by Kage Baker
“No!” she repeated, and turned a will of such iron strength on Uncle Ratlin that his hand fell away from her, and he cringed back. The stupids prostrated themselves. Quean Barbie caught her breath, withered visibly, and in that moment of her fury Tiara might have had it all.
But she turned and ran for the slave, just as the Uncles pitched him over the threshold and into the wind.
“Good-bye,” he called, as the wind puffed out his fair hair around his head. Then he was out of sight, falling like a drop of rain. She neither paused at the threshold nor flinched at all, but dove after him, spreading out her arms like the wings of a little bird.
The ship spun on across the sky, disappearing into the clouds.
And through the clouds Tiara and her slave fell, down and down. She glimpsed him below her briefly, tiny against a dark immensity that reflected the clouds like hammered and polished steel. Then there was fire in her eyes, painful light, and she was blind as he was, in a vortex of thundering air that took away all sense.
So it was unconscious instinct, or else the Memory, that pointed her body so perfectly that it clove the rolling waves and was not broken by them, and she dove downward into glassy gloom, and revived to peer about herself in astonishment. Bluegreen infinity, rippled with bearable sunlight! And fish, and coral branches and white sand… and here, drifting past her face, a pair of black cotton dress pants.
She looked up through her waving hair. There in the mirror-bright roof of the world were the bare legs of her slave, kicking feebly. She pushed off from the white sand and rose up through the water, surfacing beside him. He was coughing and gasping, flailing his arms. “Oh, much-vexed royal Odysseus,” she sang. “My hero of the beautiful hair!”
“Tiara??!!” he shouted, starting so violently that he promptly sank, but she dove down and hauled him up again, spluttering.
“I am with you, my ownest one,” she told him. “I will forsake all others to die with thee!”
“Don’t give it up yet,” he ordered, turning his blind face, craning his neck. “Look for me, sweetheart. Where are we? I can smell land somewhere!”
She looked all around, squinting against the fierce light that hurt her and danced in blotches before her eyes. Suddenly it came clear, right there not a kilometer away from them, a mountain in the sea, green waving trees, waves breaking on a beach of bright sand. Off to one side a great boat, the biggest she had ever imagined (for she had never seen one), rocked at anchor. “Oh!” She shook him in her unbearable delight. “We’ve done it. We’ve gotten into the stories at last!”
“Is it an island?” the slave asked. “Is it, divine nymph?”
“Yes! It’s the Treasure Island, it’s the Adventure Island, it’s Ogygia,” she screamed. “We’ll be safe there!” And she paddled away toward it, towing him after her.
The waves rolled and tumbled them ashore, and how heavy Tiara’s slave was as she struggled to help him from the water. Exhilarated as she was to be having an adventure at last, she was still weakened and half blinded by the blazing sun as it rose. She wept as she pulled her slave into the shade, onto a grassy lawn that sloped down to the beach.
“Don’t cry,” he told her. He groped for her trembling hand. “Don’t be afraid, child. Just let me rest a little. We’ll make another plan.”
“But we left your vitamins,” she sobbed. “And what if this is the Cyclopes’ island? Or there might be cannibals, or pirates.” She looked fearfully out at the big boat.
“I really don’t think—” he began, but was interrupted by her shrill cry. She had just turned around and looked into the interior of the island, and seen to her astonishment that the lawn where they lay was only the edge of a vast and beautifully tended garden. It was bright with flowers, it was shaded by trees heavy with fruit, and there were pergolas and balustraded stairs leading somewhere, but Tiara didn’t notice where, exactly; for standing not a stone’s throw away on the green lawn were a big man and a woman. They were staring at Tiara and her slave, in astonishment no less great than her own.
They walked forward. Tiara cringed above her slave to protect him, blinking desperately in the brightness, trying to see them clearly. “What is it?” The slave turned his head this way and that.
