Cold People

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It was with great sadness that I learnt the news of Carolyn Reidy, Chief Executive of Simon & Schuster, passing during the writing of this novel. Carolyn was remarkably kind, insightful and supportive during my career, always encouraging and a true champion of authors. It is an enormous loss. The process of writing this novel was interrupted by many disruptions, some personal and some global, and in truth it wouldn’t have been finished at all without the support and wisdom of my agent, and former editor, Mitch Hoffman at the Aaron Priest Agency, a true friend and a great mind. Working together with Suzanne Baboneau at Simon & Schuster UK, they remain a wonderful creative team, inspiring and insightful, and I will be forever grateful to them. Special mention must also go to Ian Chapman, Chief Executive of Simon & Schuster UK, for being patient with my delays and an enormous source of motivation. Simon & Schuster is a very special publishing house and I’m lucky to be part of their family. I’m also appreciative of my editor at Simon & Schuster US, Colin Harrison, whose notes and thoughts on the various drafts of the text improved the manuscript and were a pleasure to ponder. In addition, thanks to Emily Polson for her observations, all of which contributed to the final book. Finally, on a personal level, my father recently survived a stroke, my mother recently survived surgery and, despite their own struggles, they’ve both been constantly excited to read another novel. Maybe, deep down, I write all my books in an attempt to delight my parents. Also by Tom Rob Smith Child 44 The Secret Speech Agent 6 The Farm London Spy ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tom Rob Smith is the author of the acclaimed Child 44 trilogy. Child 44 itself was a global publishing sensation, selling over two million copies. His most recent novel, The Farm, was a number one international bestseller and is currently being adapted for television. Tom’s career has also extended into television, most notably with American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace for which he wrote all the scripts. His work won him a Writer’s Guild Award for best adapted series, and an Emmy and Golden Globe for best limited series. www.SimonandSchuster.co.uk/Authors/Tom-Rob-Smith TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO THE FIRST SIGHTING OF ANTARCTICA LOOKING UP AT THE NIGHT sky Ui saw only unfamiliar stars. These weren’t the constellations that guided him between the Polynesian islands of his homeland; these were stars from the sky’s outer edge, the stars his people had never bothered to name since they were no use to navigate by, dismissed as the petuu vare – the foolish stars. Tonight, he imagined them looking down upon him and asking who was foolish now, this man all alone, so far from home. His vessel made excellent speed as a strong wind filled the sails plaited from pandanus leaves. The two hulls shaped like canoes, harnessed together with a lattice of bamboo, skimmed gracefully across the ocean, carved from the oldest calophyllum tree on their home island. His father, a master shipbuilder, had toiled on them for many months using mud paste to test every seal, dabbing the joins, fitting them together then pulling them apart, searching for even the smallest patch where water might find a way through. His father’s skills were in such demand that sailors from faraway islands bartered for his services and yet he’d refused all offers, working exclusively on his son’s ship, the finest ever built. Many in their community considered both the ship’s construction and the expedition itself an indulgence of Ui’s vanity, since this journey into the unknown brought no benefits to their patagonia. It was already agreed that his abilities at sea were unmatched and his navigational skills unrivalled. He had nothing to prove. He was adored by many lovers and envied by many friends. To them, this adventure was folly, an obsession with the mythical land they called Iraro. The first time he’d heard the word Iraro was as a young boy when his father had drawn a map on the sand to teach him the geography of Polynesia. Studying the islands, Ui had jabbed his finger at the ocean on the outskirts and asked: ‘What is this?’ ‘We call those waters Iraro.’ ‘What is Iraro?’ ‘The place we know nothing about.’ ‘Why do we know nothing about it?’ ‘Because no one has ever sailed there.’ ‘One day I will sail there.’ His father hadn’t laughed or brushed off the claim as the mere boasting of a child. He’d crouched down and wiped away the markings, fearful that he’d sown the seed of a dangerous idea in an impressionable mind: ‘And if you sail there, my son, who I love very much, and who I could not live without, will you also sail home?’ Ui brought the vessel to a stop, dropping the sails, standing on deck and searching the horizon. If he didn’t discover land soon, he’d be forced to turn back. The hollow hulls had been loaded with supplies, parcels of fermented vegetables, bundles of sugar cane, but mostly with drinking coconuts since the ocean provided a ready supply of food. On his voyage he’d seen ocean life of an undiscovered kind, shoals of elegant fish unfathomable in number bursting out of the water like birds with milk-coloured scales and eyes like pearls. Having always presumed that warmth meant life and cold meant death, he now accepted this assumption was wrong. Cold was merely a different way of life. He cut a notch on the mast to mark his sixty-ninth day at sea without sight of land. The air was cold in Iraro and he was wrapped up in the thickest of furs, clothes created especially for this journey. As he sipped some of the precious coconut water, drinking only enough to stop his mind and muscles weakening, he contemplated the prospect of returning home without a discovery. Aware of his own vanity,