He came to rest against one of the windows. Beyond the diamondglass was a deep-green gloom as endless as the Datasea. It was dark in the carriage—all the lights and screens had died when it took flight—and the darkness was full of moans and whimpers. Malik tuned his headset to infrared and saw the bodies around him, some moving, others not; twisted at impossible angles. Something wet was soaking through his clothes. He thought at first that it was blood.
It wasn’t. It was worse than that.
It was the sea.
Somehow his train had been broken open, either by the explosion or by the force of the crash. The openings were only small, but that just seemed to make the sea even more excited about forcing its way through them. Malik could see three white jets spraying in, and he guessed there must be more. When he pushed himself upright the water was already up to his knees. A body bumped against him, then another, the second alive. It was the interface of Anais, one antler broken off.
Leave it, he told himself. Let it drown. It can always get another body made.
But it looked so frightened…
He dragged it through the carriage, toward the doors. “We’ll let the carriage flood,” he shouted, “then swim for it.”
“I do not know how to swim,” said the interface.
When the doors opened, the sea came in, white and boisterous and cold. It picked the survivors up and lifted them until they had to press their faces to the ceiling to sip from the last tiny pocket of air, and then even that was gone. Malik took one look back. The flooded carriage looked like a rock pool, filled with the scrambling crablike forms of the armored troopers, the seaweed waverings of someone’s hair. Then he was swimming, kicking out wildly with both legs in the dark, in the green dark with its streams of silver bubbles, and the shafts of dim light slanting and shimmering, and then suddenly in open air again, the interface whooping uncertainly for breath, Malik striking out through the waves toward the black island at the viaduct’s end.
*
“Zen? Are you hurt?”
Nova stooped over him, helping him up. Zen shook his head. All of him was shaking. He had been, he thought, in far too many battles. But all was quiet on the island now. The fallen Motorik were strewn like toys among the action-painting scrawls and spatters of their spilled blue gel. Carlota was still standing, seeping gel from half a dozen holes. A few others too, dazed android bellboys and receptionists, clutching their unwieldy guns, examining their wounds.
“We did it!” said Raven.
Zen thought he meant, “We’ve won the fight.” Then he looked at the Worm, and saw that its arms had stopped moving. The wet, intestinal noises that had come from it while it was working had fallen silent. Low down near its front end, an opening had appeared in its shell. It couldn’t be battle damage; it was too neat a hole for a missile to have made, and why would Raven look so pleased with it if it was?
“The gate is ready!” said Raven, a bit too loudly, as if his ears had not adjusted yet to the silence. “Now we just need to turn the key.” He reached into his pocket.
He frowned.
He tried the other pocket. Looked sharply at Zen.
Who was backing away fast. He groped in his own pocket as he went, and took out the Pyxis.
It was all thanks to Flex, really. The discovery that Flex was still alive in some way inside the Damask Rose had lifted Zen’s spirits and got him scheming again. He had been considering his options all the way from Desdemor. When they stepped off the train and he stumbled against Raven, he had taken the Pyxis.
He ran to the island’s edge. The waves were breaking there, shifting the crab-shell beach about with shattered crockery sounds, white spray flying. He held the Pyxis high. “If you want it, you’ll have to promise we’ll be safe, me and Nova—”
“Zen!” Raven strode toward him. “There isn’t time for this! That wartrain was just the advance guard. Half of Railforce will be coming to Desdemor…”
A shocking screech echoed off the ceramic. A shadow flashed over them. Nova screamed a warning. A barbed meathook tail lashed down, speared Raven, and hauled him into the sky.
The rays had come.
49
The rays had been circling and circling the island while the battle raged. The movement had drawn them, but the drones had made them keep their distance, uncertain of these noisy new monsters that had come to share their sky. Now the drones were gone, and in their place was something that the rays recognized as prey: frantic shapes struggling in the water. The boldest of them swooped toward the place where the survivors from the sunken train had surfaced. The rest followed, hooting and shrieking. The stragglers, sensing that there would be no one left in the waves for them, soared on toward the island.
