by Gary Gibson
Elias raised a hand, palm outwards. ‘Fine, all right. But this isn’t the time and place. Now tell me why I shouldn’t go find Trencher.’
‘Why do you think Trencher ever wanted you to come here?’ asked Kim. ‘Just to rescue him?’
Elias looked at her. ‘Sure. I guess.’
Jesus! she thought. How single-minded could the guy be? ‘You left a note for me with Vincent,’ she continued patiently. And we’re going to have to go back and bury him if we can still find him, she thought. She didn’t want to think of his body being abandoned in the middle of some lonely alien forest.
‘Sam told me you can all see into the future, at least some of it. Don’t you think perhaps your friend Trencher saw all this coming, in some way? Don’t you think that he’d want you to help do something about all this, when the time came?’ As she stared at him, his eyes flicked away. ‘Given the choice between saving your friend, and saving this entire world, don’t you think that perhaps the right choice is clear? Look. Trencher brought you here for a reason, but it’s not the reason you seem to think it is.’
His face crumpled, almost as if he might cry, but then this flash of emotion was gone, replaced by a neutral mask. ‘Trencher means a lot to me. I was on the run for a long time,’ he said, his tone almost wistful. ‘I couldn’t have made it on my own – if he hadn’t been there to give me some idea of who I was, what I’d become . . .’ His voice fading, he shook his head, stared up at the screens showing the grey blur of the landscape below.
‘Elias, I don’t know all the reasons either of us are here,’ she said gently. ‘But I do think there are reasons. Vincent came here because he wanted to find some way, any way, of stopping what’s about to happen. But I don’t think he ever seriously thought there was any way to do that. Sam seems to think there might be a way. I’m not sure what exactly, but it’s got something to do with the Citadel. Sam wants us to go there.’
‘How much time do we have left?’
Kim glanced at the time display. ‘A few hours.’
Sam Roy
Sam studied his naked flesh in the toilet mirror. The minor scars had now turned a livid pink. His teeth still looked like hell, but there was a tingling of life in his gums. He reached up and touched a jagged residue of tooth. It rocked gently against his forefinger, came loose with no pain. As it clattered to the floor, he angled his head up and saw what resembled a tiny bud of white porcelain deep in the cavity it had left.
When he returned, he found Trencher still sitting cross-legged on the floor with the Kaspian they called Ursu. The Facilitator stood in the space between them, looking so obviously an Angel artefact now it was free of its earthenware casing. It glowed faintly, a blue halo surrounding it. Trencher now looked remarkably lively, considering he’d been fished out of a deepsleep coffin only a few hours back.
The two were communicating with each other, Sam realized. Using the Facilitator, as he himself had done with Ursu. He knelt gingerly on the floor next to them, and studied intently the alien device which was the constant focus of their attention. He could distantly hear the discussions and argument of other crew, gathered in the cockpit. They were clearly unsettled by these strange old men they had thrown in their luck with, and more so by this creature they thought of as alien – even though they had grown up on the same world.
‘Tell me what you know,’ said Trencher, turning to look at him. The words had been expressed as a concept, something formless, beyond semantics, via the Facilitator which had become the technological hub of their three-way conversation.
‘The Citadel is the key,’ Sam replied by the same method.
The Kaspian had calmed down, despite continued alarm at its strange surroundings. It helped that through the medium of the Facilitator, he could share in their communicated thoughts and ideas. It was uncertain, however, whether the alien could properly absorb the information imparted to it. It didn’t take the Facilitator, though, for Sam to empathize with what was going through its mind.
‘Why am I here?’ it asked. ‘I have brought Shecumpeh to you, as instructed. Now let me go.’
Sam felt sad at what he realized was, after all, a kind of betrayal. ‘We require your presence when we go to Baul. It is part of a compact between your species and the race we call the Angels, made a long time ago. We can’t do this without members of your race present,’ he said.
Ursu was silent after that.
Sam caught Trencher’s eye, made a gesture with his head indicating he wanted to talk to him alone. Trencher stood up and approached the other man. ‘Sam, we’ve got a lot to talk about.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘We don’t have the time, I know, I know. I see you’re healing well. I know how hard it’s been.’
Sam shook his head. ‘You left us – me. I knew you were coming back – God knows both of us could see that, even Ernst could see it – but why? Why did you leave in the first place?’
Trencher smiled faintly. ‘I would have thought you could give your own answer to that – because none of us has much choice in what we say or what we do, even Vaughn. He’s as locked into his actions by his own precognitive abilities as we are. Do we really want to get into a philosophical argument right now?’
‘We aren’t going to get to the Citadel any faster than we’re going, and if things don’t work out the way we’re hoping, I’d at least like to get some things clear before we die. I used the Kaspian gods to understand the Angel language. Once I had that, it led me to the proof, there in the Citadel.’
Trencher nodded, anticipating Sam. ‘If we look into the future, whatever particular future we end up seeing—’
‘– out of a vast range of possible futures—’
‘– the probabilities collapse to accommodate that one particular probability,’ Trencher finished.
