by Stephen Hunt
It wasn’t true. These giants weren’t the race of man’s ancestors. Her kind’s forefathers hadn’t invaded Kaliban, hadn’t inflicted the miseries she had seen on Kyorin’s home.
‘Now you see why the great sage wouldn’t trust you with the truth,’ laughed the emperor. ‘We are you, but better, our flesh reworked across the ages to perfection. But we are from the same seed. You little pygmies are the stunted offspring of the masters. How could you animals possibly kill such magnificent titans as us when we are your very progenitors?’
At last Molly understood. Why the Army of Shadows couldn’t just invade the Earth of their era from Kaliban, a world still left dead and burning from the masters’ pillages, its ruined, abandoned dunes as dead as any of Kaliban’s wastes; why the emperor’s people had to travel five million years into the future to find their new harvest. Why there were lashlites flying wild on Kaliban: the lizard people and other creatures brought from Molly’s world to Kaliban when the masters crossed the celestial darks.
‘Yes, now you see how it is, little animal. After we’ve exhausted the bounty of your reborn planet we’ll launch the iron moon again on its comet’s path. And in two thousand years from now a window to the future will open above what was briefly your land, a passage forward to five million years hence. Kaliban will have healed itself by then, evolved back into life, and something descended from the Kals will look up and see our slat legions falling to their plains anew.’
‘You’re just a bastard swarm of locusts,’ shouted Molly. ‘Moving through time, destroying everything.’
‘Poor little animal,’ said the emperor, sadly. ‘It is the law of nature. The strongest prosper and survive.’ He pointed to a vast golden helix mounted on the wall of the chamber. A group of his giant kindred were on their knees in front of it, heads bobbing up and down in worship of their own kind’s perfection. ‘We destroy nothing. We only transform it; we give purpose to that which has none without our presence. Ores become iron. Oils become the fuel to drive a turbine. Flesh becomes sustenance and slaves to serve us. Would you have us weep for your people? Do your farmers weep for the poultry not born when you collect the eggs of your hens? You’ve had your chance and squandered it. You’ve had five million years to evolve, to mould yourself into something superior to us. But look at how you’ve regressed: lives as brief as mayflies, hosts to sickness and parasites. You’ve even let filthy machine life spread across your land. You can’t trust such abominations as your slaves – always changing their parameters and slipping the leash. Flesh, you can trust only flesh.’
‘I don’t trust steammen as my slaves,’ said Molly. ‘I trust them as my friends.’
‘Spoken like a loyal abomination,’ said the emperor. ‘No, unlike the Kals I don’t think there is much we’ll be taking from your revolting kind’s bodies to improve our own genetic pattern, but my scholars want to get you under a dissection array anyway.’ The emperor clapped his hands in anticipation as one of his giants came striding across the room, a small army of slats following behind her. ‘And here is the very chief of the observative sciences who is so eager to analyse your blood.’ He turned to his cohort. ‘Are you ready to cut up your next test subject?’
The scholar pushed the golden curls of her fringe away from her perfect burnished skin. ‘Arrived from Kaliban so soon? Good, then my work can begin. But first, I have brought you the animals that almost succeeded in bringing down the beanstalk.’
Her troops parted, revealing a ragged band of Jackelians, perhaps twenty of them. And Purity Drake! Molly stared in astonishment at the young girl.
‘Where is the sword they used to cut the anchor cables? I said I wanted it delivered into my hands!’ boomed the emperor.
The scholar bowed, terrified. ‘It is rooted in one of the anchor cables, which has healed itself around the blade.’
‘Then unembed it!’ yelled the emperor.
‘I cannot,’ said the scholar. ‘The anchor cable is a Kal material. We know how to grow it, but we have never possessed a method capable of cutting through it.’
So much for the superiority of the Army of Shadows’ masters, thought Molly. They were plunderers, barbarians who for all their protestations of superiority barely understood the trinkets of their stolen Kal superscience.
