“In Which Annabelle Says Goodbye”
1.
Nathanial’s head was still reeling from everything that had happened down in the caverns, and now this.
Annabelle!
“Are you really me?” whispered Annabelle herself, taking a step towards it.
The figure raised one hand and looked at it curiously. “I remember being Annabelle, yes. But I remember so much…of so many others…” It—she—looked up at them again and smiled. “I don’t quite know what’s happening to me, but I believe that it might be something quite wonderful, you know…”
“I don’t understand,” Annabelle said, convinced of the apparition’s identity by the accent as much as anything. “Why are you here?”
“I’m here to say goodbye—for now, at least. There’s so much to explain, so many things to tell you. But it’s—” She broke off suddenly and shuffled through half a dozen different faces. This time, though, Nathanial recognised some of them: Heath’s, other soldiers. Even Colonel Shawbridge’s. “Heath was right, in a way,” the ghost said, becoming Annabelle again. “Hermes meant no harm, really. He wanted to help, to improve…but he couldn’t grasp that his changes would have caused so much pain and suffering. His mind is stranger than we could imagine. But soon…soon he will learn more about humanity than he ever expected.”
“Why?” asked Arnaud, struggling to his feet, helped by Nathanial. “I mean how?”
“The poem,” the ghost said, looking straight at him. “You remember—you showed it to me. In your mind when I came to see you and Nathanial. It was the final piece of the puzzle.”
“The poem?” asked Nathanial, his mind still racing to catch up.
“John Donne’s Meditation Sixteen. The line that terrified Hermes so. ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’”
“But why did it scare him?” asked Annabelle, clearly no wiser.
“Because it was his Achilles’ Heel, if you like,” ghost Annabelle said. “The reason he kept all of us, all of us copies, isolated from himself. He was terrified of being infected—infected by us. All of us. Individuals, thinking different things. He has been an island from birth. And while we fascinated him, we scared him too. Which is why, if you like, he maintained a moat around himself.” Ghost Annabelle smiled as if at a private joke.
Nathanial shook his head and raised a hand. “Annabelle—or whatever you are. You’re going too quickly. Start at the beginning. What’s happened to Hermes?”
“It is terrifying for him, but he will soon become accustomed to no longer being alone, no longer being what he was.”
“But how?”
The ghost of Annabelle turned her head towards Joe and Saul. “The drawbridge is down,” she said, puzzlingly. “Heath’s plan would have failed—as Nathanial suspected. The explosives would have destroyed all of us, but Hermes would have gone on. And, sooner or later, he would have developed his abilities to the point where he could have reached out to anyone on Mercury, maybe even beyond, and manipulated them. Changed them. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Thank you, obviously—but are you saying that he can’t now? Is that it?” asked Nathanial.
“You and Arnaud gave me the clues. The water: you said it was heavily laced with zinc and tin. The same metals in the crystals.”
Arnaud let out a gasp. “It was you—and not the real Annabelle—that came to warn us about Heath?”
The ghost nodded. “Myself—the real myself—was difficult to reach.” She looked at a clearly puzzled Annabelle. “Your mind was clouded by the irrationality that Heath had fostered in you. I tried to come to you, but I couldn’t. I watched you in the shed, I picked up on the destruction of Hermes that burned so brightly in you, but I couldn’t reach you. So I went to these two, and I told them that Heath had to be stopped. Not because I wanted Hermes to survive. Well,” she added sadly, “not as he was. But Heath had to be stopped because his plan would fail and there would be no other chance. Without me and the other ghosts, the other copies, there would have been no one left to moderate him.”
“Moderate?” echoed Nathanial.
Ghost Annabelle nodded again. “I appeared to Saul, here, as Corporal Heath, and had him move the dynamite to a location that I knew, from Saul’s mind, would flood the cavern instead.”
Arnaud laughed. “Ha!” he said, turning to Nathanial, his eyes bright. “The water, yes? You see now! The water—it has so much of the metals in it. Like an electrical circuit, connected to all the spheres—and to Hermes itself!” He turned sharply back to the ghost. “The drawbridge that you have just mentioned. Have I understood that correctly?”
Nathanial understood it perfectly now too: Hermes’ fear of being connected—infected—with multiple human minds. Ghost Annabelle had made that fear a reality.
