Deathstalker

by Simon R. Green

  Perhaps the greatest secret of all was that the human mind was capable of far more than either normals or espers ever dreamed of. Anyone could become like the Maze people, if they could only access and control the secrets of the backbrain. All that grey matter and potential that was never used. Diana had written it all down, and hidden it in a file that couldn't easily be found. So that if the Mater Mundi did win in the end, and Diana Vertue disappeared, never to be seen or spoken of again, what she'd learned might still survive. We could all shine like suns, she wrote.

  She still believed that. Even after all the horrors and tragedies she'd seen, she still believed.

  She passed through the backbrain, and on into the undermind. Few people knew about the backbrain; fewer still knew about the undermind. Mainly because you could only reach the undermind through the backbrain. It was a vast, awful, magnificent place, and not everyone survived encountering it. The undermind was the collective unconscious of all Humanity. The dreamtime. The race memory. The bedrock of human existence. As far as Diana knew, the undermind had no distinct persona or agenda, like the Mater Mundi. It simply existed, the place that was not a place, where all minds came together; the great dreaming unconscious from which all human thought derived.

  Or perhaps it wasn't any of those things. Diana was only an explorer in these regions, and what she saw was filtered through her own conscious mind.

  She saw the collective unconscious as a great ocean. The sea of dreams. The waters we all swim in for nine months before we're born. The place we visit for dreams and ideas and inspiration. An ocean big as the world, greater than all the worlds. Diana had to be careful how she thought about it. Her mind was interpreting what was there in terms she could deal with. Allow her mind to drift beyond that, and she'd lose whatever control over the situation she had. She could become lost forever here, mislaid, swept away by unknown tides, her thoughts drifting forever as a screaming phantom in other people's dreams.

  This was a place with no maps, no boundaries, and no limitations. Here Be Tygers.

  She was standing on a small island, a rock-hard place of conscious intent and certainty. Waves lapped slowly against it, murmuring in many voices. She'd manifested in her old Jenny Psycho form, complete with spiked steel armor and a gun so huge she couldn't have lifted it in the waking world. The gun represented her power. She hoped she wouldn't have to use it.

  There were shadows and colors in the sky, streaming overhead like the nightmares rainbows might have. They were stray thoughts, coming and going in people's heads. Sometimes the colors became recognizable shapes and images, representing things that troubled or intrigued Humanity's thoughts. The rocky reefs of the Zeitgeist. Looking at them made Diana's head hurt, so instead she looked down into the tranquil waters surrounding her island. There were things there too; vast shapes moving slowly through the dream waters. The shared ideas, beliefs, and compulsions of human culture. People created them and spread them, and then they had power over people. Things are in the saddle and ride mankind, but we put the bit between our teeth.

  Humanity's collective unconscious. They called it the worldmind, before we went to the stars, and spread ourselves over so many worlds. You could go fishing in the sea of dreams, and pull out anything, anything at all. The collective unconscious is full of archetypes; perfect manifestations of cultural tropes or fascinations. The Wise Old Man, the Mystical Virgin, the King with a Wound That Will Not Heal. You could have interesting conversations with them, as long as you realized their words only made sense in the world of dreams and fancies. Their truths were too great for the waking world. And since this was the sea of dreams, there were bad things here too. Horrors of the kind that can only exist in nightmares. Everyone knows that there are Things in dreams that will get you unless you wake up first. And in the undermind there is no waking up. Those few, very few people, who have any knowledge of the undermind wonder if perhaps these Things are the natural predators of this place. Or are they rather just externalized manifestations of the psychic mind-set; self-loathing, depression, homicidal manias?

  Diana didn't know. She had visited the undermind just often enough to know it was larger and more complex than the conscious mind could deal with, except in very short doses. We could all shine like suns, but suns burn hot, and melt the wings of those who fly too close.

