If H’wan had experienced time as the fleshbound of this planet did, it would have been looking at its watch every few seconds and tutting by now. As it was, it simply scuffed its feet on the sand and noted with delight another aspect to his personality. Impatience, how wonderful.
Just as it was beginning to wonder if it had been mistaken about the resilience of the T’hn’uuth, the water near the shore began to bubble and move unnaturally. H’wan had been broadcasting its presence for nearly half an Earth orbit now. If the T’hn’uuth had survived his battle with the Unmaking Engine, he would surely come to H’wan first, if only to gloat a bit. Wouldn’t he? H’wan was aware that some of his previous predictions about the fleshbound’s behavior had proved wildly off the mark.
H’wan had mixed feelings about the T’hn’uuth, or World Walkers as the human had named them. Almost all sentient species shared these feelings—of course, the occasional backwater species worshipped them as gods or feared them as demons. But mostly, they were regarded with cautious respect and more than a little fear. So rare as to be almost mythical, the T’hn’uuth represented a true unknown. And they were not renowned for their openness in communication. But Sebastian Varden was very young. H’wan felt the stirrings of excitement again. To encounter a T’hn’uuth at this stage of his development was somewhat of a scientific coup. It had been assumed, by those who even acknowledged their existence, that the T’hn’uuth were dying out. The last documented encounter had been over a thousand years ago, and that particular specimen was thought to be older than the planet it had visited on that occasion.
So, as the water rose, foaming and spitting, coiling and writhing, H’wan struggled slightly to maintain its imposing pose. It really wanted to rub its hands together in glee.
Suddenly, the ground beneath H’wan’s feet began to shake alarmingly. The volcano behind him was active, but not due to erupt for another 722 days. No seismic activity registering either.
Rocks of all shapes and sizes first trembled, then began to shake violently, finally prizing themselves away from the sand and flying into the sea. H’wan took a couple of steps backward, then resumed its imposing stance. Wouldn’t do to drop its standards now.
With a sound like that of a thousand breakers crashing into each other simultaneously, a huge column of water rose into the air. The rocks were lifted with it, and H’wan could see hundreds of fish—and at least one shark—still swimming in the gravity-defying shape towering above him. At a height of about sixty feet, the shape stopped climbing and started taking on some definition. Oval at the top, then flowing outward beneath to a huge central area, from the sides of which two columns began to form. No, not columns.
Ah, thought H’wan. A human figure. Impressive.
Looking up, it watched the oval change, becoming a face, flowing into easily recognizable features. The hair was a mass of seaweed, the eyes dark volcanic rocks, the skin tens of millions of shells.
The giant took a step onto the beach. H’wan abandoned his pose and slipped hastily backward, making his way further up the beach.
“Why are you still here?” The voice didn’t come from the towering figure in front of him. It was a soft voice directly behind him. H’wan, to his shame, let out a high-pitched shriek and pirouetted one-hundred-and-eighty degrees.
The T’hn’uuth—Seb Varden—was looking at him. H’wan had studied the micro-expressions common in thousands of humanoid species, including those on this planet, but it didn’t know how to begin reading Seb Varden’s expression now. The human was utterly still, self-possessed. H’wan knew it had to make an effort to take control of the encounter. It was about to speak when there was a huge crash behind and around it as the giant reduced itself to its component parts. By an immense effort of will, H’wan manage not to turn around. Although, it did make a strange involuntary squeaking sound.
“You survived, T’hn’uuth. I am unsurprised, but you show a degree of control that impresses me. World Walkers, as you call them, are rumored to train themselves in their abilities for many centuries. Although, I must confess, when it comes to information about the development of T’hn’uuth, the entries in the databanks of the universe are remarkably underwhelming. I don’t suppose you’d care to—,”
It broke off. That unreadable expression was remarkably unnerving.
“No, perhaps not,” it said. There was silence for a while.
“I asked you a question,” said Seb.
“You did, yes, you did. Undoubtedly,” said H’wan. Why was it babbling like an adolescent fleshbound? It felt off balance. It was Gyeuk—part of the pinnacle of evolution, the ultimate expression of intelligence. Perhaps it had been a ship too long, after all.
Seb waited.
“Well,” said H’wan. “As I said, it is not my place to intervene. The Gyeuk is beyond such matters.”
“Beyond intervening to prevent genocide?”
H’wan regained some of its composure.
“Your perspective is understandably skewed,” it said. “Identification is a necessary part of evolution. Almost every sentient series in the universe begins its journey by developing strong identification systems. Identification with a parent, siblings, a tribe, a nation, a race, a planet. As evolution continues, this infantile trait falls away. As hard as this may be to hear, your species has barely begun to reach a level where it might even be considered to be intelligent.”
“How can you say that, if you know anything about humanity’s history?” said Seb. “Our scientific discoveries, our music, literature, art.”
“There is nothing there I haven’t seen on thousands of other planets,” said H’wan. “By that measure, you show potential, but other species have moved away from violence and self-destruction much more rapidly.”
“We will do the same,” said Seb. “Our shortcomings gives you no right to destroy us.”
