by Sarah Rayne
‘Yes, it would be a sensible thing to do,’ said Floy. Fenella said, carefully, ‘I could almost believe that the people with the knowledge had been gathered together first. Before the catastrophe hit them.’ She looked at the others. ‘In that way, they would know that at least their — what was the word? — their science men and women were safe and could perhaps use their knowledge to fight or rebuild the world, or somehow rescue the dying.’
Floy said, mischievously, ‘Fenella is liking the fact that they refer to men and women of learning and knowledge.’
‘Yes,’ said Fenella firmly. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘Well, why not?’ said Floy, and smiled at her.
‘What comes next?’ said Snizort from the desk, and Floy reached for the next tablet.
‘We have set our sights on the stars, and on the worlds we have for so long observed … And although we know that to be truly safe we should travel farther than. Man has ever travelled before, we no longer have the resources or the power. I think,’ said Floy, ‘that by power they mean some form of machinery.’ He looked up, and the others nodded.
‘It has been decided that we have sufficient power to reach the friendly little planet that we shall name Renascia, which is to say renewal, and we will take to it all that we have salvaged of our civilization and our culture.’
He stopped, and Snizort made a note.
‘There is very little that we can take with us, for all about us now is the terrible devastation and the stench of decay … There is hardly any time left to us, and our choices are limited. And there is nowhere else for us to go — ’
Again there was the sadness, the aching longing. Fenella saw Floy’s expression and knew that Floy was now a vessel, an instrument through which the agony and the despair of their ancestors was being poured. For the moment, their pain was his; it was like scalding water flooding through a pipe. Yes, he has a skin short, my brother …
Floy returned to the gold tablets. ‘Earth's ending was the greatest irony in the history of Mankind,’ he said. ‘It was the gods’ final and darkest joke.
‘You will know of comets; you will surely have seen such things from time to time, for they are there for all to see.’ He looked at the others and everyone nodded. It was interesting to hear that Earth had suffered meteors, just as Renascia sometimes did.
‘When the comet we called the Angry Sun made its first appearance in our eastern skies, our — ’ Floy frowned over another unfamiliar word, and then said, ‘Our astronomers and our cosmologists were excited; it was something that had not been seen in our skies for many hundreds of years. They studied it and charted its paths in the Maps and there was a growing belief that it was the very body that had presaged the birth of Christ. Who would that be, Snizort?’
‘I think,’ said Snizort cautiously, ‘that he was some kind of teacher they had. A widely followed cult. A very good cult,’ he said, earnestly. ‘But that would be a great many centuries ago. Perhaps several thousand years.’
‘It was something of moderate interest to us,’ went on Floy. ‘To our people who studied these things, it was of immense importance, but they formed only a tiny proportion and, for most of us, there was only brief interest.
‘But the comet had changed course since its last appearance. It had altered its journey and, although we believed that it had passed close to Earth several times in our history, it had never been sufficiently close to cause concern. It had been no more than a blaze in our firmament, a brilliant mass of light, something to bewitch and dazzle earlier primitive peoples; something about which earlier Ages wove many legends and many beliefs.
‘This time was different …
‘This time it would come so close that it would graze the Earth 's surface. It would scorch the Earth’s crust and there would be great fires in our forests and deserts. There would be immense floods, great tidal waves which would sweep our lowlands. A great many lives would be lost and a great many of our already-dwindling resources would be destroyed if it touched us.'
He paused again and Fenella moved closer to the fire because she was shivering. How would it have been to have known, quite definitely, that a great mass of fire and white-hot rain was hurtling down towards you … ?
