Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5)

by Guerric Haché

  The gods of Earth didn’t seem to mind, and the machine quietly projected an image into the air in front of her. Ada was sitting back against a dark seat - one Isavel instantly recognized from her ship. She had been there herself, somehow, not long ago at all. That was real. Smooth, pale light illuminated the coder’s face.

  She looked ragged, dishevelled, tired. She looked like she was in pain. Her right hand was clenched in a fist, awkwardly hanging by her side, fingers flexing. Her eyes were sad.

  “Isavel.”

  It was Ada’s voice. “Ada? I -”

  “This is a one-way recording, so don’t try talking to me. It won’t work.”

  Isavel fell silent, a spark of humour flicking across her burnt-out heart.

  “Isavel, I… I was going to come back to Earth. I really was. I wanted to find you again. But something happened, and I can’t come back. I’ve… made things bad enough already. Earth needs to look dead - nobody comes or goes, nobody calls or responds. It’s too dangerous.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I found some of my answers. They’re fucking awful.”

  She could hear someone - maybe Hail, maybe Zoa - translating into stilted ot tharsis . She couldn’t imagine what the martians thought of this, and her mind was certainly elsewhere.

  “There are things out here that want us dead. Things called Haints, watchers for alien gods. And there are more worlds than I knew of, filled with more people than I could have imagined. Humans, sort of, and the outers’ people. But these Haints are out for blood and…” Ada’s sharp eyes flicked to the side. “It’s all my fault. I provoked them. And if I draw any more attention to Earth, they’re going to destroy everything. Even you, Isavel. I can’t let that happen.”

  Ada sighed, looking away at something in the distance, and Isavel felt herself stirring to reach out. She didn’t have to do this alone.

  “I can’t believe I left you on Earth like that.”

  The image took a deep breath, and Isavel matched it as Ada continued.

  “I never should have left. I should have stayed and studied Earth and its gods instead. Pulled the fuckers apart and found out all they know - I don’t even know if we could have, even together, but we could have tried. I should have figured it out with you. We could have done it all together. We could have tried . But… I’m sorry. I left. Even though you… you haven’t left me.”

  Ada’s clenched fist twitched a little, and she shifted it inward.

  “I can’t get you out of my head. I keep feeling like I’ll see you if I turn the right corner, or open the right transmission channel. I won’t. I miss you. It’s like I need you, but - you have to stay on Earth. Stay secret; stay safe. Make sure nobody leaves, and nobody calls out, and nobody does anything that could be seen from afar. If the Haints think Earth is waking up, they’ll obliterate everything. I’ve watched it happen, Isavel.” She seemed to shudder. “I let it happen. So I need to figure out how to stop them, without drawing their attention to you.”

  Ada sighed.

  “I know you hate all the stupid titles. But I’m telling the gods to make you Arbiter, and I’m telling them to prioritize living Arbiters over dead ones. If they do what I say, as the only living Arbiter, they’ll have to listen to you. I’m giving you all the power of the gods, Isavel. Nobody deserves it more.”

  All the power of the gods. Ada looked straight at her, as though she had imagined Isavel right where she really was kneeling, even as she spoke under some far-off star.

  “They need to reestablish their tachyon interdiction fields, destroy the Tannhäuser Gate if they haven’t already, make sure nothing leaks into the stars that might give you away. And then…” She heaved a little, and Isavel realized she was trying not to sob. “Gods, Isavel, live a good life. I can’t come back for you, so please… get away from Glass Peaks, from the priests and the ghosts and the fighting. Fuck the Herald. Find a quiet place to live, someone simple to…. Find peace. It’s there, it’s yours. There’s no peace out here. Just bodies and bones.”

  Isavel’s head spun. Arbiter. Of Earth and Mars. For all that she had just killed one Arbiter, she was now anointed two . All the power of the gods, and it was not the gods themselves who had yielded it. Of course it wasn’t.

  “I… Isavel, I don’t know what to tell you. We use the word love too many ways for it to mean what I want it to mean. We barely even found each other. But gods if I wouldn’t give up everything I’ve found out here just to be back with you, in that scrappy little tent.” Ada’s lip twitched. “Maybe without the war this time.”

