Skyfall (34 page)

‘What you had to do? Don't make me laugh. You did what you thought would get you into favour with the Prelate.' Dernan Mann shook his head. ‘You did it because I decided to bring your brother into the program, and you did it despite knowing about the entropy scenario. You … You killed your mother here today, Janil.'

The smile faded from Janil's face. For a second he looked as though he was about to reply, but then he launched himself, swinging his fist at Dernan Mann's head.

His father ducked, but Janil caught him a glancing blow which made him stagger backwards into the wall, where he slumped to the floor, his head bowed. Janil stood over his father, trembling.

‘You're an arrogant, self-centered shi, Father. Mum and everything she stood for has been dead for a long, long time. The only one who doesn't seem to realise that is you,
Dernan'

His father's name rang like a curse.

For a long moment the tableau held: Dernan Mann slumped, broken, against the wall and his eldest son standing over him, fists clenched.

Then finally Janil stepped back and spat once at his father's feet, before marching to the door without so much as a glance in Lari's direction. There he stopped.

‘Now if you'll excuse me,
Doctor,
I have work to do. I'll inform you of my exact timeline for shutdown of the project before the end of the shift. I'll expect your cooperation.'

With that, his brother vanished into the laboratory.

He left as quickly as he'd come and once more she finds herself sitting alone in the glare of her prison, with only the cold, distant buzz of skyfire for company.

Something is wrong.

Something is different.

If she were back home, she'd simply reach down into the Earthmother and seek out the disturbance, the movements and breaks in the flow of earthwarmth.

Not here, though. All she gets when she reaches here is the cold-heat of skyfire, and she can feel it sucking at her, drawing her life and energy out.

Saria glances upwards into the glare. She knows they watch her from up there. She knows they're watching her now.

Is this a test? she wonders.

But even as she asks the question, she knows the answer. Something has happened, something bad. It was written in his voice, in the way he left the room.

Despite the merciless light and heat beating down on her, Sana's skin prickles into gooseflesh and she shivers …

Through the clearcrete, Port City shimmered in the deepening night. Stars emerged from the indigo haze, com arrays caught the dying rays of sunset, and clearcrete sparkled as the autotint brought it back from full opacity to complete clarity. The still city gleamed in the twilight as two million people went about their fully contained lives, tucked away in their plascrete wombs.

Dernan Mann stared out the window of his apartment and looked at the view through empty eyes, barely even seeing it.

All this, all his life, everything – gone. Brought to a crashing halt at the hands of his elder son.

It could have been so different,
Dernan Mann reflected.
Janil could have been so different, would have been but for me. And Eyna, of course. If she hadn't vanished …

The night after she'd disappeared, when a whole day had passed with no word, no sign of her flyer on the skyeyes, no telemetry, no coms, nothing, he'd sat with the boys at the kitchen table to give them the news.

‘Where's Mum?' Lari had asked.

He'd looked at them – his two boys, one eleven, the other six, so different from each another but at the same time similar – and hadn't been able to answer. In the end it was Janil who'd said the words.

‘She's gone, isn't she?'

Dernan Mann had nodded.

‘When will she come back?' Larinan's brow had furrowed.

‘She won't,
copygen!'

‘Janil!' It was the first time Dernan had heard Janil call his little brother that. ‘Don't you ever,
ever
call your brother that name. Not ever, do you understand?'

But eleven-year-old Janil hadn't blinked. ‘Well, that's what he is. So that's what I'm going to call him from now on.'

And Dernan Mann had turned away. He didn't have the energy to deal with it, not then.

Janil had stood up. ‘I'm going to find her.'

Dernan remembered struggling to keep his emotions in check. ‘We can't find her, son,' he said gently. ‘She's gone.'

‘I know
that.
But I'm going to find her anyway. One day.'

And he'd left the kitchen without another word. Later that evening, after Larinan had finally settled down to sleep, Dernan had found his elder son sitting at his terminal in his room, scanning down rows of data.

‘What are you looking at, Janil?'

When his son didn't answer, Dernan Mann had crossed the room and looked at the display, where the notes from his wife's most recent field expedition were rolling past.

‘What's this mean?' Janil had frozen the display and pointed at a particular line.

‘Those are field coordinates and temporary subject codes. They allow us to track individual subjects in their movements over a set period of time.'

Janil had nodded and returned to his reading.

