by Mark Ellis
Grant glanced through a pane of glass, down into a very broad room. Below, sloshing and floating in metal vats filled with a semi-liquid gel were figures of horror. A fist of ice tightened in his belly. Judging by the lack of ears, elongated skulls and the suction pads on the tentacle-like fingers, he knew they were Squidoos. Their big round eyes stared dully.
Domi joined Grant at the glass, gazed down for a silent second and turned away, her face twisted in disgust. She muttered, “Squidoo stew.”
Brigid moved ahead, obviously desperate to reach the end of the corridor. She glanced to her right, then slowed to a halt. Her “Oh, God” was a hushed whisper. Grant and Kane stopped on either side of her.
Beyond the glass, hanging from a ceiling rack, dangled a long row of transparent sacs filled with an amber gel. Small figures, curled in foetal positions, floated within the gelid contents.
“What are we looking at?” Even to his own ears, Kane’s voice sounded creaky and old.
“An incubation chamber,” Brigid whispered. “Artificial wombs, filled with synthetic amniotic fluid. This is where the hybrids are grown.”
Kane stared hard at the creatures inside the wombs. He could see the vestigial noses and the small, thin mouths, almost reptilian in their neatness of tight lips and compressed cheeks. “That’s why the bodies of the Dregs were left behind,” he said half to himself. “They were genetically ruined. Reeth wasn’t aware of the use his merchandise was being put to here, so he tried to slip in damaged goods. Salvo killed him for it.”
Kane felt the repulsion and snarling animal-fear rise within him. The hybrids were alien, more alien than human. Arrogance lay in their peaceful faces and relaxed bodies, which were bent almost in attitudes of prayer. They represented the future of the earth.
He whirled and walked away, feeling as though he were swimming through a tidal wave of fear. After a moment, Grant and Brigid fell into step behind him. A few paces past the nursery, they reached the crypt—or at least that was the first word that popped into Kane’s mind upon seeing it.
Behind frost-streaked glass, naked men and women of all races were entombed, frozen in time. There were dozens of them. They stood in orderly rows, each one upright inside a transparent stasis tube, arms crossed sedately over their chests. Their bodies had the appearance of pale blue ice, not only in colour but composition. Their eyes were closed and they seemed to be slumbering.
“Cold storage,” said Brigid with a shiver of repulsion. “Probably where the best of the best are kept.”
“What do you mean?” Grant asked.
“What Lakesh said—purity control. The purest bloodlines, the highest sperm counts, the most perfect ovum. Everything to be cloned and spliced.”
Domi eyed the bodies dubiously. “Are they dead or asleep?”
Brigid shook her head. “It doesn’t matter to them anymore.”
Kane scanned the bodies dispassionately, started to turn away, then focused his vision on the body of one man. He had seen that face before, though it was now carved in ice and relaxed in a forever sleep. He looked at his father.
The realization entered Kane’s soul, it clawed at his heart, it sent talons of torment into his brain. His spirit was shrivelling, all conscious thought blotted out. Shock held him rigid. He opened his mouth, but at first nothing came out.
“Dad?” he asked, very quietly.
“You say something?” Grant inquired. He, Domi and Brigid looked at Kane questioningly.
Kane shook his head and walked blindly past his companions. His numb shock slowly gave way to a deep, visceral ache. He tried to collect his thoughts as he walked. He sought frantically for an anchor. A vision of his father, his mother and himself as a child hovered in his dimming mind. He began to run, his breath scraping in his throat, eyes burning with tears. He had wondered just last night if a Magistrate could weep. Now he knew.
The baron had said, “Kane, as your father before, you are now offered the opportunity to serve a greater cause.” And later added, “You possess an admirable facility for seeking out answers. A facility shared by your father.”
Salvo had said, “You know already. You just don’t know that you know.”
A glass-fronted, metal-framed double door loomed ahead of him. It was the only way out of the area, and it was locked. He kicked it open and lurched through it, panting. Sweat crawled between his armour and his skin.
