“And you come to seek more of that technology?” she prosecutes.
“We come because a new threat has come into our world, by what means we don’t yet understand. But we hope to contain it if we can. I have pledged myself to protect the innocent, the vulnerable…” But that sounds like an empty pledge. So I try another tack: “If Jed—or whoever brought us—was telling the truth, then there is dangerous nanotechnology here. AI. Possibly malevolent. We don’t know why it suddenly appeared in our world in our time. But if it becomes active here, too… Maybe we can help you.”
She doesn’t reply to the offer. Instead, a cluster of them confer, huddling, occasionally looking over at us with mixes of anxiety and suspicion. I fully realize how we must appear: We say we’ve come to help, but what it looks like is that we’ve brought the very threat we’re pledging to stop. We say we’ve come to help, but we’ve admitted our priority is to save our own world.
Finally, they face us again. Their spokesperson’s affect has changed, softened—but she’s still clearly fearful.
“Please forgive our lack of hospitality. My name is Jane Greenlove-Burke. Will you eat with our Representatives?”
“We would like that very much,” I accept. “I expect we have much to tell each other.”
The Haven settlement is by far the largest I think any of us have ever seen, except for images of Earth. By Earth standards, this would be a rustic town, something from Renaissance Europe or the colonial Americas. The structures are mostly one and two story, with a very few climbing to three. All seem to be made out of the same rough-cast composite, perhaps made of local clay, though spots of incidental wear reveal what look like plant fibers in the matrix. Certain features—doors, window shutters, roofs, railings—appear to be made of cut dried plant material, like wood was used on Earth. They’re arranged around packed-ground paths in uneven grids, spreading outwards from the main path. I can see these structures seeded well up into the slopes of the curtain walls, suggesting there could be thousands of people living here. I’m wondering if they manage to subsist from gathering when we start passing impressive gardens, and then adapted livestock similar to what we saw at the Pax Keep. (I smell thin smoke from plant fires, but I don’t smell the burning flesh of our previous feast.)
The residents turn out to watch us pass, some in front of their apparent domiciles, others from windows. Most have the same stunned, apprehensive look, as if fantastic (and possibly terrifying) creatures have appeared in their home. But then I catch one pair of eyes on us from a third-story window a row off the main path: An average-looking adult male with short-cropped dark hair, wearing white garments. He looks like he’s been expecting us, as if we’re a dreaded inevitability. I lock his eyes for an instant—I realize his eyes are different colors, almost like they belong to different people—and he backs away from the window, disappearing from sight.
I get the impression that Bly isn’t as unscathed as he initially appeared. He’s beginning to move slower, as if with difficulty. I think he’s breathing harder in his mask, despite the richer air. I wonder if he needs nutrition to heal from whatever’s he’s suffered, that maybe his implanted technology has only been managing to keep him operating, like when I was running with severe wounds in Stage Two.
Thankfully, we seem to have arrived at our destination, some three hundred meters into the settlement, which seems to be about its center. Our guides usher us into a large building in good repair. It looks to be two stories tall, but the room we come into—in the apparent center of the building—has a roof-high ceiling. There are plants inside, not as garden but as decoration, and paintings on the walls: portraits of mature men and women, posed with a dignity that suggests honor and respect.
The Ghaddar takes particular interest in a set of portraits centered on the wall opposite the entrance. I think I’ve seen the faces that are rendered in them. I’m on the edge of recall when she speaks up in awe:
“I know these people. They were Unmakers. Sleepers. Allies and friends of Colonel Ram. This one is Doctor Ryder…” She points like a child as she names them. “This is Doctor Mann. This is Truganini Greenlove—a great leader… And this… This is…”
“Colonel Burke,” Straker names the face I know from the Guardian training lectures.
“My grandparents,” Jane—our primary guide—confirms. “These are the founders of our community.”
“Colonel Burke was Colonel Ram’s greatest friend,” the Ghaddar remembers solemnly. “A great warrior. A great man. Colonel Ram grieved deeply when he fell in battle.”
