by Ian McDonald
“Oh,” Everett said. “Wow.”
“Panopticon,” Tejendra said. “That's a good name, isn't it? The device that can see everywhere. I'll scale it in a little.” Tejendra dragged his fingers in across the metal surface and the holographic display contracted to the size of a table top. “Yes, that's how I remember it.” By the light of the Panopticon Everett could see Tejendra smiling. “All those stars, those are Heisenberg Gate events.”
“That's it. That's so it,” Everett whispered.
“Lieutenant, I'm getting an upsurge in Nahn activity,” Trooper Winkelman said. “Increased energy levels in the hotspots. There's a huge power spike in the Hyde Park nexus and I'm getting Nahn source-code traces running right here. They may be on to us.”
“I need to determine whether it's complete,” Everett said. “There might be some interface unit missing. We'd have to come back for it.”
“Let's see if I can remember how to get into the system files,” Tejendra said. He reached for the Panopticon. A flash of light blinded everyone in the dark storeroom. When Everett could see again, a new star burned brilliantly in the holographic constellation.
“What the hell was that?” Lieutenant Kastinidis said.
“I don't know,” Tejendra said. “I didn't touch anything. It's still operational…”
“I do know,” Everett declared. “A Heisenberg Gate opening. Right here, right now.”
“Whatever it is, the Nahn know we're here,” Trooper Winkelman said. “Activity just went off the scale.”
“Mr. Singh, completion will have to wait.” Lieutenant Kastinidis ripped the power cable from her wrist. The stars died. The darkness was sudden and total. “We leave now. Standard protection formation. Go go go.”
Blinking, dazzled, Everett grabbed the Panopticon and stumbled toward the door. He felt a hand in his back, urging him, guiding.
“Go on son, you'll be all right,” Tejendra said. Everett tucked the Panopticon into an inside pocket of his jacket. The glow tubes on his clothing shone as if he were a man made of stars. Not bright enough to see by, but bright enough to be seen.
“Major hotspot,” Trooper Winkelman said. “It's right under us.”
Everett M hit the harness button and dropped lightly to Everness's hull. He landed hard. He had half expected to bounce on it like a trampoline. He let go of the tether line and watched the hedgehopper, set free, soar away until it was lost against the white sky. It would fly until its batteries ran out. No need to bring it back.
The airship was huge. Size of a building huge. Landscape huge. The upper hull curved up gently before him and away on either side. The skin was dusted lightly with snow. There was no sense that he was a hundred meters from the ground. There was no sense that he was floating on air. The only hint that he was on the back of a great machine was a gentle vibration that came up through the soles of his feet: the airship humming to the pulse of its engines.
The tail fin was the size of a house. Stay away from the moving parts, Everett M told himself as he squatted down to unzip the quantum tracker from his backpack. It was Thryn-tech white, sealed inside a plastic bag. Foiled by plastic packaging at the last moment, Everett M had to use his teeth to tear it open. It looked like a computer mouse. Everett M realized that he had no idea what a quantum tracking device should look like, but the idea was that you pulled the strip from the adhesive panel on the flat base and stuck it down. Simple as that. He cleared away the snow with his numb, cold hands. Two seconds. Done.
Done.
Mission accomplished.
All the fear. All the horror and the dread and the bravery, the destruction and the cold, to stick a little plastic blister to the hull of an airship. Everett MEverett M. almost laughed. He didn't because he knew that if he did he would not be able to stop, and that the laughter was right on the edge of crying, from the tension and the insanity and the sick feeling in the stomach of dread that went deeper than fear. The least thing would tip it one way or the other. And he wouldn't be able to stop.
The push button on top was the only moving part. It activated the tracker and at the same time transmitted Everett M's location to Earth 4. All they had to do was open the Heisenberg Gate.
All they had to do was open the Heisenberg Gate.
The Heisenberg Gate.
Why hadn't they opened the gate?
They couldn't. They wouldn't. They'd invested too much in him, in all the Thryn tech. He was too valuable. They couldn't leave him here, could they? He saw Charlotte Villiers's red lips beneath the net veil of her hat. Beneath the lipstick her lips were thin and cold. She could leave him stranded in this world. She could do anything.
