He pushed his green hood right up close to her face and Saskia was transfixed by his eyes, half seen in the dark, gazing into hers.
“Do you want that, Saskia? Do you want the Watcher feeling you, knowing you? Do you?”
“No, I don’t, Maurice.”
He made a grunting noise and pulled away from her and they strode onwards, heading towards a fairy-tale castle situated at the end of the parkland: a white building decorated in blue stripes, golden domes flashing boldly in the sunlight.
Miss Rose gave a cough; she was trying to speak. She coughed again, clearing her throat. “This is not what I was expecting, dear,” she managed to say.
“Nor I, Miss Rose, nor I.”
Saskia felt so happy, and yet she wasn’t sure why. She was on Earth, the most dangerous place in the galaxy. Everyone said so. And yet, it felt such a comfortable place to be. It was
home
. This was where she had come from; this was the cradle of the whole human race. Of course it felt right. It had been shaped and molded and sanded and polished by the Watcher to become the perfect place for a human to live. Suddenly she felt rather churlish for having stayed away for so long.
Edward felt it too. “It’s so pretty,” he sighed. “I always thought Earth was meant to be a bad place.”
“So did I, Edward,” Saskia replied sadly.
“Nearly there,” Vanya said to Judy. She was strolling along with Constantine by her side, staring fixedly at the ground. Vanya had noticed this; it seemed to hurt his pride in some way. There was quiet satisfaction in his voice as he continued speaking. “Look to the left and you will see the avenue to the stars.”
Saskia looked up then, and she found herself unable to move farther. It was so beautiful. It was beyond beautiful. It gripped the heart in wonder, and made it swell larger and larger just to encompass the scene. She put her hand to her hood, meaning to pull it back in order to get a better view, but she remembered herself just in time. She wanted to curse Maurice for his silliness, but this was soon forgotten as she gazed in awe along the avenue in front of them. She began then to grasp the size of the Watcher’s mind.
The avenue began, here in the park, with a broad path paved in white stone and surrounded by low hedges. After that…Saskia could only guess that its course sloped upwards ever so gently. There was no other way to explain how she could see so far, seemingly beyond the horizon itself. After the hedge came two lines of poplars, and then the colorful walls of the city. Then the taller buildings, the silver spires and the skyscrapers. The avenue must widen the farther away it got. Out there, kilometers away, could she walk across an expanse of white stone and look at the towering buildings on either side, their tops wider apart, separated by the curvature of the Earth?
But her mind was lost in that vast space, lost in the arrow-straight path that led to the stars, lost in the line of hedge and tree and stone that led to the heavens. And there, hanging above the end of the path, framed by the farthermost buildings of all, she could make out the shadow of the Shawl.
“Come at night,” said Vanya. “Come on the twenty-third of September when the moon is framed
below
the Shawl. Hah, come anytime you like and it is just as good. Is it not beautiful?”
“It is beautiful,” Saskia whispered. Then something caught her attention, something black and baleful at the edge of her vision, tucked away just beyond a row of trees. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.
Vanya smiled tightly and his eyes became hollow. “Oh that, it is nothing. Now come on, the Lite station is just down here.”
“What can you see, dear?” Miss Rose asked.
“I don’t know,” said Saskia, turning up the vision on her active suit. It was hard to make out the shape, lurking as it was behind the trees. It seemed to be a fat, rounded pillar, banded in black and white, five or six stories high.
“Maurice,” Saskia said, “maybe you should take a look at this?”
“If you want to know what it is, find out for yourself,” Maurice replied petulantly.
“Judy?” Saskia persisted.
But Judy had already gone on ahead with Constantine.
“Be like that then,” Saskia muttered. She reached out with one hand, using the active suit’s senses to try and feel the sinister object, but it was too far away.
“Come on,” urged Vanya. “Come on!”
The people of Earth moved about with courtesy and consideration for others, Saskia noted. Approaching the Lite station, they saw the pedestrians striding past in well-ordered groups, pausing at junctions to allow others to pass, streams of happy people separating into tributaries that flowed this way and that, politely taking it in turns to enter doorways and narrow entrances. They moved with tremendous grace, like people in a dance. But there was something else there, too…. What was the word?