Molly stared towards Purity. She was swaying from exhaustion on her bare feet alongside a tall aquiline man in marsh leathers – also wearing no shoes – his black face pocked by frostbite. From their waxed clothes, the others in her party looked as if they might be fishermen. There was a boy about Purity’s age with a wooden leg standing behind her, his eyes darting about between their slat guards, as though if only he watched intently enough he might be able to seize the initiative and get them free. Molly really hoped the boy didn’t try something foolish. If the slats started firing to protect their emperor, the group wouldn’t last a second in the crossfire.
Purity caught sight of Molly and her eyes widened.
‘You will find a way to cut it,’ hissed the emperor.
Molly shook her head towards the young girl. Best these creatures didn’t know she and Purity were friends; they could trust that Keyspierre wouldn’t have bothered to acquaint himself with a humble seamstress back at the cannon project.
‘Let me examine the new stock,’ commanded the emperor.
A single fisherman was separated from the crowd by a slat and sent in front of the emperor. His head was bowed, hardly daring to gaze upon the giant.
‘Look at me!’
A cable like a snake-tongue flicked out of the emperor’s mouth, lodging itself in the centre of the Jackelian’s forehead, the man screaming as the emperor seized him tight. The fisherman’s face drained to a powder-white and he was caught in a seizure, crumpling as the giant sucked away his essence, his lifeforce, his very soul. This was the energy the masters craved, stolen from the world and sucked from all its creatures. It took only a second, the husk of a man falling back to the floor. The emperor pointed to one of his corrupted Kals and the female eagerly left off tormenting Rooksby to take the corpse’s blood. When she had drained the Jackelian carcass of the last of its juices, she waved forward her favoured slats to feast on the ruin of meat. Nothing wasted, a little something trickling down for everyone in the Army of Shadows.
Molly turned away, sickened. Yes, the masters had higher tastes now. Consuming pure energy, saving the messy inefficient business of digestion for their slaves and pets.
‘That one was a little stale,’ said the emperor, licking his fingers. ‘Take them back to the pens and feed the animals at least one good meal of gruel before you throw them to my wives or I will hear nothing but complaints from the imperial harem.’
‘Not these two,’ begged the scholar, pointing to Purity and the figure in marsh leathers. ‘The male is a mutation and the female cub, I don’t even know what she is, but she was the animal wielding the weapon that severed our anchor cables.’
The emperor tutted. ‘Well, at least put aside their intestines for the slats when you’re done. A little nod towards tradition every now and then would not harm those who work within the observative sciences.’
Molly and Purity were pushed into a railcar, Purity’s leather-clad friend in the car behind them, the slat soldiers taking position in cockpits in front, whisking the three prisoners through the tunnels and monstrous chambers of the iron moon.
Molly cleared her throat. ‘You look taller.’
‘You look thinner,’ said Purity.
‘Well, a diet of beans can do that,’ agreed Molly.
‘Did you meet Kyorin’s people, find the great sage?’
‘All that and more,’ said Molly, sadly. She held her thumb and finger out an inch apart. ‘I held the weapon Kyorin talked about in my hand, no bigger than a coin. It would have destroyed the iron moon and sealed the Army of Shadows off for eternity, but it is gone now, smashed to pieces. Did they capture Oliver with you?’
Purity shook her head. ‘He’s gone, t
oo. I think there’s part of him inside a sword I left embedded below in the beanstalk. Maybe I could draw the blade out again when I recover my strength?’
‘So you became a sword-saint after all,’ smiled Molly. ‘Just like the legends in Coppertracks’ book said.’
‘Legends won’t save us now,’ Purity said. ‘I’ve failed us all, Molly. The Bandits of the Marsh came from legend and followed me, just like the book said, but I believed in myself too little. All my friends died for nothing. The iron moon shouldn’t be here now, I should have destroyed it. But I couldn’t believe in myself.’
