Resolution (51 page)

Too late.

It was like a swarm of glistening, mobile ants: a long dark column stretching down the broken grey stone path which led to the dockside, where a controlled pandemonium reigned. To either side, a dark plinth extended upwards to form a tall pedestal. Atop each one stood a squat, bronze-armoured figure. Suddenly it was obvious why the refugees had not resorted to violence to get aboard the boats.

Jacks.

The two bronze figures were Jacks, each with the firepower of a regiment built into his body, capable of sniffing the air and spectroscopically detecting mood-pheromones or toxins, able to filter out subvocalized thoughts from a babble of noise ... except that now, the sound was the Chaos-stirred susurration often thousand chests breathing, of muttered prayers. There was no shouting; even the children were shocked into silence by the drawn, bloodless masks of their parents’ faces.

There were older people in the crowd - here, a frail figure simply sinking to her knees; there, a large man leaning against the rockface, his blotched face soaked with sweat - and Tom wondered how many would even reach the gangplanks.

Mantargoi and other submersibles floated on the waves, using small boats to help the loading process. As Tom watched, one large grey rotund vessel sank down, followed by another.

And how many refugees will other realms accept,
Tom wondered,
before they close their borders?

Then lev-bikes swooped over the crowd, strong hands reached down to Tom and Jissie, swung them up. They coasted over a myriad heads -upturned faces following their progress with fatalistic jealousy - before alighting on the wharf’s edge, in a clear area where platoons of Halberdiers with interlocking mag-shields held back the jostling mob.

Elva was not among the bike riders, but just then her voice called out from inside a small vessel floating at the wharf’s edge. Tom helped Jissie climb down, then flicked off his cloak and vaulted down in one easy motion.

Nausea hit him as his feet touched the deck inside the cabin, and he stumbled as kaleidoscope images flashed through his mind. Then he was on his knees, vision clearing. Jissie was nervously scanning the vessel’s interior just as the hatch solidified shut overhead.

There was no sign of Elva.

‘Elva ... ?’

Then her disembodied voice said:
‘Sorry, my love. I’m a little delayed. What you once called “salting the ground”, as I recall.
’

‘You recall everything perfectly.’

‘So I do, darling. So I do.’

Tom sat back on the soft flooring, leaned against a bulkhead, and tried not to vomit as the vessel lurched into motion.

‘What’s your ... situation?’ he managed to say.

‘
We made contact with the Third Battalion.
’ The comm hissed. ’
There’s a Jack down and
—’

Silence, save for an internal thumping of the vessel’s systems.

‘Elva!’

Tom coughed.

‘—
little delayed. Tom? Are you all right?’

The visions were closing in again.

Dead man’s hand, severed and lifeless amid broken furniture and licking flames.

Tom blinked. There was a drop of fluid on the back of his hand, electric blue and glowing ...

‘No.’

... which sank away, absorbed into his skin. It left him wondering if there had been anything there besides an artefact of blurred vision and sickness.

Then a vertiginous shift took hold of Tom and
black-and-bronze figures rear their talon-hooked wings whose leading edges carry rows of targeting eyes, and tear liquid bodies asunder with a swipe. They leap aside as more of their kind materialize in the Dark Fire where black flames spread wide and
—

Tom squeezed his eyes shut.

‘Jissie? Look after him until
—’

Shift, and
the screams of children as the Absorbed men with scarlet scarves at their throats move in unnatural synchrony, bringing their grasers to bear.

‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll do everything I—’

Then the shards of scenes which surrounded Tom became a blizzard of impressions born of Chaos, fragments of a world under siege, spinning round him like a pack of ravening beasts whose maws were open to devour his sanity while the fetid stench of rotting corpses rose from their throats and overwhelmed him.

When Tom’s head cleared, some hours later, the sickness was gone as if it had never clutched his body. Tom felt weak but clean, and he smiled as Jissie fetched him a squeeze-bulb filled with indigoberry daistral.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m feeling much better.’

‘That’s good, my ...’ Jissie, kneeling in front of him, looked down at the deck. ‘Sir.’

‘Hey’ Tom, still clutching his drink, raised her chin with his forefinger. ‘Call me Tom, all right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Tom let that slide. Instead, he squeezed hot daistral into his mouth where it exploded with sweetness and warmth. It slipped down inside, silk-soft and spreading energy.

‘Good. Ah ... Where are we?’

Jissie gestured towards a small display. They were alone in the humming vessel, which was guided by its onboard AI.

‘Close to where my Lady bade the machine go. They’ll have a, um’ - Jissie glanced at Tom - ‘an autodoc all ready for you. She said.’

‘That’s good,’ muttered Tom. ‘But I’m all better now.’

Tricons shifted in the holo. They were travelling along a submerged tributary of the Hypotubule Way, just passing through another realm’s border. Sensors indicated neither scanfields nor weaponry to delay their progress.

Tom put aside the empty squeeze-bulb, and lay back against the curved bulkhead. It felt warm, hard against his shoulder blades. His eyelids drooped, opened.

‘Sir? Tom...?’

‘I’m just tired, but I won’t sleep just yet.’ Tom reached inside his tunic, pulled out the stallion talisman. ‘Are you interested in historical stories?’

Outside the vessel, black waters which rarely experienced visible light slipped past soundlessly, without revealing the tiny fragile forms that lived and fought and died inside its fluid, nurturing, yet treacherous medium.

~ * ~

33

TERRA AD 2166

<>

[9]

Blinding sunlight sparkled from the great glass spheres, the long walkways which angled into the sea or carried holidaymakers between the restaurants and the sightseeing-globes high above the warm, dancing, lapis-lazuli waves.

There was an official name but no-one used it. Gerbil Heaven stretched out across the sea, enabling pastel-dressed tourists to spend time in its submarine restaurants and gift shops, while allowing a few precocious schoolchildren access to study centres where grinning researchers carried out real marine biology.

‘Last time I was beneath the sea,’ murmured Dirk, ‘it was black and choppy and I thought I was going to die.’

‘This was with McLean?’ said Kian; and, unspoken:
Along with Orla? Smuggling matter-compilers?

‘Right.’

With Deirdre, they rode a spherical lift to a high bubble-shaped restaurant where, she assured them, they could take lunch while watching the dolphins play below.