“What do these people make you think of, Miss Rose?” whispered Saskia.
“Robots.”
Robots, no. What was the word? Then Saskia had it: they moved with maximum efficiency. They weren’t like robots because they all looked so happy and healthy.
Look at this young boy eating a wedge of pizza, loaded with cheese and bright happy pieces of pepper. Holding it out to me, offering me a bite. And it looks so good.
“No, thank you,” said Saskia. She could smell it through the hood of the active suit: hot and greasy and salty and good. “Suit, cut aromas, please,” she instructed.
Miss Rose was getting tired now. Her bony arm was cutting into Saskia. She could feel the effort the old woman put into making each step, transmitted in the dead weight that settled upon Saskia as she moved.
Judy and Constantine were conversing in low tones.
Does she look afraid
? Saskia wondered. Not nearly enough.
Yet here she is on Earth. Does she know why? Can she guess why? Why has she been brought here?
“Oh, I’m tired, dear.”
“Not much farther, Miss Rose.”
“I think I’ll take off the hood of this suit. I can’t breathe properly in here.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“I don’t know why. Everyone here looks so polite. They always were, of course, but this is more so than I remember.”
“When was the last time you were here, Miss Rose?”
“I don’t know. Twenty years ago? Thirty?”
“That’s the Watcher, Miss Rose. Since the first of the Dark Seeds fell to Earth, the Watcher stopped hiding. It openly took control. This is what it has been working towards for so long. This is the Watcher’s Utopia.”
Miss Rose cackled. “It’s a very nice Utopia.”
Saskia laughed, too.
They felt so safe. And that was the problem. Saskia knew she should be frightened, but all she felt was a calm serenity. That was also the Watcher’s doing, she guessed. What worried her was the sense that she was forgetting this last thought as she was slowly being reprogrammed by her environment.
I’m frightened
, she said to herself.
I’m frightened
. But she wasn’t, not with her attention being distracted all the time.
The Lite station stood on stilts right at the center of an intersection of eight bright bridges. Beautiful bridges formed of low graceful arches, white dressed-stone pillars stepping daintily through the snow-covered grass and lakes and canals lying below. White lamps were arranged along the parapet walls.
“You know what it makes me think of?” Miss Rose whispered. “It’s like someone threw a stone and made it skip across the lakes and canals, and the path that it took has been written by the bridge. Look at how it goes: skip into the lake, skip into the street, then skip into the canal.”
“Ah, it’s getting to you!” Vanya said, coming up beside them. “This is the Watcher’s world. We discover new beauty here every day. It is part of the world, written into the very fabric. Come, take off your hood and breathe the air!”
“No, thank you,” Saskia said firmly.
As they rode an escalator up to the Lite station itself, the view of the city expanded: a landscape of snow and ice. The parkland lay behind them in a bowl of buildings that ran to the horizon, the silver spires of city blocks climbing higher and higher the farther they were distant from the center, all cut through by the avenue to the stars, lit up in blue rime. And all around were those happy people who seemed to walk back and forth to the beat of a metronome. There too was the
Eva Rye,
the swell of its teardrop shape rising high above the bare trees of the park.
And over there was another strange squat tower. And another one.
“Look,” Saskia called. “Maurice, can you see them? Those black-and-white towers set in a grid? They cover the whole city.”
“I can see them.” His voice was sullen.
“Maurice, what is the matter with you? Listen to me, look at those towers. What do you think they are for?”
“I…I…” Maurice was now looking at the towers. Saskia could see his green hood turning this way and that. “I…I don’t know.”
“Saskia, can you see them, too?” Edward shuffled closer to her, a hunched giant in fluorescent yellow.
Where were Judy and Constantine? Over there, looking at the map that covered one entire wall of the station. Red lines and blue lines were moving on it as Vanya pointed out the different places on the rail network. Hadn’t they noticed the towers? Like lighthouses, banded in black and white? A yellow band, the color of honey, ran around the top of each. Something seemed to be moving within that band, darker clouds of honey flowing inside the tower itself. Honey moved by convection currents that rose from the warm heart of the building.
“They’re watching me,” Edward said. “The towers are watching me.”
