And All the Stars (34 page)

It died quickly, a candle flicker compared to the Rover.

Nash's pose on the railing – and
Noi's
position hanging over it – were not so perilous at second glance. The balconies were merely sectioned off
portions of the roof of the tier below, with a broad expanse of concrete
beyond. Still Madeleine desperately
tried to lever herself off the carpet because there were only leech Blues near
Noi, and the attention of the room had been drawn to the fight with the 'South'
of the Five.

But from two lone escapees their numbers had grown
exponentially, each freed Blue quick to put to use the skills and knowledge
gained during their possession. It was
two skinny kids who hopped over the top of Madeleine and ran to the
rescue. And Madeleine managed to stay
awake long enough to see Noi, precious for many more reasons than perhaps
knowing how to bring down the Spire, lift her head.

Another domino.

ooOoo

Madeleine was resting her eyes, with occasional
interruptions. The first had been Tyler,
prodding her to drink lukewarm soup. Next, a relative hush in a room which had been humming with voices. Then a question.

"Is it possible?"

"Yes."

Not Noi, but the lightly accented voice of the former South,
a Malaysian man in his late twenties named
Haron
. Madeleine opened her eyes to look at him, the
focus of a room crowded with forty or so freed Blues.

"It is a faint chance," he went on,
apologetically. "When the Spire's
shield is down, but it is no longer functioning as a portal – as it will be in
the moments immediately after the Core returns – the Spire is vulnerable. A pulse, an application of carefully timed
blows of force, will paralyse it, preventing the raising of the shield. If this is followed by a continued attack,
there is a chance we could kill it, but more likely it will withdraw."

"Kill it?" That was Nash, startled. "It's alive?"

"The Spires – all the Spires – are a single, living
construct. A grander creature than the
Hunters and the Aerials, but sharing the same origin."

Only the leech Blues reacted with surprise. Curled in a corner of one of the room's
couches, Madeleine considered the faces of the Musketeers among the crowd of
freed Blues. Pan, Min, Noi, and Emily,
each having looked through a window at an alien world and culture. The knowledge alone would always separate
them, and the experience had marked them in other ways. They were all so bruised. Pan tried to disguise it with his usual
frenetic energy, but drooped when there was no-one to bounce off. Emily hadn't spoken, not once, while Min's
few words had been sharp, full of edges.
Noi's
eyes were shadowed.

Three days since they had danced barefoot. Every one of them silently wounded.

Madeleine glanced at Fisher, who did not drop his eyes quite
quickly enough to hide that he'd been watching her. His face was drawn, the lids drooping with
exhaustion, and despite her determination to not deal with her feelings until
after the coming battle, she had to check an impulse to wait until he looked
again. He continued to take a
deliberately businesslike tone to everything, giving her little chance to gain
a sense of him, but already there'd been glimpses of a different person to the
one she'd known. A hint of impatience, a
touch of sarcasm. More often brief glances
rather than those calm, unhurried surveys. The connection, the rapport she'd thought she had with Fisher – had it
all been Théoden?

Too much noise to think. Forty freed Blues, each with their own opinions, making it impossible to
simply issue peremptory commands without explanation. Madeleine closed her eyes on the debate, then
opened them to check again on Noi, subdued and contained, holding an icepack to
Emily's shoulder. Now that all the
Musketeers were free, Madeleine had lost her immediate drive. Incapable of celebrating, unable to mourn.

She shifted so she could see Tyler's profile. Always distant in his own way, yet conjuring
a sense of comfort, safety, the certainty of family. He would always be her cousin, no matter what
happened. But even with Tyler she could
not find any way to explain her confusion, or her need to have Théoden's
sacrifice acknowledged, could only tell herself over and over that now was the
wrong time. Everyone had their own
hurts, their own struggle with the coming battle. She shut her eyes again, trying to listen
without feeling.

