by Ian McDonald
“I heard a story that you killed your father because he slapped your mum at the Peachtree Ball.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Sen told me.”
“‘Deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood.’ Do you not sabi by now that half of what that polone tells you is lies? The trick is learning which half. No, Mr. Singh, many sins may drive a man from his hearth and his home. I was a vagrant soul for many years, sufficient that you know that I can't go home again. Captain Sixsmyth found me on the streets of old Stamboul, a soldier of fortune, a freelance agent, a man with money on his head, and she gave me that home, and hope. That ship up there, that's the closest I'll ever get to heaven. And I am loyal to it, if nothing else, and I will let nothing threaten it, and I will do anything to keep it safe and free and flying. I owe it. I have my own amriya, as these people say. Nothing personal, Mr. Singh.”
“Of course not, Mr. Sharkey.” And you would do it again, Everett thought. Without hesitation, or even a thought that you had done anything wrong. I'm safe now because we are all in danger together, but when the moment arrives when it is me or the ship, you will sell me. And it won't be personal. It'll be an act of old Deep South honor.
“Shh.” Sharkey raised his hand. They had come out from the valley onto an old, abandoned country road, so overgrown it was a tunnel beneath overarching tree branches. No hunting here: Sharkey turned off through a collapsed farm gate into a field. “Hare.”
“Where?” Everett whispered.
“There.”
Everett sighted along the line of Sharkey's pointing finger. A hare it was, upright and suspicious, at the very far edge of the field, where it ran up against the overgrown verge of the lost highway.
“You'll never hit it from here with a shotgun,” Everett said.
“‘His going forth is prepared as the morning.’” Sharkey tucked away his shotgun. From a pocket in his coat that Everett had never seen before, he drew an elegant, silver-handled revolver. From another secret place he took out a long metal tube that he screwed onto the barrel of the revolver. From the poacher pocket where he had stashed the pheasant, he took his cigar box. With a twist he converted it into what looked like a wooden rifle stock. One click and it locked to the handle. The revolver had become a bijou rifle.
“Eisenbach of München in Old High Deutschland. Finest damn gunsmith in the world—or any world, for that matter.” Sharkey took a firing position, aimed, slowly let out his breath. The shot rang out. The hare dropped cold, dead. Rifle bullets travel faster than sound, Everett thought. It was dead before it could even hear the killing shot. Everett fetched the hare. From alive to dead in a moment. He had seen that moment, that little jerk, that tiny spurt of life stuff as Sharkey's precision shot went clean through the hare's head. It would not even have known. Death was not knowing. It was nothing. No thing. The hare was still warm in his hands. Its fur was very soft. Everett felt blood wet his fingers. Sharkey's father had been right. It was a moral thing, to only eat what you are prepared to kill.
“Never cooked hare before,” Everett called. The absence of any machine sound was eerie. His voice sounded loud and wrong, as if every plant and cloud and living thing took offense at it. Sharkey beckoned Everett over. With two deft strokes from his knife he opened and gutted the hare.
“Hang him for a day or two and he'll be bona.” Sharkey walked on, scanning the hedge line, toward the chimneys of an abandoned farmhouse that rose from a tangle of overgrown garden shrubs. “Might be some layin’ fowl around here. Chicken is a national passion among us Dixie boys.”
The sound was low and soft and carried far and clear across this haunted England: the swoosh of blades cutting through air. Everett looked behind him. Up on the hill, the wind-turbine was turning. Everett thought he saw a figure, no more than a speck, riding up from the rotor hub toward the open power hatch in Everness's belly. He waved, though he knew Mchynlyth could not possibly see him. The airship hung over the ridge like a cloud.
“You coming, Mr. Singh?”
The house had been a country retreat. A dead Audi stood on the weed-choked gravel. Moss grew in the car's grooves and sills. Storm winds had tugged at the house's loose tiles, found weaknesses, and, over successive winters, stripped most of the roof. The attic had been converted into some kind of workspace. Peeling walls, peeling paper, and sagging plasterboard had collapsed down on top of desks and office chairs. The windows were all broken; rain-soaked, sun-bleached curtains wafted in the wind. Everett smelled rotting carpet and mold. Gardens and lawns were overgrown jungles. There was something blue and bloated and luminous and very, very dead in the leaf-clogged swimming pool.
