Quintessence Sky (17 page)

When the first explorers of Horizon had tried
to return to England, leaving the effects of the quintessence
field, their limbs had become gradually stiffer as the nutrients in
their bodies turned back to salt and sand. Was that what had
happened here? Was whatever had leaked through the connection
somehow causing an interruption in the quintessence field?

And what should they do now? He had opened
that thread like a tunnel between two places, connecting his
upstairs rooms with this place of death. Now that it was open,
however, how was he supposed to close it? A void was the most
destructive thing they knew about—it would obliterate any
matter—but the quintessence thread wasn't made of matter, and it
was the void that had created it in the first place.

Blanca gripped his arm. "Look!"

On the floor near the stairs, a loose, mesh
cage held two puff weasels. The furry creatures lay on their backs,
limbs splayed out straight and stiff, twitching. Matthew took a
step back. He pulled off a chunk from a piece of old bread on a
worktable and tossed it toward the cage. The bread hit the floor as
a spray of sand.

"It's spreading," Matthew said. "Coming down
the stairs. And somehow, it blocks quintessence. The quintessence
field doesn't reach wherever that miasma spreads."

"How can we stop it?"

Matthew tried to think. The miasma seemed to
move along the ground, like an invisible stream of water pouring
out of the connection and spreading out across the floor. If he
elevated himself on stilts of some kind, he might be able to make
it back up to the connection. Of course, if he fell, he would die.
If he could get to his boarcat paws, he might be able to sever the
thread, which would probably—possibly—close the hole and stop the
miasma's advance.

In the meantime, it was spreading across the
floor toward them. They ran outside into the night.

"Go and wake Parris," Matthew said.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

Blanca ran off toward the Parris home.
Matthew raced to the storehouse and was back in a moment with a
copper shovel. It was actually only a thin layer of copper around
the outside, and wood in the middle, so it wasn't too heavy to use.
The blade of the shovel was much larger than a standard shovel.
Matthew plunged it into the ground. The copper acted as a conductor
of Matthew's own quintessence field. Normally, he could change the
weight and properties of the matter in his own body, but the copper
allowed him to extend that power to whatever it touched. He dipped
the shovel down into the solid earth as easily as through water,
and pulled a huge mass of it free as effortlessly as if it were
goose feathers. He tipped it up onto the ground, allowing the earth
to run off the shovel, where he turned it to diamond, freezing it
into a squat, vertical wall.

He shifted to the left and repeated the
process, circling his way around the house, creating a ditch with a
short wall on the outside. It was the same way they built their
houses, only a team of men did the work with copper shaping tools
to make the walls straight and true. He would confine the miasma
inside a wall.

By the time Blanca returned with Parris,
Matthew had it finished. He climbed out of the circle and explained
to Parris what he had done and what he had seen. They circled the
wall, tossing bits of diamond and gold onto the ground inside of
Matthew's makeshift wall. After a few minutes, they saw the gold
objects turn back to their original materials. The miasma was
outside the house.

Only then did Matthew realize his mistake.
"Get back!" he said. Of course, a diamond wall wasn't going to hold
the miasma. As soon as it reached the wall, the diamond would
crumble back into dirt. An earthen wall might still dam it for a
bit, but it might also seep right through.

The land on which the Quintessence Society
building stood sloped gently toward them. "Around to the other
side," Matthew said. "Get to the high ground."

They raced around, and here the gold pieces
on the ground were still gold. The miasma was all flowing downhill
away from the building . . . toward the rest of the settlement.

"Sound the alarm," Parris said. Matthew ran
to the alarm box. There were a dozen of them scattered around the
settlement, placed there to give warning if the manticores ever
breached the barrier. It was much like a bell-box, only it was
attached to a large bell on top of the church. The increased weight
of a single ironfish bone was hardly enough to ring such a bell,
but it was enough to release a catch, which in turn released a much
larger weight, which fell, pulling the bell rope. The bell tolled,
its low tones resonating out over the colony.

At that moment, the Society building itself,
also made of diamond, shuddered and creaked like a ship at anchor
in a storm. The bottom of the south wall had transformed back into
dirt. Under the weight of the diamond on top of it, it was
crumbling away, and the whole structure was leaning. Finally, with
a deafening crack, the building toppled and crashed into the
growing pool of miasma. The south wall, now on the bottom,
instantly transformed into dirt and collapsed in a cloud of dust,
bringing the rest down after it.

Colonists began pouring into the street,
matchlocks in hand, thinking it was a manticore attack. When they
saw Matthew and Parris, they ran to join them. "Forget the guns,"
Matthew said. He quickly explained what was happening. Most of them
weren't natural philosophers and had only the barest appreciation
of quintessence, but they had lived on Horizon long enough to
accept the idea of an invisible smell that could destroy buildings.
The smell of death in London carried disease, after all. Why
shouldn't it carry destruction, too?

"We need to funnel it down to the river,"
Matthew said. "Keep it away from the buildings. Get the
shovels."

The others scrambled to help, and Matthew
raced back around the destruction. It was now possible to see the
miasma, if only a little. Throughout the colony, they had erected
shekinah flatworms in glass jars on poles to light the settlement
at night. Where the shekinah light hit the miasma, however, it
seemed to be swallowed up, showing where the miasma was by the
absence of light. It was like a barely perceptible shadow, only
visible at certain angles, flowing across the ground. And there was
a lot more of it than Matthew had realized.

