"I don't know. But there are men who love you. Truly love you. Loved me."
Red blinked in surprise. "Godolkin? You're kidding!"
"Don't know. Too long ago. I miss him. I wonder... what happened... to... my... child..."
The screens went blank. Red couldn't move.
"My what?" she asked dully, staring up at the darkness. "My what?"
Without Brite's will to hold it together, the Manticore started to come apart soon after Fury had picked Red up.
The giant machine had been starting to shut itself down as she had returned to that first, massive chamber, its signal-blocking ability failing as she walked. Godolkin's voice had appeared in her helmet like the buzzing of bees, but it had been some time before she could bring herself to speak to him.
When she did, it was to tell him where to aim the antimat cannon in order to blow the segmented door off its hinges.
She was glad to be out of the shroud, although it had saved her life more than once that day, and it felt good to be back in the cramped little workstations that formed Fury's bridge. Red couldn't help thinking about Brite, and how little joy she must have felt in all her thousands of years of life. No wonder she had gone insane.
Immortality, she decided there and then, was a curse. And not a route she would ever go down. "Short and happy," she muttered. "That's what I want."
"I'm sorry, holy one?" Harrow was standing behind her, watching the Manticore through her holos. "I'm not sure I heard you."
"Nothing, Jude." She paused. "Jude? Do you-"
"It's breaking up." He pointed. "Moon of blood, the whole structure's coming apart!"
He was correct, Red saw without much surprise. The machine was dissipating, its millions upon millions of components gently drifting away from each other. As they watched, it went from being a solid globe to a slowly expanding cloud.
Godolkin was in the pilot's throne. "Blasphemy, much of the structure is vaporising. Was it made of some short-lived compound?"
"No. I mean, I don't think so..." So much of the Manticore had been dragged through time, looped back in self-sustaining paradoxes just to build the very machine that had transported them back to its own inception. Perhaps, she thought dully, the loops were unravelling. Things were going back to their proper order.
"I don't know. All I know is, I hope the Bastion's watching this."
"Do you think they will disband?"
"Maybe." Red kept her eyes on the holoscreen, watching tumbling fragments of the Manticore fading out in front of her eyes. "We'll be in trouble if they don't."
"We found a way in," said Godolkin, folding his arms defiantly. "We shall find a way out."
Red didn't answer. She was thinking about the corpses in the dissection chamber, their hands linked for eternity. In their last, terrifying moments, they must have a found a small measure of comfort in that simple act of contact.
She wondered if they were lovers. Whether, in some time twisted parallel universe, they still were.
"There's no reason for us to be here," she sighed. "Come on, Godolkin, let's find somewhere to sit things out for a bit."
"What about Caliban?" Harrow asked. "Or Lydexia? Their ion-wakes can't be too faded. If we act now-"
"Nah," she shook her head. "Let them go. I'm tired of chasing things."
She sat back in the weapons throne, her eyes still fixed on Manticore's slow dissolution. Caliban, she thought to herself, had done what he set out to do. His great enemy was gone. Not only that, but he had Elu to share it with.
And Lydexia had Hirundo, together with a long shuttle-ride home. Even Brite had finally reached the peace she so desperately desired. The only player in the game to come out losing was Durham Red.
But had she? Brite had given her a prize, of sorts. A glimpse of a possible future.
That was something to hold onto when the nights got cold.
She grinned and hit the release control. The throne slid back, making Harrow step aside as it left the workstation. "Godolkin?"
"Yes, Blasphemy?"
"She's all yours. Find us somewhere quiet, but not too quiet. There's got to be somebody on one of these worlds." She stood up. "Get us somewhere that's got a bath."
The Iconoclast snorted. "After all your adventures, is that all you can look forward to?"
"Oh, no. Not by a long shot." She grinned and stretched, raising her fists to the ceiling and letting her spine click deliciously as it straightened. "There's loads I'm looking forward to, and more every minute."
"Like what?" asked Harrow, his eyebrows up in his hairline.
"Oh, the usual. I mean, I don't know if you two are hungry, but I'm just dying for a bite!"
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter J Evans has over four hundred pieces of published work to his name, ranging from the back covers of videos to big articles about Serious Stuff. He has produced regular columns for gaming magazines, short fiction, long fiction, reviews, interviews and a sticker book. His first novel, Mnemosyne's Kiss, was published in 1999 by Virgin Publishing, under their worryingly short-lived Virgin Worlds imprint. Evans previously contributed towards Black Flame with Judge Dredd: Black Atlantic (co-written with Simon Jowett), Durham Red: The Unquiet Grave, Durham Red: The Omega Solution and Durham Red: The The Encoded Heart.
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