There were nearly three thousand people in the crowd which assembled outside the starscraper lobby. Most of them looked fairly pissed at being summoned, but nobody actually argued with Bonney’s deputies when they came calling. They wanted a quiet life. On a planet they could have just walked away into the wilderness; here that option did not exist.
Part of the lobby’s gently arching roof had crumpled, a remnant of an early battle during their takeover of the habitat. Bonney started to walk up the pile of rubble. She held a processor block in one hand, turning it so she could see the screen.
“Last chance, Rubra,” she said. “Tell me where the boyo is, or I start getting serious.” The block’s screen remained blank. “You overheard what Patricia said. I know you did, because you’re a sneaky little shit. You’ve been manipulating me for a while now. I’m always told where he is, and he’s always gone when I get there. You’re helping him as much as you’re helping me, aren’t you? Probably trying to frighten him into cooperating with you. Was that it? Well, not anymore, Rubra, because Patricia has changed everything; we’re playing big boys’ rules now. I don’t have to be careful, I don’t have to respect your precious, delicate structure. It was fun going one on one against all those little bastards you stashed around the place. I enjoyed myself. But you were cheating the whole time. Funny, that’s what Dariat warned us about right from the start.” She reached the roof, and walked to the edge above the crowd. “You going to tell me?”
The screen printed: THOSE LITTLE DEADNIGHT GIRLS THAT COME HERE, YOU REALLY ENJOY WHAT YOU DO WITH THEM, DON’T YOU, DYKE?
Bonney dropped the processor block as if it were a piece of used toilet paper. “Game over, Rubra. You lose; I’m going to use nukes to crack you in half.”
Dariat, I think you’d better listen to this.
What now?
Bonney, as usual. But things have just acquired an unpleasant edge. I don’t think Kiera should have left her unsupervised.
Dariat hooked into the observation routines in time to see Bonney raise her hands for silence. The crowd gazed up at her expectantly.
“We’ve got the power of genies,” she said. “You can grant yourself every wish you want. And we still have to live like dogs out in these shantytowns, grabbing what food we can, whipped into line, told where we can and can’t go. Rubra’s done that to us. We have starships for fuck’s sake. We can travel to another star system in less time than it takes your heart to beat once. But if you want to go from here to the endcap, you have to walk. Why? Because that shit Rubra won’t let us use the tubes. And up until now, we’ve let him get away with it. Well, not anymore.”
Passionate lady, Dariat said uncomfortably.
Psycho lady, more like. They’re not going to disobey her, they wouldn’t dare. She’s going to marshal them together and send them after you. I can’t keep you ahead of an entire habitat of possessed hunting you. For once, boy, I’m not lying.
Yeah. I can see that. Dariat went over to the fire at the back of the cave. It had almost burnt out, leaving a pyramid of coals cloaked in a powder of fine grey ash. He stood looking at it, feeling the slumbering heat contained within the pink fragments.
I have to decide. I can’t beat Rubra. And Rubra will be destroyed by Kiera when she returns. For thirty years I would have welcomed that. Thirty fucking years. My entire life.
But he’s willing to sacrifice his mental integrity, to join my thoughts to his. He’s going to abandon two centuries of his belief that he can go it alone.
Tatiana stirred on the blanket and sat up, bracelets chinking noisily. Sleepy confusion drained from her face. “That was a strange dream.” She gave him a shrewd glance. “But then this is a strange time, isn’t it?”
“What was your dream?”
“I was in a universe which was half light, half darkness. And I was falling out of the light. Then Anastasia caught me, and we started to fly back up again.”
“Sounds like your salvation.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Things are changing. That means I have to decide what to do. And I don’t want to, Tatiana. I’ve spent thirty years not deciding. Thirty years telling myself this was the time I was waiting for. I’ve been a kid for thirty years.”
Tatiana rose and stood beside him. He refused to meet her gaze, so she put an arm lightly on his shoulder. “What do you have to decide?”
“If I should help Rubra; if I should join him in the neural strata and turn this into a possessed habitat.”
“He wants that?”
“I don’t think so. But he’s like me, there’s not much else either of us can do. The game’s over, and we’re running out of extra time.”
She stroked him absently. “Whatever you decide, I don’t want you to take me into account. There are too many issues at stake, big issues. Individuals don’t matter so much; and I had a good run against that Bonney. We annoyed her a lot, eh? That felt nice.”
“But individuals do matter. Especially you. It’s odd, I feel like I’ve come full circle. Anastasia always told me how precious a single life was. Now I have to decide your fate. And I can’t let you suffer, which is what’s going to happen if Rubra and I take on the possessed together. I’m responsible for her death, I can’t have yours on my hands as well. How could I ever face her with that weighing on my heart? I have to be true to her. You know I do.” He tilted his head back, his voice raised in anger. “Do you think you’ve won?”
I never even knew we were fighting until this possession happened, Rubra said sadly. You know what hopes I had for you in the old days, even though you never shared them. You know I never wanted anything to spoil my dreams for you. You were the golden prince, the chosen one. Fate stopped you from achieving your inheritance. That’s what Anastasia was, for you and for me. Fate. You would call it an act of Thoale.
You believe all this was destined to be?
I don’t know. All I know is that our union is the last chance either of us has to salvage something from all this shit. So now you have to ask yourself, do the living have a right to live, or do the dead rule the universe?
That’s so like you, a loaded question.
I am what I am.
Not for very much longer.
You’ll do it?
Yes.
Come in then, I’ll accept you into the neural strata.
Not yet. I want to get Tatiana out first.
Why?
We may be virtually omnipotent after I come into the neural strata, but Bonney and the hellhawks still have the potential to damage the habitat shell very badly. I doubt we can quell them instantaneously, yet they will know the second I come into the neural strata. We are going to have a fight on our hands, I don’t want Tatiana hurt.
Very well, I will ask the Kohistan Consensus for a voidhawk to take her off.
You have a method?
I have a possible method. I make no promises. You’d better get yourselves along to the counter-rotating spaceport before Bonney starts her hunt.
It wasn’t merely a hunting party Bonney was organizing. She was keenly aware that Dariat could always flee her in the tube carriages, while she was reduced to chasing after him in one of the rentcop force’s open-top trucks. If Dariat was to be caught, then she would first have to cripple his mobility.
The crowd she had assembled was split into teams, given specific instructions, and dispatched to carry them out. Each major team had one of her deputies to ensure they didn’t waver.
Every powered vehicle in the habitat set out from the starscraper lobby, driving along the tracks through the overgrown grass. Most of them travelled directly to the other camps ringing starscraper lobbies, coercing their occupants into Bonney’s scheme. It was a domino effect, spreading rapidly around Valisk’s midsection.
Kiera had wanted the tubes left alone so that when they moved Valisk out of the universe the transport system could be brought back on-line to serve them. Bonney had no such inhibitions. The possessed made their reluctant way into the starscraper lobbies, and down into the first-floor stations. There they combined their energistic power and started to systematically smash the tube tunnels. Huge chunks of polyp were torn out of the walls and roof to crash down on the magnetic guide rail. Power cables were ripped up and shorted out. Carriages were fired, adding to the blockages and sending thick plumes of black smoke billowing deep into the tunnels. Management processor blocks were blasted to cinders, exposing their interface with Valisk’s nerve fibres. Wave after wave of static discharges were pumped at the raw ends, sending what they hoped were pulses of pure pain down into the neural strata.
