by Tad Williams
"Ah," he said brightly. "Doctor Kunohara, I presume?" Paul understood what Martine had meant—Wells' sim did indeed look slightly less than realistic. The pale hair and the general shape of the face echoed what he had seen in newsnet footage of the technocrat, but there was something unfinished, almost doll-like about the features.
Kunohara was tight-lipped. "Yes, it is me. But I do not recall inviting you here, Wells. You are even wearing one of my scientists' jumpsuits, I see. What of the agreement I had with the Brotherhood?"
Wells looked briefly and incuriously at Paul before turning back to Kunohara. "Oh, the Brotherhood. Well, that ship ran into a bit of an iceberg, if you haven't heard." He laughed breathily. Paul did not know the man, but thought he seemed strange, almost a little mad. "Oh, yes, the Old Man screwed that up pretty damn thoroughly. Then got bumped off by one of his own employees, no less. A corporate power play, I suppose you'd call it, although the timing was unfortunate," His not-quite-human smile didn't fade. "Everything's gone to hell now, really. But it's not all bad. We just have to stay in the saddle until everything calms down again."
Kunohara's expression had not changed. "You make jokes, Wells, but as you do so, you are trying to destroy my home, the things I have built here."
Wells swayed a little as the beetle changed position underneath him. "Not me! I'm just along for the ride. It's my new friends you want to talk to." He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. Paul's heart raced as two mismatched figures appeared over the edge of the stone. It was all he could do not to run, to trust Kunohara's failing abilities instead. "It's not even you they're after, Kunohara, it's your guests," Wells said. Now he looked at Paul again, the smile lazy and a bit disconnected. "Apparently they've gotten on the wrong side of the new management. If you'd just hand them over to the boys," he cocked his head at the approaching pair, "I'm sure you'd be welcome to join us." He leaned forward and winked. "Time to choose up sides, you know. At the moment, it's not a hard choice at all."
Paul hardly registered Wells' words. He was fixed in sickly fascination on the two creatures moving toward them, the sagging, fleshy caterpillar and the albino cricket—Mullet and Finch—no, that had only been their names in the trenches. Mudd and Finney.
A spark of memory. Mudd and Finney . . . a dark room, two mismatched shapes. . . .
It was gone. Paul shuddered. They were as horrible to look at as they always were, no matter the incarnation, and every sensible instinct shrieked at him to run as fast and far away from them as he could—but still, something was subtly different this time. Only as they reached Wells and stopped on either side of the beetle did Paul begin to understand what it was.
"What do you want?" the Finney-cricket asked in a scraping, petulant voice. "The new master says hurry. He is impatient for us to secure these creatures."
"If we help him," the Mudd-caterpillar rumbled, "he will give us the little queen."
"Yes, the little queen." The eyeless cricket rubbed its forelegs together in pleased anticipation. "We have hunted for her so long. . . !" It turned its smooth head toward Kunohara and Paul. "And what are these things? Prisoners?"
"Do we eat them?" the caterpillar inquired, rearing up so that the front half of its huge heavy body towered over them both.
Paul took a step back in alarm, but there was a surge of elation, I'm right, he thought. I don't feel that terrible, sickening fear I've felt in the past—and look at them! They don't even recognize me.
Wells appeared to consider the caterpillar's request for a moment. "No, I think not. Kunohara, at least, will be a useful source of conversation in this godforsaken place." He smiled and nodded. "But you really better let them have the others, Doctor K. This pair are pretty damn single-minded. . . ."
"We will bring the new master the ones who spoke through the air," the blind cricket rasped, "and then he will let us have our little queen. Our lively, lovely larva."
"I miss her," the caterpillar said, something like a fond smile twisting its tusky mouth. "So pale, so fat. . . ! When we find her, I will nibble on all of her dozens of little toes!"
Paul now knew for certain that these versions of the Twins were not the remorseless creatures who had stalked him through so many worlds, but something more like the Pankies, oblivious to him, consumed with a quest of their own. A memory of Undine Pankie came to him then, her doughy face transfixed by some grotesque instinct just like the caterpillar's, babbling about "my dear Viola. . . ."
