I frowned. “What thing is that?”
Agent Shi Pei flicked her fingers in distaste. “That millenial star, whatever you call it—”
“The Watcher in the Skies,” Captain Novus finished for her. “It was only a single report, Imperator, and a week later the Chief Architect went mad. Copper poisoning, we think.”
I shook my head impatiently. The Watcher in the Skies—another legendary apparition of the HORUS colonies. “Don’t tell me about phantoms. What else has gone wrong?”
Agent Shi Pei sighed. “Well, as for us—there hasn’t been a supply ship here at Cisneros in six months. It’s all I can do to keep my troops from defecting and joining the fantômes,” she ended bitterly. “There is justice in this, Imperator. Slaves always rebel; even geneslaves, it seems. With your education, you and the other Aviators should have known that.”
She spat the last words at me. I looked away, recalling the empty spaces between the stars where the HORUS stations should have been.
You should have known.
She was right, of course. If I had not been so driven by hatred and my need for vengeance in Araboth, I might have learned of this sooner. Only days sooner, but it might be that we had only days left. For a few minutes the room was quiet. I could hear Valeska Novus breathing, Agent Shi Pei prying the cork from another bottle of rice brandy. Nefertity remained motionless and silent, watching us with her calm eyes.
At last I said, “I wish to have an elÿon for myself and my server.”
Shi Pei’s hand shook as she poured another measure of brandy. She held the tiny cup up to me, then drank it in a gulp. Tears sprang into her one eye as she stared at me incredulously.
“An elÿon? After what I’ve told you? For what—yourself and a taomatan ? A fembot?”
I nodded and she hooted, banging her fist on the arm of her chair. Angrily I clenched my right, human hand. I had long before decided that I would simply kill anyone who tried to stop me, but to my surprise Agent Shi Pei rose and took a few unsteady steps until she stood before me. She bowed, arms crossed in her country’s mark of obeisance, then made a clumsy gesture with her fingers meant to be the NASNA salute.
“Of course, Imperator! Did you think I would refuse? But who else is left to command me?”
For an instant I saw a cold glitter in her eye—a look I had seen before in the eyes of traitors, a shaft of betrayal and guilt that quivers where it cannot be dislodged. Agent Shi Pei noticed my expression and quickly looked away. “Though it is madness, I think, to travel to HORUS,” she added with a sullen frown.
“I intended to go before I knew of all this. But now it seems I waited too long.”
I stalked impatiently toward the window, turned to look back at her. “Have you ever heard of a replicant kept by the Autocracy in one of the stations? An unusual construct, very old, very finely made. It might resemble that—”
I pointed at Nefertity. Agent Shi Pei regarded the nemosyne wearily, and finally shook her head.
“Never. But that doesn’t mean anything, Imperator. They might have any number of such things up there—” She flapped her hands, indicating the ceiling. “I have never traveled to HORUS; besides, I am a rehabilitated war criminal. I would not be privy to such matters.”
I nodded curtly. “Of course. Very well: ready an elÿon for me.”
Agent Shi Pei’s mouth twisted into a cold smile. “Ah! but which one do you want? I would advise against the Caesaria —”
She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I knew her adjutant in his earlier life as a saboteur for the Commonwealth. He suffered from hallucinations before he was chosen for his present position.”
Behind me Valeska cleared her throat. “Perhaps you should prepare a formal request, Agent—”
Shi Pei made a rude sound and glared at the Aviator, her prosthetic eye rolling wildly. “Haven’t you been listening, Captain Novus? Who would I petition? He is an Imperator—surely he has wonderful reasons why he wants an elÿon. Who am I to stop an Aviator—even a rasa Aviator—from going to a second death?”
Her laughter rang harshly through the room, and suddenly I saw the rage behind that single amber eye. Probably she had been a high-ranking officer in the Commonwealth before she was taken as a prisoner of war, rehabilitated, and then sent here as a test of her new loyalties. That would account for the keek. It would also explain her drunkenness—alcohol and drugs impair the stability of the prosthetic monitors—and her casual acquiescence to my request for an airship. I felt a fleeting kinship with Agent Shi Pei, and when I spoke again, my voice was less cold.
