Звезда Пандоры

When he stood up he saw Simon Rand striding down the middle of the hallway, his orange robes hanging like ordinary cloth. Even Simon had been hit by glass; there was a long healskin patch on his hand, another on the bottom of his neck. His entourage was smaller than usual. A young woman walked beside him, dressed in a black top and jeans. It was Mellanie Rescorai, still enchantingly beautiful despite the sober determined expression locked on her face. Mark wasn’t at all surprised that she didn’t have a mark on her.

She saw him staring and offered a little rueful smile.

“Well there you go,” Carys said. “Just when you think your day can’t possibly get any worse.”

Mark trailed after Simon and Mellanie, with Carys, Yuri, and Olga following on behind. Simon reached the cracked and sagging marble portico at the front of the General Hospital, and raised his arms. “People, if you could gather around.”

The crowd on the lawns moved closer. There were a lot of dark angry looks directed at Mellanie.

She faced the crowd unflinchingly. “I know I’m not the most popular person in town right now,” she told them. “But I do have a link back into the unisphere. To give you a brief summary of what’s happening, twenty-four planets in the Commonwealth have been attacked.”

As she was talking Mark brought up the handheld array he was carrying. It couldn’t find a single network route back to the planetary cybersphere, let alone the unisphere. “No you haven’t,” he muttered.

Mellanie glanced over to him. She’d just finished telling them about Wessex beating off their assault. Her hand waved unobtrusively, fingers fluttering in a small echo of her virtual interface. Mark’s handheld array suddenly had a link to a unisphere node in Runwich; it was very low capacity, just enough to give him basic data functions. “I’m a reporter,” she said quietly. “I have some long-range inserts.”

That wasn’t right. Mark knew how networks functioned, and what she was saying was rubbish. He couldn’t puzzle out how she’d given him the link.

“Right now, the navy is organizing evacuations of every assaulted planet,” Mellanie said to the crowd. “CST’s Wessex station is arranging to open its remaining wormholes at every isolated community. Including us. It’s a difficult operation without a gateway at the far end, but the SI is helping them govern the process.”

Simon stepped forward. “It will be painful to leave, I know. But we must face reality here today, people. The hospital can’t cope. The rest of the planet is still suffering attacks of varying magnitude. Don’t think of this as evacuation, we are regrouping, that’s all. I will return. I will build my house anew. I would hope that all of you will come back with me.”

“When are we leaving?” Yuri asked. “How long have we got?”

“The navy’s drawing up a list,” Mellanie said. “We have to make sure that when the wormhole opens everyone from the surrounding countryside is here and ready to leave. We all go through at once.”

“Where are we on the list?” a voice from the crowd shouted.

Mellanie gave Simon a tense look.

“We’re number eight hundred and seventy-six,” Simon said.

The crowd was silent. Even Mark felt letdown. But at least there is a way out. He asked the handheld array to check if that was right, that they were truly that far down the list.

“Look at your little friend,” Carys said; her eyes were fixed on Mellanie. “She’s getting bad news.”

Mark glanced over in time to see Mellanie half turning from the crowd, hiding her face from them. Her eyes were wide with alarm. She mouthed some kind of obscenity and tugged at Simon’s robe. The two of them went into a huddle.

Mark told the handheld array to track down all official information on the current Elan situation. “No data available,” it told him bluntly.

Simon was holding his hands up again, appealing to the crowd who’d been watching him and Mellanie anxiously. “Slight change of plan,” he called above the edgy muttering. “We need to get out of town, now. If you have a vehicle that works, please drive it to the bus station. We will leave for the Highmarsh in convoy. That is where the wormhole will be opened. Can I ask all the able-bodied to help with carrying the injured to the station. Anyone with technical knowledge, we need the buses running; report to the station engineering office when you get there.”

People were starting to call out: “Why?”

“What’s happening?”

“Talk to us, Simon.”

“Tell us.”

Mellanie stood beside him. “The aliens are coming,” she said simply, and pointed at the sky behind them.

The crowd turned in unison to look at the dark rain clouds above the Trine’ba. There were two distinct patches of white fluorescence up there, as if a pair of suns were shining through. They were getting bigger and brighter.