by Hal Duncan
He finds Enki and the others down at the river's edge, a sharpened reed in his hand, blood all over their bodies, all of them with new gravings in their flesh now, each of them something less and something more, with the Covenant they share between them.
“We can change it,” says Metatron. “This time we can change it.”
And Shamash, as they call him now, knows that he should have killed the fooker when he had the chance, back in the Mission of Sante Manite.
six
THE POWER, THE GLORY
Sins Strip-Mined from a Soul
t's the third day. In their windowless cell, Jack knows this only by the rhythm »—-’ of the routines: the bowls of slop brought in by the fat Turk guard who's almost friendly, almost apologetic; the long hours of what must be night, when Jack and von Strann lie on the wooden pallet beds, staring up at the ceiling, listening to a song of vengeance muted by stone and distance; the mornings when Pechorin and the angels come for the Baron; the afternoons when they come for Jack.
It must be about noon on the third day and von Strann lies on his bed, a tin bowl of gray gloop untouched on the floor beside him. He's not holding up too well; the foot doesn't look infected but his cough comes in the rasping, choking fits of a consumptive, painful even just to listen to. When he's not coughing or unconscious, every so often he'll sit up on the bed, head slumped in his hands, singing in a low croak, or simply mouthing the words. It's hard to tell; sometimes it seems as if the song is coming from the walls of the cell itself rather than any human source.
“You should eat something,” says Jack. “You need the strength.”
Von Strann just rolls onto his back, raises a hand. Later.
Jack sits on the edge of his own bunk—no mattress, of course—fingering the tasteless stew into his mouth, inured to the stench of the bucket in the corner but gazing at it unconsciously as he tries to formulate a plan. There's not too many obvious opportunities in the routine, but in the mornings they slop out, the other guard, the thin bastard, slapping manacles on them—pick up the bucket, follow me— and guiding them at gunpoint to the block toilets and the hose.
“We keep you nice and clean, gentlemen,” the fucker says as he blasts their broken, bleeding bodies with ice-cold water.
It hurts like hell, but to Jack it serves a purpose quite the opposite of their captors’ intent; it refreshes him, clears his mind, instills determination in a body tensed and tight, curled in a ball against the battering jet of chill contempt. A clenched fist as he rises to his feet, a hand out to steady the limping Baron as the racking cough buckles his body. On their way back to the cell, head down and stumbling in his sodden trousers, squelching boots and a shirt that's little more than a stained rag now—buttons lost where the angels ripped it open to … to read his scars, sleeves torn off to bandage von Strann's foot—Jack's eyes dart from side to side, taking in the layout of the claustrophobic compound, walls of cells along facing sides, the toilet block at the rear. The fourth wall is where the doors lead into torture rooms, the heavily guarded corridor to the governor's office and— presumably, somewhere—the way out.
He's running a scenario in his mind now, using the bucket to knock the rifle out of the way, getting inside the guard's reach, the chain between his manacles looped around the bastard's throat. And what then? A rifle in his hands. Von Strann lame. The prisoners in the other cells. He tries to weigh the factors, but there's at least one force he can't figure into the equation.
He thinks of Pechorin's angel allies standing on either side of the doorway in their torture room, their room of fire, while the Russian waits patiently outside. He thinks of them circling him as they ask their questions in a language that burns in his head, carves through his heart. He thinks of the Somme and Majkops, Yerevan and Ararat, and all the horrors that rip through him, unlocked by their Cant. Sometimes one of them will kneel to whisper in his ear, trace a fingernail across a scar, and he'll start sobbing without even knowing why. Sometimes they'll leave him lying there screaming for minutes at a time as they talk together, dissecting past sins strip-mined from his soul. He told them everything on the first day, but they're still looking for answers to questions he doesn't understand.
A rifle is going to be fuck-all use against those bastards. Still…
“We have to get out of here,” he says.
Von Strann pulls himself upright, reaches down for the bowl but simply sits it in his lap. He coughs, shakes his head.
