Dust jl-1

by Elizabeth Bear

  This holde—this heaven—had all the formal ancient grace of a Nippon-style garden, of which there were a few in Engine. None the size of this one, however, and none, in the absence of defined gravity, composed of trees as old as the world, their gnarled boles shaped in heavy serpentine curves, their bark and leaves a patchwork display of textures and colors. There were smooth red-skinned trees with straining purple twigs, and a contorted gray monster whose flexible golden branches swayed with every shift of the air. One tree was green as a jade carving from the soil to leaf tip, its branches hung with drifting, lobed violet flowers that cast floating petals and a heady thread of aroma onto the air. There were flowers, too, cascades and streamers of them; vines, carpets.

  The space was bridged by twisting spans that came together in miniature parklands and separated in distributaries, a massive helical filigree around which Pinion bore her. She heard wings slap air, not her own, and when she guided Pinion back on a spiral, Dust soared up beside her. His wings were much like the ones Ariane had cut from Perceval's shoulders—membranous, soft, dusty with delicate hairs.

  Perceval wanted to touch them. She disciplined herself; it was not, she told herself, truly her own desire.

  But then, how did she know? How would she know, in the end, what was her desire and what was given her? She might, she thought, have wanted to touch them anyway, so much were they like what she had lost.

  "What think you?"

  She spread her wings wide, and let them bear her. "None of this has any place on a planet," she said. "None of this was ever intended to be set down to earth again."

  "As clever as she is brave," Dust said. "Those who made me—who made Israfel, of whom I am the best and chiefest part—made this as inspiration. And as a laboratory. Those trees are not all that grows in my garden."

  Warm air rushed past Perceval's face. She exulted in the flight, the motion—and doubted the exultation. If Dust could make her feel...

  Had he robbed her of all joy forever? Or of all trust in her joy, which amounted to the same thing?

  "That's a leading comment, Mr. Dust."

  "Jacob, beloved," he said, his wingtip brushing Pinion as he flapped to gain altitude. "Follow on."

  What else was she to do? She dipped feathertips and followed his turn and glide, deft as if on her own wings. She felt the wind through the feathers, the pressure underneath and above. Flying in free fall was not like flying in gravity. All one's energy went to speed.

  They skimmed along one of the twisting, tree-thick bridges, wingtips skimming leaf tips. Dust flew hard, and Perceval bent herself to catch him. A race, then.

  She could exult in competition. She would permit herself that. Especially when she conjured the image of smacking him with a wing, sending him spiraling into tree trunks.

  She would not condone the part of her that winced to think it.

  And then he dove, and she was hot after him, until his wings fanned hard, backdrafting, and as she nearly overshot she felt the sudden brutal grip of gravity.

  But on dares, she'd flown in the Broken Holdes as an adolescent, where the gravity could fluctuate without notice. She managed it, would have managed it without Pinion's assistance. She followed Dust into a gap between trees, an unexpected clearing where apparently the gravity worked, and her feet struck the ground featherlight.

  Beside her, Dust straightened his suitcoat, wingless again. "Very good," he said.

  She would have preened at the praise if it came from her mother, or even Tristen or Benedick. She wanted to preen now. "I will not crave your approval," she said, chin up, driving her nails into her palms. "Stop making me want it."

  He glanced sideways, and winked at her. "Follow on."

  She did, and he led her under a tree whose crimson branches hung with curious opal-colored fruit that stank of rancid meat. The vines that twined it were like morning glories, the flowers enormous and sickly sweet.

  Around the trunk he led her, and into an arch-covered stair. It brought them underground, down a spiral into darkness—or what would have been darkness, had not Dust begun on the second revolution to exude a pallid glow. The light was silver, concentrated at his hands, and with it Perceval, aided by her symbiont, could make her way down perfectly.

  They climbed for a long time. She questioned him once—"What is this way? Where are we going?"—but he only turned and smiled, the shadows over his eyes ghastly in the peculiar light. "Farther on," he said. "Farther down."