Bolstered by their successful vandalism, and Rubra’s apparent inability to retaliate, the possessed began to move en mass down into the starscrapers. They sent waves of energistic power surging ahead of them, annihilating any mechanical or electrical system, wrecking artefacts and fittings. Every room, every corridor, every stairwell, were searched for non-possessed. Floor by floor they descended, recapturing the heady excitement and spirit of the original takeover. Unity infected them with strength. Individuals began to shapeshift into fantastic monsters and Earthly heroes. They weren’t just going to flush out the traitor enemy, they were going to do it with malevolent finesse.
Hellhawks fluttered up from the docking ledges and began to spiral around the tubular starscrapers: an infernal flock peering into the bright oval windows with their potent senses, assisting their comrades inside.
Together they would flush him out. It was only a matter of time now.
Dariat sat opposite Tatiana in the tube carriage they took from the southern endcap. “We’re going to put you in one of the spaceport’s emergency escape pods,” he told her. “It’s going to be tough to start with, they launch at about twelve gees to get away fast. But it only lasts for eight seconds. You can take that. There’s a voidhawk squadron from Kohistan standing by to pick you up as soon as you’re clear.”
“What about the possessed?” she asked. “Won’t they try and stop me, shoot at me or something?”
“They won’t know what the hell’s going on. Rubra is going to fire all two hundred pods at once. The voidhawks will swallow in and snatch your pod before the hellhawks even know you’re out there.”
A smirk of good-humoured dubiety stroked Tatiana’s face. “If you say so. I’m proud of you, Dariat. You’ve come through when it really counts, shown your true self. And it’s a good self. Anastasia would be proud of you, too.”
“Why, thank you.”
“You should enjoy your victory, take heart from it. Lady Chi-ri will be smiling on you tonight. Bask in that warmth.”
“We haven’t won yet.”
“You have. Don’t you see? After all those years of struggle you’ve finally beaten Anstid. He hasn’t dictated what you’re doing now. This act is not motivated by hatred and revenge.”
Dariat grinned. “Not hatred. But I’m certainly enjoying putting one over on that witch queen Bonney.”
Tatiana laughed. “Me too!”
Dariat had to grab at his seat as the carriage braked sharply. Tatiana gasped as she clung to one of the vertical poles, hanging on frantically as the lights began to dim.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
The carriage juddered to a halt. The lights went out, then slowly returned as the vehicle’s backup electron matrix came on line.
Rubra?
Little bastards are smashing up the station you were heading for. They’ve cut the power to the magnetic rail, I haven’t even got the reserve circuits.
Dariat hooked into the neural strata’s observation routines to survey the damage. The starscraper station was a scene of violent devastation. Smouldering lumps of polyp were chiselled out of the tunnel by invisible surges of energy; the guidance rail writhed and flexed, screaming shrilly as its movements yanked its own fixing pins out of the floor; severed electrical cables swung from broken conduits overhead, spitting sparks. Laughter and catcalls rang out over the noise of the violence.
A rapid flick through other stations showed him how widespread the destruction was.
Bloody hell.
Damn right, Rubra said. She’s overdosing on the fury routine, but she’s playing smart with it.
A schematic of the tube network appeared in Dariat’s mind. Look, there are plenty of alternative routes left up to the spindle.
Yes, right now there are. But you’ll have to go back two stations before I can switch you to another tunnel. I can’t restore power to the rail in your tunnel, they’ve fucked the relays. The carriage will have to make it there on its own power reserve. You’d almost be quicker walking. And by the time you get there, the possessed will have wrecked a whole lot more stations. Bonney’s thought this out well; the way she’s isolating each stretch of tunnel will break up the entire network in another forty minutes.
So how the hell do we get to the spindle now?
Forwards. Go up to the station and walk though it. I can bring another carriage to the tunnel on the other side; that’ll get you directly up to the endcap.
Walk through? You’re kidding.
There’s only a couple of possessed left to guard each station after they’ve had their rampage. Two won’t be a problem.
All right, do it.
The lights dipped again as the carriage slid forwards slowly.
“Well?” Tatiana asked.
Dariat began to explain.
Starscrapers formed the major nodes in the habitat’s tube network; each of them had seven stations ringing the lobby, enabling the carriages to reach any part of the interior. Individual stations were identical; chambers with a double-arch ceiling and a central platform twenty metres long which served two tubes. The polyp walls were a light powder-blue, with strips of electrophorescent cells running the entire length above the rails. There were stairs at each end of the platform, one set leading up to the starscraper lobby, the other an emergency exit to the parkland.
In the station ahead of Dariat, the possessed finished their wrecking spree and went off up the stairs to start searching the starscraper. As Rubra predicted, they left two of their number behind to watch over the four tunnel entrances. Smoke from the attack was layering the air. Flames were still licking around the big piles of ragged polyp slabs blocking the end of each tunnel. Several hologram adverts flashed on and off overhead; an already damaged projector suffering from the proximity of the possessed turned the images to a nonsense splash of colours.
Given that the fire was dying away naturally, the two possessed were somewhat bemused when, seven minutes after everyone else left, the station’s sprinklers suddenly came on.
Dariat was three hundred metres down the tube tunnel, helping Tatiana out of the carriage’s front emergency hatch. The tunnel had only the faintest illumination, a weak blue glow coming from a couple of narrow electrophorescent strips on the walls. It curved away gently ahead of him, putting enough solid polyp between him and the station to prevent the two possessed from perceiving him.
Tatiana jumped down the last half metre and steadied herself.
“Ready?” Dariat asked. He was already using the habitat’s sensitive cells to study the pile of polyp they would have to climb over to get into the station. It didn’t look too difficult, there was an easy metre and a half gap at the top.
“Ready.”
Let’s go, Dariat said.
The two possessed guards had given up any attempt to shield themselves from the torrent of water falling from the sprinklers. They were retreating back to the shelter of the stairs. Their clothes had turned to sturdy anoraks, streaked with glistening runnels. Every surface was slick with water now: walls, platform, floor, the piles of polyp.
Rubra overrode the circuit breakers governing the cables which powered the tube, then shunted thirteen thousand volts back into the induction rail. It was the absolute limit for the habitat’s integral organic conductors, and three times the amount the carriages used. The broken guide rail jumped about as it had while it was being tormented by the possessed. Blinding white light leapt out of the magnetic couplings as it split open. It was as though someone had fired a fusion drive into the station. Water droplets spraying out of the overhead nozzles fluoresced violet, and vaporized. Metal surfaces erupted into wailing jets of sparks.
At the heart of the glaring bedlam, two bodies ignited, flaring even brighter than the seething air.
It wasn’t just the one station, that would have drawn Bonney’s attention like a combat wasp’s targeting sensor. Rubra launched dozens of attacks simultaneously. Most of them were electrical, but there were also mass charges of servitor animals, as well as mechanoids switched back on, slashing around indiscriminately with laser welders and fission blades as energistic interference crashed their processors.
Reports of the tumult poured into the starscraper lobby where Bonney had set up her field headquarters. Her deputies shouted warnings into the powerful walkie-talkies they used to keep in contact with each other.
As soon as the blaze of white light shone down the tunnel, Dariat started to run towards it. He kept hold of Tatiana’s hand, pulling her onwards. A loud caterwaul reverberated along the tunnel.
“What’s Rubra doing to them?” she shouted above the din.
“What he had to.”
The abusive light died and the sound faded away. Dariat could see the pile of polyp now, eighty metres ahead. A crescent-shaped sliver of light straddled it, seeping in from the station beyond.
Their feet began to splash through rivulets of water flowing down the tunnel. Tatiana grimaced as they reached the foot of the blockage, and hitched her skirt up.
Bonney listened to the frantic shouting all around her, counting up the incidents, the number of casualties. They’d got off lightly. And she knew that was wrong.