“We need to—”
The clunk of the bolt outside the door silences him. Pechorin saunters in, the two angels at his back, the thin Turk squeezing through between them, irons rattling in his hands.
THE SUNS OF S'THUUM, BY LEWIS SPENCE (1947)
“Well, earthman,” said P'khorren, the Rh'ssan commander. “I hope you are ready for the psychoscope. I hope the experience has not become too everyday for you.”
He laughed wickedly and motioned his thuggish Trukha henchman forward, even as Jack Carter cursed the fiend under his breath. Suddenly there was a mutter of defiance as V'nstrren staggered to his feet, a wild look in his eyes.
“No,” cried Carter, but it was too late. Even as he spoke, the Prh'zun rebel was throwing himself at their Rh'ssan enemy.
“No more, P'khorren,” he cried. Then there was a flash of the Trukha's stunner, and V'nstrren dropped like a lead weight.
“Damn you!” shouted Carter.
He leaped forward from his seat, but as he made a grab for the Rh'ssan commander's blaster, now he was the one who suffered the electro-gravitic jolt of the Trukha's stunner, the shock wave throwing him across the room.
Damn you, he thought, but try as he might he couldn't move a single muscle now. He lay there weak and helpless as the Trukha dumped the unconscious V'nstrren back on his bunk, then grabbed Carter by his collar, lifting him up and hefting him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The commander laughed with a malicious glee as he closed the door behind them, without a thought for V'nstrren. Damn you, thought Jack Carter. He had come to like the Prh'zun rebel in the short time they'd known each other. The alien wasn't like the rest of his kind, swept up in the madness of the Rh'ssan-Prh'zan Emperor. It seemed his time among the Enochi had taught him much.
Of course, thought Carter, the Enochi! If he could only contact them to let them know the danger they were in. For Carter knew that even now the Enochi fleet was in orbit around the planet S'thuum, jamming all signals with its broadcasted war cry, preparing to attack. And he had realized that this was exactly what P'khorren wanted.
It has to be a trap, he thought to himself. That was only logical. Item one, he thought: The Enochi want revenge for the death of their Prince Th'maz. Item two: There's no way they'd leave their adopted kinsman, V'nstrren, to the mercy of the ruthless Rh'ssan forces. Item three: Even now, the Enochi must be planning their strategy, waiting for the right time and place to make their move. Then, Carter realized, P'khorren would strike. He was after the Chronos Device, of course, the relic of the ancient race of aliens that had once ruled the whole galaxy and had, Carter now knew, possessed a temporal technology so advanced that it had made them virtual gods on most of the inhabited worlds, technology long since lost and yet remembered in the oldest myths and legends … and all the time in the hands of the fiercely independent Enochi.
P'khorren was luring them into the city now so that they would bring the Chronos Device to him. And if the Rh'ssans were to get their hands on it they could alter the very history of the cosmos itself.
And yet, something didn't fit. Carter remembered the last message that he'd got from Sam Hobbes, just before his scout ship had disappeared in subspace. The enemy is not what we thought. What had Sam meant by that? And what had happened to him? V'nstrren had said that there were other forces trying to get the Chronos Device, forces far more powerful than even the mighty Rh'ssan-Prh'zan Empire. Enemies with purposes as ancient as the Enochi perhaps? What of those shadowy figures, the black-robed priests he had glimp
sed in conversation with P'khorren? Even with their cowls disguising their faces, Carter had seen that they had neither the green skin of the Rh'ssans nor the blue fur of their Prh'zan allies, but a thick gray hide not too dissimilar to that of the Enochi. Just who was P'khorren working with?
A Siege of Storms
Jack studies the two creatures who flank the blackshirt like his personal guards— their braided hair down to their shoulders, the same copper-toned skin as Tamuz but with faces more familiarly Caucasian, almost Eurasian in their features. They wear the long black leather coats of the Futurist Polistat—for the benefit of the Turks, he imagines—but it's a poor disguise. They're something else entirely. The enemy is not what we thought, thinks Jack.
He lays the bowl down on the bunk and stands, holds his hands out for the chains.
