The lightnings flash, and Martel accepts them, one by one, without flinching, without injury, and without expression.
From the depths of the field building around Emily comes the roaring whistle of tormented air emerging onto the sands into a sandspout that bears down on Martel. The winds die as they strike Martel, and the sands slough away.
Emily makes no other moves and says nothing. Martel is determined not to speak again.
Locking his time sense into a trance, he waits, personal defense screens alerted, only half conscious of his immediate surroundings as he feels the planet turn, if Aurore indeed is a planet, a fact contested by approximately 49.49567 percent of the physical scientists in the Empire to have studied Aurore.
Alone in his time-slowed thoughts, Martel again senses the wrongness of the beach, that wrongness he has glimpsed so many times before in passing, whether gathering background cubes for the CastCenter, or cloud-diving, or just in walking the Petrified Boardwalk. Waiting for Emily, he ponders. Pondering, he waits.
Multiple drains on the field around him prick his alert screens, and Martel flashes directly into double-speed awareness, without shifting a single muscle.
Item: Five full foci surround him. Item: Emily hovers outside the pentagonal force lines. Item: Sixteen standard hours have elapsed. Item: All five of the foci circling him are asexual.
Never has Martel experienced an asexual focus. Theoretically, the user is either ancient or alien, but while alien gods are possible in theory, Martel has never run across one. Therefore, either the foci are ancient human-derived gods or artificial.
As a practical matter, neither is likely to be a danger, and Martel returns to normal awareness, increasing his circulation level to lessen the possibility of physical stiffness. He blinks.
While he can sense the five foci, he can see none, only Emily hovering at an angle, her eyes shielded by her customary veil of glitter, emotions cloaked in a jangle of discordant projections.
Lust rolls in so strongly the beach air reeks of rancid trilia blossoms, so pungent that Emily would have cast a double shadow on any other planet. Martel does not move.
“You still believe in all that ethical restraint,” Emily notes as she touches down several body lengths in front of him.
“No. Or not exactly. I don't like being pushed into making decisions.”
“Apollo wagered that you would break the elementals.”
“And you bet I wouldn't?”
Emily makes a curious gesture in the air, and the five foci are reabsorbed into the field. “You know, you do believe in ethical restraint. One woman, one god, one set of beliefs, and that's what They're fearing.”
Martel looks away, back at the thin edge of foam that coasts into the beach ahead of the waves. Finally he speaks. “Why now?”
“You've given Them a millennium. Isn't that enough?” Since Emily never quite tells the whole truth, Martel makes the necessary translation. Apollo has finally decided that Martel is no danger and is moving against him. Either that, or Emily has decided that Apollo is no danger to Martel and is pressing Martel. “Not necessarily.”
Emily takes a step sideways, toward the water. Martel casts around, but, outside of a few norms farther up the beach, they are alone. No gods or demigods are standing by.
“Why don't you go to Karnak, Martel?” suggests Emily. “Why Karnak?”
Why indeed Karnak? Is she playing to your curiosity, Martel? Or trying to get you off Aurore, and away from the field?
Before he has finished the thought, the girl who glitters has bent the field and is half Aurore away, or playing with the dolphins in midocean, or reporting to Apollo. He can go to Karnak or he can stay on Aurore. That is not the question, but then, it never has been.
* * *
XLV
“Shuttle from the Grand Duke Kirsten now arriving at port ten. Passengers from Tinhorn, Accord, and Sahara. Grand Duke Kirsten at port ten.”
One would have thought that the Viceroy would have retired the Grand Duke before having the former pride of the transport liners relegated to backwater runs. One might have thought, unless one knew the Viceroy. Even so, before long the Grand Duke would be scrap or an outsystem tramp with a new name.
Eventually, another Grand Duke Kirsten of the Imperial Western Flag Fleet would be built and christened—the fifth of the same name—and the cycle would repeat.
In the meantime, the fourth Grand Duke carries passengers on the Karnak-Tinhorn-Sabara-Acconi quadrangle, and often carries far less than a full complement, for the schedule is more important than the profit, the regularity a quietly impressive reinforcement of Viceregal power cheaper than corresponding calls by appropriate fleets. Not that the fleets do not call… just that they call less frequently, but just as impressively as ever.
The first shuttle's passengers file down the sloping corridor toward the clearance officers and their fully instrumented cubicles.
One customs inspector fingers his power spray syringe, reviewing the small holo of a black-haired man with a young face and deep eyes, a face that seems to cast a shadow even through the holo cube. His partner should steer the man toward his station. Then it will be his job to complete the operation.
The killer, for that is an accurate description of his profession, paid as he is by the Assassins' Guild of Karnak, relaxes as he sees the man approach, mentally measures the distance between the unsuspecting traveler and his inspection console, and flexes his arm to ensure the proper function of the syringe hidden within his sleeve.
The victim wears black except for a silver triangle mounted on the plain black metal buckle of his black belt. He carries no luggage, not even a small carrying case or the effects pouch of a postulant.
The false inspector feels a twinge of unease, but stifles it with a cheerful call. “This way, honored sir.”