“Quiet,” she bellowed. “How many stations attacked? Total?”
“Thirty-two,” one of the deputies said.
“And over fifty attacks altogether. But we’ve only lost about seventy to eighty people in the stations. Rubra’s just getting rid of the sentries we posted. If he wanted to seriously harm us he’d do it when the wrecking crews were down there.”
“A diversion? Dariat’s somewhere else?”
“No,” she said. “Not quite. We know he uses the tubes to get around. I’ll bet the little shit’s in one right now. He must be. Only we’ve already blocked him. Rubra is clearing the sentries out of the way so Dariat can sneak through. That’s why he spread the attacks around, so we’d think it was a blanket assault.” She whirled around to face a naked polyp pillar and grinned with malicious triumph. “That’s it, isn’t it, boyo? That’s what you’re doing. But which way is he going, huh? The starscrapers are dead centre.” She shook her head in annoyance. “All right you people, get sharp. I want someone down in each and every station Rubra attacked. And I want them down there now. Tell them to make sure they don’t step in the water, and be on the lookout for servitors. But get them down there.”
The image of her yelling orders at her deputies boiled into Dariat’s mind like a particularly vigorous hangover. He had just reached the top of the polyp pile and squeezed under the ceiling. The station was filled with thick white mist, reducing visibility to less than five metres. Condensation had penetrated everywhere, making this side of the polyp mound dangerously unstable.
Smart bitch, Rubra said. I didn’t expect that.
Can you delay them?
Not in this station, I can’t. I haven’t got any servitors nearby, and the cables have all burnt out. You’ll have to run.
Image relay of a deputy with a walkie-talkie pressed to his ear hurrying across the lobby above. “I’m on it, I’m on it,” he was yelling into the mike.
“Tatiana, move it!” Dariat shouted.
Tatiana was still wriggling along on her belly as she slithered over the top of the pile. “What’s the matter?”
“Someone’s coming.”
She gave one final squirm and freed her legs. Together they scooted down the side of the pile, bringing a minor avalanche of slushy gravel with them.
“This way.” Dariat pointed into the mist. His perception filled in glass-grey outlines of the station walls through the swirls of cold vapour, enabling him to see the tunnel entrance. Valisk’s sensitive cells showed him the carriage waiting a hundred and fifty metres further on. They also showed him the deputy reaching the top of the stairs.
“Wait here,” he told Tatiana, and vaulted up onto the platform. His appearance changed drastically, the simple one-piece thickening to an elaborate purple uniform, complete with gold braid. The most imposing figure to dominate his youth: Colonel Chaucer. A weekly AV show of a renegade Confederation officer, a super vigilante.
Rubra was laughing softly in his head.
The deputy was halfway down the stairs when he started to slow up. He raised the walkie-talkie. “Somebody’s down here.”
Dariat reached the bottom of the stairs. “Only me,” he called up cheerfully.
“Who the hell are you?”
“You first. This is my station.”
The deputy’s mind revealed his confusion as Dariat started up towards him with powerful, confident strides. This was not the action of someone trying to hide.
Dariat opened his mouth wide and spat a ball of white fire directly at the deputy’s head. Two souls bawled in terror as they vanished into the beyond. The body tumbled past Dariat.
“What’s happening?” The walkie-talkie was reverting back to a standard communications block as it clattered down the stairs. “What’s happening? Report. Report.”
There’s four more on their way up from the first floor, Rubra said. Bonney ordered them to the station as soon as the deputy said he sensed someone.
Shit! We’ll never make it to the carriage. They can outrun Tatiana no problem.
Call her up. I’ll hide you in the starscraper.
What?
Just move!
“Tatiana! Up here, now!” He was aware of all the lift doors in the lobby sliding open. The four possessed had reached the bottom of the first-floor stairs. Tatiana jogged along the platform. She gave the corpse a quick, appalled glance.
“Come on.” Dariat caught her hand and tugged hard. Her expression was resentful, but the rising anxiety in his voice spurred her. They raced up the stairs together.
Daylight shone through the circular lobby’s glass walls. It had suffered very little damage; scorch marks on the polyp pillars and cracked glass were the only evidence that the possessed had arrived to search the tower.
Dariat could hear multiple footsteps pounding up one of the stairwells on the other side of the lobby, hidden by the central bank of lifts. His perception was just starting to register their minds emerging from behind the shield of polyp. Which meant they’d also be able to sense him.
He scooped Tatiana up, ignoring her startled holler, and sprinted for the lifts. Huge muscles pumped his legs in an effortless rhythm. She weighed nothing at all.
The phenomenal speed he was travelling at meant there was no chance at all of slowing once he passed the lift doors; he would have needed ten metres to come to a halt. They slammed straight into the rear wall. Tatiana shrieked as her shoulder, ribs, and leg hit flat on, with Dariat’s prodigious inertia driving into her. Then his face smacked into silvery metal, and there was no energistic solution to the blast of pain jabbing into his brain. Blood squirted out of his nose, smearing the wall. As he fell he was dimly aware of the lift doors sliding shut. The light outside was growing inordinately bright.
Dariat reeled around feebly, clutching at his head as if the pressure from his fingers alone could squeeze the bruises back down out of existence. Slowly the pain subsided, which allowed him to concentrate on vanquishing the remainder. “Ho fuck.” He slumped back against a wall and let his breathing calm. Tatiana was lying on the lift floor in front of him, hands pressed against her side, cold sweat on her brow.
“Anything broken?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. It just hurts.”
He went onto his hands and knees and crawled over to her. “Show me where.”
She pointed, and he laid his hand on. With his mind he could see the smooth glowing pattern of living flesh distorted and broken below his fingers, the fissures extending deep inside her. He willed the pattern to return to its unblemished state.
Tatiana hissed in relief. “I don’t know what you did, but it’s better than a medical nanonic.”
The lift stopped at the fiftieth floor.
Now what? Dariat asked.
Rubra showed him.
You are one evil bastard.
Why, thank you, boy.
Stanyon was leading the possessed down through the starscraper in pursuit of Dariat. He’d started off with thirty-five under his command, and that number was rapidly swelling as Bonney directed more and more from neighbouring starscrapers to assist him. She’d announced she was on her way herself. Stanyon was going balls-out to find Dariat before she arrived. He got hot just thinking about the praise (and other things) Kiera would direct at the champion who erased her bête noire from the habitat.
Eight different teams of possessed were searching, assigned a floor each. They were working their way steadily downwards, demolishing every mechanical and electrical device as they went.
He strode out of the stairwell onto the thirty-eighth-floor vestibule. For whatever reason, Rubra was no longer putting up any resistance. Muscle-membrane doors opened obediently, the lighting remained on, there wasn’t a servitor in sight. He looked around, happy with what he found. The floor’s mechanical utilities office had been broken open, and the machinery inside reduced to slag, preventing the sprinklers from being used. Doors into the apartments and bars and commercial offices were smashed apart, furniture and fittings inside were blazing with unnatural ferocity. Big circles of polyp flooring were cracking under the intense heat, grainy white marble surface blackening. Wisps of dirty steam fizzed up from the crannies.
“Die,” Stanyon snarled. “Die a little bit at a time. Die hurting big.”
He was walking towards the stairwell door when his walkie-talkie squawked: “We got him! He’s down here.”
Stanyon snatched the unit from his belt. “Where? Who is this? Which floor are you on?”
“This is Talthorn the Greenfoot; I’m on floor forty-nine. He’s just below us. We can all sense him.”
“Everybody hear that?” Stanyon yelled gleefully. “Fiftieth floor. Get your arses down there.” He sprinted for the stairwell.
