by Dan Simmons
I could see A. Bettik open his eyes and give me a thumbs-up. At the same instant, my own parawing peeled off the thermal and was swept away to the east. Even with the diminished sound, we seemed to be roaring through the air at a speed so incredible that it was audible. Aenea’s yellow delta streaked east like a crossbow dart. A. Bettik’s blue followed. I wrestled with the controls, realized that I did not have the strength to change course one degree, and simply held on while we rifled east and down in the pounding, flowing river of air. T’ai Shan gleamed ahead of us, but we were losing altitude quickly now and the mountain was still very far away. Kilometers beneath us, beneath the monsoon sea of white cloudtops, the greenish phosgene clouds of the acid world ocean churned away unseen but waiting.
• • •
The Pax authorities in T’ien Shan System were confused.
When Captain Wolmak in the Jibril received the strange pulsed alarm signal from the Pax Enclave at Shivling, he tried hailing Cardinal Mustafa and the others but received no answer. Within minutes he had dispatched a combat dropship with two dozen Pax Marines, including three medics.
The tightline report uplink was confusing. The conference room at their enclave gompa was a gory mess. Human blood and viscera were splashed everywhere, but the only body remaining was that of the Grand Inquisitor, who had been crippled and blinded. They DNA-typed the largest arterial spray and found it to be that of Father Farrell. Other pools of blood reportedly belonged to Archbishop Breque and his aide, LeBlanc. But no bodies. No cruciforms. The medics reported that Cardinal Mustafa was comatose, in deep shock, and near death; they stabilized him as best they could using only their fieldkits and asked for orders. Should they let the Grand Inquisitor die and be resurrected, or get him to the dropship doc-in-the-box and try to save him, knowing that it would be several days before he could regain consciousness and describe the attack? Or the medic could get him to life support, use drugs to bring the Cardinal out of the coma, and interrogate him within minutes—all the while with the patient under exquisite pain and on the verge of death.
Wolmak ordered them to wait and tightbeamed Admiral Lempriere, the task force commander. Out in the T’ien Shan System, many AUs distant, the forty-some ships that had come through the battle with Raphael were rescuing survivors from the terminally damaged archangels and awaiting the arrival of the papal drone and the TechnoCore robot ship that would be putting the planet’s population in suspended animation. Neither had arrived. Lempriere was closer, four light-minutes away, and the tightbeam would take that long to reach him and bring him up to speed, but Wolmak felt he had no other choice. He waited while his message burned out-system.
Aboard the flagship Raguel, Lempriere found himself in a ticklish situation, with only minutes to decide about Mustafa. If he allowed the Grand Inquisitor to die, it was likely that a two-day resurrection would be successful. The Cardinal would suffer little pain. But the cause of the attack—Shrike, indigenies, the Aenea monster’s disciples, Ousters—might remain a mystery until then. Lempriere took ten seconds to decide, but it was a four-minute tightbeam delay out and back.
“Have the medics stabilize him,” he tightbeamed Wolmak on the Jibril in orbit around the mountain planet. “Get him to dropship life support. Bring him out of it. Interrogate him. When we know enough, have the autosurgeon give a prognosis. If it’s faster to resurrect him, let him die.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Wolmak four minutes later, and passed word along to the Marines.
Meanwhile, the Marines were widening their search, using EMV reaction paks to search the vertical cliffsides around the Phallus of Shiva. They deep-radared Rhan Tso, the so-called Otter Lake, finding neither otters nor the bodies of the missing priests. There had been an honor guard of twelve Marines in the enclave with the Grand Inquisitor’s party—plus the pilot of the dropship—but these men and women were also missing. Blood and viscera were found and DNA-typed—most of the missing thus accounted for—but their bodies were not found.
“Shall we spread the search to the Winter Palace?” questioned the Marine lieutenant in charge of the party. All of the Marines had specific orders not to disturb the locals—especially the Dalai Lama and his people—before the TechnoCore ship arrived to put the population asleep.
“Just a minute,” said Wolmak. He saw that Admiral Lempriere’s monitor telltale was on. The com diskey on his command web was also blinking. Jibrils intelligence officer down in the sensor bubble. “Yes?”