“The construct I am looking for is called Metatron. I believe it might have been brought to Quirinus two hundred years ago.”
Captain Novus shook her head. “We lost contact with Quirinus last month, Imperator.”
“Plague!” Shi Pei cut in gleefully. “A traitor got on board, a psychobotanist supervising the disbursement of provisions. Strain 975, irpex irradians, introduced via a shipment of rice from Mudjangtang. According to the notice of death filed by the station computer, only the energumens survived.”
She tugged at a flap of her uniform and removed a long black cigarette, lit it, and smoked in staccato fashion. “Of course you and your consul would not have anything to worry about from plague, Rasa Imperator.”
Irpex irradians: the radiant harrowing. One of the older microphages, dating to the Second Ascension. Even as the bodies of its victims succumbed to the quick wasting and dehydration of the disease, their minds grew more acute, seeing in the air subtle colors that have long been lost to the rest of us. In their last hours they rave ecstatically, of lights and angels and the thoughts of men darting like goldfinches through the air. Perhaps two solar days might pass between the plague’s inception and death. Survivors have described the smell of the corpses as being reminiscent of lilies. Not the worst of the plagues created by the Ascendants, except that without its serum antitoxin there was no survival rate whatsoever.
“I am moved by your concern, Agent Shi Pei,” I said coolly. “Perhaps now I could make use of your expertise in a matter of less importance—”
She tapped her cigarette ash onto the floor, her nostrils dilating so that the butterfly tattoo seemed to flutter. “Of course, Imperator.”
“Some months ago there was a research subject who escaped from the Human Engineering Laboratory, in the Northeastern United Provinces. Subject 117, a young girl named Wendy Wanders.”
Shi Pei frowned. “I have no jurisdiction over HEL. The Ascendant Governors—”
“She is no longer under HEL’s control, and according to what you have told me, there is some doubt as to whether there are any more Ascendant Governors. I want to find this girl. She escaped into the City of Trees and lived there for several months, disguised as a young man named Aidan. I was with her immediately before my death; I believe she is still alive. I want her found and brought to me.”
Agent Shi Pei and Valeska exchanged glances. Finally Valeska said, “That City was retaken by Ascendant janissaries in January, Imperator. As Agent Shi Pei told you, there has been some trouble, and it has been necessary to use viral weapons to restrain the rebels there. As far as I know, any survivors of the original invasion were detained as a recreational labor force by the new governing body there.”
I smiled grimly at the thought of Subject 117 drafted as a prostitute by the Ascendants. “Then it should not be difficult to trace her.”
“If she survived.” Shi Pei tossed her cigarette across the room. It struck the window in a burst of sparks and dropped to the floor. “And if I can reestablish contact with the City.”
“She survived. I’m sure of it.”
Shi Pei raised her eyebrows. “And what does the Aviator Imperator want with this young girl? I assume the obvious reasons no longer apply to a rasa. ”
I crossed to the window and ground out the smoldering cigarette beneath my boot, gazed down upon the smoky yellow lights and softly swirling mist. “She was an
empath engineered as a terrorist, a suicide trigger. When I last saw her, she was somewhat confused—it appeared her empathic abilities had been impaired, by grief or stress. I may have a use for her in spite of that. If what you say is true—if there is a geneslave Alliance planning war against us—then we may need humans like her fighting with us. Wendy Wanders. Find her for me.”
I continued to stare out the window. Behind me I heard a click as Shi Pei withdrew a vocoder and repeated the name. “Anything else, Imperator? Requests for aid from the Emirate’s fleet? Messages for the dead in Elysium?”
“I’d like to see a roster of the elÿon in port. We’ll leave immediately.” I turned in time to see Valeska looking anxiously at the nemosyne. “My server won’t need clearance, Captain Novus. You may accompany us to the elÿon and vouch that we are not allied with the rebel forces. Agent Shi Pei, I trust you will carry on your duties here until you are relieved of them.”
