It was getting lighter, the kind of liquid redness creeping across the island’s polyp which she associated with Duchess-night on Norfolk. Her legs began to shake. It was shameful, but she was so alone. Never before had she been denied the community of thoughts that was the wonder of Edenism. Oenone!the desperate shout crashed around the confines of her own skull. Oenone , my love. Help me!
There was an answer. Not coherent, nothing she could perceive, decipher. But somewhere on the other side of the blood-veiled sky the voidhawk cried in equal anguish.
“Come, Syrinx,” Mosul said. He held out his hand. “Come with us.”
It wasn’t Mosul. She knew that now.
“Never.”
“So brave,” he said pityingly. “So foolish.”
She was physically strong, her genes gave her that much. But there were seven of them. They half carried, half pushed her onwards.
The walls became strange. No longer polyp but stone. Big cubes hewn from some woodland granite quarry; and old, the age she thought she had seen on the approach flight. Water leaked from the lime-encrusted mortar, sliming the stone.
They descended a spiral stair which grew narrower until only one of them could march beside her. Syrinx’s ship-tunic sleeve was soon streaked with water and coffee-coloured fungus. She knew it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be happening. There was no “down” in an Atlantean island. Only the sea. But her feet slipped on the worn steps, and her calves ached.
There was no red glow in the bowels of the island. Flaming torches in black iron brands lighted their way. Their acrid smoke made her eyes water.
The stairway came out onto a short corridor. A sturdy oak door was flung open, and Syrinx shoved through. Inside was a medieval torture chamber.
A wooden rack took up the centre of the room; iron chains wound round wheels at each end, manacles open and waiting. A brazier in one corner was sending out waves of heat from its radiant coals. Long slender metal instruments were plunged into it, metal sharing the furnace glow.
The torturer himself was a huge fat man in a leather jerkin. Rolls of hairy flesh spilled over his waistband. He stood beside the brazier, cursing the slender young woman who was bent over a pair of bellows.
“This is Clio,” Mosul’s stolen body said. “You did say you wanted to meet her.”
The woman turned, and laughed at Syrinx.
“What is the point?” Syrinx asked weakly. Her voice was very close to cracking.
“This is in your honour,” the torturer said. His voice was a deep bass, but soft, almost purring. “You, we shall have to be very careful with. For you come bearing a great gift. I don’t want to damage it.”
“What gift?”
“The living starship. These other mechanical devices for sailing the night gulf are difficult for us to employ. But your craft has elegance and grace. Once we have you, we have it. We can bring our crusade to new worlds with ease after that.”
FLEE! Flee, Oenone . Flee this dreadful world, my love. And never come back.
“Oh, Syrinx.” Mosul’s handsome face wore the old sympathetic expression she remembered from such a time long ago now. “We have taken affinity from you. We have sent Oxley away. We have taken everybody from you. You are alone but for us. And believe me, we know what being alone does to an Edenist.”
“Fool,” she sneered. “That wasn’t affinity, it is love which binds us.”
“And we shall love the Oenone too,” a musical chorus spoke to her.
She refused to show any hint of surprise. “Oenone will never love you.”
“In time all things become possible,” the witching chorus sang. “For are we not come?”
“Never,” she said.
The corpulent paws of Kincaid the troll tightened around her arms.
Syrinx closed her eyes as she was forced towards the rack. This is not happening therefore I can feel no pain. This is not happening therefore I can feel no pain. Believe it!
Hands tore at the collar of her ship-tunic, ripping the fabric. Hot rancid air prickled her skin.
This is NOT happening therefore I can feel no pain. Not not not—
Ruben sat at his console station in Oenone’s bridge along with the rest of the crew. There were only two empty seats. Empty and accusing.
I should have gone down with her, Ruben thought. Maybe if I could have provided everything she needed from life she wouldn’t have gone running to Mosul in the first place.
We all share guilt, Ruben,the atlantean consensus said. And ours is by far the larger failing for letting Laton come to this world. Your only crime is to love her.
And fail her.
No. We are all responsible for ourselves. She knows that as well as you do. All individuals can ever do is share happiness wherever they can find it.
We’re all ships that pass in the night?
Ultimately, yes.
Consensus was so large, so replete with wisdom, he found it easy to believe. An essential component of the quiddity.
She is in trouble down there,he said. Frightened, alone. Edenists shouldn’t be alone.
I am with her,Oenone said. She can feel me even though we cannot converse.
We are doing what we can,the consensus said. But this is not a world equipped for warfare.
The part of Ruben which had joined with the consensus was suddenly aware of Pernik igniting to solar splendour—and he was sitting strapped into a metal flea that spun and tossed erratically as it fell from the sky.
SYRINX!Oenone cried. Syrinx. Syrinx. Syrinx. Syrinx. Syrinx.
The voidhawk’s affinity voice was a thunderclap roar howling through the minds of its crew. Ruben thought he would surely be deafened. Serina sat with her mouth gaping wide, hands clamped over her ears, tears streaming down her face.
Oenone, restrain yourself,the consensus demanded.
But the voidhawk was beyond reason. It could feel its captain’s pain, her hopelessness as the white-hot metal seared into her flesh with brutal intricate skill while in her heart she thought of nothing but their love. Lost in helpless rage its distortion effect twisted and churned like a frenzied captured beast pummelling at its cage bars.
Gravity rammed Ruben down into his seat, then swung severely. His arms outside the webbing were sucked up towards the ceiling, their weight quadrupling. Oenone was tumbling madly, its energy patterning cells sending out vast random surges of power.
Tula was yelling at the voidhawk to stop. Loose pieces of junk were hurtling round the bridge—cups and plastic meal trays, a jacket, cutlery, several circuit wafers. Gravity was fluctuating worse than a roller-coaster ride. One moment they appeared to be hanging upside-down, the next they were at right angles, and always weighing too much. A spinning circuit wafer sliced past Edwin, nicking his cheek. Blood squirted out.
Ruben could just make out the calls of the other voidhawks in orbit above Atlantis, trying to calm their rampant cousin. They all started to alter course for a rendezvous. Together their distortion fields could probably nullify Oenone ’s supercharged flailings.