“Captain, we’ve been visually monitoring the palace area. Something terrible has happened there.”
“What?” snapped Wolmak. It was not like any member of his crew to be so vague.
“We missed it, sir,” said the Intel officer. She was a young woman, but smart, Lempriere knew. “We were using the optics to check the area around the Enclave. But look at this …”
Wolmak turned his head slightly to watch the holopit fill with an image, knowing that it was being tightbeamed out to the Admiral. The east side of the Winter Palace, Potala, as if seen from a few hundred meters above the Kyi Chu Bridge.
The roadway of the bridge was gone, retracted. But on the steps and terraces between the palace and the bridge, and on some of the narrow ledges in the chasm between the palace and the Drepung Monastery on the east side, were scores of bodies—hundreds of bodies—bloodied and dismembered.
“Dear Lord,” said Captain Wolmak and crossed himself.
“We’ve identified the head of Regent Tokra Reting there among the body parts,” came the Intel officer’s calm voice.
“The head?” repeated Wolmak, realizing that his useless remark was being sent to the Admiral along with all the rest of this transmission. In four minutes, Admiral Lempriere would know that Wolmak made stupid comments. No matter. “Any-one else important there?” he queried Intel.
“Negative, sir,” came the young officer’s voice. “But they’re broadcasting on various radio frequencies now.”
Wolmak raised an eyebrow. So far, the Winter Palace had maintained radio and tightbeam silence. “What are they saying?”
“It’s in Mandarin and post-Hegira Tibetan, sir,” said the officer. But then, quickly, “They’re in a panic, Captain. The Dalai Lama is missing. So is the head of the boy lama’s security team. General Surkhang Sewon Chempo, leader of the Palace Guard, is dead, sir … they’ve confirmed that his headless body was found there.”
Wolmak glanced at the clock. The tightbeam broadcast was halfway to the Admiral’s ship. “Who did this, Intel? The Shrike?”
“Don’t know, sir. As I said, the lenses and cameras were elsewhere. We’ll check the discs.”
“Do that,” said Wolmak. He could not wait any longer. He tightbeamed the Marine lieutenant. “Get to the palace, Lieutenant. See what the hell is going on. I’m sending down five more dropships, combat EMVs, and a thopter gunship. Search for any sign of Archbishop Breque, Father Farrell, or Father LeBlanc. And the pilot and honor guard, of course.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The tightbeam link went green. The Admiral was receiving the latest transmission. Too late to wait for his command. Wolmak tightbeamed the two closest Pax ships—torchships just beyond the outer moon—and ordered them on battle alert and to drop into matching orbit with the Jibril. He might need the firepower. Wolmak had seen the Shrike’s work before, and the thought of that creature suddenly appearing on his ship made his skin go cold. He tightbeamed Captain Samuels on the torch-ship H.H.S. St. Bonaventure. “Carol,” he said to the startled captain’s image, “go tactical space, please.”
Wolmak jacked in and was standing in place above the gleaming cloud planet of T’ien Shan. Samuels suddenly appeared next to him in the starry darkness.
“Carol,” said Wolmak, “something’s going on down there. I think the Shrike may be loose again. If you suddenly lose transmission data from the Jibril, or we start screaming gibberish …”
“I’ll launch three boats of Marines,” said Samuels.
“Negative,” said Wolmak. “Slag the Jibril. Immediately.”
Captain Samuels blinked. So did the floating telltale that showed that Admiral Lempriere’s flagship was tightbeaming. Wolmak jacked out of tactical.
The message was short. “I’ve spun the Raguel up for a jump in-system to just beyond the critical gravity well around T’ien Shan,” said Admiral Lempriere, his thin face grave.
Wolmak opened his mouth to protest to his superior, realized that a tightbeamed protest would arrive almost three minutes after the Hawking-drive jump was executed, and shut his mouth. A jump in-system like this was sickeningly dangerous—one chance in four, at least, of a disaster that would claim all hands—but he understood the Admiral’s need to get to where the information was fresh and his commands could be executed immediately.
