He was sitting among the remains of the pod, which was smashed open like a hollow fruit. He must have hit the planet hard.
He couldn’t move his legs. He looked down and saw that he was encased in soft, off-white stuff. It had a dry, chemical smell.
Crash-foam. Someone had told him once that it was chemically triggered. He didn’t remember it happening, which struck him as odd, but maybe it was just very fast.
He decided not to get hung up on that.
He needed to pee. For a second he wondered if the crash-foam had any negative interactions with human urine. Then he shook his head, and shoved his hands down into the stuff.
It tore easily. After a few minutes he had dug himself free. He pulled himself upright and stood, swaying, while he mentally explored his body. Mostly good, to his surprise, but one ankle didn’t want to bear weight. When he looked, he found it extravagantly swollen. The chemical foam hadn’t been quite fast enough, then.
He took a cautious step and bit his lip at the pain – but he could move, if not fast. He climbed awkwardly out of the pod and leaned against it while he peed. Then he limped a few paces further, to get away from the smell – of chemicals as well as his own urine – and sat down on a rock outcrop while he looked around.
He had crashed on a shallow mound a couple of hundred metres across, surrounded by short trees with blue-green leaves. Bare, eroded rocks poked up through a covering of thin grasses, with patches of grey heather straggling over them. He moved his good foot a bit to one side and squashed it down into the heather. It gave reluctantly, and sprang back the moment he lifted his foot.
A tough environment, by the looks of it, but it didn’t look like anything he had seen down here before. He must have been thrown a very long way from the Wall – maybe down towards the equator?
‘Hello, Zeb.’
Someone had emerged from the trees, off to his right – a thin figure, too far away to be distinct in the dim light.
‘Feeling okay?’
He filled his lungs. ‘Fine! Who are you?’
There was a laugh. ‘You’ll recognize me in a while, although I don’t intend that you should get used to me. Are you sure you’re okay? You’re favouring your left leg. A broken ankle, perhaps?’
Zeb gritted his teeth and forced himself to take a step forwards. Pain shot up his leg but he managed to complete the step with his feet planted. ‘Fine! See?’
‘Don’t contradict me.’ The figure waved a hand, and Zeb felt his ankle crack as if something had struck it. His leg folded under him and he fell sideways, clamping his lips against a cry and catching his fall clumsily on one hand.
He looked up, and saw through a haze of pain that the figure was much closer. And familiar; yes, definitely familiar.
It leaned a little towards him. ‘Yes, obviously a broken ankle. Is there anything you want to say?’
Zeb took two breaths through his nose. ‘Keff? What are you doing here?’
Keff nodded. ‘I knew you would … but I’m not here. Nor are you, in the way that you mean. Tell me, where do you think here is?’
‘I don’t know. Somewhere near the Wall Collective, I guess.’
‘You’re wrong. And you know you are.’ Keff made a show of looking around. ‘It’s a pretty characteristic place, I’d say, even if you haven’t seen it like this. Try again.’
‘Fuck off.’
Keff laughed. ‘I will, in a moment. But you won’t. You’re going to be around for a while yet.’ It sat down next to Zeb. ‘You see, I found you.’
Zeb stared at the creature.
‘I knew there was something when I saw you at the Rockblossom. It took me a while to make a guess, and another while to check out the guess. And then I found you. Have you worked it out yet?’ Keff watched him for a few seconds, and then shrugged.
‘I looked back along the timeline from when I met you, Zeb, and I saw a line of dislocations. Like spikes on a graph. Like footprints. Like little impact craters, each one surrounded by a spreading network of cracks. Every thousand years or so someone dropped into the vreality, hung around for a while, did pretty much the same sort of things each time and then left. And they always did it in pretty much the same place, Zeb.’ Keff waved an arm around. ‘They always did it here, on a planet that had been half destroyed by the fall of a ship called the Death Rattle. So I traced the footprints back to their origin – here – and so I found you.’