“Oh please,” Tiara whimpered. They kept coming, and she glanced sidelong at the woman and turned to peer at the man, but she had to crane her head back to look, he was so tall, he went up and up against the green trees—
Her mouth fell open, and then her little face was radiant with joy and relief. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Oh, we’re saved! You’ll save us, you can do anything.”
“Child, what is it?” repeated the slave in some agitation. The woman came swiftly forward to stare at him. With a wordless cry of sorrow she sank down and took the slave’s head in her lap, stroking back his hair. He blinked, he tried to speak but couldn’t get a word out in his surprise.
“He’s hurt, my poor hero is hurt, my bad uncle shot him and spoiled his poor biomechanicals after he’d worked so hard to get them online again, but you’ll help him, I know you will,” Tiara prattled happily to the big man. “For who is so brave or so clever as you?”
The man turned his head, considering Tiara, arching one eyebrow. Then he looked back at her slave. Leaning down, he took the slave’s hand in his own and gripped it firmly. “A-ah!” cried the slave, as something seemed to flow down his arm from the man’s arm, and then he arched his back and gasped and shuddered. His skin flushed with color, his lungs filled with breath. The woman held him as his whole body convulsed, once and twice and a third time. He shut his eyes, opening them again after a long moment.
Tiara, leaning close, saw his pupils dilate and contract. The long years of his darkness ended, and Lewis looked up into the face of the very tall man.
“Oh,” he said, tears brimming in his eyes. “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome, sir,” replied Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax.
CHAPTER 34
Under Mount Torquemada:
9 July 2355
As bunkers went, it was very pleasant. Great care had been taken to combat claustrophobia by keeping the color scheme light and airy, a pale sky blue, and there was a viewscreen above the command console that had been framed to look like an immense picture window. Subtle lighting effects furthered the illusion. Fresh air was pumped down through vents, and that plus the vista of sea and breakers on the island’s windward side made it nice to linger there, or at least it would have been nice if the present occupants hadn’t been in mortal fear of their lives.
They huddled here and there in small groups. Some fidgeted, some wept uncontrollably, some sprawled drooling on the floor in tranquilizer-induced bliss. Some few stalwart souls sat at the polished conference table and attempted to monitor the progress of the rebellion. Discarded emergency ration wrappers were everywhere.
“Still no word from London Central,” said Freestone.
“Why should there be any word?” demanded Rotwang, from the Berlin office. “You’re all here!”
“There’s the non-priority personnel,” Chatterji explained. “The Theobald’s Road staff. We haven’t heard from them.”
“They’re probably home hiding under their beds,” said Bensington from the Paris office, attempting to pace and finding his way blocked by piles of weeping biophysicists and their luggage.
“The odd thing is, the Public Health Monitors aren’t reporting any civil disturbances,” said Loew of the Prague office. “No assaults, no arson, not so much as a complaint call.”
“Too quiet,” gasped Bugleg, from where he curled in fetal position under the conference table. “What if they’re tricking us?”
“We are getting a few calls from Luna,” said Collodi of the Rome office. “Their cyborg personnel are unaccounted for, too. They think they left on shuttles yesterday. One was tracked as far as Depot Alpha but—”
“That just means they’re all massing here on Earth,” wailed somebody half obscured b
y a mountain of valises, behind which he or she had retreated.
“Shut up,” ordered Rigby of the Salem office. She scrolled furiously through the list of reports that were coming in. “Everything is still under our control.”
“But it’s almost eleven o’clock,” moaned Baum of the Kansas office, wringing his hands.
“I tell you the Preservers got more sense than to run about smashing windows,” said Ellsworth-Howard sullenly, and was at once the recipient of a torrent of denunciation from all quarters. He waited until it had died down and then said “Shrack the lot of ya,” and had a sip of distilled water.
“Still no reports of meteors headed our way?” inquired Nu-Gua of the Bikkung office. “No suspicious fluctuation at the Earth’s magnetic poles?”
“No fleets of alien warships demanding unconditional surrender?” wondered Previdenza of the Athens office.
