CHAPTER 34
Italy
The plane was halfway down the Italian coast, almost at Rome, when the pilot called Cai into the cockpit. He was a painfully young man from the Swiss Guard, and he looked grim.
“We’ve just had an alert from the tower that they’ve lost touch with Palermo and Catania in Sicily, Father,” he said.
“Naples used your filming method, and they saw a salt light explosion over the Realmonte mine. The—the lights in the sky above it, they appeared to be moving north. We’re not sure how fast, but the tower thinks it’s fast. They’re getting all the planes they can onto the ground in the next ten minutes.
It’s going to be steep.” He tucked his head.
“And if it’s a choice between getting us down or a commercial liner with four hundred people on board, they’re going to choose the liner. ”
“All right. So I should strap in and have a word with the man upstairs?” Cai said, patting the pilot’s shoulder.
“If you wouldn’t mind, Father,” the pilot said, making an effort towards a smile.
“Right you are,” Cai said, and kept up his cheerfulness until he was buckled into a seat again. Then he took his phone out—it was connected to the plane’s Wi-Fi—and called Avelyn’s number again. He smiled when he heard the familiar answer message.
“Hello, lovely boy. I, er . . . I’m on a plane, close to Rome, and the tower reckons there’s salt light coming north from Sicily. We’re not sure we’ll be able to land in time. If we don’t—I love you. You’re the best thing God ever gave me.”
It was hopelessly insufficient for a whole life, but it was all he could say.
He held his phone in his lap and rested his eyes on the floor.
He never asked for anything from God; he had never tried to negotiate, or say, Please don’t let this happen.
There was no use in that. Things happened in the world either because of natural processes or because every thinking creature in it had free will; ordinary things, evil things, good things, they all came about because someone or something chose it.
To ask that evil things didn’t happen to you was just another way of asking for God to restrict something else’s ability to choose what to do, and that one thing in all creation was the most sacred; it would never change.
Now he listened to the part of his mind that was never alone—the part that could feel someone else reading holy words with him as if they were leaning against his shoulder, the part that could feel the incandescent love from the tabernacle, and which had heard the command to take Avelyn away from Hreodwater.
Like always, that presence was with him. It would be sad to leave Avelyn behind alone, but part of him sang to think where he would be going instead.
“We’ve got a landing slot,” the pilot called. “This is going to be fast. Three, two . . . one.”
A few minutes later, they were on the ground and unexpectedly alive.
Cai unfastened himself from the seat and stood up slowly, testing his knees.
The pilot came out from the cockpit, looking as though he had just seen his life flash before his eyes.
Cai told him he hadn’t doubted him for a moment and helped him open the door.
It was as they were both on their way down the steps that two passenger jets came down too close on the runway, and one crashed into the tail of the other.
As he watched both planes spin and break apart through a shroud of fire, Cai had the horrible realization that he was not the kind of person who ran towards an accident.
He was rooted in place, unblinking. A cabin bag, smouldering, was slung so far from one of the wrecks that it hit the ground right in front of him.
There were bright stickers on it. Pokémon.
Just starting to peel off as the canvas burned.
“Into the terminal,” the pilot said tightly, hauling him by one arm.
They ran in through the nearest door, where some shocked baggage handlers were staring at the fires, and at the bags and other things scattered across the runway. Cai didn’t look, in case there were people there too.
Up some bleak back stairs, up more, then suddenly out into the terminal, where everyone had surged to the windows.
Some people, perhaps quicker on the uptake, were heading away fast. Others still were watching the gigantic concourse television screens.
Footage of Sicily, and for the first time he had seen not on the screen of his own phone, of salt light, combing high in the atmosphere.
An announcement came across the tannoy. Italian airspace was shut. Everyone needed to leave.
He turned towards the airport train station, towing the pilot with him. In a better world he would have taken the poor man to a doctor, because he was plainly in shock, but any doctors here would be occupied with the horror on the tarmac now.
“Cai—Cai!”
It was Steve: Steve from the Observatory, pushing through people, a laptop clamped against his chest.
“Saw you land,” Steve explained, breathless. “Come with me, I drove.”
“But what are you doing here?” Cai demanded.
“The satellite images you asked about. I called someone who called someone, and anyway, they put aluminium over the cameras on the space station.” He was opening the laptop as they walked, despite the heaving mass of people moving in the same direction, some trying to run, others just looking tired in advance of the fight to leave the airport that would assuredly ensue.
Cai kept a grip on the pilot, worried that the young man would drift to a standstill if he were allowed to. “Is there any pattern, anything that . . .”
They were packed into an elevator designed for fifty people, but which now had a hundred in it.
Steve gave him the laptop. There was a composite image on the screen. It showed the world, but unfamiliar and strange, because it was lit not by sunlight but by salt light.
Here and there were bright blasts above salt mines.
Between them were paths of light. It could have been images of bioluminescent locust swarms, sweeping from place to place.
At first, all Cai could think was that the light was everywhere, from Canada to Antarctica to the Himalayas.
Gradually, though, he saw that some of the trails were faded; older, residue from yesterday.
“There are four main . . . wings, of whatever they are,” Steve said quietly. “One starts on the eastern coast of Australia, one on the western coast of the United States, one in the sea just off Antarctica, and one in Siberia.”
He could see it now. The pattern formed a shape like a spiral galaxy.
The centre was still dark. All the arms were converging, though, and it would not be dark for long.
“How long will take for them to get there?” he asked Steve.
“At the speed they’ve moved so far—I’d say about another four hours.”
Cai dragged his hand over his face and pulled his phone out as the elevator doors opened and everyone spilled out.
“Hi, this is Avelyn. If you’re calling about an accident that wasn’t my fault . . .”
“Avelyn, ignore the last message, I’m alive. But you need to get out of Hreodwater. Get on a ship, go out to sea. I’m sending you an image from the space station. Whatever these things in the salt light are—they’re all aiming straight at you. You have maybe four hours.”