It was ironic, Dernan Mann thought, as he watched the city from his apartment. He'd always thought that the night he lost his wife was the night he really gained his son. But he'd been fooling himself, he realised. In reality, that terrible evening six years ago was when it all started coming apart.

Dernan blinked fiercely, trying to focus on the living city in the dying twilight. Behind him, the apartment door slid open.

‘Dad?'

Larinan stepped into the living room. Dernan could feel his son's eyes on his back, almost a physical itch.

‘Are you okay?'

Slowly Dernan Mann turned to meet Lari's eyes.

‘I'm fine, Larinan. Everything's okay.'

The two stood there, father and son, scientist and subject, their stares locked, and Deman realised that his son, this boy he'd never really known, had never bothered to know, could see right through him.

‘No, Dad.' Larinan shook his head. ‘No, it's not.'

The words seemed to hang in the still air. Somewhere in the back of the apartment a com chimed, but they both ignored it.

‘Nothing's been fine since the night that girl was born, or even before that. It wasn't fine when you and Mum decided to have a copygen, it wasn't fine when Mum disappeared, it wasn't fine when you brought Saria in from the field, and it's not fine now, so stop pretending.'

Larinan's tone wasn't angry, and for a moment Dernan could see his wife standing there, could hear her words in his son's voice, her pragmatism, her desperation. He smiled.

‘What's funny? Shi, Dad! I'm being serious.'

‘You're so like your mother …'

‘Dad, listen, we don't have time for this. What's going to happen to Saria? What's Janil going to do with her?'

Dernan Mann turned back to the windows. The city really was beautiful, he thought.

‘You heard the Prelate, son. Janil will remove her.'

‘And take her back to the Darklands?'

‘No, she can't go back. Not now. She's contaminated.'

‘By what? She's been in a sterile chamber the whole time.'

‘She's contaminated by knowledge, Larinan. No subject can be returned to the field once they've seen a skycity.'

‘Why not?'

‘Protocol. It's the rules.'

‘Well, stuff protocol. It makes no difference now, anyway. We could
make
Janil return her.'

‘We couldn't, Larinan. You know what your brother's like when it comes to matters of protocol.

‘So we're just going to let him kill her?'

‘I don't see what other choice we have. It's probably kinder this way, in the long run.'

‘You've given up.'

‘I don't see any other choice.'

‘There are always choices, Dad. Even if you don't like the alternatives.'

His son's words echoed in Dernan Mann's ears. There was something vaguely familiar about them, he thought. Eyna again – it was exactly the sort of thing she'd have said.

‘There must be something we can do,' Lari said. ‘Something you know that can help us. Can't we get her out? Even just to the underworld?'

‘There's no point, Larinan. Escaping to the underworld didn't help Saria's mother, and it won't help her.'

Behind him, Dernan felt his son go still.

‘What are you talking about, Dad?'

The question hung in the air.

Should I tell him?
he wondered. This was it, really. The final secret. The only piece of the puzzle Larinan didn't yet know. After this, there was nothing left to hide.

Why not?

‘Let me tell you about Saria's mother, Larinan. Subject 45697F. Jani. Brought in from the field fourteen years and four months ago, kept in exposed observation in DGAP for two years and two months, when she was illegally removed from DGAP to the underworld by the father of her second child, one Gregor Kravanratz, to whom she was eight months pregnant at the time.'

‘Pregnant …'

‘With a girl, who your mother and I expected to be a suitable subject to use for DNA comparison and combination with you.'

‘What happened?'

‘She wasn't likely to survive the birth. Complications. But before we could take any steps, the situation was taken out of our hands by Kravanratz.'

‘Gregor …'

Dernan Mann turned away from the window to find Larinan standing there frozen, an odd expression – dawning revelation, perhaps – written across his face.

‘Larinan? Is something wrong?'

‘Kravanratz. Jani. The baby. What happened to them?'

‘The mother and child almost certainly perished in childbirth. Ratz is now, as Jenx informed us the other night, leading the terrorist movement calling itself the Underground. Probably in revenge for the death of his child, I imagine.'

To Dernan Mann's surprise, Larinan shook his head.

‘No.'

‘What? Larinan?'

‘No, you've got it wrong, Dad. It's not his child's death that Gregor is … Oh, shi!'

Dernan Mann watched in amazement as his young son sprinted from the room.