The traveler in black turns his gaze on the assassin, and the look alone sends a chill down the professional killer's spine, for the look is simply an acknowledgement of what is. Nearly convulsively the assassin triggers the syringe. For the first time in years, if ever, an assassin's weapon fails, but the Guild insists on backup plans, and the man's hands flick to the clearance lights: green for clear, red for danger—smuggling, weapons, or attack.
Even while his hands are triggering the switch that will bring a red light while alerting the guards in the overhead blisters, he reaches for his own stunner, a special model designed to burn out enough nerves to render the question of survival academic.
The clearance light turns green, and the traveler turns to move through the opening portal to the open shuttle terminal, to Karnak itself.
Frantically the assassin jerks the stunner from inside the hidden pouch, levels it, and squeezes the firing stud. No energy flows from the circular tubes pointed at the back of the departing man in black, but the jolt to the killer's arm is enough to slam his fingers apart and let the fused hand weapon clatter on the hard flooring.
Though his arm looks intact, he cannot feel anything below the elbow.
The sound of the dropped stunner echoes through the rest of the receiving tunnel.
Three red lights blink on in the consoles above, one in each guard blister. The energy-concentration detectors focus on the heat of the discarded stunner, but the guards zero in on the figure standing above the weapon.
The assassin bites hard on a back tooth, one designed in a special way, but before the nerve poison can take full effect he collapses under three separate stun beams, one from each overhead blister.
The remaining travelers gingerly step around the twitching body, avoid looking down, and make their declarations to the other two customs officials. The man in black does not look back. After a time, the assassin's body is still, and, shortly, is removed. Three disposal units roll from a recess in the tunnel wall. The body is lifted into the first. The second sterilizes the floor and surrounding area. The third does nothing.
The last of the passengers from the Grand Duke steps
around the three metallic units and presents her declaration to the sole customs officer left. By the time the clearance light has flashed green, the tunnel is empty, and the guards in their blisters have punched the standby studs, to wait for the next arrivals.
* * *
XLVI
May the wind rise in dusty rooms, rooms for sex and sensuality, and let us not call either a sin, for sinning is a term implying an absolute morality, and the gods of the Empire, the gods of Aurore, accept no morality and know no absolutes.
While they know no absolutes, they know well the power of belief in absolutes, and revel in that power.
While the winds of sex and not-sinning spin in quiet circles, rise and die, rise and die in polished sheets and damp skin, in eternal light and in eternal darkness, and in the grubby universe in between, the gods of Aurore gather upon the holy peak Jsalm.
Some glitter, like Emily, and some, like the Smoke Bull, wrap misty darkness around themselves like a cloak. Each has an individual aspect and an energy presence, but what these gods that are, beings that were, do with their appearance with the light and power they draw from the field matters little.
That they have all met on the sacred peak in person is what matters, for it was in the time of the immortal Viceroy's grandfather before the Empire of Man became the Empire of Light that they last gathered. Two have often met, perhaps three, even five, but never have all met since that time.
Apollo flares and bends the light around him, and the Smoke Bull snorts and casts little rings of darkness at the feet of those who manifest them. “Martel has left,” announces Apollo. “Karnak,” verifies the winged siren Direne, and the gods who are close enough to their maleness bend toward the lure of her voice.
Another goddess closes her eyes, thinks of her son, and wonders how soon before she will behold a leaden shield.
“I must think,” thunders the hammer-thrower. “Think… think while you can, old throwback to antiquity,” murmurs the Goat, his red eyes laughing at the prospect of chaos.
“Remember,” adds Apollo, “he is still the undeclared god, and the hope of the hopeless, and all that implies.”
… and all that implies… The thought hangs over Jsalm long after the congregation has departed, long after they have turned their thoughts to the future, all but two, whose thoughts are on the past, and what it means.
* * *
XLVII
Martel wanders down the long parade of Emperors, past the glittering lights of the Everlight Palaces, past the modest coolights of the Longlife Homes, past even the Mausoleums of Remembrance, as the promenade narrows to a boulevard to an avenue to a street to a lane and to less than an alley among the hulks of empty walls.
One fully intact structure still stands, but the steps to the temple are barred by a laser screen. Organized religion has been banned on Karnak since the Great Upheaval, the greatness of that catastrophe attested to by the fact that not even the Empire dares to raze the temple of the Black One, only spend gigawatts of hard-earned power to shield the black marble columns with a robe of death-light.
The telltales of the sweepers flicker, throwing amber flashes on the tumbled walls outside the laser beams.
“Do I dare to touch the strings of time… to taste the tartness of the lime… to think no thoughts in rhyme.” Martel stops. The words are in a tongue too old for even the databanks of the sweepers, and besides, the wench is not dead, but the ruler of the sweepers. He studies the walls of fire before the temple and sighs. “ 'Tis hardest to refrain, and therein lies the paradox… just a chatty old man you are, Martel, obsessed with your words, and knowing words are enough, and yet not enough.”
He stares at the temple another long moment, then ignores the bones that crunch beneath his feet as he approaches the light knives that have claimed so many over the past millennium.
