The General's Bride

by M F Sullivan

  Across the room, a brick shattered in the hand of the testing unit, and the General tried not to roll her eyes or smirk at the image of Tobias choreographing with his men those actions he thought the most menacing. “So I’m supposed to be scared? I’m not leading his army anymore. It’s not my problem.”

  “No, my dear, you are not leading his army. But what is a general without an army, eh? Not much more than the average man or woman!”

  “Trying to appeal to my vanity to get me to fight for you?”

  “Yes: and to acquire information! I do not expect you will disagree. Your Father took your life! Your life, and your wife.”

  “Let’s not,” said Dominia, words arranged through tight lips, “talk about my wife. All right?”

  “Just as well: I have one more thing to show to you.”

  With his unpleasant smile still stupidly in place, Akachi crooked a finger to indicate Dominia should follow him to a door on the left. This door, in turn, led through a series of others, and the General was forced to stop many times to wait for the dentist or his men to unlock them. As she endured all this, he prattled on, and by the time they reached their destination, she was sickened: not by his words but by what she saw.

  “Exo-suits are well and good, Miss Mephitoli, but there are still many problems with the logistics. For instance, one cannot easily smuggle these weapons into any old place! Your Father’s favorite city, Elsinore, is a good example: it is enwalled and defended by land, sea, and air, to such an extent that there is perhaps no city more impenetrable upon the face of this Earth. How, then, is mankind to cure the infection of a source that cannot be reached? This problem has plagued me for many years, Miss Mephitoli. Ever since I rose to power. But I mentioned my solution before. When the body cannot send its white blood cells to fight a disease, an infected tooth, or any other trouble—when these white blood cells are simply not enough, what can be done? What must be done? One night, I awoke with a revelation! When the body cannot cure itself, the body goes to a doctor, a dentist such as myself—and what does that doctor usually do? He gives it an injection. He takes an external thing—in this case, the medicine—and injects it into the body. Or perhaps, as in my case, he comes to remove a thing, as if out of nowhere. Like that”—he snapped his thick fingers—“the body is able to once more fight its ailment. We are the medicine, General, but can you guess the doctor?”

  As she refused to humor him, and he threw open a door to an external walkway whose bright glare made her grimace even behind her sunglasses, he answered, “Lazarus. His blood is the needle that transports us from one location to another: using that, I realized, it was possible for us to take our weapons into your Father’s city.”

  “How is that? You can’t even control how you appear in that place, let alone what objects are in your possession. I’ll bet if I went there right now, I’d still have my gun, and that’s somewhere on the floor back in Cairo. You can’t seriously expect the ALIF-8”—she got the joke as she said it aloud and interrupted herself with a snort. “‘Elephant’? What a stretch.”

  The gratified dentist laughed and annoyingly jostled her shoulders. “Too few people get it here! They just hear the Arabic letter—but, you were saying?”

  “I just mean, you can’t expect this to work.”

  “It is true that if I entered the Ergosphere with the suit on my back, it would not follow me. But that proved a solvable problem. Do you understand the chemical process occurring when you step into the sun and are hastened by the Ergosphere?” For a change, he was going overexplain something useful.

  “I know some. The CRY gene has been activated and lets us see electromagnetic fields.” The General forgot to hate Tobias while infected with scientific enthusiasm. “That’s what allows flies and birds to perceive them regularly, right? Magnetic fields of some kind, at least.”

  “Very good, Miss Mephitoli, very good. Yes, you are seeing electromagnetic fields: others, and your own. I have heard it said that some old men who have traveled back and forth many times can even see them here, just like the birds and flies. And—”

  “What I don’t understand”—she interrupted him, eager to learn while in the presence of someone willing to explain anything—“is how this function is possible. This is a new sensory experience you’re talking about, and in order for the brain to interpret a sense to the mind, it needs an organ—openings in the bone. What organ is it here?”