‘We ought to have been able to defeat it,' said Floy’s voice. ‘We set out to defeat it, to turn it from its path and send it spinning into infinity, harmlessly and silently. We had machines and we had weapons, and it did not occur to us that we could not halt it. It was simply an exercise, a rather intriguing project. We had never challenged the stars in quite this way before; we explored them, but we had never attacked them. We were, perhaps, arrogant. We thought, as we had for so long thought, that Mankind had become invincible … And for that reason alone, perhaps, we needed to be given a lesson. But if so, it was a harsh and a cruel lesson …
‘For our machines and our power betrayed us. We had believed that we were invincible and that Earth was indestructible. We were wrong …
‘When the comet came, when it was seen in the skies, when the sunsets began to burn with the colour of blood and fire and the wind began to be tainted with the terrible scent of Infinity, Earth changed.
‘People who had been cultured and urbane became so no longer. They began to fight, to threaten. They became greedy and violent.
‘Worst of all, little sects all over the land began to recall the ancient religions and the long-ago portents … the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who would ride into the world in its last days … The fire-beasts of the sun-god who would pour down out of the white-hot flames and devour Mankind … We had believed ourselves to be a practical) free-thinking world; now we saw that it had been a veneer, a thin outer covering only …
‘For at the end, when the comet was in our skies, the frail coating of civilisation was stripped and our people were little better than primitive savages again, believing in pagan gods, calling upon names we had thought long since vanished from our language, praying to deities who had no place in our tongue, reviving cults, sacrifices …
‘We reacted violently and arrogantly. We sent up our weapons and our immense and powerful machines. We flung them into the glowing sky, straight at the comet so that it would be destroyed, or turned off its course. And it did not occur to us that we should fail … ’
Floy stopped, and frowned, and Fenella said, in a whisper, ‘They failed … ’
Floy, his eyes scanning the page, said, ‘No. No, they did not fail. It was not that.
‘We succeeded in our aim; for although we did not destroy the Angry Sun, called in one language the Feargach Grian, we managed to change its direction. We sent it spinning away from Earth, off into the heavens, to wreak its havoc elsewhere, and we thought ourselves safe.
‘But we were not safe. The immense forces we had used to save our world from the comet, to avoid the small amount of damage it would have inflicted on us, turned upon us.’
Floy said slowly, ‘I do not fully understand this, but — ’ he stopped, and Snodgrass said, ‘But you have a glimmering of understanding, perhaps?’
Floy said, softly, ‘I believe I can almost see them. I believe I can picture them, hurling their powerful weapons and their machines into the skies. The weapons would collide with the comet, just as they had intended, they would knock it from its tracks, and then — ’ He stopped and looked straight at Fenella.
‘And then the weapons would rebound,’ said Fenella, staring at him, her eyes huge and dark. ‘They would recoil, they would — what’s the word I want? — ricochet. They would ricochet and they would go plunging and plummeting back to earth — ’
‘There would perhaps have been some kind of gravitational force involved as well,’ said Snodgrass.
‘And when they hit Earth, it would cause the great Final Catastrophe, the historic Devastation that has come echoing down to us,’ finished Floy, and then, looking back to the thin golden sheets, ‘yes,’ he said softly. ‘Yes, that is what happened. Listen.’
‘Our o
wn weapons destroyed us. The forces we had thought would protect us, finally betrayed us … ’
The achingly sad words lay on the air clearly and terribly.
The forces that should have protected them had burned their world.
'And so,’ said Floy, reading again, 'and so, the destruction of Earth was, at the last, our own doing, exactly as all the portents and the harbingers had said it would be. Apocalypse had come at last, Armageddon was upon us, and the skies were tom apart with the fire and the terrible heat and the vicious, disease-laden rain that poured down upon the Earth …
‘We burned the world and perhaps we destroyed Mankind, but we did it unwittingly … We meant to save the world, not murder it … ’
Fenella closed her eyes briefly and felt the sharp pain, yet again. How would it feel to know you had slaughtered the world … ?
Snizort said, very softly, ‘How truly terrible for them.’
‘Go on, Floy,’ said Snodgrass.
