by Demir Barlas
There—he had staked all, and she was gone. The phantom life to which he had committed himself so fully went with here. He was Jed Salt 272, keeper of the House of Dreams and maker of Marlo, the transcomputational man, and she was Astrid Redcold, the shadow of the Goddess, the summer and the winter, and they must diverge in any universe.
The divergence was important. There more be pursuit without consummation, viniculture without fruit. The fairness of labor, if brought to love, would deaden and reduce its silver glories. Love was like transcomputation. It had to be tenuous and irreducible. Yes, Salt would go back to work—to himself, to Marlo, to the House of Dreams. Yes, Salt understood that he and Astrid were antinomies. But he was immeasurably glad to have met and seen her. He had greedily stored the sight and sense of her. He could carry her always—that is, across the desert of his one remaining year. He could resort to the image of her smile, as rare and precious as life from nothing, when in the abyss of some depression. The sternness of her jaw could save him from the apex of some future mania. More than anything, he could be grateful for her absence, for she was too overpowering to consume or botanize. Her fact was stronger than his fact. Her fact was infinitely desirable and infinitely remote, and he would henceforth live in the lesser of two impossibilities—a world without her, a survivable world, in preference to a world overwhelmed by her entelechy. This was Salt—don’t you know him by now? He was already lost in thought, weaving Astrid into his ruminative hair.
Marlo returned Astrid to her room, where, as she now saw, the Redcold children were still sleeping. She might have slept herself but for another knock—not Salt’s knock. She answered the door. It was Masters. She stepped out into the hallway to see him.
“I had the habit of apology,” he began. “A long time ago. I don’t know what’s replaced it.”
“We’re Redcolds,” Astrid reminded him. “The ancient tribes don’t encompass us. I don’t hate you for killing anyone, so I don’t need either an apology or its replacement. But it’s what you want, so I’ll listen.”
“I’m very happy you Redcolds survived. I hope you inherit both worlds.”
“I have no use for this one.”
“You’ve asked Salt to end the storms?”
“Yes.”
“He will. He will, and you and can return to the world.”
“I asked him to come.”
“And?”
“He tried to kiss me. “I don’t think he’ll end the storms or even bring your people back.”
“No, you see—you’re similar, but your power’s hope. His is loneliness. He’ll be fine away from us.”
“What’ll you do?”
“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t try to kiss you. I’ve thought about it, and I’m going to dream instead. Once Salt fixes everything for us.”
“What will you see?”
“I’ll see the world before the war. I’ll see honor and dignity and pride. I’ll see my wife when she still loved me.”
And Salt? Salt was never alone, of course. He had his past selves. He had Marlo. He didn’t want to see Non-Henry, and he didn’t want to see Masters, and Astrid had had a bellyful of him, so he was able to return to the traduced comforts of what he knew.
Salt was in the God Complex now, back on the floor on which he had seen his camels mate—where he had been when Masters had woken and his adventure had begun. He had walked here mechanically. He had been thinking, apparently, but all the links were lost.
“Mom?” Salt asked the air, and Marlo appeared next to him.
“I’m here, son.”
“I’m going to be ready soon.”
“I know.”
“I fixed you and Non-Henry. Now I’m going to fix the House of Dreams. And I think I want to stop the storms.”
“Why don’t you go with Astrid? She’s your happiness.”
“Because I’d want her. I’d want to be her husband. I’d want to father a child—not that I could; not that it would be responsible for the child to be born some days before the death of its father.”
“You can, in theory, father a child.”
“Ah, yes, theory. In theory, I shouldn’t be. I’m far less likely than the universe. No, Marlo, I won’t go with Astrid. My dharma’s here, with—”
“She said she won’t have you in the way you want.”
“Yes, damn it, she did. Which raises the question of why you think she’s my happiness.”
“You already know.”
“Tell me. I’m too tired to introspect.”
“I’ll tell you soon, I think. Not now.”
