‘Yeah.’
‘Jesus.’
‘You wanted to come,’ her flesh-and-blood self said. There was a ripple of light laughter in her voice that had been missing for quite some time. ‘Insistent, you were.’
Rick grunted in dismay. They flattened themselves against the passage walls.
Julia’s alien body began to coalesce. The chamber wasn’t going to be big enough to accommodate her; Royan’s disseminator plant had been more extensive than she’d expected – another five of the hemispherical chambers, nearly a kilometre of connecting passageways. She shaped herself into a serpent form a couple of metres in diameter, hardened and roughened her external layer for traction, and surged down the passage.
‘My Lord!’ Sinclair shouted. ‘The Beast! The Beast is come.’ He fell to his knees, clasping his hands in prayer. ‘And when they shall have finished their testimony, the Beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Rick said.
The security hardliners’ rip guns were aimed at her in fear as her questing tip slithered past.
‘Down,’ her flesh-and-blood self ordered in an iron tone. ‘Put those guns down. It won’t touch us.’
Not that it mattered even if they did fire. She could absorb the bolts without any real damage, and take their guns away as any mother would from errant children. Yes, Royan had been right to fear the Hexaëmeron. She regarded the knot of cells that held her lover’s slumbering consciousness tenderly. They would be together again one day, and truly free.
Her tip split into two as it emerged into the catacombs, then those tips branched again. She started to probe the fissures and passages of the fault zone. A tide of cohesive oil penetrating every cranny; some of her extremities were thinner than leaves, barely five cells thick.
Caves and passages were observed, oppressively miasmatic in the low infrared band. Rock formations revealed their composition and weaknesses; ores were assayed. She watched freshets coursing through the bleak ragged cavities, several thin waterfalls splattering down isolated clefts, their volume visibly decreasing; and guessed at the lake next to the Celestial Apostles’ village being breached.
She started to siphon the water into herself, opening up a plexus of capillaries to distribute it evenly.
Bodies in muscle-armour suits were lying above the sinking water, jammed into tight rifts, or caught on jutting rock fangs. Little clumps of jetsam bobbed along. In one passage she discovered a dog, its fur badly singed, barbecued flesh peeling away. She sent out a pseudopod, and digested it.
Suzi was floating face down in a crescent-shaped cave where the water had pooled, long scorch gouges down the back and legs of her armour. Rip gun bolts had gouged molten scars in the rock, glassy beads dribbling down the walls like wax from a candle.
Julia ingested the water, then pushed a large lump of herself into the cave, inflating it like a bubble until every square centimetre of the rock’s surface was covered with a thin skin of cells. Four missiles had detonated, she could taste the bitter chemicals of the warheads imprinted on the walls. Minute particles of metalloceramic were detectable, along with composite and plastic fragments. Leol Reiger had been hit.
She retracted her far-flung body from the more distant sections of the fault zone, and concentrated on examining the area around Suzi’s cave.
Footsteps betrayed him, she could hear the crash team blundering about in and around the village cave, but discrimination procedures quickly eliminated them. She heard it then, a monotonous clumping, one foot moving slowly, coming down hard.
She infiltrated the passage behind him, sprouting exploratory tentacles into the wall cracks. They discovered a labyrinth of narrow chinks behind the surface, dislodged ore veins, rock and metal torn apart. Her body oozed in, filling every cranny. The leading edges passed round him in silence, slithering on ahead. Ten metres in front of him, she seeped back out into the passage, forming a solid clot like cold brimstone.
The armour suit was limping, left leg grating loudly at each movement. One infrared helmet beam shone weakly ahead, swaying from side to side. Two of the thermal dump panels on his back were dead, the third glowed strongly in the infrared. Her magnetic-sensitive cells picked up shivers of energy from the muscle bands. Air filter intakes on the helmet growled asthmatically.
Leol Reiger stopped, his rip gun raised to point at the smooth protoplasm barrier. Julia sculpted a relief of her own face, a metre high, and extended it out of the integument. A green laser fan from the suit’s shoulder sensor pod swept over her.
