Are you still in contact?
Yes. For the moment. There’s a few loose ends I want to tie up myself. After that, it’s over.
To abandon such power requires considerable strength of character. We are happy to see Samuel’s faith was not misplaced.
To be honest, a life spent jumping round the Confederation righting wrongs really doesn’t appeal. From now on all I carry
is a message.
Joshua Calvert, missionary,
Syrinx teased.
Now there’s a real miracle.
Will you be returning the Confederation stars to their original position?
Consensus asked.
No. I want them to stay here. That also is my decision.
And one we will have to abide by. After all, it will not be easy for us to send a starship back to the Sleeping God from here.
It’s not impossible. But then that’s the whole point.
Would you explain?
Humans have been lucky in the past, expanding and colonising our way across the galaxy. I’m not knocking it. Things were pretty
bad back there on Earth for a while. As a species we needed to get away, as the old saying goes, to put our eggs in more than
one basket. But it can’t go on forever. We have to face up to the future, and develop in different ways. There are eight hundred
stars out here in this cluster, that’s all. There can be no more physical expansion at our current social, economic, and technological
level. No more running away from our problems; we’re mature enough to address them now.
And our isolation will ensure that we do.
I’m hoping it will concentrate a few minds, yes.
We will live in interesting times.
All times are interesting if you know to live them properly,
Joshua said.
I have the new coordinates of the other stars for you. You’ll have to send out voidhawks to them and spread the information,
put us all back in contact.
Of course.
Joshua let the information flow out of his mind and into the Consensus.
The airlock opened, and his crew came flooding out yelling raucous greetings.
Liol hugged him first. “Fine bloody captain you make! You abandon us there to have fun all by yourself, and the next thing
we know we’ve got Jupiter’s SD command screaming at us.”
“I brought you back, what more do you want.”
Sarha squealed and wrapped herself round him. “You did it!” She kissed his ear. “And what a view.”
Dahybi slapped his back, laughing ecstatically. There were Ashly and Beaulieu, pushing at each other to get at him. Monica
said: “Looks like you got it right,” without sounding too much of a grudge. Samuel chuckled at her obstinacy. Kempster and
Renato chided him for cutting off their observations so abruptly. Mzu barely thanked him before asking about the singularity’s
internal quantum structure.
In the end he held up his arms and shouted at them all to shut the hell up. “Party in Harkey’s Bar, right now, and the drinks
are on me.”
______
Beth and Jed were pressed up against the big port in the lounge as Tranquillity expanded outside.
“It looks just like Valisk,” he said excitedly.
“Let me see!” Navar demanded.
Jed grinned, and they stepped aside. The lounge was weird now. The outlines of the steamship fittings ran through the actual
walls and equipment, solid ridges cutting through composite and alloy alike. Hints of the false colours and textures were
still there if he squinted hard and remembered what had gone before.
They knew where they were and roughly what had happened, because
Mindori
had spoken to them a couple of times. But the blackhawk wasn’t very communicative.
“I think we’re landing,” Webster said.
“Sounds good,” Jed said. He got in a good kiss with Beth. Gari gave them one dismissive glance, and went back to watching
the docking ledge.
“We’d better check on Gerald,” Beth said.
Jed tried to be a sport. At least the old loon would finally be out of his life after they landed.
Gerald hadn’t moved from the bridge since the amazing xenoc diskcity vanished abruptly and Loren’s possession had ended. For
hour after hour during the stand-off he had stood at the weapons console, like some old-time mariner gripping the wheel during
a storm. His vigilance never wavered the whole time. When it ended, he’d slithered down and sat there, legs splayed on the
floor, back propped up against the side of the console. He stared straight ahead through hazed eyes, not saying a word.
Beth crouched down beside him and clicked her fingers in front of his face. There was no response.
“Is he dead?” Jed asked.
“Jed! No he’s not. He’s breathing. I think he must have some kind of exhaustion problem.”
