The Namura Stone (24 page)

The bursts of light became bigger and bigger, spitting sparks which grew larger and larger until they coalesced into a jagged line, which looked like a fork of lightning propagating horizontally. The sound as space was actually rent in two was deafening. For a moment the new fracture hung stationary, then the self-reinforcing waves began to pry its edges open, forcing them further and further apart. The selwaves themselves were ominous shapes of colours which blistered into existence in the gap and, once there, mushroomed out, twisting and mutating into other shapes, other colours. They would have been beautiful if they hadn’t been so deadly. Behind the selwaves, light was blazing through the fracture. As the rift became larger and larger it started to consume its own surroundings, and everything in its path was suctioned towards it by forces which were beginning to increase exponentially.

Six had to shade his eyes against the light. The bubble he was in was trembling, shaking with the force of all the pressure around it as it struggled to escape the fault line, to move forwards. He had lost Diva, and he twisted to find her.

She was behind him again. He scrambled to his feet and stared over the disrupted space between them. Her bubble was being carried away, sideways and backwards.

It was the wrong direction.

She was being carried back into the rift. Her bubble was silhouetted against the brilliant white light which shone out of the rupture. She had been caught up by the shockwave. The selwaves of energy were receding with her, framing Diva – and everything which could not escape – in a bright filament of furious energy. The rift had become a giant crevice of boiling flame which was cauterizing the open wound in the quantum trap and closing it forever.

She was not going to get through the tunnel. She was being slowly carried away from him, away from safety. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, but it was inevitable; they were like flies trapped in amber.

He shouted, and pounded at the walls of the bubble. “NO! —ARCAN!”

There was no response. He hammered again at the wall, feeling helpless. “YOU HAVE TO STOP THIS!”

But there was still no reply. Now his hands scrabbled desperately at the sides of the bubble. “ARCAN! LET ME OUT!”

He could still see Diva’s face. She was looking sad, but staring at him as he was carried away from her, towards the daylight, and she was carried back, towards the dark.

He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the bubble behind him. It was already far away, but he could see her figure, slender, brave, still facing towards him. Her hands were held against the bubble, he saw.

Maybe she could sign to him!

Hastily he pushed his own hands against the bubble, his fingers racing to press out words. “Diva? Are you there?”

But there was silence. It was as if the bubble he was inside was merely inorganic; there was no sensation of Arcan’s presence. The bubble was silent, the walls inelastic, mute.

Six could do nothing but watch as the girl he had always loved with all his heart was swept further and further away. The rift was receding too, he saw. The fracture in reality was moving rapidly back into the darkness, the bubble containing Diva becoming smaller and smaller until he could no longer distinguish it, or her. He screwed up his eyes. She must be there, somewhere. But he couldn’t see her bubble; it had vanished behind the streams of seething selwaves, and was no longer visible. All that was left was the flaming line of intense light which marked the rift itself, and this was gradually becoming thinner and thinner as it raced backwards into the darkness, further and further away.

Still he peered behind him, even though he couldn’t see her anymore.

He stared at the boundary, at the disappearing line of turbulence. He didn’t dare to blink; he didn’t want to miss seeing Diva reappear. She had to reappear. He forgot to breathe.

Then the thin line that she had vanished into flared with an explosion of intense light, a light so white that it seemed to burn its memory into his retina. By the time the incandescence had faded and he was able to see again, all the selwaves had vanished; he was now only surrounded by darkness.

Six’s throat worked. He felt dizzy, still unable to take a breath. Because, even though he didn’t want to believe it, deep down he knew what that last, devastating blaze of light had been. Arcan had activated the Reventex. That part of the orthogel which was not on this side of the barrier had been subjected to a detonation big enough to destroy an entire skyrise.

Six stared dumbly at the last place he had seen her bubble; his face a numb mask, his eyes unfocused.

Diva had been on the other side of the barrier.

His mind was stricken. It was trying to inform him of a disaster, but a sponge-like sense of preservation was intercepting that information, blotting it out and refusing to let it register.

Small sparks of logic stuttered to get their message through, but were blocked by a wall of rejection.

He could hear nothing except the black pounding of his own blood in his ears, and then that, too, seemed to come to a halt as everything around him imploded and then froze.

He wouldn’t believe it; his brain wouldn’t allow it to be true. It would simply delete the possibility. His eyes closed and he let the blackness take over. An emptiness gradually erased every thought from his brain, every feeling. As if a giant hand had pushed the stop button on his life, everything inside his mind ground to a halt. He stopped working. His body refused to continue with its involuntary tasks.

The blood drained from his face; he swayed for a moment, and then keeled over, collapsing to the floor of the bubble, unconsciousness temporarily insulating him from any more contact with past, present or the immediate future.

DIVA LOOKED AROUND. She was alone. There was quite a lot of orthogel surrounding her, but she could see nobody else.

She was glad. She hoped Arcan had managed to get the others all out.

“Well done, Arcan,” she muttered to herself, surprised at the strength of her voice, but rather disappointed to find that she was beginning to shake. “Well done.”

“Thank you, Diva.”

Diva stood up, her jaw strong if trembling slightly, and her shoulders straight. She swallowed, determined to overcome the momentary weakness of her body, before going on: “Did you set the fuses?”

The orthogel around her darkened. “I did.”

“And did the others get away?”

“I can find nobody else trapped with me here. Many of my cells are gone, too, together with nearly all of my brain. I am very sorry that you were not saved, Diva. There was some sort of shock wave, which split me in two. I couldn’t get both parts out.”

She stretched her neck up proudly, and managed a smile. “The others are safe, and the Dessites will not get their hands on this part of you. That is all that matters.”

“You know that is not true.”

“It is a worthy cause to die for. I am proud to have been a part of it all.”

