‘I’m going to go up to Naxian valley,’ Florian said.
‘A good choice for the land meat creatures.’
Florian cast off and swung the long oars out over the side. The Naxian valley stream which fed into the lake was a good eight hundred metres around the shore. He began rowing.
‘It is a clear night,’ Florian remarked. Above them, the northern sky revealed the Ring Trees glittering silver-white in a mighty curve around the planet. One less tonight. He’d seen the atomic flash through the drab clouds as Liberty 2,673 successfully destroyed another enemy.
‘It is an empty night,’ Mooray replied.
‘Aqueous should be rising soon. And Trub is coming back into view from behind the sun. Even Ursell will shine bright before morning, so we can enjoy Mother Laura’s triumph.’
‘A full sky is a glorious sight.’
Florian smiled to himself. This was how he always got the Vatni talking about other worlds. There weren’t many humans who took the time to get to know the Vatni. Contact was mainly limited to official meetings about guarding the coastlines, and merchants looking to trade. But he couldn’t get enough of these stories, and their racial memory was extraordinary. Somehow the females passed knowledge on to their offspring while they were still in the second womb (of three).
It was the Vatni’s knowledge that he used to embellish his most precious file, the astronomy one. A mindscape of the whole solar system, where he could tour around the planets at will – as he’d dreamed of doing as an astronaut. Images from telescopes had been incorporated to map out planetary surfaces with great accuracy. Aunt Terannia had even found him an old book which had photographs taken by Mother Laura’s team when she opened the wormhole to survey the strange star system the Void had banished them to.
But it was the stories of the Vatni which allowed him to animate them, to make them live. Ursell before the Fireyear, a world with dark seas and wasteland continents, speckled with lights coming from Prime fortress enclaves – then the glorious blue fire enveloping the entire planet, the still-expanding atmosphere. Macule, with its vast ice caps and berg-cluttered equatorial ocean, the ominous craters pocking its bare sterile lands, carved by nuclear explosions millennia ago. Trub, the strange uniform grey world, devoid of surface features, circled by its twelve tiny moons – but to the Vatni memory, a world of extraordinary colour.
Even the moons had been larger in the past, engulfed by mighty petals like a solid rainbow flower. Until the day, over a thousand years ago, when spaceships from the recently arrived Ursell landed on its smooth surface. The day Trub’s colours died, never to blossom again.
The Vatni, with their remarkable eyes, had spotted Ursell as soon as it appeared in orbit around this star. A century later the white sparks of the Prime ships had risen from its continents and flown across space. First they went to Trub. Within days of their landing the surface had darkened, and the petals of the moons withered to nothing. The ships never came back, and the Prime sent no more to Trub. Instead the next wave of Prime ships headed straight to Aqueous.
They had orbited the ocean globe for several days before departing.
‘We know now we had a lucky escape,’ Mooray said. ‘Your great and wise Mother Laura told us the Prime need land not water to dwell on.’
The Vatni had watched the ships depart and fly to Macule next – which was also unsuitable for the Prime. They visited Asdil after that, briefly, then went on to examine every world orbiting their new star, an epic two-year voyage that saw them returning to Ursell at the end.
Then four centuries after the ships went home, Ursell began to flash with very bright explosions. Its atmosphere turned sour, and the cloud cover swelled to cover most of the surface.
‘And what of Fjernt?’ Florian asked. ‘What do you remember seeing there?’ Fjernt was a planet in the same orbit as Bienvenido and Aqueous, but in conjunction behind the sun, which meant it could never be seen from Bienvenido. All Florian knew was it had no oxygen in its atmosphere, and eighty per cent of the surface was water. Laura Brandt’s brief survey had detected no radio emissions nor seen anything that could be a city.
‘Clouds,’ Mooray said. ‘White as ice. Towers of cloud taller than a dozen land mountains. They spin and they dance as the world turns.’
‘All the lands?’ he asked, captivated.