“We’ll add it to the list,” Jed muttered,
very
quietly. “Hey Gerald, mate, we’ve landed. The
Stryla
came down with us. That’s the one with Marie in. Good, huh? You’ll be seeing her soon, then. How about that?”
Gerald kept staring ahead, unmoving.
“Guess we’d better ask for a doc to see him,” Jed said.
Gerald turned his head. “Marie?” he whispered.
“That’s it, Gerald,” Beth said. She gripped his upper arm tightly. “Marie’s here. Just a few minutes now and you can see her
again. Can you get up?” She tried to lift him, stir him into moving. “Jed, shift yourself.”
“I dunno. Maybe we should leave him for the doc.”
“He’s fine. Aren’t you, Gerald, mate. Just knackered, that’s what.”
“Well, okay.” Jed leant over, and tired to tug Gerald up.
Several loud clanking sounds came from the airlock.
Gari ran in. “The bus is here,” she said breathlessly.
“It’ll take us to Marie,” Beth said encouragingly. “Come on, Gerald. You can do it.”
His legs twitched feebly.
Between them, they got him standing. With one on either side, and Gerald’s arms round their shoulders, they shuffled him towards
the airlock.
______
Marie sat hunched up on the corridor floor outside the bridge. She hadn’t stopped crying since Kiera had been exorcised. The
memories of what had happened since Lalonde were vivid, deliberately so. Kiera hadn’t cared about Marie knowing what was going
on, what her body was doing.
It was disgusting. Filthy.
Even though it wasn’t her performing those acts, Marie knew she would never banish what her body had done. Kiera’s soul might
have gone, but her haunting would never be over.
She’d been given her life back, and couldn’t see a single reason for living it.
The airlock cycled, and the hatch whirred open.
“Marie.”
It was a frail, pained croak, but it sliced right into her soul. “Daddy?” she moaned incredulously. When she looked up he
was standing in the airlock, holding on to the rim. He looked dreadful, barely managing to stand. But his frail old face was
suffused with all the joy of a father holding his infant child for the first time. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he’d
gone through to be here at this time. And he’d suffered it all because she was his daughter, and that alone entitled her to
his love forever.
She stood and held out both hands to him. Wanting a cuddle from Daddy. Wanting him to take her home where none of this would
ever happen.
Gerald smiled wondrously at his pretty little daughter. “I love you, Marie.” His body gave way, pitching him face first onto
the floor.
Marie screamed and ran forwards. His breath was juddering, eyes closed.
“Daddy! Daddy, no!” She pawed at him in hysterics. “Daddy, talk to me!”
The steward from the bus was shouldering her aside, waving a medical block sensor along Gerald’s inert body. “Oh shit. Give
me a hand,” he yelled at Jed. “We’ve got to get him into the habitat.”
Jed was staring at Marie, unable to move. “It’s you,” he said, enchanted.
Beth pushed past him and knelt beside the steward. A life support package had covered Gerald’s face, pumping air into his
lungs.
“Medical emergency,” the steward datavised. “Get a crash team to the reception lounge.” The medical block datavised a violent
alarm as Gerald’s heart stopped. He tore the wrapping from a paramedic package and slapped it across Gerald’s neck. Nanonic
filaments invaded his throat, seeking out the major arteries and veins, pumping in artificial blood, keeping the brain alive.
______
Rather sheepishly, the participants from the Disco At The End Of The World were wandering across the concrete yard in a hungover
stupor, watching dawn break over the arcology. It wasn’t something any of them had expected to see.
Andy was down there with them, datavising questor after questor into the segments of the net that were coming back online.
Satellites were providing temporary coverage as the civil authorities began to re-establish some kind of control. Nothing
he did could bring an acknowledgement from her neural nanonics. Every programming trick he knew was useless.
He started to walk towards the gate out onto the road. She was out there somewhere; if he had to search the whole arcology
himself, he would find her.
“What’s that?” someone asked.
