“Oshi Adjani. God will see you now.”
“God – “ she stared at the drone. “What are you talking about?”
“God,” it repeated with the patience of a stone. “Will see you now.”
Oshi shuddered, gulped back a cry of laughter or pain, blinked and looked around. God. Il Duce. Der Fuehrer. Right. Hot dawn light streamed in through the oval windows, staining the walls with liquid fire. Behind her, the lift shaft that opened onto the ledge belched softly. She seemed to hear the echoing cries of lunacy born upwards on the waft of circulatory gases: Il Duce ... Oshi swallowed . “Take me to him.”
This Superbright is either a practical joker or a lunatic. Or both. Why did I ever say yes to this? Her ribs still ached from the terror-ride. As she climbed the steps, the drone retreated before her, legs clicking softly on the stone floor. At the top, she turned and looked back down the ledge: gulped and looked away quickly. The sight of the gigantic throat opening onto a stone platform made her feel queasy.
The drone retreated up a twilit corridor, painted in faded ochre heiroglyphics: intricate pictures of sloe-eyed men and women and animal-headed aliens competed for space with less familiar representations. Black and grey tiles danced a subliminal symmetry before her eyes. One glance out of the windows had told her everything she needed to know, coupled with the reduced gravity. The redoubt was slung just below the axis, defended by a cliff-face kilometres high: it merged at the top with the axial tube that ran from the interior of the colony cylinder out into whatever space-based factories kept the system running. The sky outside was the deep blue of dawn, but such light as there was would not reach far inside this structure. Someone – whoever lived here – had no liking for daylight.
The drone paused at the end of the corridor, waiting for her to catch up, then moved off again – through doors and hallways more numerous than she could see any cause for – emerging finally into a dim room with a high-vaulted ceiling and a few items of inanimate furniture. What light there was came from a trio of dull globes suspended from the ceiling; the shadows were long and dark. There was a curtained archway at the far side of the room, set between two oddly-shaped pillars. “God will see you now,” it repeated, backing towards a low niche. “Proceed ...”
Oshi reached out and grabbed at a tabletop. Her aim was accurate: the alabaster dish shattered when it struck the drone, shards of stone splintering in all directions with the slow spread of a low-gee explosion. “ Squeee – “ The drone fell over, all six legs beating helplessly at the air.
“Proceed!” she sneered, trying to conceal her fear. “I'll proceed when I feel like it, you lump of shit and plastic.”
She pushed through the curtains, and paused. She stood at one end of a twilit hall of columns, marble capped in lotus-blossom scrollwork supporting low beams of stone, wrought in carvings of incredible intricacy and antiquity. Cressets set into bronze brackets on the columns cast a fitful glow across the room. The floor was inlaid with mosaics, the design of which were vaguely familiar to her: designs that she felt she had seen somewhere before. The side walls of the hall were shrouded by darkness and pillars, unlit and unseen. The door-frame at the far end of the hall arched overhead in a sweep of polished stone, converging in a parabola. A brass balance hung from it, pans wide enough to weigh an adult human swinging slowly in the air. To either side of the balance, a throne of granite stood upon a dais. The left-hand one was empty: but seated in the right –
The thing on the throne lolled sideways, black tongue hanging from between its narrow jaws. It had the body of a man from the neck down, but its skin was black: not merely pigmented, but a deep, iridescent darkness like the carapace of a beetle. From the neck up, it was utterly inhuman, a wild-dog fantasy grafted onto human anatomy.
“Oh shit,” said Oshi.
“Welcome to the Duat, Dead ka.” The occupant of the throne grinned like a hound. “Be at home in my domain. Come hither; approach the throne of Anubis.” His voice grated like a saw blade dragged across sheet steel.
Oshi took a step forward on legs like jelly: “what is going on?”
Something moved, off to one side. A sideways glance showed her something she wished she hadn't seen, hanging between two of the pillars. Its mouth gaped wide in a silent rictus of agony: judging by the gaping wound in the owner's chest he had died before – whatever – had hung him out to dry.
“These are the western lands, the domain that lies beyond the cavern of the setting sun, guarded by the sphinx Aker. I am Anubis, the weigher of souls. I bid you welcome, for I am your destiny and your judge. We must speak. There is much that you should be aware of.”
