by Ewing, Al
THE BRASS COFFIN swung open, and the dust and ashes that had once been Jacob Steele tumbled out onto the dead platform.
“The stone was the only thing keeping him alive after so long,” Lars sighed, shaking his head. “Too bad. I honestly think he’d have thanked us for freeing him of it.”
Maya lifted an eyebrow. “Really?”
“No, not really.” He nodded to the robots entering the chamber. “Make sure you pick it up with the tongs. I don’t want anyone touching it – human or android. We don’t want to have to go through all this again with someone else.”
“There won’t be much difference between humans and robots before long,” Maya murmured, smiling. “All Pluto’s blueprints were missing was a viable power source for his immortal hybrids. Now that we have a sample of xokronite –”
Lars grinned. “Xokronite! I like it. Catchy.”
“– we’ll have all the power we need, free and clean.”
“We’ll have to find out how to synthesise it,” Lars murmured. “One sample won’t be enough. And obviously, we have to work out how to actually get power out of it in the first place...”
“I’ll tell you what I remember. You’re smart enough to take it from there. We have enough time for that.” Maya smiled, watching the stone glow with its blue inner fire as it was carried away. “We have eternal life, and infinite power. And soon all my citizens will have the same. We’ve taken a planet on the edge of total environmental collapse and created a world of gods.”
Lars Lomax nodded. “Yes, we have,” he murmured. Then he grinned savagely. “Now, what do we do with it?”
ONE MILLION YEARS LATER...
THE RED QUEEN’S RACE AND THE RED KING’S DREAM
EPSILON TWO FOUR, thought Ull of the Silver Service. I hate myself and I hate my life.
The psychetecture of the great golden building responded to the agent’s heartfelt depression, the outside of the great structure altering itself to best suit Ull’s mood. Great sections of the palace detached themselves, reconfiguring to better promote a sense of well-being and harmony.
While the entrance of the palace was heavily protected – so much so that anyone entering who was not the Red King would have their atomic bonds instantly nullified – the psychetecture system was not; he’d reconfigured the talkeasy built into his frontal lobe to make it believe that he was a guest, and the system was now desperate to accommodate his emotional needs. Obviously, the punishment for breaking into one of the Royal Houses would be death – or worse, ejection from the timestream entirely. Should he be discovered, not only would his infinite life come to an agonising end, but all traces of him would subsequently be forgotten by history. It would be as if he had never existed.
Worse still, he would fail his Queen.
Best to get this part right, then.
Alpha zero five. I’m the best there is at what I do and this is the most fun I ever had.
The sections paused at the sudden change of psychological state, jerked in the air, and moved back slowly towards their original position, as if unsure of themselves. Ull moved quickly, the deep black of his skinsuit shimmering slightly as it propelled him hundreds of feet into the air, to land like a cat on one of the moving sections. Now came the difficult bit.
Beta seven seven. I wish I’d had a mother. The structure he was perched on stopped an instant before it would have slotted itself into place and veered left instead, compensating for the sudden oedipal urge. Ull leapt again, into the gap, changing his mood in mid-air to another suicidal burst of self-loathing. Epsilon two six. I always let everyone down. He had to be very careful here – the wrong emotion and he’d be crushed between the moving parts of the building’s outer wall. Delta nine nine. Cechenena is a genus of moths in the Sphingidae family, he mused, the sheer dryness of the thought sending the sections juddering to a halt just long enough for him to snake between the gap. Alpha three one. Isn’t it great to be alive? Another gap opened in front of him as the inner walls shifted themselves about to form the perfect complement to a sunny disposition.
A second later and he was through the wall entirely – and inside the palace of the Red King.
Delta four one. Good boy, he thought, and the psychetecture, relieved that its guest had seemingly made up his mind at last, settled into an ostentatious deco design with a soft mechanical sigh. Ull smiled, petting it with his mind.
Good house.
ONE OF YOUR pets just walked into my house through the cat flap.
‘Cat flap.’ You and your anachronisms.
Don’t change the subject. He exploited the psychetecture – presumably he thinks I haven’t noticed. I take it that means we’re into the endgame?
There’ll be other games.
Not with anything of importance at stake. After today, it’ll just be for pride, or territory, or philosophy – but today, the game is for a universe.
It always was. Your move.
ULL STOOD, SNIFFING the air. He made a swift check of his selfsearch – under ordinary circumstances, he’d been trained to survive without it, but after the emotional rollercoaster he’d put himself through he needed a little grounding.
Alpha Four Seven, chattered the readout. Wary confidence, slight fear. The superior man prepares for all eventualities. How true. Inner motivations (y/n)? N. That was always a long one, and he didn’t have the time.
The hallway was a strange mishmash of styles, all of them hundreds of thousands of years old. An elevation-field coiled up from the centre of the floor like a snake, glittering in reds and pinks; a visible field seemed oddly gauche to Ull, but it wasn’t his place to question the décor choice of a King. Placed around the walls were a plethora of ancient art treasures: sculptures by Warhol, paintings by Kichida, poems by Tunos, all dating back to the pre-powered eras, before xokronite had solved the twin problems of energy generation and pollution once and for all. There were historical artefacts here as well, from the same long-forgotten past – an original copy of the Fourth Earth Battalion Field Manual, the diary of a suicidal slave-owner dated 1750, both more than a million years old. If they hadn’t been protected by specially designed fields, they’d have crumbled away to nothing millennia ago.
