Finally, from the human beings, He took something unseen, unknown. He took away a thing that not even the humans had been aware they possessed, and which thenceforth they knew only by its absence, an absence that could not be undone. Like a glimmering jewel, Nnal snatched it away and all the human beings knew was that something was gone, something had been stolen from them and they remembered not what it had been.
And they would spend all eternity trying to find it again.
ARCHANGEL
At first, as Bayn had predicted, their communication with the other side of the veil was rudimentary in the extreme. Indeed, it never reached the level of ‘communication’ as Moskin understood it, whereby words and sounds and images could be transmitted back and forth to exchange ideas. It simply wasn’t possible to arrange the universe, as Bayn explained in clear frustration, to cater to such a narrow conception of what an exchange of ideas meant to a biological organism.
This was one of the Flesh-Eater’s familiar fall-backs and Moskin wasn’t upset by it – on the contrary, he could only imagine how limited she must feel by the tools at her disposal, and how frustrated she must be by the apparent fact that they were vital to the link between this sphere and the one in which the exile was being carried out.
Still, later on they did manage to fine-tune and calibrate somewhat, focussing the interplay and the Angelic network so they were no longer receiving a thunderous formlessness instilled with the essence of an angry Archangel Gabriel, and Gabriel didn’t get a colossal migraine every time they wanted to share something with him.
They had yet to find any sign of the Second Disciple. The crude flash-shot they’d decoded showing the Pinians’ likely movements or lack thereof, centuries ago, was of little help except to confirm, conditionally, that the Second Disciple was in the city Moskin had seen. They had transmitted that data as best they could to Gabriel, but remained uncertain it had been of any use. If the Second Disciple was still there, he was not making himself known to Gabriel even though the Archangel had been actively seeking out the Firstmades for almost seventeen centuries.
Whether he’d been driven into hiding, perhaps even killed by the fire, nobody knew – although Moskin and Bayn agreed that if the Second Disciple had been slain, then he would have returned to a new physical form in Heaven and this whole thing would have come to an end. One way or another.
There was still something missing from the picture, something important. And Moskin was beginning to wonder if they would ever figure out what it was.
One thing seemed clear, however – the Archangel Gabriel blamed them for more than just the fire that had dramatically reduced the number of nice comfortable churches for the Angels to live in. He blamed them for the entire situation.
Evidently, something had gone terribly wrong behind the veil. Moskin had known this almost from the start – it was what had set him on his life’s course – but it went beyond a mere cause for concern. There had been a catastrophe. There were only six Angels left, only one of which had actually survived from before the exile, and the Disciples were nowhere to be seen, and as the obscure packets of data continued to flow back and forth Moskin and Bayn began to realise the full extent of it.
There was only the one planet. There were no other ballworlds with the rest of the lost Pinian realms wrapped around the outsides of them – or if there were, they were completely depopulated. The Destarion, of which Gabriel had been only vaguely aware, was drifting out there lodged in a frozen moon … and other than her, and a lot of cold and empty space, there was nothing at all.
The calamity that had followed the onset of the exile, it seemed, had been accompanied by a predictable backslide in technology and culture. This would have been exacerbated, Bayn said, by the fleeting lifespans of the humans and the loss of equipment such as that she’d managed to recover from the gulf. The exiled realms had been left almost completely bereft of modern conveniences, their populations left to fend for themselves in an ostensibly self-regulating and self-sufficient solar system, without even a connection to the Power Plant to help them. And with nowhere near enough Angels, in the absence of Pinian leadership, to keep things running.
Gabriel, for his part, seemed perfectly content to blame the whole thing on outside authorities. And that, in the absence of anyone more deserving, was Moskin and Bayn.
Pointing fingers at such a ludicrous disconnect was pointless, however, and after a time the Archangel seemed to accept this.
The most important steps they needed to take, Moskin and Bayn agreed, were bringing the Disciples up to speed and establishing a conduit through which Power Plant energy could be fed to a world that was at risk of choking on its own effluence. This meant that their first, and possibly only recourse was to contact the Disciples directly.
And why exactly that was so difficult was a matter of steadily-growing concern.
THE ARCHANGELIC COURT
Some time after this – Moskin tried in earnest to keep track of days, months, years, but ultimately failed – there was an election up in Heaven.
The Heaven-folk got to vote three times in important elections. Signing up to cast your vote the first time was free. If you didn’t bother to vote the first time around, or came to regret your decision in the few short months between the first and second round, you got a second chance. If, however, you hadn’t voted the first time, voting in the second election was not free.
Payment generally wasn’t in yachut, although there were allowances for that. Payment was made in the coin of the realm, which was a formalised skill-in-trade system. A period of community service, volunteer work for public systems upkeep, anything else that needed doing. There was usually something.
The third and final round of elections, a few months after that, was usually the most popular round. It was clear by then whether the new incumbents-to-be were any good, so the final vote was the last chance to change the outcome. Apathy was not gladly tolerated. And voting in the third round, if you’d failed to vote in the second round, was even more socioculturally expensive.
