Messiah (48 page)

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Authors: S. Andrew Swann

BOOK: Messiah
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Above them, the darkness parted like a curtain, the rock and earth flowing out from around them until they were prone on the floor of a softly glowing crystal chamber.
Just like the Protean had done to the outpost on Salmagundi.
The redheaded chick knelt down next to Flynn’s body. Tetsami realized she still couldn’t move anything below the neck, and it wasn’t because Flynn had control. She could move his eyes and turn his head to face Tsoravitch as she knelt next to him.
Now that there was light, she could see the mess their body had become.
Oh, Flynn, you don’t deserve this . . .
Whatever injury prevented her from moving had, as a blessing, prevented her from feeling the injuries. Below the waist, Flynn’s body had been crushed to a pulp. Both arms were broken, and she saw the point of a rib sticking out a frothing hole in his chest.
Their chest.
Tsoravitch wasn’t even dirty.
“That’s not fair,” Tetsami managed to wheeze.
“Flynn?” Tsoravitch said.
She wanted to shake her head no, but Flynn’s injuries wouldn’t permit it. “No. Tetsami.”
Tetsami stared into Tsoravitch’s face and realized the woman was crying.
Chicky, I’m touched.
She also saw the corner of her face twitch in a way that was disturbingly familiar.
“Dom?” Her voice almost choked on the word.
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be.” She had to rest a moment before going on. “You let me think you were dead.”
“I was,” he said with Tsoravitch’s mouth. “I’m just a copy.”
“A copy?”
Like me . . .
Dom placed Tsoravitch’s hand gently on the side of Flynn’s face. That, Tetsami could feel. She could feel tears building up, and she closed her eyes against them. “Dom, your timing sucks.”
“I know.”
“I’m dying here.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” They could do to Flynn what the Protean had done to Nickolai. It was a leap of faith; she doubted they would be unchanged. And she had to trust Tsoravitch.
She had to trust Dom.
I told Flynn that I didn’t want him to die.
“Flynn? Please, Flynn? Just tell me it’s okay and I’ll do it.”
Flynn didn’t answer, and she couldn’t rouse him.
The more she thought of it, the more terrified she became. She needed Flynn to give her the strength ...
But I don’t want to die either.
“Do it,” she snapped at him. “Do it before I change my mind.”
Tsoravitch bent down, and kissed her.
Tetsami’s eyes widened. She felt Tsoravitch’s lips against Flynn’s, against hers, and her skin burned with the contact. The warmth spread across Flynn’s face, and across his skin, to places she shouldn’t be able to feel anymore. Tetsami parted her own lips in response, and felt Tsoravitch’s tongue enter her mouth. The warmth spread down inside her, as if Flynn’s body was on fire.
She felt bones and organs knit back together and she could move her arms again . . .
“Gram?”
came a groggy voice in the back of her head.
Flynn had awakened just as she was reaching up to embrace Tsoravitch. Tsoravitch/Dom sensed Tetsami’s sudden hesitation and broke off from her healing kiss.
“Great timing, sonny.”
“What’s happening?”
“I didn’t want y—I didn’t want us to die.”
“What do you—Oh.”
She could feel Flynn staring at Tsoravitch through her eyes. Tsoravitch reached down and touched Flynn’s face and whispered, “You’re one of us now.”
“Are you still there, Dom?”
Tsoravitch nodded. “Rebecca allowed me . . .”
“Flynn?”
“What are you asking me?”
“Can I?”
“I think you’re asking, ‘May I?’ Gram.”
“You know calling me that is making me even more uncomfortable.”
“Not as uncomfortable as you’re making both of us.”
Tetsami realized that the ache she felt for her centuries-gone lover, whatever body he happened to inhabit right now, had become solidly physical.
Dom/Tsoravitch said, “You’re blushing.”
“Kiss her back, already.”
Tetsami sat up with Flynn’s repaired body, and kissed her back.
 
Colonel Bartholomew tried to raise any of the reunified PDC command, but none responded. Even the local units of the Eastern Division that were based with Proudhon didn’t acknowledge the contact. He couldn’t believe that things could have degraded like this. Adam had predicted the consolidation of power on Bakunin; he had placed him in a role that pushed him toward the top of that organization.
He was in command. He had to be.
One of the two soldiers left with him said flatly, “The orbital linac is firing.”
“
No!
” Colonel Bartholomew slammed his fist into the console before him. The blockade was supposed to stand down during Adam’s approach.
“Two definite contacts with incoming—”
“Don’t tell me about it,” he whispered. “We did all we could.”
“Sir, Adam
will
come.”
Colonel Bartholomew nodded and turned away from the communication console and faced the priest’s body. “I’m sure he will. Nothing man can control will stop him.”
“So why—” The man was interrupted by the sound of twisting metal. The door of the control room was bending, fracturing into facets interlaced with an angular web-work as dark as Bartholomew’s thoughts.
He raised his sidearm and pointed it at the door. “He will come, but I doubt we’ll be here to meet him.”
The door folded inward and Colonel Bartholomew fired before he ever saw Toni Valentine.
 
