At the Edge of the Game (19 page)

A warm morning
of after-rain stickiness, t-shirt weather in February. But it turned darker in
the afternoon, much colder. Now it’s snowing, already inches deep.

We’ll have to
see out the night here in the freezing car and hope for the best. Helen
supported Heathshade’s plan to just keep driving blind, but I would have none
of it, a fit of assertiveness that ought to have pleased Helen but did not.
What I get from her is that look of non-specific disappointment that has become
her wont of late.

She seems to
think this morning was my fault. Standing knee-deep in the hardening mud of the
spent landslip, Teresa and the boy watched as the John Paul weakened on the
islanded roof. Open-throated bellows came when he tried to move his hanging leg.
The sound brought to my mind the image of a dying ancient elk set upon by some
ravenous reptilian hunter. I stood near them but said nothing for dear they
might think to ask something of me. I don’t think they knew I was there until Heathshade
came over and said: ‘We’re going.’

‘You’re going
nowhere,’ Teresa said.

Helen was
already sitting in the car. It was exactly as though if I didn’t get in, it
would be the last I ever saw of her. I didn’t move at once. I felt the need in
some way to defy that that telling strike, to deny its potency.

But I couldn’t
hold out for long. How could I? I followed Heathshade across the muddy ground.

Feels like it
happened weeks ago and not this morning. Now the engine is off. Snow crystals
gather on the windscreen wipers, specks against black. We have become refugees
in land falling to pieces, seeking to overtake the tightening boundary of
civilisation before it’s too late. Maybe it’s already too late. It feels like
it is, sitting here in this desolation. Not magnificent desolation either, only
the banal Irish brand that was so easy to disregard in times past. Suppose
we’re lucky to have the car to shelter in, this wind-shaken tiny car. I found
some of the owner’s things in the glove compartment this afternoon. A few
photos from a sun holiday. Heathshade spotted exposed female skin and snapped
one off me. ‘Let’s have a look.’ He held it in one hand while the other turned
the wheel to round a corner. I opened the window and threw the other pictures
out.

The greatest
desolation of all is in my head. In the manner of an Antarctic explorer, I
ought to step outside declaring I may be some time. Then never come back. Walk
to Rosslare, leave these two sour, unpleasant people, one of whom I love.
Regain some self-respect in the process.

It’s so cold on
these heights. Fluttering lacework of ice washed now by rain again, glowing
globules falling from unseen reaches above. I stretch out my gloved hand to
catch one. It passes through as though unimpeded, leaving behind a momentary
hiss of vapour. Enemy gore is what they say this is. I don’t know that I
believe them yet.

We require
pressure suits to survive. They protect both from the thinness of the air and
from the attendant cold. I’m at last, after weeks fearing this moment, at the
Front. Shapes await us somewhere above, and our assault begins very soon. There
are more than a thousand of us here - we sit and wait close to the edge of the
Central Chasm, waiting for the chaos and death to commence.

The Chasm, the
circular shaft at the core of the Cylinder, is more than three stadia across. It
stretches the entire length of the Cylinder, from the hot depths of the earth
far up into the unknown expanses of cislunar space. It is lit by the shifting
colours of the writhing Cosmos as all things, the planets, stars and galaxies,
swoop towards final heat death. It is also the theatre of the war we wage
against the enemies of the world. This shower of incandescent matter tells of
the battle raging not far over our heads, the battle we are soon to join.

I think of
Helen and our unborn child. I know I shouldn’t - if I am to survive what’s to
come, my mind must be filled only with battle thoughts. By now I should have
been back home with her. My term of conscription was to have ended two months
ago, but I have not seen her since I was stationed on the edge of the African
Wall. I know only from the brief notes that reach us sporadically that she is
well. The last note I received was nearly two weeks ago.

They tell us
this is a time of emergency for the world. The Reserve has been mobilised. Forces
have been shipped from all over the globe. The force of which I am now part
comprises soldiers of at least ten nationalities - men from beyond the Western
Ocean, from the ends of Africa, from the islands of the tropical seas, even
Neanderthal mercenaries from the ice wastes of Europe. All are the same inside
these glittering silver pressure suits.

Our sergeant
gives the order to check force-weapons. We get to our feet and do so. These are
the only weapons we have that are effective against the Shapes, but we are not
even sure whether they actually harm them. All that is certain is that they can
repel them. The Shapes dive and harry, passing through bewildered warriors,
melting organs together, scrambling minds. No Shape has ever been captured. When
they are seen it is only as indistinct blurs of colour and form.

Recent weeks
have seen the war reach a crisis point. The front has shifted downwards ten
kilometres. Our forces have been thrown back by assaults of unprecedented
ferocity and scale. Appeals have been broadcast in the Dublin cities and
elsewhere for able-bodied men to report for duty. Now we are to become part of
the world's great counter-offensive. If we succeed, we may be able to return
the war to its previous status quo. If we fail... No one knows what will happen
if we fail.

A piercing
blast sounds in the earpiece inside my helmet. The call to assemble. We line up
in formation. Soldiers in row order step into the Chasm and drift upwards
towards the fighting. One man, a southern-African, plunges into the gloom
silently as his suit levitators fail. I am in the twelfth row. I step into the
air and ascend with my squad. Our sergeant is barking orders over our squad
channel, keeping us in formation. I drift forward momentarily to dodge a globe
of liquid fire falling towards me. The sergeant screams at me to hold my
position.

The first of
our squads reaches the front line. Within seconds, burning bodies are falling
all around us. Shapes are emerging, like swarms of hornets, from orifices in
the Chasm walls. The sergeant cannot keep the fear from his voice as he orders
us to hold. I discharge my force-weapon for the first time in anger, but the
shot misses and strikes an already charred patch of wall. I fire again and a
Shape splits in two. It continues to whirl and dive, its two halves taking
several seconds to come together again.