“None,” Rigby told them. “Just a report from the Preservancy staff about something unpleasant in the Conference Center last night, but we had no events scheduled there, so I can’t see—”
“Eleven o’clock,” said Chatterji faintly. He folded his arms across his chest, and in doing so noticed the stiff envelope in his inner pocket, forgotten since his arrival the previous night. He drew it out now and stared at it curiously.
Freestone drew himself up. “One of us ought to send the final message,” he said. “Shall I?” Nobody answered him. Chatterji tore open the envelope and peered inside.
“What’s that?” Ellsworth-Howard inquired.
Shrugging, Chatterji tilted the envelope and shook out onto the tabletop a small ivory-colored rectangle. He recognized it as an antique calling card: not the sort that had been used to operate public telephones but the even more ancient variety that had been left at nineteenth-century homes by visitors. “Writing?” Ellsworth-Howard pointed at a line of penned words above the printed name. Chatterji read aloud:
“ ‘I will be with you on your wedding-night.’ With the c-compliments of.” He frowned and puzzled over the delicate copperplate of the name. “Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax.”
“What the shrack?” said Ellsworth-Howard, as Freestone went to the main communications console and, on the temporal advisory channel, entered: WE STILL DON’T KNOW—
There was a dull thud, sounding for all the world as though something had lighted on the roof. Being, as they were, under several thousand tons of rock, this seemed unlikely. A number of people screamed and threw themselves flat. They were ignored by the others, who were staring in horror at the communications console.
It had lit up with red flashing lights across its surface. Above it, the serene view of sea and sky had been replaced by cells of images from closed-circuit cameras all over the island. Freestone staggered back, and Rotwang pointed a trembling finger at the screen. “What’re those?” he cried, referring to the three silver towers that had materialized in Avalon.
“We’ve lost contact with the others,” gasped Rigby. “All the others. Worldwide.”
“The perimeter defense just went down,” said Freestone.
“What?” screamed half a dozen people.
“It went down,” he said in an insanely calm voice. “It’s gone. Poof. Nothing between us and the hordes of ravening cyborgs except those doors—”
“Defense Protocol Seven Seven Seven,” said Rigby into a comm unit, but already the multiple screens were showing aghumms racing through the streets of Avalon, making for the high ridge road that led to the island’s west end.
“We’ve got soldiers?” Chatterji stared up at the console.
“Oh, oh, they’re coming to kill us—” whimpered Bugleg.
“Don’t be stupid, those are our own personnel,” Rigby said. “Did you think we didn’t make preparations? We’ve got a standing army of real people hidden here, have had for years! They’re on their way to us now.”
“But what good will they do?” Baum knotted his fingers together. “We’re under attack by immortals!”
“We don’t know that,” said Loew, attempting to appear calm. “And these are genuine fighters. They’ve been trained by the best Celtic Federation mercenaries money could buy. Not only that, they’ve got a deadly arsenal—”
“There are aircraft coming in—” Chatterji pointed at one of the screens.
“Where?!!”
“—And after all, you’re forgetting the psychology of the Preservers,” Loew continued, though he had lost his audience. “They weren’t programmed as fighters. They were designed to find that sort of thing morally and psychologically repugnant. It’s my guess they’ve all gone into hiding—”
“Are these our people, too, these troops coming ashore at Area Seventy-three?” asked Freestone, pointing at another of the screens. Rigby glanced up at it and went pale.
“… No,” she said.
“What on earth—” said Freestone, scowling and enlarging that particular screen. “Who are—what are those?”
There followed an astonishing harmony as Chatterji and Ellsworth-Howard shrieked in major thirds and dove under the conference table with Bugleg and Rutherford, who was already there, having rediscovered the Goddess, in Whom he had not believed since he was six. He was now busily praying to Her for rescue. “Shrack,” said Ellsworth-Howard. “Oh shrack shrack shrack shrack shrack—”
No one else had time to be alarmed by this, however, for other screens were showing aghumms colliding, smoke, and fireball explosions somewhere in the interior.
