And All the Stars

Chapter Twelve

"Will it bother you if I watch you paint?"

In the middle of setting out her first palette, Madeleine turned to find Fisher watching with an open interest which pleased and daunted her. Since they’d run from the beach Fisher had buried himself in one of the laptops, searching for any scrap of data he could use to fight back – pausing occasionally for meals or discussions, but usually to be found in the library window seat on a shadow-eyed quest for answers. She wasn’t sure why they all held on to the hope he’d find a way to fight back, beyond that he hadn’t given up yet.

"Not if you stay quiet." She tried to keep her tone casual. "I usually tune distractions out when I’m working."

"I noticed that yesterday." His smile was slow and warm. "I’ll set a chair over here if that’s okay with you."

Madeleine shrugged, and avoided Noi’s eye as she finished preparations, then stood before her easel entirely focused on Fisher instead of her subjects. But she was longing to finish this painting, the light was good, and Noi had agreed that the faint scent of acrylics weren’t that big a risk now that the building had been cleared. Even Fisher wasn’t enough to keep her from becoming completely absorbed.

Together on a couch set by the patio entrance, Emily and Noi were a study of contrasts. Fine blonde hair drifting beside foaming black curls. Slender height; compact curves. Shy pleasure at being painted against entertained interest in Madeleine’s awareness of Fisher. Below it all, never going entirely away: anger, hurt.

Madeleine blocked in colours, not pushing herself so frantically this time, spending more effort on consciously analysing shadow tones before beginning to detail the two figures. Emily and Noi chatted and read, and watched the television behind Madeleine, keeping roughly to their original positions but accepting Madeleine’s assurance that she did not need them to sit stiff and frozen except when she was working on specific detail. She released them a little before two, in part because the light had begun to shift, but also because the "First Challenge" was due to start at midday in Manila.

Fisher helped carry her used brushes, jars and palettes to the laundry, and had made a good start on cleaning them by the time she returned from stowing the paints and canvas in the study.

"Thanks," she said, and took one of the palettes.

"Will you have enough paint to complete the portrait?"

"I should. But not for the third canvas. When we toured the other North Building apartments this morning I saw a computer with a graphics tablet, and I was thinking of teaching myself how to properly use a digital art program. I don’t think I could talk Noi into the importance of art supplies to my continued existence."

"They are, though, aren’t they?" He was watching her face in his deliberate, considered way. "It’s so central to you. I sometimes wish I was so focused."

"You mean you can’t decide what you want to do?"

"I wanted to study astrophysics. And biochemistry. And archaeology. And words, and a great many things said with them. Year Ten was when we started seriously choosing courses, and I had to face that I couldn’t sign up for every unit, that–"

"There’s never going to be enough time," Madeleine finished. "Oh, I know how that feels. There’s so many things to try, to perfect, so many different techniques and media and–" She lifted her hands at the enormity of her hoped-for future, and shared a look of mutual comprehension with Fisher. "Does the fact that you said astrophysics first mean that’s what you’d chosen to do?"

He shrugged. "The Sciences are where I’ve started – I’ve been allowed to study ahead for a few different courses. I can hope to self-study the Arts, at least to a basic understanding, but Science tends to require a little more equipment."

"You were seriously going to try to study them all?"

"Eventually. Those and more." Fisher paused, then added: "To try to be a Renaissance man."

"Renaissance man?" He wasn’t talking time travel.

"Someone who has multiple areas of expertise. Think da Vinci – mathematician, artist, inventor – so many things. The ideal of the Renaissance man is to be a fully rounded person – to embrace the Arts and Sciences, languages, society, sport. Knowledge both broad and deep." The tips of his ears had gone red, and he smiled with self-conscious amusement. "I don’t usually talk about this – it makes me sound so greedy."

"Not really," Madeleine protested. "Intimidating maybe." Which was not what she’d meant to say, and she wished she had a quarter of Noi’s ability to joke and tease, but pressed on gamely: "Did they have Renaissance women?"

"Some. A Greek philosopher called Hypatia is the earliest known example. One of my mother’s heroines – my mother was a mathematician, an architect, cellist, linguist. She’s the ideal I measure myself against."

