Etherwalker

by Cameron Dayton

  “So the Pensanden solved the problem the way they always do—with machinery.”

  “And,” interjected Rictus, “with a healthy dose of cold, mathematical brutality.”

  Cal whistled for Sal to turn and point at the specter, who walked past them with his jaw set in a grim line.

  “Let’s not start that old argument again, Ric. You and I wouldn’t even be here if not for the First Hunt—our LifeBeat systems are based on the tek that originated from the Tzolkin Core medical reforms.”

  “Wait,” said Enoch. “How did the Pensanden cure the Crow Plague?”

  Rictus stopped, his back to them both.

  “They didn’t cure it. They were programmers, Enoch, not doctors. All they could see were the numbers.”

  Cal sighed.

  “The numbers were true, Ric. If they hadn’t done what they—”

  Rictus spun around, fists clenched tightly. Enoch had never seen him this angry.

  “They cut their losses! They turned their backs on three billion men, women, and children so that they could save their own lives! This is why the Pensanden fell, Cal! A little bit of cosmic justice!” He closed his eyes, visibly trying to calm himself.

  “They loved their numbers and their power more than they loved the people they were responsible for. They weren’t even human anymore. They were . . .” Rictus stopped, looked at Enoch. His mouth hung open.

  Enoch took a quick step back, shivering and feeling guilty for some reason. Rictus reached a hand out apologetically but shrugged it off.

  He forgot that I was here, I guess. That I’m a Pensanden.

  A darker thought bubbled to the surface.

  So I’m a monster, too?

  Cal tried to cover the awkward silence.

  “That’s what some people thought, Enoch. But some of us were a little more, uh, wise—” here he shot a look at Rictus, “or distant from the situation, and realized that Tepeu and the Tzolkin Core made the only choice they could have. With the entire medical community paralyzed, they turned to their algorithms. They saw that unless hard decisions were made quickly, humanity would be inundated with this plague. It had spread too wide, too fast. The off-world colonies were untouched, but they still depended on shipments from earth to survive.”

  “So what did they do?” asked Enoch, numb but still oddly afraid of the answer. “And what does this have to do with the trolls?” Mesha had climbed back onto his shoulders, and it was a welcome warmth.

  “They created a machine which could detect the virus,” said Cal. “They created an army of them. And they programmed them to contain the virus.”

  “Contain?”

  “You’ve met these machines, Enoch. The Meka-scheyf Cyborgs—prototypes of the Silverwitch you fought—were the first line of defense against the plague. Clothed in a sculpted layer of anti-viral synthetic flesh, they entered the populace unnoticed and efficiently removed those who were infected. Entire nations had to be taken down. Billions of people. A human army could never have accomplished the task and kept their sanity. It had to be machines.”

  Enoch was horrified.

  “So the Pensanden built the Serpent Wives? To kill sick people?”

  Cal looked away. Rictus kept walking, silently.

  “But how could they excuse themselves to . . . didn’t they at least try to find a . . . ?” Enoch was speechless. The pride he had felt for his newfound lineage was gone. Now he felt sick.

  It’s true. I’m descended from monsters.

  He jumped as a hand rested on his shoulder. Rictus had sidled up next to him as he walked and matched his pace. The specter was obviously feeling bad about his tirade. His voice was soft, apologetic.

  “It was the numbers, Enoch. They didn’t dare hope for a chance to save those people. The risk was too great for them, too frightening for a group who had forgotten about faith in anything that couldn’t be calculated. So the cyborgs became commonplace since we couldn’t risk another outbreak. Machines watched our health, extended our lives,” here Rictus tapped the box at his chest, “and became our crutch.”

  “Don’t think this heavy burden didn’t affect your own people, Enoch,” said Cal, his tone heavy. “The weight of those actions is what drove them to create Ketzelkol. They didn’t want to have to make that kind of choice ever again.”

  “How?” said Enoch, “How could they live with themselves, having ordered the murder of so many?”

  “Some of them couldn’t.” Rictus’s hand was heavy on his shoulder.

