In Heaven and Earth (12 page)

He peered around the
corner and along the road. This was one of Caelestia’s main
avenues, stretching along the entire length of the station, from
the docks, past the Senate, and out into the residential districts
beyond. It had been the first road they walked along when they
entered Caelestia, the first place where they had realised the
scale of the disaster.

Further along the road, a
shining figure was running forwards. The sunlight broke through it,
wreathing it in rainbows and making it too bright to focus on.
Behind it, swelling out like the wake of ship, the road was
changing, first the ground and next the surrounding walls fading
and then becoming transparent and glittering.

Reuben’s vision dimmed
suddenly as his suit adjusted his screen to protect his eyes, and
for a few seconds all he could see was shadows.

When his vision cleared,
the creature had covered half the distance between them.

“
How fast do
they move?” Meili gasped.

“
Too fast,”
Reuben said and steadied his weapon, reminding himself that this
was the enemy, no matter that it held no weapons of its
own.

He fired, and the recoil
pushed him back into the alley. Meili pulled him down smoothly, and
they crouched as the air around them flashed brightly and then
shook around them in a soundless wave of destruction that belled
outwards from the place where the runner had been.

When it stopped, Reuben
peered out of the alley again.

The shining runner was
gone, though shards of crystal were still sinking slowly towards
the ground. As they touched the road, each one glimmered and then
melted. From each, a gleaming puddle spread, and then began to roll
back to rejoin the main sweep of diamond, transforming everything
in its path.

“
Time to go,”
Meili said.

Reuben agreed. Bounding
after her, he rasped, “Vairya, we have a kill. Those things are
fast.”

“
We need more
distance if you transport us in again,” Meili said and brought her
knees up on the next step, turning in the air to swing her weapon
round. “Incoming. Cooper, get down!”

He threw himself
backwards instead, out of the path of her shot, and watched it go
arching along the side street ahead of them, where another runner
was approaching.

They had no shelter this
time, and the flash and shockwave blacked out their helmets and
sent them rising from the airless street.

Reuben twisted as he
rose, until he managed to push his feet against what felt like a
piece of wall, and he went arching away, his gloved hands brushing
what could have been the ridge of a roof. He could only see
glimmers: the bright sky, Meili’s suit moving beside him, the dim
outline of walls.

They came back to the
ground in a different road, the whole world still as vague as a
pencil sketch but growing steadily more distinct as their helmets
adapted.

“
Vairya, we’re
blind,” Meili said. “Can you see us?”

“
You’re off
camera,” Vairya said, sounding frightened. “Reuben!”

“
Still here,”
Reuben said, turning to look around. “Air and gravity would be
good. Our suits are working against us.”

“
Let me see
what I can do. Okay, there’s private security cameras on the
buildings around you. Searching, searching. Got you. You’re in a
courtyard behind warehouses, no sign of trolls. Sit
tight.”

“
Trolls?”
Reuben asked, amused.

“
They’re evil,
made of stone, and killed by big flashing lights. Got a better
idea?”

“
Trolls it
is.”

Meili sighed. “Am I going
to have to put up with this all mission?”

“
Almost
certainly,” Reuben said, smiling behind his helmet. “Keep talking,
Vairya.”

“
Concentrating
here. What do you want me to say?”

“
I want you to
keep talking so I know immediately if we lose coms.”

“
Oh.”

He could see Meili
swinging round to face him, but all she said was, “I’m glad one of
us has some idea what we’re doing.”

“
Did you hit
your head?” Reuben demanded. “What was that? Respect? From
you?”

“
Fuck off,
Cooper.”

“
Yeah, she’s
fine,” Vairya said. “Reuben, I do need to concentrate on this. The
city systems have been chewed apart by this stuff. You get
something I have memorised, I’m afraid.”

“
Should keep us
going for a while if we go through every poem in your head,” Meili
muttered.

“
And by a
while, you mean approximately thirteen centuries,” Vairya said, and
then his voice shifted, losing a little warmth and humour to
recite, “‘So all day long the noise of battle roll’d among the
mountains by the winter sea—’”

“
Could you not
find anything less morbidly sentimental?” Reuben asked
acidly.

“
Always a
critic. Would you like me to find something a little more jolly? I
have plenty of limericks in here.”

“
Adventure,”
Meili said, “if you’re taking requests. Something with some good
fights. I need inspiration.”

Vairya chuckled. “Fine.
‘Sing. O muse, of the wrath of Achilles—’”

“
Fuck off,”
Reuben said mildly. “I’m not putting up with nine books worth of
chariots and tantrums.”

“‘
This day is
called the feast of Crispian—’”

“
No
.”

“
Stop
interrupting the man, Cooper,” Meili said. “He needs to
concentrate. Go back to the original, Vairya. I’ll shoot Cooper if
he keeps whining.”

“
I hate
Tennyson,” Reuben muttered, but she was right, and he was being a
fool, demanding Vairya’s attention just because he wanted to hear
that wry tone turned at him.

“‘
Until King
Arthur’s table, man by man, had fall’n in Lyonnesse about their
Lord…’” Vairya continued, and Reuben sat and listened as his vision
cleared, and the world around him filled with sunlight again. It
was bright today, pouring over them with a fury that made him glad
they were suited up. How much closer had the city carried them? How
soon would it be too hot for anything to survive?

When the light changed,
he assumed it was his helmet again until Vairya paused in his
recitation to say, “Atmospheric shields up and secure. Working on
the air supply and gravity now.”

“
Good,” Reuben
said. “Let us know as soon as we can get these helmets
off.”

