DAY 29

 

 

“Oh fuck,” said Saunders, as they flew towards the Space Elevator. They had been travelling for two gruelling days, flying in their body armour over the jungle with their Gryphon escort without a break.

“Why? What?” Sorcha asked.

Saunders was staring down, looking at the Space Elevator Base Camp. He was transfixed by the sight, the awful, terrible sight, of the thing that was not there.

He pointed. And Sorcha couldn’t see it either.

Because it wasn’t there.

“It’s all over,” Saunders said, with utter weariness. “Hooperman was smarter than us. We’ve lost.” They flew closer and saw the AmRover. “They’re alive!” said Saunders in delight. “The others, they’re alive.”

But Sorcha didn’t answer. She still was looking down, at the thing that wasn’t there.

For the Space Elevator had at its base a small squat building, the Elevator HQ, which connected to the Satellite by a thick and almost unbreakable carbon nanotube cable, balanced many miles away by a counterweight cable that extended out from the Satellite into space. Cargo trucks and lifepods could be sent up and down this cable at will; it was the simplest and cheapest form of space travel ever devised, a simple wire-pulley system linking the ground and outer space.

But the cable snaking through the air like a beam of light reaching to the stars — that was the thing that wasn’t there. Instead, there was just a vast pool of wire on the ground. Hooperman had cut the cable. He was already up in the Satellite.

They were too late.

Saunders and Sorcha entered the Elevator HQ. It was a cavernous building, with a glass dome offering views up to the sky above. The Elevator had been built in one of the largest jungle oases, and above them was clear blue sky and a winking light — the Satellite.

Saunders was in a sombre mood; and he didn’t much relish the prospect of a reunion with the last survivors of his scientific expedition. But he felt he owed it to his people to put a brave face on things.

So he fastened on his best, charming, self-deprecating smile, and confidently walked into the spartan HQ building.

Hugo Baal strode towards them, out of his body armour, his stout frame striding fast. “Professor,” he exclaimed, and there was a light of joy in his eyes.

“We’re too late,” Saunders told him, through his helmet mike. “Hooperman —”

“We know, we know,” said Hugo cheerfully. “Come through, we have a lounge. Major Molloy, delighted you survived.”

“We’re too late,” Sorcha told him, bitterly. “That means —”

“Yes I know, I know,” said Hugo, with a trace of impatience. “Doom, destruction, the end of everything. But at least we’re out of that fucking hole, pardon my French. David! We have guests!”

David Go, the microbiologist, with his cautious rabbit’s face, emerged into the central hall of the HQ, and greeted them. “We have air, you know, you don’t need body armour,” he said, gently.

“I’ll keep this on.”

“Helmets off at least,” said Hugo, also gently. They were joined by Private Tonii Newton, Dr Mary Beebe, Mia Nightingale and Private Clementine McCoy, in an exoskeleton.

Saunders shucked his helmet back and breathed air. “Where’s Dr Kirkham?” he asked.

“Dead,” Hugo said.

“Jim Aura?”

“Killed by Rocs.”

“Sergeant Anderson?” asked Sorcha.

“Dead also,” said Hugo mournfully. “You know, you sound like a tin man through that helmet mike. You’re with friends now, come, come.” Hugo was fussing in that annoying way he had. Saunders bit back a sarcastic comment. Sorcha sighed, and shucked back her helmet.

Hugo promptly raised a plasma gun and pointed it at Sorcha’s head. Mary Beebe had a plasma gun pointed at Saunders’s head. David Go, Mia and Clementine also had their weapons raised.

“Take your body armour off,” said Hugo.

“Hugo,” said Saunders wearily.

“Shut up, Professor,” said Hugo. “Now, this is the situation, just to be clear about it: You are our prisoners.”

From the diary of Dr Hugo Baal

July 3rd

We have arrived at the Space Elevator, and have been reunited with Professor Saunders and Major Molloy. It was really rather nice to see them again alive.

However, as a precautionary measure, we have taken them both prisoner pending a further investigation into the causes of our troubles on this planet.

So many have died, after all, and on the face of it, it does appear to be all Professor Saunders’s fault. And if Major Molloy has allied herself with him, she too is suspect.