He found himself in a maze of cool white corridors. Static-dust-collector screens and ventilator ducts were everywhere. Small-bore pipelines ran along the right wall, and he followed them, knowing they had to lead to a pumping station and a way back to the surface.
He kept running, not able to differentiate between the sound of his own rapid footfalls or those of Domi, Brigid and Grant racing behind him. In his ear, he heard Grant’s breathless call. “Kane! What the hell—”
He said, or thought he said, “Go back. Don’t follow me.”
“Kane! Use your head. We’re short on time and you’re short on brains! Stop and think. You don’t know what’s down there!”
Kane slowed down, but only because he was winded. There was nothing ahead of him he could possibly dread more than what lay behind.
He stopped in an alcove where cold, vinegary-smelling air dried the sweat on his face. The corridor terminated a few feet away at a door made of heavy-gauge wire mesh. A vague brightness lay beyond it.
Kane crouched there, gasping for air, ready to kill or to die or both. He heard voices on the other side of the door, and shadows flitted past the mesh. One voice he immediately recognized. He tensed, relaxed, then walked to the door. The voices receded.
He stood with his face pressed up against the wire screen, peering through the gaps. Grant, Domi and Brigid appeared next to him, breathing hard. Brigid started to speak.
Kane turned and savagely gestured them into silence. Then he calmly kicked the door open. The lock made a sound like a wet stick snapping. Still following the pipes, he walked into a high-ceilinged chamber, or series of chambers adjoined by partitions. Ahead of him he saw a cylindrical filter tank about twenty feet high. Its white surface glistened with moisture, beaded with condensation. Four of the pipes fed directly into steel-collared sockets at its base, and the other four bent away at a ninety-degree angle. He sidled silently around the curving wall of the tank.
Kane heard the familiar voice again. The musical, fluted tones were unmistakable. Slowly he eased his head around the cylinder for a view. He saw three men in grey bodysuits, and he recognized them from the night of his initiation into the Trust. The small man with the beginnings of a paunch was named Guende. The balding Asian was Ojaka. The tall one with the weather-beaten face and grey crew cut was Abrams. They all were members of Baron Cobalt’s inner circle.
The men stood in a semicircle around a man whose excessively slender figure was draped in a golden robe embroidered with bright red designs. He wore a tall, crested headdress of yellow that exaggerated the elongated contours of his skull. His pale golden skin was stretched tight over facial bones that seemed all brow, cheeks and chin. The eyes were large, slanted and a yellowish brown in colour.
Baron Cobalt faced a man that could have been his exact duplicate except for his bright blue eyes and shorter stature. He wore a tight-fitting silvery grey bodysuit of a metallic weave. Kane spotted the plastic tubular holster strapped to his upper thigh. Both men moved with a swaying motion, like reeds before a breeze. The movements were very precise, very ritualistic, and Kane knew it was a form of ceremonial greeting. He was impressed by their lithe, graceful motions. Like the intruder in the Mesa Verde slaghole, there was something bizarrely beautiful in the way they moved.
The man said in a high, lilting voice, “I regret not locating the document in question, Lord Baron, but I was interrupted by an intruder.”
“An intruder?” Suspicion coloured the baron’s voice.
The baron’s swaying motion paused, and then began again. “I was not informed of this by my subordinates. Abrams, what do you know of this?”
Abrams answered brusquely, “Nothing, Lord Baron. Salvo is the officer in charge, though at last report, he is still incapacitated.”
Baron Cobalt brought a narrow hand to his chin. “When we return to the barony, I want him brought before me. On a stretcher if necessary.”
One more of their group bustled into view, wearing a dark blue coverall. When the figure spoke, the voice possessed a definite feminine timbre. “We are behind schedule, Lord Baron. Your bath loses its potency.”
“Matters of my office must be addressed.”
“Not here.” The female swayed to and fro in agitation. “The Directorate is very exact on these matters. Nine days to bathe nine barons. The schedule cannot be adjusted for one without adjusting it for all.”
