The Night's Dawn Trilogy (297 page)

“Bastards!” She slapped furiously at the steering wheel, anger insulating her from the loving embrace which was rising up
all around her. They had begun it, the gathering of power, the sharing, linking their wills. They’d submitted,
capitulated
, to their craven fear. Valisk would soon sail calmly out of this universe, sheltering them from any conceivable threat, committing
them to a life of eternal boredom.

Well not for her. One of the hellhawks could take her off, away where there was struggle and excitement. Only after she’d
dealt with Dariat, though. There would be time. There
had
to be.

The truck’s speed began to pick up. Her stubborn insistence was diverting a fraction of the prodigious reality dysfunction
which was coalescing around the habitat. The utterly implausible was becoming hard fact.

Bonney laughed gleefully as the truck shot along the track, ripping up a churning cloud of thick ochre dust behind it. While
all around her, the tiny clumps of scrub grass, cacti, and lichen sprawls were sprouting big adventitious flower buds. The
bland desert was quietly and miraculously transforming itself into a rich colour-riot garden as Valisk’s

new masters prepared to enact their vision of paradise.

•  •  •

The Kohistan Consensus had a thousand and one questions on the nature of possession and the beyond. Dariat sat quietly in
the tube carriage taking him to the axis chamber and tried to supply answers for as many as he could. He even let them hear
the terrible cries of the lost souls that infested his every thought. So that they’d know, so they’d understand the dreadful
compulsion driving each possessor.

I feel strange,
Rubra announced.
It’s like being drunk, or light-headed. I think they’re starting to penetrate my thought routines.

No,
Dariat said. He was aware of it himself now, the reality dysfunction starting to pervade the polyp of the shell. In the distance,
a chorus of minds were singing a joyous hymn of ascension.
They’re getting ready to leave the universe. We don’t have much time.

We can confirm that,
the Consensus said.
Our void-hawks on observation duty are reporting large squalls of red light appearing on your shell, Rubra. The hell-hawks
appear most agitated.They are leaving their docking pedestals.

Don’t let it happen, boy,
Rubra said.
Come into me, please, transfer over now. We can win, we can stop them taking Valisk to their bloody haven. We can screw them
yet.

Not with Tatiana here. I won’t condemn her to that. We’ve still got time.

Bonney’s almost at the plateau.

And we’re almost at the base of the endcap. This carriage can go straight up to the axis chamber. She’s got to climb three
kilometres of stairs. We’ll make it easily.

• •  •

Blue smoke spouted out of the truck’s tyres as Bonney skid-braked the vehicle outside the passageway’s dark entrance. When
she jumped down from the driver’s seat her sharp upper teeth were protruding over her lower lip, producing a permanent feral
grin. Her painfully red-rimmed eyes narrowed to lethargic slits as she gazed up at the steepening cliff of grey polyp in front
of her, as if puzzled by its appearance. Every movement took on a dullard’s slowness. Breath wheezed heavily out of her nostrils.

She ignored the passageway and stood perfectly still, bringing her arms to rest in front of her so her hands crossed above
her crotch. Her head drooped, bowing

deeply, the eyes closing completely.

• •  •

What the hell is she doing now?
Dariat asked.
She was frantic to get up there.

It looks like she’s praying.

Somehow, I really doubt that.

The tube carriage reached the base of the endcap and started to sweep up the slope towards the hub. An urgent whining sound
permeated the inside. Dariat could feel it slowing, then it accelerated again.

Damn it, I’m getting power dropouts right across the habitat. That’s in the sections of myself I can still perceive. I’m shrinking,
boy, there are places where my thoughts have ceased. Help me!

The reality dysfunction is strengthening. Five minutes. Hang on for five more minutes.

•  •  •

Bonney’s khaki suit was darkening, at the same time its texture changed to a glossier aspect. She was starting to hunch up,
her legs bowing out and becoming spindly. Pointed ears emerged from a shortening crop of hair. There was no suit anymore,
only a black pelt.