‘Well, I think I believed in myself just a little too much,’ said Molly, squeezing the young girl’s hand. ‘No, I’m just a writer of penny dreadfuls now, not any protector of the land worthy of the name. As for this rusting palace of mad gods and their slaves, none of them should be here, not the slats or the Kals or the giant masters that command them. They should have died five million years ago. They’ve twisted nature to stay alive beyond their means, broken time itself to crawl across to us. Back when I was in the poorhouse, when we were really hungry, we would take a dishcloth and suck it dry, suck it for the juices that were left from the plates. That’s what we found the Army of Shadows had done to Kyorin’s home, and what they’re going to do to Jackals.’
Purity raised a laugh. ‘We did the same thing back in the royal breeding house when we were put on short rations. Sucking the dishcloth.’
Molly looked at the tunnel hurtling past. ‘What a pair we make, Purity Drake. The princess and the pauper. Well, at least we’re not going to live to see them do that to Jackals.’
‘No,’ said Purity, the force of her voice surprising Molly. ‘We’re not going to give up. You and I. There’s a way, there’s always a way. The people of the kingdom will not crawl into the eternal night as slaves of these beasts. I failed once, but I’m never going to fail again.’
Molly was about to say she admired Purity’s spirit, but then they came to it, a vast circular cavern that was so immense – many miles across – that it could only be the hollow core of the iron moon. In the middle something black and terrible rotated, twisting under the blazing red fire whipping from a series of vast magnetic guns that emerged from the chamber’s curved walls. A titanic hoop-like walkway surrounded the rotating spider of darkness, the tiny figures of masters walking around and ministering to the monster’s needs through their consoles and machines. Oh sweet Circle, this was it. The Kals’ artificial singularity that the great sage had talked about. A demon more terrible than anything the Army of Shadows could have created on their own, caged and tamed by the Kals’ plundered superscience. A comet moon given the power to punch a window five million years into the past. A rift to allow the Army of Shadows to farm worlds across the passage of eternity itself, feeding their dark, fierce hungers. If the great sage had been telling the truth, then the Kals had only created one of these monstrous singularities, but one was all the Army of Shadows had required.
Molly couldn’t help it now, she was weeping. ‘There it is. I’m sorry, Purity. This is what I should have destroyed. The Army of Shadows consumed everything in their age and now their armada are sailing through the seas of time to claim us.’
Purity turned her face away from the blaze as the magnetic cannons burned at her eyes. The giant masters on the walkway wore brass goggles to protect them from the glare. Molly noticed the determined look on Purity’s face. She really didn’t know when it was time to give up.
‘Time. Yes, I know time. Time is our ally,’ said Purity. ‘The Bandits of the Marsh have rested in its halls. The bones of our land endure it, are shaped and healed by its flow. I’ll save us, I’ll save us all.’
‘Will you? We’ve been royally betrayed by time now,’ said Molly. ‘They’re us, Purity. That’s the worst secret of them all. The Army of Shadows’ masters are us. And they’re coming home.’
The two of them fell to silence as the railcar bore them along the surface of the iron moon’s core, painted by the violence of the energies of time itself being torn asunder.
It wasn’t exactly a cell where Purity, Molly and Jackaby Mention were tossed, more the smallest of the feeding pens available. Only Commodore Black stood inside, no sign of Coppertracks, but Molly barely had time to say hello before she was hauled out again and separated from the group.
Purity’s face pressed against the pen’s bars, shouting at the slats and the giant woman leading her friend away. It was the scholar who had stood in the emperor’s throne room, enraging the master of masters by her failure to retrieve the sword.
‘Where are you taking Molly?’ yelled Purity.
‘Quiet, animal,’ ordered the scholar, her beautiful features not improved by being twisted in contempt as she glanced back towards the feeding pen. ‘Your turn will come soon enough. For dissection.’
The first thing Molly noticed about the scholar’s laboratory was the large slab with a metal spider hanging above it, all blades, drills and crystal-tipped tubes dangling on iron arms. The second thing was poor Coppertracks, trapped in a vice-like machine, plates opened all over his body and leeched by cables running into the scholar’s devices.
‘Coppertracks!’
The steamman said nothing, locked into silence by the vice, his voicebox covered up.
