Sarkoth felt blindsided, unsure of where this was going. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, it’s still coming to light. Perhaps a confidential call to a wife or daughter, only now brought to light, where he confesses. Maybe they’ll find a fingerprint that leads to a suspect and then to another suspect. The point is, though…”
“…the trail of crumbs leads straight to you, Sarkoth.” Emil Gokla said, with a smile. “We will arrange it so.”
Sarkoth Amnon’s face was purple with rage. “You’re setting me up.”
“You’re already a fallen angel, and a connection to such a horrific crime…you’ll be prosecuted very quickly and effectively, I imagine.” Raya said. “Imagine all of this descending on your head at once. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
“That’s ridiculous,” he snarled. “There’s not a damned bit of hard evidence to connect me to the Solar Arm Ark attack.”
“That is present tense,” Emil said. “We’re talking future. Sometimes evidence is found, and sometimes evidence is made.”
“Do you think you’re the only one who’s willing to play that game? If you try to stitch me up with these absurd accusations, I’ll hit back with some of my own. The disappearance of children can easily be connected to you, Gokla. And I’ve been collecting dirt on you for years, Raya. You can take your best shot at me, but I’ll be slugging back twice as hard. And you know what’s happening while we’re standing in a courtroom on cross-examination? I still hold public office, my defensive network is still being built. You don’t want me arrested or disgraced. You want our solar system’s defenses neutralized so that Caitanya-9 can strike. Unless you achieve that, you’ve achieved exactly nil. Understand?”
“There’s one final thing,” Emil said, with the air of a man drawing his last and best card. “What if it comes out that you are mentally unfit? Solar Arm law is entirely within its rights to strip you of power, and install Second Minister Raya in your place. This is not dependent on a criminal trial, nor a public referendum.”
“And how will you prove my insanity?”
“I don’t,” Raya said. “I merely need to convince a plurality of the Reformation party that you are unfit to carry out your duties. With this bizarre budget flip flop and your approval rating plunging below the bottom, everyone’s eager to be rid of you. With these recent allegations of terrorism, it will be all the easier.”
“And before I forget, there’s one other thing!” Emil said. “We have it on good authority that in recent days you unlawfully abducted a Solar Arm veteran, and subjected her to a disturbing ordeal in the prisons beneath the Atrium. She views herself as insane, and has told nobody about it. But with the proper motivation, she will testify against you.”
“Ridiculous.” At last, Sarkoth Amnon started to feel the sand ebb away beneath his feet.
They had so much to use against him, so many lies and double-lies to trip him up with, so many fault lines and angles of attack.
And against a decentralized group like the Sons of the Vanitar, a group that thought little of dying for their cause, there was virtually nothing he could do them.
Emil Gokla would die soon, and would not live to see trial.
Raya Yithdras was a politician of unimpeachable repute, and he was limited in how much mud he could throw on her by dint of the fact that she was a member of his own party.
What secret am I even keeping? Do I really know anything that would help them? Some of the things I’ve done are crimes, but this is a hard room to shock.
“Very well, let’s talk,” Sarkoth said. “As you know, I conducted an experiment, using Emil’s Black Shift technology. In the initial rescue team that went out to Caitanya-9, one of them did not receive a memory.”
“That is very bad,” Emil said. “The patient is supposed to receive his memory back within seconds of awakening. If not, new neural connections start to repopulate the brain, and ischemic mental issues will…”
“…Yes, yes. Believe me, I am well aware that was a bad thing to do. I was just curious as to what a man would do with none of the baggage of a past life behind him. As it turns out, there were problems, and the man was arrested by the security on Konotouri Station, whose custody he later escaped.”
“Should we be interested in the fate of this man?” Raya said. “It doesn’t seem terribly relevant.”
“And maybe it isn’t. All I know is that when I landed on the surface…”
“…Aha, you did land down there!” Emil’s voice was a revolting gloat, thick and smug.
“Yes, I did.”
“And that means you’ve implanted false memories in the heads of all the returning personnel.”
“Not really false memories. I merely recorded their brain waves as of arriving in orbit, and reinserted them after the soldiers boarded the ships. All of their memories of being on the planet have vanished.”
“You’re not supposed to do that, either. Every new experience shapes the architecture of the brain! The whorls, the gyrusing, it all changes on a sub-molecular level!”
“Please let me finish. As I was down there, we encountered some renegade humans.”
“Who?” Emil pounced on this. “We require details.”
Sarkoth Amnon glanced at the walls and ceiling, as if seeking inspiration there. “It was Mykor and his men. The same ones you sent there, to uncover what was going on the planet. Evidently, he’d had a change of heart, and turned against his original goals. They fought us using Vanitar technology, so evidently they’d discovered something.”
“Good news, Prime Minister,” Emil said. “Your story is just slightly too implausible to be bullshit, and hence I believe it. Where’s Mykor now? Wait, don’t answer…you brought him back. He was the body detected on the ship, the one you didn’t declare.”
