World Walker 2: The Unmaking Engine (31 page)

“If that happens, your heart will stop instantly. It will never beat again. Not a nice way to die.”

He rolled the wheelchair toward them, stopping about three feet away. He spoke quietly.

“But I don’t want you to think I want either of you dead. Far from it. Your lives are about to change, granted, but change doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. As far as the rest of the world knows, I’m dead. My crazy mother took me out of hospital and disappeared. This gives me a wonderful opportunity. I don’t exist. I can start again. I can learn all about this power, and I can use your money to do it.”

His eyes were shining as he considered the opportunities opening up to him.

“You two will live here with me, as will your baby, Rosa. It may not be the life you would have chosen, but it will be comfortable and safe—as long as you do as I ask. Until the baby is born, you will remain in the apartment. Isaac, you and I will be traveling a little while Rosa stays here. I have so many questions, so much to discover.”

Isaac felt tired and beaten. He might have defied this monster if he’d been alone, but…he looked over at Rosa, glowing with health and carrying his first grandchild. He nodded his assent. Rosa looked back at him, her eyes full of love, before turning to the boy.

“We’ll do as you ask,” she said.
 

“Of course,” said the Boy. He wheeled himself backward a little.
 

“I’m a new person,” he said. “Guess I’m going to need a new name.” He looked around the apartment for inspiration, before finally looking at Isaac again.

“You divorced?” he said.

“Widowed,” said Isaac, quietly.

“What was her maiden name?”

Isaac told him. The boy considered it.

“I like it,” he said finally. “It has intimations of building, making something. Yes, I’ll take it—it will be my name from now on. What a momentous occasion.”

He smiled and, for a moment, looked like any other twelve-year old playing a game.

“Call me Mason,” he said.
 

Chapter 36

Mexico City

Present Day

Mexican cemeteries had been running out of space for years. Despite government encouragement, cremation was still unpopular, so families were forced to stack the deceased one on top of the other, creating a vertical genealogy in various states of decay. Only the very rich, the very famous, or those who had bought sites there no later than 1977 were allowed to use the city’s main cemetery, the Panteón de Dolores. The less wealthy used graveyards even more tightly packed with bodies. The overcrowding problem had become so great, there were rumors of bodies being removed late at night to make room for newer occupants.

Those who could afford nothing often found they had no other choice than to use a cemetery miles from their city, meaning they couldn’t visit their loved ones as often as they would like. Even in death, the gap between the poor and the rich was clear.

The cemetery where Walt was buried was as poor as they come. A forty-minute bus ride away, its hundreds of graves were marked by cheaper wooden crosses for the main part, the few carved headstones standing out like healthy teeth in a rotten smile.

It was the day after the Federales had released Walt’s body - four days after the fight on the rooftop. Hollywood couldn’t have come up with a more perfect morning to visit. The rain was hard and relentless, driving in at a thirty-degree angle. Seb held a large black umbrella over Mee as they looked down at the recently turned earth and the plain wooden cross marking Walter Ford’s final resting place.

“He came to warn you,” said Seb. “He finally decided to do the right thing and get away from Mason. It meant giving up Manna, leaving himself vulnerable. But he did it. He knew I couldn’t help. He saved you, knowing it meant his own death.”

“How do you know all this?” said Meera. She couldn’t stop staring down at the rich brown earth, knowing that a few feet below lay the body of a human being who had died for her. For her. She knew Walt had been involved in many morally ambiguous situations over the course of his life. Some of the things he’d done were plain wrong by any standards. Until yesterday, she would have written him off as irredeemably evil because of what he’d done to her and others. Was it possible that one utterly selfless act could outweigh all the bad in his life? Mee knew—after the events on the rooftop—she would say yes, it was. Mee had spent much of her life believing people couldn’t change, not really. She’d been wrong. The evidence was six feet under her soaking shoes.