  Cal whistled, and the ape swung from another cable to land right in front of Enoch and Rictus. Sal turned and held up a hand to stop them.

  “Oh, but they didn’t kill all of them, Enoch. You see, some of those infected with the Crow Plague didn’t die.”

  “Yeah,” said Rictus. “The lucky ones who had cancer.”

  Enoch didn’t know the word. He shrugged, and Mesha hissed at the motion.

  “Cancer,” explained Cal, “was a disease of our era in which parts of the body started growing . . . incorrectly.” He shot a look at Rictus, searching for the right words. “Well, that’s the layman’s description, I suppose. These cancerous parts, these ‘cells’ would often grow uncontrollably, blocking off normal bodily function and, in many cases, killing their host.

  “The Crow Plague virus, however, was attracted to these cancerous cells like a bear to honey . . . wait, you don’t know what a bear is, do you, Enoch? No? Okay, how about like a nerwolf to a newborn lamb? Does that make sense? Upon infecting a cancer patient, the virus would chemically ‘sniff out’ the cancer—deliberately avoiding the healthy cells—and bury itself in the mitochondria, er, the guts of the thing. There it would quietly go to work, changing the nature of the cancer until one day . . . boom.”

  “Boom?”

  “Boom. The cancerous cells would burst into an unheard-of frenzy of energetic growth, dividing and specializing like the stem cells in an embryonic, um . . . well, they just started to grow like crazy. Bones, muscles, organs, every part of these once-sickly cancer patients became strong. Too strong.”

  Enoch understood where this was going.

  “The trolls.”

  “Exactly. The hospitals were already scenes of chaos, abandoned by anyone wishing to avoid the plague and filled with the dead and dying. All of a sudden, entire wings of the building are filled with these crazy overgrown monstrosities. Crazy? Well, the human brain wasn’t meant to grow at this speed. The poor creatures kept some remnant of their core animal brains, but any memory of their civilized lives was lost. And to make matters worse, the explosive growth was accompanied by an insatiable hunger. A hunger for the quick sustenance of warm meat . . .”

  Cal let the subject drop, and that was fine. Enoch didn’t care to pursue that line of thought either.

  I don’t want to know the details.

  “So the Silverwitch army—the cyborgs—were sent to kill them, too?”

  “At first, yes. But the trolls proved surprisingly resilient to physical assault—and it was soon discovered that they weren’t vectors, i.e. they couldn’t pass the plague on to uninfected people. So the Pensanden focused their efforts on that critical First Hunt. The Crow Plague was their primary concern. The trolls escaped into the dark places of the earth and became, well, trolls. They bred. Where there was food, they flourished. Your ancestors made a couple attempts to eliminate them all after the plague scare had ended. But it was too late—the trolls were too many, and too well hidden.”

  They walked for a while in silence. Enoch turned on the light in the next section in front of them. Up ahead, the passageway seemed to widen, and they could hear something that sounded like running water.

  Enoch’s teeth wouldn’t stop chattering now. He shivered violently, inciting another round of growls from Mesha.

  Hopefully we can find something more flammable than cable and metal panels up ahead. My hands are going numb.

  Rictus saw the widening passage as a good sign.

&
nbsp; “I was hoping we’d get out of these narrow tunnels at some point—sooner or later those trolls are going to figure out that they can circle around and break the lights in front of us. And then we’ll have to fight them in the dark.”

  “But maybe they aren’t following us anymore, Ric,” said Cal hopefully. “We haven’t seen them for a good while now.”

  “Look at Mesha, Cal. Her eyes haven’t left the passageway behind us for the last several minutes. They’re back.”

  Both Cal and Enoch swung their attention to the shadowcat. She was staring intently into the darkness behind them. In the silence that followed, they could hear the soft popping sound of another bulb being shattered. Enoch had continued turning the lights off as they moved out of each section in the hopes that the trolls would lose their trail. It hadn’t worked.

  “You made me nervous with that whole ‘circle around us’ thing, Ric,” said Cal. “Can we make a run for where the tunnel widens out ahead? Enoch, can you check if there are any lights there?”

