SEVENTEEN
DECEMBER 20 TERROR
GENERAL SAMSON HAD GOTTEN THE summons back in the daily packet from Abaddon. As usual, it had been choked with demands and threats. But this time, on top of the bundle that had been thrown through the small, highly stable gateway that was here beneath the geographic center of the Northern Hemisphere on all three worlds, was a sheet of thick yellow paper.
He had known instantly what it was: a summons from Echidna.
He now sat miserably on a packed bus, on his way to the sort of meeting from which one should not expect to return.
He had come back not only to his own beloved form, the marvelous darkness of his scales, the proud flash of his bright red eyes, but also to a world where he did not need to dose himself with antiallergen, then remained rigidly shifted for hours, all the while itching like mad in every stifled scale on his body.
He didn’t want to die. But more, he was afraid of torture. And they would torture him, of course, as a lesson and warning to others. It would happen in some auditorium full of laughing, cheering underclass, delighted to witness the abnegation of an overlord.
They would rip off his still-living skin and make him dance in the cold, and kids would come up and rub salt into his white, exposed musculature. They would roast his haunches and force him to attend the banquet dressed, no doubt, as a clown.
It was she, that damned high-born Captain Mazle, she and her accursed father who had engineered this.
He had hoped that a victory over the humans would bring him real wealth at last, and the power that went with it.
Instead, the starving billions who were marked to go swarming through the fourteen huge gateways when they opened tomorrow would instead have to be kept here, and their rage and their rebellion would only become worse.
And he, of course, would have no souls to sell.
But he wasn’t defeated, not just yet. He might be able to talk his way back to earth, because even if he couldn’t open the gateways to the people of Abaddon, he could bring back all those millions of souls, full of memories of love and joy, treasures that were not available to anybody here.
But not right now. Right now, he was just another miserable, frightened man riding a rickety bus down the Avenue of the Marches to Government House, one among fifty in the old vehicle. He listened to the gas hissing uneasily out of the tank on the roof—coal gas, supposedly less polluting than the powerful fuels available to the elite. Actually, nobody cared about the brown sky. What they cared about was the fact that coal gas was cheap and, like sails at sea, therefore the best way to transport underworlders.
On both sides of the broad street stood government buildings, and ahead the grandest of them all, where he was supposedly to receive new orders.
There was a lot of traffic in the jammed bus lanes. Occasionally, also, an authority vehicle raced past in the restricted lanes. From time to time, an aircar whistled past overhead. He didn’t even look up. He deserved that life. He deserved a place among the elite, even on the Board of Directors itself.
They finally came to the Street of Joy, marking the center of the long government esplanade. The wailing cry of a siren caused the bus to stop with a jerk. Children in white-suited rows sang an anthem praising the achievements of some committee or other. The tune was always the same, but the committees changed with the political climate.
The Standing Space was crammed with as many as five thousand naked underworlders, all bound, some screaming their innocence, others in tears, others stoic. Lawyers in the bloodred hoods that signified their profession moved about among the committeemen and their friends trying to get various orders signed, buying and selling the condemned. Every so often, one of them sent a runner into the rows of prisoners, generally coming back with a young woman to be raped to death at a party later.
The stench of prisoners’ vomit was sour on the air. A platoon of Young Leaders in their sky-brown uniforms and black caps marched up to the first row, swinging their arms and singing with the choir, then began slitting throats, causing one and then the next prisoner to spray blood and writhe, then slump. The boys were getting kill badges.
There’d been a battle with the Unionists last night, a ferocious encounter at the wall, which we appeared to have won. Of course, it was always impossible to be certain, but such a cheerful Execution Morning did suggest that the news was true.
The Union was nearly finished, reduced to a few hills, nothing more than a park, really. It was surrounded by the vast planetary city that was the Corporation in all its might, its wealth beyond imagination, its poverty beyond belief.
That was why they had to expand into two-moon earth. That population pressure had to be relieved, or there was going to be an explosion here and Echidna and her class were going to have their own throats slit.
Having each done ten or fifteen victims before their parents’ cameras, the boys withdrew. One, who had been urinated on, remained kicking his victim to death. After he went strutting back to the grandstand, a soldier like Samson himself, also a general, squeezed the bulb that activated a Multi Projectile Delivery System that stood on a rickety army wagon. Instantly and without a sound, the five thousand condemned were turned to meat. Then he snapped his whip, and his great orange syrinx warbled and hooted angrily, but trundled off happily enough when it realized they were headed back to the Central Vehicle Pool.
In the bus, total silence. These were all blue-pass people, all from the underworld neighborhoods just like the people who were now being harvested by the bone spiders that had come lumbering up out of their warrens at the first scent of blood. The animals would strip off the meat and leave it behind, and carry the bones into their lairs.
Every underworlder alive was afraid he would end up in the next collection. After all, the executed had been tortured, most of them by having capsicum injected under their skin and into their anuses, or pellets of plutonium pressed into their eyeballs. He’d seen the globular orange messes that had replaced many of their eyes, had watched the steam curling up from their bobbing heads.
