Ragnarok 03 - Resonance (42 page)
Read Ragnarok 03 - Resonance Online
Authors: John Meaney
HOME GALAXY, 1005300 AD
The gods that were Roger and Gavriela floated free near the galactic core, watching the greater beings that were Labyrinth and Zajinet descendants as they worked together, repairing damage to the galaxy: refurbishing suns and tidying up their configurations.
Multitudes of crystal humans also watched, though many had returned to Valhöll-now-Earth, or made other worlds their home for now. This was the aftermath of victory.
It was no surprise when Kenna and Rathulfr flew towards them; the surprise was that the former war queen and warrior held hands as they did so. They smiled as they drew close and hovered.
âWe did it.
Kenna gestured to the greater gods at work.
Thanks to our friends, fulfilling prophecy
.
âProphecy?
asked Gavriela.
âNine realms on three levels of reality
, Kenna told them.
There was always a third universe, not to mention glowing Múspellheim, which always fit badly into the scheme
.
Was that a hint that the darkness, mediating through StÃgr a million years ago, had seen in his half-believed myths the possibility of its demise?
But Rathulfr had a different question to ask.
âSharp still believes he can resurrect Harij, Magni is headed for Andromeda to fetch his people back, and Freya seems determined to personally thank every one of three billion people that fought along-side us. Kenna and I wish to learn from our omnipotent friends
. He gestured towards the great beings at work, fixing the galaxy.
But what of you two? What are your plans?
Gavriela and Roger looked at each other.
âWe have other questions
, said Gavriela.
âLike whether war is the only way to interact with darkness
, said Roger.
So, even Kenna and Rathulfr could look surprised.
They floated in space, mulling this over.
âYou think we could have avoided all this?
Kenna gestured at the fading jet, among which crystalline corpses floated like clouds of tiny diamonds.
You think if there had been another way, we would not have taken it?
Roger and Gavriela shook their heads.
âRagnarökkr was inevitable
, said Roger.
It's the aftermath that's negotiable
.
All four turned their gazes away from the galactic centre, to the greater universe beyond.
In a trillion years, two trillion years, as Kenna had told her warriors, the distant galaxies would no longer be visible: the cosmos would have expanded so far, pulling galaxies apart by such unimaginable distances, that no light from any galaxy would ever reach another.
Then the darkness would rule.
âWhat if the darkness
, said Gavriela,
wanted to link galaxies for good, so they would not be sundered apart?
Kenna blinked.
âFor good?
So great a power might simply crush baryonic-matter lifeforms because such life seemed too trivial and worthless to care about, as humanity once treated microbes.
âAnd your intentions?
asked Rathulfr.
Your specific intentions, my friends?
Roger smiled, and took hold of Gavriela's hand.
âWe're thinking of travelling
.
They looked along the ruined jet, in the direction of Shadow Gate where so many fell. And Gavriela smiled.
âIt will be an adventure, if nothing else
.
Kenna looked at Rathulfr, then back at Roger and Gavriela.
âThat much is certain
.
âYou mean
, said Roger,
it's predestined?
The four of them laughed, floating in vacuum.
And Roger and Gavriela turned away, still holding hands, as spacetime whirled around them, lighting up with a brilliant sapphire glow.
âGo well.
âAnd you.
They flew towards the void.
When it comes to using recent historical figures in fiction, I agree with Barbara Kingsolver: an author does not have free rein. My depiction of Alan Turing, in this and the previous volume, relied heavily on the superlative biography by Andrew Hodges. It is my interpretation, a fictional rendering and not the real person, transformed to serve the needs of the narrative. The world owes the real Turing an immense debt, not to mention an apology.
Peter Hennessy's analysis of 1950s Britain,
Having It So Good
, was particularly helpful. The savagery of continental Europe following World War II, as hinted at in
Chapter 2
, was too brutal for me to detail here. A conversation with historian Keith Lowe prior to the publication of his
Savage Continent
, followed by the book itself, formed a shocking eye-opener.
In
Chapter 30
, the descriptions of termites and weaver ants (including the phrase, âsending their old women to war') come directly from E.O. Wilson's essay
In The Company Of Ants
. The
Chapter 12
quotation regarding gastrulation comes from the biologist Lewis Wolpert.
The Bach piece mentioned in
Chapter 41
is Badinerie from his Orchestral Suite No.2 in B Minor.
My depiction of the galactic centre as something other than a black hole comes from a speculation by Nobel laureate Robert B. Laughlin. Not from the Laughlin book cited below, however â that belongs here because of its emergent-properties perspective on fundamental physics.
In the previous volumes, the Absorption scene in
Berchtesgaden contains a nod to Roald Dahl, and Gavriela's homecoming after the US trip in
Transmission
, though it came into my head fully formed, is
homage
to Nicholas Monsarrat for
The Cruel Sea
.
The fictional SRS's pre-deployment antics are inspired by a description in Robin Horsfall's book,
Fighting Scared
.
For long-lived academic supervision, encouragement and friendship, infinite thanks to Professor Jim Davies. And thanks to everyone else at Oxford's Department of Computer Science, previously the Computing Laboratory.
Thank you to physicist/writer Dave Clements for organising the
Science for Writers
conferences at Imperial College, and giving me Imperial as a setting.
Many, many thanks to Fluffy Mark for reminding me about Kian.
At my redoubtable publishers, enormous gratitude goes to the magnificent Marcus Gipps (thank you for the insights, which made this and the previous book so much stronger), the stupendous Simon Spanton, and jolly Jon Weir.
Thank you to Bonbon and Nutmeg, for putting in an appearance in Labyrinth, and being wonderful.
As always and ever, love and gratitude to Yvonne, who puts up with it and gets me through it all.
While I was writing this, the third and final volume of Ragnarok, researchers reported definitive evidence that in the eighth century,
during the year 775 or 776
, Earth experienced a blast of gamma radiation. (Note that StÃgr was corrupted over a year before Ulfr encountered him.)
Several days before I submitted the completed book, news from the Fermi Space Telescope came to my attention: patterns in the data suggest some of the gamma-rays emitted from the galactic core are produced by dark-matter interactions.
It seems the darkness is on the move . . .
Mid Glamorgan, Wales, January 2013
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Copyright © John Meaney 2013
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First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
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This eBook first published in 2013 by Gollancz.
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