Axis

spiky, dangerous-looking things, spears of some brittle green substance, incomplete, of course, obviously not sustainable, but still motile… still alive, if you accept that description.'

'And they had surrounded him?' Mrs. Rebka asked, her voice gentler now.

'Or they had grown up around him while he slept, or he had deliberately gone to them. Some of them had… pierced him.' She touched her ribs, her abdomen, to show them where.

'Killed him?'

'He was still conscious when we found him.'

* * * * *

Sulean had torn herself away from Lochis and run thoughtlessly toward Esh, who was impaled on the picket of alien growths. She ignored the frightened voices calling her back.

Because this was her fault. She should never have helped Esh escape the Station. As unhappy as he had been there, he had at least been safe. Now something dreadful had overtaken him.

She felt no particular fear of the Ab-ashken growths, peculiar as they were. They had grown around the boy's body like a ring of sharpened fenceposts. She could smell them, although she was barely aware of it—a sharply chemical smell, sulfurous and rank. The growths were not healthy; they were mazed with cracks and fissures and in places blackened with something like rot. Their stalks shifted slightly when she moved among them, as if they were aware of her presence. And maybe they were.

They were certainly aware of Esh. Several of the tallest growths had arched into half-circles and pierced the boy with their sharpened tips. They had penetrated his chest and abdomen in three places, leaving little circles of dry blood on his clothing. Sulean couldn't tell at first whether he was dead or, somehow, still alive.

Then he opened his eyes and looked at her and—impossibly—smiled.

'Sulean,' he said. 'I found it.'

Then he closed his eyes for the last time.

* * * * *

The silence in the common room was interrupted by a timid knock.

There was only one person at the commune who hadn't attended this meeting. Mrs. Rebka hurried to open the door.

Isaac stood outside, still wearing his night clothes, the knees of his pajamas soiled, his hands dirty, his expression somber.

'Someone's coming,' he said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The door to Brian Gately's office opened just as a news summary popped up on his desktop. The visitor was the chubby DGS man named Weil. The press release was something about the recent ashfall.

Weil had left his sullen friend Sigmund elsewhere, and he was grinning—though his cheerfulness, under the circumstances, struck Brian as vaguely obscene.

'You forwarded this?' Brian asked, gesturing at the release.

'Read it. I'll wait.'

Brian tried to focus on the document, but his mind's eye insisted on reviewing the photograph Pieter Kirchberg had sent. The corpse of Tomas Ginn on a rocky beach, much worse for wear. He wondered whether Weil had seen the photo. Or ordered the killing.

He was tempted to ask. He dared not. He blinked and read the press service release.

PORT MAGELLAN / REUTERS.ET: Scientists at the Mt. Mahdi Observatory today made the startling announcement that the recent Equatorian 'ashfall,' which affected the eastern coast and desert inland of that continent, was 'not entirely inert.'

The ashes and the microscopic structures the ash contained, believed to be the degraded remnants of Hypothetical structures from the outer reaches of the local solar system, have apparently shown signs of life.

In a joint press conference held today at the Observatory, representatives of the American University, the United Nations Geophysical Survey, and the Provisional Government displayed photographs and samples of 'incompletely self-replicating and self-assembling quasi-organic objects' recovered from the western extremes of the dry inland basin that stretches from the coastal mountains to the western sea.

These objects, ranging from a pea-sized hollow sphere to an assembly of what appeared to be tubes and wires as large as a man's head, were said to be unstable in a planetary environment and hence posed no threat to human life.

'The 'space-plague' scenario is a non-starter,' senior astronomer Scott Cleland said. 'The infalling material was ancient and probably already corrupted by wear and tear before it entered the atmosphere. The vast majority of it was sterilized by a violent passage that left only a few nano-scale elements intact. A very few of these retained enough molecular integrity to re-initiate the process of growth. But they were designed to flourish in the extreme cold and vacuum of deep space. In a hot, oxygen-rich desert they simply can't survive for long.'

Asked whether any of these structures remained active today, Dr. Cleland said, 'None that we've sampled. By far the greatest number of active clusters occurred deep in the Rub al-Khali,' the oil-rich far western desert. 'Residents of the coastal cities are unlikely to find alien plants in their gardens.'

Because harmful effects cannot be entirely ruled out, however, a loose quarantine has been established between the oil concessions and the western coast of Equatoria. This formidable terrain has attracted no substantial settlements, although tourists occasionally visit the canyonlands and the oil consortia maintain a constant presence. 'Travel is being monitored and alerts have been issued,' said Paul Nissom of the Provisional Government's Territorial Authority. 'We want to keep out the casually curious and facilitate the work of the researchers who need to study and understand this important phenomenon.'

There were a couple of further paragraphs with trivial details and contact numbers, but Brian figured he had the gist. He gave Weil a well-what-about-it look.

'Works out nicely for us,' Weil said.

'What are you talking about?'

'Ordinarily the Provisional Government isn't much more than a harassed nanny. Since the ashfall, and especially this weird shit out west, they finally started paying attention to who goes where. Monitoring air traffic, especially.'

There were more private planes per capita in Equatoria than anywhere back on Earth, most of them small craft, and an equally large number of casual airstrips. For years the traffic had been unregulated, ferrying passengers between bush communities or oil geologists to the desert.

'The bad news,' Weil continued, 'is that Turk Findley made it to his plane, along with Lise Adams and an unidentified third party. They flew out last night.'

Brian felt an expanding hollowness in his chest. Some of it was jealousy. Some of it was fear for Lise, who was digging herself into deeper trouble by the hour.

'The good news,' Weil said, his smile broadening, 'is that we know where they went. And we're going there. And we want you to come with us.'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Turk had expected to land his aircraft at a familiar strip a couple of miles outside of Kubelick's Grave, west of the foothills on the highway to the oil allotments. His plane might be confiscated if Mike Arundji had called ahead and was prepared to press charges. But that was probably inevitable anyway.

Diane surprised him, as the plane began the long glide down the western slopes of the divide toward the desert, by suggesting a different destination. 'Do you remember where you took Sulean Moi?'

'More or less.'

'Take us there, please.'