Seb knew they’d be back eventually. He wondered what they’d find.
On the surface of the Atlantic, the ancient life-sustaining process began as the morning sun warmed the ocean. Water evaporated and rose through the atmosphere, condensed into droplets that formed clouds and moved with the wind.
The Engine, this time, delivered a payload of Seb’s design.
Seb Varden, T’hn’uuth, the World Walker, watched the white clouds moving toward the land, somewhere becoming rain.
47
Innisfarne
Six weeks later
A bell signaling the start of evening meditation chimed in the distance as Mee and Kate walked along the rocky west shore of Innisfarne. The clouds above them were heavy and dark, bruised purple-black, but those nearer the setting sun were a wispy cotton candy. The sun itself was a boiling red-orange ball sinking behind the sea.
“Dad always used to say that the sun was kept in a big iron pot on the other side of the world,” said Mee. “Apparently, it was Australia’s job to polish it while we were asleep, then push it back into the sky for us. Mum used to roll her eyes at him, but I believed it. Why not? It was perfectly logical to a five year-old.”
“Your dad sounds a bit like my brother,” said Kate. “He told me the tooth fairy was using our teeth to build a monster who would come and chew us up. For years, I used to bury my baby teeth in the yard.”
“That’s terrible!” said Mee, laughing.
Kate led the way to a bench under one of the island’s ancient yew trees. They sat without speaking for a few minutes. Silence was such an integral part of life on Innisfarne that no one ever rushed to break it. Mee had told Kate about the attempt to kidnap her, the death of Westlake and Walt. She had decided it was simplest just to tell her Mason was dead. The Order could spread the news. There was no need for anyone else to know he was Seb’s brother. She hadn’t told her about the aliens, either. Mee wasn’t completely comfortable keeping secrets from Kate, but what was the point? The world was safe again. She had only told Kate that Seb had been through an emotional and physical battle from which he was struggling to recover. Which was the biggest lie of all. Whatever was going on with Seb was something else entirely.
“Has he spoken about it at all yet?” said Kate.
Seb had appeared on the island over a month ago, joining the community occasionally, but mostly keeping to himself, spending long hours walking. With Mee, he had been kind and gentle, but there was a distance between them she was half-afraid to address. Sometimes, he’d look at her and it was as if he wasn’t seeing her at all.
Until the previous night, he hadn’t spoken about what had happened with the aliens threatening the planet, other than to say they had gone. She was still reeling from the news about Mason. His brother? After he’d told her what had happened in New York, he’d barely managed to string together a complete sentence. After weeks had passed and he showed no inclination to talk about what had happened with the Unmaking Engine, Mee had eventually decided enough was enough, had stopped pussyfooting around and had asked him outright.
Seb’s explanation had been matter-of-fact, and to a large extent, incomprehensible, even to Mee, who had a reasonable grasp of science.
He told her he had considered a couple of alternatives, but—in order to convince the Rozzers that humanity would cease to be a threat to their galactic neighbors—human Manna use had to stop permanently. The nanotech he had built into the Engine was designed to tweak the DNA of just one interrupted gene of the twenty-three chromosome pairs in all humans. Everyone would be changed, but none of them would know anything about it. Not at first.
Seb’s intervention would only become apparent as the next generation was born. The first generation with no Manna ability whatsoever. And then those few Users who’d assumed they could continue passing on their knowledge to their offspring would be in for a nasty surprise.
The longevity of Manna users, some whom lived well into their second century, meant that his plan would take time to work. But inevitably, it would work. Within the span of a few human lifetimes, all Users would be gone. And the future of Earth would be changed forever.
“Yeah, he’s spoken about it,” she said to Kate. “He saved me, went after the bad guys. Just like superheroes are supposed to.”
“You don’t sound completely overjoyed about it,” said Kate.
“Yeah, well, it’s not the world I’m worried about,” said Mee. “It’s Seb. He’s changed.”
