The Rot's War

by Michael John Grist

  Awa Babo did not understand it, but neither did he care. Here was power he had never known, perhaps power enough to do what the millennia never could. The thought overjoyed him, and he levied all the force from within the man Sen's core, and unleashed it upon his diamante shell.

  The blast rocked that huge body. Through a kaleidoscope of his own vision and of Sen's he saw blue fire lash into the diamante, bursting around it like a rising sun. He saw ripples of possibility welling in the veil, drilling into his orbic frame. The dam of Sen's power began to dim, and he flung the last of it with all his strength at himself.

  There was an almighty crack, and for the first time since he was born Awa Babo's consciousness went dark.

  * * *

  He came to in a new way, with new thoughts in a new mind. He was lying on his back, with the smell of petrite smoke in the air. He opened his eyes and saw a woman's face before him. She had blue skin and red hair.

  Her hands were upon his forehead and chest and he felt them, touched for the first time. She was humming softly, mouthing words he dimly remembered as a lullaby from another life.

  With fingers he'd never used before, he reached up to touch her soft cheek. Who was she? Some faint memory clung to him, telling him she was important, that this moment mattered.

  "Feyon," he said.

  She smiled, and a tear fell down her cheek. "You've taken my only love, machine. You've stolen him away."

  "No," he protested, though he knew it was true. This was the woman Sen had clung to. He knew her now, as he knew Sen, and all he had lost. "I only wanted to die."

  "I know," she said, "you too have known pain. I can feel it here."

  Her palm was cool on his brow. He'd never felt the touch of another, and he didn't understand it. He tried to view her through the veil but couldn't. He tried to see his diamante body through the veil but nothing came.

  "Your old body is dead," she said. "It's what you've always wanted."

  He was confused. Sounds mixed with things he saw and felt in his head. "What happened?"

  "You have taken the body of the man I love most. His name is Sen, and now he is gone."

  Awa Babo moved his arm, taking her hand in his own. She felt cold. He had never felt cold before. He had never had an arm. He thought back on what Sen had done; how he'd opened the floodgates of his mind and levered him half of the way out. Now he understood it.

  "He wanted to save me," he said. Having a voice felt natural and strange at the same time. Suddenly it was so easy to communicate his intent, whereas before it had taken lifetimes to teach his people how to build even the most rudimentary bow and arrow. Now a lifetime of meaning could be conveyed in just a handful of words.

  "He has saved you," said Feyon. "He gave his life and his body so you might be free."

  Awa Babo felt her hand tremble. By the dim light of his dying and cracked shell he saw her skin ripple.

  "What is happening to you?"

  "I'm fading," she said. "Sen's memory of me is exhausted. This is my end too."

  "Wait," he said hurriedly. She was the first face he had ever truly seen, the first voice he had heard, and she was beautiful. "I don't understand. What am I to do?"

  She smiled. "You must do what you think is right, war machine of the Mjolnirs. You have been given the body of my love. You have his powers too, and his responsibility. The fate of the Corpse World rests in your hands."

  He felt both her love and her anger radiating up. This new body afforded a shallow rendering of the veil, but it bit deeper into him than any before. Her pain infected him. Her lost joy singed him. Her memories washed out like a tide, threatening to drown him.

  Was this what he had destroyed? Had he taken all of this?

  "I only wished to die," he said. "That's all."

  "Then die."

  She blinked out of existence, and Awa Babo was left in darkness.

  He stood, moving Sen's body, carried upon Sen's legs, using Sen's eyes to look out at the wreck of what he had been.

  The greatest war machine on the Corpse World lay beside him, now split open like a blackened egg. He looked at the body he had been trapped within for so long. He touched the outer diamante shell, now scored by lines of force. He peered inside, where flashes of intermittent light sizzled. The copper lines that linked the crystals to the bombe were burnt and fused. The loupes had melted. It was dead.

  His cell.

  He looked inside himself hoping to find happiness, but it was not there. In all his dreams of real life he'd never once thought to steal the body of another.

