"You wiped it." We look at her.
There"s no coming clean now. A11 the easy evidence has gone. We"re safe in our lies. The second chance still stands.
"It"s wiped," she agrees. "OK, so it"s not like it never happened. You"ll see to that, by never letting it happen again."
She sounds serious. Like she believes we can change now the files are wiped clean, now the mess has gone from my face.
Can"t she see we"re still marked for life?
"It"s happening now," we tell her. "Happening to all of us...
Denni wants us all dead."
"You won"t... be like before. You"re not running away." She touches our arm, squeezes softly. We guess the blushes will show in our clear cheeks, and wonder if we"ll live long enough to get used to that.
She takes her hand away. You"re coining after Denni," she says. "And you"re looking after me. I don"t think you"d run out on me."
We follow down the pa.s.sageway after her, but we don"t say a word. We picture stone angels humming down the tunnels towards us. Imagine us standing our ground.
The pa.s.sage forks. Polly leads us to the left.
"You knew Denni well?" she asks.
"We were together for a time. I could never work out what it was she saw in me. I guess since my face got me noticed, hanging with me marked her out too. She liked being talked about." We give a short laugh. It sounds too high. "A woman of mystery, that"s Denni. No one could work out what someone who looked as good as her saw in a guy with a burnt-out face."
"Woman of mystery is right," Polly says. As she speaks we feel she"s picturing our old face, all black and mottled, but she"s struggling. She can"t get the way we look now out of her head. She likes it! And now she"s trying to focus again on the idea of Denni and me together. She doesn"t know what Denni really looks like, of course, and she"s got a mental image of me kissing some big, butch-looking white girl. Then this huge, bright pink animal with a long nose appears out of nowhere. We bail out of her head before it can get any weirder.
"Why would she do something like this?" Polly says. "How could she?"
She"s upsetting herself. We linger in her mind for a moment longer, to see if maybe she"d like us to hold her or something.
Why are we so scared, why can"t we just reach out to her?
But she doesn"t want us now, anyway. She"s scared for herself and for her friends. Scared of Denni.
"I can"t believe it," we say. "That she"d turn on us all like this, I mean. She always had problems with Haunt..." We shake our head, remembering back over the last three years.
Haunt got her screaming mad sometimes. "Guess she always had ambition and a whole load of att.i.tude too... But to do all this..."
"It"s evil," she whispers.
We just can"t believe that.
Her temper temper was evil, sometimes," we say, non-committal. was evil, sometimes," we say, non-committal.
"But her... I can"t believe this of her."
It"s like the image of her in our mind is becoming faceless, dangerous, the woman in Polly"s head. Makes us want to shout out loud.
The pa.s.sage narrows as we walk along, and we brush against her accidentally. She doesn"t shy away. We sneak a sideways glance: her body looks so slim in that silly yellow suit, she"s so soft, so unspoilt. We think of Frog, and Roba, and Tovel... think of how the changes will tear through us too. Why shouldn"t we hold Polly close to us? Feel her slender arms wrapped tight about our neck, before all of us change?
We walk along beside her. Scared of dying, and just as scared of being alive.
We sense the Doctor is trying to tell us something.
Something about Haunt.
To witness these events from Polly"s viewpoint, select section 6 on page 203 page 203 To switch to Haunt"s viewpoint, select section 9 on page 209
22.
Roba
We don"t see so clear. It"s dark, we know, but we couldn"t even tell you that. Our eyes are burning up. That thing, that walking dead Schirr that came down the tunnel to get us, to mess with our head...
Now we keep catching sight of things we shouldn"t see.
Like we"re walking around inside different people. When we were a marksman, starting off, we used to see people through our sights. Night vision, snow vision, infra-red. It was like seeing things through different eyes. Like someone else pulling the trigger.
Now we can"t control what we do no more. Just feel the fingers pulling through our guts, tugging at our eyes, arms and legs.
Seeing what works what, and how it can work for them.
So if we come for you. If we come to kill you. Know it"s not us.
We just wanna go home.
Return to the section you came from and select another viewpoint: viewpoint: To return to Shade"s viewpoint in section 8, turn to page 207 To return to Frog"s viewpoint in section 16, turn to page 224
23.
Tovel
We"re guiding human hands over the glowing paths and junctions of the schematic. Ben twists and bundles the damaged filaments, Creben routes them through to new circuits. We guess this sabotage is Denni"s work. It"s clumsy, easy to fix. And the schematic, it"s not designed for fat, swollen pig hands like ours. Like Schirr. It"s for small, dainty little hands, like Creben"s, to put right.
We twitch as a fresh burst of pain flows through us. Feels like our veins are full of slush ice, sticking on its way round our body, watering down our blood. We try to open our eyes, but it"s hard. The lids are like clamsh.e.l.ls, tight shut, the eyeb.a.l.l.s just pieces of grit lodged inside, changing to strange pearls.
We find we"re wondering what Haunt looked like when she died.
"The work proceeds quickly," we hear the Doctor say.
"Almost complete." He sounds rattled. We get the feeling he felt just a little of what I did then. So he"s checking I"m still here. Trying to distract me with pleasantries.
"Where are you, Doctor?"
"On my way to meet Polly and Shade back in the control room."
"Why?" We sense something"s happened he doesn"t want to tell us. We slip through different viewpoints, shadowy figures all around us, hear a babble of voices. For a second we glimpse a field of stars, and a girl"s hand stretched out to them.
"I, ah..." The Doctor falters. "Polly wishes to go back to safety, and I am escorting her."
Creben has almost made the last of the links. We watch him through Ben"s eyes as he finishes the work.
"It"s all gone too well," we think back at him. "We"ve been allowed to do this."
"Perhaps." The Doctor sounds preoccupied. "After all, as Creben says, why instigate the change in us, then let us die before it takes hold?"
"The damage to life support," we hiss. "What if it"s just been a decoy, taking our attention from something else?" We wince as the slush ice sc.r.a.pes through our bloated veins again. "If only we had those navigational crystals."
The Doctor pauses. "A decoy. Yes, of course, something must be happening in the control room!" We feel a sense of urgency, but whether it"s the Doctor"s or else something inside us desperate to take charge, we can"t tell.
"Frog. Frog, my dear," the Doctor shouts urgently. "Can you hear me?"
But it"s not her we hear.
It gets black again. We can"t move.
Something in us shifts, comes alive, as a Schirr speaks in our head.
To switch to Ben"s viewpoint, select section 10 on page 214 To switch to Creben"s viewpoint, select section 15 on page 223 To switch to Polly"s viewpoint, select section 19 on page 229 To switch to Shade"s viewpoint, select section 26 on page 241
Or you may withdraw from the neural net - but only after experiencing Frog"s perspective. Select section 27 on page 241 experiencing Frog"s perspective. Select section 27 on page 241
24.
Shade
We"ve come through one of those hidden pathways now.
What"s waiting for us here?
"Look," Polly whispers, and her hand grips ours. "There"s light up ahead."
Carefully, we reach back, slip the launcher from our harness and prime it. We cradle it and creep into battle.
The light"s coming from a window in the rock. Outside there"s just s.p.a.ce. We call to Polly, "Come on." We want her to see this with us.
"Beautiful, isn"t it," she says, and pushes past to see it more clearly.
We shrug behind her back. We"ve looked out on a million views like this one from thick, scratched safety-gla.s.s in ships of all sizes. ""Our destiny is in the stars", my ancestors used to say."