Wonders of a Godless World

by Andrew McGahan

  The orphan finally looked away from the sun to the comet. It was revolving slowly, she saw. Subtle shadows played across the deep blue that was its day side, and then disappeared into its night-side flank. The giant rock was tumbling towards its solar target. But it would never get there, she could determine that now. On this path it would miss the sun and swing around behind and be flung back out into space, so hard and so fast and so far that it wouldn’t be seen again in an age.

  Or, if they merely nudged it a little…

  To never die! To live as the foreigner had, through life after life, experience after experience. To leave the hospital, and the small town, and the whole island, and to discover existence all anew. To be reborn into another body, perhaps one that was beautiful, and quick, and clever. One which could hear properly, and speak. How marvellous that would be. And it could be.

  Only, the cost…

  And yet what choice did she have? They were going to ruin her. They were going to condemn her to the body she had now, to being slow and stupid and capable only of drudgeries. That was as good as killing her. It didn’t matter that they did so out of misguided kindness, it was still wrong. And if, in self-preservation, the only way to stop them was to do what the foreigner asked…

  Exactly! This would not be an act we perform with any pleasure. It would be a reluctant choice, forced upon us by necessity.

  Yes. Forced. But doubts still clutched at her. She cast her gaze back to the blue dot. Could she really send this hulking monster to smash into something that seemed so tiny and so fragile, and so alone?

  The earth is not tiny or fragile. It’s the comet that’s tiny, in comparison. It’s big enough to sweep clear your island, but no more.

  But did they have to do it this way? With all their abilities, wasn’t there something else they could do? Some other means of escape?

  What do you propose? You’re bound to your bed, behind locked doors, and I’m unable to move to help you. And even if we could somehow flee the hospital, where could we go on that island of yours? You are known. The authorities would never let you be. They see it as their right to order your life for you.

  No, we cannot remove ourselves from the situation, so we must remove everyone else. Only a cataclysm can do that. And it must happen soon, before the doctors perform their butchery and damage you. That’s the beauty of this comet. Redirected, at its current acceleration, it could reach earth in just six days.

  Six days! The orphan stared, but the comet’s speed was imperceptible. And silent. Somehow, it didn’t seem right to her that something so huge, so dangerous, should hurl onwards with such stealthy, utter quiet.

  But only if we start today, orphan. Only if we start now.

  But that was too soon! A choice so immense, of such consequence—she needed longer. She needed to go home to her room and think, away from this horrible place. She needed to be somewhere warm, where there were walls to block out infinity.

  But there was no such patience in the foreigner. Do you think diverting a comet is something we can do in a few minutes? This will be immeasurably harder than breaking the dam. It will take at least several extended sessions of pushing, and we have to begin while the angle of change is still a small one. If we wait too long that angle will become too great and we won’t have the strength or the time to swing the comet into the right orbit to intersect with the earth.

  She saw the truth of what he was saying. The comet dwarfed the landslide a thousand times over and far more. And while it apparently floated free in space, in fact it was locked into its path of descent, almost immovably so. A single nudge would not change that. It would need prolonged force. But still doubts tortured her, and not only because so many people would die. Despite the conviction in the foreigner’s voice, somehow she could not fully trust in him. His haste, his anger, his demand that she choose now. Something else was happening here…

  They had soared out to one side of the comet.

  I’ve already done the calculations. I know in which direction and how long we have to push. You just have to follow my lead.

  She could feel the foreigner’s mind reaching forth to embrace the mass, ready to apply pressure. And at the same time he opened himself to her, inviting entry. She knew what he expected—that she would lend him her strength again, as she had at the landslide. As ever, the knowledge and the execution would be his, but the power he needed, the raw ability, would have to come from her.

  Now, my orphan. Now.

  Ah, but at the dam she had given her strength out of love for him, out of concern for him. Now she was too confused to know what she felt.

  We must do this.

  But by chance, as she looked across the shoulder of the comet she saw again the blue spark of earth, shining forlornly, as if it was already lined up for the blow. She knew it wasn’t that simple, that the comet’s path would not be a straight one. And yet nothing else crystallised so well the action they were about to take.

  No, she couldn’t do it—not this way, not now, not yet. The power wasn’t in her to give to him, not for a motivation so selfish and destructive.

  She was sorry, but—

  Very well. His voice had gone cold. I was hoping it wouldn’t have to be this way, but if you won’t help…

  And to the orphan’s horror, he simply took her power.

  Against all her will, he reached into her, located the strength she was refusing to give him, and ripped it from her as easily as if from a baby’s arms.

  It was the worst violation she had ever experienced. All that was special about her, everything that the foreigner had said he so cherished, he was stealing away, and she was powerless to stop him. She hadn’t known, had never suspected it was possible. It couldn’t be happening. But it was. He swelled up, bright against the void, filled by her. Then he turned, and thrust all that energy against the comet.

  At first, nothing happened. Undaunted, the foreigner called for more power still, and the orphan was incapable of refusal. It was sucked out of her in torrents.

  It’s working!

