Quietus

by Tristan Palmgren

  One of the many things Niccoluccio had relearned over his lifetimes at Sacro Cuore was that silences had their own character. One could be very much unlike the last.

  Eventually, Joao snapped, “What?”

  “It doesn’t think that anyone has died, or that death is possible.”

  “You’re worse than an automaton. You’re insane.”

  “My brothers on this plane. I found them again. They’d lost their memories of the plague, but they were still the same people.”

  “Your master simulated them. Or implanted them in your memories. They weren’t real.”

  Niccoluccio barely squelched his anger. “They were just as real as I was before I stepped through that gateway. They had their own lives and needs separate from mine. They weren’t there just for me.”

  “You’d never recognize it if was an illusion.” When Joao spoke again, his voice was softer. “They died months ago. They only existed here, in the past. Your master is just trying to stop you from facing that and from realizing what’s happening to the rest of us.”

  “You still don’t understand. You’re thinking in terms of single planes. The multiverse is infinite. You know that somewhere, on some far removed plane, you have a twin. An infinite number of twins. My master lives between the planes, and sees all of them at once. I doubt it ever perceived me as an individual. It sees an infinite array of Niccoluccio Caracciolas, spread out across the planes.”

  “Everyone knows there are infinite planes,” Joao said. “We’ve been living all our lives with it, and we still have trouble wrapping our heads around it. I refuse to believe you’ve managed it in a few days.”

  “I spent a lifetime studying it at Sacro Cuore. I tried my best to see from the perspective of a creature that sees everything in shades of infinites. If I, an individual, were to die, that wouldn’t make a whit of difference to it. It will always see another Niccoluccio. Another that lived where I died, another older or younger–”

  “You’re covering philosophical ground billions of us have gone over and over, ages ago.”

  “You may have tried to understand it, but you’re not living it. You all still see yourselves as individuals. When you die, there will always be another you somewhere in the multiverse, identical in every way except in whatever circumstance allowed you to survive. For my master, those other shades of you aren’t abstract.”

  Joao said, “But those other selves aren’t me.”

  “Why would they need to be? Those of you that survived wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. They still embody all the things that make you you.”

  “Your religion is wedded to the idea of a soul. Souls that are unique, indestructible, and nontransferable.”

  “There’s a lot about what I used to believe that I question now,” Niccoluccio said. “Three times, my life has been saved by bizarre chances. I should have died of the pestilence, but I escaped. Habidah rescued me when I was freezing to death in the forest. In Florence, an outside power impersonated me and called Habidah to save me when I wouldn’t have on my own. I imagine that, on a trillion other planes, I died in those places. But I’m here, too.”

  “That’s one hell of a stretch,” Joao said, but he sounded less certain.

  “I don’t know that I see the multiverse the same way my master does,” Niccoluccio admitted. “But I’m trying to learn.”

  “If your master killed me right now, you wouldn’t think it had done anything wrong.”

  “As far as it’s concerned, it hasn’t killed anyone. It’s attacked your amalgamates’ base of power, their people. It still sees everyone who’s died living in some other part of the multiverse.” He had held Brother Rinieri’s hand when Rinieri died. He held it again on the other side of the gateway.

  Joao stood again, more deliberately. Niccoluccio watched Joao’s shadow move against the stars. “Now we know how your master thinks. All that’s left is to figure out what it’s planning for us.”

  “I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Let me guess – you have faith the rest is going to work itself out.”

  “I wish I did,” Niccoluccio said. “But I don’t worship my master.”

  Joao trod off into the darkness. After a few moments, the gaps in the walls of the barn lit abruptly. Darkness followed.

  Niccoluccio remained on the log for a moment, and then stood and followed. He stumbled around the darkness of the barn, searching for the ramp downward. For a moment, he feared that Joao had locked him outside. The door opened just as he stumbled through it.

  His eyes had almost adjusted by the time he reached the bottom. He glanced at the doors lining the corridor. The second door led him into a small dining room, not dissimilar to the refectory but a tenth its scale. Two round tables sat side by side. Niccoluccio couldn’t guess at the purposes of the individual pieces of equipment lining the far counter. The other of Habidah’s associates, Kacienta, ate alone at the farther table. When she saw him, she looked down at her plate.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said. When she didn’t answer, he took another step closer. “I was hoping to take a minute to explain–”

  She set her hands on the side of her plate, as if about to pick it up. Or throw it. She looked up. Niccoluccio had never seen so baleful an expression since the wolves.

  He held up his hands and backed out the way he had come.

  He had just started to think about where to go next when the door at the far end of the corridor opened. Habidah stepped out, looking right at him. Niccoluccio realized that she had been watching him all along. Joao would have ensured that their conversation wouldn’t remain private.

  She waved him over. She grabbed his forearm and pulled him through the door. The room on the other side was too dim to see. It must have been Habidah’s quarters. It smelled like her. It was as small and cramped as the last he’d seen, but the sheets on the bed were ruffled and someone had shoved clothes into the corner.

  Habidah sat him on her mattress. “They won’t hear us. I’ve shut off the microphones in my quarters.”

  “You heard everything I told Joao.”

