by Ryu Mitsuse
“Your Majesty.”
King Dominica, minister of the province that lay along the western coast of the kingdom, rose to his feet. He wore an elegant linen shawl and a beautiful shell necklace. His thick brown whiskers were trembling. “The moment the people hear the extent of this plan, their shock, sadness, and rage will lead swiftly to violence. There are many examples of this to which I might refer; suffice it to say, that even should this great plan be the direct provenance of Your Majesty’s benevolent will, that is not how it will be reflected in the hearts of the people. It is a certainty that they will turn against the royal house of Atlas, saying that we have replaced the kind rule of yesterday for an outrage today.”
As King Dominica once again took his seat, King Ajax of the central mountainous highlands stood.
“Your Majesty. We have moved our kingdom in the past, yet only in response to long years of drought or to escape the predations of barbarian tribes—we’ve moved only as a last resort, when it was the express will of the people.”
“I say this to you again!” came the voice from the throne, and it shook the room like a crash of thunder. “I am King of Kings. I have received the will of Heaven and devote myself to its promulgation alone. You will heed my words and devote yourselves to the divine will.”
Poseidonis the Fifth, silent until then, opened his mouth and spoke, the tone and character of his voice almost indistinguishable from that of Atlas the Seventh. “Legate and assembled kings. What has happened to the reverential loyalty you once showed to the Royal House of Atlas? I can still hear the oaths you swore to our House when I passed the title of High Officiant on to my son. Your words ring fresh in my ears. Take care that you do no injury to that loyalty today, for your devotion to the Royal House of Atlas reflects in turn the loyalty of the House of Atlas to the Planetary Development Committee.”
The assembled kings sat still as a forest of stones.
“Legate, assembled kings. I ask you, who was it, one thousand years ago, that took his first steps upon this barren continent as it drifted in an empty sea? Who harnessed the atom’s power, carved the mountains and the plains? Who planted groves of trees and taught the people how to gather their fruit and cultivate their seeds? Who built roads and towns, waterways and aqueducts? Who showed the people the art of metallurgy, the smelting of iron, and made chariots that ran on electricity? Who taught the people how to build and sail their ships? Tell me.”
“The founder of our kingdom, Poseidonis the First.” The voices speaking in unison echoed through the council chamber.
“Now, Legate. Tell me the founding ideological construct of our kingdom. Speak!”
Orionae stood as though possessed. I know the ideology. I know it all too well. But what has that to do with us here, now?
“By the reckoning of the Twin Suns, from Blue 93 to the summer of Yellow 17 in the New Galactic Age,” he intoned, “the Planetary Development Committee on Astarta 50 received a directive from Shi to attempt a helio-ses-beta development on the third planet in the Ai System. This required that a religion be engineered for the indigenous peoples whereby the influence of the Planetary Development Committee could be ascribed to divine will —” Abruptly Orionae stopped the flow of words spilling involuntarily from his lips. Then with a wrenching act of will he shouted at the towering shapes upon the stage, his voice so loud he felt as though his mouth would split all the way back to his ears: “Why did you tell them there were gods and not tell them about the Planetary Development Committee?”
A rustle passed through the assembled kings like a breeze through rushes, and their faces went white as corpses.
“Why didn’t you tell them?!”
A great dizziness came over the legate and he crumpled to the floor.
Why did you say nothing of their existence? he wanted to yell again, but he could not summon the strength. Only his lips quavered weakly.
Then the sky fell and all was lost in primal darkness.
He heard the occasional clink of metal objects coming from somewhere down below his feet, mixed with the voices of several people engaged in stealthy conversation. A strong, medicinal smell stung his nostrils.
What are they doing?
Where am I?
He tried to turn it over in his dark, soggy head, but the thoughts mischievously slipped away from him. In a wave of fatigue, he abandoned the attempt altogether.
Without warning, a sharp pain ran down his arm. He groaned and tried to sit up, but all he could manage was to move his shoulders slightly.
“I think he’s coming to,” someone said.
Coming to? What did I—? All at once the memory came back to him. That’s right. The council chamber . . .
Orionae-who-was-Plato sat up in the bed.
“You should lie down a little longer. The neural stimulant we gave you is still working—if you stand you’ll lose your balance.”
Orionae frowned at the scent in his nostrils.
“What happened? I remember falling in the council chamber.” As soon as he said the words, he had the strange sensation that his own memories were not to be trusted.
“Wait . . .” he muttered. “I mean, I was in the desert on a journey. There was a sandstorm at night, and stars, many stars, and a bright light spilling from the window . . . When was that again?” The legate put a hand to his forehead. He couldn’t have been traveling in a desert. So what was this strange feeling in the pit of his stomach—this conviction that he was somehow in the wrong place?
A man dressed all in white stared at Orionae’s face. The stranger’s dark silhouette, framed by the light on the ceiling, stirred up a memory long buried in the sediments at the back of Orionae’s mind. But no sooner had the recollection risen than it too drifted away. The dark silhouette disappeared without a sound, leaving the bright light to shine down on Orionae, hurting his eyes. For a short while, Orionae slept.