That was new. Salt was about to say something, but Marlo’s response short-circuited him. She might keep secrets—she did keep secrets—but not so baldly. She was a giver, and the giver’s reticence was a matter of great curiosity for her son. It wasn’t a barren or punitive reticence, but, he sensed, a productive one. He wasn’t the only one to have grown in the aftermath of everything that had happened since the uncorrected drift. Marlo had come far as well.
“Well, fine,” Salt concluded. “I’ll wait for the revelations.”
The revelations came sooner than expected and heralded by an explosion.
The explosion concussed Salt, dissipated Marlo, and shattered the Shield. The explosion came from inside Seaboard somehow, PROBIT’s final act of revenge. He had had much time, and unexpected bandwidth, to lodge plots within plots. He had known of the Undermen long before Marlo and controlled their dreams; they, like the Redcolds, had been Laurasian experiments, and he had held their reins. PROBIT had released them at first to kill Salt, but, having failed, had led them here. However enslaved to Marlo as a subroutine, PROBIT had been able to probe and undo the Shield from inside as Seaboard, and now the city was unguarded.
The Undermen were coming, the Undermen and the Storm. The Undermen were coming from the Earth and the Storm from the sky.
Masters knew what was happening. He and Non-Henry were in the Archive now—the Archive, whose lights and physics were failing—towards a krilltank.
The krilltank, like everything in storage, still worked. At Masters’ touch, it opened like sarcophagus, disclosing the driver’s seat. Non-Henry climbed over the side to reach the gunner’s perch. It was nice to be up against this mindless metal, the product of some solid age. No mind in charge but yours, your own flesh on the line!
Non-Henry examined the krilltank’s controls. There were three modalities: The laser, the armor-piercing projectile, and the humble bullet. The latter two had been helpfully miniaturized, but were still far more limited than the laser, so Non-Henry determined to conserve them. Certain that he was going to die soon and at last, Masters felt a burst of love throughout his body.
The Undermen had come in greater numbers this time. In fact, they had come as a species. They had overrun much of Seaboard already, and, somehow, they had started fires. The Storm was a mile away from the city, prepared to cleanse whatever was left.
Five Undermen erupted through the basalt floor of Gallery 111. The ambulant krilltank stood waiting for them. Non-Henry fired the cannon, willing to expend the valuable shell to target all the Undermen at once. Non-Henry had aimed well. The explosion turned two of the Undermen into mist, and Non-Henry lasered another three.
But more came, more and more. Non-Henry felt the reflected heat of the laser on his arms and face as something sharp and huge stuck the torso of the tank. He’d cut an Underman in half again. It wasn’t enough. The remaining Undermen went for the tank’s legs. Too close! Non-Henry had no shot. His peripheral vision, still dutifully functioning, informed him of a spreading fire below, a child of the missile’s fury.
“Cover!” Masters shouted, and Non-Henry ducked deeper into the gunner’s perch, covering his head. The krilltank was teetering on the tier’s edge, brought there by the surviving Undermen. Masters electrified the surface of the tank, and the Undermen clinging to the metal tried to fight the amperes coursing through their bodies. Non-Henry felt the tank reach its tipping
point, and then the world was falling.
Non-Henry jumped from the gunner’s perch. His outstretched hands caught the tier’s edge. He dangled there a moment, then pulled himself up. There was a tremendous crash below. Non-Henry looked down. The tank had landed squarely on one of the Undermen; the other one was fried beyond recognition. Non-Henry made for the pillar and climbed down to the tank. He and Masters had agreed to die, but the idea grated on him now. That was the thing about last stands—they were failed attempts at victory, not victorious failures.
Non-Henry ran to the tank, which was already moving. Masters had been well-cushioned inside, and he was using the machine’s last burst of power to right itself. The tank shuddered a final time and gave birth to Masters, who emerged with nothing worse than a broken nose.
There he was, still alive. Retroactively, then, he understood that he had been dead. He had come through the Undermen on the strength of the women. On returning to Seaboard, he—not Lily—had been the ghost. He had none of his reflexive interest in fortifications and planning, logic and foresight. He did, however, have his sword still strapped to his back, and he drew it now.
