by Wil McCarthy
Well, perhaps “spider” was the wrong term, since it had six legs instead of eight, and since each leg terminated in a perfect little human hand, and since its meat-colored body carried a swollen, bulbous caricature of Wenders Rodenbeck’s face in place of a ten-eyed spider head. Its two eyes glowed a malevolent red in the darkness.
Bruno quickly decided he’d never seen anything so horrific in all his years, and he couldn’t help echoing Shiao’s heartfelt scream.
He could be more horrified, though; he discovered this when the spider turned its red eyes upon him, opened its fanged mouth wide, and spoke in a rasping parody of Wenders Rodenbeck’s actual voice.
“Ah, de Towaji. Welcome.”
“My God!” was all Bruno could think to say in return. He hefted his staff like the weapon it was, pointing one end up at that hideous face. “My God, man! My God.”
“He told me you might be coming,” the spider said, around a quite incredible mouthful of dripping fangs. “I’m pleased that you have. I never disliked you, you know, even when He commanded that I should.”
“Wenders,” Bruno said, “what has he done to you?”
“Made a hideous monster of me, obviously,” the spider quipped. Then the eyes narrowed, and the legs and body lurched, and suddenly that swollen face was two meters closer to Bruno’s own. A leg raised; a finger shook, tsk tsk. “Do I finally frighten you, Declarant? Actually, this form was my own idea. Well, His idea, but I agreed to it. Rather than the alternatives, of which I was offered several. Unpleasant. But I’m the man himself inside—playwright, lawyer, defender of planets, same as ever. Same as he made me, anyway. You do realize I’m to murder you?”
“I’ve little doubt of it,” Bruno agreed, afraid to move, afraid to do anything. The sheer size of this creature implied there was nothing Bruno or Shiao could do to stop it. Mortally wounded, it could nonetheless murder them both a dozen times over, simply with its death throes.
“You’ve been grievously mistreated, sir,” Shiao offered up to the thing.
The spider, swiveling its head toward Shiao, looked surprised. “Have I? How, exactly? Do I know you, sir?”
“Actually,” Shiao said, craning his neck to look the thing in the eye, “you and I just spent three weeks together on a derelict platform, about ten million kilometers sunward of here.”
“Really!” The spider was instantly intrigued, its monstrous eyebrows shooting up, its many knees—or perhaps elbows—bending until its leathery bulk plopped heavily onto the floor. “A guy can’t help but be intrigued by that. Where am I now? Not with you any longer?”
“No, sir,” Shiao agreed. “You were killed about twenty minutes ago. By Declarant Sykes.”
“Ah. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. I’m always tying Him up in court and such, without realizing just how badly that upsets Him. I’d probably kill myself, if I met me. Bastard. But how did I die? Was I dramatic? Was I brave?”
“Yes, sir. Very brave. You were on a spaceship blasting for Mercury, on a mission to save the Queendom, and you ran afoul of some stray collapsium.”
“Extraordinary!” the spider said. “I always told people I’d die that way, sooner or later. Not saving the Queendom, I mean—running afoul of collapsium. Nasty stuff, that. Meaning no offense to you, Declarant.”
“Er, none taken,” Bruno said quickly.
“I’m to kill you,” the spider said again. “Have I mentioned? I’m conditioned for it, though obviously I’ve never had the actual opportunity. Any idea what that’s like?”
“Why haven’t you killed Declarant Sykes?” Shiao suggested.
The spider responded with a deep, awful rumbling noise that Bruno eventually identified as laughter. “Kill him? Kill him, what a thought! Oh, I could never do that. My ordeal here has brought the two of us very close together. I’m written into his script, and vice versa. You probably wouldn’t understand that, but take my word: It’s a tangible connection.”
“I do understand it,” Shiao insisted. “You and I became very close, during our time on the platform. I was very sorry to see you die. And I’m very happy, if a bit dumfounded, to discover that a copy of you still exists in … some form.”
“Really.” Again, the spider seemed almost dreamily intrigued.
