Eclipse Two

by Jonathan Strahan

  Consternation from Lu. "How are you doing that?"

  "The cathedral," I whisper. "The rules."

  "What are you talking about?" She shakes her head. "I don't care." She pops my spinal cord. Severs it like a finger pinch severs a worm.

  Or she tries to, at least.

  The thing molds itself back together.

  She squeezes through it again.

  And again.

  I feel myself healing, over and over again. Lu snorts in frustration.

  "Goddamn it!" She steps back, tries to find a better, more deadly purchase on me.

  That's when I spin, grab her—

  and we tumble through the portal.

  On the pre-set. Last door opened, first back.

  Doesn't matter. Anywhere. Anywhere away.

  And we're on Earth. That southern mountain range I was at earlier. The snowy mountain ledge. Nearby, a railing to keep the tourists from falling to their deaths.

  But nobody's here at the moment.

  Sunrise.

  Before she can get a better grip on me, I shake Lu off, madly shuffle away. Do everything I can to keep her from getting her hands on me. She really could take off my head here, now that we've exited the cathedral. And she's so very, very fast.

  Poised. Enhanced. An assassin from the future.

  Her mouth, her lovely lips, curl into a snarl. She stands up, takes a bead. Starts to come at me—

  and I pull the Hauser out of my pocket.

  Point it at her heart.

  Lu stops in her tracks.

  "You do realize what you're doing?" she asks me.

  "Killing you," I answer.

  "You know who I am," she says. "It's not just me in here. I'm still linked to the cache. You're killing us. Forever."

  "You are going to kill me. All of you."

  She shakes her head. "This work. . . so much work. The energy involved. The energy we can't afford to lose." Her voice trails off. "Such a waste.

  She knows there's really nothing left to say.

  "Goodbye, Lu."

  "I loved you," she says. Shrugs. "Not that it mattered."

  "I loved you, too," I reply. "In my way."

  I raise the gun a smidgen.

  No, not the heart.

  I pull the trigger.

  Shoot my once and future wife.

  In the face. Where it's got to hurt.

  Lu shakes as if she's touched a live electrical wire, as if a thousand volts are passing through her. Ten thousand. A million. Her head is a blur. Her ruined face—

  Pearls over. Like some monitor screen.

  Becomes another face. Some woman I never met. It melts away. Another, this time a man. Another, another. Faces. Faster.

  Delete, delete.

  Faster, faster.

  Millions of files.

  Millions of faces.

  The entire final cache. Up at the ass-end of time, as one of my ancestors put it.

  Delete.

  So be it.

  After it's all finished, I throw her body from the cliff. Into the ice and snow below.

  Where she belongs.

  I step back through the portal.

  And

  —leave Earth forever.

  But come back home.

  You.

  There.

  Listen to me.

  Don't be looking for us. We're gone.

  We've locked up the center of the Milky Way, and you can never get in. Oh, you might find someone else that will take you—somebody in another galaxy. This one's closed. You're almost to Andromeda with that ship. Perhaps there's room in the inn. You could always knock.

  Or you could resist the temptation.

  In that case, here's your chance. The chance not to disappear. To be the one exception—the singular exception in all the universe—to Fermi's Law.

  To rage against the dying of the light.

  That's the alternative to justice. And heaven.

  To remain.

  To matter.

  Take it or leave it. I'm out of here.

  Oh, by the way—I sealed the entrance behind me.

  Lu's question was the right one. They usually were.

  Is it worth the sacrifice of one child to make a heaven for all the dead and suffering children in all human history?

  My answer: of course it is. By any rational measure.

  Except that I didn't let you. And neither did the cathedral, in the end.

  So maybe that's not the real answer after all.

  I'll leave that up to you.

  I've bolted the door from the inside, taken the key with me. There's no way for you to get in. None of you. It's a one-way trip to forever, and you're not invited.

  Look, I wrote it there over the entrance, in case you have any doubts. My last work order. As plain as everlasting night.

  Thou shalt not.

  Read it and weep.

  Let the universe burn down; I don't care.

  Let all memory be turned to tears and ashes.

