Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “Wherever they are.” Asha nodded.

  “Then that makes this a good day.” Wren leaned back and smiled as Jagdish hopped up into her lap. “Everyone can sleep safe and sound in their beds, and we don’t have to worry about anything at all.”

  “Except Omar,” Asha reminded her.

  Wren sighed. “Except him.”

  “And Lilith.”

  “And her.”

  “And all of those other poor souls trapped in the undercity, deformed and enslaved down in the darkness,” Asha said softly.

  And this is only one city, one place where immortals live, one place where this insanity has festered. How many more are there, out in the world?

  “I thought you were going to get supper,” Wren said as she petted the mongoose curled up on her belly.

  “Right. I’ll do that.” Asha stood and headed for the doors of the warehouse for the second time that hour.

  “Don’t forget your bag,” Wren called.

  Asha looked back and saw her medicine bag lying on the floor in the shadows at the edge of the ring of starlight falling through the broken roof. The bag was a soft hempen weave with a cloth strap that always felt comfortable on either shoulder, and it had a dozen little pockets inside for vials and jars and paper packets, and the bottom was strong enough to hold the weight of her tools and needles, even her little mortar and pestle.

  She had carried that bag for years, from the great rivers of Ming over the high mountains of Kathmandu, through the forests of India and Rajasthan, across the vast plains of Old Persia, and here to the shores of Ifrica. She had never gone anywhere without it before. It was no mere thing. It was a part of her, a part of her hands and a part of her mind, without which she was only a shadow of the healer she had been trained to be.

  And now it looks like a relic from another life.

  Asha came back, slipped the bag onto her shoulder, and left.

  Chapter 24

  Omar lay on the table, no longer feeling the chains and shackles cutting into his wrists and neck, no longer bothered by the hideously soft creeping sensations coming from his right arm. The tears had dried on his cheeks hours ago and all that was left now was the soreness in his throat. He faced the wall, his eyes closed.

  “Oh, come now, Bashir, I think you’ve moped long enough,” Lilith said from the far side of the room.

  “She’s just a little girl,” he whispered.

  “Who? Bastet? My God, you don’t even know if she’s dead.” The woman sat in a chair drenched in pillows and blankets, and she slipped dark red grapes one by one between her dark red lips. “It could be anyone. Maybe it’s that frigid cow Nadira, or those foul-mouthed Rus people, or that Indian prince of yours you never like to talk about. Did you ever think about that?”

  Omar opened his eyes and looked at the servant woman by the doorway. She looked even paler and sweatier than before, swaying drunkenly as she struggled to stand upright while keeping her milky tentacles from brushing against her legs. He asked, “How did this happen?”

  “How did what happen?”

  “This. All this.” Omar coughed and tried to clear his parched throat. “You were an artist. A scientist. A philosopher. You were beautiful, so beautiful, from your flawless face to your bright, shining soul. You were a wonder. A jewel in the dustbin of humanity. I couldn’t believe my own good fortune in finding you. I felt privileged just to speak with you…”

  He felt the tears coming again, but he blinked them away.

  So many times I’ve thought that I had reached the end of my very, very long life. In fire and flood, war and torture, by hand of man and the fang of beast, and even by the heartless power of machines. And yet I survived, only to come here, only to see this.

  Why, Lord? Why now? I already repented what I’d done. I already resolved to undo it. I came here to make good on that promise.

  Why now, at the threshold of my redemption, when I am finally ready to do something truly good and pure for the world, when I am ready to serve the natural order instead of my own desires…

  Why now would you deliver me into the hands of the one person, perhaps the only person in the world, with both the will and the means to actually kill me?

  “Such kind words,” Lilith said. “I never hear such things anymore. I made my servants to serve, not to love. Perhaps that will be my next great endeavor. To conquer more than the flesh, and more than the will. To conquer the spirit itself. To enslave the heart.”

