System Seven (62 page)

Cathbad nodded. “Of
course you don’t. Because you trusted me. Again, I’m sorry for the betrayal.
You were destined to be steered and it was my intention to do it right. To do
it my way. Listen to me, Austin. As I created you, you are dangerous. If you
refuse us now, you will be destroyed. The same for Johan. I urge you to
consider my advice seriously. With your help, we can end the Conflict, end all
division, and start down the aligned path of the ancient trackways.”

Bastion put a hand on
Cathbad’s shoulder. “It is difficult for you Austin, but give us time and you
will understand what–”

The druid spun suddenly. From his hand a
series of lengths of silver extended to form a long blade, swinging in an arch
at Bastion. In the same instant both guards fired defensively.

The sword passed
through Bastion’s neck, lopping the Comannda’s head free just as Cathbad’s
torso exploded onto the window. Between the blood and gore Austin saw his
father dive at the glass control panel before he, too, was shot through. Beyond
his pain was a look of pride leveled at Austin. He toppled from view.

The field dropped.

Kill them all now now now!
Johan’s
voice shouted from within his skull.
No
time no time do it do it do it now now now!

Austin pressed hard –
slamming the grid forward into the glass Core. A wall of shards tore into the
High Council, shredding flesh in explosions of blood and fabric. He bared his
teeth and grabbed the field of glass as one to grate back and forth across the
room, grinding flesh and bone in blender-like fashion. Death filled the space
and left nothing to receive his anger.

He refocused his rage.
The glass between control rooms burst outward like buckshot. Director Tomov’s
head exploded and his chest burst open, spilling organs in a splash of red and
pink. Waves of quantum flux billowed, tearing apart people and machinery.
Electrical flashes and fires erupted and screams filled the air. The Comannda
were to die, had to. The ceiling bowed upward and cracked while the floor
dipped and fragmented under the storm of raw physical pressure.

The field may come up again! Keep moving!

He shot back through
the opening in the wall. From below guards opened fire as others ducked and
ran. He pressed them into the floor. The walls lit with red alert symbols and
images identified him. He bolted down the way Hannah had brought them in,
shouting obscenities, remembering the souls of Montevideo. Bodies flew, smeared
like flies against the white walls. Revenge flowed from their blood. He threw
his voice into the killing waves, amplified to haunt their entrance to eternity.
He felt like a demon and it felt right – so, so right.

“How do you like power
now? How does death feel to you?”

At every corner he
pile-drived those fleeing into one gruesome end after another. They weren’t
human, they were
Comannda
. Stolen
bodies, selfish souls – more alien to man than any extraterrestrial race.
Soldiers appeared and fired rounds that he sent whirling back at them. He
flattened some of the men and shredded others. Hatred for the Comannda boiled
over until he felt it physically. His face blushed and contorted. Intention
swelled in intensity, the ocean of potential at his fingertips. He would show
them what it meant to destroy.

Johan managed a
distant communiqué:
Stop it man, you’re
losing it! You’re losing control! We’re free! Get out! Watch the walls, Soldado
will guide you out. Just get out! Get out before you lose it!

The warning hit him
like a tap amidst a thousand punches but he held on to it, knowing vaguely he
was not fully in control. On the wall a yellow Pac Man appeared, chomping at
blue dots. To see the video game graphics interrupted the rage and returned a
sense of self.
Soldado
… He followed
the blue dots, racing ahead of Pac Man, knocking down troops instead of
destroying them. Left, right, another left then the hall intersected with the
curving hallway. Down a ways stood a bank of elevators. Blue flashing arrows
pointed down and game ghosts disappeared as if following them. He clenched both
fists and split the doors open to expose a dark elevator shaft.

The draw to rise up
the shaft and destroy the base felt like a welcome heat in the chill of night.
He could do it. The potential was there, all there, and so were the reasons.
Millions of them.

