by Luke Donegan
Jay pictured the zeppelin exploding at five thousand feet. How could anyone survive that?
“Are you sure you shouldn’t be sitting with them?” asked Rhada.
“No,” said Jay. “I want to be here.”
But anxiety coiled around him like a chill wind. Erys’ mocking smile and the confident swagger made him fearful. Does he already know? thought Jay. Has the Teacher already chosen him?
“What’s wrong?” asked Rhada. “You’re a million miles away.”
A sea of faces filled his vision. Thirty thousand people were gathered to hear the Teacher’s story. His heart raced.
Rhada tugged at his robes. “Look at me,” she demanded. “Snap out of it, Jay.”
“I don’t know if I can,” he muttered. “I don’t think I can stay.”
He rose to leave. Rhada pulled him back to the seat. The children of Ocean-Hearth watched this exchange nervously.
“No Jay,” insisted Rhada. “You will stay with us.”
His head was spinning.
“But you told me to go, remember?” he said roughly. “You didn’t want me to see the children.”
“That’s not fair,” said Rhada. “I wanted you to stay at Ocean-Hearth. I begged you. But you left me.”
The world tipped. He closed his eyes, trying to right himself. When he opened them Jayda stood before him.
“I want you to stay, Father.”
Jayda blinked her eyes. Bright blue eyes, innocent, but able to see through all the layers of fear and turmoil that rushed about him.
“Can I sit on your lap? Please.”
The little girl anchored him, when the whole world felt like it was slipping away.
The Ascendancy emerged onto a balcony high in the wall of the Ascendancy building – the Ascendant, the Supervisor, the Treasurer, the Instructor, the General, the Judge, the Mother and the Director. Which was which, no-one could tell. They all wore the same white robes and the same masks of gold. The Ascendant however stood in the middle of the group and on a higher platform.
As they emerged the crowd cheered.
The hierarchy of bureaucratic power and the path of ascendancy was as natural as the process of life and the passage through death into the next world. All citizens were on this path, climbing towards fulfillment. The Ascendants before them confirmed this. They were incredible figures and no coloured sash of evil blemished their white robes. Therefore they had no thoughts of evil. They were people who had devoted themselves to the city. People with the strongest commitment and the greatest ethics, a hair’s breadth from Spirit and the wonderment that was the ocean of souls.
The cheers subsided as the Ascendancy sat. The city’s chief bureaucrat, the Administrator, the Supervisor in waiting, ascended the stage.
“Welcome, people of Pars to our Restoration Day celebration.” The man’s voice boomed across the audience. “On this day we remember the crimes of our ancestors and we give thanks to the efforts of our curators, our Hearth-Parents, our soldiers, our administrators, and all others who work to restore the world from Aberration.”
Once again the audience cheered and clapped. Jay whispered in Rhada’s ear: “That is you he’s talking about.”
Rhada nodded to herself. It was the first time she considered the true nature of her role. In her small way she was fighting to restore the world. She smiled, and the smile slipped away as she remembered the truth about Passage.
She turned to Jay.
“Does he know?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“Does the Administrator know that there has been no restoration. Do any of them know?”
“I don’t think so,” said Jay. “I think only a few at the Museum know the truth. The Teacher, the Triumvirate. The Director.”
“Then the Ascendancy would know.”
“Yes, but they wouldn’t let it be known to others. Imagine if everyone knew. The community would fall apart.”
Rhada sat back in her seat. “Then the only thing the Ascendants are close to is a spiritless death.”
She absently caressed Jayda’s hair. The children have thirty years, she thought. And that is all.
“The Singer!” squealed Jayda with excitement.
The small woman claimed the centre of the stage. She bowed deeply and waited while a hush settled over the amphitheater. She lifted her head and began to sing.
Her voice rose above the audience and filled the air. The voice was two voices. One curled around the other - soprano and alto. The harmonies rushed into the hearts of each citizen, pulling them at once to grief and to elation.
The song started low. Each line lifted and built in power, until by the end the song was a force surging skyward, unstoppable as the ocean tide.
Born again,
To emerge,
Like the dawn,
On the horizon,
Creature of light,
Lifting up,
To climb,
To soar,
Like a bird,
Bird of flames,
To fly,
Across the oceans,
Across the deserts,
Across the mountains,
Of the world.
Restore me,
Bird of fire,
Heal my world.
The Singer sank with the completion of her effort while the audience applauded her song. Each person felt hope again, a hope that one day the world would be as it once was.
But Jay was struck by a different emotion. He knew what the people did not, that the world had not been destroyed by the Quark Wars, but by Passage.
As the woman sang, she seemed to look directly at him. He heard a voice within his head, the Singer’s voice, speaking to him from behind her song to him and no-one else.
Your doom, little bird. Beautiful bird with wings of flame. I sing of your doom.
Strings of love and companionship that held him to Rhada stretched taut, broke, and he was cast away. The Singer sang of the certainty that one day he would never see Rhada or the children again, that they would go on and he would be lost. The ache of loneliness consumed him.
