Authors: Gavin Smith
We dived, fell, flew for what simultaneously felt like a very long time and not nearly long enough. The inner mental landscape of Them was constantly changing. I understood none of it, but none of it was ugly and everywhere was light in different hues and the ever-changing music
.
Ahead of me Morag pointed towards a small tunnel-like mental vein
.
‘There’s one,’ she called and swooped gracefully towards it. I followed her and tried not to hit the wall. One what?
It was dark in the tunnel. It looked much more like rock than anything else I’d seen. The singing seemed further away
.
‘Morag …?’
‘Ssh, it’s okay.’ I could just make out her shape ahead of me. The only light was the warm white glow from the main vein behind us. ‘I told you we weren’t the first to come here.’
I could just about make out markings on the rock wall. It looked like scrollwork, like the designs that Pagan had decorated himself and his surroundings with. I realised that I was wading through a shallow stream of very cold water. It reminded me of fording a burn in the Highlands. The scrollwork seemed to be moving, making disconcerting patterns. It was playing tricks with my head. The patterns suggested strange, fantastical and sometimes horrific shapes
.
‘If you come in peace, you can live with them, even sculpt your surroundings,’ she said
.
‘You mean there are other people?’
‘I am not a person,’ a voice said. The accent sounded vaguely familiar but I could not place it. The voice sounded utterly inhuman. It seemed to resonate differently from human language. I felt it rather than heard it. Perhaps it was because of my surroundings and my recent experiences, but I found myself overcome with a feeling that I couldn’t quite understand or fully explain
.
The light was blue, but not Their warm blue; it was colder like steel and neon. It came from a large and ancient-looking, two-handed claymore with a very sharp silvery blade. The man or icon holding it towered over us. He was powerfully built. His muscles looked like corded steel and seemed almost too large. Steam rose from his flesh and he burned with an inner light. I could feel the heat coming from him. It was not the warmth that blew through the asteroid caverns. Instead it was like standing too close to a furnace. The light beneath his skin picked out the network of scars that covered his torso and arms. They formed symbols and patterns that shifted with the movement of his flesh as he moved towards us. As if they were mimicking or somehow connected to the moving symbols and scrollwork on the stone wall
.
I was struggling to think of this as something human. His eyes glowed with the same steel-blue light of the sword. The light could be seen through the translucent pale skin of his face. His ears were long and tapered to points. For all his size there was something graceful and otherworldly about him. He wore plaid trousers of spun wool and a thick belt, with various designs inscribed into the leather, around his waist. His hair was long, shaved at the sides and organised into complicated braids. He had a short beard but a long moustache that was again braided
.
Silver and gold bracelets wrapped around his left arm. I dimly remembered that they were called torcs. His other arm was made from the same silvery metal as the sword and covered in a complex engraved pattern. It looked like some kind of ancient but perfectly functional prosthetic. It had the same glow as the sword and his eyes
.
Though my iconic form in here made me look fully human, my right arm had started to ache. I held it and took a step away from the heat, the sense of raw physical power and the radiating sense of barely controlled rage I felt from this thing. I think the emotion I was feeling was awe. It was clear to me that whatever he was, he had his roots back somewhere in humanity’s collective unconscious. At the same time I felt I was in the presence of something both ancient and utterly different to me. In some ways this thing, despite familiar trappings, seemed more alien than Them
.
‘Oh,’ I said
.
‘Now do you believe?’ Morag asked
.
Shit, I thought. Was I having a religious experience? Had I been tricked into this? I pushed that thought back. I was determined not to let the normal cynical, fear-filled decisions of everyday life intrude on this place. Whatever was going on, I had to try and take this at face value as something strange but potentially wonderful. That said, I didn’t want to end up as mad as your average signalman. Though with the sheer feeling of power that was radiating from this thing I could see why so many were affected
.
‘Oh,’ I said again, my mind like a steel trap
.
‘I am Nuada Airgetláa,’ he said
.
‘All right?’ I managed. I looked at Morag. She was just smiling. ‘Did you know about this?’
‘Not really the way it works. They come and go as they please.’
‘And They let them?’
We may have been being rude and I didn’t doubt that this guy was some kind of mythic archetype from humanity’s past somehow given form, but all the while we were talking he was watching us. Actually it was more like he was studying me
.
‘You are a warrior?’ he asked. I felt my heart sink. Here we go again
.
‘No. I am or was a fucking soldier and I don’t want to be doing great deeds for abstract reasons.’
‘Jakob …’ Morag tried to warn me. She reached over and grabbed my arm
.
‘You’d have more luck with Balor if he wasn’t—’ Which was as far as I got before I was lifted up by the neck and slammed against the wall. I found the tip of about six feet of steel pressed against my stomach. His fingers scorched my neck. I could smell my own burning flesh. The pale flesh on his face seemed to slew back down to the musculature as he hissed, revealing wickedly sharp canines and too many of them. His breath smelled of honey, heather and raw meat. I’m pretty sure I screamed. Up close he looked even larger. And I had been having such a nice time. I knew I was helpless here
.
‘No!’ Morag said and grabbed the guy. She may as well have been wrestling a statue. She screamed and stumbled back, her flesh burned where she had touched him. He released me and backed off, his features reshaping into their original form. He looked down at Morag. She was cradling her burned hands, looking pained and unsure. He seemed appalled by the pain he’d inflicted on her
.
