Context (107 page)

For
a moment, the ship hung there in mu-space, alone in the golden deep, until some
power—not the Pilot, who yelped in surprise—thrust them through the deepest
currents of the fractal universe. They whirled, they sang—and then the moment
of transition into cold blackness, where stars like diamonds shone, and a blue
world was hanging before them, clothed in puffy clouds.

They were back in realspace, and
home was close.

Father...

But it was a home which would
never be the same. Not for Ro.

There
was snow in Reykjavik, cold and dry beneath a grey and lilac sky.

Everything seemed preternaturally
real: immediate and minutely textured. She tasted the air’s coldness, felt the
landing field’s reassuring solidity beneath her insulated boots.

TDVs moved like hunched beetles
among the landed shuttles, retrieving the still-sleeping passengers, complete
with the couches on which they lay, for transfer to the warmly lit reception
domes.

‘Are you OK?’ Gramps leaned
close, his face reddened by the cold, a bright hood enclosing his head.

‘Of course she is.’ Mother,
holding Ro by the elbows. Her blind metallic eye sockets notwithstanding, she
could ense deeply in matters of mood and health. ‘She’s fine.’

Someone cleared his throat.

‘There’s been an official
apology.’ It was the young UN officer, FO Neil, who had accompanied her at the
Flight School. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. ‘Conspiracy among the
Zajinets. The ones who tried to get you have been punished. Several ambassadors
have been replaced.’

No-one knew for sure, but the
renegade might well have kidnapped Ro to protect her, hiding her in Watcher’s
Bones from the official delegation who wanted her dead.

Who cares?

Ro shrugged.

Everything was different...

‘Gramps?’ She looked over to
where a crane, like a black scorpion in the gathering gloom, plucked the Pilot’s
cabin from the ship. ‘You know how the Pilots regard my father?’

Whatever else he might be,
Grandfather was still a Jesuit priest:

‘Are we going to debate the nature
of superstition out here?’

‘Maybe later.’

Dart Mulligan, subsumed in
mu-space. Everyone knew that tale.

Thank you, Father.

‘Good.’ It was Mother, Karyn, who
hooked her arm inside Ro’s. ‘Let’s go inside and get warm.’

The
cold air felt good, but she was beginning to shiver. Ro and Mother walked on
together, with Gramps, big and burly, protectively beside them.

Flight Officer Neil trailed
behind. Would he have anything to report to Frau Doktor Schwenger?

I have my own goals now. Not UNSA‘s.

But to carry them out she would
need help.

If I have the strength...

At the terminal building’s
entrance, Ro stopped and looked back across the night-shrouded space-field, at
the great vessel which crouched like a bird about to leap into flight—a tenebral
raptor in an umbral world—and wondered at everything that had occurred.

‘He was a good man, wasn’t he? My
father?’

They answered her with hugs, and
led her inside to a place of human cheer, where hot glasses of tea and clear
strong spirits were imbibed with laughter, while orange flames danced in a
fireplace which looked real, smelled
true,
with its crackling warmth and
hint of raw smoke tasted upon the air, where the furniture was old, dark wood
grown iron-hard with age, with soft cushions of maroon and chocolate brown, and
where trays of pungent fish dishes were passed around with a gentle invitation
or a witty joke, among people relaxing at the end of a day’s work well done,
celebrating their life near the axis of the world, unaware of the greater
universe which lies beyond: that place where the stars are black and spiky,
like negative snowflakes formed of darkest ink, where crimson nebulae like
streamers of spilled blood in warm salt water gently elongate themselves and
drift, where the stuff of space itself shines gold or amber, endless and
forever, and the natural laws which govern humankind can hold no sway, and
where even the miraculous can occur; a place which, once glimpsed, lures the
spirit with a soft but all-pervasive siren-song, always tempting, never to be
escaped.

<>

~ * ~

60

NULAPEIRON
AD 3422

Death
train.

He was a tiny clinging insect,
buffeted by the crushing slipstream, held by gekkomere-clingrope to the
brushed-brass hull. The cylindrical train powered its way through arterial
tunnels, riding the shock wave of its own passing.

Just hang on.

Deep into trance, locking his
body in position, an unthinking animal with only one objective.

Hang on.

And then the slowing, the welcome
deceleration, and the urge to laugh as it shrieked to a halt, in a titanic hall
arched with steel and stone, where red-badged soldiers were massed everywhere—on
platforms, on raised walkways and balconies—and floatglobes trained their
weapons ceaselessly on the people who passed beneath.

It was the heart of Dark Fire
territory, a lifetime away from freedom.

There were no alarms, no spitting
graser fire, as Tom slid slowly from the hull, gasping, and dropped to the safe
side of the train, away from the disembarkation platform.

He crouched there, sunk deep
inside himself—closed his eyes, but just for a moment—hearing as from a
distance the clang of metal (not membrane) carriage doors lowering, forming
ramps; the guards’ shouted orders and the stunned absence of protest from the
thousand ragged prisoners who shuffled from packed cargo holds onto the
platform’s breadth, and stood in starved and dehydrated fright: waiting for
whatever Fate was going to throw at them next.

Tom shivered—and continued to
shiver, unable to stop—remembering the Grand’aume’s dungeons, afraid to move
into the open.

This is insane.

But the edicts of the Blight
assumed no notion of human normalcy, or showed any sign of treating individuals
as anything more than meat.

It
had taken three tendays, a massive trek through wilderness, and Tom looked as
gaunt and starved as the prisoners. To any watching guards, he would seem as
weak and dispirited as other captives—for lack of food stuns the mind into a
state of sleepy helplessness, even as the body begins slowly to digest its own
tissues.

But in his case the appearance of
weakness was a deception.

The nearest he had come to death
had been at the mission’s start, as his arachnabug hurtled through friendly
territory and a startled sentry had fired, graser beam missing by centimetres
as Tom threw the ‘bug through evasive spins, found an exit, whipped into it and
was gone, the small vehicle’s tendrils a fast-moving blur.

He had journeyed high, keeping to
Primum Stratum-equivalent through the abandoned territories, then finally using
a vertical shaft to ascend all the way to the surface.

Wide open skies.

The arachnabug functioned on the
ground, moving swiftly across the landscape. It would have been faster to
remain in habitable tunnels, but avoiding detection had become the primary
factor.