  Enoch paused and sent his mind along the electrical lines up ahead. This journey through the complex network of a Pre-Schism construct had been opening his mind to what would have been the amazing potential of a Pensanden in an electronic environment. He was learning that he could use his power to see far beyond the limit of his eyes, actually following the trails of energy that wound through the architecture around him. It would have been more exciting if he wasn’t freezing to death.

  Enoch saw that the lines ahead got thicker and more complex as the tunnel widened out. But he recognized some of the forms within that complexity.

  “Yes, there are lights up ahead,” he said, eyes closed. “A different . . . type of light. And I just turned them on.” A warm yellow glow was suddenly visible at the end of the passageway.

  Cal looked at him, then turned to Rictus with a smile.

  “As I said—convenient. Let’s make a run for it, Ric.”

  “No, Cal. These trolls are starving. Desperate. I don’t know that a little painful light is going to keep them off of us for much longer. If they think we’re escaping, they’ll charge.”

  So the trio kept walking. Their pace was deliberately, painfully slow, but the trolls stayed at the borders of the shadow. Enoch recognized the new lead troll as the one which had provoked, then attacked the first one. It was, if possible, even larger. A pale and wrinkly gray, it had a tumescent hump jutting from one side of its broad shoulders. The troll stepped carefully into the nearest light and reached up to smash the bulb. Enoch gasped. The “hump” was actually another head, with one bleary eye and a gaping, toothless mouth.

  Am I partly to blame for this?

  The big fist swung, there was a pop, and the light went out. Enoch lit the next one, now in the final section before the tunnel opened up. The troll shied back again, growling hungrily. A thin mewing came from the mouth at its shoulder.

  Now I understand Cal’s pity. But I want to be rid of these things as well.

  “Well, that’s a welcome sight,” said Cal as they emerged from the tunnel. The walls fell away from them on each side, the metal bolted to ice-covered rock walls. The floor continued level across open space—the path through this enormous cave now a bridge extending over a frozen subterranean river. The sound they’d heard earlier was the deeper water flowing under a thick layer of ice. But the best news, that which Cal had commented on, was that the cave had been wired to serve as some sort of decorative rest stop amidst the featureless network of tunnels. Huge electrical lamps were mounted in the rock ceiling above them, and they now filled the icy cave with a warm yellow light.

  No more of that hideous blue flickering! It was making my head hurt. Well, that and the constant pausing to effect the on/off ignition of the lights.

  Enoch rubbed at his forehead. The pain he associated with his powers was now a dull background ache, something he had become accustomed to.

  Maybe Cal was right—will it become pleasant after more practice? It doesn’t hurt with any of the intensity it had when I first started using it.

  The trolls had followed them to the edge of the tunnel but now had stopped. This stronger light really hurt their eyes, and they were getting angry. The lead troll took a few cautious steps out onto the bridge then snarled, retreating back into the darkness. There were answering growls behind him.

  “We’re safe for now,” said Rictus, lowering his sword. “This new light really pains them.”

  “Hmm,” said Cal, “well, Enoch, I figured out where all this cold air came from.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Cal whistled a trill, and Sal pointed to the far wall of the cave where the river disappeared into the dark. Hidden under a massive stone lip were two enormous cylinders, white storage tanks the size of a Babel city block. They were bolted to a collection of pipes and support girders, and tubes entered and exited these tanks all along their length.

  “Frostwater.”

  “Did you just say frostwater, Cal?” said Rictus, groaning. “Geez, you have been amongst the peasants too long. That’s liquid hydrogen, you caveman. Coolant for the Ark.”

  Cal rolled his eyes. “That’s right, I forgot—you were a big spaceflight-junkie before the Schism. Seriously, Ric, remind me why you became a rock star again?”

  Enoch turned away from their bickering to examine these giant “frostwater” tanks. The tanks weren’t actually white, just covered in a thick coating of frost. He could see the tank’s original metallic color on one corner where a newly-lit lamp was melting the frost away. And then he spied the problem, the thing Cal had been trying to show him.

