In Heaven and Earth (13 page)

“
We’re losing,”
he said.

“
We’re only
playing for time,” Meili reminded him, wiping her grimy face with
her sleeve. Sweat ran in cracked lines down her cheeks. “Vairya,
where do we go next?”

“
I’m not sure,”
Vairya said, his voice tight with frustration. “I’ve completely
lost the net now, and I’m relying on the
Juniper’s
scanners. I’m going to put
more drones out, but stay put until I have a better idea of what’s
happening. I can barely see you, and if you move, I’ll lose you
completely.”

“
Understood,”
Reuben said, but Meili was staring past him, into the blackened
woods.

“
That could be
a problem,” she said.

Reuben turned and saw
what she had seen.

The trees were turning
clear, and through their whispering, shimmering leaves, ten
gleaming figures were climbing towards them, arms
outstretched.

“
Transport us,”
Reuben said. “Now.”

“
I can’t get a
lock,” Vairya said. “Run!”

Reuben was already
moving, bringing his gun up to fire, as he stumbled over the other
brow of the hill. Meili was racing ahead of him, fleet footed and
graceful, but the air was too bright to see carefully.

He saw her fall, and
grabbed her arm as he raced past her, throwing his gun aside to
drag her with him.

Below their feet, dry
leaves slid and rustled, and then went cold and hard.

Meili screamed, stopping
so hard she bent Reuben’s arm right back. He turned to shout at her
to move, and saw the terror blazing across her face.

Around her feet, there
were crystals rising, locking over her boots, and then running up
her legs in spars.

“
Run!” she
screamed, even as he tried to pull her free. “Run,
Cooper!”

And then the diamond
closed over her face, and there were trolls coming at him from
every side.

“
Vairya!”

“
I can’t see
you!”

There was nowhere left to
go, and all Reuben could do was wrench a broken branch off the
nearest tree and swing wildly at the nearest troll.

It bent and broke against
the troll’s clear shoulder, but it paused in its run to turn and
stare at Reuben.

For the first time,
Reuben believed that it had been human once. The ghost of that
long-lost face remained, in the rough stubble of a long jaw, and
narrow lips. There was nothing left there now, though, no light in
its eyes as it reached out and seized him by the throat, lifting
him.

For a moment, it held him
up to the light, as if unsure what to do.

Then, as if it had lost
interest, it dropped him and turned away.

Stiff with relief, he
tried to speak to Vairya.

And realised that he
couldn’t move his throat.

He could still lift his
hand, though, and he brought it high enough to see as tiny flecks
of diamond began to move across his palm, washing all the colour
away.

It hurt to breathe, his
body growing stiffer with every breath.

“
I can almost
see you now,” Vairya said triumphantly, and Reuben heard the buzz
of another drone. “I see… Reuben.”

Only the pure should
live, Ahrima had told him once, and he had regretted ever since
that he had listened to her. If she could see him now, would she
consider this blasphemy or revenge?

“
Reuben!”
Vairya screamed.

Reuben wished he still
had a voice, that he could speak something to ease that grief, say,
perhaps, “‘Sing no sad songs for me.’”

But then Vairya was
there, appearing over him with the milky flash of
transportation.

No!
Reuben thought at him desperately, but Vairya was
already falling to his knees beside him, all the colour draining
from his face.

“
Reuben,” he
whispered and reached out, but his hand stopped before he could
touch Reuben.

Go
, Reuben thought at him.
Don’t waste the time you have left.

But, as he watched,
Vairya’s face changed. Once again, as he had been in the garden, he
looked too fierce to be human.

“
I was made to
remember,” he said softly, “and to protect what should never be
forgotten. What use is remembering if everything just
dies?”

And, with a swift,
unsettling grace, he turned on his heel, and reached out to seize
the troll’s wrist.

Reuben wanted to shout
his protest, but could only watch and stretch his still working
hand out feebly, as Vairya tightened his grasp, tighter and tighter
and tighter.

And the troll’s arm broke
off in his hand.

Vairya stepped forwards,
lifting it like a club to bring round to slam against the
troll.

It stumbled under the
blow, cracks webbing across its face, and Vairya hit it again and
again, gasping with the effort, his face contorted with
rage.

“
Don’t,” Reuben
tried to say, and then, “Move!”

For Vairya was no
fighter, for all his strength and rage, and he didn’t even see the
next troll coming down the hill towards him, not until it hammered
its fist into his back, hitting so hard it broke through skin to
reveal the metal of Vairya’s spine, and then again and again as
Vairya stumbled, until Vairya fell under the impact, still trying
to turn and hit back.

And then, as Reuben
struggled and fought to reach Vairya, throwing the last of his
willpower into just moving, moving enough to stop them, the first
troll turned around and reached out with its surviving
arm.

And they pulled Vairya
apart and let him fall to the shining earth, cogs, bloody skin, and
dulling eyes scattered across the lifeless leaves in countless
pieces.

FOR A LONG time, Reuben
lay there, waiting to turn completely into stone, craving the
moment when nothing would hurt any more, when he wouldn’t be able
to see Vairya’s blood pooling across the ground and know that he
had failed again, that he had never been able to save anyone, let
alone the one who most deserved to live, the one he wanted, above
all, to save from this.

There was so much blood,
only the faintest silver sheen to suggest it wasn’t
human.