Sharkey shook his head. “Don't look like much chicken around—”
The things came hard. They came fast. They burst around the corner of the house. Everett saw them, three dark, low bodies, at the same time that he heard Sharkey shout a warning. He acted without thinking. The shotgun clacked together, the safety slid off; he leveled and pulled the trigger. The recoil almost knocked him off his feet, but the blast blew the lead creature across the yard. The other two came on. Everett fumbled with the shotgun. At his side Sharkey pulled out the other shotgun. Two flat cracks sent clouds of birds up from the surrounding trees.
“All you all right, Mr. Singh?”
“Yeah.” He had fired, had killed, without thinking. “I'm okay.”
“Good shooting, sir.”
Everett went to examine the dead things. The sawed-off shotguns were brutal weapons at such short range. The bodies were terribly mutilated, but there was no mistaking the creatures. Dogs. They were lean and mean and hungry. One had the foxy look of a terrier, another the perky ears of a sheepdog. The third was larger and had the curly coat and long ears of a standard poodle, but they all looked halfway between their original breed and their wolf ancestry. The canine DNA pool wasn't so much a pool as a shallow puddle. Within a dozen more dog generations, they would all converge on the wolf within.
Blackness leaked from the eyes and ears and nostrils of the dead terrier and formed a pool under its head. The pool was moving, seething, as if it was alive with millions of insects. Moving, piling up, changing shape. This was not blood. Everett stepped back. Now the black was pouring from the eyes and ears and nostrils of the other dogs, forming streams that flowed across the bricks of the drive, flowing toward each other, flowing with purpose and intelligence. The streams merged with the pool of boiling black that surrounded the dead terrier.
“To me, Mr. Singh,” Sharkey said. Everett stepped away from the mass of seething black. “Can you reload a shotgun?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do so, expeditiously. You will need it.”
Everett broke the gun and slid in two fresh cartridges. Sharkey kept both his shotgun and his revolver-rifle trained on the black. The surface was bubbling now. Shapes appeared out of the black, then broke apart and dissolved into the liquid. Shapes like tiny hands, and fox heads, and bird wings, and open jaws, howling out of the darkness.
The black shuddered and formed into the shape of a dog's head, straining to break free from the liquid. It slumped back into shapelessness. Then the blackness shivered again and sprang into being: a dog, wolf, hellhound, black and huge, head held low and hungry.
“‘Upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH,’” Sharkey said. “Get ye to the slime pits, spawn of Siddim!”
He fired, Everett a split second behind. The hell-wolf flew apart in an explosion of black liquid. Blackness dripped from the branches of the overgrown trees and ran down the front of the house and the sleek curves of the abandoned Audi.
“‘And he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver,’” Sharkey declared, putting up his guns.
The drips of black ooze ran along the gaps in the brickwork of the drive. The trickles merged
, flowed together into streams, into a pool around the dead terrier. It bubbled up into a blister, patterns raced across the surface, then it spasmed and snapped back into the shape of the black hell-wolf.
“Back out of here, Mr. Singh,” Sharkey said. “Slowly. Keep me between you and that hell-spawned abomination. Do not take your eyes off it.”
The hell-wolf crouched. Hackles rose. It bared black teeth. Black liquid dropped from its fangs. It growled. The growl sounded like dead things being torn open.
“Slow and steady, Mr. Singh. I have it covered. I can't kill it, but I can inconvenience it. How many shells do you have?”
“Four.”
“The same, and what's left in the revolver.”
Not enough, Everett thought. The hell-wolf sank lower, its legs tightening to leap.
“On my word, run. Run like every devil in the nine hells are after your soul.”
“But Sharkey—
“You're the only one can get the ship off this God-forsaken world. Ready.”
