The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (8 page)

I was useless. I’d given up. Built myself a retreat
on a lake in the Pacific Northwest, spent my days staring at the
water, the trees, the neighbors as they did the same thing. The
trees weren’t real anymore, of course. They were nano-grown organic
replacements, something to look nice and keep the O2 levels up
after we poisoned and burned and clear-cut and over-developed.

Lucky for us, we could “landscape” on a county scale,
cosmetically restore nature (except for the wildlife—we even killed
off the bugs). Always green, immune to disease and fire, but way
too perfect close up, like a cheap movie set, or a massive theme
park. You could even do simulated hunting and fishing if you were
that kind of old-school boring. (All the fun people had gravitated
to the sprawling metros. Plugged in or colliding with each other in
flesh-space. Fucking and destroying. Mostly destroying. And nobody
gets hurt, not even if they want to be.)

The preserve dome filtered out the crappy air, kept
the skies blue and the weather monotonously mild. The lake water
was even temperature-controlled.

I think I snapped in there somewhere. Slipped under
the water one day, but couldn’t drown—my mods could separate oxygen
from the water. So I just sat there for days. Until I couldn’t take
the silence, the numb. Until I fought my way back to the surface
and started making noise, trying to tell anyone “We have the power
to do anything. Why don’t we do the things we used to think were
important?” But most people just wanted their entertainment, or
they’d stop caring entirely.

Lisa was there. She’d stopped talking to me a long
time ago. She didn’t think I meant what I said. I think she was
still pissed about Matthew. And the Kali thing—that was me being
stupid because I’d stopped caring.

But Star came back. I hadn’t seen Star since a few
years after I was modded. And she wanted to help me. She’d met
someone, through Dee—good old Dee, still clicking away (and what he
must have thought about this world we humans had made). She said
things were about to change. If enough people wanted it. She wanted
me to want it. I already did. Or at least I wanted something
else.

“Good morning, sexy.”

It takes me a moment to realize I’m awake.

She’s standing on the ridge in front of me, taking in
the sunrise. Only she’s not wearing her “Ra” costume anymore. Pure
white dress with a golden armored collar, belt, arm bands and leg
guards, all very ornate. Goddess-like. It suits her. (Her
codename—Astarte—is a love goddess, after all.) Her blonde hair has
grown out long. It’s blowing in the wind. Only in the wrong
direction. And the way the light hits her is also all wrong.

I pick up a small rock and throw it at her. It passes
through her.

“No, I’m not really here. I’m afraid I can’t be. But
one of my mods lets me plug in so you can see me.”

I don’t have anything worth saying. I keep my cloak
wrapped around me.

“At least take off the ugly helmet,” she asks,
turning to look at me, visibly pouting that I’m not ecstatic to see
her. But I take off the helmet, fold it.

“
Muc
h better. But I’m still not sure I’m crazy
about the hair,” she criticizes. I have to tie the mop back up to
keep it out of my eyes in the wind.

“I’m not,” I finally say something. “But it keeps
growing back.”

“Still, it’s good to see you. Pretty again. And not
bleeding to death.”

“You left,” I confront, probably sounding like a
sulking child. “In the cave. I woke up and you were gone.”

“You took a really long time to reconstitute, even
with all the extra resources I fed you… You’d prioritized all of
your peripheral and tactical mods over your bioframe and neural
net—you and your damn toys. And I had obligations. A job to
do.”

“Which is?” I’m almost curious.

“Classified. Just be a dear and keep to the cover
story: Ra rescued you. Ra healed you. Ra’s leading the lame-ass
resistance.”

“Why the dress-up?”

“Chang won’t see Ra as a threat. And meanwhile, I’m
doing what I do best: seducing my way in. Hot blonde. Makes people
forget I’m actually dangerous. Or they don’t care, because they’re
too intent on fucking me. Let’s just say I’m undercover. So when
you see me flesh-wise, do your best to act surprised.”

More bullshit answers. I spend the next long seconds
glaring at her.

“I take it the homecoming sucked?” she pries.

“Lisa’s dead,” I almost spit at her, grinding my jaw.
That seems to shake her.

