Such a change could not have happened overnight and yet it shocks her. How could she have failed to see it?
How could it be that her mother, so glamorous, so perfect – a woman who would not contemplate leaving her chambers until the morning ritual of face and hair and clothing had been accomplished to her satisfaction – could have become so transformed?
So ordinary. Vulnerable. While her only daughter barely even noticed.
Have we drifted so far, Mother?
The thought is unvoiced, though it matters little. Her mother is beyond hearing anyway. She reaches out to brush a strand of lifeless hair away from the face of the stranger on the bed. There is no reaction. She expects none, of course, but the fact of it still hurts.
I didn’t even get to say goodbye. You couldn’t even give me that.
And for the hundredth time that day she finds herself wishing that Bran were here. Impossible, of course, but the need for him grows with each day.
I can’t face this alone.
But why should this be any different? In the years since Adam made his escape, everything that has taken place, inside the golden prison of her life, she has faced alone. The woman on the bed is a stranger with a face something like her mother’s, and she tries to remember when it happened, when the loving ended and conversation failed. When the routine of familial indifference became all there was.
But, in the end, how could it be otherwise? Trapped in a cage of privilege and wealth – a life impossibly removed from the world she has touched for only a few brief, precious hours, beyond the walls – how could emotions as pure as love and caring possibly survive?
The woman on the bed moans – a small, pitiful noise, like the mewling of a kitten, incongruous in the wretched opulence of the room.
It means nothing, of course.
At least, that is what the healers say. They say that she feels nothing, because she is beyond the pain, but listening to the desolate sadness of that sound, Sharonne wonders. What were her final thoughts, as she drifted beyond thinking? Regret? Anger? Or had she outlived both emotions during the years of empty bedrooms and barren conversations?
When her father was told that his wife had slipped into a coma, he returned to the home chambers for a day, as a mark of – respect was too strong a word. Respect had died, along with whatever emotion he had once mistaken for love, somewhere between the birthing room and the pressures of ruling a domain in a constant state of threat.
Duty was closer to the mark. Noblesse oblige. The correct behaviour expected from a husband of standing – even one whose contempt for the mother of his children was an open secret, whispered about among the inner circle and commented on, no doubt, even in the quarters of the servants, who peopled, silently and invisibly, almost every room and chamber in the Fortress de Vries.
Perhaps they gained some ironic pleasure from the fact that the lives of their superiors were so devoid of the warmth and belonging that gave them the sustaining power over their own private lives, and that they so lacked in their everyday existence.
One day.
A major concession on his part, especially with the Fe’ls growing bolder at the approach of the warmer months and with the leaderless Hawks tearing themselves apart in the West.
And in the East, the Tribe descending into disarray, imploding within the power vacuum caused by the unexpected death of Tomas Bloodhand a year ago, and the vicious struggle for succession that had followed.
It was a rare occurrence for two powerful leaders to fall in such quick succession and the balance of power among the Out-Dwellers had been thrown into chaos. Which would have mattered little, if they had been content simply to kill each other, but the bloodlust, once ignited, looks for satisfaction beyond the traditional boundaries and foes, and grows, even as it feeds.
Bran said that even the peaceful Espers had had to take measures. Though he hadn’t gone into detail, reading between the lines, she could imagine what they might be. A strengthening of the defences around the WildWood. More and more sophisticated traps and – discouragements.
She smiles, thinking of Bran’s choice of words and the ironic smile that crossed his face, disappearing as quickly as it had come. There is a combative streak in him that she has read in few of the Espers, except perhaps Alek and Reggie, his two closest friends. Alek, short, dark-haired and a little hyperactive, carries himself with a fragile belligerence, which Bran calls his little man complex – especially around Reggie, who he’s clearly trying to impress, though she never seems to notice. To Reggie, he is just Alek, perhaps because, although she is painfully shy around most people, with Bran and Alek she can be herself, just one of the boys, with no pressure.
Why complicate things by taking them in another direction?
Alek and Reggie. Were they his friends because they shared his more adventurous streak, or had they developed the streak through being his friends? She can never be sure.
Looking around the room, with its walls full of paintings and finely embroidered tapestries, its beautifully carved furniture and the thick, handwoven rugs, warming the unyielding magnificence of the polished marble floors, she realises that she can no longer breathe.
Even the air is empty of life.
For a few more seconds, she stands, looking down at the shell of a woman who was once her mother, then she turns and runs from the room.
Back in her chambers, she sits beside the mirror perfection of the pool, with her back to the dream of mountains that transforms the wall, curving into the infinite freedom of her own internal sky. In her hands, she holds a simple red shawl of local wool, crudely woven, when compared to the exquisite cloths available exclusively to the wealth of the Families. And yet –
She runs the living texture of the material across the tips of her fingers, remembering.