“Nothing has changed,” said H’wan. “My crew is already preparing another device. They are not easily dissuaded. You are just delaying the inevitable. Unless—,” H’wan paused. It knew the T’hn’uuth must have considered the possibility. He was a human, after all. “Unless you intend using violence to prevent them.”
The T’hn’uuth finally moved, turning away from H’wan and taking a few paces along the sand. A few drops of rain were beginning to fall.
“A bit late for you to take the moral high ground, don’t you think?” said Seb. He didn’t wait for an answer. “There may be another way. It will take a little time. Give me a few days.”
H’wan noticed, with some surprise, that this last was framed not as a request, but as an order. Even more surprisingly, it found its inclination was to obey. Interesting.
“How do I find you?” said Seb.
“Just speak my name. I will come.”
“Until then.”
H’wan bowed.
“T’hn’uuth.”
Seb nodded and turned to go. H’wan held up a hand to stop him.
“You spoke of humanity’s achievements. The words you used: our scientific discoveries, our music, our literature. You speak as if you yourself are still caught in the species stage of identification, but your - essence - says otherwise. You are not fleshbound, you are not Gyeuk, you are T’hn’uuth, a World Walker. If the legends are to be believed, you will always be other, always a wanderer, identifying with nothing, no place, no one. Your way is—I think—unknowable. Perhaps even to yourself. Until next time, World Walker.”
The eighteenth century Samurai started to dissolve into smoke and streak into the sky, just as Seb Walked, leaving the beach empty for a few minutes, after which the seabirds returned to their perches as if nothing untoward had happened.
44
New York
The apartment was dark and there was a smell of decay. Seb thought for a moment that Mason had died, but a quick examination revealed he was still clinging on to the last vestiges of life, as his body incrementally continued its final shutting down.
Seb looked at
the dying man in the wheelchair and felt nothing. No anger, no regret, no sadness. Nothing.
But he had made a promise.
He reached out a hand and placed it on Mason’s cheek.
Within a minute, a little color had returned to the skin of the body in front of him. Then, his lips moved slightly and the fingers of his right hand twitched. Finally, his eyelids flickered.
Seb stood and got a glass of water from the desk. He took it over to Mason and lifted his head. The closed eyes fluttered and opened. Seb tipped the glass, and after some of the liquid had made it into his mouth, Mason swallowed convulsively. A thin, shaking hand came up and held onto Seb’s own, guiding the glass as he drank. After Mason had drained the whole glass, Seb dragged a chair over and sat in front of him.
Mason coughed a few times. His mouth moved, but he seemed to be struggling to make a sound. He swallowed again and pushed himself a little more upright. He looked across at Seb. Seb looked back, marveling at the change. It was Mason—of course—yet somehow, it wasn’t him. The changes were so subtle as to be almost invisible. The line of his mouth, the way he was sitting. But mostly, it was his eyes. Those pitiless eyes, blank, unreadable, were suddenly full of human emotion. Fear, sadness, regret, empathy, compassion. It was like looking at an entirely different human being.
“Mason?” said Seb.
The skin around Mason’s eyes contracted briefly, as if in pain. He coughed, then spoke. His voice was weak, grating with lack of use, but it was no longer a whisper.
“No,” he said. “My name is John.”
From the burner phone on the desk, Sym watched and listened.
“I would have just killed the son of a bitch,” he said, before sending himself deep into the chaos of the internet. The World Wide Web now had its own spider.
Seb stood in the middle of Mason/John’s apartment. He felt a mixture of adrenaline and relief. Adrenaline because he’d been prepared to kill another human being, but it hadn’t happened. Relief for much the same reason.
The tumor in Mason’s brain had been a dark ball of cancerous gristle, pushing its mass into various clusters of synapses. Seb’s Manna had sunk into his skull, diagnosed a malfunctioning brain, and cured the disease by replacing each cancerous cell with a healthy one. It took nearly seventy seconds to remove the cancer. The resulting change in brain chemistry made it obvious that Mason had been removed with it.
Seb wondered how he would feel now, if he’d actually killed the man.
His speculation was interrupted by the sudden knowledge that the aliens were minutes away from reaching orbit. It was a strangely disorienting feeling knowing this, since the information would previously have come from Seb2.
Seb locked onto the ship’s position, and using telemetry gleaned live from several airplane tracking websites and some less public NASA communications, worked out how he could get to it undetected. His link with the ship would alert him when they began to prepare the Unmaking Engine.
Seb returned his attention to the apartment. The wheelchair was next to the picture window. Standing next to it, holding on for support, John looked out at the view he had seen every day for nearly thirty-four years. Now, finally, he could take it in properly. Central Park, a smudge of green to the northwest. He turned to Seb.
“Please,” he said, “can we go there?” He pointed with a trembling hand.
“Sure,” said Seb.
They took the private elevator down to the parking garage and walked out into the early afternoon sun. John held on to Seb for support. His legs were healed now, the bones, cartilage, ligaments and muscles capable of bearing his weight. It was just the mental adjustment to walking for the first time since he was thirteen years old that made his steps slow and hesitant.
Seb hailed a cab.
