The Night's Dawn Trilogy (277 page)

Feeble zephyrs of cold air rustled his robe. While out on the very cusp of perception, a tiny buzz increased; similar to the
Babel of the beyond, but so much weaker.

He experienced no fright, nor even curiosity at confirming such an alien phenomenon existed. The Lords who battled for the
heart of the universe and its denizens worked in ways he could never understand. All he had was his strength, and the knowledge
that he knew himself. He would never quail, no matter what.

“I got you now, fuckers,” Quinn whispered back at the tremulous voices.

As if in response, the air grew colder, its churning stronger. He concentrated hard, trying to focus his eldritch sight on
the air currents themselves. Elusive, twisting strands; they were hard for his mind to grasp. But he persisted, seeking out
the points where heat was draining out of the gas molecules.

As he delved further and further into the convoluted tides of energy a tide of light began to thicken in the air around him,
sending faint streaks of colour dancing across the tunnel. It was as if the atmosphere’s atoms had expanded into vast vacuous
blobs, rushing around each other in frantic motion. When he slashed at one of the gliding luminescent baubles, his hand was
a matt-black shape that passed clean through the hazy apparition. His fingers closed, snatching at nothing.

The misty glowing ball changed direction, ploughing through the others of its kind, rushing away from Quinn.

“Come back!” Quinn bellowed in fury, and let loose a blast of white fire in the direction it had gone. The aerial swell of
colour shrank back from the bolt of energy.

Quinn saw them then, people huddled together in the darkness of the tunnel. Illuminated by the energistic discharge, they
had dour, frightened faces. All of them were staring at him.

The energy bolt vanished, and with it the vision. Quinn gaped at the nebulous shoal which bobbled in agitation. They were
flowing away from him steadily, picking up speed.

He thought he knew what they were, then. A whole group of possessed who had discovered how to make themselves invisible. His
own energistic power began to boil through his body, mimicking the patterns inside the effervescent air. It was inordinately
difficult, requiring almost his entire strength. As the energy crackled around him in the novel formation he realized what
was happening. This was an effect similar to the one sought by the wild possessed on their quest to escape this universe,
forcing open one of the innumerable chinks in quantum reality.

Quinn persevered, exerting himself fully, clawing at the elusive opening. After all, if they could do it, he, the chosen one,
could achieve the same state. He hurried after the fleeing spectres, down the tunnel to the cavity where the bomb had been
placed. The very last thing he could allow was a whole group of souls out of his control or sight.

His emergence into the new realm was gradual. The shadowy outlines of matter which his mind perceived began to take on more
substance, becoming less translucent. His skin tingled, as if he were passing through a membrane of static. Then he was there.
Weight was different, his body felt as if it were lighter than a drop of rain. He realized he wasn’t breathing. His heart
had stopped, too. Though, somehow, his body still functioned. Sheer willpower, he supposed.

He walked into the cavity to find them all, maybe a couple of hundred people; men, women and children. A large knot were gathered
around the fusion bomb; if it wasn’t for their blatant dismay they could have been praying to it. They were turning to face
him; a collective fearful gasp went up. Children were clutched to their parents. Several held up shaking hands to ward him
off.

“Peekaboo,” Quinn said. “I see you, arseholes.”

There was something wrong, something different between him and them. His own body glowed from the energistic power he was
exerting, an image of vigour. They, by contrast, were uniformly pallid, almost monochrome. Wasted.

“Nice try,” he told them. “But there’s nowhere you can hide from God’s Brother. Now I want you to all come back to reality
with me. I won’t be too hard; I’ve learned a useful trick tonight.” He fixed his eyes on a teenage lad with flowing hair and
smiled.

The lad shook his head. “We can’t return,” he stammered.

Quinn took five fast steps forwards and made a grab for the lad’s arm. His fingers didn’t exactly connect, but they did slow
down as they passed through the sleeve. The lad’s arm suddenly flared with brilliant colour, and he screeched in shock, stumbling
backwards. “Don’t,” he pleaded. “Please, Quinn. It hurts.”

