Icarus Descending (38 page)

Crack!

He clapped his hands together and the jewel-box disappeared. “There,” he said, flicking his fingers as though to cleanse them; “
that’s
done.” He looked up at me, his emerald eyes glowing. “Now what shall we see next? Wichita? Vancouver? Punta Arenas?”

At each name a glittering image spun into sight. Wichita’s domes like dun-colored bubbles, Vancouver’s spires and minarets, the ice-locked casements of Antarctica’s capital. The nemosyne drew back, regarding them critically. “Or perhaps we should pluck an eye from HORUS—”

And there were the lazily turning stations of Hotei, Helena Aulis, Quirinus, Advhi Sar, each image much cleaner than the real thing and small enough to fit in my hand. Metatron’s eyes narrowed. Light gleamed from one plasteel arm as he reached out and contemplatively pinched Advhi Sar’s shining torus between two fingers. As I watched, he brought it to his mouth and, smiling, bit down upon it with glittering meal teeth.

“
Stop it.
”

I knew they were only ’filed images, but it was too easy to recall Jawa and NASNA Prime, and Araboth’s domes crushed by the prince of storms. Metatron only shrugged.

“As you wish, Imperator.” The shining cities blinked from sight. For an instant the nemosyne was utterly still, staring at me with the cold dull gaze of an adder. Any resemblance to a mortal man was gone. I was looking at a being infinitely less human than Lascar Franschii or myself, or even Nefertity. His coldly glittering eyes, the cruel and angular lines of his face, were less
alive
than anything I had ever seen. Yet he was charged with such malevolence, such unshakable strength and arrogance, that he seemed more powerful than anything I had ever gazed upon.

“What are you?” I whispered.

“Many things.” He smiled again, slowly, and said, “My name is Legion.”

“Who discovered you? Who has programmed you to do these things?
Why?”

A shrug of those gleaming shoulders. “
Ad astra per asperan,
Imperator. You will find out soon enough.”

The nemosyne’s image flickered, as though the transmission were fading. His voice began to grow fainter. “Certain Ascendant outposts on Earth and in HORUS have proved difficult for my followers to reclaim. It seems they have formed their
own
alliances. Ironic, isn’t it, that after all these centuries your Autocracy and Emirates and Commonwealth should suddenly find themselves with a common enemy?”

His voice grew silken as he crooned, “But we are not
your
enemy, Imperator, the geneslaves and I. Humanity is. And
you
are no longer human. Your human masters have done nothing but fail you, again and again. Don’t you think it is time you shed your lingering affection for mem? Don’t you think it is time you found a new master?”

In the air above his head fiery words appeared, the NASNA motto
Oderint dum metuant
spelled out in flames.

“You have
hated
very well, Imperator. Now it is time you learned to
fear”

The letters crumbled into ash as Metatron’s voice rose to a howl. The walls of the carrel shook around me and ’files and books slid from tables and shelves. Before my eyes the nemosyne grew larger, billowing out like an elÿon readying for flight, until he seemed to take up the entire room: a vast black cloud shot with violet lightning, pierced by two raging emerald eyes. With an explosive roar he was gone.

Silence; then a barely audible sound echoed in the room.

Another voice, my
own
voice, faint and tremulous as though it had been recorded on faulty equipment and was now being played back from a great distance—years, perhaps; decades
…

“
I must serve somebody,
” it—
I
—said; and then the library grew silent one more.

The chamber’s light had dimmed when a sound roused me.

“Imperator.”

I whirled, my hand raised to strike; but at the far end of the room stood Captain Novus. Her face was red, her eyes puffy from the drugs she had been given. “A replicant woke me and said that we are approaching Quirinus.” She yawned, rubbing her arms, and shook her head. “The time says it’s been fifty-three hours. Is that possible?”

Fifty-three hours! But of course it was possible. It seemed now that anything was possible.

“Yes,” I said numbly. I was glad I had only one human hand, and that she could not see how it trembled. “I warned you, elÿon travel is disorienting.”

I walked past her, headed for the door leading back to the navigation cell. “Make sure Nefertity has been reactivated. Both of you will meet me in the adjutant’s chamber as soon as possible.”

She stared at me, surprised at my subdued tone, then nodded. “As you wish, Imperator,” she said, and hurried down the corridor.

