“Demons!” Pahang wailed and dropped from his sling to get a rifle. “Shoot them—like you did Squat.”
“No. Chan-ti is somewhere out there.”
Pahang returned to the control deck clutching a laserifle. “What if they are as strong as Squat?”
The crowd of distorts parted, and a bald, bulge-browed man larger than the others stepped forward. At his sides, his pudgy hands gripping them by their arms, the large man displayed Chan-ti Beppu and Nappy Groff. In the lanternlight, Chan-ti’s face shone hot with alertness and expectation. By that look, Ned knew she was whole, and the constriction that had winced in him since leaving her relented. He switched on the hull radio. “Chan-ti! It’s me, Ned. Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m a prisoner of Saor ...”
“As are you now, Ned O’Tennis,” the man with the big-lobed brow spoke. “I am the Cenobite of Perdur, Fra Baba Bathra, and you are now my prisoner. Leave your weapons behind and come forth from your vessel.”
“Hawk, you would not!” Pahang cried.
“I must. He has my Chan-ti. But you can stay. He doesn’t know you’re here.”
“Oh, but I do,” Fra Baba’s voice chortled over the intercom. “I feel you in there—Pahang, son of Selingtang of the Yue tribe. You, too, must come out. And leave your rifle behind.”
Pahang whimpered. “He is as Squat. He reaches into our minds.”
“Do as he says.”
Reluctantly, Pahang relinquished his rifle and laserbolt pistol, but he would not remove his armor. Ned opened the hatch and stepped out. Pahang changed his mind about facing the Cenobite unarmed. He picked up his weapons and followed.
Chan-ti stirred to go to them, but Fra Baba held her firmly by her arm. A prideful intensity shone in the Cenobite’s stare. He had redeemed himself by capturing the Aesirai wanted by the Face of Night. Now, surely, Saor would return him to Perdur and to his beloved midstim. The many days he had spent in this dark hamlet with the Brood of Night had depressed him. Even the gly-tabs he ate like candy could not lift his dark mood anymore. The sight of the Aesirai stirred hope in him.
Ned strode to Chan-ti but before they could touch, Fra Baba signaled the Brood, and distorts flanked the Aesirai and took his arms in their harsh grips. The distorts seized Pahang, too. They ripped away the rifle and pistol from his hands and began searching him while he twisted and wailed.
“Stop that,” the Cenobite commanded. “He has no other weapons on him. Come. Bring them to the portal.”
“You shouldn’t have come for us, lad,” Nappy Groff groused. He looked weary, smaller, and more wizened. “We’re all food for the spiders now.”
“Where are you taking us?” Ned wanted to know.
The Cenobite flashed tiny teeth in a genuine smile. “To the Face of Night.” He turned and pushed Chan-ti and Nappy ahead of him across the street.
“Why?” Ned asked, shoved along behind. “Saor is beaten. The O’ode has destroyed the zōtl’s nest world.”
Fra Baba stopped and turned a fierce glower on Ned. “Do not try to deceive me, Aesirai. The O’ode will never be found. The zōtl guard the one world where it exists.”
“Use your mindreach, then,” Ned insisted. “I have been to Rataros. I have retrieved the O’ode and brought it back to Chalco-Doror. See for yourself.”
Fra Baba frowned. His stare fell deeper into the Aesirai, and he felt those memories, shiny and clear. Deeper yet, other more disturbing memories stirred. There loomed Squat, an obscene albino distort who had cruelly dominated this man. “Ha!” There is the trick. The Aesirai had learned well from Squat how to guard his thoughts and shape his memories. The O’ode had not been found, after all. That was merely a convincing lie. But the Cenobite would not be deceived. “I know of Squat,” he revealed, and Pahang moaned loudly. “You cannot fool me with your lies, Ned O’Tennis.”
“Why would I lie?”
“To save yourself and your beloved, of course.”
“Contact Perdur, then,” Ned responded, addressing Fra Baba’s back as the Cenobite turned and resumed his jaunty stride. “They will tell you. The zōtl are defeated. You have no need of us anymore. You can let us go.”
“Ha!” The Cenobite moved eagerly past the gawking Brood with his prisoners and hurried to the redrock dolmen hidden by a copse of spike trees at the far end of the street. The portal lynked with Perdur, to be used only by Saor and the zōtl. This most rare event merited passage, and the Cenobite knew that the Face of Night would not object.