Kane shifted position slightly for a better look. The female’s huge, upslanting eyes were of a crystal blue. The silky blond hair topping her domed skull framed a delicate, impersonally beautiful face.
Baron Cobalt’s reply was polite and cold. “I regret the delay. However, inasmuch as I serve the Directorate and you, Quavell, serve me, not only am I aware of my responsibilities, but you are dangerously close to exceeding yours.”
The female fell silent and stepped back. Baron Cobalt and his staff followed her out of the range of Kane’s vision.
Brigid tapped his shoulder from behind. “What’s going on?”
“Get back to the portal,” he whispered. He leaned forward.
Her hand tightened on his right arm. Kane shook free and turned to face her. “Dammit, I said get back to the portal!”
“No,” she whispered fiercely. “The way you’re acting, you’re going to get us all killed.”
“Not if you do as I say.”
“We came here together,” Domi whispered. “We leave the same way.”
There was no time and no point in arguing. “The baron is here. Lakesh probably knew he would be, and he probably knew we’d encounter him. Or he hoped we would.”
“Encounter him and do what?” Grant demanded. “Kill him?” He seemed very uncomfortable with the concept.
“Or to learn the final bit of truth.” Kane said the last word venomously. “It’s personal now, between him and me. You three stay here. Grant, when you hear me talking, depending on what I say, I want you to either get the hell out or come to me. Agreed?”
Neither Domi, Brigid nor Grant made a sound or moved. Kane rolled his eyes and circled the filtration tank. He found the maintenance ladder and scaled it quickly. Standing on the rounded top, he stretched up both arms, hooking his hands around a bound collection of pipes, and he chinned himself up onto them. By sheer force of will he managed to squirm his armoured body into the small space between the pipes and the ceiling. He belly-crawled forward, feeling the pipe beneath him quiver with the strain of supporting his weight.
He didn’t think about what might happen if the ceiling struts tore loose from their moorings and dumped him down on the floor. Habit and training took over now. His Magistrate consciousness was at work, and it drove away his fears, his anxieties and his horrors. He pulled himself forward by his arms, worming his body along as fast as he could, as fast as he dared.
He heard Baron Cobalt’s voice below him and he stopped his forward progress, peering down between a pair of pipes.
The female attendant’s voice announced, “Your bath is drawn, Lord Baron.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
KANE HAD SEEN pictures of ancient Egyptian sarcophagi. The object propped up against a cross barred brace contrivance looked very similar, like a coffin following the body contours, only this one was moulded from some transparent polymer. A pair of flexible hoses was connected to it at opposing midway points. The hoses, in turn, were connected to a metal tank with two valve wheels projecting from the top.
Although Kane hung above the baron and his party, their backs were turned to him. He could see only the face of the female the baron addressed as Quavell.
Abrams removed the baron’s tall headpiece, and Guende and Ojaka helped him step out of his robe. Naked, Baron Cobalt backed into the transparent sarcophagus, and the little attendant swung the lid over and latched it, sealing it tight. She stepped over to the tank, turned a valve wheel and with a gurgling hiss, a thin, pinkish fluid spurted from the nozzle of one hose. She twisted the second wheel. From the opposite hose spurted a thick red fluid. It dripped down the inner surface of the container, blending with the white liquid and becoming a brown-hued mixture.
The sarcophagus filled quickly. The liquid level rose above the baron’s knees, lapped at his thighs and crept up above his waist. His head was tilted slightly back and up, his large eyes closed, and he breathed deeply and regularly through his open mouth.
When the fluid touched the base of his neck, the attendant turned the wheel valves simultaneously, cutting off the twin liquid flows.
She said to the men, “I will return in ten minutes to add the next compound. Remain here with the baron.”
She moved away with a peculiarly graceful gait. Guende, Abrams and Ojaka huddled together, speaking in low, grim tones. Kane couldn’t hear much of what they said, but he was positive his and Salvo’s names figured prominently.
Fingers curled tightly around a pipe, Kane twisted himself until he hung from his hands almost above their heads. They were so intent on their whispered conference, they didn’t notice the pair of black legs dangling only a few feet behind and eight or so feet above them.
