As he turns a corner, movement attracts his eye. Three of his men emerge from a stairwell in one of the small buildings. They huddle just outside the door, looking around. Suddenly one of them shouts, “There he is!”
Horsen looks where the man is pointing and sees an infrared silhouette only thirty meters away. The figure is obscured by undulating waves of heat, but Horsen feels sure it is the Winnower. His back is turned to the men. He does not move.
“Hold your fire!” Horsen whispers into the comm. “He’s mine!”
Horsen cannot believe his luck. The figure seems totally unaware of him. Grinning so hard his teeth hurt, Horsen raises his gun and peers through the viewfinder, lining his target up in the cross hairs. The figure, perhaps alerted by the sudden movement, turns toward him, his cloak billowing around him as he moves.
That’s odd, Horsen thinks as he pulls the trigger, I don’t remember the Winnower wearing a cloak.
The beam from the gun screams forward, burning the air. It hits the figure low, in the leg, with a crackle of static discharge and the wet thud! of bursting flesh. The electromagnetic pulse knocks out the figure’s blender momentarily, and the figure becomes visible. His black cloak is torn to shreds by the blast. Glistening blood spreads across the dark cloth. He has been hit just below the left hip. It was only a glancing blow, Horsen sees, but at the high setting it was strong enough to break bone and tear flesh. The empty, black-garbed face turns toward Horsen and regards him for a moment before the blender reactivates and the figure disappears again.
“Shit,” one of the men whispers, his voice hoarse with fear. “You hit a Deathsman!”
The men back away from Horsen, not daring to look at him. Where the figure was standing, drops of blood appear on the ground. They fall with disconcerting regularity, hitting the ground with a soft pop before the dusty concrete sucks them in. Drop by drop the blood draws a trail leading away from the men. The air stinks of ozone and burned flesh.
Horsen stands with his mouth open. His gun is still in his hand; his legs are still spread in an aggressive posture. The other clops push back toward the door. No one looks at him.
“Well, how was I supposed to know a Deathsman was up here?” he shouts at them. “How was I supposed to know?”
The men jostle each other in their effort to squeeze into the door. No one speaks. One of the men pulls off his helmet and throws it to the ground. It hits the concrete with a hollow sound and rolls around briefly before settling, dented, on its side. The door slams shut behind them.
“You can’t blame this on me! I couldn’t have known!” Horsen cries, stumbling after them. “What the hell was he doing up here anyway?” But the rooftop is empty, and his voice is lost in the hum of the city.
LAST WISHES
The door to the Sensorium swings open while Dancer is still ten meters away. That is her father’s way — to always be a step ahead, to make it appear as if no event, no matter how insignificant, is unexpected. It has the intended effect, making Dancer feel small and powerless. The games Orcus plays with the rest of the world he plays twice as fiercely with his own family.
Ducking her head, Dancer mounts the narrow steps of the Master Sensorium. The door swings down behind her like a huge mouth swallowing her. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Around her, continuously changing images swirl. Bits of people’s lives jump in front of her, then disappear again: a tearful young woman consoled by a collection of chatters; a young couple, the woman with green hair, sleeping with their arms around each other; a clop, his head surrounded by a large unwieldy helmet, standing alone on a rooftop, screaming.
Colored light from the pictures washes over her father, who sits slumped in the darkness. He does not turn toward her. He does not speak. This, too, is his way. After all, what need is there to speak if everything is already known? His bulk seems melted into the chair.
His silence is designed to make her nervous, to build up tension until she blurts out something that reveals herself and gives him a hook into her. I must not play his game, she thinks. She forces down the anger and — yes — fear in her heart. She can only fight his domination if she first controls herself. She must crush all her emotions into a tiny ball, become like him. He lives for control. He breathes, eats, and shits control.
She thinks of an unobtrusive opening: “What’s in your hand?” she asks.
Without turning, he holds it up: a small, red rectangle covered in dust. “A book.”