  “That little bundle of nerves in your center, your solar plexus! Didn’t they tell you?” They had, in fact. While she almost laughed, he led her to the final room, which consisted primarily of a metal detector. “Your entire body is the opening: your torso, your ribs, the gap between your rib cage and your pelvis. Your body has reinterpreted its relationship with itself, with your mind, and with light. When your newly sensitized CRY genes are exposed to sunlight, energy is carried through the nerves and increases the vibrational frequency of the body, which increases the vibrational frequency of that light. The more directly one looks at the sun, the more energy is transmitted, and the frequency heightens until the absorbed light wavelengths increase past those of x- or even gamma rays. At the peak of this self-generated radioactivity, molecules of the body effectively slip between the Plancks of reality and into the Ergosphere at the end of time, because such high physical vibration and perception is not compatible with material existence in the Lord’s world. This is why the process is possible at night—moonlight is still sunlight—but disorienting. It is weak. Much like your half-formed martyr blood, which is an inferior poison beside that of Lazarus. Without Lazarene blood, your martyr molecules, also, are growing excited, but because your CRY gene has not been activated, the increased vibration serves to destroy your body from the inside out in a matter of minutes.”

  Due to her metal collar, Dominia was guided around the metal detector, although a number of scientists and research assistants stood in line for a routine morning inspection on their way to the office. “If an organ could manage such a thing for an organic body, why should it not be possible for an artificial object? We have machines that hear, and see, or substitute for the parts of us that do those things for our mind. Was it not possible that we could develop a device that excited the molecules of anything, everything, to that same extent? Was it not possible to use the blood of Lazarus to transport even basic matter from one location in space-time to another? After all, that is why it is possible for us to enter the Ergosphere at one location of space-time, and exit it a different location: at the end of time, the black hole envelops and contains all things as the throne of God, and therefore all things are in the same location. A hologram. It is all a matter of tricking the objects—and the hologram—into confusing two separate points in physical space for even a Planck.”

  As that aforementioned sickness settled upon her empty stomach, Akachi’s men dragged open a heavy, lead-lined door to reveal another vast warehouse. Unlike the crowded lab of the ALIF-8s, this room’s focus was singular as that of any church: beyond her breath condensing in the cold, her eyes were drawn, not to an altar, but to a gargantuan metal chandelier that, enrobed in wires and panels and glints of golden coil, hung above a similarly ornamented doorframe.

  “Congratulations, Miss Mephitoli,” said the smiling son of a bitch. “You are the only woman yet to lay eyes on humanity’s first teleporter.”

  All the horrible implications thudded down as he drew her close to the object. The wires around the frame of the vast door twisted like sinews about a glass pipe that ran with auburn fluid she could only assume to be blood. Its color was echoed by that of the apple that sat innocuously upon the threshold. “It has been many centuries since it was difficult to recreate the cells of a specific individual from only a sample. I think your Father has not done this for the martyrs, not because Lazarenes with their blood vials are difficult to catch, but because he does not want to reveal the source of his power. But I have my own source.” Tobias drew from beneath his cloak a chain upon which
dangled a glass bottle, forever stained rust red. “And it only took a few flakes for us to create a mass supply of the most valuable resource this world has to offer. The travel is not at a superluminal pace: the one regret! This means, much like when we enter the Ergosphere, we lose time. But it still affords a kind of movement that is nonlinear, and far faster than transport by walking from the perspective of those on the journey—not to mention, far more discrete. When the device is fueled and its artificial CRY organs are stimulated by a burst of photons and the carefully measured decay of a radioactive isotope”—he waved a hand and, in the first demonstration by which Dominia was genuinely impressed (and secretly terrified), a doctor threw a switch that blasted the doorway full of flickering light that vanished faster than it appeared, along with the apple—“entrance to the Ergosphere is possible for even an inanimate object.”

  “But how does it know where to come out?” Her throat had dried at the sight of the emptied doorway, but that may have been the same brief radioactive exposure that stung her eyes. Hopefully the blood of Lazarus had rendered these humans resistant to the radioactivity. “A conscious being who enters the Ergosphere decides where to leave it and looks at the sun, but an object can’t do that.”

