About ten metres from the cave entrance, I risked a look backwards and saw him. He had already dodged the creature’s second attack and was ripping off his jacket. It was a bright yellow and he raised it above his head and waved it around, screaming insanely in the direction of the recovering animal.
It was strange to hear that sound coming from Jordan. In the ten years we’d lived in the same homestead, I don’t think I’d heard more than a dozen speechwords from him. If I was within range, I could pick his thought-signature out of a crowd, but his voice –
It was higher-pitched than I’d imagined – and louder.
The Yorum paused, confused by the strange behaviour of this petty creature that had invaded her domain. Then she lowered her head again and her legs propelled her forward, directly at Jordan, who stood silent now, holding the jacket loosely in both hands.
He waited until the last possible second, until it seemed that he would be buried under half a tonne of thundering flesh. Then, at the final moment, he stepped back, flipping the jacket over the animal’s head, so that it caught on the small tusks protruding from the sides of her open mouth and covered her tiny close-set eyes.
Blinded, she careered on, slamming sideways into the wall of rock, violently shaking her head to free herself of the clinging material.
Which afforded Jordan the time he needed to make his escape.
But, of course, being Jordan, he couldn’t resist. Instead of climbing out along the top of the rockfall, he circled the animal as it struggled, and positioned himself behind the creature’s huge body. Then, with another insane scream, he slapped it as hard as he could on the rump.
Still blinded, the Yorum leapt forward, letting out a scream that sounded a lot like fear. Finally, she shook herself free of the jacket and turned around, but this time Jordan was already escaping along the rock wall.
The Yorum let out one more roar then moved watchfully back to her young.
Jordan bowed to the creature, then turned to me. He was smiling and I could feel the adrenalin pumping through him.
– You enjoyed that, didn’t you?
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
I think that was the day I realised that Jordan was crazy – always pushing the envelope, whenever he sensed it closing in on him.
It was also the day I fell in love with him, and not just because he’d saved my life.
It was more – I don’t know – the look in his eyes, when he’d bowed to the Yorum, and the feeling of respect I could sense beneath the adrenalin surge. Jordan might test the boundaries, but he would never step dangerously far beyond them.
We left the caves behind and I remember feeling completely safe with him. But I probably always had.
I was experiencing at that moment an open channel to the part of himself that he kept so carefully hidden.
It was the part that made him unique and, more than anything, I wanted to make it a part of me, too.
We were still only kids. The physical relationship would come later, slowly maturing in its own time, but from that afternoon, we were inextricably linked.
And we both knew it.
2
Jack-Jumping
Expeditionary Ether-Shuttle Cortez
in geo-stationary orbit above Al-Baada, Deucalion
16/14/1008 Standard (J-Day minus seven)
JORDAN’S STORY
All the boring slave work had to be done before we strapped in and fired up the EJ-Drive.
There’s nothing romantic about preparing an expedition like the one we were committed to. It’s months of nit-picking – checking and re-checking every component and every article of inventory.
Like I said, boring.
Of course, the science wasn’t our department. As long as you know the right button to press and the right screen to touch, as long as you have the voice commands down and you’ve run every emergency drill the simulator can throw at you, you really don’t need to know the details of the physics and the technology that convert those commands into action.
Ether-Jump theory and the hardware required to initiate the Jump are so synapse-blowingly complicated that only a handful of minds on Deucalion – and about the same number on Casia 3 – can come close to understanding their intricacies. And, not surprisingly, none of those minds was included on the crew. Physics professors don’t make good explorers, and explorers usually make lousy theoretical scientists.
For us, it was a case of press the button, close your eyes, hang on and pray. The rest was automatic – except in the case of an emergency – and even then we’d be little more than glorified passengers. The real job we’d signed up to do started at the other end of the Jump.
I closed the inspection-cover with a snap, uncurled myself from my crouch, stood up and stretched theatrically.
– Finished? Erin flashed the question towards me, without raising her eyes from the screen in front of her.
I watched the contours of her back, smiling.
– We’re about as ready as we’re ever going to be.
She had her long hair tied up with a green cable-tie and the tiny diagnostic probe she’d been using was stuck carelessly behind her ear, as she caressed the screen with her fingertips, scrolling through the information on readiness-profiles and back-up systems.
I reached out and began massaging the muscles of her shoulders. The warmth of her seeped through the thin tunic and into my fingertips.
I shifted my attention to the curve of her neck, just where it met the base of her skull.
For a moment she responded, then she caught herself and shook her head.
– Not now, Jord. This is the last one and I’ve really got to finish it. Please?
I smiled again. The massaging stopped and I kissed the top of her head.
– Later.
I let my hands linger on her hair for a moment, then I pulled back and turned for the door.
A few minutes later, lying in the co-pilot’s acceleration couch, alone on the deserted bridge, I stared out at the stars, trying to imagine the incredible distance we were about to travel.
And failing.
