Skyfall

by Anthony Eaton

  ‘Eyna Mann – Larinan’s mother – used to have a saying.’

  ‘You knew her?’

  ‘I worked with her on a lot of field assignments. We were … friends.’

  ‘Lovers?’

  ‘No.’ Gregor shook his head. ‘Perhaps if Dernan Mann hadn’t come along … but no. We knew each other well, though. It’s one of the reasons she chose me to be your father. Eyna used to say that “life likes living”. I always thought it was just one of those things you say – a platitude – but now … She was right.’ He looked across at Saria. ‘That’s how her lot have survived out there all these years. It’s why there’s hope, even if it’s slim.’

  ‘Doesn’t the same rule apply to the city, then?’

  ‘That’s my point, Jem. You four are the rule in action. We’ve backed ourselves into a corner. It’s taken us a thousand years to do it, but here we are, with all our hope resting on a copygen, a mixie, a shiftie girl and a captured Darklander.’

  At their feet, Saria’s breathing changed and slowly she rose to her feet.

  ‘You okay?’ Gregor held out a hand to assist her, but the girl refused it.

  ‘Jaman.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Saria smiled. ‘I felt the Earthmother. She’s strong here.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I gotta go home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘Daywards. Into the sunrise.’

  Gregor had been expecting something like this. ‘You’re going to take your sister with you?’

  ‘Yeah. And anyone else that wants to come.’

  Gregor offered a tight smile. ‘I don’t expect you’ll get too many takers, somehow.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. There’s life out there – lots of it. I could see it all. Plenty for everyone.’

  ‘Everyone that can survive outside the shadows, in the daylight,’ Jem added.

  ‘As long as there’s light, there’s shadows,’ Saria replied.

  ‘Come on, then.’ Gregor put an arm around each girl’s shoulder. ‘Let’s get back and find the others.’

  ‘Then what?’ asked Jem.

  ‘Then we make certain that Jenx and the Prelate have better things to do than chase you when you leave.’

  Together, the three walked quickly back between the headstones until they reached the empty corridor that bordered the Land of the Dead.

  ‘Shi!’ Gregor cursed under his breath the moment he saw Lari on his own. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She left.’

  ‘Left for where?’

  ‘To find her parents. To go home.’

  ‘Doesn’t she know about the entropy scenario?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And that didn’t stop her?’

  ‘Only made her more determined.’ Lari smiled. ‘You might be her leader in the Underground, but you sure don’t know Kes.’

  ‘She’ll never get back up. The moment she jumps a mag, security will be all over her. When did she leave?’

  ‘A while ago. Pretty much as soon as you three were out of sight.’

  ‘Shi! She’s got at least an hour’s start.’

  Gregor thought furiously. He hated being put in a position like this, but there just wasn’t time. Not now. ‘We’ll have to keep moving. There’s no point hanging around here looking for her.’

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ Lari asked.

  ‘We’ve only got a couple of days to get across the city so the three of you can leave. Head east.’

  ‘Why don’t we just use the mags? Jem can use dead I.D.s and reallocate—’

  ‘Too dangerous. Especially with Saria. Security will be monitoring the system like never before. And besides’ – he threw Lari a grim smile – ‘before too much longer, the maglift system is going to become a lot less reliable than it used to be.’

  ‘Why?’

  But Gregor wasn’t listening anymore. He ran his fingers across his bare scalp and talked to himself as much as to the other three.

  ‘If security agents have Kesra, then we’ll have to accelerate our actions.’

  ‘What have you done, Dad?’

  Gregor smiled at her. ‘Just what we always planned to do, honey. Tear down the sky. Give the Prelature bigger concerns than the three of you. Now, let’s go.’

  ‘You’re going to destroy the city?’

  Gregor faced her. ‘The city’s dying already, Jem. Larinan can attest to that.’

  ‘And you’re not going to try and stop it happening?’

