together. Nothing much had changed: the serjeants were still standing motionless all around. Occasionally, a circular patch of air high above them would inflate with white light and pulse briefly before extinguishing. If she closed her eyes, she could sense the flow of energistic power into the zone they designated: an intense focal point that was attempting to tear a gap in the fabric of this realm. The pattern which they applied the energy changed subtly every time, but the result was always the same: dissipation. This realm’s reality remained stubbornly intact.
Choma looked over from where he was examining Tina’s lower spine. “I would rather you did not exert yourself for a while longer,” he said to Stephanie. “You did lose a lot of blood.”
“Just like me,” Tina said. It was little more than a whisper. Her arm lifted a couple of inches off the ground, hand feeling round through the air.
Stephanie touched her, and they twined fingers. Tina’s skin was alarmingly cold.
“Yes, I ought to take things easy, I suppose,” Stephanie said. “We won’t get better if we stress ourselves.”
Tina smiled and closed her eyes, a contented hum stealing away from her lips. “We are getting better, aren’t we.”
“That’s right.” Stephanie kept her voice level, hoping the discipline would also keep her thoughts from fluttering. “Us girls together.”
“Just like always. Everybody’s been so kind, even Cochrane.”
“He wants you back on your feet, so he can carry on trying to get you on your back again.”
Tina grinned, then slowly dropped back into a semi-slumber.
Stephanie raised herself onto her elbows, imagining the sleeping bag fluffing up into a large pillow. The fabric rose up to support her spine. Her friends were all there, watching her with kind or mildly embarrassed expressions. But all of them were concerned. “I’m such an idiot,” she said bitterly to them. “I should never have gone back to Ketton.”
“No way!” Cochrane boomed.
McPhee spat in the direction of the ruined town. “We did the right thing, the human thing.”
“It’s not you who is to blame,” Rana said primly. “That woman is utterly deranged.”
“Nobody knew that more than me,” Stephanie said. “We should have taken some elementary precautions at least. She could have shot all of us.”
“If showing compassion and trust is a flaw, then I’m proud to say I share it with you,” Franklin said.
“I should have guarded myself,” Stephanie said, almost to herself. “It was stupid. A bullet would never have done any damage before; we were careful back on Ombey. I just thought we would all pull together now we’re in the same predicament.”
“That was a big mistake.” Moyo patted her hand warmly. “First you’ve made since we met, so I’ll overlook it.”
She took his hand, and brought it up to her face, kissing his palm lightly. “Thank you.”
“I don’t think being prepared and paranoid would have been much use to us anyway,” Franklin said.
“Why not?”
He held up one of the nutrient soup sachets. The silver coating gradually turned blue and white as the shape rounded out. He was left holding a can of baked beans. “We’re not as strong here. Changing that sachet would have taken an eyeblink back in the old universe. And that’s why they can’t get back.” He indicated the serjeants just as another white blaze of air above them broke apart into expanding rivulets of blue ions. “There isn’t enough power available here to do what we did. Don’t ask me why. Presumably it’s got something to do with being blocked from the beyond. I expect those rifles Ekelund has could cause quite a bit of harm no matter how hard we make the air around ourselves.”
“Any more good news for the patients?” Moyo asked, scathingly.
“No, he’s right,” Stephanie said. “Besides, hiding from the facts now isn’t going to help anyone.”
“How can you be so calm about it? We’re stuck here.”
“Not exactly,” she said. “Being an invalid has had one benefit. Sinon?”
Since the unfortunate trip to Ketton, the serjeants had been keeping a cautionary watch on the town in case Ekelund made any hostile move. Sinon and Choma had taken the duty, combining it with helping the two patients. It wasn’t particularly difficult; from their slightly raised elevation they could see anything moving across the bland stretch of ochre mud between them and the desolated town. There would be plenty of warning if anyone came.
Sinon was checking over a batch of the sniper rifles which the serjeants were equipped with. Not that he expected they would be used. If Ekelund did send her people, the serjeants would simply establish a barrier around their camp similar to the one holding in the air around the island, offering passive, yet insurmountable, resistance.
He put down the sight he was cleaning. “Yes?”
“Are you and the others aware we’re actually moving?” Stephanie asked him. For some time, she’d been watching what passed for a sky in this realm. When they’d first arrived, it had appeared to be a uniform glare being emitted from some indefinable distance all around them. But as she’d lain there looking at it, she became aware of subtle variants. There were different shades arching above the flying island, arranged like flaccid waves, or streamers of thin mist. And they were moving, sliding slowly in one direction.
As Stephanie started to describe them, more and more serjeants broke away from their mental union to look upwards. A mild emotion of self-censure washed through the assembled minds. We should have noticed this. Direct observation is the most basic method to gather data on an environment.
By using affinity to link their vision together, the serjeants could scan the sky like some multi-segment telescope. Thousand of irises tracked the same faint wavering irregularity as it passed gently overhead. Parallel minds performed basic mental arithmetic to derive the parallax, putting the aberration roughly fifty kilometres away.
“As the bands of dimmer light seem to be fluctuating slightly in width, we conclude there is some kind of extremely tenuous nebula-like structure enveloping us,” Sinon told the fascinated humans. “However, the source of the light remains indeterminable, so we cannot say for certain if it is the nebula or the island which is moving. But given that the speed appears to be close to a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, we are tentatively assigning movement to the island.”
“Why?” Rana asked.
“Because it would take a great deal of force to move the nebula at that speed. It’s not impossible, but as the environment outside the island is essentially a vacuum, the problem of what force could be acting on the nebula is multiplied by an order of magnitude. We cannot detect any physical or energy impacting against the island, ergo, there is no ‘wind’ to push it along. We concede that it could still be expanding from its origin point, but as the fluctuations within it indicate a reasonably passive composition, such a possibility is unlikely.”
“So we really are flying,” McPhee said.
“It would appear so.”
“I don’t want to like piss all over your parade or anything,” Cochrane said. “But have you cats ever considered we might be like
“The direction of flow we can see in the nebula makes that unlikely,” Sinon said. “It appears to be a horizontal movement. The most probable explanation is that we emerged at a different relative velocity to this nebula. Besides, if we had been falling since we arrived, then whatever we are falling towards would surely be visible by now. To exert such a powerful gravitational field, it would be massive indeed; several times the size of a super-Jovian gas-giant.”
“You don’t know what kind of mass or gravity are natural in this realm,” McPhee said.
“True. This island is proof of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our gravity hasn’t changed since we arrived. Yet we are no longer part of Ombey. We assumed it has remained normal because the subconscious will of everyone here required that it do so.”
“Holy shit.” Cochrane jumped up, giving the bottom of his wide velvet flares a startled glance. “You mean, we’re only dreaming there’s gravity?”
“Essentially, yes.”
