Many years after The Unmaking Engine, in The Seventeenth Year, we meet Joni, Seb and Meera’s daughter. Conceived before Seb sacrificed the last of his physical humanity to become a World Walker and save Earth from the Unmaking Engine, Joni discovers she has unusual abilities of her own. She is resistant to Manna, which is good and bad. Good because it can’t really be used against her, bad because she can’t Use it herself - to heal or be healed. Her other ability involves the multiverse - which Seb discovered he was using every time he Walked. Joni can reset the multiverse, returning to a point she has consciously created, where the universe branches into two possible futures.
Joni uses her ability to escape from Adam, a psychopathic remnant from the Acolytes Of Satan - the organization which tried to kill Seb in The World Walker. Adam’s belief in a demigod which created the Earth and may yet return to rule it fuels his desire to rid the planet of the most powerful Manna users to prove his worth. If not Seb Varden himself, who is missing presumed dead, then why not the next best thing - his daughter? Joni is aided in her escape by her mother and Sym - a personality construct originally created by Seb who has been pursuing his own agenda in the years since Seb vanished.
Mistakenly believing Adam to be dead, Joni and Mee return to Innisfarne where a disguised Adam kills her uncle John and prepares to kill Joni. Seb returns and saves Joni. Sym kills Adam.
Seb prepares to tell Mee and Joni—the daughter he has never met—where he has been the past seventeen years. It’s an incredible story, involving a mysterious alien artifact he as brought back to Earth with him: the Gyeuk Egg. It’s not over yet…
MAIN CHARACTERS CONTINUING FROM BOOKS 1-3
Seb Varden
Orphan, musician, World Walker and our unlikely hero.
Meera (Mee) Patel
Seb’s girlfriend, a singer and Manna user. Pot-smoking, foul-mouthed and brilliant.
Joni
Seb and Mee’s daughter. Conceived before Seb’s final evolution to T’hn’uuth status, she has unexpected abilities, namely a resistance to Manna and the power to return to a previously chosen reset point in her own timeline and re-live the subsequent events, changing them if necessary.
Sym
Artificially constructed by Seb to passively observe Walt Ford in The World Walker, Sym can live online or symbiotically within a host (hence his name). He can also take over a host body if necessary. Although his personality is based on Seb’s, he has a more ambivalent relationship with morality than his creator.
Billy Joe
A T’hn’uuth (World Walker) who evolved from the Rozzer species thousands of years ago. In The World Walker, he awoke from a dormant state on Earth in order to accelerate Seb’s own evolution into a World Walker, giving him extraordinary powers.
The Gyeuk
A swarm-mind, artificially intelligent. Just as nanotechnology provides the physical makeup and power of the T’hn’uuth, so it provides the countless tiny intelligences that go to make up the group mind of the Gyeuk. The Gyeuk’s ambitions and motives remain opaque. It was a Gyeuk ship that carried the Rozzers on their destructive mission in The Unmaking Engine. As Seb found in his encounter with H’wan (the ship), the relationship between the Gyeuk and the T’hn’uuth is characterized by a slight unease on both sides.
1
The moons were full that night. Usually, this would be considered an auspicious omen. Usually.
Two figures, silhouetted against the evening sun, walked into the meeting circle and faced the three Elders. No other tribe members were present. Sopharndi had requested a private audience for herself and her son. The orange tinge of sunset gave the illusion of warmth, although back in the settlement fires had been burning for a few hours already.
Sopharndi stood silently before the Elders. She could not quite bring herself to lower her eyes, despite her love and trust for those who led her tribe. She fidgeted while they bowed their heads. The thin scar on her chin itched, but she resisted the urge to scratch it.
Beside Sopharndi, Cley started his tuneless humming. When, at five years old, her son had first started this curious habit, Sopharndi had felt a wild and desperate hope pierce her broken heart. Perhaps Cley wasn’t a Blank after all. Maybe he was just a late starter. After all, he was able to feed himself a little, and sometimes he seemed to show interest in a bright flower or the flight of a particularly raucous lekstrall. But the humming, despite hours of patient coaxing, had never led to a single intelligible word, and Sopharndi had felt her hopes slip away, replaced by the quiet despair that accompanied her every waking hour and haunted her dreams. She wondered why the Singer had chosen to inflict such cruel and torturous punishment on her and her blameless child. Sopharndi had always tried to live according to Her silent song. Perhaps trying wasn’t good enough for the Singer.
Laak, Leader of the People, raised her head and held both palms toward Sopharndi and Cley.
“Sopharndi has asked. The Elders will answer.”
Laak dropped her hands and took a step forward. “You are a mother. Your love for your son is a reflection of the love the Singer has for all of us. We honor this, Sopharndi.”
