“Get out, please. Both of you.”
For most of the morning Foord had seen Thahl gazing impassively from the seat opposite, but now the seat was empty, the landchariot’s other door hanging open—when did that happen? Foord had neither seen nor heard him move—and as Foord stepped out he saw the second car, which had stopped behind them, and waved desperately to the three inside it, who wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Time fractured. Foord glimpsed the results of what Thahl did before he saw him do it. Events should have been sequential, but Thahl’s speed broke them into pieces and when Foord tried to put them back together, they no longer followed each other properly. He seemed to remember them before they happened.
The guns were pointed unwaveringly in his face. Kudrow was explaining that they could not allow an Outsider to compromise Sakhra’s defences, and would not rely on an Outsider to defend them against Her, that was unthinkable, and the only way to stop it was this.
Foord looked at the three in the second car, and concluded they’d washed their hands of it. He couldn’t remember if he concluded that before or after Kudrow spoke.
The guns pointed unwaveringly in his face were now on the ground, because Thahl had broken the forearms of Lyle and Astin. Thahl had not used his poison, because they were still alive where they fell, and were screaming. Their screams drowned the sound of Kudrow’s voice, explaining why they had to kill Foord. No, that came earlier. The voice drowned by the screams was Thahl’s. He was saying to Kudrow, Please don’t, You know you don’t have a chance, Don’t make me do this, Just walk away. Just leave the gun.
Kudrow reached for his sidearm. No, Thahl said, Please don’t, his pleading tone ridiculously at odds with what he had done. Thahl snatched Kudrow’s pistol, infinitely quicker than its owner, and tossed it away. Foord noticed that Kudrow’s severed hand was still clutching the grip, and Kudrow was screaming, so maybe it was his screaming now which was drowning out his voice then.
It should all have been sequential—blurringly fast, but still sequential —except that Thahl’s speed splintered it. Foord had seen Thahl in combat before, but not like this. This was a single glimpse, on-off, of things that were impossible; as if Thahl had opened his private jewel-box of impossibilities, flourished it in front of Foord’s face, and snapped it shut.
Time slowed, and the pieces rearranged themselves. Thahl had kicked the guns away from the three on the ground. Kudrow was still screaming. The others were unconscious. Then Kudrow fell silent. Foord tasted brine along the sides of his tongue, the taste that comes before vomiting: a reaction not to the violence, but to its strangeness.
And one last detaiclass="underline" their driver had said and done nothing while it happened. He was sitting where he had been all along, flicking the chimaera with his reins and waiting for the journey to resume.
Finally, when he had recovered, Foord strode over to the second car. Thahl followed him at a distance. The three inside hadn’t had time, from when it started to when it finished, even to open the door.
Somehow, Foord correctly picked out the senior one.
“Did Director Swann know anything of this?”
“No, Commander.”
“And you, you all washed your hands of it.”
“Yes. We told Major Kudrow we wanted no part of it. He said, Look the other way.”
“Your name?”
“Lieutenant Traore, Commander.”
Foord turned to Thahl, and their eyes met. Foord shook his head slightly, then turned back to face those in the car. He could see them all let out a breath; they saw what passed between him and Thahl, and were praying they’d read it correctly.
“Alright. Lieutenant, please call Director Swann, now, and tell him what happened here. And tell him we’re going into Blentport in this landchariot, and he’s to give authority for the roads to be cleared for us. We want to see his fliers and VSTOLs and groundcars ahead of us all the way to Blentport, clearing a path. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“As soon as you’ve arranged that, we’ll leave here. You and your colleagues are to stay put. And please arrange medical help.”
He stood for a while listening to them make the call, then turned to Thahl.
“How did you know they…”
“More Worrier than Warrior.”
Foord nodded, wryly. Thahl’s quiet friendship and gentle mockery had been like a soothing antiseptic balm after the orphanage; yet still he could do things like this.
4
The journey was turning feverish. The road was now a six-lane carriageway, the middle and outer lanes jammed with a thrombosis of traffic and the inner lane cleared for them, cars and trucks shunted to one side by the military. The oncoming three lanes were an unbroken procession of military vehicles: more lowloaders and groundcars, tankers and multiwheels and personnel carriers, each one with its own battery of sirens and lights. Ahead there were VSTOLs hovering low over the road, low enough to force traffic into the outer lanes. Their road was being made for them as they travelled it.
They were in the flat country leading to the rim of the Bowclass="underline" immense and drab, partly fields and partly industrial wasteland, littered with low-grade and failing development: warehouses, factories, workshops, silos, apartment blocks. Some of them were soiled with brown stains from their partly-exposed steel skeletons.
Foord’s wristcom buzzed.
“Commander, it’s Cyr. We’ve got a situation.”
“Situation?”
“It’s the crews of the Horus Fleet ships. They’re stuck here until our refit’s completed and they’re gathering round our Grid—not doing anything yet, just watching. And when I refused to hand over our people to Swann, civilians and military started gathering too. They don’t seem to know what they want yet, but Swann won’t order them away because he says their mood is unreadable and he can’t predict the consequences. And now the news of what Thahl did …How long until you arrive, Commander?”
“About ninety minutes.”
“It may get worse. And when you do arrive, it’ll take something exceptional to get you through this crowd and on board. You won’t reconsider the landchariot?”
“Not now.”
“A moment please, Commander…Smithson says he has an idea about what to do when you arrive. I’ll call back.”
“Thank you, Cyr.”
The landchariot sped on. The landscape stretched either side of the highway, reflecting the sky’s greyness as if it was a stretch of ocean.
Now that they were approaching the edge of the Great Lowland Bowl, there was a strangeness about what they saw. The country was too unrelievedly flat to see the actual rim yet—it wouldn’t be visible until they were almost on top of it—but the strangeness had to do with how its presence was felt and almost seen. Freighters and warships, going to or from Blentport, appeared to fly into and out of the ground at a distant point on the horizon where the rim was located but not yet visible; at the same location and for miles beyond, the air was coloured with rainbows from the rivers which fell in torrents over the edge; and occasionally, there was the sense that beyond every rise in the horizon there was not simply more land, but emptiness—a difference in the quality of the landscape, like the difference felt near a coast before the sea was visible. And it did things to the air. Above the rim, so high above it they couldn’t be seen properly, were flocks of white things floating on the roiling air-currents. They weren’t birds, but they had wings over thirty feet across. Angels.