by Brett Bam
The magnetic tether field did not go directly down to the surface, instead it curved like a great bow as the fields intersected and curved towards the planet far below. Dalys rested comfortably, buckled safely into the gravity couch, Lutho quiet in the seat next to her. She found her control set and flicked at it experimentally. Her couch realigned itself so the viewing port was perfectly presented; she let the scenery sweep her away. As the elevator accelerated down the length of the bow its trajectory begin to shift slightly.
When its fall became vertical the capsule began to rotate slowly, pin wheeling along its axis. It turned a slow revolution giving Dalys an all-round look at her surroundings. Earth Harbour looked fantastic from this height. It was a perfect circle, dotted with colours and drifting lines of light, trailing a river of white ice-like crystals in its wake. It must appear to be the same size as the moon from the surface.
The Earth began to grow steadily larger. Dalys began to pick up details, mountains and rivers, large deserts and intense spots of green that her data glasses told her were small intense patches of vegetation resembling the jungles of old Earth.
The capsule continued to spin as it fell, literally rolling down the tube to landfall. Closer to the ground Dalys was spinning so fast the earth and harbour flipped by every minute. There was little sense of motion and it was fascinating to watch, if a little disorienting. Gravity began to assert itself. A sigh whispered through the elevator as the magnetic field constricted, slowing the tumbling capsule. It stabilised as it came to a stop, and Dalys felt her couch unbuckle. She sat up and looked around at the view of the ravaged planet and stared in wonder.
She was about to step foot on Earth.
Chapter 10
Dalys
Mount Sahara housed more than 1600 Protocol facilities, most of them maintenance and construction yards for the magnetic generators, but there were several environmental bases as well. It was an ugly industrious place covered in black dust. Umbilicals of traffic led off through the towering machinery, support vehicles flying back and forth from one job to the next. There was a road, a great many-laned highway which descended the mountain. It left the peak and did a slow steep curve down the face of the mountain. Hovering lights marked its boundaries as the traffic flowing along it descended to the cracked Earth below. They were still in a very high place and the air was thin and cold, the world was distant and removed.
“This mountain is all that remains of the great sand desert that used to cover the northern part of Africa.” said Lutho Val Max, “When it was activated, the magnetic tether caused a dust storm that lasted for more than a decade. When it eventually subsided, it left this.”
The whole world was a steep slope leading down. Behind her towered Mount Sahara’s peak, framed by a deep blue sky bisected by the curved rainbow of the elevator, the harbour twinkling high above. Below her stretched the most phenomenal view of Earth. The ground was a different texture than she had imagined and the air tasted strange, but the sensation of a breeze on her face was a thrilling joy. Lutho guided Dalys to a transport dispatch zone and the two claimed a flyer. Dalys noticed that Lutho Val Max never asked permission for anything. He would move to do something and everything around him would fall into place. Even though they constantly moved through corridors, streets and avenues, he never once had to stop and open a door or wait for an elevator or a taxi. He never entered a destination or punched a button, they simply walked and their path was free and clear, vehicles would be sitting idly waiting for them, doors would open at their approach, and every person they met was expecting them.
The flyer lifted off under Lutho’s competent hand. Dalys had spent years of her life waiting in queues, standing inside crowded trains, using disgusting public restrooms. The facilities here on Earth were impeccable. Almost too good, as if designed and built for grand uses and then forgotten and abandoned. There were very few people around, plenty of machines maintaining and trimming and cleaning the halls meant for people, but outside of the entertainment district there were no crowds, ever. Dalys had become used to people who seemed distracted by something she couldn’t hear, people empty of attention who looked straight past her or through her. They were all just drones and their fate terrified her. The idea of a human turned into a machine was abhorrent and she had to fight to hide the disgust.
They were destined for Africa City first, then a Terran habitat near the ocean, followed by a ride on the undersea train network beneath the Atlantic to North America. There was reportedly a viewing dome in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Dalys would get to stand on the surface of the sea while the Worldstorm thundered over her. From what she could tell, the experiences set out for her were a standard inspection package tailored for visitors to the planet to see a comprehensive view of the reclamation effort.