We would all, I feel, like to know the truth before we die. Because there’s little doubt that we will all die, soon. There are no DRs left at the Elevator HQ, the compound was unguarded, and we have encountered no opposition. However, the Space Elevator itself has been sabotaged; the superhard cable which connects the planetary surface with the orbiting Satellite (TFS) has been severed. And we have no other way of reaching the Satellite. All the space shuttles in Xabar were blown up in the blast and subsequent fire. I had hoped to utilise the three other spaceworthy vessels that were hidden in a secret silo near the Elevator HQ, but Hooperman found them and they have been destroyed. I fear we are doomed.

The next stages are inevitable. The Satellite — the Horseman of Death, as some call it — will rain down destruction upon the planet, acting in concert with the three other Satellites which are in orbit around this planet. The oceans will burn, the atmosphere will ignite, poison torrents will drench the soil, and every last trace of life, every animal and plant and spore and seed and bacterium and nucleara cell and soil-based organism, all will be eradicated. Only when life is extinct will the nanonets fall and the process of oxygenating the dead planet begin.

I am familiar with the process; I have allowed it to happen on the many planets I have studied. This time it’s different. This time I, too, will be rendered extinct.

Rather than morbidly obsessing about my imminent and terrible and untimely and unfairly soon death — oh my God I’m going to die!!! — I try to focus on more positive matters. I try to keep busy.

And this is one of the reasons we are staging a trial for Saunders. It’s a way to keep busy; to spend our last hours in pursuit of the truth about what has happened to us.

Oh, I have asked Clementine McCoy to marry me, and she has said yes. Due to her injuries, however, it will be impossible for us to consummate our marriage before the heavens erupt and all life on New Amazon, including ourselves, is — no, no more of that! Stay positive.

Dr Mary Beebe has agreed to conduct the marriage service¹ and David Go will be my best man, but we don’t even know if there will be time to marry, before —

Move on, Baal.

I’ve been studying the Gryphons.² They are remarkable creatures. They are intelligent tool-users, they are beautiful in flight, and they practise an extraordinary form of visual telepathy. I visualised to one creature an image of my mother, cradling me, when I was a baby. It reciprocated with an image of a Baby Gryphon ripping the infant Hugo Baal limb from limb. It was, I surmise, a joke, but it certainly shook me.

I would like to spend longer on this planet. There is so much to learn.

I would like to have a wedding night.

I would like to live.

However, none of these are tenable options; we will die very soon.

“Kiss me, Carl,” said Sorcha.

And, still in his handcuffs, he did so, passionately, urgently, sadly.

Saunders was calm as he addressed the makeshift court. They were in the lounge of the Elevator HQ, and a coffee machine bubbled on the kitchen counter behind them. Clementine was stretched out on a sofa. Sorcha had sworn a parole, and had been unshackled. Saunders, also unshackled, was in an armchair, facing Hugo, who sat at a desk surrounded by papers, looking a little confused by his new role as judge.

“Right, let’s get started,” Hugo snapped. Everyone stared at him; what was the procedure meant to be?

“Don’t I get a defence attorney?” Saunders prompted.

“No, that’s a waste of time,” said Hugo briskly. “Just tell us the truth.”

Saunders nodded, hiding his amusement, and wondered if this court had the power to order his execution. And whether, if they did so, they’d be quick enough, and efficient enough, to execute him before they all died.

“I’ve told you the truth,” said Saunders calmly. “Hooperman hates me. That’s why he’s killing all of you people.”

Hugo glanced at David Go, somewhat at a loss. David nodded encouragement. So Hugo stared beadily at Saunders again: “Why?”he barked. “Why, I mean, does he hate you so disproportionately much?”

“Because I tried to kill him.”

“Hah! We know that. The question is — why?” Hugo snapped again, abrasively.

Hugo was starting to get his rhythm now. And he rather relished inhabiting the roles of judge, jury, defence and prosecution, all rolled into one.

