An End (20 page)

“And this heart, for you.”

Collision of storm fronts. They had planned it then, the escape from the suffocation of bureaucracy, the flight from One that would eventually draw the likes of the terrorist Maire. Under that moons-lit sky, breathing the air of the ancient lumbers... It had been a perfect world.

Berlin
walked away from the viewer. Time to go home.

“Are you watching this?”

Task turned from his targeting monitor. “Nothing else to watch down there.”

“If he becomes contaminated—”

“Nothing. If he becomes contaminated, they’ll leave him on the surface. The shit works too fast to save them from it, anyways. He’d never make it back to the command vessel.”

“Aren’t they concerned about the nears, though? They could catch a hybrid of the silver and spread it to the next planet they pacify.”

“Something tells me these nears are on a one-way mission. They’ll never make it off this planet again. Cheaper to burn them on the spot.”

Elle almost-frowned. It was as much of a look of concern as the Co-Pilot could create on a plastic face.

“No worries, Elly baby. We’re not going downstairs on this trip.”

“Do you think it’ll matter? We’ve been in this atmosphere for—”

“I’ll take care of us. Don’t worry about it.”

They flew.

Echoes of the music of their bond ceremony. Laughter from family and friends. The softness of the small of her back, muscles under softest flesh as he pulled her closer.

The skyline was intact. Mostly.

Berlin’s lander slammed to the ground. He swayed from within his jar. The nears remained upright, remained still. They sparkled to life as hangar doors opened and the interior of the bay was flooded with the maybe-contaminated atmosphere of City Seven.

“Readings are negative on silver, Commandant.”

Berlin
walked down the platform, nears fanning out before him, weapons drawn, scanning the dead landscape for movement, heat sources, anything. Stillness, cold, nothing.

Berlin’s jar slurped as he walked forward, dragging the phased glass filter that enveloped his form lazily around him. Particles of metal dust from the breeze stippled the surface, sending wave patterns outward, bouncing from one another, fronts on the weather map of his protective suit. The same metal breeze began to scour the flesh from the nears outside of the lander. They were expendable. Berlin was not.

“Are you receiving, sir?”

“Yes.” The glass distorted his voice into tin and refraction. It echoed back from a universe of liquid prisms.

“Readings are negative, but we’ll pull you out at the first sign of any—”

Berlin
cut the link. Enough talking. The nears would not bother him with conversation.

The wind whispered. The wind
whispered
. Constant hiss, the lamentations of a dead populace just beyond the edge of the senses. He made out a word every now and then, the most unlikely messages from the dead:
phallus
and
gringo
and
burlap
and
synecdoche
and
shingles
.
God crochets a warship
and
I don’t ever want to see you again
. And.
You pretend to be intense
. And.
Philtrum
.
Nancy
. Berlin closed his eyes and it was gone. It was never there. It was

The days had been longer when this had been his home.

There had been seasons; winter had only been one of them. A little park where the lander now towered over leaf-less forest. The legs and ramp had splintered the old souls in resting. There had been a park; now there was a slab of black metallish and a detachment of non-humans and a man drowning in protective glass.

And this heart, for you.

The trees had not impressed her when compared to the lumbers, but this had been the one place where she had felt truly at ease on Planet One: a sliver of green life interjected into gray city, one lone voice in the screaming of civilization.

You are an ideal. Not really there.

Park left behind, walking down abandoned streets. He found people there. Berlin’s hearts broke; the tiny silvered forms of children, flesh replaced with

The nears surrounded him in a protective formation, although there really was nothing here from which to protect him. It would be impossible now to even prevent the infestation of the silver in his bloodstream if their readings had been wrong. The glass would prevent his fragile human flesh from being stripped away in metal winds, but it would do nothing to prevent a universe of machines from stealing his

Walking and walking. The landing party followed Berlin’s lead as he went around a corner, stopped at the sight before him. Several blocks down the street, many of the buildings had been clipped off midway up, and the rubble filled the street below. No fire anymore, although there obviously had been. Dozens of half-fallen towers, sterile in this cold. There were silver bodies.

a loss so

Berlin
walked toward the collapsed part of City Seven, his eyes locked on the tower where he had last seen his family.