Central Park was busy with the usual eclectic collection of joggers, European au pairs, dog walkers, business people with a sack lunch in one hand and a cellphone in the other. Cops walking in pairs, a group of art-school students filming each other in a variety of comic poses, a cluster of Hasidic Jews huddled around the screen of a tablet. Every echelon of the drug-dealing business was represented for those who knew where to look; from the meth guy near the underpass to the cocaine supplier who played outdoor chess with her customers while they negotiated. Schoolchildren, teachers, nurses, stockbrokers, journalists, analysts and bums sat, or lay on the grass, eyes closed, the heat of the sun on their faces.
On a bench near the water, John looked out on it all and tried to piece his existence together into something that made some kind of sense.
Once, he had been Boy.
Then, he had been Mason.
Now, he was John, the name Mom had called him when Pop wasn’t there. His given name.
He had been a passenger in his own body for most of his life. A witness to terrible things, held hostage in the deepest recesses of his own brain. A dream of who he was, suddenly made real. He was forty-seven years old and his adult life had just begun.
John watched the people around him going about their lives, and rejoiced in the freedom he felt in not being involved, not wanting to control, just letting them be. He sat like that for nearly an hour. He told Seb about his parents, his childhood, the cancer, and the encounter with Manna that had saved his life but given immense power to a parasitic personality over which he’d had no control.
“The tumor would have killed you eventually,” said Seb. “Mason had slowed its progress to an absolute crawl, but I think you only had five or six years left. “
“I can’t think of Mason as an entirely separate person,” said John. “I wish I could. But that would be too easy. He was the absolute worst of me, magnified horribly, but he didn’t come from nowhere. I was my father’s child as much as my mother’s. I have to accept that, somehow. He was me, a nightmare version of me.”
“Whoever he was, he’s gone now” said Seb. “You have your life to live, but everything will be different. Destroying the tumor, and Mason with it, meant destroying your Manna ability. You will have to look after yourself. If you get sick, you’ll have to visit a doctor. You won’t live an abnormally extended life. You’re just a human now.”
“It’s all I ever wanted,” said John. “Manna is a curse, not a blessing. I know there are Users who do good with it—the Order has always tried to be selfless in their Manna use. But I’m not convinced they ever really succeeded. I met some of the Order’s most powerful proponents over the years. I’m not sure they were as far removed from Mason as they liked to believe. Manna can be subtle in the way it corrupts, but it corrupts none the less. None of the Order ever considered giving up Manna to avoid confronting me. They were addicts, just as I was. Even now, with all the Manna flushed from my system, and most of my life stolen from me by its use, there’s still a small part of me that wants it back. Wants it desperately. I’m glad it’s not an option any more. What about you?”
Seb looked slightly taken aback at the question. “It saved my life. I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for Manna.”
“But is it you? Has Manna changed who you are?”
Seb stood up and looked across the park to the water. He looked back at John and had a sudden disorienting feeling of deja vu. A flash of Richmond Park and Seb2. Then it was gone.
“I’ve changed,” he said. “I had to. I’ve grown up.” He stopped talking. He realized the man he was speaking to was probably the only other human being who had ever experienced anything close to the ability he had. Mason’s final attack on him, while not unexpected, was ferocious, clever, and incredibly powerful. A year ago, maybe even six months ago, it might have killed him. Seb knew he had evolved over the last year, so that any part of his body could recreate any other part in seconds. Even his brain. No other Manna user had the same ability. In some ways, it made him more Gyeuk than human: a colony of sorts.
He sat back down on the bench. “Yes, it’s changed me. And I don’t know where the changes will end,” he said. “But I’m still m
e.” John said nothing. Seb wondered if he was trying to convince the other man, or himself.
“What will you do?” Seb said. “Where will you go?”
“I’m going to work,” said John. “I know a place where they’ll be glad of any help they can get. And, I think I owe them. I’ll paint walls, sweep floors, whatever they want. If they’ll have me.” He looked at the man beside him and started to say something, then changed his mind and was quiet again. A few seconds passed by in silence. “What about you?” he said. “What will you do? Save the world, one life at a time?”
Seb looked at the scene in front of him, seeing different versions laid out across the multiverse. The cops were arresting the meth dealer in one. In another, the park had been cleared because of a bomb threat. Great birds circled a barren area devoid of any life in another. Most just showed variations on a theme: the same people going about their day. Seb looked at it all dispassionately. He knew the Unmaking Engine threatened every universe where humanity had discovered Manna. In none of those universes had humanity shared that discovery with the entire race and consciously evolved as the Rozzers had wanted them to. Seb felt a stab of despair for the selfishness of his species. He knew humanity could be better than that. Didn’t he?
“Actually, I’m going to save everyone all at once,” he said. “Hopefully.”
John looked at the younger man.
“You don’t seem overjoyed at the prospect,” he said.
Seb smiled at that.
“I don’t know if it’s the right decision,” he said. “But it will probably save humanity. I know that must sound crazy, but…oh, I don’t know. Forget I said anything.”
He stood up again and stuck out his hand. “I did what I came here to do,” he said. “I killed Mason. And it worked out better than I’d hoped. I got to meet you. You’re a good person, John. Good luck with the rest of your life.”
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 64
