by Paul Hughes
“They’ll be harvested.”
“Analysis was conclusive. We can isolate the flux ability.”
“Then why—”
“Because they can. And they don’t want anyone else to figure it out.”
“So that’s it? They take a few lumbers for sampling, isolate the tech, and kill the rest?”
“That’s the way we work.”
“No.” She turned around in his arms. Gray eyes swallowed by black pupils. “That’s the way they work.”
“I can’t—”
“You can’t. But we can.”
She slipped from his grasp, walked to the other side of the floater, leaned precariously over the edge. The vehicle swayed in the wake of a forest passing beneath them. Berlin walked to join her.
“We?”
Kath hesitated, cleared her throat. “You don’t have to know about this.”
“Do you think I’d—”
“No.” She squeezed his hand, let go. “But they’d kill you if they knew about it.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ve met someone. There’s a woman who can help.”
“Help what?”
“She comes from the outer. Came in months ago on a transport. Just something about her...”
“Who?”
“She knows what to do. To make it right.”
“Kath—”
“She’s not like us.”
“If you’re talking about—”
“She wants to help. Not just this planet. She can make it right again.”
“Make what right?”
Kath’s hands balled to fists at her side. “The last war... Nothing’s been the same since. Planets in slavery, One ruled by machines and nears. Gods dropped into the slumber. Nothing’s right anymore.”
“We had to fight that war.”
“But we didn’t have to become this.” Her fingertips traced the insignia on her chest, moved to her temple, where the metallish uplink writhed under her skin. “We didn’t have to give up our—
“It was for the best.”
“Whose best?”
“Our best. It had to be done.”
“We’re killing the system! The stars can’t support us anymore. The energy load alone between the two—”
“That’s why we need the lumbers. Deep galactic survey missions, colonization hives—”
“We have all that we need right here. We’ve just forgotten how to live within our means.”
“We can’t turn back now. We’re pushing the saturation mark as—”
“We don’t have to be pushing the saturation mark.”
Berlin felt the throb of the comm uplink, but kept it static. “You can’t be talking about—”
“Planet One alone uses eighty percent of the system resources.”
He said nothing.
“A lot of bad people on Planet One.”
“Not all.”
“They started the war.”
“The war’s over.”
“It’s not over. Not yet.”
He’d never heard her talk like this: such determination. Passion. He never suspected that she felt so strongly about the civil war that had split the binary system a decade before.
“If we take out One, we solve everything. Decentralize the machines’ power. Make room for real people again.”
She reached out. His response was uncertain, but he did hold her hand.
“And you know someone who can do this?”
“A woman from the outer, where the planets still burn. She says she can kill the machines.”
“And her name?”
“Maire.”
He loved the link with the female Judith.
The host body was a tickle in that ocean of thought. It was recovering from the transfer and would soon be strong enough to remove from the static tube and actually serve its purpose as a deity transport. Judith would still act as medium, though... Squeezing an ancient being into one-hundred eighty pounds of flesh and bone always brought with it a few communications problems; the grunting, guttural verbal langage of his primary pets was difficult to master. He would solve that in the upgrade.
Flickering of electrons, muscles come to life again. A finger twitches.
“We have movement.”
Doctor joined Assistant at the static tube. “It’s about time. Takes Him a while to get His bearings.”
“Do you think He’ll ever just stay in the sleep and refuse to come up for air?”
“He likes it down there... This might be the last time we ever see Him.”
“What would they do without Him?”
“Carry on. God’s dead to them as is. They have us now.”
“I feel so special.” Assistant’s mouth turned up at the corners. “Ha ha HA!”
Doctor looked at Assistant with disdain. “Stop that. You look like a fool.”
Hand of God clasped through the gelatin, of its own power.
“He’s ready. Let’s fish him out of there.”
“Still nothing.”
“Why are we wasting our time?”
Task grasped the hemispheres of his observation environment and pulled them apart with the click of mechanics and hiss of dissipating interface flux. He rubbed his eyes and pulled himself out of the bubble. Elle was waiting with smoker in one claw and igniter in the other.
Task swam past his co-pilot to the underside viewer. “Best view we’ve had all day.”
“Of what?”
“The delivery vehicle. We’re over the impact site right now.”
Elle was hesitant.
“Not much to look at. Can’t believe that it did all this.”
The crater that the impact of the starship had carved into the surface of the planet was the most impressive part of the spectacle. Not a circle... The vessel had hit at such an acute angle that most of the debris had been cast hundreds of miles in front of the actual strike, covering City Four completely in a blanket of shattered stone.
“How did she survive the fall?”
“She didn’t. They picked her up in a slither in upper orbit.”
“She was trying to escape?”
