Skyfall (41 page)

Dead earth.

Just like around the shifting tower Dead earth below her feet. Cold. Hard.

There's life down there, all right. There's the Earthmother, but she's deep. Deeper than Saria can reach right now.

It's no wonder the other one can't feel it, either.

Saria!

The call shudders into her. It's somewhere here. Somewhere in all this dead earth.

But it's impossible to tell where, through all the cold. It might be just a little away, past the next block of deadness, or it might be as far off as the sunrise. She feels it, though, and knows she has to go to it.

This one who's looking at her, this burnt man, he's different, somehow. Not quite like all the others.

Not a Nightperson, but not a Darklander, either.

There's something about him that doesn't feel right. Like he's trapped between the two worlds, belonging in neither.

Slowly, carefully, Saria calls up every last dreg of earthwarmth she can drag from the dead ground, pulling it into her, greedily, and reaches for him.

It's like he's waiting for her, warm, bright, his mind almost as welcoming as Dreamer Gaardi's.

He's smiling.

He's speaking.

‘There's somebody I want the two of you to meet…'

The dim, filtered light spilling into obs through the mirrored clearcrete windows threw a strange, silvery glow across everything. Dernan Mann stood at the terminal, his fingers in constant motion as they pulled up file after file from the project archives. Most he simply deleted out of hand, being careful to erase everything, every trace of both the folder and its contents, from the registry. Every piece of data, every finding, every speculation. A thousand years of accumulated scientific analysis of the Darklands and its citizens vanished, one tetrabyte at a time, into the ether.

Occasionally, his eyes would pick out something – some detail in the stream of information as it rolled past – and he'd stop, upload the file to a hidden subroutine he'd created in the skyeye transfer files, and then continue deleting.

He'd been working for about an hour when the com chimed. He sighed. He knew this had to happen eventually, but still, so quickly …

Dernan Mann flicked the ‘respond' icon.

‘Mann.'

‘Doctor
Mann.'

If Jenx was surprised to find himself talking to the head of research rather than his elder son, he didn't let it show.

‘What do you want, Jenx?'

‘Where is Janil?'

‘Indisposed. Can I help you?'

On the display, Jenx hesitated.

‘What are you doing there? I thought you'd been removed from the project.'

Dernan Mann smiled. ‘I'm just helping Janil tie up a few loose ends.'

‘Such as?'

‘Don't worry about it. You wouldn't understand.'

There was a pause while the two men measured each other up. Both knew there was a game being played here, a deadly one. Jenx made the next move.

‘Security has detected some … odd data movements coming from DGAP. Do you know anything about that?'

‘No. You'd have to ask Janil.'

‘Right. Janil. You'd have no objections if I came across to speak to him personally?'

‘Jenx, you're the head of citywide security. Who am I to object?'

‘Good, then. I'll see you shortly.'

The line went dead.

Dernan Mann sighed again, shut down the file he'd been working on, and then opened a new program. The computer responded instantly:

DGAP System Overwrite Protocol.
UNUSED DATA PURGE.
** CAUTION**

All critical data MUST be taken offline and given redundancy before engaging this protocol.

Enter user authorisation > :

Dernan Mann hesitated. He'd hoped to be able to load more of the critical systems files up to the skyeye, just in case Lari ever managed to …

He shook his head. Jenx would be on his way, probably with an armed division. There was no point wasting any further time.

Mann, D. 90098DGD57544

Immediately a new icon flashed red in the centre of the interface.

Execute?

Smiling at the irony, Dernan Mann tapped the icon just once. Less than a second later, the terminal went blank as the DGAP data processors purged themselves of everything.

Then, picking up a headset from beside the terminal, he slipped it on and crossed back to the windows. Janil was lying on the podium again. He looked asleep, but it was hard to be certain. Dernan Mann studied his eldest son.

It could have been so different,
he thought, as he activated the com.

‘Janil?'

‘What?'

Through the pickup, his son's voice sounded tinny and distant.

‘You'll be pleased to know that Jenx just called. He wasn't too happy when I answered his com. He's on his way across.'

Below, Janil hauled himself awkwardly upright. He was favouring his left hand and keeping his right clutched across his chest.

‘Are you going to let me out, then?'

‘No. He can do that when he gets here.'

‘So you're just going to let me stay down here?'

‘I have to go now, Janil.'

‘Where?'