  He looked deeper, seeking something within that was still the man Sen. Hints of it spoke of sorrow, and he felt guilt for the first time, rising like random motion in the veil. He saw all the world die in Sen's memory, saw the true cost of the Rot's endless war, and knew that what the Blue woman had said was true.

  It fell to him now.

  He could die if he wanted. In this body it would be so easy. A knife across his throat and like hundreds before he would die on this altar of a forgotten Federacy. But in this body he no longer felt the same. He was not the same.

  He owed a debt. For what he'd been given, for what he'd taken. This was shame, he understood. With it came the names of all those this other man, this Sen had lost; Feyon, Mare, Daveron, Alam, Gellick, Leander, Avia. He remembered details about them but the memories were cold. For the first time in all his aloneness he truly understood what loneliness was, and for the first time saw a way to remedy it.

  He reached again for the veil, and the veil responded. For millennia he had read it. He had been designed to speak across it. Now in the fragments of Sen that remained, fuelled by three millennia of his own sad memories, he found the ability to walk it.

  He ran those years like a cipher through this new mind, building in efficiencies as he'd always been designed to, taking in the whole of his strategy and the best way to complete it.

  His new future lay ahead. The white of the veil opened up, and Awa Babo strode boldly through.

  FREEMANTLE IV

  Time passed, and Freemantle waited.

  He reworked the book of Sen's memories and reorganized it, then rewrote it again from the beginning so that it flowed smoothly from one event to the next, cataloging Sen's life as he lived it, adding in everything that had happened since the end of the Corpse World.

  He tended to Sen's body, which remained motionless in the veil chair. It didn't eat, didn't drink, and didn't die, but it did wither. The withering began at his feet; they curled up and dried like winter leaves, as if all substance had been sucked down to the bone. At first this alarmed him. He tried to think of ways to hide this from Sen, so it wouldn't be too terrible to behold when he returned, but it only grew worse. Soon the withering spread to his calves and thighs, his hands and arms.

  But Sen didn't come back.

  Freemantle began to wonder if he would always be alone, now. Perhaps he would wake one day and this figure of Sen would simply be gone, like the wreckage in his room after his suicide had been cleaned away. All he'd have then would be his books, unless they were gone too. Then he'd just have the memory of a strange young man through the veil, and how long would that last?

  Madness would come as a welcome relief.

  For now he tended Sen's body. He slept. At times he re-read his own diaries. Pangs of guilt came and went, that he ought to be doing something more. If Sen was still alive, then he was out there even now, sacrificing himself to fight for the Corpse World. But that world came to feel very distant from Freemantle. Where once he'd hoped to return, perhaps even to his own time, now it didn't seem to matter as much. For now he was comfortable reading back on his old studies of the world, and reading Sen's life.

  He slept more and more. He didn't know how long for, as he had no means of measuring time, nor did it seem to matter. His dreams were simple affairs, normally involving Kelly and their sons. He'd smile and pat his eldest son Titus on the head. They'd be walking down the cobblestones
to Reymarth Park; snippets of a life half a millennium old.

  When Sen finally woke, Freemantle was dreaming. He was eating peas at the old log table in their rooms above the clock shop. It was a big bowl of peas, and Kelly and the boys were watching as he ate them one by one. He tried to amuse them by eating each in a different way, miming a lion, exaggerating the difficulties of keeping a single pea balanced on his fork like a clown. They laughed, and their laughter became a gurgling waterfall, and he woke up.

  Sen was shuddering in his chair, as something shot from his mouth. It took Freemantle a few moments to realize it wasn't peas because the jet of stuff wasn't green, but white.

  He sped to Sen's side and held him while convulsions racked his body. Another jet of waxy white stuff spurted from his mouth, splashing off the wall. It dripped down from Sen's nose and oozed from his ears.