“They’re coming,” Dariat said.
Tatiana flashed him a worried-but-brave grin, and finished tying the last cord around her pillow. They were in a long-disused residential apartment; its polyp furniture of horseshoe tables and oversized scoop armchairs dominating the living room. The chairs had been turned into cushion nests to add a dash of comfort. The foam used to fill the cushions was a lightweight plastic that was ninety-five per cent nitrogen bubbles.
They were, Rubra swore, perfect buoyancy aids.
Dariat tried on his harness one last time. The cords which he’d torn from the gaudy cushion fabric held a pillow to his chest and another against his back. Seldom had he felt so ridiculous.
His doubt must have leaked onto his face.
If it works, don’t try to fix it, Rubra said.
Ripe, from someone who’s devoted his existence to meddling.
Game set and match, I won’t even appeal. Would you like to get ready?
Dariat used the starscraper’s observation routines to check on the possessed. There were twelve of them on the floor above. A rockskinned troll was leading the pack; followed by a pair of cyber-ninjas in black flak jackets; a xenoc humanoid that was all shiny amber exoskeleton and looked like it could rip metal apart with its talons; a faerie prince wearing his forest hunting tunic and carrying a longbow in one hand, a walkie-talkie in the other; three or four excessively hairy Neanderthals; and regular soldiers in the uniforms of assorted eras.
“The loonies are on the warpath tonight,” Dariat muttered under his breath. “Finished?” he asked Tatiana.
She shifted her front pillow around and tightened the last strap to hold it in place. “I’m ready.”
The bathroom’s muscle-membrane door parted silently. Inside was an emerald-green suite: a circular bath, vaguely Egyptian in design, matched by the basin, bidet, and toilet. They were still all in perfect condition. It was the plumbing which had degraded. Water was dripping from the brass shower head above the bath; over the years it had produced a big orange stain on the bottom. Slimy bluegreen algae was growing out of the plug. The sink was piled high with bars of soap; so old and dry now that they’d started to crumble, snowing flecks over the rim.
Dariat stood in the doorway, with Tatiana pressed against him, looking eagerly over his shoulder. “What’s supposed to be happening?” she asked.
“Watch.”
A bass crunching sound was coming from the toilet. Cracks appeared around its base, expanding rapidly outwards. Then the whole bowl lurched upwards, spinning around precariously before toppling over. A two-metre circle of floor around it was rising up like a miniature volcanic eruption. Polyp splintered with a continual brassy crackling. A fine jet of water sprayed out of the fractured flush pipe.
“Lord Tarrug, what are you doing?” Tatiana asked.
“That’s not Tarrug, that’s Rubra,” Dariat told her. “No dark arts involved.”
Affinity with the local sub-routines allowed him to feel the toilet’s sphincter muscle straining as it contorted in directions it was never intended, rupturing the thin shell of polyp floor. It halted, fully expended. The cone which it had produced quivered slightly, then stilled. Dariat hurried over. There was a crater at the centre, leading down to an impenetrable darkness. The muscle tissue which made up the sides was a tough dark red flesh, now badly lacerated. Pale yellow fluid was oozing out of the splits, running down to disappear in the unseen space below.
“Our escape route,” Dariat said, echoing Rubra’s pride.
“A toilet?” she asked incredulously.
“Sure. Don’t go squeamish on me now, please.” He sat on the edge of the sphincter and swung his legs over the crater. It was a three-metre slither down into the sewer tubule below. When his feet touched the bottom he knelt down and held a hand out. His skin began to glow with a strong pink light. It revealed the tubule stretching on ahead of him, a circular shaft just over a metre in diameter, and angled slightly downwards.
“Throw the pillows down,” he said.
Tatiana dropped them, peering over the edge of the crater with a highly dubious expression. Dariat shoved the two harnesses into the tubule, and started to worm his way in after them. “When I’m in, you follow me, okay?” He didn’t give her the chance to answer. It was awkward going, pushing the pillows ahead of him as he crawled along. The grey polyp was slippery with water and fecal sludge. Dariat could hear Tatiana grunting and muttering behind him as she discovered the residue smearing the sides.
There were ridges encircling the tubule every four metres, peristaltic muscle bands that assisted the usual water flow. Despite Rubra expanding them wide, they formed awkward constrictions which Dariat had to pull himself through. He had just squeezed past the third when Rubra said: They’ve reached the fiftieth floor. Can you sense them?
Not a chance. So in theory they won’t be able to find me.
They know the general direction, and they’re heading towards the apartment.
Dariat was too intent on inching himself along to review the images. What about the rest?
On their way down. The stairwells are absolutely packed. It’s like a freak-show stampede out there.
He elbowed his way through another muscle band. The light from his hand showed the tubule walls ending two metres ahead. A thick ring of muscle membrane surrounded the rim. Beyond that was a clear empty space. He could hear a steady patter of rain in the darkness.
“We made it,” he shouted.
His only answer was another outbreak of grunted curses.
Dariat pushed the filthy pillows and their tangled cords over the edge, hearing them splash into the water. Then he was sliding himself over.
The main ingestion tract into which the sewer tubule emptied ran vertically up the entire height of the starscraper. It collected the human waste, discarded organic matter, and dirty water from every floor and carried it down to the large purification organs at the base of the starscraper. They filtered out organic compounds which were pumped back to the principal nutrient organs inside the southern endcap via their own web of specialist tubules. Poisons and toxins were disposed of directly into space. Fresh water was recirculated up to the habitat’s storage reservoirs and parkland rivers.
Normally the main ingestion tract was a continual waterfall. Now, though, Rubra had closed the inlet channels and reversed the flow from the purification organs, allowing the water level to rise up the tract until it was level with the fiftieth floor.
The cold surface closed over Dariat’s head, and he felt his feet clear the tubule. A couple of swift kicks and he surfaced, puffing a spray of droplets from his mouth. Thankfully this water was clean—relatively.
He held an arm up in the air, a sharp blue flame flickering up from his fingertips. Its light showed the true extent of the tract: twenty metres in diameter, with walls of neutral grey polyp that had the same crinkly surface texture as granite. Sewer tubule outlets formed black portals all around, their muscle-membrane rims flexing like fish mouths. The pillows were bobbing about a few metres away.
Tatiana had pushed her shoulders past the tubule’s muscle membrane, and was craning her head back to look around. The tract’s height defeated the illumination thrown out by Dariat’s small flame, revealing barely fifteen metres of the walls above the water level. A heavy shower was falling out of the darkness which roofed them, chopping up the water’s surface with small ripples.
“Come on, out you come,” Dariat said. He swam back to her and helped ease her through the opening. She gasped at the water’s chilly grip, arms thrashing about for a moment.
Dariat retrieved the two sets of pillows and strapped himself into the harness. He had to tie Tatiana’s cords for her, the cold had numbed her fingers. When he was finished, the sewer tubules all started to close silently.
“Where are we going now?” Tatiana asked nervously.
“Straight up.” He grinned. “Rubra will pump fresh water back into the base of the tract. It should take about twenty minutes to reach the top. But expect an interruption.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Stanyon arrived at the fiftieth floor to find it in turmoil. The vestibule was packed with excitable possessed. None of them seemed to know what was going on.
“Anybody seen him?” Stanyon shouted. Nobody had.
“Search around, there must be some trace. I want the teams that were searching floors thirty-eight and thirty-nine to go down to fifty-one and check it out.”
“What’s happening?” Bonney’s voice asked from the walkietalkie; there was a lot of crackling interference.
Stanyon held the unit to his face, pulling out more aerial. “He’s dodged us again. But we know he’s here. We’ll have him any minute now.”