When he awoke again there was no one around. He sat up and slid his legs over the edge of the bed, searching with his feet for something to wear. He found nothing but stood anyhow, broad shoulders swaying, and drew his hospital robe more tightly around him.
Orionae was in a fully equipped medical chamber. A variety of surgical instruments sat on metal shelves running along the wall, and a wheeled medical cart held boxes with syringes and vials, scalpels and long needles, all giving off a cold gleam in the bright lights. He looked around, but no one was to be seen.
“Who would abandon a patient like that?”
Careless! Orionae frowned and gave the door to the room a push.
He was clearly in the palace’s medical ward. It occurred to him that he had never had occasion to visit here before.
Beyond his room, the ward was in chaos. Physicians and assistants ran back and forth, all of them practically steaming with activity.
“What’s going on here?” Orionae wondered aloud.
It occurred to him that the chamber he had just vacated also showed signs of disarray. There were empty spaces in the lineup of medical devices on the shelves, as if the most important items had been removed, and one of the vials from the cabinet had toppled, its powdery contents forming a small pyramid on the floor. Whoever had been in there gathering supplies had left in a hurry.
Orionae began moving quickly toward where he thought the exit must lie. There was an elevator with its door open to the corridor that appeared to have been stopped or stuck in place. It was full of wooden boxes stuffed with an incredible assortment of medical supplies. Just beyond, an electric-powered gurney lay on its side.
“What’s going on? What happened?” the legate called out to a physician headed in the opposite direction.
The man saw Orionae’s face and stiffened.
“Tell me what has happened.” Orionae stared the physician in the eye. The man returned his stare, then lifted a hand and pointed down the corridor.
At the end of the passageway was a large sunroom with windows of glaes stained a beautiful crimson.
&nb
sp; “What about the sunroom?”
Orionae’s gaze shifted back to the physician, then back to the colored glaes. He noticed that the glaes was shimmering, brighter and darker, like a fluttering flag. For a moment he stood there watching, then ran toward it.
As soon as he entered the sunroom, Orionae realized that the giant windows there were not set with colored glaes—they were reflecting the light of a vast fire outside.
A carpet of raging flame was spread over the entire city below the hill, rolling in waves toward the heights. There was a strong wind blowing; Orionae could see shreds of flame flying up from the edges of the inferno, dancing like phoenix fledglings into the sky. Wherever they fell back to earth new fires sprang up. A dense layer of smoke roiled above the city, glowing eerily with the reflected light of the blaze beneath. He saw a huge golden column of flame burst up through the smoke and then explode in a shower of sparks, and guessed that it had risen from somewhere beyond the second ring canal. A sudden sound of gunshots came up from somewhere below the palace walls.
Orionae ran down the line of windows. The fire had spread in a semicircle along the ring canal and was pushing further inward toward the center of the city. From his current vantage point it was difficult to see the entirety of the damage.
Again, a brighter burst of flame erupted from the middle of the blaze, and this time the city around it—both the buildings and the earth itself—clearly lurched skyward. He saw people fleeing in a dark stream down the road away from the flames. They looked tiny.
Orionae ran farther. Something that he could not even begin to comprehend had pushed this great city to the brink of destruction, and he had been completely unaware.
What could possibly have happened?
Why had the city watch done nothing?
Where were the ministers and the pages?
He lurched from window to window like a wounded beast. At last, halfway around the arc of the sunroom, he saw something that gave him a sliver of hope, and he breathed a deep sigh. From this vantage point he could see the other half of the city, and it was still dark. The flames had not reached there; nor was the wind blowing smoke in that direction, for he could see stars twinkling in the sky above.
The people will have a safe haven.
There would be squads of firefighters and rescuers organizing in the dark side of the city, away from the flames. Despite the chaos, much could be salvaged. The palace medical ward alone was capable of saving many wounded. Orionae felt that he should go down, into the city aflame. He desperately wanted to know what had happened in the council chamber after he collapsed, but the fire was clearly a far more pressing matter.
The fact that the lights in half the city were out was a sure sign that the nuclear reactor had been damaged.
We will have to get that back online as quickly as possible.
In the face of such an unprecedented and unforeseen disaster, Orionae felt the urgent need to return to his duties as legate—he had never felt such distress at being away from his post as he did now. Cursing under his breath at the frozen elevator, he found a stairway and sped down it. At its bottom he found a series of hallways that twisted and turned like a labyrinth, and he raced along, looking for a way out into the undamaged part of the city. He ran fast—faster than he had ever run before.
Three hundred feet ahead, the well-lit hallway plunged into darkness.
That must be where the blackout starts.
A large section of the vast palace belonged to the side of the city that wasn’t on fire, so it followed that it would suffer the same fate as the streets below.
Orionae ran, gritting his teeth in frustration at his own sluggish legs. The darkened part of the corridor opened before him like a cavern.
Wait! There’s a separate nuclear reactor inside the palace. A blackout in the city shouldn’t affect us—and the medical ward was well lit.
Then he saw points of light in the darkness ahead of him, so many they were uncountable, so many he could scarcely even gaze at them all. A chilling premonition rose inside him, and he forced his already faltering feet to stop.
