Shadow Over Avalon

by C. N Lesley

  “Exactly. While I’m resting, you can make a short list of those tested in battle, who also possess technological knowledge. I want people who don’t follow blindly. Wild cards are acceptable though. When we get them, we’ll train them in our own way. You have Copper’s knowledge of warfare, which we’ll combine with my Elite program. Both sides have kept very much to their own tactics, making a combination unexpected.”

  Arthur yawned and stretched as he prepared to give up controls to Kai. He kept to himself his intention to recruit from forts as well as from Brethren. Kai couldn’t even begin to imagine how busy they were going to be. As soon as he had enough manpower, he would switch tactics to hold, but not for the alliance. They’d had their chance and flunked it. His army needed one loyalty – to him. He wasn’t going to rest until every Nestine served a more useful purpose by fertilizing crops with its ashes. If his plan worked, he’d turn authority over to the civilian population, so that he could devote his life to exploring the bad zones proscribed by Sanctuary. Kai might like a wandering life too. They’d make a great team. With that happy thought, Arthur willed himself to sleep.

  As consciousness faded, a faint sense of being watched alerted Arthur, but he couldn’t rouse, he couldn’t move. His will pushed against a barrier too strong to break through. He fought against a black nothingness, and it won.

  Chapter 36

  Earth Date 3892

  The wings of night swirled around a trapped spirit, engulfing it in a dark vortex. The captive essence landed in a group of insubstantial apparitions – those warriors from the Wild Hunt who waited with eternal patience for another angry soul to join their legions.

  Memories returned like a flood tide and a silent scream formed. Each soul wore a mantle of pain, all of them trapped by self-inflicted corporeal errors, or those of others’ making. They sucked at the fury of a disrupted spirit to feed their own hunger for existence. He remembered the dreadful craving from his own waiting times.

  Once more he stood with his comrades. So many lives remembered here, and every life and death in exact detail. Arthur had never died in his sleep before, though. Perhaps Kai, dozing at the controls, had caused a crash, or pursuers found their tracks despite all his efforts. Maybe someone picked through Kai’s thoughts. Locating their vessel, a seer could rig self-destruct or disable it for their easy reacquisition. Whichever didn’t really matter anymore, since here he stood, in this half-life, to continue his endless quest.

  He bit down another scream, wanting peace, a final peace denied until he found the talisman. Sometimes he could remember a need to search for something in his corporeal form, but never for what, until this latest incarnation, where he had seen the sword. His almost-victory was snatched away.

  The old one responsible failed to reckon on the species evolving so fast. Each incarnation brought Arthur closer to acquiring the talisman: his sword.

  Viewing time as cyclic, he stood witness to land changing, developing beyond recognition, and those same developments crumbling into dust. Now the land resembled a time when the talisman throbbed in his hand. He knew, with blood running rivers deep from all the dead and dying, his rebirth must be imminent. Perhaps in the next life, he’d find it.

  A breeze pushed at his robes. No tree or blade of grass stirred. The robes of other watchers belled out as their eyes became hungry in anticipation of another new spirit coming to join them. Souls sometimes burned out by whatever held them earthbound, or rejoined flesh to fulfill a quest, and then a gap in the ring of warriors appeared. Stronger winds pushed at him, whispering of new life. Unable to fight, he let it happen.

  A gust took him, propelled his essence outward, away from the others. He rushed through night, over stunted moors, where even stars hid behind a thick blanket of cloud. Ahead, a fire like a beacon snared him as a shark to blood. He saw the face of the one who tended it as he drew closer . . . that one, from his dreams in this recent incarnation.

  The cave-sitter turned matte-black eyes upon him when he reached the circle of light. Trained warrior responses sent Arthur’s hand to reach for a weapon never there in these waiting times. Frustrated, he tried to channel the will he enjoyed in corporeal flesh, during his recent incarnation, and accomplish the same end.

  “Resistance is an exercise in futility, Arthur.”

