The Recollection (34 page)

From the roots of its short, spiky front horns, wet black eyes regarded him. They looked like prunes swimming in their own juice. Ed shivered.

“I’ve no idea,” he said truthfully.

The Dho glided forward another pace. Its bony head reminded him of the fly-covered sheep’s skull he’d found as a child on the outskirts of Cardiff, in the woods up behind his school playing field.

“You are here because you are an artist.” The object on the plinth had the same black texture as the creature’s robe. As he watched, the Dho extended a limb towards the lumpy mass and a cavity opened in response.

“Crawl inside,” the creature said.

Ed leant forward. He peered doubtfully into the hole.

“In there?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The Dho let forth a stream of irritated clicks and whirrs, sounding to Ed much the way he imagined a swarm of locust would sound if amplified.

“We call this ‘The Torch,’” the creature husked. “It is a weapon, the most powerful weapon we possess.”

The hole looked uncomfortably organic. It was lined with a pale, greasy-looking material that seemed to shift and undulate as Ed watched it.

“And you want me to operate it?”

“Yes.”

“Me?”

“You are an artist, Edward Rico. You have enviable depth perception. You are used to visualizing abstract shapes in three dimensional space.” It started to glide around the edge of the plinth towards him.

Ed backed away. “I’m not a soldier. I’m not even very good at computer games.”

“The Torch is best wielded by one with the soul of an artist. It does not respond well to professional soldiers. It is a weapon designed purely for defense.”

Ed took his hands out of his pockets. He said, “How do you know anything about my soul?”

The creature stopped and clicked to itself as if surprised.

“The arch network records and encodes information about everything it transmits. Did you not know this? It stores the quantum states of every creature passing through its portals. As soon as you passed through the first arch, we knew all there was to know about you, right down to the quantum level, and we judged you an ideal candidate. You may have made mistakes in your life, Edward, but by hurling yourself into the arch network in search of your brother, you have shown that you are capable of acts of great courage and selflessness.”

Ed looked away. “But why just me? There must be other people better qualified for this sort of thing.”

The Dho made a mournful scraping sound. “There were other candidates, other men and women from Earth, but they died, or wandered off and got lost. You are the only one to make it all the way here.”

Ed took a deep breath. He rubbed his chin.

“Drake said you wanted me to stop this Recollection.”

“That is correct.”

He jerked a thumb at the cavity in the Torch.

“And this’ll do it, will it?” He shuddered. “If I climb into this thing, I’ll be able to stop it.”

The creature inclined its head, tipping its bony horns.

“We can but try.”

Ed slid in feet first, skin crawling. Where it brushed his hands and face, the lining of the hole felt warm and pliable, like grease or candle wax.

“All the way in,” said the Dho, watching.

Ed muttered under his breath.

“Why am I doing this?”

He wriggled his shoulders, inching his way deeper, until his head dropped below the rim of the hole. Almost immediately, the lining began to compress around him, hugging his arms and legs with a soft, but insistent pressure. He’d never suffered from claustrophobia, but now it was all he could do not to try to thrash his way free. His chest rose and fell as he gasped in air.

“Relax,” said the Dho. “The Torch is becoming accustomed to you.”

Ed swallowed. His fists were bunched at his sides.

“What do I do?”

“Just lie still. Whatever happens, just lie still.”

Ed felt something touch his cheek. The lining had extruded hair-fine filaments of slippery white material that reached for his face like wires. He tried to jerk his head away, but found he was pinned in place, unable to move. With agonizing slowness, the questing filaments explored his face. He felt one push into his left ear, another slide into his nostril. Another two insinuated themselves greasily into his eye sockets, sliding through his tightly-squeezed eyelids into the soft flesh beneath his eyeballs. He wanted to scream, but there were already wires in his mouth, reaching down into his throat, making him gag.

For an instant, every nerve in his body flared with excruciating pain.

And then there was silence.

Space opened up around him. He saw the whole Strauli system laid out before him: the Ark orbiting its gas giant; Strauli and the radioactive wreckage of the Quay; individual ships; asteroids; comets; space junk. Everything was there, laid out and labeled like pieces on a chess board. All he had to do was select a target and he knew the Torch would do the rest. He could feel it behind his eyes, twisting itself around his thoughts like an affectionate tiger; as vast, powerful and unpredictable as the ocean.

I have waited such a long time
, it seemed to be saying.
Such a long time. But now you’re here.

And the further it dug into him, the more wonders it showed him. He saw himself from the outside, saw his whole stupid, dust bowl life lain out like a flowchart, one poor decision leading inexorably on to the next, and the next. A bell rang in his mind. He re-experienced his childhood, felt his mother’s soothing hand, his father’s chin stubble. Re-lived the pain of their loss. Saw Verne. Saw Alice on the day he’d first met her. Was shown every wrong turn he’d ever made, every chance he’d missed or let slide. Every knock he’d taken. For one brief instant he was simultaneously present in every individual second of his life. The whole thing whirled around him, and then once more, there was silence.

He felt calm. Raw and naked, but calm. All his regrets and hang-ups were gone, washed away from the core of his being, leaving in their place only two rock-hard certainties:

Firstly, he loved Alice. Really loved her. Loved her in a way he’d been too stupid to admit to himself.