  “And then?” Omar’s voice cracked and he paused to master himself. “What then? When you’ve enslaved all the world, bent it to your every whim and desire, tasted everything that this world has to offer, and everything that you can create, what then? Whether it takes fifty years or five thousand, what then?”

  Lilith laughed. “You see, this is the problem with you religious people. You’re looking for something nobler, something deeper, something that can elevate your little lives, something to give your lives meaning, because you’ve failed to find any meaning for yourselves. Even you, Bashir, after all these millennia, even you have failed to find your own meaning for your sad, empty existence.”

  “And what meaning have you found?”

  “There is no meaning!” Lilith stood up and strode to the side of his table. “A moment ago you spoke of tasting everything in the world. Well, I have tasted much of what this world has to offer. I have placed the hot and cold flesh of countless plants and animals in my mouth, and devoured them. I have felt indescribable joys in my mouth, and in my belly, again and again. And I wish to go on tasting and devouring them over and over again, and whatever else I can discover in this world.”

  “Is that all?” Omar looked at her, but saw nothing. There was a face of course, a familiar face with dark eyes and full lips and long lashes, all framed in dark hair and bright jewels, but he had seen all of these before. There was nothing new, nothing worthwhile to see in her now.

  “All? It’s everything. And sex! Glorious sex! You remember sex, don’t you, Bashir? You rode me once, when I was mortal and fragile, when I was so proud of what I could do for a man,” she said. “But now, I can look back on those days and see what a child I was. The pleasures of the flesh are without number, without measure. There are entire books, entire schools across this wondrous world devoted to the study of pleasure, and I have studied them all. I have built their toys and worn their costumes, but I have done so much more. I have created new lovers, creatures far more sensual than any man or woman, creatures that can ravish me for hours and days. They serve my every desire, bring to life my every fantasy, and bring me to new heights of ecstasy the likes of which no man or woman has ever experienced. I have ridden such creatures to death many times.”

  “Is that all?” he whispered.

  She leaned away. “You’re such a fool. God. Heaven. Souls. Death. The meaning of life. The meaning of the universe. Why do you think such things even exist? We are human. We are flesh. We eat, and we rut. You think you are something better than a worm because you are capable of thinking such a thing, but you’re wrong. There isn’t anything more to this world, to this life, to this existence. This is all we are. Creatures. Simple creatures, all enslaved and bound to follow the same natural laws. Survive. Reproduce. Even you in all your brave inventions with your immortality, you’ve done nothing more than find a new way to play the game, still following the same rules. We all want to go on living. That’s all. The sage and the idiot, the warrior and the leper, all want to live. They eat and rut and die. The only difference between them, and us, and the worms is this.” She held up the sun-steel pendant hanging around her neck.

  Omar shook his head. “There is so much more to life.”

  “Yes, of course there is,” she said gently. “There’s pain and fear, and ten thousand other words for pain and fear. There is horror and terror, frustration, misery, depression, self-loathing, confusion, bewilderment, hatred, sorrow, and on and on. But why dwell on that if you don’t have to? I don’t. I dwe
ll in joy. I explore joy. I create joy. And yes, I am quite selfish with my joy, but the world is young and I’m not getting any older. Perhaps one day I will share my joy with the world. Perhaps one day every man and woman in every nation will experience the pleasures that I now luxuriate in.”

  “I shudder to think.” Omar closed his eyes for a long moment, and then opened them again to narrow slits.

  “Why?” She leaned down and folded her arms on the table and rested her chin on her arms right in front of his face. “What is it about happiness that so frightens you?”

  Omar said nothing.

  I believe she’s wrong, but I can’t say why. How can I? How do I explain to her that my faith is something better, when I have nothing to show for it, and she has so much to show for her lusts?