Dernan Mann took one last look at his son. Even as Janil struggled to keep himself looking angry, Dernan Mann could see fear in the way he sat, in the way he hunched his shoulders. He looked so tiny down there. Fragile. Almost like the girl. Almost like Eyna.

‘I'm going to see your mother. Goodbye, son.'

Then he toggled the com off, placed the headset beside his terminal, pulled up the command menu that operated the airlock to the chamber, and left it there for Jenx to find when he arrived.

The lift took only a couple of moments to reach the hangar deck, and Dernan Mann stepped into that vast, cavernous space. His footsteps rang off the hard plascrete floor and he stared away into the gloom, where the bug-like flyers crouched, still and silent now, most never to be flown again.

It wasn't too late for him to take one, he thought. He'd never been as good a pilot as Janil or Eyna, but he could probably still fly. He could take one and go … where? The Darklands?

No. There was no point.

And besides, he wasn't a Darklander. He belonged to Port City. He was a Nightperson.

Across from the lifts, set high into the wall beside the locker room, was the hangar control centre, a carry-over from the days when Port North created enough airtraffic to justify having a central control. It took a couple of minutes to climb the steep staircase. From up here, two large clearcrete windows looked across the entire hangar, taking in the outer doors and the whole flightline. The buglike DGAP flyers, still used occasionally, were at the end closest to him. Up at the far end were the old intra-planetary flyers, larger and more boxy than their sleek little counterparts. They were a hangover from the days when there was still regular travel between earth's sky cities.

The hangar controls were old, second- or third-generation skycity technology, a row of switches rather than a digital program on the interface. He found the controls he needed, and then it was a relatively simple matter to disengage the locks, flick a switch, and watch as the nearest of the enormous hangar doors slowly wound open on the far side of the hangar.

As he climbed back down, a slight wind was blowing in through the open door, bringing with it the dusty taste of outside.

Eyna would have loved this,
he thought.

Through the opening, Port City was alive, bright under the moonlight, sparkling below the stars. His city.

His doomed city.

The lowest point of the door curved past about a metre higher than the deck, at a slight outwards angle to the floor. His hips against the plascrete lip, he leaned out a little way and looked down into the dark tangle of the underworld.

‘I hope you're there somewhere, son.'

Then, lifting his eyes slowly, he took it all in: the enormous stacks of domes, the thousands of raised stalks, the curving clearcrete and the masted arrays, filling the sky, keeping humanity aloft. The wind whistled through the opening and he felt it on the bare skin of his face and arms. It was cold, dry, real. He breathed it in.

‘It's beautiful!'

Then Dernan Mann closed his eyes, let go of the rim and leaned forward again, just a little further …

As soon as night fell, the flyers were out again, criss-crossing the sky like a swarm of predatory insects. Searchlights probed the deep fissures and caverns of the underworld, bathing the decaying concrete in more light than it had seen in centuries.

Huddled in an empty alcove between two buildings, Lari could feel Saria's bare arm pressed against his as the five of them – Gregor, Jem, Saria, Kes and himself – waited for yet another flyer to pass overhead.

‘They're certainly keen to find you lot,' Gregor shouted over the clamour. ‘Not gonna happen, though. Not now.'

‘You sound confident,' Kes shouted back.

‘With good cause.'

The noise grew too loud for further discussion and they simply stood there, feeling the old concrete tremble around them as it was buffeted by the sound.

Apart from Gregor, the only one who didn't seem scared was Saria. When a burst of reflected light briefly illuminated the inside of their hiding place, Lari was amazed to see that she was smiling.

‘Aren't you scared?' he asked, once the noise had died down.

‘Of this? Nah. I've been chased by you lot plenty of times. At least here there's lots of places where you can get hidden quickly. Not like the Darklands. Nothin' to hide behind out there 'cept dirt.'

‘So how do you avoid them?' Jem looked at Saria, curious.

‘Sometimes we wet ourselves, cool right down and cover up in sand an' mud and stay real still, like a rock, until they fly right past us. But just before his lot got me' – she gestured at Lari – ‘I learnt how to use the Earthmother. I learnt to pull up earthwarmth and join the land, make myself part of everything, not separate like you.'

‘I don't understand,' said Jem. ‘Earthwarmth?'

Saria took Jem's hand, gently pulled her down, and placed the girl's palm flat on the ground.