“I would have preferred to save you.”

“I know, Arcan. Don’t feel bad; it is not your fault and at least I shall have died fighting. I am glad. I wanted to live up to my name.”

“Can you feel the pressure of the Dessite minds?”

“Yes; they are very strong. Will we have to resist for long?”

“Just a few more seconds. Can you do it?”

Her shoulders went back, and her eyes flashed. “Of course I can. I am the girl who fights.” Diva took a deep breath. “It’s just … I … I keep thinking of Six.”

It seemed hard to let go of everything they had shared together. There was a dull ache of protest in her heart, which seemed insistent on showing her image after image of the Kwaidian as he grew from a boy to a man. Her throat hurt. She tried to give a twisted smile, but her eyes were glistening, and Arcan saw her blink furiously.

“He will miss you.”

“I know. It will be hard for him.”

“Diva?”

“Yes?”

“I am glad I have known you. You are all extraordinary beings, even though you are transients.”

“I am the one who should thank you. I am glad I met you, too.” Her throat hurt. “Goodbye, Arcan; I thank you for these extra years you gave me.”

“Goodbye, Diva. It has been a privilege to know you.”

She allowed herself to think again of Six, just for a moment. She whispered something and closed her eyes.

Then she stiffened her back and straightened up, facing forwards like a true meritocrat should at that inescapable moment of death – to welcome its touch. She lifted her head and took a deep breath; the one she knew would be her last, the one she should savour. She breathed out slowly through her lips and gave one last, slow smile of wry acceptance.

A blazing, brilliant white flash blossomed out from the centre of the remaining orthogel in the chamber. It vapourized everything which came in its path, everything within a radius of 15 metres.

Diva’s body was instantly incinerated by the force of the blast.

THE OTHER BUBBLES tumbled over and over, their occupants being thrown around like flotsam in a mountain torrent in spring.

Grace had lost sight of Ledin, and her eyes were worried. She clawed herself upright as the movement slowed and began to look around her. They were in the lake on Valhai, she realized. Arcan had brought them home.

The bubble she was in shimmered, and she felt new orthogel take its place.

“Grace, are you all right?” It was Arcan.

“Yes! Yes, I am. You? The others?”

Arcan was uncharacteristically silent.

“What? What is it? Arcan? ARCAN?”

“I … I …” The bubble around her turned black.

Grace bit her lip. Her heart had missed a beat. “L-Ledin?” she ventured.

“Is here. So are Six, Tallen and Bennel, though Bennel seems unable to stand upright.”

Grace went white. “… And … and Diva? What about Diva?”

Arcan was silent.

Grace looked confused. “Diva is … is not here?” She thumped her hands against the sides of the bubble. “We must go back! We can’t leave her behind! Arcan! Whatever are you thinking of?”

“We can’t go back. There is nothing to go back to.”

Grace covered her mouth with her hands. “You mean …?”

“The explosives detonated. Diva will not be coming back.”

Grace sat down with a thump on the floor. Her legs had failed her unexpectedly. She stared at them, uncomprehending. Then she looked around her at the orthobubble, as if asking Arcan to rectify his last words, as if hoping against hope that she had misheard. She gazed at the still blackness surrounding her, and something in that very stillness told her that she had heard him aright. She put one hand to her throat, stricken, her face crumpled, and she began to cry.

“I am sorry, Grace. I am transporting all of you to Xiantha. Six is unconscious. I think he knows that she is gone.”

Grace still had her hands over her mouth, but she managed to nod. “Yes. Yes, of course. Take me to him, please. He will need me. I … I … h-he will need help. We … we will look after him. But … oh, Arcan, how did it happen?”

Arcan darkened again and then explained how he had realized that the namura stone might allow them all to escape. “—But it was too much, too fast, and the namura stone was too solid.” He told her about the canths and the trimorphs losing their dimming effect on the mindwall. “There was only a tiny portion of the barrier I could tunnel through, and I had to do it as quickly as I could. There was no time left to be careful. Perhaps I was too fast, perhaps the namura stone was too solid, perhaps the mindwall too strong. For whatever reason, there was a shock wave which rent everything apart, and Diva was carried backwards – to the part of me which was not able to tunnel out.”

Grace swallowed. “I see. I suppose it was lucky you could get any of us out.”

“Yes. But that doesn’t help.”

“No. No, it doesn’t. Are … are you going to be all right, Arcan?”

“Yes. Only a small part of my cells were trapped and destroyed, thanks to all of you. I will require a period of recuperation, so I will leave you all on Xiantha and then come back here to try to get back to normal. The visitor, who travelled to Enara, says that the Ammonites merely showed the Dessites where to find me as a gesture of goodwill. They are still in discussions about whether to make a formal agreement with the Dessites, and they have decided to do nothing more until that has been resolved. So we have time. The

Dessite mindwall lost any possibility of a link to this system with the explosion, which means that at least we don’t have to worry about them, for the moment.”

At last Grace took her hands away from her face. She felt as if her own heart was stabbing at her; it was still physically difficult to breathe. She was devastated, but through the cold shock that was making her whole body shake uncontrollably she knew she had things to do. “Very well, Arcan. I … I will tell the others.”

“Thank you.” Arcan’s voice seemed to come and go, rather strangely. “I would appreciate it. Please tell them how sorry I am. How much … how very much I would have liked to save Diva.”

Grace gave the saddest smile of her life. “I will tell them. I promise.”

The depths of the lake on Valhai vanished, and Grace was deposited in front of the canth keeper. The hot Xianthan sun was shining down on the canth farm, and there was a ring of canths circling them. She looked around her. Four other bubbles had gently deposited their contents on the ground.

Grace took a deep breath, and then she walked unsteadily towards them.