The Day of the Nefilim (35 page)

“You can see all this happening?” Bark asked the pile of mouths.

“To an extent. I can see and feel that the Stream is being attacked, and I can see the places where the grid is in contact with it. They are very different in nature, you see. I can’t see into the Nefilim grid, though. It’s not part of my domain. Are you hungry? Remedios will get you something to eat.”

“Later perhaps, thank you. Can’t you do anything about this?”

“There’s nothing I can do myself, but I can help
you
do something. As I said, I’m part of the Stream. It’s possible for you to enter it by using me as a gateway. For a heap of body parts, you know, I’ve got my uses.”

“We wouldn’t doubt that,” said Sahrin. “How do we do it?”

“Oh, it’s easy. We just have to join up a little. It’s no big deal. I think our young cloven-hoofed friend here knows the score. It’s much the same as when you were inside the ship’s mind, Pig.”

“You do get around, don’t you,” said Pig.

“And we’d be able to change things?” asked Geoca.

“I wouldn’t have a clue. But you’d have a much better chance than me, I can tell you that much.”

“And what’s to stop us from getting caught up in the Nefilim grid? If it’s as strong as you say?” Sahrin asked.

“Oh, it is, believe me. It’s causing a lot of trouble, and the humans are making the most of it. But to answer your question, there’s nothing to stop you from being caught there, apart from the fact that if I sense that you’re in trouble, I’ll try to bring you out. That’s about as far as travel insurance goes, I’m afraid. I can’t make any promises.”

“I don’t know,” said Bark. “It sounds risky.”

“Well, I haven’t tried to hide the fact. But it could be important.”

“I’ll do it,” said Geoca. “I want to see what the Stream is like. We’ve done so much for it, but we know nothing about it.”

“Me too,” said Sahrin. “Geoca shouldn’t go in on his own.”

“But you’re injured,” said Pig.

“Tell me about it,” Sahrin answered. “It’s giving me the shits.”

“Your injuries won’t affect you while you’re in the Stream,” said the pile of mouths. “It’s a mind trip. In fact, while you’re in there, I can do a bit of repair work, if you like.”

“Sold,” said Sahrin.

“But I’m afraid that I haven’t told you the full story.” The creature sounded more cautious now. “The problem with the grid isn’t the only recent development.”

Bark looked at the ceiling. “That would be too much to ask, wouldn’t it.”

“True. A few days ago, a Nefilim invasion fleet entered the Earth’s atmosphere.”

No one said anything, so the mutant continued.

“They’ve made up for the disaster of their previous attempt. They succeeded in getting past the satellites. This was apparently a surprise to the government, who were distracted with domestic matters, to their detriment as it turns out. The Nefilim ships have attacked many cities, and the fighting is fierce. Fortunately, though, there’s nothing in this area that they want, and I doubt that we’ll see them down here, for some time at least.”

“I’ll go as well,” said the blue woman, without offering a reason.

“The war makes this attempt to help the Stream more urgent,” said the pile. “You see, both sides are using the grid as their power source. If it fails, their war will suffer. They won’t have anything to fight with.”

‘Then I want to go as well,’
thought Anak.
‘We have to do it before they wreck everything.’

It was agreed.

A few minutes later, they were ready. The four of them sat around the mutant with their backs to it. When it told them to, they leaned back, and its surface opened up beneath each reclining body. As they sank into it, the mutant’s flesh wrapped itself around them like a placenta, a thin layer of translucent skin growing over them so that soon they looked like nothing so much as pupae inside their cocoons.

* * *

It was shining, filled with the pure light that stars produce. They were floating in sparkling blue and white waves that washed through them and over them, carrying them along. They knew who they were, but their physical bodies were gone. Their minds had taken new forms.

Geoca felt his miniature selves merge into him. His separation from them disappeared, their voices became his, and his theirs. He saw his own mind, clear and radiant, and he saw his thoughts clearly, as if each one had its own existence.
‘This is how it is meant to be,’
he thought to himself, and then for good measure agreed with himself.