  She nodded. “Kacienta, too. Those two have made up their minds. You’re not going to convince them of anything.”

  He nodded. “Have you made up your mind?”

  “I can’t believe anything you or your master tell us. The stakes are too high, and there’s no way to verify anything you’ve said. It would be too easy to trick us.”

  Niccoluccio looked to the wall. “I understand.”

  She hesitated, as a person looking over a precipice. “But I don’t want to be associated with the amalgamates any longer.” He looked at her, but the dim light kept him from seeing much. She said, “Their plans for this plane have to be stopped.”

  “Yes. Whatever else happens, I don’t want your amalgamates here. That’s one decision I’m confident is my own.”

  “And you still don’t know anything about this message you have to deliver. Only that you have to be close.”

  “If I knew anything, could tell you anything, besides what I said, I would tell you.” Her, of all people. He had never had so dear a hope but that she believed that.

  She looked to the floor, seeing nothing. Niccoluccio knew that expression. She was somewhere else, steeling herself to step over the edge. She said, “This is too enormous for creatures like us. We’re too easily controlled. The powers at play are too far beyond us. If there’s one thing I believe we can change, it’s the fate of your plane. The amalgamates haven’t gotten their roots into it yet.”

  “You’ll help me, then?”

  “I will.” For as outwardly calm as she appeared, she couldn’t hide the tightness in her voice. She was in freefall. “And we’re going to do it alone.”

  He reached for her hand, to offer that little bit of comfort, but she pulled it away.

  34

  The kick of the shuttle’s acceleration pushed Habidah deep into her cushions. She hadn’t reali
zed until she’d climbed aboard how badly she’d needed to get away from Niccoluccio. Every moment she’d spent in the field base, she’d felt alien eyes on her. She closed her eyes and let the roar and rumble wash over her.

  Joao asked, “Are we headed for Ways and Means?” He and Kacienta had come aboard without question. They understood that they needed to talk in a place free from cameras and from Niccoluccio.

  “No,” she said. “I doubt Niccoluccio’s master would let us get there.”

  The shuttle coasted through a blazing red dawn. The stealth fields struggled to fend off the morning light. The hull shimmered scarlet. The ventral cameras showed treetops clumped together like moss. A town slid onto the foremost monitor. The shuttle began its descent without prompting.

  Kacienta asked, “This again?” Habidah didn’t answer.

  The shuttle alighted in a forest clearing two kilometers from the village, just far enough away to lift off without being seen. The deck thumped as the landing struts touched ground. Kacienta and Joao followed her to the boarding ramp.

  Joao waited until they’d walked a good distance from the shuttle before speaking. “I tried to take off last night. The flight computer didn’t answer.”

  Habidah said, “I could have told you it wouldn’t work.”

  “Are you going to make me ask, Habidah?”

  She didn’t need to look deeply to see the accusation in their eyes. She said, “I programmed our entire course before we left the ground. It knew I wasn’t going to fly to Ways and Means. So it let us go.”

  The ground cut up and down at short, steep angles, across ruts and old stream beds. Brush snapped across her ankles. Dapples of dawn sunlight blinded her. The shadows were so severe that she couldn’t see the ground without infrared. But in infrared, sunlight washed out everything else. So she stumbled, half-blind, into the clear-cut fringes surrounding a wheat field.

  Kacienta asked, “Why are you dragging Joao this far? If you want to talk in private, we can do it back in the forest.”

  Habidah opened her mouth to answer, but Joao interrupted her. “I’m fine for now.” From the red in his cheeks, he obviously wasn’t.

  Habidah had no answer they would have liked to hear.

  The village ahead was only superficially similar to the last they’d visited. It was older. The houses sagged, their cob walls and matted roofs were scored black from ancient smoke. Habidah stepped across a weed-overgrown depression that had once been the foundation of a house.

  She estimated most of the fields had gone to seed no later than half a year ago. Only a few vegetable gardens remained tended. Habidah pulse-scanned for fresh graves, but to her surprise found none, not even in the church’s wide yard. The natives had taken the wise precaution of burying their plague dead away from their homes.

  A handful of locals were just exiting the church as Habidah arrived. They all stopped, staring at Habidah and her team. Kacienta said, “I don’t need to see more people dying.”

  Habidah said, “The plague has passed through. All that’s left is coping.”

  They weren’t the only visitors. A dusty trail wound westward. A family of four was on it, heading toward the village. Behind them were another seven – five children escorted by two men, one wearing clerical black.

  Joao turned to Habidah. Habidah couldn’t tell if the tightness in his face was from exhaustion or accusation. Kacienta said, “You brought us here for a reason.”

  “We’re anthropologists,” Habidah said. “We’re here to study these people. At least, that’s what the amalgamates expect us to do. Niccoluccio’s master, too, if it doesn’t understand us any better. That’s why it let us come here.”

  Kacienta said, “You have to be joking.”

  “We’re going to see a performance,” Habidah said.

  Joao said, “I’ve been watching one all along,” but he followed when Habidah stepped forward.