Salt shepherded the Redcolds into the skyfaust, entered after them, and closed the cockpit. The hatch’s top unfolded, and the skyfaust roared up. The burning city of Seaboard was more beautiful than it had ever been in life. The smoke from a thousand loving fires had gone to join the clouds. Architecture stood revealed, in dawn’s ruin, as the lovely folly that it was, overshadowed and consumed. Salt had entered a new unconsciousness, that of competence. He couldn’t think now; didn’t want to think of Marlo and the Shield and the Storm…of the Redcolds and the Undermen…of Non-Henry and Masters, somewhere below him, who had to be found. He could only work the controls. They were beautiful controls. He had seen Masters operate them, and they did what they wanted him to, and if only the whole universe had been similarly mechanical! He thought again. He turned on the local intelligence of the skyfaust and ignored it where Masters and Non-Henry was and got his answer. Astrid had drawn her sword within the skyfaust, as it would do good here (maybe it would). Salt knew that the skyfaust had been left with its weapons intact, because Marlo preserved everything, even the shadow of death. And the skyfaust rained its many little deaths now. Salt was stunning and lasering the massed Undermen thronging the once-empty streets of Seaboard. Where had they all come from? Salt, having re-entered his cocoon of safety, had thought these outer creatures safely contained—to be studied later, perhaps, by another Salt. Even Masters, so conscientious in matters of war, had made no plans against them. They had behind the ultimately safety of the Shield, undisturbed for two thousand years. They had had Marlo and the dreaming world. But there had been this other world, this Storm-world, this troglodytic world—massing, preparing, lying just beneath the visible malice of PROBIT. PROBIT had known of them. He had come to worship the Storm and the Undermen, probably, as completers of his task. They had all worked together with the sentience available to them, and they had won. For the skyfaust could destroy the Undermen by the hundreds, but they had come by the millions. They had come as entire species, dammed and released. They had come as the Earth’s hollow vengeance—come to feed on a few living humans and the innumerable dead. There was no point in them now, but cosmic vengeance is never timely. The eras are too big to align.
Astrid joined Salt. From the cockpit’s crystal windows she, too, saw Seaboard overrun. He stopped his aerial assault on the Undermen. It was purposeless. He remembered a story he had read once, about ants—enraged and numberless, those holy murderers. And, behind them, the Storm. He must find Masters and Non-Henry, concatenate all the lives that mattered to him—all lives but one. He mustn’t think of that yet. He could bring Marlo back. They just had to get clear—clear of Seaboard and the Undermen, of the Storm, of himself. For he was in the way just now. He could transcompute somewhere else—reach into the ether to bring Marlo back.
“Down there,” Salt said, and Astrid followed his gaze. There was an outcropping high up on the Archive , a ledge on the eternal ziggurat, on which two small humanoids were standing. They punctuated intermittent laser-blasts, most of which were aimed at the direction of the building from which they had come. Part of the wall had caved in, and, from this, Undermen were emerging in leaps and heaps. But there was also a subsidiary stream of Undermen, their bulk apparently no impediment to vertical ascent, up the side of the Archive; to these, now and then, the humanoids on the outcropping would turn their attentive lasers.
Salt, being neither pilot nor hero, had no definite idea of what to do. He had trusted to proximity and to the resources of the beings below him. But, seeing them now, he was flummoxed. The outcropping was too small to admit the landing of the skyfaust with the skill available to Salt. He could hover, presumably, but then what? If Non-Henry and Masters—for these were the humanoids—were capable of leaping up to the skyfaust, so too were the Undermen. As below, so above: There were too many Undermen for Salt to laser or concuss, and his aim could not reliably distinguish between the humanoids who were his friends and the humanoids who were his enemies. There was really nothing to—
Salt did not know how it had come about, but there was Astrid. She was suspended in the air, and she was holding her sword, and how in the name of Jesu-Krishna had she managed to exit the skyfaust so quickly? While he had been busy looking down at the tableau of death beneath him, she had apparently learned how to open the hatch and fling herself into the action. She had not, however, closed the hatch, and the hot wind from Seaboard’s destruction was welling up into the cockpit. Salt would gladly have followed Astrid down into the chaos, but he couldn’t jump, and, moreover, he had to keep the skyfaust aloft. In addition, there were the Redcold children—well, the Redcold child. Before Salt could close the hatch, Del and Balder had also leapt through it with their swords, so Salt was alone with Nya.
