The other guards are gone, running back towards the base-camp and the waiting flyers, but he stands unaware of his isolation.
All around him the survivors stand silently, their objective achieved. And if he possessed the strength to turn his head, he would see, barely a hundred metres away, a steady stream of humanity spreading out in all directions from a small gap in the boundary fence.
But Anton Stokes sees nothing but the horror, feels nothing but the responsibility. The Failure.
The woman appears like an apparition before him. She is about the age of his mother in Elton, grey-haired and grey-eyed. Her face is burned, and her eyes are bright with the pain of it, but she says nothing to him. He studies her face for some sign of anger, for the disdain she must be feeling towards him, but he sees only resignation and understanding.
His guilt overflows in tears, and he chokes back a sob. ‘We had orders,’ he whispers. ‘They gave us orders . . . I couldn’t . . . stop it.’
A small, sad smile warms her face for a moment.
‘I know,’ she replies, and reaches out to touch his face, but at the last instant she remembers and holds back.
‘Leave here. Now. Try to save yourself. No one is to blame.’ She follows the line of his gaze, and continues as she looks back at the dead and dying. ‘Do not punish yourself, they were already dead days ago. We all were.’
But Anton Stokes does not hear her. He is already walking away down the slight incline towards the camp he has guarded for the past weeks.
Past the fallen, through the fence and into the maze of huts and laneways, he moves slowly, trying to block the memory of screams from his mind.
And failing . . .
GABRIEL
The pain is fading and the realisation surprises him.
From where he lies, just inside the ruined fence, he can see Thadeus lying a few metres away, his lifeless eyes staring straight up into the flawless sky.
‘We did it, my friend.’ The words form in his mind, but he is beyond speaking them aloud. As Thadeus is beyond hearing them.
It is then that he hears it. Pure and clear, and as sweet as he always remembers it. Music. A single strain of melody, pianissimo, sweet and melancholy, rises gently in a minor key.
He closes his eyes and lets it carry him. Higher and higher.
‘Francesca . . .’
The name forms in his mind, but he is not certain if he has spoken it, for the notes have begun to float apart in the darkness. He reaches out his hands to capture them, and drifts slowly inexorably beyond knowing . . .
Roosevelt Foothills
Edison Sector (South)
26/1/203 Standard
RAMÓN’S STORY
When I returned that night, it was already dark. I entered the cave without speaking, and sat silently staring up at the pictures on the storywall. ’Lita had lived with me too long to try to break into whatever thoughts were occupying me, but Maija was new to this side of me.
‘We were worried,’ she began. ‘What happened?’
But I just stared at the pictures in silence.
‘Ramón?’ She tried again. ‘What . . . ?’
‘You don’t want to know.’ The words came, but my gaze remained fixed on the wall. ‘You don’t ever want to know . . .’
But later that night, after my sister had gone to sleep and we were alone, I finally told her what I’d seen.
The next morning Maija was gone.
18
Beyond the Telling
Medical Research Facility
Edison
27/1/203 Standard
CHARLIE’S STORY
‘Ready?’ I asked.
Galen turned the chair to face me.
‘I was just checking. You know, making sure we haven’t forgotten anything. It’s not like we can come back and get it if we suddenly discover—’
‘We’ve been over everything a thousand times, Galen. The files are all uploaded, the key tissue samples are already on their way. There’s nothing left to do.’
I put on my best dictatorial tone. It wasn’t that he was having second thoughts or anything, but he was umbilically attached to the place.
During the last two or three years, and particularly since that first mention of CRIOS on Hansen’s smuggled file (was it only a couple of months earlier?), we’d spent more time in the lab-complex than anywhere else. I guess for someone as compulsive about his work as Galen undoubtedly was, the thought of leaving, with every chance of never being able to return, must have been a bit like withdrawal.
Finally he turned to me. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’
He thumbed the chair-control and steered towards the door.
I felt a bit of a traitor myself, leaving without telling anyone where we were heading, but the situation had moved way beyond personal guilt.
We’d studied the epidemic dispersion projections a thousand times, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise – the speed of the breakdown, I mean.
With no one absolutely certain that they were clean, and everyone even less sure of anyone else, the psychology of isolation that we’d observed for the past weeks in the Wieta camp became apparent almost immediately. After the initial disbelief, survival instincts took over. People barricaded themselves into houses and apartments, rationing what little food they had stored and naively praying for a miracle.
Some crowded the roads, ignoring the order to stay within the city limits. And with the Security blockade an already distant memory, there was nothing but death itself to stop them.
Of course, the flyers were all grounded. Security had taken over all the air-traffic coordination centres and applied a blanket disablement. Any flyer that rose to cruising altitude received an automatic warning, which, if ignored, was followed a few seconds later by a remote-telemetry signal which shut down all field-generators. From that point the only direction was down – at terminal velocity.
After a couple of fiery examples, no one tried the aerial escape-route.