A dot of blinding white appeared in the air in front of Everett M. In an eye blink it opened into a disk of glaring white. The white light cleared and became the white of the Moon.
“Goodbye, I hate you!” Everett M yelled. Then he grabbed his backpack, pushed up his goggles, and dived through the Heisenberg Gate. It was a good backpack. He would have hated to have left it.
Everett ran. The corridor was so much longer, the floor so much more treacherous than it had been on the way in. The grey light of the stairwell never seemed to get any closer. And the room, so many rooms…Helmet lights bobbed and wove crazily around him, little flashes of insane illumination. Trooper Winkelman stopped abruptly, held up her hand for the squad to stop, and held up her scanner. Reflected light played off her visor. Everett saw her helmet move and knew it was a shake of disbelief.
“Nahn!”
“Where?”
“Every bloody where!”
A soldier darted ahead to cover each open door as the squad ran down the corridor. Storerooms full of lost science and history now housed creeping horrors. Everett saw something blacker than the blackness rear up among the tumbled shelves and dead computer cases. It looked like liquid night. It had legs. Too many legs. Far too many legs. Then the soldier fired and the EM pulse blew it all over the walls.
“Clear.”
“Don't look back,” Sharkey shouted at Everett's shoulder. Everett looked back. A wave of blacker-than-blackness advanced up the corridor, along the walls, the floor, the ceiling, coating it like some vile vomit. Faces. There were faces in it. Ten meters, five meters. Steps. Steps up. Steps out. The light in the stairwell was blinding. Everett hesitated, dazzled.
“Up up up!” a trooper yelled. Everett took the steps two at a time. He missed his footing on the final step and almost reeled headlong. Lieutenant Kastinidis seized his collar in a power-armored steel grip and hauled him upright. As the squad hurdled through shattered remains of the Huxley Building's doors a solid column of black Nahn stuff erupted from the stairwell. It towered like a tree made up of twining snakes. It blossomed at its summit into faces, like a many-headed Hindu god, then fell and splashed all over the lobby. In the moment it took to re-form, two soldiers unclipped grenades from their belts and lobbed them into the seething lobby.
“What are those?” Everett shouted, racing for the cover of the passage under the Huxley building.
“EMP grenades,” the soldier beside him answered. Everett pressed the Panopticon close to his chest. Not that it would do any good; the EMP pulse would go through him as clean as an X-ray. If it could fry the Nahn, it could fry the Panopticon. All he could do was hope that the quantum-computing circuitry was protected. The grenades went off with two flat cracks. EMP grenades, Everett thought. Just like Halo. Glancing back, he saw that the Nahn stuff frozen in the door lay like a breaking wave of oil, faces fixed forever in midscream. Everness hung huge above him, but black Nahn stuff was sliding out of the gutters, flowing along the Victorian fake gargoyles, taking their shape, and launching off into the air. Nahn demons stormed out of the air. Elena Kastinidis's soldiers met them with EM blasts that blew them into strange, angular kite shapes that fell to the ground and shattered like glass.
“Power down to 40 percent,” Winkelman said.
Everett saw Elena Kastinidis glance at her wrist
, then look up. Her fist smashed Everett to the ground. Before he could cry out, she aimed and fired. Shards of dead Nahn fell tinkling around him. He manically brushed them off as Sharkey grabbed his arm and rushed him into the passage. Elena Kastinidis paused for a moment to look at her wrist readout. She tapped it, twice. Everett thought he heard her whisper “shit” on the open channel.
From the open expanse of the Queen's Lawn, Everett glanced up at Everness. Sen stood at the great window, hands pressed to the glass. Even at this distance he could see the fear and helplessness on her face. This time she could not ride to his rescue on a drop line, disarm the bad guys with a well-aimed thumper shot, and whizz everyone into the sky. And between Everett and Sen, the Nahn swarmed on wings of living nanotech. But the sight of her, so far away and vulnerable, yet so strong, put fibre in his legs and iron in his spirit and a fire in his heart. You won't ever have to make that jump home, Everett thought. I'm coming back.
At the foot of the Queen's Tower now. Boots trampled the shattered door.
