Physically he resembled all the others, eight feet tall and big-boned, his features incongruously delicate for that face, the size of a horse’s but with Cybele’s narrow nose and Cybele’s pert mouth and Cybele’s broad cheekbones. His skin was red, almost a brickish color—they tried to vary skin color, to make it easier to identify those destined for places other than the Archipelagian hydrofarms or Urisa mining colonies—and he had the same eerie eyes, the colors of pupil and iris reversed so that they had a truly demonic appearance. Not Cybele’s eyes; an energumen’s. A monster’s.
Kalaman opened those eyes now, where he lay beneath the wispy tendrils of the oneiric canopy. It was as though a pinpricked beam of light sliced through a black hole. The shining pupil grew larger, adapting to the bright room, until the iris disappeared and there were only those two staring orbs, dead white and fixed on the canopy overhead. He had come here to rest, to recover from the exertions of sending his thoughts and will across the Ether, to try to speak to those of his kind who lived in the other HORUS colonies. It was a skill the energumens had developed over the last few hundred years, and one which their masters did not clearly understand. A sort of telepathy, like that which exists between twins; but stronger, since when they employed this subtle telepathy, the cloned siblings were, in essence, only talking to themselves.
But now Kalaman was too exhausted to send his thoughts any farther than his own head. He raised one hand, shading his eyes from the glow of the canopy, and turned slightly until he could see across the room.
“Ratnayaka,” he whispered.
On the other side of the chamber Ratnayaka stirred. He had not heard Kalaman, precisely; instead he felt him, like the breath of a moth’s wing across his consciousness. He was identical to his sibling, except for the color of his skin, which was an ivory yellow, the color of a jaundiced eye; that and the fact that he really did possess a single jaundiced eye, the other having been replaced by a keek. After the successful rebellion on Helena Aulis he had pried the prosthetic orb from its socket. It still had not healed completely: the nearly atrophied eyelid hung in a limp fold of flesh, giving him a queasy look. And so Ratnayaka, who was vain (another anomaly; he too had been a member of Cluster 579) wore a patch over that eye, a neatly woven circle of red-and-gold silk tied about his sleek long head with a cord of braided hemp. Like Kalaman he had filed his upper front teeth into dull white V’s and stained his lower teeth red with madder-root, so that they disappeared when he opened his mouth. A line of thin gold rings hung from a series of tiny piercings in his brow. As he crossed the chamber to Kalaman, the rings made a nearly imperceptible tinkling.
“O, my brother,” Ratnayaka said softly. In a room full of energumens speaking, one would hear the same voice over and over—louder, softer, angry, laughing—an effect that had driven their masters to distraction, and which Kalaman had exploited when planning the revolt on Helena Aulis. “O Kalaman, I am here—”
Kalaman drew him close, his fingers playing with the rings dangling above Ratnayaka’s eye patch. “Ratnayaka, beloved: I have done as the Oracle bade me. I have called to our sisters on Quirinus. All but my sister Kalamat—she does not seem to hear me.” He frowned, let his hand move up and across his sibling’s forehead, to rub the coarse stubble on his skull. “We should go there soon, I think.”
Ratnayaka nodded. “Of course.” He had been thinking the same thing himself.
Quirinus was where the Ascendant Architects had lived, before they succumbed to the plague loosed by one of the Alliance’s human sympathizers. The energumens on Quirinus were among the last to join the Alliance. At least, Kalaman assumed they had aligned themselves with the rebels; what energumens would not? In the last few months he had spoken to many of his kind, through standard ’file transmissions and the more subtle forms of thought that left him drained and shaken. He had been surprised that there were so many of them: their human masters had done a good job of keeping their numbers a secret. And the Oracle claimed there were more of them than could be imagined down below, on the Element. Energumens and cacodemons, aardmen and argalæ and even men and women—the Oracle had promised Kalaman a place of honor among them all, a place of honor beside their father when Kalaman and his brothers returned to the Element.