The flyer was a very good one, with a silent powerful turbine. Dalys watched the Earth pass beneath her, filled with jagged sandstone canyons and cracked dirt which stretched to the far horizon and faded into the hot thick air. The flyer skimmed through clouds which blanketed the mountain at the highest altitudes and dropped into the troughs of clear air over the southern interior. It picked up speed and the ground rushed by.
The jagged canyons finally eroded, and a great plain stretched open beneath them. Dalys started seeing smears of greenery amongst the blackened dirt. Here and there was the glimmer of a river reflecting sunlight. They flew across the plains and the land became dimpled with hills and valleys. Rivers and lakes were more common here, and so was greenery. Dalys saw places where trees covered the ground in swathes wide enough to be called forests. The sheer size of the place began to make an impression on her. She had an excellent knowledge of her geographical location, heading south down the continent of Africa. She had looked upon these places many times before, but from a great height. Now she was almost at ground level, and the amount of time it was taking to cover the distance was remarkable. She wondered what it would be like to walk down there, to rely only on your feet as the earliest men had done, to brave the dangers of a savage world with nothing more than a brave heart, a curios mind and a stick in your hand. How very far removed she felt from such a person. She was actually far closer to Lutho Val Max than she was to such an ancient man.
Their flight lasted four hours, and Dalys watched the ground the whole while. They passed over the ruins of many ancient cities, preserved and protected. Not many of the buildings or structures of the old world were still standing, but the framework was there, the patterns men carved into the world like tattoos on a skin had left a permanent mark which only epochal ages could erase.
“I know the ruins are extensive, but I assure you that there has been some comprehensive work to restore what was lost.” Lutho said, “Many of the cities on Earth have been cleared and repaired. Most of the roads and rail links have been re-established and there is electricity available in many places. This continent, in particular, was quite undeveloped before the cataclysm and as such appears less habitable now. There are many places which are almost ready for humanity to move back into.”
Dalys looked at him sceptically, “That’s a noble idea, especially coming from you.”
Lutho looked at her blankly
“Of course, the Worldstorm prevents this. We’ve been extremely lucky with the weather for this trip. It would take a better flyer than this one to get through a storm over Africa. The electrical discharges are immense, the rains cause massive flooding and winds reach tremendous speeds.”
Dalys looked back outside, there was a layer of cloud covering the ground. It was not solid, so every now and then mountains, valleys and dark forests slid into view. The landscape was crenulated and folded, it dipped and rose and curved.
“There it is, Africa City.”
Dalys saw a dim shape beyond the horizon. It was huge, through the thick air it was almost invisible, an obscure shade of grey in a grey sky. Details became apparent as they flew closer. To Dalys, it looked remarkably like a giant tree standi
ng alone. It had a strong foundation with many roads, rails and tunnels leading into it. It built up towards the centre like a root system supporting the trunk. The actual city was a massive corded knot of structures tightly wound together. It was covered in geometry, metal and glass, streams of light, elevators, highways, windows and more windows. It towered above the landscape.
The upper reaches of the city split and parted, structures emerged from the tight coil to head off in a lone direction, the buildings tapered off and narrowed towards the sky. Between these upper towers were vast diaphanous sheets of a reflective material which seemed to billow in the wind. There was a large amount of traffic, vehicles of various manufacture and propulsion swarmed in every nook and cranny and through most of the air around the city. They started a steep ascent, and Lutho banked the flyer to give her a direct view down as they circled slowly above. There was a massive pit in the centre, the whole structure was hollow.