“
Will do.
Eskil’s got four more ships away. Now where was I? Ah, yes. ‘Such a
sleep they sleep— the men I loved. I think that we shall never
more, at any future time, delight our souls with talk of knightly
deeds, walking about the gardens and the halls…’”

Meili sat down on the
cobbles, laying her gun aside. “Okay, you were right. Don’t you two
know any poetry which isn’t depressing and tedious?”

“
Barbarian,”
Reuben said, but it lacked some of the venom he might have used a
few weeks ago.

It could have been half
an hour later, or even an hour, when Meili held up her hand and
showed him the atmospheric scanner in her glove. It had changed
from red to amber, and was already green tinted.

“
Good systems,”
she said.

“
Gravity’s
about to come back on,” Vairya said. “Brace yourselves. Oh, and
Reuben, I’m about to start on
Paradise
Lost
.”

“
Only ever read
extracts of that,” Reuben said, cheering up a little.

He felt the lurch and
sudden drop of his stomach as the gravity kicked in, and swallowed
back the urge to vomit into his helmet.

Meili checked her scanner
again, and said, “Seriously, Cooper, what is the appeal of all
this? You trying to read everything ever written?”

“
Just the
highlights,” Reuben said, “and I never got much beyond one language
and two millennia.”

“
Why?”

“
Why
not?”

“
Cooper.”

He looked up at the
blazing sky. “Because they didn’t know anything. They didn’t know
what the stars were, or how planets circled the sun, or why our
hearts beat, and our bodies grew old. It didn’t stop them, though.
They loved, and they lived, and they never stopped wondering what
it meant to be—”

It was more than he had
meant to say, and he stopped himself.

“
To
be?”

“
Human,” he
finished. “What it meant to be human.”

She was quiet for a
moment. “Did they find an answer?”

“
No. No one
ever has. That’s not the point.”

“
Then what
is?”

“
They never
stopped asking,” he said. “That’s the point.”

She was quiet, and into
their silence, Vairya said, his voice soft, “You have breathable
atmosphere at ground level.”

“
Thank you,”
Reuben said and stood up to peel his outer suit off. “Keep
monitoring. We’ll need instant extraction if we lose air
again.”

“
Understood.”

The grenade launcher was
heavier now, and he couldn’t carry quite so much ammunition.
Nonetheless, it felt good to breathe in deeply and rub some of the
gathered sweat out of his hair. The air was hot, and he was glad of
the inner suit, which would still offer some protection from the
sun.

“
Where next?”
he said.

“
I’m still
having trouble maintaining a complete camera network,” Vairya said,
“but I’m watching the spread of the diamond across the city. There
are outlying spars in the Chahar Bagh district, ninety-five degrees
clockwise and three kilometres from your position.”

“
On our way,”
Meili said and led them out of the courtyard.

After a moment, Vairya
started, his voice whisper soft, “‘Of Man’s First Disobedience, and
the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree…’”

Chapter Nine

THEY found the next few
trolls before they’d even reached the area Vairya had identified,
and from then on they were running and fighting without break,
taking turns to fire while the other loaded more ammunition
frantically. The trolls were fast, and there were more and more of
them with every strike.

“
Vairya, tell
me they’re not hydras,” Reuben gasped as he ducked behind a
decorative tower on the edge of a small park. The smoke was still
clearing from their last hit, and he couldn’t see if there were
more coming, or where the edge of the diamond was now. “Tell me
they don’t multiply when we cut one down.”

“
They don’t,”
Vairya said. “They have to copy an existing body.”

“
The streets
are full of the dead!” Meili gasped, from the other side of the
tower. “Cooper, guard the door. We need to see.”

“
Go,” Reuben
said, and she dashed up the tower, her feet clattering on the metal
stairs.

He heard her gasp, and
then she said urgently, “Vairya! We’re cut off. Diamonds on every
side. Get us out!”

“
I can’t see
you,” Vairya said frantically. “There’s too much smoke, and the net
just cut out in that district.”

“
Get one of
Eskil’s drones down here,” Reuben said, peering through the smoke.
He’d thought he’d seen a flash of light out there, the now too
familiar shimmer of rainbows.

“
Cooper,” Meili
said, her voice suddenly thin. “Get up here. You’re about to lose
the ground beneath your feet.”

He leapt for the stairs
as the light flashed again, and he saw what she had seen. The dead
grass was turning pale and brittle, as if a tide of ice was
sweeping over it. “Vairya!”

“
I’m
trying!”

He went up the stairs
three steps at a time, aware of the glitter of the floor changing
below him. Meili was there to grab his arm and drag him out onto
the roof, and then they both bent to wrestle with the fastenings of
the stairs.

The last bolt came loose
as lines of diamond came streaking up the banisters, and the stairs
went crashing away.

“
It’s coming up
the walls!” Meili cried.

“
Get in the
middle of the floor,” Reuben said, dragging her away from the
parapet. For a moment he regretted the full gravity, which stopped
them from simply leaping off the edge to propel themselves away
from the untouched roofs of the neighbouring buildings.

Then, with a buzz, a
drone cut through the smoke, its faceted eye blinking
red.

“
I see you,”
Vairya said, and the world went milky around them.

They rematerialised on a
low hilltop, further out of the centre of the city. Dead trees
stood in a ring around the lower slopes, but Reuben could see right
across the hollow of the station from here. Smoke blurred the air
near the centre, but behind it, as far as the eye could see, there
was only the gleaming, dead expanse of the transformed
land.