by Heide Goody
“I should steer the rock creature! I should be in charge!”
“No one’s steering!” shouted Prudence, filled with a strange and misplaced joy.
Two Handmaidens scuttled at furious speed out of the park on a course that would intercept theirs. Yang shouted and pointed.
“I see them!” said Prudence. She leaned against the Bridgeman fish with no understanding of how to steer this creature, apart from asking. “Watch out,” she told it urgently. “Get away from them.”
A Handmaiden clambered over a parked car and into the road to block their path. The Bridgeman fish swerved. Prudence pressed herself against it to hold on. The fish’s base collided with the Handmaiden, squashing her against the side of the car before bouncing off and away. Yang gave a high squeal as her leg slipped outside of the fish’s eye. She grabbed Prudence’s legs and hauled herself back in.
“You’re going to kill us!” Yang yelled.
“We’ve got to get away!” she shouted in reply. “Are they following us, Steve?”
Steve shifted and wriggled. “You have too much hair, unruly child! I cannot see!” He pawed and tugged at her hair as he tried to push it aside.
The Bridgeman fish shot out of a narrow drive, across a large traffic island and down the grassy central reservation of a dual-lane road that ran beside a petrol station with a brightly lit forecourt.
Steve slapped Prudence’s cheek. “Go faster! Go faster! She is almost upon us!”
Prudence looked round. “Where?”
The Bridgeman fish tilted back abruptly as something – a claw tip no doubt – grabbed the end of the scooped tail and forced it down. The fish wobbled and tilted.
“No! No!” shouted Yang. Her voice was whipped away as she tumbled out onto the ground.
Pushed down further, the fishtail dug into the ground and ploughed a noisy juddering furrow in the turf. It swung side to side, each turn over-compensating for the last, until the Bridgeman fish passed beyond a point of equilibrium and tipped over. Prudence flew out. She managed to land on one foot before spilling forward and rolling.
A distance ahead the fish’s nose dug into the earth. It bounced up, spinning end over end, before landing again with a dull and final thump.
Prudence groaned and coughed. There was a broad deep ache in her thigh. She rolled over and realised it was the grenade in her pocket sticking into her. She pulled it out of her twisted shorts and tried to get her breath back.
“Steve?” she called, realising he was no longer with her.
She looked round and saw the Handmaiden of Prein just before they collided. The Handmaiden rolled and nearly trampled Prudence before grabbing her by the arm and hoisting her up.
“You are a tiresome pinprick like your mother,” said the Handmaiden. The voice was precise and calm and far too human, but there was an evident rage in her restless stance. “We should have killed you when we first saw you.”
There was no sign of Shara’naak Kye or the other Handmaiden.
“You can’t kill me because I’m the kaatbari,” said Prudence.
“Really?” said the Handmaiden, squeezing with the powerful claw. “What can you do to stop me?”
Prudence battered at the shell with the grenade she was holding. She whacked the screwed-up, bawling baby face before her. The grenade made pathetic tink tink noises against the thick bone-white shell. The Handmaiden rocked and turned. Prudence’s next strike rammed the grenade between carapace and the shoulder plate of a leg. As she pulled away, Prudence lost her grip on it.
“The pin! Pull the little pin!” screeched Steve, somewhere on the ground below her.
“What?” said Prudence, then saw the dangling ring of metal jutting from the little cannister.
As Prudence reached, the Handmaiden belatedly moved her out of reach. Prudence came away with the little ring and attached pin in her fingers.
“No!” said the Handmaiden and immediately dropped Prudence, using both claws in an attempt to reach the grenade jammed in her shell. The Handmaiden struggled and twisted, plates shifting, as she tried to reach the awkward spot. As one movement opened up a gap, a shiny metal lever pinged away from the grenade. The Handmaiden froze for a second, then her struggles became more frantic. She spun and turned and danced, feet stomping, chasing a point on herself she couldn’t quite reach—
The grenade exploded in fizzing white light. The Handmaiden continued to gyrate in a frenzy. There was a high-pitched squeal. At first Prudence, blinded by light and wheeling images, thought it was the Handmaiden screaming. It wasn’t. It was the hiss of steam as the Handmaiden cooked and her blood boiled.
