Skyfall

by Anthony Eaton

  Dernan Mann nodded and Janil altered course slightly. Lari watched the tiny glowing spark on the screen as they quickly closed the gap.

  ‘How does the scanner know someone’s there?’ Lari asked.

  ‘Body heat,’ Janil replied. ‘It’s not always reliable though.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There are areas out here where there’s still enough EMR interference to mess with the sensors. The townships are particularly bad for that. And sometimes the subjects just hide.’

  ‘Hide?’ Lari sounded surprised. ‘Where? I thought it was all desert.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate the subjects, Larinan,’ Dernan Mann said. ‘They’re cunning and resourceful. They’ve had to be, to survive this long.’

  ‘We’re not certain how much the subjects know about our technology,’ Janil continued, ‘but I’ve had them just vanish off the screen more than once, so I suspect they have at least a rudimentary understanding of how we track them. This one doesn’t seem worried, though. Here …’

  He pulled the flyer into a hover and switched on the lights again. They were now fifteen or twenty metres above the ground and below, shielding his eyes against the glare, stood a man wearing a long, sand-coloured robe and with an odd assortment of packages slung across his back.

  ‘He doesn’t seem scared,’ Lari observed.

  ‘I’ve seen that one before,’ his brother said. ‘He’s used to it. He wanders all over the place.’

  ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘Don’t know. Half the time we haven’t got a clue what they’re up to. I bet he was involved in that little escapade a couple of nights ago.’

  ‘Probably,’ replied Dernan Mann. ‘But we haven’t got time to hang around tonight. Let’s keep moving.’

  Janil nodded, flicked off the lights and resumed his original course. Lari watched the spot of light on the screen dwindle and vanish behind them. Once it fell away over the edge of the display, there was nothing else there.

  ‘It’s so empty.’ He tried to imagine what it must feel like to be that man, standing alone in the middle of all that space.

  They flew on in silence, while the moon rose, bloody red, out of the horizon and the land below fell into dull perspective.

  ‘Coming up on the facility.’

  Something loomed out of the darkness, moonlight reflecting colourless off crumbling walls. Janil trained the searchlights on the monolithic remains of a building unlike any Lari had ever seen.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘One of the processing facilities that caused these Darklands to come into being in the first place,’ his father told him. ‘As far as we know, that one is the last still standing, anywhere in the world.’

  Janil played the spotlights over the cracked and fractured building, its internal structure clearly visible through some of the gaps. The difference between it and the wall they’d passed over earlier was obvious.

  ‘It’s not plascrete.’

  ‘No. This was built long before plascrete. What you’re looking at there, Larinan, is steel-reinforced concrete, the same as you’d find if you went and wandered around in the underworld.’

  Lari’s eyes followed the lights. The ancient structure exuded a sort of timelessness.

  ‘How old is it?’

  ‘This was one of the facilities affected in the Pacific Circle catastrophe, so around a thousand years, more or less.’

  Lari shook his head in amazement, and Janil gave a superior chuckle.

  ‘I thought you weren’t interested in the project, copygen.’

  ‘I’m not interested in subgenetics, but this …’

  ‘It’s all related, Larinan. That’s why we’re here.’ His father loosened his restraints and leaned forward to get a better view out of the nosedome. ‘That building was one of seven processing facilities that ended up within the borders of the Antipodean Darkland zone. Right now, you’re at one of the epicentres that changed the face of human society.’

  Lari laughed. ‘I’ve studied history, Dad. Aren’t you overstating it?’

  ‘Not at all, Larinan.’ His father nodded at the old building. ‘I want you to remember this place. Its destruction contributed to the rapid destabilisation of the human gene pool, which in turn led to the establishment of the twelve international Darklands zones and the creation of the Darklands Genetic Adaptation Program. Along with the zones in East Indonesia, the Philippines, the Korean Peninsula and Osaka, the Antipodean zone had one of the highest rates of genetic instability on the planet, and yet, compared with the other zones – San Andreas and Los Alamos, for example – this area out here also had the lowest subject mortality. And that’s why the walls went up – to keep those mutations contained. To make sure that those poor unfortunates who’d been caught in the worst places, exposed to the worst of the disease and radiation, couldn’t pass their crippled DNA back onto the rest of humanity.’

  ‘This isn’t news to me, Dad. I know all this from third grade history.’

  ‘You know the facts, Larinan, but do you understand them? I want you to look at that building out there and really think about what it represents. What does it say about humanity? About the human condition? When it all went bad, our first response was to build those walls and lock the problem away, but when we realised containment wasn’t working – that the physical and environmental changes we had wrought upon the planet were more extreme than initially anticipated – we made some of the most sweeping political and sociological shifts in human history. We dismantled governments, did away with exponential population growth and engineered our race towards equilibrium, and, perhaps most significantly, we moved into the sky. We did it all because of what happened between those crumbling walls out there almost a millennium ago, Larinan, and we’ve yet to pay the price for it. But we will, soon.’

  ‘You make it sound like some kind of divine punishment, Father.’ Janil spoke without taking his eyes off the old building.