“And what now?” asked the real Annabelle of her ghost. “What happens to us—and to you?”
“You live your lives,” ghost Annabelle said, although her eyes flashed momentarily to Nathanial and Arnaud, and seemed to grow a little darker as they did so. “You are free to go—to have adventures together. You and Nathanial. We, all of us copies, are…” She tipped her head back and let out a sigh of something between bliss and alarm. Nathanial felt himself blush. “We are becoming one with Hermes himself.”
The ghost gave a shudder and emitted a spherical wave of blueish light that raced out from her into the dusklight, thinning and fading as it went. And then another, and another. “The things he has imagined. Oh my Lord…The thoughts he has had…”
“And the others?” pressed Annabelle, squinting a little against the intensifying glare. “They are all there, too?”
“Not all. Some were destroyed in the explosion. But there are enough of us,” ghost Annabelle continued. “We are becoming something more…something greater….” Another globe of light pulsed from her and she turned her head and fixed Nathanial with her gaze. “Nathanial. Dear Nathanial… I know you have secrets. Who doesn’t? But tread carefully. You have the potential for so much good. But so much hurt, too. Please be kind.”
The ghost gave another cry and broke up into the same glittering fragments that had made up Hermes’ form. She was still recognisably Annabelle, but more luminous, more translucent. “We have to go,” she whispered, no trace of a mouth visible. “We have such a journey to make.”
“Please,” begged Annabelle. “Before you go—one thing. Is Uncle Ernest in there? Did he survive?”
The ghost smiled: “He was almost lost, but… It is truly incredible what we can already accomplish now that we are becoming connected.”
The figure snapped instantly into that of Colonel Shawbridge. Still shimmering, still sending off whorls and spirals and waves of blue light. But most definitely Colonel Shawbridge.
“I’m so sorry, my dear Annabelle,” he said, a little dazedly. “I’ve been such a stupid, stupid old bugger, haven’t I?”
“Of course you haven’t, Uncle—” Annabelle began before she was cut off by his raised hand.
“I’m sorry, my dear—there’s no time. I know what I nearly did, and why. But things are changing. I’m seeing everything so differently now. Opens your eyes, I’ll tell you that for nothing.” He gave a gruff chuckle. “And I’ve been such a miserable old sod recently. I’m sorry your trip here has been so…well, like it has been. I just want you to know that I’m proud of you, my girl. And your parents would have been so terribly proud of what you’ve done, who you’ve become. They really would.”
Annabelle held his look, her fingers brushing against the contours of her pocket watch.
“I want you to have a little gift,” Shawbridge continued, “something to remember me by, something to help the two of you out on your journeys. A little more expedient than relying on commercial flyers. It’s nothing much—but you know Esmeralda?”
“Your flyer?”
He nodded, and gave a gasp, sending out wave upon wave of light that flooded the entire beach. “It’s yours. The…the old girl’s not much, but she’s fairly ship-shape. Should get you wherever you want to go next, at least. It’ll be a little piece of me—with you, out there in space, won’t it? More importantly, though, it will save you hanging around here waiting for the next transport. Probably best to just get in it…get in it and go.”
Even though Nathanial could see no eyes, he was certain that the old goat winked at them.
“Best…” Shawbridge said, his voice crumbling, “best not make a fuss, eh?”
Annabelle’s face broke out into a smile—but Nathanial could see the tears blooming in her eyes. “Thank you, Uncle,” she said as the tears began to fall. “And stop damn well apologising! It’s me who should—”
But Shawbridge had been replaced with something else—not Annabelle, not the colonel. Not even Hermes.
Human-shaped, it blazed with an almost painful white light. They all threw up their hands against it, while Nathanial tried simultaneously to shelter his eyes and to peer into it. But something told him not to. That he already knew as much as he was meant to.
“We are grateful to you all,” spoke a deep, sonorous voice in their heads, neither male nor female, young nor old, and so loud that Arnaud and Saul reflexively clamped their hands over their ears. “We don’t know what we’re becoming, but…whatever it is…”
They all heard a tremendous laugh, both rich and warm, and thin and sparkling. Almost imperceptibly tiny and yet incredibly huge.
And in an instant it was replaced by the loudest silence that the planet had ever known.
And they were, once again, standing on the beach, damp and shivering.
Overhead, the arc of light stretched the full length of the World River until it vanished at each horizon.