Part 31 (2/2)

Cheryl scrambled for her gun. Ardamal seemed to move in slow motion. Casually, he shot the weapon from her hands.

'Naughty, naughty. Can't have a loaded gun in untrained hands now, can we? No telling what might happen.' His expression did not change as he stepped forward and pressed the barrel of his own weapon against Cheryl's cheek. She winced as the heat blistered her skin.

'Look at me. I like to know I'm being listened to when I speak.'

Shaking, Cheryl gazed upwards into his face. He was smiling.

She closed her eyes.

The Doctor looked up as the sound of gunfire crackled through the Mushroom Farm. In moments, he was racing back through the forest of glittering stems towards the entrance. Bishop was hard on his heels, gun drawn, his face set and grim.

Ten minutes of hard running brought them within sight of Alex Bannen's workstations, and the entrance beyond. Ace was standing over the smoking body of Teal Green; Cheryl Russell struggled madly in the grip of an IMC trooper. Even as he watched, the man struck her heavily across the face and she fell.

'That's enough, trooper,' Ace said.

The man glared with undisguised hatred at Ace.

'I should have...' he snapped, and stopped.

'Fried me in the null*gray shaft?' Ace completed the sentence for him. 'Perhaps you should. Meanwhile, let's see that gun holstered.'

The trooper snapped to attention, putting his gun away as ordered. There was murder in his eyes, and the Doctor couldn't tell if it was for Ace or Cheryl. 'Consider yourself on report, trooper.'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

'Now open those doors.'

'Right away, Staff Sergeant.'

In another moment, the doors glided apart. Accompanied by another trooper, Bronwen ap Bryn stepped delicately into the Mushroom Farm and peered down dispa.s.sionately at Teal Green's body, her oiled skull gleaming softly in the glimmering light from the control stems, the tattoos emblazoned there seeming to writhe seductively.

The Doctor pushed forward. 'I demand to know the meaning of this atrocity!'

Ignoring the Doctor completely, Bryn directed her remark to the s.p.a.ce behind him. 'Adjudicator Bishop; you see the consequences of acting without authority. Perhaps now you will accede to the reality of the situation, and put yourself once and for all under my jurisdiction.'

The starpod floated in a sea of Angels.

From within, both Miles and Piper gazed in awe at the signals interpreted by their headsets.

Beyond the thin sh.e.l.l of the pod, the atmosphere of Lucifer changed smoothly from a churning cloudscape to something which almost defied belief. An ocean of liquid*metal zelanite alloy surged and crashed against islands of cloud. The liquid was viscous, a dull silver, and oily in texture. Where it slapped against the sh.o.r.e, pink and ochre clouds peeled away in vaporous streaks. Dull pseudopodia splashed upwards in slow motion, reflecting the colours of the cloudy bluffs. The surface of the ocean was not flat, nor did it even follow the curve of the planet, as gravity dictated that it should have. Instead, great whorls like moon*sized fingerprints spun within the liquid, endlessly moving, s.h.i.+fting, evolving. Some parts of the surface were kilometres higher than others, and at different angles, and all were constantly s.h.i.+fting, as if, in some obscure way, the ocean were alive.

And there were Angels, more than she could count, glimmering, s.h.i.+fting, merging, evolving.

'Sweet Jesus...' she whispered in awe. 'They're dancing.'

'Yonder in the north, there is singing on the lake. Cloud maidens dance upon the sh.o.r.e. There we take our being.'

'What?' Piper snapped her head around at the sound of Miles's voice, but the reality projected by the simularity software and interpreted by her retinal implants prevented her from seeing him. All that happened was that she widened her view of the ocean and the Angels.

And of one particular Angel.

'Miles. Miles Miles.'

The Angel wore human eyes.

'Paula!'

'h.e.l.lo, Dad. Piper. Glad you could make it. You're just in time.'

'What for? What's happening some sort of cultural activity?' Miles asked.

'Don't you know? I suppose not. You never were that good at just listening, were you, Dad?'

Paula spun closer to the starpod, as if to emphasize her words.

'It's my funeral.'

Somewhere, a Tannoy system was booming out an intruder warning. The sound was much diminished in the small storeroom located just off the main executive transporter bay in which Bernice and Christine were changing into their new clothes.

'How do I look?' Bernice smoothed the front panel of the stolen business suit, fastened the collar laces and gave the IMC logo on her breast a final polish.

Christine smeared a little more graphite lubricant across the front of her coveralls. 'The corporate image suits you.'

'Thanks. I think.'

'You realize there's no way this is going to work?'

'Rubbish.' Bernice tied up her dreadlocks with a piece of wire and firmly pulled down the IMC executive cap on top. 'My pretending to be an executive courier is our best ticket off this barge. Where's your clipboard?'

Christine looked around the storeroom.

'Come on, come on. No one will ever believe you're a whitecoat without your clipboard.'

'Ha*ha.' Christine found an LCD clipboard and a light pen, and scooped them up. As a bonus, there was a toolkit stowed in one corner. Christine attached a couple of the more interesting devices to her workbelt. 'Okay. Ready?'

'Let's do it.' Taking a deep breath, Bernice eased the door open a crack, peered through, then opened the door fully and walked briskly into the executive transporter bay.

The ocean heaved and another uncountable horde of Angels was disgorged. Piper sighed. 'So beautiful...'

The Angels whirled upwards, approaching to within a kilometre of the starpod. The original Angels had moved higher, away from the pod, already vanis.h.i.+ng into the storm*racked cloudscape above. Piper's hands danced across the console, and the starpod's brain began recording and a.n.a.lysing the events for a future that neither of them might ever live to see.

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