  Thou shalt not.

  Not take my children from me.

  TRUTH WINDOW: A TALE OF THE BEDLAM ROSE

  Terry Dowling

  The Nobodoi came to Earth a little after midday on 4 June 2023, accompanied by their support races: the Hoproi, the Matta, the Darzie, so many others. They brought with them the star Wormwood, a fragment of antimatter some said, and used it to begin their great xenoforming of the Earth, making it what they wanted. Then, overnight, the Nobodoi vanished—stepped back, withdrew, who could say?—leaving behind their Bridge Races, the remnants of a blasted Humanity and the great Patchwork they had made.

  It was Light-Commander Raine Halva Belicrue who first raised the issue, tracked it, set his Human aides to doing the relevant searches, then made the query across the world. That powerful Darzie, Fist of the Stars, Arm of Law, localized and hurting as only the most determined and committed of the Darzie Race ever would, sat in his Rule-of-Hand tower at Dars-Bayas and learned of this growing movement among the crushed, long-conquered Humans, then took it that one step further. Made it a question to the full spread of the Flower.

  What do you know of the Lady Mondegreen?

  He expected little that was new. No surprises. Few surprises. For it had been expected, modelled, some sort of emergent belief system. It's what all peoples did, all sufficiently cognate conquered peoples, just one more inevitability. But Raine took it further. His localization was the finest, the most excruciating. Only the Darzie fighting elites, the Elsewheres and the Purple-and-Blacks, endured more, surrendering self, but they stepped back into a quasi-existence of hot-glass and reverie and barely knew what they did.

  For Raine Halva Belicrue there was no stepping back. This Fist of the Stars, Flame of the Encosium, harnessed his pain, used his pain, did the search and posed the question.

  No Humans replied, of course. They lacked the Cohabitation resources, probably would for centuries, millennia, eons, unless the Nobodoi overlords, the Recalled Ones, were to Return, intervene and decree otherwise.

  But twenty-eight Matt scholars did, astonishing Raine, requesting enhancement, offering reciprocation, data-trade, asking questions of their own.

  And one—Holding-in-Quiet—made the incredible offer of leaving its typhy, its home, its work of the life, to meet "in the reach of hands" should that be required. This one had a quest of the heart, it seemed, was no doubt building this religion of the Lady into an identity artefact that would mark its days. Who would have thought?

  Raine should not have been surprised, that was the thing. After all, look at what the Cohabitation brought: access to the great Overlord nets—the Acrimba, the Tutifa, the Sarannas, the Wail Guydo. Keywords and encrypts like "Mondegreen" and "Lady" and "Goddess" would have been flagged: ideologically, sociologically, archaeologically. Philologically and etymologically, too, in current Human sayings alone: "By the Lady!" "Praise the Lady!" "Lady be with you!"

  He blamed his localization. But even as he sat back in his
Talking Chair, even as his manner became carefully businesslike and his crest spines settled, another astonishment occurred, even more amazing than the first: a stat-flash blazon and a voice on that closed alliance channel.

  "Hey, you, Darzie-pants, Raine! This is Fond Louie hisself, so be paying the tensest tension, okey-doke! Know what's shakin' the Human tree. Know the Mondegreen Lady's first and best church! Know that, hey!"

  Raine's crest flared again. Fond Louie? It truly was. The Hoproi warmaster at the Bassantrae Sequester. The screen filled with the image of this famous, crafty Hoproi, an image shot from a field link somewhere in its war-garden. The creature loomed three metres above its four elephantine legs, great grey-brown barrel body painted with stars and bull's-eyes and geometric patterns in the powdery reds and oranges of its shooting chapter.

  Raine couldn't see those legs on the screen, of course, just three of its four cardinal trunks coiled in against the great barrel torso with the single dark eye peering out between each juncture, the body finally flattening at the top with the clustering of sensory fibres where the mouth was.

  And resolutely speaking Antique, the Human occupation language all Hoproi so maddeningly insisted on using instead of Anvas or Kolack. Raine didn't care. This was wonderful, better than he had hoped.

