Mee took a step backward and looked carefully at Seb. Neither his hair or his clothes were moving in the breeze that was constantly flicking Mee’s bangs in front of her eyes.
Steeling herself, she stepped forward again and put a hand on his shoulder. She silently counted to three, then gave him a hard push. She wasn’t sure what to expect. He might rock backward, fall over, or—hopefully—wake up, look at her, and come back to reality. None of those possibilities occurred. What did happen was so unexpected that Mee stumbled backward and sat down heavily in the sand.
Her hand penetrated his T-shirt and skin, went through his shoulder. She actually saw her fingers emerging just outside Seb’s right shoulder blade. It felt like her hand was pushing through very thick oatmeal. It was even slightly warm. Mee felt like throwing up.
Instead, she stood again, stamped her feet on the shingle to force some warmth into them and remind herself she was awake, then stood in front of Seb and looked into his eyes.
“Seb?” she said. “Can you hear me? Seb?”
His eyes were definitely seeing something, but it wasn’t Meera Patel. She had heard that expression: he had a faraway look in his eye. Yep. Far away. It was just that far away couldn’t even begin to cover the sense of distance she saw in Seb’s eyes. A better fit might be: he had that ‘seeing another galaxy possibly in a parallel universe’ look in his eye. Yep. That was more accurate.
Mee didn’t cry on her way back to the main house to tell Kate, but she did swear. Loudly.
Two weeks later
For the first thirty-six hours, only Mee and Kate had known what was going on, but within a few days the entire community was whispering about it. A meeting was called, Kate told them what little they knew, suggestions were made, and a plan of sorts was approved.
“Better than doing nothing,” said Mee, but she didn’t sound convinced.
The two women made their way down to the beach at midnight. Mee hadn’t slept at all the first two nights, so Kate had organized shifts of volunteers to make sure nothing happened without Mee knowing about it. Kate and Mee were going to cover the 12-4am shift.
Two men stood up as they approached. A temporary camp had been set up under a tree overlooking the beach. It was little more than some folding chairs and a two-person tent containing a camping stove.
As she got closer, Mee realized one of the men was John, drinking from a tin cup.
“It’s no good,” he said. “I want to like tea, especially now that I’m in Britain, but I guess I’m too old to change.”
Mee forced a smile at his attempt to keep the atmosphere light.
“You, of all people, know you’re never too old to change.”
“Good point,” said John, grimacing as he took another sip. “You don’t suppose coffee beans would grow here, do you?”
Mee and Kate stood alongside the two men and looked down the slope to the beach. The tide was going out, exposing the wet rocks dotting the sand and shingle. The moon hung big and low in the clear sky.
Seb still hadn’t moved. He stood with his back to them, looking straight ahead. At night, the temperatures plummeted, but he was only wearing a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. Fifteen days into his silent vigil, the only things that changed were the light, the weather, the observers and the unceasing wash of the tide as it came in and receded. Seb stayed exactly the same.
“Even the bloody gulls won’t perch on his head,” said Mee, finishing the tea John hadn’t quite managed to bring himself to drink.
Kate and Mee watched Seb for their allotted four hours. During the day, many of the community had taken to making their way one by one to the silent figure and talking to him. Not expecting a response perhaps, but letting him know they were there. At night, it was just the rota of watchers and the bats that flickered in and out of the branches above them.
Ten days later
Mee had experienced bad shit before. She knew that prevailing wisdom claimed things got bad before they got better, that the night was always darkest before the dawn, but—in her experience—things were just as likely to get worse as get better. And what kind of idiot thought the darkest part of the night was just before dawn? The darkest part of the night was hours before that.
On this particular night, the darkest part was at 3:40am.
Mee sat bolt upright in bed and was fully awake instantly, which had never happened before. Ever. She’d taken to sleeping in one of Seb’s T-shirts since he’d been gone. The principle of which half-comforted and half-horrified her. In the end, she mentally justified her action by describing it as, “giving my inner militant feminist a cuddle,” and left it at that.
She grabbed a pair of jeans, a jacket and her sneakers and half-ran, half-hopped through the sleeping house, getting dressed as she went.
Outside, everything was quiet. It was so dark, she almost ran headlong into Sarah, one of the women covering the 12-4am shift that night. The other woman gasped in surprise as Mee rushed past. She called something after her, but Mee wasn’t listening.
When she got to the tent overlooking the beach, no one else was there. Breathing heavily, Mee looked down to the beach. It was a starlit night, but hard to see exactly was going on. There was definitely a figure down there.
Mee scrambled down to the shore.
The figure was Kate.
“I saw it,” she said quietly as Mee came closer. She took the younger woman’s hand and they both looked at the spot where Seb had been standing for nearly a month.
“What happened?” said Mee.
“There was nothing dramatic about it,” said Kate. “He took a couple of steps forward. I stood up, called Sarah—she was sleeping in the tent. By the time she’d come out, he’d gone. He took one more step. Halfway through it he disappeared. As if he’d walked through a door.”
Kate looked at Mee’s face for a few seconds. “I’ll wait up there for you,” she said, and walked back toward the watcher’s station.
