A Quantum Mythology (44 page)

‘I do not think I should answer that,’ he said eventually.

Britha had half-expected this response, but she was still surprised by how much it hurt. On the other hand, she now knew they were still alive.

‘Why not?’ she asked, but she knew the answer.

‘Because you have fallen.’

She had not expected him to put it that way. ‘I …’ she started, but found she had nothing to say.

The woman, Anharad, spat on the ground and made the sign to ward off evil.

‘Fallen or no,’ Germelqart said to Anharad, ‘you owe this woman your life, as do we all.’

Nerthach grunted his disdain and spat as well. Britha felt her fingers tighten around the shaft of her spear.

‘She will be dealt with fairly,’ Bladud said.

‘I mistrust a warrior who dresses as a
dryw
and styles himself a king,’ Britha said. Nerthach bristled and stepped forwards. Bladud put a hand on his shoulder.

‘Understandable, for you do not know me, but I am afraid you’ll just have to accept it,’ he said, affably enough.

‘I have come from Bress, warleader of the Lochlannach. He and his warband wish to pass this way and do you no harm. Will you let us by?’

There was a lot of angry muttering from the people gathered there. Mabon actually hissed at her. Bladud just looked thoughtful.

‘Why are you asking?’ Bladud asked. ‘He has never cared about the niceties before.’

‘Our business is not with you. It is with our mutual enemies that follow behind you, and I would not see bloodshed here.’

‘She cannot be trusted. She is a traitor to her people,’ Anharad said. Britha turned to glare at her, a look that would cow most people. The other woman held it, and gave it back.

‘
You
do not wish bloodshed, or
he
does not wish bloodshed?’ Bladud asked.

‘You cannot be considering this?’ Anharad demanded, forcefully enough to make Nerthach turn a questioning eye on her.

‘I do not wish bloodshed,’ Britha said. ‘He truly does not care.’

‘Then let him come here,’ said Borth the Tall, ‘and we will meet him with sword and spear. His people fared well enough against landsfolk and a few warriors taken unawares. Let us see how he does against an Iceni shield wall.’ There were nods and muttered agreements from the other warriors present, including Nerthach.

‘Bring him here,’ Bladud said. The others stared at him, and then a clamour of angry shouting broke out. The so-called Witch King let it wash over him. He never took his eyes off her. Britha knew she was being studied. What worried her more was that she was struggling to read his intent. Finally Bladud looked over at Nerthach and nodded.

‘Quiet!’ the black-bearded warrior roared.

‘Will he be attacked if I bring him to you?’ Britha asked.

‘Is he frightened?’ Bladud enquired. Some of the warriors laughed.

Britha sighed. ‘I ask you this for your own safety, but I think you will not believe me.’

The warriors present were still laughing and said exactly what she expected them to. She kept her eyes on Bladud. He gave little away.

Then Bladud spoke. ‘He does not have hospitality because I will not suffer those he has wronged so grievously to have to share meat and drink with him. Whilst we treat, however, he is under my protection. If any attack him, then I will defend him to my death.’

‘As will I, and all warriors sworn to Bladud,’ Nerthach said begrudgingly. Borth the Tall and the other warriors that Britha guessed were Iceni looked less than pleased about this.

‘And how do I know—’ Britha asked. Bladud held his hand up. It was a simple gesture, but she fell silent despite herself.

‘You are about to insult me. Please don’t, because then I will be forced to act, and nobody will get what they want. Rest assured that I was learning the laws and the lore in the groves whilst your father’s father was a young man.’

Britha stared at him for a while. ‘Very well,’ she said, and turned her horse around. She kicked the beast into a gallop along the muddy trail. She glanced back, again despite herself. The others were talking amongst themselves, but Germelqart stood apart from them, watching her ride away. Britha wondered if Tangwen was watching her from the woods, an arrow nocked, her bow ready.

‘What is this? You would betray all these people?’ Anharad demanded.

‘If only the Trinovantes warriors were as fearsome as their women …’ Nerthach suggested. Anharad turned on him, but Bladud called for calm.

‘Please, peace,’ Bladud said. ‘When we fight among ourselves we do our enemies’ bidding. Can you please trust me? If I do not do right by you then you can choose another leader.’

