Against Gravity (37 page)

Kendrick stepped out of the helicopter, the whine of its rotor blades dropping rapidly, and blinked in the bright Californian sunshine. The people he’d noticed earlier were moving towards
them, dragging a huge green tarpaulin behind them. Buddy dropped down from the cockpit and ran towards them to grab one edge of it. Kendrick stood by as they hauled the tarpaulin over the
’copter.

Buddy then stepped over and clapped him on the back, but it wasn’t hard for Kendrick to sense just how uneasy his friend was.

“What’s the tarpaulin for?”

“Smothers the heat signature.” Buddy turned to greet Veliz who was standing chatting with the others. “Hey, Samuel, still got any of that Mexican beer?”

Kendrick’s skin itched in the early-evening heat. He felt drowsy from the food and drink that he’d been given. They sat out in the open air by a crackling log fire built in a circle
of bricks. Nearby stood half a dozen patched-together vehicles which, contrary to their appearances, apparently did function. Kendrick gazed numbly into the flames, the stars overhead, trying hard
not to think of anything in particular.

A woman came over, although he couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t get too close. Her face cracked open in an uneasy grin – there was something likeable about her.

“Still hungry?” she asked. “Could getcha ’nother bite to eat.”

“I’m fine for now.” Kendrick shrugged. “It’s sort of hard to believe that everyone here is a Labrat. Haven’t seen this many of us together in one place since
. . .” He let the sentence trail off.

She nodded. “Same for all of us, yeah.”

He studied her more closely, wincing when he saw how close she looked to dying. She was in the advanced and final stages of rogue augmentation growth, her neck dark with the spread of nanite
threads inside her, thick cords of the material distorting her cheeks and lips.

Kendrick felt a powerful stab of pity. He looked away.

Shortly after the woman had left him, Kendrick made his way to the building where he would be spending the night. Right now he wanted to be somewhere inside rather than being
watched by scared eyes out in the open.

He found his way to a communal bathroom and stared for a long time at his moonlit reflection in the fly-specked mirror hanging from a nail above the washbasin. The room was little more than a
cupboard with a chemical toilet, although the sink was at least plumbed in. Instead of a door, a dark wool curtain had been tacked onto the frame.

Kendrick tugged at a light cord and a halogen bulb lit up, sending shimmering sparkles skittering off the filaments that now coated his face. His gaze tracked them down the curve of his neck,
seeing how they disappeared beneath his shirt collar.

“What’s happening to me?” he whispered to no one. There was no sign of McCowan. Was that a bad sign? There was no way of knowing.

“You okay there?” a voice said quietly. Kendrick looked around to see the woman to whom he’d briefly spoken earlier, peering at him around the edge of the curtain.

“I never caught your name,” he replied.

“Audrey,” she said. “I wasn’t spying, I just heard you talking to yourself.” Through the now open door behind her he could see pots hanging on hooks in what was
obviously a kitchen.

“Buddy mentioned you before,” she continued, “so I got the impression you were on our side. But I can see the way you look at us, like you think all of us here are crazy. You
were in Ward Seventeen, right?”

Kendrick nodded, and stepped out of the bathroom to stand closer to her. Audrey’s words were friendly enough but, whatever their shared experiences, he reminded himself that he
didn’t really know these people. So he chose his own words carefully. “I was, yes, but according to Buddy it hasn’t been exactly the same for me as for the rest of you.”

“But you saw it – the visions? Buddy said you did.”

“I saw
some
of what the rest of you saw, but I was receiving special medical treatments that stopped me getting all of it. To be honest, I don’t know if I’m ready to
believe that any of what I’m told you’ve all seen is real.”

Audrey looked appalled. “The Omega is real. I’ve seen it,
felt
it.”

“The Omega Point theory is only a theory. And, like any theory, it depends on certain preconditions – it only works if a certain set of circumstances is
presumed
to come
about. You know what I mean?”

“Believe me, I’m entirely acquainted with the details.”

“Are you, though? None of you know for sure that any of what you’ve witnessed is objectively real. All you’ve seen are pictures in your head. So, having that degree of faith,
it’s more like believing in a religion than anything else.”

Audrey shook her head, smiling the knowing smile of a true believer. Kendrick felt a burst of irrational anger. She was eyeing Kendrick as if he were some errant child refusing to see the error
of his ways.

The problem was that something
was
happening, something enormous, unprecedented. Somewhere up there a wormhole was forming, an impossible spatial anomaly that was giving every physicist
on the planet sleepless night after sleepless night. Maybe it just wasn’t something he wanted to face up to, to deal with. Who could blame him?

Kendrick wondered what Audrey’s reaction would be if she knew he’d rather see the station destroyed than risk it falling into the hands of Draeger – or anyone else.

“Well, I’ve got some news for you,” Audrey told him. “It may just seem a theory to you, but there are people out there who believe we’re monsters – things are
only going to get worse for us. One of these days they’ll either intern us all or just kill us, and that’ll be the end of it. But this way some of us get to take control. This way we
choose our own destiny.”

27 October 2096
Los Angeles

Kendrick woke deep in the night and found that he had stopped breathing again. He lurched upright, panic blighting his thoughts.
This is what it’s like to be
dead
, he thought: no heartbeat, no breath of life. A terrible silence filled the cavity of his chest, like a void.

He had been asleep for several hours on a cot in one corner of the house. Crickets chirruped outside a window nearby. It was hard to believe, listening to the sounds of nature, that he’d
see nothing but desolation if he raised his head to look outside.

No heartbeat, no breath of life.
Am I even alive?

Slowly, deliberately, he once again sucked air into his lungs. It heaved his chest out and he felt a nitrate-like rush, expanding like a bubble through his brain. He exhaled again.

