Stone Clock

by Andrew Bannister

  He rolled on to his side and looked for Fostees. The man was standing, swaying a little and wiping a hand across his mouth.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, softly.

  Skarbo nodded. ‘Why did they do that?’

  Fostees shrugged. ‘No idea. I read about it once; they have some sense or other that detects when something is threatening them. Smells, vibrations, whatever – but why they did it just then? No idea.’ He sounded shaken. He wiped his mouth again. ‘That was disgusting. Are you okay?’

  ‘I think so.’ Skarbo wasn’t sure he could stand. He rolled on to his back and looked for the Spin, and then froze.

  There were no stars. Instead, there was a grey shape moving across the sky – the blurred belly of something vast, barely lit by the lights of the city behind them.

  Skarbo’s mouth dried. He heard Fostees say, ‘Oh, fuck.’

  Somewhere in the city a single siren howled up the scale and then down, then fell silent. The lights of the city flashed once and then died.

  For a moment there was complete darkness. Then, from dozens of locations across the bowl surface, shafts of angry violet light stabbed upwards, converging on the thing above them. They lit up a curving belly, rich with blisters and bulges.

  Skarbo had read that the city had its own ancient defensive system, reserved as a desperate last throw when everything else had failed. Presumably, then, everything else had indeed failed. He half-closed one eye and tried to lid a news menu, but the links on the landing page were dead and the audio sounded like some sort of martial music. Nothing helpful.

  He heard a wordless shout. He tore his eyes away from the huge ship – surely it had to be a ship, nothing else could be so big – pushed himself to his feet and looked for Fostees, but the other man was already over the lip of the Bowl and running down the long slope towards the city. The light from the old energy weapons had bathed the slope in a shifting glow, and by it he could see other people dotted around the bowl. Most were running towards the city; a few were standing, transfixed, like him.

  For a while the ship seemed simply to ignore the fact that it was under attack. There was no sign it was affected – the beams simply stopped at its surface as if switched off. But then an irregular patch on the hull glowed briefly a dull orange, and the glow somehow detached itself and began to float downwards, gradually resolving into a gently fluttering mesh that stretched and tightened as it fell until it formed an expanding square. It was hard to judge the size or the height; at first Skarbo guessed it was a hundred metres on a side. Then, as it drew nearer, two hundred. Then three.

  It was falling towards the city, he realized. Where Fostees had gone. Where many people had gone … he lidded and looked for the man’s ident, but none of the screens were working and the music was irritating.

  Then the mesh reached the level of the Watch Towers and, with a shock, he got the scale of it. It encompassed both towers easily; enough to overlap by what must have been hundreds of metres – and they were ten kilometres apart.

  Where it brushed them, they flared yellow-white and evaporated. In ten seconds they were demolished to ground level – and the mesh went on falling towards the city below them.

  Just before it touched, Skarbo shut his eyes, but the flare still printed bright smudges through his eyelids. There were screams, and he slammed his hands over his ears. Then a scorching wind crashed into him and he was thrown backwards down the slope of the Greater Bowl.

  He remembered lying on his back. He couldn’t close his eyes because there was something wrong with the lids, and he couldn’t feel for them because his hands didn’t work, but it didn’t matter because the huge ship was sliding across the sky, uncovering stars as it went.

  The last thing he saw was the group of stars called the Spin.

  Sholntp (vreality)

  TO ZEB’S WONDERING envy Hels slept through the whole of the road train journey to Hamlet – the sleep of someone completely at peace. The narrow polished-wood tube of the car could seat twenty, in five rows of four, but they had it to themselves so there was nothing to disturb them.

  Most of the way, there had been nothing much to look at. He let himself zone out for a couple of hours, half-hypnotized by the gentle swaying of the car, its resin-and-oil smells and the regular breathing of his sleeping companion.

  Then he began to see yellow glimmers dancing outside. Not Hamlet, yet, but the outskirts; the Skin Beetles never went more than about half a kilometre from their home.

