Icarus Descending (47 page)

“What are you talking about?” demanded Jane. “I thought you were all part of this—”

“Only the young and stupid.” The man laughed bitterly. His bleary gray eyes included us in his judgment. “Like that idiot who showed you here—he don’t see what it’s got planned for them. The rest of us, it don’t even care if we know—we’re old and dying anyway. It just takes our land and our food for provisions for the rest of them, and drags us down here to rot.”

“Who does?” I demanded, then lowered my voice when I saw one of the aardmen glance at me with eager sly eyes.

“That thing—” The woman made a gesture and spat. “The construct. Metatron.”

“What have they got planned?” said Jane.

The man bared his teeth, the flickering light causing his dull eyes to gleam like two blood-streaked stones. “That Coming. The same thing Burdock’s been talking about all these years. Just more of his craziness, is all. More of the same trouble the scientists been planning for five hundred years. Only this time they’ve brought that construct to back him up, and their Alliance, so’s all the young people bought into it. They’ve got their ships on the other side of the mountain, all packed and ready to go. Just like that! Take our children and
pfft
!”

“But he’s
mad,”
the woman said, pounding softly at the table. Tears slid from the corner of her eyes, but she seemed not to notice she wept. “Who can believe any of it? A star coming from the sky! It’s just another part of his madness.”

“Her son,” the man explained, leaning toward us and whispering. “Her son’s joined up with them, thinks he’s going to see the stars. But let me tell you, ain’t none of ’em’s ever going to see no stars. Ain’t none of ’em’s ever going to see anything except the inside of an Ascendant prison vessel been turned into an Alliance prison vessel.”

The woman let out a sob. The man leaned back, his face suddenly gone slack with defeat.

I took a deep breath. “Tell me,” I said, my voice catching, “about the ships. And Dr. Burdock. About his madness—what is it? What causes it?”

“It’s his daughter,” the man whispered, his eyes dull. “See, it takes a while for him to figure it all out, about the energumens and all. ’Cause, of course, he’s actually been
dead
for all these years, but he don’t know that, at least not at first. ’Cause he’s a
clone,”
he hissed, and from the flicker of fear and hatred in his gaze, I knew that he would have been one of those who would have burned Burdock and his child, all those centuries ago. “But when finally he understands what’s happened to his little girl, the craziness comes onto him, and he just goes screaming into the night. But then, of course, he just starts all over. The whole damn thing just happens again. It’s the same every time.”

“Who’s his daughter?” asked Jane.

“
You
know,” insisted the man. “That girl, what-you-call-her. Cybele. The first one, the one in all the pictures, all the ’files. The one he cloned, the one they used for the energumens.”

Suddenly I felt as I had when that grinning livid face had grinned up at me out of the black water beneath the bridge. “The energumens,” I murmured, and looked to where they lolled against the far wall of the dim chamber. “He—he really did clone his daughter to make
them
?” And I recalled those creatures outside by the river: their immensity, the ease with which they slung upon their shoulders steel beams and sacks of grain; but also their oddly childish faces, their haunted obsidian eyes. “His
daughter
!”

The man nodded. “Of course she didn’t look like that in the beginning—there were a lot of, well,
improvements
that the Ascendants made to the stock. Only Burdock, of course, wasn’t too happy to find out his little girl grew up to be one of
those.
But Jesus Christ, that was what, four hundred years ago? Seems like a man could get used to anything in four hundred years.”

“He hasn’t been
awake
for four hundred years.” The woman glared at him, then turned to me. “They only found him fifty years ago,” she said, and sighed. “Fifty years and I should know: I was there. One of those scientists came out to our farm, looking for anything might have belonged to Burdock’s labs back then. He wanted to sift through the ruins back of our fields, but I wouldn’t let him. Showed him a gun and he went off quick enough,” she said, smacking her lips at the memory. “But then there were others felt differently about it, you know, a whole lot of fools here had their daddies and mamas worked for Burdock back then. Soon enough that scientist found what he wanted—”

She made a strange gesture, dipping her head and touching her head and breast with her closed fist. “God save us, he found it all right. Found
him,
found Luther Burdock, and after a few years managed to bring him back, like he was never dead at all. Poor soul,” she whispered, and for a moment a shaft of pity lit her dark eyes. “He wakes up and he don’t know all these years gone by. He thinks it’s only yesterday he had that girl and now she’s gone. Nothing left but
them
—”

And shuddering, she cocked a thumb at the energumens.