  And it was. The comet was shuddering now, its trajectory shifting by the tiniest of increments against the stars. The foreigner was livid with exertion, a newborn sun, his hoarse cry strained to the utmost. But still it wasn’t enough, and so much was being torn from the orphan that she felt there would be nothing left of her, that she was becoming a hollow wisp. There was a limit, surely, to how much could be taken from her. There had to be a point of ultimate depletion, short of death.

  And something strange was happening to the comet. Squeezed and pushed, caught between the grip of the foreigner’s mind and the relentless pull of the sun, the stone was rippling and convulsing like hot tar.

  Too much, too much…

  Suddenly the comet’s surface seemed to crack in a thousand places, and brillance erupted all around, explosions of steam, jets of white in the chill sunlight. After a stunned moment, the orphan understood what was happening. The comet’s internal ice had vaporised in the heat and turmoil of the foreigner’s assault, and now the gas was bursting forth to encompass the great rock in a dazzling cloud.

  The comet had begun to shine.

  In surprise, or exhaustion, or both, the foreigner let go.

  Enough…enough for now.

  Had he failed? the orphan wondered. Had he destroyed the comet in his attempt to redirect it? But no, she could see through the jets of vapour that the core of rock remained intact, as solid and massive as ever.

  And the foreigner’s tone was satisfied despite his weariness. We’ve made a good start. The out-gassing would have happened soon anyway, the closer the comet got to the sun. It makes no difference.

  The orphan found she was herself again, released. She withdrew from his voice in loathing, but he addressed her regardless.

  It’s all for the best, little one. We’ll go home and rest now, but in a few hours we’ll return and work on it again. Two more long pushes, perhaps, will do it.

  No, she
would not come back here with him!

  Disinterest. You won’t have any choice.

  Despair swept up on her. He was right. Hadn’t he just shown her? He could use her as he pleased. And so easily…

  They were moving, passing swiftly through the glowing gas around the comet, back into the emptiness of space. Ahead of them the blue dot glinted. And somehow they were accelerating again to tremendous speeds, although she was sure the foreigner was exerting no effort anymore. Something else was pulling them back.

  Perhaps, she thought, it was the call of their abandoned bodies, hungry for the return of their souls. But then fatigue was claiming her, and there were no more stars, only the unrelieved blackness of unconsciousness.

  29

  She hung poised in space. Alone.

  In reality, the orphan knew, she was asleep. In reality, she was still tied down to the bed, in the locked ward, the drugs stupefying her. In reality, the foreigner was recuperating in the empty crematorium, and there was no way she could have travelled into space on her own. This was only a dream.

  But she knew too that it was more than that. It was something that was going to happen. For real. Somehow, she was seeing into the future. Six days into the future. She was floating in the void, and had been so placed as a spectator, safely out of the way, but with a perfect view. For here it came—the earth. There had been a time when she’d thought it merely spun fixed in space, but now she knew that it sailed in a great orbit around the sun, serene, and yet with implacable momentum. And from the opposite direction, coming to meet it, equally serene, was the comet.

  But not as she remembered it. It was no longer just a naked nub of rock. The foreigner had set free its icy interior, and the jets of vapour and particles had been gushing out for six days since, the cloud ever expanding, so that now the corona was a truly vast thing, thin as mist, but glowing bright; a sphere that seemed to rival the earth in size. From the orphan’s vantage point, indeed, it seemed that, rather than a mere rock plunging into the earth, two very planets were about to collide.

  In dread, she considered the world. The sun was at her back, so it was the day side she faced. She saw blue ocean, and the tan spread of a large continent, and sprinkled nearby, just coming out of night into dawn, a cluster of island chains, vivid and green. Her own island was down there somewhere, and it was in the surrounding ocean that the core of the comet would hit. All those people, in the towns, in the hospital. What would they see if they looked to the sky? The sun would be on the horizon, but overhead would be a shining white portend of the end, terrifying.

  She could not help them. This vision of the future did not allow it. She could only watch as the earth and the comet crept nearer and nearer. So slowly—such was the scale of each body that, even at their momentous opposing speeds, they might have been merely drifting together. Until finally the forward edge of the comet’s cloud seemed to merge with the sheath of the planet’s atmosphere.

  Fires ignited. Scintillating flashes at first, bright even in the daylight. The orphan had seen a fireworks display once, and there had been rockets that exploded into masses of shimmering sparks, lingering. Now it was as if those rockets were detonating all through the earth’s upper airs. A random few initially, then increasing in number, and eventually a continuous fusillade of them.

  She knew what was happening. All the gas and dust in the comet’s corona was slamming into the earth’s atmosphere and burning up in countless tiny streaks, as surely as the foreigner himself once had. And over the minutes, as more and more of the corona mashed up against the planet, the sparkling immolations increased until nearly half the earth appeared to be wrapped in sheets of argent flame.

  Spectacular. And harmless, the orphan recognised. The wisps of the corona could no more damage the earth than could a shower of rain. But at the centre of the cloud waited the hub, not dust or gas, but a rock bigger than a mountain. And as she watched, the tumbling giant swept on through the fires of its own presaging, parted the planet’s atmosphere in a single second, and struck.

