In Heaven and Earth (14 page)

It showed on the glass
again, more clearly still, but all his attempts to step through
failed.

Taking a deep breath, he
tried to remember how he had done this the first time. The same
nanites that danced in his blood were in Vairya, although they
might be few in number now. So, he needed to strengthen the
connection.

“
Wake me,” he
whispered, and a shudder ran through him.

When he opened his eyes
again, he was back in the real city, blood smearing from his hands
to slick across the hard ground. He reached out, forcing his heavy
body to move, and pressed his bloody palm against Vairya’s wan
cheek, trying not to see that one shoulder was gone, that Vairya’s
torso ended in a tangle of torn cables, that Vairya looked
dead.

As his blood soaked into
Vairya’s skin, Reuben closed his eyes again and slipped back into
his mind, imagining rows of gardeners in armour racing along the
conduit of his blood to bind him more tightly to Vairya.

Vairya, who deserved
better than a violent death.

This time the garden rose
up before him, frail as ash, and Reuben went racing through the
gates, roaring, “Gardeners!”

On every side, the roses
were dying, their faces turning grey and wizened. Dust flew up
beneath his feet, blurring the air, and fallen leaves crackled and
broke under the weight of his steps.

“
Tend the
flowers,” Reuben shouted, as he glimpsed nanoknights moving between
the plants. “Make them live! Make them all live!”

Ahead of him, someone was
weeping, and he ran, leaping over every obstacle, until he burst
into the central grove and found Vairya kneeling there.

Chapter Ten

HE WAS AS pale as a
ghost, the gold faded from his hair, and his body a skeletal mess
of metal rods. When he looked up, though, his face was still his
own, and Reuben dropped down before him and caught his face between
his hands.

“
Reuben?”
Vairya whispered, voice dusty.

“
Live,” Reuben
snarled at him and shouted over him to any gardener who could hear.
“Make him live! Heal him!”

“
You’re dead,”
Vairya said, bringing his own hands up to cover Reuben’s. “I saw it
kill you.”

“
Nobody dies
today,” Reuben said, and he felt all his will go into the words,
boiling out of him in a silver tide. “
Nobody
dies!”

And he kissed Vairya,
desperate and furious.

When he drew back,
Vairya’s cheeks were shining where Reuben’s hands were bleeding
silver, but there was colour in his lips, and his eyes were
brighter, and his voice stronger as he said, “What’s
happening?”

“
Things got a
bit complicated,” Reuben said, watching his face anxiously. With
every second, Vairya looked a little more alive.

“
I guessed that
much,” Vairya snapped. “Why am I not dying? Why are the roses
flowering again? Where did all these knights come from?”

“
They’re not
knights,” Reuben said. “They’re gardeners. I brought you gardeners.
Garden knights, not soldiers.” He did look up then, because Vairya
was starting to look a little wild-eyed.

There were silver
gardeners filling up the avenues of the garden, crowded so closely
that they were stumbling over each other. Every rose bush was being
tended by two, and there were more lined up along the walls and
jostling to get in the gate.

“
Ah,” Reuben
said.

“
There are
thousands of them!”

“
Yes. Um.
Garden knights, if you are not needed here, ride forth. Heal the
city. Replicate as needed to complete your task.”

He saw the first
shuffling movement, but then turned back to Vairya, who was still
clutching his hands frantically.

“
Reuben,” he
said, voice shaking, “I feel very strange.”

Reuben’s heart sank. He
believed that Vairya would survive, refused to consider the
alternative, but how to tell him that he was crippled?

“
You were
hurt,” he started.

“
I know that! I
was there! My toes hurt. How can my toes hurt when I’m sure five
minutes ago I didn’t have any toes!”

Reuben was pretty certain
Vairya knew about phantom pain, but he was a little intrigued
himself.

“
Can you wake?”
he asked.

Vairya swallowed. “If I
do, will this be a dream? Are you really alive?”

“
I am,” Reuben
promised.

“
Then let us
wake,” Vairya murmured, and he closed his eyes.

THEY awoke in a green and
silver world.

Reuben’s hand was still
resting against Vairya’s cheek, but grass had sprung up in the
space between them, bright blades uncurling further as Reuben
blinked.

“
You’re
silver,” Vairya whispered and sat up, staring at Reuben. “Your
throat, your arms, your cheeks. You’re streaked with silver and
I’m… I’m whole. I think.”

And he was, no longer
ragged and broken, but naked and entire, skin covering even the
places where he had been metal before.

“
Are you flesh
and blood now?” Reuben asked, reaching out to touch his
chest.

“
No,” Vairya
said uncertainly. “I still have all my original parts, although
they’re not all quite in the right places. Oh.” He grimaced. “Okay,
now they are. That was really unsettling.”

“
What
happened?” Reuben said, looking past Vairya to where a scatter of
cogs and casings were entangled with the grass. As he watched, the
grass covered them, and then reached higher.

“
Everything
just clicked into where it was meant to be. What is
this?”

“
The nanites we
gave you to fix your memory,” Reuben said. “They’re in your blood,
and mine, and in the soil now. Think a command, and they will
obey.”

“
That’s rather
unnerving,” Vairya said.

“
We’re alive,”
Reuben said.

“
Us, the grass,
the trees— those trees were very dead a few minutes
ago.”

Reuben rolled onto his
back, looking up. The trees were alive, every dancing leaf rimmed
in silver.

Vairya crawled across to
lean over him. “What are we? Are we like them, the
Enemy?”

“
The opposite,
I think,” Reuben said and reached out to touch Vairya again, just
to reassure himself.

