– Here?
– This very spot. Years ago, when I was tiny. I remember the trees. The way they arch over the track. I came here with my mother, just before they – We were so close and yet we never guessed it could be there.
– What . . . the tunnel? How could you? It’s so well camouflaged you can’t see it even when you know it’s there.
– It wasn’t far from here that they, that she – If we’d known about it, maybe we could have—
– What? Escaped? He takes her hand in both of his and turns her to face him. Listen, Leana. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. Ever. You’re safe now. Nothing can hurt you but the memories, and they’ll fade in time. We’ll make sure they do.
Drawing her to him, he kisses her and she responds, then stops.
– I don’t know what I’d do, if—
There is an almost-panic in her sudden thought. He sees the image of her fear, and touches her hair gently.
– You won’t ever have to worry about that. I’m indestructible. I’m never going to leave you alone again.
– Promise?
– On my life.
Later, as they walk back along the tunnel, she slips her arm through his and leans into him.
– My life began – She is unsure how to go on. My life began again when you found me in the ruins. I was ready to die, to give up. If they hadn’t been slaughtered, I would have killed myself rather than See for them again. The horror, the constant killing, the responsibility.
When I saw that Fe’l coming towards me, I knew that I wasn’t going to escape, and I felt almost calm. There are worse things than death, much worse. But now—
– Now, there is something worth living for. A whole lot of somethings. He stops and looks down at her. And you owe it to yourself to experience them. Balance the bad with the good and forget the loneliness.
– I want to go next time.
He knows what she means, but he asks the question anyway.
– Go where?
– To the Northern Archive. Or anywhere else they send the copies. I just feel the need to see something. I don’t know what. Just what there is beyond here.
– It’s a difficult journey, Leana—
– Difficult? I lived with the Tribe, Mykal! How much more difficult do you think it could get?
The brief flare of emotion subsides and she smiles, a little embarrassed.
– I’m sorry, she continues.
– I know. And you’re not the only one who feels it. Most of the people in the Archive would give anything to go on one of the expeditions, but it isn’t up to us. The Council decides, and everything the Council decides is on a needs basis. What’s best for the Sect. What’s safest for every individual member. It’s how we’ve survived for so long in a hostile world.
– But I’ve lived out there. I’ve experienced things that most of the people in the Sect haven’t even imagined and I could be useful.
Mykal smiles.
– We’ll see. Who knows? They may already have you in mind. Be patient, though. It’s only been a year. I was here eight years, before they let me go on a Journey.
– That’s because you were only eight when you arrived. I’m nineteen, Mykal – at least, I think I am. And I’m ready.
For once, the smile disappears from his face. He watches her with a premonition of loss, and something moves in him. A need to protect her.
– Yeah, well it’s not up to us, is it? When it’s your time, they’ll ask you. Until then, we’d better be getting back. They’ll be sending the search-party out after us.
For the rest of the journey, although her hand remains in his, they share no thoughts.
The tunnel seems endless in the cold glow of the lamps.
19
For Good
The Forest of D’nong
Northern Perimeter
Bourne Region
November 29, 3383ad
SHARONNE
It is cold for the season, with the morning wind gusting from the south, carrying the memory of its long journey up from the icy wastes of the Southern Ocean. She shelters behind the ruined wall and waits for Bran.
So different from the last time she saw it.
The memory of that day has lain like an ache at the edge of her awareness for the past year, and looking out over the field to the small copse of trees, where –
She turns away, shaking her head and squeezing her eyelids shut – as if the action can cast off the lingering horror. The screams of the dying still echo in her memory and she can almost see the faces of the savages, as they surged towards her across the grass.
Drawing a deep breath, she turns back towards the trees, watching for him.
Ramon, the birdman, promised to carry the message to him last night and in the dark of early morning, before anyone but the servants had risen, carrying nothing but the Outsider clothes she now wears – with the small handwoven red scarf tied loosely around her neck – she made her way silently to the secret basement passage, and outside to freedom. To a new life.
Since her mother’s death, a day and a half ago, she has been ready.
‘There is nothing else holding me there,’ she told him once, when he had asked what she would miss about her life of privilege. ‘Nothing at all. There is nothing about that life I would want to hold onto.’
Well, almost nothing. She looks down at the ring on the middle finger of her left hand. It is too big for her and its huge ruby has slid around to the side. It is not the most precious of her mother’s jewels, but it is the one that speaks to her of a lost happiness and a time when her mother smiled. When a little girl felt safe and loved in her arms and the red stone caught the sunlight and shone like a magic talisman. So, she wears it. At least for now.
He does not so much arrive, as appear, emerging ghostlike from the edge of the forest, as if he is a part of it, or it of him.
She halts her breathing, watches him close the distance between them with long, easy strides. He is smiling as he reaches her and takes her hand, but there is a deeper emotion beneath the smile: a searching look that emanates from somewhere behind his eyes.