“When I spent time with Walt, I didn’t trust him,” said Seb. “As it turned out, my instincts were right. He betrayed me. He had a history of making bad moral choices. I think the fact he was so honest about himself stopped me simply dismissing him as a bad guy. It was as if he was reaching out. I think he saw himself in me. The young apprentice discovering new powers, spending time with an older, wiser mentor. Only he knew he wasn’t wise. He was still making the same mistakes, still taking the easy path.”

Mee finally managed to move her focus away from the sodden earth to look up at Seb.

“But how did you know about him giving up Manna? And I saw him get shot in the chest. How did he keep moving without Manna?”

“He had help,” said Seb. “The last time I saw Walt—ironically, it was the day he tried to talk me out of sacrificing myself for you—Seb2 planted a coil of nanotechnology on him. It wrapped itself around his brainstem and waited.”

“A what?” said Mee.

“It was a template,” said Seb. “A small, lightweight program containing a cut-down version of my personality. No detailed memories, just broad strokes. Like a child, in a way. It spent the last eighteen months or so passively sitting there. Watching. Almost like hibernation. Then, Walt left Mason and gave up Manna. Once Sym detected there was no Manna left, he was activated and made his presence known.”

“Wait a sec. Sym?”

“Apparently, yeah. Not my idea. He took a new name. Anyway, he emailed me Walt’s decision, then he stayed with him right up to his death. Walt knew he would die attempting to save you, but Sym gave him the strength to survive the tranquilizer darts and bullets so he could do it.”

“Just when I think our life is as complicated as it’s ever gonna get, you tell me something like this.”

“Yeah, well, what can I say? Sym is an interesting development, I guess. He spent so much time with Walt, his personality appears to be as much Walt’s as mine. It’s why I haven’t reabsorbed him.”

“You haven’t what?”

“Well, he was just a program. He had a job to do, and he did it. So I should reabsorb him or just delete him. But he’s kinda the only part of Walt left. It doesn’t feel right. He obviously feels the same way, too. He didn’t come back, just emailed the information about Walt. He’s out there somewhere. Independent, or so he thinks. Even though I know he’s just a tiny spiral of coded Roswell Manna, he behaves as if he’s conscious. He’s a closed system, his power is very limited and—technically—he
is
me. But his year and a half with Walt has convinced him that he’s independent. It feels morally wrong to do anything other than let him go. Does that sound crazy?”

“No crazier than half the shit you’ve pulled since aliens decided to make you Super Seb,” said Mee. “But where will he go? Attach himself to someone else’s brain stem, maybe?”

“Unlikely,” said Seb. “There’s no need. He can exist inside technology as easily as flesh. Anyway, he’s not our problem right now.”

Mee looked at Seb. He wasn’t looking at the grave. His head was tilted back, watching the skies darken and close in above the cemetery. As the clouds thickened and the atmosphere became oppressive, white flashes of lightning began highlighting the darkest areas of the sky, the air crackling with energy. The air itself seemed to thicken for a moment, as if the area immediately around them had taken a breath and was holding it, about to unleash some terrible onslaught.

One massive swathe of black cloud was parting. The sky revealed beyond it was darker still, complete blackness—it was as if all color had been sucked out of it. And yet, it seemed poised, full of latent energy, like a big cat about to spring.

There was a thunderous
crack
above them and the pool of blackness solidified and shot through the clouds; dark lightning, an ebony bolt flung from the sky like a spear. It hit the ground just in front of a large weeping pine. The tree burst dramatically into flame for about two seconds, then the lashing rain extinguished it, leaving a smoldering blackened skeleton.

Mee grabbed Seb’s arm. Squinting ahead, she looked across at the ruined tree. Nearby, seemingly unworried by the storm, stood a figure, barely discernible through the rain. She couldn’t remember noticing it before. It hardly seemed possible anyone could stand so calmly during the bizarre onslaught they’d just witnessed. And there was something else strange. Mee realized the tree must have been much smaller than she’d thought. Some kind of optical illusion, skewing her perspective. Either that, or the watcher standing next to it was about twelve feet tall, which was unlikely. She looked back at Seb. He was staring across at the figure.

