Icarus Descending w-3

by Elizabeth Hand

  “Ye-es.”

  Hesitantly, I explained something of my history to them. My autism and the terrible price I had paid for its “cure”; my participation as a subject in the so-called Harrow Effect. Emma Harrow had been my teacher at HEL. She had reclaimed my mind from the shadow-world of autism. She had also made me into a monster, one of a battalion of children whose minds were manipulated for the Ascendant Autocracy’s own ends. I spoke of Dr. Harrow’s dream research, her work in deliberately inducing multiple personalities in children, and how I had been used as a neural conduit through which patients relived certain traumas in hopes of overcoming their effects. But I said nothing of the suicides I had provoked in my patients. Nor did I mention Dr. Harrow’s suicide, or the demonic image of the Boy in the Tree, the hypostate I had somehow been imprinted with during Dr. Harrow’s own forbidden experiments with me. I did not know if they would believe me. I remembered Justice’s dubious expression when I first told him how the Boy had come to me: a sinister occult figure thousands of years old, the living dream-image of Death that haunted my dreams and waking alike, and which seemed to want to use me as a channel for loosing some ancient darkness upon the City.

  But the Boy had fled me at the Engulfed Cathedral. I believed he was dead, if such a thing can die; or that he had returned to whatever infernal place had spawned him. I still did not understand that such dark gods do not die; that they only wait in the cold spaces between the stars, and take as hosts those beings, human or otherwise, who are careless enough to welcome them.

  If only I had told Giles and Trevor then what I knew! But I was afraid and weary with grief, and anxious to end my tale. When at last I finished, the room remained silent for some time. Miss Scarlet sighed deeply. Curled in a chair beside her, Jane bit her fingernails and frowned at the aardman. A cold draft cut through the heavy air. The fire snapped; more smoke filled the room. Giles stood, coughing. He adjusted the damper, then poured himself another brandy.

  Alone in his armchair, Trevor removed his enhancer and sat with his head tilted back. Set within the ruined hollows of his eyes, the two gleaming optics sent motes of blue flickering across the ceiling. He tapped the enhancer on the edge of his chair absently, his mouth set in a half-smile. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but there was something strange about that smile; something fanatical, almost demonic. I was grateful he had no human eyes. I don’t know if I could have borne gazing into them and seeing what fires lit his mind.

  In front of the hearth the aardman Fossa yawned, long pink tongue unfurling, and covered his mouth with one great misshapen hand. Giles finished his brandy and set the empty glass on a table. Turning to his partner, he said, “Margalis Tast’annin. The one she calls the Aviator. It must be the same man.”

  Trevor nodded, still silent. Fossa growled softly. The man leaned forward, replacing the enhancer and turning its blank gaze upon me.

  “Well. This is all very interesting. You see, I have also had some experience in HEL.”

  He laughed at my expression. “Oh yes! Other people besides you have escaped and lived to tell the tale. I was a neurosurgeon there for many years—their finest surgeon, if I may say so. As a matter of fact, I am quite familiar with what you refer to as the Harrow Effect. I was one of the researchers involved with the earliest stages of the project. This was many, many years before your time.”

  “But—how could you?” I stammered. Trevor shook a finger at me and smiled.

  “The world is smaller than you think, Wendy. Over the centuries so many people have died, and those of us who remain—well, if you achieve a certain level of proficiency, a certain radiance, if you will—why then, you will meet the others like yourself. Everything that rises must converge.”

  He paused, his mouth twitching into an odd smile. “Oh, yes, I knew all about your project. Even before Emma Harrow and the other NASNA people were brought into it. I had left the facility, but they recalled me, to help screen possible subjects during the selection process. Then Emma and I had a falling out over her methodology.

  “Good god! They were sending janissaries into the wilderness searching for likely children to kidnap. Buying them from prostitutes in the capital. Dragging infants from their mothers, dragging the mothers along too, when they could.” He scowled, and I sank a little deeper into my chair. “Like with the geneslaves—this horrible notion that everything in the world exists solely for the Autocracy’s pleasure. People and animals mere toys for them to take apart and reassemble at will! I’ve never gotten used to their research methods, and I’m too old now to change my ideas about things like that. I prefer trying to reverse the surgical efforts of the Ascendancy, or working with the brains of those who are peacefully deceased. So I— retired, for good—and returned here. My family home: over six hundred years worth of Mallorys have lived at Seven Chimneys.”

