THEY found the next few trolls before they’d even reached the area Vairya had identified, and from then on they were running and fighting without break, taking turns to fire while the other loaded more ammunition frantically. The trolls were fast, and there were more and more of them with every strike.
“Vairya, tell me they’re not hydras,” Reuben gasped as he ducked behind a decorative tower on the edge of a small park. The smoke was still clearing from their last hit, and he couldn’t see if there were more coming, or where the edge of the diamond was now. “Tell me they don’t multiply when we cut one down.”
“They don’t,” Vairya said. “They have to copy an existing body.”
“The streets are full of the dead!” Meili gasped, from the other side of the tower. “Cooper, guard the door. We need to see.”
“Go,” Reuben said, and she dashed up the tower, her feet clattering on the metal stairs.
He heard her gasp, and then she said urgently, “Vairya! We’re cut off. Diamonds on every side. Get us out!”
“I can’t see you,” Vairya said frantically. “There’s too much smoke, and the net just cut out in that district.”
“Get one of Eskil’s drones down here,” Reuben said, peering through the smoke. He’d thought he’d seen a flash of light out there, the now too familiar shimmer of rainbows.
“Cooper,” Meili said, her voice suddenly thin. “Get up here. You’re about to lose the ground beneath your feet.”
He leapt for the stairs as the light flashed again, and he saw what she had seen. The dead grass was turning pale and brittle, as if a tide of ice was sweeping over it. “Vairya!”
“I’m trying!”
He went up the stairs three steps at a time, aware of the glitter of the floor changing below him. Meili was there to grab his arm and drag him out onto the roof, and then they both bent to wrestle with the fastenings of the stairs.
The last bolt came loose as lines of diamond came streaking up the banisters, and the stairs went crashing away.
“It’s coming up the walls!” Meili cried.
“Get in the middle of the floor,” Reuben said, dragging her away from the parapet. For a moment he regretted the full gravity, which stopped them from simply leaping off the edge to propel themselves away from the untouched roofs of the neighbouring buildings.
Then, with a buzz, a drone cut through the smoke, its faceted eye blinking red.
“I see you,” Vairya said, and the world went milky around them.
They rematerialised on a low hilltop, further out of the centre of the city. Dead trees stood in a ring around the lower slopes, but Reuben could see right across the hollow of the station from here. Smoke blurred the air near the centre, but behind it, as far as the eye could see, there was only the gleaming, dead expanse of the transformed land.
“We’re losing,” he said.
“We’re only playing for time,” Meili reminded him, wiping her grimy face with her sleeve. Sweat ran in cracked lines down her cheeks. “Vairya, where do we go next?”
“I’m not sure,” Vairya said, his voice tight with frustration. “I’ve completely lost the net now, and I’m relying on the Juniper’s scanners. I’m going to put more drones out, but stay put until I have a better idea of what’s happening. I can barely see you, and if you move, I’ll lose you completely.”
“Understood,” Reuben said, but Meili was staring past him, into the blackened woods.
“That could be a problem,” she said.
Reuben turned and saw what she had seen.
The trees were turning clear, and through their whispering, shimmering leaves, ten gleaming figures were climbing towards them, arms outstretched.
“Transport us,” Reuben said. “Now.”
“I can’t get a lock,” Vairya said. “Run!”
Reuben was already moving, bringing his gun up to fire, as he stumbled over the other brow of the hill. Meili was racing ahead of him, fleet footed and graceful, but the air was too bright to see carefully.
He saw her fall, and grabbed her arm as he raced past her, throwing his gun aside to drag her with him.
Below their feet, dry leaves slid and rustled, and then went cold and hard.
Meili screamed, stopping so hard she bent Reuben’s arm right back. He turned to shout at her to move, and saw the terror blazing across her face.
Around her feet, there were crystals rising, locking over her boots, and then running up her legs in spars.
“Run!” she screamed, even as he tried to pull her free. “Run, Cooper!”
And then the diamond closed over her face, and there were trolls coming at him from every side.
“Vairya!”
“I can’t see you!”
There was nowhere left to go, and all Reuben could do was wrench a broken branch off the nearest tree and swing wildly at the nearest troll.
It bent and broke against the troll’s clear shoulder, but it paused in its run to turn and stare at Reuben.
For the first time, Reuben believed that it had been human once. The ghost of that long-lost face remained, in the rough stubble of a long jaw, and narrow lips. There was nothing left there now, though, no light in its eyes as it reached out and seized him by the throat, lifting him.
For a moment, it held him up to the light, as if unsure what to do.
Then, as if it had lost interest, it dropped him and turned away.
Stiff with relief, he tried to speak to Vairya.
And realised that he couldn’t move his throat.
He could still lift his hand, though, and he brought it high enough to see as tiny flecks of diamond began to move across his palm, washing all the colour away.
It hurt to breathe, his body growing stiffer with every breath.
“I can almost see you now,” Vairya said triumphantly, and Reuben heard the buzz of another drone. “I see… Reuben.”
Only the pure should live, Ahrima had told him once, and he had regretted ever since that he had listened to her. If she could see him now, would she consider this blasphemy or revenge?