As the first of Adam’s dropships orbited into sight of Bakunin’s one continent, the massive defensive array of the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation turned its fire on them.
The linear accelerators fired slugs of charged metal at the onrushing ships, an arc of projectiles approaching half the speed of light in velocity. Unlike the weaker projectiles that had vaporized the Xanadu but left the complexities of thinking mass intact, these projectiles carried enough energy that each hit not only exploded the physical structure of the dropships, but also released enough sterilizing radiation to lobotomize the web of thought contained within.
The defenders tore Adam apart seven times before the remaining dropships dispersed again, becoming a weak cloud that offered no resistance to the linac’s projectiles.
The planet should have offered no resistance to Him. He had chosen His people to prepare the way.
His people had failed Him.
It didn’t matter. He was vaster than His current incarnation. Whatever happened now, Adam knew He was spread throughout a dozen systems, soon a hundred. He had already sent parts of Himself abroad, carrying the knowledge of this planet’s defiance.
If He failed this once—and even the word burned in His mind like a brand, a mark of fallibility that infuriated Him—even if that came to pass, He would not fail. Adam would grace this world again, and again, and again; a thousand times, a million times, a billion—eventually He would claim Bakunin, or destroy it.
His cloud drifted into the orbit of the linacs, and He realized it would not come to that.
 
Toni II looked at her Protean self and swallowed. Toni was bent over Mallory, who looked old and frail where he had crumpled on the ground. She swallowed again before she asked, “Can you revive him?”
“No. It’s too late.”
“Not even—”
“
It’s too late!
” she snapped and turned away from Mallory’s corpse.
Toni II didn’t press her. She felt the guilt herself, at not seeing a trap that seemed obvious in retrospect. She had seen her Protean self vent that guilt, and the anger, on Colonel Bartholomew and his two allies—all of whom were now little more than a thin smear on the wall and an uncomfortable smell. She had no desire to tempt any more of that forward, not unless there was a hostile target in the area.
She walked over to a still-active console, her boots sticking to atomized colonel on the floor. The holo showed a schematic of the linacs in orbit. They were firing, but their target wasn’t visible in the schematic.
“Some good news,” she whispered at Toni. “Mole or not, the blockade is trying to defend the surface.”
“Oh?” Toni stepped up next to her. “What are they firing at?”
“Adam, I presume. It could be over the horiz—” The words caught in her throat as one of the linacs disappeared from the holo. Followed by another. And another.
“I don’t believe this,” Toni II said.
Toni sighed. “Believe it. We better get aboveground if I’m going to do anything to defend this city.”
 
Above the planet, the orbital defenses disintegrated into Adam’s being, more than making up for the mass of Himself lost to the seven dropships. He spared little thought to the loss, or to the occupants of those dropships that weren’t as distributed as He was. All that mattered was the balm of erasing a prior failure. The threat was gone now, and He was as strong as He had been before, so it was not failure. He was not fallible.
He would not have to rely on His other selves to come back here.
He would claim His own victory here, and now.
In a dozen places, Adam burned His way through the atmosphere to claim all that was His.
 
Toni burst through outside in front of Toni II, stopping about three meters from the door. Toni II ran out, following. She stopped next to herself, standing on the edge of a rooftop lording over the concourse where they had landed. The strangely quiescent Proudhon skyline wrapped around them, still dominated by the damaged towers that had been the headquarters of the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation.
The sky was a cloudless desert blue, empty of aircraft.
That made the three fireballs plummeting toward the city all the more apparent.
“This is it,” Toni said.
“Can you fight that?” Toni II asked. “By yourself?”
“Sure I can,” Toni said. She turned toward the growing fireballs. “Just don’t ask if I can win.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Enlightenment
“If we had a perfect understanding of the consequences of our actions, we would never act.”
—
The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
 
“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”
—ST. AUGUSTINE
(354-430)
Date: Unknown Unknown
“What is God?”
Angel’s words hung in the still air, a presence between Nickolai and the almost comical rabbit-creature. He wasn’t certain he had even heard her correctly. He pushed himself upright, staring at her, the lepine face. Could the Dolbrians have chosen a more incongruous guardian for their secrets?
“Well?” she asked him.
“What are you asking me?”
She shook her head, and her long ears swayed slightly. “You know what I’m asking, Kit. You need to explain God to me.”
“Why?”
“You said yourself, you’re being tested. My boss has some standards.”
Nickolai stood and looked down at her. She was shorter than a human, despite the muscled and oversized legs, and when he stood, she seemed tiny.
“You must already know my mind. You read it clearly enough during those visions.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Maybe because I think you won’t like the answer.”
“Answer the question, Kit.”
Nickolai closed his eyes. Quietly, he asked, “Is the Protean dead?”
“It knew the risk better than you did.”
“I suppose so. It sent me here.” If the Dolbrians truly wanted to guard this place, they couldn’t allow those who failed the test to escape. Their test relied, he supposed, on the subject having no preknowledge of what it entailed. “Its people placed that barrier around you. They feared what was in here.”
“I won’t speak for them.”
“There was probably some wisdom in that. How many did they send in before they closed you up?”

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