'Little groups of us escaped. We scuttled underground, into cellars and basements, deep beneath the ruins of our great cities. We avoided the fires that still burned and the charred, smoking wastes that had once been towns and meadows and forests and highways. At length, some of us who had devoted much of our lives to studying and understanding power and travel managed to reach the — ’ Floy stopped again, and then said, 'managed to reach the laboratories and the powerhouses. Power,’ said Floy. ‘That word again. Clearly, it was their greatest source of strength and of force.’
‘Laboratory would perhaps mean some kind of workshop,’ offered Fenella.
‘Yes. Yes, for they go on to talk of working,’ said Floy. ‘We worked in the most horrific of conditions to salvage what we could, and at length we were able to power our craft, which we named the Ark of Ages … Quilp always insisted they had called it an Ark,’ said Floy.
'And now we have gathered together as many people as we can. We would like to believe that we could take every remaining creature on Earth, but such a belief would be foolish. There must still be men and women here, sheltering in caves and mountains, eking out a terrible existence in the cellars of devastated buildings … We cannot save them all … Even if we could reach them, there would not be sufficient room … ’
‘But they would have liked to do so,’ whispered Fenella, hugging her knees. ‘They wanted to save everyone.’
‘Perhaps the ones we have been unable to save will somehow live on. Perhaps they will be the new Earth-people and perhaps, at some time in a future we cannot see, they will re-build Earth and bring her back to greatness. It is impossible to know, but we will hope for that …
'For ourselves, we believe we shall be safe on Renascia. We believe that we can reach it and find sanctuary.’
And then, finally, and devastatingly, like great stones dropping into a quiet pool, 'There is only one cause for concern about Renascia and, although it is a serious one, still we must set our sights for there for we have not the power to go farther and we know of no other planet where life, as we know it, could survive.
'Our astronomers tell us that Renascia is on the rim of a vortex, that it is on the very edge of one of the yawning Black Chasms with which Space is studded …
'We know only a very little about these Black Chasms, but we know them to be places of infinite and incomprehensible density … If we are unfortunate enough to pass within the pull of the Chasm that borders Renascia, then we shall almost certainly be tom apart by the strong tidal forces that it will generate. It may even be that we would cross boundaries that no men have ever crossed before, for it is believed by some that once within a Black Chasm, Time, as we know it, ceases to exist … ’ Floy hesitated.
Time as we know it ceases to exist … The words dropped into the quiet room like stones into a pool.
‘We have always regarded these Chasms as Dark Lodestars, malign black lures which suck in unwary travellers, and as cannibalistic suns, angry and voracious … They are the underside of our bright, luminous suns; perhaps they are necessary, for without true darkness, how could there be true light … ? But there are many theories to explain and accredit and account for the things we do not understand, and there is not time to set them down. We have come to believe, however, that all worlds must have their dark undersides …
‘We shall trust our craft to bring us to safety, for we know that we have not the power to go farther afield than Renascia, and we know of no other planets where life, as we know it, could survive.
‘Renascia it is to be, and we shall put our faith in the gods and pray that we are travelling towards sanctuary and towards the salvation of Mankind.
‘And that we shall be able to steer clear of the Dark Lodestar that lies in Renascia’s horizons … ’
Floy laid down the tablets and looked at them. For a long time, nobody spoke. At length, Floy said, very softly, ‘They did reach Renascia. We know they did. They reached the sanctuary they had sought and they saved Mankind. Their quest succeeded.’
Fenella said, in a whisper, ‘The Dark Lodestar,’ and Floy met her eyes.
‘Yes.’
‘Where Time, as we know it, might cease to exist.’
‘Yes.’ He moved to sit beside her, his face serious and intent. ‘I am afraid that it is that — that Chasm that is warping the patterns of the stars,’ he said, very gently.
‘And eroding the daylight,’ said Snizort.
Floy said, in an expressionless voice, ‘Yes. That is the answer. That is what is happening to us. Perhaps, in some way, the Chasm has begun to expand.’ He frowned. ‘A black density,’ he said. ‘Perhaps — something to do with a star or a sun dying.’