  Hamlet was built on, and in, and sometimes underneath, a single organism that, as far as he knew, was not only unique in the vrealities but had no counterpart in the real. It was one of the main reasons for the obsessive preservation of the planet.

  Zeb had heard of primitive creatures that protected themselves within the shells of other creatures, or that accreted grains of rock around themselves as they grew. He had never heard of a plant doing the same – insofar as the Rockblossom was a plant, of course; even that wasn’t really settled despite it being the most studied thing on the planet. It had things in common with fungi and with single-celled animals as well as plants, and its DNA was usually described as ‘peculiar’. Shortly after it had first been discovered someone had called it ‘the weirdest vegetable in the universe’, and no one had ever really improved on that.

  The glimmers were getting denser. Skin Beetles were about the size of a child’s fist, with bioluminescent wings that were dark when closed but which cast a shimmering yellow-white light in flight. During the daylight they sheltered in burrows bored in the outer skin of the Rockblossom. At first people had assumed that they were parasites, because the burrows certainly looked invasive, but gradually it had dawned that something more complicated was going on.

  In short, to metabolize their primary diet of smaller insects the beetles needed an enzyme found in the Rockblossom’s skin – and only there; it was absent from the rest of the structure – and the Rockblossom, in turn, needed the minerals in beetle-shit.

  The car was slowing down, and the glimmer from the beetles was picking out a bulbous form up ahead. Zeb nudged Hels gently. She stirred, and opened her eyes halfway.

  ‘We’re there.’

  ‘Oh.’ She sat up. ‘Did I sleep all the way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I owe you.’

  ‘I’ll collect.’

  She grinned lasciviously.

  Then the car bumped gently to a stop. The internal lighting flicked on, and double doors halfway down the tube opened shakily. Cold air smelling of forest washed in. Hels stood up, stretched, and walked out of the car. He watched her appreciatively for a few paces; she was a more than acceptable view when there was no competition. Then he smiled at himself, and followed.

  The Rockblossom’s internal structure consisted of chambers, basically spherical but squashed together and linked and conjoined so that sometimes they formed caverns fifty metres across, and sometimes intimate spaces just big enough for two. It was the ideal setting for communal living. Hence Hamlet, which had no permanent residents but anything up to a couple of hundred transient ones.

  Hels thumped her fist on a section of skin. Nothing happened. She tutted, and thumped again.

  ‘Go away!’

  It was many voices, raggedly out of sync and muted by the skin of the Rockblossom. The words ended in laughter.

  Hels half turned towards Zeb and gave him an apologetic smile. ‘They’ll pay,’ she said. Then she raised her voice. ‘Guys? Open the door or I’ll carve a new one.’

  There was more laughter. Then Zeb heard a mechanical snap and a section of skin swung outwards. A cloud of smoke and vapour rolled out and up the side of the huge plant. He followed it upwards, watching as it dimmed a couple of stars on its way.

  Hels was watching too. She grinned. ‘I don’t know how the thing lives through all the pollution.’

  Zeb shrugged. ‘It’s lived through plenty. I think it’s pretty robust.’

  ‘Really?’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘I thought you were new to the place. Are you a Blossom scholar?’

  ‘Scholar?’ He thought fast. ‘No, not that. I’m just interested in things.’

  It seemed to be enough. She nodded, and walked into the smoke. He followed, resisting the temptation to hold his breath. After all, he was going to have to inhale sooner or later, and he couldn’t see any obviously dead bodies.

  He was expecting something harsh, but instead there was just a sensation of warmth and thickness. It felt a bit like he had always imagined breathing underwater would be. It didn’t sting his eyes, either. He took another breath.

  He realized Hels was peering at him. She looked amused.

  ‘First time?’

  He nodded, and she raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve lived a pretty sheltered life, for someone who is interested in things.’

  ‘I guess so. It never really occurred to me.’

  She laughed. ‘Well, it’s occurring now! Enjoy it. And, if you hang around, later on maybe I’ll show you something else interesting.’ She leaned in close to him and whispered, ‘Some things are even more fun under the smoke than they are on the edge of the Rift.’

