The Barrow. It’s even named for a type of grave, a primitive monument to the dead. Did they know that’s what it would be when they named it? Or did they just name it for the shape of the mountain? Or the tomblike quality of the research facility they built inside of it, like some old serial villain’s secret lair?
(And does that make me a barrow-wight, haunting it now?)
I think it’s even more morose now that it’s been stripped bare like a scavenged derelict—Yod’s doing, I assume, just in case anyone does make it through his physical and cognitive barriers without permission. Can’t have the humans getting their hands on something they could make a higher life form with. I expect he just disintegrated it all, unmade it on a molecular level and found some relatively harmless use for the raw elements. Just like that. Because he can do that, just like that.
It’s not that I have any use for the missing technology, the tools of our super-secret god-making workshop. I’m glad it’s all gone. But despite what we did here, what we did with that better-off-vaporized equipment, the magnified emptiness of its absence feels like everything that was good and promising about what we tried to do here—what we meant to do here, with good but reckless intention—packed up and moved out; leaving a dirty, cold, empty catacomb, haunted by bad memory.
But all that, as it turns out, does make it an appropriate place for me to be right now, given my current mood and condition. I’ve been back here once, barely a handful of days ago, but didn’t have time to linger, to really drink it in. Being here—walking the halls, feeling the concrete under my boots, hearing my footfalls echo through the cathedral-like corridors—gives veracity to the memories that have been slowly coming back (that Yod is slowly giving me back). And I need to face this place, however damning. I was a part of what happened here; a willing, eager participant. I conspired—in my own despair and desperation—to create a being we could not understand or contain. I may or may not have inspired it to rewrite the world, reset it to a time before we’d irrevocably doomed ourselves, but I do believe I did give it the idea to insert manufactured villains into that new reality, to scare humanity away from going down that same path again, to make them proceed with caution into the future this time around. And I’m sure I would have agreed to be thrown into the role I’ve been cast in—the long-suffering antihero, the well-meaning monster—just because I would need to be appropriately punished for my part in all of this.
Bel once told me that he believed that damned souls were not consigned to hell, not imprisoned there, but kept themselves there voluntarily, whether they knew it or not, because on some level they felt they deserved to be there. (Under that logic, I wonder if a true sociopath—completely devoid of remorse—would therefore freely enter heaven?) I certainly accept that we make our own hells—I’ve done it to myself most of my life, so why not have an all-powerful reality-engineer make me a custom deluxe version?
The thought brings a chuckle that stokes my pain, followed by a fresh wave of self-loathing because, if I did design my personal hell, I’ve dragged all of humanity down into it with me.
I use that rage to focus me, turn it like I do so well, because I can’t keep wallowing in this. It is what it is (unless Yod decides otherwise), and I refuse to accept that I’m totally helpless. My role may be manufactured, scripted, but I’ve played such parts before, and I’d like to think I’ve done some good, or reduced the bad. Saved lives. Protected things worth protecting. Destroyed things in dire need of being ended.
I’m here. Now. And I need time away from the battle I can’t win right now (because I can’t let either “side” win), because I do need to heal—that’s the practical reality. I need to heal this body, because I’m barely in any shape to stand—I certainly can’t fight. And I need the time to figure out my next moves before I face friend or foe, carefully, thoughtfully, objectively, because I’ve made too many deadly mistakes. And that takes distance. Solitude. Whether I think I can afford it or not.
(I remember that the words “monastery” and “monk” come from the same root meaning: to be alone.)
And if I need to be alone and away, this is the perfect place. maybe more than anyplace else on this planet. First, because it is invisible, to friend and foe alike—only a very select few know it’s here. And second, because even to those who know it’s here, it’s unreachable, unless Yod allows it. (I realize I’m here because he agreed I needed the break, enough to bend his own rules for the world he’s made and let me cross his protective boundaries. Again.)
So this is my own personal Fortress of Solitude. By the grace of Yod.