Quinn studied his pain-furrowed face, rather enjoying the sight. “So you know my name, then.”

“Yes. We saw you arrive. Please leave us alone. We can’t harm you.”

Quinn prowled along the front rank of the cowed group, looking at each of them as they pressed together. All of them shared
the same dejection, few could meet his gaze. “You mean you were like this when I came here?”

“Yes,” the lad replied.

“How? I was the first to bring the possessed here. What the fuck are you?”

“We’re…” He glanced around at his peers for permission. “We’re ghosts.”

•  •  •

The hotel suite was two stories from the ground, which gave it a gravity field roughly a fifth of that which Louise was used
to on Norfolk. She found it even more awkward than free fall. Every movement had to be well thought out in advance. Genevieve
and Fletcher didn’t much care for it either.

And then there was the air, or rather the lack of it. Both of Phobos’s biosphere caverns were maintained at a low pressure.
It was an intermediate stage, double that of Mars to help people en route to the planet to acclimatize themselves. Louise
was glad she wasn’t going down to the surface; each breath was a real effort to suck enough oxygen down into her lungs.

But the asteroid was a visual thrill—once she got used to the ground curving up over her head. The balcony gave them an excellent
view across the parkland and fields. She would have loved to walk through the forests; many of the trees were centuries old.
Their dignity reassured her, making the worldlet seem less artificial. From where she stood on the balcony she could see several
cedars, their distinctive layered grey-green boughs standing out against the more verdant foliage. There had been no time
for such leisurely activities, though. As soon as they’d left the
Far Realm
, Endron had booked them in here (though it was her money which paid for the suite). Then they’d been out shopping. She thought
she would enjoy that, but unfortunately, Phobos was nothing like Norwich. There were none of the city’s department stores
and exclusive boutiques. Their clothes had all come from the SII general merchandise depository which was half shop, half
warehouse, but of course none of them fitted her or Gen. Their bodies were a completely different shape to the asteroid’s
Martian and Lunar residents. Everything they chose had to be made-up. After that had come processor blocks (everyone in the
Confederation used them, Endron explained, certainly travellers). Genevieve had plumped for one with a high-wattage AV projector
and went on to load it with over fifty games from the depository’s central memory core. Louise bought herself a block which
could control the medical nanonic package around her wrist, allowing her to monitor her own physiological state.

Equipped and appearing like any normal visiting Confederation citizen, Louise had then accompanied Endron to the hostelries
frequented by spaceship crews. It was a rerun of her attempts to buy passage off Norfolk, but this time she had some experience
in the matter, and Endron knew his way around Phobos. Between them they took a mere two hours to find the
Jamrana
, an inter-orbit cargo ship bound for Earth, and agree on a price for Louise and the others.

That just left the passports.

Louise dressed herself in a tartan skirt (with stiffened fabric to stop it dancing up in the low gravity), black leggings,
and a green polo-neck top. Clothes were the same as computers, she thought. After using the
Far Realm’s
flight computer she could never go back to the stupid keyboard-operated terminals on Norfolk, and now she had a million styles
of dress available, none of them shaped by absurd concepts of what was
appropriate . .
.

She went out into the lounge. Genevieve was in her bedroom, the thin sounds of music and muffled dialogue leaking through
the closed door as yet another game was run through her processor block. Louise didn’t strictly approve, but objecting now
would seem churlish, and it did keep her out of mischief.

Fletcher was sitting on one of the three powder-blue leather settees which made up the lounge’s conversation area. He was
sitting with his back to the glass window. Louise glanced at him, then the view which he was ignoring.

“I know, my lady,” he said quietly. “You believe me foolish. After all, I have undertaken a voyage between the stars themselves,
in a ship where I swam through the air with the grace of a fish in the ocean.”

“There are stranger things in the universe than asteroid settlements,” she said sympathetically.

“As ever, you are right. I wish I could understand why the ground above us doesn’t fall down to bury us. It is ungodly, a
defiance of the natural order.”