“The city is our greatest attempt at weather control.” he said. “It is basically an oxygen generator, trying to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere so the global temperature drops and the ice masses at the poles start to grow again. As it is, this plant takes air in at ground level and scrubs it clean, turns it into oxygen, through the same chemical mechanisms as a tree, and then releases the oxygen into the air through the scrubbers in the upper reaches. There’s a reason it looks like a tree. Nature’s design was perfect, we just work on a slightly bigger scale. There are more of them in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern, but that’s an attempt to affect the Worldstorm. Our undersea factories and much larger and more impressive than this, we’ll head there next. For now, we are being directed to a landing zone just south of the city near the farmlands below. We will take a train into the city and spend the night there.”
They flew onwards over a chequered landscape covered in crops, green and luscious. Lutho circled and began a sharp spiral descent which made Dalys glad of her seatbelt.
Suddenly, a white light filled the sky and threw everything into sharp contrast, and if Dalys had not had her glasses on it would have blinded her. It lasted for a few seconds, which seemed like an age. The longer it burned the more painful it became. Just as Dalys could stand no more, the light shut off and the world returned. They were still spiralling downward but now were picking up speed, an unrestrained acceleration becoming apparent.
Next to her, Lutho began to convulse, his eyes rolling over to show glaring white orbs. His face contorted in a silent scream as saliva foamed and drooled from his mouth.
“Oh shit!” Dalys was horrified.
A second brilliant flash of light hammered the horizon and washed over the flyer turning the world pure white for the merest of an instant. Dalys was blinded by the sudden attack on her senses. She blinked rapidly but to no avail. The flyer powered down with a long high-pitched whine followed by the crackling of steel contracting as it rapidly cooled. Her stomach leaped through her throat as the craft began to spiral out of control. She could feel the wrongness in its fall through the seat of her pants. Panic set in as she groped dumbly for the controls. Lutho Val Max was still shuddering horribly next to her; Dalys could hear the erratic thudding of his feet on the cockpit floor. Lights swam before her eyes, afterimages of the two flashes. She struggled in vain to arrest the rapid descent of the flyer. The controls shivered in her grip in a bizarre parody of the stricken creature next to her. Alarms began to shriek their futile warnings as shapes began to flicker into her vision. With a terrible clang of fear Dalys realised that what she was seeing was the ground rushing up at her at an unbelievable speed. She hauled on the control pads and tried to steer the craft into a stable position, but without power in the boosters the flyer was reacting like an airborne brick of lead. If she could just get the nose up enough… without warning and much to Dalys’ relief the flyer’s short wings caught the air and the fall became a swoop of rushing inertia directed away from the ground. They were still dropping, but at a speed that gave her a small amount of time to search the cockpit for some means of escape. As if in response to her panic, the console before her shifted and flowed in a weird geometric pattern, and a lever folded out of the controls. It was a bright emergency red. With no other options, and death galloping to meet her, she pulled with all her might. It shifted easily in her hand, there was a squeezing moment of explosive decompression. And then she was floating gently to ground. Lutho Val Max was still shaking as a foil parachute unfolded in the sky, stabilising them and slowing their fall. She took several deep breaths in an attempt to recover some of her nerves and steeled herself to look down. They were very high up, although they were now drifting downwards at a much more acceptable pace. Lutho gave a sigh and stopped convulsing, subsiding into a series of small shivers that didn’t encourage Dalys at all.
“Hey! Lutho! Wake up!” she screamed into the wind. As she watched, the flyer tipped over and began to cartwheel toward its final destination. It impacted, a large cloud of debris scattered into the air. The bang reached Dalys’ ears a few moments later. Then the ground was suddenly very close and they were moving a lot faster than she had estimated. She triggered her defensive shield just before they hit the ground.
Her first atmospheric flying experience ended with a bone jarring thud and a debris cloud of her own. She flicked the field off, coughed in the raised dust, and wrestled with her safety harness. It clipped open and Dalys fell out of the flight seat onto a thankfully solid ground.
For a long moment, all she could do was breathe. And a strange sensation that was too. An atmosphere without a roof, how about that!
