Icarus Descending w-3

by Elizabeth Hand

  Kalaman shook his head. “No,” he said softly. His voice sounded distant, as though a ’file of Kalaman spoke there, and not the energumen himself. “That is a thing that belongs here—”

  He turned and gestured at the tiny silvery image of Helena Aulis, already smaller and fainter than it had been, a star’s sad shadow in the void. “—To that life. But this will be a very different thing—”

  Kalaman frowned, then let his breath out in a long sigh. Beside him Ratnayaka dipped his head, so that his brother would not see his mouth curling with disdain. His hand tightened about Kalaman’s thigh, slid up and beneath the short skirt of coarse linen, to stroke the muscles there, the smooth curve where Kalaman’s leg cupped into his groin. Kalaman groaned, moved as though he would embrace his brother. Something cold and smooth licked at Ratnayaka’s throat.

  “Patience, oh, my brother,” whispered Kalaman. He moved the kris so that its curved blade slid down Ratnayaka’s chest, dragged it gently across his abdomen until it lifted the edge of his brother’s skirt. “You will have me soon enough.”

  As he stared at his brother, Kalaman’s eyes glinted black and fathomless. But Ratnayaka only laughed, threw his head back and laughed until the other energumens turned, their gaze flickering uneasily between their two leaders.

  “Oh, yes,” Ratnayaka said, the hunger racing inside him like some small razor-toothed creature seeking to burst out. He brushed away the kris’s blade as though it had been a toy. “Oh, I will, my brother Kalaman. I will have you, soon enough.”

  In the empty docking chamber of Quirinus, I turned to my companions and said, “We have been betrayed.”

  Valeska Novus stared at me, her eyes betraying no emotion. “Imperator?”

  “Who has betrayed us, Margalis?” asked Nefertity.

  “I do not know, I do not know.” I pounded my hand against the wall. My human hand—when I let it slide from the tiles, a shimmer of pale fluid remained. “Agent Shi Pei, someone who saw us boarding the Izanagi; perhaps Lascar Franschii. All I know is that we have been betrayed, and my mission has been thwarted.”

  Captain Novus shook her head. “Surely not, Imperator—”

  “Yes!” I exploded. “It is worse, far worse than I or anyone else can possibly have imagined. The other memory unit has been found. The members of this geneslave rebellion are receiving their orders from the Military Tactical Targets Retrieval Network—”

  “Your nemosyne!” cried Captain Novus.

  Nefertity’s voice was nearly inaudible. “Metatron.”

  I nodded. “He knows we are here. He contacted me in the Izanagi’s library; he intends to take me prisoner. It was he who brought about the destruction of NASNA Prime and the other HORUS colonies. Now he has ordered his geneslave troops to attack Cisneros, and he plans strikes against other Ascendant targets—against every military target in his database.”

  I fell silent, then finally ended, “The damage wrought by this so-called Alliance is far greater than I dreamed; greater perhaps than any holocaust wrought by mankind since the First Shining.”

  “But why?” Nefertity asked softly. “Why— how— could another nemosyne do such a thing?”

  “I believe that Metatron intends to destroy all humanity, and set up the energumens and other geneslaves in its place. As to how a nemosyne could do such a thing, independently, with no human commanding it—”

  My voice trailed off, and I stared at the scuffed floor beneath my boots. “I do not know.”

  At mention of Cisneros, Valeska Novus had paled. Now she grabbed me. “We should reboard the Izanagi, Imperator! If this is a trap, we must get you—”

  My metal hand closed about hers and she winced. “Oh, I think we will be back on the Izanagi soon enough, Captain Novus,” I said. “It will be the quickest transport available to them, if he truly intends to return me to Earth.”

  “What of me, Tast’annin?” Nefertity’s ringing voice held no fear within it. In the softly lit expanse of the docking chamber, she burned like the blue heart of a flame. “I would not be used as a tool for slaughter. I think you should dismantle me. At the least put me in my dormant mode.”

  I stepped toward a wide archway that opened into a broad corridor lit with golden sunlamps. She was right. It would be simple for the other nemosyne to alter her program, or even to interface with her and make Nefertity nothing more than an adjunct of Metatron. But it also might be possible to use her somehow to crack Metatron’s governance code. And that might be our only chance of disabling the Alliance.

