Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

the
horizon, there was a flare of light.
    ’Lethe,’ said Nomi softly. ’That was the GUTship. It’s gone - just
like that.’
    ’Then we aren’t going home.’ Hama felt numb; he seemed beyond
shock.
    ’… Help me. Oh, help me…’
    A form coalesced before them, a cloud of blocky pixels. Hama made
out a sketch of limbs, a face, an open, pleading mouth. It was Sarfi,
and she wasn’t in a protective suit. Her face was twisted in pain;
she must be breaking all her consistency overrides to have projected
herself to the surface like this.
    Hama held out his gloved hands, driven by an impulse to hold her;
but that, of course, was impossible.
    ’Please,’ she whispered, her voice a thin, badly realised scratch.
’It is Reth. He plans to kill Gemo.’
    Nomi set off down the ridge slope in a bouncing low-G run.
    Hama said to Sarfi, ’Don’t worry. We’ll help your mother.’
    Now he saw anger in that blurred, sketchy face. ’To Lethe with
her! Save me…’ The pixels dispersed into a meaningless cloud, and
winked out.
     
    Callisto returned to the great tree.
    The trunk soared upwards, a pillar of rigid logic and history and
consistency. She slapped its hide, its solidity giving her renewed
confidence. And now there was no Night, no lurking monster, waiting
up there to oppose her.
    Ignoring the aches of her healing flesh and torn muscles, she
began to climb.
    As she rose above the trunk’s lower tangle and encountered the
merged and melded upper length, the search for crevices became more
difficult, just as it had before. But she was immersed in the rhythm
of the climb, and however high she rose there seemed to be pocks and
ledges moulded into the smooth surface of the trunk, sufficient to
support her progress.
    Soon she had far surpassed the heights she had reached that first
time she had tried. The mist was thick here, and when she looked down
the ground was already lost: the great trunk rose from blank
emptiness, as if rooted in nothingness.
    But she thought she could see shadows, moving along the trunk’s
perspective-dwindled immensity: the others from the beach, some of
them at least, were following her on her unlikely adventure.
    And still she climbed.
    The trunk began to split into great arcing branches that pushed
through the thick mist. She paused, breathing deeply. Some of the
branches were thin, spindly limbs that dwindled away from the main
trunk. But others were much more substantial, highways that seemed
anchored to the invisible sky.
    She picked the most solid-looking of these upper branches, and
continued her climb. Impeded by her damaged arm, her progress was
slow but steady. It was actually more difficult to make her way along
this tipped-over branch than it had been to climb the vertical trunk.
But she was able to find handholds, and places where she could she
wrap her limbs around the branch.
    The mist thickened further until she could see nothing around her
but this branch: no sky or ground, not even the rest of this great
tree, as if nothing existed but herself and the climb, as if she had
been toiling for ever along this branch that came from the mist and
finished in the mist.
    And then, without warning, she broke through the fog.
     
    In a pit dug into the heart of Callisto, illuminated by a single
hovering globe lamp, Gemo Cana lay on a flat, hard pallet, unmoving.
Her brother stood hunched over her, working at her face with gleaming
equipment. ’This won’t hurt. Close your eyes…’
    ’Stop this!’ Sarfi ran forward. She pushed her hands into Gemo’s
face, crying out as the pain of consistency violation pulsed through
her.
    Gemo turned, blindly. Hama saw that a silvery mask had been laid
over her face, hugging the flesh. ’Sarfi… ?’
    Nomi stepped forward, laser pistol poised. ’Stop this
obscenity.’
    Reth wore a mask of his own, a smaller cap that covered half his
face; the exposed eye peered at them, hard, suspicious, calculating.
’Don’t try to stop us. You’ll kill her if you try. Let us go, Hama
Druz.’
    Nomi raised her pistol at his head.
    But Hama touched the soldier’s arm. ’Not yet.’
    On her pallet, Gemo Cana turned her head blindly. She whispered,
’There’s so much you don’t understand.’
    Hama snapped, ’You’d better make us understand, Reth Cana, before
I let Nomi here off the leash.’
    Reth paced back and forth. ’Yes - technically, this is a kind of
death. But not a single one of the pharaohs who passed through here
did it against