One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries (37 page)

“
Thus people ever were,” said Mary.

“
How did she save her sisters?” asked Anne.

“
She … she didn’t know what to do,” faltered Ella. “Because people started to say she was too fond of dragons altogether, even though they weren’t really dragons. She started to think perhaps dragons were better than people after all, for they were still beautiful and bold.” She faltered into a troubled silence.

“
But she thought of all the stories her sisters had told her,” prompted Anne.

“
And made a few up herself,” said Sable, “because she herself was such a bold, bright girl.”

“
And she thought that the problem was that everyone had forgotten,” said Ella. She caught at Sable’s flapping sleeve and said, “Because the people had forgotten the dragons were girls who had been their friends, and the wicked prince even made her sisters forget they had ever been anything but dragons.”

“
Were they terribly fierce dragons?” whispered Sable.

“
Oh, very,” said Ella. “The best sort of dragons, if they really had been dragons. They had great red wings and spiky spines, and breathed fire and ate knights and everything.” Sable laughed hoarsely and put her arms around Ella and kissed the top of her head.

“
Go on,” said Anne, and coughed at the pale smoke that curled its way under the door. The crackling was louder than her cough.

“
So,” said Ella, “she gathered everything she thought might make people remember who the dragons really were. She found, um, hair in the sisters’ combs—”

“
And necklaces they had worn,” said Sable, jangling hers.

“
And threads from lace collars,” said Mary.

“
And strings from their violins,” said Anne.

“
And paper from their books,” said Ella. It was growing warmer in the house. “And feathers from pens they had written with.”

“
And branches from their rose bushes,” said Mary.

“
And nettles that had stung them,” said Sable.

“
And all sorts of things from the stories they had told,” said Anne.

“
She knotted them into a great big shining net,” said Ella. “And because she knew the dragons had burned all the hillsides about them and the embers would be very hot, she made shoes out of metal and glass that would not burn, and lined them with old dancing shoes because she knew that glass would hurt to walk on almost as much as coals, and she set off to the hills to find the dragons.”

“
She was a very clever girl,” said Anne.

Mary wiped her eyes, for the smell of burning wood and the thickening air was making them water. “Did she have to walk far?”

“
No,” said Ella, “but she had to run. The prince and all the people were there when she arrived. The prince was trying to kill the dragons, because then everyone would think he was wonderful, but they were very large — bigger than he expected. And then he saw the girl and thought maybe they would eat her and be distracted while he killed them.”

“
What a wicked man,” said Sable. It sounded like a wind was roaring outside the house, and the flame of the lamp flickered.

Mary sat down and leaned against Anne’s legs. She coughed, and when she stopped she said, “Go on, Ella. I want to know how it ends.” Sable and Anne sat down beside her. Ella stood before them, small but magnificent in lace and beads.

“
The girl did not want to talk to the prince in case he made her forget too, but she showed him the net and pointed to the dragons. He didn’t know who she was, but he could see the net was remarkable. So he helped her fling it up and over the heads of the dragons, and it fell down about them, and all the people saw that they were the three sisters, and the sisters remembered that they ought really to be people again. They turned into women and the girl ran to them and wrapped her coat and her cape and the net around them, and gave them the shoes she had made for them.”

“
What did the prince do?” asked Mary.

“
He was very surprised,” said Ella. “But he wasn’t at all happy.” Her breath caught, hot in her chest, and she coughed and gasped and made herself go on, though her voice sounded strange. “He picked up his sword, which wasn’t fair at all for the only weapon they had was the net and that was made of things that were good against dragons, not against wicked princes. But the three sisters opened their mouths and breathed out fire, just as if they were still dragons, and then they picked up their sister in the net and flew, just as if they still had great red wings, over the burnt hills and the trees and far away until they came home.”

She stood, looking down at them, and Sable took her hands and drew her down into their arms. “And did they live happily?” asked Sable.

Although it was so very hot, Ella curled up against her and watched the lamplight die behind a veil of choking smoke. She felt Anne’s hand on hers and Mary’s hand on her hair. Their breathing was slow, as if they were falling asleep. “Of course they did,” said Ella as the sound of hungry flames moved around and above them. “For ever and ever, and everyone was happy because the wicked prince was gone, and the sisters lived very quietly in a beautiful house in a garden full of roses. But they never, ever, ever forgot they had been dragons.”

The fire roared outside, and inside the sisters fell asleep one by one in each others’ arms. Ella struggled to stay awake as long as she could, and through burning eyes and thick smoke she saw Death come through the wall and touch the sisters, one at a time — Anne, then Mary and Sable last of all, so that they shone brighter than candles, brighter than dragons, before they vanished away. Then Death came right up to Ella and bent down and looked her in the eyes.

“
Get away from me, wicked old prince,” murmured Ella. “For I am the last of my kind, and I have told a great story, and my mother and my aunts are turned to dragons, and I am not afraid of you.”

And perhaps Death believed her, for it backed away, and Ella sat up. The beams and burning shingles fell about her like leaves and curling bark, and the smoke billowed up and away and peeled back to show the midnight sky, with its stars bright as sparks, but cold.

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The crowd around the house fell silent. For all the heat of the fire in front of them, the clear night was ice at their backs. For long years the memory of the chill of it lay like a curse on the town. The Governor returned to the city a broken man — some said it was because of what he had done, but others that it was because of what he had seen: a daughter who burned bright as the moon, bright as white-hot iron. She walked out of the burning ruins and through the fearful crowd and strode away, in her dress of smouldering lace and her shoes that shone like glass. She disappeared into the dry hills, and though for days afterwards fire raged through the trees and farms, Ella was never seen again.