  She let her lips brush his. Then she stood back and grinned.

  He grinned back, meaning it. ‘While I’m hanging around, are you going to introduce me to some people?’

  ‘Nah. Going to keep you to myself.’

  And he heard himself say, ‘That’d be good.’

  For a moment they locked eyes. Then, without anyone having planned it, they were leaning towards each other and somehow he could catch the scent of her breath through the smoke.

  ‘Hey!’

  They both snapped upright. A tall, thin, ochre-skinned creature was standing beside them, head a little to one side. It was naked except for a minimal wrap around hips so narrow Zeb could almost have closed his hands around them, and its torso was covered in pale blue stubble. Its eyes were half closed, showing a hint of purple irises, and it was the first obviously non-basic life-form Zeb had seen this visit. The wrap didn’t look big enough to be concealing anything much.

  It extended both arms and pointed a slim finger at each of them. ‘No public mating, please.’

  Hels waved dismissively. ‘That wasn’t mating.’

  The creature folded its arms. ‘It was precursor activity. You ought to thank me; a few minutes of that and you’d have been well on your way to being thrown out for breaking party ground-rules.’

  ‘No we wouldn’t. Besides, you’re just jealous.’ She pointed at the wrap, nudged Zeb and whispered loudly, ‘It doesn’t have any genitals.’

  The creature smiled thinly. ‘Correction; I don’t have external genitals. Under the right circumstances I have all the genitals I need, thank you.’ It turned to Zeb. ‘You look unfamiliar, but there is something … I imagine she’s your latest?’

  Zeb opened his mouth but Hels got there first. ‘No. He’s mine. As you ought to know, Keff.’

  ‘Oh, I do know. But does he?’ Keff eyed Zeb. ‘You look to me as if you are new to this … planet. Welcome. Let me know when you need a head-to-head.’

  Zeb nodded. ‘I will. Is that something we’re allowed to do in public?’

  Keff smiled, and it was like watching cords tightening across a carved skull. ‘It is. I promise you, there is nothing I presently wish to do with you that cannot be done in public.’

  Hels laughed. ‘Manners!’ She pushed Keff sharply in the chest. It took two steps backwards before regaining its balance and standing for a moment like an accusing statue. Then it shook its head slightly and walked off into the smoke.

  Zeb watched the skinny figure disappear. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘You care?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She smiled. ‘It’s what you call for if you think you might be having too much fun.’

  ‘Are you having too much fun?’

  ‘Not yet.’ And their eyes locked again, and they leaned towards each other, and this time no one interrupted.

  The population of Hamlet varied. It could peak at nearly a thousand, but rarely for long, and it occasionally fell below fifty during rare periods when seasons and weather patterns combined to make it too cold, too windy or too radioactive for comfort. At the moment it was around its long-term median of two hundred.

  People tended to know each other, and if you were new it made for a pretty intense party. Zeb had lost track of time.

  ‘What do you mean, it’s not smoke?’ He waved an unsteady hand through the stuff, watching it curl round his fingers. ‘Looks like smoke to me.’

  The thin male with the finely wrinkled face shook his head. ‘No, you see. It’s supposed to look like smoke, but it isn’t smoke. That would be, um, smelly. And dangerous.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘Ah. It’s very clever.’

  Zeb waited. There was no rush. Whatever the stuff in the not-smoke was, it was relaxing.

  ‘See, it’s specially blended. Different every time, because every party’s different? This one’s pretty special.’ He leaned carefully towards Zeb until their faces were only a hand’s breadth apart. ‘I was on the smoke design group. Four of us. It took days.’

  Zeb nodded politely. He had the feeling this might take days too. Apparently the smoke that only looked like smoke was a complicated blend of gases, droplets, vapour-phase compounds and nano-particles, blended with a very small amount of real smoke for the sake of it and custom designed every time.

  People in Hamlet obviously had plenty of leisure.

  Hels had been edged away from him a while ago by a standard party process, moving from friend to friend until he couldn’t be bothered to keep up. Knowing no one, he had drifted between groups, exchanging variations on hello and running a competition with himself to see how long he could keep conversations going before things got awkward. About three minutes seemed a good benchmark.