In, then out – after several seconds Kendrick didn’t have to think about it any more. He could feel his hands shaking, his thoughts clear and adrenalin-tinged.

Kendrick looked down again at the fine threads coating his skin. All of them were gold now, and the filaments appeared to be dissolving into his flesh. Slowly, his appearance was returning to
normal.

He brushed one cheek with a fingertip and felt that it was smoother than several hours before. A huge wave of relief swept through him.

So far, Audrey and Buddy were the only ones there who had made any effort to speak with him, although his relations with Audrey were still distinctly on the edgy side. He’d even seen some
of them huddled together, watching him from a distance and speaking in low whispers once they were sure that they were out of range of his augmented hearing.

Yet Kendrick could have listened to what they were saying if he’d really wanted to, and he was sure that many others in this place shared the same ability. But a house full of Labrats was
a house with no privacy whatsoever and, in accord with the special etiquette that had evolved to suit such circumstances, he avoided listening to their conversation, despite overwhelming
temptation.

It was clear by now that he wasn’t going to get any more sleep for a while, so he pulled himself out of the cot and started to get dressed.

He felt slow, turgid, his body silent like a mausoleum, yet blood still moved through his arteries by some unfathomable means. He found his way to the kitchen and dribbled some tepid tank-water
into his dry mouth. Then he turned to see Buddy watching him from the doorway.

“There were a lot more people around this place earlier,” Kendrick observed. “Where have they all gone?”

“Remember when we talked to Veliz? They’ve gone on ahead. I was surprised to find anyone here at all when we arrived, but we’re a little ahead of our own schedule.”

“So why didn’t we just go with them?”

“We have our own transport, remember? Besides, doing it this way makes more sense than all heading off together. That’s why there’s flights heading out from several different
locations. Safer that way.”

Kendrick stepped past Buddy, heading out through the main entrance and into a cool Californian night. He stared upwards at the sky, and after a moment heard Buddy step up behind him.

“I have my reasons for going up there,” Kendrick said over his shoulder. “But don’t forget that they’re not the same as yours. When I went back down into the Maze I
learned some things. I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as you seem to think.”

He turned and stared at Buddy. “I think you’re putting yourselves in great danger.”

Buddy glared back. “You’d better explain that.”

“Robert is part of the Bright, yes, but it’s a parasitical – not a symbiotic – relationship.”

“Just a minute, listen—”

Kendrick pressed on. “No,
you
listen to
me
. Peter was down there, Buddy. Robert was, too.
You
could feel it, couldn’t you?”

“
What?
”

“What’s so hard to believe? That Robert was the only one to achieve some kind of life after death due to his augments? Or wouldn’t it seem more likely there might have been
others? Peter is still alive, somehow, in the same way that Robert is. He tried to get through to all of you, but Robert managed to prevent that happening with anyone but me. That’s because
of the treatments Hardenbrooke gave me. But here’s the real kicker. If Robert Vincenzo found some way of blocking Peter McCowan’s attempts at communication with all of us, what is it
that Robert so badly didn’t want McCowan to tell you? Something, maybe, that you really ought to know?”

Buddy struggled visibly to absorb this new information. “Hey, first you tell me we’re wrong, even though we’ve all been seeing the
same
things, and now you want us all
to stop because of something –
someone
– that only you have seen. Maybe you ought to think about that.”

“Look, Draeger told me there was a way to reverse the growth of our augmentations – and I actually believe him. If he can find a way, so can other people.”

Buddy shook his head. “I’ve heard all this before.”

“Look—”

“We don’t know how long something like that could take to be properly tested, and that would be an even better excuse to lock us up in the meantime. You’ve seen Audrey, you saw
Caroline. The
Archimedes
is our only chance.”

“If you believe in the reality of the Omega Singularity,” Kendrick said carefully, “then you know it holds out for the actual resurrection, at the end of time, of everyone who
ever lived. Even if we do all die, we still all get to live again someday.”

Buddy threw his hands up in despair. “Christ, I
know
it’s only a theory. I
also
know that what’s happening up there proves at least part of it. So, no, maybe the
whole human race doesn’t wake up at the end of time in a far-future Heaven created by minds so advanced that they’d be indistinguishable from God. Maybe most of us just stay here and
rot for all eternity, since there’s no reason why any such entity should even
bother
.

“But now we have a chance, one that nobody else has, to give something back to ourselves when the rest of the world would rather see us conveniently dead. We’d never have to feel
pain again – we can be anyone or anything we want to be, for ever. And maybe we’ll even be the only human beings lucky enough to experience that.”

“Hallelujah,” Kendrick observed sourly.

Buddy gave him a sharp look, then headed over to his helicopter. Kendrick gazed after him for several minutes, wondering which of them was crazier.

The next time Kendrick woke, dawn was just beginning to break.

He’d dreamt that he’d been deep in conversation with Marlin Smeby, lost in some primeval tunnel full of twisted, hallucinatory carvings. He couldn’t remember anything
they’d spoken about.

Hearing something clatter outside, he sat up and looked around the darkened room. Empty sleeping bags were scattered across the floor and, since almost all the rest had gone on ahead, he was
alone there. He felt racked by a thousand aches and pains.

Buddy planned to fly to the offshore launch site within the next few hours. Meanwhile, Kendrick had needed all the rest he could get.

He got up and stepped outside again, looking over to where the ’copter still sat. Beyond it stood a tall wooden gate leading onto the broken tarmac of a nearby street. Part of the
tarpaulin had been flipped back, and a shadowy figure was kneeling next to the machine, surrounded by tools and equipment.