"I’m sorry," Madeleine said, and his dark brows swept down – puzzlement, not anger. Then they lifted and he shook his head.

"My parents died when I was ten. Though I’m sorry too. Did yours make it to Armidale?"

"Day before yesterday. They want me to try to make a break for it, but people recognised me from the beach broadcast and are, well, paying attention to see if I show up."

She realised they were both rinsing perfectly clean brushes, and with a murmur of thanks shook water out of the last of them and went back upstairs to stash them away. And wash her face.

When she returned she helped Fisher bring the portrait couch forward to fill its original position in the semi-circle before the screen, feeling distinctly like they were giving everyone a bit of extra entertainment to go with the alien dominance challenges.

"Just in time," Noi said. "There weren’t any good cameras on the Manila Spire, but webcams on other Spires are picking up movement."

Min handed over one of the laptops, which showed the Sydney Spire via a webcam set in St Marys Cathedral, giving a clear view of where the Spire had risen through St James Station and then the fountain at the north end of Hyde Park. One of the fountain’s bronze statues was visible, resting in a tumbled tree: Apollo inverted.

The fountain was named for the same person who had established the Archibald Prize. Madeleine stared at the tumbled remnant, thinking of all the hours she’d spent planning to win, then turned her attention to the handful of people gathered by the Spire. They were too far for details, but appeared to be casually chatting while waiting. She gave the laptop to Fisher and glanced at the presenter on the muted television.

"He looks excited."

"Yeah, it’s a sporting commentator feel, which is totally the wrong tone to take." Pan frowned at the screen. "But he’s not the only one like that. Just this past day I’ve noticed it. Most are still aching to hit out, but the non-infected…well, they’ve got this end date now. Stay out of it for a couple of years and you get your world back."

"Once people work out what these challenges mean, they’ll start betting on them. Guarantee it." Min, smiling cynic, sat back as if the idea pleased him.

"Two years until we get our world back too," Emily pointed out, more in defiance than certainty.

"That’s what we’re aiming for Millie." Noi changed channels, then restored sound.

A terse voice told them they were looking at a view of the Mumbai Spire, which had one of the closest webcams available. A dozen Blues were standing together, holding umbrellas to keep off heavy rain, and someone at the broadcaster was drawing lines on the image pointing out the Core, who was a slim man in his early twenties. The image looked slightly off, and that was because the Blues held themselves in an attitude of conversation, but didn’t move their mouths. Speaking Moth.

Two of the Blues handed their umbrellas to a Green standing to one side, and then turned and walked into the Spire. Seamlessly, without an opening or a ripple, as if the star-studded darkness truly was the night sky, and they had been swallowed by it.

Nash had already been sitting unhappily upright at the appearance of his home city, but at this he turned to Fisher: "Could it be they brought their shield down? Have they just shown us an opportunity?"

"Possibly." Fisher was reserved, not ready to be drawn.

"Still, these challenges could mean a missile at the right moment–"

"We’re cutting to a broadcast direct from Manila," the presenter said, as the image changed to a different Spire, surrounded by many more people, with more arriving, walking out of the darkness of the Spire to spread over closely maintained grass. The presenter helpfully pointed out what Madeleine had already seen: the two Blues who had walked into the Spire at Mumbai had emerged a few moments later in Manila.

Noi, sounding annoyed, said: "Okay, so either the Spires have teleportation devices…or they aren’t ships at all. They’re gates. Great big pointy wormholes."

"It felt like stone when I touched ours," Madeleine reminded her.

"Either you weren’t at the In point, or it has an on and off mode." As alien song began to sound an accompaniment to the images Noi glared at the screen, then slowly let out her breath. "Guess we get to watch the Olympics after all. I just…seriously, have they really half-wrecked our world for a pissing contest? They couldn’t decide their primacy shit on their own world?"

"They said and business of our own." Min had risen to his feet to approach the screen, but glanced back at Noi. "I’ve a bet of my own – this other business is nothing we’re going to like. Maybe when they leave they take all our water, or our sun or something."

He turned back to the screen and pointed to a tanned Blue at the edge of the ever-widening crowd. "I remember this guy from Bondi."

