by Dan Abnett
I thought this a curiously brief answer for a man so usually talkative.
'So/ he said at length, 'apart from our knowledge of where they're going, have we any other advantages?'
'We have/1 took from my coat pocket the item that had rested there ever since I had liberated it from Glaw's travelling trunk in North Qualm. Maxilla regarded it with frank perplexity.
'This/ I told him, 'is the Pontius/
* * *
We used a large, empty hold in the depths of the Essene. Some of Maxilla's servitors arranged lighting and powerfeeds. My own servitors – Modo and Nilquit – carried the claw-footed casket in and set in on the cold steel floor.
I stood watching, my hands buried deep in my overcoat pockets against the cold of the chamber. Aemos hunched over the casket and, with Nilquit's aid, began to connect cables. I looked over at Bequin. She stood next to Fischig, and was bundled up in a heavy red gown with a grey shawl, and there was an expression of grim reluctance on her face. She'd found it all fun at first, a game, even in the face of danger at House Glaw. But Damask had changed things for her. The monster Mandragore. She knew it wasn't a game anymore. She'd seen things that many – perhaps even most – citizens of the Imperium never see. Most lives are spent on safe worlds far from the touch of war and horror, and the obscenities that lurk out there in the darkest parts of the void are myths or rumours… if that.
But now she knew. Perhaps it had changed her mind. Perhaps she didn't want to be here any more. Perhaps she was now regretting jumping so eagerly for the offer I'd made her.
I didn't ask her. She'd tell me if she had to. We were all too committed now.
'Eisenhorn?' Aemos reached out his hands and I placed the cool hard ball of the Pontius in them. With almost priestly care, he fitted it into place.
I ordered everyone back out of the hold, even the servitors, everyone except Bequin and Aemos. Fischig closed the hold door behind him.
Aemos looked at me and I nodded assent. He made the final connection and then backed away from the casket as hurriedly as his old and augme-tised limbs could manage.
At first, nothing. Small tell-tale lights winked along the edge of the casket – Eyclone's casket – and the internal wiring glowed.
Then I felt a change in air-pressure. Bequin looked at me sharply, feeling it too.
The metal walls of the hold began to sweat. Beads of moisture popped and dribbled down the wall plating.
There was a faint crackling sound, like the gentle crisping of paper in flames. It spread, growing louder. Frost was forming on the casket, on the floor around it, spreading out across the hold's decking, up the walls, across the ceiling. A glittering thickness of diamond frost coated the interior of the hold in less than ten seconds. Our breath steamed in the air and we brushed jewels of ice-dust off our clothes and eyelashes.
'Pontius Glaw,' I said.
There was no answer, but after a moment or two, a series of animal grunts and barks mewled from the vox-speakers built into the casket.
'Glaw/1 repeated.
'What-' said an artificial voice.
Bequin stiffened.
'What have you woken me to?'
'What is the last thing you remember, Glaw?'
'Promises… promises…' the voice said, coming and going as if drifting away from the microphone and then back. 'Where is Urisel?'
What promises were made to you, Glaw?'
'Life…' it murmured. 4Vhere is Urisel?' There was a tone now, an anger or an impatience. 'Where is he?'
I began to frame another question, but there was a sudden flash of activity, a crackle of electronic synapses firing across the crystal surface of the ball. It had lashed out with its mind, with its potent psychic powers. If Bequin had not been here, cancelling it out, no doubt Aemos and I would have been dead.
Temper, temper…' I said. I took a step towards the casket. '1 am Eisenhorn, Imperial inquisitor. You are my prisoner and you only enjoy cognitive function because I allow it. You will answer my questions.'
'I… will… not.'
I shrugged. 'Aemos, disconnect this menace and prepare it for disintegration!'
Wait! Wait!' the voice was pleading despite its colourless artificiality.
I knelt down in front of the casket. 'I know that your life and intellect were preserved in this device, Pontius Glaw. I know you have waited for two centuries, trapped in a bodiless state, desperate to be made whole again. That is what your family promised you, wasn't it?'