And the hell-wolf leaped. It seemed to fill all the sky, hanging in midair. In that moment, Everett knew that Sharkey was dead and he was dead and, worse than dead, they'd be devoured, possessed; they were doomed to be meat puppets to the blackness inside, like the dogs. And then there was a high-pitched screech that dropped Everett to his knees, the sound so sharp that he was forced to clap his hands to his ears. He watched as the hell-wolf turned into a big flying splash of black that dropped in heavy rain to the ground.
The air curdled like heat haze and turned into figures in helmets and battle packs and copper-colored combat armor. Six soldiers moved to surround Everett and Sharkey, weapons raised and aimed. Sharkey carefully set down his shotgun and rifle and raised his hands. He nodded for Everett to do the same. Two soldiers checked out the splash of black on the bricks. One held some kind of scanning device. The other aimed a gun at the black stain, a gun like none Everett had ever seen before.
“No activity, ma’am,” said the figure with the scanner. “It's dead. Permanently.” The second figure swung the weird weapon over its shoulder into a retaining clip.
One of the soldiers stepped forward and touched its collar. The elaborate helmet unfolded like an insect's mouthparts. Very Halo, Everett thought. Inside the armor was a woman in her early thirties with a square face and blonde hair going black at the roots. It was the kind of face you saw at an elementary school or looking for a parking space at Tesco, not in combat armor, having just splattered some evil dark liquid soul zombie all over the forecourt of a ruined country house.
“I am Lieutenant Elena Kastinidis of Agistry Unit 27, Oxford Command,” the woman said. “You are under arrest.”
Everett sat on the ledge of the medieval stone window and looked out over the quadrangle. Evening sent long shadows out across the neat lawns and raked gravel paths, out from the great specimen trees in the Fellows' Garden. The last of the daylight caught the steeple of the chapel and the towers where the college fronted St. Giles. As the darkness deepened Everett could see the defense field flickering like an aurora against the twilight.
“Hey Dad,” Everett whispered. “Made it to Oxford.”
Elena Kastinidis had been brisk and brutal after taking Everett and Sharkey into custody.
“Strip,” she had ordered.
“What?” Everett had said.
“Strip,” the officer said again, in a voice that would not repeat the order a third time. There was no place Everett could hide himself from the soldiers, but he could turn his back on Lieutenant Elena Kastinidis. Already Sharkey had removed his hat and was shrugging off his coat.
“‘Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame,’” Sharkey quoted.
Jacket, shirt, and ship shorts slipped off. Everett unbuckled his Bona Togs boots and wiggled out of his leggings. He stood shivering in his underwear. There was no warmth in the winter sun, and the wind was keen.
“Everything,” the lieutenant said.
“This is child abuse, you know. There are laws about this.”
The soldiers laughed.
“Take them off, or I take them off you.” Lieutenant Kastinidis tapped a combat knife buckled to the utility belt of her armor. Everett hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his underpants and pushed them down. He stepped out of them, naked and exposed. This was hell. This was the hell of the Bourne Green changing room after a game. This was the hell of the noisy guys who didn't mind taking their clothes off around others, the ones who flicked towels and jumped on their friends when they were butt naked and wrestled them to the floor and grabbed each other's nipples and made animal hooting noises. This was the hell of the showers, of keeping your back to everyone in case the pummeling hot water had started anything you'd be embarrassed to show, of not knowing when you stepped out whether the others had hidden your clothes. It was the hell of shame and exposure and being completely naked and alone.
“Hands behind head.”
Everett locked his fingers behind his skull. The soldier with the scanning device worked up from Everett's toenails to his scalp, carefully, slowly, minutely, circling him. The second, the one with the hell-wolf-killing gun, held the weapon twenty centimeters from the bridge of Everett's nose. Everett tried to keep his eyes from making contact with the eyes inside the helmet. Then the scanner worked over his clothes and boots, slowly, carefully, painstakingly. Everett held himself perfectly still.
“Clean. Nahn free.”
The armed soldier swept the gun up and away and clicked it into a cradle on his back. Naan? Everett said to himself. Like, Punjabi bread?