He is trying to read her without entering her thoughts. ‘Are you okay?’
The question hangs between them for a moment, before she shrugs. ‘I think I am. She is at peace, finally. And he is performing his grieving husband imitation. I wonder if he feels anything. I wonder if there is anything left in him to feel.’
‘What’ll he do when he discovers you’re gone?’
‘What can he do? He has no idea where I might be, and even if he did, I doubt that he would bother to make much of an effort to track me down. Even when Adam left, he was too proud to try to find him. And Adam was his son.’
There is a trace of not jealousy, but bitterness in her words.
‘Anyway—’ Bran looks across the meadow, in the direction of the distant Fortress, its towers hidden behind the copse of trees. ‘No point in taking chances. Let’s get going.’
Walking a step or two behind him, she watches his back as he reads the trees, the tracks of animals best left undisturbed, the signs that mark the barely discernible pathways that lead to the interior of the Wood – and to home.
It is strange.
In the past year, she has been to the Village at the centre of the WildWood no more than six or seven times and yet it already feels like home, in a way that the Fortress has failed to do for too many years.
And now she is coming home. For good.
‘Will they really want me there?’ She speaks the thought aloud to his back and he stops and turns to face her. ‘At the Village, I mean. It is one thing to put up with an outsider for a few hours, once every couple of months, but to have me living there. Among them—’
Bran smiles and crouches with his back against one of
the ancient trunks. ‘Come here.’
She comes, and sits on one of the protruding roots. ‘It is a reasonable question, Bran. How many people in the Village are not Esper? Five? Six? And even they have lived there for most or all of their lives. How are they going to cope, having to use wordspeech whenever I am in the vicinity? It would be like asking people in the Fortress to use sign language all the time.’
‘And d’you really think it’ll make a difference?’ He is holding a short twig in his hands, snapping off pieces, a centimetre at a time, as he talks. ‘They already love you. How could they not? Look, there’ll be adjustments to make, but as long as you just try to be yourself and don’t try too hard to learn everything at once, you’ll be fine.
‘You won’t be able to read their thoughts, but if you give them a sign, they can read yours and that’ll save a lot of time and miscommunication. They’d never do it without your permission, but if you want them to, all you have to do is say so.’
He discards the final piece of the twig, slides up to a standing position and holds out a hand. She takes it and he helps her to her feet.
‘I know,’ she begins. ‘I just—’
‘You’re scared, that’s all. It’s all new and, except for yours truly, you basically haven’t had to deal with “new” for your entire life. So, just relax and let me smooth the way. We’re like one huge family without the feuds and you’re with me now, so you’re a part of it. We look after our own.
‘Now come on. I want to make the Village before lunch.’ He moves a few steps towards the path, then stops and turns back to face her. ‘I love you, you know.’
And the tension drains suddenly away.
I know. She addresses the thought to his back, as she follows him into her new life.
20
Earthfall
Expeditionary Ether-Shuttle Cortez
in geo-stationary orbit above former site of Melbourne, Old Earth
November 29, 3383ad
ERIN’S STORY
The final two hours of waiting were the slowest of my life.
I stood on the main flight deck, staring out of the forward view-port, watching the shallow curve of the globe and the huge landmass of the island continent stretched out beneath us.
Our landing site was still in darkness – which was, of course, the reason for the delay.
We had considered landing in the dark. Less chance of being seen. But in the end, caution had prevailed.
I watched the line of dawn creeping slowly westwards across the ocean – the one the ancients had called Pacific.
Pacific. Peaceful.
That was what Hanni said it meant, the peaceful ocean, as if a creature so vast and powerful could ever warrant such a name.
To the north, not far off the continent’s east coast, a huge storm was circling, surging towards the shore. The weather program in the ship’s data frame estimated a ‘category four’ tropical cyclone.
Spawned by the summer heat in the air over the wide ocean, it began with a pocket of low pressure sucking in a spiral of colder air and condensing moisture, a spiral that took on a life of its own, swelling to a size that dwarfed whole islands. With static from the friction in its massive clouds generating impressive bolts of lightning and with the spiral accelerating, with gusts between 180 and 200 clicks, it was an awesome sight – even from that distance.
Hanni predicted it would make landfall sometime within the next thirty-six hours and no one was about to argue over the timing – mainly because almost half of us would no longer be there to see it.
Like the others, I was far more interested in the weather about 3,000 clicks further south, in the area around Old Melbourne, where conditions were less than ideal. Thick grey clouds with a threat of thunderstorms, but with temperatures of around 35 degrees, which was to be expected during a southern summer at those latitudes – or so the info-cube assured us, when we asked.
Then it was time.
We strapped into the lander that would shuttle us to the planet’s surface and I looked at the faces of the nine others who would be making the initial trip. They were my friends and I would have trusted any one of them with my life, but for the next couple of weeks, I was in charge of their safety.
