by Dan Abnett
‘Eisenhorn?’ asked Macks, looking back at him.
Voriet nodded.
‘I think Harlon’s right,’ he said.
‘We keep going anyway,’ insisted Drusher. He took another couple of steps, looked up and saw a hunched, stained skeleton looking down at him from the top of the steps. Jade light glinted in its vacant orbits. It began to step towards them.
‘Back?’ he said.
‘They’re already on the stairs,’ Nayl shouted.
Drusher raised his pistol and fired. The shot clipped the animation’s head, above the left eye, splintering bone, and almost swung the skull around through a hundred and eighty degrees. The animating force in it broke and died, and the bones collapsed and tumbled down the steps. Some dropped over the edge through the rails. Macks and Drusher flinched to avoid the ones that bounced past their feet.
‘Get moving!’ Nayl shouted from behind them. They started to run. Drusher wondered what else might be waiting for them at the top.
‘What does it mean when a gun does this?’ he asked, showing the pistol to Macks as they took the steps two at a time. The slide was jammed and locked all the way back.
‘It means it’s empty,’ she replied.
She looked back at Nayl.
‘Nayl, we’re all out of specials,’ she cried.
‘Damn,’ said Nayl.
‘Nayl!’ she cried. She’d seen something behind him.
The animations were already ascending after them, the slower ones hobbling one step at a time. But one was moving fast, much faster than the others. It was pushing past them, scrambling after the four fleeing humans.
It was lithe, jet-black and gleaming. Macks realised that its strange appearance was simply because it was covered, head to foot, in promethium residue.
It was Streekal. The oil filming her staring eyes was backlit by the green glow inside her head, like the rangefinder in a battlesuit’s visor. Her mouth was open and slack, and viscous ropes of promethium drooled out of it.
‘Move! Move! Move!’ yelled Nayl. He wasn’t sure if he and Voriet could reach the top of the stairs before Streekal reached them. But he knew for sure that even if they did, they no longer had any way of stopping her.
They ran for the top of the stairs. Nayl picked up Voriet again. Drusher and Macks reached the top. They looked around. There was nothing on the platform, no horrors looming to grab at them.
They turned.
‘Nayl! Run!’ Drusher yelled. He unlocked the slide and fired his pistol at Streekal, hoping Macks was wrong. The snub simply clicked dry.
‘Come on! Come on!’ he yelled.
‘Just get clear!’ Nayl roared back, straining at his limit to run and carry the interrogator. Streekal was only twenty steps behind them, ploughing up the stairs tirelessly, the light gleaming off her oil-swathed form.
Macks drew her laspistol.
‘That won’t do any good,’ Drusher yelled at her. ‘Haven’t you got the hang of this yet? Normal fire won’t–’
‘Shut up!’ she cried. She was fiddling frantically with the weapon, unlocking and resetting the powercell. With a snap of her wrist, she pulled a connector loose then rammed the energy clip back in.
Nayl and Voriet reached the top of the stairs. Drusher grabbed them and hauled them onto the platform so violently, all three fell sprawling together.
Macks turned to face the oncoming Streekal. The glistening black figure was only a few metres away. She could see the oil welling out of Streekal’s open mouth and spattering down her chest.
Macks dropped the laspistol onto the top step.
‘Everybody down!’ she yelled, throwing herself clear.
Drusher heard a high-pitched whine. It got fiercer and louder. A warning signal. Macks had rigged the pistol’s energy clip to overload and discharge.
Streekal reached the top five steps. The pistol detonated like a small bomb, releasing all of its significant charge in one bright flash of energy. The blinding explosion blew the weapon apart and took the upper three steps of the staircase with it. Metal shattered. Handrails buckled and spun away. The expanding ball of heat and light enveloped Streekal.
It didn’t harm her at all. But the promethium vapour fuming around her ignited. She was engulfed in a sheet of flame, becoming a burning effigy of a human figure.