Julia opened her mouth, and used the cells inside as a diaphragm. ‘I warned you before, Mr Reiger, I would not forget you.’
Leol Reiger’s suit speaker clicked on. ‘Julia Evans. Gotta hand it to you, this is some stunt. You wanna deal?’
‘No. I want you to know it was me.’
‘Yeah? Then you’d better be good, rich bitch, you’d better be fucking supreme. Because I told you once already, the only way out now is you and me.’
‘Yes, that you did.’
Leol Reiger fired, walking forwards. Rip gun bolts tore into her outsize face, clawing it to cinders. Steam and carbon particles spewed back at him as cells died in their hundreds of billions.
Julia started to expand her cells, filling the cavities around the passage. Osmosis impelled the water through her, bloating every capillary. She felt it as a peristaltic contraction, muscles straining at their limit. The rock screeched in agony as hydrostatic pressure began to close the passage. A violent shudder threw Leol Reiger to his knees. The rip gun clattered away. He rolled on to his back, and stuck his arms up, pushing against the roof as it descended. The metalloceramic armour buckled.
Julia kept on squeezing long after it was necessary, wringing every wisp of air out of the compacted rock.
41
Greg pressed himself against the rough surface of the passage wall as the alien behemoth squirmed past. He could almost believe neuorhormone abuse had sprained his synapses into hallucinosis, abandoning him in a universe of the mind’s whimsy. In a way he wished it were true, that would mean the alien wasn’t real.
Two metres in diameter, a skin like coarse leather, coloured sable-black, gruesomely supple, and possessing more inertia than a rampant dinosaur. Shadowform thought currents purled along its length, distorted human idiosyncrasies, anything but reassuring in their metamorphosis. Human without humanity.
‘A serpent of the night,’ Sinclair cried. ‘Satan incarnate.’
Strong eddies of air whipped past Greg’s face, bringing a scent of corruption, of ripe fruit mouldering on branches. He coughed, eyelids blinking against the acridity.
‘Hail Mary, for all me sins I beg your forgiveness,’ Sinclair said. His eyes were tight shut.
‘It won’t hurt you,’ Julia said, her voice raised above the rasp of alien skin slithering over rock. Her thought currents had a self-assured tranquillity Greg envied.
‘Not this,’ Sinclair cried. ‘I didn’t want this. You’ve let loose the beast. I wanted an end to madness, the start of justice.’
‘It’s harmless,’ Rick said. ‘Believe me. That’s what we’ve done, neutered it. You’ll never see it again.’
Sinclair opened one eye, and shivered.
Greg wondered just how big the alien was now. There must have been a lot of disseminator plant to give it this much bulk.
‘Is it an angel or a demon?’ Sinclair asked.
‘Neither,’ said Julia. ‘It’s hope. A very noble sort of hope.’
‘For who?’
‘Maybe a lot of people. The whole Earth is going to be given proof we’re not alone in the galaxy, and never have been. They’ll see it written in the sky tonight. And God knows this world deserves to be touched with wonder.’
‘You’re a religious woman, Miss Julia?’
‘Yes, I suppose I am.’
The tail of the alien rushed by. Swallowed by the darkness in se
conds. Greg hadn’t really appreciated how fast the bloody thing was moving. Muscles unknotted, his legs were shaking.
Circles of light from the helmet spots on the hardliners’ suits shone on the opposite wall. He stepped out into the middle of the passage. The alien presence was dwindling, a dawn-washed star at the back of his mind. Julia was staring into the gloom after it.
‘Regrets?’ he asked.
‘Not one. It was all I could do.’
He put his arm round her shoulder, and gave her a little hug. Doubts were still cluttering the peripheries of her mind.
‘I said you were the best when it comes to decisions,’ he told her.
She grinned up at him. ‘Thanks, Greg. And you, too, Rick. I’m deep in your debt; I would never have thought of that by myself.’
‘No,’ Rick said. ‘There’s nothing to thank, this was the zenith of my professional life, I’ve justified fifteen years’ work and dreaming, and you made it possible.’ He was solemnly intent, nearly entreating. Julia’s grin became a little laboured.