“It’s only centrifugal force. Do you want to access the educational text again?”

He gave her an ironic smile. “The one which the teachers of this age have prepared for ten-year-old children? I think I will
spare myself repeated humiliation, my lady Louise.”

She glanced at her gold watch, which was almost the last surviving personal item from Norfolk. “Endron should be here in a
minute. We’ll be able to leave Phobos in a few hours.”

“I do not relish our parting, lady.”

It was the one topic which she had never mentioned since the day when they had flown up to the
Far Realm
. “You are still intent on going down to Earth, then?”

“Aye, I am. Though in my heart I fear what awaits me there, I will not shirk from the task I have found for my new body. Quinn
must be thwarted.”

“He’s probably there already. Goodness, by the time we reach the O’Neill Halo all of Earth could be possessed.”

“Even if I knew that beyond all doubt, I would still not allow myself to turn back. I am truly sorry, Lady Louise, but my
course is set. But do not worry yourself unduly, I will stay with you until you have found passage to Tranquillity. And I
will make sure that there are no possessed on your vessel before it casts off.”

“I wasn’t trying to stop you, Fletcher. I think I’m a little fearful of your integrity. People in this age always seem to
put themselves first. I do.”

“You put your baby first, dearest Louise. Of that resolution, I am in awe. It is my one regret that by embarking on my own
reckless venture that I will in all likelihood never now meet your beau, this Joshua of whom you speak. I would dearly like
to see the man worthy of your love, he must be a prince among men.”

“Joshua isn’t a prince. I know now he is nowhere near perfect. But… he does have a few good points.” Her hands touched her
belly. “He’ll be a good father.”

Their eyes met. Louise didn’t think she had ever seen so much loneliness before. In all the history texts they’d reviewed,
he had always taken care to avoid any which might have told him what became of the family he’d left behind on Pitcairn Island.

It would have been so very easy for her to sit beside him and put her arms around him. Surely a person so alone deserved some
comfort? What made her emotions worse was that she knew he could see her uncertainty.

The door processor announced that Endron was waiting. Louise made light of the moment with a chirpy smile and went to fetch
Genevieve from her room.

“Do we all have to go?” a reticent Genevieve asked Endron. “I’d reached the third strata in Skycastles. The winged horses
were coming to rescue the princess.”

“She’ll still be there when we get back,” Louise said. “You can play it on the ship.”

“He needs you there for a full image scan,” Endron said. “No way out of it, I’m afraid.”

Genevieve looked thoroughly disgusted. “All right.”

Endron led them along one of the public halls. Louise was slowly mastering the art of walking in the asteroid’s effete gravity
field. Nothing you could do to stop yourself leaving the ground at each step; so push strongly with your toes, angling them
to project you along a flat trajectory. She knew she’d never be as fluid as the Martians no matter how much practise she had.

“I wanted to ask you,” Louise said as they slid into a lift. “If you’re all Communists, how can the
Far Realm’s
crew sell Norfolk Tears here?”

“Why shouldn’t we? It’s one of the perks of being a crew member. The only thing we don’t like about bringing it in is paying
import duty. And so far we haven’t actually done that.”

“But doesn’t everybody own everything anyway? Why should they pay for it?”

“You’re thinking of super-orthodox communism. People here retain their own property and money. No society could survive without
that concept; you have to have something to show for your work at the end of the day. That’s human nature.”

“So you have landowners on Mars as well?”

Endron chuckled. “I don’t mean that sort of property. We only retain personal items. Things like apartments are the property
of the state; after all, the state pays for them. Farming collectives are allocated their land.”

“And you accept that?”

“Yes. Because it works. The state has enormous power and wealth, but we vote on how it’s used. We’re dependent on it, and
control it at the same time. We’re also very proud of it. No other culture or ideology would ever have been able to terraform
a planet. Mars has absorbed our nation’s total wealth for five centuries. Offworlders have no idea of the level of commitment
that requires.”

“That’s because I don’t understand why you did it.”