‘Something to do with meteors being swallowed?’ hazarded Fenella.
‘Truly, we cannot know. But it must be expanding. It is the only answer to the vanishing of the days and the strange livid sunsets.’
‘Renascia is on the rim of a vortex. A black density,’ said Fenella. ‘A Lodestar beckoning us to its centre.’
‘And at its centre, Time could turn upside down,’ said Snizort, thoughtfully.
Chapter Three
Floy was not yet entirely accustomed to entering the Council Meeting Room and taking the high-backed chair which had been his father’s, and seeing the faces turn towards him with a mixture of alertness and respect, here and there blended with wariness. It amused him, this spurious reverence that Quilp and the rest donned with such alacrity; he thought it was a very thin crust indeed, and he thought he would not trust one of them. But he had tried to repay this reverence with deference; even while he had been oversetting the old and tried methods and introducing his own ideas and ideals, he had borne it in mind that these men had been on Renascia’s Council for many years and that they had, perforce, far more experience than he had in governing and administering. He thought he had, so far, treated them with the courtesy due to their years, but he thought, as well, that they had never before had to face such a grim situation. It might be that the time for courtesy and deference was passed …
He was not aware that, as he walked into the Meeting Room, a mantle of unmistakable authority had fallen upon him; his mind was on the contents of the Casket and the golden tablets and he was already framing in his mind the proposals he would be putting before the Council. But, as he took his seat, the Council exchanged meaningful glances and Quilp, looking up, was at once aware of the new light in Floy’s eyes. Something has happened, thought Quilp. This will either be very interesting or very awkward.
Quilp knew himself for a reasonable man, and he thought that he was being very reasonable now. He had attended this Special Meeting of the Council which Floy had called, promptly and unquestioningly, and had even cancelled a promising little supper with the pretty young thing who served turnip grog in the Wine Shop. But it would not do to allow Floy to gain the upper hand in the Council. Quilp had not allowed Floy’s father-charming, a little feckless, slightly weak — to do so, and he would not allow the son to do so either. He studied
Floy covertly and saw, afresh, the charm and a little of the fecklessness, but he did not see any of the weakness. Oh dear, thought Quilp.
They all listened, without interrupting, as Floy recounted the story of the Casket and studied the careful transcripts that Fenella and Snizort had made of the message on the golden tablets.
When, at length, Floy finished speaking, the Council looked towards Quilp who had been making small, neat notes. Quilp did not speak. He finished his notes in unhurried and completely silent fashion (a trick he had perfected years ago and which nearly always discomfited people), laid down his pen, and regarded Floy steadily.
‘This is all extremely unexpected,’ said Quilp, raising his brows a little. He was annoyed to see that, so far from being thrown into confusion by such steady regard, Floy merely met his look and said, quite coolly, that unexpected was one word for it, certainly.
‘For myself, I would have called it alarming,’ he said. ‘But whatever we call it, we have to decide what we are going to do about it.’
‘I think we can accept the story of the comet,’ said Quilp, as if the overall direction of the Meeting had passed to him. He glanced round, as if for agreement. ‘And perhaps we can just about accept the — what did you call it? oh yes, the vortex. We have to allow that there are secrets in the stars which we do not understand,’ said Quilp, managing to sound extremely reasonable and open-minded.
He leaned forward, picking up his pen again, turning it back and forth in his hands. ‘But this tale about a yawning Black Chasm — ’ He smiled at Floy, rather sadly. ‘My dear boy, I think that perhaps you may have misunderstood the wording a little there.’ He thought to himself that this sounded really very courteous and was pleased, because discourtesy was not something he would ever stoop to. But it was necessary to be firm with Floy. He was always telling the rest of the Council that Floy was a good leader so long as people were firm with him.
Floy had felt his temper rising at this rather obvious ploy to make him appear as a supplicant who had been granted audience by the Council.