‘I watched the old woman create it,’ Bran confided, as she held it, for the first time against her cheek, feeling the vitality stored in it. A gift beyond mere valuation. ‘She spins wool from her own sheep and dyes it in the Old Way. I told her it was for someone special.’
She had kissed him then, looping the shawl around his neck and drawing him towards her. Now, she looks at herself in the mirror of the pool.
She is dying, Bran. It will not be long now. When it is over there will be nothing holding me here. Nothing.
17
Less than Five Per Cent
Expeditionary Ether-Shuttle Cortez
in geo-stationary orbit above former site of Melbourne, Old Earth
November 26, 3383ad
ERIN’S STORY
Up close, the mother-planet is even more spectacular than it is from half a million clicks out. The colours are amazing and incredibly beautiful when you compare them with the overwhelming expanses of brown and grey that dominate the landmass of Deucalion.
We were in a geo-stationary orbit, so the planet didn’t seem to move beneath us. It hung there huge and motionless, curving away into the dark of deep space, its thin envelope of atmosphere diffusing the sunlight and distorting the view of distant stars.
I hadn’t dared to imagine such beauty, until I remembered that whatever had caused the total breakdown of technology and decimated the population on the surface below, almost a thousand years ago, had provided a breathing space from the pollution and super-urban sprawl that had marked the previous centuries.
A chance for nature to regenerate and win back some of what had been taken, except, of course, where the poison of radiation had scarred the land beyond renewal.
Greens and blues dominated and the browns and sandy yellows of the deserts provided a gentle contrast. There were far more areas of deep green than there had been on the old cube-files I’d accessed in the Deucalion archives, and the bands of clouds, the whites and the greys, tracked gently along their oceanwide, continent-spanning frontlines, swirling in places into powerful stor
m patterns. But the atmosphere was clean – free of the sulphurous yellows and grey-black continents of smog that had blanketed the major population centres in the days before the Separation.
From our position one planetary diameter out (about 12,000 clicks), we could see, with the naked eye, the Australasian and East-Asiatic land masses, as well as part of the southern polar cap and the Pacific islands and archipelagos. They looked so peaceful and untouched, until you accessed the feed from the drones that were quartering the globe in a grid pattern a whole lot closer in.
By shifting scans from one former mass population site to another, you could grasp the dimension of the catastrophe. The ruins, the scarred earth; huge buildings tumbled like children’s blocks, great trees and stands of lesser vegetation flourishing in soil once covered by roads and concrete structures. And the places where nothing grew – barren and lifeless still, after all these centuries.
Jordan was looking for signs of human life and finding them. Some were organised into fortified settlements with large fields under cultivation and permanent structures, some ancient and well preserved, some more primitive in construction, but clearly inhabited. Others were more temporary, as if their builders lived moment by moment, moving where necessity dictated.
But the search brought mixed feelings. It was a huge relief that there was human life on the surface below, but I could sense the questions circling in Jordan’s mind, even before he framed them.
– What was the population of the planet before the Separation? It was more an opening gambit than a request for information. He knew the answer as well as any of us.
– About ten billion, give or take. You know that.
– And do you know what the data frame estimates that it is now – from the drones’ grid-scan?
– Why don’t you tell me? Sometimes when he got into one of his intense moods, I found it easier to cut to the chase.
He got the message.
– Sorry. It’s just that – Look, it’s only a preliminary scan, guesstimates based on the number of visible population centres and a distribution algorithm, with a high variability factor built in, but—
– But?
– But the figure comes out at somewhere between four hundred and four hundred and fifty million.
I took a breath and held it, doing the maths in my head. – It’s less than five per cent of the pre-Separation population, Jord. And that’s forty-five generations after the event. What the hell happened down there? I mean—
He faltered. The immensity of the human loss was beyond contemplating. Such huge numbers blurred and meant nothing. Five times the entire population of Deucalion, wiped from the face of a planet that hadn’t seen it coming.
– When do we go? he asked.
– A couple more days. I’ve just had a meeting with Alvy and Terese. They’ve selected three alternative landing sites and now they’ve begun a two-cycle observation of the surrounding areas – 20 clicks in all directions around each. We don’t want any surprises when we make planet-fall.
– Two days.
I could taste his impatience and it mirrored my own.
– Not too long to wait, considering how long it’s taken us to get here.
JORDAN
Two days.
His impatience is irrational and he knows it, but it makes little difference. Staring at the curve of the planet from the observation window, he imagines the taste of the air, the feeling of wind on his skin.
Two days.
Might as well make the most of it.
Spreading the zoom on the desk-screen in front of him, he refocuses on one of the potential landing sites – a small clearing in a dense wooded area about 15 clicks from the ruined outskirts of the old city. Wide enough to land the hopper, but remote enough to avoid immediate discovery.