‘Save your distress for yourself,’ advised the scholar.
‘What are you doing to him?’
‘Peeling its memories like an onionskin. Breaking the encryption on them, then storing them for analysis. This abomination you count as a friend is very clever. It might even be able to contribute to our own natural sciences. But that is of secondary interest to me. My primary concern is that this abomination doubtless controls the key to opening the looking-glass gate inside the craft you used to cross to Kaliban.’
The looking-glass gate! Their way home.
‘Yes, we have your gate too,’ laughed the scholar, seeing Molly’s face. ‘It will be most fortunate if, as I suspect, the gate opens out into the realm of the abominations. I have a very special bomb I would like to push through into the deep mountain stronghold of King Steam’s palace. How ironic if the mountain walls the abominations think protect them instead become the walls of their tomb.’
‘Why do you fear the steammen?’ said Molly. ‘They’ve never harmed you.’
‘Harmed?’ said the scholar, motioning her slats to secure Molly to the dissection slab. ‘We once fought a bloody war against the abominations. It is not just your stunted little race that our kind acted as progenitors for. There is a reason why we create no machines able to think for themselves, why it is a capital crime to even manufacture machines with the ability to network with each other. Abominations such as your friend over there are that reason.’ She tapped her head. ‘Trust only the flesh. That which can be controlled, shaped by other flesh.’
Molly tried to break free of the slats’ grip as they pinned her down on the dissection slab, but the monsters were too strong.
‘You’re the perfect example of why their kind can’t be trusted,’ said the scholar to Molly, walking to her console behind the dissection slab. ‘You’ve been infected by the abominations, made a monster, nothing but a puppet of contaminated meat to advance their schemes.’
Molly kicked futilely at the slats. ‘You use your machines to give birth to beasts like this and you dare call me a monster!’
‘Oh, I’m exceptionally proud of my slats,’ said the scholar. ‘My grandmother created the slave labour assault troop pattern during our last wars on what is now your world, securing my family’s high position in the observative sciences. The slats are the perfect soldiers, a blend of human, rodent, wolf and insect flesh. They fall out of their birthing tanks ready to function on instinct only. A superannuation date of five years ensures they are retired before the accumulation of memories and experiences outside the tank leads them to question their loyalty, and even if a few become separated from the pack, they can’t breed without us. Obedie
nt, hardy, deadly, controlled. Would that everything we made was such a success.’
Molly swore as the slats tightened leather straps around her limbs, cutting off her circulation.
‘I don’t expect much from you,’ said the scholar, a forlorn look crossing her face. ‘But I should at least be able to design a plague that will target those with your machine symbiote bloodline. I can’t risk your kind polluting the farms’ breeding stock.’
Molly yelled as a blade arm came falling down and skimmed above her belly and breasts; but the scholar was only starting by slicing Molly’s clothes away.
‘Your kind have almost been mongrelized beyond use,’ continued the giant, pointing to the far wall of the lab where a transparent pane showed figures floating like pickled sweetmeats in a jar. Craynarbians, graspers, the race of man, their bodies skinned and muscles exposed. ‘Look how many subspecies your stunted strain has branched into. You have surrendered your breeding to nature rather than science. This filth is the result. To think, there were those who argued that the timer on our comet should have been set to add an extra million years to the clock, to allow the ecos on our old world time to fully recover. I dread to think what we would have had to feed on if we had left your kind feral to jig each other stupid in the dirt down there for another million years.’
As Molly thrashed against her restraints she heard a hooting noise and stretched her neck around to place it. There, to Molly’s side, was a cage. Lord Rooksby danced inside, one of his wings torn and bloodied, exposing the flesh underneath.
‘You see how little my labours are appreciated,’ said the scholar, scowling at the agitated form battering the cage’s bars. ‘The Kals that pervert the emperor takes to his bed have damaged the animal’s wings, and now it is the directorate of observative sciences that must act as vet. Even a child knows not to play with their food, but not the emperor and his disgusting little pets.’
