by Mark Jeffrey
And it had been the right choice.
“So she tricked you,” Hardin suggested. “It was a trick.”
Max hesitated a moment, and then said, “Yes.” It was close enough to the truth to satisfy Max for now. The Pendant had been a trick on many levels. Siren had tricked Max into inadvertently revealing the location of the Pendant. And Jadeth had tricked Siren and followed him. And in the end, Enki — Mr. E — had tricked both Enlil and Jadeth. But without Max making the right choices and staring down evil all along the way, the trap for Jadeth would have fallen apart.
“How?” Hardin asked.
“I thought you just got here?” Ulrich said at the same time. “How can you not know of the Bondsman and yet at the same time have given the Pendant to Jadeth?”
Sparkle shook his head slowly.
“He wasn’t around at the time,” Max said. “He showed up after I left.”
Ulrich seemed to accept this.
“So where did you go?”
Max weighed for a moment and then said, “I time travelled. I was in the past.”
Ulrich had to replay that several times in his mind before he spoke again. “You time travelled. You have a time machine?”
“No,” Max said. “You seem to know about the Pyramid of the Arches. But do you know what the Arches themselves do?” Everyone shook their head; evidently the Tale of Max Quick didn’t include this detail. “They go to different times and place. I went through one of them into the past. And then I went through another one — and ended up here.”
As they absorbed this, another solider spoke up: “So your power … you say it was bred into you by these Archons. Why?”
“They thought they’d have control of me from birth,” Max said. “They were wrong.”
“You’re a weapon,” Ulrich summarized, eyes glinting.
Max nodded. “You could say that, yes.”
“And the Archons intended you for some purpose befitting this great power. What was that purpose?”
Careful, Max breathed. “I’m not sure. But I can tell you that the Archons are always hungry. They feed on fear and misery. There’s never enough for them. They’re always trying to make more. So whatever they were up to with me, it wasn’t anything good.”
“What about you?” Ulrich pressed. His bright green eyes bored into Max now. “You were made by Archons. How do we know you don’t serve them?”
“Your power,” the soldier added, “it would be of the sort of that the Bondsman has. And you can time travel. How do we know that you won’t simply go into the past and became the Bondsman? Maybe it would be best if we just killed you now.”
Max scanned the expectant eyes across from him. “No. I’m not the Bondsman.” Please let that be true. “Nor will I ever be. Maybe the Archons intended me to be the Bondsman, I don’t know. But I’m on your side. I promise you. Despite our differences, even Marvin Sparkle knows that.”
Ulrich looked at Sparkle who nodded reluctantly.
“So. Will you help us defeat the Bondsman?” Ulrich asked.
“Sure,” Max replied. “Yes. Of course yes. That’s the whole reason I’m here. I want the Bondsman gone as much as you do. I hate that guy.”
Ulrich conversed momentarily with Marvin Sparkle. Then, he said very loudly, “Marvin Sparkle. The actions of Max Quick are now upon your head. Do you accept this?”
Sparkle nodded and looked pointedly at Max. “I do.”
Ulrich nodded. “Very well then. We will trust Max Quick provisionally.”
Max nodded in return. “Thank you.”
“Now,” Ulrich snapped. “We have a major military action planned for tomorrow. It is an aerial assault on Region 99. Max, you are probably unaware of it, but this is one of the Bondsman’s major bases in the region. Our Sky Chambers will rise from the depths of Mirror Lake in the deep of night, silently, all lights muted so that no one in Camp Griswold will see them depart. They will fly until the early morning, and strike at sunrise.
“You, Max Quick, you will fly a Battle Throne. You will engage behind — “
“No,” Max said.
There was a brief silence of surprise.
“What do you mean,” Ulrich said, chewing every word as though it was made of thorns, “… No?”
Sparkle looked at Max in horror.