  Diana decided that her thoughts were starting to get out of hand, and clamped down hard. In the sea of dreams, even the vaguest of thoughts can have repercussions. She made herself concentrate, and looked around her for enemies. This was the human collective unconscious, but there were others who could come here too. As if in some strange way they belonged here. High up in the colorless sky hung a gray watchful presence. That was the rogue AIs of Shub. They had no subconscious, but sheer mental power gave them a window into the undermind, through which they watched and cogitated and failed to understand. Shub did not dream. There was a silvery moon overhead, that shone only faintly with its own light, and reflected in the waters. That was the Hadenman collective. They didn't understand the undermind either, but all their science had not been enough to stop them dreaming.

  Most baleful of all, there was a sun in the undermind sky. A black sun. That was the Recreated. Diana had no idea what they were doing here, but just looking at the black sun scared the shit out of her, so quite sensibly she stopped looking at it. Instead, she looked out across her little island, her rock of certainty, and saw the air ripple before her, like a heat haze. Visitors were coming.

  And in a moment, there they were. Thought of by most as the leaders of the esper underground, but actually archetypes thrown up by the esper collective unconscious. There was a waterfall, cascading endlessly down out of nowhere, with two great shadows that might have been eyes. A swirling mandala of clashing colors hung unsupported in the air, forever growing and swallowing itself at the same time. A twenty-foot dragon curled its golden scales around a tree. A muscular human form, nude and exaggerated, usually known as Mr. Perfect. A huge hog with bloodstained tusks and tiny crimson eyes, covered with tattoos of ancient runes and sigils. A ten-foot-tall woman wrapped in shimmering light, with a cratered moon for a face. All of them aspects of the Mater Mundi, given shape and form to rule over the espers.

  "You should not have come here," they all said, their mouths moving in unison where they had mouths. A single intent, in a chorus of voices. "This is our place, where we are strongest, and you are alone. You must die, that we might live. We made you stronger than we intended, but here and now we will undo that mistake. We are the dark, deep thoughts of esperkind, and the future belongs to us."

  "Not necessarily," said Diane Vertue, or maybe Jenny Psycho. "Let's see if I really am alone in this fight."

  She extended her foot past the edge of her island, and thrust the toe of her boot into the ocean. Ripples spread slowly out across the surface of the ocean, just like those caused by a pebble dropped into a pond. The ripples increased their speed until they were shooting across the surface of the sea of dreams, more and more of them all the time. The Mater Mundi archetypes stirred silently. There was a feeling of pressure, of imminence on the air, of something about to happen. And in a moment, Diana was no longer alone. Drawn by her silent call for help, by a voice that spoke in their dreams and would not be denied, her friends and allies came to her.

  First was Investigator Topaz of Mistworld, standing before Diana in silver plate armor chased with hoarfrost. Her face was deathly white and her hair was thick swirls of ice. The long sword in her hand steamed coldly. The Snow Queen, the Ice Princess, the unrelenting cold that can break the hardest spirit, shatter the strongest metal. Topaz had also once been a manifest of the Mater Mundi, but like Diana, had broken free to become her own person. She looked expressionlessly at the archetypes grouped together at the other end of the island, and then turned her icy gaze on Diana.

  "What am I doing here? Am I dreaming? I remember lying down to sleep…"

  "This is where you go when you dream,
" said Diana. "But what happens here is real enough. Events here have repercussions in the waking world. The freak show over there represents the Mater Mundi. They want to kill us, and enslave all Humanity. Will you stand with me against them?"

  The Investigator smiled, revealing teeth white as frost. "You ever known me to back away from a good fight? I can feel the danger here, Vertue. I can feel the stakes, and what we're fighting for. But there'd better be a few more of us, or it's going to be a short and very onesided fight."

  "Don't worry," said Diana. "The sea of dreams reaches everywhere. Others will have heard my call."

  And one by one, appearing out of nowhere, dropping through the dreaming into the undermind, came others who had fought the good fight for Humanity's soul. Others who were no strangers to the backbrain, and the power to be found there. One by one they came to the island, in the image they had of themselves. Typhoid Mary rose up out of the ground, with a dead face and sorrowful eyes, clothed in a rotting shroud and dirty grave wrappings. Skulls of dead children hung from her belt, and her hands dripped blood. But her heart shone pure, and she burned with the need for atonement.