You’d say anything, given that kind of pain. And “anything” would invariably include implicating anybody you were asked to implicate in whatever plot might be imagined.
He might have been implicated. Maybe it wasn’t political at all. Maybe that was why he was here.
The bus started with a jerk and a loud mechanical whine. The roadside was littered with the remains of exploded buses, inside some of which could be seen the pale green bones of the dead. Behind them, shrill screaming began. The elite had flitted away in their aircars, and now people rushed out of side streets, their scavenging permits flapping on their backs, meat bags in their arms. There would be soup tonight.
The bus shuddered and popped. Would it explode?
He found himself wondering what he wanted more, an end to this misery of a life, or a chance to talk his way out of whatever trouble he was in.
Now came the four tones that preceded Morale Service announcements. Sick though everybody was of Morale Service and its lies, they all clapped and cheered.
The bus’s speakers crackled. There was a brief hiss, then a moment of earsplitting feedback. “Are you on your way to your designated earth station?” a woman’s recorded voice shrieked, crazed with delight. “Attention please, earth stations are now receiving colonists. You must be at your earth station by midnight tonight.”
All the screens on the bus came to life with children singing and dancing in some green fantasy of a world. “Yes, more and more people every day are buying their tickets. Earth is huge and it’s rich and there’s room for all. Room for all in the new lands. Room to dream.”
Samson knew the reality, of course. Much of the existing landmass was being sunk into the sea, exposing vast ocean flats that would be where these poor fools would have to build. The reason was simple—the sea floor was full of methane and sulfur hydrates, which would melt in the air and change the atmosphere to the same richly sulfurous mix enjoyed here on Abaddon.
Cheap terraforming, in other words.
Each family that went would receive a gaggle of human slaves, which would die in a few weeks or months.
At least human meat was edible, if you could manage to get used to that creamy texture.
“Building One.”
Samson got to his feet, then stepped out. He hurried across the wide, black tarmac. Somewhere in the depths of the city, there was the roar of an explosion, followed by wailing sirens and the appearance of hundreds of bright red police aircars hovering like great wasps, their grapples dangling ominously. Do anything that appeared menacing, and they were liable to snatch you up and drop you a hundred leagues out at sea. They’d go in low so that you’d drown instead of die of impact, and the press would show up to tape the spectacle. Or they’d drop you amid pleasure craft, and people would use you for target practice.
The reason for all the brutality was simple: fear works. Ten thousand years ago the Corporation had been a loose confederation of free companies, even some tribes and even more ancient political units. But with growth had come mergers, and then the disastrous battle over the two human earths that had been lost, in the end, by all the combatants. This had been followed by long years of population growth coupled with a gradual consolidation of power, until now, when an elite million ruled a land jammed with three billion underclass.
Attempting to seem confident, he strode up the steps, brushing at his uniform, trying to remind himself that it meant something in a government context. Here, a general’s service stripes were important. After all, they’d put him in charge of what was arguably the most important project in corporate history.
So why was his craw filling with vomit?
“Samson, General,” he managed to mutter when he reached the desk. He handed over his orders, his passport, his clearances. The young clerk was a pureblood, dressed in the blue silk uniform of the intelligence service. He had fine, white scales, and eyes that had been surgically altered from piercing gold to a much more genteel eggshell blue.
He read the documents, then pressed a button on his desk. Two guards appeared, one an underworlder like him in a black uniform, the other upper class and dressed in the lovely green that the fashionistas called Memory of the Sky. In a military uniform, it indicated serious power.
The only place you could still see a green sky on Abaddon was in the very heart of the Union, amid the fields and the streams.
The clerk handed them Samson’s papers. He followed them back through the lift area to a private elevator that had an ominous, even legendary, reputation. Many a soldier had ascended to these highest floors and never returned. As he stepped into the pink marble interior, he entered another world, where every detail was sumptuous and perfect. The lift had no controls. It was controlled from elsewhere, and he stood to attention as it rose.
He thought to review his life, but could not stop his mind from imagining torture and how he would fail in its rigors, and they would all see and know the cowardice that, in his most secret being, he felt defined him. He thought about death constantly, wondered at what it would mean no longer to be, and feared above all things the destruction of his soul.
This was why he had risen so extraordinarily high. It was his willingness—which he detested in himself—to do anything he needed to do to prove his loyalty to his betters, even if it involved lies, cruelty, and pointless killing. His journey upward was a desperate flight to safety.
The doors opened and bright light glared into his face. He tried to control his hearts, but could not. The rhythms synchronized into panic mode, and he knew that his state of fear would be flaring alarms in some nearby monitoring center.
What he thought might be a board member came and stood before the light, so that he was a black shadow to Samson, his face unrecognizable. “You have twenty hours before the gateways open. You’re not even close to being ready.”
Samson took a breath. He thought he knew that voice. He thought it was Beleth himself, the master of all the males, Echidna’s husband. In effect, the king of the world. “We’re right on schedule, Sir.”
“You’re a liar, of course.”
He thought as quickly and carefully as he could, considering that his mind was racing with fear. “They can’t defeat us, they’re only human.”