Saunders sighed. His body language was relaxed, his tone assured, but he was about to take an irrevocable step. He looked at Sorcha, her soft skin, her brimming energy, and marvelled at her beauty and her passion and her potential for rage. And he hoped that he wouldn’t lose her. Not now, not after all they had been through.

“It was an accident,” Saunders said, at length.

Puzzled looks hurtled around the room.

Hugo snorted. “You expect us to believe that?” he roared. “You put a bomb in Hooperman’s book by accident?” David Go nodded approvingly at Hugo’s lawyerly tone, and deft use of sarcasm. “You’ll be saying next that —”

“May I continue?” Saunders interrupted. Hugo screeched to a halt, and nodded.

“The bomb,” explained Saunders, “wasn’t intended for Hooperman. It —” he hesitated, and then finally, after all this time, after centuries of lying, he told the truth: “It was intended for the Cheo.”

There was a shocked silence.

The silence persisted, and evolved into awed silence.

And then — a roar of anger from Sorcha.

The others came to life. Hugo blinked, astonished. David Go instinctively subvocalised, audibly to all of them, “Fuck.” Tonii and Clementine braced themselves for what was to come.

“You evil bastard!” screamed Sorcha, more bansheee than woman. “You swore to me, you told me —”

“I didn’t think you —”

Sorcha leapt at him. Tonii stunned her with the taser setting of his plasma gun but she carried on moving. Tonii braced himself to shoot again.

But then the strength went out of Sorcha’s legs. She crawled her way to Saunders. “Private Newton! Private McCoy!” she cried. “He’s a traitor, kill him, now!”

Clementine didn’t move.

Tonii hesitated.

Both knew, as they knew that air had to be breathed, that treason against the Cheo was instantly punishable by death. It was therefore their sworn duty to execute Saunders. Their every conditioned instinct told them both to draw their plasma guns and start blasting.

But neither did.

Tonii looked at Clementine. She looked back. She met his eyes and shook her head, and a silent vow was exchanged between them: no more. No more being a slave to their conditioning. No more being a vassal of the Chief Executive Officer of the Galactic Corporation. Those days were gone.

“Hear the man out,” said Tonii. Sorcha was dragged back to her chair and shackled.

And Saunders told the tale.

“I discovered the first sentient species. The Lyra. They weren’t beautiful creatures but they were profound. I had many friends among the Lyra, in the Galactic Zoo. I used to visit them often. They used to ask me Why? Why did we do what we did?

“Why did we destroy the Lyra? They were no threat to us. But we took their planet and terraformed it and killed every species that lived there and all but two dozen of the billion Lyrans living there. Then we followed their spaceships and destroyed them. We found their secret colony and blew it up with an antimatter bomb. This was all, you see, to pre-empt retaliation on their part. They might have wanted to take revenge for the destruction of their home world.

“The Lyrans in the Galactic Zoo were wonderful poets. I spent many days there, listening to their songs-made-of-words. I was fluent in Lyran, I caught every nuance. They spoke poems about great heroes and wondrous battles, although the Lyrans were herbivores who had never fought a single battle in the history of their entire civilisation.

“The Lyrans did not blame me for the excesses of humanity. But they did blame humanity. I tried to explain that humans are essentially decent honourable people. It was just one man who was doing all this! One evil dictator! Peter Smith! The Chief Executive Officer of the Galactic Corporation.

“He was to blame for everything. The murders, the rapes, the slave planets, the use of DRs to crush and colonise, the enforced whoredom of entire generations of people, the breeding of brainwashed Soldiers. He was to blame for every rancid bit of it.

“But the Lyrans firmly believe that leaders have no power if no one follows. And they observed that almost everyone in the human universe followed and obeyed the edicts and laws of the Cheo, and CSO, and the other members of the Corporation Board. Out of fear, out of duty, out of blind obedience. But follow they did.

“And I began to wonder — who should we blame most? The evil, or the good? For the evil are following their own nature. But the good — the people like us — me, and all of you — we just obey because we don’t believe you can “beat the system”. We are complicit in genocide, year after year, each of us, every one of you. You all have blood on your hands, not just the Soldiers. All of you.