“Make sure you stick with procedure. Remember it’s not just Dariat we’re up against.”
“You’re not the only council member left. I know what I’m doing.”
“I’m a minute away from the lobby. I’ll join you as fast as I can.” He gave the walkie-talkie a disgusted look and switched it off. “Terrific.”
“Stanyon,” someone called from the other end of the vestibule. “Stanyon, we’ve found something.”
It was the troll, the faerie prince, and both of the cyber-ninjas who had broken into the apartment. They were hanging around the bathroom door when Stanyon arrived. He pushed his way past them impatiently.
The sides of the ruptured toilet sphincter had sagged, squeezing more of the yellow fluid out. It was running down the outside of the cone to smear the surrounding dune of polyp chippings. Water from the fractured pipe was sloshing over the floor.
Stanyon edged forwards, and peered cautiously over the crater’s lip. There was nothing to see, nothing to sense. He pointed at the smaller of the two cyber-ninjas. “You, go see where it leads to.”
The cyber-ninja looked at him. Red LEDs on his visor flashed slowly, an indolent blinking to mirror the thoughts they fronted.
“Go on,” Stanyon said impatiently.
After a brief rebellious moment, the cyber-ninja dematerialized his flak jacket and lowered himself down into the sewer tubule.
Dariat had been worried about the undercurrents. Needlessly, as it turned out. They were rising fast up the giant tract with only the occasional swirl of bubbles twisting around them. It was still raining heavily, but the whole process was eerily silent.
He maintained the small flame burning coldly from his fingers, mainly for Tatiana’s benefit. There was nothing to see above them, only the empty blackness. They slid smoothly past the intermittent circlets of closed tubules with monotonous regularity, their only real measure of progress.
Dariat was warm enough, circulating heat through his skin to hold the water’s numbing encroachment at bay. But he did worry about Tatiana. She’d stopped talking, and her chittering teeth were clearly audible. That left him alone with his own thoughts of what was to come. And the whispers of the damned, they were always there.
Rubra, have you ever heard of someone called Alkad Mzu? he asked.
No. Why?
Capone is very interested in finding her. I think she’s some kind of weapons expert.
How the hell do you know what Capone wants?
I can hear it. The souls in the beyond are calling for her. They’re quite desperate to find her for the Organization.
Affinity suddenly gave him a sense of space opening around him. Then an astonishingly resolute presence emerged from the new distance. Dariat was at once fearful and amazed by its belief in itself, a contentment which was almost the opposite of hubris; it knew and accepted itself too well for arrogance. There was a nobility about it which he had never experienced, certainly not during the life he had led. Yet he knew exactly what it was.
Hello, Dariat, it said.
The Kohistan Consensus. I’m flattered.
It is intriguing for us to communicate with you. It is a rare opportunity to talk to any non-Edenist, and you are a possessor as well.
Make the most of it, I won’t be around for much longer.
The action you and Rubra are undertaking is an honourable one, we applaud your courage. It cannot have been easy for either of you.
It was realistic.
His answer was accompanied by Rubra’s emission of irony.
We would like to ask a question, Consensus said. Several, in fact.
On the nature of possession, I assume. Fair enough.
Your current viewpoint is unique, and extremely valuable to us. It’s going to have to wait a minute, Rubra said. They’ve found the toilet.
* * *
The cyber-ninja had squeezed down into the sewer tubule and was squirming along on his belly. His mind tone was one of complete disgust. Pale violet light illuminated the lenses on his low-light enhancement goggles, casting a faint glow across the polyp directly in front of him. “They were in here,” he yelled back over his shoulder. “This shit’s all been smeared around.”
“Yes!” Stanyon banged a fist against the muscle-membrane door. “Get down there,” he told the second cyber-ninja. “Help him.”
The cyber-ninja did as he was told, sitting on the edge of the crater and slinging his legs over.
“Anyone know where these pipes lead?” Stanyon asked.
“I’ve never been in one myself,” the faerie prince said airily. “But it’ll empty into the lower floor eventually. You could try searching down there. Unless, of course, he’s simply popped up inside someone else’s john and walked out.”
Stanyon gave the slack cone an irritated look. The prospect of Dariat simply walking through the habitat’s pipes to escape in the throng was intolerable. But with everyone wearing their illusionary form it would be appallingly easy. Why can we never organize ourselves properly?
With extreme reluctance he switched the walkie-talkie back on. “Bonney, come in please.”
Rubra opened the sphincter muscle below every single toilet on the forty-ninth, fiftieth, and fifty-first floor. It was an action which nobody noticed. There were over a hundred and eighty possessed milling around on those three levels, with more still arriving. Some were obediently searching through the rooms; most were now there simply for a piece of the action. As there was no organized plan, none of them were suspicious when all the remaining apartment doors slid open. At the same time, emergency fire-control doors quietly closed off the lift shafts.
Dariat pulled Tatiana to his chest and held her tight, locking his fingers together behind her back. “Stay with it,” he said. The surface of the water was just rising over the sewer tubules of the twenty-first floor.
Bonney reached the twelfth floor well ahead of the five deputies accompanying her. She could hear them clumping down the stairwell above her. They competed against her heart hammering away inside her ribs. So far she didn’t feel any fatigue, but she knew she’d have to slow down soon. It was going to take a good twenty minutes to reach the fiftieth floor.
“Bonney,” her walkie-talkie said. “Come in please.”
She started down the stairs to the thirteenth floor and raised the walkie-talkie to her face. “Yes, Stanyon.”
“He’s vanished into the pipes. I’ve sent some of my people after him; but I don’t know where they all lead to. It’s possible he might have doubled back on us. It might be an idea to leave some guards in the lobby.”
“Fuckhead.” Bonney slowed to a halt as mystification overshadowed her initial anger. “What pipes?”
“The waste pipes. There’s kilometres of them under the floors. We found one of the toilets all smashed up. That’s how he got in there.”
“You mean sewer pipes?”
“Yeah.”
Bonney stared at the wall. She could sense the thought routines gliding through the neural strata a metre or so behind the naked polyp. In his own fashion, Rubra was staring right back at her. He was content.
She didn’t know anything about the sewer pipes, except how obvious they were in hindsight. And Rubra had absolute control over every single environmental aspect of the habitat. Dariat had been spotted for a few brief seconds, which had sent everyone chasing after him. Then he’d vanished. If the sewers could hide him so thoroughly, he should never have been found in the first place.
“Out!” she yelled at the walkie-talkie. “Get out of there! Stanyon, for fuck’s sake, move!”
Rubra opened the muscle-membrane rims of the sewer tubules which served the forty-ninth, fiftieth, and fifty-first floors. The pressure exerted by a thirty-storey-high column of water filling the ingestion tract was a genuinely irresistible force.
Stanyon saw the cyber-ninja bullet out of the cone of ruined muscle to smash against the ceiling. The gust of air which blew him there gave way to a massive fist of water which howled upwards to strike the spread-eagled man full on. Its roar was pitched at roughly the level of a sense-overload sonic. Stanyon’s skin blistered scarlet as his capillaries ruptured. Before he could even scream the bathroom was filled with high-velocity rain which knocked him to his feet as if he were being hammered by a fusillade of rubber bullets. He crashed back into the bath where a slim laser-straight pillar of water had burst out of the plug hole. It might just as well have been a chain saw.
Throughout the three condemned floors, every bathroom, every kitchen, and every public toilet were host to the same lethal eruption of water. The lights had gone out, and into this tormented night came the water itself, icy foaming waves that rushed through rooms and vestibules like a horizontal guillotine.