Secondly, he was also in love with this outrageous, extraordinarily eldritch weapon, and together, they were really going to fucking
kill
something.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

KICKING ASS

Over the next twenty hours, gory red welts blossomed on the islands and land masses of Strauli, disfiguring its genteel serenity. Although keeping track of their progress, Kat spent much of the time supervising the refueling of the
Ameline
and, later, the fixture of a lumpy Dho weapon to the ship’s belly. The Dho called the weapon ‘The Torch,’ and apparently Victor’s brother would be operating it.

Verne, she corrected herself. Not Victor,
Verne
.

Working without a break, she checked every system on the ship. She worked until her eyes were too tired to focus, and only then allowed herself a few snatched minutes of sleep on the pilot’s couch. Her purpose sustained her. She couldn’t afford to let herself slacken, she had to keep active. She was determined to have the ship in peak condition, ready to take it down to the surface of her home planet, to the very door of the Abdulov compound if necessary. The work distracted her from thoughts of her attack on the Quay. The numbers of potential casualties were too great to comfortably grasp. If she stopped to imagine all those people, all those faces, she had no doubt that they’d overwhelm her, preventing her from completing her rescue mission. Later, there would be time for grief and self-disgust. Right now, she had to keep her focus. People were depending on her. She had to get down there, pick up her family, and rescue her unborn child, and she wouldn’t let anything get in the way of that, not even guilt.

When Verne found her, she was crouched beneath the ship, working on one of its landing struts, making sure the hydraulics were primed for a rough touchdown.

“What do
you
want?” she said without looking around, wiping her hands on the thighs of her overalls.

“Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know.”

Kat rose to her feet, shoulders hunched.

“What about Alice?”

“What about her?”

“She’s your wife.”

“
Was
my wife.”

Kat turned to face him. He’d changed into a standard skin-tight black ship suit, which revealed the slight middle-aged paunch around his midriff. A large-bore pistol hung at his hip.

“She still is,” she said. “You’re still married.”

Verne shook his head.

“Not really. Not for a long time. I’m not sure that the laws that put us together even still exist.”

Kat huffed through her nose, an angry sigh.

“So?” she demanded.

“What?”

She put her fists on her hips.

“So where does this leave
us
?”

Verne reached for her. “Nothing’s changed,” he said.

Kat shook her head.
Idiot
.

“Have you been paying attention? Everything’s changed. Nothing’s the same.”

“I’m the same.”

She closed her eyes, remembering the way he’d stormed out of their hotel room all those years ago, trying to reconcile that old anger and arrogance with the man now standing before her, the veteran of three horrifying days on Djatt, witness to countless unspeakable atrocities.

“No, you’re not,” she whispered. “You’re not the same.”

You’re better now
.

She held his gaze. The moment stretched...

Finally, she shook herself and bent to pick up her tools.

“So,” she said, “what are you all dressed up for?”

Verne put his hand to the butt of his holstered weapon.

“I’m coming with you,” he said, “if you’ll have me.”

Hefting the toolbox in one hand, Kat paused. She bit her lip.

“Thank you,” she said.

Later, Ed and Alice sat together in the human quarters, at a table in the mess hall, overlooking one of the Ark’s internal caverns. A bonsai rainforest filled the space before them, trees and creepers reaching for the sunlamps inlaid in the cavern’s ceiling. Mist rose between the branches. Occasionally, small, bat-like creatures flapped from perch to perch.

For Ed, the last ten hours had been spent swaddled in the cervical confines of the Dho weapon. Now, when he closed his eyes, all he could see was a retinal ghost of the Strauli system, all the game pieces laid out on the board, ready to play.

“How do you feel?” Alice asked.

He shrugged. He worked his jaw, mouth dry.

“My head hurts.” He scratched the flaky blood crusting the corner of his eye. All he wanted was a hot shower. He thought sadly of the bathroom in his flat in London, now forever lost.

“I’m okay,” he said. He missed London: missed the ever-present background noise, the simplicity of a life he’d never properly appreciated.

He watched Alice push a curl of auburn hair behind her ear. She passed him a cup of coffee and he gratefully wrapped his hands around it.

She said, “How do you think it went with Verne? About us, I mean.”

Ed rubbed the side of his mouth on the back of his hand. His throat still felt raw, with a greasy taste on his tongue. He hoped the coffee would help.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

Alice hugged herself. She looked at the floor. “So... what do we do?”

Ed put a hand over his eyes. His head hurt like a hangover.

“I don’t know.”

“You
do
still want to be with me, don’t you?”

He looked up. “Of course I do. I love you, Alice, I really do.”

“You
do
?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re worried what he’ll think?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course I am.”

Alice squirmed in her seat. She crossed and uncrossed her arms.

“I don’t want to hurt him again,” she said.

Ed reached out and took her hand.

“Neither do I.” He gave her fingers an affectionate squeeze. “I have to go soon.”

“Be careful.”

Ed lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be fine. I know I will.”

She gave him a sideways look.

“How can you possibly know that, Ed?”

He shrugged and let her hand fall back into her lap. “I guess I don’t. But look how far we’ve come, Alice. Look at all this.” He waved his arm, encompassing the forested cavern, the Ark surrounding it, and the stars beyond.

Alice twisted her finger in a lock of hair behind her ear: a nervous gesture. He smiled at her. A flock of yellow butterflies danced in the tree canopy.