I have almost seen enough, Jonah thought. Almost.
The trees were tall and healthy, mostly spruce and balsam fir mixed in with larger hardwoods, and the forest floor was home to swathes of bramble, blueberry and rhododendron shrubs. A heavier yellow fruit that he did not recognise hung in bunches from a broad-leafed plant, and for a moment he worried about trying it. Then he laughed and plucked one, popping it between his teeth and sighing at the warm sweetness.
Small blue birds flashed between tree boles, and from somewhere higher up Jonah could hear the cry of a hawk. Sugg could tell me if that was a goshawk or a red-tail, he thought. But Coldbrook’s chef was an incomprehensible distance from him now, and probably dead.
There might be wolves and bears, coyotes and cougars, moose and caribou, and perhaps animals that he had never seen or even dreamed of. And perhaps he would see some of them if he walked far and long enough.
Something down through the trees caught his eye, a shadow that he recognised, visible against a wall of deep blue flowers. Jonah approached at his own pace. The time had to come soon, he knew. And he had a sudden, panicked thought that for every second he stalled, another world fell to the fury infection.
‘I can’t know that,’ he said. Birds quietened around him, and something rustled through the undergrowth. How ironic it would be to die here, taken down by a wildcat or bitten by a snake, stung by a spider or mauled by a mountain bear. Ironic and tragic, because no one would ever know, in this universe or any other.
He rolled the soft trigger between his fingers, still in his pocket. It remained warm to the touch.
‘Accept,’ the Inquisitor told him. His voice came from beside Jonah, even though the shape he could see was at least two hundred feet away, visible past tree trunks and through the light camouflage of bushes and heavy ferns.
‘Fuck you,’ Jonah said mildly.
He saw the first evidence of what had become of this place. Perhaps it had been a fury, perhaps not, but the corpse, tied to a tree, was now little more than mouldy bones and scraps of leathery skin. No evidence of clothing, though the rope was wound and knotted with skill. He moved closer and saw that a spider had made its home in the cadaver’s skull. The arachnid was as large as an apple, and its web was an architectural wonder: some single strands were eight feet long and stretched in all directions. He had no wish to touch one; he didn’t know how fast the spider might move. But he had seen all he needed to. There was a small metal plate in the skeleton’s skull, and glinting on one wrist where both had been tied behind the tree was a watch.
Another dead Earth, and perhaps centuries had passed. He would never know when that watch had stopped.
Jonah moved on. This world had been darkened for him, and yet the beauty of the scenery seemed to bloom brighter. The flowers were wonderful, their scent subtle on the air; birds flitted from branch to branch, or plucked insects from the air, or gracefully rode thermals higher up; the tree canopy shifted and swayed, alive and kissed by the wind. And he would never be able to tell anyone about this.
I’ve seen more than any human ever has, he thought, travelled further, and to die right now would just feel like only one more step. But he still found comfort in the idea that had always kept him rooted – there were billions of stars in the galaxy, billions of galaxies, and perhaps infinite universes. He meant so little, and knew next to nothing.