“So I decided to make a difference. I conceived a conspiracy to thwart the CSO by saving an alien planet from genocide, just as I told you earlier. And I confided my plans in Andrew Hooperman. And, as you know, he betrayed me. So I bribed my guards to allow me to escape from Earth. And before I left, I conceived a new plan, a cold-blooded conspiracy to murder Dr Jeremy Marston, the Chief Scientific Officer of the Galactic Corporation, and all the other members of the Board. Including the Cheo himself.

“I planted nanobot bombs in the airconditioning of Westminster Abbey, timed to explode during a Board meeting when I knew the Chief Executive of the Corporation would be present. And for backup, I put a bomb in Hooperman’s book of the Tree of Life, which he was due to present to the Cheo in person.” Saunders stared at his accusers. “And I thought, with all of them dead, Marston, Peter Smith, the whole corrupt gang of them, I thought there’d be some chance to — no matter. I failed.

“You see, the nanobots were disabled by the Board’s security systems. And the nuclear missile I launched from a warehouse on the South Bank of the Thames was blown out of the sky by satellite lasers. And Hooperman was snubbed by the CSO and the Cheo, and never got to hand over the fucking book to them. And so he went home and he was blown up by mistake, and you know the rest.

“I wasn’t acting alone. I had a dozen co-conspirators, the best and the brightest and the boldest men and women in the world. None of them informed on me. All remained steadfast. Between us, we built the bombs and the nuclear missile and cracked the Cheo’s security systems and we almost succeeded. But we didn’t succeed. We failed. His empire is too great, his security too perfect, his Doppelganger Robots too powerful, his Soldiers too loyal. No one can ever defeat the Cheo; and so I predict his regime will prevail until the end of time.

“All of my co-conspirators were captured and, I don’t doubt, died in agony. I managed to flee, and for centuries I have been fleeing. Pursued by the deranged Hooperman, but also wanted by the Cheo’s secret police. I have lied to all of you and I feel no shame for that. I have deceived everyone, and I am proud of it. I am a failure in my life’s mission, to make a better universe for humans, but I exult in the fact that at least I fucking tried. And that’s my story. That is me.”

There was another stunned silence.

“Why didn’t you tell us all this earlier?” Mary Beebe said bleakly.

“Because Major Molloy and the other Soldiers would have killed me on the spot,” Saunders said. “It’s the first principle of the Soldier’s Code: to protect the Cheo with their lives, and to kill anyone who threatens the Cheo. It’s their conditioning. So I had no choice. I had to lie, to protect my life.”

Mary turned to look at Sorcha, still shackled to the chair. Then she looked at Tonii and Clementine. “Is this true?” she asked.

“It’s true,” said Tonii.

“Yes,” said Clementine.

“Yes,” said Sorcha. “I’m sorry, but I have to kill you, Carl. The minute you let me go, I will execute you.”

There was an extremely awkward pause. Then Mary looked back to Tonii and Clementine, who were both armed and body-armoured. “And what about you?” Mary asked.

“I — must,” said Tonii, and wrestled with his conscience. “No! I owe no loyalty to the Cheo. Not any more.”

“Clementine?”

“This is my tribe now,” said Clementine. “What’s done is done.”

“Traitors!” Sorcha roared.

“Sorcha — please —” Tonii begged.

“Make a fresh start?” Clementine implored.

But Sorcha wrestled wildly with her bonds, and with her killing rage, and would not heed their words.

“Sorcha, I love you,” Saunders said wearily.

Sorcha spat at him and fought to get free. She rocked the chair until blood dripped from her wrists, and still the bonds didn’t break and finally she was still. She sat and glared at Saunders, her enemy, thinking her hate at him as if communicating with a Gryphon.

“And so this is why?” Mary said, in jagged tones, to Professor Carl Saunders.

Saunders was very aware that Mary had a plasma pistol strapped to her waist.

“This is why,” continued Mary, “why William died? And why so many thousands of my colleagues died? Because of you? Because you tried to assassinate the Cheo?”

“Yes,” said Saunders. “And I’m —”

She waved him silent with an imperious gesture.

And then she smiled.

A rare, exhilarating, crazy smile.