‘No point even tryin' to feel it here. This land's got so much dead earth smeared all over it that the Earthmother's buried, real deep. But she's down there, all right. An' once you can feel her, you can find her easy enough.'

Lari and Kes exchanged a mystified look over the top of the other girls' heads.

‘We're clear again,' Gregor said. ‘Let's go.'

Lari and Kes followed him back out into the street and Jem and Saria came after them. They were walking along a wide thoroughfare lined with empty, crumbling buildings. Once or twice Lari caught glimpses of other people, little more than shadows, who seemed to be trailing them, flitting between the rubble on either side. Gregor seemed unconcerned.

‘Clansfolk. It's old Weymouth's people, though. Nothing to worry about.'

The avenue curved slightly, then straightened. The sun had set some time earlier, but there was enough light thrown down from the skycity to make out the whole street, its surface cracked and crazy, stretching as far as Lari could see.

It was strange, almost dizzying, to be able to look so far along a straight line and not have it interrupted by a curving wall of clearcrete. The closest thing he could compare it to was the flightline in the hangar deck below DGAP, but even that paled into insignificance against the unbroken, geometric immensity of this part of the underworld.

They made their way cautiously, always alert for the telltale howl of an approaching flyer. Here and there, fires threw flickering dots of light from various deserted buildings, and between two of the old structures Lari saw a makeshift campsite with a mother suckling a child beside a dull fire. The look she gave them as they passed was somewhere between hostility and a lack of interest.

‘This is how they live? The clans?'

Gregor nodded. ‘Some. A couple of groups, the beachfolk, for example, move around a lot, up and down the coast. But in this part of the city, people tend to stay put.'

‘What do they eat?'

‘Whatever they can get their hands on. The river and sea-edge clans know how to get food from the water. Some raid recyc storage dumps and others have shiftie relatives who bring stuff down from up top.'

For Lari it was impossible to imagine anyone actually having to live like this.

‘You still haven't told us where we're going,' Kes said. Ever since leaving the refuge, she'd been fretting about her parents. ‘I need to get back up to Mum and Dad. They'll be frantic. Are you certain I can't just get a maglift and—'

‘Not possible,' Jem said curtly. ‘All upward-bound maglifts are being redirected straight to security stations.'

‘Then what about a ladder? Like the one on 87b?'

‘No,' Gregor answered. ‘For the moment you're safest with us. Don't worry, Kes. You're part of the Underground. We'll look after you.'

‘But my parents …'

‘They can't keep up this level of security forever. It'll have to relax soon. Once they ease up we'll get you topside.'

‘But what if they don't?'

Gregor looked at Jem and gave a tight smile. ‘They will. Before a lot longer the Prelate's going to have much bigger things to worry about than catching a mixie girl like yourself.'

Something in the look that passed between Gregor and his daughter left Lari feeling uneasy. ‘So who's this person we're meeting?'

Gregor looked at Saria. ‘She knows. Don't you?'

The Darkland girl nodded. ‘You're takin' me to Jani.'

‘That's right.'

Jem stopped. ‘My mum?'

‘Yeah.'

‘But she's dead.'

‘In a way. We're going to see her anyway.'

‘What's going on, Dad?'

‘It's all right.' Saria walked over to her half-sister, reached out, rested her fingers lightly on the tattoo on the side of the girl's neck and closed her eyes. Lari watched as Jem tensed for a second then seemed to relax completely. When she spoke again, her voice was completely different. Softer.

‘What was that?'

Saria smiled. ‘Earthwarmth. Jani. Me.'

Jem let Saria take her arm and they continued in silence. Gregor led, then Jem and Saria, and finally Kes and Lari, trailing behind. Once the others were out of earshot, Kes spoke in a low voice.

‘Lari, what's going to happen?'

‘I wish I could tell you.'

‘But what are you going to do? You can't live down here. Like … that.' She gestured back to where the clanwoman's camp was now vanishing behind them.

‘We won't. We'll get out. Get away from the city.'

‘You won't survive.'

‘We might.'

‘They might. You're not like them. The moment you get exposed—'

‘Do you think I don't know that?'

‘So why risk it?'

‘I don't see any choice. Anyway, I'd rather die out there, out in the open, than here in the shadows of a city that's dying anyway, no matter what we do.'

‘What about your father? What about Janil?'