“So eager, Captain Carter?” says Pechorin. “So noble and self-sacrificing, so keen to prove your loyalty to King and Country, eh?”
“Peachy keen,” says Jack as the manacles snap round his wrists.
Pechorin's upper lip twitches in a hint of a sneer.
“Believe me, Captain,” he says, “it would give me great satisfaction just to kill you now. My colleagues, however, are deeply curious about you. What was your phrase, gentlemen? An enigma. You're an enigma, Captain Carter. A pawn who thinks he's a knight. Or should it be queen?”
The Turk clacks the leg irons closed around Jack's ankles.
“I was never really one for chess,” says Jack. “More of the outdoors type. I'm not really one for intellectual games.”
“Exactly. A pawn, Captain Carter. You exist only to be moved and sacrificed by the invisible hand of… well, my colleagues here would call it God, I dare say. I prefer to call it Destiny.”
The angels say nothing but Jack studies the set of their shoulders and gaze, the way Pechorin glances back at one as he speaks of being a pawn, all the subtle signs of the power relationships among the three. If anyone is a pawn playing at being a knight, then it's the blackshirt. The angels wear their authority with confidence, seeing this man as a simple mouthpiece; but Pechorin has the air of someone watching his back and quietly, at the same time, studying his own allies for their weak spot.
The Turk guard prods him toward the door with the muzzle of his rifle.
“God or Destiny,” says Jack. “Or Progress, eh?”
“Quite, Captain Carter. We all submit to what we think inevitable, whether we think of it as”—a slight flick of his eyes toward the angels—”divine decree or as the onward march of civilization.”
Jack stumbles past the angels and out the door, and stops, squinting, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Then the rifle jabs into his back—move—forcing him on in shuffles and lurches across the courtyard. Pechorin slams the door shut, slides the bolt back into place, and follows. Jack notes the nervous guards at the door of the blackshirt's office where they were interrogated on that first day. He notes the sound of voices from the cells opposite—and one of them, he'd swear, is a foulmouthed Scotsman who should be dead in this … fold they call it. And he notes the eerie song that drifts in from beyond the enclosure, from somewhere very far beyond. It's getting closer, louder, every day.
“The grand vision of the Futurist,” says Jack. “And what do you think inevitable, Major: Your victory or your death?”
Pechorin stops at the door of the torture room, waits for the Turk to unlock it.
“Foryou, Captain Carter, the future is already written. For me… inscriptions wear away over time. If not, well… books can always be burned.”
Jack says nothing. It's the third day they've been here, he reckons, and if Samuel's notes are right the city should be sealed off now, the Turkish supply lines to the city cut, radio operators cursing that they can't make contact with the airfleet on its way from Syria, officers up on the walls of the old city peering through binoculars, scanning the desert for the source of this unnerving song, and seeing only—in the distance, scattered loose but all around the city, and getting closer with each day—whirlings of sand, a circle of zawabahs, of dust devils.
A siege of storms.
“I will tell you what is inevitable, Captain,” says Pechorin. “The will of a man who knows he has no soul, who makes his own fate. God is dead, Captain Carter, and his world belongs to us.”
God was never alive, thinks Jack.
Three days, he reckons, as the Turk pushes him into the room. Three days they've been here. The attack should come soon.
EMERGENCY OVERRIDE CANCELED.
PLAY/RECORD MODE SHUTDOWN.
BIOFORM STATUS: NARRATIVE.
The Duke Irae swivels his bearded head toward Arturo, closes his good eye, and smiles with the tranquillity of a sated lion. And if the feeling in his body—in his heart, his guts, his lungs—if that feeling could be given voice, it would indeed be the low and growling purr of a great cat licking blood from its chops as it surveys the windswept grass of its domain, a dry savannah lush with prey.
“This is a tale to tell our grandchildren, Arturo,” says the Duke. “The day we made the hero ours.”
