And All the Stars (21 page)

"Is that some kind of trick question?" Min asked,
derisive. "What is
not
dickish
about invading someone's planet so you can play games?"

"Yeah, yeah." Pan threw a mock-punch. "I
just mean picking a religious icon for this challenge. Are they going to go for the Spring Temple
Buddha next, or play
chasies
in a mosque?"

"Given they started with a golf course..." Min
said.

"That was the Manila Moths," Pan said. "These are the Rio Moths. We know not all Moths act the same because of
the way some go out of their way to destroy any webcams in their areas, while others
don't care. The London ones wave when
they pass. Maybe the Rio ones are trying
to make a point today, rubbing our faces in how we just have to sit here and
watch."

"Or maybe the Rio Moths were trying to decide on a
challenge, looked about and saw a great big statue on a hill?" Min's acid tone was leavened by a grin. "How about, you do my next turn at the
washing up if I'm right and they don't destroy the thing?"

Pan held his hands in a warding-off gesture. "I'll pass. You've already got me doing your laundry and
cleaning your room."

The great big statue was called Christ the Redeemer and its
appearance on the challenge website had caused a new wave of upset, at least
among Christians, who were convinced that the goal of the challenge was to destroy
the statue.

"Do you think they're going to destroy it?" she
asked Fisher.

"I don't believe they'll care if they do." He stopped typing to glance at the
television, where the
Mothed
Blues were lining up
near a long row of cars, then turned the laptop toward her. "There's been another Rover
sighting. Again it's a city which gained
points during the first challenge. But
look at it."

He started a video, and within a minute everyone was hanging
over his shoulder having him replay it. The Rover they'd killed had stood as tall as a human, but wider, and its
tail had extended a couple of metres. The video, an elevated street view, showed a Rover which was taller than
the size of an ordinary door, so that it had to crouch and crawl to get inside
the building it was trying to enter, its curling tail trailing behind like a
swimming snake's. Several Blues followed
it in.

"Who filmed this?" Nash asked.

"A Green who returned to Berlin after the Spire stopped
singing. She's been documenting Blue
activities."

"Damn. Above and
beyond." Pan shook his head
respectfully. "What've you been
saying?"

Fisher paged down the comments, where his new net identity,
'Theo', had been making suggestions about fighting Rovers. "I don't dare outright say what worked
for us," he explained. "Too
big a flag. But I tell enough. Important, since the Rovers do appear to be
tracking Blues."

"I'm not sure we could fight one that big,"
Madeleine said.

"There's every chance we won't have to." Fisher flipped through the mixture of photographs
and drawings he'd collected in the short time before and after urgent
rest. "The first sighting of a
Rover is soon after the Manila challenge, and if we look at the progression of
sightings, each larger than the previous, it's not unreasonable to conclude
that the Rovers were some form of prize. That suggests a scarcity."

"With Nash, we have a chance against these glowing
things," Noi said. "I'm more
worried about what we do if Blues come after us. Greens we can shield paralyse and run. Blues –
Mothed
Blues fight far better than we can, and if Nash drains them, well, from what
we've seen that will probably kill the host as well as the Moth. Are we all willing to do that to people? Are we willing to do that to Gavin?"

Silence.

"
Ho-
ly
shit!"

Pan almost catapulted himself into Fisher's lap, gaping at
the muted television, though by the time Madeleine looked there was only an
image of three fighter jets, moving into formation as they streaked away over a
tree-dotted city.

"They shot a Spire! They shot a Spire!" Pan said. "Turn on the sound!"

Min dived for the remote and a woman's gasping voice said:
"
...there an impact?
"

"
Get higher
," a second woman said. "
In case they're coming back.
"

The image dipped and bounced as whoever was filming ran, and there
followed a confused jumble of stairs and biohazard suits.

"I didn't see any explosion," Pan said.

Noi had an iron grip on Madeleine's shoulder. "Let it work," she breathed.

"But why would they think–?" Madeleine paused. "Of course. The Moths bring the shields down to go
through for the challenges."