“Doesn’t look like a book.”
He swivels around. Flipping through the pages, he says, “It’s the old kind of book. The kind they used before the Second Pandect. You have to use your hands to turn the pages, your eyes to read the words, and your brain to understand them. This kind of book is better than what we have now. This kind makes you think. It’s a lost art, thinking.”
Dancer frowns. Her father’s voice is slurred only slightly, but it’s obvious to her that he is drunk. The almost imperceptible lack of coordination in his movements frightens her. Normally her father can drink all day and never show it.
“This particular book is a collection of stories,” he says. “Fiction: that’s another lost art. These stories were collected shortly after the Eternity Riots, retellings of older stories, possibly written by one of the Founders. The story I’m reading is ‘Red Death Mask.’ Some people believe that it’s the origin of the legends of the Winnower.”
Frustration and disbelief explode out of her. “By the Stone, Father! Are you still worrying about him? He’s just one man! An aberration! He’s not relevant!”
“That’s where you’re wrong. He’s a critical part of something much larger, a focal point of the anger and frustration of the entire city.” Orcus sighs, looking at the screens. “It seems he’s been shot. That’s the report anyway.”
“Father, we have more important things to worry about than some malcontent in a stolen suit of armor.”
“But he’s not dead,” Orcus continues as if she had not spoken. “No, he’ll be back. I can feel it like a chancre in the pit of my stomach. He’ll be back.”
“Damn it, Father! While you’ve been sitting here reading two-hundred-year-old trash, I’ve been out running myself ragged trying to save this family from destruction! I’ve gathered video to help Second Son in his trial, and I’ve gotten theological experts who will testify before the Prime Medium that the Winnower is nothing more than a deluded charlatan! I’m killing myself trying to bring the Orcus family into the next generation, and you just sit here . . . masturbating!” The last words come out almost as a shriek. She had not realized she was so angry.
Orcus slams the book down on the console. The images around him whirl about frenetically in response to the buttons accidentally pushed. The muted sound becomes a deafening babble. Without looking, Orcus reaches behind himself and jabs a button that brings the images back to normal. He turns to face Dancer fully. His eyes seem to glow in the darkness.
“I know very well how busy you’ve been, Daughter. I saw your performance with Second Son.” Again without looking, like a magician performing a trick, Orcus sends his hand rushing across the keys. The room fills with images of Dancer and Second Son, their sweaty bodies rolling together on the floor of their father’s suite. In some of the images she is on top, pinning his wrists with her hands, playing with him, never letting him release. In others, their positions are reversed, he pounding at her tirelessly, her nails digging into his back. In others, their interactions are more complicated. It had gone on for a long time, and it is all there, replaying on the walls.
“You watched . . . all of it?” The thought fills Dancer with horror. She had known he would be watching on their wedding night — in fact, she had wanted him to watch, to see that she could control Second Son better than he — but she had assumed he would only watch a little. She assumed he had . . . better things to do.
“Every moment of it.” The emotion in his eyes, though intense, is unreadable. Behind and a
bove him, Second Son raises his head, his open lips trying to suckle Dancer’s breasts, which bob above him, just out of reach. “It was disgusting,” Orcus says.
“I could simply have beaten him into submission,” Dancer says coldly, “but I thought he would be more useful if he followed me voluntarily.”
“Yes, you’ve got him,” Orcus admits with a sigh. All the energy seems to drain out of him. “I tried to prepare him. I let him sleep with Pinky. I took him to the most wanton, debauched women the lower levels could provide. It didn’t make a difference. Somehow you were still his first.”
“I know. He needs me, Father. He can’t manage his own life, much less this family and the Hypogeum. With me he’s actually happy, for the first time in years!”
“A woman,” Orcus mutters to himself, “running the Orcus family . . .”
“No one has to know,” Dancer says. The thought that she might actually be winning an argument with her father is the most terrifying thing she has ever experienced. “Second Son can still make all the announcements, all the public appearances. He can be the figurehead. He can take all the credit. By the Stone, Father! Do you think I actually want to run this misbegotten family?”
