by Mark Ellis
“I volunteered for the stasis process. I desperately hoped that I would revive in a brave new world, different but much better than the one which had been destroyed. It was a foolishly vain hope.
“I was resurrected fifty years ago. Much had changed over the course of a century and a half, but much was still the same. The Archons were now in charge, their Directive now a Directorate. Oh, they still operate behind the scenes, but now they enjoy hands-on control of their willing human marionettes, so they no longer have to deal through several layers of intermediaries. For some reason, though, they don’t seem to be here on a permanent basis and come and go, but their power apparatus is fully in place.
“The barons are the most obvious example of puppet and puppet master. They are hybrids of Archons and humans, bred to survive, even thrive in the post-holocaust world. The baronial hierarchy is composed of these hybrids, the mixture of genetic material. The last two generations of barons are of hybrid stock. It is a return to the ancient god-king system, where the subjects believed their rulers to be semidivine.
“Through them, the Archons implemented the so-called Program of Unification, which keeps a boot forevermore pressed on the necks of humankind. The world they tried to build using the Nazis as pawns has finally come to pass. The mass of humanity is guided, controlled, channelled—and they don’t even know it.
“This is our world shaped by the Archon Armageddon, and I pity those of you who were born into it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DEAD SILENCE REIGNED in the room. Brigid, Grant, Kane and Domi stared at Lakesh in stunned silence, eyes wide with a pain hovering near disbelief.
Lakesh smiled sadly and leaned back in his chair. “Any questions?”
Grant stirred in his chair. “Only a thousand or two...I’ll work from the end to the beginning.”
Kane repressed a smile. Grant was in interrogation mode. He almost expected to hear “slagger” tacked on at the end of every query.
“Why were you revived?”
“The Program of Unification had reached a certain level of progression,” Lakesh responded smoothly. “I and a number of others were resurrected to aid in the final shaping of baronial governments. We were consultants, more or less. At the moment, there is one frozone, as we are called today, serving in an advisory capacity in every barony.”
“Who are they?” Domi asked.
“I’m only personally acquainted with one…a Dr. Van Sloan.”
Kane said, “On the night of my initiation into the Trust, I was told the Archons supplied the barons with the necessary tech and firepower to make the unification program successful. True?”
“Yes. The Archons observed humanity’s adaptation to the postNuke world. Most of the ordnance came from the Anthill complex and from a few still-hidden COG Strongholds.”
“And the Magistrate Division was simply the old international police force idea, dusted off and updated?” Brigid inquired.
Lakesh nodded. “Exactly.”
“And our division, the archivists? Why was that important?”
“The function of the Historical Division was to keep all information of any sensitive nature, especially any texts that hinted at the Archons’ involvement in our collective past, completely secured. Aside from that, it was solid source material to reinforce the sense of shame and the guilt complex among the people. As you remember, historical precedent was always cited to keep the citizens in line, to keep them in their place. Like the Magistrates, the Historical Division was consciously designed as another control mechanism.”
“If you had so many reservations about it,” Grant said, “why didn’t you oppose the plan after you were first briefed?”
“Outright opposition was impossible. The slightest indication would have classified me as a security risk. Then I would have turned up as a suicide, as did so many of my colleagues who were foolish enough to express their objections. Buzzards would have indeed picked my bones, out in the desert.”
Domi shook her head in bewilderment. “This is all so crazy. Why?”
Lakesh sighed. “It’s hard to offer a cogent explanation, my dear, especially so many years after the fact. Even before Nukeday, the world seemed to be on the verge of some sort of catastrophe. Political systems were collapsing, socioeconomic inequities led to strife and crime. Madness was rampant, entire nations ran out of control. The world felt like it was coming apart at the seams. Something needed to be done to contain the insanity, the growing anarchy. To my everlasting shame, I admit that I agreed with that sentiment. At least hypothetically.”
“No,” rumbled Grant. “She meant what is the Archon agenda.”
“Isn’t it obvious? They now have a world pretty much free of social strife, of crime. And once the planet repairs itself, free of choking pollution. Of course, there is no liberty, no free will, but the Archons and their human allies never liked that about us in the first place.”
“So,” ventured Kane. “The Archons’ solution was to engineer a war among all of the nuclear powers?”
Lakesh shook his head. “That’s only the cover story, the cultural control mechanism to keep humanity in check.”
Domi cocked her head quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“There was no war,” Lakesh declared. “Not in the conventional sense. The Archons triggered every nuclear stockpile at the same time, all over the world. There were thousands of simultaneous thermonuclear explosions in the US, Russia, the United Kingdom, China, India...kilotons and megatons, all detonated within a minute of one another.”
Kane stared at him, eyes wide. “How?”
“I can only speculate...the Archons most likely used their technology, perhaps from a spacecraft in high Earth orbit to transmit the detonation and launch codes. I wasn’t made aware of this until my revival from stasis.”
“What do the Archons want?” Brigid demanded, clenching her fists on the arms of her chair.