“Well, I’d say,” said Mary Beebe, and her eyes were moist, “and I’m sure William would agree with me, that certainly is a cause worth dying for.”

Hugo was cooking sausages over an open fire made out of laser-beam-severed Aldiss tree. The others were gathered round, sitting on the ground or on camp chairs. Sorcha sat nearby, cross-legged, silent, tethered with unbreakable wire, at what was considered to be a safe distance away from Saunders.

“This is nice,” said Saunders.

The jungle was loud. The crackling of sausages merged with the sounds of insects and birds and monsters howling and screeching and cawing.

“Lull before the storm,” said Hugo. He seemed calm, adept in his sausage cooking, attentive to the mood of all around him.

“It’s going to be grim,” Saunders admitted.

“Too fucking right,” said Clementine.

“I feel —” Saunders broke off. He had a vision of bloodied bodies and corpses, and his guilt was starting to drown him. “I’m tormented,” he said eventually, “by the knowledge that —”

“Have I ever told you,” said Hugo, interrupting with panache, seemingly oblivious to Saunders’s yearning to expiate himself, “about my first tour on a xenoexpedition?”

Saunders blinked. He had lost his train of remorse. All eyes were on Hugo, waiting for him to tell his story.

Hugo took his sweet time. He started serving up the food. Tonii got up and helped him. Clementine was able to use the exoskeleton of her body armour to move her arms and legs, but it made it hard for her to drink wine elegantly. However, she persevered. She drained her glass and smacked her lips.

“Nice wine,” conceded David Go.

“Thank you, David,” said Hugo, who had synthesised it himself.

And still they all waited for Hugo to tell his tale. It suddenly dawned on Saunders: this tubby little man had the whole group in the palm of his hand; he had them captivated.

They began to eat. There were no vegetables, just plant extract tablets, but the sausages were freshly thawed and delicious. Saunders sipped, and ate, and waited.

And finally Hugo began: “I cried, for six months afterwards,” he said, still referring to his first xenoexpedition. And he let the pause linger for a while.

And then he continued: “After, that is, you know, the genocide.”

They all nodded, sharing his pain. It was a moment of group catharsis.

“Which planet?” asked Saunders.

“Delphi.”

“Swamp planet,” Saunders recalled, and Hugo nodded. “The green warthogs,” added Saunders. “Biggus verdus.”

“I apologise for that. I had some very jejune colleagues,” said Hugo.

“Slimesnakes,” Saunders continued. “Amphibious birds that could spend half the year in the ocean, half the year in flight.”

“Persephone aves,” Hugo recalled.

“A beautiful planet?”

“Not especially. An unvarying habitat. Swamp and mud and muddy swampy ocean. Even the air was rich in colloid, it was like oxygenated mud. My body armour turned brown. But even so, I had a month of tears after I destroyed it all.”

“Same here,” admitted Saunders. “I’ve done it six times now. I had no choice. I was a fugitive. Science is my only skill. Each time it gets worse.”

“I weep every time, too,” admitted Mary.

“Such wonderful worlds. Ugly creatures. Beautiful creatures. Gentle creatures. Savage creatures. Vile biospheres. Visions of paradise. But all different.”

“Unique.”

“Special.”

“We destroy them all.”

“And why?”

“We need the planets,” said Sorcha stubbornly, from her position of tethered isolation.

“Don’t you ever fucking listen to a word I say?” Saunders snapped at her.

“I listen, I usually don’t agree.”

“There should be a God,” said David Go firmly. “For if there was, he would smite us down, as vile and evil murderous sinners.”

“We are who we are,” protested Clementine.

“Yes! We’re animals,” pointed out Sorcha. “We do what all animals do. We promote our own survival.”

“Animals don’t kill for pleasure,” retorted Mia.

All the Scientists snorted at her naivety.

“Animals don’t lay waste to other planets.”

“They would if they could.”

“Then we should be better. We should fulfil our destiny,” Mia protested.

“We have no destiny,” said Sorcha. “Except survival.”

“Anyway,” said Hugo. “Let’s agree this much: it’s a tragic waste to kill so much life. A deeply tragic waste,” he repeated, with calm insistence. “And stupid. And immoral. And wrong.” He stared at Sorcha fiercely, and finally she actually flinched.