Mee could still see Seb’s footprints. She knew the tide, which had washed around his feet every day for a few hours, would soon wash them away forever. She carefully put her own feet where his had been. Stood where he had stood. Looked out toward the sky the way he had been doing for the last twenty-five days.
Mee tried to see what Seb had seen. Tried to think like him. And finally, admitted to herself that she didn’t know how to do that anymore. She couldn’t think, or see, what he saw. The Seb she’d known had changed beyond recognition. Not in a bad way, perhaps. Maybe from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Which was all very lovely, but not so great if you were the caterpillar’s girlfriend. The thought made her laugh. The laugh turned into sobs, and she allowed herself a cathartic ten minutes of howling. Then she wiped the tears from her face with the bottom of Seb’s T-shirt and made her way back up the slope.
She allowed herself one last look back. She slowly scanned the empty beach, then raised her eyes and gazed at the night sky. For most of her life, the stars had seemed friendly, exciting and mysterious. Tonight, they were cold, distant, and unknowable.
She put one hand on her stomach and wondered if he had known. He seemed to know everything else. Could he have missed what was going on right in front of him? She knew the anger she was feeling was misplaced and unfair, but she couldn’t help it.
“If it’s a boy,” she whispered, “I’m definitely not calling him Seb.”
THE END
Author's note
Book Three of The World Walker Series, The Seventeenth Year, is available on Amazon: getBook.at/TheSeventeenthYear
Thanks for reading The Unmaking Engine. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon USA or UK (apologies to all other nationalities who bought the first book—but please leave a review on your country’s Amazon page!)
You can join my mailing list here - http://bit.ly/1VSg2tT, and I'll send you a free copy of the unpublished prologue to The World Walker. I blog very occasionally here - https://ianwsainsbury.com/ and you can email me on
[email protected]. I'm on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IanWSainsbury/
On March 21st 2016, I published The World Walker—my first novel—on Amazon. And now, five months later, I've written the sequel. Which you've just finished reading.
Oh, hang on. Before I go on, I have to address a little problem I didn't anticipate first time around. Apparently, some people read the Author's Note before they read the book. Why? I can't answer that, because I've never done it. But I have solid evidence that it happens. So, can I just point out that Author's Notes sometimes contain spoilers? You might read something that diminishes your enjoyment of the story.
So...don't do it.
Seriously.
I’m talking to you, Auntie Hazel. Stop reading immediately, go back and start at the beginning. We'll wait.
Right, on with the note. Honestly, some people. Tut.
The World Walker took me about eighteen months to write from the time I first scribbled the initial idea into a notebook. The Unmaking Engine took five months. So, if my calculations are correct, the next one should take about 15 days. Hmm. Apparently, there are folk out there who can write that fast. I haven't a clue how. I imagine they have some sort of Faustian pact with a minor demon who slows down time around them in return for sexual favors and exclusive access to their immortal souls.
Just so you know, I don't think I'll ever be able to write a novel that fast. If I did, I’m reasonably certain it wouldn't be worth reading.
On the other hand, I can't ever see myself following in George RR Martin's footsteps, making desperate readers wait years for the next book in a series.
(An aside on George RR Martin. He's my equivalent of an Indy band you discover years before the rest of the world catches on. In the early 1990s, I read Fevre Dream, a vampire story set on the Mississippi in the golden age of the steamboat. A long, long time before Twilight made vampires ubiquitous. Anne Rice was doing her lush, sensuous vampire stuff of course, but there was something about Fevre Dream. Maybe it was the evocative prose, or the wonderfully flawed human hero, Abner Marsh. Maybe it was the believable vampire culture and history. Maybe it was the tightness of the story—compact, fairly short, possible to read in one or two obsessive sittings—which I did, first time around—try doing that with A Song Of Ice And Fire. I love Fevre Dream. I've given copies of it away at least three times and bought myself a new one. In fact, looking at my shelves, it’s not there now. Time to buy it again. These days, of course, everyone knows who GRRM is. Which—totally unfairly—irks me. I am irked. He was my author. I wish I was a bigger man and could be unirked. But I can't. Grr.)
Back to the point. I hoped to write a second book. I had lots of ideas about developing the story, and one book couldn't do justice to all of them. I avoided a cliffhanger ending for The World Walker, because—sometimes— they make me want to throw my Kindle out of the window. But I knew there was more to come. I just wasn't sure when I'd find the time. And that's where you come in, gentle reader…
After the first few weeks, The World Walker started selling a constant number of copies every day. Also, there were plenty of people borrowing it through Kindle Unlimited and Select. Not enough to buy a new car/pay for a child’s education/upgrade to First Class on any future airplane trips, but enough sales and borrows to encourage me to take a risk and make time to write the sequel sooner rather than later.
Once I'd made the commitment, I wrote pages of notes and carefully plotted most of the book, including the ending. Which is hilarious, because—when I look at my notes now—almost everything has changed. The ending is completely different. It's the strangest sensation when a story takes on a life of its own. There's one chapter in The Unmaking Engine which came from nowhere. Straight from my subconscious onto the page, bypassing my conscious mind completely. And you thought Manna was weird?