  “No,” I said at last. “You may be able to help us, if and when we are brought before him.”

  “But who found this other nemosyne? Who has programmed it to do this?” blurted Valeska Novus.

  “I don’t know. But my guess is that it was someone who had no real idea what they were doing. Even the crudest and most mendacious of the Autocracy would not have ordered the systematized destruction of the entire human race.”

  “You seem quite disturbed by all this,” said Nefertity, her words tinged with slight malice. “I had thought such emotions beyond the Aviator Imperator of the Ascendant Autocracy.”

  “I will choose whom I will serve, Madame Nemosyne. I am not a puppet or any man’s slave—any thing’s slave—and if this Metatron thinks so, he will learn otherwise. Captain Novus, please arm yourself.”

  “Yes, Imperator,” Valeska Novus said, slipping her gun from its holster and glancing at me admiringly. An instant later her expression turned grim, as the sound of footsteps echoed toward us from the corridor.

  “Captain Novus, you will defend myself and this nemosyne at any cost—you understand?”

  She nodded, her dark eyes slitted as she went into a half-crouch in front of us. “Of course, Imperator,” she said, and we waited to greet our hosts.

  An announcement came over the Quirinus voicenet telling us of the arrival of the elÿon.

  “O sister Kalamat, they are here! Do you think our father is with them?”

  I turned from my sister Hylas in ill-disguised impatience. “Of course not. That ’file transmission was from the Element. And these are—I don’t know who they are. Probably there is no one aboard but the adjutant. But I think you should go now— all of you—go to your chambers and wait for me to call you.”

  Hylas and the others who had come up behind her looked disappointed, but they knew I would brook no argument. They had few belongings, so there would be little to pack for our voyage. They had only, then, to wait.

  “Go,” I said. I started for the door that led to the docking area. “We cannot assemble for departure until our brothers have arrived from Helena Aulis. And I wish to speak with their leader, this Kalaman, before we do so. I will call you when we are ready to board the elÿon.” As one, my sisters bowed their heads, hands crossed upon their chests, and left.

  As I hurried down the hallway, a new announcement came over the voicenet, informing me that unauthorized personnel had entered Quirinus.

  “An Aviator and two nonviable constructs,” the net’s ethereal voice chimed. “None have received clearance to leave the docking area.”

  My heart beat faster at the words nonviable constructs. Would this be the Oracle Metatron, somehow spirited from the Element to engage us in his battle plan? Too late I wished that I had brought a weapon. I turned the last corner, blinking at the unaccustomed brilliance of the sunlamps, and saw them silhouetted in the corridor.

  There were three of them. After so many weeks without human personnel on board, they looked absurdly small to me, although only one of them was actually human—a woman, slight even by human standards and wearing the crimson-and-black dress leathers of an Ascendant Aviator. She knelt before the other two and trained a protonic gun on me.

  “I am not armed,” I said, and stopped. “Name yourselves.”

  Despite my cold tone I gazed down at them fearfully. Because surely here was the Oracle and another like it, come to wrest us from Quirinus and thrust us into the gen
ewars below.

  Behind the kneeling woman stood two constructs. One was a replicant in the form of a man cast in crimson metal and plasteel, wearing an Aviator’s leather uniform and upon its breast the sigils of an Ascendant Imperator—the Aviators’ blighted moon and the Autocracy’s malevolent Eye of HORUS. And beside this crimson figure was another, as like to the Oracle as my sisters and I are to each other.

  Only this oracle was silver and cobalt where Metatron was limned in violet and black, and in the likeness of a woman. But it was far more beautiful than any human woman, or even an energumen, because of the exquisite symmetry of its form and face, the shining array of lights that coursed up and down and around its crystalline body, silver and blue and gold and green, and its eyes: the purest jadeite shot with gold.

  “Who—who are you?” I said, my voice catching.