As Mooray gurgled his flowery descriptions of the hidden planet, Florian turned the boat up into the stream that ran along the floor of the Naxian valley. It was wide for a stream, with plenty of water surging along its stony bed, but not quite big enough to qualify as a river in its own right. Rowing against the swift current was hard work. Florian was soon sweating.
A couple of hundred metres from the water, the well-maintained track up into the valley curved in from the west and began to follow the stream. It was easy enough to see, even without his superior Eliter vision. Like all country roads on Bienvenido, it was lined with trees in accordance with Captain Iain’s law, passed seven hundred years after Landing, so that travellers would always be able to see the way ahead.
The huge ancient larches marched away into the night, all the way up to the Ealton family’s farmhouse – a large stone mansion at the centre of half a dozen barns, stables, and yards.
Florian kept rowing, methodically pushing the boat along parallel to the avenue. Naxian was a lot wider than the Albina valley; its shallow slopes were predominantly pasture, with long swathes of jibracken clinging to the boggy folds. It was excellent terrain for raising herds of mountain sheep. The Ealton family had been doing just that for generations, dating back a thousand years before the Great Transition. Now they carried on under the People’s Congress as they had done when the Captains ruled, only they did it under state licence – a difference which made no difference.
The road slowly split away from the stream, angling westwards. When they were a kilometre apart, Florian eventually turned the boat into the shallows and clambered out. Tall, stiff volreeds lined the swift water, and he secured the painter to a big rock jutting out of the bank.
The Ealton family farmhouse was another four kilometres upstream. On full magnification, Florian’s eyes could just make out a small glimmer of red where the stone walls were a couple of degrees warmer than the night air.
‘Can you see anything?’ he asked Mooray.
‘No people of the land are close.’
Florian reduced his zoom and started to scan the surrounding landscape. The centuries of work which generations of Ealtons had devoted to the valley had resulted in long drystone walls dividing the meadowland into regular pastures, extending across the valley floor and halfway up the slopes, almost reaching the high wild forests. A lot of the walls were in need of repair, with long sections crumbling away – just as they always had been. Strips of temporary wire fencing had been set up to block the bigger gaps.
Flocks of sheep showed up in his infra-red vision, red lumps clustered together for security and warmth. He picked the crossbow out of the boat. ‘This way.’
They set off towards a walled-off pasture a couple of hundred metres away, which contained at least eighty sheep that he could see. The gate was held shut by a simple chain, which he removed quietly. None of the sheep moved when he pushed it open. Mooray and Teal slipped through the gap.
‘Wait here,’ he told them. Teal let out a tiny whine, but sat obediently next to the Vatni.
Florian loaded a quarrel into the crossbow as he walked towards a pack of seven sheep. They started to stir when he was about twenty metres away. He stood still and took careful aim.
The quarrel shot into the sheep’s skull, killing it instantly. The others scattered, bleating in panic as it collapsed onto the ground. Florian scanned round carefully. If any of the shepherds were close, that would attract them. Apart from the sheep, and some smaller creatures he guessed were bussalores, nothing was moving. He let out a low whistle.
Rustling wasn’t a huge problem for the valleys, and Florian didn’t sneak into
the Naxian valley often enough to draw attention. The Ealtons would likely write off the occasional missing sheep to roxwolves, not that he ever saw much of them; the lean predators tended to stay within the treeline.
Mooray lumbered up out of the darkness as Florian finished strapping a rope harness to the sheep. Between the two of them, the carcass was easy to drag.
They’d almost made it to the bank of the stream when Florian’s communication routine flashed a spectral green icographic of a general ping request across his vision. He started at the unexpected connection.
‘Is something wrong, friend?’ Mooray asked.
Florian held up a hand for silence. The signal was gaining strength. His auditory nerves plagued him with a distorted whistle which quickly calmed and began to stutter before becoming coherent.