Ull found himself checking his selfsearch again. Gamma eight three. Curiosity, the edge of a great understanding. The superior man sees the hidden thread connecting all. These disparate treasures had something in common, then. What?
There was a large, flat field distortion hanging on the back wall, a complicated interference pattern that seemed to make no sense until Ull realised that it was meant to be appreciated visually; the eddies and currents sparked colours that, on proper inspection, formed a green paradise filled with strange plants and populated by men and women walking hand in hand. It was oddly scandalous – the people in the image were missing the telltale markings that showed where their selfsearches and skinpatches had been implanted at birth, and what Ull had taken at first for flesh-coloured skinsuits was actually their naked skin, open to the elements. Most shockingly of all, the men and women in the image had hair cascading from their scalps, under their arms, between their legs; Ull felt vaguely disturbed by it. Zeta seven three, he thought, not needing to check. Mild disgust, fear of the other. The superior man respects all difference and is secure in his own preferences. He’d had that one several times.
He looked around the hallway, searching for exits aside from the central lifting field; that would certainly be monitored. He could rely on his augmented skinsuit to deflect surveillance to an extent, but this was the Red King’s summer palace, and there could be no relying on –
– Ull felt something brush his shoulder. He looked, and there was the smallest rip in the fabric of his skinsuit, and a bead of blood peeking through. His blood ran suddenly cold. Zeta zero six. Fear of death. He tried to remember what the superior man did when faced with that particular emotion.
Something brushed against his hand.
When he lifted it to look, one of
his fingers was missing.
RAZORFIELDS?
Remember when ‘razors’ were something that existed? Ask someone what a razor is now. Anyone younger than eight hundred millenia wouldn’t have a clue.
Isn’t that a little... primitive? Bloodthirsty, even?
He breaks into my house, pokes around my private collection and then sneers at my art – he’ll get what he’s given and like it. I’m particularly proud of that painting. I’m not having one of your drones turn his nose up at it.
‘Painting.’ Oh dear.
So I remember history. You know what they say – those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it...
And that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?
Your move.
IN THE ROYAL Hangars, the five-strong crew of the Zor 714 stood stiffly to attention, arms at their sides, eyes forward. Behind them, the Zor hung in its gravimetric cradle, rotating slowly; a great spinning-top of shimmering silver metal. The crew had been waiting for several minutes, but they showed no sign of resentment, only a hungry anticipation; today, the Zor was no longer an ordinary mid-level scientific research vessel – one of thousands serving Habitat One.
Today, the Zor was under Royal command.
As a mid-level scientific research vessel, the Zor was usually commissioned for surveys on the various colony worlds; very occasionally, if there was a report of some asteroid or planetoid inward-bound from the intergalactic gulf, the Zor would be sent, along with several other vessels, to take its measure and make sure it was no threat to the various human-occupied worlds, the Habitats. It never was.
The crew had expected to comfortably drift through the countless millenia ahead of them, like all the other scientific research crews, mapping new planets and solar systems, surveying their flora and fauna, reporting to whichever of the two Royal Houses commanded their particular loyalty – or to both – on any discoveries thus gained. Perhaps when all the stars had been fully explored – when every scrap of life had been fully catalogued and categorised and exploited for whatever use it had – they would find something else to do. In the meantime, they were happy in their work, and the uneventful nature of the job was part of the charm. Captain Tura had never considered the possibility that the crew of the Zor would ever do anything too challenging or exciting. She’d certainly never thought her ship would carry out any vital missions for the Queen.
That was the thing about living forever. Given enough time, anything can happen.
A pair of floating silver drones swept into the hangar, their speakers serenading the crew and the ship with the deep musical trills of the Royal Anthem. The Queen’s retinue followed, a group of six androids with silver and gold casings; they were occasionally referred to as the Rusos, or the Queen’s Bishops, but the role had been purely ceremonial for hundreds of thousands of years. In this day and age, the Queen was best protected by an invisible field, raised around her at all times; it was enough to stop any anarchists or insurrectionists from making an attempt on her life, and the Red King would, it was agreed, never be so gauche as to attempt a direct attack.
Tura swallowed, avoiding the urge to check her selfsearch as she gazed on the glory of the Red Queen. She wore a skinsuit of shimmering royal purple, a hooded cloak of red, and a ceremonial helmet, which completely covered her head and included a mask of brass, fixed into an expression of serene and noble calm; nobody had seen the Red Queen’s true face in countless millenia. However, there were rumours among the older residents of the Habitat that, in the ancient times of pre-powered society, she was known as Britannia.
“Your Majesty!” the crew chanted in unison, falling to one knee as custom dictated.
“My subjects,” the Red Queen nodded, and Tura rose to her feet. “You are all, I take it, fully briefed on the specifics of your mission?”
