Wonders of a Godless World (24 page)

And something strange was happening to the comet. Squeezed and pushed, caught between the grip of the foreigner’s mind and the relentless pull of the sun, the stone was rippling and convulsing like hot tar.

Too much, too much…

Suddenly the comet’s surface seemed to crack in a thousand places, and brillance erupted all around, explosions of steam, jets of white in the chill sunlight. After a stunned moment, the orphan understood what was happening. The comet’s internal ice had vaporised in the heat and turmoil of the foreigner’s assault, and now the gas was bursting forth to encompass the great rock in a dazzling cloud.

The comet had begun to shine.

In surprise, or exhaustion, or both, the foreigner let go.

Enough…enough for now.

Had he failed? the orphan wondered. Had he destroyed the comet in his attempt to redirect it? But no, she could see through the jets of vapour that the core of rock remained intact, as solid and massive as ever.

And the foreigner’s tone was satisfied despite his weariness.
We’ve made a good start. The out-gassing would have happened soon anyway, the closer the comet got to the sun. It makes no difference.

The orphan found she was herself again, released. She withdrew from his voice in loathing, but he addressed her regardless.

It’s all for the best, little one. We’ll go home and rest now, but in a few hours we’ll return and work on it again. Two more long pushes, perhaps, will do it.

No, she would not come back here with him!

Disinterest.
You won’t have any choice.

Despair swept up on her. He was right. Hadn’t he just shown her? He could use her as he pleased. And so easily…

They were moving, passing swiftly through the glowing gas around the comet, back into the emptiness of space. Ahead of them the blue dot glinted. And somehow they were accelerating again to tremendous speeds, although she was sure the foreigner was exerting no effort anymore. Something else was pulling them back.

Perhaps, she thought, it was the call of their abandoned bodies, hungry for the return of their souls. But then fatigue was claiming her, and there were no more stars, only the unrelieved blackness of unconsciousness.

She hung poised in space. Alone.

In reality, the orphan knew, she was asleep. In reality, she was still tied down to the bed, in the locked ward, the drugs stupefying her. In reality, the foreigner was recuperating in the empty crematorium, and there was no way she could have travelled into space on her own. This was only a dream.

But she knew too that it was more than that. It was something that was going to happen. For real. Somehow, she was seeing into the future.
Six days
into the future. She was floating in the void, and had been so placed as a spectator, safely out of the way, but with a perfect view. For here it came—the earth. There had been a time when she’d thought it merely spun fixed in space, but now she knew that it sailed in a great orbit around the sun, serene, and yet with implacable momentum. And from the opposite direction, coming to meet it, equally serene, was the comet.

But not as she remembered it. It was no longer just a naked nub of rock. The foreigner had set free its icy interior, and the jets of vapour and particles had been gushing out for six days since,
the cloud ever expanding, so that now the corona was a truly vast thing, thin as mist, but glowing bright; a sphere that seemed to rival the earth in size. From the orphan’s vantage point, indeed, it seemed that, rather than a mere rock plunging into the earth, two very planets were about to collide.

In dread, she considered the world. The sun was at her back, so it was the day side she faced. She saw blue ocean, and the tan spread of a large continent, and sprinkled nearby, just coming out of night into dawn, a cluster of island chains, vivid and green. Her own island was down there somewhere, and it was in the surrounding ocean that the core of the comet would hit. All those people, in the towns, in the hospital. What would they see if they looked to the sky? The sun would be on the horizon, but overhead would be a shining white portend of the end, terrifying.

She could not help them. This vision of the future did not allow it. She could only watch as the earth and the comet crept nearer and nearer. So slowly—such was the scale of each body that, even at their momentous opposing speeds, they might have been merely drifting together. Until finally the forward edge of the comet’s cloud seemed to merge with the sheath of the planet’s atmosphere.

Fires ignited. Scintillating flashes at first, bright even in the daylight. The orphan had seen a fireworks display once, and there had been rockets that exploded into masses of shimmering sparks, lingering. Now it was as if those rockets were detonating all through the earth’s upper airs. A random few initially, then increasing in number, and eventually a continuous fusillade of them.