  ‘Stop it? Not at all.’ Gregor shook his head. ‘This is what I was trying to explain, Jem. This city – all the cities, for that matter – they’ve had their chance at life and they’ve squandered it. They’ve closed themselves off, first from the Earth itself, then from one another, and finally from their own citizens. The cities decided that some people are more expendable than others, that some life is less valuable than other life, and now they’re paying for it. The city is dying, Jem, and your best chance of living is if it happens sooner rather than later, so I’m planning to help it along.’

  ‘That goes against everything the Underground stands for.’

  ‘No, Jem. I started the Underground to fight for equality, and to provide a little hope for everyone who lives down here in the twilight. Well, thanks to the entropy scenario, it’s too late for equality. That dream is as dead as those stones back there. All that leaves us with is hope. That’s all the Underground has left to fight for. And that’s where you three come in. As long as you’re out there, as long as you can get away, then there’s hope. I’ll die with this city, knowing that there’s a chance, just a chance, that my daughter – that humanity – will continue out there. And because you’re my daughter, I know that whatever world you build will be better than the one you’re leaving behind.’

  Gregor turned away and looked out from the top of the embankment. From his raised position, the old city stretched away in every direction. Through the murky air the domestems rose into the night, and here and there ground-level fires, some of which had been burning for a hundred years, threw dancing red shadows onto the smog. He was vaguely aware of the three children climbing up to stand a little behind him.

  ‘Look at it, kids.’ Gregor shook his head. ‘We built ourselves our own little hell. Well, now we’re going to destroy it.’

  Wordlessly, he set off east along the top of the embankment, the ancient city smouldering and steaming at his feet.

  Trudging east, they followed Gregor along the top of the narrow embankment as it meandered through the dead city. Here and there the terrain would rise above the level of their path and they’d find themselves walking through steep-sided cuttings, but for the most part the path stayed slightly higher than the landscape around them. Gregor led in ominous, thoughtful silence.

  ‘Is your father all right?’ Lari asked Jem at one point, but the shiftie girl was not in the mood for chatting.

  They walked on.

  When the embankment lifted them above the surrounding ruins they could sometimes make out flyers combing the skies in the distance, searchlights probing the gloom. Occasionally a faint hum from their resonators would carry through the night. Lari watched the tiny light threads weave in and out among the stems of the skydomes.

  ‘I’m surprised they’re not searching more over this way.’ It was the first thing Gregor had said since they’d started walking, several hours earlier. ‘Perhaps they didn’t get their hands on Kesra after all.’

  ‘Or perhaps she lied to them.’

  Gregor’s reply was noncommittal. ‘Perhaps.’

  Then he turned on his heel and they continued their silent march.

  Lari watched Saria anxiously. They’d been walking almost all night, and the Darklander girl looked so frail that he expected her to collapse from exhaustion at any moment. But Saria just kept plodding along in the same steady rhythm, and when she caught Lari glancing at her she smiled.

  Dawn found them following the embankment into a part of
the city where the crumbling towers seemed taller and more densely clustered.

  ‘Welcome to Per,’ Gregor announced.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The city of Per. It’s not quite what it used to be, but its perfect for our purposes.’

  Lari looked up. The old city loomed over the embankment, stretching south down a gentle slope and pierced by more domestems than anywhere they’d been so far. They rose from every plaza, every street, a seemingly impenetrable forest, reaching into the darkness above. It was dark in there – possibly the darkest place he’d encountered down here. The streets and alleys between the old block-formed towers were pitch black. No fires lit the buildings and even less light than usual seemed to penetrate from above. It looked cold.

  ‘Why are there so many stems here?’

  Gregor nodded towards the hidden sky.

  ‘Climb high enough above Per, Lari and you’ll find Port North Central. That’s why it’s so dark. Think of it as a perminant eclipse.’

  Gregor led them a little way off to their left, north of the embankment, over several large piles of rubble towards an old, blocky building that crouched in the middle of a large plaza, a little like a dome common but littered with debris. They turned left and scrambled down a broken slope and through a narrow opening and emerged into an enormous underground cavity, directly below the building.