“I mean no!” Max nearly shouted. “Look. None of your assassination attempts ever work, right? Why is that? Because the Bondsman wants you to try and kill him! He feeds on it, because his masters, the Archons, feed on it. They love it when you feel all that hatred, when you boil over! And that’s the whole point of the Bondsman. He’s supposed to inspire war, suffering, all of it. You can’t defeat the Bondsman with war because he loves war. You can’t just attack him with military machinery. That’s what makes him so devilishly clever. Even if you win, it doesn’t matter. Anyone who wins just serves his ends.”
“So … you will not fight?” Ulrich said, mouth looking like he was tasting acid. “You refuse?”
“Yes. Because a frontal attack on the Bondsman won’t work,” Max said flatly. I’ve tried that, and this is why we’re all here.
Ulrich looked like he’d just been slapped.
“Look. You can’t just attack him,” Max said. “Believe me, I’ve made this exact same —” He almost said, mistake, but stopped short, realizing he’d then have to explain about the Machine. About what he’d done.
“Look. There are only two possible outcomes. One, the Bondsman defeats you. Which is probably what happens, let’s be honest. Or, two, you actually manage to win. But the problem with winning is that then you become the very thing that you were fighting.”
Ulrich looked a question at him. “How is that?”
“The Bondsman is working with the Archons — Eaters of Time — and that is how they rig the game. The make it so that if you win, it’ll turn out that you were actually helping them the whole time.” The Machine, Max breathed. That damned bloody Machine. The reason the Bondsman had even been allowed to exist in the first place. “I can’t tell how it will happen. I don’t know that. But believe me, it will. It’s how they work.”
“So you suggest we do nothing?” Ulrich said.
Max shook his head. “No. I just want you all to understand how this works. If we lose, then we lose, but if we win, then we still lose.”
Ulrich eyes narrowed. “That like you’ve given up.”
“Of course not!” Max shouted back, stung. “I want him gone just as much as you do! I just — we have to be careful. Normal strategies won’t work here. We have to be clever.”
“So you won’t fight,” Ulrich said.
“Of course I’ll fight!” Max said, standing now. “I’m just not stupid enough to fight in the same way again.”
Marvin Sparkle’s eyes went to the ground. He sighed in annoyance.
“What do you mean, the same way again?” Ulrich asked.
Max looked around the room. He had already told these people so much truth! And their lives were hard. Everyone here was gaunt, not well fed, not well rested. They’d probably been this way for most of their lives. This was normal to them. A good laugh was probably beyond their normal every day to day existence. There was war during the waking hours — and the horror of The Dream at night.
“I fought the Archons once,” Max said. “I told you I went back in time. I did. To 1912. The Archons had built a Machine. It was —“
“No!” Marvin Sparkle shouted. “Do not!”
“They need to hear this!” Max growled. “They’re going to make the same mistake otherwise!”
“They won’t understand,” Sparkle boomed. “All they’ll hear is what you did!”
Max nodded. “Maybe. And they’ll make their own choices after they hear it. But I can’t just sit here and not tell them. I owe them an explanation as to why I will not fly a Battle Throne. I need to try to make them understand.”
“They’ll kill you,” Sparkle said quietly. “By God, they’ll kill you.�
�
“They can’t,” Max said. “You know that. There’s no way anyone in this room can stand against me.”
“Max Quick,” Ulrich said, eyes full of wet pain and horror, “I cannot believe that you will not join in our fight if your heart is true. Do you hate the Bondsman as you say? Or will you become the Bondsman? Why will you not fight?”
“Ulrich. Listen to me,” Max said. “I know this is hard to understand. I was like you back in 1912. I attacked —“
“In 1912?” the Indian woman said pointedly.
“Yes. 1912. That’s where I went. That hole they found in New York City? The one where they discovered Sky Chambers? I made that. I did that. That was me.”
The murmur that arose was almost deafening.
“There was a Machine. It was built by Niburians, but it was of Archonic design. I thought it was something that was going to be used for great evil. I mean, I knew it was of Archonic design! And I knew Millicent Madworth was a Niburian and that she was up to no good. And I knew they were torturing children —! I mean, who wouldn’t try to stop that? Who wouldn’t try to destroy it? Even though Europa Romani tried to talk me out of it, I decided to attack. She thought I was rash. I thought she was a coward.
