A Night Without Stars

Mooray, meanwhile, had slipped into the water. His tails were flicking about with deceptive force, pushing them along with the current, travelling a lot faster than Florian had ever managed to row.

  The lights from the farmhouse and the trucks quickly fell behind. The empty night sky and dark land merged into one, leaving him alone. And for the first time he could actually stop to consider what had happened, the crazy thing he’d agreed to do: hide a Commonwealth baby for a month by avoiding the PSR, the most ruthless, most efficient force on the planet?

  ‘Oh crud, what have I done?’ It had all happened so fast.

  Of course, the whole encounter was madly exciting, and he was defying the PSR bastards. But that burst of exhilaration, the yearning for defiance, might well be a side effect of the Commonwealth drug.

  I’ll never know now.

  The baby finished guzzling the bladder and let the teat drop from her slack mouth with a contented smile. Florian held the flaccid bladder up in puzzlement. It was practically empty. The baby couldn’t possibly have drunk that much. Has the bladder got a leak?

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Mooray asked.

  Holding the child very carefully under one arm, Florian put the flute between his lips and blew a quiet answer. ‘I’m not sure. Keep her safe like I told the Commonwealth machine I would. I really don’t want the government to get her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I suppose because she’s from the Commonwealth. Government people don’t like that. They’re always saying how bad it is.’

  ‘How do they know?’

  ‘They don’t. The last person from the Commonwealth was Nigel and he triggered the Great Transition, which Slvasta hated. But then Eliters always claim we should make contact with the Commonwealth because it will save us. Only they don’t know that for sure, either, if I’m being honest.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I guess I just want things to change.’ He looked down at the baby in the crook of his arm. ‘And it sounds like she might do that for us.’

  *

  They were halfway across the lake to the Vatni village when the baby woke and started crying – really bawling. The noise was incredible. Florian was convinced she’d wake the whole county. Any Air Force planes searching would hear her above their propeller roar.

  ‘Is she ill? Have you damaged her?’ Mooray asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Florian replied. He held the baby up, looking beseechingly into her scrunched-up, distraught face, hoping beyond reason she’d give him some kind of clue what was wrong. That weird thing stuck to her head?

  He bounced her softly on his knee. ‘What is it? What’s wrong, sweetheart?’

  The wailing continued. He began to move her a little more. ‘Please, please. It’s all right. Just . . . What is it?’

  She came down on his knee – and let out the biggest burp he’d ever heard. A mouthful of richmilk splattered on his hand. It was disgustingly warm and tacky. He couldn’t move his hand to wipe it off, or she might topple over.

  ‘Oh.’ Now he understood. Wind. You have to wind babies after they’ve had milk, he remembered.

  She still didn’t look happy, so he tentatively bounced her about again. Two burps later, she seemed calmer. So he supposed he ought to check the nappy—

  ‘Oh, great crudding Giu!’ Florian thought he might throw up. The smell. And surely it shouldn’t be so liquid? He winced, and looked away, trying to inhale some clean lake air.

  ‘Friend—’

  ‘Don’t ask! Just . . . get us to the village. Fast, please!’

  But it had to be dealt with. So balancing the baby on one knee, which was now suspiciously damp, he felt round in the bag for the wipes and a fresh nappy.

  It took forever, and the unsteady boat didn’t help. But just before they reached the little jetty she was clean and dry and wrapped in a new nappy. He actually felt rather pleased with himself for coping. And he’d know how to do it better next time.

  The boat knocked into the jetty and Mooray heaved himself out of the water. ‘What now?’ the Vatni asked. ‘Do you wish to stay here with us?’

  ‘No. You have been more than kind, my friend. But I cannot stay here, for to do so would be to put you in danger. My government would not take kindly to you aiding me.’

  ‘Please be careful.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I will be the most careful person on the planet.’ He lifted his head, looking to the north. The breeze was growing stronger. Thin scattered clouds were starting to build across the horizon. The weather would slow any search. He would have time to prepare, to work out what he was going to do, and where to go. Aunt Terannia first. She’ll know what to do.