There are no tears in phased glass.

“Do you smoke?”

It wasn’t a glare. Hannon didn’t believe that she had the energy to consciously create a glare to thrust at him. Her lifesigns were barely on-scale as it was.

“Do you mind?”

He didn’t wait for an answer but lit the smoker, sat back in his chair. The wall of phase shielding barely distorted her features. He was glad to sit back; his hair returned to resting position.

“Do you speak?”

One corner of her mouth turned up at his question, but her eyes remained locked on the tabletop between them.

“Berlin’s on the surface as we speak. As
I
speak.”

She gave no indication that she even recognized the name. Right hand gently traced fingertips over tabletop.

“We know that he was with you in the beginning.”

Her hand came to rest, withdrew to her lap.

“Yeah. We’ve known for quite some time.”

She opened her mouth, eyes still down. Her mouth closed as she reconsidered.

“He has no idea. We could leave him down there, you know.”

Her eyes closed.

Hannon exhaled smoke and leaned forward again, forced smile on his face. “We won’t. He’ll just go with you after sentencing.”

She looked Hannon in the eyes for the first time. “Go?”

He inhaled the smoker. “Just a little trip. We can’t kill you, but we can’t keep you here to try this again.”

Flicker of inaudible conversation. Hannon tapped his neck to cut the link. He crushed his smoker on the tabletop and stood.

“Sleep well, sweet Maire. Sentencing is tomorrow.”

Hannon left his side of the room, and the phase shielding faded to black, leaving Maire alone with her thoughts.

sleep well.

the in-dark answers with wind

do you? you know. you do.

the way that she warmed him, trees above and nothing below, forest of sky and intruding stars wondering from

Botanist.

internal tides of

“We can escape. We can

He’d known the child. Not known, but he knew who the boy had been, the little slivered, silvered boy, mimicking in uncertain gesture the children of a Pompeii of another world not yet born. A playmate of his son, beautiful son, now pressed to the sidewalk, arm shielding face, but he knew the boy. Not knew, but he knew who the boy had been.

What have I

Berlin
didn’t want to go inside, shouldn’t go inside, would go inside. He had to know. Had to see with his own eyes what a planet of evidence was telling the system.

The nears followed him, the most-damaged stumbling as best they could with the biological damage of metal winds. Some fell, critical systems wounded beyond repair. They were left behind.

Why did you

Reached out with his mind, and several nears wrestled the shield-locked entry of the building open. The planet was devoid of electricity now, but it wouldn’t stop his forward progress. A plasma burst and the entry was clear, pressurized interior venting weakly into an atmosphere raped of breath. He walked in, filter slurping lazily around and behind him, sizzling as it touched the still-glowing edges of the entrance.

How could she

Hearts beating in unison. Forehead and cheeks secreting a sweat immediately whisked away and neutralized by the glass. Blinking back tears. Lick lips. The nears’ spotlights flashed to life, illuminating the foyer. There were people, but none matching the way he remembered his family. It wouldn’t be that simple. They would be above, just below the shattered top of the tower.

Elevators would be useless.

He directed the nears without words. More flashes of cutting phase, stairwell revealed. The building had closed the main entrance points automatically in the instant before the attack and the eternal loss of power. One unfortunate young man had been cleanly clipped apart by the slamming of the stairwell shield doors. Berlin didn’t know him.

Mindless walk. He would sometimes take the stairs in the days before just because. Just because. He disliked technology’s intrusion into every aspect of his life. He was a strong man, and he didn’t mind walking. On this day, he didn’t feel like a strong man. Each successive stair, each story drained him more. The paths he took through his life, each step toward this crime, this Event.

He thought too much.

we could

and there would be

but

they have to be

we have to

you know

you do

“Who’ve they sent?”

“Judith.”

“Is she—”

“She’ll do. She’s been a medium before.”

“Which time?”

“The last time. Here she comes.”

The viewer revealed the bending of galaxies toward the singularity. Flash of starburst as the planetship reassembled particle-by-particle. The transit ocean froze, shattered into infinite crystals as the end product of near-light materialized.