They hadn’t had sex since he’d returned. They hadn’t talked about it yet. They were sharing a bed, but—most nights—Mee would wake up in the early hours and see Seb standing by the window, looking blankly ahead. There were times when he almost seemed his old self, but Mee could tell he was making an effort to keep his attention focused on her.
“It’s like he’s just out of reach,” said Mee, as Kate put an arm around her shoulders.
“What are you going to do?” said Kate.
“If he won’t respond to me, I’m going to have to try something else.”
They walked back toward the main house.
It felt like a dream at first. Seb knew he was in bed, lying next to Mee. It must be a dream. But somehow, he knew it wasn’t. He was there.
His eyes were open, but he could see very little at first. He was underwater, drifting deeper and deeper with every passing second. The dark blue tinge to the water was gradually disappearing, becoming absolute blackness.
For a few minutes, the only sensation was the sensation of warm water on Seb’s skin; the gradual darkening around him the only indication he was still moving. Still diving.
At some point—it might have been minutes, or hours later—he became aware of light below him. There was a pale blueness waiting somewhere in the depths. As he got closer, his eyes adjusted and the gloom slowly lifted. He could see huge shapes in the dimness, some far away, others disconcertingly close. There was no sound at all, and—when he turned his head from side to side to try to catch a glimpse of what he was sensing—he could see nothing. Yet, he knew they were there. There was a strong feeling of curiosity, playfulness, intelligence. Seb was unafraid.
His progress downward slowed and, eventually came to a stop, although Seb was still floating, his upper body lower than his legs. He realized he wasn’t breathing, hadn’t been breathing during the dive. That was why the silence had seemed so absolute: he didn’t even have the sound of his own breath in his head.
As he hovered in the blue stillness, Seb wondered which ocean he was in. There was no way of knowing.
More time passed, more shapes came close, none lingering long enough for him to see them properly.
Seb looked down at his own body. He couldn’t see it. Bemused, he brought his hands in front of his face. They weren’t there. It was an unutterably strange feeling, but still, Seb felt no fear.
Three shapes appeared in the middle distance, drifting closer. As they got closer, they gradually became clearer. They were constantly changing shape, sometimes almost imperceptibly, other times in a blur of speed. All three were rust-colored, like floating clouds of blood. They looked a lot like pictures of distant nebulae Seb had seen once. He remembered now—it was an exhibition on a gallery, with images captured by the Hubble telescope printed on enormous canvases. The nebulae, vast clouds of plasma, gases and dust, were incredibly beautiful.
“Seb.”
As the clouds came closer, swirling hypnotically, Seb remembered what he’d read about nebulae. Within their extraordinarily beautiful depths, stars were created, and also died. They were stellar nurseries, and stellar graveyards.
“Seb.”
Seb felt himself move toward the three clouds. As he did so, he began to question his initial impression of being underwater. He had arbitrarily assigned ‘up’ and ‘down’ and assumed he was diving. Now he began to wonder if, in fact, he was in water at all.
Seb accelerated toward the nearest cloud.
“Seb! Please!”
He opened his eyes and was here and here for a brief, confusing moment. Then he saw Mee’s face as she shook him by the shoulders, shouting his name.
“Mee?” he said, quietly, as she sat down beside him, holding his hand tightly. She was crying. The tears were rolling down her face when she curled up and put her head in his lap. He hesitated, then reached up and stroked her hair. She was still crying when she finally fell asleep.
John Varden arrived on Innisfarne two days after he’d received the letter from Mee. He used one of the passports Mason had created in a variety of different names, should he ever need to travel on a commercial flight. John’s name change to Varden was, as yet, unofficial, but he’d filed the papers. He wanted the same surname as his brother, even though he knew Seb’s last name had been chosen by one of the sisters at St Benet’s, after the newborn had been left on their doorstep.
The journey to Innisfarne was long and tiring. John was still trying to get used to how quickly he became exhausted, with no Manna reserves to restore his energy. He fell asleep as the gently rocking fishing boat brought him to the island.