“But not this time,” Hugo added. “New Amazon must survive.”

“Even if we could save the planet,” scoffed Clementine, “it won’t be for long. They’ll send another expedition, they’ll conquer us, they’ll terraform. What’s the fucking point?”

“It’s the moral thing to do.”

Sorcha and Clementine winced at his use of that word. But Tonii nodded; he agreed.

There was a howl in the distance, of a Screech-Lizard. An eerie song, as two Godzillas mated. Smoke from the fire billowed out towards the canopy of trees beyond the oasis clearing, and Saunders could swear he saw arboreals on the lower levels of the Aldiss tree trunk peering down at them.

“The real point,” said Saunders shrewdly, “is do we want Hooperman to win?”

“Fuck no,” said Sorcha, suddenly changing her ground.

“No fucking way,” said Clementine.

“Cream that mf,” added Tonii.

“So, do you have a plan?” asked Hugo.

“Oh yes,” said Saunders, chewing slowly.

They all looked at him. He’d been saving this moment up for some time, and it didn’t disappoint.

Saunders milked the pause for as long as he dared. Then: “Yes,” he said, “I do know a way to defeat Hooperman.”

“Explain,” said Hugo.

And Saunders explained. And they listened.

“That could work,” Hugo said.

“It’s a suicide mission,” Saunders pointed out. “We’d need a volunteer.” He waited.

“That’s not a problem,” said Sorcha, proudly. “I’m a Soldier. Tell me where I die, and there I will die.”

“If we let you go, you’ll kill me,” Saunders pointed out.

Sorcha grinned. “Hey, that’s a risk you have to take.”

“It should be me,” Tonii argued.

“No, me. I have less to lose,” said Clementine, “because I’m a cripple.” And a look of pain flashed over Hugo’s face.

“No, it should be me,” said Hugo, calmly, and they all stared at him, amused and sceptical. And Hugo stared them down.

“I’m willing to die,” he said. “And I’m expendable.”

Saunders smiled, and then realised Hugo was serious.

“I’m a zoologist, a taxonomist,” Hugo continued. “But so is Mary, so is Professor Saunders, my skills aren’t needed. But we desperately need all our Soldiers to defend us in the times ahead. And we need all our women, to create a new generation. So if you need a volunteer to die, then I volunteer. I have to, you see. Because it’s my job. My duty. My imperative.” Hugo blinked fiercely. “To protect my people.”

Sorcha couldn’t sleep.

All her life she had dreamed of a Glorious death. Her parents had died Gloriously, so had her brothers, and most of her friends from military academy had died Gloriously. She had never wanted anything more out of life than her own death.

But at the moment when Hugo Baal volunteered to die, Sorcha had been overwhelmed with . . . relief. She’d glanced at Tonii and seen the same look in his eyes. She looked at Clementine, and saw it there too.

Hugo was right, he was expendable. And furthermore, he embraced his death. Sorcha could smell his raw courage, and was in awe of it.

Because Sorcha herself had lost her faith, her creed, her will to die.

Everything she had believed in now felt worthless. When Saunders had cut her bonds, she’d had a chance to break his scrawny neck and beat him to a pulp; but she couldn’t do it. He had kissed her on the temple, and she’d allowed it.

Her killing rage had vanished. Her loyalty to the Cheo now seemed futile. She remembered the wind on her hair, the touch of Saunders’ skin on hers, and she didn’t want to lose the chance of more moments like that. Traitor or not, she couldn’t bring herself to kill him. In fact, quite the opposite.

And so, despite all her instincts, despite her own better judgement, she wanted to live — so very very much.

Mary watched Mia as she slept.

The two of them often shared a bed these days. They didn’t have sex, but Mia had said she needed the company, and the comfort of cuddling, at this time of stress and horror. And Mary didn’t have the heart to say no.

And in truth, Mary didn’t mind having Mia in her bed. Anything to take the curse off her loneliness. She had no desire for Mia — no love — no fondness even. But it helped, a little bit, to have someone sleep beside her.

