Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

Madeleine drew her feet up, wishing she’d brought a blanket down, and then murmured gratefully as Nash handed her a bowl of steaming pasta shells. The television divided its time between the video uploaded by the two uninfected women, and the challenge in Rio de Janeiro, which seemed to involve several hundred people scrambling for the nearest vehicle and racing off. A full stomach and not enough sleep combined to make this a lullaby, until Fisher woke her to a room darkened and emptying.

"We’re going to finish the night in the study," he said. "Now that the challenge is over, it’s possible the local Moths will pick up any search for their Rover."

She sat up, neck stiff, rubbing at her eyes and glancing at Pan and Nash tidying in the kitchen. Fisher gauged her winces as she straightened.

"I’ll get you an icepack," he said. "We shouldn’t have left your back untreated."

Ice was no less revolting a concept than when Noi had suggested it, and so Madeleine had to smile at herself obediently taking off her jacket, turning it to cover her front and slipping her arms back through the sleeves. She was sore, but more interested in an opportunity for another small step forward into something new. She felt increasingly certain, too, that Fisher was finding chances to take them as well.

"Shoulder blades primarily?" He’d brought two folded tea towels, and prodded her gently to lean forward so he could rest them both against her back. Cold seeped through her Singlet, and she shivered.

"Not that giving you a chill is ideal," he said, lifting and turning the packs. "After a couple of days you’re at least able to switch to hot packs."

"What happened with the challenge?"

"It was a straightforward race. The base of the statue was simply the end point."

"It all seems so petty." Races and competitions – played with a distinct lack of care for the possessed hosts, but still games which hardly seemed worth the immensity of death which preceded them. "And the attack in Washington?"

"No sign of any immediate response." Fisher’s voice was composed, but the pressure on her back momentarily increased, and she knew that if their positions were reversed she would feel the roil of frustrated energy in him.

"You and Noi are so alike."

"Noi?" he repeated, startled, then stopped and gave the idea some thought before saying: "I don’t see it."

"You’re both always trying to hide how really worried or upset you are. All stressed and pressured, as if you were responsible for looking after the rest of us, and so can’t show when you’re overwhelmed. You must know we’re not so unfair as to expect you to produce some miraculous solution."

She couldn’t catch any response. The icepacks remained steady, and the only sound was Pan and Nash putting dishes away.

"I expect that of me, though," Fisher said finally, voice almost too low for her to hear. "Call it ego, or…I had so much I wanted to do, and it’s been taken away from me, and I seethe and grind my teeth and shake with this need to sow vengeance and regret."

He paused, took an audible breath, then said: "For that we need to bring down the Spires. I have ideas on how to find a way to do that, but I keep coming up against what it will take to gain the information we need. And my courage fails me."

It was an admission, weary and subdued. Madeleine wished she could see his expression, but resisted the impulse to turn, instead asking: "Did you feel that way in the first days after the dust, when you were trying to identify the best way to treat Greens?"

He turned the icepacks again. "I knew I would kill people." A simple statement of fact. "Dividing up boys of about the same condition, and giving one group sugar water and one saline sounds innocuous, but what if the Conversion was more efficient with an infusion of electrolytes? What amount of energy did their bodies need to survive? Raise their temperature or lower it? Keep them active, keep them still? When one option appeared more promising, I couldn’t just switch them all to it immediately, had to keep a control group in case it was a false positive. I had constant nightmares about the data I was accumulating, this logic puzzle of life and death written in permanent ink, with no option to erase it all and start over. I will never forget the faces of those in the groups where treatment clearly wasn’t helping. Never. But the knowledge that that was just the first wave, those exposed in the first hours, drove me on. Doing nothing was the worst option.

"With the Spires, doing anything could result in another release of dust or…or anything else the Moths consider a suitable reprimand . Endangering hundreds of thousands of people who only need to wait two years to be safe. And every time I hear Pan or Emily say All for one, and one for all I wonder how that will work if one of us is possessed. Everyone here wants to do something in the abstract, but to get anywhere, to find a way to fight them, we’re going to have to gamble everything."

"Have you stopped trying to find a way, then?" Madeleine asked softly.

"No."

"Are we ready to actually do anything?"

"No."

She shook her head. "I’ve been around Pan too much, and all his dramatic speeches – it makes me want to try one. I feel so strange and unlike myself, possibly the least social person on the planet suddenly part of this group of people which can seriously consider the Three Musketeers' motto as something which fits us. But yesterday none of us ran. We all held together and fought, because we are…we’ve become more than just people in the same place, trapped by circumstance. If any of us comes up with a plan, we’ll think hard about what we mean to do, and then we’ll all face the consequences of fighting back."

"Together." He sounded sad, exhausted. Then briskly stood, lifting the icepacks away. "That should be enough. I’ll go kick a few people out of the way so you have room to lie on your stomach."

He went upstairs, and Madeleine trailed up to change her shirt, wondering if she’d helped at all. And if her imagination was running overtime or, as he turned away, he’d brushed a finger across the nape of her neck, just below the knot of her hair.

Sinuous bodies wove a mid-air ballet, so beautiful and strange that Madeleine could not help but sit spellbound as the pair of dandelion dragons twined a pas de deux between bridges and skyscrapers.

Machine gun fire rose, a rat-tat accompaniment which sparked a new form of dance. Dipping, twisting, wildly joyous: driven by countless wings in a madcap obstacle race mere handbreadths above rooftops, from air-conditioning plant to scaffolding and fire escape. It was so obviously a gleeful game, exultant and playful, that its culmination in a tumbling human figure made her gasp in protest.

"Where is it this time?"

Madeleine started. At nearly two in the morning, she still had an hour to go on intruder watch. Judging by his hair-on-end, rumpled and cross appearance, Min had simply given up trying to sleep.

"Pittsburgh," she said, as a rifle began firing.

"Pointless." Min sniffed disparagingly at the gunshot punctuation.

"They did hurt one once."

"And what did that achieve? A glowing thing spitting up its load of dust in the middle of the street." He shook his head, then crossed to the patio door and slid it open despite the chill, kneeling in the entrance to light incense before the statue he’d placed just outside.

The reprimand had begun the day after the Rio de Janeiro challenge, late night Sydney time, and dawn on the east coast of the United States. The many-winged flying serpents which served as air transport for Mothed Blues had appeared in numbers, and flown riderless to the non-Spire towns and cities nearest to Washington. The first sighting had been at a large hall housing Washington refugees, where one dandelion dragon simply thrust its enormous head through upper windows and vomited a great gout of dust over hundreds of sleeping families.