Solstice

Davis peered at him.

He stared at the pilot and said, 'It has to be.' Then turned to Schulz and Helen on the video screen. 'We think we've found the place. We're going down.'

'Michael,' she said, 'take care. We can't get in support for a good twenty minutes or so.'

'Yeah.' He tried to smile. Then the Squirrel bobbed and wheeled, descended to the ground in a cloud of dust, and, with a solidity Lieberman adored, found its feet on the dry grass in front of the house. He pulled the cans off his ears, turned to Mo. 'You and Annie stay behind us. We don't know what we'll find here. We don't want you in the way until we need you. And when we do need you, it has to happen fast. You have to establish a network link straight through to Irwin, and he can take it from there. Right, Bevan?'

'Right.' He looked younger now, less confident. Maybe he was scared, just like the rest of them. Lieberman popped open the door and jumped down into the dry, thin air, took a couple of deep breaths, praying for his head to clear. The light was too strong, the day too hot. It felt like they had landed in an oven. Davis and the others joined him, staring at the house.

'Company,' Davis said. And they watched the tall, lean figure of Joe Katayama walk toward them, then come to a halt six feet away, between them and the house. He stood still, arms folded, staring with cold, quizzical eyes. Lieberman looked at every inch of this big, powerful man and thought: He's unarmed. Davis stood, tensely playing with his weapon, and Bevan watched this small drama unravelling, nervous too.

'Joe,' Mo Sinclair said behind them, and Lieberman could hear Annie let out a low, quiet whimper of fear.

'Hey, listen to me. We're going in,' he said to the imposing, still figure. 'This thing has to end now.'

'No.' When his big head moved slowly from side to side like that he looked wooden, like a statue, not quite human. 'You're too late. The zenith's nearly here. And we burned the link after we set the program. It's all gone now. You've got no pathway up there. You've got no hope. Like the woman said: Prepare. Now, why don't you go tell your bosses that?'

'Right. Well, that sounds nice and sensible. But you don't mind if we check for ourselves, now, do you? And me and Charley, we go back some — it would be a shame to come all this way without saying hello.'

'No, you can —'

'Mummy!' Annie's shriek brought Lieberman's head back down to earth, back from this image of the sky, dancing, wheeling, aligning, that filled it right then. A shadow passed in front of him, something following it. Mo was walking toward Katayama, her back to them, her hands out from her sides, fingers stretching, saying, 'No, Joe, it's okay, Joe…'

And Annie, screaming, ran behind, catching up fast.

'Hey.' Lieberman touched Mo's hair briefly. 'Let's all stay cool. Okay?' And didn't feel cool at all (this is some form of redemption, the inner voice said, this is Mo paying herself back).

'Joe,' she said, so close to him, a hand reaching up touching his cheek (a cold cheek, Lieberman thought, seeing, in his head, the picture of the girl with the snapped neck on the Web, and registering these big strong hands). 'We were wrong. Wrong. Can't you understand that? All of us. And when you get out of this place you'll understand that, you'll see it was just our closeness that made us crazy like this. We lost perspective.'

'Perspective,' he said, and in one swift movement reached forward, pushed Mo aside, snatched Annie by the hair, twisted her around with a single violent blow, and from somewhere there was a gun at her throat, the barrel glinting silver in the dazzling sunlight.

'No…' Mo said, scrabbling on the ground, close to sobbing (tears of rage, Lieberman thought, tears of fury).

'Shut up,' Katayama said calmly. 'You fucking people. You get back in that machine. You get out of here. Leave us alone. You understand that? And when this is over, when we see what's done, then you come back for her. If you can.'

Annie was tight in his grip, not struggling, eyes wide open. Flesh on flesh, flesh on metal, and the sky bore down on them all, like a heavy golden weight on their shoulders.

Screaming (no words, nothing you could understand), Mo Sinclair rose from the ground, took hold of his giant, muscled hand, and then tore at it with her fingers, tore at the tendon (the shield goes down, Lieberman thought, this is the way this big, cold man is thinking just now), her body was pulling him away from Annie, the silver shape moving, Annie ducking, getting free from his grasp, and behind the animal gasp of Davis's laboured breathing.

Then Lieberman was pushed aside by the small, frantic figure, gun rising, these figures moving so slowly in the hot, meagre air, like puppets dancing on strings, limbs jerking, mouths agape, all fear and fury. A sound, like the cracking of a whip. Then a second, different in timbre, from another direction. He looked at Katayama, who was exposed now, his shield had escaped, and slowly, with the agonized motion of broken film running wild through the mechanism of some ancient projector, a small red dot appeared in his cheek, grew, became a livid, pumping rose, the colour of blood, the colour of flesh, then opened, like a window into his head.

Someone screaming, Annie, racing back, not caring, not minding. And Mo Sinclair, slumped to the ground (two shots, he thought, two different sounds), a dark, intense stain spreading across her cheap white T-shirt, bubbles of blood appearing at her mouth.

Look.

You look, Charley. This is your doing. Not mine.

Look.

He ran over, was by her side, not knowing what to say. Annie was weeping, shaking uncontrollably. The red stain covered most of Mo's chest now, and it was alive, something pumped strength into it from inside her, stealing away her vitality by the second.

Her eyes rolled, so white, so open. 'Annie…' Her mouth was filled with blood, dark and pulsing. Hands trembling, Lieberman shook the videophone free, flipped it open, yelled for backup, yelled for a doctor, and didn't even wait to hear the answer. Bob Davis knelt by him, touched Mo lightly, touched her wrist, tried to hold the girl off.

'Be careful, Annie,' Davis said. 'She's hurt. You mustn't make it worse.'

'Where the hell did he get the gun?' Lieberman yelled, his mind racing. Ellis Bevan stood behind them, ashen-faced, looking scared. Lieberman joined Annie, kneeling by her side. 'Hey,' he said, holding her hand. 'You just keep calm, now. We can get help in here. We can call someone on the radio.' 'No time,' Mo said (the blood bubbling, boiling over her tongue, her teeth, her voice thick with the viscous blackness there). 'Michael, go…'

'We can carry you,' he mumbled, astonished at the flatness of his own voice.

'No,' Davis said, looking gingerly at the wound. 'We can't move her. It's too dangerous. She has to wait here for the doctor. It's the only way.'

'Michael, I'm cold…' Her eyes were losing their light, her skin seemed paler, thinner, and Annie howled, screamed and howled (in this place, Lieberman knew, you go mad, everything disappears, gets stripped from your soul). Mo's thin arm, the walnut tan already looking lifeless, came up slowly; a hand, a single finger, went to Annie's face.

Michael Lieberman closed his eyes, wished himself out of this nightmare, wished himself anywhere else in the world. Then felt her fingers close on his.

'Annie,' Mo said (voice so thick, Lieberman had to work to follow her now). 'You have to help Michael now. You have to leave me, go with him.'

'Mom,' Annie whispered, her face long and ashen, and they could feel her grip weakening, the life draining out of her.

He watched all this from some distanced, remote part of himself, and knew then that your mind goes crazy watching someone die. You go to some space, some part of the world where nothing is real, where a voice inside you screams: Take me, take me. But there was no way to change places, one life for another, even if he thought it the cheapest deal in the world to make. He watched Annie in her agony, watched Mo slipping away into the dark, his consciousness dwindling into this single, searing focal point of suffering. It was like kneeling in a golden, roaring ocean of heat and light screaming silently around them all.