  Such participation—and about such an issue. This trivial but curiously robust Racial yearning, this quaint and inevitable first flowering of hope among the Humans was being transferred globally, and so cohesively, that was the thing, by what could only be word of mouth: solitary wanderers, tinkerers and minstrels, Human bureaucrats, travelling siswitch troupes—circus performers: Raine knew the term well—despite the culls, the checks and prohibitions, the sampling imposts. It was the cohesiveness that fascinated Raine, troubled him. Two hundred and thirty-eight years since Wormwood arrived, fifty-six years since the Recall, and despite the Great Work, the xenoforming and all that it entailed, such an effective degree of interfacing. Was mutuality the word?

  All that came in seconds, moments, instants for Raine, primed as he was.

  "Fond Louie, what do you know of this? How is your chapter involved?" Raine spoke the Antique terms carefully. The Hoproi were notorious for misunderstanding words, twisting language and meaning to suit themselves.

  "Know this, you betchy! Know Humans using this to make a way. Crooning kumbayas aplenty."

  Raine's fingers danced on the keypad of his chair, cuing additional flash translations, sending surge commands through a dozen monitoring systems. "There can be no prospect of insurgency in this."

  "None," Fond Louie boomed, trunks flexing merrily. "We ruling the roost!"

  "The what?"

  "No mattress! No threat or intent. Namby-pambies behave, bejeez! But I got the goods. That church close by this Sequester, capisce?"

  "We can visit?" Straight to it. Raine had to control this exchange, snatch sense from the dross.

  "Certainment, mon capital! Ours for the done-deal. Name the day!"

  "Fond Louie, a house-lord will accompany. You have no reservations?"

  "Plenty of seats. More the merriest. When-so, great Raine?"

  "Let me confer with this lord. But the sooner the better, once I've assessed the data coming in."

  "Done deal. But limited, capisce? Just you. Just me. Just this one crimpy. No sharps."

  "But you will have choi protection."

  "My Sequester, best Raine. My turf. Natch."

  "Then I shall bring a bodyguard."

  "Fraidy cat! No scratch Darzie. No probable claws."

  "I will call you shortly."

  "Done deal." And the screen went blank.

  The church, such as it was, sat ten metres back from the dirt road in what did indeed look like a prairie stretching off for miles: a small-enough, whitewashed stone building made from hand-fetched discardo, twenty metres on its long sides, ten on the shorter, a little under three metres high, with a small dome at the flat roof's midpoint. A simple pillar and lintel archway was the only entrance.

  A Human place, old in design to those who knew such lore—Mediterranean Vernacular—but new, newly made.

  Such a rare thing.

  And equally rare on this plundered, extravagantly xenoformed Earth two hundred and thirty-eight years after the great Nobodoi rulers brought down their piece of controlled antimatter—controlled, the word said it all!—brought in three Bridge Races and dozens of Lesser Races to rule it for them, for a Matta, a Hoproi and a Darzie to meet face to face at a Human place.

  Such meetings did happen between the Races, of course they did, but rarely away from sanctioned holds, optimals and vast dedicated protections, and rarely with just one member of each species present.

  The scale of it was dazzling, thrilling. Bridge Races they were, the ruling elect, each judged sufficiently compatible by the Departed Ones that they could be left to do this job this time, interface with Humanity and with each other, marshal the less Human-coterminous Races in the great spread of the Donalty Flower. But an imperfectly localized Darzie could so easily lose phase and turn rogue. A Hoproi warmaster might suddenly discern a fine logic or status-enhancing joke in a trophy kill, despite—because of—the inevitable reprisals; a Matta's life journey, the callings of the Narrow Way, might demand some ultimate and crucial self-immolation. The mindsets, tropisms and imperatives were profoundly different; understanding so easily deflected down so many byways. Only elaborate compatibility totes, localizations and an abiding fear of the Nobodoi made it possible.