The sergeant
rallies us, manages to induce us to deliver a wide-angle volley. A many-headed
Shape charge is repulsed. He urges us onward. The Shapes charge again from high
above. We deliver another volley. Again they are repulsed. Men from other
squads find heart join us. There are now upwards of forty of us, all under the
command of my squad sergeant. We volley again and again, each time pushing the
Shapes higher, each time gaining courage.

In our helmet
earpieces we hear the following assault force begin their ascent. If we can
just consolidate the gains we have made here, the skirmish will have been
carried. The sergeant readies us for another volley. But now I hear screams
coming from the men on my left, and from the men on my right. An ambush. The
Shapes are pouring out of the wall underneath us. We are cut off from the
ascending supporting forces. Men all around me turn to fire and plunge into the
depths. The sergeant is killed.

I cut my suit
levitators and fall, gaining speed, through the Shape line below. I fall
through the next assault wave as it prepares for its part of the fight. I fall
further and further, weeping and screaming, though the undermanned
fortifications down below. Soon the battle is visible only as faint flashes
high above. My senses return to me, and I re-engage the levitators, slowing
myself to a stop.

Over the coming
minutes, burning bodies in hundreds tumble down, terminal velocities slower
than that of my still-living form. I try to muster courage to ascend, rejoin
the battle, but the horror is too much. Instead I drop slowly towards the city
and Helen. Globules hammer the roof of my helmet, miraculously failing to burn through.
They pop and splatter, but the thin aluminium holds. Fluid runs down the glass,
pockmarking the white layer on the bonnet, creating shadowed craters in the
tentative light of the cloud-diffused low-angle dawn sun.

Christ.

I reach back to
wake Helen, who lies underneath a mass of blankets. She stirs with the greatest
reluctance.

‘You all right?’

She mumbles and
exposes her face to the cold air.

The door is
obstructed by the snow outside, and needs some kicking and shoving to open. Heathshade
curses himself awake.

‘I need a piss,’
he says. He rolls down the window and – for a second there I thought he was
going to kneel on the seat and just do it from there - climbs out.

Urine steam rises
from a caldera of hissing snow, carrying back to us as aerosol despite the
pelting rain.

I trudge farther
afield than he, being fully human. The low ridge puts me out of sight. The path
ahead continues upward through the snow, albeit on a shallower grade. To the
left of the road is a steep decline littered with glacial scree, bottoming out
into a narrow valley floor. To the right is a steep hill face that rises
perhaps another hundred and fifty feet.

Back at the car,
voided, I am fairly thoroughly soaked by the rain. Heathshade is changing his
clothes. Now stripped down to his underpants, he whips these off too.

I help Helen
through the snow to a place of privacy, and then step away. The rainfall starts
to come harder, pounding the smooth snow. The cloud overhead is darkening so
that the sun no longer makes it through. We’re in a shadowless murk.

Helen and I
scramble back to the car, too late to avoid saturation as the rain becomes a
blinding cascade that beats a powerful tattoo on our unprotected heads.

In the back of
the car we get out of our drenched clothes. Heathshade, in the front, presses
his face against the window.

‘It’s washing
away the snow,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘It’ll wash us
away too.’ He turns the ignition key. The engine engages after some spluttering.
The wipers wave uselessly against the force of the water.

I reach forward
and grip his shoulder. ‘Hey, don’t try to drive blind.’

‘You stick your
head out the window and tell me if I’m going all right.’

The car is
moving. No choice but to do what he says. Sheets of ice-cold water pour off the
right-hand slope, taking large masses of undigested snow. Right onto my head.

‘Straight ahead!
Right! Stop! Straight! Stop!’

We inch towards
the top of the hill. The water rushes knee-deep past, gurgles through the
cracks of the doors, pooling inside.

The top of the
hill is in sight. I see buildings… but now a mass of snow gives way high above
us and crashes down upon the car. I haul my head back inside just in time to
avoid having my neck snapped. The snow must have been damming a mass of
rainwater. The avalanche is followed by thousands of pounding gallons.

The engine cuts
out. Now the car lurches. It’s sliding backwards.

‘Get out!’
Heathshade pushes his door open against the force of the water. I drag Helen with
me. Heathshade splashes forward. I pull her after him.

The road is blocked,
but we can climb the right-hand slope. We scramble upwards through icy bracken
and unstable snow. Lightning flashes away to the east, illuminating the car as
it falls over the side of the precipice and tumbles down into the valley.

The top of the
hill is wide and flat, covered in bracken still brittle despite the thaw. The
wind lashes. I try to support Helen’s weight, dragging her forward.

 A light
penetrates through the obscurity somewhere ahead. Heathshade lets out a shout. A
farmhouse.

He kicks the
front door open. Helen falls onto the cold stone floor, and so do I.

I spent a
day moving various items between the Unquiet Spirit and the habitat. I was
making the ship my own, removing signs of Dexter and Brinnilla's occupancy and
replacing them with things of mine. Even so, I still intended to return the
craft to Dexter after I was sure that he had abandoned his ridiculous plan. I
decided that I was merely making the ship more comfortable for myself in the
meantime.

The
following day I flew the ship into space. The ship handled differently in the
near vacuum of the upper extremes of the atmosphere. It was a joyous experience
to see the curvature of the earth for the first time since I crashed my own
ship, to behold the pulsing weather systems, the rivers, lakes and seas, the
valleys and mountains, the structure and detail of all the world's great
features. For one full orbit I watched the planet turn beneath me, so strangely
free of ice in comparison with the Earth of my time.