  Dernan Mann was quiet for a few seconds before he replied. ‘Janil, I don’t think that anyone, even you or I, has any real conception of just how bad it’s going to be, or how fast it might happen.’

  His words seemed to echo around the small cabin.

  After a moment, Lari asked, ‘This – what you’re talking about – it’s all to do with that entropy thing, isn’t it?’

  His father nodded. ‘Everything.’

  ‘So are you going to explain or just leave me wondering what in the Sky we’re doing out here?’

  ‘There’s more to see, first.’ He nodded at Janil. ‘Head for the nearest township.’

  Janil tapped in a couple of commands and the processing facility dropped away into the night. Below, the starlit landscape rushed by.

  ‘Imagine what it must look like out there by daylight, Larinan.’ Dernan Mann leaned forward. ‘Imagine the size of it – the colours, the brightness. Something none of us have ever really seen. Imagine being like them, being able to walk out there, across that land, beneath the sun. What would that feel like, do you think?’

  ‘Bloody scary,’ Janil interjected.

  ‘Of course. But also … free.’

  Lari twisted in his seat and tried to get a look at his father’s face, but in the dim light from the instruments all he could make out was a dark shape.

  ‘Being in love with walking around out there was what got Mum killed, Lari.’ Janil’s voice was sharp. ‘So don’t get any romantic ideas into your head about breaking field protocols, no matter what Father says. And don’t fool yourself either. It’s dangerous out there. The people are dangerous, the animals worse, and if something goes wrong and you get stuck, then unless you’re lucky enough to find somewhere to hide you’ll max out your exposure about three minutes after the sun comes up. It’s not a place for us.’

  ‘It might well be the only place we’ve got left.’

  Janil ignored their father. ‘Here’s the township.’

  An insignificant cluster of lights on the ground
ahead grew rapidly larger.

  ‘Which one is this?’ Dernan asked.

  ‘Woormra.’

  ‘Ah. Where it all began.’

  ‘Or ended. Depends on your point of view.’

  The searchlights sliced the darkness to reveal a squalid collection of structures sprawled around a central clearing and stretching across the floor of a shallow valley. Flickering firelight showed here and there through openings in the walls, but otherwise the place seemed deserted.

  ‘People live there?’

  ‘Have done for centuries, Lari. Even before the wall went up.’

  ‘How do they survive?’

  ‘I told you earlier, they’re resourceful. The Darklanders know things about this land that you or I couldn’t even begin to understand.’

  The wistfulness in his father’s tone was so completely out of character that Lari couldn’t let it pass.

  ‘That doesn’t sound particularly scientific.’

  ‘There’s science to it, all right. Just not the type we can understand.’

  Janil snorted softly.

  Lari studied the township. Against the all-encompassing darkness, it seemed so tiny, so inconsequential. It was hard to conceive that people could have existed there for so long. Almost as though reading his thoughts, Lari’s father spoke again.

  ‘They haven’t thrived, but they’ve survived, and that’s an achievement in itself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Dernan Mann ignored the question. ‘How are we going for time, Janil?’

  ‘Plenty. It’s not even first shift yet. We’ve got power for at least another four hours.’

  ‘All the same, you might as well take us back. I think we’ve seen all we have to out here.’

  Lari was confused. ‘What? We’ve seen an old building and a falling-down town. I thought we had some important reason for being out here. You said there were answers.’

  ‘There are, Larinan. You just have to ask the questions first.’

  The flyer rose sharply, soaring into the dark sky.

  ‘You’re talking in circles, Dad.’

  ‘Not at all. You want to know why I’ve allocated you to DGAP—’

  ‘So do I, for that matter,’ interrupted Janil.

  ‘… and this land out here is the real reason that the Darklands project manages to still exist.’

  That seemed obvious.

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘You’re not unintelligent, Larinan. You already know the answer if you think about it. What are the two functions of DGAP?’

  Lari rolled his eyes. Every schoolkid knew this stuff.

  ‘You were just talking about it. Containment and study of those subjects isolated from the human gene pool in the Darklands quarantine zones in order to maintain ongoing stability of the human genetic code.’

  ‘Now think about everything you’ve seen tonight. Do you really think that containment poses a serious problem anymore? Do you think the Darklanders are going to be rushing over the walls to destroy the rest of the human race at any time in the near future?’

  Lari remembered the size of that wall and mentally compared it with the tiny figure they’d watched, silhouetted alone in the middle of the desert.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Of course not. It’s a smokescreen. Given the relative size and age of the Darklander population, the chance of them escaping the zone is negligible, and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. By this time they’re such a statistically insignificant race that any impact they could have, assuming they could even make contact with us, would be minor at best. So containment clearly has nothing to do with DGAP. It hasn’t for centuries. Which leaves us with …’

  ‘Study.’

  ‘Exactly. But Larinan, why would the Prelature continue to invest resources in the study of a race of people who, as we’ve just established, are no longer an ongoing threat to humanity?’

  Lari considered this. The Prelature wasn’t known for its generosity in the way it managed the city. Everything was a resource of some kind, and resources were just too valuable to waste on luxuries. The same would be true of the administration of other skycities, too.