  So they agreed to come, this unlikely, possibly unprecedented three, to this quiet, green-enough field outside the force-wall of the Bassantrae Sequester. Raine arrived first, phasing in from his swordship Nobion, shimmering in its containment field at thirty thousand feet. With him came six Elsewheres in full hot-glass armour, who stood quietly by the entrance tracking the scene at a dozen vested data-ranges unavailable to most Races in the Patchwork. They waited while the light-commander stepped through that doorway and entered the shadowy interior.

  It was very much as Raine had expected: a dim, all-but-empty space with no windows save for the unglazed square opening in the building's rear wall. Four slender discardo columns supported the roof, but there were no other adornments, no pews laid out for worshippers, just a few makeshift Human-style benches along the wall, a spigot from a rain tank feeding a small dish to one side, a door into a curtained alcove on the other that stat-flash specs showed to contain a bench above a sump for a toilet.

  Fiercely localized, sharp with it, Raine immediately understood why the structure was here, in this location, at this lonely, singular spot, saw too the desperate and probably guileless cunning of it.

  Outside to the east was the Bassantrae Sequester, the Hoproi domain with its hazing of mighty force-walls sweeping upwards, held by the massive towers of the luda supports, sparking now here, now there, off into the distance, and with the heavy-gravity, phase-up markers themselves set within the perimeter, increment by increment until all was locked in a misty sepia sheen. Earth's lesser gravity made the Cohabitation a joy for the Hoproi and they gleefully set up their shooting chapters in the great Trade Cities by preference but, like any occupation forces, they too needed something of home.

  To the west, plunging away into a distant haze to form the other side of this vast forsaken corridor, were the force-walls of an enclave of a very different kind, roiling and full of violence, rearing up into the purple-bronze sky like sheets of amber and pearl: the ley walls of Rollinsgame, a demon-ley, if intel showed it fairly. There the walls were honey-milk clear at first glance, though with sudden snatches of darkness beyond, darkness streaked with reds and quick stabs of scarlet.

  But the thing, the chance, the wonder of it was—look ahead, look between those narrowing, converging walls with the Sequester to the right and the opalescent eye-trickery of Rollinsgame to the left and you had it. By quirk of physics, optics, photonics, purest luck, the turned grasses seemed green enough, the sky an ersatz blue enoug
h, for it to give Humans a tricked-up glimpse of something they knew to yearn for: green lands, blue skies and, by the most precious serendipity of the lot, the sense of golden light. Golden. Taken together, it was the biotype's optimum: the Pre-Wormwood norm. How could they not come here?

  So obvious, too, why the single window opened onto such a view, the only thing needed. Such was the power of his localization, Raine understood.

  Who knew what sims and scapes, what museum photographs, salvaged celluloids and old-style digitals, what ancient hobbyist watercolours and children's drawings gave that reality, but here it was, and Humans found in this and a scattering of other such precious places enough of the dream.

  By the Lady!

  As they said. As they always said now. By the Lady!

  But Raine knew more of the Lady than they did, grasped the terrible irony of how error and misunderstanding working with chance had made it possible. Such a joke.

  A Human moved forward from the shadows, a slender older woman with her long grey hair tied back. She wore a plain white robe, unadorned but for a simple line-work square inside a circle at the right shoulder. Window on the world, it said. In the world. The old biome.

  "Welcome, Great Lord. I am Josephine Cantal, custodian here."

  Raine inclined his head slightly. "You are the priest, the priestess—what is the word?—the sacerdote?"

  "Just custodian, Lord. I care for this Window."

  "But priest. Is this the word?"

  "For some, Lord. But the Lady is not a goddess."

  "Not?"

  "There is no divinity."

  "Ah." As with so much else, the translation was instantly there. "Then what?"

  "Just a way of remembering how it was before the Cohabitation. 'Mondegreen' is an old coining. It means 'green world' in a blending of two old languages."

  Raine, fiercely localized, knew otherwise, and knew enough of the broken histories to have countless templates for convenient deities masking social unrest: Roman Judaea and the Jesuits—were those the right names?—many templates for errors as origins: the story of Romulus and Remus being raised by a wolf when in fact it came from the Etruscan word for Rome, Romula, or Hong Kong being named, quite wrongly, after the giant primate deity that once occupied its central tower. Such were the free radicals of circumstance.