  According to satellite records, the plague had culled three-fifths of this village’s population. Aside from the vegetable gardens and fields gone to seed, none of the dwellings showed obvious signs of neglect. The doors were closed, the foggy windows clean, the grass clear of trash. Habidah wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that new families had coalesced, orphaned children adopted.

  She held up her arms and called, “We came to see the pilgrims.”

  “We don’t know you,” the nearest of the locals answered, a man no less suspicious than Joao.

  In a place so small, the locals would be familiar with the names and faces even of those from neighboring villages. “A messenger told us they would be coming today,” Habidah said, pretending she hadn’t heard.

  He waved his hand in disgust and carried on. Permission enough, Habidah supposed. At least for now.

  Not that the locals could stop new arrivals if they tried. People trickled down the road, often with children. She was only surprised to find that there were so many children left.

  Habidah said, “We came here to learn from these people.”

  Kacienta said, “That was a long time ago.”

  “We can still learn a lot if we pay attention. Joao, you told Niccoluccio that you doubted anything we did would make a difference.”

  Joao said, “If Niccoluccio’s master wanted to kill us, it could have. We’re not even worth that much attention.”

  Kacienta said, “I don’t know about that. It is putting some effort into keeping us from communicating with Ways and Means.” And it had communicated mostly with Niccoluccio, ignoring Habidah and her team except for the moments when it needed to push them into new positions like pieces on a game board. It was afraid of being caught.

  That was probably also why it had chosen to attack Ways and Means so indirectly, through Niccoluccio. Any attack originating closer would be more detectable. She doubted that detection would stop the monster in the end, but it might make its plan a lot messier.

  Habidah nodded at the travelers approaching from the west road. “These people are lifetimes away from figuring out what their plague was and how it was transmitted. They hardly have any more idea how to react than we do.”

  Kacienta said, “Don’t slight them. They know that diseases transmit, and to stay away from places where the infected have been. They may not know why, but they have a practical understanding of what to do.”

  It was easy to forget that, not that long ago, they had been academics capable of holding a reasonable debate. Kacienta was right, of course. Habidah said, “That’s more than we do. If what Niccoluccio said is true, we haven’t been able to fight our plague because there is no way to fight it.”

  Joao asked, “What’s your point?”

  By now, forty or fifty people had gathered near the road and churchyard. Habidah stopped by their fringes. She pointed to a mass farther down the road, a larger group of dark-shod travelers. Before all this had happened, she’d tracked them for days.

  Deep-voiced singing echoed over the gentle hills. At first, Habidah had to strain her ears to hear. Even her demiorganics couldn’t filter much through the wind. Then she was able to pick up individual voices: men and women, all adults, all keeping their voices low. They were singing a psalm.

  The village bell began to peal, so suddenly that Habidah nearly jumped. Only ceremonial. Everyone who could be roused was already here. Kacienta glanced to Habidah, eyebrow raised, and stepped closer to the road to get a better view.

  A cloud of dust trailed after the newcomers. There were about seventy marchers, all dressed in black goat’s-hair sackcloths and cilices. Dark stains marred their clothes. They marched in file like an invading army. They outnumbered the people of this village, and the other visitors, too.

  The thing that surprised Habidah most was their near-even gender balance. Men and women marched on opposite sides of the road. She had rarely seen that except among poor farmers. These were neither.

  A towering man set their pace. He was thin but not for lack of nutrition. Powerful muscles bundled under his arm
s. His hair had thinned, but he was not yet bald. When he at last reached the church, he looked over the gathered, tremulous villagers as he might the fields of rotted wheat surrounding them.

  “Are there any Jews among you?” he cried, raising his whip. It was a vicious-looking thing with three tails. Dark-stained iron slivers were knotted into each end.

  The village folk shook their heads and and wailed in several voices. Some of them stepped back as if they were about to be whipped. “No! Out! They were driven out!”

  The marshal lowered his whip, but only gradually. Then, abruptly, he raised it again – and turned and lashed a balding, middle-aged man, one of his marchers. The whip’s spikes slashed through the man’s sackcloth. He fell to his knees, visibly restraining a scream.

  The travelers and village folk gasped or shrieked. When the marshal lowered the whip, though, none of them moved to help. The other marchers remained unmoved.

  “This man,” the marshal said, “tolerated Jews as his neighbors for sixteen years. His family perished from their poisons. His, and his other neighbors, and their neighbors’ neighbors. His whole town was brought down by the deviltry of the Jew.”

  “Punish me, Lord!” the man cried, voice broken.

  The marshal returned his attention to the crowd. “We have all sinned against our Father. All of us have reaped the harvest. We travel here, too, to reap our sins, and to sow our penance, to save our world from our Father’s wrath and hellfire.”

  Another man among the travelers, voice trembling on the edge of a sob, cried, “Punish me! Save me!”

  A girl no older than thirteen added, “Save us, Lord!”

  The marshal turned toward the village’s small church and marched in without invitation. Ten from his parade followed him, including the whipped man. The locals gradually filed after them.

  Habidah, Joao, and Kacienta joined the crowd mid-stream. No one paid them the slightest attention. “OK,” Kacienta transmitted, “Many of them don’t have the slightest idea what brought the plague on them. They invent whatever they want.”