I glimpsed Agent Shi Pei’s bitter smile as I strode toward the door. She followed, stooping to pick up a heavy book with marbled cover. She flipped through it, marked a page with a bit of torn paper, and handed it to me.
“Here—I think this is the current list. Remember about the Caesaria. ” She made a mocking bow as Nefertity and I passed.
In the doorway I paused. I reached out and rested my metal hand upon Shi Pei’s shoulder. The derisive lines faded from her face; her brown eye rolled nervously, then blinked closed as I squeezed her. A moment later she cried out, buckling beneath my grip. When I let her go, she staggered against the wall. Valeska stared openmouthed, her Aviator’s composure shaken.
“The empath. I will be expecting to hear from you within one solar week, Agent Shi Pei.” Without another word I tramped down the stairwell.
The book Shi Pei had given me was heavy, with creamy thick pages and gilt edging, its covers an expensive swirl of violet and blue and yellow. Rather an archaic means for a Commanding Agent to track the comings and goings of an Ascendant staging area; but inside I found a meticulous record of just that, page after page of transport duties, arrival times and departures and ports of call, with the names of the various elÿon transcribed in an elegant hand whose delicate characters resembled ideograms more than our Arabic alphabet. The violet ink made the tiny figures difficult to read at first, but eventually I puzzled it out—
General Li
Angevin
Izanagi
Stella d’Or
Caesaria
Pierre Toussaint
Esashi
Of the seven listed on the page Shi Pei had indicated, I had only ever traveled aboard the Angevin and Izanagi. Both had been appropriated by Ascendant forces, the Izanagi being a stalwart Nipponian vessel, the Angevin a Gaulish freighter. The rest were mostly Ascendant vessels, built on the North American continent, and I was wary of them. My Academy training notwithstanding, I had seen too many Ascendant-made vessels sabotaged—it took only one disgruntled technician or clever geneslave to infect a nav program and bring the whole enterprise crashing down. Nipponian vessels were sturdier, their minds harder to infiltrate. I chose the Izanagi and handed the book to Valeska.
“Inform the Izanagi’s adjutant that we will be boarding and departing as soon as the ship can ready itself. Have the technicians place my Gryphon Kesef on board.”
She saluted and disappeared in the warren of towers on the main deck. Nefertity watched her go impassively, then turned her unblinking eyes on me.
“So now we will travel by starship?”
I laughed, my boots making a hollow boom on the metal grid beneath us as we walked. “Starship? No. There are no starships, Nefertity. Only a few old military vessels retrofitted for commercial transport between here and HORUS.”
She nodded. A fine rain had begun falling. It softened the edges of things, turned the glaring landing lights into golden halos, and made Nefertity look as though she were encased in glowing blue velvet. “And it is a long trip, to these space stations?”
“Not really.” From a speaker overhead a tinny amplified voice announced the hour and number of the shift that was due to change. A sudden frantic rush of yellow-uniformed personnel seethed from previously unseen doors and tunnels; there was much swearing amid the clatter of boots and the nearly silent hiss of rain. Then abruptly all was still again, as though the inhabitants of an overturned beetle’s nest had burrowed safely back into their holes. The platform’s rocking subsided to a gentle swell. From somewhere in the fog above us a kittiwake moaned, and I could hear the beating of its wings as it passed into the mournful darkness. I looked at Nefertity and said,
“The elÿon are all biotic craft, controlled by the thoughts of their adjutants—it is an old technology, and the Nipponian fleet was supposed to be the most sophisticated. And no, it does not take very long to reach HORUS. Perhaps three or four solar days; but time runs strangely in the elÿon. For humans, at least. For you it may be different.”
A smile glinted in the nemosyne’s face. “And for you? Does time move differently for rasas as well?”
I did not reply. In my short life as a rasa I had noticed that, without sleep, the weight of constant visual and aural stimulation sometimes made it difficult to recall where I was. Memories would flood me: I could not remember if I was still a student at the Academy, or on board a fouga in the Archipelago, or back in the Engulfed Cathedral with my madness. Then there were the jagged impressions of my death, mostly images of lights—sudden gashes of green or yellow brilliance, like sickly lightning—and noise, muted roarings or poppings that I imagined now had been the sound of my brain disengaging from my body’s functions. But I could not always control the flow of remembered impressions. Now I could not recall what it had been like to be aboard an elÿon. I ignored Nefertity’s question and hurried across the deck.