“God
damn
this shit!” he shouted and shook
his hands as if they’d been burnt.

He leapt forward into
the shaft and descended instead.

There are intangible realities which float near us, formless
and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are
excluded for lack of interpreters.

-Natalie Clifford
Barney

Storm clouds dumped
rain in the murky dusk, forming mud in the trenches. Bursts from a
tripod-mounted machine guns drowned out the cries of the wounded. Orders
shouted were lost to all but the nearest soldiers. A breach had occurred and
grenades were expected.

Johan stood on a
trench ladder and saw the improbable – two men midfield, grappling in hand to
hand combat. A wall of soldiers rose from the enemy trenches and filled the sky
with thrown charges.

“Change!” Johan
shouted and blinding light stole the moment.

High winds buffeted
the two men struggling on a skyscraper’s wide ledge. Gray clouds wrapped the
sky and cold air chilled them to the bone. Below on a broken window-washer’s
rig, eight of the Council stood helplessly, three having been released
according to the sand men’s plan.

Cathbad throttled
Bastion’s throat and banged his head against the stone wall. Bastion kneed
Cathbad in a bid for control. Overhead, a pitch-dark cloud descended and
coalesced into a band of black birds that swarmed over Cathbad.

Again Johan shouted
for change but the scene did not. He leaned into it and formed a hand the size
of a bus. He batted a swath of the birds away and took both men in his grasp,
tossing them across the city–

–and stole into a
pickup truck speeding along a dusty road. Sun-baked earth and browned weeds
stretched out in every direction. Cathbad turned and nodded in approval at the
tied and gagged bodies stacked in the back. Bastion’s murderous eyes peered
through the window at the two men. Somewhere ahead a border crossing with a
single hut loomed.

“You’ve got it locked
in?” Cathbad asked.

“I’ve got it in mind,
if that’s what you mean. God knows if it’ll be there or not.”

The race to find Eden
and deliver the Council was on. Johan grimaced at pressure from the hunters. A
pothole jarred the truck. The resulting bounce threatened control. He fought
the sliding pitch of the back end against unnatural forces.

The road suddenly
curved and rocks appeared alongside it.

“Bastards!”

He pulled the wheel
and willed the truck to follow. Tires narrowly missed rock. The landscape rose
ahead, a sudden hill that grew impossibly steep.

“Change it up,”
Cathbad advised.

The truck began to
fold into geometric squares until it collapsed into a single matchbook-sized
cube cart-wheeling on the dirt. It slowed and caught the edge of a rock and
bounced in the air. When it landed, the train’s engine strained, vibrating the
floor. Johan leaned from the open window to assess the approaching tunnel.
Thirty, maybe forty seconds away. He glanced back at the car where the Council
was held then ducked back in at the sight of single-engine fighters lining up
to strafe. Metal popped as their rounds made their mark.

A fighter released a
bomb that struck near the tracks and rocked the trailing cars. Johan doubled
their weight to keep them on the rails. Another bomb fell, then another. Both
missed but still tipped the cars. Each time he countered with the needed
weight, slowing the train. The korjé pressed many distinct fronts, coordinating
in an overwhelming collage of creativity. Distractions grew – children ran onto
the rails and were struck, sections of rails disappeared requiring his instant
attention, black widow spiders dropped from the ceiling, and the floor
superheated as if on fire. While limited to the world he’d created, they were
taking advantage of their numbers to tweak it and distract him.

“Damn!”

The engine ducked into
the tunnel just as a bomb hit the third car back. The explosion sheared the
car’s walls outward which struck the tunnel’s entrance. A thunderous report
filled the tunnel and the train shuddered when the linkage broke between the
cars. The engine and second car shot down the tunnel line alone.

A dim bulb in the
cabin revealed Cathbad’s worried face.

“Keep it focused,
man!” he shouted.

Johan peered out
again. The light at the end of the tunnel grew impossibly bright, as if a giant
flashlight had been placed at the entrance. The train rocketed towards it.