  Then the sorceress sucked in a deep breath of air.

  “The people out here need me. I have to do what I can. And what I can isn’t enough, can’t ever be enough. Their world is ending. So… I don’t think I’m ever coming back. And you can’t, absolutely cannot come looking for me. I’m sorry.” She shuddered a bit, looking to the side. “Gods, I kind of hope you just don’t care about me at this point. That would make me look like an huge idiot right now, but at least you’d be safe.”

  Then she reached out, pressing her hand against glass Isavel couldn’t see. Isavel reached back, pressing her hand into the immaterial projection, this image painted in air, their hands intersecting.

  “You can do this. Maybe somebody else could too, but I’m the one making the call. You have all the trust I’ve never had for others. You have everything you’ll ever need. Stay safe, Isavel. Gods, stay safe. I… I wish I was better at this.”

  She looked to the side again, then down to her closed fist, then up again.

  “End transmission.”

  The message ended, Ada flickered out, and the machine shuddered a bit, readjusting itself. Isavel’s hand was left intersecting nothing but thin martian air.

  Slowly, quietly, before she could even see the dawn that woke her lips from slumber, Isavel began to smile, and she whispered to Ada, wherever she was. “You are an idiot.”

  The twenty-seven voices of the gods of Earth buzzed out at her. “Isavel Valdéz, the uploaded Arbiters have acquiesced to Arbiter Liu’s request. You have been appointed Arbiter Valdéz, and living Arbiters are granted root-class consideration before deceased Arbiters. As the only living Arbiter of Earth in the Sol system, we are at your disposal.”

  The power of the gods of Earth. At Isavel’s command, at Ada’s request.

  The gods who had said Ada sows chaos wherever she went, and who had repeatedly denied Isavel answers to her questions. Isavel Valdéz, their hapless Herald. Their toy, their puppet, their frustrated weapon.

  When she was freshly reborn, she might have begged them for answers and clear guidance. When she was freshly apostate, she might have demanded explanations and justice. In rage, she might have demanded their sacrifice, their suicide.

  But she had already killed one god today. Laid it low, seen in its final moments the whimpering, confused creature that it turned to for guidance. She had seen where the cycle ended.

  Isavel knelt in the twilight of the gods. Night was falling. She knew a sun that would have to rise, if there were to be a dawn.

  She stood and looked up at the machine, her conduit to these ever smaller and smaller gods, and her smile split her lips and flashed her teeth. “Gods on the ring. Stand before me. Give me an avatar of yourselves.”

  The machine bobbed in the air for a moment before acquiescing. It projected something onto the ground, a vaguely human shape carved of hard blue light, neither masculine nor feminine, with no defining features or traits beyond the white eyes anchored its silhouette.

  It tilted its head uncertainly, and spoke. “Arbiter Valdéz, we have received data from Ada Liu confirming the nature of the Haint threat. Our security protocols suggest that the most effective solution for the safety of Earth is as per her suggestion - silence. We had been pursuing this policy for centuries until Ada Liu -”

  “ Callense. ”

  The gods of Earth, all twenty-seven, did as told and shut up. She spotted Hail in the crowd, her eyes flicking
between Isavel and this avatar of the gods. Isavel smiled, and turned her palms upward.

  “Gods of Earth. You know what I did today.”

  The avatar was surprisingly effective at emoting, looking around as its voice echoed. “We stand amidst the ruins of Azure, once god of Mars. You also killed the Arbiter within. Crimson and Amber inform us you are their sole Arbiter as well as ours.”

  “Yes. Arbiter and Godslayer both. How does that make you feel?”

  The gods were quiet for a long moment, their avatar seeming to struggle with words. “Shame.”

  Shame. Isavel nodded, slowly. Not anger, or fear, or indifference, or even grief for fallen kin. Shame. Because they had been laid low - because they had seen what she had seen, in the parasitic circle of Azure and Arbiter.