Orcus looks up at her with weak, bloodshot eyes. How long, she thinks, has it been since he slept last? All around them, she and Second Son are still making love, in an endless, senseless time loop. With a quick slap of her hand she turns off the monitors. She has never been trained in the Sensorium, but she has seen enough to know how to do this. The chamber becomes instantly dark and silent. Only the softly glowing keyboards light their faces from below.
“Do you think I want to do this?” she cries, not caring how carelessly the words slip from her. “All I ever wanted to do was stand beside Stone, to love him and support him while he brought glory to the family name again. I never had any ambition of my own. Everything I’ve done is for him, and for the family! You can’t know how much I loved him.”
“Shut up!” her father shouts. “You’re not fit to speak his name!”
“I am! I’m the only member of this family who ever really knew him!”
Her father leans forward in the chair, gripping the armrests, his white knuckles trembling. “If you loved him so much, why did you never shed a tear for him? Why weren’t you there when he died? Why weren’t you by his side when the knackers came for his body?”
Dancer’s eyes widen in surprise. A tear falls from her lashes. “Because he told me not to,” she says quietly.
Her father falls back in his chair. “What?” he whispers.
“When he realized he wasn’t going to . . . make it . . . he told me that I had to be ready to take his place. That I had to be strong. That I couldn’t cry. It was the last thing he said to me.”
Her father stares at her, his mouth open, a look of bewilderment on his face.
“I thought you knew,” she says.
His hand reaches up to his left shoulder, gripping it. “I didn’t see,” he whispers. “I couldn’t bear to watch . . . when he was slipping away.” The irony is almost enough to make her laugh, but the look of pain that shoots across her father’s face quiets her. “What’s wrong?” she asks.
“No,” he says angrily, gripping his shoulder tighter.
“What?” She falls to her knees and looks into his face. “What is it?” “Nothing,” he groans. He tries to push her away with his other arm, but he has no strength. “Leave me alone,” he says. “Haven’t you bothered me enough for one day?”
“Father, what’s the matter?”
“No,” he repeats, louder. His eyes are closed tightly in anger and concentration. “It’s not my heart. Don’t let anyone say it’s my heart!”
“Father!”
With a shudder, he falls to one side. A moan of inarticulate pain seeps out of his mouth.
“Father!” Putting her arms around him, she tries to pull him up again, but he is too heavy. He slips, slowly, off the chair, down into the darkness.
“I know what they’re saying,” he whispers.
WITHIN
The air duct is one of the old kind, made of tin alloy back when metal wasn’t so hard to come by. His armor makes a din as he crawls through it, but it can’t be helped now. By some incredible stroke of luck, he has managed to elude the clops, and he needs to get as far away as possible.
His lower back where they shot him pulses with a warm, dull ache. He can feel his flesh swelling with blood, pressing against the inside of his armor. The pain grows each time he moves, shooting up his back and down into his groin.
He loses his grip and slides down an incline, metal screeching against metal. He takes the impact with his arms, but the pain makes his vision swim.
He pulls himself up to his hands and knees. It is tempting to stop here, but if he loses consciousness they will surely find him. He has to keep moving. He rests a moment, breathing deeply. This is the thanks I get, he thinks, for doing their job for them! Anger gives him strength to rise.
A popping sound from his left attracts his attention. A wayblazer, a maintenance robot, emerges from one of the side tunnels, crawling along the wall like a flat plastic spider. The greasy black dust that coats the walls of the vent is scoured by rotating bristles in the robot’s belly and sucked down a long umbilicus that drags behind it, disappearing into the darkness of the tunnel. Everyone in the Hypogeum has heard of the wayblazers; it is said their laser torches will burn through any obstacle that obstructs the airflow, including any human who is foolish enough to climb into the ducts. In reality the wayblazers are slow and decrepit, using their torches only in the most extreme circumstances, if they function at all.
