“We’re helpless,” she said.
“Even if we weren’t, we can’t get involved,” Stuart said. “This is their fight. They have to settle it their way.”
“I hate feeling so useless.”
“I’d suggest prayer... only it’s them we’re supposed to pray to.”
Tezcatlipoca locked his fingers around Quetzalcoatl’s neck. The Plumed Serpent broke the grip, slamming Tezcatlipoca’s arms outwards, and sent his brother reeling with a headbutt so hard that it partially shattered the silvery mask. He pressed home the advantage by shoving him hard against the confinement unit.
A ragged sliver of Tezcatlipoca’s face was now exposed. He glared up at Quetzalcoatl, hatred blazing in his visible eye. Quetzalcoatl punched him repeatedly, relentlessly. Blood spurted from Tezcatlipoca’s nose. The mask crumbled away in fragments until there was none of it left, just a jagged hole in the front of Tezcatlipoca’s helmet. The Smoking Mirror flailed at his brother, trying to ward him off, but Quetzalcoatl kept up the attack, seeming to sense that this was it, the decisive moment.
“Please...” Tezcatlipoca mumbled.
Quetzalcoatl halted.
“P-please, brother. Enough.”
“You submit?”
Tezcatlipoca nodded weakly.
Quetzalcoatl backed off.
Tezcatlipoca grinned. “Gullible as ever, Kay.”
Light burst out of him. Quetzalcoatl staggered backwards, stunned.
“You had me on the ropes,” Tezcatlipoca said, straightening. “Yet you couldn’t bring yourself to do what had to be done – finish me off. A conscience like yours hamstrings you.”
With a roar, Quetzalcoatl threw himself at him. Again, Tezcatlipoca collided with the confinement unit, this time with such force that its outer shell ruptured.
An alarm sounded. A recorded voice announced, “Torus breached. Torus breached. Plant will go into automatic shutdown.”
Mal turned to Stuart. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting the hell out of here.”
“What for?” he replied. “There’s no danger to us. The fusion reaction dies down as soon as the power to the magnets is turned off. There may be a plasma escape, but while we’re hovering up here, we’re not near enough for that to matter. The only people liable to get burned are those two.”
Quetzalcoatl bore down on Tezcatlipoca, one forearm to his windpipe. “I can kill you,” he growled, “and I will. You’re nothing but scum. Our mother should have strangled you at birth.”
“You keep blaming me for your own failings, Kay,” Tezcatlipoca said, choking the words out. “Accept some responsibility for once in your life.”
“I blame you for everything. I’m innocent.”
“Kill me then, if it’ll make you feel better about yourself. But know this. If I die, so does this world and everyone on it.”
“What?”
“Yes. All these humans you’re so fond of. All gone.”
“You’re lying.”
“Am I? Don’t you think I didn’t anticipate that a moment like this might come? I’ve installed a failsafe system in this armour. If it stops detecting any life signs, it initiates a countdown. A signal is sent out worldwide to every fusion plant on every active volcano.”
“This is nonsense.”
“The fusion plants go into overdrive, forcing massive eruptions. Earth’s volcanoes, all fifteen hundred of them, explode simultaneously. Fault lines shatter. Tectonic plates are split asunder. An entire planet rips itself to pieces.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“The infrastructure is in place. If I can’t have this world, then neither can you.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Quetzalcoatl. “When has anything that’s come out of your mouth ever been true?”
“I’m telling the truth now. I know how precious this world is to you, the high hopes you have for its inhabitants. You wouldn’t risk their lives just to take mine, would you?”
“Try me.”
“Then go ahead. Do it.”
The confinement unit juddered beneath Tezcatlipoca’s back. Tongues of translucent orange flame licked out from the fissure near his head.
“You can’t win, Kay,” said the Smoking Mirror hoarsely. “Kill me, you lose. Don’t kill me, you also lose. I’ve outwitted you again, brother. You may be the noble one, but I’m the smart one. Brains beat good intentions every time.”
Quetzalcoatl bent further over his brother, pinning him down harder.
Stuart swooped down to his side. “Don’t,” he said. “Can’t you see it’s what he wants? He’s goading you. Don’t play into his hands.”
The Plumed Serpent didn’t look round. “Stay out of this, Reston.”
“I can’t. I believe him, even if you don’t. As the Great Speaker, he had control over volcanoes. He must have known all along that he might need a backup plan, something that would be sure to deter you. This is it.”
“Heed your human mascot, Kay,” said Tezcatlipoca. “He’s wise.”
“Leave him be, Quetzalcoatl,” Stuart urged. “There must be some other way of resolving this.”
“This is not your concern!” Quetzalcoatl bellowed, and with an almost casual flick of his arm, he swatted Stuart aside. Stuart struck a wall, and his chest filled with fire. It felt as though more than one rib was broken now. It hurt simply to breathe.
Mal came down and squatted beside him.
“We have to stop him,” Stuart told her.
“Great idea. How?”
There wasn’t a how. The fate of the world now hung on a god’s whim. It was all down to Quetzalcoatl.