Rhada grasped his hand tightly. Though her grip was solid, she was flailing with empty hands at soul strings flapping loosely on a high breeze.
The Teacher crossed the stage and embraced the Singer. The smaller woman left the stage. Jay wanted to cry out after her and demand answers to his questions.
Why am I doomed? What do you mean?
But she disappeared and the moment was gone.
The Teacher faced the audience and her story of the Quark Wars began.
Captain Baran rubbed his eyes. He would not allow himself a minute more sleep than his body required. Although the satellite’s systems would wake him if needed, a fraction of a moment lost could be all the time an enemy missile needed to break through his defenses. He sat at his observation platform on a satellite two hundred miles above the planet. He remained awake, for the Third Roman Empire, and for his people. He remained awake out of duty, out of a commitment to the principles under which this war had been fought.
What principles are they? he said in response to his companion. They are, well ... I can’t remember. But they are worth fighting for. It is why we are here.
He remained awake for his wife. He dreamed of an impossible future where he and his wife could live in peace. Could live without fear. But the dream was a fantasy. His wife was long dead and their home city of Myami nothing but a smear on the peninsula.
But the desire was real. That had not changed.
He flew across the cabin in zero gravity. As he prepared a coffee, he shrugged off the nagging questions of his companion. The coffee was thick and black and it dragged his mind into the moment. Resuming his seat he inspected the cockpit instrument panels. Data collectors surveyed the planet below with radar, telescopes, infra-red spectrometers and radio receivers. The little battle satellite worked furiously to detect signs of enemy activity. Captain Baran perused the readouts, interpr
eted the graphs and maps. Today, as for many months, they showed him nothing.
The battle satellite slipped silently through dark space towards the gravity horizon. It made no sound. There was no person on Earth who knew of its existence.
Still, it pays to be vigilant, insisted Captain Baran to his companion. You should understand that, Franco. When have you last caught me unawares? Never. That’s right. It pays to be vigilant.
His companion made no response.
He switched off the lights in the cabin and placed his eye to an eyepiece protruding from the instrument panel. Planet Earth rotated on its axis far below with an almost imperceptible grace. Blue seas, green continents, brown deserts, and a sprinkling of white still icing the poles. And wide, thousand mile scars of yellow destruction. Through the eyepiece they looked like patches of yellow fungus colonising the land.
The battle satellite swung southwest across Northern Siberia towards Europe. Yellow patches covered the great cities of Russia: Moskva, Rybinsk, Sankt-Peterburg – half the naked earth was yellow. As the battle satellite tracked west, Captain Baran saw that more land than not had been decimated by the quark bombs. Much of that land he had destroyed himself.
Nothing remained of France and Germany. Yellow canker bled over the continent into the Mediterranean. The Adriatic was emptied and devoured by quark bomb residue.
Of course it was necessary! he said, turning angrily on Franco. There can be no deterrence without forthright action. Preemption pays off in the end.
Franco had been fashioned in the form of a human, more on the designer’s whim than for function. He stood by Captain Baran, searching the landscape. He made no sound. Red lights flickered on his face where a human’s mouth and eyes would be. Captain Baran interpreted the pattern of the lights and made his response.
No, the war is not over. It is my responsibility to search out every last enemy and strike before they have the chance to regroup and gain access to weapons. That means any activity in Siberia, in Ch’in, in India or Barackistan. They must be struck down. The risk is too great.
The battle satellite orbited northwest across the Atlantic towards North America. The continent was still a seething mass of bubbling yellow. The half-life of quark residue was short at five years. Twenty years after a quark burst, people could recolonise the land. But the landscape would bear no resemblance to what it had once been.
Franco’s red lights flickered.
I know that the Third Roman Empire is no more, replied Captain Baran. But there is still Pars and Sydon and Welling. They were our allies and we must defend them.
Captain Baran closed the eyepiece and left his battle chair. He prepared a quiet meal and spent the next hour listening to music. He sipped a glass of synthesised wine. He thought about his wife and children and hoped they had not suffered greatly.
The battle satellite drifted through space. It was the only one of its kind remaining. Hundreds of similar satellites once orbited the planet, all targeted and destroyed, but not before they had deposited their payloads. All but his. He had survived, along with the little societies on the southern continent. At times he considered landing in that great land. He dreamed of reconnecting with people. But he had a duty to protect what remained.
They are my principles, he said, remembering finally. Franco? Who knows? I could be the savior of the human race.
Franco’s lights flickered.
How many have I killed? I don’t know. Perhaps millions. But I don’t want to think about that!
His weightless body sailed across the control room as he returned to his battle chair. Dishes were untended on the table. Franco stood impassively by the console, staring out into the dark universe. Stars reflected on the chrome of his face.
The battle satellite blazed a line through the heavens, northwest over the Pacific. Once there had been many islands, all drowned now beneath the rising ocean. The satellite tracked across Ch’in. Captain Baran had traversed this land a thousand times.