“He waiting for you?” she said.

“Yeah. You ok here a while?” She nodded.

Seb handed Mee the umbrella and set off through the rain toward the distant figure. The rain avoided his body like iron filings being dragged away by magnets.
 

The figure was shaped like a human. From a distance, it had seemed indistinct, shadowy. Up close, the effect was disconcerting. A mass of swirling dark fog, constantly in motion, waited under the dripping pine branches. As Seb approached, the body shrank, its height matching Seb’s own. About six feet away, Seb stopped. The part of it that resembled a head turned toward him. The voice was low, almost musical in its inflection.
 

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” said Seb. “You’re the ship. Thanks for coming.”

Chapter 37

At St Benet’s Orphanage, from the age of eight right up until he left nearly a decade later, Seb had slept in a dormitory. His bed had been against the wall opposite the largest window. One of his strongest memories was of the drapes. They were cheap and hard-wearing, bearing a repeating abstract pattern. For years, he’d fallen asleep looking at that pattern. In daylight, it was just a series of gray and blue shapes. At night, particularly in summer, when the thin material didn’t block much of the light from outside, Seb had watched the pattern slowly darken and—as it did so—change. The shapes weren’t random any more, they were faces: some happy, others sad, some animal, others human. The top right corner always drew Seb’s eye eventually, even though it used to scare him when he was younger. The face that appeared up there rippled and shifted, its eyes darting from left to right, looking at the boys as they slept. And the expression on the face was impossible to read. Sometimes it was angry, sometimes kind. It could be judgmental and severe, or forgiving and gentle. Seb knew the fact that that a small pane of glass was missing in that corner meant that the curtains moved. He knew his imagination had turned the mass-produced pattern into a face. But it made no difference to how real the face was in the semi-darkness of those long summer evenings.
 

And now, he was looking at the same face. But this was the face belonging to a representation of an alien ship that had carried the Rozzers for generations on their mission to Earth.
 

Instead of a pattern, the ship’s face was made up of something very like dense black smoke. Rather than rippling as the wind moved folds of material, it swirled and twisted, a storm-torn weather system contained in a human shape. Seb knew he was projecting the remembered face onto the formless features speaking to him, but that didn’t make it any less unnerving.

“It is true then. You are T’hn’uuth.” The mouth formed the words, then disappeared. Seb could see no eyes but he had the unmistakable impression that he was being looked at intently. He knew his Manna was interacting with the figure, that the surface conversation was only part of the interchange between them.

“I’m what?”

The stranger took a few paces to the side, then returned to its starting position. As it moved, the outline of a figure became briefly more pronounced. When it turned, Seb had the distinct impression that it was wearing a cloak. There was a surreal air of deliberate drama about the whole scene.

“T’hn’uuth,” said the figure. “Your language provides no alternative word. A loose translation might be ‘the traveler between realities’.”

“The World Walker?”

“The World Walker. Yes, it’s as good a term as any other.” The shadow being made a strange sound and scuffed the earth under its feet. If it had feet.
 

“You accepted my invitation,” said Seb. “Thank you. You know my name, ship. What is yours?”

“I am H’wan,” said the figure, bowing slightly. “I confess, I only accepted as we can no longer bring you to us. This has never happened before. Your organic structure fascinated me immediately, particularly that which was inaccessible. Our failure to bring you back this time raised the possibility that you had changed that organic structure. Consciously. Only a T’hn’uuth is capable of such action. I hardly dared to believe it was true.”

“I meant to mention that,” said Seb2. “The reason they can’t summon you now.”

“I know,” thought Seb. “It was a tipping point. You accelerated the process. I’m now more nanotech than flesh and blood. They can’t lock onto my DNA anymore.”

“Smart ass. Incidentally, this thing doesn’t
possess
Manna as such, it
is
Manna, or something very like it. But it’s wary of you. Its approaches are tentative, careful. You represent something outside the limits of its knowledge. This is very much a new experience for it, I think.”