Realm

The sea was calm, calmer than most days in the autumn, a slowly rolling deep-blue blanket of passive power. Little waves belied the amazing force this sea could summon; now they were just small crests for a boat to rock gently on like a child in a cradle. White caps glistened in the sparkling morning sunlight, decorating this quilt whose squares stretched for miles.1

Somewhere above a tiny shadow glided. It was no bird – this black shape reflected nothing and even in the gay sunlight it seemed dark and …well, not of life. It was a plane, streamlined wings stretched over fluffy cirrus clouds like the Rift-lines in old California. It was a plane on a mission, as quiet as the rifts, as dangerous as the rifts.2

Worse than any earthquake, Cedre Vallen thought wryly. I carry the latest fashion aboard my little plane, and the worst thing mankind ever made.3

He was feeling at peace today, flying his Skyrunner over the deep Pacific Ocean; who wouldn’t? Only an occasional thought of the bleak luggage he carried entered his head. There hardly seemed anything to worry about. He thought he had life all figured out – understood and wrapped up neatly in a little gift box; photographed neatly in a frame like the one on his dashboard, of his family.4

When I get home, he reflected, guiding the Skyrunner to auto-pilot mode, and leaning back to relax, I shall make up all my days on commission with my family. Rose shall never have to rebuke me for staying out late on work. I’ll log off the pager network, tell the General I need a holiday…with all this revenue coming in from this latest job I can take the kids to Disneyland every week! Cedre smiled faintly, picturing Rose’s sweet face blooming with flushed happiness, and the excitement in the smiles of little Johnny, and cute Blae. They all lived such happy lives. With the development and completion of the Radioactive Resource Application Project way back in the early 21st century, life was usually happy. Without plutonium, Cedre mused, I wouldn’t even be sitting in a Skyrunner!5

The scenery had changed; the coastline of his target destination spread like milkstains on the inside of his morning mug across the horizon, curving gently like a turned-down mouth. Cedre allowed the Skyrunner to pick up speed – he was on-schedule, but the faster he got things over with, the faster he could get back to base. And get back to Rose.6

The fingernail slice of land grew inevitably. Sandy white beaches moved steadily by, under the plane’s belly, and soon Cedre and his load glided over the lush greens of the Saredonian plains. Cedre sat up straighter and went into manual control, giving voice commands to adjust the camouflage-coat system. He had been specifically chosen for his level-headed efficiency…he would not fail.7

Hillsides and small outlying farms and schools slowly drifted close, under, and away; the farmers and their innocuous figure who could hardly appreciate the wonderful discoveries of the Realm. They were living in self ignorance, too happy with themselves. Cedre snorted at them, at the teen-agers absorbed in their primitive games of …football, and such, that the Realm had proven were unnecessary in the pursuit of total success.8

At last a gleam appeared in the distance, gradually enlarging as Cedre and his Skyrunner drew closer.9

‘Loose cartridge C,’ Cedre told the inflight computer-control pod. ‘Keycode, 6-1-7-7-5 fingerprint authorization, CCX as loaded pre-flight.’ He placed his fingers of his left hand on the waiting pad, heart pounding nervously as the computer read his fingerprints. Fool, he told himself, this happens nearly every week. And this is what non-Realmers deserve. 10

The small, faintly audible ‘click’ told him the load was ready, and Cedre swooped the plane round. Below him glittered the city-town of Snowgard, named for its shining white walls and capped towers of ivory hue. It looked magnificent, defiant in its sun-reflected glory, a god’s garden. 11

‘Drop cartridge,’ Cedre said.12

He couldn’t see the metal-and-plastic object, so small in the glare of the reflected light off Snowgard dim, and flicker, like a candle on a vast birthday cake that little Blae had not the strength to extinguish.13

Colour exploded beneath. A brief, small flare, with clouds of billowing black smoke that stood out starkly against the walls so pure fleece-white, and in a circle barely 10 metres in diameter. That was all, yet it was enough. Snowgard was beautiful, majestic, and dead.14

Radioactivity ensured that everything was now complete. Cedre’s mission was over, the rest could be left to radioactive decay. The file in General Musatto’s study could be sealed and put in the huge shelves for files of the like. Cedre could turn the Skyrunner around and head home.15

As Cedre did just that, mind dazed, the picture of Rose, and Johnny and Blae that sat on the dashboard, slipped off and smashed, on the floor, by Cedre’s feet. Innocent faces, broken by his feet.16

What’s…wrong with me? Cedre thought, snatching at the shattered remains, panickedly trying to piece Rose together. Glass slipped, and cut his fingers, but Cedre could not put Rose’s face right. Her eyes and plump pink cheeks stared back emptily, seeming to demand…Blae was ripped in half, and Johnny couldn’t be found. All I did was drop the frame, and this…destruction happens…Cedre stared at Rose, and then, strangely enough, back out the Skyrunner’s windows. All I did was drop – drop…17

Snowgard faded into the distance; the hills were back below him, farmers and children. Portraits of primitive life… no, not anymore. They were dead, all of them. Cedre trembled, with realization, as if slapped in the face, as if with the recoil of firing a shotgun. Snowgard was dead, the hills were dead, everything, for kilometers around, was dead. Crushed at his feet like the picture and frame, and blood on his hands. His neat framed life shattered. Blood on his hands.18

The teen-agers were still at their game. Cedre looked away, he could not bear to watch and know they were dead. Radiation leeched out of this now tainted place – years on these innocents would be afflicted with horrible cancers, and deformities. No plant was safe for tasting, no animal for consuming. Saredonia, was tainted, was dead. Was death.19

As Cedre flew blindly on, he thought of this and felt his body shiver, felt his mind lose grip, no longer professional calm. Those people who had denied the Realm were not innocents, Cedre and his fellow Realmers were the innocents, for not realizing the devastation their radioactivity yielded. And this city was just a tagged file in a cupboard now, one in thousands to be killed, to kill. The Realm demanded much. Blood on his hands, death at his feet. A thousand slimy things all the same, lived on, while the good men perished; and he was just one of those slimy things. One of the Realm.20