“She wasn’t trying to do anything... The slither was harddocked to the delivery vessel. It released automatically when the carrier hit critical gravity.”
“Escape system.”
“She probably didn’t know that she was going to escape. She wasn’t even alive when they found her.”
“The catalyst?”
“It came from her.”
The delivery vessel was a giant half-buried in the surface, one nacelle towering thousands of feet into the atmosphere, the other snapped off and flung miles from the impact site, now resting in the ruins of a village. The conical body of the vessel itself now stuck from the desert hardpan like an addict’s needle. Many of the dispersion ports had bent or torn off completely from the collar upon impact. Elle noted the empty slither-shaped port just above the collar at the vessel’s top. The rest of the ship dwarfed the slot from which Maire had poisoned the atmosphere of the planet with a universe of machines.
“She wanted to die on that ship.”
“They won’t let her die now.”
Beeping alert. Elle swam to the cockpit.
“Action above City Seven.”
“Visual.”
A flurry of lights erupted from the surface, arced upward to strike the underside of the main planetship. It solidified into a tightbeam linking the vessel to the planet.
“Is that weapons fire?”
“No.” Elle adjusted the viewer. “It’s a halo. Comm nanos. Someone must have deactivated their link.”
“Berlin’s the only one down there. Nears wouldn’t switch off.”
“Why would Berlin turn off his link?”
“Could be dead.”
“Could be.”
“Could be the silver.”
“Could be.”
“He might need help.”
“He might.”
<
br /> “What should we do?”
“Let’s listen to what they’re saying.”
Task switched in.
Dark room.
Elle reached out to take Task’s hand. He hadn’t expected the contact. In this flux, Elle’s projection was a female, green eyes instead of white, tan flesh instead of gray, black hair instead of none. She smiled, blushed. Task squeezed her hand, but placed one finger to his lip to signal silence.
They walked forward into the ambiguous expanse. There was a table at the room’s center, two men on opposing sides, faces contorted in angry conversation, hands animated in frustrated fists.
subvocal: no sound?
i’m surprised we’re in this far. atmosphere must be interfering with the audio.
compensating.
“And what does that mean?”
“Maire’s taking a little trip.”
“And I’m going with her?”
“You could have been a brilliant leader. Such a waste.”
“She killed my family!”
“You should have considered that possibility before helping her.”
“I never—”
“You did. Helped her just enough.”
what are they talking about?
looks like berlin was in on it.
“We didn’t help her do this.”
“Guilt by association. You should have told us.”
“The machines would never have believed it.”
“But we might have.”
“And we’re the ones in control?”
Hannon slammed his palm to the table. “The war is over. They won. We have to live with that.”
“And what does God think about all this?”
“I’ll tell you in a few hours.”
Berlin’s lips parted but the words remained lost inside.
they woke up god.
we shouldn’t be listening to this.
“That’s right. He’s awake.”
Berlin studied the featureless tabletop.
“Make your peace with your family. I’ll be in touch.” Hannon waved his hand before his face, shooing the nanos away. His image disappeared.
let’s get out of here.
“Don’t.”
Elle’s greens widened considerably and her gaze locked on Task.
“He couldn’t see you. Must have been the interference.”
commandant?
“Yeah. I know you’re there.”
sir, we didn’t—
“Of course not.”
and if we—
“You’re dead if he finds out you listened in.”
we didn’t know—
“And now you do.”
we won’t tell—
“No. You won’t. You’re not going to tell anyone about this.”
sir?
“Help me.”
how?
“Get me off this planet.”
Hearts pounded. Hannon was furious.
He batted at the remaining nanos. They hovered like nibblers until winking out, drained of residual phase.
There was a time...
And then there wasn’t. Berlin was a traitor, regardless of other times and places. He would be punished accordingly
or else they’ll get you
because that was the way the system worked. It was a good system.
He had to meet soon with the medium and God and the council. He didn’t feel like talking. He didn’t feel like facing God after placing him in the slumber for so long. It hadn’t really been his or His decision, but those had been awkward times. Heroes of war and night. A new order.
There was a time.
They had been young
men on the last field of war: Berlin’s blood on Hannon, Hannon’s blood on Berlin. Twin stars above, twin hearts racing with the rage of battle. How that knife had slipped into flesh, the blade turning slightly, notching the neck as his fingers gouged out the left eye. The final scream: four vital pipelines severed and cool black splashing the front of gray armor. Pressure and the blade cut farther, remaining eye rolled back and scream ended as the head was removed.
Machines in the sky, too close overhead: the wake of their passing knocked them to the ground. Berlin helped Hannon to his feet. Their eyes locked, revealing the shared knowledge of defeat without surrender.