‘It’s hardly that simple,’ said Sam. ‘There are only a few of us with the precognition skill. If we all see slightly varying futures, the direction in which the wave function collapses is determined more by whoever has the greatest ability in precognition.’
‘Which, fortunately for us, almost certainly isn’t Ernst. But I fear I do not feel greatly reassured.’
Sam nodded. ‘You could have come back, before the Hiatus, and helped me stop Vaughn before it got too late. Instead you ran away and hid on Earth.’
‘Because I’d already seen that would happen?’ Trencher shook his head. ‘Maybe, yes. And perhaps because I wondered if things really would turn out the way we’d foreseen them, or if perhaps we could be wrong.’
‘We weren’t, though. Which brings us to another question. Why can’t we now see what’s going to happen next?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Trencher, ‘because we’re going to die.’
‘Or perhaps there is a way out,’ said Sam fervently. ‘The Angels could see ahead, too, yes? And that’s why they left.’ Sam had spent enough time studying the Citadel to know. They exited this universe, he thought, because they had become something like gods, with all the attendant horror and infinite boredom of possessing absolute knowledge. So they had gone somewhere else.
‘What I’m about to tell you,’ said Sam, ‘I don’t recall foreseeing. I don’t know whether you did. So you may be about to enjoy a genuine revelation.’
Trencher’s eyes glistened with pleasure. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘The wave of radiation heading towards this world, it’s not a natural phenomenon.’
Trencher stared. ‘Then who?’
Sam explained what he had discovered about the second race, in the heart of the galaxy. ‘At first I thought this was a faction of the Angels, separated perhaps for political reasons, perhaps religious, or more likely something beyond our understanding. But the more I learned about the Citadel, the more I realized there must be another species in the galaxy that shared in the knowledge and power of the Angels. There was a war between them, I think.’
‘This is indeed a revelation. And you elicited all this in the Cit
adel?’
‘There is machinery down in some of the lowest levels of the Citadel, something like those things.’ Sam nodded at the Facilitator.
It was so much easier to communicate the raw concept through the Facilitator. Here, thought Sam, and a flood of knowledge entered Trencher’s mind.
Perhaps the Angels had shared their knowledge with this mysterious other race; perhaps they had gained it solely by themselves. However that might have been, Sam was sure of one thing. There had once been a conflict, one that might not yet be over.
‘The Angels won, of course,’ Sam elaborated. ‘They imprisoned their enemy – contained them? – within the heart of our galaxy, where there is nothing but light and heat. How they are held there, I do not know.’ This information came through to Trencher almost as if he had lived through these things himself; the galaxy spread before him in his mind, ships composed of energy and space twisted together, diving towards the very core of the Milky Way in the blink of an eye.
‘The species imprisoned by the Angels are using the galaxy just like a weapon, firing off incredible bursts of life-destroying energy,’ said Trencher in a low murmur. ‘A terrible thing, but magnificent also somehow.’
‘But we can do something about it. The Angels provided us with the means.’
‘Of course.’
‘And then?’
‘After? Why, my dear brother,’ said Sam, ‘we destroy the future, of course.’
Ursu
Ursu watched the two Shai talk between themselves but no longer communicate with him. He was surprised to find he could still communicate with the Facilitator separately, not just as a means of conversing with Sam Roy. He asked the device how they would save their world.
The words-pictures-feelings overwhelmed Ursu with responses. He learned that the Facilitators served more than one purpose. They also administered – controlled? – no, monitored the whorl of stars known as Hesper’s Crown.
And when the fire from the stars came to burn his people away, something would save them. A mechanism – something that would shield them.
‘Except that the shield isn’t working.’
For a moment, Ursu imagined that these words had come from the Facilitator itself. He felt a presence beside him, looked around and saw the Shai Sam staring at him with those small, intense eyes.
‘That’s why we go to Baul,’ he said to Ursu. ‘We need your god to reactivate a device that will save your people, as well as your world.’
Kim
The Citadel reached towards the Kaspian sky with impossibly lofty black towers. Kim had led Roke through to the shuttle’s cockpit.
She still felt slightly dazed by how quickly events had moved, particularly Elias’s sudden appearance with a stolen shuttle.
Kim had come full circle, returning to the place that had become a familiar part of her dreams and nightmares for so many years.
‘You know that I’ve been here before.’
Elias didn’t look round. ‘Yeah? I thought they didn’t allow anybody down here.’
‘Except for exploratory missions. I used to work in search and recovery, researching Angel sites for possible artefacts. The Citadel was always high on the list, before and after the Hiatus. It’s far away enough from Kaspian civilization for us not to be seen as interfering with their natural progress.’
‘It does seem pretty inaccessible. Maybe deliberately so?’
‘Seems like a fair bet.’
They were over the mountains now, the last of the peaks slipping away behind them. Only the Citadel now lay ahead. ‘So I guess if you’ve been here before, you know where to head for,’ said Elias.
‘I’m . . . not sure,’ she said. ‘I know where the main entrances are, but the whole thing is so vast. I—’ They both realized that the message light on the console was blinking. They looked at each other questioningly, then at the light again. As Elias reached out and touched it, a message appeared on a screen, followed by a set of coordinates.