Mee met him at the jetty. He didn’t know what to say to her. She held up her hands. For a few seconds, he was puzzled, then he realized what she was showing him. All of her fingers were intact.
“I left one hand with four fingers as a reminder you were still out there,” she said. “But I don’t need reminding any more. When Seb came back, I asked him to heal it.”
John nodded. Her letter had said she knew it wasn’t him, that she understood about the tumor that had given Mason life. But reading a letter was different to looking into the eyes of someone who’d encountered Mason, someone he’d hurt. She held his gaze. He felt a lightness, a burst of unexpected happiness as he realized she not only forgave him, but she didn’t believe there was anything to forgive. She’d looked at him and seen only John. Not Mason. It was another big step toward him being able to fully forgive himself.
They had breakfast together and talked about Seb. Then she took him to his brother.
Seb was walking on the beach again, his pace slow, picking a path through the slippery rocks. Mee had to call him three times before he finally responded, lifting his head, then waving at them.
They met by the water, the gulls wheeling and diving for scraps in the sun-flecked water.
Mee hadn’t told Seb that she’d invited John. She wanted to see his reaction up close. At first, she thought this might be the breakthrough she was hoping for. Seb looked amazed, then pleased, even hugging the older man. After a few minutes, she smiled at John, kissed Seb on the cheek and left them.
Over the next few days, Seb and John spent every morning together, walking. Mee left them to their own company. Growing up as an orphan and then discovering you have a sibling must have been a shock even for a guy who could eat breakfast in a parallel universe. She gave them their space.
In the afternoons, John volunteered to help repair some of the dry stone walls on the far side of the island. It was fairly physical work, and by the time he’d had supper, he was wiped out. Mee managed to speak to him a few times. He’d been telling Seb everything he could remember about his parents. Finding out his father was a vicious bully couldn’t have been easy, but Seb’s mother sounded like a warm, intelligent woman who’d made the best of a terrible situation. Mee couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t just smacked the guy on the head with a skillet. She could only assume she’d thought she was protecting her son by staying put.
For a few days, Seb seemed to engage with the idea of having a family. He told Mee about his mother, how he wished he could have met her. He’d grown up with the usual fantasies dreamed up by orphans—that his parents were actually rich, or famous, and there had been some kind of mistake. That they’d be coming to claim him any day. Then, when he was a little older, the feelings of betrayal—how could a mother abandon her own flesh and blood? Next, in adolescence, the crushing self-pity of feeling unwanted. Hard to shift that particular feeling when your mother had left you on the doorstep of an orphanage. But Seb had eventually outgrown these feelings and had become a good man. And now he knew, finally, that his mother had abandoned him for heartbreakingly understandable reasons. He seemed to have found some sort of peace. Knowledge—even when it hurt—was better than ignorance.
There were a few signs of the old Seb. He picked up a guitar one night and strummed a few chords. Then he carefully replaced the instrument in the corner of the room and didn’t touch it again.
Then his long conversations with John stopped and he started walking alone. John was sanguine about it.
“His life has been thrown into chaos,” he said to Mee at dinner one night. “Anyone would take time to adjust.” He speared a carrot, grown in the community’s vegetable garden. The island was pretty much self-sufficient. “I know all about that, trust me. But—”. He stopped talking.
“But what?” said Mee. John looked a little uncomfortable. Mee pressed him. “What were you going to say?”
John put his fork down and looked at Mee.
“I was going to say that there’s something about him that scares me a little.”
Mee shivered. This was a little too close to something she’d been feeling herself. Something she didn’t want to admit.
“I don’t mean scared of him, exactly,” said John. It’s kinda hard to explain. It reminds me of something that happened when I was about ten years old.”
He stopped again. Mee waited as he tried to find the right words. Her throat felt suddenly dry, but she didn’t want to move, even to reach for her glass.