“You're – what?” Another dried-out corpse hung between pillars to her right. Oshi focussed on the throne, zooming her eyeballs through a full-spectrum scan. Near panic added a jittery tension to her stance: she felt simultaneously present and absent, as if she was at full readiness but someone else was driving her body. “Do you know what I am?” Nameless fears hung in the balance of her mind as she took another step. Anubis was a huge presence looming above her. The stink of his breath pulsed in a hot miasma, driven towards her on a breeze from behind the thrones. Now she was close she saw what the weighing pans held; in one, a long white feather, and in the other, some dried-out red offal.
“Yes. I know what you are,” said the dog-head. It yawned, baring canines the size of knives. Lucent black pupils the size of hand grenades focussed in on her, outlined by a tiny rind of sclera. Saliva dribbled from one side of its grin. “You are a dead soul, despatched to me that I might weigh you in the balance! But come, we have much to discuss first. You are unlike the others in my domain. How do you explain this?”
Oshi paused just beyond arm's reach: “you're a Superbright download,” she stated. “Your purpose is to supervise the robot installations in this system. What's going on? Why haven't you reported recently?”
Anubis grinned and slavered, panting like a dog. “I know nothing of this super-bright you speak of,” he grated. “I am Anubis and this is the Duat. I await only the coming of the Great One, blessed be he, who approaches from the distance: I fulfill my duties in the meantime. Indeed, it is to his presence that you owe your incarnation: were he not shortly to arrive, I would have left you in limbo a little longer. Who are you to demand anything of me?”
“But the –” Oshi stopped. Thinking: no wisdom. That means no Dreamtime upload if I die. But why? Suppose something's soaking up all the bandwidth available to the colony. Something like a Superbright– “I have a message for you,” she said. “A message from the Boss.”
Anubis yawned. His jaws snapped shut with a clack and he leaned forward, ears swivelling to focus on Oshi. “It is of no importance. This is my domain, and within it I reign supreme. I discharge my holy duties, and none will divert me from them. Will you be judged now, errant soul, or will you maintain this pretense of life indefinitely?”
Oshi stared. He's stark raving mad! Now what do I do? “If it's all very well –” she eyed the balance warily – “I'd rather carry on pretending to be alive.”
“Come now. My judgements are nothing if not fair.”
“I wouldn't presume upon your mercy,” she muttered. “What is in the balance?”
“Your soul.” Anubis raised one hand: the balance swung wildly, the pan containing the feather rising. “Your ba. If it outweighs the feather of the law –”
Oshi stared at the offal in the lower pan with queasy fascination.
“– you will be found guilty. But if you are innocent –”
“No,” said Oshi, her voice husky with emotion. “No!” I didn't come all this way to have my heart ripped out by a mad Superbright!
“I urge you to reconsider,” hissed the dog-head. “If you are innocent you will join me here, in the redoubt. I can show you things –” The floor below her turned to glass. She was looking down on herself, as she had been – hairless and emaciated, skin soiled from a ride through the midnight forest, lying on a rough
stone floor somewhere. The window misted back into stone before she could see any more of her circumstances. “I can expose the truth that lies within you. I am the only God of these western lands. If you do not choose to follow me, all other ways are sterile.”
Oshi backed away from the throne. Contorted shapes tugged at her peripheral vision; mummified bodies racked and hung between the pillars to either side, their chests hanging open and empty where once their hearts had been. Doors bulked in the shadows behind them. “Let me go,” she mumbled. Somewhere deep inside, she winced at the tremor in her voice. “This is nothing to do with me.”
“Oh, but it is,” snarled Anubis, lurching to his feet. “Respect!” he barked, eyes suddenly wide and furious: “Anubis demands Respect!” There was a rattling and hissing from behind the curtained entrance. “Respect for his Dignity and Moral Primacy! The agencies of false gods hold no sway here! They sent Anubis here to rot so they can go and rot too, for all the good that this will do them! Respect, I say!”
Oshi stared. Cold sweat trickled across her forehead, matting her eyebrows together. “I see. Of course. Is that your final word?”
