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.‘No, not ever.I’m sorry.’‘For God’s sake, I can’t even radio out a distress signal.We’ll die if we can’t.’He stared back at her calmly.Her hand was shaking, she realized.‘Elias, listen.’ She then told him about what Vincent had said, about the radiation coming from somewhere near the centre of the galaxy.Maybe he’d understand now, she thought, if he even believed her.‘Look on the public news channels if you don’t trust me,’ she said.‘It’s just starting to break.’He continued staring at her, but after a moment his focus shifted, so that he seemed to be gazing at some faraway place Kim could not imagine.‘You know, it’s all starting to make sense now,’ he said after several seconds.‘So you’ll turn us back?’‘I told you.’ His voice was strangely calm.‘It’s too late for that.We’d never make it.’‘We have to try,’ she said, hearing desperation growing in her own voice.‘We could send out an emergency signal, and someone might be able to meet us halfway.’To her horror, he shook his head from side to side.‘Things make sense now,’ he repeated.‘Kim, I’m not trying to get any of us killed.We’d have a better chance by maintaining our course to Kasper anyway.Even if it comes to the worst, we can find a deep cave somewhere.’An idea came to Kim, making her start.‘The Citadel,’ she said.Elias looked at her blankly.‘The Citadel,’ she said again.Elias shook his head; clearly he didn’t know what she was talking about.‘It’s a place on Kasper, the biggest Angel artefact of them all.It goes deep, Elias.Very deep.’FourteenVaughnVaughn slid his shirt off, revealing a well-muscled chest criss-crossed with tiny long-healed scars.He dropped the shirt into a basket.A girl called Ann came into the room and handed him a cup of what the Kaspians, roughly translated, called green wood tea.She left with a vague smile.Matthew knocked a few moments later, and entered Vaughn’s office.The room was low and wide, with windows that looked across at the Northern Teive peaks.The Kaspians rarely ventured this far into the mountains, and even if they did make the attempt, there were ways to dissuade them.Mists hid the valleys far below.Some of their nomadic tribal peoples still travelled up to the foot of the Northern Teive peaks, but Vaughn wasn’t worried about them being able to scale those heights just yet.Vaughn’s home doubled as a kind of city hall, and the surveillance systems were run from a room directly below his office.It was the other backup systems that Vaughn was concerned with just at that moment.They would be required when the fire came and the world was made anew.Those other systems would be stored in the Retreat, as the deep caves had come to be known.Preparations for the catastrophe that would wipe out the native civilization were under way, and if it wasn’t for the loyalty and the patience of the people around him, Vaughn didn’t know how they might have managed it.‘Father,’ Matthew greeted him, then went to stand by the blazing log fire Vaughn had stacked that morning, shortly after he had materialized before the Emperor in Tibe.‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff.’ Vaughn’s son nodded towards the green wood tea.‘I like it.’ Matthew grimaced, but in a humorous way.‘It’s strange,’ Vaughn continued, ‘how it isn’t the young who take to these things.This is the tea of Eden, of a new world.Young as she was, even your mother.’ He caught himself: no use digging up old memories.He smiled, showing his teeth.‘It’s not so bad, actually, and the natives certainly seem to like it.’Vaughn picked up a fresh shirt and put it on.Not long, he thought, not long.And then they could abandon their mountain retreat forever.He would miss it, but there would be so much else to look forward to.He studied his son.He was sure he’d burned the fire of rebellion out of him.And yet.‘We’ve run an analysis on the nanocytes,’ said Matthew.‘I thought I ought to let you know.The majority of them have departed en masse through the singularity [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]