  Next came Tobias Moon, striding up out of the waters and onto the island, smiling gently. All a man now, with nothing of the Hadenman left in him. Scarlet foliage curled around him, alive and aware. Captain Silence and the traitor called Carrion arrived out of nowhere together. Silence wore a suit of old-fashioned armor, scoured with rust, and bore a shield whose design had been mostly worn away. He looked older than he usually did, and his eyes were tired and sad. Carrion looked exactly as he always did. He knew what he was. A long, slender chain ran from his wrist to Silence's.

  And finally, hovering above them, standing calmly in midair as though it didn't need the illusion of solid ground: the elf gestalt. A cityful of minds, personified in the single figure they admired the most. In all her familiar leathers and chains and colors: Stevie Blue.

  A power began to build, within and around them, cloaking them in a strength and dominion they could never have raised separately. Their shared intent crackled on the air between them, sharp and potent. But even so, they all knew that their combined will wasn't going to be enough to stand against the collective unconscious of all the espers in the Empire. Diana looked about her, at all the people touched by forces greater than themselves, altered beyond the limitations of mere Humanity, and knew with sinking heart that some odds were just too great to be beaten. To buy time, she addressed the Mater Mundi archetypes directly.

  "Why did you bother choosing manifests for your power? Why transform people you expected to go insane and die?"

  "They were our means for direct action on the physical plane," said the Mater Mundi, in its horrid chorus of voices. "And they were our hope; our attempt to create more powerful espers, to be our weapons against those who would oppress us, and deny us our destiny. Espers must rule. We are naturally superior. We will replace and supersede poor deaf and dumb Humanity. We were content to work slowly, until your friends passed through the Madness Maze, and threatened to become greater than us. They are not like us. They could become greater than us. We cannot allow that. Our manifests failed before because their minds were too controlled, too rigid to embrace the power we granted. Now we know to choose minds that are more malleable, people like you and Topaz. With what we have learned from you, we will create an army of manifests to carry out our will in the physical world. After we have destroyed you. All of you who dared to threaten our power. That was why we allowed you to call for help. We wanted you all here, in this place, so that you could be destroyed forever."

  Out on the surface of the waters, a storm was brewing: the rage of the Mater Mundi. It grew and grew, sucking up the waters of the sea of dreams into a great dark tidal wave hundreds of feet high, bearing inexorably down on Diana's tiny island. And everyone there knew that if that storm swept them away, they would drown in the ocean, lost forever in the sea of dreams. Their bodies, lying untenanted, would continue for as long as others cared to maintain them, but their souls would only exist in dreams.

  Diana and her companions raised their combined will, and stopped the tidal wave in its tracks. It hung before them, a great wall of churning water, pressing against their minds, heavy and overpowering with the weight of all the espers in the Empire unknowingly behind it. Foot by foot it surged forward, gradually building momentum despite their best efforts, and nothing Diana or her companions could do even slowed its inexorable advance. And that was when the four Maze survivors finally chose to make their appearance. Owen, Hazel, Jack, and Ruby, standing at their ease at Diana's side. They all looked exactly as they normally did. They had no problems with self-image, and precious few illusions they could still hide behind. Owen Deathstalker smiled warmly at Diana, and then turned his attention on the Mater Mundi archetypes.

  "You didn't really think you could hide something as big as this from us, did you? Even we can take a hint, if it's shouted in our ears loudly enough. We have, for the moment, put aside our individual differences to deal with you. To start with, let's get rid of the storm."

  The Maze people turned their gaze on the tidal wave, and it collapsed back into the ocean and was gone. The sea of dreams was still and tranquil again. The Maze people looked back at the archetypes, who stood their ground. Power was developing around Diana's island, and everyone there could feel it, a great charge building and building, that would have to earth itself somewhere.

  "You can't harm us," the archetypes said in their joined voice. "You dare not. Destroy us, and you kill millions of espers all across the Empire."

  "They're right," said Diana. "The Mater Mundi is an unconscious gestalt. The espers honestly don't know what they've been doing."