The magnetic field, which had always kept them away before, was gone, collapsed during the fighting.
The first of them caught Raven. The second swerved after it, trying to snatch him. The third dived at Zen, but by that time Carlota had realized what was happening. A blast from her rifle tore through it, and another Motorik brought down the two that were squabbling over Raven.
And then the rays were everywhere, and the Motorik were shooting at them while Nova went running across the island, down onto the white beach where Raven had fallen. “Leave him!” yelled Zen, but she wouldn’t, and he couldn’t blame her—Raven had made her, after all. He went after her, jumping down the island’s side onto the beach. Bleached crab shells crunched and splintered under his boots like delicate tea sets. A dying ray thrashed in the surf. Blood had sprayed in cartoonish scarlet splats over the shore. Zen couldn’t tell how much of it came from the ray and how much from Raven, who lay twisted in a hollow of the beach, his white face whiter than ever. He looked as surprised as Nova had when that harpoon went through her on the Spindlebridge, but the stuff coming out of the hole in him was not blue but red.
“Do you have any idea how much these things cost?” he asked as Nova and Zen reached him. He plucked at his ruined shirt. It seemed a strange time to be worrying about shirts. It was only later that Zen would realize he had been talking about bodies.
Farther down the beach, another voice yelled, “Help!”
There in the reddening waves, some soggy survivor of the wartrain was fighting his way through the surf.
Zen couldn’t ignore him. Not even when he saw that it was Malik. There were only two sides at that moment, rays and people. “Get Raven under cover!” he shouted at Nova, and scrambled along the shore. A wave threw Malik down among the shifting shells, but Zen grabbed his arm and hauled him upright. A ray’s tail had slashed his scalp, but beneath all the blood Zen did not think the wound was bad. He started telling him how you could trick the rays by staying still, but Malik was too shocked to listen, and shuddering too much to stay still anyway.
“We have to get into shelter!” Zen shouted, over the surf’s boom.
Malik looked behind him. Rays still trailed their screams over the waves, but he could see no one else swimming, only a few patches of burning oil. He had been the only one to reach the shore. Out beyond the breakers, something that might have been an antler broke the surface for a moment, but when he looked again, it was gone.
The rays were concentrating on the island’s summit, diving at the muzzle-flash from the guns, and at the thrashing wings and tails of their wounded comrades. They snatched Motorik into the air, dropped them disgustedly into the sea when they worked out they were not edible, and circled back for more.
Zen helped the castaway back up the island’s side, and caught up with Nova, who was dragging Raven. The Damask Rose was too far away, so they struggled through the shadows of diving rays toward the Worm. Carlota was already there. The other Motorik were all gone: snatched by the rays, or damaged so badly that they had shut down.
Nova and Zen dragged Raven inside, blood on the threshold like a red carpet. Malik followed them in, the
n Carlota. As she scrambled through the opening, something wet and frantic blotted out the light behind her. Zen shouted a warning, thinking it was a ray, but it was a human figure, or human-ish. The interface of Anais Six squeezed itself inside, and the opening closed behind it with a sigh, shutting out the angry hooting of the rays.
They sat down in the soft dark on what seemed to be stairs, made of what seemed to be bone or cartilage, trying to grow used to the strange wet whooshing noises, the purring hums, the dim glow from the walls and ceiling of the Worm. Zen stared at the interface, fascinated by the impossible blue slenderness of it, while it examined the gashes the rays had left on its arms and hands. One of its antlers had snapped off short; the broken part snagged like driftwood in its sodden hair. It trembled steadily. It had lived in many bodies, but most of them had spent their time at concerts and cocktail parties; it had never really known fear, or pain, or danger.
Zen kept looking at it. It was the sort of thing you couldn’t take your eyes off. He kept thinking, It’s a Guardian, an actual Guardian, and almost laughing, because he could hear Myka in his head, saying in that worlds-weary voice of hers, “The Guardians aren’t interested in the likes of us.” But they are, he thought, they are now. I’ve done something that’s woken one up, made it download itself for the first time in years, and now it’s sitting here next to me, Myka—what do you think of that?
