From heat to cold, Shale was fury. And we are the first to know that. What a curious thing that is. And what a storm that change brought about, three years and only now is it ending. I write this in the anticipation of a spring. Forgive me my excitement. I never expected to live to see it, and yet I, and yet we, have.
THE UNDERGROUND
David's new room was small, far smaller than the one he had had in his father’s house, or even the room at the Habitual Fool. But it was his, and somehow, unlike the others, it did not feel like a cage. He'd already managed to find a few books he hadn't read and these were piled up, all wonderful potential, next to his bed.
One day, David knew he would sit down and write his own story. It would be a rough-and-ready work, that writing, for he did not possess the finer points of art and history, but it might help the pain. That was the worst thing of all, the pain of what he had done and the guilt that came from wanting it gone. He'd destroyed a world: he didn't deserve to lose the way it had marked him.
He’d worked all day, helping Medicine in the infirmary. It was little more than getting things when Medicine demanded them, but it was good work, and the sort that meant you met a lot of people. David was never going to be a doctor, but it was a start at building something. And, as they worked, he could talk to Medicine Paul. And they had. Catching up on each other's lives, both adjusting to just how much the other had changed in just a few months. With Medicine, Veronica, Margaret and Kara, it was like having a family again. Though that was only the beginning. He had a whole people to care for, and to protect.
He crawled into bed, and slept. And one last time he dreamed a dream that wasn't.
David knew this place.
Cadell was there, or the shadow of Cadell.
The panoptic map was dark, though David could see clouds swirling across the map's surface, wiping it clean. There was nothing to see here any more. No rain clouds over Mirrlees, no Mirrlees at all, just that scouring whiteness.
“You did good, Mr Milde,” Cadell said, distracting him from the map. “Better than I could have expected.”
“You lied to me,” David said.
“Surely you're used to that.” Cadell patted him on the back. “Would you have done it if I hadn't?” His face split with something that might have passed as a smile. David could see that he didn't care, not really.
“I might have questioned it more deeply,” David said, hearing the lie before it came from his mouth, then watching the words tumble down into the sky, the vowels in white, the consonants red and green — it was a dream, after all. “I might have found another way.”
Cadell shook his head. “The Roil doesn't negotiate.” He looked at his pocket watch. “And it will come back. And, worse than that, the cities will be reborn, reseeded, the people there risen whole from the earth with new- sprung memories.
“In a few years when the snows recede, you will find a new Mayor Stade. A new Council, all with memories and histories leading up to the Roil. The Engine will have edited those bits out. There will be many puzzles for you to solve, and histories for you to unpick, and I am sorry that I cannot be there with you. Except, of course, I will be, only I won't know you, and I will be in a cage with the other Old Men.
“Remember, once, how I told you how you would never understand the things that I had seen and done, that I would rather that you didn't. I meant that. Not just because it put me in a bad light, but because of what it would do to you. And I was right. Now, I think it is time that we said our farewells, don't you?” He started folding up papers, turning down switches with his long pallid fingers, so that the light in the panoptic map room dimmed even further.
David shoved his hands in his pockets. “If you want forgiveness, I can't give it to you.”
Cadell laughed, as though that might just be the biggest joke in the world; he wiped at his eyes, then looked at David with a genuine fondness.
“You and me share that, David. Regardless of how we have come to that sharing.” Cadell stretched and his bones cracked. The Old Man winced. “Neither of us expects to be forgiven. The universe continues regardless, it's a big old thing, the universe, and it doesn't give a damn.” He yawned, and started for the door.
“When you slept,” David said, his voice stopping Cadell as he reached for the door handle, “there was always a tear, running down your cheek. Why were you crying?”
“Why was I crying?” Cadell laughed again, softly, his eyes gentle, though they still possessed a terrible hardness. He dropped his hand from the door. “That song, the one I had you hum when I was dying, the one I hummed back at you: 'The Synergist's Treason' it was called.”
“Yes,” David said. “I remember that.”
Cadell patted David on the arm. “I lied when I told you I heard it in my childhood.” He smiled that smug smile. “I wrote that song, it was vanity — nothing more — that had me demand that you sing it to me. It is the memory of my life bound in music. Dear boy, after the things I've done, and not just once, wouldn't you cry?”
David woke, his face wet. It was dark; the lights outside had been dimmed in turn with the diurnal sequence. He lifted his watch to his face and the radium hands blurred into view. Three o’clock. He pulled his arm away, and it was as if the watch had never existed, he could be staring into the heart of the Engine's cage again. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could feel the ground trembling, another storm assailing the mountain perhaps, or heavy machinery — despite the dimmed lights, the Underground never really stopped, it was a mechanism almost as complex as the Engine itself.
“It's over,” he said softly, his face aching with the movement. There were drugs he could take, to deal with the pain, but David refused them. He was done with hiding from the pain.
“All done,” he said into the dark.
But, of course, it wasn't.
Something cold pressed against his side, he reached down, and found the Orbis, its edges rough and already flaking. He rubbed the finger that had borne it, and there was nothing to show the ring had ever been there. His thoughts, too, were less crowded, no longer wedded to the Engine of the World and its Mechanical Winter. The sadness that welled up in him was a surprise. Part of him had grown used to bearing all those memories, and now they were gone, it didn't quite know what to do. He'd become smaller, no need to contain Cadell anymore. But that didn’t mean his ambitions had shrunk.
He put the ring on his bedside table. Perhaps Medicine or Buchan would like to study it, this last vestige of the Old Man. One thing he knew for certain, he would never wear the Orbis again.
He stared into the dark a while and, in the dark, he fell again to sleep.
It turned out he had little choice regarding the Orbis. He woke to find that all that was left of it was a circlet of dust.
A universe reduced to nothing.
David stood with Kara and Margaret.
He touched his jaw with a gloved hand, and pressed at the ache. Kara squeezed his other hand.
“I can feel her out there,” she said, and David squeezed her hand back.
“Are you sure?”
Kara gave him such a dirty look that it was hard not to smile, even with his aching jaw. “I’m a pilot, I know when an Aerokin is coming.”
Medicine was already walking out into the snow, his footsteps tracking towards to the landing fields. A cold wind whipped his coat around his shoulders like an Endym's wings. David's coat was buttoned to his neck. The last of his meagre tolerance for the cold had gone with the ring.
The first Aerokin was coming.
Almost everyone that was not on duty was there to see its arrival. Margaret had even dragged herself from her work in the gardens, her hair tied back on her head, skin almost as pale as the snow. Her coat managed to stay tight around her, barely moving with the wind, as though she had fostered an iron discipline even in her clothes.