“Colonel Ava?” she confirms. I remember she was never
too crazy about Lisa, in either life. Residual jealousy for the
ex-girlfriend, especially since Lisa stayed in my life.
Live
s
. “I’m sorry…”

“Why am I saving this world again?”

“Because you can’t not. It’s what you do. Once you
stop wallowing.” She stops herself, takes a breath. “I am sorry
about Colonel Ava. I know you two had history, the kind you just
don’t let go of. I was there for the aftermath, remember? For
you.”

“Why are you here now?” I don’t want to talk about
Lisa.

“Because I
did
leave you in that cave. And I
didn’t know how you’d turn out. But you look like you did when I
last saw you, in my timeline. And it looks like you’ve still got
your this-world set of memories. What about the world I come from,
where you’re all classic long-haired sword-and-sorcery style?”

“Fuzzy. And depressing.”

“Sounds like you remember it perfectly.” She doesn’t
sound like she’s joking.

All the bizarre parallel world bullshit is giving me
a headache. Apparently I still get headaches.

“Figured out all the upgrades, yet?” she tries to
cheer me up, or at least distract.

“Getting there.”

“Well, at least your formerly geriatric self should
get a kick out of them. You were sixty, and I wasn’t far behind,
when we took the first treatments. Being thirty again, being
totally perfectly healthy, I think that was the biggest thing for
me. For you, too. The super powers and the gadgets were icing. And
after a while, the new mods got almost silly. But I’ll never forget
waking up young. And knowing I could always be.”

“You realize I’m on the run from my own people?” I
let her know whatever moment she thought I’d have is
well-ruined.

“We saw the patrols, picked up on the chatter. Your
new leaders are in an amusing panic about you. And they haven’t
seen anything yet.”

“’We’?” I pick up.

“Back to my job. Speaking of: I’m out of time again.
TTFN. And Chang also has his eye on Tranquility. Thankfully, the
UNMAC agenda gives you a reason to be there, so he won’t get
suspicious when you show up. Love you. Still.”

And she’s gone.

She still hasn’t told me what the fucking plan is.
Did we just get dropped back through time to wing it, with the fate
of reality on the line?

Stop Chang.

It doesn’t even make sense.

If I buy any of this, Chang’s plan was to use a
sub-atomic “splice” to back before the corporate boom to create
self-producing nanotech programmed to wreck the research, keep the
human race mortal for awhile longer. He sent seeds to make his
Discs, which he called simple self-managing drones. But he also
sent the tech to remake
himself
, so a version of himself
could oversee it, ensure it happened. (The rules of the paradox
should have forced that to fail.) And he apparently also seeded the
tech to make other things, or he’s got the skills to adapt what
he’s made out of and apply it to making ships, weapons, hybridizing
Bly and Nina Harper into monstrosities.

But somebody dragged me—and Star—into some bizarre
plan to stop him, somehow inserting us into Chang’s seeding program
(supposedly because they couldn’t just stop him from doing it), so
we could be here to resist him.

And too many things about that are eating at me.

If whoever sent us could add that much into Chang’s
program, then why couldn’t they just sabotage it, change it so it
wouldn’t replicate anything?

Unless that would reveal them, and they were
vulnerable to Chang (and whoever might have been with him). Or they
simply assumed Chang would just try again (after ensuring they were
shut out), or do something worse.

But sending us… Chang sent drones. They replicated a
lot sooner than our complex bodies, and got to work (doing far more
damage than Chang intended, if I believe him). Sending us would be
too little, too late—Chang would already have changed the past.
Even if they didn’t believe he could succeed—that sending us was
just a failsafe on the outside chance he managed the impossible—the
plan was doomed to fail in design.

Or maybe
by
design?

If we had no real hope of stopping Chang before he
did his damage to the timeline, how exactly are we stopping
him?

Running this through my head again—maybe because my
rage is making me go especially into darkness—I think I know: If
Chang could defeat the paradox, maybe that was to be our weapon as
well.

Stop Chang.