Anubis became abruptly calm, as if posessed by a different personality. “Yes, Anubis believes it is,” he said, scratching behind one long ear with a humanoid hand. “Respect! Damn all false gods!”
“But there's a war situation; Ultrabrights are attacking –”
“There is no war!” He clapped his hands. “Leave me now. Must think. Guards!” The curtain behind her creaked open a fraction: there was an angry hissing from behind it. “Don't even dream about subversion. Won't tolerate it! The Duat is all mine. Mine! Won't let the other gods spoil it! Won't let the dead souls spoil it! Won't ever let them go! Now leave me!”
Oshi glanced over her shoulder at the vestibule; oh shit. The Goon waiting there had spotted her. Blind terror gave her wings as she leapt to one side, past an eviscerated woman who had withered into a leathery mass gripped between chains: she yanked the door open and shut behind her, fumbled blindly with the cast-iron bolt, then turned and tensed. Something snapped insider her and she ran into the guts of the castle, sobbing for breath, cold terror coursing through her veins.
Minutes passed before sanity brought her stumbling to a halt in a corridor of hewn stone blocks, floored in fused sandstone. The sole illumination was a glow-lamp recessed in the ceiling: it cast shadows as sharp as a knife blade behind her. Where she was was a mystery. Her sense of direction, normally as acute as any navigation system, had deserted her completely somewhere in the maze of the redoubt. An acrid scent tickled her nostrils. She had only smelt it once before, but it was enough to make her shudder.
Those monsters. He must breed them up somewhere. She shivered at the thought. He's cracked. How in hell do I report back now? Is there some other power base I can focus on?
She began to pace along the corridor, reflexes alert for signs of danger as she turned the problem around in her mind. Item: Anubis is stone crazy. Why? He's on his own. If what Year Zero Man said was halfway true, that would fit. No stimulation. A human being in sense-dep for three days shows signs of distress; total isolation for much longer than that produces psychotic effects, hallucinations. How much worse could it be for a being with a thousand times the information-processing bandwidth of a human mind?
Someone, somewhere, must know ... Oshi blinked. A tickle on the back of her neck, where there were no hairs to be disturbed. There was high-density Wisdom traffic nearby. Flick ... her sub-cortical modifications came on-line, sucking in the signal greedily. Not enough process-power to figure out what was going through, but enough to know that it was heavy. Anubis, perhaps. Oshi could feel it, sense the two-way traffic as subtle signals pulsed back and forth. Something is very wrong. It isn't just Anubis' psychosis. Even paranoids have enemies. I wonder why Anubis needs guards?
There was a doorway set back in the corridor wall. Corridors made Oshi nervous. Like a burglar exploring at midnight she sought shelter, somewhere to hide. It looked promising. She bent to listen, heard nothing. When she turned the handle and pushed, the door creaked like a breaking neck. She avoided the poisoned spike and the other trap with ease: they had not been placed well, or the designers had not anticipated that they might be encountered by someone who could see in the dark. The room she found on the other side of the hidden trapdoor was completely dark, shrouded with a carpet of dust. Oshi glanced round, jacking her eyes down into infrared. Boxes and ... no, coffins. Oddly shaped sarcophagi, stacked carelessly like traveller's chests in the hold of a tramp ship. She shivered. A tomb, perhaps, more furniture tailored to Anubis' intricate web of self-delusion. But there were other furnishings here, too. Intricate columns of hieroglyphic script marched down the walls behind the boxes; a table hulked in the deep shadows, laden with tableware: and behind it, there was a bundle of what looked like ...
She walked over to the far wall and reached out, grabbed cold metal. She felt a sudden rush of savage joy at the comfortable weight of wood and iron in her hands. Now we'll see who's in charge, she decided, carefully avoiding the icy knowledge that if Anubis retained so much as a shred of his Superbright identity she stood as much chance of resisting him as a snail before a juggernaut.