‘Not if we have all been put in another wicker man and set on fire!’ Anharad snapped. Bladud had come to value the Trinovantes woman’s council. She came from warrior stock and had a good head on her shoulders. A practical and no-nonsense woman, she had obviously helped run the village her husband ruled. Bladud had never seen her so angry.

‘Anharad is right,’ Borth the Tall said. ‘We need to prepare to fight them.’

‘We should,’ Bladud said, ‘but I would speak to them first.’

‘Why?’ Anharad demanded. ‘They are of the Otherworld, the fair folk. Why would you give them the opportunity to glamour you?’

Because
, Bladud thought,
Tangwen was told by her father that only the Otherworldly raiders have the power to defeat the Muileartach, and I must find a way to steal that power from them.

31

Close to the Oceanic Pole of

Inaccessibility, 3 Weeks Ago

He shouldn’t feel pain when he dreamed, not like this. He shouldn’t have to keep waking up with blood pouring out of his eyes, nose and ears, a concerned-looking Siraja standing over him.

He didn’t think he had the senses necessary to interpret it all. Instinctively, he saw, heard, felt, smelled and tasted in many different angles and from all perspectives. Even with his augmentations it was far too much information.

He heard birds on the wing over still-forming continents; felt the warmth of the sun as he moved through/with the living stone of the city; tasted the salt spray of the ocean; smelled the smoke, incense, sweat and funk of human, guardian, sea people and serpent alike. He could hear his sisters speaking to him throughout his – no, her – entire form. And he saw the ceremony.

The boy was exotic-looking, his homeland very difficult to pin down. He was impossibly tall and androgynously beautiful. He had been ceremonially shaved.

Most of the denizens of the city had come to see the ascension. They crowded the steps of the surrounding ziggurats and the basalt rooftops of the sepulchral buildings. Guardians clung, partially melded to the edge of the buildings. Serpents stood under complex silk parasols held up by multiple eunuchs. Those from the sea kept themselves wet in the cool, clear pools, little more than their black eyes showing above the water, and all found themselves sometimes in the shadow of waving tentacles and the massive, palpating bulks of the first as they drew themselves from their cooling melds with the living stone of the city.

The priest was a shortish man with an average build and a bit of a paunch. His features were those of someone from far to the east,
and his skin was swarthy, leathery and weather-beaten, suggesting time spent at sea. He had a small, neatly trimmed and lacquered beard, black with just a few grey hairs, and he wore kohl around his dark eyes. His robe was of simple white linen.

The ceremony was taking place on one of the split-level ziggurats, around a pool on a platform about halfway up the stepped structure. The tall boy and the much shorter priest stood on one of the steps overlooking the green water, which was choked with strange plant life. Sinuous ripples in the water and the occasional glimpses of a blunt, reptilian maw were the only clues to the pool’s inhabitants.

There was little or no fear in the boy’s face. Even when one of the guardian servitors leaped from a nearby roof to land on the ziggurat’s steps and partially sank into the stone, the boy showed little reaction. His mind had already been opened by the consumption of various narcotic compounds.

The small, bearded, pot-bellied man stepped into the pool and then reached up for the boy. The boy turned around and leaned back, letting himself fall. The priest caught him and lowered him down into the water. The sinuous movement in the water increased as something eel-like moved just below the surface. Electricity played across the water and strange flowers bloomed, though only beneath the surface.

The priest stepped out of the pool with as much dignity as his haste could afford him. He did not see the boy open his eyes as dragon-headed serpentine forms entwined themselves around him. He did not see the boy open his eyes, and the gulfs behind them, but Lidakika did. Then she felt the tear, and then everything was pulsing blue light.

‘Lodup!’

Lidakika, that was his name, her name.
He wasn’t sure if this had been imparted to him in the dream, or whether it was just the way he had come to try and understand her, to try and fit her in his head. He had grown up hearing stories of the octopus that guided the god Sapkini and the crew of his canoe to the reef from which Pohnpei would spring.

‘Lodup!’

He always struggled to wake from these dreams. It was as if they clung to him, reluctant to relinquish him to the waking world.

‘Lodup, get up now!’

The clone-zombie – as he had started thinking of them – trying to wake him up sounded a lot more excitable than they usually did. Lodup opened his eyes to pulsing blue light flooding the submersible through its diamondoid observation bubble. He was crying tears of blood. Blood was also coming out of his mouth and ears. Again.

