The Night's Dawn Trilogy (296 page)

“Yes!” Stanyon banged a fist against the muscle-membrane door. “Get down there,” he told the second cyber-ninja. “Help him.”

The cyber-ninja did as he was told, sitting on the edge of the crater and slinging his legs over.

“Anyone know where these pipes lead?” Stanyon asked.

“I’ve never been in one myself,” the faerie prince said airily. “But it’ll empty into the lower floor eventually. You could
try searching down there. Unless, of course, he’s simply popped up inside someone else’s john and walked out.”

Stanyon gave the slack cone an irritated look. The prospect of Dariat simply walking through the habitat’s pipes to escape
in the throng was intolerable. But with everyone wearing their illusionary form it would be appallingly easy. Why can we never
organize
ourselves properly?

With extreme reluctance he switched the walkie-talkie back on. “Bonney, come in please.”

Rubra opened the sphincter muscle below every single toilet on the forty-ninth, fiftieth, and fifty-first floor. It was an
action which nobody noticed. There were over a hundred and eighty possessed milling around on those three levels, with more
still arriving. Some were obediently searching through the rooms; most were now there simply for a piece of the action. As
there was no organized plan, none of them were suspicious when all the remaining apartment doors slid open. At the same time,
emergency fire-control doors quietly closed off the lift shafts.

Dariat pulled Tatiana to his chest and held her tight, locking his fingers together behind her back. “Stay with it,” he said.
The surface of the water was just rising over the sewer tubules of the twenty-first floor.

Bonney reached the twelfth floor well ahead of the five deputies accompanying her. She could hear them clumping down the stairwell
above her. They competed against her heart hammering away inside her ribs. So far she didn’t feel any fatigue, but she knew
she’d have to slow down soon. It was going to take a good twenty minutes to reach the fiftieth floor.

“Bonney,” her walkie-talkie said. “Come in please.”

She started down the stairs to the thirteenth floor and raised the walkie-talkie to her face. “Yes, Stanyon.”

“He’s vanished into the pipes. I’ve sent some of my people after him; but I don’t know where they all lead to. It’s possible
he might have doubled back on us. It might be an idea to leave some guards in the lobby.”

“Fuckhead.” Bonney slowed to a halt as mystification overshadowed her initial anger. “What pipes?”

“The waste pipes. There’s kilometres of them under the floors. We found one of the toilets all smashed up. That’s how he got
in there.”

“You mean sewer pipes?”

“Yeah.”

Bonney stared at the wall. She could sense the thought routines gliding through the neural strata a metre or so behind the
naked polyp. In his own fashion, Rubra was staring right back at her. He was content.

She didn’t know anything about the sewer pipes, except how obvious they were in hindsight. And Rubra had absolute control
over every single environmental aspect of the habitat. Dariat had been spotted for a few brief seconds, which had sent everyone
chasing after him. Then he’d vanished. If the sewers could hide him so thoroughly, he should never have been found in the
first place.

“Out!” she yelled at the walkie-talkie. “Get out of there! Stanyon, for fuck’s sake, move!”

Rubra opened the muscle-membrane rims of the sewer tubules which served the forty-ninth, fiftieth, and fifty-first floors.
The pressure exerted by a thirty-storey-high column of water filling the ingestion tract was a genuinely irresistible force.

Stanyon saw the cyber-ninja bullet out of the cone of ruined muscle to smash against the ceiling. The gust of air which blew
him there gave way to a massive fist of water which howled upwards to strike the spread-eagled man full on. Its roar was pitched
at roughly the level of a sense-overload sonic. Stanyon’s skin blistered scarlet as his capillaries ruptured. Before he could
even scream the bathroom was filled with high-velocity rain which knocked him to his feet as if he were being hammered by
a fusillade of rubber bullets. He crashed back into the bath where a slim laser-straight pillar of water had burst out of
the plug hole. It might just as well have been a chain saw.

Throughout the three condemned floors, every bathroom, every kitchen, and every public toilet were host to the same lethal
eruption of water. The lights had gone out, and into this tormented night came the water itself, icy foaming waves that rushed
through rooms and vestibules like a horizontal guillotine.

