Skyfall (15 page)

‘We're all going to die.' This was just the sort of thing Janil would say purely for effect.

‘Yeah, of course we are.' Lari didn't try to hide his scepticism. He smirked to let his brother know he wasn't being fooled.

‘Listen to your brother, Larinan. This is no laughing matter.' ‘We're all going to die,' Janil repeated, ‘sometime in the next fifty years, perhaps less, because the skycities themselves are dying.'

He was serious. Lari's grin faded.

‘What?'

‘They're breaking down. The food, water, filtration and recyc systems. The power grids, the magnetic resonators, the dome governors, even the chemicals that cause the autotint to function. It's all slowly but inevitably grinding to a halt, and with it, so are we.'

‘And that's entropy?'

‘No.' Janil chuckled. ‘It's nothing to do with entropy. Not strictly speaking, anyway, but people have been misunderstanding that term for so long now that it seemed kind of funny to use it for this. Entropy is a measure of the dispersal of energy from areas of high concentration to low. But most people don't think of it that way. In the early 20th century some mathematicians messed around with the term and effectively turned it into a philosophical nightmare for the rest of history.'

‘I don't get it.'

‘It's simple, little brother. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing. And that includes the bonds that hold things together. We can fight against it, obstruct it as much as possible, but eventually energy wants release. You can't maintain a closed system forever, because the reality is that there's no such thing.'

To Lari, Janil still wasn't making any sense.

‘Let me try and explain,' their father said softly. ‘We've been aware for some time now that certain systems which sustain the skycities are becoming more and more susceptible to failure, but these systems have been diverse and the causes of their breakdowns apparently unrelated. It's only comparatively recently we've begun to suspect that in fact it's all linked; each failure is a symptom of a much larger phenomenon which has already accelerated well beyond our ability to control it.'

‘Why can't we control it?'

‘Because the universe doesn't work that way, Larinan.'

‘Here.' Janil fished into the emergency kit beside the pilot's chair, pulled out a ration of water and unsealed the cap. ‘Lesson one in entropy for dummies. Take this, keep your arm straight and hold it over the panel here.'

Lari did as he was told. Gripping the vial, he held it above the central control display. ‘What now?'

‘Just hold it.'

After a minute, Lari's arm began to ache. ‘What's the point of this?'

‘Arm hurting?'

‘You know it is.'

‘Tell me why.'

‘The vial is getting heavy.'

‘No. The water weighs exactly the same as it did two minutes ago when I handed it to you.'

‘Okay, then, my arm's getting tired.'

‘Exactly. That vial, held up in the air above the instrument panel, is loaded with potential energy – kinetic energy, in this case – and the universe wants to take that potential energy and realise it, disperse it. But of course at the moment it can't. Something's in the way.'

‘Me.'

‘Precisely. You're obstructing that energy from release. You're keeping it from falling. But you can't do it forever, can you?'

‘I don't see what this has to do with Port City.'

‘Everything and nothing, Larinan,' said his father.

Lari's arm was beginning to tremble.

‘Don't drop it!' Janil's voice became sharp. ‘Put it down if you have to, but don't drop it.'

With relief, Lari lowered the vial and Janil tossed him the cap.

‘Do you know what would have happened if you'd dropped that open bottle of water onto the control panel, copygen?'

‘No.'

‘Me neither. But I don't imagine it would be much fun if the processor system was shorted out while we're cruising along on autopilot, fifteen hundred metres above the ground and at two times the speed of sound.'

‘What's the point of all this?'

‘It's simple, copygen. Imagine that bottle is a skycity, the instrument panel the ground, and your arm the combined efforts of humankind to keep that city suspended in midair, with civilised society safely contained inside. It can't be done. Not forever, and when that potential energy is realised, the consequences are going to be nasty. Terminally nasty.'

Lari looked at his brother. The gleam in Janil's eyes was disconcerting.

He likes this sort of stuff,
Lari thought to himself.
He actually enjoys it.

‘Okay, but what if I built a plascrete or steel brace? Something stronger than my arm to support the bottle?'

‘Makes no difference. You might keep it up there longer, perhaps a lot longer, but eventually something's gotta give. You can't obstruct the universe forever.'

‘And that's entropy.'