“Just a gesture, for old times' sake,” he says, knowing that the banks of recorders will relay it all to the Viceroy of Karnak.
Wrapping the darkness tighter about him, he bends and picks up a jawbone, several teeth still intact, and thrusts it through the weaving net of lasers. The bone and teeth vanish in an acrid puff of smoke. Martel withdraws his untouched arm and black sleeve.
As the flashing of the telltales begins to build, the one who calls himself Martel strides into the shadows dripping from the shattered walls of the ancient dwellings that surround the Black One's temple. He is gone, gone even from the wide-angle, time-perfected spyeyes of the telltales.
* * *
XLVIII
The Viceroy watches the scene from the third telltale disc, and although the angle differs, the picture is the same. The stocky figure in black, white bone in the left hand, thrusts through the laser screens with a puff of smoke. The bone is gone, but he withdraws his untouched hand and arm and disappears into the shadows. None of the telltales have been able to catch the man's face.
“Tell me what you saw, Forde,” commands the actual and titular ruler of Karnak, planet of long life and capital of the Western Reaches of the Empire of Light.
“I saw what you saw, Lady,” answers the man in red, who has begun to resign himself to a drastic reduction in his life expectations. She purses her lips, then laughs.
“Forde, you please me. That is one answer which I might accept.” Forde bows. Tall as he is, overtopping the slender figure worn by the Viceroy, he is all too aware of how appearances deceive, all too aware his continuation rests on a patience that can be as short-lived as a laugh. “You may go.”
Forde bows again, and strides for the portal. The Viceroy lifts her finger, then lowers it. Forde's second in command would have tried to answer the question. Better a clever schemer who knows his limits than an ambitious power-grabber who recognizes neither limits nor gods.
The man in black seemed familiar, whether she could see his face or not, and that bothers the Viceroy. The color black has unpleasant associations, reminding her of matters better left forgotten.
She represses a shudder. Perhaps she can again forget. Perhaps.
She touches the arm of the high chair that is not quite a throne.
“Query?” The well-modulated voice of the databanks forms in the empty space in front of her. She could use her screen faster than the vocal mode, but she isn't in the mood. Or she could link directly with the system, but that is not called for at the moment, she feels. Besides, she wants to be alone with her thoughts, and with the direct link she certainly does not feel alone.
“Linkage probabilities between the man in black at the temple of the Black One and the code file 'Interest Black'?” The Throne Room is silent.
“Linkage between the recently observed man in black and the Black One variable, depending on validity of Kyre-Brackell hypothesis and associated Auroran phenomena. Range from thirty percent to eighty percent.
“Linkage between man in black and code file 'Interest Black' approaches unity.
“Linkage between the Black One and code file cannot be calculated. Further query?” The Viceroy purses her lips once more. Why would there be any linkage between the man in black and the Black One? But why would her sources on Aurore merely have suggested her agents assassinate the man in black? How had he managed the failure? For that alone he deserved to live, at least until she could discover if he had a certain method for beating the Guild. That she could use. She frowns. Why was his bearing familiar?
At last, she shakes her head. Maybe the familiarity was only an illusion, a similarity to someone else.
* * *
XLIX
Rydal and Commoron drift across the Lake of Dreams in a swanboat, a common swanboat with second-degree time-stretching and pleasure-lifting intensifiers. They thus prolong each instant into hours, trying to grasp the feeling of eternal life and youth.
The swanboats on the Lake of Dreams are all the two will know of long life or of centuries as frequent as sunrises. Rydal and Commoron are poor, limited to extensive wardrobes, limited in travel to the grand city of K
arnak, limited to one “now,” waiting for a death that will arrive long before the Viceroy has skimmed another millennium down the timetrack.
“I saw a streak of black along the far shore.”
“No one walks that shore, Commoron. That's from the ruins of death.”
“That's why I noticed it.”
“You shouldn't be noticing such things now.”
“Why doesn't the Viceroy,” persists Commoron, “just level the Black One's temple?” She finishes with the symbol of the looped cross.
“Because,” answers her lover, the poor Rydal, “the Black One remains trapped within the temple, like you're trapped within my boat.”
Rydal ignores the fact that the swanboat is not his, as youths have done in all times and in all cultures. “No one wears black on Karnak,” Commoron muses.
“Then you didn't see a streak of black,” he responds, before kissing her hand and drawing her to him.
The swanboats, including the one containing Rydal and Commoron, circle the Lake of Dreams on their preprogrammed patterns, twining their intricate paths for poor lovers clutching a moment out of time.
And yet… do those poor lovers know something in their blindness?
They do not. It only seems so, particularly to gods who are searching for humanity in a race that has never really had it.
Martel knows about the swanboats and favors them with a glance as he walks the ruinshore side of the Lake of Dreams, the side he had never walked as a student. He inhales the too-strong scent of trilia and novamella that crosses the water from the pleasure groves on the opposite side, beyond the dreaming couples in the swanboats.
Too much of a scent, like too much power, often has the wrong effect.
He smiles at the thought, but the smile is not a pleasant one, for his eyes are cold.
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