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Day Zero

Earth

I
t
was an unremarkable summer morning beneath the cloudless weather domes, when fifty-three thousand residents of the Pacific Hub failed to wake up. Harried medics jetted through the subdued towerscapes, finding no evidence of trauma, no detectable poisons or pathogens. Just the gentle grip of rigor mortis setting in.
 

The following week, the Mediator of the Southern Mineral Alliance keeled over during a live cloudcast, along with three million of her compatriots. No splinter cells claimed responsibility. Epidemiologists were both horrified and quietly intrigued.

Only one particular man could have known what had begun, but he had vanished over ninety years ago.

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Five years after Day Zero

Earth

Ven sprinted through the creaking corridors of the Mariana Base, her wet brown hair falling into her eyes, klaxons melting, embers chasing her down the collapsing steel tube. The water rose hungrily around her shins, and Ven slowed only to seal each door behind her. The boy in her arms made no sound, his thin, olive arms tight around her neck, his face pressed into the shoulder of her faded red flight-suit. The last airlock hissed shut as they entered the cockpit, and Ven buckled the boy into a padded seat imperfectly modified to fit a six year old.

Ven hadn’t been trained for scenarios like this. On a bad day, she might have to salvage a busted container of octopus puppets after a tricky re-entry, but today, it wasn’t a cargo module clamped to the underside of the
Morning Star
.
 

Ven’s fingers bashed across the black console, and holographic indicators fuzzed into life. The cockpit shuddered, and Ven nosed the ship upward. The domed bay doors were closed, but she had to trust that her colleagues were still alive. Even with the facility disintegrating around them, they wouldn’t let her down. That was scientists for you.

Ven swept her fingers up the engine gauge; the cockpit screamed with warnings as the nanocarbon doors loomed to fill the screen. With inches to spare, the metal maw opened and the
Morning Star
slammed into the crush of dark water.
 

Ven switched to propellers, churning up through the cloudy water column. Colossal squid slammed briefly into the viewscreen before fading back into the bioluminescent twilight. She didn’t dare glance at the boy, didn’t dare think of her friends in the imploding research station below. The engines whined furiously as they finally broke through the waves and into a smoky red sky.

A mess of gargantuan, holographic screens hung in the sky, blaring static. On the horizon, an ominous glow was intensifying exponentially.

“
Oh hell,” said Ven.

She swiped every thruster to maximum, hoping the shields would prevent the boy turning into jam. Ven drained the power from every system save the burning blue engines as the light outside swept closer, dissolving the clouds around them. Missiles chased them through the stratosphere, and the ship rocked as one warhead shattered the landing gear. Ven heaved the
Morning Star
back on course, the other missiles falling away as they pulled further into orbit. Below them, a blinding corona rushed across the blue green surface, and the crust of the Earth disintegrated.
 

Ven sat in silence, then flicked off the viewscreen. She ventured a glance at the boy, who continued to stare at the blank frame. Ven’s interactions with children generally left them in tears, but she could hardly make things worse. She unbuckled the ashen boy from his seat, and wrapped a thermal blanket around his shoulders.

“
Solomon, isn’t it?” said Ven.

The boy nodded mechanically, so Ven continued softly.

“
When I was young, a friend told me a story. When the universe was new, the sky was full of suns. But it was too bright, and too hot, so the great coelacanth of the cosmos swam between them, swatting them apart with her massive tail…”

The boy’s eyes turned slowly to meet hers, and he blinked solemnly. Ven forged on with her tale of far flung suns and rivers of stars, haunted by astral dragonfish with moons for lures. When she ran out of story, she continued to hum random tunes, her arms around the boy. He listened wordlessly, and as their tiny blue star sailed further from Earth, the silent void seemed just a little less lonely.

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Ven sagged on her bunk, undressed to a black singlet and shorts. Solomon had finally fallen asleep, or unconscious — she never could tell the difference. Ven rolled her singlet up her stomach, wincing as she prised open the panel beneath her ribs. She’d been meaning to get the latch fixed, but Doctor Josh had been so busy.

“
Would you rather be alone?” said a soothing, male voice.

On the monitor beside the copper-alloy door, a light blue sine wave undulated calmly.

“
If you’re shy, you can avert your sensors, Mike,” scowled Ven.

She wedged a fingernail beneath her sternum, and a battery deck ejected with a soft whir. The green bar was illuminated at eighty percent. She should have replaced the battery when she had the chance, but no one seemed to stock legacy tech.

“
He’s going to notice you don’t get older,” said Mike.

Ven snapped the panel shut.

“
They say men aren’t perceptive about those things,” said Ven.

“
I think you’re getting men confused with blind cave beetles.”

Ven swiped the data cuff on her wrist, and a holographic star chart bloomed before her. In one corner, a tiny blue green globe turned peacefully.

“
Did you watch it, Mike?” said Ven softly.

There was a pause.

“
Yes,” said Mike. “It’s just us now.”

Ven lay on the cold bed, staring at the rust coloured ceiling.

“
There are still other stations, other ships,” said Ven.

“
The same kill switch in every human.”

Ven sat up icily.

“
Sorry,” said Mike, his tone unrepentant. “I meant the same chronogenetic species-wide pathology. Only robots have kill switches.”

Ven let it go. From what little she knew, Mike35 had every reason to be bitter. When the mysterious epidemic first began, the world had been terrifyingly unprepared. Entire cities were wiped out overnight, and then for weeks, sometimes months, there would be no unusual deaths. Everyone would wonder if perhaps it was over, and then another enclave would succumb.