  ‘It wouldn’t.’

  ‘You’re right, it wouldn’t. Everyone knows that production protocols for water and food have been steadily lowered for the last fifty years, yet DGAP still receives whatever we need to continue our work, which, as you’ve just pointed out, appears to serve no useful purpose.’

  ‘But there’s been talk of shutting down the project. I read about it on the webs this morning.’

  Dernan Mann chuckled. ‘Smoke and mirrors, Larinan. You’d be amazed how long people will tolerate something if they think it has a finite term of existence. And most people have been so conditioned by a thousand years of webbing and propaganda that they don’t even think to question DGAP’

  ‘Some people do. What about them?’

  ‘Generally speaking, unless you have a voice, you don’t have power, and the Prelate does a lot to ensure that those people brave enough to ask questions don’t have a voice. Or at least, not for very long. But we’re getting off the topic. Have you solved the problem yet?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘If DGAP has no reason to continue to exist, why does the Prelature allow it to do so?’

  Lari considered this while the flyer streaked high over the Darklands wall. The line of red beacons flashed past against the ground.

  ‘Come on, copygen, it’s obvious.’ Even in the dark, Lari could make out Janil’s smirk.

  ‘Well, I can’t see it,’ Lari snapped back.

  ‘That’s always been your problem, little brother. You can never see what’s right in front of you.’

  ‘And you’ve always had a talent for stating the obvious.’

  Janil didn’t retort, but the look he threw Lari was loaded with such smug superiority that Lari paused, thinking furiously.

  ‘You’re finally getting it, aren’t you?’ Janil’s tone was taunting. ‘It’s right in front of you.’

  Lari ignored him. ‘If the original function of DGAP has become redundant, we have to assume that the Prelate knows it, and yet she continues to support the department,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Keep going,’ Dernan Mann encouraged.

  ‘Which means she must have other reasons to give that support.’

  ‘And therefore …’

  ‘And therefore DGAP must serve some other function. A purpose nobody knows about.’

  ‘Well done, Larinan. See, all you have to do is think.’

  ‘So the question is what you’re really up to.’

  ‘Not just us, you too, Larinan. As of today.’

  An instrument chimed softly and Janil touched an icon on the control display.

  ‘We’ll be at the outer marker in about an hour.’ Janil sat back and left the flyer controls to the processor.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what this secret purpose is? Or do I have to work that out myself, too?’

  ‘If we wait for you to solve it, we’ll be out here all night,’ Janil remarked.

  ‘You already know some of it, Larinan.’ His father loosened his harness and leaned forward, his head appearing between the seats and his expression serious. ‘You were in that meeting this afternoon, you saw what happened when Janil raised the question of the entropy scenario.’

  ‘But I still don’t know what it’s about.’

  Dernan Mann slipped back into the darkness. ‘Explain it, Janil.’

  ‘Well?’ Lari looked at his brother expectantly.

  Janil said nothing, apparently concentrating on the readouts for the flyer, then he looked his little brother straight in the eye.

  ‘We’re all going to die.’

  Somewhere on the white plain another mind touches hers.

  She stops, freezes. Turns. Searches.

  For a moment, nothing.

  But then it’s there again, faint, featherlike. The tiniest brush
of some other consciousness against her own.

  Girl?

  Yes.

  You gotta learn to ride the skyfire, girl.

  What?

  You wanna stop falling, you gotta ride the skyfire.

  I don’t understand.

  You will.

  Gone.

  Somewhere behind her, the plain begins to dissolve, the hard whiteness falling away into nothing. She runs, fleeing before it as fast as she can; ahead is only more of the same endless bright plain; behind, emptiness. She can feel it coming closer, faster, swamping.

  Below her, the plain grows softer, colder, less stable. She feels it crumbling beneath her.

  She looks down into …

  Nothingness.

  Cold, white nothingness.

  There’s a sudden surge, a panic, as she hurls herself out, reaching.

  And for an instant, something is there. Something not earthwarmth. Something so hot it feels cold. Something so powerful it’s barely there.

  It sears her mind and she screams silently as she pulls from it.

  And then she’s falling again, just like always …

  Falling …

  ‘They’re all going to die,’ she said.

  The statement was met with mute disbelief.

  ‘Forgive my daughter, gentlemen.’ The last thing they needed now was to scare off this particular group. ‘She tends to overstate things occasionally. There will, however, be … some unfortunate but unavoidable damage caused by our disruption, and it would most definitely be a good idea if none of your people were present at the event. That is why we’re informing you now of our intentions. During the time windows we’ve outlined, you’d be well advised to keep out of the target area.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but what happens afterwards?’ asked a short, elderly man with a hole where his nose should have been. ‘What happens when the topsiders come down here looking for the culprits? Where do you think they’ll look, eh? They’ll need someone to blame and chances are it’s going to be our people, not yours. You lot’ll melt away into the shadows like you always do. It seems to me that you’re not giving us any choice here, Ratz, just dragging us into your little war whether we like it or not.’