“Reuben!” Vairya screamed.
Reuben wished he still had a voice, that he could speak something to ease that grief, say, perhaps, “‘Sing no sad songs for me.’”
But then Vairya was there, appearing over him with the milky flash of transportation.
No! Reuben thought at him desperately, but Vairya was already falling to his knees beside him, all the colour draining from his face.
“Reuben,” he whispered and reached out, but his hand stopped before he could touch Reuben.
Go, Reuben thought at him. Don’t waste the time you have left.
But, as he watched, Vairya’s face changed. Once again, as he had been in the garden, he looked too fierce to be human.
“I was made to remember,” he said softly, “and to protect what should never be forgotten. What use is remembering if everything just dies?”
And, with a swift, unsettling grace, he turned on his heel, and reached out to seize the troll’s wrist.
Reuben wanted to shout his protest, but could only watch and stretch his still working hand out feebly, as Vairya tightened his grasp, tighter and tighter and tighter.
And the troll’s arm broke off in his hand.
Vairya stepped forwards, lifting it like a club to bring round to slam against the troll.
It stumbled under the blow, cracks webbing across its face, and Vairya hit it again and again, gasping with the effort, his face contorted with rage.
“Don’t,” Reuben tried to say, and then, “Move!”
For Vairya was no fighter, for all his strength and rage, and he didn’t even see the next troll coming down the hill towards him, not until it hammered its fist into his back, hitting so hard it broke through skin to reveal the metal of Vairya’s spine, and then again and again as Vairya stumbled, until Vairya fell under the impact, still trying to turn and hit back.
And then, as Reuben struggled and fought to reach Vair
ya, throwing the last of his willpower into just moving, moving enough to stop them, the first troll turned around and reached out with its surviving arm.
And they pulled Vairya apart and let him fall to the shining earth, cogs, bloody skin, and dulling eyes scattered across the lifeless leaves in countless pieces.
FOR A LONG time, Reuben lay there, waiting to turn completely into stone, craving the moment when nothing would hurt any more, when he wouldn’t be able to see Vairya’s blood pooling across the ground and know that he had failed again, that he had never been able to save anyone, let alone the one who most deserved to live, the one he wanted, above all, to save from this.
There was so much blood, only the faintest silver sheen to suggest it wasn’t human.
So much blood that wasn’t being transformed, just like Reuben himself was still half-alive when the tide of diamonds had swept over everything else around them.
Silver in Vairya’s blood, silver in the shooting stars of Reuben’s imagination, silver in the cool bottle of nanites they had taken from the fridge only two days ago.
And, so simply, Reuben understood that the battle wasn’t over. There was one more way to fight, one more way to avenge Vairya and Meili and the people of Caelestia, one more way to stop the greatest Enemy humanity had ever faced.
Forcing himself to lift his still fleshy hand, he drew his palm across the sharp edge of the nearest glittering leaf, tearing it open. It hurt, and he could feel the damage, but it didn’t matter. He would never wield a scalpel again, never lift a sword or gun in battle.
No, his weapons were of another sort.
As his blood slid across the cold ground, he closed his eyes and fell back into his mind.
He landed briefly in his imaginary infirmary, but it was ruined, its walls leaning at impossible angles and claw-like crystals breaking through the floor. Dismissing it, he walked towards the wall of shattered glass which had been a screen before and willed it to become a doorway.
It took him back to the corridor to Ahrima’s study, but this time he was not afraid. He was not her tool, not anymore, but he would use the knowledge she had given him to destroy these monsters. When the door opened, he walked straight past her, to the window, and looked down upon a darkling plain, where rows of nanoknights stood at attention, their faces masked and spears flung over their shoulders. Dark pillars rose from the pebbled ground, cupping flames that brushed the whole dim world with the colours of blood and destruction.
“Nanites,” Reuben said, bleak satisfaction rising through him. “Multiply.”
They divided as swiftly as a sigh, suddenly two in the place of every one, then again and again until the plain expanded around them to the furthest horizon.
Reuben smiled.
“So,” Ahrima said, coming to stand beside him, “you go to war.”
“Yes.”
“To purify what has been corrupted.”
He looked at her then, and found he no longer feared her. She was just another monster in his mind, a ghost bleating out the same old falsehoods.
“They don’t need to be purified,” he said. “They have tried too hard to do that to others. No, General, I’m just going to take all they have created and turn it into dust, and then I’m going to destroy them all. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’”
Row upon row, field upon field, the nanoknights kept replicating.
“You impress me,” Ahrima said, laying her hand on his arm. “You always did.”
Reuben shrugged her off. “I don’t care. You are nothing but a drooling husk in a prison far, far away. I’m not doing this for you.”
“Then what are you doing it for?” she asked. “You should always know that, Reuben. I told you long ago.”
“You’re not my mentor anymore,” he said, looking out at the knights. “I don’t have to listen to you.”
“Yet you came to me when it was time to start killing.”
“You are the most efficient killer I know,” he said, staring at his reflection. He could see her face behind his, reflected faintly in the dim glass. “Where else would I come?”
