by David Beers
A lot of people were coming for them because taking over this planet had created ripples Alistair hadn’t thought through when he began.
The AllMother wasn’t only worried about that, though. Another concern, and one that was growing, was her brother.
She hadn’t heard from him in some time, nor did she feel his Myrmidons. He hadn’t given up his chase; that was an impossibility, and that it appeared so indicated something was amiss.
The AllMother stared at the ceiling. Light would soon fall on the world, and she’d be forced to get back up again.
For now, though, she had one thought. What are you doing, brother?
The black-tentacled creatures that had been grown in a tank now traveled through the fifth dimension. The AllSeer had endowed them with the ability to move between dimensions, just as his ships could.
No human had ever seen anything like them. They were something new, a part of evolution outside of evolution. The most basic way to describe them would be to say they were both flesh and machine, but that wouldn’t give the creational genius its due. Truthfully, that classification didn’t work. They were something new.
Part of the AllSeer’s genius was in creating horrors that could kill more efficiently than anything natural or manmade.
The tentacled things had played with each other in their tank, cutting the tentacles off one another and laughing about it, but they no longer did that. They were capable of something resembling thought, though it didn’t have a linear pattern like that of humans or animals. At this moment, they were focused on one thing: finding the owner of the blood that had been spilled in their tank. Nothing else existed for them, and unlike creatures that could focus for a time, there would be nothing else until they found the owner.
It didn’t matter how far away the individual was or whether he lived on the most densely populated planet the universe had ever known. They would find him, then they would kill him.
Chapter Five
The day was over, and Alistair was exhausted mentally and physically, though the things he’d done that day were nothing compared to some of his physical feats. He didn’t know how many hours he’d worked, only that it was dark outside when he finally called it quits.
Obs was staring at him as he powered down the DataTrack. Alistair looked at the drathe. “You don’t need me to go on a walk with you, you know. You’re perfectly capable of doing it by yourself.”
Obs barked at him, not in a friendly way.
“Fine.” Alistair stood up. He’d been sitting for that majority of the day, and he figured it wouldn’t hurt to get some kind of exercise, even if it was only walking outside with the drathe. “Let’s go, but it’s not going to be long. Don’t get that in your head.”
Animal and man went outside into the brisk night air. Alistair still hadn’t gotten used to the colors of this strange planet. At night, something in the atmosphere lit strings of deep purple across the black sky, making it look as if the gods were trying to peek through.
Alistair had been rundown when he’d killed the men who controlled this place. He’d killed so many people and pushed so hard for so long that he’d felt less than human. Perhaps he’d even questioned if it was worth his soul to fight this war; he couldn’t remember. His mind had been so frazzled, so frayed, that many of his thoughts were still gray now.
He felt better now. This respite here had let him recharge. He was ready to leave, though the feelings from conquering this place hadn’t faded. He would never be the hero in a child’s story. He understood that now. There was no pure confidence or lack of self-doubt in him. Perhaps heroes like that didn’t exist, though sometimes the AllMother and the AllSeer seemed to be that kind.
Each was possessed by their goals. In some ways, Alistair thought they weren’t very different from each other in that. They would both burn the entire universe to get what they wanted. For the AllMother, ending the Commonwealth justified her means.
The AllSeer’s goals were less clear to any sane person, but he was the same.
Obs and Alastair were walking through the compound’s grounds. The city was just outside the high walls, though the people who’d lived here had been in no danger. The creatures they bred would never rise up, and everyone else worked for the company.
Obs ran across the yard to the left of the brick trail they walked, rushing after one of the little vermin that lived in the trees. They looked like an Earth squirrel but with much larger, floppier ears and a curly tail, as well as being a neon green that matched the leaves they usually hid in almost perfectly.
Obs was the smartest animal Alistair had ever met, but even he liked to have his fun. Chasing those squirrel things provided that for him.
Alistair sighed, still exhausted despite this exercise. He’d done a lot of thinking about the AllMother and the AllSeer, but what of him?
Will you burn the universe to see me, Allie? his wife asked.
The truth?
He would. Still. He didn’t want to, but if the universe forced him to burn it all, then that’s what he’d do. Soul or no soul, he would see his wife again or die trying.
The small animal had made it up the tree, stopping halfway and turning around to taunt Obs. Most of the animals on this planet had been engineered after the originals were killed off by the colonizing humans. Alistair believed all the new ones had been endowed with a sense of humor.
He continued walking around the bend, knowing Obs would follow when he’d had enough fun teasing the squirrel creature. Alistair hadn’t had time to consider what the AllMother had said, but he thought it might be the most important thing he’d heard today.
Look at the sky.
What was the old woman talking about?
He stopped and did as she’d told him, turning his head to the purple and black above. There were no clouds, just the planet’s two moons across each other.
“What’s up there?” he asked himself. “What do I need to learn that’s so important?”
He rapidly thought through the possible answers.
There was only one that seemed to make any sense. Humans had been looking into the skies since they had eyes, and most of the time, they were looking for one thing: other lifeforms. If she was telling him to look at the sky now, it was because a giant wind was coming to get him.