  “Should I enjoy watching you gloat?” The forces holding him pushed down on his shoulders. Arthur resisted, arranging his legs to squat instead of kneel. From that position, he managed to sit cross-legged. A chilling guess had become reality in those moments. The cave-sitter had used the same words to warn against resistance that the Archive uttered. He knew now with certainty they were the same entity.

  “Interesting.” The cave-sitter threw another branch on his fire. “So you think yourself defeated, and a captive?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I? Waiting with the Wild Hunt again, in between entertaining you.”

  “You dream, nothing more.” Another hunk of wood joined the blaze. Sparks flew skyward.

  “I’m alive?” Arthur squashed down a surge of hope, aware of how devious his companion was. “What do you want?”

  “There are truths you must learn.” The black eyes met Arthur’s over the fire. “I intended to use your body as a vessel for my essence to escape from Archives. I needed the neural pathways without your essence cohabiting, and I almost got my wish, but then you joined in a gestalt with your brother. I thought I had prevented such a possibility when I directed his steps into death. I underestimated your need to belong. The forces you released smashed through my bonds and I now wear the form I wore when I first visited your world.”

  “Who . . . what are you?” Arthur resisted naming this being. He wanted more than a convenient handle. He wanted answers. The figure of power he remembered from a past life did not claim spacecraft skills, however restricted his wording in the language of those times.

  “Later. For now, watch and learn.” A gesture from the being sent a huge wall of flame between them. It flattened to form a golden mirror-like surface that smoothed into multifaceted moving images.

  Arthur, trapped and horrified, writhed as it pulled him into glowing light. A helpless spirit without substance, he saw the actions of others through many windows. A tug in any direction that caught his attention brought him into the head of the person responsible. Full sensory playback paled into insignificance beside this experience. He was the Archive. Windows flashed before him, data surged into his memory base.

  *

  Gregor swallowed another stim tab, so close to victory that he dared not sleep. He walked over to a window, looking down, while he waited for the effects to kick in.

  Did those endless lines of people who shuffled on the sidewalk just trying to move really care what he did, or how he did it, as long as they benefited? Did anyone care what the black-band wearing proletariat thought? Did ethics have any place in a world drowning under the weight of its own population? Would anyone find out that he bartered his skills to be on the first hibernation ship to leave Earth for another world? Did he care?

  He fingered the metal band of his own silver identity wristlet. It gave him access to better quarters and medical facilities. He had received an education, and he might even receive permission to breed one day, unlike the sterilized black-bands. He wanted more. The right to walk down a street, and not have to share that same space with another living soul.

  A communit buzzed, calling his attention back into his laboratory. He depressed a button on the console. The face of a fat, balding man flickered into view.

  “Wojuk, how long do you estimate your drones will take to hatch?” Director Greenley asked, wiping a sheen of sweat from his shiny pate.

  “Around a year. I base that on the longest normal gestation period of all the species used in this amalgam.” Sweat started under the collar of his white lab coat. Not from heat in his air-conditioned paradise, but from fear. Who else worked in similar fields of research? Had they made a breakthrough? Would he l
ose his place on the ship?

  “We don’t have a year. Speed it up. Do whatever.” The screen went blank.

  Gregor let his breath out in a hiss. The species he used, the genomes spliced together with so much care to create the greatest intelligence, and it came down to ‘Do whatever’. And if he didn’t, who else would, and steal his place? He plucked a hair from his dark brown thatch and fixed the root to a microscope slide. So, they wanted fast, did they? They wanted smart?

  Ian Greenley was only a silver band, too. Gregor wondered who controlled the controller. What price did Greenley pay for the power he wielded?

  Five minutes later, Gregor added human alleles to the beginnings of a new race. He sent a short current pulsing through haploid cells. His mouth curved up in a smile when he saw activity through the lens of his microscope. Aiming the comment at a now absent Greenley, he said, ‘Let there be life,’ and giggled at his own blasphemy.

  *

  “What do you mean, Dexter? The drones aren’t viable? What good are they if they can’t perpetuate themselves?” The fat, beringed hand banged down on a rare, real-wood desk. “Didn’t you read Wojuk’s data?”