  Then he had washed up here, and three minutes was just a fond memory. His new acquaintance was called Retslamb. Or something. They were in a bubble-shaped space deep inside the Rockblossom, lounging in a complicated web spun out of ropes twisted from Skin-Beetle thread. There was a smoke brazier on the floor below them, and they were stoned to the wide.

  Definitely relaxing.

  He blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’

  Retslamb grinned. ‘It’s pretty dense here, huh? Listen, take a drink.’ He held out a slim flask and shook it from side to side.

  ‘Really? How will that help?’

  ‘It’s complementary to the smoke. Didn’t I say? We designed the two together. The smoke takes you down,’ and one hand described a lazy fluttering descent, ‘and the drink lifts you back. You choose how up or down you want to be.’

  Zeb took the flask, unstoppered it and sniffed carefully. It had a clean scent that, although faint, seemed to cut through the sweet clouds. ‘How much should I drink?’

  ‘If you want to get to a balance, about half of that.’

  Zeb nodded and raised the flask to his lips. It tasted clean, too.

  He handed it back. His head was clearer already. ‘The rest is for you.’

  But the other man shook his head. ‘No way. I’m staying down.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just stuff.’ The grin was gone, and the thin face looked older.

  Zeb studied him for a second, then shrugged. ‘Okay. Your choice.’

  ‘S’right. Choice. Look, it’s been fine.’ Retslamb swung his legs out of the ropes and pulled himself upright. ‘Have a good party, all right?’

  ‘Sure.’ Zeb watched the man walk slowly out of the chamber. As he reached the entrance he stopped and stood aside, and Hels looked round him. ‘Ah! Found you. Can you stand up?’

  ‘Sure.’ He demonstrated. ‘Retslamb gave me something.’

  She laughed, and nudged the thin man. ‘I bet he did. Listen, come with me, okay? If I stay here any longer I’ll need a drink myself. I want some fresh air. Oh – see you, Retslamb …’

  With a
twitch that looked ostentatious to Zeb, the other man had turned sideways and eased himself through the gap between Hels and the door. He paused just outside, gave an awkward wave and walked off, disappearing quickly in the dim smokiness.

  Hels watched him go. ‘What did I say? Or what did you say, if it wasn’t me?’

  ‘I don’t think it was you.’ He told her about the other man’s change of mood.

  She nodded. ‘That explains it. He doesn’t do sober, doesn’t do straight. I think it hurts too much.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘When he sobers up he remembers he’s an Illusionist. I think he’d rather forget. Now, are you coming?’

  She turned without waiting for an answer. He shook his head and followed.

  He had no idea what she was talking about.

  Hels led him through the elaborate vegetable intestines of the Rockblossom and along a low tunnel that he guessed was a Skin-Beetle boring, and then to his relief they were outside. He stood up straight and took a few deep breaths, expanding his ribs as much as he could to cram in fresh air instead of party smoke until points of light flickered in front of his eyes. When his vision cleared he saw Hels looking at him.

  She smiled. ‘Better?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Feeling energetic?’ She raised an eyebrow.

  He laughed. ‘I guess …’

  ‘Good.’ Her smile broadened. ‘Let’s find somewhere …’

  Somewhere turned out to be a clearing a few hundred paces from the Rockblossom. Slim trunks curved inwards to form a tall arched roof; Skin Beetles glowed.

  As it turned out, he was indeed feeling energetic. The fumes had cleared, and the glow from the insects was kind of romantic, and when Hels pulled him down to the ground the undergrowth was soft.

  They were busy for a while.

  Later, they rolled apart and lay looking up at the arching trees. It was beginning to get light. The beetles had dropped to the forest floor where they lay like fat, fading lanterns, and the forest had turned from glowing to grey. Zeb studied the shapes of the trees. Now they weren’t oddly lit by the shifting glow of the beetles they looked very symmetrical. He pointed upwards. ‘Is this natural?’