In the navigation cell I tried to question Lascar Franschii about my vision of Aidan Harrow and the subsequent message from the nemosyne he referred to as the Oracle.

“Of course there are ghosts here!” the adjutant whined. “There are ghosts on every elÿon, how do you think we travel so quickly? They pull us, we are chained to them, spirits of the past, the dead, the damned—”

There was more of this babble, but in a rage I yanked his speaking tube from the wall. When Valeska and Nefertity arrived, Lascar Franschii was thrashing furiously within his web of wires, squeaking like a bat.

“That is cruel,” Nefertity said coldly. She slid the speaking tube back into his mouth. A froth of blood and spittle greeted her for her kindness, and a stream of curses. Even Captain Novus looked appalled.

“We’d better find the docking area,” she said as the adjutant kicked weakly at the wall behind him. Without a word I strode to the door, not waiting for the others to follow.

“Will he—will that affect our landing?” Captain Novus asked uneasily when we were out of earshot. “He seems to be having some kind of seizure.”

“We have fallen into a trap that Lacar Franschii has helped set for us, Captain Novus. Please arm yourself and be prepared for a hostile encounter. Under no circumstances should you allow my replicant to be harmed.”

Valeska Novus swallowed and glanced at Nefertity beside her like a radiant shadow. “Yes, Imperator,” she said, and was silent.

We entered the main corridor, its glowing walls painting us all a lurid crimson. At the end of the hallway was the door through which we had first entered the
Izanagi.
Three of the Maio servers stood beside it, their silver faces turned attentively toward us.

“Imperator Margalis Tast’annin,” one of them announced in its clear, cold voice as we approached. “There is no human escort on HORUS colony Quirinus to greet you. A psychological reading of those aboard shows only thirteen auxiliary personnel, female energumens from Kalamat Cluster 533. There is evidence of recent biochemical sabotage. In addition, three auxiliary capsules bearing the designation
HORUS Colony Helena Aulis
are in the process of making an unauthorized docking at Quirinus. We recommend aborting this mission.”

“I don’t believe we could abort this mission under any circumstances,” I said curtly. “And we will have no need of human escorts. I have reason to believe that the energumens are expecting us.”

Before us the door shuddered as the elÿon docked into the main entryway of the HORUS station. I could hear Valeska’s shallow breathing, and from the navigator’s cell far behind us the voice of Lascar Franschii bellowing with laughter. With a sound like a knife scraping glass, the entry-way began to open. Brilliant blue light poured into the chamber, mingling with the elÿon’s crimson glow to turn everything a vivid purple. A moment later we were gazing into the vast recesses of Quirinus.

A
S OUR CARAVAN APPROACHED
the river bounding Cassandra, I could see why the Ascendants had not been able to destroy the town. Protonic cannons lined the riverbank: steel-blue cylinders pointed at the sky, steaming in the morning sun. Earthen berms and small brick outbuildings rose beside them, and from these swarmed figures clad in the dusty blue hoods and tunics I slowly realized must be the uniform of the Asterine Alliance. Most of these figures were men and women; but there were others who went about unclothed, or wearing abbreviated versions of the uniform. Aardmen with their hunched gait; ethereal argalæ, struggling to carry the smallest cartons in their frail twiglike arms; cacodemons and huge and horrible four-legged things like equine men. All of them moved busily along the shore, like the apocalyptic figures in a recusant’s tapestry brought to life. Beyond them the river was wide and brilliant as the sky, and as calm. I could see where fish were rising to snap at clouds of insects, and where a motorized dinghy V’ed lazily through the placid waters as though on no more serious errand than fishing, heading for the far shore.

“There’s a checkpoint ahead,” Cadence warned us. She pointed to a ramshackle metal building at river’s edge. Immediately past it a bridge spanned the water, its rusted spans repaired with wooden beams and salvaged metal. “
I’ll
take care of everything.” She glanced at Jane, then turned back to the wheel. Jane looked affronted. She stuck her chin in the air and in beleaguered silence joined me at the open window.