  “No answer?” Lilith’s voice was soft and gentle, a graceful sound that verged on the musical, as though she’d rather be singing than speaking. There was no anger in her now, no sharpness or hardness. This was her world, and she was in control, without fear. “Tell me about your noble life, Bashir. I know that you’ve spent four thousand years traveling the world, making people immortal and asking them to learn things for you. But I want to know what it has all added up to. Have you found happiness? Have you built great works? Have you transformed the world to better fit your wills and desires and visions?”

  He swallowed. “No.”

  “Tell me.”

  Omar swallowed again and looked at her. The face that gazed back at him was calm and lovely, young and full of innocent expectation, awaiting his answer, any answer, without judgment. He said, “I have destroyed nations, and cultures. I have killed thousands, both with my own hands and through my actions. I have caused plagues and fires, famines and floods. I have driven men and women mad. I have turned the virtuous into the depraved. I’ve made princes into monsters, and lovers into traitors. I have built two great houses dedicated to death and greed, and filled them with killers and slavers. And so much more than I can scarcely stand to think it, much less say it. And the worst part of it all… is that I never knew what I was doing.”

  She nodded slowly, still no trace of emotion on her face except curiosity and patience. “I’ve killed, too. Not thousands, I don’t think. Hundreds, more likely. But one at a time. Never by plague or madness or anything that you described. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have lived a life such as yours.”

  He turned his face toward the ceiling. “Don’t pity me. Don’t you dare. Not you. Not here. I can’t…” He closed his eyes again and focused on the feeling of the air sweeping in and out of his lungs, on the soft pounding of his heart, on anything other than the woman staring at him.

  “Why not me? Why not here?” she asked.

  “You’ve imprisoned me in a tomb deep in the earth and turned my arm into that hideous, disgusting thing.” He coughed and squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to let the tears escape again.

  “Is that all?”

  Pain exploded through Omar’s right arm and he snapped his head over to see Lilith slicing into his beetle-arm with a slender knife. As he gasped, she reached inside the black armored limb with her bare fingers and yanked out a tiny sliver of gold, which she tossed onto another, smaller table behind her.

  Then she leaned forward again on the edge of his table, her chin on her bloody palm and a look of utter serenity in her eyes. “Better?”

  Omar stared at his deformed, inhuman arm with its violent gash and splash of blood, and within four or five heartbeats it was smooth brown skin and hair and nails again, just as it always had been. The foul sensation of being a soft bundle of nerves inside a chitin shell evaporated and he once again felt solid and whole. He flexed his fingers one by one and felt his nails scratching lightly on his palm. The knife wound was already gone, already healed, already closed and forgotten without leaving the faintest mark.

  He lay his head back down on the table and heaved a long, deep sigh. He was still a prisoner, still chained to a table, still able to see the sickly woman with the writhing tentacles, still feeling the shackles digging into his body, and yet… the veil of the nightmare had lifted.

  I’m still myself. Still human. Still a man. I’m not some creature, not a slave. I am Omar Bakhoum, and Bashir, and Grigori, and all the others right back to Thoth. I am alive, and I am sane, and this insanity needs to end.

  He opened his eyes and looked at the beautiful young woman staring down at him. He said, “Much better, thank you. Now if you could do something about these chains, I’d be quite appreciative.”

  She smiled. “Probably not appreciative enough.” Lilith straightened up and headed back toward her chair.

  “So what now?” he asked. “Games? Feasts? Orgies?”

  “Certainly,” she said in all sincerity. “For me, yes. But for you? No. You’re too valuable to me, like Horus and the others. You can serve me as few others can. I’ll have to think awhile about how best to use you.”

  “If immortals are so valuable to you, why don’t you just make more?”

  “Ah! Now there is an intelligent question,” she said. By the sounds she made, Omar guessed that she was settling back into her cushioned throne and picking at her grapes. She continued, “And the answer is… it’s not worth the effort.” She laughed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, drawing out a living soul, trapping it in the hot sun-steel, forging and sealing the pendant, all while keeping the person alive? Well, just talking about it is exhausting. It’s a complicated and delicate procedure, and one that I’ve only attempted once,” Lilith said. “And then what would I have? Another you? Another me? Another Horus or Gideon? That’s dangerous, too dangerous for my blood. I thought you would have realized by now that I’m not very ambitious. Remind me, please, which one of us built two temples to greed and power? Oh yes, that was you, not me.”