The crux of the debate was the consequences of failure. If the Spire remained functional, then the
united clan response would mean the deaths of most, if not all the freed Blues
who had mustered to fight, followed by a release of dust to create more Blues
around Sydney. Even if they succeeded,
they would be facing the Core and two Quarters – and a dragon.

"Eight years."

Noi hadn't raised her voice, but her flat tone still managed
to cut through the noise.

"The gap before the next cycle of primacy will be eight
Earth years," she continued. "Why are we even discussing this? You mightn't have been hosting one of the Reborn, but it still must be
obvious to you all that there's no question of passing up this chance, or of
making sure the information we have is spread as far and wide as
possible."

"A cycle." Nash had straightened in dismay. "Of course. That has always
been there, right in front of us. A
cycle suggests repetition."

"They'll come back," Noi said. "Until there's not enough people left on
Earth to make it worth their while. And
then they'll skip our planet for a few cycles, until we've built up a big
enough population for them to care. Over, and over, and again. Unless
we stop them."

There was no argument after that.

A small 'command group' – primarily the Musketeers and the
leech Blues – woke Madeleine a third time, returning to the North's suite for a
strategy meeting after the rest of the hotel had been cleared. Of the three hundred and fifty-odd possessed
Blues in Sydney, they had now freed a hundred and eight. There were as many Greens in the building,
posing such a technical difficulty for the freed Blues that any suggestion of
rescuing Blues in other hotels was quickly shut down.

"It will have to wait until after we've faced the
Core. If the Spire withdraws, the Greens
will recover themselves in..." Noi
shrugged, her eyes still flat and dark. "The North didn't know the exact timing. A day or a week – long enough that we'll be
either fighting, avoiding, or have our hands full helping them. The most we can do beforehand is try to limit
Green involvement with the initial battle, and then deal with them after, along
with any Moths which attack us."

"Any guesses how many will?" Nash asked.

"While the Spire stands, and the Core's alive, all of
them will come. That's not an option for
them. The longer the battle lasts, the
more we'll have to fight." Noi nodded
at the television, where an endless series of battles between possessed Blues
was being waged. "Less than two
hours till dawn, and we'll want to be in place well before, in case that wraps
up early. Let's get this recording
done."

"I'll wake Fish," Pan said, picking up one of a
pair of compact video cameras Fisher had produced from his backpack.

"No, we'll do the technical sections first." Noi glanced at Madeleine, not Fisher
collapsed on the couch opposite. "Everyone should get as much rest as they can."

Drowsy, but no longer numbingly exhausted, Madeleine stayed
curled up, watching as Noi explained the process of freeing and reviving Blues,
and the best techniques for fighting Moths and their creatures. Then
Haron
set out
the plan to bring down the Spires, in the hopes that if they failed another
city would be able to carry it out.

While they talked, Madeleine watched Fisher sleep. The mouth she had kissed, the hands which had
touched her. Beneath the jacket and
shirt, comets. She squeezed shut her eyes,
and when she opened them again he was looking back, and did not shift
away. Half the room between them, and
identical unhappy expressions.

Haron
finished, and Noi grimly
checked the time on the television. "Ready to do the history, Fisher?"

He nodded and sat up, pausing to run his fingers through his
hair, trying to tame sleep-born excesses.

"You want me to hunt you out a comb?" Pan asked,
still determinedly upbeat in defiance of the subdued focus which had settled on
everyone else. "A mirror? How about some cucumber slices for the
circles under your eyes?"

"Maybe later." Fisher's gaze was level. "You'll want to save your primping for yourself – you'll be doing a
closing recording."

"Me? Why?"

"If we bring down the Spires, the Moths will be furious,
desperate. Worse, if we fail, and the
Moths are alertly on guard, holding the threat of dust over their cities, any
free Blues are going to be facing tremendous hurdles. We've had the advantage of surprise. Picture trying to work out how to spirit
punch, then heading into Moth territory hoping to free a possessed Blue, with
the knowledge that the response might be the deaths of thousands of
uninfected. We need an Agincourt
speech."

