The Day of the Nefilim (20 page)

They found a shopping mall. Reina chose a jacket from a shop, and then they found some backpacks. Reina found another jacket there that she liked better, and swapped them, and Bark found a pair of boots and a black woolly hat. Reina thought it made him look like a cheap criminal, a house burglar or something, but he liked it, so she said nothing.

The age of fashion sensibilities had passed, anyway. Even so, she found a third jacket that she liked even more.

In a supermarket they filled the backpacks with food and drink and anything else that might be useful. The few staff and customers who had been in the place when the darkness fell had set up camp in the aisles. They had candles for light, food to eat, and blankets for warmth, which made them incredibly wealthy by current standards, at least until the light returned. None of the inhabitants confronted the two intruders, except to ask for news of the outside world.

“Don’t bother going out there,” Bark told them.

“The manager went outside a few hours ago,” someone replied, “and he hasn’t come back yet.”

“Aisle three, on the right about half way down,” said a woman when Reina asked her where they could find a can opener. She was making coffee on a gas burner borrowed from the hardware department.

Everything was going well. Laden with supplies, they left the supermarket and set off towards the doctor’s office. Reina stopped to pick up some magazines from the contents of a newsstand that had spilled over onto the footpath. As she knelt down to gather the magazines together, idly wondering what someone like Geoca or the blue woman would read or whether they read at all, a light rain began to fall.

Bark grabbed her by the collar and dragged her into a doorway.

“What the fuck! It’s only rain! What are you…?” Her protests trailed off as she saw it, coming down the street towards them, moving deliberately and slowly. It was a vehicle, but it was unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was slung low, and had no wheels; it was floating on some sort of field, and whatever it was made of shone brilliantly with a white light, or white as they were seeing things at the moment, anyway. It was uncovered, and on it sat three human soldiers and three Nefilim, all armed, or at least carrying things that looked like weapons, even though they weren’t like any guns that Reina had seen before. All of them, human and alien, were wearing visors of some kind. From the way they were looking around, it was obvious that they could see their surroundings.

Reina and Bark retreated into a doorway and crouched down behind some overflowing rubbish bins.

The raft drifted silently past them. As it neared an intersection, a middle-aged man carrying a kerosene lantern appeared from a side street and walked out onto the road. In the meager visibility provided by his light, he didn’t see the raft until it was almost upon him.

It would have been the first time he had seen a Nefilim. He staggered backwards, his mouth open in silent shock at the vision that had come sliding out of the darkness towards him. In panic, he threw the lantern clumsily towards the raft. It hit the side of the vehicle, bounced harmlessly off, and rolled along the road. Kerosene spilled onto the ground, where the flame caught it.

The raft didn’t stop or deviate from its course as one of the soldiers raised his weapon. There was a thin hissing sound and a beam of light shot towards the man, striking him in the center of his chest. He staggered and fell to the ground. The aura of light inside him flared up like a small supernova. He became totally white, as though he was being consumed. Then he disappeared.

The raft slid silently down the street and disappeared around a corner.

“Shit,” said Bark. “That’s the word, isn’t it?”

“Let’s get back,” said Reina, looking at the white smudge on the ground that was the only remaining trace of the man.

As they walked, they kept a careful watch for any more soldiers or Nefilim.

“The Nefilim grid,” said Reina. “The raft must have been powered by it. And the gun as well.”

“I suppose they’d have to be,” agreed Bark. “Nothing else seems to be working. They’ll be totally in control when the light comes back, if they keep that up.”

“That’s if the three-day thing is right,” said Reina.

“I think it will be. I’ve heard of things like this photon belt before, in other parts of the universe, even though I’ve never seen one. They always pass.”

“Oh. Do they always kill electricity? It’s a bit inconvenient if they do...”

“Well, that’s hard to say. You see, this planet is the first place I’ve ever encountered this electricity that you talk about.”

“Yeah? What does everyone else use?”