  I shook my head. “But—that’s incredible! When were you at HEL?”

  “A long time ago. Before you were born. I met Giles shortly after I left.”

  “They let you go?”

  Trevor smiled grimly. “Oh, they weren’t very happy about it. Researchers for the Autocracy are like military personnel; one doesn’t just quit.”

  “They were afraid of him,” Giles broke in. “They didn’t dare try to make him stay—”

  I glanced over at Jane and Miss Scarlet. The chimpanzee had crawled from her chair and into her old Keeper’s lap, and huddled there in her tartan like a child’s toy. “Why—why were they afraid of you?” she asked.

  Trevor smiled at the quaver in Miss Scarlet’s voice. “I daresay some people were afraid of your friend Wendy here when she left,” he said lightly. As he turned toward me, a cobalt gleam escaped from beneath his enhancer’s silvery rim. It gave him the look of some ancient cycladic statue, with his eyeless face and smooth skin. “But I held a certain amount of—well, you might call it seniority—and I had contacts with the Prime Ascendancy in Wichita, and the peons at HEL didn’t really want to cross them. And you know, of course, that there was trouble at HEL—?”

  I shrugged uneasily. “I knew the Ascendants took over for Dr. Harrow.”

  “That’s right—but not for very long. The NASNA force brought geneslaves with them—some energumens, the usual contingent of sexslaves and aardmen. This started rumors at the facility, that the energumens were going to be used instead of human subjects, and that the remaining human subjects would be killed. The energumens rioted. Several empaths and even some of the staff fled, but many of them sided with the geneslaves. They were all executed when Ascendant troops were called in. Only a skeleton staff remains there now, under protection of a janissary guard.

  “But you understand, this is merely a single indicator of the changes that are happening everywhere now. There have been other rebellions, in other facilities around the world. The Ascendants are losing control of their territories. Those who remain at places like the Human Engineering Laboratory are desperate to keep some semblance of order. At HEL I know they work to redeem the work begun by Emma Harrow and her associates.”

  He fell silent. A brooding expression clouded his face. I leaned back, stunned. Energumens and geneslaves at HEL? I remembered my friend Anna, one of the other empaths who had fled into the City with Gligor and Dr. Silverthorn. Had she known of this rebellion? Is that why she had risked leaving HEL? I shifted in my chair and pulled my blanket close to me. The room was starting to take on the contours of a place in a nightmare. The backdrop of smoke and leaping flames; Trevor’s impassive face beneath its enhancer; the faces of my friends pinched with exhaustion. There was a strange dreamlike clarity to all of this; and to Giles’s peculiar calm, and the snow beating relentlessly at the windows, and Fossa crouched on his haunches like the effigy of some half-human god.

  Miss Scarlet broke the silence, turning to Trevor and smiling anxiously. “And so you retired from medicine and started an inn,” she exclaimed. “How nice!”

  Trevor looked surprised, then nodded. “
Well, er, yes. Of course, that’s exactly what I did.”

  Giles gazed fondly at his partner. “This place has been an inn forever,” he said. “It’s almost as though the Mallorys just pass through so there’ll be someone to keep it company. Sometimes I think the house would go on even if we weren’t here to mind things.”

  “But who comes here?” Jane shook her head, pointing at the fireplace, the ancient but well-kept video monitor, the chairs and tables beneath their linen shrouds. “It just—well, it all seems out of place. You can’t get much traffic—even in the City we seldom saw visitors.”

  Giles shrugged, but his mouth seemed drawn as he replied, “Oh, you would be surprised. Ascendants pass through here more often than you’d think—business with HEL, and there was some trade with the City.”

  “Those soldiers, then,” said Jane. “The ones we saw as we were leaving the City. Did they—did they come from here?”

  Trevor shook his head. “We don’t accommodate troops. Commanders stay here. Special Agents, Imperators. Ascendant Governors, if they have the need to.”