  She wondered if he meant to rape her. Perhaps it should have occurred to her earlier, but it wasn't the sort of thing she was used to considering. If he raised a hand, she vowed, she would fight him with all the strength that was in her.

  And there was the question. Did machines' sapiences even think of sex?

  She had no idea. So she watched him.

  She knew there was a space ahead by the echoes, and when they came to the bottom of the stairs, the glimmer of her escort's light faded into darkness.

  "I have come," Dust declaimed.

  Perceval wondered if he spoke aloud for her benefit. A machine sapience he might be, but he was also mad as a bachelor uncle—madder, if that uncle happened to be Tristen Conn. As she wondered, however, the lights came up in serried ranks, flicking on in sequence from the far end of the room.

  Room was a term of some inadequacy. It might have encircled the entire holde they had just flown to the center of. Perceval could not tell; it arched up out of sight in all directions.

  Where above the air had been balmy, here it carried a dank chill. The floor of the chamber was occupied by legions of refrigeration units.

  "All this power," she said. She looked at Dust. "All this power expended on—"

  "My mission," he answered. "The mission of the Jacob's Ladder." He reached out without looking and grasped her fingers. This once, she did not stop him.

  He led her forward, and she went.

  The paused before a bank of coolers. "Open one," he said.

  Without releasing his hand, half not knowing what to expect, she reached out and she pulled the white door open. Frost cracked; she had to pull. The cold air that fell from it, chilling her ankles and feet, stank of staleness.

  It might have been decades since the freezer was open. Centuries.

  Within were vials. Each labeled in neat type, with color-coded caps. "Genetic samples," Dust said, when she looked at him blankly. "The biological diversity of a world. Or as much as the builders could cram into their ark."

  A treasure. Perceval swallowed. The treasure. The heart of the Jacob's Ladder. Its reason for being. Its very soul.

  "Why show me this?"

  "When you captain me, you will need to know. Close the door, beloved. There is more."

  She shut it, and let him lead her on. Farther in there were glass-topped caskets. Never, she thought, a good sign.

  Of course, the crystal faceplates were bearded with hoar, and of course they were cold to the touch. "And open this as well?"

  "There is no need," Dust said, and cleared the frost from the nearest with a sweep of his hand.

  She bent over it, expecting the staring face, the frozen eyes. But again he surprised her: what lay within the casket was a sad bundle of scarlet feathers, resting on something like an ivory jaguar pelt. "What are these?"

  "Extinct species," he said. "DNA. That is a frozen scarlet macaw, and the pelt of a snow leopard." He gestured along the bank. "I have umbrella stands made of rhino legs, and hats decked with the feathers of the passenger pigeon."

  She breathed a sigh, half relief and half frustrated adrenaline.

  He smiled. "You seemed worried."

  "I was having visions of Snow White," she admitted.

  His smile widened and he gestured, sweeping. "Oh. The frozen people are down here."

  She thought he must be kidding, and she thought she should really be beyond the capacity for shock by now. But when she caught sight of the banks of drawers, like an oversized apothecary's cabinet, she sat d
own on the edge of the casket, impervious to the chill. "What people are those? Your enemies?"

  "Volunteers."

  "You tell me they... volunteered to be frozen? Can they be thawed?"

  "Well." His shrugs were quite artistic, really, she thought—and quelled the thought. "We have not developed the technology to bring them out of cryogenic stasis alive. But their DNA is still fresh. And that's what matters."

  "So what, they're ... dead from Earth? They're suicides?"

  He shook his head. "They signed on to the voyage. They may not have known what they were signing consent for."

  She had been rising to her feet. She caught her arm to steady herself. "They didn't know?'

  He touched her temple tenderly, a gesture that would have been the tucking of her hair, if she had any. "Of course not. Not really. They knew that they were the chosen ones, that they would be remade in the image of God in their cold voyage among the stars. I doubt if any of them appreciated the technical challenges."

  "Oh, space." She staggered. She would have fallen if he had not held her up. "There must be thousands of them."

