Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [106]
And so the two extra humans had been birthed without any explanation for their behaviour.
And as time passed people had tired of trying to explain the irregularity.
And the children had grown into adults.
In the entire year she had spent on the planet she had never made the connection before. Perhaps because she hadn’t wanted to think about Nikolas having family or friends. She had wanted to keep him as impersonal as possible in her mind. Now it was obvious.
She turned to where Nikolas was examining the symbols on the stone disc. Suddenly, the eighteen-year-old question of why the Blooms had produced two extra children seemed pressing.
Perhaps he knew the answer. ‘What will you do if you do obtain this super power?’ she asked, trying to keep her voice neutral. ‘More war? More invasions? Is that what this is about?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged, still intent on his work. ‘That all depends on the nature of the weapon.’ He turned to face her, pulling his respirator up, his face was relaxed beneath. The vicious laddish grin that accompanied his lies and brutishness was absent. For a second, she saw a profound weariness in his eyes. It didn’t belong to someone as young as he was.
On an impulse, she asked, ‘And then you’ll kill me, won’t you?’ Her voice was slightly muffled by her respirator, but the fixed expression on his face told her that he had heard what she had said.
He nodded. ‘Probably,’ he replied, almost absently. ‘You won’t be going back to Ursu, that’s for sure. But then you must have known that,’ he added.
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose I always did.’
‘You may as well go back to your little hut. There’s nothing either of us can do now until Iranda brings the female visionary. All we can do is wait.’ And then he turned and walked away.
Kitzinger watched him go, pressing her finger against the edge of the crystal knife in her pocket.
Now that she knew she was never going home she could let go of her life. And anyway, if, as Nikolas said, these creatures had colonized her world then the Ursu she dreamt of returning to no longer really existed. Just in her dreams. For the first time she allowed herself to imagine what the Sunless might have done to her world.
She had lost everything. Her home. Her only friend. Her dreams. Her life.
And possessing nothing, you are free. The old Ursu saying reassured her. She hadn’t lost herself. She smiled ruefully. She was free even to choose whether to live or die.
Kitzinger looked up at the Blooms on either side of her. Their huge curved undersides were now deeply buried beneath the floor of the chamber – only their top halves were visible. Dark ribbed domes rising up from the ground. She had spent her whole life in and around the giant organic devices in their home under the university. No, that wasn’t right, the university wasn’t their home
– this was. This was where they belonged, before the companies had ripped them out of the ground.
And now they were back in their home. Surrounded by the children they had spontaneously spawned.
It hurt her to accept that the whole of Ursulan society was built on a theft. The devices which had allowed her society to be created free of the chains of patriarchy, the tyranny of human reproduction and possessive love, had been based on the greed of the companies.
It was ironic. The people who had designed her world had called the Blooms a gift. Putting their discovery down to serendipitous good fortune, to the existence of magic in the universe. The original Ursu Group, a consortium of people from different worlds and different species, had seen in the Blooms a chance to make a world untouched by the cold heart of profit and oppression. They had been scientists, therapists, healers, politicians, warriors. Their backgrounds had been diverse, but they had