On maximum zoom, the trees stand like a phalanx of ancient soldiers – an image he remembers from an otherwise forgettable history lesson sometime in his childhood. Shoulder to shoulder, they stood; rank on rank, forming an impenetrable wall, upon which the tide of the opposing army would break and fail.
Adjusting the zoom outwards, he watches the northeastern quadrant of the city, as it slips slowly into night. He sees the tiny fires spring up within the ruins and in small villages and dwellings beyond the tumbled rubble of the old city.
Less than five per cent. The figure haunts him. It is beyond imagining. Tragedy on a planetary scale, worse than any war in history, or any pandemic.
And another piece of the puzzle slips silently into place.
– Disease? Erin sits on the bed opposite him, watching his eyes.
– Why not? In Earth’s Middle Ages, the bubonic plague wiped out a third of Europe in a few years – and the world wasn’t anywhere near as overcrowded back then. Think about it, Erin. If there was no energy and the food supply was totally disrupted, it wouldn’t take long for the riots to start – and the fighting. And then the body count would start rising. You know what happened during the Crystal Death back home – and we still had power, comms and the ether-net.
She begins to understand his logic.
– And with all the bodies—
– Comes disease. Exactly. Not a problem in a functioning society, only now the system’s down and nothing’s functioning, and all the pharmaceutical factories are automated, so without power or the networks there’s no way to produce the antibiotics. The stockpiles wouldn’t last long, and the population’s so far from nature, and so dependent on preventive medicine, that they’ve lost their natural resistance to even some of the most basic bugs.
But this is far from basic. You’ve got decomposing bodies everywhere and no means to get rid of them. The water mains are inoperative, so the only water is in the streams and rivers, which were already polluted. Then there’s the vermin, the biting insects and—
– I get it, Jord. I get it. Her words bring him up short.
He sits leaning forward in his chair and stares down at his hands. He runs the ball of his thumb over the opposite knuckles repeatedly, and she tries to break through the black veil that has dropped over his thoughts, but this time his Shield is too strong, so she waits, powerless to help.
Then, finally, it is over. He raises his eyes and attempts a smile.
– Ancient history, he says. Still, you have to wonder.
– What?
– What living through that hell did to the survivors. What kind of a world rose from the ashes.
She has found no answer. How could she? How could any of them?
But whatever the answer, they are about to find it.
In two days.
18
For the Time
Northern Extremities
Old Bourne
November 26, 3383ad
MYKAL
Mykal and Leana stand together, watching as the blindfolded Northerners are led away. The five men are disguised as itinerant trappers, the precious documents carefully secreted among the kangaroo and dog skins in the panniers behind each horse’s saddle.
The 1.5-kilometre tunnel between the Archive and the outskirts of the city is large enough to accommodate the horses – a fortunate indulgence on the part of its builders. With all but one of the other entrances to the ancient shelter emerging within the ruins of the Old City, the risk of approaching the Archive would otherwise have been too extreme.
Mykal waits silently, until the group disappears between the trees that arch above the narrow track, for as far as he can see.
Out here, the peace is tangible, as if the Earth herself were at rest. He can feel her cool breath in the gentle movement of the breeze, and the early morning quiet.
Sometimes, standing here, on the rare occasions when he can escape the confines of his life in the Sect, he imagines never going back; following the track as far as it might take him – back to the
world of his birth; back to his own people.
But he knows it will never happen.
He is committed to the Sect and its dream of securing the Knowledge of the ages.
‘For the time when the world has grown ready to learn again.’
The words of First-Mother Denise, carved on the lintel of the Central Archive, nine centuries ago, as a reminder or a prayer.
It is the credo they live by, the reason for the risks they bear and the arduous work they undertake, copying the texts, even when their meaning is obscure; puzzling over the strange phrases, the ancient pictures of magical contraptions, the blueprints (which are never blue), the descriptions and instructions for machines and devices and processes which haven’t seen the light of day for centuries.
And may not for centuries to come.
The thought is intolerable.
Beside him, Leana looks intently up into the branches of a nearby tree.
– What is it? The question escapes almost before he frames it, but she ignores the interruption as if he is not there.
Almost a year, and still she retains the habits she developed as a slave of the Tribe. The ability to shut out the everyday world and focus on the fragile sanctuary of her own inner space. It is so much a part of who she has become that sometimes, even now, she forgets that she is free. The others don’t notice – most of the time, at least. On occasion, they may look sideways at her, sensing a distance, but not often. Mostly, they remain unaware of the deeper currents of her interior life.
It is as if she can split herself. Smile, go through the motions of social behaviour with the surface of her mind, while deep down, where they cannot go, another Leana lives a secret life, from which the world is forever excluded. The world – but not him, for he has shared that life in a way that they could never share it. He has remembered the worst of her memories with her.
He doesn’t repeat the question. If she wants to answer, she will. If not, the repetition would be pointless. Finally, the mind-silence is broken.
– I’ve been here before. The thought emerges like a whisper.
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