“That’s your mistake and I’m surprised at you. We knew you were arrogant and venial, but who isn’t? I had not taken you to be stupid.”
“No, Sir.”
“And neither are the earth people. The full-blooded earth human is smarter than we are, as you know. They lack only experience, this new species, to make themselves masters of the three worlds. Remember that they already have two, which we do not.”
He seemed to want to engage in conversation. Samson was compelled to respond. He cast around for something positive to say. “They are a more advanced form than us, it’s true, Sir. But they have no idea how easy it is for them to pass through gateways. They’re ignorant.”
“Thanks to the work of our forebears. Can you imagine what a human army would do here? Bringing hope, happiness even, to people who cannot be controlled except by fear?”
“That would be an extraordinary misfortune. But I don’t think it’s one we need to worry about. They are far from realizing that they can use gateways at will, at any time.”
“How about the Union intelligence agent in the one-moon universe?”
“That’s going well, Sir.”
“In what sense, General? Have you killed him?”
“I expect that to be confirmed on my return,” Samson replied.
“But it’s not confirmed now?”
“No, it’s confirmed, in the sense that we got an assassin through. So, yes, I can confirm that.”
“How did you get an assassin into a place that we can’t penetrate, General?”
“Well, we are able to, in a limited way. And remember, the closer to the moment of passage we come, the easier it is.”
“So the agent is definitely no longer a problem? You can guarantee this?”
Samson forced acid back out of his craw and into his churning stomach. This agent had been placed only a few leagues from the center of the whole operation, and not only that, had somehow been penetrated into the inaccessible one-moon universe where he lived in direct parallel to the single most dangerous human being on the two-moon earth, Martin Winters.
It was quite an achievement. And the problem was, he had no idea at all whether or not the agent was dead. But North was a brilliant achievement, too, and he had to believe that the attack had worked.
“Can you guarantee it, General Samson?”
The only acceptable answer was “yes.” Anything less could bring torture and death. “The agent is dead.”
“Then let me report the good news to my wife. She’s been very concerned about this aspect of the situation.”
Samson fought for air. He needed to sit down, but there were no chairs here. As it was supposed to, the piercing light was making him feel naked and exposed. It was forcing him to shiver his scales, lest his body temperature rise and make him slow.
There came, from behind the horrible shadow, piercing female laughter.
It could only be her.
Then the light went out. As Samson’s eyes got used to the dimness, he had a great surprise: he saw that the entire Board of Directors was present. All of them, even Mazle’s father, he noted.
Behind the assembled Board, an enormous window overlooked the Sea of Anubis, and a great longing entered Samson when he saw a ship, a pearl-white jewel tiny in the sun, its red sails rotating slowly in what must be a light breeze. How lovely their lives must be, those simple sailors, even the ones whose jobs would make their time short, the pitch makers and the rope weavers and the scrapers. At least they did not risk their souls, not like a politician or a general.
“Come,” Echidna said. She actually took his hand. Up close, she was dazzling, a shimmering complex of the smallest imaginable scales, blushed
pink under her high cheekbones, delicate blue around her smiling, sparkling, delightfully pale pink eyes. Her body, easily visible beneath a floating gown of gossamer gold thread, was superbly curved, breathtakingly desirable. She was so vastly, incredibly different from the humble women on the bus with their dull scales, sagging with untended molt, that she might as well have been an entirely different species, not a seraph at all, but something from some grander and more extraordinary world than Abaddon.
He followed her past the boardroom and into the private apartments, feeling her strong, cold hand in his. He forced his neck scales as tight as he could, but the musty scent of his desire still oozed from his pulsing glands. It made her throw back her head and laugh, and made Beleth nudge him from behind, and hiss.
Children’s toys littered the legendary floor of pure gold, and kids playing darted between the feet of their elders. In the family shrine at the far end of the great room, the mistress’s women attended their business, some sewing quietly while warming her latest clutch of black eggs, others listening discreetly to the proceedings.
“He will sit,” Echidna called as they approached her ladies.
Chairs were brought by two young fashionistas, so highly bred that their scales were like white cream, almost as pale as hers.
He found himself surrounded by gorgeous women. These really high aristocrats made even a highly bred noble like Mazle seem dreary.
He strove not to appear as he felt, thunderstruck.
Some of the children gathered, interested, no doubt, to watch whatever was about to befall him. Because he had only won the first round.
He looked across the impassive faces of the board members. Nobody was readable. All eyes stared straight ahead. The ultimate power rarely acted, and when it did, all were silent. Whatever she did, there would be absolute approval. Debate would end.
She glared down at him, then leaned forward slightly and stroked his neck. “Such interesting scales,” she murmured, and he saw something in her eyes other than the contempt he had expected. It crossed his mind that the old Echidna might have died and been replaced by another clone, and perhaps also another soul, one that might use the memories stored in the brain quite differently. With the high born, there was no way to tell who actually possessed a given identity at a given time, so this might not even be the person who had favored him and promoted him in the first place. She might consider that her memories of doing those things represented a mistake on the part of a predecessor.
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