  Omar grimaced.

  “I’ve built a temple to pleasure. My pleasure. My fantasies, my joys. And while I have toyed with the notion of making this circle of one into a circle of many, I don’t really want to bother.” She laughed. “Can you imagine me ending up like Osiris and Isis? Not exactly the romantic future I aspire to. So no, I don’t make others immortal. It would only complicate things, and I like things simple.”

  “And that’s why you killed Bastet?”

  Lilith sighed. “Oh, for pity’s sake, that heart didn’t belong to Bastet. It belonged to Anubis.”

  Omar felt his own aching heart stop as the revelation shot through his veins like ice water. For an instant, he didn’t dare to hope that she was telling the truth. He couldn’t stand to think his little girl was still alive only to lose her again. “You can’t know that.”

  “Of course I can. Osiris’s heart tarnished after all those centuries in his dank little tower, and it turned his skin green,” she said. “Don’t tell me it never occurred to you that the same thing had turned Anubis’s skin black?”

  “Turned him black?” Omar frowned. “But… he was always very dark…”

  “No, he was just like the rest of his family,” she said. “I met them not long after you made me a part of this little world of yours. Anubis went off on that sojourn of his, if you recall. He spent two hundred years in that desert monastery. Something about the heat and the sand must have altered his sun-steel heart, because he came back with midnight skin. The loveliest I’ve ever seen. Not that he could be tempted, but still, he was delicious to the eye.”

  “So you saw…?”

  “Yes, there were black stains in the crevices of the heart I burned.” She slurped from a goblet noisily. “I must say, for the man who invented the science of immortality, you seem to know almost nothing about it.”

  Omar blinked and swallowed.

  I think I saw the black stains. I think she’s telling the truth. Anubis, I’m so sorry. But… Bastet… still alive. My little one…

  “I mean, what have you been doing with yourself all these years?” Lilith mused. “
You talk about death and disaster, but weren’t you the one on the quest for ultimate knowledge? Was the questing so much fun that you simply forgot about the knowledge part?”

  “I… was easily distracted.”

  Lilith laughed. “Distracted? I could teach you a thing or two about distraction.”

  “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

  “Mm.” Lilith chewed on something, making many soft wet sucking sounds. “You know, I’m quite tempted to take you downstairs and torture you just a little with my friends and toys, but really, what would be the point? Either you’d enjoy it or you wouldn’t. And either way would be work for me, and that does not appeal. So I think I’ll retire by myself for a few hours while I ponder what to do with you. I hope the screams won’t bother you too much. Good night!”

  Her laughter followed her out the door and down the passageway. Omar sighed.

  Alone at last. And whole. And Bastet is alive.

  He leaned his head up and looked at the servant woman. She was slumped against the wall, her eyes wide and glassy, her tentacles no longer twitching or curling.

  Oh God…

  Chapter 25

  Asha woke to the gentle rocking sensation of someone shaking her shoulder and whispering her name. She opened her eyes and saw just a few paces away Wren spread-eagled on the floor, her red hair strewn over her blanket, drool glistening on her lip, a mongoose curled up on her belly, and a thin snore whistling through her nose. In the distant shadows, the bizarre figures of Isis and Horus hung from their chains, still and silent.

  She turned and looked up into the wide, smiling eyes of a handsome young man.

  “Sorry to wake you,” Gideon whispered. He nodded at the prisoners. “I see we have another friend here.”

  Asha sat up and wrapped her warm wool blanket around her shoulders. “He came after sunset. I think he came looking for his mother. Wren and I captured him the same way we caught Isis. No trouble to speak of. We’re both fine.”