Tatiana cried out fearfully as the water began to drop. The two of them began to circulate around the edge of the ingestion tract; slowly to start with, then picking up speed. Small waves rippled back and forth, slapping against each other to produce wobbling spires. A loud gurgling sound rose as the water fell faster.
Dariat watched in dismay as the surface tilted. At the centre of the tract it was discernibly lower than it was at the walls. They began to spiral in towards it. The gurgling grew louder still.
Rubra!
Don’t worry. Another thirty seconds, that’s all.
Bonney was helpless against the torrent of anguish rushing around her; the flock of souls arising from those trapped below to depart the universe, their sobs of bitterness and fright striking her harder than any physical blow. They were too near, too strong, to avoid; raw emotion amplified to insufferable levels.
She fell to her knees, muscles knotted. Tears dripped steadily from her eyes. Her own soul was in danger of being pulled along with them, a migration which commanded attendance. She fisted her hands and punched the polyp step. The pain was no more than a gentle tweak against the compulsion to join the damned once more. So she punched again, harder. Again.
Finally the carnage was over, the three floors filled to capacity with water. Narrow fan-sprays of water squirted out from the rim seals on several of the lift fire-control doors, filling the empty shafts with a fine drizzle, but the doors themselves held against the pressure. As did the stairwell muscle-membrane doors on the fifty-second floor, preventing the lower half of the starscraper from flooding. Pulverised bodies that had pressed against the ceiling were sinking slowly as pockets of air leaked out of their wounds, trailing ribbons of blood as they went.
The starscraper’s ingestion tract did strange things to the gurgling sound produced by the frothing water, channelling it into an organlike harmonic that rattled Tatiana’s bones. She was inordinately glad when it began to subside. Dariat was moaning feebly in her embrace as if he were in great pain. The flame he’d produced had snuffed out, leaving them in absolute blackness. Although she couldn’t see anything, she knew the water was slowing, its surface levelling out. The cold was giving her a pounding headache.
Dariat started coughing. “Bloody hell.”
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’ll survive.”
“What happened?”
“We’re not being chased anymore,” he said flatly.
“So what’s next?”
“Rubra is going to start pumping water back into the tract. We should reach the top in about fifteen minutes.” He held up his hand and rekindled the little blue flame. “Think you can last that long?”
“I can last.”
Bonney walked slowly out of the starscraper lobby, still shivering despite the balmy parkland air ruffling her khaki jacket. Nearly a dozen possessed were loitering outside on the grass. They were gathered together in small clusters, talking quietly in worried tones. When she appeared, all conversation ended. They stared at her, thoughts dominated by resentment, their expressions hard, unforgiving. It was the germ of the revolution.
She gazed back at them, coldly defiant. But she knew they would never take orders from her again. The authority of Kiera’s council had drowned back there in the starscraper. If she wanted to go up against Dariat and Rubra now, it would be on her own. One on one, the best kind of hunt there was. She brought a hand up to her face, licking the bloody grazes which scarred each knuckle. Her smile made those possessed closest to her back away.
There were several trucks parked beside the lobby. She chose the nearest and twisted the accelerator hard. Spinning tyres tore up long scars of grass as she tugged the steering wheel around. Then the truck was speeding away from the lobby, heading for the northern endcap.
Her walkie-talkie gave a bleep. “Now what?” Rubra asked. “Come on, it was a grand hunt, but you lost. Drive over to a decent bar, have a drink. My treat.”
“I haven’t lost yet,” she said. “He’s still out there. That means I can win.”
“You’ve lost everything. Your so-called colleagues are evacuating the starscrapers. Your council is busted. There’s going to be nothing left of Kiera’s little empire with this lot running around out of control.”
“That’s right, there’s nothing left. Nothing except me and the boyo. I’m going to catch him before he can escape. I worked that one out already. You’re helping him reach the spaceport. Lord knows why, but I can still spoil your game, just as you did mine. That’s justice. It’s also fun.”
One wacko lady, Dariat commented.
She’s genuine trouble, though. Always has been, Rubra said.
And continues to be so by the look of it. Especially if she gets to the spindle before me. Which is a good possibility. The water was now up to the second floor. Dariat could see the top of the ingestion tract now, the black tube puncturing a bubble of hazy pink light.
Another ninety seconds brought him level with the floor of the cistern chamber. He had emerged into the centre of a big hemispherical cavern whose walls were pierced by six huge water pipe outlets. Ribbons of water were still trickling across the sloping floor to the lip of the tract.
He struck out for the edge with a strong sidestroke, towing Tatiana along. She was almost unconscious; the cold had penetrated her body to the core. Even with his energistic strength, hauling her out of the water was tough going. Once she was clear he flopped down beside her, wishing himself warm and dry. Steam began to pour out of their clothes.
Tatiana tossed her head about, moaning as if she were caught in a nightmare. She sat up with a spasm of muscle, her few remaining bangles chiming loudly. Vapour was still effervescing out of her dress and dreadlocks. She blinked at it in amazement. “I’m warm,” she said in astonishment. “I didn’t think I would ever be warm again.”
“The least I could do.”
“Is it over now?”
The wishful childlike tone made him press his lips together in regret. “Not quite. We still have to get up to the spaceport; there’s a route through these water pipes which will eventually take us to a tube tunnel, we don’t have to go up to the surface. But Bonney survived. She’ll try to stop us.”
Tatiana rested her chin in her hands. “Lord Thoale is testing us more than most. I’m sure he has his reasons.”
“I’m not.” Dariat lumbered to his feet and untied the pillow harness. “I’m sorry, but we have to get going.”
She nodded miserably. “I’m coming.”
The search teams which Bonney and her deputies had organized were wending their way out of Valisk’s starscrapers. Shock from the flooding was evident in their shuffling footsteps and tragic eyes. They emerged from the lobbies, consoling each other as best they could.
It shouldn’t have happened, was the thought which rang among them like an Edenist Consensus. They’d made it back to the salvation of reality. They were the chosen ones, the lucky ones, the blessed. Eternal life, and the precious congruent gift of sensation, had been within their grasp. Now Rubra had shown them how tenuous that claim was.
He was able to do that because they remained in a universe where his power was a match to theirs. It shouldn’t be like that. Whole planets had escaped from open skies and Confederation retribution, while they stayed to entrap new bodies. Kiera’s idea—and it had been a good one, bold and vigorous. Eternity spent within the confines of a single habitat would be a difficult prospect, and she had seen a way forwards.
That was why they’d acquiesced to her rule and that of the council, because she’d been right. At the start. Now though, they had increased their numbers, Kiera had flown off to negotiate their admission to a dangerous war, and Bonney committed them against Rubra to satisfy her personal vendettas.
No more. No more risks. No more foolhardy adventures. No more sick savagery of hunting. The time had come to leave it all behind.
The truck raced along the hardened track which countless wheels had compacted across the semi-arid plain surrounding Valisk’s northern endcap. Bonney had the throttle at maximum, the axial motors complemented by her energistic power. Small flattened stones and cracked ridges which lay along the track sent the vehicle flying through the air in long shallow hops.
Bonney didn’t even notice the jouncing, which would have caused whiplash injuries to any non-possessed riding beside her. Her mind was focused entirely on the endcap whose base was five kilometres in front of her. She imagined her beefy old vehicle beating the sleek tube capsule slicing along its magnetic rail in the tunnel below her. The one she knew he would be riding.
Up ahead she could just make out the dark line of the switchback road which wound up to the small plateau two kilometres above the plain. If she could only reach the passageway entrance before Dariat got out of the sewer tunnels and into a tube carriage she might conceivably reach the axis chamber before him.