The space between the suns danced with silver.
City on fire, plains on fire, men on fire. The horror of black metal slamming to the ground.
They’d fought on the right side, and the machines were forgiving.
“He’s awake.”
“So I gathered.” Judith walked through the chamber door. Doctor and Assistant parted to let her past.
God sat at a table, a tray with utensils and a bowl of viscous gray nutrition slurry before him. He eagerly shoveled the food into his mouth. Some of it actually hit target instead of dribbling down his chin.
Judith leaned over the table, pushed God’s head up with left hand while opening his eyelids with the right. She looked for damage.
“Couldn’t you have gotten a better host body?” His projection in the flux had been delicious. This bald middle-aged creature sitting at the table was a travesty.
“It was short notice.”
Judith slumped into the chair across from the deity. “Good food?”
He looked up quickly, face blank besides drippage. Back down into the bowl. Splashing spoon launched a droplet of slurry onto Judith’s cheek. effin’ fuck! She wiped it from her face and sighed.
“He’s a mess. I’ll have to hardlink him for the entire conference.”
“At least he’s mobile now.”
“You could have put wheels on the fucking static tube.”
“Host body transfer is standard—”
“Viable host body transfer is standard procedure.” Something about that little shop of wind and dark bitter liquid... His eyes had been beautiful. A ring of silver on a shaking glittered hand. Deus Ex Machina.
how do i know these things?
God smacked his lips, smiled and nodded his head as Assistant placed another bowl in front of him.
“He’s so dumb.”
“The host body withstood all the standard testing.”
“Was it like this before? Was he a retard in real life?”
Doctor shook its head. “God was not a retard.”
“Filtered?”
“He was filtered, yes.”
“And where exactly did you get this host?”
“Shipment of biologic from the outer. Selected at random.”
“You bring the bodies back?”
“Special ops. Next generation nearish development.”
“When did this program start? Using dead people for—”
“I can’t discuss this with you.”
“I have full clearance, Pasty.”
“Not for this.”
Judith stood up, placed both hands on Doctor’s shoulders. She leaned in close, spoke into its “ear.”
“Pssst. I’m the girl who talks to God. You can tell me anything.” She kissed Doctor’s cheek and smiled warmly.
Doctor’s eyes narrowed. “I guess you’ll find out somehow anyways.”
“Of course I will. Now spill it.”
“The outer systems have been burning for decades.”
Burning: euphemism for the machine war that never really ended. Resistance to the drowning. The way the polite castes referred to the non-surrender of the barbarian horde. What a joke.
“This I know.”
“What we’ve just realized, though, is that prolonged exposure creates abnormalities.”
“I thought we sent nearish to the front lines.”
“Nearish need reals to lead them.”
Slurry slurp. Judith turned to see God finishing his second (third?) bowl.
“What kind of abnormalities?”
“Sub-genetic, for the most part.”
“For the most part... What else have you found?
”
“I really shouldn’t—”
“Tell me.”
“Cardiac abnormalities.”
Judith felt gooseflesh stipple her forearms.
“One heart?”
“How did—You couldn’t have known that.”
She ignored the near, sat back down at the table in front of God while unwinding a length of hardlink cable. She snapped the link into her chestshield, maneuvered the other end around pudgy sticky resistance fingers and plugged home between his hearts.
Nothing.
“Come on, baby.” She twisted the link in the port, felt a tickle of connection at the base of her skull. “Come on
wings of wind and i will
we
there were in that time gods of
taken from and stolen with
hidden
deep with-in deepness
and over the sky i have
returned to
make sure the fire’s out.”
She blinked in confusion as God kicked dirt into the remnants of the campfire. Acrid smoke, dust and dirt. She wiped sleep and soot from tired eyes. The sky was dark. One sun... A wounded sun. Gauzy, webbed. Around them, shattered buildings. Clothing on racks. Signs in a stranger language.
“Where are we?”
He stopped his kicking, shook his head. “I’m not sure anymore.” He was the man from the other encounter, yet this time there were deep lines around his eyes, and a black pattern of lines on his forearm. She looked down and wasn’t surprised to see a similar marking on her own arm. On his chest, writing in alien letters. A name.
“Haze and smoke. The air’s changed, and the heart’s gone.”
“Yeah.” There was a pack strapped to God’s back. He unbuckled the clasp and placed it on the ground. “Sorry about the puppet they put me in. I was trying to talk to you, but it was impossible. The host’s flawed.”
“You heard, though?”
“I heard.”
“Have any ideas?”
“I’ve seen all the information they collected about the young woman. Maire.”
“Doctor says she’s not the only one with the abnormalities.”
“No. This host body is flawed.”