‘Come on, I think we’d better get going,’ Greg said.
‘Yes,’ Julia said. ‘I must get in touch with Victor and Sean, there will be the most awful panic if I don’t inform them what’s about to happen.’
Greg had half expected to meet the alien again in the caves. Two or three times he thought he could hear something rumbling, a sound like boulders being slowly ground together. But the only sign of its presence was an oval tunnel which had been bored into the storage cave, saving them from wriggling along the narrow crack. The rock had been sheered clean, giving it a polished-marble finish.
‘Is it ahead of us?’ Greg asked Julia.
‘No. I want to get back to Hyde Cavern quickly.’
‘So it made this opening for you?’
‘Yes.’
Shelves and cargo pods had been smashed against the rear wall of the storage cave where the wave had flung them, walls and ceiling were dripping wet. There was no sign of any of the fruit.
‘The hardliners must have breached the lake,’ Greg said.
‘So where did all the water go?’ Rick asked. ‘We never saw any, and we were lower down than this.’
‘Used up,’ Julia said without hesitating.
‘Are you in contact with that thing?’ Greg asked.
‘Not exactly, but there was some feedback when I squirted my memories over. I know what it can do, and I know how I’ll use it. The water is only the start. It needs a lot of organic chemicals.’ She sighed. ‘I hope it leaves enough hydrocarbons to germinate the second chamber’s biosphere.’
The extent of the damage in the village cave surprised Greg. It must have been a brute of a fight. The crash team were splashing about through ankle-deep water. He counted seventeen armour suits laid out in a row. One of them was small, badly scored.
Suzi had been so young when they first met, barely a teenager, frightened and determined, emotionally scarred. One of the best Trinities he had ever trained, soaking up every word, bright and quick. She never had a childhood, not the kind his kids at Hambleton were getting. Instead he taught her how to kill, then threw her straight into the front line. She hadn’t known anything else, her entire life moulded by a bunch of drunken Party militia, a random fling of the dice. If they had turned down another street, ransacked someone else’s hotel, it would’ve been so different. Suzi was smart enough to have made it in any field. Never had the chance to try. That was what they’d fought for together, back in Peterborough, so that the next generation could live real lives again. And they’d been right, Julia and her achievements proved that.
He turned to Julia as she picked her way over dead fish, button nose wrinkled in dismay. She recoiled from the heat in his expression.
‘Are you quite sure you and the alien dealt with Leol Reiger?’ he asked.
She nodded hurriedly, eyes dark with emotion. He hadn’t seen her that vulnerable-looking for seventeen years.
Greg’s earpiece hissed with static, then Melvyn was talking in a breathless voice. ‘I was about to send out a scout party for you. I was worried the water might have trapped you.’
Three of the suited figures were walking towards them.
Julia fumbled round in her hood, and found the small mike. ‘Do you have a communication circuit with Victor?’ she asked.
‘Not a chance, our fibre optic went down in the combat.’ He paused. ‘Greg—’
‘I know,’ Greg said.
‘We’re leaving now,’ Julia said. ‘Get your team together.’ She started for the staircase.
‘But there’s still five tekmercs unaccounted for,’ Melvyn protested.
‘Are all your people here?’
‘I detailed four to take our wounded out, but the rest are here, yes.’
‘Then get them out.’
‘Yes, ma’am. What about the tekmercs?’
‘Leave them to the alien, they won’t escape.’
‘You found it?’ Melvyn asked. Greg heard a thousand questions in his voice.
‘Yes,’ Julia said.
‘Lordy, me boy, you should have seen the beastie,’ Sinclair said. ‘A kilometre long, it was, black as hell.’
‘Where’s Royan?’ Melvyn asked.
Julia’s step faltered. ‘Gone.’
Fragments of data traffic bounced down the service tunnel as Greg led them out into Moorgate station, his earpiece picking up snatches of shouting voices. Half of New London’s security staff were waiting for them. He could see paramedics easing the crash team casualties into a hospital coach, the four armour-suited members standing close by.
