I wish I was vain.
Valisk’s parkland was also becoming less attractive. Now he had hiked out of the valley, the vivid pink grass which cloaked
the southern half of the cylinder was grading down to a musky-grey, an effect he equated to a city smog wrapping itself round
the landscape. It couldn’t be blamed entirely on the diminished illumination; the slim core of plasma in the axial light tube
was still a valiant neon blue. Instead it seemed to be part of the overall lack of vitality which was such an obvious feature
of this realm. The xenoc plant appeared to be past its peak, as if its spore fringes had already ripened and now it was heading
back into dormancy.
None of the insects which usually chirped and flittered among the plains had roused themselves. A few times, he came across
field mice and their xenoc analogues, who were sleeping fitfully. They’d just curled up where they were, not making any attempt
to return to their nests or warrens.
Ordinary chemical reactions must still be working,
he suggested.
If they weren’t, then everything would be dead.
Yes. Although from what we’re seeing and experiencing, they must also be inhibited to some degree.
Dariat trudged on. The spiral-springs of grass made the going hard, causing resistance as his legs passed through them. It
was though he was walking along a stream bed where the water was coming half-way up his shins. As his complaints became crabbier,
the personality guided him towards one of the narrow animal tracks.
After half an hour of easier walking, and pondering his circumstances, he said:
You told me that your electrical generation was almost zero.
Yes.
But not absolute?
No.
So the habitat must be in some kind of magnetic field if the induction cables are producing a current.
Logically, yes.
But?
Some induction cables are producing a current, the majority are not. And those that are, do so sporadically. Buggered if we
can work out what’s going on, boy. Besides, we can’t locate any magnetic field outside. There’s nothing we can see that could
be producing one.
What is out there?
Very little.
Dariat felt the personality gathering the erratic images from clusters of sensitive cells speckling the external polyp shell,
and formatting them into a coherent visualisation for him. The amount of concentration it took for the personality to fulfil
what used to be a profoundly simple task surprised and worried him.
There were no planets. No moons. No stars. No galaxies. Only a murky void.
The eeriest impression he received from the expanded affinity bond was the way Valisk appeared to be in flight. Certainly
he was aware of movement of some kind, though it was purely subliminal, impossible to define. The huge cylinder appeared to
be gliding through a nebula. Not one recognizable from their universe. This was composed from extraordinarily subtle layers
of ebony mist, shifting so slowly they were immensely difficult to distinguish. Had he been seeing it with his own eyes, he
would have put it down to overstressed retinas. But there were discernible strands of the smoky substance out there; sparser
than atmospheric cloud, denser than whorls of interstellar gas.
Abruptly, a fracture of hoary light shimmered far behind the hub of Valisk’s southern endcap, a luminous serpent slithering
around the insubstantial billows. Rough tatters of gritty vapour detonated into emerald and turquoise phosphorescence as it
twirled past them. The phenomenon was gone inside a second.
Was that lightning?
Dariat asked in astonishment.
We have no idea. However, we can’t detect any static charge building on our shell. So it probably wasn’t electrically based.
Have you seen it before?
That was the third time.
Bloody hell. How far away was it?
That is impossible to determine. We are trying to correlate parallax data from the external sensitive cells. Unfortunately,
lack of distinct identifiable reference points within the cloud formations is hampering our endeavour. You’re beginning to
sound like an Edenist. Take a guess.
We believe we can see about two hundred kilometres altogether.
Shit. That’s all?
Yes.
Anything could be out there, behind that stuff.
You’re beginning to catch on, boy.
Can you tell if we’re moving? I got the impression we were. But it could just be the way that cloud stuff is shifting round
out there.
We have the same notion, but that’s all it ever can be. Without a valid reference point, it is impossible to tell. Certainly
we’re not under acceleration, which would eliminate the possibility we’re falling through a gravity field… if this realm has
gravity, of course.
Okay, how about searching round with a radar? Have you tried that? There are plenty of arrays in the counter-rotating spaceport.
The spaceport has radar, it also has several Adamist starships, and over a hundred remote maintenance drones which could be
adapted into sensor probes. None of which are functioning right now, boy. We really do need to bring our relatives out of
zero-tau.
Yeah yeah. I’m getting there as quick as I can. You know what, I don’t think fusing with my thought routines has made that
big an impression on you, has it?
______
According to the personality, Tolton was in the parkland outside the Gonchraov starscraper lobby. Dariat didn’t get there
on the first attempt. He encountered the other ghosts before he arrived.
The pink grassland gradually gave way to terrestrial grass and trees a couple of kilometres from the starscraper lobbies.
It was a lush manicured jungle which boiled round the habitat’s midsection, with gravel tracks winding round the thicker clumps
of trees and vines. Big stone slabs formed primitive bridges over the rambling brooks, their support boulders grasped by thick
coils of flowering creepers. Petals were drooping sadly as Dariat walked over them. As he drew closer to the lobby, he started
to encounter the first of the servitor animal corpses, most of them torn by burnt scars, the impact of white fire. Then he
noticed the decaying remains of several of their human victims lying in the undergrowth.
Dariat found the sight inordinately depressing. A nasty reminder of the relentless struggle which Rubra and Kiera had fought
for dominance of the habitat. “And who won?” he asked morbidly.
He cleared another of the Neolithic bridges. The trees were thinning out now, becoming more ornate and taller as jungle gave
way to parkland. There were flashes of movement in front of him coupled with murmurs of conversation, which made him suddenly
self-conscious. Was he going to have to jump up and down waving his arms and shouting to get the living to notice him?