‘Urgent request for assistance. Urgent request for assistance. If you are receiving this, please respond. Urgent request for assistance. Urgent—’
The message carried on with methodical insistence. An Eliter! Florian let out a small groan of dismay. Some hothead radical on the run had ended up in the valley, one step ahead of the sheriffs or PSR officers. But scanning the larch-tree avenue in infra-red, he couldn’t see any kind of vehicle, not even a bicycle. I don’t need this.
‘Is there a problem?’ Mooray asked in a fast clatter of tusks.
‘I hope not.’ Slumping his shoulders, Florian ordered his communication routine to open a link. ‘Nobody here can help you. You need to keep moving.’
The signal strength multiplied by an order of magnitude. Florian hadn’t known anyone could transmit at such strength. ‘Not an option, I’m afraid. I’m locking on to your position. That’s good; nice and remote. I can make that easily. Hang on, I’m decelerating.’
‘What?’ Spoken aloud as well as transmitted along the link.
‘Three minutes out. You’ll hear me real soon. Don’t be afraid.’
Which was completely the wrong thing to say. And still there was nothing visible between the larch trees.
Mooray’s tusks clattered wildly. Teal barked.
‘Look, look,’ Mooray was saying. His heavy body was rocking about in agitation, flippers extended rigidly, pointing up into the air.
With blood thudding in his ears, Florian slowly looked up into the sky, dreading what he would see, telling himself there could be nothing. Please. ‘Oh great crudding Giu!’ he moaned.
Something blazing with heat was moving across the northern sky, curving round. Fast, so fast! Lining up on the Naxian valley as if the wide open slopes were some kind of welcome embrace.
‘Go away!’ Florian pleaded. He knew he was watching the end of his life zooming towards him. Nothing was ever going to be the same again. He whimpered in dismay. The urge to wrap himself in a pleasant faraway mindscape until the thing was gone was almost overwhelming.
‘Way too late for that, pal. I’ve been waiting for a long time now. And anyway, my systems ain’t what they used to be.’
Then it was dipping down, and slowing. Getting bigger. But actually, it wasn’t that big. Florian had been expecting something the size of an IA-509. What he saw now was a cylinder with slightly bulbous ends, which his optical-analysis routines were classifying at three metres long, and two wide. The incredibly hot air surrounding it was not moving, which was impossible. He could see the turbulence in the sky behind it, a long line of warm twisting air.
‘What is that?’ Mooray asked. ‘A new type of Faller?’
‘No,’ Florian told his friend. ‘I don’t know what it is. But it’s trouble.’
The cylinder passed fifty metres overhead, descending rapidly now. Somehow it wasn’t as hot. Its halo of fiery air was dissipating, a spherical ripple gushing away.
Florian felt it, a gust of heat as if someone had opened an oven right in front of him. Teal barked in dismay, jumping about. Then thunder rolled into the valley – a weird crackling boom from the north that went on and on. And Florian just knew that had to be the cylinder’s wake, ripping through the sky.
The whole county’s going to know it’s here!
Teal was howling with fright now as the thunder echoed off the valley walls. Sheep were charging across their pastures. Infra-red vision showed him flocks of panicked birds rising from the trees they’d been sleeping in.
‘Down and safe. Well, sort of. Get yourself over here, my new friend. I have something for you.’
‘What?’ Florian replied automatically as he tried to soothe Teal.
‘As of now, the most precious thing on the planet. Come on, get your arse over here.’
Florian looked at Mooray and pulled out the flute. ‘The thing that Fell from the sky; it wants us.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘It’s speaking to me, the way my kind speak, over distances.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then we will adventure this night. Hunt more than stupid land meat. Hunt the knowing, friend Florian. This is good.’
The cylinder had landed about eight hundred metres away, at the edge of a spinney of silver birch that crowned a small rise. Florian hurried towards it, torn between wanting to know what the cylinder was and simple fear of the unknown. Teal bounded along beside him, while Mooray struggled to keep up.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Joey . . . well, I used to be. I’m not any more.’
‘I don’t understand. What are you now?’
‘Good question. Technically, this is an independent life-support system.’
