Context (122 page)

‘Premature, perhaps.’ Tom did not
think they could afford optimism. ‘Perhaps the Blight’s in hiding.’

‘I agree.’ Corduven had better
access to intelligence. ‘But the other occupied realms are fighting purely
conventional battles, and there seems to be confusion among their upper
echelons.’

The enemy officers appeared to be
purely human. No-one had detected true Dark Fire activity since the War Between
Gods.

‘I’ve another thought for you,
Corduven. A nastier one.’

They walked in silence for a few
more paces.

‘All right, I’ll bite.’ Corduven
glanced at Tom. ‘What’s the sting in the tail?’

‘Two gods bumped against each
other, and there was divine anger, and the dark one got burned. Isn’t that what
people think?’

‘Don’t you?’ Corduven tapped Tom
gently on the shoulder. ‘It was your idea.’

‘Not mine, not really.’

‘But—’

‘Dart, or the “system reflection”
I talked to before, whatever—we used the Blight’s own energies to blast a
signal into mu-space, to the processor I used before. The Blight attracted the
Dart-entity’s attention, and they didn’t like each other.’

‘That,’ said Corduven, ‘sounds
like an understatement.’

They stopped beside a floating
bronze-encased levanquin, whose driver was waiting patiently, eyes ahead as
though he could not detect Tom’s or Corduven’s presence.

‘What if Dart destroyed
Nulapeiron’s Blight’—Tom’s voice was very quiet—‘but not before its signal got
through to the original Anomaly?’

For a long moment, Corduven stood
very still.

Then he stirred into life, but
did not say another word as they climbed aboard, and the levanquin lifted and
moved off.

They
arced through a clear pale-yellow sky. Overhead, a tiny dark dot: a floating
terraformer, spewing creamy heat-retaining clouds into the upper atmosphere,
replenishing the storm-blown cloud cover.

Tom and Corduven sat behind the
flight crew, looking out across the wild landscape. Mountains gave way to
familiar heathland, and then the blasted muddy waste which had been churned up
by battle.

None of it was Blight-held
territory. Not any more.

They banked downwards, to the
left, and Tom tried to look over Corduven’s shoulder, but Corduven held up a
hand, blocking his view.

‘Not yet.’

The flyer whispered softly into
land.

Tom
jumped down into the wild grasses, took a deep breath of pure fresh air, and
walked up to the ridgeline. Trying not to remember the battle-Chaos of the last
time he had been here.

He was puffing a little when he
reached the top, and looked down.

With amazement.

Where the great crystalline
structure had stood, everything now was flat—and softly shimmering.

A lake of glass spread wide
before him, cupped in a kilometres-wide natural depression, smooth and shining
beneath the morning sun.

‘Take your time,’ said Corduven.

A
soft breeze caressed Tom’s face as he descended to the glass lake’s edge, and
stood there.

For a long time.

Then he tapped the glass with the
toe of his boot, satisfied himself that it was solid, and threw back his cloak
over his right shoulder.

He stepped out onto the glass.

And walked.

Out
across the smooth lake, taking careful paces so he would not slip, Tom did
indeed take his time. Eventually he reached a point, smooth and perfectly flat
like any other, which he judged to be the glass lake’s centre.

Taking care, he went down on one
knee, and leaned forward to splay his hand against the surface.

It was not heat, he decided,
which had turned the glass structure to liquid, but some other force which had
dissolved the molecular bonds only of that substance. He knew that, because the
proof was visible, beneath him.

The girl was young, eleven SY
perhaps, and she was frozen in the glass, hair trapped in a swirl which would
remain in stasis. None of the bodies had burned: every one was intact, trapped
forever at the moment of death.

Had there been children among the
multitude? Tom had not realized.

She died, they died, to save us
all.

But that was scant comfort.

Tom stood up, walked a little
way, and stopped.

Lemon skies and creamy clouds,
and air fresher than he had ever breathed.

But down below his feet, held
frozen for eternity, were more intact people, hands raised upwards as though in
helpless supplication, and it was at that moment that the enormity of his
actions was made clear to Tom.

So many...

In there, down inside the vast
lake of glass, frozen, were two hundred and fifty thousand bodies, every one a
victim who had known what it was for a higher power to enter their minds, rape
their humanity and take possession of the remnants, and each of those quarter
of a million souls had once been a child, perhaps was one still at the end; had
known life, their parents’ love or society’s cruel indifference, fallen in
love, betrayed or been betrayed, bereaved, found happy fulfilment, hard work or
indolence . . .

Each was a real, complete life.

An entire universe, if the truth
be told, which ceases to exist when each person dies, with their perceptions,
their thoughts and innermost untold fears and highest dreams—all turned to
insensate dust.

For what can possibly matter,
save people... people, and time, and love?

Tom knelt down, carefully, upon
the smooth glass surface.

And bowed his head.

Oh, my brothers and sisters.

The magnitude of it all.

I am so sorry.

And wept for the frozen dead.

~ * ~

68

TERRA
AD 2143

<Story>>

[21]

Epilogue