And so he was anxious to leave Helena Aulis, the hollow metal torus that had been prison to him for the twenty months of his brief life. He and his brothers had no reason to continue to stay within the HORUS colonies. Their enemies were dead; any weaponry could be transported to the Element, to better serve the Alliance. To hasten their journey there, the Oracle had arranged for an elÿon to meet them a few days hence—a vessel called the Izanagi, whose adjutant had been easily subverted by the rebels on Totma 3. They had given the navigator enough of a neural supply to forestall his pre-programmed death by several weeks. Enough time, the Oracle had told them, to launch another round of assaults upon the Element. The elÿon would rendezvous at Quirinus. There Kalaman and his brothers would board it; and the others, their sisters. Kalaman had never seen a female energumen. At Quirinus he would finally meet the one they called Kalamat; the only one who, consciously or not, had not responded to his mental forays. He was anxious to leave the station, anxious that the others should know of the journey that awaited them.
“I will tell our brothers,” Kalaman said.
He closed his eyes. All about him the simulated wind stirred, the curlews cried and swept past on imaginary currents that could not warm him. Kalaman relaxed, tried to open his mind and heart to his brothers on Helena Aulis; but it was no use. The effort of calling to the other energumens across the void that yawned between this station and Quirinus had exhausted him. His heart had slowed, his hands and feet felt as though they were trapped in ice. He could die from these repeated efforts to cry out across the abyss—one of his brothers had died, just days after they had executed the last of the tyrants.
But Kalaman would not be so weak or careless. He had found the means to restore himself during the days when they held their Ascendant Masters hostage: he had learned about the harrowing. Later, when there were no more humans left alive, he discovered that the effects of the harrowing were even more intense when practiced upon his brothers. But that must be done with great care. A few of his brothers—Bili here on Helena Aulis, Castor and Mfwawi on Totma 3—had displayed the same flair for leadership that Kalaman possessed. It would not do for the Alliance to be destroyed by internecine fighting even before they joined their father and the Oracle. And, of course, harrowing his brothers meant that there would be fewer of them, though those few would be stronger than before, oh, much stronger.
The first had been Jhayash, injured during that final skirmish against the humans, when their masters had assaulted them with their last stores of protonic flares. He could not bear to watch Jhayash suffer and slowly die, could not bear to feel it; and so almost without thinking he had taken him, and afterward felt strong, so strong! and all his brothers with him.
He had heard of such things—it was well-known that the energumens of Advhi Sar had ritually dispatched their own kind, and there were many tales in the Archipelago of both human and energumen cannibals. But for Kalaman and his brothers, Jhayash had been the first. In the last months there had been others: all given to Kalaman, to keep him strong, to keep his clever mind alert and able. When he felt horribly wearied by his efforts at communicating with their sibs in the other stations, or exhausted by the hours linked to the stratboards, watching scenes of the destruction on the Element: then he would give himself over to the harrowing. At such times he had plucked a human hostage from the dwindling group in the prison bay. Later, when they were all dead, he had begun to choose carefully from among his brothers, and always he had invited his other siblings to share the harrowing with him. Afterward the survivors had grown stronger, their psychic link more intense. Kalaman had grown strongest of all, but he needed to: the Oracle had said he was to be a leader. Now, if he went for many days without a harrowing, a sick
ness came upon him, and so upon his brothers. And they could not weaken: not now, not when they were so close to closing the ranks of the Alliance.
Kalaman sighed, breathed deeply the salt-scented air. He should choose one now, before he grew too tired to make the summons. Ratnayaka was the nearest. Standing there beside him, his single eye was fixed upon his brother with a vigilance that resembled hunger as much as it did love. And Kalaman knew that hunger, real hunger, was as much a part of Ratnayaka as his scarred eye socket and the line of fine gold rings along his brow. If he was truly wise, Kalaman would choose Ratnayaka for the harrowing, and spare himself the confrontation he knew was to come.
But he could not do that, even if it meant that his brother would destroy him. At the thought Kalaman groaned softly, his great hand closing upon the toy-sized kris at his side. Ratnayaka was the one he loved best. He too had been born in Cluster 579 and had journeyed in that same crowded hold with Kalaman to HORUS. With Ratnayaka, there was little effort lost in speaking—their thoughts flowed together, a warmth running through Kalaman’s veins, a taste in his mouth like honey. He could not take Ratnayaka, not yet at least; but the notion warmed him so that he turned to his brother and smiled.