Numbers have no meaning. The number of stars in the universe. The number of sand grains on all the beaches, in all the deserts, on Deucalion.
3.216672 x 1014. The number of kilometres in thirty-four light-years. The distance between Deucalion and Earth.
Numbers that size aren’t just abstract; they’re obscene.
I tried for something smaller.
Seven.
Seven days to go.
Seven days until the start of the ‘Great Adventure’.
It makes about as much sense as jack-jumping.
Who had said that? I tried to remember.
Hanni?
Probably not. He was way too keen on the expedition and its historical significance to doubt what we were doing.
Alvy?
Maybe. But Alvy was the original sensation-junkie. Alvy made me look conservative. He would see nothing illogical about jumping off a high cliff, trusting in the mysterious technology of the suspension belt to prevent you becoming painfully intimate with the rocks at the bottom.
Erin?
Probably. It was just the sort of thing she would say. Even when we were kids, she had a schizophrenic attitude to risk-taking. Always nervous, but always up for it in the end.
– Someone’s got to stop you killing yourself.
Her standard rationalisation.
But this expedition was not some spur-of-the-moment decision, just for the thrill of it. Jack-jumping, sky-boarding, thermal gliding and a hundred other adrenalin boosts might keep the boredom at bay and add spice to an over-ordered and sanitised existence, but this –
This was life-changing. You could laugh at Hanni as much as you liked, but about this he was ri
ght.
Historical.
Significant.
Powerful words. No one ever called diving headfirst off a cliff- top significant – unless the suspension belt failed, of course.
3
Jump-Day
Expeditionary Ether-Shuttle Cortez
in geo-stationary orbit above Al-Baada, Deucalion
23/14/1008 Standard (J-Day)
ERIN’S STORY
In the end, the Jump itself was almost an anti-climax.
There was no sudden acceleration, no sense of movement even. One instant the planet was revolving, huge and russet brown beneath us, with Pyrrha and Pandora barely visible above its curved horizon, their edges distorted slightly by the thin blanket of atmosphere. The next, Deucalion was gone and the endless deep field of stars elongated like thin strands of elastic light stretched slowly across the surface of an invisible sphere.
Another heartbeat and the stars, too, were gone. Beyond the Plexiglass of the pilot’s port lay – nothing. A yawning emptiness. An absence, not just of light, but of existence. The Ether Dimensions are immaterial. Within them, the normal laws of physics and energy don’t exist.
No cause and no effect.
I stared beyond the glass, unaware of the silence on the flight deck. Beside me in the tech-officer’s chair, I could sense Jordan staring out, a rare frown creasing the skin of his forehead. I reached out a hand and touched his. He didn’t respond.
Even Hanni was quiet, his eyes searching the emptiness for some kind of bearing.
Leaning forward, I tapped a small red square on the console and the shield slid up, covering the view-port and breaking the spell.
– Shit! Jordan shook his head. Now that was a trip. I don’t know what I expected but it sure as hell wasn’t that. All that build-up for—
For once, words escaped him.
‘Much ado about nothing.’ I spoke the thought aloud.
Absolutely nothing.
The thought was Shielded from the others. When I turned my gaze from the view-port, he was smiling.
Unclipping my seatbelt, I got to my feet, trying to appear professional – and almost succeeding.
– Come on. Let’s get the systems check started. The sooner we make sure this bird is operating properly, the sooner we can get a good year’s sleep.
Standing outside my body, I watched my fingers tap out the codes that would initiate the systems scan.
We did it, Dad. Wish us luck. I wish you could have –
From behind me, Jordan placed a hand on my shoulder.
– He’d be so damned proud of you, Erin. He always was.
Slowly, I placed my hand on his, squeezing slightly.
– How do you always know?
He smiled again.
– Sympatico.
JORDAN’S STORY
I was head tech – which meant that it was my job to make sure the others were all tucked in before putting myself to sleep. Twenty-three electronic cocoons, containing the precious cargo – the only cargo – of the Cortez. The twenty-fourth – mine – lay open and waiting.
The cryo-chambers were simple and efficient, and one by one I had punched in the activation code, closing them in and watching them fall instantly asleep.
Erin was the last one. We stood together for a long time, neither of us knowing what to say and neither of us wanting to start the long sleep without saying something.
I remembered the shirt she’d bought me for my last birthday and the slogan printed on it.
Sarcasm: just one of the services I offer.
We both knew how fitting it was, but somehow at that moment I couldn’t find anything clever or funny to say. So I didn’t say anything.
– I love you, you know.
I knew. I’d always known. Even before Erin had made the connection.
– It’s going to be okay, Erin. Sometimes, when the words elude us, clichés are all we have left.
It was like we were children again and I was playing protector. Hero.
Except that I didn’t feel particularly heroic. Just a little bit excited and a whole lot nervous. I tried to mask the feeling, but I don’t know how successful I was. This was Erin – she knew me too damned well. She was waiting for me to go on, so I spoke.