  There was no sound because there could be no sound, but there was light—unbearable, shattering light that seemed to fill space. Even in ghost form, the orphan was burnt by heat and had to look away. And she knew in that moment that the foreigner had lied to her. He had promised that the comet would merely splash down in the ocean and drown only her island, that the damage it caused would not be fatal to the earth itself. And not a word of that was true…

  But it was some time before the fireball faded, and she could look. Even then, much of the planet remained hidden by glowing clouds of ash and smoke. And the fireworks still blazed too, as the rear half of the comet’s corona, only partially shredded, plunged on in. To her special senses, however, everything was clear.

  The comet had not splashed into the ocean; at the point of impact it had vaporised the ocean in an instant, miles deep, and slammed directly into the earth’s crust. In that same instant it had obliterated all the nearby islands—her own included. Not merely flooded them, but wiped them from existence.

  The resultant shockwave had then flattened everything in its path across a whole hemisphere, the air superheated enough to set entire landmasses ablaze. The seas had boiled and reared into vast inundations that were still spilling across the coastlines. Earthquakes, too, were vibrating all around the world, a resonance that was toppling mountains and opening cracks and awakening dozens of erstwhile sleeping volcanoes. And finally, the impact had thrown up a plume of smoke and debris with such force that it was reaching back out into space.

  All this, the orphan observed in total silence. But then, feather-light, she felt the touch of another mind. His mind. From a vantage point like her own, watching on. And he was happy, she could sense. Pleased by the display.

  The touch revolted her. She shut him out, and descended, anguished, towards the planet. The last vestige of the comet’s corona had been consumed at last, leaving the earth to convulse alone in its agony. And she could see now that, in some ways, the damage might have been worse. The impact hadn’t knocked the earth from its orbit, or made it falter as it spun on its axis. Nor had it fractured the earth’s core. The deepest levels of the planet held firm. Oh, but the damage otherwise…

  She entered the atmosphere, and now there was noise, even high up, where the air was thin. It was an echo of the great collision—a tumult of fires burning and winds howling and waves thundering. And there was an awful metallic stench. It was the smell of the innards of the planet, spewed unwillingly forth.

  On she glided, down through the fireball’s massive plume. It was spreading out now, borne by disturbed winds. The ash up high was as fine as powder, but there was so much of it, the orphan guessed, that eventually it would cloak the planet in a thick cloud. And lower down she found the heavier ash. It was raining back to earth in a deluge that would bury houses even half a world away from the impact.

  She dropped closer to the surface and saw the levelled cities, the farmlands scorched grey, the stumps of incinerated forests. Already millions, billons were dead. But that was only the beginning. The plume of ash was, in fact, a shroud. Because of it, the ground would be smothered, the oceans choked, the skies blotted black. The earth would become a sunless realm, and any survivors would not endure long. They would starve and freeze in the dark. Yes…this was the true injury the comet had inflicted. Not to the earth’s structure, but to its ability to support life.

  And the wound was a mortal one, the orphan could feel. She sailed through a muddy rain of ash, towards the centre of the blast, and all around her there was a lessening, a fatal withdrawal of energy. The loss stung her. A crucial thing was departing from the world—not only life, but the possibility of life. The great glow of existence that had wrapped around the planet was fading, and at the same time the orphan felt her special awareness also diminishing, dwindling into everyday blindness.

  It was a surprise, that blindness. She had come to think that she was in tune only with the in
animate world—with the wind, and the rain, and the inner earth—and that her mysterious powers came from there. It had never occurred to her that her abilities might in some way be connected to the living world.

  But to know the truth of it, she had only to look down. The point of impact was still far ahead, but even here the earth had been ravaged and burnt and left sterile. Immense forces were at work; lava gushed from clefts, steaming oceans surged and smashed against cliffs, whirlwinds of hot air howled and beat at the sky. It should have terrified and thrilled her, but it didn’t. Instead it all seemed as meaningless to her now as the patterns on a television screen, or squiggles in a book. Her unique insight was blinkered. Because in all this wonder, nothing was alive.

  What, then, would be the good of them surviving the comet’s cataclysm, her and the foreigner? They would be alone amid all this ruin. Immortal, maybe, but trapped on a dead world, a wasteland without purpose. Trapped forever, for without life around her the orphan would be shrunken and weak, with no power to lend the foreigner, and thus there would be no escape for them to explore the cold marvels of the universe.

  Better to not survive at all! So why had the foreigner done it? It was no accident, of that she was sure. He must have known. He was far too clever to miscalculate the kind of damage a comet of such size and speed would cause. He had wanted this to happen. Indeed, she had felt his joy as the comet struck.

  So his lie had been deliberate. But what about everything else he’d told her? What about the threat of her surgery, and of the mob waiting to attack the hospital? Was any of that true? She had only his word to go on, she hadn’t heard herself what the doctors were discussing, or what the crowd was muttering. Had there really been an urgent need to defend themselves? Or had he just made it up to frighten her into obeying him?