They saw why it was called the Stream. It was warm, suffused with a soft bubbling energy that made them want to bathe in it forever. It was an intricate fabric of channels and pathways, and their minds flowed out into the fine tendrils that spread out into the earth like the roots of a plant.

It was there that they saw that the Stream was in trouble. They saw it being attacked, and as they dissolved more thoroughly into it, they felt its pain. They saw that the Stream was nowhere near the size it should be; it was being torn apart at its edges, eaten alive by something totally alien to it.

Something floated past them. They felt its awareness, felt it observing them. It hesitated for a moment, then slowly moved away. It thoughts were different; none of them understood it.

‘
What was that?’
someone asked.

‘
An elemental,’
answered the blue woman.
‘You might call it a nature spirit. There are many of them, many different kinds. They love being in the Stream. They will use it to reinvigorate the planet, if they get a chance.’

‘
Then we’ll just have to give them the chance, won’t we,’
thought Sahrin.

‘
Should we see where the damage is being done?’
thought Anak.

‘Yes.’
Sahrin was feeling better. Here, her pain was gone.
‘Where is the grid?’

‘
All around us. Come with me.’

The blue woman led them to a place where the Stream was heavily disturbed by turbulence. It was writhing around, seeking escape from its pain. The grid was visible beyond the divide that separated it from the Stream. It was a churning mass of darkness, creeping forward, eating into the Stream like acid. As pieces were eaten away, they were thrown back into the grid and carried away.

‘
This is how it is happening, then. Look at that!’

‘We can’t do much from here. Can we get through?’

‘I say yes. Let’s do it.’

‘But we don’t even know whether we’ll survive in the grid, let alone be able to enter it. We might just be foreign bodies to it. It could reject us. It might just chew us up, like it’s doing to the Stream.’

‘I doubt that it will reject us outright,’
thought Anak.
‘Remember the method that’s used to power it.’

‘OK, I’m remembering it. What if we end up in the same boat?’

‘We’ve come this far…’

They pushed against the grid. There was no resistance at all; it was as though it wanted them. As they crossed the threshold, something pulled at them, as though it would have liked to dismember them, but it didn’t have the strength.

Suddenly, they were inside. It was different here. Where the Stream had been full of light, here everything was underpinned by a static that hissed relentlessly.

A flood of tiny shards of artificial light swept around them in a blizzard, stinging them like pieces of glass. It felt strong, but it was a harsh strength, a composite of other things that had been pulled apart and reassembled in new combinations. The grid was a kaleidoscope on the verge of disintegration, continually fragmenting and being forced back into place.

They looked different here. The glowing bodies they had possessed in the Stream were gone; their physical bodies had been partially remade, flickering as if they had been created from the static itself. They looked like holograms that hadn’t been focused properly. Their minds were closed off again. When they spoke, it was almost with their physical voices.

“It hurts…”

“It wants to cut us…”

“Yes, it hurts!” It felt as though it wanted to flay them alive with its countless tiny needles.

“Wait,” said the blue woman. Something here had changed her blue coloring to a bright, burning red. She put her hands on them, one by one, and the pain stopped.

“It can’t hurt you now. It’s not that strong, it just needs balancing. It feels worse than it is.” She withdrew from them, but the healing she had given them remained, protecting them.

“I don’t like it. Look at it, it’s ugly.”

From here, they had a new view of the effect it was having on the Stream. Shafts of darkness plunged into the Stream and spread out, like the branches of a tree. Once inside it, they started twisting and turning, tearing the Stream’s body apart and throwing pieces of it back into the grid. When that was done, the static moved in to fill the empty space that was left.

“It’s awful.”

“It is. Let’s see what’s going on.”

The grid was constructed of broad, long corridors, inter-secting at right angles. On top of it was superimposed another finer grid of smaller pathways that divided the main squares into smaller ones.

“I know where we need to go,” said the blue woman.