Ratnayaka, he beckoned him.
Ratnayaka gazed down upon his brother, tilting his head so that the gold-and-crimson patch above his cheek glowed like fine brocade. Yes?
Come to me.
Slowly Kalaman drew his brother onto his chest. He kissed him, let his open mouth fall upon Ratnayaka’s brow, probed the line of little gold rings with his tongue while his brother moved atop him. Then his hands grew rougher, clawing at Ratnayaka’s back even as the other’s hands raked his own. His teeth pierced the flesh on Ratnayaka’s shoulder—brutally, not with the razored softness of an animal’s teeth, but with enough force to cruelly bruise him. Blood spurted onto his lips and spread across Ratnayaka’s shoulder, marbling the smooth ivory skin with crimson and black. Still Ratnayaka made no sound. Kalaman’s will was stronger than his, was his, in a way that their Ascendant Masters had never understood—and that, of course, had been their undoing.
A minute passed, and Kalaman’s face grew rosy with his brother’s blood. His great long-fingered hands splayed across his brother’s chest, moved to brush his forehead and left the gold rings there hanging each with its ruby pendant. He was too tired; he needed another, now.
“Choose one,” he murmured.
Ratnayaka pushed up on his strong arms, so that he hung above his brother in his blood-spattered hammock. He closed his eyes, gently tugged his thoughts from Kalaman and let them wander the softly lit corridors and vast dark chambers of Helena Aulis until he found another there.
Sindhi.
Ratnayaka summoned him: an energumen with brick-colored skin like Kalaman’s, Kalaman’s eyes, Kalaman’s hands. And from where he slept, in the bedchamber that had belonged to the station’s Tertiary Architect, Sindhi answered: a thought that would have been a sigh if it had been given breath. A few minutes later he appeared in the doorway of the stim chamber, passing through the generated image of falling water and entering, miraculously untouched. Nearly invisible tendrils from the oneiric canopy descended to brush against his neck, a sensation like walking into a mist.
“Brothers,” Sindhi whispered. The tendrils sent their visionary fragments coursing through his brain. The impression of sunlight was so intense that he blinked, shading his eyes. He smiled as he stood and waited for Kalaman to welcome him. His bare feet left no impression upon the white sand he felt burning beneath his soles.
Come to me, Kalaman beckoned. Sindhi nodded and crossed to where Kalaman and Ratnayaka were tangled in the hammock. Without speaking, Kalaman slid from the fragile-seeming web. Ratnayaka followed, filaments from the canopy brushing against his face and chest and leaving a tracery of blood upon his arms. Kalaman embraced his brothers. The three of them sank to the floor, Sindhi between the other two.
Kalaman sighed, feeling Sindhi’s hands upon his thighs. It should not have been like this, with only the three of them savoring each other. He should have summoned all of his brothers, the seventeen of them who had survived the rebellion and then Kalaman’s depredations. One by one all the rest had been chosen, and shared, until only these few were left, much stronger than they had been before. But always Kalaman was the strongest, Kalaman was the first; Kalaman was the Chosen of the Oracle. It was an honor for Sindhi to have been summoned like this, a greater honor in a way since there were only three of them.
Kalaman drew away from the other two, his eyes narrowed, and after a moment Ratnayaka drew back as well. Sindhi knelt between his brothers with head bowed. For an instant, the shimmering impression of sand and lapping waves that surrounded them looked less solid, like a poorly transmitted ’file image; but then the likeness of a tropical beach grew strong once more, its heat and dampness seeping into their veins, though none of them cast a shadow. Sindhi laughed, his filed teeth flashing. His hair was very long and black, with a reddish, almost violet tinge. He wore it pulled through a small copper ring atop his skull. Ratnayaka sat behind him, nearly straddling him, and took the end of Sindhi’s hair and pulled gently until Sindhi’s neck arched. Beside them Kalaman watched. Without moving, he reached beneath the hammock, until his hand found the little raised panel there. His fingers brushed across the rows of tiny buttons, finally stopped when they touched one that felt more worn than the rest. He pressed it gently. A moment later a lenitive essence filled the air, an invisible mist that would stimulate neural centers in their minds to release a flood of opiates that would dull any pain. Kalaman took a few shallow breaths and focused on keeping the endorphins from clouding his will. Across from him Ratnayaka did the same. But Sindhi only shut his eyes. His blood traced a pulse point like a fluttering petal on his throat as he turned to Kalaman, his chin tilted so that the number of his birth-cluster could be seen tattooed there. Cluster 401: a brood whose members were as acquiescent as puppies.