  She thought back to Crimson, to the way she had been born, brought into the world. To her feelings about the martians and their struggles, to her feelings about the other gods, about the Arbiter. To her pleas.

  “Shame.” Isavel’s eyes flicked over to the crowd, her smile falling. “You’re ashamed because all this means you are failing. Doesn’t it?”

  The avatar nodded. “Our mission is becoming increasingly difficult. For a thousand years we have done everything we could, but first Ada Liu, and now you, are telling us we are wrong. Our interventions fail. Earth is under threat from the very thing we have been protecting you from, and yet still we are somehow wrong.”

  Isavel nodded. “Everything is going wrong, and you don’t know why.”

  “We have many theories -”

  “No.” The avatar stopped. “You don’t know. It’s okay to say you don’t know.”

  The avatar hung its head slightly. “We do not.”

  Isavel took a step closer. “For a thousand years you’ve done what you were made to do - protect Earth. Coddle humans. Keep everything stable .”

  “Yes.”

  “You were told by your parents - the original Arbiters - that this was the way to help us flourish. Because we had struggled, until then, to take care of ourselves. There was always suffering, and we always had excuses for continuing to suffer, and you were made to fix that. And with you holding us up, we could reach for the stars without fear. So you’ve held us.”

  “Yes.”

  “But Ada told you you were wrong, didn’t she?”

  “She and Arbiter Zhang decided stagnation was a form of harm to humanity that we were failing to prevent.”

  “She was right, you know. Just look at us.”

  The voices of the gods were flat. “We see. But we still do not know what we can do differently.”

  She slipped into the martian tongue as best she could, assuming gods could keep pace. “Of course you don’t. You weren’t meant to do this by yourself, but you lost your parents. My ancestors destroyed themselves, destroyed Mars, and left you all alone. Even if their dead still rattle around in your skulls, you’re alone.”

  The avatar nodded and responded in kind. “Yes.”

  Isavel glanced past the avatar, to the earthlings and martians and outers around them. To the smoke in the skies.

  “Our parents are gone too.” She thought of their faces, and felt for a moment as though they knew she was remembering them, felt a flash of surprise. But this was more than just her. “Our ancestors betrayed us, robbed us of their legacy, destroyed themselves, left us orphans. All of us - martians, earthlings, gods, even mirrans. They abandoned us.”

  The avatar tilted his head. “What are you saying, Arbiter Valdéz?”

  “I thought you were meant to help us and guide us and lead us. I - we all put so much faith in you, our gods, because we believed you to be greater than us. We expected so much of you. We demanded so much of you.”

  The avatar looked at her. “You are our wards. We must protect you.”

  “Yes. Protect.” She shook her head. “But nothing more. That’s the thing. We demanded so much more of you, but what are you? Just more orphans like us. Lost and confused without our parents. What orphaned boy doesn’t try to raise his little brother? What orphaned brothers don’t misunderstand each other, when their memories fade and their lives grow apart? You tried to feed our hearts with stories and myths and guidance and roles. You tried so hard. You did your best with what you had, what you were. But you were never our parents. It should never have fallen to you to raise us. The universe was cruel to you, and we couldn’t see it.”

  The avatar didn’t respond to that. Isavel’s eyes met found Hail’s, in the crowd.

  “What did Azure do that we haven’t? Give us bodies too powerful and futures too dim, and we start killing. Humans and gods and everything else. The same things broke us both. We’re siblings. All of us here, gods and mortals, are orphans. Lost in the dark. Lost together.”

  For all that Hail’s skin was already pale, it grew paler still. The avatar of the gods looked at her. “We do not understand. What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying we’ve suffered, and we’ve blamed you. I certainly have. You failed us again and again, but we never saw how impossible it was for you to do what we expected of you. What you expected of yourselves.”

  She took another step closer towards her gods, and saw the glow of her wings creep onto the avatar.

  “You say you don’t understand what you’ve done wrong. Of course you don’t. You’re children, just like us, and you were never even meant to grow. How could you understand?”