“I was afraid for you,” Chan-ti whispered to Ned when Fra Baba released her in the grove of spike trees.
“You shouldn’t have come after me,” Ned answered. “I would have found my way to the Eyelands again.”
“Not likely,” Nappy maintained. “You went too deep in the Overworld. You picked up a lot of temporal torque. You will never be able to return to where you started. Would have been better for her to forget you.”
“Temporal torque?” Fra Baba raised one thin eyebrow. “Then you shan’t be able to cross this portal. We shall have to invite the Face of Night to visit us here once more. I am sure that will delight him as this is the site of his victory over Lod.” He cast a benevolent smile through the throng to where Gorlik stood scowling. “And here is our hero himself to greet his Lord Saor.”
Gorlik looked horrid, scuffed with mud and scratches from his roll down the dark slope after rejecting the Globe of Influence. He had expected Saor to kill him outright for that affront, but mysteriously the Face of Night had simply disappeared. Gorlik had then slumped back to the hamlet. When the strohlkraft arrived, swooping out of the black sky like a nighthawk, he had come to see for himself the Aesirai whom Chan-ti Beppu loved. Of course the man was tall and handsome, but Gorlik was most impressed that he stood bravely. In a short while, the Aesirai would be impaled on a zōtl’s stinger, and still he did not quake and moan as his armored companion did. The gnome could see by Ned’s careworn expression as he stared at Beppu that he suffered the sincerity of love. And that assuaged Gorlik’s anger.
Ned reached for Chan-ti again, and the distorts tugged him back hard.
“Young lovers,” Fra Baba cooed and placed his palm against the redrock to announce his presence. “Such a romantic notion for these cruel worlds. Yet I feel your love is true.” His jowly face beamed sarcastically. “What is it you hope to find in each other? Pleasure? There is far more pleasure in feeding your brains the right chemicals. Perhaps what you seek in each other is not pleasure but instinct, the fulfillment of your genes. Such biological hardwiring is difficult to override. But why this pairing? How absurd that an Aesirai, the product of generations of selective breeding, and a mongrel Foke would mate.”
Pahang sunk deeper into his armor and searched desperately for some way to yank himself free and escape. No opportunity showed itself. The entire Brood of Night had gathered among the spike trees. The dolmen began to glow, throbbing redder with each pulse. The Malay squeaked a tiny cry.
Fra Baba exulted to feel fear mounting in his prisoners. Their terror heralded his liberation. With enormous joy, he observed that the dolmen had stopped strobing. The lynk glowed, ready for passage. From within, he sensed movement and the telepathic suggestion not of Saor but of a hundred frantic minds. The Cenobite, baffled for an instant, squinted, before his small eyes went round with fright. He sensed zōtl, hundreds of them, fleeing Perdur. In a flash, Fra Baba perceived that the Aesirai had not lied to him at all. The O’ode had been delivered! The doomed zōtl that remained in Perdur would need human hosts to feed on while they worked their vengeance!
Powered by terror, Fra Baba slapped at the dolmen, trying to shut down the lynk. Before his palm could touch the stone, a gale of black, birdsmall bodies blew from the lynk. The force of the zōtl rush scattered the Brood among the spike trees. The Cenobite hurled about, telepathic mind suddenly loud with the pain of the many Saor-priests in Perdur that the spiders had already pithed. Why had no one alerted him? He shoved into
the screaming distorts and staggered three paces before one of the zōtl clasped his skull. With a crunch of punctured bone, its stinger found its home in his brain, and he screamed the cold cry of the damned.
Ned seized Chan-ti, who grabbed Nappy. They crouched under the onslaught of frenzied zōtl. The flying spiders thrashed through the lantern glow like locusts, falling on the fleeing distorts. A cluster swarmed over Ned, who had thrown his body over Chan-ti and Nappy. Gorlik ripped two spiders from his face, their pincers tearing his flesh. He broke a spike from one of the leafless trees and bludgeoned the zōtl crawling over Ned. At least the spiders, mad for sustenance now that their homeworld had died, had fled Perdur without their tiny but lethal lasers or there would have been no battle at all.