“I was in the forest on my own,” he said. “I’d taken a book with me, climbed a tree and spent hours perched there, reading. Got lost in the book, to tell the truth. At first, when the atmosphere changed, I didn’t notice. Then it got darker suddenly. I could hardly see the page I was trying to read. I climbed down the tree. The clouds were real low and they were a kind of sick, yellow color. But the weirdest part was the noise. There wasn’t any. Nothing. Now this was the middle of a forest—birds, animals, insects scurrying about. The sound was usually so constant you forgot it was there. Until it wasn’t. It was—what’s the word?—unnerving. I felt the hairs on my neck go up. It was like everything around me knew something was about to happen. Something big. I panicked and ran. Halfway home, the biggest clap of thunder I’d ever heard in my life sounded right over my head, followed by lightning so bright I’d swear I could see my bones through my skin. I was about twenty yards from shelter when the rain came. It was like someone was emptying a swimming pool over my head. Soaked to the skin in two seconds.”
“You must have been terrified,” said Mee.
“Damn near crapped my pants,” said John, smiling ruefully. Then his smile slipped. He shook his head. “It was just the sheer power of nature,” he said. “I felt—no, I knew that we humans were insignificant. Nature could brush us aside, swat us like bugs, any time.”
He pushed the plate away, leaving half of his food untouched.
“And that’s how Seb makes me feel,” he said. “There’s an atmosphere around him. I feel like I’m back in that tree, just before the storm broke.”
48
Four nights after her conversation with John, Mee woke up to find Seb’s side of the bed empty and cold. He wasn’t standing by the window. The door to their room squealed like an outraged cat every time it opened, so she knew he must have Walked. Without telling her. Which was a first. Not a precedent she liked at all.
When he wasn’t back by 5am, Mee, unable to sleep, decided an early morning walk would be better than sitting up in bed, her thoughts whirling in an unhelpful spiral of speculation and uneasiness.
The approaching dawn was just beginning to lend some definition to the buildings, trees, and paths as she set out. She could hear the hooting of owls, and the scurrying of small mammals hoping to avoid predators. In places, the grass was long, and the dew had soon soaked the ends of her pants. After
a few minutes, she realized she’d been mentally humming four bars of a song she’d written with Seb. They hadn’t written lyrics yet, so it was just a melody—a haunting, wispy line that sounded like it was written centuries ago. It had just that hint of darkness that Mee always tried for. The grit in the pearl. She’d always distrusted music without that suggestion of fracture, melancholy or pain.
She shook her head and tried to change her internal soundtrack to something else, despite knowing it was a next-to-impossible task.
She almost walked past Seb without seeing him at first. A person standing still is never completely motionless. The human body just isn’t built for it. Buckingham Palace’s red-jacketed guards, world famous for standing still with furry microphone pop shields on their heads for hours at a time, still have to breathe. But Seb was so uncannily still, Mee’s conscious mind dismissed the statue-like figure, until her sub-conscious pulled her up and made her look again.
When she realized what she was looking at, she didn’t run. It was that unnatural posture that made her slowly and carefully make her way across the rocky beach. Part of her was reluctant to get close. She acknowledged her fear, and firmly decided to ignore it.
Up close, it became even more obvious something strange was happening. Seb looked normal at first. Then she realized he wasn’t breathing—or possibly, was breathing so slowly that nothing was outwardly discernible. His eyes were open. Light fell on his face, but the sun was still down and the night had been moonless. Mee reached out a hand and put it in front of Seb’s face. Impossibly, no shadow appeared on his features.
Mee reached for Seb’s hand. As soon as she touched his skin, she pulled back her hand with a hiss. It was like touching cold, hard metal. She reached out again, more slowly this time. She tried not to flinch when her fingertips touched his skin, although her lips twitched. It felt exactly like a cold beer can. She pushed. There was resistance. Not quite like human skin, more that of an under-ripe avocado.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 66
