She screamed and staggered back. He crashed to the ground perhaps an arm’s length from her. One massive fist slammed into her ankle, sending a stab of pain that made her cry out. If he’d landed on top of her he would surely have crushed her.
The beast, winded, was already clambering to his feet.
She got up and ran, ignoring the pain of her ankle. Night followed her, his lumbering four-legged pursuit slow but relentless. As she ran she kicked open her buried caches of body parts. He snapped them up and gobbled them down, barely slowing. The morsels seemed pathetically inadequate in the face of Night’s giant reality.
She burst out onto the open beach, still running for her life. She reached the lip of the sea, skidding to a halt before the lapping black liquid. Her plan had been to reach the sea, to lure Night into it.
But when she turned, she saw that Night had hesitated on the fringe of the forest, blinking in the light. Perhaps he was aware that she had deliberately drawn him here. He seemed to dismiss her calculations. He stepped forward deliberately, his immense feet sinking into the soft dust. There was no need for him to rush.
Callisto was already exhausted, and, trapped before the sea, there was nowhere for her to run.
Now he was out in the open she saw how far from the human form he had become, with his body a distorted slab of muscle, a mouth that had widened until it stretched around his head. And yet scraps of clothing clung to him, the remnants of a coverall of the same unidentifiable colour as her own. Once this creature, too, had been a newborn here, landing screaming on this desolate beach.
He walked up to her. He towered over her, and she wondered how many unfortunates he had devoured to reach such proportions.
Beyond his looming shoulder, she could see Asgard, pacing back and forth along the beach.
‘Great plan,’ Asgard called. ‘Now what?’
‘I—’
Night raised himself up on his hind legs, huge hands pawing at the air over her head. He roared wordlessly, and bloody breath gushed over her.
Close your eyes, Callisto thought. This won’t hurt.
‘No,’ Asgard said. She took a step towards the looming beast, began to run. ‘No, no, no!’ With a final yell she hurled herself at his back.
He looked around, startled, and swiped at Asgard with one giant paw. She was flung away like a scrap of bark, to land in a heap on the dust. But Night, off-balance, was stumbling backward, back toward the sea.
When his foot sank into the oily ocean, he looked down, as if surprised. Even as he lifted his leg from the fluid the flesh was drying, crumbling, the muscles and bone sloughing away in layers of purple and white. He roared his defiance, and cuffed at the sea – then gazed in horror at one immense hand left shredded by contact with the entropic ooze.
He began to fall, slowly, ponderously. Without a splash, the fluid opened up to accept his immense bulk. He was immediately submerged, the shallow fluid flowing eagerly over him. In one last burst of defiance he broke the surface, mouth open, his flesh dissolving. His face was restored, briefly, to the human, his eyes a startling blue. He cried out, his voice thin: ‘Reth Cana! You betrayed me!’
The name sent a shiver of recognition through Callisto.
Then he fell back, and was gone.
She hurried to Asgard. Her chest was crushed, Callisto saw immediately, and her limbs were splayed at impossible angles. Her face was growing smooth, featureless, like a child’s, beautiful in its innocence. Her gaze slid over Callisto.
Callisto cradled Asgard’s head. ‘This won’t hurt,’ she murmured. ‘Close your eyes.’
Asgard sighed, and was still.
‘Let me tell you the truth about pharaohs,’ Nomi said bitterly.
Hama listened in silence. They stood on the Valhalla ridge, overlooking the old, dark settlement; the brightest point on the silver-black surface of Callisto was their own lifedome.
Nomi said, ‘This was just after the Qax left. I got this from a couple of our people who survived, who were there. They found a nest of the pharaohs, in one of the biggest Conurbations – one of the first to be constructed, one of the oldest. The pharaohs retreated into a pit, under the surface dwellings. They fought hard; we didn’t know why. They had to be torched out. A lot of good people, good mayflies, died that day. When our people had dealt with the pharaohs, shut down the mines and drone robots and booby-traps … after all that, they went into the pit. It was dark. But it was warm, the air was moist, and there was movement everywhere. Small movements. And, so they say, there was a smell. Of milk.’
Nomi was silent for a long moment; Hama waited.
‘Hama, I can’t have children. I grew up knowing that. So maybe I ought to find some pity for the pharaohs. They don’t breed true – like Gemo and Sarfi. Oh, sometimes their children are born with Qax immortality. But—’
‘Yes?’
‘But they don’t all grow. They stop developing, at the age of two years or one year or six months or a month; some of them even stop growing before they are ready to be born, and have to be plucked from their mothers’ wombs.
‘And that was what our soldiers found in the pit, Hama. Racked up like specimens in a lab, hundreds of them. Must have been accumulating for centuries. Plugged into machines, mewling and crying.’
‘Lethe.’ Maybe Gemo is right, Hama thought; maybe the pharaohs really have paid a price we can’t begin to understand.
‘The pit was torched…’
Hama thought he saw a shadow pass across the sky, the scattered stars. ‘Why are you telling me this, Nomi?’
‘To show you that pharaohs have experiences we can’t share. And they do things we would find incomprehensible. To figure them out you have to think like a pharaoh.’
‘You’ve found something, haven’t you?’
Nomi pointed. ‘There’s a line of shallow graves over there. Not hard to find, in the end.’
‘Ah.’
‘The killings seemed to be uniform, the same method every time. A laser to the head. The bodies seemed peaceful,’ Nomi mused. ‘Almost as if they welcomed it.’
He had killed them. Reth had killed the other pharaohs who came here, one by one. But why? And why would an immortal welcome death? Only if – Hama’s mind raced – only if she were promised a better place to go, a safer place—
Everything happened at once.
A shadow, unmistakable now, spread out over the stars: a hole in the sky, black as night, winged, purposeful. And, low towards the horizon, there was a flare of light.
‘Lethe,’ said Nomi softly. ‘That was the GUTship. It’s gone – just like that.’
‘Then we aren’t going home.’ Hama felt numb; he seemed beyond shock.
‘…Help me. Oh, help me…’
A form coalesced before them, a cloud of blocky pixels. Hama made out a sketch of limbs, a face, an open, pleading mouth. It was Sarfi, and she wasn’t in a protective suit. Her face was twisted in pain; she must be breaking all her consistency overrides to have projected herself to the surface like this.
Hama held out his gloved hands, driven by an impulse to hold her; but that, of course, was impossible.
‘Please,’ she whispered, her voice a thin, badly realised scratch. ‘It is Reth. He plans to kill Gemo.’
Nomi set off down the ridge slope in a bouncing low-G run.
Hama said to Sarfi, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll help your mother.’
Now he saw anger in that blurred, sketchy face. ‘To Lethe with her! Save me…’ The pixels dispersed into a meaningless cloud, and winked out.