Fahad said that it was as if a golden giant had loomed against the sky. An anime monster swatting at a swarm of fighter planes. The planes trailed black threads, swooping around and around the monster, wrapping it in a constricting net that immediately began to tighten, cutting into its substance. Slivers of furnace light burned in gaps between the threads, jetting into the air in every direction as the monster struggled and roared and diminished.
Chloe saw the world shift and change, as if everything had been replaced by a copy of itself. Everything the same; everything slightly different. She saw the image of the Jackaroo avatar explode like a stained-glass window, shattering into a thousand animated shards. Sharp and swift and burning, they swirled around Nevers, who screamed and dropped to his knees, and then whirled high into the air. A skinny column that grew thicker and brighter as it lengthened because the shards were multiplying. And suddenly there were other shapes in the air around it, flocks of small quick dark ghosts fluttering in the glare of the column, each plucking out a shard and wrapping around it and falling out of the air. A hard rain striking the ground all around and vanishing into it, while overhead the column diminished until it was no more than a stain fading into the dun sky.
A few fugitive ghosts fluttered here and there in widening gyres. One slanted low and swooped above the trench, turning to look at Chloe as it went past. She had the impression of a face like a shelled walnut randomly studded with black stones, or a drop of water swarming with black motes, or a ball of churning insects, or a clutch of busy clockworks. Something so unfamiliar that her mind couldn’t make sense of it, a wrongness projected by a logic at right angles to everything she knew, a mask or shield that hid a fierce avid awareness that would shrivel her if she saw it entire. She felt the extreme edge of that attention pass through her mind, and then it was gone, and the last trace of the column was gone too.
The Jackaroo avatar had vanished. Nevers looked up cautiously, dazed and dishevelled, and the other man jumped into the trench and told him to stay exactly where he was. He was aiming his rifle at Nevers, glancing down at Chloe and asking her how she was doing.
‘Not so good, to tell the truth.’
She had forgotten the heavy pain in her belly for a moment, but now it was back.
‘You hang in there,’ the man said. ‘I’m going to call for help.’
Fahad was standing at the wall of the trench, staring towards the mound that cradled the black room at its centre. He tore off his face mask and goggles, turned to Chloe. He was crying. ‘He’s gone,’ he said.
55. Some Kind of Connection
Mangala | 5 August–10 September
The walls of the hospital room were painted a soothing green, with a long narrow window shuttered by a venetian blind. Chloe could glimpse slivers of a dusty night sky through the slanted blades. It was as if she was afloat in a planetary ocean of deep smog. The lights dimmed in the evening and the pulse of the hospital slowed and settled, although there was always the clatter of a trolley on its way to somewhere else, the squeak of shoes on polished floors, human voices, and at last the lights brightened and it was another day. But it was always night outside. The night-year of Mangala.
Tethered to drips and the beeping monitor, she drifted on slow deep morphine tides.
One day she woke and the policeman, Vic Gayle, was perched on the chair by her bed. A large middle-aged man in a brown suit with a pink check, looking tired and a little awkward.
There were flowers on her bedside cabinet. Yellow roses.
He asked her how she felt, and she said it was about what you’d expect after being shot.
‘You look pretty good.’
‘That’s weird. Because I feel fucking awful.’
She seemed to be looking up at him from a deep pit. She couldn’t move anything but her eyes. The various cramps and jags of her damage were distant reports from another city, voices in another room.
Vic Gayle said, ‘They put you in what they call an induced coma to help your body heal. They brought you out of it a couple of days ago, but only just now let me in to talk. I don’t have long, though. If you have any questions you’d best fire them straight at me.’
‘Fahad?’
‘He’s safe. Squared away in an apartment in the UN building. He wanted to go home, but by the time we’d sorted out the little problem of his illegal entry the shuttle had departed.’
‘He has a little sister, back on Earth.’
It felt odd, saying that. Earth. You don’t need to think about the name of your home until you’ve left it.
‘He talks to her by q-phone every day,’ Vic said.
‘Is he still drawing?’
‘Not that I know of. Playing video games, complaining that we won’t let him go out…Drury’s organisation has fallen apart, there’s a little civil war over control of drug corners, but some hothead might decide to try to make a name for himself by taking a pop at the kid.’
‘The spaceship…?’
‘Was Fahad right about that? Has it arrived? I don’t know. No one knows. The storm has locked down everything in Idunn’s Valley. A UN team is trying to get through to the site, but communications are down all over. If something has happened out there it will take a while for the news to reach us. But don’t you worry, Chloe. It’s been taken care of. Everything is fine. All you need to do is rest and get better. Can you do that for me?’
‘I’m trying.’
‘The nurse is giving me a death stare. I have to go. Take care, Chloe. I’ll come back soon.’
And then the nurse was bustling around her and did something to her morphine drip, and everything sank away.
When Chloe woke again the room was lit only by the glow of the monitors and a wedge of light under the door. She listened to the noises of the hospital, and slept. When she woke, dry-mouthed and cottony, the policeman was there again.
‘Water,’ she said.
Vic called the nurse, who let her sip ice water through a metal straw. It was heavenly. When she had finished, she asked him about Henry Harris’s body.
‘It should go home. Back to Earth.’
‘It’s still in Winnetou. But as soon as the dust storm lifts I’ll make sure it’s sent back.’
‘Nevers. Is he still here?’
‘In jail. But not for long, I reckon. The British consulate has lodged a complaint, and there’s a rumour of some under-the-counter deal. We’re having more luck with Cal McBride. He’s been charged with the murder of Hanna Babbel. Fahad told us what you told him; at some point we’ll need a statement from you. McBride made bail, but he’s tagged, and he knows we’re watching him. And we’re still looking into his involvement in the death of Nevers’s partner, and a stack of old cases. One way or another, he’s going down.’
‘The avatar?’
‘No sign of it. Nevers claims he doesn’t remember anything. The scientists have been doing all kinds of tests on the memory wire he was carrying, but it seems to have burned out. No trace of activity left in it.’
‘The ship?’
‘Still no word. Fahad wants to visit, by the way. If I can swing permission for him, will you be up for it?’
‘Love to see him.’
‘He’s been having tests here, as a matter of fact.’
‘I think Ugly Chicken has finished with him. But if he starts drawing again…’