Infinite Day (87 page)

The words held no meaning. At least none that was acceptable. “You mean . . . ?” she said, and she heard her voice tremble.

“Yes, you are going to die.”

“But I do not feel ill.”

“You are not ill. In fact, I can tell you that you could probably live for another fifty years.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I hope you don't mind me saying that this is the most bizarre conversation that I have ever had.”

“Not at all. It is rare for me. Its rarity indicates how much the Most High values you.”

“I ought to be honored, then? So, how am I going to die?”

“The unfortunate Zachary Larraine is going to come and kill you. It will not be particularly unpleasant. He has a drug that will stop your heart beating and mimic a natural death. You will have known worse events in life than the act of leaving it.”

Eliza got to her feet and stood against the desk. “So I'm going to be murdered. But shouldn't I do something about it?”

“No.”

“But I have this document.” She gestured to the screen. “That must be sent off.”

“The one I serve says that now is not the time for the truth to be revealed.”

“Look, letting this happen—this . . .
murder
, not publishing this file—doesn't that mean that you are acquiescing in evil?”

The head tilted slightly. “That is a common complaint. It is not, however, true. Evil will be judged. That is recorded in the Word and all men and women know that in their hearts. Yet there are times and places where evil must be allowed to persist for a little while. The time is not yet come for the prebendant and his colleagues to face judgment.”

“But it doesn't seem, well,
fair
.”

“From your perspective, it doesn't seem fair. But the human viewpoint is defective.”

A new thought came to her. “But my family . . . I need to talk to them.”

“You spoke to them just now.”

And so that is why I was prompted to say what I did; I was indeed making my farewells.

“No chance of a delay, I suppose?”

There was a shake of the head. “I wouldn't ask for it. His time is the best time. Please delete the file. You have fifty minutes.”

Then, as if he had been snatched out of the room too fast to see, he was gone.

I must do as he says.

She sat down at her desk again.

“Irrevocably delete this file.”

“Are you sure?” the artificial voice asked.

“Quite sure.”

The text vanished. “File deleted.”

She was aware she was oddly calm. She laughed at the realization that she was wearing old clothes.
That really will not do for the occasion
.

She quickly changed into a long, brightly colored dress, put on her favorite jewelry, tidied her hair, and returned to her desk. Then she prayed.

Just after nine the doorbell rang. Eliza rose to her feet and walked to the door. She stretched out her hand, aware that, finally, she was trembling.

It was Zak.
I would have been astonished if it had been anybody else
.

He looked ill, and his eyes darted this way and that.

“I have a message,” he said. “May I come in?”

What happens to history if I refuse?

“By all means,” she said, noticing that the pocket on his jacket bulged slightly.

She closed the door behind him.

“I know why you are here,” she said, and she saw his eyes widen. “Whatever you have to do, do it quickly.”
A quotation.
She tracked it to its source and balked at it.
How strange that it was said not far from where I stand now
.

She felt a sudden enormous spasm of pity for Zak.

“I am under orders,” he protested, and she heard the wobble in his voice.

“Of course. So am I.”

Zak's hand dipped into his pocket and pulled out a small pad. “A neural poison.” He was talking too quickly. “It will trigger heart failure.”

The pad was close to her nostrils.

“I forgive you.”
That was important to say
.

The pad was over her nose. There was a strange smell—of flowers, perhaps.

“It will be best . . . if you don't resist. Breathe deeply.”

As she felt her heart thud and slow down, she was struck by the strangest of thoughts.
I am dying and my killer will live. Yet the reality is quite the opposite: it is he who faces death . . . and I who am truly going to live.

At the end of the second week of walking, Merral and Vero had put the high ground well behind them and were making their way along flatter land at the edge of what was now a major river. They were weary. Despite having been supplemented by fish and fruit, their food supply was now very limited and they had both lost a good deal of weight.

They had just come to a high and wide ridge of rock through which the river tumbled down into a steep-sided valley. A thunderous rumble and clouds of water vapor in which rainbows gleamed spoke of at least one waterfall ahead. Reluctantly, Merral and Vero left the riverbank and began a slow and painful traverse of the ridge. It took them most of the morning, but they encouraged each other with hopes of at last seeing the sea.

At the very crest, they peered ahead, but all they could see was endless ranks of green broken by more tumbled massifs and spires of rock. There was no sign of any sea.

“It can't be that far away,” Merral protested. “Even on Made Worlds, rivers reach the sea somewhere.”
Or do they? Perhaps this one just dies out in some bleak desert?

Then they picked up their backpacks and began walking on westward. As the sun was setting they reached a loop of the river. After its foaming passage through the gorge, it was quieter here, a broad, smooth-flowing, muddy serpent of water.

“It's a pity we can't float down it,” Vero said.

“I'm considering it,” Merral replied. “But we'd have to make a boat and we may not have seen the end of any more rapids. I think it's safer to walk.”

That night when Vero woke Merral for his watch, he told him that he'd seen something in the sky that might have been a new satellite. Merral caught the concern in his voice and on his watch he too glimpsed a silver point of light speeding overhead.
It is more likely foe than friend
.

The following day they struck camp early and continued westward. Now, though, they walked more carefully than they had hitherto, moving around clearings rather than across them, and all the time listening and watching intently.