Valeska met us at the transport center. She looked flushed from running, and no longer carried Agent Shi Pei’s elegant logbook.
“It should be ready,” she said a little breathlessly. “Your Gryphon has been sent ahead. Here—we can take this up—”
She motioned at one of the elevators, a cylinder like an immense candle that stretched into the air, until its tip was swallowed by the glow of the elÿon fleet. From here I could not make out individual craft. Their sheer bulk and the hazy gleam that emanated from them made it impossible to tell for certain where one ended and the next began, like trying to untangle a shimmering mass of sea nettles. As our elevator began to rise, Nefertity turned, peering through the dirty window at the behemoths floating overhead.
“They are not what I expected,” she said at last. Valeska stared at her curiously, and the nemosyne continued. “I thought they would be like ships. They are ships, of some kind?”
Valeska turned to me with eyebrows raised. I looked past her, taking in what Nefertity saw: huge vessels that seemed to be as much animal as machine. The comparison to the medusæ was apt—the elÿon had been modeled on sea nettles and jellyfish and other cnidarians. They were amorphous leviathans, their central bodies umbrella-shaped and with a faint translucence like the swollen bladders of the Portuguese man-of-war. They floated like untethered balloons high above the decks of Cisneros, emitting that bizarre rubeous glow, with long gassy blue streamers occasionally billowing behind them as one or another shifted slightly in the wind. Their polymer walls shifted in size and shape to accommodate changes in air pressure, temperature, light or darkness, so that to watch one taking flight was to see a vast opalescent bubble churning through the marine haze, like an immense Portuguese man-of-war drifting above the calm Gulf. Their interior climate was equally dreamlike, controlled by the thoughts of human adjutants imprisoned in navigation cells deep within the elÿon’s labyrinth of fuel canals and living quarters.
As we grew nearer to the fleet, we began to hear them. A sort of low, droning sound, a bass counterpoint to the slap of waves against the platform now far below us. Nefertity stared at the elÿon, the growing radiance of her torso and face attes
ting to her absorption. Valeska looked uncomfortable, as though wanting to speak. After several more minutes of silence I asked her if she had any questions for me. She dipped her head, tugged at the peaked collar of her leather uniform, and finally nodded.
“Yes. Will you—am I to accompany you? To HORUS?”
I gazed down upon the floating city. Set with beveled squares of green and violet, its landing grids like yellowing embers: from here it was a delicious toy, a glittering lozenge one might hide in a pocket as a bribe for a beloved child. Nefertity stared at it, her eyes impossibly wide and bright. Valeska kept her own gaze hooded, only glancing at me covertly to see what my reply would be.
For the first time since I had awakened to that second horrible birth in Araboth’s regeneration vats, I felt a twinge of an emotion besides hatred or vengeance. I tried to imagine what Valeska would like to do. It would be an honor of sorts for her to accompany the Aviator Imperator to Quirinus, even if it was a futile mission. It seemed probable that we would find nothing in HORUS save rebel geneslaves and the bones of their victims; and travel aboard the elÿon was always a dreadful prospect. Under the best of circumstances, embarkations from the HORUS colonies were often little better than forays into madness and exile. At last I spoke, keeping my eyes fixed on the window.
“What would you like to do, Captain?”
A minute passed before she answered. “I would like to go with you, Imperator.”
In her tone I heard that note that often colors Aviators’ voices, something between the voice of a child accepting a dare and the bitter resignation of a prisoner to her fate. She went on, “I have never been to HORUS. My tour here began only six months ago; but as Agent Shi Pei said, we have lost all contact with the Governors. And since most of the other Aviators have left to join the fighting, she has been reluctant to part with me. I had lost hope of ever receiving another detail. I think—I think I would like to accompany you.”
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