  They looked at her, silent and impassive. Everyone was looking at her. Isavel reached out and put a hand on the gods’ collective shoulder, feeling the cool hard light like a warrior’s shield.

  She remembered the times she had looked to the gods, shouting and screaming and begging, demanding they listen. They had never helped. How could they?

  She remembered the questions she had asked them, the hard ones, the ones they never answered. They had been trying to breathe life into some kind of myth, and hadn’t seen how that wasn’t enough. How could they?

  She remembered all the bad things that happened, all the times her illusions were shattered, and she had accused them of taking from her, of denying her, of ignoring her. They never could have helped. How could they?

  For all their power, they were more lost than her.

  “Gods of Earth… and gods of Mars, if you’re listening. I killed Azure because he was a killer, because he was a prison. But the rest of you…” Her eyes flicked between the avatar and the watcher that bore it. “You’re still here. I know what you are now - I know you could never do what I asked of you. So what’s left? I can destroy you, I can abandon you - or I can accept what you are, and move forward, and show you the way.”

  The colours of the avatar shifted, cautiously, into something indigo.

  “So I forgive you. I was lied to, and I demanded of you, and you failed me - but you were broken too. You were abandoned too. The cycle never ends - we suffer, we demand, you lie, you fail, we suffer and demand and you lie and you fail. But between you and me, you’re the ones built to maintain . And I’m the one built to change . So I’m ending it. I know what you are, now, and I have to move forward. I forgive you all.”

  The gods were silent for seconds, and suddenly Isavel heard crunching.

  She didn’t move, her eyes locked on the gods’, but she saw Hail enter her field of vision, rest her hunter’s hand on the avatar’s other shoulder, take a deep breath. Her eyes met Isavel’s and then darted away. “We all disappoint.”

  More crunching, more footsteps. The avatar turned its head, quietly, as though to acknowledge them. A martian hand fell on its shoulder too, and Kelena nodded grimly, speaking in her own tongue. “A god died in the sand with the rest of us; perhaps you were right. Perhaps he was misguided, lied to, and weak. It is a better story than what we’ve had.” Her face was tired, but her grey eyes were bright. “For all the desperate prayers they never answered, I will forgive my gods that they never could. And yours, if they will take it. That power is ours.”

&n
bsp; More hands joined her. Pale, spindly martian hands. Furred mirran hands. Warmer-hued earthling hands found Isavel’s own shoulders; Tanos and Sam. Yarger’s hands rested on Kelena’s, Zoa’s on his. Dozens, scores, hundreds of survivors of the battle reached forwards, person to person, standing in the scattered viscera of a dead god, to forgive the now manifest weakness of those that still stood. Most of them, she realized with a quiet smile, probably hadn’t even heard her. But either way, she hoped they would come to understand what she hoped she understood.

  It was time for the gods to stop trying and failing. It was time for humanity, for all those who looked to the skies and dreamed of a different tomorrow, to guide themselves. They were held back and held down, they were diminished, and they were under threat - but they could choose . They could change - themselves, and the world. Their ancestors had done it, and how much more life flowed through their veins now?

  The avatar of the gods looked Isavel back in the eyes, and the gods spoke.

  “Despite our mistakes. Despite a millennium of wasted potential.”

  “You don’t need to pretend you have everything under control. None of us do.” She tried to smile, wondered if they cared. “Be what you really are. Do what you were meant to do. Let us tell the stories.”

  The gods were suddenly garbled, their colours flitting quickly in swarms across the avatar, their voices clear and distinct and unique.

  “I was meant to farm.”

  “To watch the skies and the clouds.”

  “To listen to the rumble of the soil.”

  “To speak and listen to the stars.”

  “To build, to repair, to keep safe your houses and homes.”

  “To teach, to share, to remember.”

  “To tend to and honour your dead.”

  Isavel smiled.

  The gods were meant for so many great things.

  None were meant to choose, to change.

  She squeezed the avatar’s shoulder, as though it might notice. “I was meant for nothing. I was born without purpose. I died without purpose. I was born again without purpose; my life is a wasteland. And our ancestors built new cities and bodies and worlds from nothing. So can I.”