“You mustn’t do it,” Bruno said, suddenly finding his voice, and with it his anger. “You mustn’t do Marlon’s bidding. He has a way of breaking people, of conscripting their minds as well as their bodies. Perhaps you can’t see what a joke he’s made of you, what a shadow of your former self, but I tell you, the very same thing has happened to me. And do you know where I am? I’m guarding the spaceship that brought us all here. I’m determined to overcome the damage Marlon has done, to me and to everyone else. You must let us pass, sir. We’ll carve a hole in that wall, there, and pass through it into Marlon’s study, and if we survive our business there, we will return to help you!”
Again, the spider laughed. “You need to understand, sir, I’m conditioned to resist those sort of appeals. You’re not dealing with amateur security here; we’ve been optimizing for years and years.”
Bruno’s anger flared. “All right then, you, why haven’t you killed us already? Why talk to us at all?”
Shiao sighed angrily, looking as if he’d just realized something important. “Declarant, perhaps his purpose is simply to delay us. A familiar face, an encouragement to stand around persuading him … We haven’t the time, sir.”
Perhaps the spider had been conditioned to react to that phrase with violence, to delay the fight as long as possible and then commit to it wholeheartedly, with intent to win. Perhaps it was angered for some reason, or had simply heard enough. In any case, it leaped for Shiao with surprising nimbleness, snatching him up in its oversized jaws and driving its dripping, mirror-bright fangs hard against the fabric of his space suit. Over the suit radios, Bruno heard Shiao gasp, heard the breath squeezed out of his body as it had so recently been squeezed out of Rodenbeck’s, inside the Ring Collapsiter fragment.
All thought fled from Bruno’s mind. He had let Rodenbeck die, had carelessly let him slip too close to the collapsium and be crushed to death. He simply would not repeat that mistake.
Throwing down his staff, he dodged between two pink-brown spider legs to retrieve the impervium sword where Shiao had dropped it. At his touch, the thing came alive, its blade vibrating all in a blur, its handle acoustically isolated and quite firm and steady in his grip. Then, with a patience and precision that would have astonished him a minute earlier, he stepped forward and lopped off the spider’s swollen Rodenbeck head.
He fully expected the thing to die badly, messily, and in this he was not disappointed; the spider thrashed violently as its head was parting company with the rest of it, and as a result the head flew across the room—with Shiao still inside it—and crashed hard against the wall. The body’s spasms did not end there. Quite the reverse: its legs, with surprising coordination, carried the body forward to crash hard against another wall, and another, and another one still. The hands flailed madly, grabbing at anything. The body rolled. Bruno was lifted, dashed, trampled, and for one dizzy moment, crushed up hard against the ceiling. The wind was knocked out of him immediately, and his limbs were twisted all the wrong ways, and his skull suffered a number of sharp blows against the dome of his helmet, which should have been too far from his head to make contact, if his neck had been holding onto it properly. Those were the hard parts of the ordeal; he waited patiently through the rest of it, willing himself limp, knowing he had nothing to gain by struggling against this agonizing tumbling and buffeting.
Finally, what seemed like hours later, the spider gave a final shudder and lay still.
Bruno tried to breathe, waited a few seconds, tried again. Now, finally, he could hold off panic no longer. He managed a little, gasping inhalation, but it only seemed to make things worse. He tried again, and again. Finally, when he didn’t black out, he realized he must actually be getting enough oxyge
n to survive, regardless of how it felt. He willed himself to be patient one final time, and partially succeeded.
A minute later, or maybe just a few seconds, he managed a fairly deep, fairly refreshing breath. A few more followed, more easily, and after another minute he gritted his teeth and forced himself to sit up.
Shiao was nearby, still trapped inside the spider’s head. His helmet dome had shattered, and his suit’s tough outer layer hung around him in scorched tatters, revealing the tubes and hoses of the midlayer underneath. His headlamps had shattered and gone out, and of course, like everything else in the room, he was covered in sticky red blood. It was only the faint, purposeful movement of Shiao’s arm casting moving shadows on the wall behind him that let Bruno know he was alive at all.
“Shiao?” He called out.
No reply.
Gathering his breath and wits, Bruno managed to flip over onto his hands and knees, and crawl—slowly and painfully—to the enormous fallen head.
“Shiao?”