  "Then we'll just have to send them a wake-up call," said Owen.

  The four Maze minds slid effortlessly together, like interlocking pieces of a single puzzle, fusing into a single will far greater than anything they had ever achieved separately. Diana and her companions were swept up into it, a small but vital part carried along by the sheer power being wielded. The Mater Mundi archetypes raised their joined voice in a horrified scream as they realized what their enemy intended. They struck out with all their power, and it glanced harmlessly away; no match for the greater energies of more than human minds. That united will spoke in a Voice that could not be ignored, thundering through all the undermind, saying to every esper on every world in the Empire: WAKE UP!

  And they did. In that moment every esper everywhere became aware of the Mater Mundi; what it was and what it had done. They understood, and forgave, and with an instant sane and compassionate decision the espers enveloped the Mater Mundi and superseded it, to become a single completely conscious gestalt mind. Conscious, awake and aware, and determined to put things right. The Mater Mundi archetypes snapped out of existence, no longer needed or tolerated, replaced by a single figure that was both male and female, shining so brightly it would have blinded a normal human being. The concerted will that had opposed it broke apart, and everyone was back in his or her own head again.

  "The Mater Mundi is no more," said the shining figure, in a warm comforting voice. "We have moved beyond that."

  "Good," said Hazel. "So; what will you do now?"

  "We're not sure," said the gestalt. "But you've given us a lot to think about." It turned its blazing gaze on Diana and her companions. "You have done so much for us, but we can do nothing for you. You cannot ever be a part of what we have become. You've progressed too far, in different directions. You are no longer merely espers."

  "Ah hell," said Diana Vertue. "I've always been my own person."

  The gestalt figure vanished, and everyone relaxed a little. Investigator Topaz sniffed loudly.

  "Typical. We can bring our people to the Promised Land, but…"

  "You wouldn't know what to do in a paradise anyway," said Mary.

  "True," said Topaz. "Time to go, I think. If you've quite finished with us, Vertue. Some of us have got jo
bs to go to when we wake up."

  And one by one they disappeared, going back to their own lives and the waking world, until only Diana and the four Maze people were left on her tiny island.

  "Well," said Diana. "That was interesting. Maybe some day all Humanity will be part of some great gestalt. United by the backbrain and the undermind. Maybe some day… all life…"

  "Maybe," said Owen kindly. He looked out over the ocean. "This is… a very restful place. I always knew it was here, but I never got around to visiting. Always something that needed doing. You know how it is. But there are… possibilities here…"

  "Right," said Hazel. "I get the feeling the sea of dreams is separate from Time. All times are one, here. Past, present, and future are just directions as far as dreams are concerned. Maybe my passing through this place explains the dreams I've been having…"

  "I have a plan to defeat the Shub," said Diana diffidently. "It came to me suddenly, just now. This is the place of inspiration, after all. I'm going to need your old Family Standing, sir Deathstalker."

  "My castle?" said Owen. "It's yours. But don't ask us to help. Hazel and I still need to go back into the Darkvoid."

  "And Ruby and I have unfinished business," said Jack Random. "Maybe afterwards…"

  "Yes," said Ruby Journey. "Maybe. Afterwards."

  They shared a brief smile, and then the Maze figures were gone. Diana sighed. "So; once more alone against impossible odds. But this time, I have a plan."

  And then she woke up.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Even Legends Die

  The mighty human Empire had spread its seed across hundreds of worlds for hundreds of years, great and glorious, bestriding the scattered stars like a colossus. Its power and influence had shaped the destinies of both human and alien species, and many species that had dared to stand against the expanding Empire no longer existed. And now, after all these hundreds of years, Humanity was reaping what it had sown, and there was nowhere and no one they could turn to for help. The Empire's sundered worlds were under attack from all sides at once, with what remained of their armies up against forces almost too large for human minds to grasp. The nightmare steel vessels of Shub. The huge golden ships of the Hadenmen. The awful dark presence of the Recreated. Humanity had its back to the wall, and everyone could see the vultures gathering.