They made good progress that day, and the night passed without incident. The next day they pressed on until, near midday, a broad whaleback of stone began to rise up above the trees ahead of them. By the time the late afternoon clouds had gathered and the frenzy of the storm was upon them, they were at its edge and took shelter under a rock slab by the river's margin. There they sat in near darkness as the rain whipped down around them in a downpour so deafening that it almost drowned out the thunder.

While they waited, Merral watched as the river level rose within minutes; great branches and even whole trees began flowing past them. As the storm abated, a large fir tree, its drowned branches still green, came into sight, bobbing in the turbulent brown waters. Merral watched it, wondering how far it had traveled.
Like me, it has been uprooted by the current of events from a world where it flourished.
Then as if to contradict his gloomy thoughts, the tree's roots caught in the mud and it swung to a shuddering halt on the riverbank below.

Perhaps I am like a tree trunk in a river
. Then a bizarre notion came to Merral:
Could the trunk criticize the river?
And then, in an instant, he was overwhelmed with a sense of his own folly.
How little I understand! How little I
can
understand! What basis do I have for criticizing God? I am ignorant.

In an insight he saw what had happened. His elevation on Farholme as warrior, the repeated—if slenderly based—claim that he was the great adversary, even his reckless attempt at self-sacrifice at the Blade of Night had all contributed to a sense of self-importance.
I became proud; I imagined that I had contributed to my own success, and that blinded me. Then, when the inexplicable happened, I rebelled because it went against my expectations. Did I really expect to be consulted by the Maker of the universe?

He bowed his head and admitted his pride, and in his admission, found he could pray.

I demanded understanding that I might have faith. I failed to realize that faith is the prerequisite of understanding.

The storm was slow in blowing itself over, and they decided they would go no farther that day. So they sat and watched as a bloodred sun sank, setting fire to tattered columns of cloud and turning the river red. And as they did, Merral told Vero, in halting words, that the crisis was over.

Vero said little but just nodded.

“You knew the problem, didn't you?”

“My friend, I guessed. But pride is a hard thing to deal with. It is unique in that it carries its own defense against accusation. And we all have our own battles to fight.” And with that he let the matter drop.

The next morning, with water vapor rising off the sodden vegetation around them, they hid the bags in a recess in the rock and began to climb the great stone ridge with just some water and the pocket fieldscope.

It took them longer than they had predicted, mainly because they tried to avoid bare expanses of rock. At the top they looked westward. The great river snaked on ahead for some way through the forest, but they both felt, for the first time, that the line of trees did end ahead of them. In the distance, tiny white specks wheeled in the sky.

“Gulls,” Merral said. “I smell salt in the air. The sea at last.”

Vero, peering through the fieldscope, drew Merral's attention to something. Far away, near where they felt the river flowed, a narrow line rose into the sky like a hair.

It has to be a construction—perhaps some sort of weather or survey station. It is the first evidence we've seen of any human activity.

Within minutes, Merral realized his hopes had become centered on that tower. There they would find security, food, and who knew what. In a more rational part of his mind he knew that such hopes were baseless.
In the past there might have been help and possibly a communications system. But now, with the worlds at war and the Gate closed, there can be no such hope.
Still, it gave them a goal.

They were discussing the significance of the tower and how long it would take them to get there when Merral became aware of a bird, calling wildly, heading westward overhead. It was followed by another, also uttering cries of alarm.

With a surge of unease, he turned around. Far to the east of them, above the treeline, enormous flocks of birds were rising and circling in panic. With a wordless urgency, Merral leaned down and focused the small fieldscope on the trees, zooming the instrument for maximum enlargement.

Perhaps ten kilometers away, the foliage of the trees was shaking, as if a great wind were slowly drifting across a wide front of the forest. As it moved toward them, birds were fleeing before it. He heard their distant calls of dread.

“We have company,” he said. “Better take a look.”

The Krallen are coming. Not in twelves or twenty-fours but in hundreds—if not thousands—sweeping their way meter by meter through the woods. They will not miss us.

Vero took the device. “Ah. How long before they get to us?”

“Three, four hours. They are traveling slowly and thoroughly. Ideas?”

“None. Another hilltop last stand?”

Merral felt himself smile at what now seemed a distant memory. “Not yet. And this time, there's no one to rescue us.”

A moment later Merral had an idea. “Let's take the river. We have one last chance to elude them.”

They raced down as fast as they could to the jagged rock where they had overnighted. Merral gestured to the great fir lying beached on the soft mud at least two meters above the water level.

“We travel down on that. We may be able to hide in the branches. But it will be a wet journey.”

They took out the wire saws from the backpacks and, standing deep in the mud, sawed away slowly at the roots that held the trunk fast in the riverbank. Yet for all their efforts, by early afternoon the tree had still refused to move.

“We'll have to wait for the water to rise on the next storm,” Merral said, looking eastward to where the clouds, as white as sheets, were slowly bubbling up over the mountains.

They decided that all they could do was wait. They sealed their backpacks closed, tied them to the tree, and then hid themselves in the branches as the warm sun beat down and flies buzzed around.

Soon the clouds were thicker and above them came regular flurries of panicky birds flying away overhead. A herd of deer bounded nervously past on the far side of the river.