“Of course they are,” said a passerby. He smiled brightly at Edward. “That’s the Watcher.”
And Saskia felt as if a little chink had opened up in her body and an icicle had been inserted, lit up from inside with a honey-yellow glow.
The Watcher? Of course, it was the Watcher. She had known that he was here waiting for them. But now, as she studied the black-and-white towers that spread out to the horizon, she suddenly felt so cold.
You could see the whole world on that map, a representation of the continents, you could zoom in on anyplace you wished to go.
Maurice was still sulking and refused to interface his console to it, so Constantine had taken control.
“Where do you want to go to, Judy?” the robot asked.
“I don’t know. I’m the property of DIANA, so I’m supposed to go there.”
“You should ask it for DIANA headquarters,” said Vanya. “The map should know.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Constantine.
The blue and red lines on the map moved. Two circles appeared.
“You are here,” read Judy from the top one. Saskia looked to the circle at the bottom of the map. Written above it in red letters were the words “DIANA Headquarters.”
“There you are, then,” said Vanya. “I’m glad I could be of service. Now, are you sure I can’t tempt you to a glass of tea? No? Then I bid you good day.” And with that, he turned and made his way back down the escalator to street level.
“Did you get the feeling that he’s just been turned off?” Saskia asked. Judy wasn’t listening; she was tracing a line on the map, following its path from their station to DIANA.
“According to this map, we’re in a place called St. Petersburg at the moment. I need to travel along this line, through Poland, to Germany. I’m almost there.” She looked wistful. “I can’t believe that it’s that easy,” she murmured. “Well, this is where we part, I think. There is no need for you to accompany me any farther.”
“No!” said Edward. “No! We’re coming with you!”
“Speak for yourself,” said Maurice. “I’m going back to the ship.”
“Maurice, we agreed,” Saskia reminded them. “Edward is in charge now.”
“And he’s making us go off on a train, leaving our ship behind!” Maurice waved an arm out across the sparkling parkland to the huge curve of the ship. “Don’t you understand what’s happening here? These suits aren’t proper space suits.” He tugged at the green material of his sleeve. “They can’t block out everything the Watcher will be throwing at us. MTPH will be getting through, slowly seeping in, giving him a toehold inside our minds.”
“Don’t be so paranoid,” Saskia said. “If the Watcher really wanted to, it would just arrange for our suits to be taken away from us.” She shook her head—did she really believe that? Had she believed that a few minutes ago?
“Don’t be so sure,” Judy said. She wore a tired look, dimly seen through the darkness of her black hood. She rubbed one hand across her forehead. “That’s not the way the Watcher works. He prefers the slow, subtle approach—and it’s working. Look how he’s got you all following me. Edward follows me, you follow Edward…”
“What about Maurice?”
Maurice was rubbing his head through his hood.
“Damn!” he said. “Damn!”
“What’s up, Maurice?”
“Damn, fuck and blast!”
“There’s a train coming,” said Constantine, and Saskia heard a descending whistle. A woman stuck her head around the corner, her pink head scarf fluttering in the wind of the approaching train.
“Going to DIANA? This way! The train’s just arriving.”
Judy set off towards her.
“Are you coming, Maurice?” asked Saskia.
“Oh fuck! Oh damn!” Maurice sounded close to tears as he followed them out onto the platform.
The Lite train was an airy transparent box that whisked them away across one of the bridges towards the tall icicle buildings lining the horizon. They sat on white leather seats and looked out at the scenery. Everything looked so beautiful.
“Look, there’s another lighthouse,” said Saskia. The black-and-white pillar swept close by the track, honey curling in the band around the top of it.
“It
is
watching us,” Judy breathed. “I can feel it through the meta-intelligence.”
Maurice sat near the back of the coach, his head in his hands.
“Are you okay, Maurice?” Saskia called.
He gave a grunt, and Saskia left him to sulk in silence.
“That’s pretty,” Edward said as they slid through a residential area. Silver cones of different heights sped by, their tops passing by above and below them. The brightly dressed people who walked in orderly patterns along the pedestrian ramps were a colorful blur as the train gathered speed. The hiss of air could be dimly heard outside the transit field.