“And so I did. I attacked. And so Gaspar Faliero, Carlos Gustav, Sambhava, and yes, yes, yes, even Michelle, lost their lives in the attack. We succeeded. And in that success lay our failure. Because I destroyed The Machine, I ripped apart a fundamental strut that holds reality together. It was my power the Archons were after. That was the whole point of the Machine, to goad me into destroying it — and thus use my power to complete their plans. They didn’t control me from birth, no, but they did find a way to control me afterwards.
“And now they’re controlling you. They’re using your hatred and your fear to make you do what they want. You actually think an army and a fleet of Sky Chambers will be effective against the Bondsman. Ha! And that’s exactly what he wants you to think, what he wants you to do. Attack! Shoot! Hurt! Maim! He loves it! Because no matter who wins, he wins. Or they win. Because the Archons are his puppet masters. They’re the ones you need to worry about, not some idiot in a golden mask. That’s just a symptom, not the disease.”
“This fundamental strut of reality, as you put it,” the Indian woman pressed. “Describe this to us.”
Marvin Sparkle stood in alarm. But Max ignored him and took a deep breath. Moment of truth. “The Machine was powered by a past version of myself. It used our combined power, set each of us against the other. All that power … it was too much for the structure of reality. The Machine was specifically made to channel that conflict in a particular way — to break the structure of reality. I set my power against the Machine, and the result was that history can now be changed, altered, rewritten. This isn’t 1977 as it was supposed to be — you’re all living in an alternate 1977. The Bondsman isn’t supposed to be here. Everything since 1912 is now different, wrong.”
Ulrich absorbed this for a moment and then said: “I don’t understand.”
“It used to be that the past couldn’t be altered. Time travel couldn’t change anything,” Max explained. “‘The tyranny of the page is absolute’, as one person used to say. He meant that what’s written is written and can’t be rewritten. But not any more. Because I destroyed the Machine in 1912, everything since that moment is up for grabs. It can all be changed. It has been changed. This isn’t the 1977 that was supposed to be here.”
“What was supposed to be here?” the Indian woman asked.
“The Beatles. Queen. Elton John. Happy Days. Silly Putty. Monopoly. All kinds of things. Instead, you have the Bondsman and Sky Chambers.”
“So you’re saying we’re living in an alternate timeline?” Hardin asked. “You mean, right now?”
“Yes,” Max replied. “That’s right. And an alternate timeline shouldn’t be possible. But it is — because of me, because I destroyed the Machine. I opened the door for all of this.”
Deep breath. And then: “The Bondsman is my fault.”
That did it. They all gasped, of course. Their lives had been ruined because of Max Quick, just as they had believed their entire lives. The version that the Bondsman told was a lie, that Tale of Max Quick, but the core of it, the essential message of that story was actually true. He had betrayed them all.
Ulrich’s hands became fists. His old bones snapped and cracked under the strain. Rage strained the veins in his neck. They stood out like ropes beneath his reddening skin.
“Now you’ve done it,” Marvin Sparkle said. “Now they will never trust you again.”
“Because I told them the truth?” Max said. “Then fine. If they can’t accept the truth, I don’t need their trust. But I do want them to know why I won’t fly the chair. It isn’t because I’m afraid. They need to know that. And they need to know that no matter how many Sky Chambers they throw at the Bondsman, it won’t make any difference. They can’t win that way. They’re making the exact same mistake I did. I’m trying to help them see that.”
Ulrich stood, shaking with rage. “You are responsible for the Bondsman,” he said. “You did this to us.”
“Yes,” Max said. “It wasn’t intentional. I was tricked. But yes I did this to you.”
“And now you refuse to fight with us,” Ulrich said, still not looking at Max, not being able to. If he viewed the focus of his rage he might explode into raw violence. “You refuse to use the most powerful weapon we have, when it is well within your power to do so?”