She suddenly raised her rodent head and emitted an ear-piercing screech through a circular mouth caged by fangs. Eyes glittered
a devilish red. She opened what had been her arms to spread her new wings wide. The leathery membrane was thin enough to be
translucent, revealing a lace-work of minute black veins beneath the dark amber surface.

Oh, fuck,
Rubra exclaimed.
No bloody way! I don’t care what she looks like, she weighs too much to fly.

That won’t matter anymore,
Dariat said.
The reality dysfunction is powerful enough to sustain her; we’re in the universe of fables, now. If she wants to fly, she
will.

Bonney ran a couple of paces across the plateau, then her wings gave a fast downwards sweep, and she was airborne. She beat
her wings steadily, rising quickly, her triumphant screeching echoing over the blank polyp. Her flight curved around sharply
as she gained altitude, evolving into a spiral as the beats became smoother, more insistent.

She’ll catch me,
a stricken Dariat said.
She’s going to reach the axis chamber before me. I’ll never get Tatiana out.
“Anastasia!” he cried. “My love, it can’t end like this. Not again. I can’t fail you again.”

Tatiana stared at him in fright, not understanding.

Do something,
he begged.

Like what?
Rubra’s mental voice was faint, lacking interest.

Remember your classics,
the Kohistan Consensus said.
Before today, Icarus and Daedalus were the only people ever to fly with their own wings. Only one survived. Think what happened
to Icarus.

Bonney was already three hundred metres above the plateau, swooping upwards on a tempestuous thermal, when she noticed the
change. The light was altering, which it could never do in a habitat. She shifted her balance, twisting on a wingtip, howling
at the sheer exhilaration of the wind buffeting her face. The cylindrical landscape stretched out in front of her, dabbed
with curving smears of flushed red cloud. For the first time, the lively sparkle coming off the circumfluous reservoir was
absent. The entire band of water seemed to be darkened; she could barely see a single feature on the southern endcap. Yet
around her the light was growing. That should never be. Both endcaps were always maintained in a dappled shade. The effect
was due entirely to the nature of the light tube, a slender cylindrical mesh of organic conductors which mimicked the shape
of the habitat itself. At each end the mesh narrowed to a near solid bundle of cable which suspended the main segment between
the two hubs. The plasma it contained dwindled to a mild violet haze eight hundred metres from the hub itself.

She could now see that horn of ions retreating from the southern hub as Rubra increased the power flowing through the cables
at that end. The magnetic field was expanding to squeeze the plasma along the tube. At the northern end, he cut the power
completely to one specific section of the mesh. Plasma rushed out of the gap, inflating flamboyantly as it liberated itself
from the constricting flux lines.

From Bonney’s position it was as if a small fusion bomb had detonated above her, sending its billowing mushroom cloud hurtling
downwards.

“All this,” she cried disbelievingly, “for me?”

The air caught in the cup of the endcap was torn asunder by the racing plasma, sending her spinning madly, broken wings wrapping
her body like a velvet cloak. Then the wave front of inflamed atoms swept across her like the breath of an enraged sungod.
It had none of the fury and strength of a genuine fusion explosion; by the time it reached her the plasma was nothing more
than a tenuous electrically charged fog that was rapidly losing cohesion. But nevertheless, it was moving five times faster
than any natural tornado, and with a temperature of tens of thousands of degrees. Her body disintegrated into splinters of
vivid copper light which trailed contrails of black smoke all

the way down to the resplendent desert far below.

•  •  •

A siren started to whistle as soon as Dariat broke the hatch seal; half of the corridor lighting panels turned red, flashing
urgently. He ignored the clamour and floated through the small metallic airlock chamber.

The escape pod was a simple one-deck sphere, four metres in diameter, with twelve thickly padded acceleration couches laid
out petal fashion. Dariat emerged from a hatch set at their centre. There was only one instrument panel, barely more than
a series of power-up switches. He flicked them all on, watching the status schematics turn green.

