The God Mars Book Five: Onryo

by Michael Rizzo

  Still

  “We should go.”

  I hike with her down to the edge of the green.

  “We got Murphy and Sulemon—the Katar prisoner—out of Eureka with minimal losses, none of ours…” she fills me in as we go, even though I didn’t ask. “The Katar managed to recover some of the property taken from their dead. Between that and the rescue of one of theirs and the blood revenge, I think they considered the attack Valuable. Your father… He found your armor and your sword. He killed the man who had them, after demanding to know what they’d done with your body. The man said he didn’t know what he was talking about, for obvious reasons, so your father cut off his hands and gutted him. Then he took your things with him, bullet holes and dried blood and all, hugging them like they were his child.

  “I followed them out, away from the colony until I was sure they were out of danger. Then I followed your signals. It was pretty easy to assume where the wizard ran to when he lost his kingdom, but you left a pretty obvious trail…”

  I’m poor company. I don’t say a word to her. I don’t even drop my mask.

  I feel numb, empty. Except for Peter, and all that’s on his mind is what he’ll do when he finds Thel again. We look out over the living forest and can’t appreciate it, because it’s hiding our enemy. I think if Peter could, he would burn it all away, just to find Thel.

  “Your father…” she gets to the point she’s been circling, “…he’ll be so happy to know you’re alive. So will the others. I saw him at Eureka. How he fought. What he did to that man… I’d never seen him like that. So ruthless, so bloodthirsty…”

  “You can’t tell him,” I insist flatly.

  “I… Why not?”

  I turn on her.

  “Because I’m not alive. You know what the immortals’ Seeds do when they take a body. It’s just resources. This Seed is Peter Nagasawa, a scientist that worked on that ship. Sixteen years ago, Yod let them into the Barrow, let them take away tech: One blank Seed, one basic Companion. Another one of his fucking tests of humanity. I assume we failed, but he should have known what would happen if he’s as all-powerful as everyone says he is.” I realize I just repeated Asmodeus’ own thought.

  She starts to protest, but I cut her off before she can get a word out.

  “The Seed is coded to Peter. He’s trying to keep it from erasing me, but it eventually will. I barely have control of my own body and mind now. How many times should Abu Abbas have to mourn me? You think I want him or Sarai or any of the others to watch me fade, turn into some stranger?”

  I’m shaking with rage, and right now I’m grateful for it. If I was feeling what I should be feeling… I don’t want to. I don’t want to feel.

  “Bel… maybe Bel could help you…”

  “Bel overwrote the Ghaddar’s father,” I snap. “I don’t see him making that right.”

  She looks crushed, defeated, like the loss is hers.

  “Where will you go?”

  “Asmodeus was right. I can’t join Ram. Peter only cares about his revenge. He hates the whole fucking planet for what it took from him, what it did to him and what he still sees it doing. I’m already lost in that. His rage is my rage.” I look south. “I… There are things I need to do.

  “Go back to Katar. They’re going to need you, especially if Asmodeus and his Harvesters are on the move. Tell Ram what you saw in the pit.”

  “And what do I tell him about you?” she needs to know.

  I take a deep breath, feel my nanotech process the oxygen deep down in what used to be my lungs. Every breath I take from now on is going to be like this. Every breath. Every moment I have left.

  “I’m Peter Nagasawa. Reaper. Onryō. A failed test. No concern of his.”

  She forces a sympathetic smile, but still looks deeply sad. I expect she went through a similar crisis when she became what she is now: the changes, the shock, being unable to return to her people. But she’s still her. What am I?

  “We’ll probably cross paths again,” she tries. “Small world. Enemy of my enemy.”

  “Enemy of my enemy,” I allow.

  I turn and walk south and don’t look back.

  “Who’s Skeletor?” I ask Peter as we hike the easier way around the tip of the divide.

  I feel him chuckle in my head.

  A character from a cartoon… An animated serial for children, used to sell toys. Heroes and villains in outrageous costumes. Silly.