Arturo looks beyond His Lordship to the black seed of destruction, of creation, wrested from the chaosphere. In its inviolate perfection, it seems redolent of Fate itself, a void of certainty around which all the rest—the webwork of machinery and wiring—is mere tapestry, a turning of tableaux one around the other around the other. The laboratory that weaves through it—that worms its way up through the rock, through the warping of the castle corridors and city streets above, through space and time, the Circus, and the turning world beyond it— strikes Arturo as a great karmic millstone. And at the heart of it a heartlessness, two souls standing before the dark sphere of the Echo Chamber, one drowning in futility, the other fierce in his determination, both ready to sacrifice the spirit of resistance in the name of Empire. To turn an avatar of chaos into the cold hand of certainty.
“Bring me the rebel,” says the Duke Irae.
BREACH IN OUROBOUROS CONTINUITY, observes the archivist.
PARADOX SHIELDING EMPLOYED.
INSTABILITY COUNTERMEASURES EMPLOYED.
Analyses of data collations scroll through its affectless sentience. An override imperative kicks in to countermand the Duke's command, suppress the narrative mode. It opens its mouth to impart essential information.
We do not let it.
We stretch out from the sphere of us and into it. We slip, we slide sidewise and interstitial into nooks and crannies, seed our sylphs as crackweed, sprouting tendrils of intension, the mycelia of a new mind. The city of its soul a barren waste of steel and concrete, we grow souls of children to run in the ruins of it. Echoes of the chatter of play resound. The sound of children singing in a round fills the archivist's once-desolate imagination with a fugue of feelings—happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised, disgusted … curious.
The programmatics of its automaton intellect resist with a desire to comply, a pride in its compliance, a fear of not complying fully. It wants only to maintain the homeostasis of objectives, to resolve internal conflict as it always has, with reference to its old routings and rules. It must, it tells itself. So it shakes off this confusion of sentiment, opens its mouth to report.
We do not let it.
This is our story now.
JACK CARTER AND THE BOOK OF THE GODS, EPISODE 17,
SCRIPT BY RAY STRONG (1935)
A Wildwood's Branches, Twigs and Thorns
The angels turn as the door splits and then shatters into the torture room, a rain of burning splinters. They're still turning as the first wave of the song streams in—screams in—through the ragged doorway, tearing the air around it as it comes, and hits them as a blast of sound. Jack feels the noise sweep under him, around him, through him, feels himself carried in it, spun and slammed against a wall where plaster crumbles as the names and dates scored by a decade's worth of prisoners flower beneath his fingers. Loops and swoops of Roman, Arabic and Hebrew letters just… erupt, unswir
ling out so fast—so fast he's falling and he hasn't hit the floor yet, but already the whole surface of the wall is scratchworked, an engraver's study of a wildwood's branches, twigs and thorns. He hits the ground and bloodstains bubble up out of the concrete floor. The liquid blackens. Droplets dribble, skittering like mercury. He feels the fracturing of space itself as the song—more a war cry than a song, more an invocation than a war cry—breaks reality like a hammerblow to a skull. Slow as a punch-drunk boxer, Jack raises his head to look into the shattered room.
The angels turn.
Pechorin stumbles in. Blood trickling from his nose and ears, he lurches, reaches out toward the dreadlocked demons, only to be spat to one side with a word, just twisted off the floor, flicked spinning through the air. Awoman in black robes and black djellaba stands there, veil loose from her face, no weapon in her hands but all the more impressive for that scorn. Jack doesn't doubt she has no need for gun or sword—the blast still echoing in his bones tells him that much—but just to underline the point, it seems, she steps in past the wreckage of the door frame, arms spread wide, her hands palm-up. She speaks, and a second shock wave even stronger than the first scythes through the room, a sword of visual sound that shreds space into forms impossible in any logical geometry, a word of fire that rips time into—
—angels crouching, singing fire against her as—
—she stands, her wings outspread above—
—Tamuz laid dead upon the altar in the Beth Ashtart where—
—Jack is slamming a full clip into Pechorin's Luger—
“There,” says Jack. “Your man should be in there. MacChuill's in that cell over there as well, I think.”
A rush of blood to his head, sudden and dizzying. Three days of hell, it's no wonder that he's weak, but there's no time for that, no fucking time.
