key and the map, and it will guide you there if you let it. But once there…” His face softened, David couldn’t read the meaning of his expression, beyond a gentle sadness. “Be careful with the Engine, and all your dealings with it. Caution. Caution. In the ages since it was last engaged it has grown a little mad.”
“How does an engine grow mad?” David demanded. “It’s a machine.”
“First you make it smarter than anything living, then you let it destroy a world,” Cadell said. “Why I was driven mad enough and it knows more guilt than I ever did. It blames itself with the sort of precision that only a mechanism can possess.”
“And how do we deal with it?” David said.
“Ah, that’s the rub isn’t it. The most important thing.” Cadell shuddered, dark blood trickled from his ear, he touched it with a finger and brought it to his lips. “Oh dear, I really am quite a mess. Pity, there is so very much that you do not know. Truths and lies, but you will walk that thorny path alone. Just remember, the most important thing is… Ah, but I suspect you already know.”
David shook his head furiously.
“Take care, boy. I think you better wake now.” Cadell pointed to the map. He whispered into David’s ear.
“You’ll find the solution there. Oh, and my body, you will need to do something with it. Burning it would be best or… well… it could become… problematic. Now, to the problem at hand.”
He stabbed the pointer at the panoptic map. Three iron ships tracked towards the Roslyn Dawn.
David coughed, his breath wasn’t coming, an awful weight pressed on his chest. His head throbbed. Cadell was dead. Only he wasn’t, Cadell was in his blood like a sliver of ice or the slow ripple of a sustained shiver through his flesh.
What have you done, Mr Cadell, he thought. What have you gone and done?
Then the weight was gone, and he could move.
David’s limbs shook, his teeth chattered so fiercely that his jaw ached. Where Cadell had bitten him the wound had darkened but David knew it would soon start to heal.
With those memories came a different sort of knowledge. Cadell again, so much more of it was Cadell than him. If he wasn’t careful, it would push him out altogether.
David sat up. He could do with a nice shot of Carnival, just to clear his head. Kara and Margaret huddled over the control pod in argument or conversation, he couldn’t tell, though Margaret gripped a rifle in one hand.
They weren’t watching him. If only he had some Carnival.
The memory struck him and for the first time in a long time he forgot about Carnival altogether.
“They’re coming,” he said, almost shouting.
Margaret turned to him, startled. “You’re awake.” She put down her rifle and was beside his bunk in a couple of steps. She pushed him down easily. “You need to rest.”
“You don’t understand. They’re coming,” he snarled, far more savagely than he’d meant. Margaret took a step back from him. “Iron ships like the last one, only there’s three of them this time. We need to land.”
“What’s he talking about?” Kara Jade said. She didn’t look any better than he felt. Blood tracked her jaw line and her eyes shone too brightly. What had been going on since Cadell’s bite?
David rattled off co-ordinates. They just slipped from his lips, Kara Jade’s jaw dropped. “Bring us down there or we will die. All of us. Do you want the Roslyn Dawn to die?”
“What do you think?” Kara was already running to the controls.
“You’re just in shock,” Margaret said. “I’ve seen it before.” She didn’t sound certain.
You haven’t seen this before, David thought.
David sat up, this time Margaret let him. “I wish that was all it was.”
The Roslyn Dawn descended. He slid out of the cot and slipped into his clothes. His entire body was one big bruise. He looked over at the still form of Cadell.
“He did something to me,” David said.
“What?” Margaret demanded.
“Something he had to. Something horrible but I understand why, and it will save us.”
“You need to rest,” Margaret said.
David shook his head. “Yes I know, but I can’t, not now.”
“We’re down,” Kara Jade said a few moments later.
David was out the doorifice at once, dropping to the ground. Margaret followed. “Back in the Dawn,” he said. Margaret hesitated. “Trust me. Please.”
Margaret didn’t look happy, but she did what he asked, and David was thankful for that.
“As soon as you see those ships, you get out of here,” David shouted at Kara, she was peering at him through the doorifice.
“What about you?” Kara Jade demanded.
“Come back for me. If this succeeds, you’ll know.”
The moons were out. The Roslyn Dawn rose above him, a single flagellum brushed his face though he couldn’t tell whether it was in farewell or dismissal.
He looked about him. There was the hill, there was the slender river, almost identical to the one Cadell had used.
Now he could hear the iron ships: flying in tight formation, thundering through the air on their fingers of flame. And he could see them every time he closed his eyes. They would be here soon. He ran to the river, crashed through its shallows.
When he was up to his thighs in icy water, he waited, not sure what he was doing.
He blinked, the ships’ lights burned. They were almost here.
Now he felt it, the lode and beyond that a distant consciousness, weary, wintry and strangely familiar that almost at once became anything but distant.
The Engine of the World sighed.
No, it said. No.
Then we are all dead.
Some doors you shouldn’t open.
You’re right, David said. But I don’t have any choice. And neither do you.
Another sigh. This time, perhaps.
Something clicked, some space in his mind or his blood, or both. The Orbis tightened around his finger and he screamed with the agony of it.
The river froze.
Great rough pillars of ice swung into the sky, striking the ships as they came over the hill.
Their iron hulls darkened, then crumbled, and the ships corkscrewed, spewing smoke. The three ships became three fireballs. Shards of shrapnel flew towards him, and the river lifted like a great hand, and slapped them down as though they were nothing more irritating than flies.
David was struck, across the forearm, a deep gash.
He watched his blood spill. How much blood could he lose? The wound began to close and he marvelled at that.
You must be so proud. The Engine said, and David wasn’t sure who he was talking to.
I’m alive, Margaret and Kara are alive, that is all.
Disapproval, ponderous and deep crashed down upon him. And the door is opened. You’ve lessons to learn, the sort that drown you. The sort that snatch you from yourself. I do not think you will like it.
The Engine pulled away from David. The water warmed, marginally, and the ice melted, releasing him. David staggered to the shore, water steaming from his body. He dropped to the icy ground, grass shattering with the impact. What am I? What am I?
He drew his knees to his chest, teeth chattering, body shaking, and wept.
“What was that? What was that?” Kara Jade demanded.
Margaret wanted to slap her. “We need to get to David.”
“I know, and we will. Give me time. Give the Dawn time.”
The Roslyn Dawn descended, arcing back towards the hill. The three ships (her mother’s ships) little more than craters now, blazed beneath her, and near the fires and the river lay David.