Viola. Something tickled his thoughts. Viola. Vaala. Avialle.
Ava.
". . . I must insist you turn them away, Wells," Kunohara was sputtering. "This is my house, my domain, and whatever has changed, I still insist on my rights. No guests of mine will be taken from under my roof."
Wells nodded, the soul of reason. "Oh, sure, I understand. But what's that old saying about cutting off your nose to spite your face? You don't really want to go up against the new boss, Kunohara. As for me, I have no pull with him at all—not yet, anyway. Nothing personal, but I just can't help you."
The cricket and the caterpillar, slow and self-absorbed as their thoughts were, nevertheless had begun to pay attention. "This is the one?" the cricket whined, pale blind face turning to Kunohara. "This is the one who keeps us from the others?"
With a squelching noise like a giant water mattress, the caterpillar moved closer. A ripple passed through its legs as those nearest Paul stretched toward him, the tips curling and clenching. "They keep us from the little queen. . . ?"
"Enough," Kunohara said, and gestured. A moment later the-stone outcrop was gone and Paul, caught by surprise, stumbled and sat down in the middle of Kunohara's bubble-house.
"What happened?" asked Florimel. "We couldn't hear. . . ."
Paul turned on Kunohara. "Why didn't you blast them—snow or wind or something, one of your god-tricks? We were far enough away from the house. . . ."
"Something blocked me in their presence." Kunohara was clearly troubled. "Their new master, this Dread it must be, has protected them. He is playing tricks with my world." The worried look changed to a scowl. "But I will not be destroyed so easily. Not in my own home."
The wasps had become more agitated on top of the bubble, the slowly moving tapestry of chitin now sped until it was almost a liquid blur, their buzzing so intense it made the air in the transparent house vibrate.
"Op that!" T4b shouted. He took a hurried step back and knocked Paul staggering. Just above their heads the weight of the swarming creatures had begun to push the arch of the dome downward. "Don't get out of here, be six-meat, us!"
One of the stingers finally ripped through the fabric of the dome and the pressing weight began to widen the tear. Even Kunohara stared in shock as one of the deformed creatures slid into the hole in the fast-collapsing membrane. It hung above them for a moment, kicking its huge black legs like a horse dangling from a chandelier.
"Downstairs," Kunohara shouted. He snatched at Paul's arm and shoved him toward the steps leading to the lower chamber. The others tumbled after them as the first wasp finally fell through and landed on the floor of the upper room. It stood, eyes staring blankly from its caricature human face, then several of its fellows rattled down on top of it, knocking Kunohara's furnishings into splinters as they struggled mindlessly to disentangle themselves.
When all the humans had reached the room below, Kunohara flicked his fingers at the door atop the stairwell to close it behind them; when it did not respond, he snatched at it and began pulling it down. T4b and Florimel leaped up to help him, but a flailing leg pushed through before they could close it. With a shout he barely recognized as coming from his own mouth, Paul snatched the first thing he could find, a small table, and hammered on the leg until it snapped. Gray liquid spurted through the trapdoor, but Kunohara and the others were able to ram it shut and latch it.
Overwhelmed, Paul stared at the severed leg lying on the transparent floor, still twitching slightly. Beneath his feet, perhaps stirred by what
was happening on the surface, the spidery postlarval shrimp swarmed toward the transparent bottom of the bubble, stalk-eyes swiveling, legs stroking. The rumbling hum from the upper room grew louder. The trapdoor began to bulge inward beneath the weight of the creatures swarming in through the torn roof.
"Sixed, us," T4b panted. "Take some of them crawlies with us, though."
"No." Kunohara pointed to a place on the floor. "Stand there."
Martine was holding her hands to her ears, overwhelmed by the buzzing. "What are you going to do?"
"The only thing left to do," Kunohara said, raising his voice as the din overhead grew even louder. "Their field of defense now surrounds this place, too—I cannot even transport myself! But with you gone, perhaps I can still salvage something." He took Martine's arm and directed her roughly toward the spot he had indicated.