Zeb’s heart was racing. He pulled himself upright and leaned back against the rock, ignoring the stabbing in his ankle. ‘Here? But—’
‘Yes, here. You’re in the vreality you like so much. I thought that was obvious?’ Keff stood up, looked away, spoke without turning. ‘How could you be so stupid? Everyone else is happy to splash around in the virtual shallows, but not you. You could have done all the fucking’ – the word was bitter with distaste – ‘you wanted up there. That’s what the top levels are designed for, even if everyone pretends it’s something more profound. What else does recreation mean, to you lot? But you had to come down here. Every time you planted your idiot self in here, and even more, every time you just vanished when things got difficult, you set off another ripple of doubt. What possessed you?’
Zeb shook his head. ‘Nothing possessed me. I promised—’
‘You promised?’ Keff spun round and held out a hand towards Zeb’s good ankle. He felt a wrenching crunch, and appalling pain shot up his leg. There was a roaring which was half him and half the blood hammering in his ears, but he could still hear Keff.
‘I know about your promise. I told you, I followed your clumsy trail back to the start. You promised to honour a machine that was about to die because you had already interfered, but all you did was to go on doing the stupid thing you had already started doing. You’re a tourist, Zeb, nothing more, and like any tourist you fuck up the place you visit.’
The voice stopped, and so did the pressure on his ankle. The pain subsided, a little. Zeb felt his breath rasping against his scoured throat. He swallowed. ‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing you can offer.’ Keff spread its arms. ‘You’ve contaminated trillions of life-equivalent years. You can’t give that back.’
‘So, what then?’
The creature grinned. ‘Amusement. You’re stuck with me, and I can go anywhere and anywhen I want in this vreality. I’m a response to you. Think of me as an immune cell, if you like. I’m going to have some fun with you, and it starts now. You’re going to live through every – single – year – of the chaos you caused. You know where you are, but can you guess when?’
Zeb shook his head. He didn’t trust himself with words.
‘Well, you’re back at the start. Just before it, really. Up above you, the Seven States are about to go into battle, and you’re in a small crippled spaceship that’s about to crash on this spot, followed by a big, dead one.’ Keff grinned. ‘And here’s you with two broken ankles. What are you going to do?’
It turned and walked away.
Zeb stared after it. He almost called out, but stopped himself. He had no breath for word games and the only other option was begging. He’d given it enough fun already.
He looked round, feeling his eyes stretched wide with pain and adrenalin. He was in the middle of the wide mound – probably ground zero. In here, he would die instantly if he stayed put, and merely fast if he moved. Out there, outside the vreality, he had no idea. Keff had brought him in against his will, so he had to assume it was making the rules …
While his mind was racing, his body made a decision. He turned over on to all fours and began to crawl, away from the crash site and down the slope where he thought the forest was nearest, keeping his calves bent upwards so that his worse-than-useless feet dangled off the ground. Even so, his ankles lanced agony with every movement – but it was better than the alternative.
At first sight the rock looked smooth, but it sparkled with tiny off-white crystals which stood proud of the surface, so that after a while his k
nees began to bleed and he reflexively let his feet drop.
His bellow of pain brought blood to his mouth. He spat pink, and forced himself to start moving again.
By the time he began to lose the skin from the palms of his hands, he had no idea of distance or duration. There was only the next movement and the next growl of pain. Sometimes he tried to follow the occasional streak of grass that clung to low points in the surface of the rock, but they soon ran out, and he quickly found that the grass was almost as abrasive as the rock, and bled a stinging sap when it was crushed.
So he gave up, and just crawled, until every movement was a howl that begat another howl.
And then the rock beneath was gone and before he could catch himself he was falling, rolling down a steep slope off the edge of the mound and into the wiry forest, and the pain of his flayed body was multiplied by the tearing of his ankles against branches and boulders.
There was no way to break his fall. He went limp and waited for the end.
There was a crack, and a pause full of dreams. Then, voices.