He ran ahead of it and started shoveling,
trying to make a wedge of barricades to direct it into a chute. A
few men joined him, and he shouted instructions. They dug fast, and
threw up great piles of dirt, but the miasma came faster and higher
than they expected. It rushed over the walls and flowed around
them, sending them running. The two buildings on either side of
them, their foundations undermined, crashed toward each other. One
man was struck by a falling wedge of diamond wall, pinning him to
the ground, where the miasma quickly rolled over him, transforming
him into a crumbling statue of salt and sand.

"Back!" Matthew yelled. "Farther back!"

But it was too late. The miasma was
spreading, far beyond their ability to control it. They abandoned
their attempts and instead ran ahead of it, checking the buildings
for anyone left inside and circling back around to higher
ground.

Matthew spotted Blanca running into the small
building the colonists used to store common goods and tools. It was
one of the few original structures that had survived the
devastating quintessence fire of two years before, although its
diamond walls were melted thin in some places and its original
diamond roof had been replaced with a wooden one. Surely there was
no one in there to evacuate.

He ran in after her. The building was one
large room filled with odds and ends for general use: split boards
and cut stone, small mountains of scrap gold and silver, and a
smaller pile of copper. And, of course, the stores of mercury,
sulphur, and salt. These three were divided into shares and
restricted to one share per family, except by special permit from
the governor. Blanca was there, gathering up sacks of salt.

"This is all we have," she said. "We need to
save it."

Matthew shook his head. "We need to go. We'll
get more salt."

"There isn't any more salt. We need this if
we're going to survive."

She was right, of course, but so was he. They
didn't have time. "Take what you have, and let's go!"

"Not enough."

Frustrated, he joined her, throwing the bags
onto a old canvas sail they used to haul large quantities of
materials from place to place. If they could get the salt on it,
then between them, perhaps they could drag it out and up to safety.
The miasma, however, was too quick for them. Before they had half
of the sacks transferred, a spot of light near the door suddenly
darkened. He couldn't see how much there was, but he knew they
didn't have long.

"Quick," he said. "Up!"

Blanca could be as stubborn as Catherine, but
she recognized the urgency in his voice. He saw her bend as if to
leap, and jumped himself, making his body both light and
insubstantial, shooting right through the wooden roof as if it were
made of air, and out onto its peaked top. Blanca didn't join him.
He dipped his head back in and saw her, her face turned up with a
look of terror. Her legs wouldn't move.

Matthew jumped back down, landing on the pile
of salt, hoping it was high enough to keep him safe. He held a hand
out for Blanca. She grasped it, and he increased his own weight,
balancing her as she dragged herself toward him, barely able to
move her legs at all. They were heavy and stiff, and she could no
longer lighten them like the rest of her body. There was no way he
could leap clear while carrying her. Around the edges, near the
floor, the pile of salt began to spark and sizzle. The building
creaked and tilted as its foundation was undermined.

"Hurry," Matthew said. Blanca shuffled up
toward him, and as she did, she pulled her legs clear and regained
their use. "Now jump!"

They both leaped this time, clearing the roof
and landing on top. It was no problem for either of them to leap to
the ground from such a height, but they had no idea how much ground
the miasma covered. Near the shekinah lights, it was clearly
visible as a shadow along the ground where none should be. In the
rest of the settlement, however, it was invisible. They knew it was
safe to the north of the collapsed society building, but even with
the help of quintessence, they couldn't jump that far.

The building underneath them lurched and
tilted, nearly pitching them off the roof. Blanca shrieked and held
onto Matthew's arm for balance. They were out of options.

"The nearest diamond," Matthew said. "Let's
go."

The buildings nearby, although they had
collapsed, still had pieces of diamond wall jutting up from the
mounds of dirt. If it was still made of diamond, that meant it was
high enough that the miasma hadn't reached it, and if they could
leap that far, they could make it.

Holding hands, they jumped, the air rushing
by them, and landed on the nearest diamond. Blanca slipped and slid
toward the ground, but Matthew held her up. "Again," he said.

They leaped again, farther up the slope, to
another island. Finally, after three more similar leaps, like
crossing a river on exposed rocks, they made it back to where they
had started. Behind them, the storehouse collapsed like the others,
only this time, a rush of white flame engulfed the wreckage and
melted it down to nothing.

"The salt," Blanca said. "It's gone."

"Everything is gone," Matthew said. He shook
his head in disbelief, feeling a heavy stone settling in his chest.
Before this, his experiments had always brought good to the colony:
more food, more comfort, easier ways to accomplish work. He hadn't
meant to risk such destruction. He had only been trying to find
Catherine.

They watched the last of the settlement
crumble away.

CHAPTER 10

RAMOS kept trying the bell-box, but he got no
reply. Either it wasn't working anymore, or else the Horizon
colonists, realizing who he was, no longer wished to speak to him.
He could hardly believe that it had really happened. He had spoken
to someone on the other side of the world! He had only just gotten
used to the idea that they could make a bell ring a thousand miles
away; that was astonishing enough. Now his voice, his own voice,
had somehow been made to travel across that immense distance.

His mind spun, trying to invent plausible
theories for how it worked. There was nothing connecting his
bell-box to anything else. Nothing that could been seen or touched,
anyway. Just to prove it to himself, he lifted the box and waved
his hand under it, over it, and all around it. He felt nothing. Yet
somehow sound had traveled from Horizon to his little box.