  "In all the cryogenic facilities in the world? Beloved, there are close to seven hundred thousand." He shrugged, an even more elegant one. "With Metatron dead, I cannot be certain how many of the freezers have failed, and Samael has had to use some for raw material. For their water and carbon and amino acids. We were not meant to be trapped here so long, and the damage from the explosions caused cascading failures."

  Perceval had always thought that being dumbstruck was merely an expression. She shook her head, and tugged herself away from Dust. He let her go, but not too far, and Pinion was always there behind her. "You killed seven hundred thousand people?"

  "I did not kill them. Nor did Israfel. The builders killed them. Froze them and sent them to the stars."

  "What gave you the right to choose for them? For us, goddamn you?"

  "I didn't," Dust said. "I only served those who chose for you. As I was made to do. As I shall serve you."

  "Be that as it may," Perceval snapped, frustrated. "Who gave them the right?"

  "No one gave them anything." He drew a glittering object from his waistcoat pocket, flipped it open, and glanced at the face of the ancient analog watch within. "The passengers and engineers had the need. The builders had the power, beloved. It's the way of the world."

  "It's not the way of mine," Perceval said. But watching his hands as he tucked the watch back into his pocket, it was all she could do to make her voice sound confident.

  "Oh, child," he said, all sorrow. "Who do you think your forebears were?"

  22 inward and down

  The lights begin to twinkle

  from the rocks:

  The long day wanes:

  the slow moon climbs: the deep

  Moans round with many voices.

  Come, my friends,

  'Tis not too late to seek

  a newer world.

  —ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON,"Ulysses"

  And a voice spoke out of the tall grass, and bade Rien to come forward, and not to fear.

  The first was the easier. She glanced over her shoulder, to where Tristen and her father stood as if petrified. Benedick noticed her glance, though, and nodded once, so Rien wondered why he thought she required his approval. And then wondered why she had turned to look for it.

  "Gavin?"

  "Do as you are bid," he whispered, but he did not leave her shoulder. So Rien stepped forward, because after years of living in Rule, while fear could impel her to follow orders, it could no longer paralyze her.

  A few steps, and her eyes began to water with a scent she had been too angry before to notice. It was the scent of hot water, rich in metal and minerals, and she followed it in. Now she heard footsteps behind her, Benedick and Tristen trailed at a respectful distance, and she was struck between gratitude for the company and a trickle of wrath, that they did not think her competent enough to handle whatever lay ahead.

  Whatever lay, she now saw, at the bottom of a crevasse. The deck was torn and furrowed before her, the air so sultry that beads of lukewarm water condensed upon her skin. She saw the curled edges of metal, eroded and friable; the wheat stalks nodding over the cavernous hole. Rien's symbiont ticked away; the water was hot, radioactive. Not into the redline, though; her colony still believed it could handle the dose, and Hero Ng was inclined to support it.

  Given how he died, Rien thought she should respect his judgment.

  "Climb down," spoke the voice—deep, many-threaded, with holing overtones echoing up from the cavern. "Rien Conn, climb down."

  Rien steeled herself and called back, "Sir, I am afraid to. You are very hot, and would burn me."

  "Know ye not that the spirit of God like a fire is burning? In immolation are ye freed."

  "This may be so," said Gavin, from her shoulder, "but the lady has work to do before anyone 'frees' her. Come up, if you please."

  That provoked a chuckle, and an answer. "Then I shall come up. And perhaps scald you less. Small ones, shield your eyes."

  Rien obeyed, her symbiont darkening her vision- She could not see if Tristen and Benedick followed suit, but she hoped so. Because what rose from the corroded rent in the decking was a muscular pillar of blue-white luminescent heat, a flare near worthy of the waystars. The thing twined like a snake, its tiger's head wreathed in lashing ribbons, its clawed hands flexing. Steam rolled like a fog bank from its hide, which was striped like a tiger's, incandescent blue on blinding white.

  Rien's radiation detector clicked so fast she heard nothing else for a moment, her skin already aching. And then the rate of impacts dropped, the clicks tailed off, the flare of brilliance dimmed to the sulky colors of embers. "Rien Conn," it said. "Your sister has been taken by Dust, and you must run if you are to save her."