  I shuddered. Had we walked into a trap, then—a house whose owners were in collusion with the very people we were trying to flee? Ascendant Governors. Commanders…

  People like the Mad Aviator.

  But then why had Trevor told us about the geneslave rebellion at HEL? If Trevor and Giles didn’t share our terror of the Ascendants, neither did they show any support for them. Trevor had worked at HEL, but he had disapproved of its methods and left. And I couldn’t believe that a Paphian—particularly a Saint-Alaban—would ever be in collusion with the Ascendants.

  And then I remembered rumors I had heard about the Mad Aviator. It was my first day in the City of Trees. Justice and I were at the house of Lalagé Saint-Alaban; he was begging her for gossip, any news of what had befallen those in the City while he had been an Aide at HEL—

  “There was trouble, Justice. A new Governor was sent here — but the Governors will never hear from him again… .”

  That Governor had been Tast’annin. The Curators had learned of his coming, somehow, and had been ready to betray him when he arrived in the City. Who told them? I glanced at Giles, who leaned against the mantel with arms crossed, a thoughtful expression on his amiable face. Then I looked aside at Trevor Mallory, whose family had owned this inn for centuries. I’d seen nothing else standing between here and the City of Trees. Where else would Tast’annin have stayed?

  I swallowed, my mouth dry. The thought that they had betrayed him was more unsettling than the notion that they had not. You would have to be very brave, or very powerful, to set yourself against the Ascendant Autocracy. You would have to be insane to go up against Margalis Tast’annin. I took a long sip from my brandy and stared at the floor.

  “You knew Tast’annin,” I said at last.

  Giles grimaced, baring his teeth like an animal. “It will be the best news we’ve had in a year if we knew him—if he’s really dead, as you say.” He glanced admiringly at Jane, who blushed and looked away.

  “He’s dead,” Miss Scarlet said firmly. “Jane has a very good eye.”

  I recalled the frequency with which Jane’s pistol misfired but refrained from commenting. “You said janissaries pass through here? On their way to the City?”

  Our hosts exchanged a look. Fossa arched his long spine and straightened into the half-crouch that aardmen favor over standing upright. After a long moment Trevor admitted, “Yes. There was a satellite-tracking station near here once, two hundred years ago. It’s gone now but the road’s still there. There were underground bunkers as well, with enough room to house fifty or sixty Aviators. The Ascendants still utilize them sometimes, for training missions.”

  “Or for planning an attack on the City of Trees,” said Jane.

  Giles nodded.

  “And the commanders—they stay here?” My voice sounded accusing.

  Trevor shrugged. “We need to supplement what we can grow here for ourselves,” he said coolly, “What other traffic is there, these days? Once or twice a year they come through, give us enough in trade or currency—”

  “And news,” cut in Giles.

  “And news—enough to keep us going until the next time. For the rest, we trade with the towns to the west—”

  “There are towns out here?” Now it was Miss Scarlet who interrupted, but Jane and I were no less amazed.

  “Of course!” Giles laughed. “Did you think the world ended at the edge of your City?”

  From Miss Scarlet’s expression it was clear that was exactly what she believed. I sat in embarrassed silence, but Jane said curtly, “Well, where does it end, then?”

  Trevor looked from Jane to me, eyebrows raised, as if waiting for a joke to be revealed. Finally he said, “Well, it doesn’t. If you mean, Where do the people stop living —well, there are three settlements within a week’s travel from here. Less, if you can get your hands on an autovehicle or aviette.”

  “People,” Miss Scarlet murmured, her black eyes huge. “I had no idea.”

  “Sperryville and Luray and Cassandra,” said Giles. “There’s more, too, the farther west you go. In the mountains,” he added. “Very strange, those mountains. In Cassandra they live in caves.”

  Jane sat up. “Caves! I’d like to see that.”

  A low rumble escaped from Fossa. His amber eyes narrowed and for an instant he looked less canine, his mouth drawn into a grin. Then it passed, and his features settled back into their accustomed grimace.

  “Not me,” shuddered Miss Scarlet. “We did Macbeth once, set in a sort of cave. It made me quite ill.”

  “Cassandra,” I repeated. I frowned and looked at Miss Scarlet, who shook her head.