She kept moving, but the top of the staircase, wrecked by the blast, was shearing away from the platform. The entire stair structure broke away from the top, dipping slowly and catastrophically into space, spilling the animations, fast and slow alike, off its collapsing length. They dropped away into the darkness below, some glancing and bouncing off the gears and struts of the whirring machine.
The staircase broke off at the base, wrenching away from the catwalk supports, and tumbled after the things it had shrugged off into the air. It fell, grinding and screeching, bending and crumpling.
Streekal fell, arms and legs moving uselessly.
Like a comet, trailing fire, she dropped into the depths. The flames of her descent were visible long after all the other plummeting animations had vanished from view.
Then her light vanished too. She had gone back where she had come from, down to the very base of Keshtre’s tower.
‘Holy Throne,’ breathed Drusher, looking down.
Far below, the darkness winked and flickered. There was a sudden glow, red and dull, that swiftly grew brighter and more fierce.
The promethium sump at the base of the tower had ignited.
TWENTY-THREE
The Torment
The fire had been burning for a while. At first, it was far away, down in the darkness where no one could see it, just a dull red glow, roiling in the blackness. It looked as though it would never be serious, never really catch hold, that it would burn itself out and grow cold.
But fire has been deceiving man since it was first given to him by the gods. Or since he first stole it from them. Stories differ. The only truth that matters is that fire likes to betray. It has burned man’s hand since first he took possession of it. When he thinks it is extinguished, it leaps back into life and reveals itself in fury, suddenly overwhelming, all-consuming and too strong to fight.
So with this fire. From the dullest glow to a seething inferno, from nothing to everything in the beat of a heart, taking hold, devouring all, leaving nothing but ashes.
Its heat was upon him, stifling him. Its light was in his eyes. His skin was blistering and flaking. His bones were beginning to fuse and melt.
He heard the constant rattling of the Loom, spinning towards eternity, despite the conflagration that enveloped it. But the noise of the Loom and the roaring rush of the fire were both drowned out by the chirring in the air. The clicking whispers. The sound of a trillion invisible insects stridulating in the back of his mind.
He could bear the heat no longer. He was being burned away. The door to the dark room was open, and hard sunlight shafted in from outside. Despite its glare, the light looked cool compared to the flames that lit him from head to toe.
He got up to reach for it. He pulled his burning body from the rough cot to claw at the light.
‘Stay still,’ the robed man said gently.
‘I burn…’ he gasped.
‘It is the Torment,’ the man told him. ‘I’m sorry, this is what it does. We have tried many things to ease the pain. Stasis fields. Ice baths. Opiates. Induced coma. Other victims have told me that it burns like hell’s fury even in their dreams.’
‘Is this a dream?’ he asked. His voice was small, without substance, like burning paper lifting into the air as it crisped away.
‘I’m sorry, no,’ said the robed man. ‘Lie back. You are too weak.’
‘I will get up,’ he insisted. He hauled himself up. The robed man reached to steady him. Why aren’t you burning, he thought. I am on fire, you touch me, your hands are on me. Why aren’t you burning too?
He shuffled to the open door. The robed man supported him.
‘I don
’t know your name,’ the robed man said. ‘You were brought to us in…. in this condition. You carried no identity. These are the first words you have spoken.’
‘I… My name… is Gregor. Gregor Eisenhorn.’
‘I will do all I can to help you, Gregor Eisenhorn,’ the robed man said softly.
They stepped out into the light. The air was humid. He could see the deep blue sky above. He could smell the sea. Beyond the old stone walls of the garden, lush green vegetation rose, the skirts of a rainforest that blanketed the sheer flanks of the volcanic flue that stood in the distance, a ghost in the heat-haze.
The chirring of the insects was louder. Uncountable insects chirping in the jungle thickets beyond the ancient walls.
‘Where is this?’ Eisenhorn asked, squinting in the bright sunlight. ‘Is this some other part of Keshtre?’
‘I don’t know where that is,’ said the robed man. His robes were pure white. His skin was very dark. ‘I haven’t heard of it. Is it where you were?’
‘Then… have I folded again?’ Eisenhorn asked. ‘Is this another extimate overlap?’
