The crimson light inside the cloud flickered and died. It was so sudden Andy thought there was something wrong with his eyes. All that remained of the frightened city were outlines so faint he could be imagining them. He scoured them for signs that the SD weapons had begun their slaughter.
Nothing moved in the dead silence. He looked up.
There were no stars anymore.
The wormhole interstice opened a million kilometres above the sun’s south pole. Its edges immediately expanded. Within three seconds it was over one and a half billion kilometres in diameter, greater than Jupiter’s orbit. Fifteen seconds later it reached the size Joshua had designated: twelve billion kilometres across, just wider than the entire solar system. It moved forwards, enveloping star, planets, asteroids, and comets alike.
The interstice contracted to nothing.
All that remained was a single human figure in a black robe, tumbling wildly through space.
In Tracy’s lounge, Arnie got up and thumped the top of the television. The picture didn’t return.
“What’s happening now?” Jay asked.
“Corpus doesn’t know,” Tracy said. Her hands trembled at the revelation.
Over seventeen million possessing souls in various arcologies were exorcised from their captive bodies as Earth moved into the wormhole. Joshua arranged its internal quantum structure in a fashion similar to the conditions Dariat and Rubra had used to expel the possessors from Valisk. There was one difference: they didn’t become ghosts, this time they were torn cursing in anguish straight back into the beyond. From Earth, orbiting thirty thousand light-years from the centre of the galaxy, the glorious blaze of the core stars had never been visible. There was too much dark mass spread throughout the spiral arms, interstellar gas clouds and dust storms absorbing the light spun off from the densely packed supergiants. Astronomers had to turn their telescopes outwards, studying other starpools to see what such a spectacle might be like.
You had to be a lot closer in towards the centre to see the core’s corona starting to expand over the shielding plane of dark matter. Even then, it would only be an exceptionally bright crescent nebula stretched across the night sky. To witness its full glory, a planet needed to be perched right at the root of the spiral arms where the core appeared as an iridescent cloak of silver-white light across half of space, outshining the local sun. Regrettably, such a place was lethal; a fierce outpouring of intense radiation from the tightly clustered stars would immediately sterilise any unprotected biological life.
No, to gain a full appreciation of the galaxy’s native beauty, it had to be observed from outside. Above the spiral arms, and away from the radiation.
Joshua chose a location 20,000 light-years out from the core and 10,000 to the north of the ecliptic. The solar system emerged there to be greeted with the sight of a majestic bejewelled cyclone shining fiercely against a blackness devoid of any constellations.
The Kulu system was the next to arrive. Then Oshanko. Followed by Avon. Ombey. New California. They no longer emerged one at a time. The singularity was capable of creating wormholes simultaneously. Joshua shifted his participation to the executive, selecting what was to be taken. Gateways were opened into the realms where the possessed had fled with their planets. Lalonde, Norfolk, and all the others were returned to their stars, then moved out of the galaxy.
The Confederation soon formed its own unique, isolated stellar cluster sailing serenely through intergalactic space. Eight hundred stars orchestrated into a classic lenticular formation with Sol at the centre, and the rest never more than half a light-year from each other.
Other, more subtle, astronomical modifications were made, seeds of the changes to come.
Quinn didn’t understand why he was still alive. During the cataclysm, Edmund Rigby’s pitiful soul had been wrenched from the prison he’d forged at the centre of his mind. He no longer had any contact with the beyond, no interdimensional rift to bestow his fabulous energistic power. No magical sixth sense. And he was floating through empty space, with air to breathe.
“My Lord,” he cried. “Why? Why did you take the victory from me? Nobody has served you better.”
There was no answer.
“Let me go back. Let me prove myself. I can make Night fall. I will ride the dark angels into heaven, we will tear it down and sit You upon the throne.”
A human figure appeared in front of him, bathed in gentle starlight. Quinn drew in an excited breath as he drew closer. It was spat out in disgust as he recognized the face. “You!”
“Hi, Quinn,” said Joshua. “Ranting won’t do you any good. I resealed the opening to the dark continuum, the fallen angels aren’t coming to rescue you. Nobody is.”
“God’s Brother will win. Night will fall with or without me at the head of His army.”
“I know.”
Quinn gave him a suspicious glare.
“You were right all along, though not in a way you imagined. This universe ends in darkness.”
“You believe that? You accept the gospel of God’s Brother?”
“Your gospel is a load of shit, and you’re the only arsehole to squirt it out, Quinn.”
“I will find your soul in the beyond. When I do I will crush your pride and—”
“Oh, shut up. I have an offer for you. In words you’ll understand, I want you to lead the lost souls to your Lord.”
“Why?”
“Many reasons. You deserve to be erased from time for what you did. But I can’t do that.”
Quinn started to laugh. “You’re an angel of the false Lord. That’s why you have the power to snatch me away from Earth. Yet He won’t let you kill me, will He? He is too compassionate. How you must hate that.”
“There are worse things than death and the beyond. I can deliver you to the fallen angels. Do you think they’ll be happy to see someone who failed to free them?”
“What do you want?”
A circular opening in space expanded behind Joshua. “This leads into Night, Quinn. It’s a wormhole that takes you straight to the time of God’s Brother. I’ll allow you to go through it.”
“Name your price.”
“I’ve told you, lead the damned souls out of the beyond and into your Night. Without them, the human race will stand a chance to grow. They are a terrible burden on any species who discovers the true nature of the universe. The Kiint, for instance, cloned mindless bodies to house their lost souls. It took them thousands of years, but every one was brought back, and loved, and taught to face the beyond as it should be faced. But that’s the Kiint, not us. We’re going to have a big enough task helping the living over the next few decades. There’s no way we can deal with all those billions of lost souls, not for centuries. And all that time, they’ll be suffering and inhibiting our development.”
“My heart bleeds.”
“You don’t have one.” Joshua drifted to one side. There was nothing between Quinn and the opening now. “Now tell me, do you want to meet God’s Brother?”
“Yes.” Quinn stared greedily into the absolute blackness revealed by the opening. “Yes!”
The souls who had been cast back into the beyond brought with them a devastating tide of bitterness and fury as they raged impotently against the atrocity. Freedom existed, it was possible to regain a life. Now there was only purgatory again. No chink existed in the barrier between them and reality. They screamed their wrath, at the same time pleading with those they could dimly sense moving on the other side. Begging to be let back, for just one last taste of sensation. None of the living heard them any more.
A fissure opened. One small precious gap leaking the most gorgeous human sensations into the cursed void. They flocked around it, rejoicing in its magic. And there was enough for all to feast upon. Every lost soul knew the touch of air upon skin, saw myriad constellations shimmering against the night sky.