There it was.
He’d either been too unfocused or too dumb to understand it then, but now it appeared obvious that someone was coming here. He didn’t have to leave because the wind would come for him, and it was on the way.
The display showed Alistair outside her room, the drathe pacing at his side. The AllMother didn’t have to see Alistair’s face to know he’d figured out her little riddle from this morning; it was all over Obs. A ridge of hair stood up on his back, and he wouldn’t stop walking back and forth as if patrolling for danger.
As far as Alistair’s face, well, he looked less than pleased.
“Go ahead and open the door, Jeeves,” she told the ever-present AI.
“Certainly, madam,” Jeeves responded, and the door slid into the wall.
Alistair wasted no time, his broad shoulders nearly scraping the jambs as he stepped in. She knew he never thought about his size or the ruggedness of his physique. She also knew that when his enemies saw him, they would understand the man they dealt with was unlike anyone they’d seen before.
The AllMother was at her kitchen table with a cup of tea grown on this planet in front of her. Alistair rounded the corner, his presence sucking up the room’s energy. He looked at the floor as he spoke, pacing as Thoreaux did. Obs, thank the gods, stopped patrolling and laid on the floor just outside the kitchen. He put his head between his paws and watched his master going to and fro.
“Would you like some tea, Alistair?” she asked.
He ignored her, reached the other end of the kitchen, and turned, still looking at the floor. “I’m going to leave the issue of why you didn’t tell me to the side for the moment. Who is coming here? There’
s no other reason you would say to look at the sky, so who is it?”
The AllMother knew her role, and she also knew what Alistair wanted it to be. He wanted her to be his whipping post, but the AllMother understood that she was most likely his last teacher. None would come after. She wouldn’t shrink from that role. “You were in my room about fourteen hours ago, Alistair. Not for long, though. You stood up and left. You didn’t try to think about what I’d said. You just got mad that I wouldn’t tell you exactly what you wanted to hear, and you left.”
He stopped pacing and turned to her. It might have been the first time she’d seen something resembling rage in him. He’d gotten annoyed with her before, maybe even close to angry, but not like this. Her power would fall before him like autumn leaves in front of an oak. She could do nothing to stop this man if he wanted to hurt her.
“Who’s coming?” he repeated in a low voice.
“I need you to answer my question first. Then we’ll discuss yours.”
He reached for the counter behind him and gripped the edge, his knuckles white. “Who is in charge here, you or me?”
“You.”
“Then answer my question,” he demanded.
The AllMother leaned back in her chair, put her hands on her knees, and stared at him for a few seconds. “You may be in charge of this movement, Alistair, but I think it’s fair for you to remember that I built this from nothing. You know my story, and you know that to me, you’re little more than a child. A newborn. Someone fresh from his mother’s womb. Pluto wasn’t the first world I saw burn. It wasn’t even the second. I’ve witnessed empires grow and fall, surviving them all. I’ve been hunted since I was barely a woman by my brother, and I still live. Men and women have served at my feet for centuries, some perhaps greater than you, O Great Prometheus. They weren’t you, but they understood what I’d seen and been through without knowing the full story. They listened to me, even if it wasn’t what they wanted to hear. So, young man, decide now whether you respect me. Whether you trust me. If you don’t, then certainly I’ll answer your question. Ave, Prometheus.”
He let go of the counter, and the rage left his face. His hands hung at his sides as his eyes gazed at the floor. After a second, he ambled to the table, pulled a chair out, and sat. “I didn’t think about it this morning because I was focused on other things. There’s a world out there that I completely changed, and it’s my responsibility to fix it and keep it from eating itself.”
The AllMother didn’t move. Her face didn’t soften. She showed no change in emotion, but internally, if she could have wept with relief, she would have. The man could have walked out of the room, casting her to the side, and gone his own way. Instead, he was here and still willing to listen.
I chose well, she thought with more than a little thankfulness.
“Alistair, have you killed parents?” she asked.
“I suppose.”
“Did you go to their house and care for their children? Did you make sure their offspring had food and shelter?”
He looked up, hurt on his face.
She raised a hand, her palm facing him. “No need to defend yourself. I understand. My point is, there were other times you didn’t do nearly as much as you have here. You gave these gigantes a fighting chance to survive, and you’ve worked with the others to try to create an economy. It’s commendable. It’s more than any other warlord in this universe would do, I assure you. In doing so, though, you took your focus off your goal. Your mission. Even today, you went about your regular business instead of considering just about the only advice I’ve ever given you. That’s why I didn’t come out and tell you something was on the way here, Alistair—because you need to look out for those you lead. The more you take on, the greater your responsibilities and the more you have to look after. It was an honorable thing, coming here for these gigantes, but it was not our mission.”
She paused. The former Titan was leaning his elbows on his knees and staring at the floor, taking his tongue-lashing without protest.
The AllMother softened her tone. “Do you know what the lesson is, Alistair? Do you understand what I was trying to teach you?”