  There was no smell. It was sterile but for the violence it caused. Sen's face was red, his mouth wide open, and he gripped Freemantle's wrist like an iron vice. Nothing Freemantle shouted at him seemed to have any impact, so he simply wrestled him to his knees and held him while the vomiting continued. It went on for far longer than he thought possible, always with more of the white wax spewing out.

  By the end Freemantle himself was weary, exhausted from bracing Sen and saying reassurances. The floor was coated with wax curdling into hard white blocks, like drying lava.

  When it was finally over Sen sagged to his back, and his tunic peeled open, showing his stomach. The shock bit into Freemantle hard.

  Where before there had been a stomach delineated with faint lines of muscle, there was now a valley, thinned out like his limbs. Loose skin sagged like wet cloth, picking out the inner outline of his spine.

  For a moment Freemantle thought he might vomit himself. It was worse than the eye.

  Then Sen spoke.

  "Who are you?" he asked.

  Freemantle felt the bottom drop out of the fuzzy life he'd been living. Fear gripped him, and for a moment he couldn't think of any answer to give.

  He scooped the figure of Sen up in his arms. He was so light now. His arms and legs hung down uselessly from his body. His head lolled back feebly, his neck unable to support it, and the skin on his face had gone taut, showing the skull underneath.

  Freemantle laid him gently on the bed and stepped back. Sen was looking up at him with fear growing on his face.

  "I can't move my arms," he said. "I have arms don't I?"

  "It's all right," said Freemantle, knowing that it wasn't but not knowing what else to say. "Your arms are there. They'll get better, just like your eye."

  "What happened to my eye?"

  A second wave of fear passed through Freemantle but he gulped it down. "You lost it. You don't remember even that?"

  He watched Sen struggle to move his right hand. The fingers merely twitched. Tears budded at the corners of his eyes.

  "I can't move. I can't move!"

  "It'll be all right, Sen," soothed Freemantle. "Calm down."

  The wasted figure's eyes set on Freemantle's. "Sen," he said, his voice drawn, each word clearly an effort. "You expected Sen."

  Freemantle just stared at him. "Yes," he answered dumbly.

  A tear rolled down the sallow creature's face.

  "Sen's gone."

  * * *

  Freemantle sat at the desk with his insides churning. The creature that looked like Sen was asleep. Its breath rasped loudly in and out.

  He felt the same gathering frustration as the day he'd killed himself. He wanted to beat upon the walls and smash the desk to bits. He wanted to shake this strange creature awake and demand answers.

  Instead he waited, but the turmoil inside did not diminish. Before him sat the re-worked Book, and the thought of it made him want to laugh. It was just a story now, if Sen had forgotten even his own name. It didn't mean anything.

  He'd been a fool to think they could fight, a fool to think the Darkness he'd seen could be stopped. His wife had died nearly five hundred years ago, but for the last weeks he'd allowed himself to hope she might somehow be returned to him.

  She would not. He would never go back. The Corpse World was gone and he was a fool. For the thousandth time he grieved for all that he'd lost.

  * * *

  Awa Babo woke to whiteness and confusion. The man with the broad jaw and the fear in his face was sitting at a white desk with his head in his hands.

  Now he knew this man's name. He recognized him from the remnants of Sen. He was Freemantle, and this was his cell in the veil.

  He looked down on his own body, now covered with a blanket. He could feel his skin sagging underneath, spread too loose over this paltry frame. He remembered the awful moment he'd woken and the vomiting had begun. His head had tipped back like a baby's, the muscles in his neck no longer able to support it. If Freemantle had not been there to hold him he would have choked on his vomit.

  He struggled to move his legs beneath the sheets, but saw only the faintest wrinkle in the distance. It made him want to laugh. He was a prisoner again, trading one useless body for another, though now his veil sight was reduced and his body was ruined.

  What had he done?

  He had stolen a body, and a life, and a purpose.

  Freemantle stirred, and turned to look at him. Within his eyes Awa Babo saw surrender.

  "Freemantle," the once-machine said.

  For a moment Freemantle's eyes sparked with hope. "Sen?"

  "No."

