Empress of the Sun

by Ian McDonald

  Silence, and darkness.

  The object hovered a thousand metres over London. It blocked out the sun. Its shadow was dark as night. Camera flashes flickered in the crowd. A thousand hands held up a thousand phones and iPads, taking photographs, shooting video.

  An underground train rumbled far below. On any other day it would not have been heard. It broke the silence. In an instant, London found its voice again. Phones ringing, people making calls: hello hello? It’s massive; car radios blaring, horns blaring, people blaring; people talking, people shouting, people all asking the same question: what is it?

  ‘It’s a Jiju cityship!’ Charlotte Villiers called from the side of the footpath to anyone who would listen. ‘It’s not just London, they’re everywhere!’ The people standing by their cars gaped. The radio reports were confirming what the mad shouting woman was saying. ‘It is the end of the world! Earth has been invaded.’

  37

  The view from the bridge destroyed any doubt, or hope. Where Palatakahapa, the palace of the Empress of the Sun, had floated, glittering with ten thousand windows, was a void. Nothing. Dead air. Everett could see across twenty kilometres to the pinprick lights of the far side of the shaft through the world. The slender bridges were snapped like cut threads. The streamers of lightning below arced without interruption across the great pit.

  ‘Where did it go?’ Sen asked.

  Kax stood at the great window, hands against the cracked glass. ‘Where do you think?’ she said in a voice like winter.

  Everett shivered. He hated Kax using his mum’s voice; the tone she had used was exactly the same as his mum’s when she had told Everett that his dad was gone, wouldn’t be back, they were splitting up. The End of Everything voice. ‘My mother has initiated the Final Victory. It’s not just Palatakahapa. It’s every single Sunlord city. The invasion has begun. And she has left me …’

  The realisation hit Everett like a physical blow.

  ‘The sun!’

  ‘Yes,’ Kax said. She turned from the great window. ‘The order to fire the nova sequence would have gone out at the same time as the cities jumped off the Worldwheel.’

  ‘Mr Singh, get us out of here!’ Captain Anastasia snapped.

  ‘Now!’

  ‘He cannae,’ Mchynlyth said in a quiet voice of bone-deep shock. ‘He disnae have the power.’

  Everett tapped up the Infundibulum. The JUMP button was greyed out.

  ‘Heisenberg Jump not available,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Singh, we need answers,’ Captain Anastasia said. Her voice was supernaturally calm.

  ‘It takes eight minutes twenty-six seconds for the nova message to get from here to the sun,’ Everett said. ‘It’s a speed-of-light thing. And it’ll also take eight minutes twenty-six seconds for the blast to reach us.’

  ‘About two minutes since Palatakahapa disappeared,’ Captain Anastasia said. ‘Fourteen minutes until the sun blows up. That’s enough. Mr Mchynlyth, have we power for the impellers?’

  ‘Fart-in-a-hurricane territory,’ Mchynlyth said.

  ‘A fart in a hurricane will suffice. Sen, fire up the impellers. Gentlemen, to engineering. Kax, I need every hand. If you please, ma’am, break out the lightning array. I’m taking her down –’ Captain Anastasia pointed at the blue electric arc – ‘into that.’

  ‘You can’t!’ Sen cried.

  ‘Take her in, Miss Sixsmyth,’ Captain Anastasia said in her sternest tone of command. ‘Gentlemen, reptiles, you’re still here.’

  *

  ‘The lightning array,’ Everett said, chasing Mchynlyth up steps, walkways, ladders, up between the gas cells into the heights of the airship. ‘Isn’t that where you fly into a thunderstorm to recharge the batteries?’

  ‘It is,’ Mchynlyth said. They were on a crawlway pressed up tight against the top of the ship, so low even Everett had to crouch.

  ‘Like, the thing where, if it goes wrong, it can burn up your airship?’

  Mchynlyth’s face was purest disbelief. ‘Laddie, the sun – the sun – is about to explode and blow our dishes to the Dear. A wee sense of proportion here.’ And he was gone, scuttling like a crab down the cramped passage. Everett’s thighs complained with cramp as he scurried after the Chief Engineer.

  Mchynlyth stopped under two large brass wheels set into the ceiling. ‘Haul for all your might, lad!’ The engineer grabbed a wheel. Biceps, neck sinews, collarbone bulged as he wrenched the wheel round.

  Everett’s watch beeped.

