Part 37 (2/2)

At some indeterminate point in time, for time is a meaningless concept when applied to singularities, Alexmark gazed without eyes into the heart of the Angels' temple.

Though what he once would have called an event horizon was no longer present, still the darkness within the singularity was complete.

Through a dancing screen of Angels, he was able to make out... something: a pattern, a force. A thing he no longer had the vocabulary to describe.

He looked closer.

Something moved upon the face of the dark.

EPILOGUE.

ON THE THIRD DAY...

'You cannot fight against the future.'William Gladstone

The noise of surf on sand was the only hint of the vast ocean that lay before them as they stood, hand in hand, on the headland.

'My father lived here,' Miles said. In the darkness, all that Piper could see of him was the occasional gleam of starlight in his eyes. 'He had a shack down on the beach. He called himself the last of the Tewa. He kept all the traditions going, and he taught them to me, and to Paula.'

A faint chemical tang drifted up from the beach, and Piper was glad that she couldn't see the extent of the pollution. In the dark, with the regular pounding of the waves beneath, and the bright profusion of stars scattered above them like petals in a bowl, the years since she had last seen Earth seemed like a cruel illusion.

'Truth to tell,' Miles continued, 'the Tewa all died out generations before he was born. I think he read about them in a book. But he kept the traditions going, and for that I loved him.'

He paused, and Piper reached into her tunic for a small package. Wordlessly she pressed it into Miles's hand. He tensed as he felt its shape, its weight.

'Piper?'

'I took it from Cheryl's room after Paula died,' she whispered rapidly, before she could think better of it. 'I thought that if you were acting erratically then the Adjudicator might recommend closing Project Eden down. I'm sorry.'

'Too many apologies,' he said quietly, and held the bowl out in front of them. 'Too much weight attached to the past.'

He threw the bowl far, far out over the headland. For a moment Piper thought that she could see it glitter in the starlight, and then it was gone, falling away from them through darkness towards the black sea.

Piper did not hear it break, but she felt Miles relax beside her, and knew that it must have done.

'Only from death do we learn of life,' he whispered, and put his arm around her.

'What does that mean?' she asked.

'It's something Dad used to say.' In the silence, Miles hugged her tight. 'We must live for the future.'

Piper reached into her tunic again, and gently crinkled the small twist of paper that the Doctor had given her in those last moments on Belial. She pulled it from her pocket and unwrapped it. The small grains of powder seemed to glow of their own accord.

'What's that?' Miles asked as she held the paper up.

Piper remembered what the Doctor had told her, and suddenly grinned.

'Hope,' she said, as the powder was carried away from them, like a flurry of sparks, upon the wind.

<script>