The Marriage of the Living Dark

“And selfish,” Meg said, mollified somewhat by his comment

“Oh, that I don’t deny. Yet I do question whether we could have acted other than we did. My obsession with death, for instance. What was that but an expression of my deep mistrust of existence? I was an experiment, damn it! A clone! Why should I not think myself unreal?”

“Do you really think it was that, Ben?” Li Yuan asked, a strange compassion in his tone.

“Part of it,” Ben answered. “And there the floraforms have the advantage over us, I feel. They can control the DNA they have inherited from us.” “You think we’ve been controlled then?”

Ben laughed. “Of course we have. Machines, that’s all we were. Machines of flesh. Mere sensory keyboards.” He looked into the flames of the fire. “When you think how many generations there have been. Six million years, and what was the result? An orgy of self-destruction.”

He looked up again, meeting Li Yuan’s eyes. “I’d say that whoever made us played wet chi. Not only that, but he was a lover of the long game. But he got bored. The experiment turned sour and he abandoned it” “You believe that?”

Ben grinned. “Not entirely. But it’s one explanation.”

Li Yuan frowned. “You’ve not entirely changed, then?”

“Not entirely. I didn’t grow dumb when I grew kind.”

“No ...” Li Yuan paused, then drained his glass. “I really ought to go.”

“Whaf s happening?” Ben asked. “I mean ... out there.”

“A war. Another war.”

“The last?”

Li Yuan smiled. “I think so.”

“And when if s over?”

“We either leave or we don’t” He paused, then. “You can come, Ben. In fact, I came deliberately to invite you.”

Ben smiled. “I’m grateful It was ... well, nice of you, I guess. But...” “We’d love to come,” Meg said, coming across and standing beside Li Yuan, looking down at him, even as she rocked the sleeping child. “Your offer is most graciously accepted.”

“Meg...”

She turned. “No, Ben. We have the child to think of. And Li Yuan’s right There is no future here. This world - this human world - is ending. If s time we left Time we sought a new home.”

Ben stared at her a while, then shrugged. “Then so be it”Li Yuan laughed and clapped his hands. “But thaf s tremendous news! We could leave at once. We could be there in two hours.”

But Meg was staring now at Ben, her dark eyes mirroring his own. “Tomorrow,” she said, soothing the child’s head with her hand. “We’ll leave here on the morrow.”

Ben woke to hear voices out in the garden. He went to the window and, drawing back the curtain, looked out Li Yuan’s cruiser was still there - an extraordinary sight in that rough uncut field of grass, its emblematic golden dragon embossed upon the old flag of the American Empire. The hatch was open and Ben could see Li Yuan himself standing just within the shadows, talking. For a moment he stood listening, then, with a word or two of Han, he turned and came back down the ramp, gathering up his long silks with one hand as he hastened back to the house.

Ben threw on a wrap then went down to the kitchen. Meg was standing at the hob, making breakfast. Li Yuan sat nearby, cradling a cup of steaming apple ch’a.

As Ben stepped into the room, Li Yuan looked up. “Ben...” Noting his despondency, Ben went across and sat, facing Li Yuan across the scrubbed pine table. “What is it?”

‘If s DeVore. He’s hit two of the generators. One in Northern Poland and another in Lapland.”

“Destroyed?”

“Totally.”

Ben nodded thoughtfully, then. “Do we know what kind of effect this is having?”

‘There have been violent storms. With each generator he knocks out, the strain on the others grows. Air flows out to fill the gaps.” Li Yuan shuddered. “It is as if he is poking holes in the planet’s lungs.” “Hmm. Then maybe you should adopt a more aggressive policy. Don’t wait for him to come to you. Go to him.”

Li Yuan smiled bleakly. “And if in the meantime he takes out yet more generators?”

“Then that is a risk you must take, Li Yuan. He must be stopped, and stopped quickly.”

Li Yuan sighed heavily. “I wonder if if s worth the death of any more of my people. I wonder if we shouldn’t just go and let DeVore fight it out with the floraforms.”

“And leave him here, triumphant? You want that?”

“No, but...”

“Then fight, Li Yuan. This one last time. Make sure he doesn’t have a base to extend from. If DeVore survives here, you will be safe nowhere. Not even if you cross the galaxy.”

Li Yuan thought a moment, then nodded. “All right But you will come with me, neh? And be my advisor, like old times?”

