As suddenly as it had descended upon her, it withdrew and she was able to breathe again.
She could see clearly. The spicy taste of the brown stuff lingered on her tongue.
Celeste stood on the platform of an old-time railway station. It was a barren place illuminated by flickering oil-fed lamps and surrounded by a close thickness of oak trees. There was a man sitting on a wooden bench. It wasn’t No. This man was short and plump, dressed in an overcoat, pyjama bottoms and a pair of moth-eaten slippers. His round face was kindly but it sagged as if he were bearing some unspoken weight.
Celeste walked towards him, “Where am I?”
He looked up at her with gentle, brown eyes, “The station, of course.”
“And what is the station?”
“Why, it’s the station. It’s where we wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For what is coming.”
“And what’s coming?” Celeste asked, starting to feel exasperated.
“If we knew that, then there’d be no point in waiting, would there?”
She scratched her head. What did this have to do with anything?
“It has everything to do with everything.” The old man said.
She frowned, “No, is that you?”
“No, I am who I am,” the old man said, “and that’s who I am and that is me.”
Celeste sat down next to him and sighed, “This all feels wrong. This isn’t where I’m supposed to be.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“Because I was with someone who was going to help me, I thought, and then he… sent me here. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I think it does. You are on a journey, are you not?”
“Why’d you ask that?”
“Because this is a station. A railway station. No-one comes here who isn’t on a journey of some kind.”
“I guess not.” Celeste replied.
She could feel the cold of the air.
“Aren’t you freezing?” she asked.
The man shook his head “It’s all a matter of perception,” he said. “If I decide that I do not want to be cold then I am not cold. Each of us is in our own world, after all. We accept it and seek only to control that which falls within our limits, but what if you were to reach outside those limits, eh?”
He turned to look into her eyes, and she saw the colour of his eyes had shifted from gentle brown to a piercing blue, “What could you do then, Celeste Walker? What could you not do? Have you ever seen them before?”
“What?”
“The stars. Look up, do you see them?”
Celeste looked up, saw the stars and caught her breath. She wanted to weep. The sky was clear and unclouded. She could see every star and, as her sight adjusted, how they blended together into sweeps, swirls and brushstrokes. Light blue, darkest indigo and traces of azure – the night sky was not black at all and neither were the stars merely points of light. It was all a pattern of brilliance, texture and scintillating colour. More real colour than her five and thirty years in the Crawl could have prepared her for experiencing. It was Life itself.
“I see them,” she whispered, “they’re beautiful.”
“And do you know what they are? They’re old photographs. Light that has travelled millions upon millions of years to reach us, longer than the lifetime of the stars it left behind. The stars we see are the universe’s past lingering on here in the present, which is their future. Do you understand me?”
Celeste nodded. “It’s a paradox,” she said, “the past and the present and the future co-existing even though they should not. This is a place people used to travel through even though waiting was a big part of the journey. Another paradox.”
“And this place is not here even though it is,” the man said. “You know that you are not really here and neither am I yet somehow we are. Reality is the sum total of every paradox. Worlds within worlds. Plays within plays. To reach them, one needs but to open the doors of perception and step through to the other side.”
“The play is the thing,” Celeste said, “wherein to catch the conscience of the king.”
“Exactly right,” the man smiled.
His eyes were no longer blue, nor had they reverted to brown instead they shone like the stars above, and the light bleeding from them washed over Celeste and their surroundings until she was adrift in a somnolent haze. She was part of an embrace. No’s arms were around her. His body abrading against her own. They were communicating something deeper and more profound than simple love: this was a delicate waltz dictated by the universe.
Celeste was naked as she mounted No, taking him deep inside her. Tears stung her eyes as she moved atop him, feeling his clay-like hands pass near-frictionless over her flesh. She brought him to climax. This was a love he was never meant to know, and she’d given it to him. He had wanted it though and accepted it. Something had drawn them both to this moment, and now they were moving apart as electrons mate and unmate themselves. Something of him passed along to her as he extracted the soulwire from her being without leaving a mark, or ending her life. She felt it. Somehow, he’d set her free and given her a greater gift.
Afterwards they knelt together in the dark, endlessly caressing one another. Their time together was almost over.
“When you meet the man in the moon. I ask only one thing from you.” No said, quietly.
“Yes?”
She felt No’s hands come to rest on her shoulders, light and boneless. “Do what must be done, and do it in our name.”
A desolate cry came from somewhere close.
“It has begun,” No said. “They are here.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A siren’s wail cut through the air. The rising-lowering drone had not been heard by human ears since the world wars. The people of the zero-sec scattered. There were shouts from above and barked commands from all sides. Men and women in black polycarbon armour trooped into the streets with plasma rifles and flame-throwers braced for action. All of them wore helmets with opaque visors by choice. They were faceless emissaries, merely wearing the shape of humanity.
In one street, a young girl dashed out into the open followed by her mother’s cries, brandishing a blunt wooden cudgel. They stopped. Formed up into a line. As one, they raised their weapons – and torched the girl’s home-tower. She dropped her cudgel, screaming in tune with her parents and the other families who were roasted alive by the swiftly ascending blaze. Weapons lowered, the invaders turned and marched down another street. In a matter of seconds, another tower was alight. Then another and another. Gradually, bit by bit, the zero sector was turned into an inferno.
Celeste ran through the burning streets, dodging falling debris and the hot ashes that showered down. The air was thick with smoke, screams and the crackling of incinerated structures. She knew the thought processes behind what was happening. A lifetime in the mid-secs made sure of that, the past lingering on into the present, creating this grim future. The ghosts of deleted mindware told her these people were not part of the Crawl. They were parasites, vermin, an infestation. This was necessary. This was pest control. Genocide as mercy killing – and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Bodies, adult and child, sprawled across her path. All burnt the same. Reduced to charred meat and melted bone. She saw wide-open eyes that were gentle brown and piercing blue.