A feeling of contentment began to seep into her mind. An insidious infiltration which called on her to respond, to generate her own dreamy satisfaction, to pledge it to the whole.
“Bastards!” She slapped furiously at the steering wheel, anger insulating her from the loving embrace which was rising up all around her. They had begun it, the gathering of power, the sharing, linking their wills. They’d submitted, capitulated, to their craven fear. Valisk would soon sail calmly out of this universe, sheltering them from any conceivable threat, committing them to a life of eternal boredom.
Well not for her. One of the hellhawks could take her off, away where there was struggle and excitement. Only after she’d dealt with Dariat, though. There would be time. There had to be.
The truck’s speed began to pick up. Her stubborn insistence was diverting a fraction of the prodigious reality dysfunction which was coalescing around the habitat. The utterly implausible was becoming hard fact.
Bonney laughed gleefully as the truck shot along the track, ripping up a churning cloud of thick ochre dust behind it. While all around her, the tiny clumps of scrub grass, cacti, and lichen sprawls were sprouting big adventitious flower buds. The bland desert was quietly and miraculously transforming itself into a rich colour-riot garden as Valisk’s new masters prepared to enact their vision of paradise.
The Kohistan Consensus had a thousand and one questions on the nature of possession and the beyond. Dariat sat quietly in the tube carriage taking him to the axis chamber and tried to supply answers for as many as he could. He even let them hear the terrible cries of the lost souls that infested his every thought. So that they’d know, so they’d understand the dreadful compulsion driving each possessor.
I feel strange, Rubra announced. It’s like being drunk, or light headed. I think they’re starting to penetrate my thought routines.
No, Dariat said. He was aware of it himself now, the reality dysfunction starting to pervade the polyp of the shell. In the distance, a chorus of minds were singing a joyous hymn of ascension. They’re getting ready to leave the universe. We don’t have much time.
We can confirm that, the Consensus said. Our voidhawks on observation duty are reporting large squalls of red light appearing on your shell, Rubra. The hellhawks appear most agitated. They are leaving their docking pedestals.
Don’t let it happen, boy, Rubra said. Come into me, please, transfer over now. We can win, we can stop them taking Valisk to their bloody haven. We can screw them yet.
Not with Tatiana here. I won’t condemn her to that. We’ve still got time.
Bonney’s almost at the plateau.
And we’re almost at the base of the endcap. This carriage can go straight up to the axis chamber. She’s got to climb three kilometres of stairs. We’ll make it easily.
Blue smoke spouted out of the truck’s tyres as Bonney skidbraked the vehicle outside the passageway’s dark entrance. When she jumped down from the driver’s seat her sharp upper teeth were protruding over her lower lip, producing a permanent feral grin. Her painfully red-rimmed eyes narrowed to lethargic slits as she gazed up at the steepening cliff of grey polyp in front of her, as if puzzled by its appearance. Every movement took on a dullard’s slowness. Breath wheezed heavily out of her nostrils.
She ignored the passageway and stood perfectly still, bringing her arms to rest in front of her so her hands crossed above her crotch. Her head drooped, bowing deeply, the eyes closing completely.
What the hell is she doing now? Dariat asked. She was frantic to get up there.
It looks like she’s praying.
Somehow, I really doubt that.
The tube carriage reached the base of the endcap and started to sweep up the slope towards the hub. An urgent whining sound permeated the inside. Dariat could feel it slowing, then it accelerated again.
Damn it, I’m getting power dropouts right across the habitat. That’s in the sections of myself I can still perceive. I’m shrinking, boy, there are places where my thoughts have ceased. Help me!
The reality dysfunction is strengthening. Five minutes. Hang on for five more minutes.
Bonney’s khaki suit was darkening, at the same time its texture changed to a glossier aspect. She was starting to hunch up, her legs bowing out and becoming spindly. Pointed ears emerged from a shortening crop of hair. There was no suit anymore, only a black pelt.
She suddenly raised her rodent head and emitted an ear-piercing screech through a circular mouth caged by fangs. Eyes glittered a devilish red. She opened what had been her arms to spread her new wings wide. The leathery membrane was thin enough to be translucent, revealing a lacework of minute black veins beneath the dark amber surface.
Oh, fuck, Rubra exclaimed. No bloody way! I don’t care what she looks like, she weighs too much to fly.
That won’t matter anymore, Dariat said. The reality dysfunction is powerful enough to sustain her; we’re in the universe of fables, now. If she wants to fly, she will.
Bonney ran a couple of paces across the plateau, then her wings gave a fast downwards sweep, and she was airborne. She beat her wings steadily, rising quickly, her triumphant screeching echoing over the blank polyp. Her flight curved around sharply as she gained altitude, evolving into a spiral as the beats became smoother, more insistent.
She’ll catch me, a stricken Dariat said. She’s going to reach the axis chamber before me. I’ll never get Tatiana out. “Anastasia!” he cried. “My love, it can’t end like this. Not again. I can’t fail you again.”
Tatiana stared at him in fright, not understanding.
Do something, he begged.
Like what? Rubra’s mental voice was faint, lacking interest.
Remember your classics, the Kohistan Consensus said. Before today, Icarus and Daedalus were the only people ever to fly with their own wings. Only one survived. Think what happened to Icarus.
Bonney was already three hundred metres above the plateau, swooping upwards on a tempestuous thermal, when she noticed the change. The light was altering, which it could never do in a habitat. She shifted her balance, twisting on a wingtip, howling at the sheer exhilaration of the wind buffeting her face. The cylindrical landscape stretched out in front of her, dabbed with curving smears of flushed red cloud. For the first time, the lively sparkle coming off the circumfluous reservoir was absent. The entire band of water seemed to be darkened; she could barely see a single feature on the southern endcap. Yet around her the light was growing. That should never be. Both endcaps were always maintained in a dappled shade. The effect was due entirely to the nature of the light tube, a slender cylindrical mesh of organic conductors which mimicked the shape of the habitat itself. At each end the mesh narrowed to a near solid bundle of cable which suspended the main segment between the two hubs. The plasma it contained dwindled to a mild violet haze eight hundred metres from the hub itself.
She could now see that horn of ions retreating from the southern hub as Rubra increased the power flowing through the cables at that end. The magnetic field was expanding to squeeze the plasma along the tube. At the northern end, he cut the power completely to one specific section of the mesh. Plasma rushed out of the gap, inflating flamboyantly as it liberated itself from the constricting flux lines.
From Bonney’s position it was as if a small fusion bomb had detonated above her, sending its billowing mushroom cloud hurtling downwards.
“All this,” she cried disbelievingly, “for me?”
The air caught in the cup of the endcap was torn asunder by the racing plasma, sending her spinning madly, broken wings wrapping her body like a velvet cloak. Then the wave front of inflamed atoms swept across her like the breath of an enraged sungod. It had none of the fury and strength of a genuine fusion explosion; by the time it reached her the plasma was nothing more than a tenuous electrically charged fog that was rapidly losing cohesion. But nevertheless, it was moving five times faster than any natural tornado, and with a temperature of tens of thousands of degrees. Her body disintegrated into splinters of vivid copper light which trailed contrails of black smoke all the way down to the resplendent desert far below.
A siren started to whistle as soon as Dariat broke the hatch seal; half of the corridor lighting panels turned red, flashing urgently. He ignored the clamour and floated through the small metallic airlock chamber.
The escape pod was a simple one-deck sphere, four metres in diameter, with twelve thickly padded acceleration couches laid out petal fashion. Dariat emerged from a hatch set at their centre. There was only one instrument panel, barely more than a series of powerup switches. He flicked them all on, watching the status schematics turn green.