“Who made you a killer, Doctor? Are you ready to be the death of so many?”
“Don’t talk as if they were human. They are nothing but the urge to replicate.”
“And what are we? Machines swim in your blood. You consort with those who have cut out their own flesh and replaced it with novelties of steel and silicon. You made love with a machine as if he were a man. What right have you to decide what makes a human?”
Reuben swung on her. “It’s our actions, not our bodies, that make us human!”
“And yet you come to me to learn how to kill.”
“Say what you mean,” he snarled.
“What you mean,” she parried. “I’m just a monster in your mind, remember, Dr Cooper?”
“Shut up!” he snapped, suddenly shakily angry again. “Shut up!” He swung away, and as he did, something in the front row of nanoknights drew his attention, something out of place.
He pressed to the glass to take a closer look, and caught his breath.
Two of the knights were not carrying spears. Instead, they had hoes propped over their shoulders.
I thought helping things to grow suited their nature better than war, Vairya had said.
“But this is the time for war,” Reuben said, pressing his hand against the window. His skin was stained with silver, shining streaks spreading over the brown like the roots of a tree. “What good will gardeners do now?”
Vairya had turned his people into flowers and sheltered them in the rose garden of his mind. He had told Reuben to run, had only fought when he was trying to protect Reuben.
How did someone as bloodthirsty as you ever become a doctor? Reuben himself had asked Meili.
He had always thought that medicine was a war, battles to be fought against disease and injury, pitting strength and will against the pull of death.
But Vairya had given him gardeners.
Vairya helped things grow. He did not kill.
The people of this city had become flowers, not soldiers.
War… battle… violence… They meant nothing in a sunlit garden.
Reuben needed to stop fighting, not wage war on the nanites of Old Earth.
Suddenly terrified that he was too late, that he had been too stupid to save Vairya after all, Reuben slammed his fists against the glass, thinking of the garden.
Vairya didn’t need air to breathe. He didn’t need a body to think. If his memory had survived, there was still hope.
On the glass in front of him, a faint outline of the garden showed and then faded.
“Is he really worth the effort?” Ahrima asked mockingly. “You could have ripped the station apart by now, sent us all tumbling into the sun.”
“Vairya!” Reuben shouted. “Let me in!”
He thought of the garden, of the swirling colours of the roses, the faces in the flowers, the quiet peace of it.
It showed on the glass again, more clearly still, but all his attempts to step through failed.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to remember how he had done this the first time. The same nanites that danced in his blood were in Vairya, although they might be few in number now. So, he needed to strengthen the connection.
“Wake me,” he whispered, and a shudder ran through him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the real city, blood smearing from his hands to slick across the hard ground. He reached out, forcing his heavy body to move, and pressed his bloody palm against Vairya’s wan cheek, trying not to see that one shoulder was gone, that Vairya’s torso ended in a tangle of torn cables, that Vairya looked dead.
As his blood soaked into Vairya’s skin, Reuben closed his eyes again and slipped back into his mind, imagining rows of gardeners in armour racing along the conduit of his blood to bind him more tightly to Vairya.
Vairya, who deserved better than a violent death.
This time the garden
rose up before him, frail as ash, and Reuben went racing through the gates, roaring, “Gardeners!”
On every side, the roses were dying, their faces turning grey and wizened. Dust flew up beneath his feet, blurring the air, and fallen leaves crackled and broke under the weight of his steps.
“Tend the flowers,” Reuben shouted, as he glimpsed nanoknights moving between the plants. “Make them live! Make them all live!”
Ahead of him, someone was weeping, and he ran, leaping over every obstacle, until he burst into the central grove and found Vairya kneeling there.
Chapter Ten
HE WAS AS pale as a ghost, the gold faded from his hair, and his body a skeletal mess of metal rods. When he looked up, though, his face was still his own, and Reuben dropped down before him and caught his face between his hands.
“Reuben?” Vairya whispered, voice dusty.
“Live,” Reuben snarled at him and shouted over him to any gardener who could hear. “Make him live! Heal him!”
“You’re dead,” Vairya said, bringing his own hands up to cover Reuben’s. “I saw it kill you.”
“Nobody dies today,” Reuben said, and he felt all his will go into the words, boiling out of him in a silver tide. “Nobody dies!”
And he kissed Vairya, desperate and furious.
When he drew back, Vairya’s cheeks were shining where Reuben’s hands were bleeding silver, but there was colour in his lips, and his eyes were brighter, and his voice stronger as he said, “What’s happening?”
“Things got a bit complicated,” Reuben said, watching his face anxiously. With every second, Vairya looked a little more alive.
“I guessed that much,” Vairya snapped. “Why am I not dying? Why are the roses flowering again? Where did all these knights come from?”
“They’re not knights,” Reuben said. “They’re gardeners. I brought you gardeners. Garden knights, not soldiers.” He did look up then, because Vairya was starting to look a little wild-eyed.
There were silver gardeners filling up the avenues of the garden, crowded so closely that they were stumbling over each other. Every rose bush was being tended by two, and there were more lined up along the walls and jostling to get in the gate.
In Heaven and Earth Page 9