What I'm trying to say, in a long-winded and rambling way, is that those of you who read The World Walker made The Unmaking Engine possible. I've been incredibly lucky—thousands of people have read the first novel, and the reviews (please do review any independent author's book you've enjoyed, it makes a HUGE difference) have given me the confidence and impetus to keep writing.
I have more in store in the multiverse of The World Walker. There’s at least one more book to write about Mee, Seb and—perhaps—the next generation. I also have lots of other stories to tell. If enough of you want to keep reading, I'll keep writing.
Reading opens our minds, lets us see how others perceive the world—even an imaginary world. This is a good thing. And the world needs more good things. Thanks for reading.
Ian W. Sainsbury
Norwich
August 19th 2016
Book Three of The World Walker Series, The Seventeenth Year: getBook.at/TheSeventeenthYear
Also by Ian W. Sainsbury
The World Walker (The World Walker Series 1)
The Seventeenth Year (The World Walker Series 3)
The Unnamed Way (The World Walker Series 4)
Children Of The Deterrent (Halfhero Series 1)
The Seventeenth Year
Copyright © 2017 by Ian Sainsbury
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Hristo Kovatliev
For Olive
Previously in The World Walker Series (contains spoilers for books one and two)
Join my (very occasional) mailing list, and I’ll send you the unpublished prologue for The World Walker: http://eepurl.com/bQ_zJ9
What you need to know about Manna:
Manna is nanotechnology accessible by a minority of people born with a certain genetic disposition. The Earth was seeded with stores of Manna at the dawn of multicellular life. These stores are known as Thin Places, regularly visited by Users when they need to refill their personal stock of Manna. Different Users manipulate Manna in different ways; some to attack by manipulating their physical environment, some to sense the proximity of enemies, some to heal the sick. All can use it to produce food and water in seconds from their surroundings.
Seb Varden has almost god-like powers given to him by Billy Joe, an alien who had been kept in a secret government facility since 1947. Unfortunately, these powers—essentially a massively upgraded version of Manna—come with no instruction manual, and, while Seb tries to work out how to use them, he is pursued by various interested parties. The most tenacious of these is a Manna user called Mason, who uses ruthless mercenaries to try to gain access to Seb.
Despite killing Seb’s friend Bob and kidnapping Seb’s on/off girlfriend, Meera (Mee) Patel, Mason is eventually thwarted. In The Unmaking Engine, he redoubles his efforts, and, in a confrontation with Seb, is finally defeated. A brain tumor, keep at bay since childhood by Manna, is healed and the real person trapped inside Mason is revealed. Mason is actually John, Seb’s older brother.
As well as defeating Mason, and gaining a brother, Seb has to take on the Rozzers - the alien race who created humanity and provided the Thin Places billions of years in our past. They are en route to Earth to wipe out a failed experiment and start over. The Unmaking Engine will be dropped into the ocean to achieve this end. Unfortunately, their failed experiment is the human race, and the only person standing in their way is Seb. Seb is now further into the process that began when he was first given his powers - he is evolving into a World Walker, an incredibly rare being. The Rozzers try to manipulate or neutralize him. Even their ship—which is, in fact, a sentient being itself, part of a hive mind that evolved from nanotechnology into a new species of artificial intelligence—attempts to dissuade Seb from interfering.
Seb takes on the Rozzers and prevents them from wiping out humanity. To do this, he must make two huge sacrifices. The first is his removal of humanity’s Manna ability, ac
hieved by adapting the Unmaking Engine. From this point on, no child will ever be born with the genetic makeup necessary to manipulate Manna. Seb’s second sacrifice is to finally allow his entire body to be replaced by nanotechnology.
On a personal level, this may be a tragedy rather than a triumph. Seb has finally found happiness with Mee, and their relationship has deepened. But, by saving humanity, has Seb lost his own? He becomes distant, struggles to relate to those around him and, finally, vanishes from the island of Innisfarne where he and Mee were hoping to build a new life together.
Mee is left behind, wondering where the man she loves has gone.
And she’s pregnant…
1
Innisfarne
Joni died on her ninth birthday, but she didn’t let it spoil her party.
There were only two other children on Innisfarne that spring. Evan and Hattie were eight-year-old twins. Evan was quiet, solemn and watchful. Hattie was loud, spontaneous, unreliable. They looked so alike that the gulf between their personalities seemed even more pronounced. And they didn’t think dressing up as magical characters was silly, which some of the visiting children did. When Joni announced her fancy-dress theme, Evan consulted his books for ideas. Hattie, who had little patience for the written word, drew her inspiration from movies and tv.
“I’ll be Tinkerbell,” she said, dancing under one of the giant oak trees that marked the center of the small island. “Or…Peter Pan. No! They’re not creatures, are they? I’ll be the ticking crocodile, a unicorn, a dragon. No, Rumpelstiltskin, um, a phoenix, no—I know—I’ll be a robot.” She danced out of the shade and skipped across the small clearing before breaking into a run as she headed back to the Keep.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 67