“Is that it?” Cathbad
asked.

“I don’t know!” Vague
shapes swam in the light. He prepared to release the Council.

The train shot from
the tunnel into bright sunlight and the lurch of freefall. Johan saw blue ocean
out one window, sheer cliffs from the other. Rails gone, the engine tilted and
fell towards a rocky shore far below. He grabbed the window frame as he rose in
microgravity.

“This is
not
Eden!” Cathbad shouted.

Johan pushed off from
the side of the cabin and shifted, just clearing the mothership before it
blinked into hyperspace. His tethered cargo recoiled behind him – Cathbad in a
suit, the Council stuffed into a life-support crate. Billions of stars peered
at them from every direction, distant but infinitely present. Silence pervaded.

Via a tinny comm link,
Cathbad asked, “Where are they?”

“Fighting my ghost on
the ship. At least for the moment. Think Eden. We need to attract it.”

“Aye. I’m doing my
best.”

Warning lights in the
helmet’s rim lit and an AI announced a possible collision imminent. Johan spun
in time to see the mothership return, fresh from hyperspace.

“At this rate, we
won’t see Eden,” Cathbad said.

It was all too
familiar, too easy for them to wedge in and push or pull the scene. Something
drastic might give them the time needed for Eden to approach.

He burrowed deep and
found what he wanted. The next shift brought them to a market in Barcelona.
Crowds gathered to watch street vendors perform. Laughter rose above the din
from a group of men outside a pub.

Johan walked with an
old woman and pushed an old man in a wheelchair. The old man’s head bobbed and
drool rolled from his mouth. In his lap was a ceramic cremations jar. The old
woman raised her brows and looked around.

Johan smiled.
“Catherine, what a delightful dress. Purple is your color.”

Cathbad wobbled
alongside, awkward in heels. He ignored the jab and the garb and looked around.
“The weave... amazing. Truly amazing.”

Johan nodded at the
compliment though he owed the technique to the sand men.

The throng jostled
them as they passed under the arches of the market. Fruits, vegetables, fish,
and meats of all kind lay on display. The memory of La Boqueria Mercat proved a
beautiful setting to become lost in. The most impressive aspect, though, was
the meta flowing out of each and every person – so authentic it formed several
layers of group minds. At the edges of the dream, multiple observers dwelled
with depths that felt alien. Almost certainly Mu. In the crowd were korjé,
out-classed but still searching.

Cathbad stopped to
sample a morsel of bread. The aged Bastion slumped and made a gurgling sound.

Johan leaned in for a
piece of bread. “Heavenly, isn’t it?”

Cathbad nodded. “But
I’d rather have some good news.”

There was none, yet,
other than the freedom of movement. Or the illusion of it.

“I rather think we’re
being toyed with.” Johan tried the bread. “They may have a way of keeping Eden
away.”

Cathbad scowled his
old woman face. “Where are the sand men? I’m still not sure I trust them.”

The sand men’s
betrayal of Bastion was not in question. What they might do after a successful
coup was.

“If they fail to take
out teams one and two, we have a problem. And if their intent is to
double-cross us... well, it won’t be long before we know.”

Cathbad shook his
head. “I don’t like to gamble.”

A group of merchant
sailors buffeted the crowd, searching. Another three entered the market through
the arched entrance. Johan moved on to the busy fish vendor and joined a
hodge-podge that served as a waiting line.

The sailors were
converging on their position.

“This is getting old,”
Johan said. “Either they’re smarter now or they’ve got someone stronger at
their back. Catherine, something more drastic is in order. Brace yourself. I’ve
been toying with an idea and now’s as good time as any to try it.”

“Oh Lord.”

Colors in the dream
shifted hue, sounds pitched higher, and time slowed. A driving sense of déjà vu
struck then, the moments of which aligned like gear teeth... he’d formed this
energy before, had been in the market when he did, and had faced the unknown outcome
before. The wet tip of intuition held the answer to what would come next yet
still a fog obscured the future. He took it as a sign. Primed and focused, he pushed
the energy to manifest further.