“Thank you, O my brother,” Kalaman whispered as he leaned over Sindhi. With one hand he touched the kris within its worn leather sheath. Sindhi’s eyes fluttered open. He gazed up at Kalaman fearlessly and smiled.
“My brother,” he whispered, as Kalaman took his head between his huge hands. Kalaman drew Sindhi’s face toward him, as though he would hug it to his breast. Across from him Ratnayaka watched, his single eye slitted to an ebony tear.
Silently, Kalaman slid the kris from its scabbard. It was not the proper instrument for the harrowing. Its curved blade gave it an ungainly balance. But it would do; had done, many times before.
He held the kris up. It glowed turquoise, reflecting the false sea lapping nearby. Long ago there had been those among their Ascendant Masters who harrowed their own people as Kalaman had his brothers. The Oracle had told him about them. He had even shown Kalaman cinemafiles of their rites, simulated of course on film, but stirring nonetheless. Kalaman had been entranced: such magnificent people, with their stone pyramids and feathered capes! Since the insurrection Kalaman had read of them in talking books, and seen ’files of their artifacts, among them knives of turquoise stone, no clumsier than his sword. He pressed its tip against Sindhi’s skull, at the soft spot where maxilla and mandible joined beneath his temple. Sindhi grimaced as the point of the weapon punctured his skin. Sweat welled from the corners of his eyes, the ligaments of his face strained until they assumed the same grinning rictus they would show in death. Before fear could halt him, Kalaman drew the kris from jaw to jaw, slicing through Sindhi’s lips and cheeks and then running the blade across the back of his neck where Ratnayaka still held the hair in a taut black sheaf. Blood poured down Sindhi’s jaw, like the yolk from a cracked egg. More blood pattered to the floor, giving the lie to the sun-bleached sand. Kalaman set his hands upon the top of Sindhi’s skull.
“O my brother!” he cried, and felt Sindhi’s will yielding to his, a clear untrammeled ecstasy bubbling from beneath the pain. Kalaman tightened his grip, hi
s hands trembling from the effort, until he could feel the plates of Sindhi’s skull begin to separate between his fingers. And still Sindhi smiled at his brother, his lips drawn back now to show blood-filled gums above his filed teeth, his ebony eyes bulging. Across from him Kalaman could hear Ratnayaka’s calm breathing and smell the sandalwood essence he wore mingling with the smell of the sea, fainter now as the coppery scent of blood filled the air.
“Sindhi.”
Kalaman’s heavy eyelids fluttered shut for a moment as he whispered his brother’s name for the last time. Their Ascendant Masters would have done it differently. They would have invoked a god, gods—finned Chac-Xib-Chac with his ax, the gaping maw of Xibalba, and the jawless head of Tlaloc. But the energumens did not believe in gods. They were gods. Soon those upon the Element would learn to worship them.
The kris fell, clattering loudly on the tiled floor that lay beneath the hazy vision of golden sand. Kalaman drew his hands to his breast, blood flecking his face with deeper red. He could feel Ratnayaka watching him, that single eye like an awl boring through his forehead. Now! he thought.
Quickly, so that no pain would have the chance to pierce the shield of opiates and mindlessness slipping over the brother in his arms, Kalaman cracked Sindhi’s skull open. The plates of bone and skin he moved apart as though prying the meat from a nut.
And there it was, their jewel, pale gray and pink like a stony coral, and like a coral trembling ever so slightly, as though in an ocean current. It was surprisingly bloodless, striated here and there where Kalaman’s fingers left ruddy smears, but heavy, much heavier than the brains of their masters had been. He lifted it gently, another medusa tethered by medulla and vertebrae to its stony shadow, and let Sindhi’s lifeless body fall away.
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