The Marriage of the Living Dark

Again Tybor hesitated, then, “Not yet”

“Good,” Horton said. “Because I’ll take them off your hands.”

“I’m not sure...” Emily began, but Horton interrupted once again. ‘Til pay you well. Enough equipment to launch a new campaign and whatever supplies you need.”

Lin Sling’s eyes lit up at this offer. He looked to his mother, expecting her to be equally enthusiastic, but she was looking down. “Forgive us, Shih Horton, but we shall have to consider your kind offer.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “We need to consult... you understand?” “Oh, perfectly. But if it helps persuade you, we can provide you with cruisers.

And artillery.”

Emily stared at him, astonished. What had Michael brought back that he wanted so much? “Cruisers?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper. Horton nodded. “We could supply them within a week, from Africa. Would six be enough? You’d get spares, of course, and expert back-up.” With that many cruisers they could take on DeVore’s patrols and make the Wilds their own, and that, in itself, would make them so much more effective. But at what cost? Horton seemed far too keen to close this deal. Besides, how did he know what Michael had brought back? Or was he guessing, gambling on the reputation of GenSyn’s big Milan plant? Of course, none of it was in the plant itself. If it had been, DeVore would long ago have plundered it But much remained - hidden away - that had once been produced there. Like the cache of powders Michael had stumbled upon and bought “Lcf o oolJ thie mooting to a does,” Emily said, her thoughts racing. “Tybor, Lin Chao... Daniel... come through, we need to talk.” She saw the flicker of frustration in Lin Sling’s eyes, the way he glared at Daniel, who’d been included in the decision-making process rather than himself, and knew she would have to deal with that. But not now. Right now she had to find out what was going on.

Emily waited until the others had gone, then, closing the door behind her, she turned to face Tybor. “Well? Just how dangerous is it?”

A TOAIL OF SMOKE

Tybor hesitated, then. “If s hard to say. In its sealed form if s not harmless at all, but when if s activated ...”

“What do you mean, activated?”

Tybor spread his hands. “The packets are vacuum-sealed. That means that the contents have been kept at a constant temperature - not cold exactly, but low enough for them to remain dormant But when I cut open one of the packets -under the proper conditions, naturally - the temperature quickly rose.” “And?” Lin Chao asked.

“If s organic. Or rather, genetic. The pure building blocks of life. Magic dust, you might call it. Living change. Whatever it reacts with it transforms.” “You know this for a fact?”

Tybor nodded. “We experimented. You should have seen what it did to one of the birds we put into the iso-box with it.”

“Did the bird die?”

“No. But it would have been better for it if it had. We had to incinerate everything in the iso-box. But I’ve kept a tape if you really want to see how lethal this stuff is.”

Emily shook her head. “I’ll take your word. But earlier, when I asked how dangerous, you said that if s hard to say. Why?” “Because in laboratory conditions the thing just keeps transforming itself. But out in the open it might ... just might find a natural, stable form. Then again, it might just keep on metamorphosing.”

“Meaning what?” Lin Chao asked.

“Well,” Tybor said, turning to face him, “imagine a landscape so transformed that it was like an alien planet Every single form changed. And that change going on at every single level of existence from the smallest bacteria to the largest mammal. A great soup of change. Thaf s one possibility.”

“Then we burn it All of it”

“And Morton’s offer?”

“You think I’d give this to him, Chao? No. We’ll have to make do without cruisers.” Emily shuddered, then. “What madman would have thought of such a thing?”

“Klaus Ebert””Hans Eberf s father?”

Tybor nodded. “He was a great man in his way. He used the stuff in controlled experiments.”

“Are you guessing now, Tybor?”

“No. There were two small notebooks in one of the sacks. Eberfs notebooks. He

used these substances in minute amounts to unlock normal genetic structures and

re-structure them.”

“Skeleton keys,” Daniel said, speaking for the first time since he’d come into the room.

“Exactly,” Tybor said.

“Then we’re lucky,” Emily said. “Extremely lucky. Imagine if these had fallen into other hands.”

She was silent a moment, then, “Tybor, go and arrange the incineration at once.

Chao, give Tybor whatever help he needs.”

Tybor and Lin Chao stood and, with a small bow to Emily, left. Daniel too had stood, but Emily gestured for him to sit again. “No, Daniel You stay. You and I need to talk.”