“Yes,” Max confirmed. “But haven’t you heard anything I’ve said? The Archons are tricking you right now, just like they tricked me. They want you to keep waging war. They want you to keep attacking the Bondsman. They feed off it and —“
“Or you are the Bondsman,” Ulrich said, voice shaking with rage. “Or you will become him at some point. Or you’re in league with him now. Why else would you refuse to help us? And why else would you seek to dissuade us from attacking him?”
“No,” Max said. “You’re wrong. I’m on your side.”
“Then fight by our side,” Ulrich said, his voice breaking. “Prove it.”
“No,” Max replied.
“Then I must assume the worst about you, Max Quick. I must assume that what I’ve been told about you since I was a child is true,” Ulrich said, barely above a whisper.
Then Ulrich reached a decision. “You refuse to fight. And by your own admission, you have inflicted the Bondsman on all of humanity. I don’t need any other reason. Either of those would be reason enough.”
Ulrich drew a deep breath — and then drew his gun.
“Kill him,” Ulrich commanded. “Kill him as dead as you can. Kill him fifty times. Kill him in the head, the heart, and anywhere else. And then kill him again — just to be sure.”
Nine: The Heist
ENKI WAS pacing in the company’s suite at the Rosewood Arms. Outside the grand window, City 29 of the North American Region was waking for their normal Sunday twelve-hour work routine, for there was never a day off in the Bondsman’s world.
Casey and Sasha was still in their room talking: Casey still hadn’t quite got her head screwed back on from her encounter with the Cody Chance of this timeline.
Ian busied himself with the television, take a good look for the first time at the Bondsman-controlled media.
There weren’t very many channels. The first one he encountered seemed to be a 24-hour news continuous feed. “Huh. ‘BNN’,” Ian said with a snicker. Maurice looked at him quizzically. “Bondsman News Network,” Ian explained. “Like CNN.”
When Maurice still seemed puzzled, Enki said without looking up, “1977.”
“Oh. Right,” Ian replied. “Keep forgetting that. This doesn’t seem like 1977 at all.” Maurice had never been alive in the original timeline when CNN was popular; it wasn’t a reference he would understand.
Beneath a portrait of the every-present golden face that stared down on everyone like the death ma
sk of an ancient Pharoah, a young woman was reporting on a rebel insurgency somewhere near a place called Iron Valley. The footage showed a battle over a mountainous region — one fleet of Sky Chambers versus another. Ian noticed that one side seemed to have particularly bad pilots — he could tell, he knew how to pilot a Sky Chamber himself. Their control was inexact; they wobbled sloppily. And they slowed down before turns, as if they were flying an airplane, like they actually had to deal with inertia. Sky Chambers did not have these limitations; they could make hairpin, ninety-degree turns at fantastic velocities with no problem whatsoever.
A ferocious battle raged in the clouds. A few battered and beaten Sky Chambers were dashed across the mountainsides, falling, burning with a blue plasma fire in slow-motion, it seemed, as they collided with a snow-capped shoulder of stone. The camera-work was frantic: it zoomed and blurred and refocused and went from stable to shaky and then all over again.
Ian could feel the inexperienced pilots flinch whenever an energy weapon hit them. This was because they had not trained themselves to react properly: a Sky Chamber was piloted by a mind interface wherein the pilot became the Sky Chamber — they lost all sense of their physical body, and instead, they inhabited the Sky Chamber fully with their consciousness: it became their new body of flying stone and gems. The hull of the ship was their skin; the gemstones that provided motion, their legs. When a pilot fired, their arms hurled gouts of energy.
Thus, it was in many was like hand-to-hand combat.
Except the hull was not your skin: you did not actually feel pain when an energy blast hit your craft. The experienced pilots knew this, and had trained the instinct to flinch out of their fighting style — the inexperienced had not. And this hesitation, this split second, cost them dearly.
Ian deduced that the inexperienced pilots were the rebels: they had evidently stolen Sky Chambers, but had not had any way to practice with them before launching their assault.