Trent Jamieson - Night's engines

And word had finally come to him of an approaching Roil mass, a finger of the Roil itself, two miles wide by three. It was covering the ground behind them at an incredible rate.

If they didn’t reach the Underground in three days, this small finger of Roil would be upon them. And small though it might be, it was still enough to crush them.

THE DEEP NORTH 2000 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL

Two days from the river and David became aware of the slow rise and fall of the world, and the landscape beneath them began its curious simplification. They reached the place where the last forests thinned and became nothing more than low wind-burned trees and grass, and these in turn gave way to clumps of some grey matter that seemed to sit halfway between grass and lichen.

After that landscape became raw stone, grey too — except when it rained, short icy showers that turned the stone blue or black. Three times they passed over Lodes — like the one David had used those weeks past — and each time, looking down, he could feel the Engine of the World staring back. David couldn't read the expression, but it was at best ambivalent, at worst disapproving.

Each Lode (as though they possessed transformative powers) brought a little more of Cadell to the surface, too. Memories waltzed through him that weren’t his own. Conversations, jokes and slights that made little sense to him, though he knew Cadell understood them. Certain unfamiliar mannerisms became less so; the way he walked sometimes felt wrong; even the way he looked out at the world, as though Cadell was trying to use his eyes differently from how David used them. Objects in the distance grew clearer, peculiar lights haloed the stony earth below. When he pointed it out, no one seemed to see it.

What he noticed most of all was an ever-increasing smugness. Cadell was getting what he wanted, or trying to hide behind it. He pushed away the disapproval, hoped that Kara hadn't seen it.

The world stopped its rising and falling, and just seemed to fall, as though the entire north was focussed on — and leaning towards — a single point. For two days, as they followed their slow flight, nothing changed below them, but for the stone, or the occasional animal, never larger than a fox, scurrying from sight, eking out an existence in what must be the harshest of environments.

David felt the great curvature of the world too, though here, yet again, it felt as though it was only curving in to one point.

Change came at last, a hint, revealed in increments, of a great upthrust of stone.

Tearwin Meet.

It grew on the horizon, and beneath them, that sensation of falling at first accelerated before shifting, as though the earth itself had stopped to crane its neck and look up. And still it seemed that they would never reach the city; that no matter how far they travelled against that terrible and monotonous gale, they could draw no closer.

And when David slept, Cadell was there, and that increasing sensation of falling: him falling into Cadell or Cadell falling into him. David had nothing to hold onto, it was happening whether he wanted it or not, and it was accelerating.

“I’m coming back,” Cadell said during one particularly deep slumber. They stood in the map room, Cadell circling the world like a moon.

“I know,” David said, wondering if he wasn't just substituting one form of powerlessness for another.

“The clouds are peculiar today, don’t you think?” Cadell tapped the panoptic map with his thumb.

David’s gaze was drawn towards a single dark finger of cloud.

“Peculiar, that’s no cloud.”

Cadell nodded his head smugly. “The Roil’s got its legs. Now it’s decided to go walking. And where would such a thing go walking?”

They both looked at the range, and the one mountain that contained the Underground.

“The cloud is moving swiftly, three days, no more, and it will reach the Underground.”

“Why not Hardacre?”

“It doesn’t see that city as a threat, it has already lost, as far as it is concerned. No matter how this turns out, Hardacre will cease to be.”

“And we can’t stop that?”

“You are doing your best to now. But it is better to think of what lies ahead. Tearwin Meet. The Roil itself is important, but we cannot influence it anywhere but here. And by we, I mean me.”

Cadell reached across the map, grabbed David's head and began to twist.

David’s eyes snapped open. He was in the Dawn, Margaret watching him from the other bed. “What curious dreams you have,” Margaret said.

David grimaced. “If only they were merely curious.” He stretched his arms above his head, yawned. “Are you rested?”

She shrugged. “All my weapons hold a charge,” she said. “All I want is to look down on the Engine of the World.”

David smiled. “You don’t look at all rested.”

“Neither do you.”

Yes, he thought. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea. Maybe you couldn’t rest before such a thing. Not when the drug you depended on for calm was leaching out of your body. But he had tried.

He yawned. “Where’s Kara?”

The toilet flushed in the cabinet nearest them, followed by the sounds of furious scrubbing. A half minute later, the door swung open. “Can't a person use the amenities without half the world talking about them?” she said.

David felt his face slip into a disapproving expression that wasn't his own. “I'm touched that you think I'm half the world,” David said.

Kara grimaced.

“We’re almost there,” David said. “I need you to be ready.”

“A pilot is always ready,” Kara said. “Ready or dead. Now, ready for what?”

Margaret peered north. “Just what is that fire?” she said quietly. David turned to her.

“What fire?”

“The one streaking towards us.”

David made a gagging noise. “Ready for that,” he said. “Kara, could you veer to the right, please?”

“Starboard, veer to the starboard. Why should I — oh.” She began her curious conversation with the Dawn, fast and furious, but not without its eccentricities. She touched the control panel twice, and the Dawn almost seemed to shiver, rather than fly, starboard.

The flaming ball swung past them, almost perfectly between the Dawn and the Collard Green, close enough that they could hear its screaming descent; the air smelt burnt.

“That makes no sense,” Kara said. “We're flying in the safe zone.”

David sighed. “I’d forgotten this,” he said.

Margaret sighted along her nearest rifle, pointing out into the void. “Forgotten what exactly?”

“Well, forgotten is probably the wrong word, Cadell had forgotten it, or I'd suppressed the bit that knew. This is the problem. This is the problem when you fight it. We're almost there, and I still only know half of what I need to,” David said. “But it doesn't matter now, this far north, and with the Roil expanded, the safe paths have changed.”

“What do you mean changed? Or have you suppressed that, too?” Margaret asked.

“There is only one set of coordinates that will have us reach the city by air without being shot down. Well, a range of coordinates.”

Another ball of flame cruised towards them. “I take it that we’re not exactly following those coordinates now,” Kara said.