And then the Guardian seemed to feel his gaze, and looked up at him, and there was something in those golden eyes that made him remember that it wasn’t always a good thing to wake the interest of a Guardian.
Malik was saying, over and over, that there must have been other survivors, and Zen looked at Nova, and Nova gave her head a little shake, and Carlota put her hand on Malik’s shoulder and said, “They’re all dead.”
Malik shrugged the hand away. He looked past her to where Raven lay, a broken scarecrow at the center of a satiny red pool that spread and dribbled down the stairs. He seemed to be wondering what to do. He took out his gun and pointed it at Raven, as he had pointed so many guns, so many times before. But Raven was way past shooting. He looked pathetic, lying there, not like a former god at all. His eyes were unfocused, his face slack, but when Nova leaned over him he managed a faint smile.
“The new gate…” he said.
The interface stood up, huge under the low roof. It turned to Raven with a look too strange and ancient for Zen to read, but which seemed a lot like sorrow. It said, “There will be no new gate, Raven.”
“Anais,” said Raven. “Are you going to let Malik kill me again? It’s getting to be a bad habit with him. It won’t do you any good, you know. In a short while this gate will be active, and all the lies of the Guardians will be exposed.”
Who would talk to a Guardian like that? So light and mocking, as if it were his equal. Only Raven. Perhaps that was what had first drawn Anais Six to him, Zen thought, on the banks of the Amber River, where the songflowers bloomed. It moved closer and looked down on him. Tears filled its eyes, making it blink in surprise.
“Railforce will be here soon,” said Malik. “Experts, Scientists. They’ll dismantle everything you’ve built, Raven.”
Raven’s smile faded. He looked at Zen. “So whose side are you on, Zen Starling?” he whispered. “Are you with Malik? Railforce? The Guardians? I thought you were a thief, like me.”
“I’m not on any side,” said Zen. “Just my own.”
“Doesn’t work that way,” said Raven. Blood in his mouth; a cough clawing its way painfully out of him. “Comes a point, Zen, when you have to decide.”
Zen shook his head. He made himself remember all the bad things Raven had done to him, in case he started crying too. “You know I’ll choose the winning side. That’s what people like me do. I’ll choose the winning side, if I have to choose. That’s them, not you.”
“Is it?” Raven looked right at him, into his eyes. “The new gate is a beginning, not an end,” he promised.
“It’s the end for you, Raven,” said the interface, quite gently.
Malik didn’t need to use his gun. He just stood watching. They all stood watching. After half a minute more Raven was dead.
“I always wondered how it would feel when it was over,” said Malik eventually. “Turns out it doesn’t feel like anything much.”
“It isn’t over,” said the interface. “This thing he has made must be destroyed.” It squatted down beside Raven’s body on its too-long legs. It laid its long blue hand for one moment against his dead face, then started searching his clothes. Zen watched it. He felt in his pocket. He closed his fingers around the Pyxis. He was thinking of Lady Rishi Noon, who had spirited the sphere away from the Guardians all those years ago, and Raven, who had kept it hidden in plain sight for so long. They had stolen the secret of making K-gates from the Guardians themselves. It was like fire stolen from Heaven, and now it was nestling in Zen’s pocket.
Whose side are you on, Zen Starling? I thought you were a thief…
“The Marapur sphere is not here,” said the interface, abandoning its search of Raven’s body.
“Raven must have dropped it on the beach,” said Nova.
“I do not believe you, Motorik.” The interface stood upright again. Its golden eyes flared down at Nova for a moment, then past her, looking for Zen. “Where is the boy?” it asked.
50
He was climbing quickly, through the shadows and the strange light of the living walls. At the top of the stairway was a small chamber. The floor might have been ivory. There was a small, round hollow in its center.