Astrid landed on her feet, and she went to war. Masters was amazed to see it. He had seen little of her in action in Immortal Station, but there were now hundreds of Undermen on which she demonstrated—not skill, he thought, but sleep. The sleep of inhibition, the same trick he’d been taught, was native to her and allied to a biology beyond his, perhaps even beyond Non-Henry’s. She might scythe through all the Undermen. And now others—Del, Balder—were also on the outcropping, and Masters saw Salt at the skyfaust’s controls. Del and Balder proved to be almost as lethal as Astrid, and, together, the five were able to hold their own. But the Undermen were widening the breach in the wall, and the stream climbing the Archive was getting wider, and the Undermen were tearing through themselves to get at the humans.
Nya had come up to join Salt in the cockpit. Salt felt a series of thumps that displaced the skyfaust and realized that some of the Undermen who were climbing up the Archive were also launching themselves at the skyfaust. His position was untenable. But the spectacle of the five below him was too much. Here they fought—almost the last representatives of his species.
Salt nudged the skyfaust closer to the outcropping, then tipped the nose downwards. From that angle, he was able to laser through the entire length of the climbing stream—of the Undermen who had been climbing from street level, hundreds of feet below, to this height of the outcropping. He had to take this action in order to clear space at the very edge of the outcropping, where he must have the skyfaust hover. Non-Henry saw what his friend was doing and herded his comrades out of the way of what must be Salt’s next line of attack, on the widening wall of the Archive. As soon as the five stood clear, Salt returned the skyfaust to its horizontal position and began blasting the remaining Undermen. The fire was heavy. As Salt directed it, he also landed the skyfaust where he had wanted to. He maintained a slight hover, avoiding the crumbling masonry, and opened the side-hatch this time. Astrid flung Del inside, then Balder; she entered after Non-Henry and Masters went inside. Salt sealed the side-hatch and took to their air again. Just in time; the Undermen had only temporarily been dissuaded, for they
now claimed the outcropping in full.
Salt felt buffets strike the skyfaust. Masters sat next to him and took the controls. Salt turned to the aft window and saw the Storm. Masters was struggling with the skyfaust, which had lately been so compliant, to get some altitude and distance itself from the direction of the tempest. Non-Henry had opened up some occulted chunk of the skyfault’s machinery to increase power. Thankfully, it was working. The skyfaust climbed a few hundred feet
The explosion that Salt felt now was not as powerful as the one that had destroyed the Shield. Nonetheless, it shook the skyfaust. Salt knew precisely where the explosion had taken place. The House of Dreams! With Marlo gone, the quantum interference of the Storm and the primeval violence of the Undermen was razing Seaboard. The House of Dreams! There lay two billion dreamers. There lay the species, now destroyed. They were burning in their paradise.
Non-Henry knew what had happened. It took Masters another moment to understand what had happened. The years fell away. He was back in the last war. But there was a conclusion this time, a failure—an end, a welcome end, to humanity. Not to himself. Not yet. He’d known, hadn’t he, that his doom was somewhere beyond that of his species?
The skyfaust was shaking more angrily now. Masters had to keep climbing. The ascent was too rapid. The skyfaust’s machine intelligence magnetized the innards of the craft and pulled its passengers into positions of safety. Masters alone remained at the controls. Salt had been close to the control, of course, but perhaps the machine had realized that he was the wrong pilot. It would only have Masters’ touch now. The touch was gentle; freed of the burden of humanity, freed of Lily’s ghost, Masters was attuned only to the small and manageable facts of space, to lift and pitch, to speed and orientation.