Sarkoth nodded. “And if you’re wondering where he is now, he didn’t survive. He sustained fatal injuries on the planet, and although we got him to earth, when we reanimated him he was a corpse.”
Emil smiled that turtle-like smile. “Ah, that sounds like a lie. But please go on.”
“I fought him on the ground. He was digging his way through the planet’s crust, where he thought there was the access point to some kind of weapon. I’m very confused by it all, not chief by the fact that Andrei Kazmer then took that opportunity to break free, get down to the planet, and join the side of Mykor.”
“And what happened then?”
“We overwhelmed Mykor’s men, and threw Andrei Kazmer down the hole in the earth that Mykor had dug. It was a huge pit, sunk straight into the rock, hundreds and hundreds of meters down. It was completely unsurvivable. Soon it was impossible to stay on the planet due to the transit of the moons, and we had to run. That was where things really hit the shits.”
“What happened?”
“Kazmer came back.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t know. He spoke to me, promised that he’d be back some day, and that the Wipe would happen to the solar system. Just pure rage. He wanted to leave me alive so that I would feel fear.”
Emil Gokla nodded. “Well, a few pieces are falling into place. The message on the shuttle wall is clearly meant to inspire fear. Based on your knowledge of the planet, do you think he can do it?”
“We’ve found evidence of gamma ray bursts throughout the universe. We don’t know if they came from Caitanya-9 or some other source. But if it happened once, maybe it can happen again. And the fact that he made the planet disappear, leaving no trace…that’s FTL travel. Impossible, but he’s doing it. I don’t know if he’s bending space and time, or creating a temporary black hole, or what the story is. But that poses a big problem for the single person in this room who cares about existential safety. He can pop out at any time and open fire.”
“So why’s he warning us?” Emil said.
“Like I said, he wants me to be scared. I guess he wants us all to be scared. He sees himself as abused and mistreated, and maybe he’
s right. I do not make excuses for my actions. I just wanted knowledge.”
“And you got it, and so have we,” Raya said. “Your story hovers on the edge of unbelievablity, but then so does a space station just magically appearing and crashing into Terrus. At the moment, we are satisfied, and you may go.”
Her imperious tone stung Sarkoth. Officially, Raya was his second in command. He said jump, and she said how high. But in the dark oubliette that was Emil Gokla’s mansion, she was the one who called the shots.
“This was a conversation filled with threats and unpleasantness,” Sarkoth Amnon said. “Quite amazing, given that I’ve allowed your little death cult to continue to exist. If the history books discovered my role in sheltering you, they would brand me a villain.”
“Now you’re the one who’s bluffing, Sarkoth,” Emil said condignly. “Just try and expose us. It would be funny.”
Sarkoth Amnon left. Relativistic shuttles would get him back to Terrus in a day or so, where the nightmare continued.
As he left, he caught a glimpse of a young boy’s face poking out around a doorway. He looked young, and sick. Sarkoth knew about Emil’s tastes, and his use of parabiotic blood therapy. But he felt incredible jealousy for the boy.
Imagine having no responsibilities. Just someone draining your blood away until you peacefully died.
Want to swap, lad?
Caitanya-9 – February 28, 2143 – 1400 hours
The survivors continued to live, lurking in the earthquake-free zone around the digging site. The day came when the Defiant scraped bottom on the water buffalo. Their supplies now stood at zero.
Ubra drank her water ration, reflecting that it might be the final water to pass her lips.
She had no fear, no worry for the future. She was living by faith.
Their planet was ruled by a god. Not a just god, or a kind god, but miracles flowed from his hand.
Dark miracles.
Wake was keeping them alive, she was sure of it. Even if he lacked the honesty or sanity to admit it to himself, he did not want them to die. The moons passed overhead, gouging the landscape…except for the narrow swathe of territory where the Defiant lived. From time to time he walked among their campfires, muttering and ranting, but doing no more. So far, Haledor’s fears had proven groundless. He had killed no more people.
She returned to the original digging site. It was the place that should have been uprooted and buried a dozen times by the moons, but it still stood.
And there was a temple on it.
Nobody was sure exactly when Wake had raised the structure from the rock. It had just popped into existence one morning, without noise or proclamation. It was a hundred meters tall, and reminiscent of a Babylonian ziggurat. A sloped spiral rose upwards, and by navigating the clockwise twists you would find yourself standing on a platform.
Did he expect worship? Did he want human hearts cut out and put on it, like Huitzilopochtli? Or was the mere benediction of his followers enough?
She walked, her eyes on the ground. The strange religions on Terrus, offshooting from Christianity in the 21st century, had left her with little idea of how to deal with a diety from the Old Testament.
She walked for nearly half an hour, until she was on top of the Ziggurat. A cool breeze played across her face. You no longer needed to feel existential terror at the slightest breath of wind on Caitanya-9. The whipping tornados and earthquakes were a thing of the past, so long as they remained in the habitable zone.
She stood then on the platform, at the apex, and and started speaking. “I need your help.”
When she raised her eyes, he was in front of her, as she knew he would be.
His visage was terrifying. So was that of thirst.
“We need water.”