The two Elders flanking Laak were parents and grandparents. Hesta had two boys. Gron had outlived both of his children and was bringing up his granddaughter. Laak’s daughter Cochta was strong of arm and was considered by most to be the obvious next First, replacing Sopharndi when the time came. Some suspected Cochta’s desires were greater still, and she intended to follow her mother as Leader. When Sopharndi looked at Laak, she saw a woman entering her final years, her strength beginning to ebb away. Cochta was certainly strong enough to lead but lacked her mother’s patience and wisdom. The girl had a little too much to say for herself.
Better too much than nothing at all.
She looked at Cley, then automatically took out a cloth and wiped away the saliva spilling from the corner of his mouth. He stopped humming for a second while Sopharndi dabbed at his face, then picked up where he had left off. Sopharndi looked back at the Elders and—just for a moment–saw a flicker of pity in Laak’s eyes.
The decision had gone against her, then.
“It is our way,” said Laak. “We cannot make an exception.”
Sopharndi, Hesta and Gron intoned the age-old response. “As the Singer wills.”
Cley would have to make the Journey. He would go into the Parched Land. For any other of the People, it was just a ritual marking their transition from adolescence to adulthood. For Cley, it was a death sentence.
Without another word, Sopharndi took her son’s hand and led him back to the settlement.
2
Innisfarne
When Seb opened the door of the crofter’s cottage to find Jesus Christ standing there, he was—for a moment, at least—nonplussed. He regarded the figure in silence. Jesus looked back at him steadily. The slowly falling snow was part of Seb’s reason for his lack of reaction. There was something uncannily familiar about the scene.
“Seb,” said Jesus, with a friendly nod.
“Jesus,” said Seb, returning the nod. Being brought up by nuns made politeness habitual.
And it’s Jesus, for Chrissakes.
Seb spent a moment trying to unpick the sheer wrongness of that last thought before mentally shrugging and giving up. He was dressed for the weather, his usual jeans and T-shirt supplemented with a thick woolen sweater, a greatcoat that looked like it belonged in nineteenth century Russia, gloves, hat, and scarf. He had no need for clothes for warmth, but he was making a determined stab at being normal. On his back was a knapsack, inside which—carefully wrapped in an old blanket—was an object that had been created by an Artificial Intelligence made up of a swarm of beings that were both many and one, countless light-years away from where he stood now, outside a cottage on the tiny Northumbrian island of Innisfarne. Looking at Jesus. Maybe this whole attempt at normal wasn’t going perfectly, but Seb could be a stubborn and resolute man, and he wasn’t done trying just yet.
But snow?
“So, yeah, Seb,” said Jesus. “Hey. What’s happening?” Despite the sub-zero temperature, the apparition didn’t shiver. Apparition was the wrong word. Seb had no doubt that, were he to place a hand on that wound on the man’s side, he would feel warm flesh and blood. Not that he intended to try it.
Instead of feeling as if he were in the presence of a miracle, Seb felt irritated. Snowflakes were settling in the figure’s long, deep-brown, lustrous hair, with its unlikely shampoo-commercial shine. The beard covering the chin of the otherwise flawless white skin was neatly trimmed. Jesus’s barber was obviously a perfectionist. The eyes were an unlikely shade of cornflower blue.
Why did it seem so—
Then, suddenly, he had it. Sister Theresa’s office. On the windowsill. Next to her bowl of plastic rosaries, which she had handed out with unrelenting generosity and optimism to everyone she met.
A snow-globe.
When he had been very small, way before he was attending any classes, Sister Theresa had sometimes let him sit in her big leather swivel chair. She was in charge of the orphanage accounts and had spent hours every day hunched over bills and receipts. A bad back didn’t allow her to sit still for extended periods, so she had made sure she stood for at least ten minutes in every hour. And that had been when the two or three-year-old Seb, looking at picture books or playing with donated toys in the corner, had been allowed to sit in the big chair, his outstretched feet not even reaching the edge of the leather. As the only resident orphan abandoned on their doorstep just after his birth, he had enjoyed certain privileges.
While she’d stretched her recalcitrant spine, or moved paperwork from an eternally refilling in-tray to a similarly overloaded out-tray, Sister Theresa would hand Seb a plastic rosary—because not to do so would just feel plain wrong to the dutiful woman—and, after a few seconds during which he looked at her wide-eyed and ever so slightly reproachfully, she’d cave in and give him the globe. She did it just to see the child’s face break into that broad, delighted smile that not a single Sister in the place could resist. They weren’t going to spoil the boy, God forbid, but if an opportunity arose to take any action that would produce that wondrously uplifting expression on Seb’s chubby, innocent face, well, who could blame them? If any Sister in the place had ever harbored any doubts about their calling, a few seconds’ exposure to that boy’s smile would set them right.
So, maybe once a week, when it was Sister Theresa’s turn to babysit, Seb would get the chance to shake the snow-globe, and watch the tiny flakes swirl around the figure of Jesus, as he stood in a frozen gesture of blessing. But that figure had been robed. Seb couldn’t remember any other details apart from the blue eyes of the plastic statue. All other colors had long disappeared, the materials used in the globe’s construction having been chosen for cheapness, rather than durability. Over the years, the figure of Jesus had become as white as the scene around him, only those two minuscule flecks of blue remaining in an almost featureless face. The contours had worn smooth, no details discernible. Christ’s plastic form had literally become part of the world inside the globe, little by little, shake by shake, his own body falling around him with the flakes of snow.
