Icarus Descending (36 page)

I walked for a long time, never really going anywhere. Because of the
Izanagi’s
utilitarian purpose, there were few windows, no signs, no pictures, no holofiles; nothing to relieve the sense of wandering within a huge, rosy ventricle, like the cavity of a human heart. There was, however, a viewing deck, and it was to this I was headed. On all my previous ventures aboard the elÿon, I had been undisturbed by the dreamy light, the thick air scented faintly of saline and ozone. As a
rasa,
I assumed I would be truly impervious to the subtle lunacies that could stalk you through those blood-warm tunnels.

Instead I felt a growing unease. I had checked a map posted outside Nefertity’s cell to determine the location of the viewing deck. Surely I should have arrived there by now; but the corridor kept winding away in front of me, unbroken by doors or windows, an endless labyrinth pulsing softly with every shade of red. The clicking of my metal feet upon the floor grew louder, and with it another sound, like blood thumping at my temples. Only, of course, I am a bloodless construct, but still that noise hammered at me. It seemed to come from everywhere, and finally I thought it must be the pulse of the elÿon itself that I heard, the rhythmic mindless beating of a thing that has no heart but is itself a viscus, floating through the firmament. I began to hurry, until I raced down those corridors, the echo of my footsteps nearly drowning out that other infernal noise.

Finally the hallway started to widen. The roseate glow grew darker, tinged with blue like a bruise. I had reached the viewing deck.

Before me opened an immense plaza, set with rows of columns of softly glowing steel and jet. To either side a huge window curved upward, to form a domed peak that seemed to open onto the heavens. All was cloaked in a deep, soft, embracing darkness. From ventricles in the floor and walls, tiny jets of air hissed. Probably the ventricles released some mild sedatives or euphoric incense, Pangloss or Ecstasy; but of course I smelled nothing. Overall it was a soothing place, and I walked to the window. If I had still been a man, I would have laughed with relief, to see framed there familiar stars.

They hung unmoving in the darkness, brighter even than I remembered them. Old stars with new names: Cadillac, Wilson, Miguel Street, Goring. But most of that curved glass was filled with the Earth. My world, the old world where I had lived and died.

From here it did not seem so diseased a place. You could not see the continents that had been glazed to deserts of glass and sand, or those parts of the oceans where the water had turned red with decaying diatoms and plankton. You could not tell where the Emirate had set the Arabian Ocean aflame, or where mutagens had turned the great northern steppes between Calgary and Monis into a wilderness of twisted tick-pines, haunted by the howls of aardmen and dire wolves. From here the Earth seemed as it ever had, a calm marbled eye gazing into the firmament. From here it was beautiful.

I thought of the energumens, looking upon a place they had never seen, except in the implanted memories of a fifteen-year-old girl. Could they really dream of conquest, of launching war upon their masters? And would the Earth welcome them, if they returned to claim it?

I don’t know how long I stood there, staring back into that blue-green orb. Hours, certainly; though it could have been days. I had no need for food or water, and there was nothing within the
Izanagi
to mark the passage from day to night. But finally I did draw away from that window—mindful, perhaps, of Commander Wyeth and his enraptured crew.

I turned and walked across the plaza. Overhead, stars glittered within the domed ceiling, so brightly that their scattered reflections shone in the polished floor at my feet. It was cool here—I could see condensation on my torso’s outer casing. The light was dim and diffuse, spilling from slender indigo torchieres set between the steel and black columns. Quite a grand viewing deck, considering the
Izanagi’s
freighter status. But it had been a Nipponian vessel, and they set great store by beauty and ritual. I had attended formal moon-viewings on other elÿon in the Nipponian fleet, and sat with their Emperor as he composed delicate verse to honor an eclipse. It seemed a noble thing to me, to think they had provided such a fine deck for those few men and women who might ever have cause to use it. I let my hand linger upon the smooth brass curves of a torchiere, then took the last few steps to the far side of the chamber.

With no home planet to fill it, this window seemed more immense than its twin. Distant stars bloomed and reeled, distorted by the energy fields surrounding the elÿon. The constellations looked different here, and it took me a moment to realize why.