‘They both made their choices. They don't need me now, any more than I need them.'

Kes looked ahead, making sure that Gregor and the girls were too far away to overhear.

‘I'm not staying down here, Lari. I can't.'

‘Nobody's asked you to.'

‘I just wanted you to know. In case I have to disappear in a hurry.'

Lari didn't reply, then he touched her forearm lightly.

‘We'll be heading east. If you change your mind.'

‘East? What's out there?'

‘That's the way my father said we should go. I guess we'd reach the Darklands eventually.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Hurry up, you two!' Gregor called. ‘We're almost there.'

Lari and Kes increased their pace until they were all moving in one bunch again.

‘This way.' Gregor veered off the main road, down a long, narrow alleyway. Several times they had to scramble over small piles of rubble, until they crossed an empty stretch of land, climbed a large embankment, and stood looking out over row after row of uniform, white stones.

‘What are they?' Kes's voice was puzzled.

‘Markers,' Jem answered. ‘Each one of them is a life.'

‘A life?'

‘A death, more accurately,' Gregor corrected his daughter.

‘There's no difference.' Saria had stopped and knelt on the uneven ground, then she completely prostrated herself. ‘I can feel her again,' she said. ‘She's stronger here. Stronger than before …'

‘Get up, Saria.' Jem tried to haul the Darklander girl to her feet, but Gregor stopped her.

‘Leave her a moment, Jem.'

‘What's she doing?'

‘Just… trust me. Her mother – your mother – used to talk about this.'

‘But what's she feeling? I don't understand.'

‘Neither do I. But she's feeling something, all right. I've got no doubt about it.'

A moment later Saria stood up again and nodded at Gregor.

‘This way,' Gregor said. He led them down the slope, to a tangle of decomposing metal. There he turned to Lari and Kes.

‘You two wait here. We'll be a while.'

‘No. We're coming, too.'

‘You can't. This is … personal. Wait here and we'll come back for you.'

Lari and Kes exchanged an uneasy glance, then Kes shrugged.

‘If you say.'

Without another word, she settled on the hard ground, her back against a jagged slab of concrete. Lari joined her.

‘See you soon.'

Gregor took Saria's and Jem's hands, one in each of his, and led them into the rows of white stones, and before long they were completely lost from sight. As soon as they were gone, Kes leapt to her feet.

‘I'm going.'

‘Now?'

She nodded.

‘But the lifts are still being diverted.'

‘We don't know that. We haven't seen a flyer in hours.'

‘What if they catch you?'

‘I don't care, Lari. I have to try.'

Lari stood up and faced her.

‘Kes, listen, the city's dying.'

‘I know. You told me.'

‘I mean it, Kes. Really dying.'

‘I believe you, Lari.'

‘But you're still going back up?'

‘It's where my family are.' She took a couple of steps towards the embankment, then stopped and turned back. ‘You've known about this all along, haven't you?'

Lari nodded. ‘Not me personally, but DGAP and the Prelate have known about the entropy scenario for years.'

‘And it can't be stopped?'

‘No. The system's running out of energy, Kes. And it's going to take everyone with it when it goes.'

‘How long?'

Lari made a gesture of helplessness. ‘Fifty years at most. Less if the Underground continue their attacks.'

There was a momentary clearing in the haze and Kes stared up at the distant, twinkling skycity.

‘I don't belong down here, Larinan,' she said. ‘My parents, my brother …'

‘There's even less future up there than there is down here, Kes,' he said gently.

‘I know. But not for me.'

Abruptly, she grabbed Lari in a fierce hug. ‘I'm sorry,' she whispered.

‘Sorry?'

‘For everything. Jem was right. I should have told you.'

‘It doesn't matter, Kes. Just listen to me now …'

‘No, I can't. Be careful, Larinan Mann.'

She planted a quick kiss on his cheek, her lips barely brushing his skin, then pushed him away gently and scrambled to the top of the embankment.

‘Kes!' Lari called, and she stopped and looked down. ‘East. Remember that. Just in case …'

Kes nodded, just once, then slipped across the embankment and into the night.

SARIA!

It's not a call anymore. It's a constant, summoning shiver. Here amongst the marker stones the earth isn't dead – not like everywhere else in the city.

Between the marker stones, there's life. There's earthwarmth.

It's ancient, it's tired, but it's there, and Saria can feel it though the soles of her feet.