“There’s fighting at the Hogsback Portal,” said Rigby in a dull voice. “And in the tunnels.”
“Are they going to reach us in time?” Bensington looked horrified.
“Who are they fighting with?” Loew demanded. “The scans aren’t showing any cyborgs in that area! In fact—”
“What are those things coming up from the beach?” demanded Freestone. He leaned under the table to peer at Chatterji, who just shook his head, lips pressed tight together.
“Shrack, shrack, shrack, shrack, shrack—”
“Those aircraft are landing,” said Collodi. “Yes. Here they are. See? Right outside. Well, that’s it. We’re dead. Any second now—”
“Shut up!” Rigby ran to the command console. She squeezed in an order and with a dull rumble a section of sky blue wall rolled back, revealing a passage leading down into darkness. A strong smell of the sea came up out of it, and the distant boom of surf.
“We can evacuate,” she announced. “There’s a Deepwater craft below with supplies for a year at full capacity!” People were already scrambling to their feet and rushing past her, down the tunnel. “We can go any—”
“But those things are coming right—” There was a boom as the doors to the bunker blew inward, followed by the sound they had heard in their nightmares for years: the tramp of marching feet.
The Island of Destiny: 9 July 2355
“Are you scared?” Hearst inquired. Joseph, who was staring out at the looming windward face of the island, turned with a bright smile. His eyes, though, were desperate.
“Who, me scared? Hell no. Now, if I was whoever it was that’s crouching in that command bunker under that mountain there, I’d be scared all right.”
“That’s the spirit,” Hearst assured him. “Justice will emerge victorious!”
“Sure it will,” Joseph said. They fell silent, watching as the bright water leaped back from the Oneida’s prow.
Budu approached them, unhurried, looking happy. Ten minutes to the anchorage, he transmitted, and into their minds sent a glowing relief map of the island. A circle appeared around the west end and zoomed in on their present location. They beheld Mount Torquemada rising sheer from the sea on its bay, in the lee of Cape Cortes to the west. Budu indicated the area of deep water where they were to anchor.
The first wave will go ashore here, he transmitted, and the narrow rock beach under the mountain lit up. There are no batteries evident, but the perimeter defenses are in place. We can expect seventy-fiv
e percent casualties. Survivors will scale the cliffs and make for the ventilation shafts at these locations. Three blue dots flared high on the shoulder of the mountain.
Okay, Joseph responded.
Hearst was unaccustomed to subvocal transmission so it took him a moment to inquire: What happens if the casualties are higher?
The second wave follows them, Budu replied. And the third.
But… that won’t leave very many to attack once they’ve got up to the ventilation shafts, will it?
Unnecessary. Their purpose is to draw fire. Budu indicated a steep canyon coming down to the sea on the eastern side of Cape Cortes. The main attack force makes landfall here and proceeds up this canyon. At this point—Another blue dot lit, halfway up the canyon—we will plant an explosive charge.
Explosive? Joseph’s eyes widened. Where did we get explosives, father?
I made them, Budu explained patiently. Simple chemicals. The cleaning solution for console screens combines effectively with—
But that’s really unstable! Joseph transmitted in a panicky kind of way. Budu grinned and shrugged, and as he did so they noticed the backpack he had fastened on his immense shoulders. Joseph scanned it and went pale. You’re carrying the stuff yourself, he observed.
Yes.
So … we go ashore and blow something up and then—
You will be briefed. Budu drew from his pocket a running pouch on a belt. It was emblazoned with the words SOUVENIR OF HEARST CASTLE and was zipped shut. He presented it to Joseph, who stared at it uncertainly. Wear this, son. If I’m taken out, open it. You’ll know what to do with what you find.
But—but what if I’m taken out first?
You won’t be, Budu transmitted. You’re a Preserver. You survive.
Do you need me to do anything? Hearst transmitted hopefully, as Joseph cinched the belt about his waist. Budu turned to regard him.