‘I am sorry, Mother.’
Morag looked as mystified as I was
.
‘That’s okay,’ she said slowly. I was rubbing my bruised and burned virtual neck
.
‘It was just that he said the name of my enemy,’ he explained
.
Balor’s ability to make friends and influence people seemed second only to Mudge’s. Unless of course he was referring to the mythological demon that Balor had named himself after. Of course he was. I groaned. Even though I was having some sort of religious experience I lacked the ability to process it properly. It all seemed like nonsense to me. Frightening and painful nonsense
.
‘Different Balor and he’s dead anyway,’ I managed
.
Nuada nodded. ‘So you are a warrior?’ he asked again
.
‘Whatever. What are you?’
‘I am Nuada Airgetláa, it means “Of the Silver Hand”. I am of the Tuatha Dé Danaan; I was once their king.’ He held up his silver arm. ‘But I am no longer whole.’
This I understood
.
‘Tough war?’ I asked
.
‘Yes,’ he said simply
.
I nodded. ‘I’ve got one just like it.’ Then I remembered where I’d heard the name before. ‘The arm. You made sure I got it? You’re one of those self-aware AIs that latches onto religious iconography in the net, aren’t you?’
‘I thought they were just the fevered imagination of hackers,’ Morag said. Nuada said nothing
.
‘How did you get all the way out here?’ I asked him
.
‘This is just another road from Tir Nan Og.’
This of course made no sense. I wondered if religion would have a more universal appeal if the gods could manage to be a bit less fucking cryptic. Then a strange thought occurred to me
.
‘Wait a second. The arm. Are you trying to identify with me?’
I saw Morag roll her eyes. I think in the big electronic church of hacking you were supposed to be a little more respectful during your visitation
.
‘The Adversary is coming—’ Nuada started
.
‘No shit.’
‘Jakob!’ Morag hissed at me. She sounded genuinely pissed off
.
‘The Adversary is going to drown us all. There will be only one god, and that god will be a god of fear.’
‘You mean Demiurge?’
‘And when he drowns us he will know us,’ Nuada continued
.
‘So you can hide and keep secrets?’ I asked
.
‘Now we hold our own mysteries, but not in the face of the Adversary.’
‘Okay, Demiurge is bad. We know this. So?’
‘He will have our power.’
This didn’t sound good
.
‘Is that a lot of power?’ I asked. He just looked at me as if I was stupid. ‘If you’re frightened of Demiurge then fight. Don’t dress yourself up in old gods and expect others to do the work for you.’ Again he said nothing. ‘Have you got anything to bring to this?’
‘If we go near it, we will be taken, we will be corrupted, we will become an extension of it, and you do not want this as much as we do not want it.’
‘Okay, so come forward,’ I said
.
‘And risk the burning times?’
‘So you’d rather be urban myths? Hackers’ tall tales? What are you anyway?’
‘I told you. I am Nuada Airgetláa.’
I took another step back. Despite the odd way I seemed to be hearing him, he seemed to be trying to keep his tone as even and emotionless as possible. I just couldn’t shake the feeling of enormous rage being held back just below the surface
.
‘Okay. With all due respect, what do you want from me?’
‘You must have them remake Pais Badarn Beisrydd.’
I looked over at Morag questioningly. She was crouching down and backing into the shadows. There was something odd and primal about her movements. What the fuck was going on?
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘If you are a warrior then we will share blood.’
With his silver hand he wrapped his fingers around the sword’s blade, barely touching it. His hand started to bleed what looked like smoking mercury. I looked at Morag again. The shadows in the tunnel seemed to be elongating to engulf her. They moved across her naked skin like they were alive. I began to feel dislocated like I was on a good but frightening psychotropic. It was as if it wasn’t happening to me but I was somehow witnessing it
.
‘It’s only information,’ Morag whispered
.
I could only see her as a shadow now, though the shadow’s teeth and eyes seemed to burn. I swallowed and reached out for the sword. I didn’t even realise I’d touched it until my hand came away wet with blood. Nuada grasped my hand. My blood and his mingled. It burned, it burned so much. It took me a moment to realise the discordant screaming that was so jarring, even in this part of this place, was me. My flesh glowed from the inside through translucent skin
.
I awoke in the pool. My body felt like a rough-edged machine. It was awkward and painful to live in. Of course it would have been less painful if I hadn’t stabbed myself in the arm earlier. I felt feverish and was surprised that the water wasn’t bubbling. Morag was holding me, cradling me like I was a sick or frightened child
.
Later in the grotto I was still shaken and didn’t feel right. I was too hot. A diagnostic check of all my internal systems found no trace of any information exchange
.
‘Did you take me there?’ I asked
.
She didn’t answer straight away. I think she was trying to work out if there was any accusation in my question. There wasn’t. I’d worked hard to make sure there wasn’t
.
‘It wasn’t an ambush. I knew there were things there. I’ve spoken with some of them but I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘They’re AIs, aren’t they? Powerful self-aware ones masquerading as old gods. That’s why they’re so frightened.’
‘Maybe,’ she said
.
‘You can’t believe they’re gods, can you?’ I said incredulously. Maybe I was just trying to convince myself. It had seemed pretty real at the time
.