  She should have guessed who was behind the abduction, had she not been so filthy with anger. "I don't know where to run."

  The thing writhed atop an endless body, or perhaps a column of coherent water. Rien could not tell. "Run to Engine. I am their ally of old."

  Whatever this creature was, Hero Ng did not know it. Rien herself had no idea. Gavin clucked in her ear.

  "Susabo," he said. "I was told you were dead, angel."

  The tiger-thing smiled with its glowing maw. "I am not Susabo. No, for he was struck through the heart with stone by the Enemy, and then his brothers devoured what remained. I am Inkling. I am he that was born where the blood from Susabo's death wound spilled."

  "A core leak," Rien gasped. "You're a reactor core coolant leak." The one that killed Hero Ng, she guessed. But Ng remained silent when she asked.

  Graciously, the tiger-thing inclined his head and spread his arms wide for a bow. "I am Inkling. Do you know what you fight, little nothing?"

  "Dust? Only what Samael told us." She imagined Benedick wincing behind her for the information she gave away. But if this thing wanted them dead, she imagined they would have no way to stop it. Already the skin of her face and hands felt taut and dry; even to be in Inkling's presence was blistering.

  "He was the library," Inkling said. "He has a head full of romantic nonsense and divine intervention. He does not know what I know."

  A leading statement if ever there was one, and Rien gestured him to continue.

  "That the only God is in the numbers and fire; in the equations and the furnace. That is the God who can save us. That is what the Engineers knew, and the commanders did not know, for their eyes were watching their frail and tiny God. And now the relict of their belief that they were the chosen ones, their belief in their own election, holds your sister to the fire. Do not believe in angels, Rien Conn, for they are all corrupted by the lies of the Builders, as your forebears were corrupted, too. Only the blood of Engine is clean of deceit."

  "Why should I believe you?"

  "Because I will show you a faster path to Engine. And because 1 am a friend of Caitlin Conn, who sent me to you. Now I bid yo
u again" —a slow rolling of steam from enormous jaws, such that Gavin bated on Rien's shoulder, and she put a hand up to gentle him before he started something she couldn't finish— "climb down."

  Rien bit her lip. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, half expecting the flesh to slide away at the touch. Even with the symbionts, could they endure this monster's lair? There was a story, wasn't there, of a lion that pretended injury and friendship to other animals, until one day a fox noticed that all the tracks to his cave led in?

  But surely, if he meant to deceive, he could have met them in a fairer form.

  "One thing," Benedick asked. His voice came so close at Rien's elbow that she almost jumped into the demon's arms. "Did Cat send a message for me?"

  The demon regarded him with smug pleasure. "In point of fact, Lord Benedick, she did not." Its tongue moved like a cat's. "She did for Lord Tristen, however, with your indulgence."

  "Speak it, then." Tristen, too, had somehow come up on Rien in her complete ignorance. His hand brushed her elbow; she leaned on him in gratitude.

  The tiger-demon chuckled. "She bids you welcome, and bids you trust me. And bids you also remember the time in your childhood when you 'borrowed' her paints, and made such a mess in the hall that your father had you both beaten—you for mischief, and she for carelessness."

  "I'm half satisfied," Tristen said. "Although an agent of Ariane's could know that."

  "Climb down," Benedick answered. "He's from Cat." "How do you know?" Rien was surprised to hear her own voice sound so strong. It was, of course, an illusion. "Cat hasn't spoken to me in fifteen years," he said. "A little thing like the end of the world wouldn't change that."

  Perceval's shivering was only partly from the cold, but Pinion folded about her nonetheless, as if its warmth could help. She might, under other circumstances, have struck out, beaten the parasite wings away. But she would not let Dust see her weak, and she would not let Dust see her frightened.

  Angry, disgusted: there was dignity in those, and she let that be her lodestar. "But then why bring so many living?" she asked. "Why the heavens and passengers and all the animals above? Why whole, frozen people? If all the Builders cared for was the genetic material—"