The camerawoman had reached a roof and provided a shot of a
placidly unperturbed Spire standing in the middle of a very long, straight
park.

"The Spire which rose under the Washington Monument,"
Fisher said.

His tone and expression were no more than thoughtful, but
sitting beside him Madeleine could feel the tension behind the relaxed
appearance. She touched the back of his
hand, and he looked at her blankly, then managed a semblance of a smile. "The most likely result is that they
just bombed Rio de Janeiro."

"Damn, Fish is right," Pan said. "No sign of any damage on the Spire,
anyway. Does anyone have the Moth
transmission still up? Any
explosions?"

"Wherever those missiles went, it wasn't to Rio,"
Min said, holding up a tablet. "The
Moths aren't acting like they've even noticed."

"
Here they come!
" gasped one of the rooftop
women.

The image jumped sideways, then focused on the three jets,
approaching in a tight triangular formation. A giant tower made an easy target, and each jet fired and peeled off in
rapid succession.

"Shield's back."

Noi, voice flat, let go of Madeleine's shoulder as the blooms
of fire died.

"And now we find out if they meant it about
'reprimands'," Min said, trying for his usual caustically delighted tone,
but lacking the enthusiasm for it.

Madeleine drew her feet up, wishing she'd brought a blanket
down, and then murmured gratefully as Nash handed her a bowl of steaming pasta
shells. The television divided its time between
the video uploaded by the two uninfected women, and the challenge in Rio de
Janeiro, which seemed to involve several hundred people scrambling for the
nearest vehicle and racing off. A full
stomach and not enough sleep combined to make this a lullaby, until Fisher woke
her to a room darkened and emptying.

"We're going to finish the night in the study," he
said. "Now that the challenge is
over, it's possible the local Moths will pick up any search for their
Rover."

She sat up, neck stiff, rubbing at her eyes and glancing at
Pan and Nash tidying in the kitchen. Fisher gauged her winces as she straightened.

"I'll get you an icepack," he said. "We shouldn't have left your back
untreated."

Ice was no less revolting a concept than when Noi had
suggested it, and so Madeleine had to smile at herself obediently taking off
her jacket, turning it to cover her front and slipping her arms back through
the sleeves. She was sore, but more
interested in an opportunity for another small step forward into something
new. She felt increasingly certain, too,
that Fisher was finding chances to take them as well.

"Shoulder blades primarily?" He'd brought two folded tea towels, and
prodded her gently to lean forward so he could rest them both against her
back. Cold seeped through her Singlet,
and she shivered.

"Not that giving you a chill is ideal," he said,
lifting and turning the packs. "After a couple of days you're at least able to switch to hot
packs."

"What happened with the challenge?"

"It was a straightforward race. The base of the statue was simply the end
point."

"It all seems so petty." Races and competitions – played with a
distinct lack of care for the possessed hosts, but still games which hardly
seemed worth the immensity of death which preceded them. "And the attack in Washington?"

"No sign of any immediate response." Fisher's voice was composed, but the pressure
on her back momentarily increased, and she knew that if their positions were
reversed she would feel the roil of frustrated energy in him.

"You and Noi are so alike."

"Noi?" he repeated, startled, then stopped and gave
the idea some thought before saying: "I don't see it."

"You're both always trying to hide how really worried or
upset you are. All stressed and
pressured, as if you were responsible for looking after the rest of us, and so
can't show when you're overwhelmed. You
must know we're not so unfair as to expect you to produce some miraculous
solution."

She couldn't catch any response. The icepacks remained steady, and the only
sound was Pan and Nash putting dishes away.

"I expect that of me, though," Fisher said finally,
voice almost too low for her to hear. "Call it ego, or...I had so much I wanted to do, and it's been
taken away from me, and I seethe and grind my teeth and
shake
with this need to sow vengeance and regret."

He paused, took an audible breath, then said: "For that
we need to bring down the Spires. I have
ideas on how to find a way to do that, but I keep coming up against what it
will take to gain the information we need. And my courage fails me."

