“So what are your long-range goals, Al? What’s your Organization going to do next?”
“Smooth things out. No one is trying to deny things are still a little rough around the edges down here. We need to work on what kind of society we can build.”
“Is it true you’re planning to attack the Confederation?”
“That’s pure bullshit, buddy. Je-zus, I don’t know where you got that rumour from. No of course we’re not going to attack anyone. But we can defend ourselves pretty good if the Confederation Navy tries any funny stuff, we sure got the ships for that. Hell, I don’t want that to happen. We just want to be peaceable neighbours with everyone. I might even ask if we can join the Confederation.” At the murmur of surprise echoing through the lobby he grinned around happily. “Yeah. Why the hell not? Sure we can ask to join. Maybe some good will come out of it, some kind of compromise that’ll make everyone happy; a solution to all the souls that wanna come back. The Organization can pay Confederation longhairs to grow us all new bodies from scratch, something like that.”
“You mean you’d give up your body if a clone was available?”
Al frowned as Emmet leaned over to murmur in his ear, explaining what a clone was. “Sure,” he said. “Like I told you, we’re all the victims of circumstance.”
“You believe peaceful coexistence is possible?”
Al’s jocularity darkened. “You’d better fucking believe it, buddy. We’re back, and we’re here to stay. Grab that? What I’m trying to convince you guys is that we ain’t no end of the world threat, it’s not us who’s the riders of the Apocalypse. We’ve proved possessed and non-possessed can live together on this planet. Okay, so people out there are alarmed right now, that’s only natural. But we’re frightened too, you can’t expect us to go back to the beyond. We’ve got to work together on this. I’m personally offering the Assembly President my hand in friendship. Now that’s an offer he can’t refuse.”
The glowing red clouds had begun to grow, small ruby speckles blossoming right across Norfolk. Louise, Fletcher, and Genevieve spent their first day in orbit watching the images received by the Far Realm ’s external cameras. Kesteven island was by far the worst. A solid crimson aureole had gathered to mask the land, its shape a distended mockery of the coastline it was obscuring. Strands of ordinary white cloud malingered around its disciplined edges, only to be rebuffed by invisible winds if they drifted too close.
Fletcher assured the girls that in itself the red cloud was harmless. “A simple manifestation of will,” he proclaimed. “Nothing more.”
“You mean it’s just a wish?” Genevieve asked, intrigued. She had woken almost purged of her emotional turmoil; there were none of yesterday’s periods of manic exuberance or haunted silences. Although she was quieter than usual; which Louise thought was about right. She didn’t feel like talking much, either. Neither she nor Fletcher had mentioned the Tantu .
“Quite so, little one.”
“But why are they wishing it?”
“So that they can seek refuge below it from the emptiness of the universe. Even this planet’s sky, which has little night, is not a sight to cherish.”
Over thirty islands now had traces of redness in the air. Louise likened it to watching the outbreak of some terrible disease, a swelling cancer gnawing away at the flesh of her world.
Furay and Endron had come down into the lounge a few times, keeping them informed of the navy squadron’s actions, and the army’s progress. Neither of which amounted to much. The army had landed on two islands, Shropshire and Lindsey, hoping to retake their capitals. But reports from the forwards units were confused.
“Same problem as we had with Kesteven,” Furay confided when he brought them lunch. “We can’t support the lads on the ground because we don’t have any reliable targeting information. And that red cloud has got the admiral badly worried. None of the technical staff can explain it.”
By midafternoon, ship’s time, the army commanders had lost contact with half of their troops. The red cloud was visible over forty-eight islands, nine of which it covered completely. As Duke-day ended for Ramsey island slender wisps were located over a couple of villages. Teams of reserve soldiers were hurriedly flown in from Norwich. In both cases contact was lost within fifteen minutes of them entering the area.
Louise watched grimly as the coiling cloud thickened over each village. “I was right,” she said miserably. “There’s nothing anybody here can do. It’s only a matter of time now.”
Tolton made his way up the narrow creek, water from the narrow stream slopping over his glittery purple shoes. The top of the steep bank, a fringe of sandy grass, was several centimetres above his head. He couldn’t see out onto the parkland, and nobody could see him—thankfully. Far overhead, Valisk’s light tube gleamed. The intensity hurt Tolton’s eyes. He was a night person, used to the clubs, bars, and vestibules of the starscrapers, delivering his poet sermons to the ship crew burnouts, bluesensers, stimmed-out wasters, and mercenaries who sprawled throughout the lower floors of the starscrapers. They tolerated him, those lost entities, listening to (or laughing at) his carefully crafted words, donating their own stories to his wealth of experiences. He moved among the descriptions of shattered lives as vagrants moved through the filthy refuse of a darkened cul-de-sac, forever picking, trying to understand what they said, to bestow some grace to their wizened dreams with his prose, to explain them to themselves.
One day, he told them, I will incorporate it all into an MF album. The galaxy will know of your plight, and liberate you.
They didn’t believe him, but they accepted him as one of their own. It was a status which had saved him from many a bar fight. But now, in his hour of desperate need, they had failed him. However difficult it was to acknowledge, they had lost; the toughest bunch of bastards in the Confederation had been wiped out in less than thirty-six hours.
“Take the left hand channel at the next fork,” the processor block clipped to his belt told him.
“Yes,” he mumbled obediently.
And this was the greatest, most hurtful joke of all: him, the aspirant anarchist poet, pathetically grateful to Rubra, the super-capitalist dictator, for helping him.
Ten metres on two gurgling streams merged together. He turned left without hesitation, the foaming water splashing his knees. Fleeing from the starscraper, it was as though an insane montage of all the combat stories he’d ever been told had come scampering up out of his subconscious to torment him. Horror and laughter pursued him down every corridor, even the disused ones he thought only he walked. Only Rubra, a calm voice reeling off directions, had offered any hope.
Water made his black trousers heavy. He was cold, partly from the fright, partly cold turkey.
There had been no sign of pursuit for three hours now, though Rubra said they were still tracking him.
The narrow creek began to widen, its banks lowering. Tolton walked out into a tarn fifteen metres across with a crescent cliff cupping the rear half. Fat xenoc fish lumbered out of his way, apparently rolling along the bottom. There was no other exit, no feed stream.
“Now what?” he asked plaintively.
“There’s an inlet at the far end,” Rubra told him. “I’ve shut down the flow so you’ll be able to swim through. It’s only about five metres long, it bends, and there’s no light; but it leads to a cave where you’ll be safe.”
“A cave? I thought caves were worn into natural rock over centuries.”
“Actually, it’s a surge chamber. I just didn’t want to get technical on you, not with your artistic background.”