She knew what was happening. All the gas and dust in the comet’s corona was slamming into the earth’s atmosphere and burning up in countless tiny streaks, as surely as the foreigner himself once had. And over the minutes, as more and more of the corona mashed up against the planet, the sparkling immolations
increased until nearly half the earth appeared to be wrapped in sheets of argent flame.

Spectacular. And harmless, the orphan recognised. The wisps of the corona could no more damage the earth than could a shower of rain. But at the centre of the cloud waited the hub, not dust or gas, but a rock bigger than a mountain. And as she watched, the tumbling giant swept on through the fires of its own presaging, parted the planet’s atmosphere in a single second, and struck.

There was no sound because there could
be
no sound, but there was light—unbearable, shattering light that seemed to fill space. Even in ghost form, the orphan was burnt by heat and had to look away. And she knew in that moment that the foreigner had lied to her. He had promised that the comet would merely splash down in the ocean and drown only her island, that the damage it caused would not be fatal to the earth itself. And not a word of that was true…

But it was some time before the fireball faded, and she could look. Even then, much of the planet remained hidden by glowing clouds of ash and smoke. And the fireworks still blazed too, as the rear half of the comet’s corona, only partially shredded, plunged on in. To her special senses, however, everything was clear.

The comet had not splashed into the ocean; at the point of impact it had vaporised the ocean in an instant, miles deep, and slammed directly into the earth’s crust. In that same instant it had obliterated all the nearby islands—her own included. Not merely flooded them, but wiped them from existence.

The resultant shockwave had then flattened everything in its path across a whole hemisphere, the air superheated enough to set entire landmasses ablaze. The seas had boiled and reared into vast inundations that were still spilling across the coastlines. Earthquakes, too, were vibrating all around the world, a resonance that was
toppling mountains and opening cracks and awakening dozens of erstwhile sleeping volcanoes. And finally, the impact had thrown up a plume of smoke and debris with such force that it was reaching back out into space.

All this, the orphan observed in total silence. But then, feather-light, she felt the touch of another mind.
His
mind. From a vantage point like her own, watching on. And he was happy, she could sense. Pleased by the display.

The touch revolted her. She shut him out, and descended, anguished, towards the planet. The last vestige of the comet’s corona had been consumed at last, leaving the earth to convulse alone in its agony. And she could see now that, in some ways, the damage might have been worse. The impact hadn’t knocked the earth from its orbit, or made it falter as it spun on its axis. Nor had it fractured the earth’s core. The deepest levels of the planet held firm. Oh, but the damage otherwise…

She entered the atmosphere, and
now
there was noise, even high up, where the air was thin. It was an echo of the great collision—a tumult of fires burning and winds howling and waves thundering. And there was an awful metallic stench. It was the smell of the innards of the planet, spewed unwillingly forth.

On she glided, down through the fireball’s massive plume. It was spreading out now, borne by disturbed winds. The ash up high was as fine as powder, but there was so much of it, the orphan guessed, that eventually it would cloak the planet in a thick cloud. And lower down she found the heavier ash. It was raining back to earth in a deluge that would bury houses even half a world away from the impact.

She dropped closer to the surface and saw the levelled cities, the farmlands scorched grey, the stumps of incinerated forests. Already millions, billons were dead. But that was only the beginning.
The plume of ash was, in fact, a shroud. Because of it, the ground would be smothered, the oceans choked, the skies blotted black. The earth would become a sunless realm, and any survivors would not endure long. They would starve and freeze in the dark. Yes…this was the true injury the comet had inflicted. Not to the earth’s structure, but to its ability to support life.

And the wound was a mortal one, the orphan could feel. She sailed through a muddy rain of ash, towards the centre of the blast, and all around her there was a lessening, a fatal withdrawal of energy. The loss stung her. A crucial thing was departing from the world—not only life, but the
possibility
of life. The great glow of existence that had wrapped around the planet was fading, and at the same time the orphan felt her special awareness also diminishing, dwindling into everyday blindness.