  ‘We’ll rest up here for the day.’ Gregor made his way to a small alcove built off the main cavern and pulled aside a couple of sheets of plastic. ‘Here.’ He took out a portalamp and a couple of blankets and he tossed them across to the others. ‘It’s a cache I’ve been keeping for an emergency. There’s food and water, too. Make yourselves comfortable and don’t go outside.’

  The portalamp flickered into life, throwing a white glow off the hard concrete. Gregor crossed back to the entry.

  ‘I’ve got a few things to do. Don’t worry if I don’t get back before full daylight. I’ll shelter somewhere and come back for you this evening.’

  ‘What “things”?’ Jem asked. ‘I’ll come too. If this is an action—’

  ‘No.’ Gregor shook his head. ‘Your place is with Lari and Saria now. Watch out for them. Get some sleep. I’ll see the three of you tonight.’

  He slipped out through the gap and vanished.

  Lari looked around. The dim glow of the portalamp wasn’t enough to light more than a tiny corner of the vast, underground space. The old, man-made cavern reached away into complete blackness, its ceiling supported by a forest of pillars.

  ‘Where do you think your father’s gone?’ he asked Jem.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of ideas. Not for me to tell you, though.’

  ‘Give us a hint, at least?’

  ‘Can’t. He never tells me the details until I need to know them. But I know he had a couple of big actions in the pipeline before all of this came up.’

  ‘Actions? You mean like the explosion in Port North Central? Is that your word for it?’

  Jem’s eyes met his, defiantly. ‘All we want is an equal share of the city’s resources. If that means we have to hurt a few topsiders to get attention …’

  ‘Hurt? I was there, Jem. You didn’t just hurt. You burned and killed and destroyed. I saw a young girl, probably no older than you, get burned to death in that “action”.’

  ‘A casualty of war, copygen.’

  Lari snorted, softly. ‘You sound like my brother.’

  ‘Janil?’

  ‘That’s how he talked about your sister.’ He looked across at Saria, who had already settled herself onto a blanket and appeared to be asleep. ‘He always called her a “subject”. Never a girl or a person and especially not “Saria”.’

  At the sound of her name the girl’s dark eyes opened and she silently regarded Lari for a moment before closing them again.

  She’s listening to every word, he realised.

  ‘You don’t have any idea what it’s like to live in the lower levels or the underworld,’ Jem was saying.

  ‘You’re right, I don’t. But I know there’s no future in blowing up innocent people just to make a point.’

  ‘No future for you, you mean. For the shifties and the clans there’s a lot to be gained.’

  ‘You think you gained anything that day? You think you made the topsiders feel any more sympathy towards you? You think you scared Jenx into backing off even a tiny bit? No, Jem, it’s a waste of time. Everything your father stands for is just making things worse.’

  ‘Then why’s he helping you?’ Jem spat the words. ‘What’s in it for him, eh? Getting some spoilt topsider kid safely away from a dying city, even though he doesn’t have to. Even though he could easily just dump you down here somewhere and we could take Saria and the three of us could escape. Why isn’t he doing that, Larinan Mann?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lari said quietly. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘I’ll tell you why. It’s because, when you get down to it, my father is the same as yours. They believe the same things. They both see the same writing on the same wall. They both know that you and her and me are the only hope that’s left and they’ve both done whatever they can to help us along. For your father, that meant having a second son and undermining his whole life’s work to see you and Saria escape. And for my father it means fighting. It means struggling against the weight of that filthy city up there until it either crushes him or he crushes it. But in the end it all comes down to hope, Larinan Mann. Hope and belief.’

  Her words rang around the empty cavern for a long time.

  Finally, Lari shook his head. ‘We’re never going to agree, Jem.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Without another word, Jem wrapped herself in a blanket, lay down beside Saria and turned her back on him.