  “His notes stopped short.” Just before you had him terminated, John Dexter thought but did not say. He wondered if Greenley had another geneticist waiting to take over from his research for a place on the first ship. How many of us vying for the same berth? How many prepared to step on dead men’s shoulders, like he had with Wojuk?

  “Fix it.”

  John saw his death in those black, pig-like eyes. He knew then what alleles he must use. The drones needed invertebrate characteristics to reproduce. They needed a queen. The solution wasn’t perfect, or natural, but who expected natural in a Harvester? He cast a guilty look at Greenley, aware that no-one was supposed to name the drone species before the Director decided on a handle. That was what everyone called them, though.

  *

  Ian Greenley cast one last look at his home-world from the screen of the moon shuttle. He hated it and all who lived there. Five of his Nestines remained out of a hatching of twenty. Five plus the queen egg. Not necessary, the Ruling Planetary Council said. No more hibernation ships. No-one trusts those. Look what happened on the Saturn mission. We will pour resources into underwater cities instead.

  Have you seen the first one? We’ve called it Avalon. No, we don’t need the Nestines for that project. Oh, we’re sorry, there isn’t room for you in Avalon. We need physicists and chemists there, so you do see that your skills are redundant. While we are on that subject, we would like a full report on the whereabouts of six prominent geneticists. Tomorrow will do fine.

  Greenly saw his mortality on their smug, soon to be safe faces.

  His Nestines had killed thirty humans to get him aboard this shuttle. Enough of them survived to pilot the craft, and it held a fresh cache of weapons. Humans on the moon base were about to learn who ruled. He wouldn’t kill them. The Nestines needed a source of fresh meat.

  How much stock did each of the five hibernation ships contain? Greenley needed an answer before he acted. Animal life and insects, plants and fungi, as well as human sleepers. All must be on hand to sustain the moon base. Then . . . Greenley giggled, imagining his finger pressing the button. Nuke the bastards. Nuke all of them. And in the beginning, there was one. He giggled again. Ian the Almighty. Ian the Most High.

  *

  Ur-ar paused on the threshold of the passenger cabin, listening. He sent his thoughts to the other four, so they also heard. Their minds merged while the human raved. Let the human do as he wishes until we are in control. Ur-ar must pacify and flatter the one we Nestines call Fat Food. Let the fresh meat build a gestation chamber for our Queen, and then . . . he shall be our hatching gift to her.

  *

  Golden light swirled, shifting in the breeze, a feeling of wind on skin. The skin of a body. Arthur opened his eyes to meet the black gaze of the cave-sitter across firelight. The same horror was reflected in those eyes. He wanted death. He wanted oblivion.

  “Now do you understand?” the former resident spirit of Archives asked.

  “How am I going to tell them?” Arthur tried to imagine how Terrans and Submariners might handle the horrendous truth that the Nestines were created by humans.

  “You don’t.” The cave-sitter held up one hand for silence when Arthur opened his mouth to argue. “Remember the lesson of leadership. A leader is he who would serve his people by protecting and guiding them. Protect them from a truth they are not mature enough to handle. Guide them into paths of safety, so that they may grow.”

  Arthur bowed his head to the wisdom of these words. Responsibility crushed down upon him.

  “Arthur, keep faith strong. You are very much like your original incarnation. He put others first, as you do.” A faint smile lifted the features of that old-young face. “Apart from hair color, you look similar too.”

  “What are you?” Arthur demanded, as the cave sitter’s cloak flew back in the sighing wind. Other sounds too started to return.

  “I suppose I could be eligible for the vacant Nestine mantle of deity,” the cave-sitter mused, staring deep into flames, flames that did not reflect on those matte-black eyes. “I wouldn’t make much of a god. I tried that once and became terribly bored with all the genuflecting and other forms of groveling. You’d be amazed how quickly worship palls and how close a watch on you all the devoted keep.” The cave-sitter yawned, a very human gesture. “I prefer the life of a traveler and probably always will.”

