It was like invisible hands, strangling him.
‘Keinosuke!’ yelled Li-Cheng.
But it was too late for Sunadomari. There was only one way that Hsiu Li-Cheng could help his old friend; and he did it now, flicking to command interface with the building’s defences and giving the order to activate grasers.
Invisible gamma rays cracked the air, blowing Keinosuke Sunadomari’s head to mist, a spray of blood and brain that spattered throughout the room.
Then they turned on his body, destroying the entire plexweb before it could be absorbed.
A full thirty seconds later, Li-Cheng had recovered enough to slip back into monitoring his battling designers, all of them incredible, as they worked to shore up SkeinTwo, strengthening and restrengthening the cleansing routines for transfer. More and more across the globe, Luculenti were shifting into SkeinTwo, fleeing the virtual hell that had been their intellectual home. Status displays showed their geographical coordinates; only a few dozen were in Lucis City - most were in distant regions.
Then a private comms request pinged him. That fact was incredible enough, overriding his shutout barriers; but the ID code accompanying it was nothing he had expected. This was a risk, lowering his barrier, even if he sandboxed a portion of his own mind, ready to destroy it in case of corruption. But the code identified a Pilot, with highest diplomatic authority; and so he opened the link.
‘My name is Carl Blackstone.’ The Pilot’s face was strained. ‘Are all Luculenti lost?’
‘We’re fighting back.’
‘And if you don’t succeed?’
‘Then we’re clearly defeated, Pilot. What are you-? Wait one moment.’
Li-Cheng returned his attention to the room, where one of his designers, Clara Calzonni, had dropped out of computation trance and was staring at him, unaware of twin tear-tracks rippling down her face.
‘Oh, no,’ said Li-Cheng.
‘It’s got through,’ Clara whispered. ‘SkeinTwo is corrupted.’
Li-Cheng bit his lip.
‘Activate the suicide protocol. Give me sixty seconds, if you can.’
‘There’s something—’
‘Tell me.’
‘The . . . entity . . . links through hyperdimensions, effectively making all the brains and plexwebs contiguous, as though they’re physically touching each other.’
Li-Cheng was aware of Pilot Blackstone, waiting for more information.
‘I don’t know if it’s thought of it yet,’ continued Clara, ‘but soon it will be able to . . . able to . . .’
‘What? Just say it, please.’
‘It will be able to subsume organic minds. Ordinary, non-Luculenti minds.’
‘Oh shit.’
It was the end of the Skein War.
‘The world is lost.’
Nodding, Li-Cheng shifted back to comms.
‘Pilot Blackstone, our efforts are failing. Soon every Luculentus will be part of a global mind that appears destructive and predatory. The ordinary Fulgidi - ordinary people are unaffected as yet, but at some point, the entity will be able to absorb them as well.’
‘Then we need to evacuate before that happens.’
‘You can’t evacuate an entire—How many mu-space ships are on Fulgor right now?’
‘Three,’ said Carl Blackstone, ‘including mine.’
‘Then how can—?’
‘Leave that to me.’
Pain slammed into Li-Cheng’s mind and body, severing the link.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Carla. ‘We can’t hold it—’
‘Suicide. Now.’
‘I’m—’
‘Now.’
‘Yes.’
The Via Lucis Institute, home of LuxPrime, originator of all that had been best in a glittering culture unmatched on any human world, detonated inbuilt plasma bombs and disappeared into blazing vapour, shining nova-bright, a sphere of burning energy.
From orbit, Carl Blackstone saw the explosion as a small white dot.
FORTY-NINE
EARTH, 777 AD
In the morning, Ulfr’s head was thick, but he woke up smiling. It was not just the celebrations, but the memory he took with him from dreamworld, of fighting alongside the woman Gavi in some demon realm. Or perhaps alongside was not correct. The details were fading as his eyes opened.
Beside him, Brandr came awake, ears twitching. The old volva, Eydís, was watching them both.
‘Good morning, priestess,’ said Ulfr. ‘Are you well?’
‘I need the help of someone strong.’
‘Ah. If you give me a moment—’
‘We’re camped over there.’ She pointed beyond the charcoal remains of a large fire.
‘All right, I’ll—’
Eydís was already walking off.
‘—be right with you. Come, good Brandr.’
The warhound followed him. They used the same bushes downwind of the camp for the same purpose, then drank from the same stream, and made their way to Eydís’s bedroll. But it was the young volva, Heithrún, who lay there with one leg splinted and encased in poultice, while Eydís knelt to one side, chanting.
Ulfr felt his own eyelids began to descend, and the words were not even meant for him.
‘Now, good Ulfr. You need to help reset the leg.’
He had done this before, and knew it to be painful. Ivárr had screamed during the procedure, and he was a tough warrior.
‘Here.’ Eydís guided his hands. ‘And here.’
Heithrún’s eyes were closed, her face calm, like a young girl sleeping.
‘Now pull and—There. Twist.’
It was hard work. The bone crunched and ground.
‘And . . . yes, that’s it.’
Heithrún’s leg bone was pushed into place. But she had remained calm, her lips almost smiling, throughout the manipulation.
‘She felt it, warrior,’ said Eydís. ‘But just a sensation, nothing more.’
‘Now what?’
‘You set yourself down over there’ - she pointed - ‘while I rebind the leg.’
Ulfr moved off and sat on the ground, pulling his cloak around himself and Brandr, who lay close, panting. Ulfr patted Brandr and waited.
Finally, Eydís knelt down facing him.
‘Show me your hands.’
Ulfr did that. She held them, then made passes across his chest and shoulder. He felt his own body make small adjustments in reaction, all without his thinking about it. Whether his body moved toward or away from her hands, he could not tell.
She stared at him and breathed, and his eyes defocused.
‘My words of power accompany you now, and as you choose to blink - that’s right - you can breathe out now and close your eyes as you walk farther and farther down the dreamworld path, because there are things you wish to learn and things you already know how to walk into dreams right now—’
His head was down and his eyes were closed, yet he could see every blade of grass and sprig of heather, he could taste the clouds and feel the deep earth, and he could hear the separate movement of each insect’s wing. He drifted, rolled without substance across the land; and finally returned to his body, as it was time to awaken.
‘—coming back to me now.’
Ulfr’s eyes came open.
‘I felt like Heimdall,’ he said. ‘Seeing everything, hearing everything.’
‘As Watcher of the Gods’ - Eydís pointed at him - ‘he will be the one to warn Óthinn by sounding his horn, when the All-Father will go to Valhalla to muster his Soul-Fetchers and their armies for the final battle.’
‘I . . . Yes, I know. I didn’t mean . . . that.’
‘You stride between worlds easily, good warrior. You have had a guide to dreamworld, someone you care for.’
‘Eira,’ he said. ‘She’s back home. I care about her.’
‘And what else? Your voice holds doubt.’
‘I slew her brother. Not by choice.’
‘Ah. And she is a volva, young and trained like our Heithrún?’
‘Yes.’