‘What’s happening … ?’ Lodup started, then something hit the submersible hard. Everything slowed down as his augmented reactions stepped up his response time. Something gave in the submersible. Lodup had time to think:
That’s not supposed to happen.
The water that breached the submersible was under so much pressure that it punched straight through the clone-zombie’s hardening overalls and his toughened skin and cut a red rent through his flesh. The water that came out through the other side of his body was red.

This is going to hurt
, Lodup thought. Then he hit the submersible’s internal bulkhead. There was another impact as the vessel hit something hard that stopped them dead, and then it was tumbling slowly through the water. Lodup tried to find something to hold on to. His foot dropped through the jet of water. He yanked it out, but it was too late. The pain was only momentary. He barely had time to scream before the signals from his nerve endings in that area were cut off. He somehow had the presence of mind to pull his legs up and curl into a foetal position as he held on to the handle for the hatch.

Outside he could see the city slowly spinning. It took him a moment to realise that the submersible was turning end-over-end. He could hear someone talking in urgent tones in his ear but didn’t want to focus on the voice. The blue pulsing light was fading. There was a final impact and an explosion of silt and other particulate matter as the submersible hit the seabed. He could understand the words he was hearing now.

‘All divers recall, I repeat, recall.’ It was Siska. This had to be serious. Lodup looked down numbly at his blood swirling in the crystal-clear water that was rapidly filling the submersible. He stared at the ruin of his foot. In his mind he was receiving information about the bruises, contusions and at least two fractures that had resulted due to whatever had hit the submersible, which was now lying on its side. The clone-zombie was dead. Lodup hadn’t even bothered to learn the name of the person he was a copy of.

Lodup forced himself to stop looking at the stump of his foot. Already nanites were fixing his other injuries, making flesh from his fat stores. Skin grew over the stump. He took a moment to artificially correct his breathing and chemically alter his anxiety and fear, and then looked around.

They had been surveying some of the rooms within one of the tomblike structures, looking for tech they might have missed on earlier visits. They were heading back towards the habitat. Deane was supporting them in an
ADS
. The dive supervisor had been working with him a lot more recently, since the blackouts and the dreams started. Since Hideo had gone thatch and murdered Sal. He was pretty sure Siska wanted one of the ‘immortals’ keeping an eye on him at all times.

He pulled himself up and moved forwards, careful to avoid the jet of water still rapidly filling the submersible. They’d hit one of the ziggurats and tumbled down the steps to the seabed. Lodup was pretty sure it was the one from his dream – it had the same split-level look to it. Above him he could make out the sled-like
AUV
s moving quickly through the water to converge on something. Lodup saw tubular ripples as the
AUV
s fired torpedo after torpedo at an unseen target. An orange light glowed behind him. Water boiled, then one of the
AUV
s came apart. The submersible rocked as the water-amplified shock wave hit it. Lodup saw the spiked balls of the smart mines dropping through the water, then lost sight of them. There was light, and distorted noise, followed by the concussive force of successive rapid shock waves battering the submersible. He was thrown about in the water now half-filling the vessel and only just avoided losing another piece of his body to the jet of water. His severed foot bounced off his head.

There was more bright orange light above him, and part of the ziggurat exploded. He was appalled at the force that would be required to do that. He saw lumps of the alien-technology-infused masonry raining down on the submersible and held on to the hatch handle for dear life as the craft took another battering. The water started rising even more rapidly. He could hear the creaks of the stressed matter of the hull as the crack weakened the vessel’s structural integrity.

‘Deane?’ Lodup subvocalized as he evacuated air from his body and started to fill hollow cavities with saline, sucking water through the intakes in the technological gills implanted in his chest.

‘I’ve got you, Lodup,’ Deane said. Even though he knew the dive supervisor was subvocalizing, the other man sounded particularly quiet, subdued, frightened.

‘Okay, the sub’s taking on water. I’m going to need to let it fill completely to equalise the pressure and hope it doesn’t collapse before I can get out.’

‘Understood. You’re covered in debris at the moment—’

‘Don’t try moving it until the submersible’s full of water, copy?’

‘Understood. How’s John?’