“These are my terms,” said Tezcatlipoca. “Let me go free. Return to Tamoanchan, you and the others. Never return here again. Accede this world fully to me. It’s no longer your project. It hasn’t been for half a millennium. It’s mine.”
“No.”
“I understand humans far better than you do. They’re not worth your time. They don’t deserve to be exalted, only ruled and managed. Look at those two over there. A killer and a slave. And they’re about the best of the lot.”
“Humans are admirable. As a race. As a whole.”
“Stop deluding yourself.”
“Stop trying to delude me.”
“I’m being honest. Perhaps it’s time you started being honest with yourself.”
“I’m not listening to you. I listened to you before, and...”
“Yes, that turned out well, didn’t it?”
“Be quiet!” Quetzalcoatl snapped.
“You and Quetzalpetatl...”
“I said be quiet!”
“Sisterfucker,” Tezcatlipoca spat.
Quetzalcoatl hauled Tezcatlipoca sideways, so that his head was over the breach in the confinement unit.
Fire lashed out in flickering lambent arcs, touching Tezcatlipoca’s face.
Tezcatlipoca screamed.
So did Mal, in protest. So did Stuart.
Quetzalcoatl held his brother’s face to the scorching curls of plasma. He closed his eyes tight. Tezcatlipoca shook and shuddered, bucked and squirmed. Skin blackened and peeled. Flesh melted. Smoke coiled upwards. Soon bone showed through.
Quetzalcoatl let go only when his brother’s body fell still. He dropped Tezcatlipoca to the floor and heaved a deep, trembling sigh. He stood staring at the faceless corpse for several moments.
“It had to be this way, Tez,” he said. “Don’t you see? It had to be.”
MAL ROSE. “WHAT have you done?” she said, in cold fury.
“Freed you. Liberated you.” Quetzalcoatl’s tone was matter-of-fact. What could be more obvious?
“But the failsafe... The fusion plants...”
“Tezcatlipoca had your race so brainwashed, so cowed, you’d fall for anything he said. Luckily I was able to see through his deceit.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know my brother. This was a desperate, last-ditch gamble. Of course it was. He was preying on my
one real weakness – you humans. He would never –”
Faintly, through their feet, they felt a vibration. It swelled then faded, like the hum of a tuning fork.
“He would never...” Quetzalcoatl repeated, faltering.
The vibration came again, stirring up dust.
Quetzalcoatl took off, zooming up through the hole in the roof.
Mal knelt by Stuart again. “Think you can move?”
“Everything hurts, but yes.”
Their suits of armour carried them unsteadily skyward. Outside, above Tenochtitlan, Quetzalcoatl was scanning the horizon in all directions. His movements were agitated.
“This can’t be,” he muttered. “He wouldn’t. He didn’t.”
“You fool,” said Mal. “You big fucking arrogant twat.”
“How dare you talk to me like that?” But it lacked conviction.
“It’s happening, isn’t it? Just like Tezcatlipoca said.”
“I...”
“You didn’t listen. You were too bound up in your petty vengeance. And now look what you’ve done.”
“I can fix it.” This, too, lacked conviction.
“Oh yeah? Fucking how?”
“I can...” Quetzalcoatl broke off. He bowed his head. “I don’t know how.”
“You’ve screwed us all. Do you realise that?”
Faintly: “Yes.” Then, with a little more strength: “But I can save you. You two, at least. Come with me.”
“Where to?”
“Tamoanchan.”
“Tamoanchan exists?” said Stuart.
“It’s a world,” said Quetzalcoatl. “And such a world, too. A world where there are many like us. Where you can be like us.”
“You aren’t gods, are you?” Somehow, Stuart had known this all along. Ever since his first visit to the underground ziggurat. “You call yourselves that, and by comparison with us you are. But you aren’t. Not really. You’re scientists, that’s all. Scientists and warriors.”
Quetzalcoatl’s silence confirmed it.
“From somewhere like earth.”
Another silence.
“You live longer than us, you’ve discovered more than us, and you enjoy being hailed as gods by us. But you aren’t and never have been.”
“It seemed as good a description as any,” Quetzalcoatl said. “A useful shorthand. And what is ‘god,’ after all, but the name a lesser being gives to a superior one? A dog’s owner is god to that dog.”
“Superior?” said Mal scornfully. “That’s a laugh. You’re so superior, how come you just signed our planet’s death warrant?”
“I’ll say it again: come with me. We’ll join the others. There’s still time. We can leave. Tamoanchan lies just a sidestep away. Our underground ziggurat isn’t just our beachhead, it’s our transportation – a gateway through the interstices between worlds.”
“Go with you,” said Stuart, “and be treated like talking monkeys for the rest of our lives?”
“It won’t be like that.”
“Oh, no?”
“I can look after you. I’ll – I’ll hold you up as ideal specimens of your kind.”
“Specimens,” snorted Mal.
“Look at the two of you. Oneness in duality. Duality in oneness. My people will respect you. Revere you, even. I guarantee it.”
The sky had begun to shimmer – waves of gossamer iridescence rippling across the blueness. The surface of Lake Texcoco pulsed and heaved. The walls of Tenochtitlan quivered. Birds took to the air, squawking in fright.
