Phantasm 2: In the Shadow of Iniquity (two)

"I was always isolated from everyone else. I was unlike everyone else and that kept me apart. I wasn' t corrupted because there were always things that seemed more important to me. I guess I was angry as well. Anger can make things clearer sometimes, remove the complexity of everyday living, strip it bare."

"Gondowin sounds like the way Earth used to be, when I was there," Laura said softly. "My world had a lot of things that were good and bad. Advanced, with its beauty, but it was all just surface. Nothing was deep. Scratch the surface and you could see everything underneath. It was like a mirror that reflected an image of how we wanted to be, not of how we really were."

"Do you know what Earth is like now?" Scott asked.

"No. I haven' t been back home for twenty years. I expect it' s probably still the same, or maybe worse. It' s hard to turn away when you' re set in your ways and you don' t want to change. I don' t know if I' d particularly want to see it now. I think I' d keep seeing ghosts of my past and not what' s really there."

Scott shifted, turning towards Willow. "What about you? What memories do you have of your home?"

Willow opened her mouth but hesitated to speak. Laura seemed to stiffen, watching. At last Willow said, her voice so low it was barely audible, "The only thing I know of home is the people. I don' t know where I came from. I can only remember being with Laura, and of a time before that, and nothing else."

"You mean you know nothing at all of your past?"

"I have nothing in the way of direct memories, no."

Scott couldn' t think of anything more to say to that. Laura was conspicuously quiet. Time went by and they remained like that. At last they rose and continued on their way.

They reached the spaceport just as night descended. Walking along the streets they hardly met any signs of life. The buildings were old and empty, without lighting. Aircars and other such vehicles sat on the curbs of the streets, looking vaguely sad, untouched, abandoned. It was quiet, eerily so. A place like this should have been filled with sound; children laughing or crying as joy quickly turned to tears, the voices of travellers sharing their stories in the occasional bar they discovered, each as abandoned as the rest, but there was none of this, instead there was only the unnerving, disquieting void.

Laura became depressed the further they progressed. The spaceport had become something of a ghost-town to her, only on an epic scale. Memories of the ruins she had seen on Pnath came back to haunt her, the recollections almost overpoweringly strong. She attempted to force the distraction from her mind, casting it aside into duplicates, mental projections of her character, shadows of her soul, to be rid of them more permanently, taking care first of all that Scott wouldn' t see. The phantasms pressed at the very back of her consciousness, desiring to possess the shadows and mould them to give them form and freedom. Laura released the hold on the duplicates rather than allow the phantasms to make use of them. They quieted as the opportunity for freedom disappeared. She could feel their disappointment and maybe even a little pain through their connection. Guilt gnawed at her, but this she refused to cast aside. It was her burden to bear and she had to accept it, not be rid of it.

The spaceport was unusual in some respects in that it was relatively compact, relatively considering at peak efficiency it had in excess of ten to fifteen thousand people living inside it. The overall design was of a village or town which had been extrapolated upon to a grand scale, keeping the same kind of layout but increasing it at the same time to accommodate all the people. The buildings were of many varieties, from excessive to tiny. The spaceport was like a resort, designed to entertain and enthral people and allow them to escape, and so most of what they recognised was oriented towards monetary production - theatres, VR chambers, inns and bars and an assortment of other venues. Normally Laura could have imagined these places coming alive, filled with dazzling displays meant to attract attention. Now they were all dark and vacant, filled with signs of disorder and panic, messy and cluttered, as though everyone had gathered their essential items and left in a hurry, scattering everything else without much consideration. The buildings were still full of objects that had been abandoned and they told stories of their own - a doll or a teddy bear lying on the ground; templates still active and shedding their faint, haunting luminescence; replicators that still functioned with power still active, with items inside their rings; and so on. The three of them saw it all from a distance as they continued along the streets. Laura felt her skin prickle and grow cold. It was unnerving.

They came to what was roughly the spaceport' s centre where it was remarkably different as they could see a light shining in the occasional home or building, silhouettes moving around inside, people.

Further on they found an inn which appeared as if it might be occupied and they entered. The interior seemed to have more in common with the lobby of a hotel than the foyer of an inn; a large open space with a reception desk against the far left wall, some passages leading to other sections of the building, and a staircase elsewhere. It might have appeared rather plain if it wasn' t for the theme of the decorations. They were of historical periods from Earth' s past, concentrating predominantly upon weapons and technologies from distant eras. Hunting rifles adorned the space on the wall above the desk; swords and shields and helmets collected together on another; varying types of grenades kept behind glass cases, likewise with small pistols and assorted firearms; framed images of nuclear and chemical and biological weapons; and so on and so forth. Miniature starship models, from the many Apollo vessels to shuttles and representations of larger craft, early types of replicators and laser pistols, the technical designs for aircars and other forms of hover-transportation? it didn' t seem to end. Ceiling fans sent cool air in their direction, though the whole place felt air-conditioned anyway. It was a comical sort of place but not without a certain charm as well. Craning her neck to see all the displays, Laura could not help but feel impressed.