“In in in…” Lieutenant Kastinidis pushed the civilians into the tower. Everett dashed past her. A blackness slammed out of the sky. The lieutenant put up her arm, and the Nahn hit it and clung. It had the face of a two-year-old child. With her free hand Elena ripped it from her, threw it into the air, and shattered it with a blast from her pulser.
“Good save,” Everett said. The steps—they went up forever. Round and round and round, up into the darkness. Then his eyes acclimated to the gloom and he saw that the beams, the braces, the struts, and the framework that held the bells were festooned with thousands of hanging Nahn.
“Just keep counting the steps,” Sharkey said. One turn, two turns. Endless. Everett's thighs ached. Even Sharkey looked out of breath. And Tejendra…he was in pain. He was blinking, puffing, eyes bulging.
“I'm with him,” Lieutenant Kastindis said. “I'm with him all the way.”
And then above them, a bell chimed. A single, small high note. Clear and out of nowhere. An impossible chime.
“Oh my God,” Everett said as the wooden trusses exploded with Nahn. The bells tolled and pealed as the Nahn swarmed around them.
“Arm yourself!” Sharkey yelled. Everett unslung the almost-forgotten shotgun from his shoulder.
“Civilians! Stay close to soldiers!” Lieutenant Kastinidis yelled. “Mr. Sharkey, you remember I said I'd tell you when? This is when.”
Bunched tight as an ancient Greek phalanx, the squad fought its way step by step up the inside of the Queen's Tower. The bells quivered and rang with the impact of flying Nahn shards as the trooper's EM pulses shattered them. Faces. They all had faces. This was a nightmare without end. Step by step. Staircase by staircase.
“Power's low!” Trooper Winkelman yelled. Everett flinched as a Nahn bat swooped at his head. Lieutenant Kastinidis aimed at it. Nothing. It turned in midair and threw itself at the lieutenant. It had the face of an old woman. With one thought and one action, Everett swung the shotgun and fired. The Nahn flew apart and instantly began to re-form itself. LEDs lit up on the back of Lieutenant Kastinidis's gauntlet. Power. She aimed and blew the Nahn out of the sky.
“Good shooting, Mr. Singh.” Then she yelled to her squad, “I'm almost out. Switching to reserves for battle-suit functions. Go go go!” She touched her helmet and it opened and retracted. “At least I can see where I'm going. Dr Singh, are you all right?”
Tejendra had stopped, exhausted, hands on thighs, panting heavily.
“Oh God…Oh God…I can't…”
“‘And I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy,’” Sharkey said. There was deep awe and reverence in his voice. Everett turned and looked down. The Nahn bats had all been destroyed, but now long, black tendrils were sprouting from the base of the tower, coiling up the stairs, along the beams, up the walls.
“Let's get the hell out of here,” Lieutenant Kastinidis shouted. “Run!”
Everett ran. His lungs ached and the blood burned in his heart. Run. Run. There was the light of the balcony door, the white light. Safety was the white light. Hope was the white light. Everness and Sen were the white light. Thirty steps. Twenty steps. Ten steps. There. The white light blinded him. The cold wind blew in his face. The soldiers were already filing across the ramp to the ship. Sen was below him, beneath the curve of the hull, but he could see the fans already running in the impeller pods. At a moment's notice, she could go.
“Get in there Everett,” Sharkey shouted. He clung to the parapet with one hand, the other clapped his jaunty hat to his head against the buffeting of the ships engines.
“I have to see…” Everett glanced back into the tower. Tejendra had fallen behind. Lieutenant Kastinidis was with him, trying to get his arm around her bulky shoulder, help him onward, upward. Behind them, the inside of the tower was a writhing mass of tentacles, splitting into finer and finer tendrils.
“Come on!” Everett yelled.
Tejendra gave a weary smile. It froze on his face.
“Oh,” he said very softly. He wore a look of mild surprise. Then a point of blackness appeared in his chest. It opened like origami, then spread over his chest. Spread, kept spreading. The oily liquid black of the Nahn.
“No!” Lieutenant Kastinidis yelled. With the last of her suit power she tore in half the tendril that had pierced clean through him. A dozen tendrils sprouted from the severed ends. “I'm out of power!”
“You know, the funniest thing,” Tejendra said as the blackness wrapped his chest and sent feelers up his neck, around his skull. “It doesn't hurt a bit.”