The HORUS colonies, of course. The stations were gone that would have filled the gaps in Osaka-O and The Circuit of Ten. The stray stars that were actually MacArthur, Sternville, Campbell: gone, all gone. There should have been at least ten of the colonies visible from here, if you knew where to look. I spotted only one, a flicker of blue where immense solex panels candled into flame as it tilted toward the sun. That would be Advhi Sar. I tried to remember what the adjutant had told me about that station—had it fallen to the energumens as well? And there was another celestial orb that I did not recognize, a rather hazy, whitish mass, so pale and amorphous, it might almost have been a dimple or blemish upon the window. Surely it should not have been there? But my thoughts were confused. Old dreams and memories had been tossed together by the intrusion of the adjutant overmind; I could remember nothing clearly.

So for many minutes I stood there, gazing out upon that black map. I may even have entered that state of rapture that seized Wyeth and his crew; because the next thing I knew I was no longer alone.

A figure leaned against the window: a tall young man wearing the red-trimmed, cerulean leathers of an Aviator cadet. On his left hand winked a heavy gold ring, set with a single large blue stone. From where I stood, I could not make out the letters surrounding that stone, but I knew they were there. I raised my hand, my human hand, until light struck the ring it too bore, illuminating the thick gold letters that spelled NASNA. Slowly I clenched my fingers in the Aviator’s salute. The figure against the window did the same. His auburn hair spilled across his forehead and he smiled, his gray eyes flecked with green where the light touched them.

I lowered my hand. Still he said nothing. And then I recalled what I had read once, in his book in fact, the forbidden DeFries
Incunabula:
that the dead cannot speak unless they are first addressed by the living. I took a step toward him, half-expecting him to disappear into glints of starlight. He did not move.

“Aidan,” I said.

His smile grew even wider, showing predatory white teeth in his vulpine face. When he spoke, it was with that same voice I had been imagining for days now, its boyishness offset by mockery and a certain feminine cruelty.

“Sky Pilot! I’ve been waiting such a long time to see you again.”

I winced. “What are you doing here?” Although now that he had manifested himself, it was as though I had been expecting him. My sleeplessness, my steady diet of dreams, had prepared me for this. It was perhaps a miracle that they had not
all
come back to haunt me.

“Only this, the traditional employ of revenants. A warning.”

He leaned forward and stretched, a great cat wakened from its warm sleep, and for the first time I saw the marks around his neck, bright red and black, as though he had been burned. I glanced at the floor, half-expecting to see a rotted rope fallen there; but there was nothing.

“A warning?”

He nodded, smiling slyly, then ducked his head. Sudden seriousness creased his eyes. “You are in danger, Sky Pilot.”

I looked at him shrewdly. “And why should you warn me? And why should I heed you? A phantasm, a stray glimmer of starlight upon the viewing deck. Have you warned everyone who comes here to look upon the sky?”

Once more the figure grinned, tossing back his long hair, and straightened the crimson cuffs of his uniform jacket. I recalled how he had been buried in it, given full honors as a NASNA cadet even though he was a suicide. That was my doing. I had petitioned Manning Tabor, insisting that Aidan’s death had actually been the most noble course for him to take with his life, if the others would have led to madness and an eventual soiling of his Aviator’s rank.

“Of course not.” There was no rancor in his voice, only a sort of detached amusement. He began to walk toward me. A heavy earthen scent wafted through the room, a freezing wind. I felt cold, and sudden terror.

Because as a
rasa,
I should not be able to feel, or smell,
anything.
When the figure reached for my hand, I drew it back sharply. His eyes widened and sly laughter filled the chamber.

“Ah! I have waited a very long time for that—there
is
something the Rocket Man is afraid of!”

“Your purpose.” My voice sounded hollow, the voice of a replicant and not a man. “I must return to my quarters.”

He smoothed the front of his leathers and gazed smiling at the floor. “I told you, Sky Pilot. Nothing but your welfare. A warning for the Rocket Man.”

“Why do you bother with me? I had nothing to do with your death, revenant.”

He shrugged, drew his hand to his face. For the first time I noticed how pale he was, how the skin on his cheekbones seemed gray and slack. Perhaps such phantasms have a very short life before they begin to decay.