Late afternoon, Ben always took a nap - a doze of an hour or so, so that he’d be refreshed and ready for a long evening’s work. Today, however, that nap had been broken. He had woken with a jolt, blinded and in pain, gasping for air, then, blinking, looked about him.

Slowly the vision passed.

The night-coloured pearl. After all these years he had seen it again, in a dream - a dream so realistic and powerful that it had seemed almost like one of his shells. But this time, instead of being a thing of beauty, of wonder, it had seemed to emanate an air of horror, creating in him a sense of dread so overwhelming that, in the dream, he had whimpered and cried out And still the thing had grown, blotting out the depths beneath him as he floated there, immersed in the cool blue water, rising towards him all the while, like the swollen abdomen of a giant, female spider, its dark skin bloated as A TRAIL OF SMOKE if a thousand awful creatures moved beneath the thick skin of its outer covering. And even as that thought suggested itself to him, so he saw that it did move, like a nest of dark maggots.

He had struggled up, hauling himself up to the surface, even as the great egg-like pearl brushed against his feet, making him cry out yet again and lift his feet, afraid lest they be contaminated by it And then, even as he glanced back at it, it split open, a great rift of pure light leaping like a spear from its heart to pierce his eyes, the pain so fierce it took his breath away.

Which was when he woke.

Ben sat up, trembling. He was covered in sweat and his head ached, as if he had a migraine.

That light It had been so real.

He looked about him again. No wires, no tapes. It had only been a dream. Just a dream.

And now he recalled what had woken him, and shuddered, for as the light had spilled from the splitting pearl - in that last moment of vision before it blinded him - he had seen faces on the tiny maggots that filled the great dark pearl Hundreds of faces, and all the same.

DeVore. Howard DeVore.

Ben walked across the room, slowly, unsteadily, like an invalid recovering from a fever that had laid him low, then stood beneath the shower for some time, letting it flow ice-cold on his flesh, his eyes closed against the pain in his head.

He knew what the dream meant, of course. He was far too self-aware not to know. Yes, and he knew what Meg would say, were he to tell her. But did that mean the dream was right? Was he repressing this? Forcing himself not to feel what, perhaps, naturally - as a human being - he ought to be feeling. Which was what?

The words came easy. Aversion. Repulsion. Appalled. Sick. And so on... A nice long list of responses to DeVore and his schemes. Decent responses, or so his sister claimed. Not sickly ones, like fascination. For too long now he had lived in his eyes, in the landscape of his visual memory, shutting out anything that did not slot into the great library of images he’d stored over the years. Emotions were untidy. One did not know what shelf to put them on. Whereas images .. .

Maggots. Hundreds of squirming black maggots, and every one possessed of that bastard’s face. Enough maggots to fill the galaxy. He shut off the flow and stepped out, beginning to dry himself.

Meg. I need to see Meg.

Yes, even if he didn’t mention this, it would be good to go home for a while. To see the Domain again and walk down to the bay.

He looked about him, as if fragments of the dream still clung to the edges of his vision, then, with a tiny shudder, went through to his bedroom and began to pack.

DeVore sat in Li Yuan’s chair, the two handwritten notes laid side by side on the desk before him, and smiled.

He had got what he wanted. An alliance. And not just one, but two. Picking up Coover’s note, he read it through again and laughed. Coover acted the humble peacemaker but he was a greedy son-of-a-bitch. He wouldn’t rest until he had a map of the world on the wall above his desk - a world marked out in his own colours.

He let the paper fall from his fingers then reached out and picked up Egan’s. Egan’s note was more grudging, as if every word had been forced from him - as probably it had been. Rumour was that he’d taken on Li Yuan as his advisor. If that was true, then he could prove a dangerous enemy. But as an ally...

As an ally he could be made to agree to all manner of things he might otherwise

baulk at

So which would he go for? Coover? Or Egan? For the two were sure to slog it out

from here on in, winner take all

A TRAIL OF SMOKE

Or so they thought.

Egan looked the least likely victor. He’d lost all his Western armies and now his capital. But he was tenacious. And now he had the experience of Li Yuan to guide him.

Then again, there was his grandfather, Josiah, to contend with. He had to win that battle even before he took the field against Coover. In the meantime, if accounts of the treaty they had made were true, Coover was bleeding Egan dry. Egan’s only chance was a swift, decisive strike against Coover. And Coover knew it and was wary of it That was why he had sent Horton over, to see The Woman.