  “No. But if one possesses a pair of finely tuned, ultra-accurate quantum computers”—so that was the chandelier—“and activates one, then activates the second at a time proportionate to the distance it takes to travel the Void from the first teleporter to the other, those two locations could be said to be physically the same when the calculations are made to the Planck. Both the same black hole. It was a matter of finding men cleverer than I to research all this, and to teach the doorway to match the coordinates of its photons to those of its specific partner, rather than any other doorway that might, by some happenstance, be active at that same Planck; the ratios of time and distance, I am told, are key in this. And we may thank your Father for the radioactive material the world has dumped on the fair continent of poor, abused Australia, because that was his donation to this project! In a way, you could say it is not the universe or the entity that is being tricked, but the doorway. It thinks its other side is far away! Were you and I to step through and join the apple, we would find ourselves several hours in the subjective future, in my favorite city in the world: Tunis.”

  “Carthage,” she said, frowning. “We have a lot of intelligence about African Hunters assembling there, but the Hierophant’s spent the last three hundred years politely avoiding the entire continent while warring with everybody else.”

  “Because he understands that, were he to go to war with a single country on the continent of Africa, China and most of Asia would leap into the fray. They cannot allow martyrs more land than they already possess; moreover, possession of Africa as well as Europa would allow him to slip a noose around the Middle States in a matter of decades. The right move is to head him off at the pass, as they say.”

  “You’re planning an assault.”

  “Malta has been a sensitive city ever since your Father claimed it,” he said, referring to an island that, like Venezia, had been retrieved from the greedy sea by her Father long after climate change deepened her waters. “Though it trades with human states, it is notoriously overfull of martyrs, and defensive when it comes to outsiders. It will not take much to begin a conflict there: one that will see us invited to Europa’s proper shores.”

  “Then you’ll ride your ALIF-8s through the Alps, playing Hannibal Barca.”

  “Hannibal made a few fatal mistakes: namely, being set against Scipio Africanus, rather than trying to reach him man-to-man. That is why I brought you here today, Dominia. I do not need to elaborate on the implications of this device. We have learned to set them up quickly, and a team of twenty engineers can now produce a working doorway, given the right prefab parts, in roughly twelve hours of assembly. The only problem is one of defense, and ensuring that the second teleporter is not interrupted in its future calculations: always a sticky wicket with teleportation, as science fiction taught us, but that is the nature of the beast! I think the risk is worth it. An endless army of men with guns, bombs, and ALIF-8s funneled through could destroy anything found upon its other side. And there is no reason for you to face them, so far as I can see.”

  “I don’t intend to face them.” Her voice was dark as her expression. “But I don’t intend to lead them, either.”

  Irritation strained the dentist’s mouth; for emphasis as he spoke, he slipped the glasses from his eyes, using them to gesture like a pointer. “So you will sit and do nothing against your Father? You cannot think this should be sustained!”

  “You can’t think the world is better off with your Hunters in control.”

  “You make my ends sound like some vain, cartoonish plan for world domination, my sister. Look at yourself!”

  With childlike stomps, he stormed to a nearby table, removed from its cluttered surface a television remote, and flipped on the nearest of several two-dimensional televisions mounted to the walls of the room. The display arranged into a face Dominia knew too well, distinguished from that of the Hierophant’s by age, its lack of composure—and its missing right eye, replaced by a custom DIOX-I making no efforts to disguise its nature. The implant, of crimson pupil and black sclera, whipped in all directions regardless of the position of its adopted brother.

  “This was recorded yesterday.” Tobias rewound the video of El Sacerdote standing at the pulpit of a cathedral in the heart of Mephitoli.

