M. Harrison - LIGHT

'Waraaa!' said her brother, ambushing her on the landing. She dropped the lunch tray and the two of them stared down silently at the mess. A boiled egg rolled away and into a corner.

All that winter, K-ships roared low over the New Pearl River. They made sudden dirty white arcs across the sky. The father took Seria Mau and her brother to the base, to watch those ships come in. It was war. It was peace. Who knew what it would be, out there on the edge of the galaxy, with the Nastic only three systems away, and unknown assets at large in the Kuiper Belt, presenting as lumps of dirty ice? The children loved it. There followed the best and worst of times, marked by parades and marches, economic crashes, political speeches, the overturning of scientific paradigms: fresh news every day. That was when Seria Mau made up her mind. That was when she made her own plans. She collected holograms-little black cubes full of stars, roseate nebulae, wisps of floating gas-the way other girls collected cosmetics. 'This is Eridon Omega,' she explained to her brother, 'south of the White Cawl. The Vittor Neumann pod rules there. Just let the Nastic try anything against them!' Her eyes glowed. 'They have ordnance that evolves itself, generation by generation, in a medium outside the ship. Whole worlds are at stake here!' She watched herself say this in the mirror, with no idea why she looked so wild-eyed and excited. The morning of her thirteenth birthday, she signed up. EMC were always looking for recruits, and for the K-pods they only wanted the youngest, fastest people they could find.

'You should be proud of me,' she told the father.

'I'm proud,' her brother said. He burst into tears. ' I want to be a space ship too.'

Saulsignon was a training camp by then. There were wire fences everywhere. The little railway station had lost its look of Ancient Earth, its flower tubs and the tabby cat which made the brother angry because it reminded him of his little black kitten. They stood there, the three of them, on her last day, awkward in the wind and rain.

'Will you get leave?' the father said.

Seria Mau laughed triumphantly.

'Never!' she said.

As soon as this word was out, the dream faded to nothing, like lights going down. When they came up again, they came up in the magic shop window. Ruby-coloured plastic lips. Feathers dyed bright orange and green. Bundles of coloured scarves that would go into the magician's shiny hat and then hop out as live white pigeons. All that stuff which, though sometimes pretty, was always fake: always made to mislead and dissemble. Seria Mau stood in front of the glass for some time, but the conjuror never came. Just as she was turning to leave, she heard a faint bell ring, and a voice whispered, 'When will you come for me, Dr Haends?' She looked around in surprise at the empty street. There was no doubt about it. The voice had been her own. When she woke, she thought for a moment that someone was bending over her: in the same instant, she saw herself marooning Billy Anker and Mona the clone in the shadow of the gas giant. The memory of an act that bad could only make you feel absurd.

'Why did you let me do it?' she said.

The mathematics gave its equivalent of a shrug. 'You weren't ready to listen.'

'Take us back there.'

'I wouldn't recommend that.'

'Take us back.'

The White Cat shut her torch down and fell as silently as a derelict between the gas giants. Course changes were made in increments, using tiny, ferocious pSi engines which worked by blowing oxygen on to porous silicon compounds. Meanwhile, the particle-detectors and massive arrays, extending like veinous systems in a leaf, sifted vacuum for the track of the Krishna Moire pod. Tower up,' the mathematics instructed quietly. 'Power down.' What was left of Seria Mau's body moved impatiently in its tank. She had a need to see Billy Anker that anyone else would have described as physical. If she had remembered how, she would have bitten her lip. 'Why did I do this?' she asked herself. The shadow operators shook their heads: sooner or later something like it had been bound to happen, they inferred. In the end the White Cat got close enough to examine the planet itself. Something moved among the feathers. It might have been whatever lived down there; it might have been ancient calculations crumbling into dust.

'What's that?' said the mathematics.

'Nothing,' said Seria Mau. 'Go in,' she ordered. 'I've had enough of this.'

She found Billy Anker and Mona the clone lying half out of the long cobalt shadows. Mona was already dead, her pretty blonde head resting on the upper part of Billy's chest. He had one arm round her shoulders. With his other hand he was still stroking her hair. As she died she had been looking intently into his face, and had placed one leg between both his, trying to get some final comfort out of life. Under the instructions of the old algorithm-which, provided so suddenly with raw material for its endless repetition, had sifted stealthily down on to them from the structures above-their cells were turning to feathers. Billy Anker's legs looked like a peacock satyr's. Mona was gone all the way to diaphragm, blue-black dusty feathers which seemed to shift and grow and do something odd to the light.

Seria Mau's fetch-in these conditions little more than a shadow itself -wove nervously about in front of the lovers. How could I have done this? she thought, while she said aloud:

'Billy Anker, is there any way I can help?'

Billy Anker never stopped stroking the dead woman's hair, or looking away from her.

'No,' he said.

'Does it hurt?'

Billy Anker smiled to himself. 'Kid,' he said, 'it's more comfortable than you'd think. Like a good downer.' He laughed suddenly. 'Hey, the wormhole was the spectacle. You know? That's what I keep remembering. That was how I expected to go.' Silent a moment, he contemplated that. 'I could never even describe what it was like in there,' he said. Then he said, 'I can hear this thing counting. Or is that some sort of illusion?'

Seria Mau came as close to him as she could.

'I can't hear anything. Billy Anker, I'm sorry to have done this.' At that, he bit his lip and finally looked away from Mona the clone.

'Hey,' he said. 'Forget it.'

He convulsed. Dust billowed up from the stealthily shifting surface of his body. The algorithm was reorganising him at all scales. For a moment his eyes filled with horror. He hadn't expected this. 'It's eating me!' he shouted. He flailed with his arms, clutched at the dead woman as if she might help him. Forgetting she was only a fetch, he tried to clutch at Seria Mau too. Then he got control of himself again. 'The more you deny the forces inside, kid, the more they control you,' he said. His hand went through her like a hand through srnoke. He stared at it in surprise. 'Is this happening?' he asked.

'Billy Anker, what am I to do?'

'That ship of yours. Take it deep. Take it to the Tract.'

'Billy, I-'

Above them, streaks of violet ionisation went across the face of the gas giant. There was a great whistling thud of displaced air; then another; then a vast emerald fireball somewhere in orbit, as the White Cat began to defend herself against what must be the attentions of the Krishna Moire pod. Suddenly, Seria Mau was half up there with her ship, half down here with Billy Anker. Alarms were going off everywhere along the continuum between these two states, and the mathematics was trying to disconnect her fetch.

'Leave me!' she cried. 'I want to stay with him! Someone must stay with him!'

Billy Anker smiled and shook his head.

'Get out of here, kid. That's Uncle Zip up there. Get out while you can.'

'Billy Anker, I brought them down on you!'