“We are, your Majesty.” Tura bowed her head.
“And there are no questions?”
Tura shook her head. Who would dare to question a direct command from the –
“Your Majesty?”
It was the voice of the new Security Officer. Tura turned pale, even as she noticed Unwen smirking out of the corner of her eye. She wanted to slap him, but in front of the Queen all she could do was keep her eyes forward and try not to scream.
The Queen turned her expressionless mask towards the speaker, waiting for her to continue.
“Your Majesty...” Shut up, Tura thought, desperately, shut up, shut up... “Your Majesty, I can’t help but notice that these orders are extremely vague. You’ve told us to take the Zor to a very particular nav-point at a very particular time, but there’s nothing out there that might warrant a survey – especially not from a biogeneticist like Unwen. Why are we actually needed for this?”
The Red Queen tilted her head. She seemed almost amused, but with the mask it was difficult to tell. “Because I commanded it. What’s your name, Officer?” She asked the question as if she already knew the answer.
The Security Officer looked up at the monarch almost belligerently. “Maya.”
Underneath the mask, the Red Queen smiled to herself.
“Of course it is.”
THE PAWN BEGINS her journey up the board. Well played. Unfortunately, it’s all for nothing if I can take your knight out of the game...
We’ll see. Your move.
THE SKINSUIT WAS self-repairing. It would mend and strengthen itself as needed, taking care of any holes or gaps in its fabric; so would Ull’s skin. His little finger, however, wasn’t going to grow back. It would need to be repaired back in the Queen’s Palace, if he ever made it that far. And the next razorfield might take his head off at the neck.
The razorfields were invisible to the naked eye, but it was possible for his skinsuit to put out a weak field of its own, distorting them enough for Ull to see their faint shapes flitting to and fro in the air. Their movements were almost random, but at the same time there were traces of a definite pattern in the way they circled the room, like a shoal of deadly transparent fish.
They were toying with him, he realised; evaluating what defences he had before moving in for the kill. Soon, the fields would close in, a storm of knives piercing and slashing at him from every side; and that would be that. His existence would end, and with it the misson. If his skinsuit were capable of distorting the razorfields more, he might stand a chance against them –
– distortion.
That was the key.
Gamma eight nine. Understanding in the face of adversity. The superior man thinks and acts in one moment. He reached out with the weak fields of his skinsuit – the same ones that allowed him to leap hundreds of feet in the air, or cling to any surface – and captured the decorative image on the wall. An image made up of billions of tiny distortions...
“No! Oh, you little hooligan –” The voice echoed from nowhere. Ull had never heard the voice of the Red King, but there was no mistaking who was speaking. Under other circumstances, he might have studied the voice, even configured the selfsearch to begin a full mental evaluation. Now, he was busy.
It told him he was being watched, at least.
He curled the image around himself, taking a certain pleasure as the deformation of it made the little people burst and run together, the colours of the green grass and the blue sky and the varied flesh tones melding and changing, flowing into each other in a riot of shifting hues.
The razorfields circled for a moment, as if deciding how to approach, then dove from all sides. As they swooped down on him, Ull stilled his mind and prepared for death.
But the decorative image acted as he had hoped; as the razor fields flew through the distortion field, they were themselves distorted – transmuted by the shifting field into harmless bursts of colour and light. Ull smiled to himself, then released his grip on the image; unable to bear the stresses he’d imposed, it trembled for a moment like a soap bubble before bursting apart into individual globules of every shade and tint. They floated lazily through the ai
r for a few moments, before being absorbed into the walls or the lifting field in the centre of the room.
Ull waited to see if there would be any other traps, or if the mysterious voice would deign to provide further comment. But the Red King, it seemed, had nothing to say.
Well, the alarm had evidently been raised. Ull stepped into the lifting field, and ascended.
THAT POISONOUS LITTLE bastard. I can’t believe he did that. He could have just let the razorfields chop him up, you know. He didn’t have to destroy a priceless masterpiece.
Personally, I thought it had a certain symbolic value.
Really? I thought you said that piece was derivative.
It is. I meant the way he destroyed it.
Oh, ha ha. Well, we’ll see who destroys what. That’s only a picture – it’s the reality I’m interested in. He won’t be able to take that apart so easily.
Won’t he?
...your move.
THE QUEEN WAS silent for a long time, as if contemplating what punishment to visit upon the Security Officer. Tura, pale and almost shaking with nerves, waited for the axe to fall – would it only be the insolent Maya who faced the penalty for incurring the Red Queen’s wrath? Or all of them? Even Unwen seemed to have realised the severity of the situation, and poor Munn looked as if he might be sick.
Eventually, the Queen spoke. “...My move,” she murmured, to nobody in particular. Then she addressed the crew as a whole. “The Zor will be ready to depart directly – as soon as the necessary changes are made to the fuel situation. A fresh isotope is needed.”
“Fresh?” the Security Officer blinked. “One isotope of xokronite is as fresh as any other, surely? The word doesn’t have meaning in the context of –”
“Maya!” Tura barked, almost shouting. “Be silent!”