“What they already have. The planet is back in their possession, as it was millennia ago when certain cultures worshiped them as gods. They have unrestricted access to Earth’s natural resources, and a manageable population to supply them with everything from slave labour to biological material. I also suspect that the geomagnetic changes brought about by the Nukeday are more suited to their metabolisms. And if they are indeed linked to the Annunaki as I suspect, their agenda is still ongoing.”
“If they’re so superior, rather than trying to beat us down and conquer us, why didn’t they try negotiating with us to share our planet with them?”
Lakesh took a deep breath. “They have no empathy for us or place any value upon us. We’re objects to be used or destroyed. Trying to negotiate with the Archon Directorate would be as futile as concentration-camp inmates bargaining with the commandant for their freedom.”
Angrily Grant said, “If it’s so goddamn hopeless, what’s the point of your so-called underground resistance? Why did you turn against them when it was too late?”
Lakesh steepled his fingers. He did not answer for a long moment. When he did, his voice was a soft, sad rustle. “I am old. I devoted my life to a single passion, and this world is what came of it. I never married, never had children, and never contributed anything of value to my world, to our shared reality. As history clearly shows, if you do not create your own reality, someone else is going to create it for you. I allowed that to happen, and I do not like the reality I got. Now, as the end of my life approaches, all I want is to enter the house of my deity justified.”
Kane uttered a short, bitter laugh. His hand trembled, and the glowing end of the cigar between his fingers shook ashes all over it. He stubbed it out on the floor. “One last thing, then, before you change addresses. The proof.”
Abruptly Lakesh stood up. “Follow me.”
They filed out of the office into the corridor. Grant, his voice subdued, said to K
ane, “This may be our chance.”
“For what?”
“To get our guns and get the hell out of this jolt-hole.”
Brigid overheard and whispered impatiently, “We’re not prisoners.”
At that moment, a goateed man carrying an SA80 fell into step behind them. Grant muttered darkly, “You could have fooled me.”
Kane couldn’t deny Grant had a point. He lengthened his stride until he was abreast of Lakesh. “How many people are in this stronghold?”
“Not counting you four, a baker’s dozen.”
Seeing the confusion in Kane’s eyes, he added, “Thirteen. Of course, only twelve of them are human.”
“What?”
Brigid said, “If the thirteenth isn’t human, then what is it?”
“Long ago, the acronym of ‘UTE’ was applied to him and his people.”
Brigid narrowed her eyes. “Ute? Wait…you don’t mean—?”
“Ultra-Terrestrial Entity is what I mean.” Lakesh stopped before a door. Unlike the others, it bore no knob or handle. Instead, a square keypad device was affixed where they should have been. He punched in six digits. The lock clicked open. The door was pulled inward by a tall, skinny black man. He looked very young, very earnest and sincere.
Lakesh said, “How is he today, Banks?”
Banks shrugged, eyeing the four people behind Lakesh curiously. “About how he’s been for the last three years. Maybe he’ll enjoy seeing some new faces.”
He stepped aside. With an ironic smile, Lakesh turned to Kane. “You should always be careful what you wish for, friend Kane.”
He stepped through the doorway and indicated the others should follow him. They walked into a large, low-ceilinged room with several desks, most of them covered with computer terminals and keyboards. A control console ran the length of the right-hand wall, consisting primarily of plastic-encased readouts and gauges. Kane’s eyes took in at a glance the heavy tables loaded down with a complicated network of glass tubes, beakers, retorts and Bunsen burners. The smell of chemicals cut into his nostrils.
The left wall was constructed of panes of glass, beaded with condensation. Behind them he saw a deeply recessed room, dimly lit by an overhead neon strip that cast a reddish glow. Banks moved to the wall, rapping on a sheet of glass. “We call him Balam.”
“Call who Balam?” asked Domi.
On the other side of the pane, shadows slid beneath the ruddy luminance. “Him,” said Banks.
A shape shifted in the red-tinged gloom, like a swirl of seething mist, a deep dark against the very dark. Then the mist became even more dense before Kane was aware of a pair of eyes flaming out of the blood-hued murk. The eyes were overpowering, large and tilted like a cat’s, completely black with no pupil or iris. Reflected light glinted from them in burning pinpoints.
Kane stared, transfixed, into those eyes. He heard a faint, agonized groan, and distantly he knew it had been torn from his own lips. A long, tormented moment passed before he recognized the emotion flooding through him was an unreasoning, undiluted terror such as he had never known. He felt frozen to the spot, as if he stood in the icy blast of an arctic wind gusting from some nightmarish cosmic gulf between the stars.
The black, fathomless eyes held his captive, peering deep, deep through them into the roots of his soul. In those obsidian depths blazed intelligence, cold and remote.
We are old, came the words into his mind. When your race was wild and bloody and young, we were already ancient. Your tribe has passed, and we are invincible. All of the achievements of man are dust, they are forgotten.
We stand, we know, we are. We stalked above man ere we raised him from the ape. Long was the earth ours, and now we have reclaimed it. We shall still reign when man is reduced to ape again. We stand, we know, we are.
Suddenly Lakesh was there, standing in front of the glass, blocking his view of the narrow face and the black, depthless eyes. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers twice.