  “Sacrilege,” Cicero snarled, having abandoned the cultured, European priest of peacetime in favor of a preaching persona closer to the fire-and-brimstone brand on which humans and martyrs of the Front both thrived. “I have heard from the Lord and the Lamb both that there are those among the flock who have the temerity to question our teachings; those who have been, by their own, weak wills, swayed to such extent they now doubt that most evident truth that we martyrs hold so dear. We are God’s chosen people, my faithless children, and let you all have no doubt—although I know so many of you, cowards that you are, surely will. Let not the actions of a pathetic terrorist, that coward of all cowards who ran from home to consort with enemy forces, dissuade you from your basic knowledge of the truth! That it is you, children, who are on the right side of God, of the Lord, of Christ, of history—you, and not the traitorous bitch who tore out the eye of your own hapless priest! Your own humble servant of the Lord! Will you, children, be so fearful and selfish, so base and animal—so human”—hisses arose—“that you will let the actions of one fool criminal decide the fate of an entire country? Or will you remain as one, a noble cause beneath the eye of God, so when He looks upon the Earth and sees His people standing together, He will know without fail that same truth those few, most virtuous souls among you have always known: that it is the martyrs who are righteous? For it is the martyrs who shall inherit the earth. It is the martyrs who are the true children of God!”

  The General only realized she clenched her teeth when she caught Tobias studying her face. She shot him a withering glance that inspired him to correct his attention and redirect it to the rant of the near-foaming Eternal Son. “Who among you will be counted as the righteous in the coming nights? Who among you will be damned to an eternity of despair for your faltering hearts, your traitorous nature?” Voice lifting above the growing clamor of his parishioners, Cicero beat the edge of his pulpit with force that would bruise a human hand for several days, rather than the several minutes of his martyr’s flesh. “There have been other generations of my Father’s children, many before Dominia. I have seen them, and of them all, only I am left standing. Why? Because I alone have remained ever faithful to my Holy Father’s will. Because I, his Eternal Son, lean not upon my own understanding, but trust in the Lord with all my heart.”

  “Filthy, unholy garbage,” muttered the dentist under his breath, withdrawing from his pocket a rosary (a simple two-barred cross of the human sort, rather than a crucifix with a second crossbar dividin
g a horned circle as was the symbol of the martyr church). He toyed with its beads as Cicero, returning to Earth, smoothed his blond hair.

  “There have been other whelps put down before Dominia. There will be many, I expect, in her wake. But let her be the first in the lifetimes of many martyrs I see here. My Father has authorized a bounty of five hundred million dollars for the life of Dominia di Mephitoli, whether her killer be human or martyr, foreigner or citizen.” As the crowd’s fervor scattered into a series of gasps, the General lowered beneath Tobias’s watchful eye into the chilled metal of a folding chair. “Should she so much as show her face again, it will be the last time she shows it anywhere. Yet even if she does not return home (if hypocrites can be said to have a home), she will know no safety, for my Father waits ever vigilant for news of her resurgence. It will not be long, now; and when she does reemerge, we will be ready to destroy her. Let none disrupt this tenuous peace we have built with the human world and live to revel in it. Let none lead astray the souls of the Lord and ever find safety or comfort again. Let us pray, children: pray that the disgraced Governess is caught and killed for her crimes.”

  As a few cheered but more audibly knelt to pray, Akachi finally did Dominia the courtesy of pausing the recording.

  “Do you see what I tried to tell you?” he asked her, in a way so gentle it was, from him, utterly patronizing. “I wish I could be more delicate, but I must be blunt, General. It should not matter to you who displaces your Father, because you are already a nonentity. As good as dead.”

  “Then I’d might as well throw my life away to kill you now, hadn’t I?” She didn’t move, whatever she said, too drained physically and too emotionally adrift to prove capable of violence. Tobias seemed to sense that, and made no move, himself.

  “What a waste that would be! You cannot let this news sour you, General. I am doing you a favor. I am liberating you by pointing out the truth! Now, you are freer than you have ever been. All your previous self-definitions are lifted from your shoulders. That we should all be so free! But think of all you can do with that freedom. Think of the wrongs you can right, all the deaths and martyring you can prevent in the future.”