Shingle gave way to tacky mud. Laggard waves of the yellow slough were creeping down the beach from the land behind. Clumps
of grass and small bushes were being trawled along with it.
Great,
Sinon said as he waded in.
At this rate, it’s going to take a week to get there.
He was aware of other squads encountering similar difficulties all along the coast.
We need to get to higher ground,
Choma said. His affinity indicated a point on the guidance block image.
That should give us better terrain to traverse.
The squad concurred, and changed direction slightly.
Any news on when this rain’s going to end?
Sinon queried their liaison.
No.
______
Not even Cochrane could be bothered to maintain the Karmic Crusader’s outlandish appearance. The rain was eroding their spirits
at the same rate it ate into the valley’s soil. Three hours so far, without ever slackening.
Flares of lightning revealed what it was doing to their beautiful circular valley. Water cascaded over the lip, turning the
orderly terraces into long curving waterfalls. At each stage it grew muckier and more glutinous as it carried the rich cultivated
black soil with it. Avalanches of crops and sturdy young fruit trees were plunging down the ever-steepening slopes to sink
without trace into the expanding lake. The lawn at the rear of the farmhouse was slowly submerged, bringing the water up to
the ornate iron-framed patio doors.
By that time they were already loading the Karmic Crusader with their cases. Wind had ripped countless slates from the roof,
letting the rain in to soak through the ceiling plaster.
“Just bear in mind, there’s only one road out of this valley,” McPhee said when the first rivulet came churning down the stairs
into the living room. “And that runs above the river. If we’re going to get out of here, it’s got to be soon.”
Nobody had argued. They splashed their way upstairs to pack while he and Cochrane brought the bus out of the barn. Moyo was
driving, keeping their speed to little more than walking pace. The dirt track along the side of the winding valley was crumbling
at an alarming rate as sheets of filthy water poured down out of the trees above them, foaming round trunks and raking out
the tangled undergrowth. His mind concentrated on giving the bus broader tyres in an attempt to gain some kind of traction
on the quagmire surface. It was difficult; he had to get Franklin and McPhee to collaborate with him, meshing their thoughts
together.
A tree crashed onto the track twenty metres ahead of them, uprooted by the relentless water. Moyo stamped down on the brakes,
but the bus just kept slithering forwards. Not even the full focus of his energistic ability could affect the motion. An untimely
reminder about his acute lack of omnipotence. He just managed to shout: “Hold on to something,” before the bus’s front collision
buffer hit the trunk. The windscreen turned white, bulging inwards to absorb as much of the impact as it could before finally
disintegrating into a hail of tiny plastic spheres. A fat bulb of twigs and spiky topaz leaves burst through the rent. Moyo
tried to duck, but the seat straps held him fast. Instinct took over, and a stupendous ball of white fire engulfed the twigs.
He screeched as his eyebrows smouldered and his hair shrivelled into black frazzled ash. The skin on his face went dead.
Steam belched along the interior as the Karmic Crusader juddered to a halt. Stephanie loosened her grip on the seat back in
front of her, leaving deep indentations in the composite. The floor was tilted at quite an incline. What with the rain drumming
on the roof, and the water from the slope pouring round them she could only just distinguish the stressed creaking coming
from the bodywork. There was no way of telling what was causing it. Even her eldritch sense was cluttered with confusing shadowforms,
the rain was equivalent to strong static interference.
Then water came gurgling eagerly along the aisle, pushing a fringe of filthy scum ahead of it. It glided over her shoes. She
made an effort to banish the cloying steam, trying to make out the gloomy interior.
“My eyes!” It was just a whisper, but poignant enough to carry the length of the aisle. Everyone swung round towards the front
of the bus.
“Oh god, my eyes. My eyes. Help me! My
eyes
!”
Stephanie had to hang on to the overhead racks, swinging one hand in front of the other, to make her way forwards. Moyo was
still sitting in the driver’s seat, his body rigid. The incinerated remains of the tree’s branch cluster loomed centimetres
from his face like some fabulously delicate charcoal sculpture. His hands were held close to his cheeks, trembling from the
fear of what he’d find if he actually touched himself.