Armed with the short halberd, Oshi felt more confident about trying the corridor. She glanced either way before she stepped out; then darted along from doorway to doorway, ducking for cover, professionally paranoid. Escape from this lunatic's dream of a dungeon was her first priority, she decided. But I need to find out what the fuck he's doing at the wisdom level. Why he's taken it down, dropped the Dreamtime connection too – which is just the long-range counterpart of the wisdom link.What does he think he's doing, cutting himself off? Surely there must be some method to his madness? Two doorways ahead, to either side, there was a dark stretch: the glow-bulb burned out. Oshi ducked forward, jumping from cover to cover.
Her only warning was a twitch of air against the nape of her neck. Oshi fell back against the left-hand wall, spun round with the heavy butt of the halberd braced against stone. A nightmare presence bore down on her, six arms stretched wide, mandibles rippling in concentric circles –
“YEEE!”
The Goon lunged forward, skidding, unable to stop. Oshi leaned into the shaft. A sickening thud jarred her to the core, sprayed hot dark blood across her face as she twisted, ducked to avoid a lashing fistful of claws. “Yeee –” The screech trailed off into a bubbly rasp as the Goon shuddered, movements slowing, and tried to tear itself away. Half-blinded by a foam of blood and sweat, Oshi dragged at the halberd, twisting as it sucked out of the wounded monster: lift and chop forwards and down, feel the thud of the axe-blade lodge in something like flesh and bone. Can't see. Where – down on the floor. Chop. Hot liquid gouted across her legs. “Lie down and die, dammit!” She shivered, aching to the core: muscles screamed at her to stop. Is it alone? She froze, listening. Later she'd swear that she heard the Goon's six-chambered heart falter into silence.
Nothing else moved in the corridor. She breathed in raggedly, looking down through a clear hole in her visual field: everything else was a solid red-out, obscured by the blood in her eyes. The living weapon lay at her feet, leaking gore and shit and a loop of twisted intestines from a messy hole in its abdomen. Its huge and complex head lay at her feet, outer jaws half-severed from its face. The creature had a sex: it was male, a pair of incongruously small penises spilling from a ventral pouch unsealed by death. Suddenly the halberd was unbearably heavy. Oshi grounded its point, heedless of the risk of damage, leaned against the wall and smeared at her face with a muck-splashed sleeve. Screwing up her face she forced herself to weep for a moment: the tears helped clear the ooze from her eyes. Vision returned, blurry and pink-stained at first. “Lucky,” she whispered, staring at the claws that grasped, the teeth that ground. “So lucky.” A shudder racked her, from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck: for a moment she felt unbearably horny, dizzy with the eroticism of survival. �
��I'm so lucky ...”
Something scratched behind her. Reflexes made her whirl: weak muscles made her stagger and stumble. The door on the right. She stared at it. It looked like something that belonged in a dungeon: thick wood bound in black iron, secured – ominously, in the corridor – by bolts evidently designed to withstand an assault from the other side. Silence. Then, after a moment: scrit scrit scrit.
“Shit.” Not so lucky any more. Forcing herself to lift her feet and glide like a vampire, Oshi crossed over to the door and leaned against it. Total silence, total attention focussed on it. All her senses kicked in: infra-red, touch, wisdom access –
There was someone behind the door. Someone with the standard upload nanomonitors, and something else she didn't recognize. It certainly wasn't a Goon; not Anubis, either. And the door locked on the outside.
Oshi didn't stop to think. “ Hey.” It was a short-range call over the wisdom link, an electronic yell that would only be audible to the person on the other side of the door: “ who are you?”
“Help me. Let me out of here. Please!”
She reached out and grabbed the halberd one-handed. She worked on the bolts with her free hand: as the second one slid back, she caught up her weapon and levelled it, point first, dropping to a crouch as the door swung inwards. The point wove in tiny circles before her eyes; she was still jittery with adrenalin. She slowly relaxed as she saw that there was no immediate threat. “Shit. What have they done to you?”
A short man, brown-skinned and bald, lay spread-eagled on a metal table. His arms and legs were pinned out by restraining straps like a rat awaiting dissection. The fingers of one hand were dark with blood where he'd been scraping them on the table's edge. Oshi took it all in: the stone walls and ceiling like something out of a dark age, robosurgeon hovering over the top of the table, cannulae winding into the veins of his neck like the roots of a revoltingly hungry plant. He rolled his eyes at her: “ I can't speak. There's a block on my larynx. Please help –”
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