Except us.
From the days when Carmody Island and its special inhabitants were the best-kept secret on Deucalion, the community there had made an art of subterfuge. All their flyers were equipped, as a matter of course, with expensive and extremely effective motion-detection screening.
In an emergency, any flyer from Carmody could become a hopper, making it invisible to even the most sophisticated tracking devices, appearing at some predetermined point to pick up a passenger, then ‘hopping’ – disappearing as if it never existed – as soon as it rose from the ground. And you can’t shut down the field-generators of a machine you can’t detect.
As for feeling like a traitor, I knew the feeling would pass.
After all, more than half the staff of the Research facility had failed to show the day after the bombshell was dropped during the presidential address. We’d been working virtually alone in our lab since then, and the numbers were still dropping in every area of the facility, so there was no need to feel guilty about going somewhere much safer to carry on the fight.
Of course, after the event, when running historical post- mortems became a growth-industry, there were those who accused the people in power of using their privileged positions to save themselves without considering the responsibilities that power imposed on the powerful. But that criticism was aimed more at the politicians than at those Researchers who had worked so tirelessly to find a solution to the riddle of the Crystal.
And, when it came to the politicians, I suppose you could see their point. On the day after the address, the President, the heads of Security and Treasury, the entire Emergency Cabinet and most of their closest advisors, maybe five hundred high-ranking figures and their families disappeared from the face of the planet.
Literally.
Later it was argued that, if any semblance of stable governme
nt was to survive the chaos that was likely to ensue as the crisis deepened, those charged with the responsibility of making the important decisions had to be kept safe from the threat of the epidemic, so that they could function without distraction.
It had been common practice on Old Earth, during the troubles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries ad, they said, for leaders to have secret ‘bunkers’ to which they could retreat in times of national emergency. But in the current crisis, there was nowhere on the inhabited face of the planet that could be considered truly safe.
So on the morning of the twenty-fourth an unspecified number of shuttles lifted off from the landing-field outside of New Geneva, heading for the C-ship Pandora, to set up their emergency government in the one place absolutely safe from the threat of the Crystal Death.
Three days later, on the roof of the Medical Research facility at Edison, the door of the flyer opened and Jules looked out at us.
‘I thought you might like some company for the trip.’ He looked towards Galen. ‘Hi, at last. Nice to see you in the flesh. Don’t you just hate cyber-linkups? Everyone looks so different on the screen.’
Galen smiles. ‘I’m shorter in person.’
Then he moved the chair towards the ramp that was sliding towards us from beneath the doorframe.
I looked at Jules and he winked.
Two minutes later we were airborne, detection-screened, and on our way to Carmody Island.
Roosevelt Ranges
Edison Sector (West)
27/1/203
CINDY’S STORY
The climb over the Ranges took the best part of five days – five days of searing heat and skin-flaying winds that had us sheltering for hours at a time, cowering against the rock face, sometimes on ledges and tracks barely a metre wide.
According to the information I’d managed to squeeze from the punchboard, we were on the only passable route within a 150 clicks. Which made me begin to doubt my understanding of the word ‘passable’.
Of course, whoever had programmed the information in and rated the climb probably didn’t expect the climbing party to possess absolutely no safety equipment, or to include in their number a set of ten-year-old twins.
About three days into the ordeal, when we were resting on the edge of a sheer, 2,000-metre drop, Mac sat down next to me with his legs dangling over the edge.
‘Cox is worried,’ he said, staring off into the distance. ‘The kids are tiring rapidly. If we don’t get them off this damned mountain soon, they mightn’t make it.’
‘Kids are tougher than you think,’ I replied – like I was an expert!
I guess I was feeling more confident than I had any right to feel, considering the circumstances, but I’d been watching the kids pretty closely, seeing as how I was usually ‘tail-end-Charley’ in most situations.
With Mac and Cox taking turns at point, deciding the easiest route and testing it out, then helping the rest of us through the tough sections, and with Tim and Krysten shepherding the twins, it was up to me to run back-up and watch for problems that the others might be too busy to notice developing.
It gave me a chance to see how the kids were coping, and from what I’d seen it seemed to me that with the help of Krys and Tim they would make it.
They were weaker than they’d been at the start of the journey – we all were – but with only a couple more days to last, I knew that we could nurse them through. If necessary, they had a brother and a sister – not to mention a ‘tail-end-Charley’ – who would carry them the rest of the way on their backs.
Family’s a wonderful thing, even if you have to borrow someone else’s to experience it.
Besides, we had Mac.
Sitting there next to him, I looked out across the gaping emptiness towards the wall of rock maybe 60 or 70 metres away.
‘We’d all be dead without you. You know that, don’t you? Not too many people could have got us this far.’
He needed encouragement, but it just happened to be the truth. Or I wouldn’t have said it. One thing I’d learned on Ganymede was that you didn’t try to kiss-up to McEwan Porter. He had built-in-crap-radar, and he didn’t react well to it.