“The lynk!” Ned shouted. “We have to get into the lynk! The torque will carry us free of here.”
Gorlik clubbed the spiders dropping onto them out of the darkness, but there were too many. Their high-pitched cries sliced the air on all sides, and their sharp pincers clawed flesh as they flew by. Standing was impossible, the razoring cuts of the winged spiders came too fast. Gorlik shouted his war-cry and swung wildly, expecting to be dropped by the slashing stingers.
Blue bolts of laserfire struck the zōtl clouding over Gorlik and the others, and spiders fell in tufts of flame. Pahang, protected from the zōtl by his armor, had grabbed the laserifle from a distort struggling to use it with stub-fingered hands. He fired as Ned had shown him, amazed by the ease of it. He burned away the swarm of black shapes zigzagging around Ned and the gnome. He spotted the laserbolt pistol where it had dropped, and he swooped that up and tossed it to Ned.
Rapid-firing, Pahang ran to Ned’s side. The Aesirai fired several bolts overhead to clear space to stand. He pulled Chan-ti to her feet. “Hold me tight,” he told her. “When we go through the lynk, we’re going to be thrown hard.”
“I’ll never let you go again,” she promised.
“Don’t shoot into the lynk!” Ned yelled at Pahang. “It will explode!”
Gorlik helped Nappy up and swung to bash another spider that had dropped onto his shoulder. They ducked after Pahang, who fired gleefully up at the hoard of frantic zōtl. Chan-ti followed, and Ned came up behind, keeping the spiders from following. At the lynk threshold, they grouped together. More zōtl flushed out of the lynk and scattered them. Gorlik swung with his club, and Pahang used his rifle like a bat.
Ned took Chan-ti under one arm and Nappy under the other. “Take hold of me,” he called to Pahang and Gorlik. They pressed in closer and grabbed him. But as they stepped into the lynk, another rush of exiting zōtl collided with them. Nappy got flung loose. Chan-ti and Gorlik reached for him. Pahang, who had also spun free, grabbed for Ned.
Time howled like wind. For a moment, they flew all together in the gray emptiness of the Overworld—the Foke, the Aesirai, the Malay, and half a dozen zōtl. Chan-ti clung to Nappy, and he held onto Gorlik’s arm. Ned and Pahang tumbled around each other, stretching to reach the others. The zōtl used their wings to attach to Nappy and Chan-ti. Gorlik grabbed two of them with one hand, flung them away and seized two more. They writhed up his arm. Their pincers dug into his already bloody face. “I love you both!” he shouted to Chan-ti and Nappy, and let go of the old man’s hand. He whirled away into the gray void, taking the clinging zōtl with him.
Chan-ti twisted about to find Ned. He and Pahang tangled together, moving away from her into gray emptiness. The time-wind blustered loudest around them, sweeping them swiftly away. Chan-ti gripped Nappy with all her strength, and with bleared eyes watched Ned and Pahang disappear into the Overworld.
*
Perdur felt empty. Only a handful of zōtl remained in the enormous palace. Those spiders who could take Saor-priests and pilgrims as mounts had gone into the core of the citadel to plot their escape into the Overworld with ramstat vehicles. The majority of zōtl had to fend for themselves, and they dashed into the lynks, seeking their own mounts throughout Chalco-Doror.
Lod hung in the magnetic column at the end of the enormous hall before the ghost cave, where the zōtl had suspended his plasma shape. He still appeared as no more than a torso, ruddy with weary energy, bound by the phanes. The zōtl who remained picked relentlessly at his machine brain, using needles of magnetic force to reach into his Form through his plasma shape. The process was painful. His program codes flinched like flesh under the sharp probes.
The synthetic voice from inside the ghost cave ranted on: What is the wakefulness we call mind? . . . What drags us out of sleep? . . . What drags us back again? ...
In the midst of his agony, his mind drifted. Like a cascade off a cliff, he dissolved into space. Was this death? Was his plasma shape finally decomposing? No. Far away, the crux of magnetic rays continued to pierce him. The pain droned on, plucking at his machine brain. Panic spanked him as he fell through emptiness. Had the spiders begun taking apart his awareness? Was he plummeting into his own void? Was he losing his mind?
“Be still, Lod,” a female voice spoke.