"What, he give us to the bugs?" T4b shouted. "Chance not. . . !"
Kunohara hissed with fury and desperation. "Have you not already brought enough ruin on me? Must you insult me, too? Get on that damned spot!"
Paul seized T4b and shoved him to the place where Martine and Florimel already stood. The floor abruptly bulged downward into a round concavity. T4b slipped and dragged Martine and Florimel to the bottom as well. "Gonna drown us, him!" T4b shrieked.
Paul looked back at Kunohara, whose returned glance explained nothing, then abandoned himself to trust and slid down into the growing blister. As the bubble-material bulged outward, the water of the river abruptly surrounded them, the congregation of translucent shrimp now only inches away.
Paul shouted back at Kunohara, "What about you?"
"There is another thing I must do, otherwise they will simply catch you floating here. Brace yourselves." He turned his back on Paul and began another series of elaborate gestures. As if in response, thunder boomed outside, momentarily outstripping the angry murmuring of the wasps. Lightning flared, a murky flash seen through the water that now almost totally surrounded them. The bulge had become a small bubble, connected only by a shrinking hole to the rest of the house. Paul was crushed between Florimel and T4b, scarcely able to move. Kunohara dropped his hands like a conductor at the finish of a symphony and the hole through which Paul was watching him abruptly narrowed, then disappeared. With a sudden bounce that made Paul's stomach drop toward his feet the bubble popped free of the house that had birthed it and rose swiftly toward the river's surface.
The pressure was so strong that the sphere actually shot entirely out of the water before falling back, throwing Paul and his companions into each other, elbows and heads and knees all making painful contact. The momentary sense of freedom was short-lived. They had surfaced only a small distance from the house and its swarming blanket of insects. Rain was pounding down on all sides now, huge drops that smashed the surface of the river into a froth and bounced their tiny, spherical life raft like a child's ball.
Paul untangled himself from his companions and pressed his face against the bubble wall. Even the hammering rain had not slowed the Twins' assault: the bridge to the land was now complete, a hundred thousand wasps and beetles twined together across the agitated water. In a lightning-illuminated moment he saw the cricket and the caterpillar making their way unhurriedly down the stone outcrop and onto the landward end of the insectile chain, like conquerors mounting a castle's drawbridge. Paul couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw Wells spurring his beetle behind them.
"They have seen us!" Florimel shouted, and for a moment Paul had no idea what she meant—the Twins and Wells were surely too far away to attach any significance to their bubble, surrounded as it was by others kicked up naturally in the rain-pummeled water. Then he saw that some of the mutated wasps were swimming toward them, floundering across the water with purpose in their movements if not on their blank faces. Several had already been swept away by the roiling waters, but dozens more were still paddling on with the awkward determination of dogs.
Their spherical ark was splashed by another massive raindrop and slipped sideways, bobbing and spinning. Paul had to brace himself against its curvature to keep his balance. When he could see out again, another glare of lightning showed him the Twins, now poised atop the shattered parabola of Kunohara's bubble. The mantle of wasps squirmed wildly, perhaps struggling to make an entrance for their commanders. A river-tossed stick almost half the size of the house bumped past, caught in the current, and scraped away a few of the hundreds of wasps clinging to the house. Leaves and bits of wood and grass were scattered across the surface of the river. Paul looked up to the cataract behind the house and saw that a great clot of debris had formed, an accidental dam of twigs and leafmold, trembling with the force of the water rushing over it and through its interstices.
The rains, he thought distractedly, so much rain. There must be a lot of water and other things trapped behind that rubbish.
What had Kunohara said? "There is another thing I must do. . . ."
"Oh my God!" Paul shouted. "Hold on—brace yourselves!"
"We are already fighting just to keep upright. . . ." Florimel began, but Paul put his foot against her hip and pushed her back against the curve of the bubble. "Just brace yourself. It's going to be. . . ."
