Transition by Iain M. Banks

Author:Iain M. Banks
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Science Fiction - High Tech, Science Fiction - Space Opera, Fiction - Science Fiction, International Relations, High Tech, Science fiction, Secret societies, Space Opera, Scottish Novel And Short Story, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Scottish, General, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Good and evil
ISBN: 9780316071987
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2009-09-23T07:00:00+00:00

I must have closed my eyes. I swayed and staggered as I opened them again. There was a grey light all around us and the air was suddenly chill and fresh. Mrs M was releasing me from her grip but holding one of my hands so I didn’t fall over and saying over and over, “It’s all right, Adrian, it’s all right, it’s all right…”

But it wasn’t all right, because not only was there was no dark, amber-lit room around us, there was no fucking building around us.

The Novy Pravda was gone and here we were in the grey light of a dawn that was hours too early on a low hill surrounded by marshes with a big river coiled across the landscape in the direction of the still-cloud-obscured rising sun. Great. Not just the room, not just the Novy Pravda. The whole of fucking Moscow had gone.

Scattered all about, stretching to the horizon, lay ruins.

I felt like I was going to keel over and we did a bizarre dance for a few seconds as Mrs M still held my hand and tried to stop me falling onto my bum and I sort of staggered and revolved around her, trying to get my balance back and gasping as my shoes slipped on the tussocky grass on the cold hilltop. Finally I got my legs spread far enough apart to stop gyrating and Mrs M pulled me to a stop, taking me by both shoulders while I bent, breathing hard and fast and not believing what I was seeing whenever I took a look out across this deserted landscape of grey marshes and black ruins.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m okay.”

I straightened up. She kept one hand on my elbow.

I took a few deep breaths, holding them a handful of seconds each. I looked around. Couldn’t see another soul. There was a dot on the distant river under the light patch of sky where the dawn was. It might have been a boat. The ruins spread in every direction. A few were on the horizon, darkly jagged. Towers and bits of domes; bitten, slumped-looking squared things that might once have been tower blocks or big office buildings.

There were some dressed stones sitting half-overgrown by longer grass a few steps away down the slope towards the nearest marsh.

“Let’s sit,” Mrs M said. She sat me down on the cold hard stones.

“Where the fuck is this?” I asked when I had my breathing back to something like normal.

“Another Earth, another Moscow,” she said. She sat beside me, half turned to me. The veil was down again, had been ever since we got here.

I rubbed my neck. “Was that the pill did this, or—?”

“This did this,” she said, showing me the little lighter gadget. “The pill was for if something went wrong. You had to visualise the room we left from, remember?” I nodded. “That was your way back. You shouldn’t need it now, though. We can go back together. The first transition is always the most problematic.

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