Stephen Baxter - Moonseed

The pavement was broken, rippled, in some places subsided. The Moonseed was here, she realized: right here, in the bedrock, under her. The ground could give way under her any minute, dropping her into hell.

But there was nowhere else for her to go, nothing for her to do but run over this unsafe ground.

They ran east, trying to reach the main road that would take her home.

The road was packed with stationary cars, all crammed with luggage. Most of them were still occupied, drivers and families waiting patiently for a break in the jam, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. As he ran Henry shouted at them. “Get out! Get out!” But he didn’t stop running. The car passengers, many of them children, stared out bewildered at the stream of ragged and bleeding refugees running past them.

After a hundred yards, they came to a woman trapped under a fallen tree. She was screaming.

Henry and Jane hesitated. Then they bent to help.

The tree was thick, mature, immensely heavy. Impossible to move. They tried anyhow.

Jane looked back, towards the lab. It dominated the horizon of the street, as it had yesterday. But now it leaned impossibly, like a sinking tanker; for now it was still intact, though its upper levels were crumbling, its windows and fascia cracking and falling in great leaves, exposing its steel and concrete frame.

There was no fire here, she realized. They had been spared that, at least. But there was a smell of burning, a pall of smoke rising from somewhere to the east. There was no sign of the emergency services. No police, no fire brigade — nobody save for the lone police constable, running with the rest of them, trying to raise her station on her lapel radio.

And now an immense groan emanated from the falling lab building. Jane looked back. There was a crack like snapping bone, and the building exploded, lengthways, its upper levels hurling themselves forward as if trying to escape the betraying ground. But they fell, inexorably, fragmenting as they went.

The building lost coherence and collapsed, in a cloud of billowing dust. There was a fresh explosion, a sharp, almost beautiful flower of flame, at the base of the building.

The woman, still trapped under her tree, was no longer moving She was unconscious but probably still alive, Jane thought But how could they help her?

“We have to keep going,” said Henry. “When these cars start going up, there’ll be a chain reaction.”

Jane looked down at the woman. “The first we are leaving to die.”

“She won’t be the last,” Henry said grimly. “Listen, I have to go with that cop.”

That startled her, although she should have anticipated this.

His face was full of doubt and anguish. “I need to get to the authorities, somehow. Yes. That’s what I have to do. She’s my best bet—”

“No. We have to reach Jack.” She looked into his face. “You have to help me.”

His expression was complex, unreadable. “I have to do this.”

“Why?”

“Because they have to evacuate the city. And then I have to tell what I know. To someone who can do something about it, on a global scale.”

“Lake what?”

“Like find the source of this.”

She thought that over. “You mean the Moon?”

He peered up at the sky, as if seeking the Moon, then looked at her. “Listen to me,” he said. “We saw what happened to Venus. Maybe this is all somehow linked. And right now we don’t have any way to stop it, here on Earth. No way to stop it, until it goes all the way to its conclusion.”

That chilled her, more than she would have believed possible, after what she’d already gone through, what she still had to face. But the most important thing, the central realization, was unchanged.

He’s not going to come with me.

She felt more frightened than ever.

When she was with Henry, she felt as if she could do anything, go anywhere. Live forever. My head knows we’re in trouble, but my body needs educating. Like a dumb old dog It doesn’t understand.

But I barely know him. Am I investing too much, in a relationship that barely got started? Could I have expected anything more?

Hell, yes, she thought.

If there were people on Venus, did they feel the same as I do when it started there?

“I have to get to Jack,” she said. “It’s all I care about.” And it was true; she could feel the pull to her child, like a cable attached to her chest, dragging her, a primeval force.

“I understand.”

“But you won’t help me.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“I thought you cared about us.” Christ, that sounds weak.

“You know I do,” Henry said. “Jesus.” He turned away, his shoulder muscles hunching with the tension. “It’s what I want. To be with you.”

One last try. “Then come with me!”

“I can’t. I have to go find a way to stop this. I’m sorry.”

She held his gaze for one, two seconds.

Then he turned away, and ran towards the city centre.

A helicopter flapped over her, silhouetted against the sun, so she couldn’t see if it was here to help the people, or to watch them die.

In support of the general evacuation of the eastern city that had been ordered, Morag Decker was assigned to assist at the Queensbury Hospital, off the Holyrood Road.

The area immediately around Arthur’s Seat remained chaotic and uncontrolled, because of the suddenness and scale of the devastation, the collapse of the roads, the inability of the emergency people to penetrate.

The wounded and dead still lay as if dropped from some other planet onto these quiet Edinburgh streets.

But here she was, a police constable, running past the casualties, making for the hospital as fast as she could manage.

She knew the drill, the work that ought to be done here: Attach a waterproof numbered disc or label to the remains. Each body or part of a body must be numbered. Mark the position of the remains with a similarly numbered peg or stake. Use yellow wax crayon on hard surfaces. Place the remains in a body bag and label with the same number. If during this procedure items or body parts fall from the remains they should not be replaced but put into a separate container and labelled to indicate the probable association with that body number…

She wanted nothing in the world so much as to go off duty, to go home, to shower away all the shit she’d been put through already today. That wasn’t an option right now.

She reached the hospital.

The car park was crammed There was a queue of buses, cars, taxis, ambulances both ways at every exit. There seemed to be patients wandering everywhere: some complaining, some apparently enjoying the break from hospital routine, some actually pushing their drip bottles on portable stands. At the exits, hospital staff were chasing their patients, trying to get their details before they became lost in the crowds. A policeman was trying to ensure a one-way traffic flow through the grounds, but the system wasn’t working.

A cry went up when an ambulance, reversing, knocked over a wheeled stretcher. Fortunately the stretcher was empty.

She heard the hospital managers conferring with each other, and the consultants and senior nurses. Where the hell were they going to put all these patients? The Health Service had gotten very sleek and efficient, it seemed, but it didn’t have an ounce of spare capacity…

She found a senior police officer, a superintendent, trying to bring some order to the chaos; she told Morag to help out with room clearing.

Morag went into the hospital.

Away from the reception areas, the building had already mostly been cleared. The National Health: bulk-bought green paint on the walls, echoing corridors, metal-framed beds, the all-pervasive stink of disinfectant — as a child Decker had had an unhappy time in hospital, an extended stay to treat a badly fractured leg. Being here brought all of that back. Especially the smell.