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clutching
a child to her breast Behind her, one hand resting lightly on her
shoulder, was
a middle-aged man.
Shepherd! It was Ben Shepherd and his sister!
As they came down the ramp, Emily went across to greet them. But even
before she
could say a word, a mobile stretcher rattled out and down the ramp,
four
orderlies hastening to get the stretcher's occupant to the tent where
they could
give him attention.
"If s Li Yuan," Ben said, even as Emily recognised the ring upon the
hand that
lay outside the blankets. "He took a piece of shrapnel. I staunched the
bleeding, but..."
And now that she looked at Ben she saw how the whole front of his shirt
was
covered in blood.
"He's dying," Ben said."No," she said, over-insistent "No, we can save
him."
"You can keep him alive, yes."
Emily stared at Ben, frightened by his words. "What do you
mean?"
"Half of his brain's gone, thaf s what I mean. So even if you did save
him, it
wouldn't be Li Yuan you're saving. You'd do better to reactivate his
cfang."
The coldness in Shepherd's voice surprised her, yet there was something
in his
eyes that contradicted that This had hurt him. Hurt him badly.
'It can't..." she began.
"Can't what? End like this? Of course it can. You think he was
immortal?"
"No, if s just..."
But she couldn't say. Not to Shepherd, anyway. To have been reconciled
- to have
found such a good friend in such awful times; an unexpected friend, and
then to
have had him snatched away like this. It was unfair.
But then Shepherd was right. The world wasn't fair. The world was as it
was. It
was up to them to make it fair or
unfair.
She wiped away the tear that had rolled down her cheek, then nodded.
"Is that
why he went? To fetch you?"
"So it seems."
Emily shivered. '1 thought you were enemies."
"We were. And then we weren't. Something changed him. Changed him
profoundly. He
was ... different"
"Yes," she nodded. It was exactly how she'd felt in his presence. As if
Li Yuan
had somehow found the thing each one of them was looking for. Yet even
then he'd
fought Even then he'd still concerned himself with the business of the
world. To
put things right. Yes, and to stop DeVore from triumphing, because
unless he
could be stopped nothing mattered.
Against DeVore, inaction was not an option.
But now Li Yuan was dying. Li Yuan, who had been their beacon of hope
in these
final days.
And when he dies, will hope die too?Touching Ben's arm again, Emily
hurried past
him, heading for the operating theatre, wishing as she'd never wished
for
anything before that Ben was wrong.
A faint mist swirled about the pit and then was gone, sucked outward it
seemed,
like a tide receding, and as it did, so the greenery about the pit
began to
shrivel up and die, a false autumn making the trees shed their leaves
with an
unheard sigh.
It was cold now. A frost rimed the bare earth. And overhead, where a
hole was
slowly forming in the atmosphere, one could see the stars winking
mercilessly in
the blackness of the vacuum.
At the far end of the valley a cruiser lifted and, banking as it rose,
headed
south. Towards the Wilds. Towards the final confrontation.
The wind was blowing strongly now, tearing at the thorny shrubs that
clung to
the mountain's slope and threatening to prise Emily from the rocky
crevice in
which she stood, peering out over the edge of the valley wall. Huge
black clouds
had formed on the horizon. There was a distant rumbling. Flashes of
lightning
regularly lit the darkening evening sky.
She was still standing there, one hand shielding her eyes, when Daniel
came to
her.
"Ifs over," he said, raising his voice to combat the noise of the
growing storm.
"Ah..." She felt an immense sadness. It was as if the world itself had
ended
with his death. The last Pang. The last great ruler of the Earth. The
last
aristocrat
There was a time when she would have applauded that But not now.
Daniel nudged her gently. "Look," he said, pointing down the slope and
to the
left She looked. There was a swirl of dust and grain and then a man
appeared, as
if he had stepped from the air.
"Floraforms," Daniel said, leaning close and speaking into the shell of
her ear.
"They've been forming all afternoon." Emily turned, wide-eyed, to stare
at
Daniel. "Why didn't you
say?"
He shrugged. "I wasn't sure what it meant."
They both watched a moment as the man-like shape walked on a pace or
two, small
swirls of black wisping from his arms and legs and back. He stopped,
looking
down at the palms of his hands, then he shimmered and was gone, a great
swirl of
seed and dust and grain marking where he'd been.
Emily shivered. The world was growing strange. Stranger than she could
ever have
imagined as a child.
"What do you think they want?" she asked, shouting across
at Daniel.
"To be," he answered. "I think they're trying out their powers. Seeing
what they
can do."
She watched a moment longer. Saw how it tried the shapes of animals and
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