It was the woman standing beside the tanned man who had Madeleine’s attention. Short-cropped blonde hair and a lovely line of neck and shoulder.

"Asha." She exchanged a glance with Noi, then added for the benefit of the room: "One of the people we met going through Finger Wharf. We cooked dinner together."

"Every country – every Spire is sending two people to compete?" Emily asked. "What was the little glowing animal picture for?"

"I guess we’re about to find out."

The flow had stopped, the crowd forming into a loose circle around the Spire. The weather in Manila was a step up from Mumbai: only overcast and drizzling, and most of the Blues moved with an eager, alert step, though some must come from time zones when they’d normally be well asleep. The air filled with oscillating song, and Madeleine wondered if they were just saying hello, or were sledging each other, or boasting about their stolen bodies.

She glanced at Fisher, sitting attentively, and could almost feel the roil of anger swelling in him. The room was thick with it, with resentment, and worry, and over it all, helplessness. Was this how it would be? They would spend two years hiding and watching, feeling as though their faces were being rubbed in their loss? The cheerful excitement of the Manila crowd, and the wash of language impossible for humans to understand, seemed to declare the irrelevance of any audience but the Moths. They had co-opted cities, people, technology, and would use them as they pleased.

The chorus of song died away, and one Blue outside the circle climbed onto a rock, raising a single thin warble.

"Speeches?" Min said. "Skip to the good stuff."

Quite as if she’d heard, the Blue standing on the rock raised one hand, and produced three short notes.

Fireworks. All around the circumference of the Spire, about twenty feet from the ground, balls of light burst out in unison. But instead of popping, or arcing to the ground, these zigzagged away, leaving a suggestion of a trail behind.

The circle of Blues gave chase, the sudden intensity of movement wholly at odds with their light-hearted cheer of moments before. One woman, particularly quick to react, leapt impossibly high into the air to intercept the nearest ball.

"Shield jump!" Pan cried, while the ball curled at the woman’s touch, no longer trying to move.

A second Blue had followed the woman into the air, aiming not for the ball, but for her. He hadn’t quite connected when another woman punched at him from the ground, clipping him so that he spun away then tumbled down, slowing at the last moment as the grass and dirt bellied out below him beneath the cushion of a shield.

"Are they wearing any flags or colours to tell which team they’re on?" Min asked, frowning at the screen.

"I guess all they’d need to know is their partner. Everyone else is on another team." As the two women sprinted for the Spire, Pan leaned back, visibly resisting being caught up in the competition. "And maybe they can see something we can’t."

A different pair were trying to intercept the sprinters, gouging a channel into the bright green grass with a punch which knocked both women sideways. The one holding the light animal – dangling it by its ears – somehow angled her landing so that her shield bounced her toward the Spire. With a stumble, she ran into starry darkness.

At the end of the muddy gouge her companion lay broken. She had been a short woman, maybe twenty, with dark braided hair and bronzed skin which set off the blue of the stain. The fine drizzle dewed her skin, and glimmered in the light of blooming wings.

The Moth lifted, a slow undulation, and swam through the rain into the stars.

"There’s a leader board," Fisher said, and tilted the laptop so Madeleine could see a web page where a name had appeared in two different scripts, with the number 2 beside it. "That’s the São Paulo clan." He paused, looking across at Noi, who was grey, lips set, and added: "You don’t have to stay."

"Yes, we do," she said. "They’re showing us their limits. Their attacks."

Madeleine stared at the screen, as the image shifted to another part of the golf course in Manila, to another group of Blues chasing long-eared balls of light. The second time a Blue died, the Moth seemed to be fatally wounded as well, emerging only to slump to the wet grass, colour leaching from its blue pattern. Other Blues were merely injured, and limped or were carried away, helped by Greens stationed near the cameras.

The chase for the long-eared balls of light was quick, brutal and efficient. There were many more teams than balls, and soon the losers were returning to their home Spires, to face the widely varied reaction of their Cores. Two dozen corpses remained, human and alien, but it wasn’t particularly comforting that most of the Moths had died with their hosts.

"The garage," Madeleine said stiffly, when it seemed they were done. "Practice? If we use a look-out?"

They looked at each other, then at the screen at another crumpled, discarded shell which had been a person, and nodded.