  The spark fell out of them. "Then how do you know me?"

  "I held Sen within me, for the briefest time. Before I killed him."

  Freemantle blinked. "You killed him?"

  Awa Babo tried to think of a way to explain all that happened without causing this distressed man further fear. It wasn't something the Gnomics had factored into him when they'd built his frame. He was designed for wheeling Aigles and massed flank attacks from underground, not measuring and managing the emotional reactions of fragile, solitary individuals. Yet he had information on this too. Sen was perhaps an expert, thanks to his muted ability to read emotion on the veil, and that level of knowledge remained.

  "I regret it now," Awa Babo attempted. "I did not know what I was doing. I was trapped much like you are now. I couldn't touch the world for thousands of years. Would you not have killed to escape?"

  The malaise lifted from Freemantle, replaced by something else. Anger, perhaps.

  "Tell me," he said.

  Awa Babo did. As he spoke he felt his mind coming back to order. The wounds that were left by Sen's departure began to suture together and heal, binding the fragments together. With each stitch placed he remembered something more; images from another life blending with his own. He remembered standing upon the walls of Ignifer and calling out to the last Man of Quartz. He remembered the big Cray Lonnigan and his war on Heaven. He remembered the young Craley in his arms, weeping for his dead father.

  When Awa Babo finished they sat in silence for a long time.

  "He wanted you for the army," Freemantle said, breaking the stillness. "You were the final piece of the puzzle."

  "I was."

  Freemantle nodded, thinking it over. "To control the war machines of the Mjolnir Federacy. The defeated."

  Awa Babo shook his head. The motion was new to him. "Then he was misguided. All the war machines were destroyed by the armies of King Seem as he lay waste to the Federacy."

  A hint of hope rose in Freemantle's eye. He seemed to be seeing something that Awa Babo had not seen. "Are you certain of that?"

  "Of course. These are the memories of my birth."

  Freemantle rose to his feet, an anxious energy rising off him. "Birth memories can be misleading. A human child remembers nothing from that earliest time; perhaps you're similar. Did you actually see them destroyed?"

  Awa Babo studied himself. The systems he'd once had to check and report on integrity were no longer there, but the patterns could still work. He interrogated them swift
ly. "I felt them vanish from the veil," he said, "their outstretched minds cut away. That meant their destruction."

  "But you didn't see them destroyed," said Freemantle. He snapped his fingers and started rustling in a book from his stack on the table. "They were the defeated, Awa Babo," he said as he flicked through pages, "so what if Sen took them like he took the army of Aradabar, before they ever had to fight? What if they are all waiting for you to return, like King Seem's army?"

  Awa Babo stared at him. The lantern-jawed man's abrupt enthusiasm was unnerving. "How would he do such a thing?"

  Freemantle laughed, settled on a page, then held it out for Awa Babo to see. It was a picture he remembered from Sen's mind; a comet-shaped trail of warriors arcing behind Saint Ignifer. Undoubtedly amongst them were Aigles, Ators and other Gnomic craft. How could they be there?

  "He's Sen," said Freemantle, close to a kind of hysterical laughter now. "He traveled millennia in time to find you, beyond the end of the world. If he wanted your machines he could have taken them!"

  For a moment Awa Babo felt the growing enthusiasm from Freemantle spread into him. Was it possible, did he have those memories? There was nothing in Sen that suggested it. Then the cold reality of the Gnomics' masterplan bit in.

  "That is not possible. The war machines were tailored specifically to respond to only two voices across the veil: the Emeritus' and my own. For Sen to break into even one of their minds would have taken a lifetime of study. And even if he had somehow accessed them and scooped them out of my era, I would not be able to control them now. I no longer see the veil the same way."

  Freemantle waved a hand, as if all of his logic amounted to nothing. "That wouldn't matter. If you can walk the veil like him, as you obviously can, I'm certain you could speak over it too." He rushed on in a babble, not affording Awa Babo a chance to speak. "Whatever the case, you have to go fetch them now."