“Oh… well, there’s gravity, water, sunlight, starlight, mental energy, the space winds, such as my ship uses, and the crystals, of course. In the case of the Stream, the crystals are being used to focus the natural energy paths of the planet. Of course, there are other ways to use crystals.”

“I know. You can hang them in a window.”

“I suppose you could. But crystals have form, and order. The keys to the power of the universe are locked into their lattice structures. Quite literally. The beauty of ratio and numbers is there, and the power of helixes and pyramids and spirals. It’s all there.”

“Then what about the Nefilim grid? Does that use crystals as well?”

“I know only what the stories about the Nefilim say. From what I’ve heard, they extract the life energy from living beings and use it to maintain their system. It’s totally artificial, and has nothing to do with any of the natural systems of a planet. The Nefilim have created their own geometry to allow this to happen, but it is a geometry that needs to be constantly held in place.”

“How do they get the life force out of someone, then?”

“You’ve seen the light that radiates from inside people? The light that you’ve been able to see with the vision that we’ve been given? I’ve never seen it before, but it’s the life force; I’m certain of it. Each individual has their own, with their own stamp on it. It resonates with their own frequency. Somehow, the Nefilim must be able to use that by taking it into their system. I don’t know how they do it, but we can assume that it’s far from pleasant, and not beneficial to the individuals concerned.”

“And the system we’re creating?”

“You’ve seen as much of it as I have, I suppose. The crystals amplify the planet’s natural energy. Each planet is like a huge crystal, as you know… oh, well, you know
now
then… with exactly the same vortices as the smaller crystals that you are familiar with. Or not familiar with. When one of the crystals is put in place, it acts as a catalyst, or an amplifier. When the process is complete, and the Stream has grown and developed, like a living thing, for it
is
a living being, in a sense, the entire planet will be bathed in energy, available for anyone and everyone.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m well traveled, Reina. I’ve seen it done before. I’ve seen most things done before.”

“Sahrin tells me that your ship can travel through time.” Reina was making the most of this opportunity to get some questions answered.

“Well, yes…” Bark hesitated. “But don’t make too much of that.”

“Why not? Sounds pretty good to me.”

“It is, but we can’t just do it at will, which is what you might be thinking. We travel the universe by sailing the currents of the space winds. Think of rivers and how they run through a landscape, twisting and turning around obstacles, narrow in some areas and wide in others, flowing fast or slow, deep or shallow, depending on the terrain. It’s the same in space, and in some of the currents, time varies. You can travel backwards or forwards in time, and to particular places. So it can be that if you take one route to a place, you will arrive in its past, but if you take another route, you will arrive in the future. Like the ports on a river, the main stops are known to all the ship’s captains. And just like a river system, a backwater is a backwater. And this planet of yours is in one of the backest waters I’ve ever come across.”

“No shit. So we can go to the future or the past if we want? That could be useful, couldn’t it? We could go back, to before all this happened, and put the crystal in its place a few months ago, before all these goons started running around killing everyone.”

Bark laughed. “No, but it’s a nice thought. For one thing, this planet is in a pretty wild part of the universe, as I said. We only found our way here because of an old map that we could barely understand. This area hasn’t been surveyed, as far as I know. There might be timeflows here, but if there are, they’re not on any chart that I know of.”

“Pity. They sound great.”

“Oh, they are. You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen the time drifts as they twist around the Naan nebulae. Or the time banks of the Sentori system, where time has been trapped, and builds up in vast mountains. Perhaps I’ll show you one day…”

“Yes… maybe…”

They walked for a while in silence. They passed a wall covered with the same white marks that had been left when they had seen the man shot. There were a dozen or more, as though people had been lined up against the wall. “If this is their new world order,” said Reina, “I don’t think much of it.”

“Neither do I,” said Bark, then, his attention on something else, “Look at that. Up there.” He was looking up into the sky.