'Urisel promised… he said it be so… the methods were prepared…'
To sacrifice the nobility of Hubris so that their life energies might be siphoned off into you through this casket. To give you the power to create a body for yourself
'He promised!' The stress fell on the second word, anguished and deep.
'Urisel and the others abandoned you, Pontius. They abandoned the Hubris project at the last minute in favour of something else. They are now all in the custody of the Inquisition.'
'Nooooo…' The word turned into a hiss that died away. They would not…'
'I'm sure they wouldn't… unless it was something so vital, so unmissable that they had no choice. You'd know what that would be, wouldn't you?'
Silence.
What would be more important to them than you, Pontius Glaw?'
Silence.
'Pontius?'
They are not caught/
'What? Who are not?'
'My brethren. My kin… If you had them, you would not be asking these questions. They are free and you are desperate/
'Not at all. You know how it is… so many lies, so many conflicting stories. Your pitiful family trying to sell each other out in exchange for freedom. I came to you for the truth/
'No. Credible but no.'
'You know what it is, Pontius/
'No/
'You know what it is. They woke you from time to time to keep you informed, woke you from the oblivion that surrounds you in that globe. Beneath House Glaw, for example, in that chapel they built to contain you. I saw you there. You subdued me with your power/
'I would do so again/ it said, traces of fire once more flickering along the golden filaments and woven circuits that encased the jagged, quartz-like lump.
You know what it is. They told you/
'No/
I reached down and grasped a sheaf of wires. You're lying/ I said and yanked the wires out.
A brief moan rolled from the vox-speakers and faded. The lights on the casket went out. Air temperature and pressure began to climb again. The frost began to dissolve.
'Not much then/ said Bequin.
'We're just beginning/1 replied. 'We've got thirty weeks/
SEVENTTEEK
Discourses.
Speculation on an unsymmetrical theme.
Betrayal.
Iwent то the hold each day with bequin and aemos and we repeated the procedure. For the next few days, he refused even to answer. After about a week, he began to goad us and abuse us with threats and obscenities. Every few days, he tried to lash out psychically, thwarted each time by Bequin's untouchable presence.
All the while, the Essene plunged through the Immaterium towards the distant stargroup.
In the fourth week, I changed tactics, and entered into discussion with him on any subject mat occurred to me. I didn't ask a single question concerning the 'true matter'. He refused to engage for the first few days, but I remained cordial and greeted him patiently each session. At last, discourses began: on astral navigation, high ecclesiarch music, architecture, stellar demographics, antique weapons, fine wines…
He could not help himself. The isolation of his condition made him crave such contacts with a real, vibrant world. He longed to taste and read and see and live again. Within two weeks he needed no encouragement to talk. I was no friend, and he was still wary, and keen to insult on any occasion, but he clearly welcomed our conversations. When, deliberately, I missed a day, he complained sullenly, as if wounded or
let down.
For my part, I had the chance to realise how dangerous Glaw was. His mind was brilliant; charming, witty, incisive, and formidably knowledgeable. It was a pleasure to talk to him and learn from him. It was a salutary reminder of the quality of mind that Chaos can steal. The greatest of us, the brightest, the most urbane and learned, can fall prey.
One day in the tenth week, I entered the chamber with Bequin and Aemos as usual and we woke him. But an uncommon sensation troubled me.
'What is this?' I said. It seemed to me the casket was not quite in the same place as usual. 'Have you been in here, Aemos?' I asked. 'Even to make standard checks?'
'No/ he assured me. The hold was locked as a matter of course after each session.
'My imagination then/ I decided.
Our discourses continued, pleasantly, each morning for an hour or so. We often discussed Imperial policies and ethics, subjects on which he was astonishingly well-read. He never strayed, never allowed himself to profess a belief or concept that might be deemed counter to the strictures of the Imperium, as if he recognised that such an admission would perforce end our entente. On occasions, I gave him openings to do so, conversational gambits that would allow him space and opportunity to criticise or denounce the way of the God-Emperor and the rule of Terra. He resisted, though at times I felt he was desperate to voice his own, contrary beliefs. But his need for activity and contact was paramount. He would not risk losing our interaction.