Mary stroked the hair off Mia’s face, gently, so as not to wake her, and thought, as she always thought, about William.

Hugo Baal was eleven years old when he had his first microscope, and from that moment on he was lost in the joys of the insect world. He lived on a terraformed planet called Shadalia with no wasps or bees or scorpions, but a wealth of beetles, ants, millipedes and, most of all, butterflies. Hugo built his own wind chamber with magnifying-glass walls so he could watch the butterflies in flight, magnified to the size of birds.

Hugo’s father was a bureaucrat, and they rarely spoke. Hugo’s mother divorced her husband and her son when Hugo was five years old, and he never saw her after that. Occasionally she appeared on television, in her capacity as an Ethics professor, lecturing on family life, but Hugo never watched.

Hugo didn’t have many friends until he was in his twenties, and even then they were all fellow Scientists, who were also emotionally withdrawn, many of them orphans. He had never married. He had never, in fact, been in love.

But in a century and a half of life, he had never been lonely, never sad, never dejected, never rejected. Because he had his thoughts, and his ideas, and his insects, and that was all he needed.

Until now. For now, he had a family . . .

Saunders was remembering Hooperman’s first day as a graduate student. A tall, gangling, awkward wild-haired eighteen-year-old with bad skin and blazing energy. Hooperman had been late and had run up the stairs to the lab, and arrived dripping with sweat, and breathless, and the minute he walked through the door he started talking and he didn’t stop for ten minutes. Saunders had been awed by his bravura and charisma, and by his absence of social skills.

Hooperman had been so annoying back then. And arrogant. And rude. He didn’t care about anyone, or anything, except himself and the thought that happened to be in his head. They had all disliked him intensely. And no matter how many hints they dropped, Hooperman was there at every party, always in the pub, always button-holing Saunders for advice, in his tedious awful way.

But Hooperman was also, it had to be admitted, the finest and most brilliant student Saunders had ever taught.

And once, a very long time ago, they had been friends.

Hooperman, or rather, what remained of Hooperman, was remembering the hummingbird.

The hummingbird was where it all went wrong. That was the real cause of the legendary feud that had sprung up between the two men. It wasn’t the bitter quarrels they had during the Amazon Expedition, or the endless low-level bickering, or the sniping over food rations, or Saunders’s constantly condescending tone. No, it was all because of a tiny creature like a will o’ the wisp that haunted the shadows of the dense rainforest. For hundreds of years this creature had eluded all the naturalists who had sought in vain for new species.

And Hooperman was the first to see it.

But to his astonishment, Saunders had shamelessly and outrageously denied Hooperman’s claim; he said that he was the first to see the bird. It was so tiny it was almost invisible but Saunders — so he claimed — sensed it, and saw it, and captured it.

This meant, of course, that he, Saunders, would go down in history, not Hooperman. Hooperman would become — well, a footnote.

And Hooperman knew full well that the world would believe Saunders’s story, not his — because Hooperman was a nobody, and all the world loved and respected the great Professor Saunders. And he knew too that, because Saunders was faster to reach for his camera, the datestamp on his digital image of the bird would clinch and for ever prove his priority.

And that, looking back on it, that was the moment when Hooperman’s love had turned to hate. For Saunders had lied! His mentor, his inspiration, his god, had lied to him. His insufferable vanity had made him lie.

And Hooperman could never forgive him for it . . .

That’s when the hate was born. And when the bomb blew up in his study and Hooperman was turned into human wreckage, that’s when the hate was stoked to a burning flame.

Hooperman wondered sometimes if it was hate that had kept him “alive” when Juno and the QB were destroyed. What else could have allowed his consciousness to exist independently of his body? Sheer blind hate?

It was a thought.

And Hooperman was certainly aware that in his new state of being he had a limited range of emotions. Intellectual curiosity, that was undimmed in him. Rage, and hate, yes, they flowed freely. But love? Could he feel love? He barely knew what it was any more.

Remorse and guilt, however, these were emotions he had felt, and was capable of feeling. These were the emotions that had impelled him to rescue those fools who’d buried themselves alive, and that poor Soldier who had been crippled.