I looked at them and shivered. The man nodded eagerly. “It happens every time, the same way. He doesn’t believe it’s really her. He keeps thinking he’ll find her the way he left her, but when he realizes she’s gone—” He made claws of his hands and raked them through his thin hair, miming desperation and madness. “Happens every time.”

“How many times?” My voice sounded cold and much too loud. Because all of a sudden it all began to make sense to me, with that terrible kind of logic that adheres only in dreams. “How many times has it happened?”

“Who’s counting?” the man said, and cackled.

“He starts out by helping us, or wanting to,” the woman whispered. “Thinks he’s going to save us from his crazy star. Then he starts to look at all his old ’files and records, and the madness comes onto him, every year it’s the same.”

“But this time it’s worse,” the man broke in. “He’s
obsessed
about this imaginary star of his. And that robot Metatron backs him up, tells us all that the Doctor’s right, there’s this star headed
right for us.
Comes by every four, five hundred years, bang-o—but now who could count all that time? I know they say the Doctor saw it, I know they say he’s that old; but I don’t believe it. I think this Metatron just wants a way to kill off all us old people and send the young ones to their death. That’s what I think.”

I remembered the unearthly malevolent green eyes that had stared at me from behind Metatron’s metal mask. It was easy enough for me to believe that he would do such a thing.

“And Dr. Burdock?” I asked. “What happens to him? Tomorrow night?”

“The scientists will come,” the woman began; but before she could finish, a shadow loomed across the table.

“Will you help us with this packing?” one of the energumens asked in its clear, girlish voice. “Our fingers are far too big—” And it raised its clawed hands as it gestured for us to follow.

“I guess we’re just going to find out when everyone else does,” Jane said darkly. Her brown eyes were wide and shot with a desperation I’d never seen before. “God, I wish I had my pistol.”

I bowed my head. “I don’t think it would help this time, Jane,” I whispered, and turned to follow the energumen.

“You must be brave, Kalamat,” my father had told me in my dream. And so I made a show of fearlessness and went with the Sky Pilot and the Light Mother into the elÿon: myself and all my sisters. I had already told them that I had no intention of leaving this place where our father was; no intention of going forth to battle as the Oracle had commanded us. Brief as it was, my entire life had been tied up with a dream of my father. If I was to die now, I would die with him. And perhaps it would be as he had said, perhaps death would not truly claim me at all.

I was a fool. I thought my sisters would stay with me. I was expecting for Hylas, at least, and Polyonyx to follow me, and I was prepared to fight our brother Kalaman if he tried to prevent them and force them to accompany our brothers into war.

But my sisters did not care. They were being sent as janissaries to a place we had never seen, to a planet we had only ever glimpsed in dreams, but this meant little to them.

“O Kalamat! It seems sad, that you will not come with us, and that we will be going so far away,” said Hylas. But she did not look sad. We were on the viewing deck of the
Izanagi,
staring out at the gauzy stars, the tiny fractured wheels of the distant fallen HORUS colonies. Her eyes had a molten glow, like jet with a faint silvery sheen. “But then you would be leaving us soon, anyway…perhaps it is for the best.”

I nodded sadly, and with disappointment. Of course: why should my death matter any more than the myriad other deaths we had witnessed during our thousand days?

But then my sister suddenly grabbed my arm. “Look there,” Hylas said, her voice rising slightly. Her forehead creased and her delicate mouth bunched into a frown as she pointed at a dark celestial body, neither star nor HORUS station, that bloomed behind the thick curved glass of the viewing deck. “What is that? A comet?”

I moved closer to her and looked out the window. I could see it in the distance, an amorphous shape that stood out against the nether background like a ragged hole cut in black silk. “A comet would not be so dark,” I said, though the object had a somber halo, a dusky violet haze that surrounded it and seemed to pulse as we watched. “But I do not know what it is,” I went on, and added, “And really, I do not care.”