  He drove the Openland back up to his lodge, again not switching on the headlights. By the time he got back, he was exhausted and the headache was getting even worse. All he wanted was to crawl into bed and sleep.

  The baby was fitful when he took her from the passenger seat. When he bent over her, he caught a whiff of— ‘Not again? I just changed you.’

  But when he got her inside and unwrapped the cloth on the kitchen table, sure enough the nappy was full. He cleaned her up, quicker and more efficiently this time.

  The baby lay on her back, wide awake. Her little arms were raised, hands clawing at the air, as if she was searching for something. The beginnings of a frown crinkled up her face.

  ‘Now what?’

  Her mouth was opening and closing like a fish.

  ‘What? More milk?’ It didn’t seem possible. But when he produced the second bladder she started guzzling immediately. Teal curled up on his blanket beside the range cooker and watched quietly.

  And of course, after the feed, she needed to be burped. It wasn’t anything like as easy as last time. Then, just as she seemed to settle, she had to be changed.

  ‘Great Giu.’ Florian could barely keep his eyes open; he’d never been so tired before. Dawn was only a couple of hours away now. His headache had evolved to a hot burn that thumped away behind his eyes with every heartbeat.

  He put the baby down in the middle of his bed. Then, worried she’d wiggle her way off, he put the pillow on one side and lay down on the other. Sleep came fast.

  Equally fast, he was awake as soon as she started crying. Another change!

  Sleep.

  Dawn and more crying combined. The headache had mercifully abated, but his neck was stiff from not having a pillow. And he couldn’t have had more than an hour’s sleep in total.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he groaned, close to weeping himself now. The third bladder of richmilk. Crud, I’ve only got two left. How can she drink so much?

  When he held her in the crook of his arm to feed, he saw the cloth she was wrapped in was uncomfortably tight around her skin. Must be from squirming round in her sleep.

  Change her. Wrap her up again – but there wasn’t as much cloth. ‘Huh?’ Looking at her, he could have sworn she’d grown several centimetres overnight, which was weird. But . . . Kids have growth spurts . . . I think? Nothing else could explain it, and Joey said he would need more cloth soon, so nothing was wrong. She’d survived the night. ‘I did it right,’ he told the dozing infant with a proud smile. ‘I actually did it.’ Then he thought about having an entire month of nights identical to the one he’d just survived, and his skin turned cold.

  It was raining. A low cloud roofed the valley, reducing the morning sunlight to a dour grey glimmer as if twilight had already arrived. Florian switched on the light in the living room. The range cooker was cooling, but the embers were still glowing, so he put some fresh logs in. Before long they’d caught, and he left the air vent fully open so they would burn fast and hot.

  The baby was asleep on the ancient sofa, safely surrounded by cushions to make a kind of nest. He knew he’d only have an hour at most before she’d need changing again. Probably a feed too.

  There was still some of yesterday’s bread left, so he cut some slices and spread raspberry jam over them. Only then di
d he realize how hungry he was. The kettle took a long time to boil. He put some more logs on, knowing the oven temperature would be all wrong – and just not caring.

  He sat on the rocking chair and stared at the baby. The enormity of what he’d done was starting to register. He’d be lucky if he could manage to look after her, never mind keep her away from the PSR.

  That drug. It must have been the drug. I’d never agree—

  There was a mild flash. Florian looked up at the window, thinking lightning was plaguing the valley, but it was a very weak flash and there was no thunder.

  ‘What?’

  More flashes – but they were coming from behind his eyes. Like a broken icographic, except this was brighter. The flashes quickly stabilized into five stars in a pentagon formation.

  ‘Huh?’

  Shapes began to emerge from each of the stars, so much sharper and clearer than the icographics he was used to. A green pyramid, turning slowly in mid-air. Spheres made up of smaller spheres, multiplying from the centre. A sinkhole of concentric lavender circles that led back to infinity. A sphere of rippling yellow sine waves. Rainbow star cluster.