Lonely, cold, gutted, and full of dust.
I need to stop giggling like a madman. It really hurts.
So does walking, limping with crushed muscles on mangled joints, but I’m in no mood to lie down. I lose myself in the pain, keep plodding one foot in front of the other, and pace the lonely darkness—an exercise in will over flesh—as I wait for my Mods to slowly rebuild me.
The massive empty spaces seem to go on forever, a maze that a shuttle could almost fly through. The sun has gone down, snuffing out the skylights. The darkness makes it feel even bigger by hiding its boundaries. Even with my night vision, I can barely see past the dusty polished stone floor in front of me. The walls and high ceilings may as well be lost in infinity—I’m surrounded by overwhelmingly immense space that I know is deep inside a mountain. I’m reminded of sets from old science fiction shows: budget-cutting stylized unbounded spaces of pure white or—like this one—black. (I once saw a public television production of “Waiting for Godot” that used a similar space—a dead tree illuminated in the middle of black nothing. Except I don’t have a tree. Or maybe I am the tree.)
In the ghostly enhancement of my Modded vision, I one thing can see very clearly is my own footprints in the dust, marking a record of the meandering I’ve been doing as I absently walk my solution to this labyrinth, though my solution is not to escape. I know the way out: the way I came in. But I can’t go that way, not yet.
As I limp on, I take inventory of the damage done to my body by Earth’s latest atrocity (as if we’re all locked in a competition of atrocities):
All of my limbs feel like they’ve been recently dislocated and deeply bruised—I’m surprised nothing’s obviously fractured (or traumatically amputated). My left eye isn’t working so well. I have no idea how much of my face I still have—I’m afraid to touch it, but most of it feels like it’s on fire, and sticky wet. My ribs hurt, my back… I’m having trouble breathing. Things grind and rattle and slip inside of me.
This is my bill from the blast, from being way too close to a rail-gun strike, and my subsequent burial when the mountain turned to rubble and landed on me. I should be grateful that my limbs are still attached, just considering the shockwave that hit me. Or that all of my skin didn’t get burned away from the heat produced by that much kinetic energy. Or that I’m still even in one piece at all, not shattered to bits. I wonder again if I had the benefit of Yod’s “grace”, bending the laws of quantum physics to make sure I wasn’t out of his game too very long.
(Did he give the same consideration to my enemy?)
I know I need more than time to fix all this. I need resources. I don’t require my internal indicators all glaring red in the corner of my vision to tell me that. But I’m loathe to do anything about it, even if it will get me back in the fight sooner.
There are fruit, seed and nut-bearing plants just outside—they grow in a ring all around the base of the mountain, between the rock slopes and the narrow beach of the lake that surrounds it (making it an invisible island in the middle of an invisible lake). But I would need to consume quite a bit of it, and still probably not have what I need to completely heal. I know what would provide I need, of course, but I can’t bring myself to do it, not now, not yet. I’d like to think not ever again, but I know necessity will drive me, sooner or later… But if anything is stripping me of my humanity, it’s this more than anything else
: I’m sick to my core of being a ghoul, a cannibal, drawing my sustenance from handy corpses. That I’ve never actually tasted the flesh, that my nanites do the extracting for me at a sustained touch, doesn’t make it more palatable. I’m still a cannibal.
(How the fuck did it come to this?)
I’d rather be in pain. Broken. Barely knitted together by the nanotech in every cell.
My dragging footfalls echo in the caverns of the Barrow, no matter how softly I try to walk. Even without enhancements, I can hear the grinding inside of me. But more than pain, every step, every time I force a leg forward, feels like I’m waist-high in molasses. I’ve barely got enough left just to keep moving.
I distract myself by appreciating Yod’s thoroughness. The whole facility is indeed gutted of every single piece of technology from that other world, cleanly stripped to the cast and cut floors, walls and columns. Only the hatchways are left, though they have to be opened manually (and some of them are monolithic). I still see no sign that any of the equipment was physically moved, of course. No heavy lifting necessary—Yod just thought it all out of existence.