Tatiana hauled herself gingerly through the airlock, looking dangerously queasy. Her dreadlocks swarmed around her head, their
beads making tiny
clacking
sounds as they knocked against each other.

“Take any couch,” Dariat instructed. “We’re coming on line.”

She rotated herself carefully into one of the couches. Webbing unfurled from its sides to creep over her.

Dariat took the couch opposite to her, so that they were feet to feet.
Are the other pods armed?

Yes. Most of them. Dariat, I don’t exist on the other side of the starscrapers anymore; I see nothing, I feel nothing, I don’t
even think down there.

A minute more, that’s all.
He reached up and pressed the launch sequencer. The airlock hatch hinged down. “I’m going to leave soon, Tatiana. Horgan
will be back in charge of his own body again. Take care of him, he’s only fifteen. He’s going to be suffering.”

“Of course I will.”

“I… I know Rubra only forced us together to put pressure on me. But I’m still glad I met you.”

“Me too. It laid a lot of old demons to rest. You showed me I was wrong.”

“How?”

“I thought she’d made a mistake with you. She hadn’t. The cure just took a very long time. She’s going to be proud of you
when you finally catch up with her.”

Two-thirds of Valisk’s shell was now fluorescing a lambent crimson; dazzling dawn-red light shone out of the starscraper windows.
Inside, the possessed were united, they could perceive the entire habitat now. The flow of its fluids and gases through the
plexus of tubules and pipes and ducts was as intimate to them as the blood pumping around their own veins and arteries. Rubra’s
flashing thought routines, too, were apparent, snapping through the neural strata like volleys of sheet lightning. Under their
auspices his thoughts were slowing and dimming, retreating down the length of the cylinder as their will to banish the curse
of him from their lives grew dominant.

They knew now of all the remaining non-possessed Rubra had hidden throughout the interior. Twenty-eight had survived Bonney’s
pursuit, cowering in obscure niches and alcoves dotted about the shell structure, frightened and uncertain at the ruby glimmer
that was emerging within the polyp. The possessed didn’t care about them, not anymore. That struggle was over. They even perceived
Dariat and Tatiana lying prone on the escape pod’s acceleration couches as the computer counted down the seconds. Nobody objected
if they wanted to leave.

Profound changes were propagating outside the habitat. Nanonic-sized interstices flicked open, only to decay within milliseconds.
The incessant foam of fluctuations was creating distortion waves similar to those generated by voidhawks. But these lacked
any sort of order or focus. Chaos had visited local space-time, weakening the fabric around the shell.

Furious hellhawks swarmed above the northern endcap. Harpies and hyperspace starships spun and swooped around each other at
hazardous velocities, their flights dangerously unstable as the massive distortion effects buffeted them as a tempest treated
leaves.

The bodies!
they clamoured to these possessed snug inside who were capable of affinity.
Kiera promised us the bodies in zero-tau. If you leave now we will never have them. You are condemning us to a life in these
constructs.

Sorry,
was the only, sheepishly embarrassed reply.

Combat sensors deployed as the hunger for retribution reverberated across the affinity band. Activation codes were loaded
into combat wasps.

If we are denied eternity in human form, then you will join us in the same abyss.

The only functional thought routines Rubra had left were those in the northern endcap. Everything else was blank to him, his
senses amputated. A few mysterious images were still reaching him from those bitek processors which interfaced him with the
electronic architecture of the counter-rotating spaceport. Wavering sepia pictures of empty corridors, stationary transit
capsules, and barren external grid sections. With them came the data streams from the spaceport’s communications network.

And he’d almost lost interest in it. Dariat, he thought, had left the transfer too late; the boy was too caught up in his
obsession and guilt. The end is here, night is finally eclipsing me after all these centuries. A shame. A crying shame. But
at least they’ll remember my name with a curse as they vegetate their way through eternity.

He jettisoned every escape pod in the spaceport.

Now,
Dariat sighed.