“It’s that or perish,” Quetzalcoatl insisted. “I’m offering you survival. Just you two, alone out of billions. You should be flattered. Honoured.”
Stuart and Mal looked at each other.
“Choose,” said the Plumed Serpent, holding out a hand to them. “Now or never.”
THIRTY-THREE
Same Day
THEY ALIGHTED ATOP a high, undamaged tower. They removed their helmets, smoothed out their hair, raised their sweat-drenched faces to the breeze.
You could feel it. Hear it. The earth groaning. The world turning on itself, harming itself. Hot, unnatural gusts of wind blew, constantly shifting direction. Whitecaps criss-crossed on the lake in overlapping layers. The sun seemed to dance in the sky.
“So,” said Mal to Stuart.
“Be fair to him, it was a generous offer.”
“Motivated by pure guilt. The bastard never really meant it.”
“I think he did. But we’d never have lasted there. Tamoanchan. We’d have been curiosities at best. Zoo creatures.”
“We’ve done the right thing.”
“We’ve done the right thing. We should feel proud.”
“The only thing I feel is scared.”
He slipped an arm round her and hugged her close, even though it was exquisite agony for him.
“Gods are lies,” he said. “And liars. They leave nothing but pain and disaster in their wake. We’re better off without them.”
“Yeah, better off.” Mal gave an acerbic laugh. “Volcanoes are blowing their lids all across the globe. Seas are going to boil. Earthquakes are going to crack continents in two. But hoo-fucking-ray for us, we don’t have gods any more.”
“It’ll be quick.”
“You think?”
“I hope.”
“And no chance of...?”
“Civilisation pulling through somehow? Doubt it. The skies will be clouded with ash for years to come. Maybe some people won’t be killed instantly, a few, but there’ll be no sunlight, no crops, nothing for them to eat.”
“Shit.”
“Precisely.”
They were silent for a while, listening to the far-off, elemental rumbling that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
“I don’t love you, Stuart Reston,” Mal said, “but I could have.”
“I’m very loveable, once you get to know me.”
“You stuck-up arsehole.”
“True. True.”
And so they sat side by side on the high tower, at the heart of a decapitated Empire, and waited for the world to end.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Let’s just name names. In no particular order: Jes Bickham, Gary Main, Andy Remic, Jonathan Oliver, David Moore, Ben Smith, Michael Molcher, Nick Sharps, Andrew Miller, Jonathan Morgantini, Kirsty Reid, Eric Brown, Adam Roberts, Roger Levy, Nick Archdale, Hugo Degenhardt, Andy Neal, Ian Whates, Keith Brooke, Kit Reed, Philip Palmer, and Paul and Kelly Wilson. Writing’s a solitary, sometimes lonely business. It’s nice to have people around who make it less so.
And, as ever, I couldn’t have done it without Lou. True 100%.
EXCLUSIVE TO EBOOK - AN ALL-NEW NOVELLA
Dion Yeboah leads an orderly, disciplined life... until the day the spider appears. What looks like an ordinary arachnid turns out to be Anansi, the trickster god of African legend, and its arrival throws Dion’s existence into chaos.
Dion develops strange new abilities. He becomes quicker, both in mind and body. He is able to move and deceive like never before. He has become Anansi’s avatar on earth.
Then he discovers the price he has to pay for his newfound skills. He must travel to America and take part in a contest between the avatars of all the trickster gods. It’s a life-or-death battle of wits, , andt the end, only one person will be left standing.
“The kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write.”
The Guardian on The Age of Zeus
www.solarisbooks.com
Also from Solaris Books, The Age of Ra by James Lovegrove...
The Ancient Egyptian gods have defeated all the other pantheons and divided the Earth into warring factions. Lt. David Westwynter, a British soldier, stumbles into Freegypt, the only place to have remained independent of the gods, and encounters the followers of a humanist freedom-fighter known as the Lightbringer. As the world heads towards an apocalyptic battle, there is far more to this leader than it seems...
> "The kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write."
The Guardian on The Age of Zeus
www.solarisbooks.com
Also from Solaris Books, The Age of Zeus by James Lovegrove...
The Olympians appeared a decade ago, living incarnations of the Ancient Greek gods, offering order and stability at the cost of placing humanity under the jackboot of divine oppression. Until former London police officer Sam Akehurst receives an invitation to join the Titans, the small band of battlesuited high-tech guerillas squaring off against the Olympians and their mythological monsters in a war they cannot all survive...
"The kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write."
The Guardian on The Age of Zeus
www.solarisbooks.com
Also from Solaris Books, The Age of Odin by James Lovegrove...
Gideon Coxall was a good soldier but bad at everything else, until a roadside explosive device leaves him with one deaf ear and a British Army half-pension. So when he hears about the Valhalla Project, it’s like a dream come true. They’re recruiting former service personnel for excellent pay, no questions asked, to take part in unspecified combat operations.
The last thing Gid expects is to find himself fighting alongside ancient Viking gods. The world is in the grip of one of the worst winters it has ever known, and Ragnarök - the fabled final conflict of the Sagas - is looming.
Age of Aztec Page 37