  I can see some of it as he remembers. Garish. Ridiculous. And all the males have an absurd amount of muscle—they look like their bodies have been inflated. They shoot guns and swing swords and axes, but no one ever seems to get more than mildly stunned. What kind of a lesson is that for children?

  “And Skeletor was a hero?”

  No. He was the main villain.

  He shows me. I look nothing like that, except maybe the skull face. And the villain is a whining, screaming, cowardly idiot—I can’t help but feel insulted by the comparison, even when Peter insists that Skeletor was a very popular character. Still, I watch some more of it, and find something else more bothersome:

  “The main hero… No one seems to know he’s the young prince, but he looks the same. All he does is take off his clothes and get a little more tan. Are they all so busy looking at his naked body that they never look at his face?”

  Peter gets a good laugh out of that. At least he can feel something besides rage.

  We make it back to the ship by late afternoon. There’s a lot less haze in the South Blade, but looking back through the gap, the Central is still thickly veiled in it—it doesn’t seem to be fading. Asmodeus could be anywhere.

  I stop at the graves.

  “You made these,” I remember. Then remember another detail: “Who painted the hatch?”

  The warning? One of Thel’s more forgivable minions. Old man, but still low-rank. He took a lot of ridicule from the others, but he was Japanese, kept the old legends from his parents, even tried to appease me by leaving sacrifices of food and prayers on folded paper. The only known way to exorcise an Onryō is to transform it, deify it, give it a shrine. I think Thel encouraged it so the others wouldn’t try breaking into the ship to look for anything they hadn’t already looted. He didn’t want to risk anyone restoring me.

  “Except my parents.”

  Peter doesn’t have a reply, doesn’t try to assure me that he wouldn’t have taken them. He knows whatever he’s done for me is temporary, and irreversible. He’s killed me. That it was not malicious doesn’t alleviate his stain.

  I give Peter control, let him pull a string of beads out of his satchel and chant his prayers, kneeling before the grave of his wife and child (and his own that he’ll never occupy). I realized I haven’t bothered with Salat since before I died. (Are the dead still obligated to pray?) (And how can I be buried properly if my body keeps walking around, forever?)

  My situation is ridiculous. I haven’t even urinated since I was killed. Or eaten or drank anything with my mouth.

  In my head, I say parts of the Salat al Janazah, wishing the dead God’s mercy, even knowing that’s been decided long ago, and they were not of the Faithful.

  When Peter is done, I gather some fruits and nuts, filling my satchel with the same species I got in trouble for picking when I was a child. Then I take my humble meal into the ship.

  The airlocks pop for me as I approach. More surprisingly, the ship is partially pressurized, warm.

  I was able to restore some of the basic systems. Water recycling is back online, if you’d like a shower.

  I go to the galley, set out my harvest on the table, and pry off my helmet for the first time. My hair still seems to be as I left it, just like my beard, and—I assume—my face, since Straker didn’t react like it had changed significantly. I should go find a mirror, but I’m not sure I have the nerve yet. So I attend to more basic needs.

  I rifle through the cabinets for a receptacle for water, finding plastic cups along with dishware that
look familiar, and where I expect to find them. I let the faucet run for several seconds to clear out the unused plumbing, losing myself in the water stream. The simple experience seems so much clearer now, sharper. If I look hard, concentrate, I can slow it down, zoom into the shimmering clarity…

  I almost forget I was going to pour myself a drink.

  The water is cold and tastes metallic, but tasting anything right now is…

  I can feel something moving before I hear it—a low-level EMR signature, behind me. I spin, hand on my gun, but don’t draw.

  In the corridor through the open hatch: She shimmers out of the wall, her cloaking technology having visually blended her into the ship. I suppose I should have done a proper sweep.

  Her eyes have gone wide as she sees my face. I take my hand off my gun.