  The woman of glass and steel stepped forward, and as she did so, the kneeling Aviator clicked the safety on her weapon. “Greetings, sister,” the replicant called in a low, clear voice. She raised her arms slowly, a motion that had nothing human in it at all, and rippling light fell like water from her hands. From within her breast I could hear a faint whirring as of hidden and subtle engines. “I am the United Provinces Recorded History project, copyright 2109, Registered Nemosyne Unit number 45: NFRTI, the National Feminist Recorded Technical Index, or Nefertity.”

  She paused. Behind her the female aviator shifted slightly, and took her eyes from me long enough to look at the replicant in surprise.

  The woman of glass continued, “Greetings, good child. Hello, daughter of the suffering Earth. I greet you, whoever you are.”

  I gasped. She spoke of the Mysteries of Lysis, the words of the Great Mother in that hymn we call the “Latria Matrix.” I dropped to my knees in amazement. The Aviator started, swinging her weapon, but the glittering construct called Nefertity stopped her.

  “Who are you ?” she asked softly.

  “I am the energumen called Kalamat. Are you—are you an emissary from the Asterine Alliance?”

  Nefertity glanced at the ominously silent replicant behind her. She shook her head. “No. We have no formal affiliation with anyone. We disembarked from Cisneros several days ago on the elÿon Izanagi, in search of another nemosyne, the military unit called Metatron. We thought it might be on Quirinus.”

  “No, Mother,” I said, relief making me unwary and perhaps overbold. “He is not here—he is with our father, Dr. Luther Burdock, awaiting us upon the Element. But if you are looking for him, are you members of the Asterine Alliance?”

  I frowned. I thought this would be very strange, if Ascendant Aviators had joined with the rebels.

  “No.” The crimson figure behind Nefertity spoke for the first time. He had a man’s voice, a commanding voice, but so cold and wretched, it might have been summoned from a corpse. “We are members of no Alliance nor do we answer to the Autocracy.”

  “That is good,” I said, “because the Autocracy has fallen.”

  The figure looked at me. I shuddered a little then, for though he had been modeled after a man and was smaller than I by a foot, his eyes like his voice were deathly cold. Human eyes, which I had never known a construct to have, the palest blue I had ever seen and the cruelest, too. “I gather you have aided in its defeat, Kalamat,” he said. “Are there any human survivors on Quirinus?”

  “None,” I replied. I returned his gaze boldly despite my fears, and added, “And no Master died here from any act of Kalamat’s, nor any of my sister’s. But I would know your name, and your pilot’s”—I tipped my chin toward the kneeling woman, who still clutched her weapon and watched me with grim intent—“and what business you have here.”

  The replicant shook his head. “My nemosyne told you: we are searching for Metatron. I had reason to believe he was brought here during a previous Ascension. I have since learned I was wrong. As for who I am—”

  His voice rose to a roar that sent the sunlamps blinking their warning beacon. “ I am the Aviator Imperator Margalis Tast’annin.”

  “Margalis Tast’annin!” I said in amazement. Of course I had heard of him—even the Architects, the chief-ranking members of the Autocracy, had spoken of Margalis Tast’annin with fear. He was the Ascendants’ greatest warrior, the most famous Aviator since Ciarin Jhabvilos, but he was rumored to be mad; at least he had done things in battle that no sane man would ever do.

  “Margalis Tast’annin!” I repeated, marveling. But then I frowned as I gazed at that chiseled metal face, the corpus of molded metal that was neither body armor nor uniform. “But what have they done to you? Because surely you are not a man?”

  Tast’annin bared his metal teeth in a grimace. “No, I am not a man, Kalamat. I am a rasa. Do you know what that is? A regenerated corpse. But my Ascendant Masters proved to have less of a will in my creation than I myself; and so I do not answer to them any longer. If I am no longer a man, still I am not less than a man.”

  I regarded the crimson-and-black leathers that he wore over his reconstructed body, the insignia of the blighted moon that shone upon his breast. “But are you still an Aviator, then? Can you be an Aviator and not serve the Autocracy?”

  At this the woman kneeling before him lowered her weapon and looked up with great interest. Tast’annin laughed harshly, swiping at the air with one hand; and I saw that was all that remained of his humanity—those bleached dead eyes and that hand, its skin a sulfurous yellow and mottled with bruises. A corpse’s hand. I shuddered, thinking of the rotted shell that had gone into making him. The Aviator Imperator cried, “Not an Aviator, then! Call me something else—rebel angel, rebel corpse, traitor—or no!—

  “Call me this. Call me Sky Pilot. That is a name I have answered to before.”