When she had presence of mind, Prudence scrambled to her hands and knees and fled. She saw Steve the Destroyer running towards her and scooped him up.
“We are victorious!” he crowed.
Yang was on the ground, lying in the groove ploughed into the ground by the crashing fish.
“You okay?” said Prudence.
“I could sue,” Yang mumbled.
“I really don’t know what that means.”
Yang held out her hand. Prudence grabbed it and pulled the mammonite girl to her feet.
“She’s not dead,” said Steve.
For an instant, Prudence thought he was talking about Yang, but he was tugging Prudence’s hair so she looked round. The Handmaiden was hauling herself towards them, the legs of one side clawing the earth, pulling her along and dragging brittle, black and smoking limbs behind her. Even crippled, she moved at a lick.
“Not dead,” agreed Prudence, ready to flee.
Gunfire flashed in the night, a constellation of flaring lights. The Handmaiden slumped sideways as her shell cracked and shattered. A few more wounded steps and she keeled over completely.
Men and women approached, stepping into the light cast from the petrol station forecourt. They wore grey and white combat fatigues and carried assault rifles not unlike the ones the mammonites had used.
“The soldiers again,” Prudence said. “We have to go.”
As they began to move off, a voice shouted. “We’re not going to hurt you!”
Prudence wasn’t prepared to take such things on trust. As they began to run, she immediately came up against two more of them, approaching from the other direction. A tall man slung his gun behind his back and held out his hands, open-palmed.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re here to help.” He must have seen the doubt on her face. He grinned. “We’re not regular army troops. We’re the good guys.”
There was a stutter of gunfire as the soldiers shot the Handmaiden again. Prudence jumped at the sound.
The tall man made a gentle shushing sound. “I’m Captain Malcolm McKenna with Forward Company.” He looked at Yang and the bleeding bruise that covered one half of her face. “You okay, kiddo? You don’t look so good. You come with us. We’ll look at that. Get you some food.”
“The other soldiers…” said Prudence.
Captain Malcolm shook his head. “We’re not with them. We’re not like them.” He tapped his assault rifle. “We’ve got the ammo to kill these Venislarn monsters. You’re safe with us. What are your names?”
“Prudence,” said Prudence.
“Yang,” said Yang warily.
“Sir!” shouted a man ahead. “Got some sort of animated concrete thing here! I think it’s wounded.”
“Deal with it!” Captain Malcolm called back. There was a bout of sustained gunfire. “See?” he said. “We’re the good guys.”
Forward Company had a van parked on the far side of the abandoned petrol station. Prudence and Yang were instructed to hop in and sit on the benches nearest the driver’s seat. A soldier climbed in after them and took down a medical pack from among the racks holding weapons, ammo and armour.
“Let’s take a look at you, then,” he said and began to clean the cuts on Yang’s face.
Prudence suspected, even feared, that Yang’s injured face was the only thing preventing them denounc
ing her as a Venislarn monster and shooting her at once. The cuts and the bruise drew the eye away from the fractionally, but disturbingly uneven quality of her features. Her bad symmetry was no symmetry at all with a great purple welt running down it.
He carefully removed her blazer to check her shoulder. Her shirt was ripped but nothing more.
He taped a dressing to her forehead. “The rest of it you’ll just have to be careful with,” he said. “Okay? Anything else I can get you?”
Yang pointed to the rack opposite. “The SA80 rifle and two thirty round magazines.”
The medic laughed. He looked back at the gun and laughed again.
“She means we’re fine, thank you,” said Prudence.
The amused but confused soldier shook his head. “We’ll get you somewhere safe soon enough. Got a fortified base in the city centre. That’s a nice dolly,” he said, nodding at Steve clutched in Prudence’s hand.
