From Zardino’s ship they observed the disintegrating Moon base. Now there only remained a part of the core lab section, but even that was breaking apart. Yet within the ruins the device appeared intact. Zardino had increased magnification to full. Floating in front of it was the metal form of Torbin. Zardino interpreted the strange symbols, explaining to Raiya what it all meant. The Moon base was now spinning as regularly as a Cepheid variable, it had drifted over a million kilometres since the first strike. Yet the slow-down penumbra had expanded to encompass as far as the orbit of Mars. The only problem was the zero-point field, designed to envelope the Earth in normal time, now only covered about a third of the planet.
Another flurry of missiles had just crept passed their dilated zone to massively accelerate for a few seconds before exploding at what seemed like a deadly range.
‘They seem to be adapting to the repulsion field,’ commented Zardino.
‘Just tell me one thing: can you stop them?’
‘Honest answer: I don't know.’ He shrugged his shoulders in a very human-like way. ‘I could do with assistance from my associates. Fact is, they've abandoned me. I'm guessing the council is in a crisis session. That could certainly take hours.’
‘And we don't have hours, do we? So we do something now.’
‘Such as getting that device back to the Moon, I know.’
Raiya was thinking of Torbin, right there in the midst of it all, held in a constant spin like a faithful satellite. Helpless, frightened, or perhaps resigned.
Zardino appeared deep in thought, until he looked over at her. ‘I'm taking you back to Earth,’ he said firmly. ‘Things must be very confusing there. People in a state of panic.’
‘Fine. I'm sure I can calm them all.’ She couldn’t be sure he’d get the sarcasm, rather than think that was just a massively deluded statement.
Zardino leaned back in his seat. ‘You can try to explain the situation. But there is something else I need you to do. Rescue Roidon.’
‘Hmm, you don't ask much, do you.’ Raiya thought back to the time when Roidon had found her, trapped in a crashed vehicle. He was so sure of himself, so sure that he knew how to take care of her. It was a presumptuousness that in him appeared uncommonly attractive. Raiya had felt like a twenty-year-old again, being rescued in a way that seemed to develop into a fantasy.
And what of her rescuing him?
Zardino took the craft at some inertia-belying speed towards Earth. As they slowed for orbital insertion, Raiya thought the world looked as it ever did: the swirls of cloud over the green and brown continents, the sheen of the ocean, as serene as ever. It was hard to imagine the chaos currently taking place. It only became apparent when Zardino took them down a few thousand metres above Russia, above an area where the zero-point field faded to the penumbra of slowed time. Vehicles flying through it appeared to slow to a fraction of their speed. Taking them further down, in the town it became even more surreal: there were people running as if escaping from a tsunami, yet the effect of time slowing down was hardly noticeable.
‘On the ground the effect is only apparent when using communication such as the cell network,’ said Zardino. ‘By now people will know something strange is happening, the broadcasters will be speculating; they will be telling the populous where it is occurring, and so the people are running towards the zero-point zone.’
‘Then they need to know what's really happening. We can send a message to their networks.’
‘How good is your Russian, Raiya?’
‘Non existent.’
‘Then I need to find a translation program. In the meantime I will take you back to the place you were trying to visit.’
For a few seconds she didn't know what he meant. ‘The Transcender's compound?’
‘Yes. They can offer you protection and assistance.’
She stared at him intensely. ‘They work for you? Parmayan works for you?’
‘Let's just say we share a common interest.’
‘My enemy's enemy.’
*
Watching the constant flurry of missiles explode ever closer Torbin’s certainty began to ebb away. Even though the device was maintaining full power, the field expanding, each strike was breaking away the last remaining section of rock beneath him. Now, above, his form still tethered to the upturned cone of the field generator and spinning slowly with it, dragged along in its cosmic dance. Stars rotated; in any other circumstance that would have been nauseating, but somehow he was beyond such human frailties.
The old Torbin would have been terrified. That fear he knew should exist was now just an observation of some base human response, like he was in the thrall of a potent barbiturate drug. But Torbin felt something beyond a simple drug effect: an expansion of his consciousness.
The Elusivers had seemed all powerful, like gods. Now he was seeing them as they truly were: a civilisation perhaps a millennia ahead of humans, yet still flesh and blood; fearful, paranoid about their perceived threats from humanoid races displaying a potential for galactic spread. How much much did they fear the potential challenge of machine life – the sentience borne out of silicon that evolved to encompass the biological? The machines could link in to every database, they were part of those early data storage devices. Now the Elusivers’ lives were laid out bare before him. But rather than the demigods of his nightmares, these appeared humanoid. A family in an idyllic garden, children playing. They could have been human, if not for their elongated forms. How were these the same beings as the dark, malevolent creatures that once dissected him like some lab rat? Now the Elusivers’ attempts to push away the only real challenge they faced seemed to be working, in their focused and determined way. But their technology was not beyond the reach of a powerful enough mind.
There was still enough of Torbin left to ask the device of one thing. What happened to Emelda? Was she killed by the Elusivers?
It was simply an accident. The answer was more of an acknowledgement he always knew deep down to be the truth. ‘I couldn't accept that her death was so meaningless,’ he seemed to think out loud.
The device knew his mind better than any Elusiver with their invasive probing; it sensed what he wanted. And it knew the memory he most wanted to relive.
Their new bedroom, their new house...
***