Victor came at a dead run as they emerged from the service tunnel. He stopped short half a metre from Julia, looking her up and down. ‘You’re all right,’ he said, he sounded scared.
Julia smiled. ‘Yes, Victor, I’m all right.’
Victor cleared his throat, and glanced back down the service tunnel. ‘What about Royan, did you find him?’
‘Yeah,’ Greg said. ‘But he’s not coming back, not with us.’ He sat down on one of the big pipes next to a turbopump casing. Now the tension and adrenalin drive were abating, the exertions of the last two days were making themselves felt. The immediacy was lost; always the same after combat, and that’s what this had been, even without the physical side. His neurohormone hangover was nagging, cutting him off from the emotional by-play of the security staff, Victor and Julia, Rick; Sinclair’s doolally inspirations. And he didn’t care. He wanted out of his dissipater suit, then a bath, a drink, and a call to Eleanor. Maybe the other way round.
‘And the alien?’ Victor asked.
‘It’s agreed to leave,’ Julia said. ‘Have you got your cybofax on you?’
Victor handed it over.
‘Get all these people out of here,’ Julia said as she entered a code into the wafer. ‘And clear all the other northern endcap stations as well.’
‘Why, what’s happening?’
Her eyes glinted challengingly. ‘There’s going to be a slight adjustment to New London.’
Victor appealed to Greg.
‘Don’t look at me, she made the deal.’
‘What, with the alien?’
‘Yeah.’
Victor glanced back at Julia. Like a teenager hit with first-love blues, Greg thought.
Sean Francis’s face appeared on the cybofax screen. ‘Ma’am. You’re all right, yes?’
Julia sucked in her cheeks. ‘Yes, so it seems. Sean, order a complete evacuation of all personnel in the second chamber, miners, technicians, supervisors. Absolutely everyone, they are to use the emergency capsules. I want them out fast.’
Sean looked shocked. ‘What’s happening?’
‘The alien will be entering the second chamber soon. And while I think of it, make sure the orb foundry plant crew evacuate as well. Then clear every spacecraft within a five-hundred-kilometre radius of New London, and that includes all the cargo tugs and personnel commuters. Everything, understood?’
>
‘My God, if it’s that dangerous shouldn’t I order a full-scale evacuation?’
‘It’s not dangerous,’ Julia said quickly. ‘Just very, very big.’
‘Big,’ Sean mouthed silently. ‘All right, I’ll initiate the procedures now.’
‘Thank you, Sean,’ Julia said. ‘And have Maria power up my Falcon. We’ll be at the southern hub docking complex in five minutes.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Sean asked. It wasn’t quite an accusation.
‘Certainly not. I’m reserving a grandstand seat; after what we’ve been through we’ve earned it.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Julia sat beside Greg, and slipped her arm through his. She was effervescent. It was a lovely sight, he thought, like watching time in retreat, her face smoothing out.
‘How about you boys?’ Julia glanced up at Rick and Victor, tip of her tongue caught between her lips. ‘You coming?’
Victor and Rick exchanged a nervous glance, not quite sure how to react to this teasing, girlish Julia.
Greg chuckled at them, and allowed her to haul him to his feet. Muscles creaked in protest, but she was right, he couldn’t miss it. At least somebody had got what they wanted out of all this.
Space was full of bright orange sparks, a wide cyclonic circle spinning out of New London’s northern hub like some giant Catherine wheel display. The Falcon glided smoothly towards them, maintaining a steady two-kilometre separation distance from the bulk of the asteroid.
‘Just how many people have you got building the second chamber?’ Rick asked. He was floating parallel to the cabin roof, gawping out at the pyrotechnic armada of emergency escape capsules.
Julia clucked her tongue, concentrating on the data her processor nodes were feeding her. ‘About three and a half thousand all told. The capsules can hold up to eight people. They’ve launched most of them.’
Maria snorted. ‘A thousand vomit comets, the mind boggles.’
Greg tightened his grip on the back of her chair. Maria had been grumpy since they left New London’s southern hub docking crater. He got the impression she didn’t like being crowded out like this. The four of them hanging on behind her, peering out through the slim, graphic-laden windscreen.