“My grandfather died of cancer,” Jane corrects, confused. “And I get the impression that Colonel Ram was no longer his friend. Colonel Ram… He was Modded. One of the first… I don’t think he understood why my grandfather wouldn’t become like him, like them. You… say you knew him?”
The Ghaddar nods, but doesn’t elaborate. I try to:
“In our version of history, Colonel Burke gave his life in a fight against enemies from this world.” I realize as I say it how little sense any of it must make.
“And my grandmother?” Jane wants to know.
“Is still alive in our world, as far as I know,” Straker tells her. “So is Doctor Mann and Doctor Ryder. I’ve had the honor of serving with them, however briefly.”
“In the military?” Jane says like it’s another offensive concept. When Straker nods warily, she explains, “My grandfather had left that service long before he even came to Mars. He ran a corporate security detail for awhile, then retired after he met my grandmother. Doctor Ryder and her husband retired when they joined us. My grandmother was never in the military.”
“Nor was she in our world,” I recite from history. “She was a leader in what was called the Eco Movement, an on-planet group actively resisting the development of the technology that apparently led to Modding.”
“As she was here.” She seems to find some comfort in the one consistency. Then Straker takes that away:
“The Ecos in our world were militant. Forces from this world apparently escalated violence that probably didn’t happen in your history. Your grandmother was a warrior, a leader.”
Jane is shaking her head—what we’re telling her must be unthinkable. Thankfully, no one mentions that her grandparents never married, never had children in our world.
“Sit… please…” Jane manages to invite.
The center of the big room is dominated by a long table that looks like an antique, like some of the treasures my own forefathers brought from Earth at excessive cost. Around it are ten hand-crafted high-backed chairs, these made out of local materials like the doors and shutters. Under our feet, the floor is made of large rough-cast ceramic of some kind.
A dozen of the locals have come in with us. Those that can’t sit with us at the table take simpler seats around the perimeter of the room. Tumblers and trays are set before each of us, and pitchers of water are brought, then wide bowls of breads and produce, as well as the polymer-like substances we sampled at the Pax feast, collectively called “cheese”.
We don’t dive in and gorge like ravenous raiders this time, and even Bly is discrete about slipping morsels into his mask.
Straker and I take the lead in telling the history of our world, assuming the divergence began with the first appearance of the Disc drones. We get regular comments from our hosts to confirm the events we describe didn’t happen for them: The escalating conflict, the UN militarization, the placement of the nuclear failsafe platform, the sabotage-triggered devastation of the Apocalypse, Earth’s half-century withdrawal and traumatic evolution, the struggles of the survivors and their descendants while my people worked to make the valleys livable, the coming of Chang and the violence that followed.
What’s surprising is that the locals don’t recognize Chang’s name, or his distinctive appearance. Or the name Asmodeus. They have, however, heard of Fohat. And Bel. And Lux and Azazel. And Ram, of course, in his mortal and immortal forms. Stories told by thei
r ancestors, cautionary tales. What their grandparents chose not to become.
Our story ends with a brief summation of our journeys to the Vajra, the battle with Fohat’s machines, the mysterious appearance of our Companions, and the even more mysterious appearance of the Lake and Jed.
They’ve listened to our tale in respectful silence, but they are clearly disturbed—I can only begin to imagine how deeply. They’ve lived in this small sealed world all their lives, with only passed-down stories and historic records to fill in the rest of the universe. And now we tell them of a completely different world that exists out there. Somewhere. (Some-when?) The only proof of its existence is us, and what we carry.
I make a small demonstration of that proof: I pull out my utility knife, pull off my glove, slice the palm of my hand. They watch it heal with a mix of wonder and horror. I try to reassure them that we mean them no harm, that we intend to help them if we can.
Then it becomes their turn to spin a history that we can’t begin to imagine.