Moskin didn’t really follow the whole system, although he was familiar with public service as currency as it made sense and was used on a lot of worlds, including Barnalk Low. Bayn happily prattled on about it for hours, and had asked him about the democratic process of his homeworld.
“There’s not much to tell,” he’d said on the most recent such occasion. “The Áea-folk have a robust series of challenges and political debates, and public servants and government officials are judged against their promises and community expectations based on previous years. Failure is punished. People who think they can do better have channels through which they can voice their grievances and attempt to get changes made. People who are certain they can do better are free to run for office. Corruption is … nonexistent.”
“I have the story of Luxor Redhale in my database,” Bayn had said. “I believe he was the last Áea-folk politician to accept bribes in the form of Barnalk and off-world properties, in exchange for certain decisions affecting social infrastructure.”
“Yes,” Moskin replied. “I remember learning about him, although most of him lived a bit before my time.”
“And now, medically-preserved segments of Redhale are displayed at each of those respective properties,” Bayn had concluded enthusiastically.
“Preserved and biologically functioning,” Moskin had clarified. “At least some of the pieces. Redhale held a record for a short time, as the politician active in the highest number of simultaneous jurisdictions.”
Bayn had found this boundlessly entertaining.
Now, it seemed as though the election was finally over. For a time it had been uncertain which faction was going to win, and it wouldn’t have made much difference to their work either way, but the final-round campaigning had been fierce. And the winning faction had gained a place in the Archangelic court by a rather extreme method.
“They’ve promised to bring Blacknettle home,” Bayn told him.
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The ship appeared not long after this.
“So,” Moskin said. He was standing at one of the external viewing galleries, seldom-used because there wasn’t much to look at out there. He studied the ornate golden ship as it curled into an approach pattern. “Has this happened before?”
“A few times,” Bayn said idly. “They’ve never sent a Category 6 after me, though,” she gave her familiar non-titter. “It must be you they’re worried about.”
“Is that a Category 6, then?” he asked with interest. The ship was beautiful in a certain overdone way, with etching and filigree and weapons ports that looked like brooches. She was marked with a name in a Heavenly script he didn’t understand, which was suffixed with the symbol of the Pinian Brotherhood: three stylised hourglass-shapes, each with a slender spire emerging from the top. Moskin had always thought they looked like misshapen sacrificial knives.
“The Gorgoña,” Bayn confirmed. “A Vorontessi vessel, medium-range armaments, no magi or priests.”
“That’s good,” Moskin said mildly. “Are we fighting her?” Bayn didn’t answer this, which was actually all the answer Moskin needed. “Can you take on a Category 6 platform?”
“Oh, I barely even count as a Category 1 on my own,” Bayn laughed. “But I have a few tricks I can play. The biggest problem is if there are Vorontessæ on board – which, being a Vorontessi ship, is fairly likely.”
“Why?”
“That’s … a long story,” Bayn said, and for a while Moskin stood and watched the Gorgoña close in on them, waiting for the Flesh-Eater to elaborate or not.
“If you don’t want to talk about it…”
“It’s not widely discussed outside of Vorontessi society,” Bayn eventually spoke. “It is a matter of deep historical significance.
“As you are no doubt aware, after the Worm Cult was driven from the Corporation, the Destarion and her fellow Category 9s were commissioned to defend the sovereignty of the Pinian domain and aid in the relocation of our united civilisation from The Centre, back to the assorted Pinian worlds. The Destarion carried out many such tours, defending whole societies from opportunistic survivors of the Worm.
“During one such tour, there was a vessel named the Vorontessa. Packed into her decks were the greatest achievements of the Vorontessi species, bound for their ancestral homeworld of Heaven. Their knowledge, their art, their greatest minds and the children of many castes. While they did not place their entire civilisation on board that one ship, they placed much that made it shine most brightly among the Heaven-folk.
“It remains uncertain what happened on board the Vorontessa, but the prevailing story is that some surviving remnant of the Worm took root, and she broke convoy. She initiated hostilities with other vessels and when the reality of her situation became clear, the Destarion … destroyed her. She was consumed with all hands, and little was ever recovered of her manifest – and none of her passengers.”
“My God,” Moskin murmured.
“Since that day, the Destarion has owed the Vorontessæ a debt of sorrow that can never be repaid,” Bayn said sombrely, “and the ability to charge weapons against them, from Flesh-Eater to All-Eater, was forever written out of her mission brief. It is a prohibition that also applies to Angels, or so Blacknettle informs me.”
“I wonder why they didn’t send Vorontessæ to intercept you when you came to Fade,” Moskin said, rather than voice his initial thought – that such a significant and apparently eternal prohibition was profoundly short-sighted. What if the Vorontessæ fell victim to an enemy like the Worm Cult again? What if – as these very ones were now doing – they placed themselves in opposition to the needs of the Disciples?
