Stephen Baxter - Moonseed

He increased his pace.

Over the summit and there they were: the cultists, the followers of the Scottish lunatic Bran, gathered on the agglomerate. None of them wore protective gear of any kind, not so much as a handkerchief over the nose, and Blue could see how they coughed and wiped their streaming eyes. There seemed to be fewer of them now — evidently the resolve of Bran’s followers had been tested to the limit — but still, many remained, perhaps a dozen, all of them in their ludicrous purple pyjamas. They sat in a circle around Bran, oddly asexual, and they sang their absurd sci-fi songs to each other.

And they were smiling.

The Seat appeared to be otherwise deserted. Just this single ring of cultists before the unearthly steel-grey glimmer of the Moonseed puddle, the smoking ruin of the Edinburgh suburbs beyond. But a single policeman had stayed with the cultists, standing patiently with his hands behind his back, showing no sign of fear.

Remarkable, thought Blue. He knew the British police had no powers to evacuate people forcibly. This young man must know his own life was forfeit, and yet he stayed to do his duty, giving himself up to defend a foolish law.

Mike Dundas was here, among the cultists. His head was shaven, and he had somehow acquired the cultists” oddly asexual look. Perhaps it was the pyjamas.

Blue walked up to the cultists. He waved to the policeman, miming that he would stay here only two minutes.

He reached Mike. He took a deep breath, and pulled off his hood It was difficult to grasp the dusty material with his heavily gloved hands.

The air was heavy with sulphur, and his eyes stung immediately.

Mike’s eyes, he saw, were glowing like jewels.

Blue squatted beside him. “You must come with me.”

“I’m staying here. I’m in no danger.”

Blue shook his head. “The signs are unmistakeable. You understand this. The Moonseed has been eating down into this basaltic plug. Working its way to the old magmatic chamber that powered this volcano in the first place. We’re expecting a major event. The deformation has increased, in some places, by two yards since yesterday. Kid, when you see a turtle on a fence post, you know it didn’t get there by accident.”

Mike looked up at him, puzzled. “I understand what’s happening.”

“Then you are a fool, Mike Dundas.”

“No.” Mike’s expression was peaceful, despite his streaming eyes. “I’ve made my choice.”

And, Blue thought, maybe it was a rational choice after all. Mike would find peace, he supposed, whether his space aliens came to beam him up or not.

“I do not know what has driven you here,” he said gently. “I do not know what you’re trying to escape.”

“No,” said Mike. “You don’t. Anyhow, there is no escape. For any of us. But we don’t need it. We have to put aside our fear, and accept.” He smiled. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Blue looked at the landscape, the scar of metal-grey Moonseed that was pushing aside the green blanket of Scotland.

“No,” he said. “I do not think it is beautiful at all. I will remember you to your family.”

“Just tell them I love them. And I’m sorry.”

Sorry? For what?

Blue said, “I will tell them.”

The ground shuddered again, a stirring beast.

Blue pulled on his hood, and walked back the way he had come.

Morag Decker walked steadily along George Street, knocking on doors.

This was the heart of Edinburgh New Town, lined with banks and shops and churches. Today, the day after the first Moonseed surge, twelve hours after the evacuation was ordered, the street was empty save for a couple of abandoned cars, an old newspaper blowing down the centre of the road. The emptiness was eerie in the middle of the day, the sun bright overhead, the light splashing from the buildings.

The smoke clouds were still rising from Abbeyhill.

There was no reply to her knocking. The evacuation of the city was all but complete, as far as anybody could tell; this was the final sweep.

The evacuation, though fast, had been a mess. She’d been surprised how difficult it had turned out to be to get people to move.

There had been broadcast warnings in the media — national and local TV and radio, even the Internet — with details of evacuation procedures, assembly points, Rest Centres. But the messages had been confusing, and mixed up with a lot of lurid misreporting. People were fragmented; there was no one channel that everybody listened to, no one time when everyone tuned in. And besides, nobody sensible believed what they heard on the radio anyhow.

So the police had resorted to more old-fashioned methods. There was a mail-shot campaign, aimed at households and businesses affected, thousands of them. That had worked, even if it hadn’t made people move immediately; Morag had seen many people clutching the flyers, carrying the information with them.

And at last, in the small hours, there had come the blunt approach: police cars with loudhailers patrolling the streets, one-way road blocks, coppers going from door to door telling you to get packed up and get out now. It had been that, it seemed, the sight of police on the doorstep giving direct commands, that finally forced compliance.

That, and the sight of the fires on the eastern horizon, the mess around Arthur’s Seat that was visible from most of the city: this is real, and it’s coming this way.

Morag’s briefing, from the local authority emergency planners, had been rudimentary, but effective.

For instance, how to tackle looting. Looting was rare — bad guys flee too if the danger is real — but the fear of looting, whipped up by inaccurate reporting, was something you had to deal with. People wouldn’t have their houses marked as empty, for instance, for fear of making them targets. So you had to reassure. It was one reason she was still here now, a bobby on the beat in the empty heart of Edinburgh: to reassure the thousands who had gone.

The most heart-rending moments had been dealing with people who couldn’t move themselves. The elderly. The disabled. A team of interpreters had combed the Asian communities, to make sure the message got home there. Once Morag had found a house occupied by a deaf couple; she’d had to call out a sign language interpreter.

There were a lot of people on the margins. She’d never realized how many. Like the people dumped out of homes and hospitals under the Care in the Community programme. It had reduced the nation’s welfare bill, and no doubt done some kind of good in many cases. But, by God, it had added to the strain in this situation.

The gold police commander, the Chief Constable, had estimated that fifteen per cent of the population had needed direct attention and assistance of some kind. Fifteen per cent.

Anyhow, now it was done; as far as she could tell, George Street was empty of human life — empty, at any rate, of anybody who wanted to move.

She studied the eighteenth-century buildings that studded the street. There were two great churches, St George’s and St Andrew’s, the latter with its spire rising out of a Pantheon-like neoclassical building The monumental banks and insurance houses were a blizzard of porticos, pediments and pilasters. But this was no museum, but the heart of a working city; many of the buildings had modern frontages of glass and plastic grafted on to them, sometimes with a brutal lack of grace.

She reached the intersection of George Street with Frederick Street She stood at the feet of the statue of Thomas Chalmers, founder of the Scottish Free Church, and looked north. Monuments everywhere to the great men of the past, who had looked for immortality in stone and bronze.

Beyond a line of trees she saw blue sky, a hint of the waters of the Forth. The fresh light, still untainted in that direction by the smoke from Arthur’s Seat, drenched the prospect in loveliness.