‘I’m sorry, my friend,’ the robed man said. ‘I do not understand the terms you use. Gregor, your fever is so high it cannot be measured. You are hallucinating, I think. Hallucinating and confused. You have contracted a pestilence. It is called Uhlren’s Pox. It is severe, I’m sorry to say. Your confusion is part of the illness. I should return you to your bed.’
Eisenhorn looked at him.
‘Are you one of Gobleka’s people?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know the name, Gregor.’
‘Are you a doctor? A medicae?’
‘I care for those who come here,’ the robed man said. ‘I am Baptrice.’
Eisenhorn looked around the garden. His raised voice had attracted attention. Three sisters in stark-white robes and starched bicorn wimples observed him with concern. A grizzled old man sat on a garden seat beside the wall. He was naked except for an old ammunition belt, and his left arm was nothing but a mass of old scar tissue. He was putting brass shell-cases into the loops of the bandolier and then taking them out again, counting each time. ‘…six, seven, eight… six, seven, eight.’
‘What is this place?’ Eisenhorn asked.
‘The Hospice of Saint Bastian,’ the robed man said.
‘On… Symbal Iota?’ Eisenhorn asked.
‘Yes,’ said Baptrice. ‘You know where you are, then?’
‘What… year? What year is it, sir?’
‘Gregor, it is the third year of the Genovingian Campaign and–’
Eisenhorn broke free of his hands and walked out onto the lawn. The insects were so loud.
‘Gregor?’ called Baptrice. ‘You are lucid. I have never seen such lucidity in a patient so tight in the grip of the Torment. I would like you to speak with someone, if you are able. He might learn a great deal from you.’
‘Who?’ asked Eisenhorn.
‘His name is Sark,’ said Baptrice.
‘Draven Sark?’
‘No, sir,’ said Baptrice, frowning. ‘Lemual Sark. Higher Administrator Medica Lemual Sark. He is visiting us. His speciality is Materia Medica, and–’
‘I want to leave now,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘That cannot be permitted,’ said Baptrice sadly.
‘Why are you showing me this?’ Eisenhorn asked.
‘Showing you… what?’ asked Baptrice.
Eisenhorn wasn’t talking to him. He was staring down at his own hands. Old hands marked with old scars, hands that were dirty with soot and machine oil. Hands that were covered in yellow blisters from the fire that was eating him away.
‘Why are you showing me this?’ he asked the fire in his blood. ‘This is… this is your place of birth. Where you… where the truth of you crossed Sark’s path and the connection was made. Where the infection began. Carried not as a disease but as an idea, from father to son to grandson…’
‘Sisters!’ Baptrice called. There was worry in his voice. ‘Help me conduct this poor soul back to his confinement. He is delusional and very sick. I fear for his safety out here.’
The sisters approached. Their robes were ice-white, and their horned cowls trembled as they walked. There were more of them than before. Ten, fifteen…
‘Come, Gregor,’ said Baptrice. ‘Let me take you back. Let the fever run its course. There is hope yet.’
‘There was no patient with the Torment housed in this place,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘No outbreak occurred here at the hospice. It was an asylum. There was only a survivor. One man, an inmate who had survived the pandemic. I have read the reports. This is a lie. You are a lie.’
‘Help me with him,’ Baptrice smiled. The sisters closed around, their white bicorn wimples like tusks in the sunlight. More of them now, forty, fifty…
‘I want to leave,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Restrain him gently,’ Baptrice said. ‘He knows not what he says.’
The sisters surrounded him. There were more of them now than there were chirring insects in the jungle outside. Eisenhorn staggered through them, brushing aside their phantom hands and their snow-white robes. He started to walk, pushing them aside. Somewhere, a cloister bell began to ring. He reached the iron gate in the old garden wall. Beyond, the green darkness of the jungle swarmed with the fricative words of insects.
The flames swirled around him. He opened the gate and stumbled through.
‘I suppose you get a lot of cases like mine,’ sniffed the small man waiting for him on the other side of the desk.