“Well, that is to do with the elections and the different factions in charge up there,” Bayn said, her tone shifting back to amused carelessness, “a topic in which I have long since despaired of you taking any interest…”
“I’m the product of an upbringing that included Luxor Redhale's fully-functioning toxins-bladder,” Moskin said in amusement. “When I was a child, we used to visit his monument and try different poisons-”
“In any case,” Bayn went on, “I suspect the court has only recently gained some measure of Vorontessi backing. Still, they have made a critical mistake.”
“Oh yes?” Moskin inquired. Abruptly the Gorgoña surged forward and to one side and vanished – the motion accompanied by a slight shift in Moskin’s centre of gravity. He reached out to steady himself. “Did we just–?”
“Expanded to engulf their ship,” Bayn confirmed happily, “which incidentally places them next to my main power impellers. They came too close – they should have hung back and targeted us.”
“Having an enemy ship right next to your power impellers makes you sound rather vulnerable,” Moskin said, although he had to admit he didn’t feel particularly worried. His association with Bayn had been so long and so intimate, he tended not to get upset if she wasn’t.
“Yes – if they want to destroy themselves along with us,” Bayn said. “They will now have to disembark and confront you face-to-face, giving us the advantage.”
“You know there’s only one of me, right?”
“I’ll open you a passage to the pocket in which I have lodged our visitors,” the Flesh-Eater went on. “Would you like to walk in through a doorway, or appear dramatically from floor or ceiling?”
“Let’s hold off on the dramatic entrances until we find out how trigger-happy they are,” Moskin suggested, and strode into the tunnel Bayn opened for him.
The crew of the Gorgoña were indeed Vorontessæ, the tall, wiry brown Áeaoids he’d become passingly familiar with during his time in Fade. There wasn’t even a noticeable difference between these military Vorontessæ and the religious zealots he’d known – their broad, calm faces and huge bright eyes were the same; their pale leather wrappings were the same absolute minimal concession to modesty and practicality; and their spire-crowned skulls bore the same decorative golden plating and etchings. These ones carried guns, but didn’t seem in any hurry to use them.
Moskin had never tested himself against a Vorontessi. He’d been told they were Molranoid-comparable in strength and resilience, even though they were accustomed to Heaven’s slightly-lower gravity that had given them greater size and lower bone density. They were tough, but not–
His line of thought was terminated as the twelve Vorontessæ standing near the open port of their ship swiftly stepped into six-and-six formation, guns rising to honour-guard readiness. And the tiny, fiercely beautiful figure of an Angel swept down the gangway in a shimmering white robe.
She was, he was almost certain, the same glorified human he’d briefly encountered in Fade all those years ago – and this guess was confirmed as she stopped, spread her wings slightly, and looked up at him.
“Moskin Stormburg,” she said. “Do you remember me?”
“I do,” he said politely. “Greetings, Angel of God,” he nodded to the soldiers. “And to you, Heaven-born.”
The Vorontessæ didn’t respond, but he would have expected nothing less. The Angel inclined her head.
“If you remember our last encounter, then you know why I am here,” she went on.
“The return of the Angel Blacknettle,” Moskin said, “and this vessel’s return to the Destarion, and the Destarion’s return to the shipyards of Central Nirvan.”
“Yes,” the Angel said. “Can you speak to these requirements?”
“I … believe so,” Moskin said. “I cannot speak to Blacknettle’s wishes, but I for one am here of my own free will, I am doing the work of the Brotherhood, and I don’t believe this vessel’s position has changed. We answer to the revered Firstmades, and are not subject to the lesser authority of the Archangelic court.”
The Angel sighed gently. “I was hoping that would not be your position any longer,” she said. “You and this Flesh-Eater are not in possession of the latest data–”
“Perhaps if you shared the
latest data with us, it would help our common cause,” Moskin said. “Why be at odds, when we serve the same Disciples, the same God?”
The Angel studied him with piercing eyes. “Very well,” she said, and pondered for a moment. “We are aware,” she continued, “that a relatively short time ago you made use of the same soul-conduit utilised in the so-called Dagab incident of the Fourth Century post-vanishing. We know you achieved some form of interaction with the Lost Disciples.”
Moskin nodded, although he was very curious as to how they were aware of this. He was also curious as to how long it had actually been, in the daylight-washed world above the gulf. For all he knew, another two or three hundred years had snuck past since his disastrous first contact, but if the Angel wanted to call it a relatively short time, that was fine with him. “I was not aware it was the same conduit, necessarily,” he said, “but if you say so.”
“I do,” the Angel said firmly. “I know this, because there is only one such conduit. And any interference, let alone traffic through that conduit is closely monitored by powers far beyond us. And strictly forbidden. For what lurks within the Lost Realms, perhaps coiled around the wandering souls of the Lost Disciples themselves, may not under any circumstances be allowed to go free.”
Moskin felt his centre of gravity shift again as it had when Bayn had engulfed the Gorgoña – only this time it was entirely within his own mind. “You speak of the very purpose of the exile,” he whispered. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought some of the Vorontessæ shifted uncomfortably at his words.
“Yes,” the Angel replied, “a purpose with which we can under no circumstances interfere.”
“Why? Who told you this? And what manner of lurking thing are you talking about?”
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