  ‘Six minutes to Sunburst.’ He had thought of the name on the race up the stairs from the bridge to the top of the ship. The end of the world, and he still couldn’t resist making up a name for it.

  Mchynlyth banged his fist against the skin. ‘You know? I really. Really. Do. Not. Need. The final friggin’ countdown.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Bugger sorry. Heave.’

  Everett grabbed the wheel and threw his weight on to it. It wouldn’t move. He took a deep breath and tried again. Every muscle screamed. It was agony: crouching cramped, arms up.

  ‘Gaaarghhhh!’ Everett cried. With a squeal the wheel shifted.

  ‘Turn! Turn!’ Mchynlyth yelled.

  Everett hauled on the brass wheel. His watch beeped again. Four minutes to Sunburst.

  Mchynlyth held up a hand.

  ‘We’re moving,’ he said. ‘We’re moving! Haul for Jesus and Krishna and the Dear!’

  *

  Sen felt it in every part of her body: the familiar vibration she had not known for so long now: the throb of the impellers. The constant welcome tremble that said you were on an airship, a living, breathing machine with a life and a great heart, like a lion. The vibration was weak, but the ship’s heart was beating again. Sen lifted her hands from the engine-start levers. She felt as if she had worked magic: brought the ship back to life with a healing touch, in the same way the Genequeens had healed her. But she could not put those hands on the steering yoke. The lighting arc below her blinded her, paralysed her with fear.

  ‘Take us down, Miss Sixsmyth,’ Captain Anastasia said. She stood by the great window, hands behind her back, feet apart, looking out: her customary stance of command. That stance said: I am Master and Commander of an airship.

  Sen reached for the yoke, then recoiled. She saw the wreck of the Fairchild, as she had seen it so many times in so many falling, screaming nightmares. She saw her parents’ ship spin end over end through the stupendous storm off the Azores; the lighting array unfurl like sails, one above, one below. She saw the lightning strike. She saw the killing arc. She saw the ship catch and burn.

  She saw it happen again. She saw everything end in fire. She couldn’t do that to the ship. But if she didn’t …

  ‘Miss Sixsmyth! We have twelve minutes before the nova hits us!’

  Either way, it ended in fire. Sen whimpered. Everett had talked about choices of evils. All the evils in all the worlds were here, underneath her fingers. But the two crossing arcs of blazing blue light filled her eyes and her mind.

  ‘Sen! Don’t make me take the controls from you!’

  She could not touch the steering yoke. The ship would scream at her betrayal if she touched it.

  ‘Sen! Listen to me! The Fairchild – I was the pilot. Never forget that. I was the pilot, I took her into the storm. And I made a mistake. Sen, I flew that ship to its death. It was too much for me. And I can’t do this. You can do it. Only you can do it. You’re a better pilot than I ever was. Only you can save Everness!’

  ‘No!’ Sen shouted, and seized the control yoke. Slowly … very slowly … so slowly it hardly seemed like movement at all … Everness crept forward on the last whispers of energy in her batteries.

  *

  He was failing. He was in pain. It hurt too much. Every muscle was on fire, dipped in liquid lightning. Pull. Pull. Pull. Did this wheel never come to an end?

  ‘Come on, Mr Singh!’ Mchynlyth yelled.

  With the last of his strength Everett hauled the
brass wheel round. There was a moment of resistance when he felt his muscles might fail, and then the wheel clicked into place. Mchynlyth locked his wheel.

  ‘She’s up. Now let’s scarper. You don’t want to be up here when we hit the lightning.’

  ‘Have you ever done this before?’ Everett asked.

  ‘No. But I have a very strong imagination. It’s a Mchynlyth family trait. Anytime you like, Mr Singh. Nae rush.’

  Everett covered the last metres of crawlspace on hands and knees, body contorted with pain. He hauled himself upright. The stairs went down and down forever between the ballooning gas cells.

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Ach, come on, you’re young, you’re fit,’ Mchynlyth said. He pushed past Everett and took the steps at a canter. Everett’s watch pinged. Another two minutes closer to Sunburst.

  *

  ‘Power at fifteen per cent, Ma.’

  ‘Hold us steady.’

  Sen held Everness straight and true for the place where the two arcs crossed. The great window was a wall of searing electricity. Captain Anastasia stood silhouetted against crazy lightning, black against blue.