Tatiana hauled herself gingerly through the airlock, looking dangerously queasy. Her dreadlocks swarmed around her head, their beads making tiny clacking sounds as they knocked against each other.
“Take any couch,” Dariat instructed. “We’re coming on line.”
She rotated herself carefully into one of the couches. Webbing unfurled from its sides to creep over her.
Dariat took the couch opposite to her, so that they were feet to feet. Are the other pods armed?
Yes. Most of them. Dariat, I don’t exist on the other side of the starscrapers anymore; I see nothing, I feel nothing, I don’t even think down there.
A minute more, that’s all. He reached up and pressed the launch sequencer. The airlock hatch hinged down. “I’m going to leave soon, Tatiana. Horgan will be back in charge of his own body again. Take care of him, he’s only fifteen. He’s going to be suffering.”
“Of course I will.”
“I… I know Rubra only forced us together to put pressure on me. But I’m still glad I met you.”
“Me too. It laid a lot of old demons to rest. You showed me I was wrong.”
“How?”
“I thought she’d made a mistake with you. She hadn’t. The cure just took a very long time. She’s going to be proud of you when you finally catch up with her.”
Two-thirds of Valisk’s shell was now fluorescing a lambent crimson; dazzling dawn-red light shone out of the starscraper windows. Inside, the possessed were united, they could perceive the entire habitat now. The flow of its fluids and gases through the plexus of tubules and pipes and ducts was as intimate to them as the blood pumping around their own veins and arteries. Rubra’s flashing thought routines, too, were apparent, snapping through the neural strata like volleys of sheet lightning. Under their auspices his thoughts were slowing and dimming, retreating down the length of the cylinder as their will to banish the curse of him from their lives grew dominant.
They knew now of all the remaining non-possessed Rubra had hidden throughout the interior. Twenty-eight had survived Bonney’s pursuit, cowering in obscure niches and alcoves dotted about the shell structure, frightened and uncertain at the ruby glimmer that was emerging within the polyp. The possessed didn’t care about them, not anymore. That struggle was over. They even perceived Dariat and Tatiana lying prone on the escape pod’s acceleration couches as the computer counted down the seconds. Nobody objected if they wanted to leave.
Profound changes were propagating outside the habitat. Nanonicsized interstices flicked open, only to decay within milliseconds. The incessant foam of fluctuations was creating distortion waves similar to those generated by voidhawks. But these lacked any sort of order or focus. Chaos had visited local space-time, weakening the fabric around the shell.
Furious hellhawks swarmed above the northern endcap. Harpies and hyperspace starships spun and swooped around each other at hazardous velocities, their flights dangerously unstable as the massive distortion effects buffeted them as a tempest treated leaves.
The bodies! they clamoured to these possessed snug inside who were capable of affinity. Kiera promised us the bodies in zero-tau. If you leave now we will never have them. You are condemning us to a life in these constructs.
Sorry, was the only, sheepishly embarrassed reply.
Combat sensors deployed as the hunger for retribution reverberated across the affinity band. Activation codes were loaded into combat wasps.
If we are denied eternity in human form, then you will join us in the same abyss.
The only functional thought routines Rubra had left were those in the northern endcap. Everything else was blank to him, his senses amputated. A few mysterious images were still reaching him from those bitek processors which interfaced him with the electronic architecture of the counter-rotating spaceport. Wavering sepia pictures of empty corridors, stationary transit capsules, and barren external grid sections. With them came the data streams from the spaceport’s communications network.
And he’d almost lost interest in it. Dariat, he thought, had left the transfer too late; the boy was too caught up in his obsession and guilt. The end is here, night is finally eclipsing me after all these centuries. A shame. A crying shame. But at least they’ll remember my name with a curse as they vegetate their way through eternity.
He jettisoned every escape pod in the spaceport.
Now, Dariat sighed.
Twelve gees rammed him down into the acceleration couch. His vision disappeared into a purple sparkle. And after thirty years the neural strata no longer resisted him.
Two entities—two egos—collided. Memories and personality patterns merged at a fundamental level. Hostility, antipathy, anger, regret, shame, an abundance of it all pouring out from both sides, and there could be no hiding from it anymore. The neural strata thrummed from collective moments of outraged pique as secrets long hidden were exposed to searing scrutiny. But the indignation cooled as the two differing strands of thought began the process of twining and integrating into a functional whole.
One half brought size to the mating, the huge neural strata, alive yet quiescent under the spell of the reality dysfunction; from the other half came the energistic effect, small in a single human, but with unlimited potential. For the first five seconds of the transfer, Dariat’s essence was operating within a section of the neural strata only a few cubic metres in volume. At that level it was sufficient to halt the reality dysfunction of the possessed from paralysing any more of the neural strata. As the integration progressed and the thought routines amalgamated and multiplied it began to expand. More and more of the neural strata awoke to accommodate it.
The horrified possessed, quite literally, watched their dreams shatter around them.
Okay, you fuckers, bespoke Valisk’s new personality. PARTY’S OVER.
As soon as the escape pods launched, a hundred voidhawks from the Kohistan Consensus swallowed in. Their appearance ten kilometres from Valisk’s counter-rotating spaceport startled the already frantic hellhawks. The gulf between the two antagonistic swarms of bitek starships was slashed by targeting lasers and radar pulses.
Do not engage any targets, the voidhawks ordered. The habitat is to be left intact, the escape pods must not be harmed.
Two hellhawks immediately launched a salvo of combat wasps. Solid rockets had barely propelled them clear of their launch cradles before they were struck by X-ray lasers from the voidhawks. It was a perfect demonstration of the disadvantage the hellhawks suffered in any short-range combat situation. The energistic effect downgraded their electronic systems to a woefully inferior state.
Wormhole interstices sprang open, and the hellhawks dived down them, eluding any further conflict, abandoning their erstwhile abode with nothing more dangerous than a backwash of obscenities and threats.
Over two hundred escape pods were plunging away from Valisk’s spaceport. Solid fuel rockets burned a glaring topaz, gifting the drab grey gridiron of the spaceport with an unrivalled dawn. As the distended skirts of flame and smoke died away, a cluster of five voidhawks surged forwards to intercept a single pod.
Tatiana knew Dariat had gone; his body had shrunk somehow, not in size, but certainly in presence. It was as if the terrible crush of acceleration had left him behind, diminishing the teenage boy lying on the couch. Horgan began to wail. She released her webbing and floated over to him. Her own free-fall nausea forgotten in the face of someone whose suffering was far worse.
“It’s all right,” Tatiana whispered as she hugged him. “It’s all over now. He’s left you for good.” She even managed to surprise herself at the note of regret which had crept into her voice.
The voidhawks rendezvoused with Tatiana’s pod, claimed its occupants, then swooped away from the habitat at seven gees. Valisk was now host to a war of light. The original red fluorescence was besieged by a vigorous purple shimmer sweeping down the shell from the northern endcap. As the purple area grew in size, so it grew in intensity.
Ten minutes after the escape pods were launched, the last glimmer of red was extinguished. The voidhawks were seven hundred kilometres away when it happened, and still retreating at two gees. Nobody quite knew what constituted a safe separation distance. Then their distortion fields detected Valisk’s mass starting to reduce. The last image of the habitat which their sensor blisters received was of a purple-white micro-star blazing coldly. At the core of the photonic rupture, space itself broke down as bizarre energy patterns exerted a catastrophic stress.
When the glare faded and space regained its equipoise there was no evidence of the habitat’s existence. However hard the voidhawks probed, they could find no residue of energy, no particles larger than a mote of dust. Valisk had neither vaporized nor shattered, it had simply and cleanly departed the universe.