“Play along,” said Prudence when the medic had left the van.
“I’m not afraid of him,” said Steve.
“And I do not lie,” said Yang. “Did he mean I could have the rifle or not? He was unclear.”
“They think we’re a couple of ordinary girls,” said Prudence.
“I am an extraordinary girl,” said Yang.
“I could be even more extraordinary if I wanted, gobbet,” said Steve.
Prudence sighed heavily. “You’re both going to get us killed.”
“Let them come,” said Yang. She put her blazer aside and inspected a belt on the wall from which a long knife hung in a sheath.
“Or maybe,” said Prudence slowly, like she was talking to idiots, “we let them think we’re perfectly ordinary girls and get a ride to the city centre. My mum is there.”
Yang’s fingertips lingered on the knife grip. “I suppose. But I will not lie.”
“Then we need to think carefully what we will and won’t tell them.”
Yang sat down cautiously.
“Am I also to be a perfectly ordinary girl?” said Steve the Destroyer.
“I don’t know what you are,” said Prudence.
04:29am
Golden light played over the invisible dome that covered the city. It was like someone had taken the sun and rolled it out to the thickness of pizza dough and draped it over them. The city inside was bathed in a horrible fake daylight. The world beyond was burning. The light didn’t seem to be fading at all, as though the nuclear explosions which should have killed them all were merely on pause. It wasn’t frozen, though. The light energy swirled and bubbled on the cusp of consuming them all.
“My mum was watching Coronation Street on the day she died,” Morag said.
Vivian stood at a counter in the Library lobby a short distance away, flicking backwards and forwards through the Bloody Big Book, annotating and making additions. She was working with a machine-like intensity and didn’t look up.
“I am Yoth-Kreylah ap Shallas, the living black and white. I am functionally omniscient, or at least was, and know all things. But even I found that utterance meaningless and baffling.”
“I was just thinking,” said Morag. “When we didn’t die just now, I was relieved. I was glad we didn’t die.”
“Even though—”
“Even though death is definitely the preferred option right now. Yes, yes, of course.” Morag shifted her stance. She felt occasional dull tugging sensations in her lower body. She hoped it was her body moving back towards its normal shape after childbirth.
“That’s your illogical animal brain,” said Vivian. “Only thinking in the short term. Death would have been the preferable option for you.”
“I don’t think it’s illogical,” said Morag. “I was thinking of my mum. On the day she died she was in terrible pain. Morphine wasn’t even touching it. She knew she was dying. She told me. And yet she decided to watch Coronation Street.”
“Certain types seek escape through mindless television soap dramas.”
Vivian Grey might try to hide her callous nature behind the excuse she was an honest pragmatist, but there was an audibly vicious glee in the way she said ‘types’.
“It wasn’t that.”
“You’re questioning my omniscience?”
“No,” said Morag. “I’m telling you you’re wrong.”
Professor Sheikh Omar, who had been sitting, pale and silent in his wheelchair, gave a snort of laughter.
“There was this storyline,” said Morag. “This psycho, Richard something, was brutalising Gail and her family.”
“Richard Hillman,” said Omar.
“Right. I didn’t know you were a Corrie fan.”
“One can’t help but pick up some titbits if it’s on in the room. Maurice finds the northern accents charming, apparently.”
“Anyway,” said Morag, “you could tell this storyline had some way to go. This guy, Hillman, drove them all into a canal in the end, not that you need me to tell you that, what with your omniscience and that.”
Vivian grunted but said nothing.
“But even though she must have known she wasn’t going to see the end of that storyline, my mum watched it on the day she died. We have this insatiable desire to see how things turn out. We want to know what happens next.”
Vivian apparently had no insights to offer on this and continued her writing. Morag knew the woman had only recently escaped from Hell, but it wouldn’t hurt her to join in a bloody conversation. To see that Morag was only talking so much because she was worried. About Prudence, about what the hell she was going to say to Yo-Morgantus when she confronted him, about the infinite tortures that still awaited them all.