Dear Jesus, thought Wolmak, the Grand Inquisitor crippled, the Archbishop and the others missing, the sodding Dalai Lama’s palace looking like an anthill that’s been kicked over. Goddamn that Shrike-thing. Where’s the papal courier probe with its command? Where’s that Core ship we were promised? How can things get worse than this?
“Captain?” It was the chief Marine medic on the expeditionary force, beaming from the dropship infirmary.
“Report.”
“Cardinal Mustafa is conscious, sir … still blind, of course … in terrible pain, but …”
“Put him on,” snapped Wolmak.
A terrible visage filled the holosphere. Captain Wolmak sensed others on the bridge shrinking back.
The Grand Inquisitor’s face was still bloodied. His teeth were bright red as he screamed. His eye sockets were ragged and void, except for tendrils of torn tissue and rivulets of blood.
At first, Captain Wolmak could not discern the word from the shriek. But then he realized what the Cardinal was screaming.
“Nemes! Nemes! Nemes!”
• • •
The constructs called Nemes, Scylla, and Briareus continue eastward.
The three remain phase-shifted, oblivious to the staggering amounts of energy this consumes. The energy is sent from else-where. It is not their worry. All of their existence has led to this hour.
After the timeless interlude of slaughter under the Pargo Kaling Western Gate, Nemes leads the way up the tower and across the great metal cables holding the suspension bridge in place. The three jog through Drepung Marketplace, three motile figures moving through thickened, amber air, past human forms frozen in place. At Phari Marketplace, the thousands of shopping, browsing, laughing, arguing, jostling human statues make Nemes smile her thin-lipped smile. She could decapitate all of them and they would have had no warning of their destruction. But she has an objective.
At the Phari Ridge cableway juncture, the three shift down—friction on the cable would be a problem otherwise.
Scylla, the northern High Way, Nemes sends on the common band. Briareus, the middle bridge. I will take the cableway.
Her siblings nod, shimmer, and are gone. The cablemaster steps forward to protest Nemes’s shoving in line ahead of scores of waiting cable passengers. It is a busy time of day.
Rhadamanth Nemes picks the cablemaster up and flings him off the platform. A dozen angry men and women shove toward her, shouting, bent on revenge.
Nemes leaps from the platform and grabs the cable. She has no pulley, no brakes, no climbing harness. She phase-shifts only the palms of her inhuman hands and hurtles down the cable toward K’un Lun Ridge. The angry mob behind her clip onto the cable and give chase—a dozen, two dozen, more. The cablemaster had been liked by many.
It takes Nemes half the usual transit time to cover the great abyss between Phari and K’un Lun ridges. She brakes sloppily on the approach and slams into the rock, phase-shifting at the last instant. Pulling herself out of the crumbling indentation on the cliff behind the landing ledge, she walks back to the cable.
Pulleys whine as the first of her pursuers careen down the last few hundred meters of wire. More spread out to the horizon, black beads on a thin string. Nemes smiles, phase-shifts both her hands, reaches high, and severs the cable.
She is surprised how few of the dozens of doomed men and women scream as they slide off the twisting, falling cable to their deaths.
Nemes jogs to the fixed ropes, climbs them freehand, and cuts all of them loose—ascent lines, rappel lines, safety lines, everything. Five armed members of the K’un Lun Constabulary from Hsi wang-mu confront her on the ridgeline just south of the slideway. She phase-shifts only her left forearm and swats them off into space.
Looking northwest, Nemes adjusts her infrared and telescopic vision and zooms in on the great swinging bonsai-bamboo bridge connecting the High Way promontories between Phari Ridge and K’un Lun Ridge. The bridge falls as she watches, the slats and vines and support cables writhing as they fall back to the western ridgeline, the lower reaches of the bridge dropping into phosgene clouds.
That’s that, sends Briareus.
How many on it when it fell? queries Nemes.
Many. Briareus disconnects.
A second later, Scylla logs on. Northern bridge down. I’m destroying the High Way as I go.
Good, sends Nemes. I’ll see you in Jo-kung.
The three shift down as they pass through the city fissure at Jo-kung. It is raining lightly, the clouds as thick as summer fog. Nemes’s thin hair is plastered to her forehead and she notices that Scylla and Briareus have the same look. The crowd parts for them. The ledge road to the Temple Hanging in Air is empty.