(From what Jon Drake showed me of Peter Nagasawa’s memories, it was done between ten and fifteen Standard years ago, between two of Yod’s idle behavioral experiments, letting humans from the outer world in here to see what they would do. So did he gut it all because what happened to Nagasawa and Harris went so ugly, or was he simply done with it?)
My left eye still won’t open all the way. Of all my injuries, this is the one that’s bothering me the most for some reason. It doesn’t really hurt, especially compared to the rest of me, but it feels like something is pressing into it. I could have a chunk of mountain—or a chunk of Asmodeus—stuck in my face. Assuming I still have all (or any) of my face. I get the odd impression that it’s not just squeamishness that’s keeping me from reaching up and touching it and finding out for sure. It’s like I somehow know if I try, there’ll be something palpable in my way, though it’s probably just knowing that the damage to my muscles and joints will prevent me from raising my arms that high, or make the act more unpleasant than it’s worth.
In the dark, I remember the Pax Keep, or the rubble that was the Pax Keep, like I can see it now. The whole fucking mountain… Not so much a mountain anymore. That marvelous, amazing complex… the dragonfly nurseries… the livestock pens…
Rubble. Like a blasted quarry. The whole mountain.
How many times did they hit it? I wasn’t counting. I think I remember four or five impacts. I was well-buried after the first one. The rest just kept pounding and crushing through the rocks and dirt of my impromptu grave, a few minutes between each world-scarring blast as they recharged and reloaded up in orbit. (Was it just the one mass driver that did all that? Or do they have more now? The files Lisa flashed me had plans and manifests, but no indication of what they’d already managed to cobble together and get online in terms of orbital weapons systems—I expect that’s the secret they’re keeping most guarded.)
I feel a flash of blame, of anger at the ETE. Did the “deal” they made help fuel the orbital construction efforts? Would I have had more time if they hadn’t have been so unbelievably stupid, thinking they could actually bargain with these people?
“You shouldn’t have come.”
The darkness and space is fucking with my memories. Or maybe it’s a head injury. I probably finally passed out. Either that, or my Modded body has an autopilot. But I’m suddenly just back in the moment, another moment, yesterday, right after my infuriating meeting with Jackson: Flying to White Station. Waiting stubbornly in the cold thin outside their airlocks.
Paul. Paul came out to meet me. Alone. Of course he was alone.
“My father still won’t see me. The excuse is network vulnerability. But the others…” His face wrinkled up, like a broken-hearted child, and I saw a ghost of the innocence I thought he’d lost (thanks to me). “They won’t share a space with me. I’m unclean, and not just because I have Mars all over me. And death.”
He hadn’t traded his battle-worn armor-patched sealsuit for a fresh one, hadn’t bothered to try to fit in with his neat and uniform brethren. He didn’t even bother with a helmet and mask. And of course, he was carrying his rifle—the rifle I gave him and taught him how to use—not his people’s Tools.
I realized I could smell him, that he smelled human. I don’t think I ever smelled an ETE in all my time working with them, even staying in their Stations. They’re that obsessive about sterility.
They didn’t stop him from letting me in, didn’t post visible guards, but he was right: any time we entered a section that had white suits, they quickly left, not saying a word and barely glancing at him. Us. It was like they’d all been issued a mandate.
Without me asking, he took me to a containment chamber, through multiple containment walls, to a regeneration tube that looked like a beefed-up version of their implantation couches.