Tatiana cried out fearfully as the water began to drop. The two of them began to circulate around the edge of the ingestion
tract; slowly to start with, then picking up speed. Small waves rippled back and forth, slapping against each other to produce
wobbling spires. A loud gurgling sound rose as the water fell faster.

Dariat watched in dismay as the surface tilted. At the centre of the tract it was discernibly lower than it was at the walls.
They began to spiral in towards it. The gurgling grew louder still.

Rubra!

Don’t worry. Another thirty seconds, that’s all.

Bonney was helpless against the torrent of anguish rushing around her; the flock of souls arising from those trapped below
to depart the universe, their sobs of bitterness and fright striking her harder than any physical blow. They were too near,
too strong, to avoid; raw emotion amplified to insufferable levels.

She fell to her knees, muscles knotted. Tears dripped steadily from her eyes. Her own soul was in danger of being pulled along
with them, a migration which commanded attendance. She fisted her hands and punched the polyp step. The pain was no more than
a gentle tweak against the compulsion to join the damned once more. So she punched again, harder. Again.

Finally the carnage was over, the three floors filled to capacity with water. Narrow fan-sprays of water squirted out from
the rim seals on several of the lift fire-control doors, filling the empty shafts with a fine drizzle, but the doors themselves
held against the pressure. As did the stairwell muscle-membrane doors on the fifty-second floor, preventing the lower half
of the starscraper from flooding. Pulverised bodies that had pressed against the ceiling were sinking slowly as pockets of
air leaked out of their wounds, trailing ribbons of blood as they went.

•  •  •

The starscraper’s ingestion tract did strange things to the gurgling sound produced by the frothing water, channelling it
into an organlike harmonic that rattled Tatiana’s bones.She was inordinately glad when it began to subside. Dariat was moaning
feebly in her embrace as if he were in great pain. The flame he’d produced had snuffed out, leaving them in absolute blackness.
Although she couldn’t see anything, she knew the water was slowing, its surface levelling out. The cold was giving her a pounding
headache.

Dariat started coughing. “Bloody hell.”

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’ll survive.”

“What happened?”

“We’re not being chased anymore,” he said flatly.

“So what’s next?”

“Rubra is going to start pumping water back into the

tract. We should reach the top in about fifteen minutes.” He

held up his hand and rekindled the little blue flame. “Think

you can last that long?”

“I can last.”

•  •  •

Bonney walked slowly out of the starscraper lobby, still shivering despite the balmy parkland air ruffling her khaki jacket.
Nearly a dozen possessed were loitering outside on the grass. They were gathered together in small clusters, talking quietly
in worried tones. When she appeared, all conversation ended. They stared at her, thoughts dominated by resentment, their expressions
hard, unforgiving. It was the germ of the revolution.

She gazed back at them, coldly defiant. But she knew they would never take orders from her again. The authority of Kiera’s
council had drowned back there in the starscraper. If she wanted to go up against Dariat and Rubra now, it would be on her
own. One on one, the best kind of hunt there was. She brought a hand up to her face, licking the bloody grazes which scarred
each knuckle. Her smile made those possessed closest to her back away.

There were several trucks parked beside the lobby. She chose the nearest and twisted the accelerator hard. Spinning tyres
tore up long scars of grass as she tugged the steering wheel around. Then the truck was speeding away from the lobby, heading
for the northern endcap.

Her walkie-talkie gave a bleep. “Now what?” Rubra asked. “Come on, it was a grand hunt, but you lost. Drive over to a decent
bar, have a drink. My treat.”

“I haven’t lost yet,” she said. “He’s still out there. That means I can win.”

“You’ve lost everything. Your so-called colleagues are evacuating the starscrapers. Your council is busted. There’s going
to be nothing left of Kiera’s little empire with this lot running around out of control.”

“That’s right, there’s nothing left. Nothing except me and

the boyo. I’m going to catch him before he can escape. I

worked that one out already. You’re helping him reach the

spaceport. Lord knows why, but I can still spoil your game,

just as you did mine. That’s justice. It’s also fun.”

