Resplendent by Stephen Baxter Page B

And they do things we would find incomprehensible. To figure them out you have to think like a pharaoh.’

    ‘You’ve found something, haven’t you?’

    Nomi pointed. ‘There’s a line of shallow graves over there. Not hard to find, in the end.’

    ‘Ah.’

    ‘The killings seemed to be uniform, the same method every time. A laser to the head. The bodies seemed peaceful,’ Nomi mused. ‘Almost as if they welcomed it.’

    He had killed them. Reth had killed the other pharaohs who came here, one by one. But why? And why would an immortal welcome death? Only if - Hama’s mind raced - only if she were promised a better place to go, a safer place—

    Everything happened at once.

    A shadow, unmistakable now, spread out over the stars: a hole in the sky, black as night, winged, purposeful. And, low towards the horizon, there was a flare of light.

    ‘Lethe,’ said Nomi softly. ‘That was the GUTship. It’s gone - just like that.’

    ‘Then we aren’t going home.’ Hama felt numb; he seemed beyond shock.

    ‘… Help me. Oh, help me …’

    A form coalesced before them, a cloud of blocky pixels. Hama made out a sketch of limbs, a face, an open, pleading mouth. It was Sarfi, and she wasn’t in a protective suit. Her face was twisted in pain; she must be breaking all her consistency overrides to have projected herself to the surface like this.

    Hama held out his gloved hands, driven by an impulse to hold her; but that, of course, was impossible.

    ‘Please,’ she whispered, her voice a thin, badly realised scratch. ‘It is Reth. He plans to kill Gemo.’

    Nomi set off down the ridge slope in a bouncing low-G run.

    Hama said to Sarfi, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll help your mother.’

    Now he saw anger in that blurred, sketchy face. ‘To Lethe with her! Save me …’ The pixels dispersed into a meaningless cloud, and winked out.

     
    Callisto returned to the great tree.

    The trunk soared upwards, a pillar of rigid logic and history and consistency. She slapped its hide, its solidity giving her renewed confidence. And now there was no Night, no lurking monster, waiting up there to oppose her.

    Ignoring the aches of her healing flesh and torn muscles, she began to climb.

    As she rose above the trunk’s lower tangle and encountered the merged and melded upper length, the search for crevices became more difficult, just as it had before. But she was immersed in the rhythm of the climb, and however high she rose there seemed to be pocks and ledges moulded into the smooth surface of the trunk, sufficient to support her progress.

    Soon she had far surpassed the heights she had reached that first time she had tried. The mist was thick here, and when she looked down the ground was already lost: the great trunk rose from blank emptiness, as if rooted in nothingness.

    But she thought she could see shadows, moving along the trunk’s perspective-dwindled immensity: the others from the beach, some of them at least, were following her on her unlikely adventure.

    And still she climbed.

    The trunk began to split into great arcing branches that pushed through the thick mist. She paused, breathing deeply. Some of the branches were thin, spindly limbs that dwindled away from the main trunk. But others were much more substantial, highways that seemed anchored to the invisible sky.

    She picked the most solid-looking of these upper branches, and continued her climb. Impeded by her damaged arm, her progress was slow but steady. It was actually more difficult to make her way along this tipped-over branch than it had been to climb the vertical trunk. But she was able to find handholds, and places where she could she wrap her limbs around the branch.

    The mist thickened further until she could see nothing around her but this branch: no sky or ground, not even the rest of this great tree, as if nothing existed but herself and the climb, as if she had been toiling for ever along this branch that came from the mist and