This one has less warfare, less slaughter, but still manages to be less hopeful. With the advancement of the Modding technology, humanity became spoiled, destructive, apathetic. First, they ruined the biosphere on Earth, remaking and destroying with the whim of children. The few that chose to remain Normal formed colonies, managed to declare “Preserves” that were secured against incursion and interference by the invincible monsters the rest of their race had become, but even that protection was by the agreement of those monsters. There was fear, there was no real hope for the future of mankind, but life in these few dozen scattered enclaves was still considered a far better condition than giving in to the temptation of artificial immortality.
But then, one summer morning in Common Era Twenty-One Twenty-Nine, their grandparents woke to find that all contact with the outside world—Mars and Earth—had gone silent. And when they attempted to cross the Lake to find out what had happened, they were either driven back by intense storms or would inexplicably wind up circling back to their own shore, the Peninsula. The world beyond is still visible, but unreachable. Their remaining world stretches only twenty five kilometers east and northeast from here, to the impassible Rim wall. (In this world, like our own, the terraforming of Mars did not progress past the Marineris stage. The Planums are still near-vacuum beyond whatever this world’s version of an Atmosphere Net is.)
I do my best to relate what I understand of the temporal splice, the theories to explain the paradox of the altered timeline (including what now appears to be strong evidence in support of the Multiple Worlds Interpretation). Our hosts counter with some of their own theories, about how such a splice may have destabilized their world in a perimeter around the Event (especially when we tell them that Jed confirmed that the Event happened somewhere within this pocket world), or how the Preserve’s perimeter field might have protected them from waveform collapse.
Elias has his hand over his eyes during this discussion, as if he’s having a particularly bad headache. At certain points, I see him wince.
My brother’s opinions aside, these do not appear to be uneducated primitives. They seem to pride themselves on education, art, craftsmanship, even trying to preserve the history and understanding of a world that none of them have experienced in their lifetimes.
Conversely, it’s clear that they’ve come to accept, even embrace, their lot. They’re safe here. They have what appear to be more than adequate resources. They appear healthy. They’re a close-knit, peaceful community. And they’ve thrived, nearly quadrupling their population over four generations. I’m reminded of literary fantasies involving impossibly remote lost paradises.
“So no one has come or gone since that day?” Murphy asks.
This question seems to give them pause. Their eyes shift, and not just to glance at each other. They try not to visibly squirm. Then Jane speaks up with a sudden quickness that sounds like she’s trying to distract:
“Some of us still try to cross the Lake, from time to time…”
“It’s a rite of passage for our more rebellious youth,” the male who gave the date—Cal Ryder—jumps in. “They build a raft, a boat—some of them are pretty impressive. They’ve tried all sorts of propulsion systems…”
“Most come back, get turned back,” Jane gets to the point. “A few… We assume they drown, which is why we discourage them trying.”
“Have any strangers like this ever appeared in your territory?” I ask Terina. “Or the Pax Lands?”
She thinks about it, shakes her head, but doesn’t seem sure. I realize she’s said almost nothing since we arrived. She looks tense, coiled—even enjoying a friendly meal—as if the very walls might suddenly attack. I expect this is what someone stuck in a nightmare must look like.
“Some say they see Captain Jed’s ship, but only if there’s a fog or a storm,” another male, Thomas Matheson-Wang, admits as if it’s ridiculous. “Some of them wind up out there for several days, even weeks, drifting or sailing in circles before they get back to shore.”
“There was such a ship, on the far shore, before the Event,” Jane allows. “Outside the Preserve. A Modded made it as an art project, supposedly grew it. Our grandparents said he was eccentric, but harmless. Seeing the ship… We thought it might be like how we can see beyond, but can’t get there. Or it might just be a hallucination fed by an old story, a shadow in the fog.”
“It’s pretty solid for a hallucination,” Murphy says, sounding—like the rest of us—that he’s still not buying what we’ve experienced. “And it came within fifty meters of your shore, in clear skies. No one saw it?”