It was apparently from Trencher.
Elias stared at the message, thunderstruck. Maybe it was from him. Maybe it wasn’t.
‘What are those coordinates?’ asked Kim, after a moment.
‘Give me a second and I’ll find out.’ He looked down. ‘Okay, straight ahead.’ Straight ahead? It could be a trap, he thought.
What the hell, he figured. If you’re going to go, you’re going to go.
‘So, you think it’s really him?’ she asked. Elias had already redirected the shuttle, aiming for the coordinates listed. The craft tilted until pointing at the eastern rim of the Citadel.
‘Haven’t a clue. Let’s go find out.’
He’s looking forward to this, she thought. He doesn’t care if he gets killed or not.
Curious, Kim touched the console to bring up magnified images of the precise section of the Citadel they were aiming for. A great maw of an entrance appeared above a tunnel, leading far underground. There was movement there.
‘Somebody’s home, all right,’ said Elias, intently watching the image. ‘Any exploration teams still meant to be down there?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Kim. ‘I would think they’d all have been called back.’
‘I’d think so too, Kim. Do we have any weapons on board?’
‘Weapons?’ She stared at him.
‘I want to stay here and keep an eye on things. It’s pretty obvious our being here is no secret now, or we wouldn’t have been able to get our hands on this shuttle in the first place. The crew who tracked me down were well armed, but clearly not very experienced. That suggests people unused to combat situations, which gives me some advantage. But they might have kept other weapons too on board this shuttle.’
‘I’ve never used a gun before,’ she confessed. Before I pointed one at you, she silently added.
‘You seemed pretty enthusiastic a couple of days ago, but it probably won’t come to that. But it’s good to know we can defend ourselves, if it does come to that.’ His tone was calm and reassuring, which worried Kim.
Elias had already described to her how he had appropriated the shuttle. This alone brought up many unanswered questions for her, concerning the nature of the human beings who had found their way here so long ago.
She glanced back, through to the cargo bay. ‘You want me to look?’
He gave her a reassuring smile. ‘That would be useful, thanks.’
There were arms back there. Mainly standard projectile weapons with clips attached, plus some atmospheric shock guns, like the sonic slammers Kim had seen the bad guys using in interacs. Plenty of ammunition too – not enough for an army but maybe enough for a massacre.
She went back fore to give Elias the news. The Citadel filled the sky in front of him.
‘Right,’ said Elias. ‘Keep an eye on things here while I go take a look myself.’ She nodded, resting her fingertips on the back of the pilot’s seat, while the shuttle propelled itself towards the coordinates Elias had entered.
Everything had turned around so fast. Not so long ago, she’d have looked on those weapons as a way to overcome Elias. She wasn’t quite sure when she’d decided to throw her lot in with him, perhaps when Sam had spoken to her while she had been under the thrall of the Book. Hearing a noise behind her, she turned to see Roke still sitting quietly in the corner.
A pang of sympathy filled her. Despite the blank eyes, she imagined he felt lost, out of place. She got out the smartsheet and went over to the Kaspian. Explaining certain things wasn’t going to be easy, but he deserved to be allowed some idea of what was about to happen.
Twenty
Sam Roy
Things were going to move fast now, thought Sam. So many decisive moments in history were decided almost in the blink of an eye, with most people none the wiser. Because that’s what it sometimes came down to in the end: blood, and death, and pain – and possibly that great void he’d never yet been able to see beyond. Perhaps death was the only fitting reward he could hope
for.
Sam and Ursu and Trencher had spent time going over what would happen when the moment came. The Facilitator was the key to everything: the only Facilitator which Ernst Vaughn had not prevented from reaching the Citadel, the place from which it originated.
The Citadel itself grew organically from the continental bedrock of Kasper. In external appearance it resembled a tree trunk severed close to the ground, with twisted roots reaching out to plunge into the ice and rock all around it. That geomorphic tangle gave them plenty of potential hiding places close to the spot where they had landed, near an abandoned base camp at the edge of the Citadel.
Unfortunately, Ernst Vaughn and whatever forces he’d been able to assemble would enjoy the same advantage. They were all now deep into that blank, empty void which none of them had been able to see beyond with all their precognitive powers. Sam could not even be sure Elias had received their message. Now he could only hope.
There were others there, barely a dozen, whom Matthew had trusted to side with them, and who had used the confusion of Trencher’s disappearance to slip away in another of the shuttles. All were young, all eager to rejoin the human race – to travel to a home-world they’d never known. Sam felt stronger and healthier than he could ever have believed. Though his body still bore the marks of years of abuse, if he only had his freedom for a few hours longer, it would have been worth it to feel so healthy again.
Sam knew that Ernst would be on his way here by now; there was only one place the last Facilitator could go. Stepping out of the shuttle, Sam watched all the young people embracing and chattering around him, clearly amazed that they had come this far and still survived. Some of them, he suspected, might well soon be dead.
He buttonholed Matthew. ‘You’re going to have to arm these people – are they ready for that?’
‘Of course.’ Matthew nodded. ‘I did everything you said. We’ve got weapons and supplies, although I’m not sure they—’