  “Long story,” I tell the Zauba’a Ghaddar, sheepish and weary. “Bad ending.” Then I gesture to my meal. “Are you hungry?”

  Part Two: Time of Death

  Chapter 1: Local God

  Maybe I should have come back sooner, should have come back immediately after the battle. Finished it. Now I’ve lost my best opportunity. And inherited a responsibility I neither want nor deserve.

  But the procrastination, I expect, was all me. Reason, pushing through the single-mindedness of our desire—our need—for vengeance. Or maybe I was just sick of the killing, especially the killing of Normals that really have no chance against creatures like us.

  The delays certainly didn’t come from Peter. I knew what Peter would do, would make me do. With both Thel and Asmodeus out of our reach, the Keepers were the only remaining targets. Without Thel, we could easily slaughter them all; hacked and shot our way through the entire colony in one bloody afternoon, and been done with the vicious, cold-blooded animals forever. And given Peter’s still-fresh rage at losing his opportunity to kill Thel, we absolutely would have, and not stopped to question or regret until it was irreversible. Because the Keepers wouldn’t be coming back from the dead.

  So for six days I managed to stay away from Eureka, by keeping Peter focused on a bigger target, on Asmodeus. We spent most of those days and nights getting enough of the DQ’s systems back online to give us a chance of tracking the Stormcloud through the tenacious magnetite-laced haze that still blankets the Central Blade. The key to that—Peter’s own idea—will be the ship’s compliment of probe drones. But their batteries need to be chemically reconstituted, and we’ll need to reset their frequencies to ensure they’re not detected by Asmodeus. Or the Unmakers in orbit—I won’t have our mission interfered with by another impulsive railgun strike. Thel, Asmodeus and Fohat must be dealt with face-to-face. That’s the only way to be sure.

  The repair work has been both a wondrous and tedious process: All I have to do is lay hands on the pieces of equipment, and I can feel myself extend into them, my nanites doing the work automatically. Even though I have no real education in the design of any of the hardware or materials, I just need to focus on what I want done, and then maintain physical contact until it is done. Touch, think, fix. It became an exercise in meditation, and one, I think, we both needed. It tempered Peter’s bloodlust by keeping his head in being constructive, building instead of destroying. And it kept me focused on what I could do with what I’ve become besides killing.

  So for six days, we were creators instead of destroyers, and I had time to learn some more of what my so completely altered body could do. And in our idle moments, Peter gave me access to his memories, took joy in showing me the planet of my parents, playing teacher and guide through a world of wonders that I’d only touched in what media files had survived the Apocalypse. So many beautiful and amazing things…

  And Peter actually seemed willing to let the Keepers be, to make our Modded enemies priority, as they were truly the greatest threat to all life on both planets. I’d thought I’d even convinced him that using our power against others like us was the only just and reasonable application for it; that we can’t use it in any good conscience against what the Jinn call “Normals”, not if we have any choice at all.

  We—and the other beings like us—are simply too strong, too powerful. And it’s not just that the still-mortals are like fragile children with toy weapons against us. It’s also one of the curses of Modded invincibility and immortality I’ve quickly discovered: It makes a man not care. It makes a man forget everything he used to value, including, most damning of all, human life.

  Asmodeus was right: I enjoyed the slaughter. I’ve reveled in victories before, but it wasn’t anything like what I felt at Eureka. The killing I did that night—and I did take part, no matter how much I convinced myself that Peter had control and I was just a helpless observer… It wasn’t like I was killing men at all. It was an easy rush that too-quickly turned unsatisfying, frustrating, demanding more.

  It’s no wonder we destroyed our world, that other world, before Yod undid it all. Every wondrous act of creation I do only frames that fundamental flaw in our nature. What the human race could have done with these gifts… But instead, we apparently gave in to the worst of what we are. Or so I’ve been told, by individuals with questionable memories of that hell—and I did doubt, but now that I’ve seen what just a few human beings given such power have done, I have no reason at all not to believe in a world so terrible that an even more powerful being would choose to completely undo it.