Hylas’s frown faded. She tilted her head, gazing at me with soft black eyes, and said gently, “At least you will see our father.” She reached out to trace the foggy outline of that strange radiant object upon the glass. A note of longing crept into her voice. “Will you tell him—will you let me know if he remembers me?”

A wave of sorrow overwhelmed me. I turned and embraced her. “You will know, Hylas. You will still be able to hear me within your mind.” I stroked her forehead, then leaned forward to kiss her.

“Perhaps,” she said absently. She pressed her face against the glass and stared at the strange pulsing glow. “But I do not think so. I think the sounds of battle will drive you from my mind.”

I nodded, then whispered, “But not your heart, sister. Do not let them drive me from your heart.” For the last time I looked upon her, the darkness at her back pierced only by the gleam of that black star without a name. Before she could see the tears upon my face, I fled the viewing deck.

The energumen Ratnayaka refused to allow Valeska Novus to stay with me during the elÿon voyage.

“I do not trust humans, Imperator,” he said, flashing me a grin with those pointed teeth. “Our history is one of betrayals by them.”

“As is my own,” I began tersely; but he waved away my protest with a frown.

“No! Had not the Oracle ordered that we bring you and your entire escort to Cassandra, she would not be alive now—” His pointed white teeth glittered like a gavial’s in the elÿon’s rosy light.

I had Nefertity accompany Captain Novus to her room. I would not trust my aide alone with the energumens—I had seen myself how they would cannibalize humans and each other—nor did I wish for the nemosyne to be left unattended. Ratnayaka was not happy with this arrangement, but Kalaman grew angry when he complained.

“You will answer to
me,
brother, until we set foot upon the Element. And then you may answer to whomever you please.”

Ratnayaka bowed, grimacing. He had removed the crimson patch from his eye; the wound there had begun to fester and seemed to pain him. I could see a speck of blackened metal embedded in the flesh, and guessed there had been a keek there once, or some other prophylactic monitor. But his remaining eye held enough black malevolence to intimidate an entire battalion of humans. When he turned it now upon his brother Kalaman, I marveled that the other did not cringe beneath its glare.

I thought then that Kalaman had not too long to live. He sweated as though from fever, and I never saw him eat or drink—though that was not unusual; many people do not feel comfortable eating during an elÿon voyage. But Ratnayaka too seemed consumed by something—illness or desire or perhaps that madness that stalks the elÿon’s rubeous hallways.

“As you will, brother,” Ratnayaka hissed at him. He turned to walk a little unsteadily toward where the other energumens had gathered upon the viewing deck.

“He is ill,” I said to Kalaman.

“It is his heart that eats him,” Kalaman replied. Sorrow seemed to vie with pride in his voice. “He does not like it that I am master now; but he will not turn against me.” He looked at me with glowing black eyes and said, “You must understand, I have only a few more days left of my thousand. But it is enough, that I will look upon our father and this Oracle before I die; although it may be that our father will not let this happen to me. The Oracle has said there is a means now for us to outlive our destinies, that there is a way for us to grow old and bear young as humans do. Perhaps I will live long enough to see Ratnayaka harrowed by my children,” he ended, and his eyes glittered cold as Ratnayaka’s own.

Just then a cry rang out from the viewing area.

“O my brother, but look!”

Kalaman strode to where the others pointed, and I followed slowly, my metal boots striking the floor and sending sharp echoes across the chamber. A great foreboding hung about me, a cloud of fear that made me wish I had Nefertity by my side, or even Valeska Novus. Twice before I have felt this sense of brooding horror. Once as I stood upon a high place in the Archipelago, and looked down upon my troops as they walked into a tide of liquid flame and writhed in silent agony amid the waves of gold and black, like maggots dropped in burning oil; and again when I first gained a sort of half-consciousness within the regeneration vats of Araboth and realized I had lost forever the last traces of my humanity.

But this was a different sort of fear. It encompassed not only myself, but also all those I had ever held within my heart with either love or hatred. At the window I stopped and looked to where the energumens stood in a long line, some forty-odd creatures more monstrous even than myself, each reflecting the face and manner of the one next to it so that I seemed to look upon some ancient frieze showing a more ancient race than humanity, gazing out upon the stars.