Seb found he was losing patience. His Manna was providing information he had already half-guessed.
“Jesus Christ was a Middle-Eastern Jew,” he said, “not a Woodstock hippy.”
Piercingly blue eyes narrowed into a slightly petulant glare.
“I thought you’d like it.”
The voice was pleasingly soft and nondescript, unmistakably American, but geographically vague. The kind of accent an actor playing Christ might settle on.
“Well, you thought wrong. I don’t.”
Jesus mumbled something and rolled his eyes. Then, with such swiftness that it seemed to happen instantaneously, the figure lost about a foot in height, its skin darkening to a sun-baked brown. The eyes were dark now, the eyebrows bushy and wild. The beard now looked unkempt, matted with blood. The face was completely different, older, weathered…tired. For a moment, Seb felt a deep sense of shock as the Christ he had sometimes pictured as a teenager, rejecting the toothpaste commercial poster boy he kept seeing, stood before him, silent and solemn. Then the man winked, and the spell was broken.
“Well, are ye going to invite me in, then?” said Jesus, the voice now accented, although Seb couldn’t place the dialect. There was something maddeningly familiar about it. Then, suddenly, he had it. Jesus had now, for no good reason, adopted a strong Scottish accent.
“I’m going out,” he said. “Whatever you want, it can wait.”
He opened the door wider and stepped aside. The figure—with a childish giggle—walked in, then paused, surveying the room. The roaring fire’s dancing orange and red light revealed fairly sparse furnishings. There was a wooden chair, a table that didn’t match and an old chest in the corner. A dented stove and a plain, iron bed completed the picture.
“Make yourself at home,” said Seb. The man, who was now shorter than him, looked up and smiled.
“You haven’t asked why I’m here.”
“I know why you’re here, Fypp.”
His visitor seemed unperturbed by the use of the name.
“It’s time. We need to look at the Egg.”
Seb shifted the knapsack on his shoulder and shook his head.
“Later,” he said. “I have to be somewhere. We can look at it when I come back.”
The figure of Christ rose a few feet into the air, looking briefly annoyed. Then he leaned back as if supported by an invisible cushion and folded his hands over his stomach.
“Sure. I can wait. I’ve done my fair share of waiting over the millennia. Billenia? Trillenia? Am I making up words now? Ye go tell them whatever it is you have to tell them. Then we’ll talk.”
In the doorway, framed by the falling snow behind him, Seb turned.
“Please don’t look like this when I get back,” he said. “It’s in pretty bad taste.”
Jesus tutted.
“There’s no need to be touchy about it. It’s just a bit of fun, och.”
Och? Seb didn’t reply. Jesus sighed and pouted.
“Oh, have it your way. Perhaps I had ye figured wrong, laddie. Maybe you’re boring after all.”
Seb stepped out into the snow.
“Fypp, you may be a lot of things, but empathetic isn’t one of them.”
A halo had appeared above the figure’s head. Jesus grabbed it and tossed it toward the fire, where it landed neatly on the poker in its brass stand. He applauded his own skill.
“When you’re as interesting as me, what’s the point in caring about what anyone else is feeling?”
“Hmm. Well, here’s a heads-up for you. Being boring sounds really appealing to me right now.” As he pulled the heavy door closed behind him, he caught one last comment from the floating figure.
“I only thought if ye saw me looking like this, ye might get a kick out of it. Even think it was good news. Good News - geddit? No? Just me?” The accent shifted again. “Jeez, tough crowd.”
Seb closed the door and trudged away from his visitor toward the Keep, toward the woman he loved and the daughter he’d only just begun to know.
It was time for him to tell them the truth. Whatever that was.
3
Joni st
epped out of a small, stone building as Seb approached the Keep. She hugged him briefly, and he felt the same curious tightening of his chest and his throat that afflicted him every time she was near.
She smelled like home.
He had seen news stories and PBS documentaries about fathers who discovered they had a kid after years of not knowing, and despite his certainty that he was being emotionally manipulated, he had always cried.
Mee had caught him at it once, drying his eyes in front of the TV as a man was confronted with a ten-year-old son he had never met.
“Wuss,” had been Mee’s only comment. Seb suspected she never watched those shows herself because she would end up bawling, but he’d allowed her to keep her illusory sense of superior emotional balance.
His situation was a little different from those in the documentaries, of course. He had stepped away from the planet for a few weeks. Or seventeen years. Or a lifetime. It was all relative, apparently. It didn’t feel relative to Seb, though.
He held Joni for a long moment and tried just to enjoy that moment, rather than lament the lost years. It would be all too easy to blame himself for allowing Joni to grow up without a father, but he knew he had been given no real choice. He was here now, he had choices now. What else was there?
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 96