But, as it turned out, these were pale, feeble emotions compared to hate. For at the moment when Hooperman had confronted Saunders for the very last time, by the shores of that New Amazonian lake, hate had filled his being once again. And he had felt all-powerful! Remorse, guilt, shame — these weaker emotions all vanished.

One emotion at a time, that was all he could manage most days.

So when that bitch reached for her plasma pistol — well, what else was he going to do? She threatened him, he tasered her, and hate possessed him utterly.

And now, that one emotion, hate, defined him. It made him what he was. It made him possible.

And thus, tragically, but exhilaratingly, all the humans now had to die! To feed the Hooperman hate.

Oh yes — “pride”. That emotion still came upon him sometimes.

“Sorrow” . . . a delightful emotion. But no, sorrow, no, not any more. However —

“Regret”!

That was an emotion he could still feel, and now felt, as he primed the Satellite to commence its deadly terraforming process. A delicious, heart-gnawing, soul-searching regret, as he remembered the hummingbird.

Ah — mused Hooperman, with infinite regret — ah, what beauty it had possessed, that glorious hovering bird!

It was a bird designed to break your heart. Sweet, small, fast, mercury-silver in colour, with a haunting and barely audible song. It took them four hours to trap it. But, once inside a cage, its essence was gone. It was mere flesh and blood; it was no longer the will o’ the wisp of the rainforest.

Catching it killed something; arguing about what name to give the damned thing killed something else; bickering about who saw it first killed everything.

If only, thought Hooperman, he had seen the bird and not said anything. Saunders would never have seen it, for it was as small as a flicker of light. And if Hooperman had kept quiet it might still, all these hundreds of years later, be undiscovered, unnamed.

And free.

“Will this work?” Hugo asked, anxiously.

“I hope so,” said Saunders.

Sorcha and Saunders and David Go had jerry-rigged an apparatus that employed all the body-armour jets of the seven survivors, attached to a hardplastic rig that could be a worn by a single astronaut.

“All you need to reach the Satellite is escape velocity,” Saunders explained. “This will give it. The jets in one body armour aren’t powerful enough to get you here; but this should do it.”

“It’s a high-gravity planet.”

“Yes, but this will give you a hell of a lot of acceleration.”

“How long will it stay intact?”

Hugo looked anxious. Saunders shrugged.

“No idea. Hopefully, long enough.”

“How long?”

“Twenty minutes?”

“Not enough,” said Hugo, “to get me up and out of the atmosphere.”

“He’s bloody right, of course!” said David Go, exasperated.

“Maybe we —” said Sorcha, then ran out of road.

“I have an idea,” Saunders announced.

Stars.

Planets.

Moons.

A flying creature, flying with the stars.

A Two-Leg flying, on fire. Flames coming out of body armour. Flying, flying, falling, smashing, body breaking up.

Then the picture vanishes.

Then:

A Two-Leg, flying, on fire. Flames coming out of body. Flying, flying. But also Gryphons flying. Carrying Two-Leg. Higher. Higher. Clouds. Wings flapping. Fire bursts from armour again. Two-Leg flies up high.

Two-Leg in stars, flying!

Saunders paused. He was exhausted with the act of visualising so precisely.

Isaac was twitching his head. Happy? Unhappy? There was no way to tell.

Then an image came into Saunders’s mind that was painful in its immediacy. Gryphons, a flock of them, flying high. Flying higher still. Flying among the stars. Until finally, he saw: Gryphons in flight in space.

“No,” said Saunders. “Not possible. You couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t survive.”

But the image burned his retina: Gryphons in space.

“No . . . Ah!”

The image burned him. Gryphons in space. Saunders finally understood.

“Maybe,” Saunders conceded. “Maybe, one day?”

And Saunders then did a wicked thing. He visualised a spaceship taking off from the surface of New Amazon. He zoomed up to the window. Inside the spaceship, comically, but credibly, was Isaac, and a score of other Gryphons, flying inside the vast spaceship in perfect formation. A Gryphon spaceship.

One day, maybe. And that day was all the more likely, now that the seed had been planted, now that the idea was in Isaac’s mind.

One day?