  The space machine’s code.

  Florian smiled, entranced. Then someone spoke fractured, juddering words that made no sense, fading in and out like short-wave radio in a storm. He twisted round in shock, but there was nobody in the room. It was inside his head, part of the new code.

  The voice spoke again, and this time the fragments came together in a mellow tone. ‘Can you understand this? If you can, please say yes out loud.’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I am the basic operational memory package for macrocellular cluster operation. I have run tests on your neural functionality, and configured myself accordingly. There is a red diamond icon positioned at the top of the display in your exovision. Please locate it.’

  ‘Sure. I got it.’

  ‘In order for this package to download from your lacuna and into your main cluster, you must visualize the diamond expanding. When it has done this, please rotate it one hundred and eighty degrees clockwise. To cancel the download, please rotate it the other way. Please confirm you understand.’

  ‘Yeah. Uh, right.’ He needed to take a breath. This commitment was as big as picking up the baby. Commonwealth knowledge! The one thing the Eliters have wanted for centuries. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Please make your choice.’

  Florian concentrated on the diamond, wanting it to be bigger. When it expanded, he thought of it turning rapidly clockwise.

  The sensation which followed was akin to the drug he’d taken last night, but confined to his skull. Information like silver light was glowing inside him, shining through his grey matter to nestle snugly inside a billion neurons, elevating them. It was as if his brain had never been truly alive before, and now it sang with knowledge.

  The operating system downloaded and installed, bringing a revelation of understanding. Instinctively, he grasped the functions behind the exovision icons. There were formatting tools for sight, sound, and sensation. There were files decompressing into his storage lacuna. Encyclopaedia files. Specialist files. Even entertainment files. Medical routines started monitoring his physiology, showing him body temperature, heart rate, blood-oxygen levels, toxin levels, hormone secretion, muscle performance, nerve paths, neural activity.

  ‘Oh crudding Uracus,’ he breathed in glorious amazement.

  The baby started crying.

  ‘Seriously?’ he growled at her. ‘Now?’

  But she needed feeding, and was as insistent about it as only she could be. With a small martyred sigh, he postponed exploring his newfound wealth and reached for the next bladder. Crud, only one left after this. So while she sucked down the entire contents, he sat on the settee and accessed the file on richmilk. It was like ordinary milk, but with a massively high protein and vitamin content, along with concentrated specialist fats and hormones. He started to cross-index their functions with encyclopaedia files, and quickly got lost in terms he didn’t understand. For all the information now filling his storage lacuna, comprehension was lacking. The space machine hadn’t given him any education packages.

  ‘Uracus!’ It was like being able to see an orchestra playing, but not hearing it.

  So the Commonwealth baby needed richmilk. He didn’t know why she was different to Bienvenido babies, but that explanation was probably somewhere in the files, too. He could work on refining the search function later. He called up operational files on the nutrient processors, and shot an activation code at one of them. The top opened, its malmetal expanding, allowing the plyplastic hopper to swell up and form a big cone. Florian laughed in delight and made the cylinder repeat that several times before he sheepishly admitted to himself it was a bit childish.

  He burped the baby while looking up what kind of food to put in the hopper. Plenty of vegetation, the goat’s milk would also do, some protein (there was a little bit of rabbit stew left), water, jam for sugar.

  While she was sleeping – it wouldn’t be long before another change was due – he ran round collecting the ingredients and dropping them in the smooth conical hopper. The nutrient processor’s micronet asked for a bladder to be attached. Florian had to use all the water he’d boiled to sterilize the used bladders, so he still hadn’t managed to make a cup of tea for himself. The kettle went on again. He sterilized the used bladders in a big copper pot, and connected one to the bottom of the nutrient processor. Then he watched in satisfaction as the mush of food in the hopper was slowly ingested, and a trickle of richmilk filled the bladder.

  I made it work!