This time, he was answered with a groan. Bruno completed the journey, then threw himself back over into a sitting position. It took another several seconds to get his breath again. “Shiao?” He touched the man’s arm, felt it move beneath his fingers. Shiao’s head stirred. His eyes opened.
“Tight,” he whispered.
Tight? Belatedly, Bruno realized the spider’s jaw, in death, continued to clamp down on Shiao’s body. Not as hard as before, probably, but hard enough to keep him from breathing properly. Mustering his strength, Bruno got to his knees, then his feet. He grabbed an edge of jaw and tugged on it. He’d half feared that the thing wouldn’t budge, that he’d have to search under the spider’s bus-sized carcass somehow, to find the sword again, to cut Shiao free. But no, the jaw wasn’t clamped, it was just heavy. With effort, he lifted it a few centimeters. With greater effort, he lifted it farther, and with the last of his strength lifted it a bit farther still, then gently kicked Shiao’s body out from between the fangs.
Shiao gasped, exhaled, gasped again. He was breathing. Not normally, perhaps. Not easily. But breathing nonetheless. Now fully exhausted, Bruno sat down beside his fallen comrade with no thought at all for what should happen next.
Perhaps fortunately, this decision was made for him: in the far wall of the chamber, a door opened up. And there in the doorway, framed with light, stood Declarant-Philander Marlon Fineas Jimson Sykes.
“Good Lord, Bruno,” he said wonderingly, in the clear, strong voice so familiar from days gone by. “You really are my peer.”
chapter twenty-three
in which lives are pledged and traded
Incredibly, Cheng Shiao lifted his blood-streaked head up into the light and spoke. “Declarant-Philander Marlon Fineas Jimson Sykes, it is my … duty as a Captain of the Royal Constabulary to place you under immediate arrest, for suspicion … of the crimes of murder, high treason, and regicide in the first degree.”
The voice was weak, bubbling wetly, but the words themselves were clear enough. Shadows danced in Bruno’s headlight beams as Shiao continued. “You have the right to an attorney. You have the right … to be interrogated by disposable copies. You have the right to commit suicide without entering a plea. Do you … understand these rights?”
For a moment, no one moved or spoke. Then, finally, Marlon’s silhouette said, “Cheng Shiao, right? I remember you. We once investigated a murder case together.”
“A murder for which you … are now prime suspect,” Shiao agreed.
“Hmm,” Marlon shifted slightly in the doorway, and Bruno’s sound pickups clearly transmitted the rubbing and creaking of fabrics. Marlon actually seemed to consider the offer for a moment, but finally he shook his head. “It seems a shame to kill you both; it really does. I admire nothing so much as tenacity. There will be a new society after I’m finished here, and perhaps there’s a place for both of you in it somewhere. Oh, I’m sure you can’t conceive of that right now, but I do pride myself on being a fair man. Come. I’ll show you around, and then place you both in fax storage. That’s humane, isn’t it? ”
Neither Bruno nor Shiao answered.
Sighing, Marlon reached into a little pocket in his gray-blue waistcoat and withdrew a complex little pistol of some sort, which he proceeded to aim at Cheng Shiao’s head.
“Really, Bruno, you know I’m capable of violence. Now, shall I shoot your friend, or save him? The choice is up to you.”
“Stop!” Bruno said at once, raising both hands to the level of his shoulders. “Lower the weapon. Show us what you wish to show us, but you will not harm this man. I won’t allow it.”
“Won’t you?” Marlon said, amused. “All right then. Come.”
With effort, Bruno got his armored feet down under his armored body and slowly hauled himself erect. Every part of him throbbed with hurt; he could only imagine what Shiao must be going through.
“Forgive me, friend,” he said then, extending a hand downward for Shiao to grasp. Shiao’s fingers, all but exposed in the tatters of glove, gripped weakly, and with a tentative quality that suggested great pain. But grip they did, and soon Bruno was helping him up.
“I owe you everything, sir,” Shiao said quietly as he wobbled to a standing position. “I’d follow you anywhere. I mean this in the literal sense.”
“You’re a fool, then,” Bruno said back, in the same low tones, carried externally through the speaker beneath his chin. “I don’t see how I can possibly get us out of this.”