My orders.
My responsibility.
We were entering the unknown and, with so many variables, there might be ten different opinions on any course of action. There would be discussion, of course, but in the end there could be only one decision-maker. And I had drawn that short straw a couple of years earlier.
Jordan understood – perhaps better than me. On the night before the Jump, he had held me close, squeezing harder than I could ever remember, then he had stepped back, holding my shoulders and, standing at arms-distance, looking into my eyes until I blinked.
– When we get there, he began finally, it’ll be different. Time to take charge.
I waited for more, but he just stood there, his eyes unfaltering, as if he was reading me. There was really no need to say anything else. We both knew what he’d meant.
I shut the door on the memory. Now it was time to focus.
On the bridge of the Cortez, Terese activated the lander-release and I nodded to Alvy, who was in the pilot seat. He nodded back and powered up.
Of all of us, he was the best pilot in Real Time situations. His reflexes had been honed from the age of eight or nine in the pared-down flyers they raced on the suicidally tight circuits around Madison and Eureka, where his people came from.
Not that we would need a pilot on this descent. The auto-pilot had been programmed with the co-ords of ground zero, and the rest was as easy as strapping in and watching the readouts. As long as things went to plan, he would be a passenger, like the rest of us.
In the end, it was those reflexes and an adolescence misspent playing adrenalin-junkie that saved us.
JORDAN’S STORY
It was a textbook approach.
With the increasing density of the atmosphere acting as a natural brake against the planet’s gravity, and the auto-pilot controlling the vectors with bursts of the retros, except for some minor turbulence, it was like we were riding a rail down to ground zero.
I was even beginning to relax a little.
Then, a few clicks from the ground, something went radically wrong. We felt a series of tearing thuds against the outer hull, the alarms began howling and the depressurisation warning began to shriek.
I could hear the hiss of the emergency sealants, as they foamed then set in milliseconds, as impervious as Plasteel, caulking the gaps that would otherwise tear us apart and spread our fragments across an alien sky.
In the pilot’s seat, Alvy was flicking through screens of diagnostics, his fingers finessing the touch-screens, his eyes darting over the data. He began a monotone breakdown of our situation.
– One of the perimeter heat shields has failed. We’ve been breached, probably by the debris, we’ve lost the port and starboard lateral thrusters and we’ve got no visuals of the surface. All the peripherals on the starboard side have gone west and the port ones aren’t much better. We’re three-parts blind, and we’ve only got vertical thrust. I’m activating manual override.
His calm was surreal. I was sitting next to him in the co-pilot’s couch and I stole a glance away from the instrument panel. He wasn’t smiling exactly, but he didn’t seem to be sharing in the adrenalin-fuelled anxiety that was surging like acid through my internal organs.
He reached automatically for the oxygen mask, which had appeared in front of him from its compartment in the pilot’s console, inhaled deeply and went to work.
– I’m going to need your eyes, Jord. As long as the primary heat shield holds, we can make it, but things are going to get bumpy in about three and a half seconds, so I’m going to need all my concentration to hold this baby steady. I want you to fee
d me altitude readings every hundred metres or so. We’re going in blind and I won’t have time to do the calcs.
I was breathing in the cold oxygen, trying to match his impressive calm.
– You’ve got it, I managed. Sixty-nine hundred metres, and closing fast.
– Okay, he said more to himself than to me. Here goes.
From that moment, I fed him the descent information and watched him wrestling for all our lives, pitting reflexes and human will against natural forces that had already defeated the best of Deucalian technology.
– Sixty-eight. Sixty-seven.
– Come on, baby, work with me, that’s it. Just a few more – Damn it!
At about six clicks above the ground, the lander lurched to starboard. Alvy struggled with the controls and gradually checked the sideways motion.
– Sorry, guys. Slight oversteer. Won’t happen again. Jord?
I realised I’d stopped my soundings.
– Oh! Six thousand – make that fifty-nine hundred, fifty-eight—
– Descent speed?
Too damned fast.
– Six-ninety.
– I’m going to give us a ten-second burst on the vertical thrusters. I have to slow the descent. The inner hull’s intact for now, but at this velocity and at low altitude, if we switch to flight-mode at more than three-fifty clicks, I wouldn’t like to bet on it holding together. Besides, the air resistance at that speed would probably rip the wings right off, as soon as they deployed. Ten seconds. On my mark, count me down – Mark!
He punched the thruster control and the ship lurched, as the rockets beneath us surged to life. The gee-forces were punishing, but there was no point in focusing on the pain.
I began counting.
– Ten, nine, eight— Suddenly, it was like I was drifting outside myself, listening to the countdown coming to me in the mind-tone of a stranger. Seven, six, five—
The rest of the crew was silent. We were passengers on a ride that could end in oblivion, yet no one panicked. Even Hanni looked remarkably calm.
– Four, three, two, one—
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