it had unscrewed itself from the peninsula.
Air was roaring hard overhead, sucked into the space the island was vacating. It still hovered in the centre of the valley, but now it was becoming insubstantial as well as small. The light around it turned a dazzling monochrome white, obliterating details. Within minutes it had evaporated down to a tiny star. Then it winked out. Ralph’s neural nanonics came back on line.
“Cancel the other two assaults,” he datavised to the AI. “And halt the front line. Now.”
He scrambled cautiously to his feet. The reinvigorated grass was withering all around him, shrivelling back to dry brown flakes that crumbled away in the howling wind. Images from the SD sensors showed him the full extent of the massive crater. Its edges had already begun to subside, mountain-sized landslides were skidding downwards, taking a very long time to reach the bottom. Waiting for them five kilometres down was a medieval orange glow that fluctuated in no comprehensible rhythm. He frowned at that, not understanding what it could be. Then the vivid area ruptured, and a vast fountain of radiant lava soared upwards.
“Whoever’s left, get them back,” he shouted desperately at Acacia. “Get them as far away from the lip as possible.”
“They’re already retreating,” she said.
“What about the others? The ones on the island? Can your affinity still reach them?”
Her forlorn look was all the answer he needed.
Stephanie and her friends looked at the serjeants, who stared back with equal uncertainty. For the first time in what her dazed thoughts insisted must have been hours, the ground had stopped oscillating beneath her. When she looked up, the sky was a starless ultradeep blue. White light flooded down from nowhere she could see —but felt right, what she wanted. Her gaze tracked round to where the other side of the valley had been. The blank sky came right down to the ground, and the true size of their island became apparent. A tiny circle of land edged with a crinkled line of hillocks, adrift in its own eternal universe.
“Oh no,” she murmured in despair. “I think we screwed up.”
“Are we free?” Moyo asked.
“For now.” She started describing their new home to him.
Sinon and the other serjeants used the general affinity band to call to each other. There were over twelve thousand of them spread out around the island. Their guns worked, their electronics and medical nanonics didn’t (several had been injured in the waves of quakes), affinity was unaffected, and there were new senses available. Almost a derivative of affinity, allowing him to sense the minds of the possessed. And there was also the energistic power. He picked a stone from the mud and held it in his palm. It slowly turned transparent, and began to sparkle. Not that a kilogram of diamond was a lot of use here.
“Could you dudes like give this heavy military scene a break now?” Cochrane asked.
It would appear our original purpose is invalid in this environment,sinon told his comrades. he shouldered his machine gun. “very well. what do you propose we do next?” he asked the hippie.
“Wow, man, don’t look at me. Stephanie’s in charge around here.”
“I’m not. And anyway, I haven’t got a clue what happens now.”
“Then why did you bring us here?” Choma asked.
“Because it’s not Mortonridge,” Moyo said. “That’s all. Stephanie told you, we were frightened.”
“And this is the result,” Rana said. “You must now face the consequences of your physical aggression.”
We should regroup and pool our physical resources,choma said. It may even be possible for us to use the energistic power to return to the universe.
Their minds flashed together into a mini-consensus and agreed to the proposal. An assembly area was designated.
“We are going to join up with our comrades,” Sinon told Stephanie. “You would be very welcome to come with us. I expect your views on the situation could prove valuable.”
That last image of Ekelund popped up annoyingly in Stephanie’s mind. The woman had banished them from Ketton. But Ketton no longer existed. Surely they wouldn’t be excluded now? Somehow she couldn’t convince herself. And the only other alternative was staying by themselves. Without food. “Thank you,” she said.
“Wait wait,” Cochrane said. “You guys have like got to be kidding. Look, the end of the world is maybe half a mile away. Aren’t you even curious what’s out there?”
Sinon looked to where the island’s crumpled surface ended. “That’s a good suggestion.”
Cochrane grinned brightly. “You cats’ll have to get used to them if you’re going to hang with me.”
The breeze picked up considerably as they approached the edge of the island. Blowing outward, which troubled the serjeants. Air had become a finite commodity. Long rivulets of mud were sliding gently to the edge and spilling over, dribbling down the cliff like ribbons of candle wax. There was nothing else to see. No break in the uniformity of the midnight blue boundary of the universe that might indicate another object, micro or macro. The realization they were on their own percolated through all of them, growing stronger as they approached the rim.
It was only Cochrane who inched his way cautiously right up to the edge and peered down into the murky void of infinity which buoyed them along. He spread his arms wide and threw his head back, letting the breeze flowing over the island blow his hair around. “WAAAAAHOOOO.” His feet jigged about crazily as he cried out ecstatically: “I’m on a fucking flying island. Can you believe this? Here be dragons, mom! And they’re GROOVY.”
Chapter 11
For some reason, the tangled strands of black mist which filled this dark continuum would always slide apart to allow Valisk through. Not one wisp had ever touched the polyp. The habitat personality still hadn’t managed to determine the nature of movement outside its shell. Without valid reference points, there was no way of knowing if it was sailing along on some unknowable voyage, or the veils of darkness were simply gusting past. The identity, structure, and quantum signature of their new continuum remained a complete mystery. They didn’t even know if the ebony nebula was made from matter. All they did know for certain was that a hard vacuum lay outside the shell.
Rubra’s uncorked brigade of descendants had devoted considerable effort into modifying spaceport MSVs into automated sensor platforms. Five of the vehicles had already been launched, their chemical rockets burning steadily as they raced off into the void. Combustion, at least, remained an inter-universal constant. The same could not be said for their electronic components. Only the most basic of systems would function outside the protection of the shell, and even those decayed in proportion to the distance travelled. The power circuits themselves failed at about a hundred kilometres, by which time the amount of information transmitted had fallen to near zero. Which was information in itself. The continuum had an intrinsic damping effect on electromagnetic radiation; presumably accounting for the funereal nature of the nebula. Physicists and the personality speculated that such an effect might be influencing electron orbits, which in turn would explain some of the electrical and biochemical problems they were encountering.
The gigantic web of ebony vapour wouldn’t touch the probes, either, denying them a sample/return mission. Radar was utterly useless. Even laser radar could only just track the modified MSVs. Ten days after the axial light tube was powered up, they were floundering badly. No experiment or observation they’d run had resulted in the acquisition of hard data. Without that, they couldn’t even start to theorize how to get back.
By contrast, life inside the habitat was becoming more ordered, though not necessarily pleasant. Everybody who’d been possessed required medical treatment of some kind. Worst hit were the elderly, whose possessors had quite relentlessly twisted and moulded their flesh into the more vigorous contours sported by youthful bodies. Anyone who’d been overweight was also suffering. As were the thin, the short; anyone with different skin colour to their possessor, different hair. And without exception, everyone’s features had been