“There's nothing I can do,” Lieutenant Kastinidis said, and her face was pale, as if she had seen the thing worse than any nightmare. “Nothing.”
“Everett…” Tejendra pleaded. And Everett understood what he was asking, and he had never been asked a more terrible thing. “If you eat meat, you must be prepared to kill it yourself,” Sharkey had said when they'd gone hunting in the shadow of Aston Hill, and “kill only what needs killing.”
A hand grabbed the shotgun. Sharkey wrestled it from Everett's fingers.
“Go Mr. Singh.”
“Tejendra…”
“Everett. Go.”
He saw Tejendra, his brown face vanishing second by second under the devouring black. He saw his eyes. The eyes said, I understand. Everett turned and walked into the light. There was no rebel yell, no cry of “Dundee, Atlanta, and Sweet St. Pio.” He heard Sharkey say, “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee.” Two shots. Nothing more.
Sharkey was last from the tower. The ramp retracted as he ran down it. His face was like the storm of God. He did not look at Everett; he did not look at Lieutenant Kastinidis or any of her squad in the out dock. He went down to the bridge and took his place at the communications desk without a word. Everett and the lieutenant followed him.
Sen was already pulling Everness away from the Queen's Tower. Black tendrils erupted from the door, from the skylights in the dome, coiling around the dome like snakes.
“Do you have it?” asked the Agister of Caiaphas College in her fine robes of silk.
“I have it. It works,” Everett said.
“And Dr. Singh?”
Lieutenant Kastinidis shook her head.
“Full reverse, Sen,” Captain Anastasia said. Her voice was ice. “Get my ship the hell away from that thing.”
Everness backed away from the tower. The tendrils had burst the dome, showering heavy chunks of masonry into the courtyard below. They coiled together, higher and higher. Everett watched the blackness swallow the tower as it had swallowed Tejendra. It was the opposite of everything: of life, and also of death. It was un-death. Everett loathed it. He loathed it with every cell in his body. His hands shook with helpless rage.
Kill only what needs killing. The cards had spelt it out. The cards didn't care whether
Everett Singh believed in them or not. Bubbles of Earth. Enemies press close and there is no clear way to victory. The all-seeing spire of Andromeda Heights. The dark tunnel that was about to swallow the Jaunter on his train. The hideous half-human crawling children of Spiderbabies. The world-swallowing darkness of Season of the Wolf. The bird in the endless storm, striving for the unreachable light of Shining Path.
Shining Path. The beam of light that pierced the darkest storm. The light from over the horizon. The light. The sun. The sun. Everett opened a channel on the palari-pipe to engineering.
“Mr. Mchynlyth, have we enough power to open a Heisenberg Gate?”
The Queen's Tower looked like a vile flower about to blossom. Tendrils reached out for Everness, coiling and twining, splitting into finer and finer tendrils. Sen leaned on the thrust levers. Slowly, so slowly, the huge ship picked up speed.
“Aye. Just about. Are you thinking of jumping us out of here? That's a bona thing to think.”
“No, Mr. Mchynlyth, I'm not thinking that at all.” Everett understood. Everett understood how his alter could want to kill him. Everett understood what it felt like to have every part of your life taken by someone else's hands and twisted out of shape. He understood because he had found that emotion in himself. Everett Singh understood hate. Hate was a fist of glowing iron in his chest. And Everett understood that most people are powerless in their hate, but when people have power to act out that hate, it is a terrible thing. The most terrible thing. And he had power. He had all power. He flicked up the Infundibulum. It was easy. Dr. Quantum filled with the slow-turning veils of the Panoply. He found the coordinates. It was easy. The calculations, they were easy. The transforms: simple, instinctive, right. In point, out point. Aperture. Duration. The Infundibulum spat out a solution. Easy. He slid the code into the Jump Controller.
The tendrils opened like jaws. Their tips, flat like squid palps, dissolved into a storm of flying shapes. Everness backed away under full thrust: the Royal College of Music, the Royal Albert Hall, the Albert Memorial, the tree-scattered white of Kensington Gardens slid out from under the hull. The Nahn storm whirled into a dark tornado, leaning toward the airship.
