Stephen Baxter - Moonseed

Ted straightened up painfully; it felt as if there was no blood at all in his lower legs. “Structures?”

“Yes.” Blue shifted his position, looking for more samples. “From the aerial shots and samples taken on the ground, it appears that the Moonseed is endeavouring to construct something here. A kind of dish, with a parabolic profile, half a mile across—”

“Covering most of Arthur’s Seat, then.”

“Yes.”

“This Moonseed is a rock-eating germ. How can it construct anything?”

“It does not eat rock,” Blue said, “and neither is it a bug. It moves atomic particles, sometimes molecules, to build structures from the subatomic level up. As far as we can tell, these structures are perfect. Without defect.”

“Not so perfect. That thing in your hands just fell apart.”

“It’s true we can disrupt the structures if we catch them early enough. But I don’t think whatever the Moonseed is building here is meant for this world.”

“What do you mean?”

But Blue wouldn’t answer.

He bent again, trying to collect more samples of the Moonseed structure, which he preserved in clear, fast-setting plastic.

When they were done, they walked gingerly back along the neck of land.

Ted pointed to the Cathedral on Castle Rock. “We go there.”

Blue looked at him curiously, face masked by the layers of dust and dirt on his faceplate. “Why?”

“Something I’m looking for.”

Blue shouldered his equipment. “Henry told me about your son.”

“In between porking my daughter.”

“I understand why you have come. I feel a certain — responsibility — for bringing you here.” He looked into Ted’s face. “So I feel I have to tell you this. Smell the coffee, Ted. Your son is dead. I saw him here, just before the great eruption. He is lost, here in the ruins of Edinburgh. At best you will only find his body. Probably not even that.”

“I know,” Ted said softly. “I’ve known that from the beginning.”

“Then what are you looking for?”

Ted said, “Are you coming with me, or do I go alone?”

Blue sighed. “If I abandon you, Henry will squeal like a pig stuck under a gate. Come.”

With Blue leading, they worked steadily over the shattered cityscape towards the building.

St Giles” was a great sandstone block, atypically low and squat for a Gothic cathedral, but that had evidently helped it survive; the pyroclastic flow, washing over Castle Rock, had heaped up against the eastern wall, but not breached it. Still, the stained glass windows had shattered or, it looked like, melted; and the ornate crowned tower, the Scottish equivalent of a spire, was gone.

They paused for breath.

“St Giles’,” Ted said. “Patron saint of cripples, lepers and tramps.”

“Very appropriate,” Blue said. “I am impressed it has survived at all.”

Ted pointed. “Those pillars holding up the tower are nine hundred years old. Even survived the English burning the bloody place down. They’ll last a wee while yet. Come on.”

The big wooden doors of the Cathedral had been smashed in, the shards burned. Ted and Blue picked their way over the wreckage, the scorched wood crunching under their thick-soled boots.

The roof was destroyed — debris was scattered over the aisles and altar and the rows of pews — and silvery, alien daylight streamed into the dusty interior through the gaping roof and the empty window frames. Ted stood in the doorway for a few minutes, letting his gaze follow the soothing geometry of sunbeams. As if one part of the world still worked. The Cathedral was full of light, in fact, probably brighter than it had been since the day the roof was put on. The uniform grey and black was oddly pleasing, like a charcoal sketch.

He moved forward. He had to push through the ash layers, climb over the cold lava bombs which lay beneath it, like pushing through a shallow stream.

There were people in the pews, he saw.

Some were sitting, some had been kneeling, some seemed to have fallen. Their bodies were barely visible, all but drowned by the ash. Here was a woman — he couldn’t tell her age — her face tipped up to the ceiling, he supposed towards God, her mouth open and clogged with ash.

“The roof probably gave way immediately,” Blue said gently. “The ceiling rubble came down on them, and then pumice, hot ash, steam, gases. They must have died very quickly. Probably of suffocation.”

“I suppose they came here for shelter.”

“I suppose so. Perhaps we will find the priest at his altar. If they are undisturbed, perhaps this will form another Pompeii, for future archaeologists.”

Ted stopped beside another woman. “They are not undisturbed.”

Blue bent to see.

A necklace had been ripped from the woman’s neck. There were fingermarks, cut deep in the layers of ash. “He’s here,” Ted said.

It didn’t take long to find him. There weren’t many places left in the Cathedral intact enough to hide in.

He was in the Thistle Chapel, an ornate, heavily ornamented twentieth-century annexe of the Cathedral. The windows had blown in, but its roof had survived, and so had most of the Chapel’s ornamentation: carved animals, angels playing musical instruments, including bagpipes.

He was hiding under a pew. He was thin, in rags, filthy, wide eyes staring out of a sketch of a face, patchy stubble over the spittle-splashed chin. Really no more than a boy, Ted realized. He had a little food — cans and packets and bottles of water, detritus around him — and a pathetic stack of valuables, jewellery and wallets and cash.

Ted pulled off his hood. There was a stench.

“You have fouled yourself,” he said softly. “Even an animal does not foul itself. Are you, then, less than an animal?”

Blue was frowning at him, but Ted kept his gaze on the boy.

“I don’t know you.” The lad’s voice was thin, breaking, from fear and disuse.

“I know you,” Ted said. “You are Hamish Macrae. The one they called Bran.”

Bran said nothing. He shrank back beneath his pew, folding his legs against his chest.

Ted reached forward and collared him, as simple as that. From a renewed, sharp stink, it seemed as if Bran had fouled himself once more.

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you remember me, Hamish?”

“No…”

“A father, of one you led to the Seat. One of many. To his death.”

Bran was trembling, but he spoke up bravely enough. “So you found me. So what?”

Blue asked, “How did you know he would be here?”

“He stayed as close to the heart of it as he could. He was scared to run too far. There are others looking for him.”

“Too fucking right I’m holing up here,” Bran said. “Have you not heard the troopers? In the Highlands they’re already burning witches.” He looked at Ted, calculating. “I didn’t mean it. The Egress Hatch thing. I mean, I did. And I was right, wasn’t I?” He glared at Blue. “It did come from space.”

Blue rubbed his neck, through the thick fabric of his suit. “It is possible.”

“That mirror thing the Moonseed is building. It’s a solar sail,” Bran said. He smiled. “It’s obvious.”

Ted turned to Blue. “A what?”

Blue was wheezing; maybe the concentrated dust here was getting to him. He said, “A sail, to catch the sunlight and so drive a spacecraft. Perhaps that’s the purpose of the large parabolic structure the Moonseed is struggling to assemble. Others have speculated like this. The Moonseed seems to be making spaceship parts. But it is stranded, here, at the bottom of this gravity well, under all this air.”

Spaceship parts. For a few seconds, the strangeness of the thought threatened to overwhelm Ted.