“It’s all right,” she said automatically. Her mind played traitor, fright and revulsion at what she saw surging to the surface
of her thoughts. His skin had roasted away, taking most of his nose and all of his eyelids with it. Blood was dribbling out
of the fissures between scabs of crisped corium layers. Both eyes had broiled, turning septic yellow as creamy fluids percolated
out in a mockery of tears.
“I can’t see,” he cried. “Why can’t I see?”
She reached out and grasped both his hands. “Shush. Please, darling. It’ll be all right. You just got scorched by the flame,
that’s all.”
“I can’t see!”
“Of course you can. You’ve got your sixth sense until your eyes recover. You know I’m here, don’t you?”
“Yes.
Don’t go
.”
She put her arms round him. “I won’t.” He began shaking violently. Cold sweat was prickling his undamaged skin.
“He’s in shock,” Tina said. The others were gathering round, as much as the cramped aisle would permit. Their thoughts tempered
by the sight of Moyo’s injuries.
“He’s all right,” Stephanie insisted in a brittle tone.
“It’s very common with major burn cases.”
Stephanie glared at her.
“Yo, man, give him a drag on this,” Cochrane said. He held out a fat reefer, sickly sweet smoke seeping from its glowing tip.
“Not now!” Stephanie hissed.
“Actually, yes, darling,” Tina said. “For once the ape man’s right. It’s a mild sedative, which is just what he needs right
now.” Stephanie frowned suspiciously at the unaccustomed authority in Tina’s voice. “I used to be a nurse,” the statuesque
woman continued, gathering in her black diamante shawl with a contemptuous dignity. “Actually.”
Stephanie took the reefer, and eased it gently into Moyo’s lips. He coughed weakly as he inhaled.
The bus groaned loudly. Its rear end shifted a couple of metres, sending them all grabbing for support. McPhee ducked his
head to peer through the broken windscreen. “We’re not going anywhere in this,” he said. “We’d better get out before we get
washed away.”
“We can’t move him,” Stephanie protested. “Not for a while.”
“The river’s nearly up level with this track, and we’ve got at least another kilometre and a half to go before we’re out of
the valley.”
“Level? It can’t be. We were twenty metres above the valley floor.”
The Karmic Crusader’s headlights were out, so she sent a slender blade of white fire arching over the track. It was as if
the land had turned to water. She couldn’t actually see any ground, slopes and hollows were all submerged under several centimetres
of flowing yellow-brown water. Just below the flattish section which marked the track, a cavalcade of flotsam was sweeping
along the valley. Mangled branches, smashed trunks, and snarled up mats of vegetation were all cluttered together; their smooth
progress was ominous, nothing stood in their way. As she watched, another of the trees from the slope above slid down past
the bus, staying vertical the whole time until it reached the river.
She didn’t like to think how many more trees were poised just above them. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Cochrane retrieved his reefer. “Feel better?” Moyo simply twitched. “Hey, no need for the downer. Just like grow them back,
man. It’s easy.”
Moyo’s answering laugh was hysterical. “Imagine I can see? Oh yes, oh yes. It’s easy, it’s so fucking easy.” He started to
sob, tapping his fingertips delicately over his ruined face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“You stopped the bus,” Stephanie said. “You saved all of us. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Not
you
!” he screamed. “Him! I’m saying sorry to him. It’s his body, not mine. Look what I’ve done to it. Not you. Oh god. Why did
all this happen? Why couldn’t we all just die?”
“Get me the first-aid kit,” Tina told Rana. “Now!”
Stephanie had her arm round Moyo’s shoulder again, wishing there was some aspect of energistic power that could manifest raw
comfort. McPhee and Franklin tried opening the door. But it was jammed solid, beyond even their enhanced physical strength’s
ability to shift. They looked at each other, gripped hands, and closed their eyes. A big circular section of the front bodywork
spun off into the bedlam outside. Rain spat down the aisle like a damp shotgun blast. Rana struggled forwards with the first-aid
kit case, fiddling with the clips.
“This is no use,” Tina wailed. She plucked out a nanonic package, face wrinkled in dismay. The thick green strip dangled from
her hand like so much wobbly rubber.