As the lightning flashed again, he saw the great wedge of debris lurch and change shape across the top of the cataract. For a moment the waterfall was almost completely choked off—a change so great that even the misshapen pair on top of Kunohara's house turned to look behind them. As the effect of this throttling of the flow reached Paul and the others the current grew momentarily mud and their bubble settled deeper in the water. Then the clot broke apart and the river surged over the fall like a fist made of green water and white foam, smashing down on Kunohara's house and the insects, driving the whole mass beneath the surface in an explosion of spray.
The wall of water rushed across the surface of the pool toward Paul and his companions, caught them up, then hurled them screaming out over the lower cataract, so that for a moment they were freefalling through the air above the dark, rain-whipped river like a star that had plummeted from the heavens.
The destruction of Rome was in full swing now, and the smoke of the burning could be seen as far away as the vineyards of Campania—a defeat of staggeringly unprecedented proportions. But the Romans, citizens and slaves, could have been forgiven for being caught unprepared, since the massive assault had arrived out of nowhere, and almost three hundred years late.
Before this day had dawned, Tigellinus had reigned two years as emperor. The onetime horse trader was still popular, not so much because of his own acts, although he had been a careful steward, but because of the hatred in which the people of Rome had come to hold his predecessor Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors, in the days before his assassination. It was not just Tigellinus, many Romans suggested—even one of his horses would have been an improvement over Nero.
In fact, as of the day before, all had seemed more than well in the Mother of all Cities. A March tramontane wind had swept the skies clean, and spring had seemed to sprout almost immediately in its wake, luring buds out of the branches of the chestnut trees, turning the hills green. Strangely, even the College of Augurs had offered no warning of anything amiss—the most recent sacrifices had gone smoothly, and all the signs had suggested a happy year for the emperor and his people. The empire itself was quite secure. There were still skirmishes at the outer fringes of the Roman world, but generally the idea of war had become little more than the setting for stories told by old soldiers in the wineshops who had fought in Britain or the forests of Gaul. No one had expected any sort of attack. let alone one by a long-dead enemy—especially when that enemy's city had been dust almost as long as he had.
On that late March morning, Hannibal's army had simply appeared as if sprung from a god's hand. Hundreds of years earlier, the Carthaginian's crossing of the Alps had caught the Romans by surprise. This time, Hannibal Barca and his armies had found some even more startling way of traveling. The
first anyone knew of his presence was black smoke trailing in the sky just north of the city and the first terrified refugees fleeing down the main roads into Rome itself. Within a few hours fires were burning in many places inside the city walls and the corpses of citizens were being defiled on the Field of Mars.
The city was largely undefended. The Senate had fled south down the Via Appia at the first reports of invasion, some of the senators making themselves notable by crushing other refugees beneath the wheels of their carts in their hurry to escape. The most respected men of the day were far from Rome, in large part because Tigellinus had preferred it that way, all Rome's defenders and generals scattered. And, of course, Hannibal's old enemies Scipio and Marcellus were centuries dead.
The Praetorian Guard fought nobly, but against ten thousand shrieking Carthaginians they could do little; Hannibal's armies cut their way down the Via Triumphalis like a knife through hot fat. Emperor Tigellinus was dragged from the Golden House with his arms bound behind him. Hannibal himself climbed down from his black horse and beat the emperor to death with a stick—a mark of respect, of sorts.
The most bizarre thing in what would become a week of horrors too great to comprehend, was not just that the monster Hannibal of Carthage should rise from his ancient grave, but that he should storm Rome with an army of men who looked so much like himself—in fact, some survivors swore that every soldier was absolutely identical. It was at least certain that instead of the diverse band of mercenaries he had used the first time he had come down into Italy in the days of the Republic, Ligurians and Gauls, Spaniards and Greeks, this time there was a strange uniformity to his troops—each and every one small but well-knit, with black skin, long dark hair, and a strange Asian cast to his eyes. Wherever they were from, they burned and pillaged and murdered with a cruelty so savage and arbitrary that even in the early hours of the assault some Romans swore that the very pits of the Earth had opened and belched forth this army of demons. By the end of the first day, scarcely anyone would have argued.