“I bear you no ill will,” he said. His tone was ragged and shrill. “Listen to me—

“You are on a fool’s errand, Margalis. Chasing after lesser demons when the devil Himself is preparing to devour you.”

He swept out his hand to indicate the swollen green tear shining in the window opposite. “Look at it well, Sky Pilot: you may not have another chance. There is a cataclysm in the stars that will engulf your entire world. But you can escape it. Flee now, take this elÿon, and you may travel fast enough and far enough to survive.”

I stared at him in disbelief, then laughed. “Don’t be absurd! We will dock at Quirinus within a day or two. If I don’t find what I seek there, I will return and look for it on Earth.”

“What you seek will find
you,
old friend.” He grinned with a skull’s cold grimace, and his words came out slurred, as though his tongue were exhausted by the effort of speaking. “You are going now to meet with your own destruction, Margalis. Your own and your world’s.”

“I am going as Imperator of the Ascendant forces, to investigate the mutiny of Quirinus and seek the nemosyne named Metatron.”

Aidan only laughed shrilly and said, “ ‘Oh, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us!’ ”

Without warning he slumped over. His fingers splayed outward so that his ring struck the floor, and I heard a loud crack, as though the tile shattered beneath it. With an effort he pushed himself up on his hands. When he raised his face to gaze at me, the wound on his throat burned fiercely—truly burned, with small brilliant flames like an incandescent torque thrust about his neck.

“The damned ever seek redemption,” he whispered. “But listen to me, Margalis. I was human, once. And even the dead can weep, to see the world they loved in flames—”

His voice rose in a wail. “Much has happened while you slept, Margalis. And I have learned much, oh, too much! about those who dwell behind the veil between the worlds—

“I was wrong about them, Sky Pilot. The demons bring no gifts—they know nothing but death, and they would kill us, kill us all! There are records here in the ship’s library that will show you—look at them and learn, Margalis. Luther Burdock’s children have heard the voice of the Oracle. They will betray you—”

He opened his hand. Onto the floor dropped a small object, the kind of ’file disk that had been manufactured half a century ago, when I was a boy. It struck the tiles and for an instant spun before falling down flat.

“Behold Icarus,” he whispered.

As I watched, a small cone of pallid white light rose from the disk, and from this was projected a blurred object, like an eye or cloudy whirlpool. Within its haze the foggy eye seemed to move. Threads of gray and white flowed from it, and after a moment tiny gold letters appeared at the apex of the cone of light, letters far too small for me to read. From the flattened disk on the floor shrilled a voice like that of the smallest monad, so that I had to strain to hear it.

“…
it is of the utmost importance that the JPL Project permits immediate release of warning transcripts and all information relating to this disastr
—…”

The words burned off into static, and then there came another voice, so faint and distant, it was like the wail of something drowning in the abyss.

“
Icarus. Icarus. Icarus. Icarus.
”

“What—” I cried; but as suddenly as it had begun, the voice grew silent. The luminous cone retracted into the ’file disk. Where he lay sprawled upon the floor, Aidan Harrow’s revenant stared up at me with sickly glowing eyes.

“You may be the only one with the strength and will to stop him, Margalis,” he whispered, and curled his hand in a final salute. “Farewell, old friend…Sky Pilot….”

I bent to touch him, drew back sharply. Flames leapt from the floor, flames and the smell of charred leather. There was a soft explosive sound, and a ball of smoke roiled toward me. I brought my hand protectively to my face. When I drew it away again, the flames were gone.

The viewing deck was empty. When I stopped to examine the floor, I found a small circle of ash where the ’file disk had been. As my finger stretched forth to touch it, it melted away like snow, and I stood back up in a daze.

“
There are records here in the ship’s library that will show you
—
look at them and learn.
”

“The library,” I whispered. I turned and fled the viewing deck, my heels clashing against the tiles, while behind me the blue-glazed eye of Earth gazed implacably upon the
Izanagi.

The library was nearly as spacious as the viewing deck, with a great window running the length of one wall. Outside, stars burned and swirled in that dreamy waltz that accompanies the elÿon’s bursts of acceleration. I hardly gave them a look. I hurried to a carrel, throwing myself into the seat so quickly, I ripped its fabric with my metal hand.