  Then the baby needed changing, and then the bladder on the nutrient processor was full, so he attached a second one. And he realized Teal hadn’t been fed, so he took care of that. And the kettle was whistling loudly, which woke the baby. So he soothed her back to sleep. Then the hopper needed cleaning, the undigested slop flushing out of the processor ready for the next batch.

  It was midday already (how did that happen?), and Florian hadn’t eaten anything but three slices of bread. Three weeks ago, on his trip to the general store in Wymondon, he’d bought a cured ham. There was still some left, which was a relief. He had to eat something before he set off to visit Aunt Terannia. Exactly when he was going to pack for his forthcoming trip, he didn’t know – nor what to take. The baby would need feeding again soon. And—

  Teal raised his head, ears twitching. Then he was on his feet, nose close to the door, barking. The baby started whimpering.

  ‘Quiet, boy,’ Florian told the dog; the last thing he wanted right now was the baby waking up again.

  He looked out of the window. Three black-painted regiment Terrain Trucks (bigger versions of his Openland) were driving up the track to his lodge.

  2

  The Albina valley forest warden’s lodge was Chaing’s seventh visit of the day. A helicopter had brought him out to the big farmhouse in Naxian valley an hour after leaving the Opole aerodrome. Chaing had never flown in one of the contraptions before. The lack of wings was profoundly disturbing, though the pilot’s cheery attitude went some way to building up his confidence as they took off. Then they flew into the dismal low clouds which plagued the foothills of the Sansone mountains and he gripped the seat hard, relieved that the painkillers for his wrist were keeping a lid on his anxiety.

  For over twenty minutes they flew on in rain, the big inflated rubber landing skis just skimming the treetops. Naxian valley was easy enough to distinguish; it seemed as if half of the county regiment’s vehicles were parked along the larch avenue, spilling out into the expansive fields on either side. Twenty troop carriers were parked in the various farmyards along with a mobile Fall command post, while a knot of big lorries and tracked trucks were clustered together beside a spinney of silver birch.

  As soon as they landed, a flustered lieutenant escorted him to the command post. Stonal was inside, talking to the regiment’s brigadier. They stood beside a table that was co
vered with maps of the surrounding area, where pins representing deployment were already stuck in. One wall of the command post was taken up with a bank of radio equipment, manned by seven operators.

  ‘Good to see you again so soon,’ Stonal said without any noticeable insincerity.

  The brigadier gave Chaing a moderately disapproving glance before leaving to talk to a group of officers at the other end of the table.

  ‘Has there been a Fall?’ Chaing asked.

  ‘Yes and no. The latest Liberty mission might have caused more than the usual Treefall.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Pilot Major Evine claimed to have seen some kind of alien spaceship directly after the warhead detonated. Naturally, we discourage such flights of fancy; it could as easily have been a chunk of Tree debris. But it seems he may have been right. Ironically, while I was interviewing him last night, something flew into the atmosphere over the Gulf of Meor at very high speed. A lot of people heard it.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, no one did. There was no radar trace. Just noise.’

  ‘Noise?’

  ‘Air Force boffins describe it as a sonic boom. Apparently if you fly faster than the speed of sound, it makes a terrific noise, like a thunderclap, but continuous. They put the reports together and found a trail heading in from the coast, travelling just south of Opole and ending here.’

  Chaing frowned. ‘That’s unusual for an egg.’

  ‘It wasn’t an egg. The Ealton family, who live in this valley, reported finding the “object” at first light this morning. It crashed to the ground a few kilometres from where we’re standing.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Good question. We have no idea. It’s a manufactured artefact. Cylindrical, not particularly large, but potentially revolutionary in impact.’

  A giddy combination of fear and fascination created a tingling along Chaing’s spine. ‘The Prime?’

  ‘No. It appears to be protected by a force field, just like Mother Laura could create around herself.’

  ‘You mean . . .’ Chaing gave the huddled officers a guilty glance before lowering his voice. ‘It’s from the Commonwealth?’