“Come on! There must be something in it you can use,” Stephanie said.
Tina rummaged through. The case contained several strips of nanonic package, diagnostic blocks—all useless. Even the phials
of biochemicals and drugs used infuser patches, the dosage regulated by a diagnostic block. There was no non-technological
method of getting the medication into his bloodstream. She shook her head weakly. “Nothing.”
“Damn it—”
The bus groaned, shifting again. “No more time,” McPhee said. “This is it. Out. Now.”
Cochrane clambered out of the hole, splashing down on the track next to the fallen tree. Keeping his footing was obviously
difficult. The water came halfway up his shin. Rana followed him down. Stephanie gripped the seat straps holding Moyo in,
and forced them to rot in her palms. She and Franklin hauled him up, and guided him through the hole. Tina followed them through,
letting out martyred squeals as she struggled to find footholds.
“Lose those bloody heels, ye moron,” McPhee yelled at her.
She glared back at him petulantly, but her scarlet stilettos faded into ordinary pumps with flat soles. “Peasant. A girl has
to look her best at all times, you know.”
“This is real you stupid cow, not a fucking disaster movie set. You’re no’ being filmed.”
She ignored him, and turned to help Stephanie with Moyo. “Let’s try and bandage his face, at the very least,” she said. “I’ll
need some cloth.”
Stephanie tore a strip off the bottom of her saturated cardigan. When she passed it over to Tina it had become a dry, clean
strip of white linen.
“I suppose that’ll be all right,” Tina said dubiously. She started to wrap it round Moyo’s eyes, making sure the stub remains
of his nose were also covered. “Do try and think of your face as being normal, darling. It’ll all grow back, then, you’ll
see.”
Stephanie said nothing, she didn’t doubt Moyo could repair the burns to his cheeks and forehead, but actually growing eyeballs
back…
Franklin landed with a heavy splash, the last out of the bus. Nobody fancied trying to salvage their luggage. The boot was
at the rear, and not even energistic power would help much clambering over the tree. Blasting the trunk to shreds would only
send the bus spinning over the edge.
They spent a couple of minutes sorting themselves out. First priority was fending off the rain; their collective imagination
produced a transparent hemisphere, like a giant glass umbrella floating in the air above them. Once that was established,
they set about drying off their clothes. There wasn’t anything they could do about the water coursing across the track, so
they gave themselves sturdy knee-high wellingtons.
Thus protected, they set off down the track, taking turns to guide and support a shivering Moyo. A bright globe of ball lightning
bobbed through the air ahead and slightly to the side of them, hissing as raindrops lashed against it, but lighting the way
and hopefully giving them some warning of any more falling trees. Apart from that, their only worry was making it out of the
valley before the river rose up over the track. The driving rain and roaring wind meant they never knew when another tree
slithered down the slope into the dark and battered Karmic Crusader, sending it plunging into the engorged river.
______
Billesdon was a cheery little town, tucked into the lee of a large granite headland on Mortonridge’s eastern coast. Sheltered
from the worst of the breakers to come rolling in off the ocean, it was a natural harbour. District planners took advantage
of that, quarrying the abundant rock to build a long curving quay opposite the headland, enclosing a wide deepwater basin
with a modest beach at the back. The majority of boats which used it were trawlers and san-drakers, their operators earning
a good living from Ombey’s plentiful fish and crustacean species. Even the local seaweed was exported to restaurants across
the peninsula.
It also proved a haven for pleasure boats, with several sport fishing and yachting clubs setting up shop. With so many boats
to service, the marine engineering companies and supply industries were quick to seize upon the commercial opportunities available
and open premises in the town. Houses, apartment blocks, shops, hotels, entertainment halls, and industrial estates were thrown
up all the way back along the shallow valley behind the headland. Villas and groves began to blossom along the slopes above,
next to golf courses and holiday complexes.
Billesdon became the sort of town, beautiful and economically successful, that was presented as the Kingdom’s ideal, every
citizen’s entitlement. Sinon’s squad reached the outskirts around midday. A trivial glimmer of light was penetrating the clouds,
giving the world a lacklustre opacity. Visibility had risen to a few hundred yards.