Just as he was psyching himself up for the dismaying inevitable, the little group caught sight of him. There were three men
and two women. Their clothes should have clued him in. The eldest man was wearing a very long, foppish coat of yellow velvet
with ruffled lace down the front; one of the women had forced her large fleshy frame into a black leather dominatrix uniform,
complete with whip; her mousy middle-aged companion was in a baggy woollen overcoat, so deliberately dowdy it was a human
stealth covering; of the remaining two men, one was barely out of his teens, a black youth with panther muscles shown off
by a slim red waistcoat; while the other was in his thirties, covered by a baggy mechanics overall. They made a highly improbable
combination, even for Valisk’s residents.
Dariat stopped in surprise and with some gratification, raising a hand in moderate greeting. “Hello there. Glad you can see
me. My name’s Dariat.”
They stared at him, already unhappy expressions displaced by belligerent suspicion.
“You the one Bonney had everyone chasing?” the black guy asked.
Dariat grinned modestly. “That’s me.”
“Motherfucker. You did this to us!” he screamed. “I had a body. I had my life back. You fucked that. You fucked me. You ruined
everything. Everything! You brought us here, you and that shit living in the walls.”
Comprehension dawned for Dariat. He could see the faint outlines of branches through the man. “You’re a ghost,” he exclaimed.
“All of us are,” the dominatrix said. “Thanks to you.”
“Oh shit,” he whispered in consternation.
There are other ghosts?
the personality asked. The affinity band was awash with interest.
What does it bloody look like!
The dominatrix took a step towards him; her whip flicked out, cracking loudly. She grinned viciously. “I haven’t had a chance
to use this properly for a long time, dearie. That’s a shame, because I know how to use it real bad.”
“Gonna get you plenty of chance to catch up now,” the black guy purred to her.
Dariat stood his ground shakily. “You can’t blame me for this. I’m one of you.”
“Yeah,” said the mechanic. “And this time you can’t get away.” He drew a heavy spanner from his leg pocket.
They must all be here,
the personality said.
All the possessing souls. Just great.
“Can we hurt him?” the mousy woman asked.
“Let’s find out,” the dominatrix replied.
“Wait!” Dariat implored. “We need to work together to get the habitat out of this place. Don’t you understand? It’s collapsing
around us, everything’s breaking down. We’ll be trapped here.”
The black guy bared his teeth wide. “We needed you to work with us to beat the habitat back in the real universe.”
Dariat flinched. He turned and ran. They gave chase immediately. That they’d catch him was never in doubt. He was appallingly
overweight, and he’d just finished a nine kilometre hike. The whip slashed against the back of his left calf. He wailed, not
just from the sharp sting, but from the fact it could sting.
They whooped and cheered behind him, delighted by the knowledge they could inflict injury, pain. Dariat staggered over the
end of the bridge, and took a few unsteady steps towards the thicker part of jungle. The whip struck him again, flaying his
shoulder and cheek, accompanied by the dominatrix’s gleeful laugh. Then the lean black guy caught up with him, and jumped
high, kicking him in the small of the back.
Dariat went flying, landing flat on his stomach, arms and legs spread wide. Not a single blade of grass even bent as he struck
the ground; his bloated body seemed to be lying on a median height of stalks, while longer stems poked straight through him.
The beating began. Feet kicked savagely into his flanks, his legs, neck. The whip whistled down again and again, landing on
his spine each time. Then the mechanic stood on his shoulders, and brought the spanner down on his skull. The battering became
rhythmic, horrifyingly relentless. Dariat cried out at every terrifying impact. There was pain, in abundance there was pain,
but no blood, nor damage, nor bruising or broken bones. The blaze of hurt had its origin in a concussion of hatred and fury.
Each blow reinforcing, emphasising how much they wanted him ruined.
His cries grew fainter, though they were just as insistent, and tainted with increasing anguish. The spanner, and the whip,
and the boots, and the fists began to sink into him, puncturing his intangible boundary. He was sinking deeper into the grass,
the hammering propelling his belly into the soil. Coldness swept into him, a wave racing on ahead of the solid surface with
which he was merging. His shape was lacking definition now, its outline becoming less substantial. Even his thoughts began
to lose their intensity.
Nothing could stop them. Nothing he said. Nothing he begged. Nothing he could pay. None of his prayers. Nothing. He had to
endure it all. Not knowing what the outcome would be; terrifyingly, not knowing what it could be.
They let him be, eventually. After how much time not one of them knew. As much as it took to satisfy their hunger for vengeance.
To dull the enjoyment of sadism. To experiment with the novel methods of brutality available to ghosts. There wasn’t much
of his presence left when they finished. A gauzy patch of pearl luminescence loitering amid the grass, the back of his toga
barely bobbing above the surface of the soil. Limbs and head were buried.
Laughing, they walked away.
Amid the coldness, darkness, and apathy, a few strands of thought clung together. A weak filigree of suffering and woe. Everything
he was. Very little, really.
______
Tolton had a brief knowledge of scenes like this. Secondhand knowledge, old and stale, memories of tales told to him by the
denizens of the lowest floors of the starscrapers. Tales of covert combat operations, of squads that had been hit by superior
firepower, waiting to be evac-ed out of the front line. Their bloody, battered casualties wound up in places like this, a
field hospital triage. It was the latest development in the saga of the habitat population’s misfortunes. Lately, studying
the parkland had become a form of instant archaeology. Evolving stages of residence were laid out in concentric circles, plain
to see.
In the beginning was the starscraper lobby, a pleasing rotunda of stone and glass, blending into the superbly maintained parkland.
Then with the arrival of possession, the lobby had been smashed up during one of the innumerable firefights between Kiera’s
followers and Rubra, and a shanty town had sprung up in a ring around it. Tiny Tudor cottages had stood next to Arabian tents,
which were pitched alongside shiny Winnebagoes; the richness of imagination on display was splendid. That was before Valisk
departed the universe.