– Every reading’s in the green. She’s running perfectly.
– It’s time isn’t it? I mean—
Burying her face in my chest, I held her to me.
– I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.
She knew. She had always known.
– Just don’t let anything happen to you.
Then she kissed me. Not hard – little more than a gentle touch of her lips.
She turned, climbed inside her chamber and lay down. When I moved across to close the lid, she didn’t open her eyes.
I was glad.
I punched in the code, watched the transparent lid come down, then turned and made my way to my own chamber.
The last thing I remember, as I lay down and entered the code into the touchpad on the console above my head and the lid hissed slowly down, is the feeling of yawning emptiness, and the vague fear that I might never wake up.
4
Après le Déluge I
Canberra
Republic of Australasia, Central Southeast Sector
July 13, 2459ad
(2 Years post-Meltdown)
AIDAN
The ropes cut into his shoulders and despite their makeshift metal cleats, his boots lose traction on the slick ice of the roadway. The small sled behind him begins to slip sideways on the camber of the road, jamming the edge of its runner hard against the cracked gutter and wrenching a muscle somewhere up under his shoulderblade.
As the pain hits, Aidan Tan swears, stops pulling and stares back at the sled and its precious cargo, wondering for the thousandth time why they bother.
‘It’s not like anyone gives a shit.’
He recalls the argument of the previous night and as quickly as it forms, the frustration growing in him fades again. He shakes his head and smiles.
Hardly an argument, really: he venting a fury he didn’t really feel; Den feeding the baby and throwing in annoying remarks to keep it going, just for the hell of it and smiling at him while she did.
‘Any reason why they should? Give a shit, I mean. They’re far too busy trying to feed themselves and keep from killing each other to worry about a little thing like posterity. But we knew that when we started. It’s sort of the whole point of the exercise, isn’t it? I mean if anyone apart from you and me did give a shit, then there really wouldn’t be any reason for us to give one. Would there?’
Impeccable logic, as usual, and the end of the argument, because, as she looked down on the child at her breast, the hair fell away from her neck and he leaned down to kiss the exposed skin. It felt warm and soft beneath his lips.
He leans into the rope harness, allowing it to take the strain, then moves carefully forward. This time, the sled follows more or less obediently.
Two years of hardship and survival and the birth of Travers have mellowed her, where all the pressure and responsibility of the old days never did. Some people thrive in adversity – bloom, even – and others, if they are lucky, are carried along in the slipstream.
Sometimes he watches her sleep, curled up in a loose foetal position, with her back to him, inviting. His knees behind hers, his stomach against her spine, his arm around her, gently caressing. In sleep, she offers a gentle intimacy more revealing even than the moments of release, when she clings to him and cries at the thought of losing him.
Would they ever have come together, if the Meltdown hadn’t happened? Or would they have gone on day after day, year after year, shepherding the insignificant threads of information to create ephemeral meaning? Colours on
the data-wall. Images that flickered then disappeared into the infinities of the data frame, stored for future manipulation.
You are what you Serve!
A slogan, read once, scrawled in red on the street wall of the data centre. It surfaces at times, even now. Truth in a five-word sentence that might easily have pronounced his sentence, if the Meltdown had never happened.
If things had remained as they were, would they ever have been closer than friends – two drones sharing a cell in the beehive? Would they ever have made love – even a desperate coupling to drive back the terror of anonymity?
Perhaps.
Who knows?
You are what you Serve.
But the Meltdown did happen and with it the wall of the beehive was torn down.
The end of the world as we knew it. The beginning of the world as it is.
Disorder. Death. Despair.
And Denise – the centre around which his life revolves. The warm curve of knees and back against which he can melt and forget the danger and the snow and the times of aching hunger. Despite the chaos that surrounds them, Aidan Tan is contented.
The Archive was Den’s idea, naturally. It grew from her obsession with all things ancient. Old poems, artworks, music. Forgotten history.
‘It’s the new Dark Ages,’ she explained once, ‘and we’re like the old monks, laboriously storing and recording all the lost wisdom. Someone has to. Someday the world will find a way to climb out of the hole we dug for ourselves and all this will fuel a new Renaissance. In less than seven hundred years, the world went from medieval superstition and feudalism to space travel, from the quill pen to the data frame, from horsepower to nuclear fusion and the warp.
‘We made mistakes, a lot of them, but it wasn’t all bad. It can happen again – and more quickly – a new Age of Reason. And maybe next time, if we leave enough clues, they can avoid our worst mistakes, but only if we save enough of the forgotten knowledge to give them a head start. It’s not like we have anything better to do with our time.’
The entrance to the Archive is just ahead, invisible behind its pile of rubble. He checks over his shoulder for movement. A stray cat stares yellow hatred out of a nearby drain, while a coven of crows sits in ritual silence on the stark branches of an ancient leafless oak across the street. But there is no sign of anyone following.
Dreams of the Chosen Page 3