‘Whoa! Look …’
‘What? Oh, shit. Where did he come from?’
‘Don’t know. He looks pretty damaged. Hey, friend …’
Hands on him, turning him over. One of his ankles caught on something and he tried to scream, but only heard a whimper.
‘Hooo, fuck. You are so bust up. Can you talk?’
He tried to nod, but even that didn’t want to happen. He moistened his lips. ‘Crash.’
‘Yeah, I bet. What were you in?’
He tried again and this time the words were easier. ‘No. Crash – there’s going to be a crash.’
Silence. He looked up and tried to see whoever it was. Two silhouettes against low sunlight, with heads turned sideways as if they were looking at each other.
Low sunlight. Nightfall – he had watched the ships go down into the twilight band, hadn’t he? It must be soon; maybe very soon.
He managed to raise his arms and grab at one of the silhouettes. ‘We need to leave! Now! Please …’
Hands took his and gently pressed him down. ‘Sure. Sure. We’ll leave. Just rest a moment.’
The silhouettes moved away and he heard low voices but couldn’t distinguish words. He must have slept, because with no transition he was being lifted on to something, and then into something, and then there was the sort of fast, smooth movement that meant flying.
He wondered how fast they were going, and if anything that flew in an atmosphere could ever possibly be fast enough.
It was out of his hands for the moment.
He slept again.
Orbiter ‘Moon’, Brasedl Sphere
SKARBO SPENT THE next two days wandering through the more accessible of the forests of the moon. He preferred his own company. He had things, as the little machine Grapf had said, to process.
Starting with his whole life’s work. From the moment he had first seen the Spin, and watched it being smudged out by a Baschet ship, he had known, with a certainty beyond any logic, that he was going to spend the rest of his life observing it. Against everyone’s advice he had chosen his insect form because it offered almost certain longevity, just to make sure he could – what? Complete his observations? Hardly; that enterprise was doomed to be unending.
What, then?
A few days before Hemfrets had arrived in his little world to annex it and powder it and do whatever else it had done, Skarbo had decided to acknowledge failure. Now, even with everything behind him shattered and very little in front of him, he was less sure of his decision.
After a day of wandering he had discovered that forests were not the complete rulers of the inside of the moon. A few hundred metres from the old water tower, the trees thinned out and gave way to a sort of sculpture garden – or that was the best description he could come up with; he had asked the Orbiter, through Grapf, but it had taken its usual course and said nothing, and the little machine itself had said it didn’t know.
There were twenty-two objects, all dull white ovoids mounted on slim columns that ranged from less than a metre to more than ten in height. The objects were different sizes too, but not so great a range: the biggest was about ten metres across and the smallest about half that. Their long axes all pointed in different directions, and from time to time, if he looked away and then back, one of them had moved a little – but he never caught one in the act.
The ground around the columns was covered in a very fine, soft black sand that held the heat of the sunlet for a long time. It was good to sit on.
The Bird was enjoying itself too. From a position of initial dubiousness it had now discovered the pleasures of the near-zero gravity conditions at the centre of the moon, and was trying to set speed records for power-dives from there to the forest. Skarbo watched it fly in a tightening spiral up to the centre, where even to his eyes it became a fuzzy black dot against the background of the forests. It would play at the centre for a while, tumbling and flapping in the directionless gravity-free space, and then launch itself randomly downwards in a streamlined, back-swept black blur, pulling out of the dive in a tree-brushing display of aeronautics. From time to time Skarbo heard a faint haaaaaaa!
The Orbiter hadn’t wanted to be precise about how long the Sphere had to live – but not long. It wasn’t a random thing, apparently; the huge entity had some choice in the matter.
The Bird was back at the centre, spinning. Then it fired itself down, this time more or less towards Skarbo. He fought the urge to stand up, move away from the clearing and take shelter among the trees. He wasn’t sure how good the creature’s steering was.
The dot grew quickly.
Then Skarbo felt the ground move, and suddenly he was sitting down much harder than before. He forced himself to stand, feeling his legs creak, and took hold of a column to support himself.
