“Please,” he said. “Can you take us there?”
The humour sank from her face. “Listen, son, take the advice of an older woman. That recording: it’s just a big bullshit con. They want you there so they can possess you, that’s all. There’s no paradise waiting at the end of the rainbow.”
“Have you been there?” he asked stiffly.
“No. No, I haven’t. So you’re right, I can’t say for certain. Let’s just put it down to a healthy dose of cynicism; everybody catches it when they get older.” She turned back to her drink.
“Will you take me?”
“No. Look, son, even if I was crazy enough to fly to Valisk, do you have any idea how much it would cost you to charter a starship to take you?”
He shook his head mutely.
“From here, about a quarter of a million fuseodollars. Do you have that kind of money?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are then. Now stop wasting my time.”
“Do you know anyone who would take us, someone who believes in Kiera?”
“Goddamnit!” She screwed around in her chair to glare at him. “Can’t you inbred morons pick up a simple hint when it’s smacked you in the face?”
“Kiera said you’d hate us for listening to her.”
The captain let out an astonished snort of breath. “I don’t believe this. Don’t you see how gullible you are? I’m doing you a favour.”
“I didn’t ask you to. And why are you so blind to what she says?”
“Blind ? Fuck you, you teeny shit.”
“Because you are. You’re scared it’s true, that she’s right.”
She stared at him for a long moment, the rest of the crew fixing him with hostile stares. They’d probably beat him up in a minute. Jed didn’t care anymore. He hated her as much as he did Digger and all the others with closed minds and dead hearts.
“All right,” the captain whispered. “In your case I’ll make an exception.”
“No,” one of the crew said, his hand going out to hold her arm. “You can’t, he’s only a kid with a hard-on for the girl.”
She shook off the restraining hand and brought out a processor block. “I was going to hand this over to the Confederation Navy, even though it would be difficult to explain away given our current flight schedule. But I think you can have it instead, now.” She took a flek from its slot in the block and slapped it into an astonished Jed’s hand. “Say hello to Kiera for me. If you aren’t too busy screaming while they possess you.”
Chairs were pushed back noisily. The crew of the Rameses X left their unfinished drinks on the table and marched out.
Jed stood at the centre of a now-silent pub, every eye locked on him. He didn’t even notice, he was staring raptly at the little black flek resting in his palm as if it were the key to the fountain of youth. Which in a way, he supposed, it was.
The Levêque was orbiting fifteen thousand kilometres above Norfolk, its complete sensor suite extended to sweep the planet. Despite the Confederation Navy’s hunger for information, little data was returning. Slow cyclonic swirls of red cloud had mushroomed from the islands, mating then smoothing out into a placid sheet, sealing the world behind a uniform twilight nimbus. Small ivory tufts of cirrocumulus swam above the polar zones for a few hours, the last defiant speckling of alien colour; but in time even they fell to melt into the veil.
The consolidation was five hours old when the change began. Levêque ’s officers noticed the cloud’s light emission level was increasing. The frigate’s captain decided to play safe and ordered them to raise their orbit by another twenty thousand kilometres. By the time their main fusion drive ignited, the crimson canopy was blazing brighter than any firestorm. They ascended at five gees, badly worried by the glare expanding rapidly across the stars behind them. Gravitonic sensors reported discordant ripples within the planetary mass below. If the readings were truthful, then the world should be breaking apart. Heavily filtered optical-band sensors revealed the planet’s geometry remained unchanged.
Seven gees, and the cloud’s surface was kindling to the intensity of a nuclear furnace.
Luca Comar looked upwards in a dreamy daze. The red cloud guarding the sky above Cricklade manor’s steep roof was writhing violently, its gold and crimson underbelly caught by potent microburst vortices. Huge churning strips were being torn open, allowing a fierce white light to slam down. He flung his arms wide, howling a rapturous welcome.
Energy stormed through him at an almost painful rate, bursting from some non-point within to vanish into the raging sky. The woman beside him was performing the same act, her features straining with effort and incredulity. In his mind he could feel the possessed all across Norfolk uniting in this final supreme sacrament.
Boiling fragments of cloud plunged through the air at giddy velocities; corkscrew lightning bolts snapping between them. Their red tint was fading, sinking behind the flamboyant dawn irradiating the universe beyond the atmosphere.
A thick, heavy light poured over Luca. It penetrated straight through his body. Through the mossy grass. Through the soil. The whole world surrendered to it. Luca’s thoughts were trapped by the invasion, unable to think of anything but sustaining the moment. He hung suspended from reality as the last surge of energy unwound through his cells.
Silence.
Luca slowly let out his breath. He opened his eyes cautiously. The clouds had calmed, reverting to rumpled white smears. Warm mellow light was shining over the wolds. There was no sun, no single source point, it came from the boundary of the enclosed universe itself. Shining equally, everywhere.
And they’d gone. He could no longer hear the souls in the beyond. Those piercing pleas and promises had vanished. There was no way back, no treacherous chink in the folds of this fresh continuum. He was free inside his new body.
He looked at the woman, who was glancing around in stupefaction.
“We’ve done it,” he whispered. “We escaped.”
She smiled tentatively.
He held out his arms, and concentrated. Not the smoke-snorting knight again; the moment required something more dignified. Soft golden cloth settled around his skin, an imperial toga, befitting his mood.
“Oh, yes. Yes!”
The energistic ability was still there, the imposition of will upon matter. But now the cloth had a stronger, firmer texture to the artefacts he’d created before.
Before . . . Luca Comar laughed. In another universe. Another life.
This time it would be different. They could establish their nirvana here. And it would last forever.
The cluster of five survey satellites from the Levêque gradually spread apart as they glided through the section of space where Norfolk should be. Communications links beamed a huge flow of information back to the frigate. Every sensor they had was switched to maximum sensitivity. Two distinct spectrums of sunlight fell on them. Tremulous waves of solar ions dusted their receptors. Cosmic radiation bombardment was standard.
There was nothing else. No gravity field. No magnetosphere. No atmospheric gas. Space-time’s quantum signature was perfectly normal.
All that remained of Norfolk was the memory.
When it was discovered in 2125, Nyvan was immediately incorporated into the celebration of hope which was sweeping Earth in the wake of Felicity’s discovery. The second terracompatible planet to be found, a beautiful verdant virgin land, proof the first hadn’t been a fluke. Everybody on Earth wanted to escape out to the stars. And they wanted to go there now. That, ultimately, proved its downfall.
By then, people had finally realized the arcologies weren’t going to be a temporary shelter from the ruined climate, somewhere to stay while Govcentral cooled the atmosphere, cleaned up the pollution, and put the weather patterns back to rights. The tainted clouds and armada storms were here to stay. Anyone who wanted to live under an open sky would have to leave and find a new one.