‘Who?’ Lodup asked before he realised Deane must be talking about the submersible pilot. ‘He’s dead.’
Or as dead as anyone gets around here
, he added silently. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Deane said quietly. ‘We’re being attacked.’

By who?
The light and the explosions appeared to be getting further away, but they were moving towards the habitat. There was no more information coming from C&C other than the repeating diver recall, though it was Siraja’s voice now, not Siska’s. He lay there, occasionally feeling a slight tremor from distant shock waves. At last, the submersible was completely flooded.

‘Now,’ he subvocalized to Deane. He felt the vessel shaking as the dive supervisor used the
ADS
’s exoskeleton to remove the rubble. Finally the submersible was shifted to make it easier for him to use the hatch. He didn’t like the sound of stressed metal echoing through the water. He started to turn the lock. At first it wouldn’t shift, so Lodup internally shifted matter and energy to his arm muscles. He felt himself becoming thinner. Slowly the lock started turning. He managed to move it all the way around, but when he pushed the hatch wouldn’t open.

‘Deane, I can’t get the hatch open,’ Lodup said. He knew that even with the power of the
ADS
he wouldn’t be able to breach the observation bubble. That would take something insidious and truly powerful, like water under pressure.

‘It looks warped from this side,’ Deane said. Lodup heard a scraping sound on the hull and the submersible moved as the
ADS
shifted its position outside. ‘Okay, get away from the hatch. I have to do some cutting, and it’s going to get hot in there.’

Lodup moved all the way forward and stared out of the observation bubble. Part of it was buried in the debris, and it looked like someone had taken a bite out of the ziggurat. The water above him was empty, but behind him, he could see nearly constant flashes of light.

The condensed adamantine hull next to the hatch was glowing white, the water around it bubbling as the heat of the
ADS
’s fusion torch boiled it. When Deane finished cutting, Lodup craned his neck to look through the submersible’s observation bubble. He saw Deane’s
ADS
holding up the submersible with one hand while the other pulled on the hatch. The creaks from the stressed hull were louder now. The water amplified the noise, making it sound much worse than it was. The submersible shook as the hatch was finally wrenched open and Lodup made his way through, careful to avoid the parts of the hull still glowing red.

When Lodup was clear, the
ADS
dropped the submersible, which caused an explosion of silt and a slide of debris. Lodup found Siraja standing in the silt cloud.

‘Where have you been?’ Lodup subvocalized as he looked around. About half a mile from his position there was a lot of light refracting through the water. He saw bubbles of fire encasing explosions rising above the roofs of the once-living buildings. A line of orange, flame-like light that reminded Lodup of lava reached up from an unseen street in the city and pierced the armoured body of one of the orcas. The body ruptured, glowing armour plate and chunks of cooked meat drifting towards the sea floor, boiling the water around them.

‘I was busy,’ Siraja said tersely. Three Archies were silhouetted above the lights, half-striding, half-propelling themselves towards the area of disturbance. ‘You need to move quickly and return to the habitat. I have plotted you a safe but circuitous route.’

Suddenly a three-dimensional map of the city’s confusing layout appeared in Lodup’s mind. Siraja’s suggested route was highlighted in red.

‘Won’t whoever is attacking us be going there, too?’ Lodup asked.

‘Yes,’ Deane said over the ultrasound link, ‘but it’s also heavily defended. It’s either that or we stay out here and get picked off on our own.’

‘Who’s attack—’ Lodup started to ask Siraja, but the dragon-headed AI had already disappeared. It occurred to him that the AI became considerably less polite during stressful situations.

They watched as torpedo after torpedo disappeared between the ziggurats and tomblike buildings of the city. The structures between them and the fight-zone were thrown into sharp relief by the light of the bubbles of explosions and the shock waves buffeted them. The thick lava-like beams of force reached out again, drawing scorch marks and glowing lines of cooked meat through one of the massive Archies. Lodup was appalled when he saw the massive creature topple. The lights of the city were dimmed as tonnes of silt were thrown up into the water.

Now smaller lines of the same lava-like force were boiling water as they destroyed incoming torpedoes, smart mines and
AUV
s. Lodup and Deane watched as several of the security-pod orcas dived down into the city, firing various munitions at the unseen attacker. The thicker line of force was almost constant, like a searchlight, as it sought out, ruptured and destroyed one orca after another until they broke off their attack.