Kane mentally shook himself, feeling cold perspiration trickling down his face. His entire body was clammy with it. Around him, his three friends stirred, as if awakening from a nap.
He tasted bile in his throat and he wiped his face with a shaking hand. “What happened?”
“I apologize for not warning you,” Lakesh said, “but you needed to experience Balam’s patented telepathic speech for yourself. The creature has it on continuous loop for newcomers. The rest of us are immune to it, so we can tune it out. Even though we’ve had him in here for three years, he’s still remote and superior. Balam simply can’t adjust to his situation. He’s incapable of accepting that we apes can and do hold him prisoner. The fellow suffers from a nearly terminal case of denial.”
“Why is he in the dark?” Grant asked.
“He’s uncomfortable in higher light levels,” answered Lakesh. “His optic nerves operate differently than ours. We don’t deliberately want to cause him pain.”
“What does it—he—eat?” Domi’s voice was a quivery whisper.
“Balam doesn’t eat exactly,” replied Banks. “He absorbs a mixture of cattle blood and peroxide through his skin. We synthesize the stuff here, and he more or less bathes in it.”
“A form of osmosis,” put in Lakesh. “He does ingest food normally on occasion. He’s very fond of ice cream.”
Kane only half heard the old man. He sensed the words were directed more toward Balam, anyway. He turned away, breathing with difficulty. He desperately wanted to run out of the room, out of the stronghold, into the fresh clean air and wholesome sunlight, into a world where even the horrors of the Dregs could not compare to this.
Kane and Grant’s glances met. A savage light shone in his friend’s eyes, and he knew the same primal light gleamed in his own. It was as if the two men were primordial hunters, deciding to make common cause against an inhuman enemy.
“Kill that little bastard,” Grant rasped. “He’s worse than a Squidoo.”
“That’s everyone’s initial reaction,” Lakesh explained. “A very visceral, xenophobic response. Quite primal and natural. But executing Balam will not solve anything.”
Voice high and strained, Brigid demanded, “How can getting rid of that...that...thing possibly make things worse?”
“Balam is our only link with the Directorate. Even after all these years, we still don’t know much about them. We do know this much, though—each Archon is anchored to another through some hyperspatial filaments of their mind energy, akin to the hive mind of certain insect species. Balam cannot communicate to his brethren his plight, but if he is killed, the absence of his mind filament would be instantly sensed by all Archons everywhere.”
Brigid arched an eyebrow. “How do you know there any Archons other than he?”
Lakesh shrugged. “We don’t. We’re operating only on assumption.”
Kane turned around carefully, looking slowly toward the recessed room. This time all he saw was a shapeless mass of thickening red shadows.
“You get used to his mind games,” said Banks with a grin. “You know what the oddest thing about him is? He smells like wet cardboard.”
The young man’s remark helped dispel a bit of the fear and tension. Everyone managed a short, uneasy laugh.
“How many Archons are there?” Grant asked.
Lakesh pursed his lips and shook his head. “We don’t really know, but we calculate—we hope— there are only a few. Evidently, they were a race on the verge of extinction long before the Nukeday. The hybrids are a different matter. Since they are the products of genetic engineering, their numbers are growing exponentially.”
“How did you get your hands on Balam?” inquired Kane.
Lakesh peered at him over the rims of his spectacles. “Appropriate that you should be the one to ask that question, friend Kane. Balam was brought to us by your father.”
&
nbsp; Kane felt his mouth falling open. Before any words came out, Lakesh moved quickly to the door. “Let me give you a tour of our retreat. You’ll find it edifying.”
Back out in the corridor, Kane moved in a daze, grappling with everything he had seen, done, smelled and heard over the past three days. It seemed like ages since he had palmed the computer disk in Reeth’s slaghole. It was almost incomprehensible that the entire chain of sanity-staggering events had been triggered by that single impulsive act.
As they walked the corridors, Lakesh explained that Stronghold Bravo was built into the side of a mountain peak and could be reached from the outside only by a single, treacherous road. The sec door was usually closed, so the portal brought people and materials in, and occasionally out. The thirty-acre facility had come through the Nukeday in fairly good shape. It, and most of the other strongholds, had been built according to specifications for maximum impenetrability, short of a direct hit. Its radiation shielding was still intact. The stronghold was powered by mini-fusion generators, and probably would continue to be for at least another five hundred years.
Lakesh showed them the armoury, a room that was stacked nearly to the ceiling with wooden crates and boxes. Many of the crates were stencilled with the legend Property U.S. Army, and others bore words like DARPA and TACTRON.
They moved along the walls, inspecting the contents of glass-fronted cases. M-16 A-l assault rifles were neatly stacked in one, and an open crate beside it was filled with hundreds of rounds of 5.56 mm ammunition. There were SA80 subguns and 9 mm Heckler amp; Koch VP-70 semiautomatic pistols complete with holsters and belts. Farther on they found bazookas, tripod-mounted M-249 machine guns and several crates of grenades. Mounted in a corner stood a full suit of Magistrate body armour. Every piece of ordnance and hardware, from the smallest-calibre handblaster to the biggest-bore M-79 grenade launcher, looked to be in perfect condition.