Red lights flashed on Franco’s silent face. The cabin lights suddenly dimmed and the battle console sprang into activity. Lights flashed and little speakers beeped. The battle satellite’s computers detected life far below.
We’ve found something, said Captain Baran. Thirty four north, one hundred and nine east.
He ran the coordinates through the database.
Shaanxi, he said. Near the city of Xi’an. Xi’an was destroyed, but somebody nearby survives.
Franco’s red lights flashed.
You know we must investigate. I have strict orders. It doesn’t matter that the people who gave those orders are dead. I must see it through.
Captain Baran decelerated the satellite until it hovered two hundred miles above the Province of Shaanxi. To his naked eye he could see a zone of uncontaminated land perhaps three hundred miles in diameter. This habitable zone was surrounded on all sides by old craters. Ch’in had been mercilessly bombed in the early days of the war.
The satellite’s radio telescope detected faint signatures of electronic activity.
There is something going on down there, realised Captain Baran. Electricity means generators, perhaps computers. This isn’t a band of primitive survivors. Computers mean communication, data storage, calculation. They are rebuilding.
He switched the scope eyepiece to infrared. It was early evening in Ch’in. The scope showed traces of heat on the landscape beyond what would be expected. He switched frequencies. There was no sign of gamma radiation, no quantum signature. He flicked to visible range and increased the magnification to maximum. He saw rooftops, buildings in a village. He saw faint movement on roads through the village.
Yes, there they are, Franco. People.
He switched to radio.
Lights flickered desperately on Franco’s face.
We have a duty, said Captain Baran. If they have electricity they could have radar. They may have detected us already. It’s all spelt out in the policy of preemption. I do a radio sweep to detect any enemy communications, and then ...
The crackle of the radio suddenly slipped into human speech. A male voice, speaking in Ch’in. The satellite’s translators interpreted the message then fed it back through the cockpit speakers.
We mean you no harm. We are a small group and looking for friends. We are rebuilding. If you wish to join us, contact on this frequency. We mean you no harm.
Captain Baran listened to the message three times. It was pre-recorded on a continuous loop.
He closed his eyes and thought, and finally came to a decision.
He typed a pre-fire code into the control bank. Yellow battle light bathed the cabin.
We have seen these tricks before, he said. India tried a similar trick with Barackistan and then attacked.
A quark bomb was loaded into a firing chamber, the satellite vibrating as the weapon shunted into place.
No Franco! No! We have a responsibility to do what is right. If we let them live, and they attack the communities left, all will be lost. Because of us.
We mean you no harm, implored the computer voice. Franco’s red lights flickered.
This is my responsibility, insisted Captain Baran. It rests on my shoulders.
His finger hovered over the fire button. He paused. I can’t do it, he cried. He clenched his fist and hammered it against his forehead. Once, twice. Five times he pounded his face.
... are a small group ...
The pain in his face steadied him, gave him strength to focus.
I do it for the world, he said. In the hope that one day we will be restored.
The robot watched as he pressed the button. The quark bomb sailed away towards the earth and passed from visible sight. Captain Baran powered the satellite across the sky. The recorded message continued to play throughout the cabin.
... are rebuilding. If you wish to join us ...
Captain Baran and his robot companion sat in silence watching the dark rim of the world.
... we mean you no harm .
..
Golden light flooded the cabin as the horizon erupted. A boiling cloud of molecular turmoil bloomed above the landscape like a swelling wave, then collapsed and spilled across the land.
... are looking for friends.
The recorded message cut in mid sentence.
Beautiful light from the explosion radiated yellow to red to violet. He had seen this many times and understood that nothing could survive the blast cloud.
Once more he punched his face. He buried his bruising face in his hands.
I’m sorry Franco, he moaned. I’m so sorry ... oh, oh ... I’m sorry.
There was no reply. For Franco was not a sentient matrix. He was a dumb robot with no capacity for conscious thought. He received information and performed complex operations. He stared into the dark universe – silent space, silent mind – and asked no questions.
The Teacher collapsed. A collective gasp rose from the audience. Jay passed Jayda to Rhada and stood. The distant figure convulsed with pain and a golden light sprang from her chest.
Jay pushed his way towards the aisle. Erys was also working his way through the crowd. The Museum employees were on their feet.
People were standing, blocking his path. He shoved past them, knocking one man back into his seat. As Jay reached the aisle Erys was already making his way down the tiers.
Jay ran, descending towards the stage two steps at a time. The Teacher was obscured behind a group of people. Light radiated from behind them.
Erys climbed onto the stage, crying: “I am her scion! Out of my way!”
As Jay followed, Erys knelt beside the Teacher, holding her face with his hands. The golden light of Passage sprang furiously from her chest The process too far-gone and she only had moments left.
The Administrator attempted to hold Jay back. “I am her scion,” he argued. He broke free and dropped beside the Teacher, opposite Erys. The woman’s eyes were closed, her face contorted with the terrible pain of Passage. Her lips flickered as she whispered something inaudible.
“Teacher,” said Jay, taking her hand. “I am here.”
