in every direction, tangling high above the streets and choking the narrow roads. One particularly thin and elegant tower standing almost directly before Herb seemed to have been a favorite target. It was so wrapped around with creepers that it looked as if it had been strangled and was now being dragged to the ground.
And through it all, the yellow-and-black-striped metal bees hummed back and forth.
“Those yellow pod things. What are they doing?” asked Herb.
“I don’t know,” said Johnston. “They’re too big to be just observation pods. There must be some pretty powerful equipment stuck inside them. Maybe we’ll find out up there. Come on.”
The journey into space took longer than Herb might have guessed: Johnston couldn’t seem to jump them more than a couple of floors at a time.
“There’s no clear line of sight up to the top,” he explained, as he and Herb stood several thousand meters up the building, frustrated again at how few floors they had jumped.
Their journey became one of flickering movement as their consciousness appeared on one floor just long enough for Johnston to find a path to the next. Herb watched the Necropolis recede below them as they slowly climbed to the stars, the elongated towers of the city falling away as the pair of them rose to meet the layers of spaceships that hung above.
The outer limits of the Necropolis began to resolve themselves. The city appeared to have spread itself over a considerable part of the planet’s surface before the ongoing decay in the integrity of the reproductive machines finally set in. The bounds of the Necropolis were ragged, the towers out there having stretched themselves too high before collapsing under their own weight. The city didn’t so much come to an end as fade into the surrounding countryside. Herb shivered and wondered what it would be like to wander through those forsaken lands.
Johnston was his only unmoving point of reference. He stood next to Herb, his face set in quiet concentration as they traveled upwards. Behind him the room appeared to flicker: sometimes it grew larger, sometimes smaller. Occasionally the windows vanished, cracked and blown out into the thinning air. At one point they traveled in darkness for a good five minutes, and Herb guessed that they had reached the limit of the space intended to be occupied by humans, but then the habitable rooms resumed, this time much larger and with a faint air of half- formed opulence around them. It was a shame that the Necropolis had failed, reflected Herb, then he thought about what Johnston had hinted at earlier. There must be hundreds of failed cities like this, scattered throughout the Enemy Domain. How many cities had been built successfully?
Not for the first time, Herb shivered at the thought of what he had agreed to fight.
They had risen so high Herb could now make out the curve of the planet. They were approaching the first layer of spaceships, spread out above them like checkers on a board, vanishing into the distance in all directions, silver-grey and almost disk-shaped except for a love-heart indentation. They rose through the first layer and continued, past a second and a third, climbing into the night.
The flickering movement suddenly stopped.
“I need a rest,” Johnston muttered. He removed his hat and took a white handkerchief from his breast pocket. He mopped his forehead with it and then carefully replaced his hat, tilting it at a jaunty angle. Herb wandered to the window for a better view of his surroundings. Looking down through the crystal lattice of spaceships, he could see the ball of the planet, far below. He felt a wave of dizziness as he realized that if he fell out of the window now, he would probably miss the planet as he went down. The thought was ridiculous.
Johnston was refolding his handkerchief. “We can’t go on any further by this route,” he said. “We’re now approaching the end point of the elevator; beyond here everything was constructed from perfectly functioning VNM stock. It had to be, otherwise it wouldn’t have held together.”
He gave a deep sigh and pushed the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Whew. I’m rather hungry. It’s amazing what conditioned responses can do to you. Anyway. We’re going to have to make a jump into the unknown. I’m guessing that the end of the elevator is not that far above us. It will probably be in geosynchronous orbit with the base. I’m hoping that a docking station was completed, possibly even using the same VNM that later seeded the planet below. There must be something there that could host us.”
“And if there isn’t?” asked Herb.
“Then we’ll never know about it. Our consciousness will just fade from here, and the Herb and Robert back home will never know what we have learned.”
“Oh.”
“Not to worry. I beamed our consciousnesses to other points in the Enemy Domain, too. There’s another pair of us in the Necropolis. One set should get back at least.”
Herb frowned. “It will still be like dying to us, though, surely?”
“Ah. Don’t worry about that. Are you ready?”
Herb gripped Johnston by the sleeve.
“Hang on. Let’s talk this over.”
“No time. Let’s go.”
They jumped…
eva 2: 2051
High above Eva, the lime leaves fluttered gently against the deep blue of the afternoon sky. Flickering pale green and yellow hearts formed a vaulted ceiling over the quiet cathedral-like space between the dark trunks. The air was rich with the smell of soil and summer rain; it insinuated its way into Eva’s body, filling her with its heady presence. She had kicked off her shoes to walk around the clearing, feeling the darkness of the earth between her toes. Eva, held apart from it for so long in the grey headache of South Street, was reconnecting with life.
A voice whispered: “Eva.”
She started and twisted around, trying to see who had spoken. The voice had sounded in her ear, but there was no one there. The space between the trees was a vessel filled with woodland silence, a silence that was now leaking away.
Eva could see Alison, Katie, and Nicolas approaching across the overgrown green lawn that lapped the treeline. They were obviously looking for her. Nicolas spotted Eva first and pointed her out to the others. The three came crashing into her retreat.
“Hello, Eva, I thought we’d find you here.” Alison was on a high, every word packed with a jangling, desperate energy. Katie gave a nervous twitch and quickly turned her head in the other direction. Nicolas stared at her breasts.
“Hello, Eva,” he said. “We’re going to sneak into Pontybodkyn. Are you coming?”
“I can’t. I’ve got a counseling session in an hour.” Eva was glad for the excuse not to go, but Alison wasn’t going to be deflected so easily.
“Skip it,” she said, too loudly, snapping her fingers dismissively. “No one will care. The staff will be pleased to get an extra half-hour’s break.”
“No. I want to go.”
Nicolas directed a knowing smile at her breasts.
“You’ve only been here two weeks, haven’t you? You’ll soon find out. Nobody really cares about counseling here. The staff only do it because it’s their job; we only go because it gives us someone to talk to.”
“Well, I’d like to talk to someone.”
“Come to Pontybodkyn and talk with us. At least we won’t be spending all afternoon trying to convince you there’s something wrong with you.”
Eva ran a hand through her grey hair, tucking it behind her ears. She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “There is something wrong with me. That’s why I’m here.”
“Ah,” said Alison, smiling slightly hysterically. “But where you’re going wrong is expecting them to make you better.” She gave an exaggerated sigh and spun around on her heels. The shafts of sunlight flickered over her body. “Oh, this is boring! Come on, Nicolas; come on, Katie. Leave her. We don’t want little miss goody two shoes spoiling our trip.”