So much blood that wasn’t
being transformed, just like Reuben himself was still half-alive
when the tide of diamonds had swept over everything else around
them.

Silver in Vairya’s blood,
silver in the shooting stars of Reuben’s imagination, silver in the
cool bottle of nanites they had taken from the fridge only two days
ago.

And, so simply, Reuben
understood that the battle wasn’t over. There was one more way to
fight, one more way to avenge Vairya and Meili and the people of
Caelestia, one more way to stop the greatest Enemy humanity had
ever faced.

Forcing himself to lift
his still fleshy hand, he drew his palm across the sharp edge of
the nearest glittering leaf, tearing it open. It hurt, and he could
feel the damage, but it didn’t matter. He would never wield a
scalpel again, never lift a sword or gun in battle.

No, his weapons were of
another sort.

As his blood slid across
the cold ground, he closed his eyes and fell back into his
mind.

He landed briefly in his
imaginary infirmary, but it was ruined, its walls leaning at
impossible angles and claw-like crystals breaking through the
floor. Dismissing it, he walked towards the wall of shattered glass
which had been a screen before and willed it to become a
doorway.

It took him back to the
corridor to Ahrima’s study, but this time he was not afraid. He was
not her tool, not anymore, but he would use the knowledge she had
given him to destroy these monsters. When the door opened, he
walked straight past her, to the window, and looked down upon a
darkling plain, where rows of nanoknights stood at attention, their
faces masked and spears flung over their shoulders. Dark pillars
rose from the pebbled ground, cupping flames that brushed the whole
dim world with the colours of blood and destruction.

“
Nanites,”
Reuben said, bleak satisfaction rising through him.
“Multiply.”

They divided as swiftly
as a sigh, suddenly two in the place of every one, then again and
again until the plain expanded around them to the furthest
horizon.

Reuben smiled.

“
So,” Ahrima
said, coming to stand beside him, “you go to war.”

“
Yes.”

“
To purify what
has been corrupted.”

He looked at her then,
and found he no longer feared her. She was just another monster in
his mind, a ghost bleating out the same old falsehoods.

“
They don’t
need to be purified,” he said. “They have tried too hard to do that
to others. No, General, I’m just going to take all they have
created and turn it into dust, and then I’m going to destroy them
all. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’”

Row upon row, field upon
field, the nanoknights kept replicating.

“
You impress
me,” Ahrima said, laying her hand on his arm. “You always
did.”

Reuben shrugged her off.
“I don’t care. You are nothing but a drooling husk in a prison far,
far away. I’m not doing this for you.”

“
Then what are
you doing it for?” she asked. “You should always know that, Reuben.
I told you long ago.”

“
You’re not my
mentor anymore,” he said, looking out at the knights. “I don’t have
to listen to you.”

“
Yet you came
to me when it was time to start killing.”

“
You are the
most efficient killer I know,” he said, staring at his reflection.
He could see her face behind his, reflected faintly in the dim
glass. “Where else would I come?”

“
Who made you a
killer, Doctor? Are you ready to be the death of so
many?”

“
Don’t talk as
if they were human. They are nothing but the urge to
replicate.”

“
And what are
we? Machines swim in your blood. You consort with those who have
cut out their own flesh and replaced it with novelties of steel and
silicon. You made love with a machine as if he were a man. What
right have you to decide what makes a human?”

Reuben swung on her.
“It’s our actions, not our bodies, that make us human!”

“
And yet you
come to me to learn how to kill.”

“
Say what you
mean,” he snarled.

“
What
you
mean,” she parried.
“I’m just a monster in your mind, remember, Dr Cooper?”

“
Shut up!” he
snapped, suddenly shakily angry again. “Shut up!” He swung away,
and as he did, something in the front row of nanoknights drew his
attention, something out of place.

He pressed to the glass
to take a closer look, and caught his breath.

Two of the knights were
not carrying spears. Instead, they had hoes propped over their
shoulders.

I thought
helping things to grow suited their nature better than
war
, Vairya had said.

“
But this is
the time for war,” Reuben said, pressing his hand against the
window. His skin was stained with silver, shining streaks spreading
over the brown like the roots of a tree. “What good will gardeners
do now?”

Vairya had turned his
people into flowers and sheltered them in the rose garden of his
mind. He had told Reuben to run, had only fought when he was trying
to protect Reuben.

How did
someone as bloodthirsty as you ever become a doctor?
Reuben himself had asked Meili.

He had always thought
that medicine was a war, battles to be fought against disease and
injury, pitting strength and will against the pull of
death.

But Vairya had given him
gardeners.

Vairya helped things
grow. He did not kill.

The people of this city
had become flowers, not soldiers.

War… battle… violence…
They meant nothing in a sunlit garden.

Reuben needed
to
stop
fighting,
not wage war on the nanites of Old Earth.

Suddenly terrified that
he was too late, that he had been too stupid to save Vairya after
all, Reuben slammed his fists against the glass, thinking of the
garden.

Vairya didn’t need air to
breathe. He didn’t need a body to think. If his memory had
survived, there was still hope.

On the glass in front of
him, a faint outline of the garden showed and then
faded.

“
Is he really
worth the effort?” Ahrima asked mockingly. “You could have ripped
the station apart by now, sent us all tumbling into the
sun.”

“
Vairya!”
Reuben shouted. “Let me in!”

He thought of the garden,
of the swirling colours of the roses, the faces in the flowers, the
quiet peace of it.