  During those days, Peter seemed to appreciate my company, my “fresh and innocent” perspective, my playing the role of his moral compass. But Peter apparently wasn’t as committed to this new purpose as I thought he was, at least not enough to forget his desire for easy vengeance. He bided his time, waited until I was distracted, and subtly aimed me back here.

  I’ve been making myself (and Peter) perform a daily ritual each morning, so I (we) don’t forget my (our) humanity. Peter, for his part, hasn’t protested or resisted—it even feels like it’s been quality “bonding” time between us, a kind of therapy for both our conditions.

  I (we) take a walk in the forest, appreciating the random beauty of life thriving on a world that—only a handful of decades ago—had none outside of a greenhouse. I (we) watch the leaves of the plants slowly open to the early light, losing myself (ourselves) in the soothing rustle of the wind through the green. I take off my (our) helmet to feel the sun and the wind on my (our) face, and breathe deep, smelling the growth and the damp soil as it thaws from the overnight frost. I drink cold clean water from a canteen like it’s the finest-pick tea. I pick nuts and fruits and eat them like a human being, savoring each bite.

  And I perform Salat, facing west-northwest, a simple survival blanket serving as a prayer rug, humbling myself before God (the real God, not Yod, even though I know it’s likely that I’m kneeling on top of him as I do so). Then I tend the graves of Peter’s family and Declan Chance, and kneel in the dirt while Peter says his own prayers for the welfare of their souls, while I recite my own words in my head, asking God for His mercy.

  I know the Ghaddar is watching me on the ship’s restored monitors as I do all this, just like she’s watched me all week, poorly pretending that she isn’t. (Is she spying for Ram? Or is this her own choice, to stay with me for some reason she won’t say?)

  Except for his graveside chanting, Peter has been unusually quiet this particular morning. He’s been spending less and less time filling my head with idle conversation, talking about his world, his history, his culture, his wife and daughter—words made real for me because I can see the memories in our shared brain, that wonderful unbelievable planet of plenty. On a good day (and I think there have been more good days), I can make him forget how much he hates that world, or at least the people that rule it. I can make him feel my wonder, feel what it is to see his home planet through my eyes: The rich air, the unbelievably abundant water, heat, a bounty of food that I can barely imagine. And in remembering the good things, all the good things, he seems to forget his rage, if only for minutes or hours.

  I
don’t have to view everything through his memories. The ship has an extensive library of media, still intact: Music, books, movies—more than any collection of files my people had preserved or acquired. I tell myself I’ll take the time to delve into them properly, once our enemies are found and dealt with, assuming I have that time. In the interim, I play music while we “work”, a habit of Peter’s which I quickly become accustomed to. (But sometimes I notice subtle “stutters” in the sung parts, and Peter admits that the governments of his home world have been censoring their art and media for what they consider “offensive” content.)

  In all of this, I have to be constantly careful. I have to steer his memories away from his daughter, his wife. They’re wonderful memories, but they always end in horror and hate. I’ve gotten better at it, day by day, or maybe he’s letting me distract him. For longer and longer each day.

  But then I lose control when we dream.

  When we dream, I become him. I experience the profound joy of the birth of his baby girl, watch that life come into the world, a miracle. I watch her grow, watch her wonder and smile and laugh and play and learn.

  I have to hold him there, when we wake. I have to keep him from thinking forward, from reliving her murder, her terror. I usually fail. And so we start each day with rage, with a desire for revenge that we know can never be sated, not even if we went back to Eureka and killed every last Keeper.

  Hence the need for our morning ritual.

  I also fail when we dream of his wife, because we often dream of their passion for each other, of making love with her, of the pleasures of her body, her scent, her taste, what she likes and how she responds. I find myself withdrawing from those moments, ashamed—I have no business there. I can feel that he’s similarly uncomfortable, both of us stripped bare before the other, me inside his most intimate and private and emotionally powerful moments.