By the time Reza, Jalal, and Ariadne walked into the clearing he had become an undistinguished middle-aged man with brown skin and thin features, wearing an ageing LDC one-piece jump suit. Fenton was noisily lapping up water out of a bowl at his feet, mind radiating contentment with his new friend.
Reza walked over cautiously. His retinal implants scanned the man from head to toe, and he datavised the pixel sequence into his processor block for a search and identify program. Although the earlier phantom lumberjack image had vanished, Reza saw the roots of the man’s black hair were a dark ginger. “Afternoon,” he said, not quite sure how to react to this display of passivity.
“Good afternoon to you. Not that I’ve seen anything like you before, mind. Not outside a kinema, and perhaps not even there.”
“My name is Reza Malin. We’re part of a team employed by the LDC to find out what’s going on down here.”
“Then with every ounce of sincerity I own, I wish you good luck, my boy. You’re going to need it.”
An ounce was an ancient unit of measure, Reza’s neural nanonics informed him (there was no reference to kinema in any file). “Are you going to help me?”
“It doesn’t look to me like I’ve got a lot of choice, now does it? Not with your merry gang and their big, big weapons.”
“That’s true. What’s your name?”
“My name? Well, now, that’d be Shaun Wallace.”
“Bad move. According to the LDC files you’re Rai Molvi, a colonist who settled Aberdale.”
The man scratched his ear and gave Reza a bashful grin. “Ah now, you’ve got me there, Mr. Malin. I must admit, I was indeed old Molvi. Charmless soul he is, too.”
“OK, smartarse, game over. Come on.”
Reza led the way back to the hovercraft, with Jalal walking right behind their captive, gaussrifle trained on the back of his skull. A couple of minutes after they left the clearing the pink light began to dim back into the same lustreless burgundy of the surrounding jungle. As if immediately aware of the abandonment, playful vennals slithered into the trees around the edge of the clearing. The more venturesome among them dared to scamper over the grass to the cabin itself, searching for titbits. After quarter of an hour the cabin emitted a vociferous creak. The vennals fled en masse back into the trees.
It was another couple of minutes before anything else happened. Then, with the tardiness of a sinking moon, its surface texture leaked away to reveal a starkly primitive mud hut. Tiny arid flakes moulted from the roof, resembling a sleet of miniature autumn leaves as they scattered over the grass below; rivulets of dust trickled down the walls. Within twenty minutes the entire edifice had dissolved like a sugar cube in soft, warm rain.
Forget discovering Ione Saldana existed, forget discovering Laton was still alive, this was the ultimate interview. For this Collins would make her their premier anchorwoman for the rest of time. For this she would be respected and lionized across the Confederation. Kelly Tirrel was the first reporter in history to interview the dead.
And as the dead went, Shaun Wallace was agreeable enough. He sat on the rear bench of the lead hovercraft, facing Kelly, and stroking Fenton the whole while. Jalal kept a heavy-calibre gaussrifle levelled at him. On the front bench beside her, Reza was listening intently, making the occasional comment.
The trees were thinning out as they raced for the end of the jungle. She could see more of the red cloudband through the black filigree of leaves overhead. It too was becoming flimsier; there were definite fast-moving serpentine currents straining its uniformity. Strangely, for there was no wind at ground level.
Shaun Wallace claimed he had lived in Northern Ireland during the early twentieth century. “Terrible times,” he said softly. “Especially for someone with my beliefs.” But he had just shaken his head and smiled distantly when she asked what those beliefs were. “Nothing a lady like yourself would want to know.” He died, he said, in the mid-1920s, another martyr to the cause, another victim of English oppression. The reason the soldiers shot him was not volunteered. He claimed he hadn’t died alone.
“And after?” Kelly said.
“Ah, now, Miss Kelly, afterwards is the work of the Devil.”
“You went to hell?”
“Hell is a place, so the good priests taught me. This beyond was no place. It was dry and empty, and it was cruel beyond physical pain. It was where you can see the living wasting their lives, and where you drain the substance from each other.”
“Each other? You weren’t alone?”
“There was millions of us. Souls beyond the counting of a simple Ballymena lad like myself.”
“You say you can see the living from the other side?”
“From the beyond, yes. ’Tis like through a foggy window. But you strive to make out what it is that’s happening in the living world. All the time you strive. And you yearn for it, you yearn for it so hard, lass, that you feel your heart should be bursting apart. I saw wonders and I saw terrors, and I could touch neither.”
“How did you come back?”
“The way was opened for us. Something came through from this side, right here on this sodden hot planet. I don’t know what the creature was. Nothing Earthly, though. After that, there was no stopping us.”
“This xenoc, the creature you say let you through; is it still here, still bringing souls back from the beyond?”
“No, it was only here for the first one. It vanished after that. But it was too late, the trickle was already becoming a flood. We bring ourselves back now.”
“How?”
Shaun Wallace gave a reluctant sigh. He was quiet for so long Kelly thought he wasn’t going to answer; he even stopped stroking Fenton.
“The way the devil-lovers of yesterday always tried to do it,” he said heavily. “With their ceremonies and their pagan barbarism. And God preserve me for doing such things, I used to think what I did before was sinful. But there’s no other way.”
“What is the way?”
“We break the living. We make them want to be possessed. Possession is the end of torment, you see. Even with our power we can only open a small gateway to the beyond, enough to show the lost souls the way back. But there has to be somewhere waiting for them, some host. And the host has to be willing.”
“You torture them into submission,” Reza said bluntly.
“Aye, that we do. That we do, indeed. And, mark you, there’s no pride in me for saying it.”
“You mean, Rai Molvi is still there? Still alive inside you?”
“Yes. But I keep his soul locked away in a dark, safe place. I’m not sure you could call it living.”
“And this power you mentioned.” Kelly pressed the point. “What is your power?”
“I don’t know for sure. Magic of a kind. Though not a witch’s magic with its spells and potions. This is a darker magic, because it’s there at a thought. So easy, it is. Nothing like that should be given easily to a man. The temptations are too strong.”
“Is that where the white fire comes from?” Reza asked. “This power you have?”
“Aye, indeed it is.”
“What’s its range?”
“Ah now, Mr. Malin, that’s difficult to say. The more of you that fling it, the further it will go. The more impassioned you are, the stronger it will be. For a cool one such as yourself, I doubt it would be far.”
Reza grunted and shifted back on the bench.
“Could you demonstrate the power for me, please?” Kelly asked. “Something I can record and show people. Something that will make them believe what you say is true.”
“I’ve never known a newspaper gal before. You did say you were from a newspaper, now didn’t you?”
“What newspapers eventually became, yes.” She ran a historical search request through her neural nanonics. “Something like the Movietone and Pathé reels at the cinema, only with colour and feeling. Now, that demonstration?”