‘Life support . . . ? You mean you’re in a spaceship, like a Liberty capsule?’
‘Not so much in it, as: it. I’m resident in the smartnet nowadays.’
‘What?’
‘I’m the electronics.’
‘You’re the machine itself? I’m talking to an electrical machine?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. You are.’
‘Then what is your function?’
‘Okay, that’s the complicated part. You’ll see in a minute when you get here.’
Florian saw the lights in the farmhouse come on. They would have been woken by the thunder of the cylinder’s flight. But the Ealton family weren’t Eliters; they wouldn’t be able to see the cylinder’s radiant heat, and know something had come from the sky. He still had some safe time.
‘You said you required assistance?’ Florian enquired.
‘Yeah. I was trying to reach a big concentration of Advancers. I scanned from orbit and picked up their link chatter; there’s an area near the coast with a lot of them there. I figured they’d be my best bet.’
‘What are Advancers?’
‘Crap. You have forgotten a lot. Advancers are people like you, with functioning macrocellular clusters.’
‘We call ourselves Eliters. Bethaneve founded our movement during the revolution, but it became so much more. Now it is used by the government to denigrate us. But we use it with pride.’
‘Ah. I wondered about that. I’ve picked up some radio over the centuries, but it’s been intermittent. Eliters got mentioned, but never in a good way.’
‘Centuries? You have been orbiting for centuries?’
‘Not through choice. I got stuck. Long story, and irrelevant tonight.’
‘Joey, where are you from?’ Florian asked in trepidation. There was one answer he wanted to hear above everything.
‘Again: complicated. But originally I’m from the Commonwealth.’
‘You’ve found us!’ he yelled joyfully.
‘No. Sorry, pal, I’ve been here all along, and I’m completely alone. But that should end soon.’
‘How?’
‘Look, I’m not sure how long we’ve got, so let’s just cut short the— Holy shit! What is that with you?’
Florian glanced sideways at Mooray, uncertain how to respond. ‘This is Mooray, my friend of the water.’
‘It’s an alien? A sentient one?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know there were more aliens on Bienvenido.’
‘The Vatni come from Aqueous. They came across through the wormhole Mother Laura opened.’
‘Sonofabitch! I’ve missed so fucking much. Bastard Tree. Nuking was too good for it. Is Laura Brandt still alive?’
‘Mother Laura sacrificed herself to defeat the Prime.’
‘Sweet Jesus! The Prime are here? The Prime? This is a fucking nightmare!’
‘The Prime were exterminated. Mother Laura killed their world. She flooded it with the atmosphere from Valatare.’
‘Valatare? That’s got to be the gas giant, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Flooded . . . ? So she left you working wormholes?’
‘No. The wormhole closed behind her. We think she did it to protect us.’
‘Oh, that stupid smart woman. I always thought she was the best.’
Florian had arrived at the bottom of the slope. He looked up at the pale slim trees on top; several of them had been knocked down when the cylinder landed. There was a short gash in the ground as it had torn through the lingrass to end up with one blunt end embedded in the steaming mound of peaty soil it had ploughed up. Once again, his enhanced vision revealed a strange layer of air cloaking the thing’s skin.
‘Joey, did you know Mother Laura?’ he asked in bewilderment.
‘Yes, I knew her. Long time ago, now.’
‘But—’
‘Look, I know you’ve got a bazillion questions, but we’re kind of short on time. From what I did manage to catch from your radio, Bienvenido has some kind of totalitarian government, right?’
‘Depends how you look at it.’
‘Should have asked before. What’s your name?’
‘Florian.’
‘Okay, Florian. My sensors are showing you’re a young man. So you’re full of ideals, right?’
‘Not really.’
‘Dump the modesty; this is extremely important. Is your government totalitarian? Think carefully about your answer, please. I need you to be completely honest with me, okay? No pressure, but the fate of every human on Bienvenido may depend on it. There are some big decisions that have to be made in the next minute, and this net isn’t really wired for that. I need my choices to be as simple as possible.’