Her captain’s jacket was torn and dirtied and she was perspiring heavily in the heat of the Earth day. She unzipped the jacket but didn’t remove it. Beneath she wore a bright red v-necked shirt tucked into a pair of black pants with sturdy thick soled boots. The pants were torn indecently and she had dirt scuffed on her face.
She turned and reached for Lutho Val Max’s harness, unbuckling and lowering the unconscious man to the black dirt. She performed a cursory examination but could not revive him. He was alive and breathing, but he was out like a light.
“What in the hellfire was that?” Dalys asked the sky above her.
Obviously there had been some tremendous calamity in the south. That had looked spectacularly like a nuclear blast, an attack or an accident.
She looked south waiting for the dust around her to settle, and in the quiet, Lutho Val Max woke up screaming. He sat up rigid in shock. The whites of his eyes were huge and spittle flew from his mouth as he voiced an incoherent terror. Dalys spun around. The man was sitting up and cradling his head in his hands.
“Are you OK? You went into some kind of fit and we crashed.”
“Empty! Empty!”
He looked up and to Dalys’ surprise she found that Lutho Val Max had a wildness, a horror-stricken life in his eyes, something that hadn’t been there before. It looked like he had just woken from a nightmare. The expressionless face had come alive. He was flushed and frantic, but Dalys felt certain that for the first time she was seeing Lutho Val Max for the person he was.
“Gone, the voices, they’re gone, everything’s quiet. I can’t feel them.” Even his voice was different, emotional. Tears filled his eyes and spilled down his red and flushed cheeks. Dalys frowned, “What’s gone quiet?”
“Alone! Empty! Nothing!” He began to hit himself repeatedly, punctuating his words with his fist. Dalys lunged forward and tried to stop him when she realised he was doing himself serious damage.
“What the hellfire happened?”
“He’s escaped.”
“Who escaped?”
“He’s loose! He’s out. He’s coming.”
The man was rambling, obviously delirious. Dalys turned and looked at the city.
“Could we find help there? Will somebody come for us?”
The city had plainly been affected by the disaster too. Air transports were screaming around, narrowly missing each
other and as she watched she saw several accidents flare and fall out of the air, trailing corkscrews of smoke and debris. There were huge gashes of darkness where power cuts scarred the trunk of the city. There was a lot of debris being shed by the city causing terrible damage in their falls. A series of small explosions rattled up the main trunk, black smoke billowing out from the trail of destruction. There would be no help from that quarter, they had their own problems. All the rules had just changed.
Dalys was stuck at the bottom of a very deep gravity well. She had a traumatised and shocked man to deal with who needed help, she had no transport and was stuck on the ground for the time being. The feeling of not being able to get off the planet suddenly smothered her like a claustrophobic blanket. She had to get off! It took a moment to reel the fear in to more acceptable levels, but with a few deep breaths she did it. Now what? The Ribbontail’s shuttle had a lift off capability. It could theoretically land and take off again. Could it climb out of such a massive gravity well? Was the crew watching her from orbit? How could they find her?
She walked to the wreck to search it for some sort of emergency beacon or a survival kit, something. She found a pack containing water, first aid supplies and a couple of flares. She shoved some more water into it and scrounged what she could. The wreck was dead, not a spark of electricity anywhere. It must have been some sort of electro magnetic pulse, which would confirm her suspicions of a nuclear blast. Her data glasses had been reduced to scrap yet she could not bring herself to throw them away. They were still polarised so they would serve as sun protection if nothing else. It really seemed like they were not going to get any help. There had been a small airport of some kind at their destination, a landing lawn and a small clutch of buildings, a road and a railway line snaked past it on the way to the city. If anyone was going to come to them that was the place to be. It couldn’t be far, she remembered passing over it as they drifted down. There was a tarred road just beyond the trees. The wind was cold and crisp. The sky was grey and foreboding, and the wind was picking up. If the flash had been a large explosion, then there was very likely some severe weather coming. The rain which would fall might even be contaminated in some way, radioactive acid? How would this affect the Worldstorm? Was that about to descend on them? They had to find some shelter.