Vairya pulled him into a
tight embrace, and Reuben hugged him back, pressing his face
against Vairya’s shoulder to reassure himself that it was
real.

“
Get a room,” a
disgusted voice said, interrupting them, and Reuben jerked back to
stare up at Meili.

“
You’re alive,”
Vairya said to her, his eyes wide again.

She shrugged, her face
taut with frustration. “Stating the obvious there. Get me out of
this!”

The sheet of diamond
which had encased her was peeling away, drooping like petals, but
her legs were still trapped. Reuben hurried to help pull the rest
off, watching the sunlight catch on the flashes of silver dusting
her hair and bare shoulders.

“
Why are you
the only one with clothes, Cooper?” she demanded.

“
I didn’t die
quite as much as the rest of you,” he said vaguely and regretted it
when a spasm of panic made her face clench. To distract her, he
said, with as much gleeful malice as he could summon, “If I’m
breaking you out of your chrysalis, Meili, does that make you a
beautiful butterfly?”

Her hand was free now,
and she lifted a finger at him with a scowl. “Have you looked in a
mirror lately, Cooper? You’re not one to be casting
aspersions.”

“
Been a little
busy,” he said, and they all sighed in relief as Vairya dragged a
limp leaf of diamond away far enough that she could step
out.

“
Where are the
trolls?” she said, looking around.

“
Now that,”
Vairya said, “is a very sensible question. Have either of you still
got coms? Drone eyes would be useful.”

“
Nothing but
skin and implants here,” Meili said.

Reuben lifted his hand to
his ear to check his coms, and brought away a marbled mass of
silver, diamond, and crushed wires. “No.”

“
I can’t see
anything through the trees,” Meili said, squinting around them.
“Would they come back to tackle this?”

“
Yes,” Vairya
said, looking around as well. He was starting to look
jittery.

“
Up the hill,”
Reuben said. “Let’s see exactly what is happening here.”

Vairya nodded and led the
way. Reuben followed, and Meili fell in beside him, picking her way
barefoot along the grassy path. She didn’t seem in the least bit
self-conscious about her nudity, so Reuben tried his best to ignore
it too.

“
It’s silver,”
she said. “That’s our nanites, isn’t it? Cooper, what the hell have
you done?”

“
I’m not sure,”
he admitted and took a deep breath. The air tasted green and sweet,
and it calmed him. “I didn’t want to be at war any
longer.”

“
Reuben!”
Vairya called. “Meili! Quickly!”

He didn’t sound afraid,
but Reuben ran anyway, grass brushing at his heels and the sunlight
hot between the swaying branches of the trees, filling the world
with warm shadows.

Out on the crest of the
hill, it was hotter, enough to sting his skin and make Meili swear.
Vairya was standing at the highest point, gazing down at the city
with parted lips. Reuben stopped beside him and looked
out.

After a few
stunned moments, Meili whispered, a note of awe in her voice,
“Reuben, what
have
you done?”

The diamond wasteland was
turning green once more. Wherever Reuben looked, the diamond was
dissolving, and grass was breaking through the cracks. After the
grass came tiny trees, lifting their leafy heads towards the
blazing sun, leaves shivering in delight.

And there were roses,
twining over every still-shining wall in long briars, breaking into
swollen flowers as he watched.

“
Look for the
trolls,” Vairya said, his hand gripping Reuben’s.

“
Where?”

“
The roses have
them.”

Now Vairya had said it,
Reuben could see them. The trolls of old Earth no longer roamed
freely through Caelestia’s streets. Instead, they stood, imprisoned
by thorns, as the grass rose up around them.

“
Watch!” Vairya
said, lifting his free hand to point.

At the foot of their
hill, a troll lifted its arm, struggling to pull it free of the
briars that were growing around it faster and faster. Then, as
silver thorns pressed against its hard skin, it shuddered
faintly.

And then it fell apart,
shattering into countless shards of diamond that flew into the air
like beads of water. They fell to the grass below, and then
sprouted, not into new diamond warriors, but into green
shoots.

“
Come on!”
Meili cried and went dashing down towards them.

“
It’s not
safe,” Reuben protested.

She looked back,
laughing. “I don’t care. I want to know what’s
happening!”

“
I’m with her,”
Vairya said and released Reuben’s hand to go running after her,
their bare thighs flashing through the long grass. Reuben threw
himself after them, laughing at the sheer madness of it
all.

When he reached the
bottom of the hill, they were both staring at the new plants,
startled into silence.

Roses grew from
glittering seeds, but they were strange in form, their stems ridged
and twisted.

“
They look like
people,” Meili said uncertainly.

“‘
Get with
child a mandrake root,’” Vairya murmured.

Make them
live
, Reuben had screamed at the garden
knights.

“
Vairya,” he
said. “The only limit is your imagination. If you want them to be
human, think it so.”

Vairya understood, of
course, and he turned to stare at Reuben, his eyes bright with
shock and doubt. “I don’t have your imagination. I don’t know how
to—”

“
Then
remember,” Reuben said urgently, seizing Vairya’s hand and pressing
it against silver-tinged rosewood. “Remember one of the people you
saved, just one of them. Remember!”

Vairya closed his eyes,
breathing out slowly. For a moment, nothing moved, save the wind
rippling through the newborn trees.

Then the rosebush
changed, shuddered like a man rolling out his shoulders, and became
human.

He looked like an
ordinary enough man, middle-aged, broad, laughter lines around his
eyes, and a farmer’s tan on his arms. When he opened his eyes,
blinking, they were just an ordinary brown.