Sensing him, the robot turns. Eight optical sensors ringed around its body reinforce its spider-like appearance. Normally he makes a point of avoiding the wayblazers; now he feels too weak to do anything but stare as the robot approaches him. The wayblazer hums while its tiny computer brain tries to determine what sort of obstacle he represents. It releases two powerful jets of water, striking him in the chest and face. Cursing, he kicks the thing, catching it under its metal carapace. With a series of popping sounds its suction cup feet come loose. The robot flips backward and drops down a shaft, clanking intermittently as it strikes the walls, until the umbilicus is drawn taut and it comes to an abrupt stop, bouncing and spinning slowly.
Still cursing, he crawls down a side tunnel. He only gets a hundred meters before the dizziness stops him again. He rests his head against the floor, the wind whirling around him, the vibration of the metal filling his ears. The pain in his back abates for a moment, then returns doublefold. Reflexively, he touches the wounded area, but he can feel nothing through the armor, which is crumpled but intact. From the nature of the pain, he guesses that one of his kidneys is damaged. He prays he is not hemorrhaging.
Crawling forward again, he looks all around him, attempting to guess his location relative to the city outside. He tries to determine if there is someplace nearby where he can safely hide, but the pain and the darkness make it impossible for him to get his bearings. Preoccupied, he does not notice the incline until he is on it. He begins to slip. He grabs at the walls, but he does not have enough strength or leverage to dig his fingers into the metal. Unable to stop himself, he slides down and over the edge.
He falls. Wind whips around him, buffeting him from side to side. With an emotion too resigned to be called fear, he realizes he has stumbled into one of the main ventilation shafts, giant metal tunnels as high as the Hypogeum and wider than he is tall. He tries to slow his descent by grasping at the walls, but his claws cannot find purchase. Sparks fly as he rips long gouges in the metal.
He hits the bottom hard. The metal floor warps underneath him, bouncing him off to one side. The impact takes the breath out of him. Without the armor, he would have been killed.
Finally he rolls to a stop. He raises his head. The dank air is filled with the smells of oil, mold, and metal. He must be somewhere in the very lowest reaches of
the city. With his last strength, he pulls himself into a small side passage. He will have to stop here, no matter where he is, no matter if they find him. He can go no further.
He comes to a small vent and squeezes in. He breaks the lock and pushes the panel through. It falls to the floor with a loud clatter. The opening is still too small. Afraid he will lose consciousness before he is through, he smashes a larger hole with his fist. He pulls himself into the ragged opening and collapses awkwardly, head first, to the floor. Before he blacks out, he is able to raise his head and look around. It is a small room, he sees, cluttered and dimly lit.
A woman’s face, wreathed by jet-black hair, looks down at him. Her eyes are ice blue, almost white. She hovers over him, beautiful and ethereal. He tries to speak, but the world is flying apart around him. He lets go, unable to hold on any longer. He falls upward into her eyes.
(Eight years earlier)
IMAGE
Amarantha is sitting on the causeway railing with her friends, sucking oxygen and throwing things at the people on the lower levels, when her ident chimes and reminds her in its flat voice that it is time for her to visit Image. She sits and jokes with her friends for a while longer, because you don’t just jump when your ident chimes. She lets it slip for a while. Finally one of her friends reminds her, so she hops down from the railing and picks up her reticule.
Luke also hops down. Just to show off how crazy he is, he pulls off his respirator and kisses her on the cheek. Amarantha feels her face turn red. He is sweet, in a stupid kind of way.
Now she really is late. As she hurries up steps and down passageways, she feels her obligations pressing down on her. Everywhere around her she sees constraints: the low ceilings that reverberate with other people’s footsteps, the timetables set by anonymous strangers, the constant capacity tests, the hot water that runs for fifteen centichrons a day, no more, no less. Hers is a world of limitations with tight, steel lids.
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