  Lari did the same, but even through the blanket the floor was hard, and its coldness seeped up into him. When he did finally manage to get to sleep, he dreamed disturbed, nightmarish dreams in which he was buried, crushed under the ground, his father and brother somewhere above, piling more and more earth onto him, and the more he choked and struggled the more they added until he couldn’t stop the dirt entering his mouth, breathing it in as it filled him.

  There was a thud, a dull roar of distant thunder which trembled through the ground.

  Lari woke. ‘Did you hear that?’

  Jem and Saria were awake, too, both sitting upright, still wrapped in their blankets.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Shh.’ Jem held a finger to her lips. ‘Listen …’

  Somewhere in the darkness a gentle creak floated to them, followed by the soft noise of something trickling to the ground.

  ‘What is that?’

  Another low rumble shivered through the old city. Lari could feel the floor tremble as a concussion shivered through it. Then silence. Then a loud ‘crack’ from the darkness, followed by that same whispering trickle.

  ‘Come on!’ Jem was on her feet, hauling Saria upright with her.

  ‘Your father said not to go outside.’

  ‘Move!’ She half-dragged her sister towards the narrow opening, which was only dimly visible through a faint mist which was suddenly filling the cavern.

  Rising to follow them, Lari licked his lips and realised that it wasn’t mist. It was dust.

  With a sound like a thousand pacifiers, something collapsed in the back of the cavern and the whole weight of the building above began to slip downwards.

  ‘Shi!’

  Stumbling, Lari threw himself after the two girls.

  ‘It’s coming down!’ he shouted.

  ‘You reckon?’ Then Jem was gone.

  Behind him, Lari could hear the building imploding, filling the empty darkness with a cacophony of destruction as the ancient concrete finally gave way and roared downwards.

  As soon as he was through the gap he stopped, but Jem grabbed his arm and tugged him savagely towards the large plaza a little way up the slope.

  ‘This way! Now!’

 
The air was loaded with fine powder that Lari could feel clinging to him, filling his lungs as he stumbled up the broken slope, following the two girls away from the falling building.

  Finally Jem stopped, her chest heaving, her dark hair almost white with dust.

  ‘We’ll be fine now.’

  Lari turned and looked behind him.

  The building was gone, fallen completely in on itself. All that remained was a giant crater, in which dust was slowly settling.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Jem looked at Saria and Lari.

  ‘Yeah.’ Lari answered for both of them. ‘Just shaken. Does that happen often down here?’

  ‘First time for me,’ Jem said. ‘I guess it must, though.’

  Above, the last vestiges of twilight gleamed down through the cluttered sky.

  ‘How long do you reckon we slept?’

  ‘Most of the day. Dad shouldn’t be too far away, I imagine.’

  Even as she spoke, Gregor shouted from across the plaza. He was sprinting towards them and as soon as he reached them he swept Jem up into a tight hug.

  ‘Thank the Sky! I thought I’d lost you.’

  ‘You nearly did.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Something woke us. Just in time, too.’

  Gregor held her out at arm’s length and looked her over. ‘You’re all right? No injuries?’

  ‘We’re fine, dad.’ She hesitated. ‘What was the blast?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Just before the building collapsed. Something triggered it. Something big. Don’t tell me you don’t know.’

  ‘Jem, I’m sorry.’ There was something disconcerting about seeing Gregor so shaken. ‘I had no idea that building was so weak. If I’d realised …’

  ‘Dad – the blast?’

  ‘It… Come and see.’

  They followed him back across the plaza, south towards the causeway embankment. Even before they’d climbed to the top, Lari realised that something had happened in the remains of Per. A column of thick grey smoke poured into the air between the towers, rising thousands of metres before dispersing in the lower levels of the skycity itself.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Just look.’

  From the top of the embankment the view below was one of utter chaos. Where the old city had been made up of dark, empty shadows, there was now a maelstrom of flames and smoke. Fire raged through every empty space so that it looked as though the air itself was burning.