Hideaway

Halvorsen's tone of voice changed now. 'That's our invitation, then. We've opened the gateway for you; provided the means for information to pass into the shadow universe. To take the next step, you must make the hardest of sacrifices. You must discard the flesh; submit yourselves to whatever scanning techniques you have developed. We did it once, and we know it's a difficult journey, but less difficult than death. For us, the choice was obvious enough. For you, it may not be so very different.' Halvorsen paused and extended a hand in supplication. 'Do not be frightened. Follow us. We have been waiting a long time for your company.'

Then she bowed her head and the recording halted.

Merlin could feel the almost palpable sense of relief sweeping the room, though no one was undignified enough to let it show. A swelling of hope, after so many months of staring oblivion in the face. Finally, there was a way out. A way to survive, which was something other than Gallinule's route to soulless immortality in computer memory. Even if it also meant dying . . . but it would only be a transient kind of death, as Halvorsen had said. Waiting for them on the other side was another world of the flesh, into which they would all be reborn.

A kind of promised land.

It would be very difficult to resist, especially when the Huskers arrived. But Merlin just stared hard at the woman called Halvorsen, certain that he knew the truth and that Sayaca had, on some level, wanted him to know it as well.

She was lying.

Tyrant fell towards empty space, in the general direction of the Way. When Merlin judged himself to be a safe distance from Cinder he issued the command that would trigger the twenty nova-mines emplaced in the lowermost chamber. He looked down on the world and nothing seemed to happen, no stammer of light from the exit holes of the Digger tunnel system. Perhaps some inscrutable layer of preservation had disarmed the nova-mines.

Then he saw the readouts from the seismic devices that Sayaca had dropped on the surface, what seemed like half a lifetime earlier. He had almost forgotten that they existed - but now he watched each register the detonation's volley of sound waves as they reached the surface. A few moments later, there was a much longer, lower signal - the endless roar of collapsing tunnels, like an avalanche. Some sections of the tunnels would undoubtedly remain intact, but it would be hard to cross between them. He was not yet done, though. First he directed missiles at the tunnel entrances, collapsing them, and then assigned smaller munitions to destroy Sayaca's seismic instruments, daubing the surface with nuclear fire.

There must be no evidence of human presence here; nothing to give the Huskers a clue as to what had happened--

That everyone was gone now: crossed over into the shadow universe. Sayaca, Gallinule, all the others. Everyone he knew, submitting to the quick, clean death of Gallinule's scanning apparatus. Biological patterns encoded into gravitational signals and squirted into the realm of shadow matter.

Except, of course, Merlin.

'How did you guess?' Sayaca had asked him, just after she had presented Halvorsen's message.

They had been alone, physically so, for the first time in months. 'Because you wanted me to know, Sayaca. Isn't that the way it happened? You had to deceive the others, but you wanted me to know the truth. Well, it worked. I guessed. And I have to admit, you and Gallinule did a very thorough job.'

'Do you want to know how much of it was true?'

'I suppose you're going to tell me anyway.'

Sayaca sighed. 'More of it than you'd probably have guessed. We did detect signals from the shadow universe, just as I said.'

'Just not quite the kind you told us.'

'No . . . no.' She paused. 'They were much more alien. Enormously harder to decode in the first place. But we managed it, and the content of the messages was more or less what I told the Counciclass="underline" a map of Cinder's interior, directing us deeper. There we encountered other messages. By then, we had become more adept at translating them. It wasn't long before we understood that they were a set of instructions for crossing over into the shadow universe.'

'But there was never any Halvorsen.'

Sayaca shook her head. 'Halvorsen was Gallinule's idea. We knew that crossing over was the only hope we had left, but no one would want to do it unless we could make the whole thing sound more, well . . . palatable. The aliens were just too alien - shockingly so, once we began to understand their nature. Not necessarily hostile, or even unfriendly . . . but unnervingly strange. The stuff of nightmares. So we invented a human story. Gallinule created Halvorsen and between us we fabricated enough evidence so that no one would question her reality. We manufactured a plausible history for her and then pasted her story over the real one.'

'The part about the aliens fleeing the neutron star merger?'

'That was completely true. But they were the only ones who ever crossed over. No humans ever followed them.'

'What about the Diggers?'

'They found the tunnels, explored them thoroughly, but it seems that they never intercepted the signals. They helped though; without them it would have been a lot harder to make Halvorsen's story sound convincing. ' She paused, childlike in her enthusiasm. 'We'll be the first, Merlin. Isn't that thrilling in a way?'

'For you, maybe. But you've always stared into the void, Sayaca. For everyone else, the idea will be chilling beyond words.'

'That's why they couldn't know the truth. They wouldn't have agreed to cross over otherwise.'

'I know. And I don't doubt that you did the right thing. After all, it's a matter of survival, isn't it?'

'They'll learn the truth eventually,' Sayaca said. 'When we've all crossed over. I don't know what'll happen to Gallinule and me then. We'll either be revered or hated. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see, but I suspect it may be the latter.'

'On the other hand, they'll know that you had the courage to face the truth and hide it from the others when you knew it had to be hidden. There's a kind of nobility in that, Sayaca.'

'Whatever we did, it was for the good of the Cohort. You understand that, don't you?'

'I never thought otherwise. Which doesn't mean I'm coming with you.'

Her mouth opened the tiniest of degrees. 'There's nothing for you here, Merlin. You'll die if you don't follow us. I don't love you the way I used to, but I still care for you.'

'Then why did you let me know the truth?'

'I never said I did. That must have been Gallinule's doing.' She paused. 'What was it, then?'

'Halvorsen,' Merlin said. 'She was created from scratch; a human who had never lived. You did a good job, as well. But there was something about her that I knew I'd seen before. Something so familiar I didn't see it at first. Then, of course, I knew.'

'What?'

'Gallinule based her on our mother. I always suspected he'd tried simulating her, but he denied it. That was another lie, as well. Halvorsen proved it.'

'Then he wanted you to know. As his brother.'

Merlin nodded. 'I suppose so.'

'Then will you follow us?'

He had already made his mind up, but he allowed a long pause before answering her. 'I don't think so, Sayaca. It just isn't my style. I know there's only a small chance that I can make the syrinx work for me, but I prefer running to hiding. I think I'll take that risk.'

'But the Council won't let you have the syrinx, Merlin. Even after we've all crossed over, they'll safeguard it here. Surround it with proctors that'll kill you if you try and steal it. They'll want it unharmed for when we return from the shadow universe.'