People were stopping and looking up at the dome. The sun had only just risen over the eastern rim; it showed a low bank of
grey cloud washing in from the north. It reached the geodesic crystal structure and flowed gently round it. Not an armada
storm; in fact Andy had never seen a cloud move so slowly before. Then it became curiously hard to see out through the crystal
hexagons. The reason took a very long time to register, he even checked the now-fervid news shows to be absolutely certain.
For the first time in nearly five and a half centuries, snow was falling on London.
______
There was no sign now that humans had ever visited or been involved with the red dwarf star named Tunja. Joshua had moved
the settled Dorado asteroids to the New Washington system along with all their industrial stations; the two Edenist habitats
were to be found orbiting Jupiter. Nothing remained to tell the new inhabitants of the system’s infamous history.
Quantook-LOU had spent two days recovering from the effects of gravity he’d endured in Lalarin-MG. He remained immobile in
his personal space, plugged into Anthi-CL’s dataweb, supervising the initial repair work. Conflicts between the diskcity dominions
had ended, from surprise rather than agreement to start with. But he had mediated a new peace with the other distributors
as they all examined and shared the images which came from sensors mounted on both sides of Tojolt-HI.
The bounty they revealed was almost beyond belief. Mastrit-PJ’s entire population of diskcities now orbited the tiny red star,
packed together in equatorial orbit. And beyond them was a supply of raw cold matter that defied logic; a vast ring of particles
over two hundred million kilometres in diameter. The Mosdva were suddenly drowning in resources.
They could leave the old worn-out diskcities, building new dominions independent from each other. As far as the distributors
could tell, every Tyrathca enclave had been emptied at the same time the diskcities were taken from Mastrit-PJ. The conflicts
which had cursed the Mosdva since the dominions were established would be over for all time.
Quantook-LOU also had the data from the humans, telling him how to build their faster-than-light ship engines. Other distributors
were already mediating for favourable alliances with Anthi-CL, wanting to share the technology. This was a new part of space,
strangely empty without the nebula which had dominated half of their old orbit. Billions of stars lay open to them. It would
be interesting to find the humans again, and other races of which Joshua Calvert had spoken.
______
The Ly-cilph’s perception field expanded slowly outward as its active functions returned out of their dormancy within its
macro-data lattice. At first it believed it had suffered memory loss. It was no longer in the jungle clearing where the human
sacrifice was conducted, instead it appeared to be floating in clear space. The perception field could find nothing within
range. No mass existed for a billion kilometres, not even a lone electron, which was extremely improbable. The energy waves
washing through the field were of a strange composition, one it had no prior record of. An analysis of this continuum’s local
quantum structure revealed it was no longer in the universe of its birth.
A dense mass point emerged beside it, emitting a variety of electromagnetic wave functions. It was impervious to the Ly-cilph’s
probing.
“We understand you are on a voyage to comprehend the full nature of reality,” Tinkerbell said. “So are we. Would you like
to join us?”
______
Oenone
’s crew appeared in Harkey’s Bar amid cheers and boisterous hugs, and the party looked like reaching truly epic proportions.
Genevieve loved every minute of it. It was noisy, hot, and colourful; nothing like parties at Cricklade. People were nice
to her, she’d managed to drink a couple of glasses of wine without Louise noticing, and cousin Gideon even partnered her on
the dance floor. But nothing was funnier than watching the antics of Joshua’s brother, who spent the whole time trying to
avoid a very beautiful and extremely determined blonde lady.
Louise stuck by Joshua’s side the whole time; smiling more from fright than delight as everyone crowded round him, wanting
to hear the tale of the naked singularity from his own mouth. Eventually he led her through the door, swearing he’d be back
in a second. They took a lift directly up to the lobby and walked out into the parkland.
“You looked unhappy in there,” he said.
“I didn’t realize you had so many friends. I never really thought about it. I only ever met you and Dahybi before.”
He led her down a path lined by orange wimwillows, towards a nearby lake. “I never met half of them before today.”