There, not more than two or three yards ahead, the floor gave way to the void. The lights he saw in that darkness were the fires of one hundred billion stars.
The corridor opened out onto a vast, empty space that cut the city clean in half.
Putting a hand on one wall for support, he stared out at the sea of twinkling stars like a child staring at the night sky. His head hurt so fiercely he feared it might split; thick beads of sweat ran down his cheek and chin. He felt as though his brain was on fire, and the rest of his body had gone cold as ice. Unable to grasp what had happened, he knew only that everything had changed.
So what do I do now?
Could it be that I am dreaming?
He stood, swaying, repeating these questions to himself. But the sea of stars that spread out before him was not the stuff of dreams or illusions. Some of the stars seemed close enough to touch with an outstretched hand, while others were so distant they proved the vastness of the void of space.
Slowly, he made his way back along the corridor.
His vision of a safe half of the city, dark and free of flames, had just been torn from him. All that remained was a raging pyre.
Orionae descended another stair, walking mechanically like a marionette, emotionless. The corridors below were silent, save for the sound of an automatic cannon firing from somewhere in the far reaches of the palace; he saw no sign of the other palace inhabitants.
Where has everyone gone?
He passed another line of windows that looked out over balconies reflecting light from the blaze below and arrived at the steps down to the central hall on the first floor. Now he could see people—refugees—in the darkness beneath the tamarisk in the central courtyard, and he hurried outside. Making his way across the cobbles, he spotted a six-wheeled autocarriage lying on its side beneath a marble wall. A ragtag group of soldiers, their faces drenched in the light of the fires, rounded the guardhouse and approached him through an arch in the castle wall.
“Do not leave the palace,” the leader said. “The mob has broken through the outer perimeter.”
“The mob?” Orionae stopped at the unfamiliar word. “You mean they’re rioting?”
“Yes, sir.” One of the soldiers recognized the face of his own legate. He quickly held his automatic gun at attention and bowed.
“You mean rioters are responsible for this conflagration?”
The fighting men stared at him, suspicious that the highest of all ministers in their government had no clue as to what was going on.
“Th-that is,” Orionae stammered, “I’ve yet to receive a full report.”
“The proclamation from King Atlas was met with unrest from nearly every quarter of the city. The offices of administration were attacked, and before we could properly respond, the mob had taken over half the city—and us with no way of putting out the fires.”
The soldier shifted the weight of the heavy ammunition bandolier on his shoulder.
“Your name?” Orionae motioned with his jaw to the man directly in front of him.
“Heracletos, gunner with the Royal Honor Guard Light Infantry.”
“How many are you?”
“Seventeen, plus one wounded, so eighteen, sir.”
Orionae nodded. With every word he spoke, he could feel himself regaining his authority. “Good. Hold this position. Don’t let a single one of that mob inside the palace proper.”
Without waiting for a response, Orionae stepped out onto the wide thoroughfare that ran along the front wall of the palace. The fire had already engulfed the large building across the roadway, the regional ministers’ quarters; now the blaze was spitting golden tongues of flame out onto the road.
A violent gust of wind crossed the city like a cresting wave, picking up a fireball of wood and debris and hurling it against the offices of the guard that stood imposingly at a corner in the road. For a moment, the
city was hidden from Orionae’s view behind a swirling river of flame.
Then he saw shapes, people staggering through the wall of fire like lost souls. They reached out toward the edifice of the palace behind him, hands dripping molten flesh, shouting incoherently. Their bare feet slapped down upon the smoldering bricks like swollen water skins.
“Here, quickly!” Orionae shouted, running out from the shadow of the palace walls.
He heard a long chatter of gunfire; a few of the shapes running toward him were plucked up off the road and thrown back into the flames.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire, I said!” Orionae shouted up to the top of the high palace wall above him, but in the wind and roaring of the fire there was no way he could be heard. He ran along the bottom of the wall, no destination in mind, only a feeling that, as legate, he must do something. His feet moved of their own accord and he heard himself shout, “To the harbor! To the sea! We’ll find boats!”
The people ran in a group behind him now, making their way from patch to patch of open ground beyond the reach of the flames. Orionae found himself on a narrow side street, where he could hear the weeping of women, the crying of children, and the shouting of men echoing loudly off the high brick walls to either side.
A government autocarriage, marked with the wide horizontal yellow stripe of an official vehicle, came careening at breakneck speed around a corner, then slammed directly into a wall without slowing. The body of the car split in half, its batteries erupting in a shower of blue incandescence. Several corpses—some of them children—rolled out of the shattered vehicle onto the street, the stench of their blood mingling with the ever-present choking cloud of dust and smoke.
Dozens of people were huddled or sprawled in the dark courtyard of Oriental Chariot Square. Orionae stepped over several men and women who lay on the cobblestones, making his way to the small fountain he knew stood in the middle of the open space. He knelt and drank eagerly from the basin. Though much of the cool water slipped through his cupped fingers and spilled onto the stones below, what reached his mouth was the most delicious he had ever tasted.