“Nevertheless,” Shiao said, straightening.
Together, using one another for support, the two of them hobbled toward that backlit doorway, toward the gun Marlon was pointing at them.
“That’s it,” Marlon said gently. “That’s fine, both of you. The fighting’s all done now—no one could possibly say you haven’t tried. I’ll see that history does mark your deeds, if only as a footnote to my own.”
Then he was sidling back, making room for the two of them to step, side by side, through the doorway. The apartment on the other side of it was surprisingly small, surprisingly modest—a rumpled cot on one side, a fax, a toilet, and on the other side a wellstone desk much like the one Bruno had always used.
Bruno noted that the fax was dark, apparently lifeless. Ditto the desk, which was bare wellstone at the moment—a translucent gray matrix that emulated nothing.
“My winter quarters,” Marlon apologized, catching Bruno’s look. “It isn’t much, but then it doesn’t really need to be, does it?”
“Your systems are down,” Bruno said.
Marlon’s smile was sheepish. “Well, yes, there is that. Not entirely down, mind you—not yet, anyway. But the most critical systems—the ones on which the Queendom’s fate depends—are inaccessible. I was hoping perhaps you could help me with that.”
“I?” Bruno asked innocently.
Marlon’s smile vanished. “I don’t know what you’ve done, Bruno, but you’ll kindly undo it. Immediately! The project has reached a critical juncture, and if I’m not at the controls in the next few hours there will be no arc de fin. The sun will still collapse, mind you, but there’ll be no purpose to it, no benefit to anyone. Senseless death and destruction is something we all wish to avoid, I’d think.”
“Hence your magnanimity,” Bruno said.
“Oh, tch tch, Bruno. After all these years, you still doubt the special bond between us? Come, help me out of this jam. If you reflect a moment, you’ll realize you have no actual choice about it.”
Wobbling against Shiao’s weight, Bruno sighed. “Marlon, can’t you just stop this? I believe you. You’ve discovered the arc de fin, where I have not. Isn’t that enough? History will mark your triumph either way. But if you end this villainy now, if you’re willing to leave bad enough alone, you’ll at least be remembered with some measure of approval. A would-be monster who, in the end, didn’t have the heart for it. The sun, Marlon. Was there ever a more fundamental symbol of nurture, of comfort, of life itself?”
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“I expect not,” Marlon agreed, amicably enough. “I’ve come too far, though, Bruno. I wouldn’t stop this if I could, and at this point I don’t see that it’s even possible. Now, that’s an honest response. I could just as easily have agreed to your demand, let you reactivate my systems, and then killed you. That’s what a monster would do. But I have more respect than that.”
“And if I agree to your demand,” Bruno countered, “and your systems are reactivated, you could still kill us both.”
“I could,” Marlon conceded. “But I give you my word that you and all your friends will be stored safely.”
“Safely?” Shiao snorted. “Surely this place … will be among the first destroyed, and there is no Iscog to carry our patterns away from here.”
Marlon shrugged. “Whether this camp will survive I’m not sure—it’ll be on the nightside during the worst conflagrations, vulnerable only to neutrinos passing all the way through the planet. But the question is moot—I have a spaceship to escape in.”
“Ah,” Shiao said. “Of course you do.”
“No insolence, please,” Marlon said wearily. “I’ve already given you your lives, what more do you expect?”
There was no right answer to that question. No answer was attempted.
Finally, Marlon rolled his eyes, sighed heavily, and pointed the gun again at Shiao’s head. It was a strange little thing, four tubes emerging from the rim of a parabolic dish, not parallel but converged on the geometric center of Shiao’s skull. The whole thing was translucent and blue and quite fragile looking, like a funny toy designed to mock the concept of “gun.” But Bruno had never seen anything like it, and that was reason enough to be afraid.
“Fifteen seconds, gentlemen. You’ve presumed on my patience long enough.”
“Give him nothing,” Shiao said calmly.
But Bruno held up a placating hand. “Marlon, please. This isn’t easy for us.”
“The others with you,” Marlon said. “They’ll die as well. Slowly, badly, if I have any say in the matter. Five seconds.”