"And you expect one from me?" Pan held the camera before him in
protest. "You write me something
and I'll perform it, but I'm no good with my own words."

"You always did want to play Henry Fifth," Nash
said, clearly entertained.

"Yeah, I'll tell the world it's Saint
Crispian's
Day, that'll help. Or yell fuck a few million times, which is
about my level of
improv
. Or–" His gaze settled on Tyler, sitting quietly at the end of Madeleine's
couch. "Or, hey, world famous
actor! That would make much more
sense."

"But very poor casting." Tyler crossed one leg elegantly over the
other, and said, in a smoky, musing voice: "'
From this day to the
ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered
'. You'd pass that up? You don't want to make that moment your
own? To have aspirant actors, centuries
from now, vying to play you?"

Pan was clearly much struck, but shook his head. "Now I
really
can't think of anything good enough to say."

"Don't try for good enough." Noi crossed to take the camera off him. "It's not the words that matter. It's the emotion. I'll film Fisher's intro, and you can think
about how you feel about the Moths."

Pan wavered, then mischief crept into his expression. "I'll give it a shot for a thimble,"
he said, presenting his cheek.

"You and your thimbles." Noi leaned forward, but Pan, eyes wide,
turned his head so that their lips met, the briefest touch before she started
back. Looking close to angry, she shook
her head. "You better come up with
something good for that."

"I'm sure as hell feeling inspired."

It was the complete lack of imp, of any hint of joking, which
brought the blush to her face. Visibly
at a loss, but suddenly much more like her normal self, Noi looked down at the
camera, then raised it as a shield. "Ready when you are, Fisher."

Fisher, hair almost tame, moved a few steps, waited for
Noi's
nod, then spoke.

"We are here because of a Moth." The words were crisp, clear. "The name he chose to use was Théoden,
and he died so we could be free."

Fisher had gained the total attention of the dozen people in
the suite, but he didn't react to their surprise, gazing past the camera to
Madeleine.

"It is true enough that the En-Mott will leave in two
years. A timeframe is useful, the first
time they visit a planet, to minimise attacks. It is equally true that they will return. Their driving reason is not their ruling
order, but their own survival.

"The En-Mott were once the
Mottash
,
a tired race on a tired world. Not too
different from us – warm-blooded, oxygen breathing – facing a depleted
future. They were searching for ways to
leave their world, and instead they left themselves. The Conversion – a two-step process, the
first part of which we have experienced – was considered a triumph. Lack of water, failing crops: what did it
matter if the world turned to dust if you could live on light? And the newly created En-Mott would survive
centuries.

"Still, they could die, and did. A slow attrition of numbers. Reproduction of a sort was possible, a slow
and deliberate division which weakened the parent, hastened death. The En-Mott had set themselves on a path to
extinction.

"They turned to the Spires for a solution. One of the planetary travel methods under
development before the Conversion, it had matured to the point where it could
be used to look for and reach inhabited worlds. A partial conversion of a warm-blooded host gave the En-Mott access to
energy reserves, enough to increase in strength, to breed without death. For the first time in centuries their numbers
rose."

Fisher glanced toward the master bedroom, where the corpses
of a half-dozen Moths had been chivvied out of the way.

"Their solution had trapped them in flesh, since leaving
the host was dangerous, often fatal even when energy levels were high. But then a handful discovered a use for
faulty conversions – the leech Blues – and the Reborn came to be. Leech Blues lack the ability to produce some
of the energies which form the substance of the En-Mott, and cannot be directly
possessed. But the Reborn are able to
slowly transfer their...selves to them, to complete what is missing. This act, unlike their fission reproduction,
increases the strength of the Moth instead of depleting it."

Madeleine sat up, and slid along the couch so she could sit
shoulder to shoulder with Tyler. Her
cousin, as usual, looked no more than coolly interested in proceedings, but if
he had had a fortnight of assaults like the one Madeleine had experienced, what
he was demonstrating was his self-control. Nash, Claire and
Quan's
expressions were all
variations of suppressed revulsion.