He could quote, extensively, chapter and verse from Imperial texts, philosophies, poetry, ecclesiarchal lore. His scholarship rivalled Aemos's. But just as he refrained from condemning himself with heretical utterances, he also refrained from actually professing loyalty to the golden throne. He conducted our conversations in a subjective, uninvolved way. He did not attempt to dissemble and play the part of the loyal citizen. I appreciated that this represented his respect for me. He did not insult my intelligence by lying.
More often still than politics and ethics, we talked of history. Again, in this area, his learning was tremendous, but there was also, for the first time, an eagerness, a hunger. He never asked directly, but it was clear he longed to know in detail about the events that had taken place in the two hundred and twelve years since his death. His family had clearly told him little. He made leading remarks to draw answers out of me. I gave him some, and sometimes volunteered accounts of major events, political changes and Imperial gains. I had decided beforehand not to make any mention of Imperial defeats or losses, to avoid giving him anything he might relish. The picture that Pontius Glaw got from me was of an Imperium stronger and more healthy than ever before.
Even so, it delighted him. Precious glimpses of a galaxy he had long been divorced from.
The rest of that long transit time was spent in preparation and study, daily regimes of weapons practice and combat training. Fischig ran hand-to-hand sessions each afternoon, and set himself to honing Bequin's natural dexterity and speed. I pressed weights in a makeshift gymnasium, and ran tens of kilometres each day around the empty halls and corridors of the Essene. Slowly, I brought myself back to peak fitness.
I worked my mind too. A disciplined regime of psychic exercises, some conducted with Lowink's help.
Aemos and I studied extensively. We worked through all the archive data we had to hand, researching the saruthi. It added little to our knowledge. The extent of their territories was known, but virtually nothing beyond that. There had only been a handful of officially recorded contacts in the past two thousand years. I wondered how much was known about them by the rogue traders who sailed beyond the Imperial veil, men like Gor-gone Locke.
All we knew with any certainty was that the saruthi were an old xenos culture – insular, secretive, lying outside the bounds of the Imperium. They were technically resourceful, mature and well-established. We knew nothing of their culture-type, beliefs, language… not even their physical appearance.
4Ve can at least conjecture they have some religious beliefs or values/ Aemos told me. 'Or, at the very least, they hold certain relics of their past in high regard for some symbolic or sacred purpose. Our foes only excavated that material on Damask because they knew it had value to the saruthi/
'Holy items? Icons?'
He shrugged. 'Or ancestor spirits – or simply a desire to recover and repatriate cultural materials from their past/
'And we know their territory was once bigger. Extending as far as Damask, even if that was but a distant outpost/ said Lowink.
We sat around an inlaid table in one of Maxilla's staterooms, the polished table top smothered in open books, scrolls, data-slates and record tiles.
'And Bonaventure/ I said. 'The wheel-graves. Bequin remarked that the site at North Qualm reminded her of those on her birthworld/
'Perhaps/ said Aemos. 'But I am no archaexenon expert. The wheel-graves of Bonaventure are classified as 'of unknown xenos manufacture' in all the texts I can find. They are but one among hundreds of unidentified relic sites in the Helican sub-sector. All traces of a long-vanished, or at least long-shrunk, saruthi civilisation… or the remnants of many miscellaneous forerunner species that roamed this part of space before man ever came this way/
I set down a data-slate and picked up the item that lay in the centre of the table, wrapped in felt. It was the single ancient tablet that had
escaped Damask with us. I had taken it from the crate during the standoff, and it had still been in my hand when we had thrown ourselves aboard the gun-cutter. Like the stonework dug-out in the flame hill mine, it was made of a hard pale material glittering with flecks of mica that we all agreed was not indigenous to Damask. And it was octagonal, but not regularly so, being peculiarly long on two edges. The back of it was burned and scored where it had been cut away. The reverse showed a bas-relief symbol, a five-pointed star sigil. But it, too, was irregular: the radiating spars of the star were of unmatched length and they protruded at a variety of angles.