Reina looked. A swarm of shooting stars was moving across the sky. There were hundreds of them, too many to count. Each one appeared first as a tiny point of light, a pinhole in the firmament, then flared in intensity as it floated downwards on a long shallow gradient.

After a few seconds, each light winked out of existence, leaving smaller fragments that fell towards the earth, trails of smoke following them as if they were spent fireworks. It went on for a minute or so, and then the sky was as empty as it had been before, its emerald expanse clear again.

“A meteor shower?” said Reina.

“Best guess, I suppose,” said Bark, “although given the current state of things, it could be anything.”

They had reached the doctor’s rooms.

* * *

IT WAS DARK OUTSIDE, but on the fortieth floor of the United Nations building, behind the drawn curtains of the Secretary-General’s office, the lights were burning. In the corner, a fax machine purred softly as it accepted a message from somewhere.

The power wasn’t coming from the backup power system, for that was as dead as the main system. The building was plugged into the new grid.

The Secretary-General lowered himself into a seat. He was big, and years spent in offices and meetings had only served to make him larger and softer. He almost rippled as he relaxed against the soft antelope vellum of the couch. His eyes were like pissholes in snow, set into skin that hung off him in moist oily folds. He leaned across his stomach and pushed a small onyx box along the table.

“Cigarette, President Veal?”

The President took a cigarette without saying anything and lit it.

“I’m sorry, Theo,” the Secretary-General continued. “Do carry on.”

The Vice-Secretary picked up where he had left off. “So as I was saying, we filmed our operation. One should always document one’s successes, don’t you agree? I have it here, if you care to see it…”

“But of course, dear boy, of course,” the Secretary-General wheezed. “Into the machine with it. You don’t mind, do you, General?”

The General sat nursing a whiskey. “Of course not.” He would have loved to say what he thought of them and their habit of filming their exploits, but he and the Gores continued as always to observe the unspoken rule, and behaved themselves in front of the Secretary-General.

The Vice-Secretary hit play. The first segment had been shot from the air, while the helicopters were circling above the island. Missiles and tracer fire spat from just off camera, down onto the buildings and fleeing creatures. The camera zoomed in on a mutant that had been cut neatly in two. Its arms flailed around uselessly, then it was consumed by flame from somewhere. The sound of laughter came from behind the camera.

After a few more panoramic shots, the scene changed. They were on the ground. Alexis Gore was standing outside a burning building, holding a small lizard-headed creature up off the ground. She turned and threw it into the flames, and then reached out of shot and took another similar but larger creature by the neck and dragged it into view.

“Well, here we are in the hottest news spot in the cosmos,” she laughed to the camera. “And here I am speaking with one of the local citizenry. Sir or madam – why, you’re just such a goddamn freak, I just don’t know what I should call you, now do I? You seem to be having a spot of civil unrest here! A bit of bother, some might say! Would you care to comment?”

The creature said nothing. “What? No comment?” She shook the mutant. “Well, shall I just bring it on home to you then, lizard breath? A little first hand experience?” She drew her pistol from its holster and held it to the mutant’s temple. “Well? No? Oh well, damn it…” Her shot took the mutant’s head off.

The scene changed. Soldiers were herding a group of mutants toward the end of an alley. With nowhere to go, they gathered in a group against a wall. They seemed to know what was coming, and some of them were trying to protect the others. The soldiers lined up, taking their time and joking among themselves, and then someone gave the order. It was finished in a few seconds.

“Damn, those Uzis are just the most excellent things,” said Theo Gore, from his spot on the couch beside his sister. “I swear, you could plow a field with one.”

There was more. When the tape was finished, the Secretary-General cast the closest thing he had to a beatific smile in the direction of the two Gores. “Well done, both of you. An excellent job. I take it you cleaned the place out thoroughly?”

“We
all
cleaned the place out thoroughly, Secretary-General,” interrupted the General.

“Ah yes, General. You were there, of course. And your boys acquitted themselves well, I hope.”

“Of course, Secretary-General. There was nothing left standing.”