Nemes is leading as they approach the final, short swinging bridge before the ledge below the stairway to the Temple. This had been the first artifact repaired by Aenea—a simple, twenty-meter swinging span above a narrow fissure between dolomite spires a thousand meters above the lower crags and cloudtops—and now the monsoon clouds billow beneath and around the dripping structure.
Invisible in the thick clouds, something stands on the cliff ledge at the other side of the bridge. Nemes shifts to thermal imaging and smiles when she sees that the tall shape radiates no heat whatsoever. She pings it with her forehead-generated radar and studies the image: three meters tall, thorns, bladed fingers on four oversized hands, a perfectly radar-reflective carapace, sharp blades on chest and forehead, no respiration, razor wire rising from the shoulders and spikes from the forehead.
Perfect, sends Nemes.
Perfect, agrees Scylla and Briareus.
The figure at the other end of the dripping bridge makes no response.
We made it to the mountain with only a few meters to spare. Once we dropped out of the lower reaches of the jet stream, our descent was steady and irreversible. There were few thermals out above the cloud ocean and many down-drafts, and while we made the first half of the hundred-klick gap in a few minutes of thrilling acceleration, the second half was all heart-stopping descent—now certain that we would make it with room to spare, now more certain that we would drop into the clouds and never even see our deaths rising to surround us until the kite wings struck acid sea.
We did descend into the clouds, but these were the monsoon clouds, the water vapor clouds, the breathable clouds. The three of us flew as close as we could, blue delta, yellow delta, green delta, the metal and fabric of our parawings almost touching, more fearful of losing one another and dying alone than of striking one another and falling together.
Aenea and I had the comthreads, but we talked to each other just once during that suspenseful descent to the east. The fog had thickened, I caught the merest glimpses of her yellow wing to my left, and I was thinking, She had a child … she married someone else … she loved someone else, when I heard her voice on the hearpatch of my suit, “Raul?”
“Yes, kiddo.”
“I love you, Raul.”
I hesitated a few heartbeats, but the emotional vacuum that had pulled me a moment earlier was swept away in the surge of affection for my young friend and lover. “I love you, Aenea.” We swept lower through the murk. I thought that I coul
d taste an acrid scent on the wind … the fringes of the phosgene clouds?
“Kiddo?”
“Yes, Raul.” Her voice was a whisper in my ears. We had both removed our osmosis masks, I knew … although they would have protected us from the phosgene. We did not know if A. Bettik could breathe the poison. If he could not, the unspoken plan between Aenea and me was to close our masks and hope that we could reach the edges of the mountain before we struck the acid sea, dragging the android up the slope and out of the poison air if we could. We both knew that it was a flimsy plan—the radar aboard the ship during my initial descent had shown me that most of the peaks and ridges dropped abruptly beneath the phosgene cloud layer and it would be only a matter of minutes between entering the poisonous clouds before we struck the sea anyway—but it was better to have a plan than to surrender to fate. In the meantime, we both had our masks up, breathing fresh air while we could.
“Kiddo,” I said, “if you know that this isn’t going to work … if you’ve seen what you think is …”
“My death?” she completed the sentence for me. I could not have said it aloud.
I nodded stupidly. She could not see me through the clouds between us.
“They’re only possibilities, Raul,” she said softly. “Although the one I know of with the greatest probability is not this. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t have asked you both to go with me if I thought this was … it.” I heard the humor in her voice through the tension.
“I know,” I said, glad that A. Bettik could not pick up this conversation. “I wasn’t thinking of that.” I had been thinking that perhaps she had known that the android and I would make it to the mountain, but she would not. I did not believe that now. As long as my fate was entwined with hers, I could accept about anything. “I was just wondering why we were running again, kiddo,” I said. “I’m sick of running away from the Pax.”
“So am I,” said Aenea. “And trust me, Raul, that’s not all we’re doing here. Oh, shit!”
Hardly the quotable pronouncement from a messiah, but in a second I saw the reason for her shout. A rocky hillside had appeared twenty meters ahead of us, large boulders visible between scree slopes, sheer cliffs lower down.
