The snake stopped. It was convoluted, wrapped around and through the city’s buildings like a tapeworm through intestines. Now it took up the slack. A barely perceptible trembling shook it. Metal began to buckle. Masonry disintegrated. The length of the snake went through, buildings like a wire garrote through a human throat, spilling water, hemorrhaging electric fire as it cut through cables and conduits, messily severing dozens of trapped inhabitants, toppling buildings onto the crowds in the streets.
Then it began to retreat down through its hole, sliding slickly inwards like the extended tape from a tape measure. The satyr was still stamping insanely. With its last few yards, as a final gesture, the worm looped itself around and around him, ignoring his wrenching, twisting hands. Then it squeezed him till he burst.
Hundreds had died, but dozens survived, hidden underground or in buildings strangely untouched. There was one cargo ship in the city still functioning; its cyborg pilot had had the great presence of mind to leap the coil as it slithered around the ship. The ship’s reactionless drive had curdled a building nearby with great loss of life. But the ship, with its cargo of refugees and hastily salvaged soul sculptures, was intact.
The ship was already trying to pick up survivors when the snake slithered out of the crevice in the side of the cliff and collapsed downward, simply falling, threadlike, in mile-long loop after loop after loop. ...
The city’s atmosphere immediately began to rush out the hole. A cloud of frost appeared as moist air puffed out and froze, glittering in raw vacuum sunlight like the dust of diamonds.
The rainbow film that roofed the city began to collapse as the air whistled out from under it. It settled slowly, dents and ripples forming on its surface, pale bands of insect-wing color chasing one another faster and faster across its surface. Soon it would touch the top of the highest remaining skyscraper.
The second city was in a state of frantic activity now, readying rescue craft, searching for weapons. The first rescue ship was about to lift off when a subtle grinding registered on the outpost’s seismographs, a grinding from directly beneath the city.
A circular area all around the outpost suddenly gave way, as neatly as coring an apple. The city immediately fell fifty feet. Rock met rock with incredible impact There were strong buildings in that city; some of them actually remained standing. But the rainbow film instantly gave way, and a sparkling gust of air leapt upward and outward from the newly formed crater. It was a mercy, really the freezing vacuum ended the pain of these few still alive. A little disturbed dust loosened by wind, sifted over the freezing ruins like a scattered benediction.
There were no witnesses. The rainbow film on the first city was still collapsing. A final long indentation touched the leaning top of a battered skyscraper. Blinding white energy sleeted outward from the area of contact; the top of the building dripped hot slag into the street. The film burst.
Death was immediate. Even as the few survivors died in their underground shelters, coughing blood of different colors, the last starship lifted off. Its reactionless drive, at frantic full power, melted a few of the remaining buildings, and it surged away from the planet’s surface. Seeking free space.
A cloud of dust arose from the crater beneath, a small cloud, no more than two or three tons worth.
It accelerated upwards. I estimated that by the time it reached the lip of the cliff it was doing at least three-quarters of the speed of light. It moved faster than perception; there was no evidence of its existence at all until the hull of the starship was suddenly turned into something like metal cheesecloth. The loss of air was only incidental. Everyone aboard was riddled with charred holes, thousands of them. There was no blood; it was all cauterized. And they were all dead.
The hulk drifted off serenely into blackness.
The sun was setting over the rim of the Nullaqua Crater. The sea below was calm; the slow vortexes of dust that had disturbed its surface stilled into eddies and vanished. The whole Crater seemed to settle into the peace of complete satisfaction, a state like the quiet joy of drawing in one’s first cool breath when a fever has finally broken. Stasis. Peace. Stability.
The sound of coughing woke me.
I opened my eyes to a vast unfocused glare, and blinked away a gritty film pf tears. The dust was all over my face, clogging my eyelids, crusting inside my nose, coating the inside of my mouth with a nauseating mealy dryness. I was floating on my back on the surface of the sea.
I tried to clear my mouth. My lips split their dusty scabs and thickened blood flowed over my dessicated tongue. My mouth revived a little in the wetness and saliva began to flow, turning the dust to a thick nastiness. I began coughing convulsively.
My dustmask was still hanging by a strap around my neck. When I reached for it I felt the first red-hot jolt of pain penetrate the numbness of shock. I felt it like a burning bubble inside my right elbow. As I moved weakly others sprang up like flames in my joints and muscles—knees, thighs, arms. Tears of agony channeled through the dust on my cheeks. I had the bends.
An aeroembolism in my heart could kill me. I lay very still, feeding the dust with the tears clearing my eyes and the blood oozing through caked clots from wounds in legs and hands and ears. I tried to control my coughing; I was beginning to suffocate. I reached for my mask again and felt red-hot spikes rip through bones and nerves and tendons. I realized that death was very near, and the thought called up deep reserves of animal vitality.
I spat wet sludge and said, “I want to live. Just let me live. I can help you, I’ll be your Mend . . . you gods . . .”
I reached for my mask left-handed, and the pain was not so bad. As I lifted the mask to pour the dust out of it, my head sank a little and I was forced to kick my legs to keep my face from going under. My knees and hips began to burn from the inside out, little trapped fires boiling under my kneecaps. My hands trembled uncontrollably as I put the dustmask to my face. Its adhesive edge, form-fitted to my face, pushed grit into my skin. I wheezed outward to clear the filters. Dust fell from the little rubbery creases around the lenses, inside the mask, to torment my nose and eyes. I lay still again, waiting for the pain to burn itself out.
In the absolute stillness there was a sort of numb stasis of pain. But when I moved, it seemed as though my movement cracked a shell around the pain and let it ooze out, burning cells and nerves.
I kept weeping, and my eyes began to clear again. I turned my head a little to look at the cliffs, expecting to find them red with evening—it seemed as if hours had passed—but they were gleaming white.
As I looked I saw a black speck move slantwise across their mighty faces.
The black speck was a disturbing presence in a world of walls and bitter dust. It was Dalusa. I lifted my left arm, crusted gray on gray. Could she see the movement amid the miles of bleakness? I could barely move my right arm. Beyond the burning nexus in my elbow was the hot mashed numbness of bleeding fingers. I kicked my legs, raising a little plume of dust, clenching my teeth with a crunch of grit at the stabbing pain in my knees.
There was hope. I kicked and splashed in the dust for as long as I could, stopping when I had to fight a choking fit. My eyes kept oozing tears; I felt more than saw the shadow flit across me. There was wind, and the dust slurred over my cracked lenses and Dalusa settled into the dust beside me.