Quinn screamed himself raw as he was possessed by a hundred billion lost souls. Their violation was total, devouring the import of every single cell that was him.
His body soared through the opening, carrying the burden of humanity with him. The wormhole closed behind them, cutting off the sight of the stars which humans had always known as their own.
Chapter 15
Though it would never be told this way, Louise actually spent most of the summoning ceremony unaware of what was happening. After Courtney shoved her down on the bench she rolled onto her side, fighting the dreadful nausea. Little of anything Quinn said registered through the pain and misery. The backlash from the energistic power marshalled by the possessed set off concussions of fright inside her skull.
Then the solid rocket motors ignited, smothering her in choking smoke. She was on the floor retching desperately as the Orgathé drew up level with the gallery.
She lay there shivering between peaks of flame and ice, crying wretchedly. Then all the external sensations began to die away, abandoning her in a stinking grainy grey smog that obscured everything save a few yards of the gallery.
Footsteps crunched on the powdery debris that’d showered down when the escape pod hit the cathedral’s dome. They stopped beside her. She moaned, aware that the person was bending down. A hand stroked the side of her head, tenderly brushing the hair from her eyes.
“Hello, Louise. I said I’d come back for you.”
It was the wrong voice. An impossibility. But so utterly right. Louise blinked up, and tears flooded her eyes again. “Joshua!”
His arms went round her, and he kept saying: “Shush, it’s all right, it’s all right,” as he rocked her shaking body against him.
“But Joshua—”
He kissed her gently, tapped his forefinger on her nose. “It’s okay, it’s all over. I promise.”
“Quinn,” she gasped. “Quinn, he’s . . .”
“Gone. Over. Finished.”
Her head swung from side to side, seeing the tendrils of smog slowly withdrawing from the gallery. The cathedral below was shockingly quiet.
“Here,” Joshua said. “Let’s get you sorted out.” He pulled the wrapping off a medical nanonic package, and applied it gently to her face where Quinn had struck her.
She realized her neural nanonics were back on-line, and hurriedly put her medical monitor program into primary.
“It’s all right,” Joshua said softly. “Our baby’s fine.”
“Huh,” Louise grunted. “How do you know about . . .”
He kissed her hand. “I know everything,” he said with that beautifully wicked Joshua grin. The very same one which had started all this. Louise thought she might even be blushing.
“If you could hang on to the questions for a moment,” he said. “There’s someone you have to say goodbye to.”
Louise let him help her up to her feet, glad of the assistance. Every part of her seemed to be aching and stiff. When they were standing, she just couldn’t resist giving him another kiss, making sure he was real. And no way was she going to let go of his hand. Then she saw Fletcher standing behind him.
“My lady.” Fletcher bowed deeply.
She drew a sharp breath. “The possessed.”
“Gone,” Joshua said. “Except for Fletcher. And he’s not exactly possessing anybody any more; this is a simulacrum body.” He offered his hand to the solemn naval officer. “I wanted to thank you in person for looking after Louise through all this.”
Fletcher nodded gravely. “I confess I have been curious as to what man might be worthy of Lady Louise. I see now why she speaks of no other.”
Louise knew for sure she was blushing this time.
“Am I now to return to that purgatory, sir?”
“No,” Joshua said. “That’s something else I wanted to tell you. You were there because of your own decency. Leaving your family and your country, mutinying against your king, were all terrible crimes. You convinced yourself of that, and imposed your own punishment. Purgatory was what you believed you deserved.”
Fletcher’s eyes darkened with remembered pain. “In my heart I knew what we were doing was wrong. But Bligh was cruel beyond any man’s endurance. We could withstand no more.”
“It’s over now,” Joshua said. “It’s been over for nearly a thousand years. What you have done for Louise and others this time is enough to pardon a hundred mutinies. Have courage, Fletcher, the beyond is not all there is. Sail through it. Find the shore that lies on the other side. It is there.”
“I could never doubt a man of your valour, sir. I will do as you say.”
Joshua stood aside.
“My lady.”
She hugged him tightly. “I don’t want you to go.”
“This is not where I belong, my dearest Louise. I am adrift here.”
“I know.”
“But still, I consider myself privileged that I have known you, however bizarre the circumstances. You will prosper, I foretell, and your child too. Your universe is a many-splendored thing. Live your life in it to the full.”
“I will. I promise.”
He kissed her on the brow, almost a blessing. “And tell the little one I shall think of her always.”
“Bon voyage, Fletcher.”
His body began to attenuate, its boundary dissolving into wisps of platinum stardust. An arm was raised in a farewell salute.
Louise stared at the empty space it left for some time. “Now what?” she asked.
“A few explanations, I think,” Joshua said. “I’d better take you over to Tranquillity for that. You need to clean up and rest. And Genevieve is doing truly awful things to the servitor housechimps.”
Louise began to groan. Her breath stalled as the lush parkland of the habitat quietly materialized around her.
Samual Aleksandrovich had spent the last ten minutes accessing the station’s external sensor suite. Even so, he had to see for himself before he could truly believe. The SD control centre had been alarmed by the number of starships which kept appearing above Avon, but swiftly discovered they were all ships who had been en route to other stars. They’d been snatched from interstellar space, emerging in the designated zones above the planet. Once the First Admiral confirmed they weren’t an attack force, he and Lalwani took a lift capsule to the observation lounge.
The big compartment was crowded with naval personnel. They parted reluctantly to allow both admirals through to the curving transparent wall. Samual looked out in trepidation at space without stars. The station’s rotation slowly brought the galaxy into view; its core shining gold and violet, embraced by the silver shimmer whorl of satellite stars.
“Is it ours?” Samual asked quietly.
“Yes sir,” Captain al-Sahhaf said. “SD command is using the sensor satellites to identify neighbouring galaxies. They correspond to the known pattern, which puts us approximately ten thousand light-years outside.”
Samual Aleksandrovich turned to Lalwani. “Is this where the possessed come, do you think?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Ten thousand light-years. What in God’s name did this to us?”
“Joshua Calvert did, sir.”
Samual Aleksandrovich gave Richard Keaton a very suspicious look. “Would you care to qualify that remark, Lieutenant?”
“Calvert and the voidhawk Oenone succeeded in their mission, sir. They found the Tyrathca Sleeping God. It’s an artefact capable of generating wormholes on this scale.”
Samual and Lalwani traded a look.
“You seem remarkably well informed,” Lalwani said. “I’m not aware of any communication from Oenone or the Lady Macbeth reaching us since we arrived here.”
Keaton gave an embarrassed smile. “I apologise that you didn’t know in advance. Nonetheless, Calvert transferred every Confederation world out here.”
“Why?” Samual asked.
“Moving a possessed body through the specific class of wormhole we just came through closes the rift which allows a soul to extrude from the beyond into this universe. He simply did it en masse. The lost souls have all been returned to the beyond. He also brought back all the planets which the possessed had taken away.” Keaton gestured at the empty void outside. “The whole Confederation is here. There is no more possession crisis.”