  “I’m afraid it means nothing to me,” she said.

  “Never heard of it,” said Jane.

  Trevor stood and crossed to the fireplace. He rested his hands on the mantel and absently took one of those odd globes into his hands, caressing it as though he weighed its worth. Only when he turned back to us did I see that what he held was a human skull. On the shelf behind him its fellows stared with gaping eye sockets, as though suddenly betrayed. I was so startled that I spilled my drink.

  “The town of Cassandra once housed a research facility,” Trevor pronounced in a deep voice, as though delivering a lecture. “Quite similar to HEL, as a matter of fact, but a much older compound, nestled out there in the mountains. Far enough from the capital that they could carry on their work without fear of contaminating the City’s population, but near enough to be considered part of the whole military-biological complex.”

  “What—what did they do?” I stammered.

  “Geneslaves. Cassandra was the first facility in North America to carry out bioengineering on a huge scale—for the purpose of pure research, I mean, not merely as a commercial or military venture. Some of the effects created there have never been duplicated.”

  As he spoke, the aardman began to make a low noise deep in its throat. The flesh curled back from its mouth, showing sharp white teeth and blackish gums.

  “Burdock,” he snarled.

  Giles snapped something, a phrase I didn’t catch, and Fossa grew silent.

  Trevor nodded. The firelight sliced through the crook of his arm to touch with dark gold the hollow eyes of the skull he cradled. “It was the home of Luther Burdock. His compound was there, near the caverns.”

  He paused, as though waiting for me to show some recognition of the name. Outside, the storm sent branches scraping at the windows, and I could hear the wind screeching like a wild thing trapped in the chimney. I tore my gaze from Trevor’s face and shrugged.

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  He turned to Miss Scarlet. “And you?” he asked softly. “Does the name mean nothing to you, Miss Scarlet?”

  When I glanced at her, I gasped. The chimpanzee had reared up in Jane’s lap, her lips drawn back in a snarl. Her mane of stiff hair stood straight up, and even from where I sat, I co
uld catch the ammoniac scent of her fear.

  “Luther Burdock!” she hissed. Her long fingers flew to her throat and temples, clutching at the thick fur. Beneath the dark hair was a series of raised scars, where long ago Ascendant researchers at the Zoo had performed the experiments that left her with human speech and thought, but imprisoned within the body of a monkey. “His ’files, they made us watch his ’files—”

  Her voice trailed off into wordless chatter. Fossa cocked his head and whined softly, and Jane hugged the chimpanzee close to her.

  “Who is he?” I demanded. “Scarlet, tell me!”

  Miss Scarlet shuddered, saying nothing, but Trevor nodded. “Geneslaves,” he said. He held the skull out at arm’s length, eyeing it critically as he added in a matter-of-fact tone, “They all know of him, somehow. Either they have seen ’files of him, or heard his name, or—”

  I started to demand a better explanation than this, when Giles broke in smoothly.

  “Perhaps this isn’t the time, Trevor. Perhaps we should show our guests to their rooms. I’ll start dinner.”

  “No!” I said. “I think you should tell us—”

  But Giles and Trevor had already started for the door.

  “I’d like my clothes,” Jane called after them, her face pinched. “ And my weapon.”

  “Of course, of course.” Giles paused beside his partner and took the skull from Trevor’s hand. “Marlena Hawksbill?” he asked, placing it back upon the mantel with its fellows.

  “Sextus Burchard, I think,” said Trevor. In her little chair Miss Scarlet pulled the tartan more closely around her frail shoulders. Her rage had faded; once more she looked like some Ascendant child’s toy. I bit my lip, feeling an agony of sullen anger and dismay. I longed fiercely for those powers I had lost, the rage and strength that might have protected us, gone now, all gone….

  “Come.” Giles walked to the door and paused, waiting for us. Jane stood and wrapped herself in her blanket like a cape, sweeping from the room with her head in the air. Miss Scarlet followed her more cautiously, almost fearfully. As she passed where he crouched upon the floor, the aardman Fossa stood. He stared down at Miss Scarlet with intelligent wolvish eyes. She stopped to stare back up at him. He was three times her size, graceless where she moved with the elegance of a courtesan; and yet—