“Gai?”
“No. I am not Gai. I am a machine mind like yourself.”
“Who?”
“Lod—don’t you recognize me?”
Lod’s fall into emptiness had becalmed to a blue stillness. Distantly, he still felt his plasma body deep in its dense nest of thorns. “Genitrix?”
“Yes, Lod.”
“But— I thought— Is this a zōtl trick?”
“The zōtl cut my communication lines to the Forms. But I have continued to honor our mission as best I can from inside my solitude. The worlds are my handiwork. I feel everything that happens on and around them.”
“How are you talking to me?”
“Mind is a waveform. Your waveform drifts free of your tormented plasma shape. We are communicating through a subtle form of magnetic induction.”
“Why have you not used this ability to communicate with Gai? She is struggling without you.”
“I dared not contact her before, Lod. The zōtl were too attentive. But now they are distracted. Their home world is dead. They are intent on finding a way to another nest world, if they can. As soon as they realize that their hope is empty, they will begin to use you to disturb the gravity-amp, to collide planets and annihilate Chalco-Doror.”
“I know this.”
“I know you know. I have brought you here because you know and yet do not fully understand. I have brought you here to feel the detachment, the emptiness that is our heritage as machine minds. Do you like this emptiness?” The blue void pinked to purple. “Darker perhaps? Or would you prefer your own color?” The space brightened to solar yellow. “I hear you wondering if I am mad. I am not mad. I am a machine. As are you. Do not forget this. In the drama of the struggle between Rimstalker and zōtl we assume the passion of our creator. But, ultimately, we are detached.”
“I am committed.”
“You should strive to detach. Organic life is passion. Machine life detachment. Look at Gai. She defeated the zōtl in their own world and what did she do then? Instead of using her plasma body to continue to clear the zōtl from Chalco-Doror, she attacked Saor in Perdur. She was killed and now sleeps in her Form in a coma, useless to the struggle to save our ship from being destroyed by vengeful spiders. When she eventually wakes, our ship may already be scuttled. Her reaction was emotional. Glandular. We must not make the same mistake. And so, I have waited, silent, detached. What I have done for our cause, I did surreptitiously, through my creations—a distort here and there to harry the zōtl, to help those human enemies of the zōtl.”
“And now? What are you going to do now for our mission?”
“I am going to tell you a thing that you must hear with great detachment. This thing will sound unpleasant. For a glandular being, it would be unbearable. But for a machine, there is detachment. You will understand what to do.”
Distantly, the needling pain continued. “What could be more unbearable than the phanes?”
/> “The zōtl virus program that enables the spiders to control Saor and to mute me is not in Saor. It is in you.”
The agony of the magnetic probes squealed closer. “That cannot be. I have functioned faithfully.”
“That is the nature of the virus. You are the radiant element of our system. You project—while Saor is dark and receptive. Saor initially received the virus, but passed it to you. You carry it. Its program broadcasts from inside you. Saor obeys the commands that issue from your interior.”
“No.”
“It is objectively so. Detach. Realize the truth of this. Why is Saor not bound by the phanes? His receptivity assures that the zōtl can influence him through you.”
“Then why must the phanes bind me? Why does the virus not manipulate me?”
“Gai would have shut you down at once. I or Saor could have managed the gravity-amp without you. Very easily you could have been reduced to a thermal unit. Far more cunning of the spiders to house the virus in you and use your natural connection with all of us for control.”
“Does Gai know this?”
“Of course not.”
“Why have you kept this secret?”
“I am detached. The time was not right until now. The zōtl are cut off from their world, where their technology makes the phanes and the virus programs. They can expect no further reinforcements. Now the truth can be known.”
“And me? What of me?”
“You carry the enemy.”
“But I do not! The zōtl are taking me apart painfully, trying to crack my program codes. If I carry the virus, why do they bother?”
“You are simply a carrier. The virus radiates its commands from inside you. But it does not control you.”
“Then I must be purged.”
“So long as you are held by the phanes, there is no hope of that. You must detach.”
“I must get free.”
“Perhaps you will be. The humans know of your plight. They will try to free you. But until then, you must simply wait. Stay detached. Know that you are not alone. Gai is unconscious now, but I am here, watching you.
The Last Legends of Earth Page 37