'Most perturbatory/ said Aemos, looking at it for the umpteenth time. 'Symmetry – at least, basic symmetry – is a virtual constant in the galaxy. All species – even the most obscene xenos kinds like the tyranid – have some order of it.'
'There's something wrong with the angles/ agreed Lowink, furrowing his unhealthy, socket-pocked brow. I knew what he meant. It was as if the angles in the star symbol made up more than three hundred and sixty degrees, though that of course was unthinkable.
Who has been in here?' I asked at the start of my next session with Pontius. I glanced around the frost-caked chamber. Bequin shrugged, blowing on her hands. Aemos also looked puzzled. 'The casket has been moved again. Just slightly. Who has been in here?' 'No one,' Pontius remarked, his artificial voice colourless. 'I was not directing the question at you, Pontius. For I doubt you would tell me the truth.' 'You wound me, Gregor/ he answered softly.
Are you sure it's not your imagination?' Aemos asked. 'You said before-' 'Perhaps/1 frowned. 'I just feel something is… changed/
I dined with Maxilla most evenings during the long voyage, sometimes in company with the others, sometimes alone. One evening in the twenty-fifth week, only Maxilla and 1 sat at the stateroom table, as the gilt servitors brought in our meal.
'Tobius/1 said at length, 'tell me about the saruthi/
He paused, and set his food-laden fork back down on his salver.
'What would you have me tell you?'
'Why you claimed to know nothing of them when I told you we were heading into their territory/
'Because such places are forbidden. Because you are an inquisitor, and it does not do to admit transgressions to one such as you/
I toyed with the lip of my half-empty glass. You have aided me eagerly and generously up to now, Tobius. I suspected your motives at first, a detail for which I have apologised. I see now you are as keen to serve the Emperor of Mankind as I. It troubles me that you would withhold information now/
He bared his pearl-inlaid teeth and dabbed at his lips with the co
mer of his napkin. 'It does more than trouble me, Gregor. It has plagued me, a crisis of conscience/
'It is time to speak then/ I refilled both of our glasses with vintage from the decanter. 'Imperial knowledge of the saruthi is scant, and as you say, forbidden. I am more than aware that rogue traders know a great deal more about the outside systems and their species than we do. You are no rogue, but you are of the merchant elite. I think it unlikely that you have never come across any information pertaining to this xenos breed/
He sighed. As a young man, over ninety years ago, I travelled into saruthi space. I was a junior crewman aboard a rogue trader called the Promethean. The master was Vaden Awl, long dead I imagine. Now there was a true rogue. He was sure he could strike a trading deal with these unknowns, or at least rob them blind of treasures/
And did he?'
'No. Remember, I was junior crew. I never left the bowels of the ship, or went to the surface of any worlds. All I knew was the miserable duration of the voyage. The senior crewmembers were tight-lipped. It took them, as I understand it, a long time to find the saruthi at all, and then they were less than forthcoming. The third officer, a man I knew reasonably well, confided to me that the saruthi played tricks on Awl's trade envoys, hid from them, tormented them.
Tormented how?'
Their worlds were eerie, disarming, uncomfortable – something about the angles, the officer said/
The angles?'
He laughed sourly and shrugged. As if something ill and twisted had infected their dimensions. We came back empty-handed after a year. Many of the crew quit and left the Promethean on our return, especially when Awl, who was a sick and driven man by then, declared he was going back to try again. I quit then too, but only because I couldn't face another year below decks/
'And Awl?'
'He went back. I presume so, anyway. A few years later I heard his ship had been taken in the Borealis Reach by eldar renegades. That's the sum of it. You can perhaps see why I was unwilling to tell you these things before… because there is nothing useful to tell. Except to incriminate myself by admitting I had gone beyond/
I nodded. 'In future, do not hold information back from me/