  “What are you?” Arthur asked again. The wind sounds grew louder, and he began to float back, pushed by it.

  “Think of me as Emrys,” the being he had known in other times as Merlin called, fading to a shadow. “I’ve always rather liked that handle.”

  “Arthur? Wake up.” Someone was shaking him. Arthur opened his eyes a fraction, trying to keep the dream, but it was gone in an instant.

  “Do you feel sick? You made some peculiar sounds.” Kai squatted down by his bunk.

  “Only a dream. I dreamed a dream of long ago, of places far away. Yet, it seemed in my dream to be now. I spoke with an old friend, or an old enemy. I’m still not sure which. I’m going to miss him.”

  “Maybe you’ll meet again,” Kai said, still looking concerned.

  “I hope not, and I rather think I’m going to revise an old religion, just so I can have someone to pray to that it never happens.” Yes . . . even he would appreciate the irony of that. And there would have to be intricate, ornate gestures . . . and groveling, lots and lots of groveling.

  Epilogue

  Earthrise stretched shadows over the dusty, pockmarked ground, lending a faint touch of indigo to the airless surface. Kiri Ung’s claws unsheathed the moment the black disc-shape of an incoming vessel appeared on his monitor, slicing through the tranquility like a bug heading for a fresh corpse.

  What had gone so wrong during the return flight to Moonbase? Commander Te Krull’s first report detailed a successful mission, despite resistance from the chosen targets. The Nestine patrol unit had captured an unbanded Terran without causing it physical damage.

  Te Krull knew how important it was to question one of the free-ranging creatures, and for that they needed a healthy specimen, one capable of anticipating pain. Kiri Ung’s crest pumped into full erection for the third time since receiving the last infuriating message. He waited for the buzz of the communit, willing it to spew out Te Krull’s voice. Nothing. Not a word since his second-in-command had sent out the urgent request for medical aid to meet the ship at docking bay. The captured Terran was hurt.

  This prey-beast must be both coherent and articulate, because Kiri Ung needed to see if the Terran would lie to him. If it did, he would know it had free will; crucial information for the safe farming of the Terran race on the planet. These creatures must not be immune to Nestine mind control.

  The ship approached Moonbase much too fast, and yet Te Krull would not disobey protocol without good
reason. Just how damaged was the captive? And how, in the name of all creation, had a group of Terrans managed to override their programming? They shouldn’t be able to see Nestine farmers, let alone attack them.

  A cold claw of fear ripped down Kiri Ung’s back, standing his fur on end. He turned to his desk console, sitting down to punch out a series of commands for the bot drones to start cleaning the outside of Moonbase as soon as the ship cleared docking port. Dust eroded every moving part, and Te Krull knew better than to leave a coating of dust when the ship bore no cargo but the captive.

  Kiri Ung ran his paw over the smooth leather surface of his favorite chair. So soft and always difficult to acquire, Terran skin was almost impossible to cure in large enough sheets. The Terran on that ship had better be able to communicate, or Te Krull would suffer. Unable to settle, Kiri Ung returned to the window port to watch the incoming ship. He wanted answers, and as Queen’s Mate, he was responsible for the continuance of healthy food for the hive. Had he missed some genetic abnormality emerging in the Terran herd? If so, a hard culling must be done.

  The ship deployed forward thrusters and angled up for a position over a landing platform out of his sight. Kiri Ung now contemplated the emerging blue planet, partially shrouded by clouds; so beautiful from space and yet ugly on the surface. The primitive, stench-filled dwellings of the Terrans marred the scenery, but worse, the vast quantity of bugs seemed to prefer the taste of Nestine over Terran. He didn’t envy Te Krull’s role as planetary governor, not compared to his own clean work-station on Moonbase. Gradually, his crest deflated because he didn’t want to confront his second-in-command with a threatening posture; that could wait. He picked up a soothing, intricately shaped crystal, enjoying the play of light on its many facets. Ironic that his most prized possession came from the first Terran a Nestine had ever eaten.