It was an admission, weary and subdued. Madeleine wished she could see his
expression, but resisted the impulse to turn, instead asking: "Did you
feel that way in the first days after the dust, when you were trying to identify
the best way to treat Greens?"

He turned the icepacks again. "I knew I would kill people." A simple statement of fact. "Dividing up boys of about the same condition, and giving one group
sugar water and one saline sounds innocuous, but what if the Conversion was
more efficient with an infusion of electrolytes? What amount of energy did their bodies need
to survive? Raise their temperature or
lower it? Keep them active, keep them
still? When one option appeared more
promising, I couldn't just switch them all to it immediately, had to keep a
control group in case it was a false positive. I had constant nightmares about the data I was accumulating, this logic
puzzle of life and death written in permanent ink, with no option to erase it
all and start over. I will never forget
the faces of those in the groups where treatment clearly wasn't helping. Never. But the knowledge that that was just the first wave, those exposed in
the first hours, drove me on. Doing
nothing was the worst option.

"With the Spires, doing anything could result in another
release of dust or...or anything else the Moths consider a suitable
'reprimand'. Endangering hundreds of
thousands of people who only need to wait two years to be safe. And every time I hear Pan or Emily say 'All
for one, and one for all' I wonder how that will work if one of us is
possessed. Everyone here wants to do
something in the abstract, but to get anywhere, to find a way to fight them,
we're going to have to gamble everything."

"Have you stopped trying to find a way, then?"
Madeleine asked softly.

"No."

"Are we ready to actually do anything?"

"No."

She shook her head. "I've been around Pan too much, and all his dramatic speeches – it
makes me want to try one. I feel so
strange and unlike myself, possibly the least social person on the planet
suddenly part of this group of people which can seriously consider the Three
Musketeers' motto as something which fits us. But yesterday none of us ran. We
all held together and fought, because we are...we've become more than just
people in the same place, trapped by circumstance. If any of us comes up with a plan, we'll
think hard about what we mean to do, and then we'll all face the consequences
of fighting back."

"Together." He sounded sad, exhausted. Then
briskly stood, lifting the icepacks away. "That should be enough. I'll
go kick a few people out of the way so you have room to lie on your
stomach."

He went upstairs, and Madeleine trailed up to change her
shirt, wondering if she'd helped at all. And if her imagination was running overtime or, as he turned away, he'd
brushed a finger across the nape of her neck, just below the knot of her hair.

Sinuous bodies wove a mid-air ballet, so beautiful and
strange that Madeleine could not help but sit spellbound as the pair of
dandelion dragons twined a pas de
deux
between
bridges and skyscrapers.

Machine gun fire rose, a rat-tat accompaniment which sparked
a new form of dance. Dipping, twisting,
wildly joyous: driven by countless wings in a madcap obstacle race mere
handbreadths above rooftops, from air-conditioning plant to scaffolding and
fire escape. It was so obviously a
gleeful game, exultant and playful, that its culmination in a tumbling human figure
made her gasp in protest.

"Where is it this time?"

Madeleine started. At
nearly two in the morning, she still had an hour to go on intruder watch. Judging by his hair-on-end, rumpled and cross
appearance, Min had simply given up trying to sleep.

"Pittsburgh," she said, as a rifle began firing.

"Pointless." Min sniffed disparagingly at the gunshot punctuation.

"They did hurt one once."

"And what did that achieve? A glowing thing spitting up its load of dust
in the middle of the street." He
shook his head, then crossed to the patio door and slid it open despite the
chill, kneeling in the entrance to light incense before the statue he'd placed
just outside.

The reprimand had begun the day after the Rio de Janeiro
challenge, late night Sydney time, and dawn on the east coast of the United States. The many-winged flying serpents which served
as air transport for
Mothed
Blues had appeared in
numbers, and flown riderless to the non-Spire towns and cities nearest to
Washington. The first sighting had been
at a large hall housing Washington refugees, where one dandelion dragon simply
thrust its enormous head through upper windows and vomited a great gout of dust
over hundreds of sleeping families.