I think I’ve seen this movie: We find an earlier
version of him and kill him. None of this happens. Time resets
mostly the way it was.

But that doesn’t work (and my headache is raging).
Chang’s already changed time. If there’s a younger Chang somewhere
in this time, it’s
not
the one who grows up to do this, not
anymore.

Unless we were just too late.

But Chang’s already overwritten all of us in that
time, including the original him that started this. That’s the
unbeatable paradox: As soon as the timeline changed, none of us—the
way we were—would exist anymore in that future, so none of us
should still exist to be here now (including Chang), since we came
from versions of ourselves that are now undone. So—by
extension—killing Chang early wouldn’t erase the one that’s already
here doing damage. However the paradox got broken, it’s done.

So what the hell are we doing here? The best we can
do is limit the damage. We can’t undo what he’s done. (Unless
Chang’s still got the time-splice tech, and we can take it from him
and jump further back, ahead of his arrival, then kill young Chang,
and…
owww
…)

Every way I run it, I collide with the broken
paradox. And make my headache worse.

The only thing I can do that makes any sense is track
the fucker down and hurt him. End him. And that makes sense because
that’s exactly what I’m good at, what Star is good at.

Pointless justice.

A pair of the new light AAVs fly over my head,
heading east, possibly for a look at Tranquility, possibly looking
for Chang. They ignore me—a quick hack of their Link feed confirms
they didn’t even see me, despite how low they’re flying. (And I get
a flash of wishing they did, just so my rage can prove that Burns
can’t hurt me, can’t stop me if I ever decide to collect for
Lisa.)

I really don’t know what to do. But I apparently know
where Chang
will
be, thanks to Star. (Assuming I trust her.
Assuming that
is
Star. It could be a convincing fake. So
could Chang. Maybe some unknown is doing this to play me, to play
everybody.)

(But I need to play to find out.)

Tranquility is still a good two day’s walk from here.
Last time we tried visiting, we lost two men, got two more hurt
bad. All we did was show up, try to tell the locals we came in
peace, wanted to help them. Now Burns is going to do the same
thing, just with a lot more guns. But no matter how many guns he
brings, he won’t be able to take the place without major bloodshed,
and the locals certainly won’t go quietly just because a supposedly
superior force says so. At least
I
could walk in without
much fear of getting hurt, and, if I’m lucky, not hurt anybody
else. But what good would it do? How are they going to receive a
freak like me? (Maybe better than a freak like Chang. But at least
Chang has something to offer. What am
I
selling?)

What would Lisa want me to do?

No. That falls apart as soon as I remember the look
of absolute horror on her face at the sight of me. I realize: she
must have woken up, rolled over, saw this long-haired child that
barely looks like the young me she fell for, and managed not to
scream while she snuck out of my quarters and called for the
cavalry.

Lisa would have wanted me not to be what I am.

The backlash of anger I get at that thought—angry at
Lisa for being so terrified of me—just shows I’m lashing out about
her death (even at her for dying, or for calling in the
troopers—Burns—that led to her dying). But I also consider the
words I’m beginning to use, even to myself:

What I am.

This is what I
am
. And not just what I am now.
This is what I’ve
been
, at least in that other time. And in
that other time, this is what I
chose
to be.

I remember the me from
this
timeline, not long
ago, in an idle conversation with Paul, hypothetically coveting the
gifts that the ETE have: Immortality, healing, resilience,
strength, speed, interface. And tools that can manipulate the
binding forces of matter. Godlike power. The Nomads call them Jinn.
And what could I do with such power, hypothetically, if the ETE
would ever give it? Would I dare take it? Would I do good with it?
Save the world? Or make it worse?

Now I’ve got more than the ETE, and without asking.
Unfortunately, I’ve also got memories that say I
didn’t
do
good with it, didn’t save the world. I abused it and wasted it like
pretty much everybody else did. And I wanted a second chance, but
there was nothing I could do.

Maybe there’s something I can do now, in this
time.

I need to rethink. The me from the other time, the
one sent to stop Chang, has failed, lost the war before he even got
on the field. But the me from this time has his gifts, his tools.
His weapons.