The market suddenly splintered,
second and third dimensions fragmenting in a confusing array. He cried out, the
sound lost in a crush of imagery and noise. Voices shouted among a cacophony of
whispers. A background silence held the cries of millions. Agony and ecstasy
rang like two bells in a darkness with a hidden light no man would ever see.
Near felt far away. Familiar felt strange. Right was also wrong, and evil had
expressions that ranged to the divine. He struggled and shifted to retain
control but couldn’t. The maelstrom he’d unleashed was more than him, more than
he could conceive. There was no withdrawal, no avenue of retreat.

Layers upon layers of
imagery exploded in flickering contention for dominance. Each tick of thought
popped random experience. Rejection. Ponderance. Arrival. Displacement. Negation.
Demand. Each stuck like a pin in an endless stream of punctures.

The beginning of it
fell away, as did any expectation of an end. No sides nor safety. No height nor
depth. All meaning arrived and departed at once. Chaos reigned. His sense of
the others faded and one of sheer crisis took its place.

He’d gone too far,
grown too sure of himself. He’d lost the others and been caught again–

“No.” A whisper close
but distant. The concept of speech pierced the madness with a sense of time. He
pulled the voice around him like a safety blanket.

“What have I done?”

“Shhh.”

The chaos continued
unabated until it seemed he would lose himself after all. He had loved his
childhood kaleidoscopes, had stared into them for hours, but this was a
perversion of the beauty of randomness, a recipe of creation serving up a
demented and disassembled reality. How anything remained
cohesive
in the universe – meta, soul, individualism, thoughts, let
alone the rigidity of Raon... how did meaning form from the vast mix of
infinite possibility? Who was
responsible
?
A more pressing question rose: where was the pristine beauty and order of
Saoghal? It was as if he’d struck a crack and fell through. He clung to the ebb
of emotional response like a floating device.

“Impulsive and
dangerous, dreamer. You create ripples in all that is.”

Pale sun-yellow face
with black eyes. He internalized the pang of understanding. It was the Mu with
him, there in the field of –

“Not Mu.”

Meaning flickered in
the chaos, glimpses that became messages. No, not the Mu. The Mu belonged to a
confederation, to the Owners – one of a vast collection of species.

“The Pure. We are
free.”

The Pure didn’t belong
to anyone – they were Outside. The Owners had claimed entire galaxies but the
Pure had escaped their control.

“What is this?”

Beyond the mesh,
beyond the Last Seam lay the raw stuff of reality, the ingredients of Saoghal. From
here, in the wash of what felt like God’s own mind, the alien race thrived and
watched all that manifested. They observed life forms fish for meaning, divine
for secrets, and contend for authority. From here, they had sensed Johan’s
affect and grew interested.

“Dreamer, you have
broken free. Fortunate we saw. Soon Faction will act.”

“Who are they? What do
they want?”

Answers formed. Layers
of structures represented the bureaucracy of the many Factions, the most
advanced species from hundreds of galaxies. Together they tended worlds for the
Owners. Who or what the Owners were wasn’t clear, but their place at the head
of the confederation was.

Earth was a new world,
its life having been groomed. Saoghal was only a container for mankind, a kind
of womb for their collective consciousness. The Comannda had been grown to
facilitate controls and safeguards that would ultimately allow Earth to be
pressed into the folds of the confederation. The Korda was another growth for
greater control. The ying and the yang, both by design.

“Plans long drawn.
You, dreamer, are dangerous to them. Young and powerful. Unpredictable.”

Then he felt it, the
approach of something massive, a form that displaced chaos. He shied away as
did the Pure. The giant mass flowed, creating a distinct sense of locality amid
the disarray. A sense of otherness arrived with it, something full of malice.