‘Cases?’ asked Eisenhorn. The room was cool and grey, as if it were raining outside, or the place were always starved of light. There was a large, ornamental fireplace that clearly had not seen a fire in centuries, a rug on the wooden floor and two plain chairs on either side of the desk. The old man sat in one. A gilt clock stood on the mantle, ticking like an insect in a jungle thicket, steady and slow.
‘You may take a seat,’ the small man offered. ‘Of your own volition. You might as well be comfortable. We’re here to talk.’
Eisenhorn sat. The old man was shrivelled and bent, lost in the folds of his hand-me-down robes.
‘You get a lot of cases like mine,’ he sniffed.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Oh, you understand. You understand, sir. You just don’t care. And because you don’t care, you don’t remember.’
‘What am I supposed to remember?’ asked Eisenhorn.
‘The people you have ruined,’ said the man. ‘How many is it? Lost count? I’m sure you remember the truly great ones. Pontius Glaw, you’d remember him. Stopping him was the making of you. Or was it the breaking? What about the others? The nondescript ones? The minor cases? The insignificant ones? The innocent? Do you remember them? Or are they just faces that passed you by? Do you remember me?’
‘I remember this room,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘I remember that clock, ticking like–’
‘Oh, you remember the room do you? That’s nice,’ said the man. ‘Of course you remember this room. It’s where you brought them to. All of them. This room and a thousand like it. A room in which to talk. A room in which to slowly dismantle a man’s life. How many lives is it now? How many have you brought here? Not the notorious, vile ones, I mean the ones like me. The unfortunates. The ones who walked in off the street, troubled by some minor transgression, only to find they were going to be rendered down. Their pride. Their hopes. Their dreams. Their lives. Their livelihoods. Their possessions. Did you pause to care for any of them?’
‘I don’t remember you,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Rather my point, interrogator,’ the man said. ‘Is it interrogator still? It was then. I’m sure it isn’t any more. What are you now?’
‘Nothing,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Then we are turned about, sir,’ said the small man. ‘For last we met, I was nothing to you. My name is Imus. Does that stir anything?’
‘No.’
‘No, of
course not. You have always been very good at your job, sir. Very good. You have excelled in your duties. Shall I tell you why?’
‘I feel you’re going to, Master Imus,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Because you never care,’ said Imus. ‘You are without compunction. This allows you to perform your duty with intense purpose. No sentiment gets in the way.’
‘Drusher said that,’ murmured Eisenhorn.
‘Drusher?’ asked Imus. ‘Friend of yours?’
‘No.’
Imus grinned.
‘I knew the answer would be no, you see,’ he said, ‘because you have no friends. No one comes close to you. You do not allow them to. A connection with another soul would be weakness. Which is why a hundred thousand people have passed through this room, and you have disassembled them all, and you cannot even remember their names. Now, this heartless bearing of yours explains why you are very good at what you do. But it begs the question… why do it at all?’
‘Why do it?’ Eisenhorn asked.
‘Yes, yes! Keep up. Why devote your life to the protection of mankind, when you cannot abide the close connection of another human being?’
‘Ordo service is hard,’ said Eisenhorn. ‘One must put aside certain things. One must stand apart and keep to the shadows. It–’
‘Poppycock,’ said Imus. He drummed his bony fingers on the desktop. ‘The Ruinous Powers, sir, in your expert opinion, are they a contaminant?’
‘Yes,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘Like an infection? A disease? Once contracted, even from the briefest contact with a carrier, never cured?’
‘Yes,’ said Eisenhorn. The insect-tick of the clock was scratching at his mind. ‘It is the great horror of the warp. It never leaves a man once it has stained his hands. Corruption is inevitable.’
‘Yet you have touched it, sir.’
‘An obligation of my work,’ said Eisenhorn.
‘True,’ said Imus. ‘Also true, and a fact you know well… All inquisitors end. They are, by necessity, finite. The work they do… How can I put it? It tarnishes them. They are carriers. Infected with the torment of their duty. No matter how noble and dedicated, it gets them all in the end. Doesn’t it?’