  At this outburst his aide blanched and quickly returned her attention to me. I shook my head. “No, Imperator. Kalamat will call you Tast’annin. And this one—?” I pointed at the kneeling warrior.

  “She is Captain Valeska Novus, Pilot Second Class.”

  “Very well. Will you ask Captain Novus to retire her weapon? As I told you, I am unarmed. Though if I had wanted to, I could have summoned my sisters here minutes ago. You might have withstood them for a little while; but not long, I think. And my brothers who are arriving now—I do not think you could withstand them at all.”

  At that Tast’annin smiled coldly, looking up at me with those orphaned eyes. “That is why she will keep her weapon where it is. Tell me, Mistress Kalamat—your Ascendant Masters, the Architects of Quirinus—what became of them?”

  “They died of a plague brought aboard by a human spy, a delator from the Asterine Alliance. We did not kill them. We did not even know of the existence of these rebels, until after many of our Masters had died.”

  “Did you try to save them?”

  I shrugged. “There was nothing to be done for them. The delator died as well. We performed our own rites for them and gave their bodies to the Ether—you may have seen them as you docked.”

  A glimmer of unease passed across Captain Novus’s face. She glanced back at Tast’annin, who stared at her for a long moment before saying curtly, “Put away your gun, Captain. For now, at least.”

  With the weapon gone I felt emboldened. I turned to the replicant Nefertity and asked, “But you, Mother—what are you doing here?”

  She looked at me with those lovely clear eyes. “I was commandeered by the Imperator,” she said. “Against my will, to help him find my brother nemosyne Metatron. Since my awakening I have seen little to endear humanity to me—indeed, I have seen almost nothing but cruelty.

  “But if what Tast’annin has told us is true, and your Alliance has declared war upon mankind and intends their destruction, I want no part of that either. I was programmed by Sister Loretta Riding, a member of the Order of Divine Compassion, a pacifist and freedom fighter before the recusants drove her into hiding hundreds of years ago. My allegiance is not to Ascendants or rebels but to womankind, and so to humanity. I
will not aid in its extermination.”

  “What of us, then?” I asked, my voice rising. “Do you support our enslavement by human Tyrants?”

  “No, but neither will I support a world ruled by energumen Tyrants,” she replied coolly.

  I nodded. Overhead the lights dimmed momentarily. From the voicenet came a soft but urgent announcement.

  “Three ancillary craft bearing the designation Helena Aulis have entered the docking area without formal clearance.”

  Captain Novus looked around anxiously, her hand at her weapon.

  “Those are our brothers from Helena Aulis,” I said. I crossed to where a small monitor was recessed into the wall and switched it on. Blurry images of the three aviettes appeared on the screen. After a moment I switched it off again and turned to the others. “On Helena Aulis there was a violent rebellion. All human Masters were slain and many of them tortured. I did not support this or even know of it; I am merely informing you of what happened. The surviving energumens have contacted my sisters and told them of their union with the Asterine Alliance. Now these rebels are here. With them, we will be transported to the Element via your elÿon.

  “Their leader, my brother Kalaman, says that the Oracle has told them they will breed with us. Our lives will no longer be governed by an Ascendant clock. We will be as humans; we will live and reproduce as humans do. But” —my voice rose angrily as I continued—“this thing called Metatron, the Oracle you call a nemosyne—it is a chary freedom he offers. He brings us to the Element only to draft us into battle. You know that our lives are short: a thousand days, less than three solar years. Mine is nearly ended, but I would not have it end in battle.

  “And I am the only one of my sisters who fears this Metatron. I think he intends to betray us. At any rate, I do not believe in exchanging one form of tyranny for another.”

  Captain Novus stared at me dubiously. “How can you breed? None of the energumens—”

  “What of the rest?” broke in Tast’annin. “The others here on Quirinus?”

  I bowed my head. “They will do as Metatron bids them. They believe it is the will of our father.”