There was a shriek from somewhere above.
‘Gravity!’
He looked up, and then ducked reflexively as The Bird corkscrewed over him. It half recovered, stalled, and disappeared into the trees. He heard a distant ‘fuuuuck!’, and then nothing.
He followed. There was definitely something wrong with the gravity; it was stronger, and it kept changing so that his legs buckled and swayed as he walked.
As he arrived at the edge of the clearing, The Bird hopped out of the trees, shaking its wings.
‘Are you all right?’
It shook its head. ‘No! Not right at all. Big problems. Gravity gone wrong. Don’t know why. Probably means something very bad.’
Skarbo nodded. He was trying to convince himself that this was all part of the preparations the Orbiter had mentioned – but it wasn’t working. ‘Let’s get back to the tower.’
‘If we can … gravity still wrong.’
It was, and walking was difficult. Skarbo moved from tree to tree, using the trunks as props; The Bird hopped ill-temperedly in front of him, swearing under its breath every time the ground jinked.
Then they were among the slim trunks of the trees near the tower. Skarbo looked up, and saw the inverted cone sticking out above the leaf canopy. He looked round for any sign of the machine.
Then the ground kicked and swerved beneath him and he fell, landing heavily. The Bird made an inarticulate squawk and shot up into the air. It hovered for a second, swinging from side to side, staring upwards. Then it dropped until it was just above Skarbo. ‘Run!’
He stared at it. ‘What?’
‘Run! You deaf as well as senile? Tower’s falling. Run!’
The ground kicked again, and Skarbo looked up.
The tower was swaying, swinging through a widening arc.
He levered himself to his feet and ran, or tried to. The ground was no longer jinking, but there was something seriously wrong; something was making what should have been a straight path into a curve that kept slamming him into trees, and he didn’t seem to weigh as much as he had before.
Then he heard a drawn-out tearing sound that e
nded in a deep, concussive crash.
Instinct threw him to the ground before he had time to think. He hooked a couple of legs into some roots, and flattened himself as much as he could.
Something roared behind him. Then the water hit. He felt it trying to tear him loose, to blind him, to force itself beneath his shell and peel him open. Something heavy battered into him and wrenched him away, tumbling him over in a chaos of limbs and bubbles. Then he crashed into something, and for a while there was just blur.
Then the water had gone. He didn’t remember it going. He was lying on his back, staring up though unable to focus – but at least he could breathe.
His sight cleared and he was looking up at the canopy of leaves, but now there were ragged holes in it, and the light looked different.
Something appeared in one of the holes. He squinted, and then sighed. It was The Bird. It flapped down and perched on a broken branch by his head. ‘Still alive, are you?’
He managed to nod. ‘And you.’
‘Seem to be. Huh. Stupid questions.’ It hopped along the branch, and then back. ‘Might not be for long. Seen the light?’
‘Yes.’ He stared upwards. ‘It’s different. Less intense. And less steady.’
‘Clever. Yark! You fireproof, insect?’
He stared at it. ‘What?’
‘Not so clever. Gravity went mad and I fell out of the sky. What else fell? Eh? Eh?’
Skarbo shook his head. Enough; it was enough. Everything was. He levered himself up into a half-sitting position that emphasized every ache, and spoke slowly. ‘I don’t care, bird. I might not be alive for long? Fine. Now feels like a good time for it to end. But please? Let me go in peace? Shut up?’
‘Fine! Cook in your shell if you want to.’ It flung itself into the air and hovered over him so he could feel the gusts of its wingbeats on his eyes. ‘Fire, insect! The sunlet fell, that’s what. The forest is burning.’
Skarbo thought about that for a moment. ‘So? Where should we escape to, do you think?’
It paused, and wagged its head. ‘Don’t know. Might fly to the centre.’
‘Well I can’t.’ Skarbo lay back. ‘Enjoy your trip.’
Stone Clock Page 14