  Everness shook. Sen trimmed the attitude controls. Her air-mojo was back; the inborn Airish gift for feeling the winds, thinking in three dimensions, reading the atmosphere. She reached inside her jacket and felt out the contours of the Everness tarot. She slipped out the top card and peeked at it.

  Empress of the Sun.

  Sen flicked the card across the bridge. Another draw: a solitary tree within a circular wall at the top of a hill. Lone Tree Hill. Does the wall keep the tree safe from the world, or the world safe from the tree? People, events, circumstances can flip in an instant and still be the same.

  Was the tarot speaking to her again, or were the visions and skills the Jiju had put in her head muddying her ability to read the deck? Or was the Everness tarot saying that, sometimes, all an oracle will tell you is the absolutely obvious. Save the ship, Sen Sixsmyth.

  ‘Lightning array is operational.’ Mchynlyth’s voice, suddenly at her side.

  Everett slipped behind his station beside Sen. He nodded, gave her the briefest, sweetest, most pain-filled smile. Then he turned all his attention to his comptators.

  ‘“The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save.”’ So Sharkey was here too.

  Everness shook again, more powerfully. Electricity sparked from every exposed metal surface. In the corner of her eye Sen glimpsed Kax. The Jiju princess’s halo was pulled in tight to her head. It shone almost as blue and bright as the lightning.

  ‘Take us into the heart of the storm,’ Captain Anastasia ordered.

  ‘Aye, ma’am.’ She pushed the steering yoke forward. Creaking, groaning, whining, shuddering from mismatched impellers, Everness answered the helm. The great window was a wall of lightning. Sen could feel every heartbeat, every muscle in her body ordering her to twist the steering yoke, take the ship up and away. She held true. She held firm. She held her course.

  Everness jolted. Sen gave a small, animal cry but kept her grip on the yoke. The ship was shaking now, thrashing like a dying thing. They were in the heart of the plasma stream.

  ‘Charge her up, Mr Mchynlyth,’ Captain Anastasia ordered.

  Mchynlyth threw a brass lever and the bridge came alive with lightning. Sparks cracked from every bolt and rivet, St Elmo’s Fire danced along every trim and fitting. The bridge was filled with a cacophony of cracklings and fizzings and hissings.

  ‘“And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings,”’ Sharkey said.

  ‘Try not to touch anything,’ Captain Anastasia shouted.

  ‘Aye, right,’ Mchynlyth muttered.

  ‘Captain.’ Everett’s voice was small and quiet and almost lost in the blazing thunder inside the bridge, but his tone turned every head to him. ‘The sun just exploded.’

  ‘How long have we got?’ Captain Anastasia asked.

  ‘Eight minutes, twenty-six seconds,’ Everett said.

  ‘What’s the state of our batteries?’ Captain Anastasia asked.

  ‘Twenty per cent,’ Mchynlyth said.

  ‘Sen, hold position.’

  Everness lurched and dropped. Sen yelped as her feet left the ground. The ship yawed as she fought to regain her grip on the steering yoke.

  Sharkey was scanning those monitors that still worked.

  ‘We’re arcing from the lightning array to the hull. Burn-through in section Upper 6.’

  ‘Hold her steady, Sen.’

  ‘Thirty-three per cent,’ Mchynlyth said.

  ‘Mr Singh, make whatever preparations you need. I want Heisenberg Jump the instant we have the power.’

  ‘Aye, ma’am. Sunburst plus two minutes.’

  Captain Anastasia bit back an oath.

  *

  Lightning danced around Everett floor to ceiling as he powered up his equipment, computer by computer. The Panopticon. The Infundibulum. The jumpgun. Slow and steady. One careless move in this electrically charged environment could cause a short. A short circuit could burn out the processors in his computers. Dead computers was dead Everett, dead everyone. Slow and steady and try not to think of the wall of light and heat racing at the speed of light across the innermost edges of Diskworld. Everett could imagine it all too well. He had touched the very stuff of the sun, turned it to a weapon in his hand and its power awed him. He had loosed the tiniest piece of it on Imperial University in Earth 1. This was the entire sun blasting off its outer layers. The light and heat would be enough to kill – there would be no warning, not even a flash of light racing towards you across the world. The wall of sun-stuff would blast everything to free-floating atoms. Trees, living creatures, seas rivers lakes, cities, the rocks themselves. Could even the fantastically strong substance of the Diskworld resist the energies of Sunburst? The Sunlords believed so: after the lava cooled and the water vapour rained out, they would return and reseed and restock their world.