Ben looked to Meg, who had turned to watch them. She smiled and gave a tiny nod. “Okay,” Ben said and, smiling, reached across to take Li Yuan’s hands in his own. “Like old times.”

The cruisers drifted in, like bees on a summer’s day, their lazy drone filling the valley long before their shadows fell upon the outpost Bombs fell, hanging in the air like rows of chimes before they exploded with a flash and huff, a rapid succession of detonations, earth and trees thrown up amidst the roil of smoke and flame And then the hidden guns opened up. Rockets streaked across the burning valley, homing rapidly upon their targets. More detonations. Craft exploding in mid-air or tumbling, flaming to the valley floor. And then a kind of silence, with only the roar and crackle of flame.

Dense smoke drifted across the valley. The burning pyres of ruined craft littered the Edenic scene.

And then cheers. Cheers from the hidden gunners. Elation from the defenders of the generator. They had won. They had beaten off the attacking force. They wandered out from beneath their camouflage nets, clapping each others’ backs as they looked out over the burning ruins that dotted the length of the valley. Not a singlecraft had escaped. They’d nailed the lot Broad grins gave way to whoops of excitement.

And then a faint rumble. A rush of wind. From the far end of the valley something dark and sleek whizzed past them like a bullet Heads turned, mouths open in shock. And then the mountainside lifted, as if a dark wall of earth and rock had emerged from deep beneath the surface. The shock wave rippled through the earth to where they stood, knocking them from their feet, throwing their guns - their feeble rocket-launchers -fifty metres into the air.

And then it fell on them.

For a minute, two minutes there was silence. And then there came the faint yet distinctive drone of cruisers.

Only this time there would be no opposition.

DeVore stepped down and looked about him at the burning valley. “Perfect,” he said, the word muffled by the breathing mask he wore. Already the weather was changing, great cyclones sweeping across the central plains of Europe as the air slowly gave out. One by one he was picking them off. And all Li Yuan’s attempts to second-guess him were futile. When it came to the endgame there was no better player. Besides, he remembered now. He knew now just why he had to win this game.

Ward. Ward was the stone that turned it all

Yes, and he must be drawn back here. Must be enticed to come. For sentimental reasons if no other.

And he would come.

As they brought the great excavator across, he stretched and yawned, feeling the stitches pull in the wounds where his surgeons had sewed him up. He did not need this form much longer now, but for a while longer it would serve him. Until he had Ward in his web. And then he’d show himself, even as the sticky strands wrapped about his adversary.

The thought of it made him grin. He could feel his true shape buried within him, just there, on the other side of reality. Less than a breath away. Closer than the width of an atom.

There where the black wind blew eternally.

And soon it would blow here too. The breath of the vacuum, into which he had been born, and in which he had had his being.

How strange that Tuan should seek to deny that heritage. But so it had ever been among his kind, the weaker of the twins drawn always to the sun’s misleading warmth, while the stronger...

Blood seeped from the wounds. DeVore relaxed. His time would come. Soon. Very soon now. Until then he’d play the Man.

Emily stood in the doorway, weeping for the last of her sons who now lay dead upon the mortuary slab.

And so she had lost them all. All whom she had loved. All but her last adopted son, Daniel.

The thought of it made her want to lie down beside them and embrace that long, cold sleep. She kept seeing them in her mind, picturing them laughing and happy, as they’d been but days ago. The very best of sons. Dead now. Cold and pale and dead.

And she still alive. She who had survived the worst the world could throw at her.

Pained, she pressed her hands together, then, whispering a last “farewell”, turned and left them there.

Her boys. Her beautiful boys.

Daniel met her just outside and held her, embracing her, his hand at her neck, his voice mumbling soothing words into her ear. But her grief was beyond words. Seeing them thus had finally brought home to her the price she’d had to pay all these years. The endless loss. The endless grief she had been forced to endure. Eat bitter. So the Han said. Eat bitter and endure. And so she had. But now she’d had enough of it Now it was time to end this struggle, one way or another.The news was bad. DeVore had now hit six of the twelve generators. Great storms were raging, blowing like a dragon wind across the continent. And still there was no word from Li Yuan.

Where is he? she wondered, easing back out of Daniel’s embrace. Where in the gods’ names has he got to?

“What is it?” Daniel asked.

“Li Yuan. He should be back by now.”

“He’s on his way. We got a signal ten minutes back.” “Ah ...” She hesitated, then. “We should send ships out to meet him and escort him back. If DeVore intercepted that signal...”