Inside I could see Kah-Terina Sher-Khan. Asleep. Unconscious. Her Companion—still in its Naginata form—was embraced across her chest like she was on-guard. She was still in her Modded form: Her original long-limbed broad-chested Katar adaptive physiology overwritten by an Earth-grav athletic ideal, her people’s pervasive rust-dyed skin cleared to a rich olive-tan, all thanks to her Companion’s default settings. She looked healthy and intact, except for the face over her right eye: Her massive head wound was mostly healed, her skull and facial bones re-grown (probably helped by the rich nutrient media she was being fed), but the part of her face that had been blown away by the explosive round was still that glossy, translucent silicate—the same artificial “skin” that had covered all of her after she’d received devastating radiation burns desperately fighting her way through Yod’s barriers to the Barrow.
“Progress?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Our bio-nanotech teams are intrigued by the Companion interface. Drake was right: There is potential for at least partial memory reconstruction. But recreated memories, no matter how detailed…”
“Won’t be the same,” I agreed. “Might not even be convincing.”
“Like Asmodeus,” he said it before I could. “And will that be her fate, too? The madness of knowing?”
“Asmodeus was insane to begin with,” I tried to be comforting. “The only real difference is the reduced impulse control, the emotional lability. The original version—the mortal version—was a little more reserved.”
We stood there watching her heal, trying to imagine what she would be when she finally woke. I could tell: There was something Paul was reluctant to tell me. I gave him the time he needed to get up the nerve, to find the words:
“The Council… They’ve been in talks with UNMAC. Trying to forestall their demands that we turn over all of our technology and surrender the Stations.”
“And?” I could tell the news wasn’t anything I wanted to hear.
“They’ve agreed to partial cooperation, to provide fuel and oxygen. UNMAC has landed a depot facility in Melas, hooked it up to a Feed.”
(I would find reference to it later in the files Lisa gave me. They called it “Project Wellspring”.)
“They’re gearing up for war,” I told him what he had to already know, what they all had to already know. “They need the fuel for all their new fighters, shuttles. They’re using you until they have the foothold to take your Stations by force. In the meantime, they’ll use the range that fuel gives them to hunt down the locals, round them up for relocation, or hit them from the air if there’s resistance. They won’t work with us. They won’t believe a goddamn thing we say or do. They’re still convinced that your people were behind the Discs, or actively collaborating with whoever was. And because of that, they now think you’re behind us, that you made us to be your agents in a long con, so everything good we’ve done they’re sure is just to lure them into some kind of a trap so we can infect them, infect Earth. They see everything we do through that lens. I’m sure they’re te
sting all the fuel you send them for viral nanotech.”
“I should slip some in,” he partly joked. “But the Council thinks this is the only way to back them off, to buy us time.”
“Time for what?” I almost spat. Paul just shrugged again and shook his head.
“The Council still won’t engage Asmodeus directly. According to Elias Carter, they were just sitting up here watching him build his base at Lucifer’s Grave, watching him send his bots to slaughter the Pax and Katar.” His face hardened again, back into the warrior I made him. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m ashamed to be one of them. I don’t care what their larger agenda is… I can’t even tell you if they’re seriously working on the Harvester issue at all.”
I nearly impulsively asked what the fuck they are working on, what this “larger agenda” is that he hinted at, but I realized he was intentionally not elaborating, not daring to. And I wanted to laugh then, because it was ridiculous: As if Yod has to hear someone say it to know that the ETE are probably trying to figure out a viable defense, a way to resist a being that can manipulate matter at the sub-atomic level, a being that remade two worlds and every living soul on them.
“So in the meantime, they get to milk you for all the fuel they need to ramp up their on-planet operations, and fuck the obvious long-term consequences of that,” I criticized out loud, hoping the Council was listening. “I’m sure they’ll keep negotiating with a smile right up until they blow your hatches open.”
“Do they have a weapon that will disable us?” he asked practically, knowing where I’d just been.
“They have more nukes.”
“They won’t use them against the Stations,” he tried to be sure. “They can’t.”
“But we both know they’re working on something. They’ve had Colonel Ava to study this whole time. I’m sure they haven’t wasted a minute of it.”
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 6