Zen took out the Pyxis. The touch of it made his hand tingle. He knew that the sphere inside would fit perfectly into that hollow, and that that was what it had been made to do. He had the dizzy feeling that everything in his life had been rushing him toward this place, this moment.
“Give it to me,” commanded the interface, coming to the top of the stairs. It stooped to enter the chamber, stood upright again when it was inside, towering above Zen. Behind it he could see Nova and Malik, out on the stairs, their faces lit by the pulsing light of the walls.
He gripped the Pyxis tight. He looked up into the golden eyes of the interface. He said, “Raven told me it would change the Network, not destroy it.”
“Raven lied,” said the interface. It came toward him, holding out its hand for the Pyxis. It circled him, putting itself between him and the hollow in the floor where the sphere wanted to go. “The Network cannot be extended. Opening a new K-gate will cause an energy feedback that will burn this world to a cinder and kill us all. The effect will spread across the Network, destabilizing all the existing gates, releasing a cascade of KH energy, destroying everything. That is what Raven wanted.”
Zen looked into its face. It was so hard to believe that it was lying, that face that had been designed for humans to worship. You were meant to kneel before a face as strange and wise as that. You were meant to bow down and kiss those blue feet. And yet there was something in him, some spiky street-thief pride that didn’t want to bow down to anyone.
“You’re just afraid,” he said. “It’s like Raven said. You’re afraid of things changing.”
“Malik,” said the interface, losing patience. “Kill him.”
“No need,” said Malik. He raised his gun but he didn’t point it at Zen. He pointed it at Nova: right at her head, like a man who knew how to kill Motorik.
The interface looked confused. “What good will that do?”
“Zen risked everything for this Moto,” said Malik. “Went back for her when he could have got clean away. They love each other.”
And Zen, who had been shying away from the L word ever since Sundarban, telling himself he wasn’t sure what he felt for Nova, knew that it was true. The Railforce man knew him better than he knew himself. He had loved Nova ever since he walked with her to the sea, that first day in Desdemor. And by
some billion-to-one chance, she loved him back. It was a relief to them both to hear someone else say it. That made it real, somehow. Much more real and much more precious than some age-old alien K-gate-opening machine.
“Take it,” he said. He pressed the Pyxis into the hand of the interface and watched the blue fingers fold over it. “Let Nova go.”
“Thank you, Zen Starling,” said the interface. It considered him for a moment. “Now,” it said, “kill him, Malik.”
Malik scowled. “He’s just a kid.”
“He’s Raven’s kid. Kill him.”
“Zen!” shouted Nova. She snatched at Malik’s gun. Malik drove his elbow into her chest, knocking her backward down the stairs. Zen took his chance and ran toward the doorway. There was no real plan in his head. Why make plans, when all his plans went wrong? He just had some wild hope that he might get past Malik and grab Nova and run out of the Worm and back to the Damask Rose. But Anais caught him. It reached out one long blue arm and grabbed him by the neck. It slammed him against the wall and worked its long blue fingers around his throat and squeezed. For something so frail-looking, so ornamental, it had surprising strength.
“Kill the Moto too, Malik,” the interface said, clenching its perfect teeth with the effort of choking Zen.
He heard Malik’s gun go off, stunningly loud in that small space. Three shots, one after the other, very quick. He saw three holes appear: two in the chest of the interface, one in the middle of its blue forehead. There was an expression of astonishment in its golden eyes, and then no expression at all. It let go of Zen and fell sideways and moved its feet for a moment restlessly and was still.
Zen sank down beside it, gasping, rubbing his bruised throat, staring at Malik.
“It was lying,” Malik said. He put away his gun and came into the chamber. “I knew Raven. You don’t hunt a man all across the Network and kill him that many times without getting to know how he thinks. Raven wanted to live. That’s why he ran so far, fought so hard, hid so long. Destroy the Network, and himself with it? That’s not Raven’s style. If he planned to get this gate working, he must have been pretty certain he’d be able to escape through it.”