  One of the support girders, rooted on the bank of the river, had collapsed as the bank eroded away beneath it. The massive iron post had torn a gash in the lower tank. A thick stream of liquid ran down the side of the cylinder, coursed along the remaining ice-choked girders, and pooled on the glacial rocks below. The liquid gave off an icy steam, even in this cold air. It was devouring any heat in the room, even from the lights Enoch had just powered on. He thought he could feel the evil stuff suck the last bits of warmth from his arms.

  “That is why the trolls are starving,” said Rictus. “The cold has killed any of the fish and vermin which used to live down here. And the cancer won’t let their own bodies die, probably sloughing off frozen skin.”

  Cal nodded. “And that’s why they’ve started hunting topside.”

  They all looked up as a cracking sound filled the cave. Rictus was the first to realize what was going on.

  “Scales! Enoch, can you dim the power you’re channeling to the surrounding lights?”

  “What? Why? They’re actually warm, Rictus. Besides, these aren’t adjustable like the blue lights in the tunnels—they’re only off or on.”

  “Turn some of them off, then! The lamp materials have been cold for so long that . . .”

  The cracking intensified, finally culminating in a loud crashing “pop!” as the lamp nearest to the tunnel they’d just emerged from went black.

  “Run!” shouted Rictus. “Get to the passage on the other side and turn those lights on!”

  The trolls had already moved onto the newly darkened edge of the bridge. The dying light had emboldened them.

  Another lamp exploded in a cascade of glass and filaments, and another section of the bridge fell into shadow—this time behind them.

  “Run!”

  They ran. Enoch struggled to keep up with the specters. He couldn’t get his frozen body to move fast enough, couldn’t feel his feet as they pounded down the metal bridge. He was so cold. Rictus turned and came back for him.

  “Keep going, Enoch. I’ll try and hold them here until you’re across.”

  Enoch felt a tug at his pant leg and looked down to see Sal pulling at him. Cal was trying to keep his voice calm.

  “One step at a time, boy. Follow me—Sal will make sure you don’t fall over the edge.”

  At that, Enoch looked down. He was at the direct center of t
he bridge. The cave floor now dropped several hundred feet beneath him. The icy river was a narrow white line in the dimming light.

  That would be a long fall.

  Another pop, and the cave was darker.

  “Move!”

  Rictus pushed him, and he staggered a couple of steps. Sal kept Enoch’s momentum going in the right direction, pulling the boy along whenever he slowed. The bridge shook with the heavy footsteps of the oncoming trolls. They were charging now.

  Everything felt slow, not like when Enoch paused, but frozen. Heavy. Numb. Enoch ignored Cal’s protests and turned to look back.

  The first troll had reached Rictus, a smaller beast with tusks curving out from the bottom of its jaw. Rictus met the charge with a sweeping overhand blow, completely cutting the creature’s arm off at the shoulder. It squealed and fell to the metal floor with a wet thump. Enoch tried to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move.

  Rictus can handle them.

  The specter took a step back and almost fell over. The troll’s disembodied arm had curled around Rictus’s leg. The specter struggled to pull the muscled limb off of him. With a shout, he kicked free and stepped into guard position. The fallen troll was already back on its feet, the ghastly wound at its side squirming with some sort of muscular scar tissue. Enoch was repulsed but fascinated.

  Is it growing a new arm?

  He couldn’t look away, despite Sal’s insistent tugging, Cal’s desperate invective.

  A new arm was growing from the wound. Enoch gasped as the scar bulged like a blister, writhing as snakelike muscles pulled the swelling mass into a thinner protrusion. Wet skin, pink as a newborn pig, rippled across the appendage. The troll panted and whined as its body contorted under the explosive powers of this cancer—apparently the regrowth was just as painful as the loss.

  Rictus, less moved by the miraculous regeneration, kicked the still grasping arm off the side of the bridge and brought his sword down upon the troll’s head. The weapons’ vibrations caused the cranium to shatter, sending bits of brain across the cave. The troll wasn’t going to heal that one.