Kane released his grip and dropped, bending his knees slightly to cushion his fall. At the sound of his boots hitting the floor, all of them turned in unison, their expressions of astonishment so similar that they could have been triplets.
Abrams was the biggest of the three, the most physically capable despite his advanced years. Kane took him out first. Abrams made gestures of negation, as if waving his arms would drive his attacker back.
Kane quickly stepped inside the man’s out-flung arms and kicked his right kneecap. The pop of the patella being forcefully removed from the femur was clearly audible, even through the lining of his helmet.
Abrams went down on the floor, plucking at his maimed leg and howling in agony. He gaped up at Kane in incredulous horror.
Kane planted the steel-reinforced toe of his boot against the point of Abrams’s chin, snapping his head back and down. His skull struck the concrete with a crack.
Kane pivoted on one heel and drove a roundhouse kick into Ojaka’s lower belly. The man folded over Kane’s leg, and while he was suspended there, Kane brought his left fist in a snapping arc against the bridge of Ojaka’s nose. The man uttered a grunt, and then flopped down on the floor.
Guende stood paralyzed, merely staring, and breathing wetly through his open mouth. He gaped at Kane and didn’t move. Kane’s right leg arced upward and around in a spinning crescent kick. The sole of his boot caught Guende on the left side of his head. Consciousness went out of his eyes with the suddenness of a candle being extinguished. He went down heavily on his face and made no movement afterward.
All three men lay helpless, and Kane walked over to the sarcophagus. Unaware of the struggle, the baron still luxuriated in his bath, eyes closed as if in serene meditation. Kane rapped on the transparent cover. Baron Cobalt’s eyelids twitched. Kane knocked again. The eyelids fluttered, then lifted. The annoyance in them changed instantly when they took in the black helmet, the red visor and the savage, bare-toothed grin beneath it.
The baron’s body convulsed, sloshing the fluid around, splashing it up onto his face. He opened his mouth to call for help, but only a shriek of fear and frustration emerged. Kane was a little surpris
ed that he was able to hear it so clearly through the walls of the sarcophagus.
Baron Cobalt was still screaming when Kane flipped open the latches and heaved the lid aside. A torrent of liquid cascaded out. Kane smelled peroxide, alcohol and the faint coppery stink of diluted blood.
The sudden release of pent-up pressures washed the baron out. His feet scrabbled on the slick floor, trying to gain some sort of purchase. He sat down heavily with an undignified whoof of forcefully expelled air.
Setting his feet firmly as the liquid swirled around them, Kane bent down, closed his left hand around the delicate column of Baron Cobalt’s neck and hauled him upright. He was remarkably light. Kane swung him around, slamming his back against the filtration tank, pinning him there with his hand around his throat. He raised the Sin Eater until its bore was on a direct line to a spot between the baron’s eyes. His struggles ceased.
Despite the residue of the biochemical fluid still clinging to his body, Kane saw the baron was completely hairless—even his pubic area was smooth. His sex organ was a tiny bud, no larger or thicker than the tip of Kane’s little finger.
“So, Kane,” said Baron Cobalt in a sibilant hiss. “Traitor, criminal. Murderer. You will surrender yourself to me and confess your crimes.”
“That doesn’t work anymore, Baron. You’re not a god-king, you’re not divine. You’re not even a good employer. You’re a laboratory monstrosity with an attitude—a vampire living off the genetic material of human beings. You have to take baths in chemicals and gore to stay alive. You’re disgusting is what you are.”
Baron Cobalt’s eyes blazed in golden rage, a golden haughtiness. “How dare you presume to pass judgment, you filthy apeling! Are you truly so deluded that you believe you can defy the baronies and the Directorate?”
“You’re a puppet whose strings are pulled by a bunch of little grey bastards, and you think I’m deluded?”
A cruel smile lifted the corners of Baron Cobalt’s mouth. “You think the Archons are responsible for what happened to the world? We did it to ourselves.”