‘That's what most people
think
is entropy. They're wrong, of course. Entropy is the measure of that energy dispersal, not the cause of it. It's symptoms and causes, Lari, and right now our society is showing a hell of a lot of symptoms and it's those that the people are looking at, not the causes.'

‘Why not?'

Janil shot him a nasty grin. ‘Entropy.'

‘What?'

‘Don't make this more confusing than it has to be, Janil.' Their father leaned forward again. ‘The point is, Larinan, that a lot of people, powerful people, don't
want
to admit that there's a larger problem here. It's a political and social nightmare.'

‘Why?'

‘Do you know what the Darklanders call us?'

‘No.'

‘Nightpeople. According to the history books, we were originally referred to as “t'outsiders”, then “skyfolk”, but sometime in the last seven hundred years it changed to “nightpeople”, and that's what we've been ever since. Why do you think that is?'

‘We only ever come at night.'

‘See, he is a genius after all,' Janil interjected.

‘And the reason for that?' his father prompted.

‘Exposure. We can't endure direct solar radiation without…'

Lari stopped as the enormity of it started sinking in.

‘You understand now, don't you? A thousand years ago, humankind – or part of it, anyway – sealed itself into domes and cut itself off from a world that was rapidly becoming too inhospitable for us to survive in. We moved up into the sky and disconnected ourselves from the rising sea levels and increasingly toxic soil. We isolated ourselves from what we thought was the threat of genetic pollution, filtered out the radiation in the light, adjusted the mix of gases in the air, and continued living just like we always had.'

‘But the planet didn't,' Janil said. ‘It kept evolving without us. The sun got harsher, the ground warmer, summers longer and winters shorter. And now the artificial world we built for ourselves is facing a catastrophic breakdown and we're no longer equipped to survive anywhere else.' He laughed, a bitter, ironic chuckle. ‘Funny, isn't it? A thousand years ago we thought we were sealing the subjects up in the Darklands to protect our gene pool, then we went and did exactly the same thing to ourselves.'

Lari shook his head, disbelieving. ‘But it can't be as bad as all that. People would know. People would do something.'

‘What people? The Prelate? Don't make me laugh, copygen. All the politicians care about is stability. They haven't worked out yet that there's no such thing.'

‘Janil is right, Larinan. This isn't new, this knowledge. Just highly restricted.'

‘But that doesn't make sense. If everyone knew about it, then people could—'

‘What?' Janil twisted in the pilot's seat. ‘Riot? Kill each other? Destroy DGAP? Take over the city? It wouldn't make any difference if they did, we'd still be dead. Just faster, that's all. People are stupid.'

‘So you're telling me there's no hope. Is that it? You're both just giving up?'

‘Until a couple of days ago, that would have been true.' His father touched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘But things have changed dramatically in the course of the last twelve shifts.'

‘So there is a way out?'

‘Perhaps. But it's a big perhaps.'

‘How?'

‘Actually, Larinan' – Dernan Mann's grip on his son's shoulder grew stronger – ‘that's where you come into it.'

Now that she knows it's there, she can't get away from it.

It tickles at the edges of her mind, pressing, cold and insistent, in on her.

Skyfire.

The pulsing energy becomes her constant companion.

It's there when she's walking across the white plain.

It's there when she wakes in the round room.

It's there when she's falling, especially when she's falling.

It's pure, passionless, so distant as to be little more than a spot in her thoughts.

But it's always there.

Sometimes she tries to pull it into herself, to draw it up and reach as she would with earthwarmth.

But whenever she does, the pain follows, the burning cold, the searing heat.

She feels as though it's watching her.

And waiting …

‘Seen the webs this morning?'

‘What are you doing here?' Kes hissed, with a glance back into the apartment to make certain nobody else had woken up. Of all the people who might have come banging on her door at this time of the morning, the last one she expected to see was the Underground guy from the ref.

‘This is important.' He pulled her into the dimly lit corridor.

‘You couldn't just com?'

‘Don't be silly. Have you seen the webs today?'

‘No. Why?'

‘Your boyfriend's making an appearance.'

‘Lari isn't my boyfriend.'

‘Whatever. It doesn't matter, anyway. His face is all over the webs and Ratz wants to know why.'

‘How am I supposed to know? I just woke up.'

‘Find out. Did you fix things with him yet?'

‘No. I was going to, but—'

‘Do it. Now.'