He nodded. “Sit with me for a moment.”
They passed an hour wordlessly, until Wake started speaking again, “I have sent a message back to Terrus. They have six months, and then I destroy them. How do you feel about that?”
There was a terrible moment when Ubra imagined grain fields razed, the oceans boiling in their trenches, mountains blasted to cinders, and she suppressed a shiver. She adopted an air of indifference. “What does it matter? I live here now.”
“Your pretense is well acted, but you care. Either way, know that it is happening. If I don’t make up my mind now, I might never do it.”
They looked out over the purple landscape.
“Listen,” he said, as loud cracks and shivers echoed across the landscape, like the splitting of ancient bones. She looked to the sky, thinking he must have rescinded his protection from the moons, but neither Somnath or Detsen were visible.
Then water burst through the ground.
It was so long since she’d seen it in any large quantity. It took her a moment to mentally process what it was.
More wellsprings exploded from the hard rock, then more still, and soon the landscape was dotted with fountaining jets.
She smiled, and then giggled. When windborn spray touched her face, she laughed with joy.
“How?” She asked. Caitanya-9 had only trace amounts of water, locked away in clouds that never rained.
“The bulk of the crust is composed of feldspar, of which potassium is a critical component. Suppose I dissolved the bonds of eight protons and electrons from each potassium atom, as well as two proton/election pairs. Suppose these were reunited as hydrogen and oxygen. Suppose furthermore that I sequestered the leftover ions deep underground, as well as smoothed over the resultant release of energy. Caitanya-9 would have water. More than that, it would have oceans.”
“Is that what you’ve done here?”
He did not answer, and Ubra just looked at the changing landscape.
Lakes were now spreading across the landscape. Every low lying basin was now filling with what appeared to be fresh, clean, drinkable water.
He brings us water, yet he would bring devastation to our homeworld.
The contradictions were stacking up, but did that matter with two facts in congruence? Their bodies needed water to survive, and now, water had been provided.
“Should I tell the others you did this?”
“Are they so stupid that they’d think I didn’t?”
She stood up, wondering if she was skating close to an unpredictable bad mood. Then she began to descend.
“It is well that you leave now, Ubra,” he said. “You don’t know how much water I’ve made. Soon, there might be an ocean that covers the entire world, except for a few mountains. Hurry, or risk drowning.”
She did hurry, but her mind wasn’t thinking about an ocean that covered the entire world. She was thinking about all the peanuts and hazelnuts being roasted around fires. She wondered if anyone had worked as a farmer before signing up as a soldier, and perhaps had a sentimental seed or two tucked away in a knapsack. She wondered if there was some way to synthesise nitrogen, so that they’d have fertile soil.
She dashed along the thinning wedges of land. On either side, the life-giving liquid that bubbled and churned from the ground.
It was a land of miracles.
Time passed. All of their electronic equipment was steadily going haywire. Clocks no longer kept sync with each other. Computers failed erratically. Nanomesh computer suits would stop working and
The hydroponic food product Zelity had thrown from the Skyfortress was recovered. Genetically engineered potatoes and beans that reached maturity in days instead of weeks. Soon, paltry harvests were supplementing their MREs and food reserves. No doubt that they’d replace them entirely, when it was necessary.
Twice more, Wake sucked them into the maw of a wormhole. And twice more, he used the Wipe in some distant corner of the universe.
Each time they saw the mighty gamma ray bursts turn the heavens to fire, they wondered at what was being lost out there, what was carelessly destroyed for no reason at all.
But life was carelessly created for no reason at all. There might be some symmet
ry there. Or at least some poetry.
They existed in an uneasy peace with Wake. Their relationship was partly worshippers and a God, partly ants and a human.
They built a small village, and went about their lives. Did stereotypically human things. Tried not to overstep their bounds and enrage the one that burned the skies.
Ubra was shocked by how calmly and placidly everyone was accepting their fate. Soldiers turned farmers, who would never see their families again…were accepting it. Nothing seemed unusual about this to anyone.
They would just happily continue on, until the scheduled end of the world.
She put the question to Zelity once. He thought for a few seconds, then gave some half-digested mush for an answer.
“It’s because now they know the end.”
“How is that a comfort?”
“Because it takes away the uncertainty. People used to believe crazy things. That the world was run by witches. Why? I guess because they’d figured out a way to make a confusion and weird situation make sense, even if the explanation was horrible on its face. Right now, we’ve got closure. You’re not going to get buried in a grave and wonder if humanity will continue for another thousand or million years. You know that the grave is going to be big and deep and long and we’re all going to lie in it together. And that, in a way, is comforting.”
Ubra looked for comfort in herself, and didn’t find as much of it as she would have liked.
Each new morning brought nausea, and strange food cravings.
She was beginning to think that if she looked inside her body, she would find something else growing there.
I’m pregnant.
Titan – December 3th 2142, 1000 hours
“I really like this Andrei Kazmer man,” Emil said. “He’s one of us, though he doesn’t know it.”
Extinction Level Event (The Consilience War Book 2) Page 16