•  •  •

One wacko lady,
Dariat commented.
She’s genuine trouble, though. Always has been,

Rubra said.

And continues to be so by the look of it. Especially if she gets to the spindle before me. Which is a good possibility.
The water was now up to the second floor. Dariat could see the top of the ingestion tract now, the black tube puncturing
a bubble of hazy pink light.

Another ninety seconds brought him level with the floor of the cistern chamber. He had emerged into the centre of a big hemispherical
cavern whose walls were pierced by six huge water pipe outlets. Ribbons of water were still trickling across the sloping floor
to the lip of the tract.

He struck out for the edge with a strong sidestroke, towing Tatiana along. She was almost unconscious; the cold had penetrated
her body to the core. Even with his energistic strength, hauling her out of the water was tough going. Once she was clear
he flopped down beside her, wishing himself warm and dry. Steam began to pour out of their clothes.

Tatiana tossed her head about, moaning as if she were caught in a nightmare. She sat up with a spasm of muscle, her few remaining
bangles chiming loudly. Vapour was still effervescing out of her dress and dreadlocks. She blinked at it in amazement. “I’m
warm,” she said in astonishment. “I didn’t think I would ever be warm again.”

“The least I could do.”

“Is it over now?”

The wishful childlike tone made him press his lips together in regret. “Not quite. We still have to get up to the spaceport;
there’s a route through these water pipes which will eventually take us to a tube tunnel, we don’t have to go up to the surface.
But Bonney survived. She’ll try to stop us.”

Tatiana rested her chin in her hands. “Lord Thoale is testing us more than most. I’m sure he has his reasons.”

“I’m not.” Dariat lumbered to his feet and untied the pillow harness. “I’m sorry, but we have to get going.”

She nodded miserably. “I’m coming.”

•  •  •

The search teams which Bonney and her deputies had organized were wending their way out of Valisk’s starscrapers. Shock from
the flooding was evident in their shuffling footsteps and tragic eyes. They emerged from the lobbies, consoling each other
as best they could.

It shouldn’t have happened, was the thought which rang among them like an Edenist Consensus. They’d made it back to the salvation
of reality. They were the chosen ones, the lucky ones, the blessed. Eternal life, and the precious congruent gift of sensation,
had been within their grasp. Now Rubra had shown them how tenuous that claim was.

He was able to do that because they remained in a universe where his power was a match to theirs. It shouldn’t be like that.
Whole planets had escaped from open skies and Confederation retribution, while they stayed to entrap new bodies. Kiera’s idea—and
it had been a good one, bold and vigorous. Eternity spent within the confines of a single habitat would be a difficult prospect,
and she had seen a way forwards.That was why they’d acquiesced to her rule and that of the council, because she’d been right.
At the start. Now though, they had increased their numbers, Kiera had flown off to negotiate their admission to a dangerous
war, and Bonney committed them against Rubra to satisfy her personal vendettas.

No more. No more risks. No more foolhardy adventures.

No more sick savagery of hunting. The time had come to

leave it all behind.

•  •  •

The truck raced along the hardened track which countless wheels had compacted across the semi-arid plain surrounding Valisk’s
northern endcap. Bonney had the throttle at maximum, the axial motors complemented by her energistic power. Small flattened
stones and cracked ridges which lay along the track sent the vehicle flying through the air in long shallow hops.

Bonney didn’t even notice the jouncing, which would have caused whiplash injuries to any non-possessed riding beside her.
Her mind was focused entirely on the endcap whose base was five kilometres in front of her. She imagined her beefy old vehicle
beating the sleek tube capsule slicing along its magnetic rail in the tunnel below her. The one she knew he would be riding.

Up ahead she could just make out the dark line of the switchback road which wound up to the small plateau two kilometres above
the plain. If she could only reach the passageway entrance before Dariat got out of the sewer tunnels and into a tube carriage
she might conceivably reach the axis chamber before him.

A feeling of contentment began to seep into her mind. An insidious infiltration which called on her to respond, to generate
her own dreamy satisfaction, to pledge it to the whole.