Jane shakes her head. Her fellows look like we’re telling them that one of their childhood folktales is real.
“They might not admit to it if they did,” I consider out loud, “if the sightings are so fantastic.”
“But we’re here,” Straker protests. “That would be pretty validating.”
I realize we’re being distracted. I push us back to the second half of Murphy’s question:
“And no one has ever come through from the outside?”
Now they really don’t seem to know what to say.
“There has,” I decide.
“There was the Doctor…” Cal admits sheepishly. Some of the others—including Jane—glare him down. “He…” But he doesn’t finish the thought.
We glare back at them, waiting for what I consider very necessary intelligence…
…but then Straker taps my arm, gets my attention.
“Bly…”
I hadn’t noticed. He seems to have gone still inside his armor, his helmet tilted back against the back of the chair, arms on the armrests.
“Bly?”
Straker shakes him. She could be shaking an empty suit of armor. His helmet rolls sideways, his arms dropping limply off the rests.
Murphy jumps up and goes to help. Our hosts all rise, anxious, helpless.
“He’s out,” Murphy decides after some prodding and listening. “I can barely hear his heart. We need to lay him down.”
Straker and I help get him to the floor. It’s like lifting a Bot.
“He’s been fused to his armor,” Straker tells our hosts, frustrated. “It doesn’t come off. A ‘gift’ from one of your Moddeds.”
“He was hit by lightning on the ship,” I fill in.
“We don’t know how badly he’s hurt,” Murphy focuses. “He doesn’t heal as well as the immortals.”
“If there’s anyone here that knows anything about this kind of technology…” I plead.
Again, Cal is the first one to spill their apparent secret.
“There’s the Doctor. Doc Long.”
“He isn’t far,” Jane finally allows. She sends Cal to fetch him.
Chapter 3: The Lost Legion
Jonathan Drake:
The water is impossibly cold… so cold it hurts like knives as it soaks in through my clothing. Freezing. It should be ice. How is it not ice?
I’m being
pulled deep into it. Down, like I’m falling very slowly. I try to breathe through my mask, but it floods, and I choke on it. I remember Jed said not to breathe it. I hold my breath and flail under the water, my arms getting tangled in my cloaks, my feet kicking against thick nothing. The water is hard to move in, and it crushes me from all sides. My vision is badly blurred, but I see daylight through the surface above me, and a big shadow that may be the ship—it looks so far away. My lungs are burning—I’m using my oxygen too fast…
I rip the tube out of my mask and try sucking oxygen straight from the feed. Choke again because I get water in through my nose.
I’m getting pulled deeper every second. I can feel myself fall, see the light getting further away, feel the water get heavier and heavier, crushing me, the pressure stabbing into my ears. It’s so cold I can barely move. I pinch my nose closed when I inhale through the tube, blow out through my nose. I need to think, use my brain against my fear, just like I do in battle. I can do this. But I’m going numb. Too cold…
In the dark, something moves—I feel it through the water. Then I feel hands on me, fumbling with my clothing, my armor. I can’t see who it is. A hand jerks at my chest, and there’s a hissing. The vest Jed gave each of us swells rapidly around my neck. I feel myself pulled upwards, but it’s not enough. I’m still trapped under the water, being pulled in two directions by the vest and my body. No, not my body: What I’m wearing.
The hands on me work furiously. I try to feel what they’re doing, get jabbed by a knife. Straps get cut, and my gear drops from me. Then I feel my armor start to fall away in sections. With every piece of steel that drops, I feel myself rise. My rescuer stays with me. I think I see cloaks. The light gets brighter. I’m falling gently up…
My head breaks the surface, and I reflexively gasp, start coughing, losing my breathing tube. Another head bobs up right in front of me, thrashing, gasping, inflated vest swollen around his own neck and shoulders. My father. He reaches out, shakes me. He’s calling my name, but I can barely hear him over our thrashing against the surface.
The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades Page 31