A little way down the corridor, a door opened and a middle-aged woman walked towards them. The Underground guy watched her with a cold, gimlet stare until she vanished through the doors of the creaky internal lift.

‘Make up with your boyfriend, find out why he said the things he did, if there's any truth to them, then get your pretty little backside down to the ref and fill me in.'

‘What's the rush? Lari gets strange sometimes. This could take a couple of days.'

‘We don't have a couple of days. Do it now.' The man propelled her towards her apartment door. ‘I'll be waiting.'

When she re-entered the apartment, her father was standing in the middle of the tiny living area, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

‘Who was that?'

‘Old Mrs Camplan. She accidently logged off-system again.'

‘Poor thing. You get her back on?'

‘You know me, Dad.'

‘That's my girl.' He grinned sleepily. ‘Hungry?'

‘No, thanks. Still too early for me. I'm going to check the webs.'

‘Okay. Caf?'

‘Thanks.'

While her dad busied himself getting the drink together, Kes logged onto the shared access terminal that served their whole family.

‘Anything interesting?' Her father, not wanting to wake the baby, kept his voice low.

‘Not that I can see, just the usual … Oh. Shi!'

‘What?'

Leaving the caf half-made, Kesra's father came and stood behind her.

‘Isn't that your friend?'

‘Yeah.'

They watched in silence. When the story finished, her father raised his eyebrows. ‘Well. That was … informative.'

‘What in the Sky was he thinking?'

‘Perhaps it's true.'

‘It can't be. He'd have told me. He tells me everything.'

‘Clearly not.' Her father returned to the tiny prep area. ‘You know what I've always said about upper-level kids, Kes.'

‘Yeah, Dad, I know. Lari's different, though.'

‘Sure looks that way. Here you go.' He placed a cup down beside her and took his own back towards the bedroom he and his wife shared with the Bean.

‘Lari, what possessed you?' Kes muttered.

She had to call him. No question. Sky! Even if the Underground weren't on her back she'd do it anyway. She owed him that much, especially after what she'd called him yesterday. She glanced at the time. It was still early, but he'd be better off if she warned him before someone else got to him. Like his father.

She punched Lari's access code into the terminal. He wasn't answering. She let it go. With a bit of luck he was still asleep.

The first time she'd met Larinan Mann had been her first day at the advanced school. They'd been in the same class, thrown together by fate, or so it had seemed at the time – the copygen and the mixie girl, a couple of pariahs trapped by circumstance in one of the city's most guarded upper-level strongholds. The advanced school was where the policy of ‘concentration of aptitude' found its strongest expression. For centuries the science and political branches of the city had been sending their children there from as young as three years of age, to be ‘properly inducted' into their family fields. At six, Kes had been a late starter, but that in itself wasn't exceptional.

The exceptional part was that she came from a mixed-use family and usually there was no way someone like Kes would have been allowed even to set foot outside the maglift hub at the advanced school.

Somehow, though, she'd been accepted.

When they got the com informing them, she'd thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to her – to their whole family. This was her chance to shine and pull her mum and dad out of their three-roomer and up into one of the glittering high domes, into the rarified air at the very top of the city.

It hadn't happened that way, of course. On her first morning, before school had even started, the other kids were onto her.

‘What are you doing here, mixie?'

‘Come to make my lunch, mixie?'

‘You can't sit here. This is for DGAP kids only.'

The only one who hadn't joined in was Larinan – the copygen. She'd spotted him on the other side of the school common, sitting on his own, and she threaded her way towards him, ignoring the jeers of the other kids when they realised where she was headed.

‘Hey, check it out! Mixie's got a boyf! She's going out with sister.'

Standing over him, Kes thought she'd never seen anyone look so miserable in her whole life.

‘Hey. I'm Kes.'

He'd looked up at her, an odd, disconcerted expression on his face. She thought he was going to ignore her or poke fun like the others, but then he'd nodded.

‘I know. The teachers told us you were coming. They said we weren't to talk to you.'

‘Oh.'

For a moment Kes felt like the entire school dome was falling around her. She blinked back furious tears, determined not to give any of them the satisfaction. Then the boy clambered awkwardly to his feet.

‘I don't care, though. The teachers here are shi. So are the kids. I'm Lari.'

The jeering and taunts of the other kids faded into the background and the thudding in her ears subsided.

‘Hi, Lari,' she said with a grin.