“You can get dressed again,” the lieutenant said.
Everett almost dove into his clothes. He hopped as he pulled on leggings and tried to jam on boots that seemed to fight against his frozen feet. The shivers started as he was fastening the frogging on his cavalry-style jacket. Glancing over at Sharkey, he saw the American pull on his caped coat. Two other soldiers held his guns. Sharkey put on his hat, adjusted the set of its feather to precisely the right angle, and straightened his cuffs. Dignity restored. Cool under fire. Everett envied that. But he was still burning with shame, and he was angry. He flipped up the hood of his quilted great coat and took a step toward the officer.
“What was that about? What is this? Who the hell are you?”
Lieutenant Kastinidis took Everett's anger as lightly as February drizzle.
“That's not a question you ask me, boy. I ask you, and you answer. An Earth 3 Class 88 cargo airship up on Aston Hill.”
“You know—”
“We've had you on radar since you first popped up over Northeast London. We'd better go have a word with your captain. Call him, let him know what's happened.”
“Her,” Sharkey said. “Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth.”
Lieutenant Elena Kastinidis was unimpressed.
“Move out.” She waved her armored troopers forward. They carefully stepped around the shiny black stain on the brickwork of the drive. Everett noticed that Sharkey had left the hare and the pheasant on the roof of the abandoned Audi. They didn't seem good eating any more.
Captain Anastasia raged. She raged at Sharkey for being captured. She raged at Sharkey and Everett for bringing sharpies back to the ship. She raged that armed strangers were holding her crew, her daughter, and herself at gunpoint. Most of all she raged that she was being issued orders on her own bridge
“This heading.” Lieutenant Elena Kastinidis touched her heads-up display glasses and information flowed down her finger onto the palm of her hand. Cool, Everett thought.
“Make it so.” Captain Anastasia almost spat the words. Sen hesitated. “Make it so!” the captain snapped. Sen entered the heading and pushed the thrust levers forward. Everett felt Everness tremble under him.
Lieutenant Kastinidis bent close to Mchynlyth's homespun engineering rig that hooked the jumpgun and Dr. Quantum together.
“This I recognize.” She tapped t
he jumpgun. “This I do not.” She prodded Dr. Quantum.
“Don't touch that. It's mine,” Everett said. At once he regretted it. But she had recognized the jumpgun. She knew what it was and what it could do. My instinct was right, Everett thought. My instinct is always right.
“I'll touch what I like, son.”
It must be something about uniforms, Everett thought. Leah-Leanne-Leona and Moustache Mulligan had displayed the same sense of entitlement when they had sat in his mum's kitchen and demanded tea and toast after the disappearance of Everett's father. No, not uniforms, Everett thought. Sharpies. They're the same the universes over. He was starting to think in Airish, he realized.
“Go ahead,” Everett countered, “provided you're comfortable with the possibility that hitting the wrong button could send us anywhere in the Panoply.”
It was a lie; a jump gate couldn't be opened without the control panel, and Everett had password locked that, but it was enough to make Lieutenant Kastinidis step back from Everett's desk. She stared at him.
“Just who are you?”
“Everett Singh,” Everett said. “And I's a navigator.” He remembered the pride in Sen's voice when she had announced that she was Everness's pilot. It was a glow. It restored a little self-worth after the humiliation at the ruined house. Sen glanced over at Everett from her position at the flight controls. She gave a tiny smile, flashed her eyebrows. Bona omi.
Lieutenant Kastinidis went to the great window and stood before it, hands clasped behind her back. Everett saw Sharkey bristle with rage. That was the captain's position, reserved for the master and commander of Everness. The ship flew low, two hundred meters over the ruined land. Highways, factories, villages, and estates lay abandoned to nature—or whatever nature had become. Sunlight winked from dead windows. Everett's breath caught. Far ahead a faint curtain of light flickered like an aurora on the horizon. It looked like pale lightning arcing across the sky, forking and reforking into glowing streamers, hard to see against the westering sun, fusing and splitting into a web of light.