He turned to face me. ‘Tell me when we’re back at sea level.’
Then he looked up towards the distant expanse of blue, but I knew he was looking much further than the sky.
When he spoke again, it was as if he’d forgotten I was there next to him. ‘People have trusted me before.’
JMMC Taxi-Shuttle Lunar Explorer
En route – Earth/Lunar
August 13, 2318ad
MAC
He stares down at his gloved hands. The frozen blood-crystals cling like sweat to the static-field of his suit, and at the edge of his field of vision something floats past. Something shapeless and grotesque that a few hours earlier was joking and breathing and ordering him outside to fix a leaking atmosphere pressure-valve.
It was a simple maintenance task that even an eighteen-year-old, ‘wet-behind-the-ass’ rookie could handle, and one that was well beneath the station of the three senior crew-members.
There is nowhere he can hide from the accusation of their disfigured faces. They float in the airless cabin, circling him, denouncing him silently, as he breathes in the stale recycled oxygen from a failing apparatus and waits to die.
And as he waits, the litany of guilt repeats like an evil charm.
You should have done something. There must have been some sign. Something to show it was defective. The others would have noticed. They would never have fitted a defective valve. They trusted you . . . You should have done . . . something . . .
As darkness closes in from the edges of his consciousness, he notices the proximity alarm flashing red, but before he can turn to see the rescue vessel closing in on the crippled ship, the horror around him slips away into black.
The board of enquiry will blame a manufacturing fault in the newly fitted valve for the failure and the explosive decompression of the Lunar Explorer, and for the deaths of fifteen passengers and three of the crew of four. But McEwan Porter will carry the secret guilt away from the hearing-room, along with a finding absolving him of any culpability.
A guilt which will return again and again to haunt him.
Genetic Research Laboratory,
Carmody Island
Inland Sea (Eastern Region)
27/1/203 Standard
CHARLIE’S STORY
When I said they had a ‘state-of-the-art’ facility on the island, Galen believed me. He always believes me, except when I’m disagreeing with him. But he didn’t realise I meant state-of-the-art.
In the hundred or so years since Stanley Hendriks had set it up, big money had been spent keeping it up to date. It was easily as sophisticated as the lab-complex back in Edison, but the surroundings were a whole lot more pleasant.
If you looked out on the forest and the sunlit beach outside the windows, you could easily forget that the world was dying and that you were one of maybe a couple of dozen people with a chance of finding a way to stop it happening.
‘You’re sure you wouldn’t like to settle in first?’
Jules was trying to be the perfect host. He didn’t know the first thing about the lab, but he was the local, and I suppose with Kaz gone, and Loef totally tied up with the baby, he needed something to do, so he’d volunteered to act as guide.
Galen, of course, totally ignored him. He wasn’t trying to be rude, it’s just . . . well, he probably felt like he’d died and gone to Researchers’ heaven: Digital gas-chromatography on-hand, a DNA configuration imager like the one he’d been pushing for since forever.
‘I am settling in.’
He directed the chair across to the data-frame control console.
‘Is it coded?’
My area.
I nodded. ‘And ether-linked. You can access any Research or med-centre on the planet, and the archival ROM-frame in New G.’
‘What about Hamita? I want to see if he’s still there after the massacre yesterday.’
News of the fall of the quarantine camp had come to us on the secure channel the night before. It wasn’t common knowledge yet. An informal censorship had grown up in the past weeks concerning sensitive news. But of course by now the rumours were probably flying in Edison itself.
Still, it was clear that Jules hadn’t heard them.
‘What do you mean?’
Before I could answer, one of the island kids entered the lab, placing some hard-copy files and a specimen case onto one of the surfaces. While I was distracted, Galen beat me to the punch.
‘Hamita’s the only one with anything approaching real data on the progress of the disease, and no one’s seen as many cases as he has. I just hope nothing’s happened to him. The whole thing was a bit of a mess, if you can believe the preliminary reports. Over two hundred deaths.’
There was no mention of Kaz, and no consideration. Galen could be so incredibly insensitive at times. I watched the look of concern on Jules’s face.
To break the mood, I said, ‘They’re probably fine.’
I turned to the console, leaned across in front of Galen, punched in Hamita’s code and stepped back.
Within moments his face appeared on the screen.
‘Galen!’ He was smiling with what looked like relief. ‘We thought we’d lost you. I called this morning and there was no one at the lab.’
I looked across at Jules, then I stepped back in front of Galen.
‘We moved,’ I said. ‘Somewhere safer. Memorise this.’ I punched in the new data-routing protocol. ‘It’s encrypted. No one can be allowed to find out where we are. You understand?’
He nodded, and I watched him read the screen.
When I looked up again, I cancelled the code and waited until he typed it back to me. It was correct. And he would never forget it. Jerome Hamita was one of the few people I knew who had a truly eidetic memory.
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