“You think the world outside this … this shield is destroyed now?” she said.
“Some of it,” said Vivian, still not looking up. “Much of it. Other places will have been preserved.”
“This is Morgantus’s doing, right?”
“Yes.”
“Because you told the August Handmaidens of Prein about the missiles?”
Vivian nodded, turned over a billion pages and jotted something in the margins.
“She’s got a plan,” said Omar. Normally, he might have injected this statement with a sly tone and a darkly playful look, but the professor didn’t have the energy. Whatever magical shellfish were working at his chest, his injury was slowly but certainly getting the better of him.
“I simply need to finish the book,” Vivian said.
That seemed to be her answer to everything. Morag sighed, but kept the sigh silent; she didn’t want Mrs Grey to know she was getting to her. She stepped closer to the door and looked out.
“Are you sure this taxi is coming? I could have walked to the Cube by now.”
“Across streets filled with slaughter and fire?” said Vivian. “I think not. The taxi is coming. I am omniscient, you know.”
“Really? You’ve never mentioned that before.” It was cheap sarcasm, but the woman was indeed getting to her. From hauling Vivian out of Hell, to jokingly wondering if she could send the damned woman back, had been less than two hours. It took a special kind of person to generate that level of irritation.
“Ontological necessity,” said Vivian.
“I beg your pardon?” said Morag. “Did you just swear at me?”
Vivian raised her gaze from her book and looked at Morag. “Your former lover, Cameron Barnes, introduced me to the concept while we were discussing the mysterious appearance of OOParts in the city. He stated that the objects might exist because they had been comprehensively described in the Bloody Big Book, and the describing of them made them real. The cosmologist, Max Tegmark expressed the view that all structures which mathematically exist also exist as physical structures. The complexity of the concept is indistinguishable from the reality.”
“Sounds like flimflam to me,” said Omar.
Vivian shot him a pointed look.
“Oh, I’m all in favour of flimflammery,” he said.
Vivian briefly return
ed her attention to Morag. “I must write the book because the world exists.”
“Not sure that makes sense,” said Morag.
Vivian’s stillness conveyed the notion that Morag’s opinion was as unwanted as it was obvious.
The lifts dinged. For the first time, Morag wondered if the Library had its own backup power systems so the consular mission could keep going after the rest of the world had been plunged into darkness.
Chad from marketing stumbled out. “Ah!” he exclaimed and tottered over. His jacket was gone and his shirt sleeves rolled up. This usually implied Chad had slipped into total marketing mode; that his mind, hammering away at the coalface of corporate bullshit, had reached some sort of epiphany. “Shouldn’t the world have ended by now?” he asked.
“It did,” said Vivian. “Over four hours ago. And we have maybe an hour or two before the arrival of Yoth-Bilau and the closing of the Soulgate around our world.”
“I meant…” He sighed. “Shouldn’t we all be blown up? I was delivering my pitch vis-à-vis the apocalypse. I’ve got some great ideas about remarketing to the disaffected and providing calls to action via micro-influencers. It was an idea blizzard and totally buzz-generating. You should have been there.”
“We really shouldn’t,” said Morag.
“The nuclear missiles didn’t kill us,” said Vivian. “Yo-Morgantus or someone he could call upon put up a protective shield over the city.”
The wavering emotions of surprise and elation and fear flickering across Chad’s stupid face mirrored how Morag had felt at that moment of non-annihilation.
“We’re going to live?” he said.
“And then we’re going to hell, young man,” said Omar.
“Yo-Morgantus doesn’t want us all dying before we can become his tortured playthings,” said Morag.
Vivian made a mark in her book. “It is impossible for you to comprehend what hell will be like.”
“Well, you’ve been there,” said Morag. “Tell us.”
Vivian shook her head. “I fell into Leng-space and travelled from there to Hath-No. We might call those places hell because that’s where the gods and demons live. That’s hell as mere geography. We are about to experience hell as a state of being.”