He didn’t answer for a few seconds. Obs stood up and padded over to lie beneath his chair and give him support.
“The obvious answer is if I’m leading the movement, then I need to lead toward our goal without sidetracking the entire thing.”
She nodded. “That is the obvious answer. What’s the non-obvious one?”
He didn’t hesitate. He understood now. “That someone is always going to be coming after us. Even if the Commonwealth or the AllSeer isn’t in front of us, someone will be trying to kill us.”
“Exactly. For three months, we’ve been lucky. We’ve forgotten the threat to this rebellion. It’s time we remembered.”
“Okay.” Alistair straightened and looked at her. “What is coming, or is that something else I have to figure out on my own?”
The AllMother finally smiled. “You know the answer to that. I’ve been spoon-feeding you from dawn to dusk. You need to figure out what’s coming toward us.”
He wasn’t angry as he asked his next question. “You realize that every hour we wait, that’s less time we have to prepare?”
“I do.”
“It’ll most likely cause more people to die. You understand that too?”
Her smile was gone as she nodded. “I understand. It will be worth it if it prepares you to get us back to Earth. You are the key that will unlock the door I’ve been staring at for a thousand years, and if this helps mold that key to fit the door, anything is worth it.”
Alistair nodded, looking as if he’d thought about what she’d said. “I’ll figure out who’s coming then.”
The hour was growing late. It was much later than Alistair thought he’d be up when he awoke this morning, but there was nothing to be done about it.
He’d walked with Obs outside for a bit, staring at the purple scars across the sky. He thought about how to figure this out. They could scan the sky and even the universe, but no technology to show the entirety of it existed. The universe was too vast and the ships traveling through it too small. Most likely, they weren’t even in the third dimension but had jumped to the fourth, which would eliminate the ability to see them.
He finished his walk back at the compound. Obs was looking up at him. Alistair was able to read the drathe now, understanding what he wanted almost as well as Obs understood him. “You can go to bed,” he told the animal. “I’ve got more to do yet.”
The drathe reared up too quickly for Alistair to stop him and put his front paws on the man’s chest. He gave his face two big licks, hit the ground again, and bounded off before Alistair had a chance to yell at him.
He shook his head, then wiped his face through the smile on it. Alistair had no idea how he’d gotten lucky enough to be soul-paired with an animal like Obs, but he was thankful for it.
There was only one person he wanted to talk to right now. Caesar was a gigante and part of a culture much richer and deeper than Alistair had ever imagined.
Caesar didn’t stay with the rest of the council. He lived with the gigantes, and his reasoning had been sound.
“I can’t teach them if they look at me as one of you. I am a gigante, and if I’m to free them, they have to know I’m the same as them.”
Alistair could have taken a transport, but he decided to walk. He knew he wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. He would think about this subject until it was solved because to do anything else would end with even more dead.
He headed to the outskirts of this singular city. The gigantes had never been allowed in, and as a whole, they didn’t feel comfortable living inside the city limits. The “makers” were still a powerful remembrance, with some not believing them dead, only gone into hiding.
Caesar had his work cut out for him, that was for sure. Alistair had seen little of him since they’d taken ownership of the planet.
It was a thre
e-mile walk to where Caesar stayed, and Alistair traveled fairly quickly. He didn’t know if the gigante was up or how much help he’d be, but he wanted to see his friend. They hadn’t known each other for long, but that didn’t matter when they’d been through as much as they had.
He reached the tent-town they lived in. They were only a few miles from state-of-the-art buildings, yet they preferred the housing they’d had as children, large tents that could hold ten or more gigantes at a time. Fires blazed within their small city.
Alistair walked past tents and fires. The gigantes knew, feared, and respected him. It showed how good a job Caesar was doing that they didn’t bow to him, but he could see the awe on their faces as he headed toward where Caesar slept, the firelight not allowing their emotions to hide.
He arrived at the tent. It was sized for a single gigante to sleep in since that was the way their clan leaders were usually housed, the only luxury given to them. Caesar had taken it, but not out of any need for luxury. It simply allowed for privacy when he spoke one-on-one with others.
Alistair raised the tent’s flap and peered inside. Caesar was on the other side, seated with his legs folded beneath him. A large sheet of paper was before him, with lines and words crisscrossing it. The words were written in the gigantes’ language, so Alistair couldn’t have read it if he’d wanted to.
Caesar looked up. “Ave, Prometheus.”
Alistair smiled at the greeting. “You mind if I come in for a minute?”
The giant shook his massive head. “I’ve missed you, Pro. It is good to see you.” The gigantes spoke a stilted form of the language, sometimes overly formal, sometimes missing words. Alistair found it endearing for some reason.
“It’s good to see you too.” He stepped inside the tent, a massive thing that allowed him to stand up fully. There was no pole in the middle, but the gigantes used metal up the sides and at the base, which kept the thing sturdy against the elements as well as gravity. Alistair took a seat a meter or so away from the giant. “How are things going?”