It was a surprise, that blindness. She had come to think that she was in tune only with the inanimate world—with the wind, and the rain, and the inner earth—and that her mysterious powers came from there. It had never occurred to her that her abilities might in some way be connected to the
living
world.

But to know the truth of it, she had only to look down. The point of impact was still far ahead, but even here the earth had been ravaged and burnt and left sterile. Immense forces were at work; lava gushed from clefts, steaming oceans surged and smashed against cliffs, whirlwinds of hot air howled and beat at the sky. It should have terrified and thrilled her, but it didn’t. Instead it all seemed as meaningless to her now as the patterns on a television screen, or squiggles in a book. Her unique insight was blinkered. Because in all this wonder, nothing was alive.

What, then, would be the good of them surviving the comet’s cataclysm, her and the foreigner? They would be alone amid all this ruin. Immortal, maybe, but trapped on a dead world, a
wasteland without purpose. Trapped forever, for without life around her the orphan would be shrunken and weak, with no power to lend the foreigner, and thus there would be no escape for them to explore the cold marvels of the universe.

Better to not survive at all! So why had the foreigner done it? It was no accident, of that she was sure. He must have known. He was far too clever to miscalculate the kind of damage a comet of such size and speed would cause. He had
wanted
this to happen. Indeed, she had felt his joy as the comet struck.

So his lie had been deliberate. But what about everything else he’d told her? What about the threat of her surgery, and of the mob waiting to attack the hospital? Was any of that true? She had only his word to go on, she hadn’t heard herself what the doctors were discussing, or what the crowd was muttering. Had there really been an urgent need to defend themselves? Or had he just made it up to frighten her into obeying him?

Perhaps even his greatest revelation—that she was immortal, like him—was a lie. Perhaps once he had made use of her, she was meant to die in the conflagration along with everyone else…

She had risen again in the choked air, and now—after skimming over a range of jagged mountains, newly formed by the shattering of the earth’s crust—she found herself above the crater of the comet’s immolation.

And what a hateful place. It was so large that, even through gaps in the smoke, she could not see the other side. There was no sign of the ocean that had once rippled here, or of the islands that had protruded above the water, let alone her own island, and its towns, and its hospital. Instead she looked upon a vast sunken plain that was seething with flame and steam and mud.

And yet from somewhere she felt again the touch of the foreigner’s mind, watching on. He was closer now, his emotions
more evident. And to him, she sensed, the crater was beautiful, a matter of deep satisfaction, of justice…

And all at once, finally, she understood.

The heat seemed to be stinging her eyes. Or perhaps she was crying. Everything was blurred now. The light was changing. And suddenly the noises and smells of the crater were gone. She woke to the soft crackle of her radio. The white ceiling, the white walls. Her hands and feet tied to the bed. She was back in the locked ward. Those six days had not yet passed, and the comet had not yet hit.

She blinked away the last tears. There was so much mourning in her, over the depth of his betrayal, but more for the loss of his love. Even if it had never been real, it was the only love she’d ever known. But there was no time for self-pity. The comet had not yet hit, it was true, and indeed it was not yet even on the right path to hit. But all too soon the foreigner would come for her. He would spirit her back into the iciness of space and begin to push upon the rock again until its path
was
right.

She could resist him, perhaps, while she was wide awake, but when she fell asleep, or when she was drugged again, she would be helpless. He could take her then, and use her power however he wished. That could not be allowed.

The strange thing was that, even as she’d woken, she’d seen the solution there in her mind, in all its fitting cruelty. And it was the foreigner himself who had shown her. Long ago now, it seemed. When he was trying so hard to prove that he was real, and trustworthy. Maybe that was another reason for her tears, and her mourning. She wept a little for what she must do to him.

But she mustered her strength anyway, her vision, her anger.

And then she reached out to the volcano.