  Everything dying, everything twisting and burning in the killing light.

  ‘Sunburst plus four,’ Everett said. The Panopticon was live. Everett blinked as the screen filled with Heisenberg Jump points. Thousands of them. Millions of them. More than the stars in the sky. On every one of the Known Worlds of the Plenitude. An invasion on a billion fronts. His world, his home: he had to know. Everett tapped up the parameters for Earth 10. They were all over it. Every single human city had a Sunlord cityship hovering over it. And Palatakahapa, the centre of it all, stood over London. His London.

  The Infundibulum was active now. Everett looked from Infundibulum to Panopticon, Panopticon to Infundibulum.

  ‘Sixty-two per cent,’ Mchynlyth intoned.

  ‘Burn-throughs in lower and upper hull quadrants,’ Sharkey said.

  ‘Hold her steady, Sen.’

  Everett glanced at Sen. Her face was tight, her muscles rigid as cables as she fought to hold the bucking, quaking airship in the plasma stream. Sweat ran into her eyes, she flicked it away.

  ‘Ma’am, I have an idea!’ Everett said,

  ‘Make it a good one, Mr Singh,’ Captain Anastasia replied.

  And the Jump Controller went from grey to green. The controls were live. Everett swept code from the Panopticon into the controller. The JUMP button lit up.

  ‘Heisenberg Jump in five …’

  ‘Four minutes to spare, Everett,’ said Captain Anastasia. ‘You’re losing your touch.’

  ‘Three …’

  The wall of killing light, racing towards him across the endless plains of the Worldwheel, flashing everything to vapour. Billions of deaths.

  ‘Two. One.’

  Everett hit the JUMP button. Light from beyond the universes flooded the bridge.

  And gone.

  38

  No voom.

  Everness departed, Everness arrived.

  Palatakahapa hung over London. Cold clear January light showed it in all its might and m
onstrousness. Pinnacles and buttresses like a thousand mashed-up cathedrals; spines and spires like some creature from the bottom of the darkest sea; ribs and spars and vents like the oily body of some obscenely elegant movie alien. An iron crown ten miles across: from Acton to Canary Wharf; from Hampstead to Streatham. London: conquered. Three million people cowered in its shadow.

  ‘Coms are crazy,’ Sharkey said. ‘Two hundred channels of screaming.’

  ‘Belay coms, Mr Sharkey,’ Captain Anastasia ordered.

  Everyone on the bridge flinched as fighter aircraft flashed over the airship, close enough to set Everness trembling with their jet exhaust.

  ‘Are those air-o-plans?’ Sen said.

  ‘Mr Singh, where have you brought us?’ Captain Anastasia said.

  ‘My world,’ Everett said. ‘My home. I’ve got a plan – but it only works if I can get to Palatakahapa. And that’s here. Over my London.’

  Everyone was drawn from their posts to the great window. The sight was awesome. That’s a word we use too much, Everett thought. A new phone or a movie trailer or hi-tops and we’re like: that’s awesome. That’s just stuff. A flying palace of parallel-universe smart-o-saurs hovering over London. Now that’s awesome. I look, and I feel awe.

  Everett had jumped Everness in over White Hart Lane football stadium. He had done the math quickly but carefully: far enough away from Palatakahapa to avoid the danger of jumping one material object inside another; close enough to be able to see pieces of snapped bridge and sheared architecture crumble and fall to the streets of Stoke Newington a thousand metres below. Everness hung half a kilometre from the north-east sector of the Jiju palace. It dominated the great window. Abney Park, Stoke Newington, Clissold Park, the Emirates Stadium, Bourne Green School, all lay under the shadow of the Empress of the Sun.

  ‘My mum is down there,’ Everett whispered. ‘My sister, my bebe and my cousins. All my friends …’

  ‘My mum is in there,’ Kax said. She blinked at Everett. Her halo was obsidian dark. ‘I felt them all, Everett. I heard them, in here.’ She touched the corner of her jaw where the Jiju small ears sat. ‘Everything that walked or swam or flew or burrowed. One short cry, and gone. Turned to ash, the ash turned to dust, the dust to atoms. Every story and song and building and poem and game and toy and painting, every piece of knowledge and wisdom: gone in the blink of an eye-membrane. Sixty-five million years of Jiju civilisation. We are the last of the Jiju!’