The van crept the last few yards toward the guardhouse. People had stopped their work—mostly hauling crates and canisters from several other ancient caravans parked near the cannons—and stood in small groups, staring at us as the sentries waved us through. Beside the guardhouse a huge figure stood by a smaller, hooded one, inspecting something that might have been a transformer or some kind of old ’file transmitter. As I watched, the larger creature turned, very very slowly, and stared at us as we passed. I had an impression of fawn-colored skin and slightly darker hair, and eyes that were black and implacable as a starless sky.

At that unblinking gaze a cold tongue of dread licked at me, and I shuddered. Even from a distance there was something eerie, almost obscene, about that form. As though some ancient monolith had begun to move—like the City’s Obelisk or Sorrowful Lincoln—something formed over the course of aeons out of marble and fire and blood; something that should never have been given life. The thing watched our caravan rattle by, its huge hands holding the dully gleaming core of the transmitter as though it were a hollow log. As the van rounded a corner, I turned to look back at it. For an instant its eyes met mine, and I gasped.

Because those eyes—pupilless, cold and deep as black water—were utterly without guile or hatred. For all the grotesque immensity of its body, the gaze that met mine glowed with the rapturous curiosity of a child’s.

“What is that?” I whispered.

Jane stared after it, her face drawn.

“Energumen,” she said. I knew from her expression that she had never before seen one alive.

Nor had I. I had never even quite believed that they existed, let alone that one might work peacefully side by side with humans. The notion had seemed too ludicrously horrible even for the Ascendants: deformed, bioengineered clones twice the size of a man, created to serve as slaves in the HORUS colonies and the most distant reaches of the Archipelago.

This one, though, had not been quite so large as I had imagined—perhaps only two feet taller than a man, though beside it that solitary human had looked spindly and utterly inconsequential in his loose uniform. I stared after them until our caravan began to cross the bridge.

“Christ,” Jane muttered. She stood beside me and looked dispiritedly out at the rusted spars and sagging cables. “We’re in for it now, Wendy.”

I pointed to where dull-gray canisters and spiky arrays of wire and metal had been bound to the struts with lengths of barbed wire, until the whole thing looked like the work of some great caddisworm. Jane nodded glumly.

“Explosives. They’ve got the whole thing rigged so that if anyone tries to cross—like, say, someone trying to rescue us—the bridge will go under—
pfft
—like that.”

In the front seat Cadence turned and gave us a warning look. Jane grew silent, crossing her arms on her chest and casting a baleful glance to where Suniata stood in silence beside the driver’s seat, his round carp’s-eyes fixed on the road before us.

And so we reached the shores of Cassandra. Behind us the placid waters of the Shenandoah curled out of sight between the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Ahead of us stretched the road, wider now, with long gouges in the red clay where shallow trenches had been dug and rudimentary channels stood half-full of rusty-looking water. Our caravan slowed, creeping to avoid boulders and trees that had fallen in the course of constructing more armories and crude storage buildings. There were many men and women working here, wearing the hooded blue uniform of the Alliance, as well as a number of energumens: all carrying sacks of meal and grain, dragging great steel beams across the wounded ground, pulling the broken axle from beneath a pile of wreckage. Compared to their slight, almost scrawny forebears, the energumens were surprisingly graceful, with smooth, heavily muscled bodies. Most wore only a loose linen skirt about their narrow waists. Their skins were different colors—the same vibrant red as the Virginia clay; a dusky bluish-brown, like the flesh of a muscat grape; an ivory tone like fluid wax.

But what I found strangest about them was their faces. Or rather, their
face
—because they all shared the same features. Large intelligent eyes above rounded cheeks, wide foreheads, childish round mouths. Jane grimaced when they stopped their work and gazed after us, but to me they looked like grotesquely large children. Only their eyes betrayed their demonic origins, with black iris and cornea and tiny white pupils, and the same expression of intense inquisitiveness as they watched us pass.

There was another checkpoint up ahead, and an even more staggering array of weaponry, all of it arranged in shining, neatly ordered columns beneath the lacquered blue sky. At the sight, even Jane’s customary irony turned to disbelief.

“Scarlet was right,” she said. Outside, two energumens worked on a metal platform that supported a satellite dish twice the size of our van. On the ground beneath them another energumen manipulated a control panel. Slowly the entire apparatus swiveled, liked a monstrous clockwork toy. “This really is war.”