“Where?”

“To the control points,” she replied, “where it began. There are four of them.”

“I know how to find them,” said Anak. “I know this system. There will be one near here.”

He led them to one of the main corridors. They paused at the intersection, looking at the torrent as it roared past them like an endless horizontal waterfall. They leapt into it, and it picked them up, sweeping them along. It was much faster than the Stream. After a while, Sahrin noticed that the grid was empty. “There are none of the elementals here, are there?” she yelled above the noise.

“Of course not,” answered the blue woman. “Would anything live here by choice?”

“We’re almost there,” said Anak. “Soon you’ll see the only life form that the grid is home to.”

Something had appeared ahead of them. It appeared first as a distant glow, like daylight at the end of a tunnel. As they approached it, they saw a gigantic mass. It looked like a huge ganglion of nerve tissue, some cell that had grown out of control and become a tumor.

The current entered the cavern that surrounded the object. It was suspended in the center of the space, held in place by thin tendrils that grew out of it like tentacles. The force of the flow diminished, leaving them floating in front of it.

“Jesus! Is that thing meant to be here?”

“Of course,” said Anak. “It creates the power that keeps the grid going. It is the gateway – the contact between the physical world and the grid.”

It was beating slowly, like a heart, as the currents flowed in and out of it. There was sound coming from it, some kind of voice. As they got closer, and moved in among the outer branches, they realized that it wasn’t one voice, but a cacophony of voices. There was whimpering, and moaning and screaming. It was a choir of pain.

“Where’s that coming from?” asked Sahrin.

“You’ll soon see,” Anak replied. “I thought it might be like this.”

They were approaching the thing’s center. The branches had become thicker, and attached to them were objects that looked like air sacs in ribbons of seaweed. They stopped in front of one of the pods. Something was trapped inside it.

“What is it?”

The thing in the pod moved, straining against its imprisonment. A face turned towards them.

“This is what happens to the grid’s power source,” said Anak. “Their life energy is drained from them, until finally they become empty husks. Then they are replaced.”

They looked around. There were scores of the cocoons scattered around them.

“If we can get them out, the grid will lose its power,” said Sahrin. “Does that sound right?” She reached out and started pulling at the pod. The material came away in sticky strips.

Anak followed Sahrin’s example. It came away easily, falling from the body in large clumps. As they threw it aside, it was carried away by the current, disappearing into the distance.

It was a boy, probably just a teenager. As they pulled him out, his eyes opened. His mouth opened and closed as though he was trying to say something, but no sound came. He looked back and forth in confusion at the strange apparitions floating around him. They asked him who he was, but there was no answer, just the blank questioning look in the eyes. He began moaning.

“He’s not all there.”

“Literally. The grid has been eating him alive.”

“First, we should free them all,” said the blue woman. “Then we take them to the Stream. It’s this place that is hurting them. In the Stream, their pain will cease.”

They set to work, moving among the closest arms of the ganglion and freeing all the prisoners they found. Then they herded them like sheep along the current, until they reached a point where the grid and the Stream were touching.

“Here you are,” they said, and pushed them through, one at a time, delivering them into the Stream like midwives delivering babies. It was an easy birth. The grid seemed unaware that it was losing something, and allowed them to pass through easily. Sahrin and Geoca went through with them, and watched as the tortured bodies transformed into glowing spheres of light.

‘
I think they’ll like it here,’
thought Geoca.
‘How do you feel?’ he asked one of them. ‘Are you all right?’

There was no answer, but Geoca felt a wave of happiness flowing from it. It reminded him of a dog wagging its tail.

‘
They may have been people once,’
thought Sahrin,
‘but they’re something different now.’

‘They seem simple,’
thought Geoca, watching them drift away.
‘But they’re happy. Let’s go back.’

They went back into the grid, where the blue woman and Anak were waiting for them. They went back to the ganglion and searched thoroughly, freeing the rest, taking them to the Stream and releasing them.