by Matt Forbeck
Samuel ended there and let silence fall over the room. He gave the ambassadors time to contemplate his words, to consider them and the course of action they demanded.
For a long while, no one spoke. This unnerved the monk, for he knew that most times these men jockeyed for the chance to make themselves heard, to trump their fellows in timing if not substance.
The silence stretched on longer. Then the man from Bauhaus spoke in his lilting accent.
“Asinine. You begged an audience with this council. You claimed to have knowledge of these mutants. And you tell us fairy tales.”
The man glanced around at the others as he spoke, and their righteous nods gave him their tacit assent. Emboldened, the Cog put his fist down on the table and made a final pronouncement.
“There is only one way to fight an enemy: with blood and iron.”
11
Although Corporal Paul Lamb had never left the planet of his birth, he had fought battles on nearly every part of Earth. He’d never been in one like this.
The transport that had brought him here, from the home to which he’d supposedly retired from conflicts like this, had passed over the region where all of this had reportedly started. He’d peered out through the tiny window in the side of the plane and spied thousands of the so-called mutants streaming like ants out of the ancient plain that had now become a crater.
A fighter had nearly collided with the plane as it strafed the mutants, and then it came back for another pass. The bullets had almost no effect. They mowed down a line of the creatures as the fighter passed over them, but an instant later the open space disappeared as the survivors filled the gap.
Just thinking about it as he stood here in these trenches, which smelled of newly moved dirt, made him sick.
“You all right, mate?” a man next to him said in an Imperial accent much like Paul’s own. The tag embroidered on his uniform’s shirt said OLSSON.
Paul looked up past the man at the brilliant skyline of the city they’d been ordered to defend. He couldn’t understand what hope they might have. If the enemy had made it this far from that damned hill, how could they be stopped here?
Paul just shook his head. He didn’t feel like talking much.
“None of us are,” the man on the other side of him said. His voice carried a strong Mishiman accent. His tag said ISHIMORI. “Last month, I was in a war along the coast of Africa. We fought against the Imperials there. Over farming rights.”
Ishimori stared at Olsson. “I might have been shooting at you.”
“Or vice versa,” Olsson said.
Paul nodded. Glancing down the trench, he could see patches on the shoulders of every soldier, declaring from which corporation he’d been seconded. Imperial, Mishima, Bauhaus, Capitol—they were all here.
“It’s not natural,” Ishimori said, looking up at the dark, storm-tossed sky. “We should be fighting against each other, not with each other.”
“It’s the way of things,” a dark-skinned Capitol soldier named Watts said. He stood tall and broad-shouldered, his head shaved entirely clean. He toted his M606 machine gun over his shoulder like it was made of plastic rather than cold steel. He had the way of a veteran about him, and Paul instantly felt a kinship with him.
“How do you mean?” This came from a Bauhaus soldier by the name of Emmert.
“Think about it,” Watts said. “We’re like one big family here. Humanity, I mean. We fight like hell with each other every chance we get. Sometimes over the stupidest fucking things.”
The large man paused to unlimber his weapon and place it butt-first on the fresh earth.
“But if someone from outside the family tries to fuck with us?”
Paul nodded, as did the others.
“We are all right there for each other,” Emmert said.
“We bond,” Ishimori said. “Become a team.”
Olsson chuckled at that. Paul started to ask him what was so damn funny, but a flight of bombers roaring overhead cut him off. Once the planes had passed, he tried again.
“It’s not funny at all,” Olsson said, a wry grin on his face. “It’s just—think about it. If we weren’t here as a team, what would we be doing instead? Killing each other straight off.”
“Once this is over, don’t you think we’ll go right back to that?” Emmert said. He stared at the others with his bright blue eyes and then at the twisted series of open tunnels around them. “I wonder if we’ll get orders to turn on each other before we leave these trenches or after.”
“You’re making one hell of an assumption there,” Watts said.
The Bauhauser snorted. “You don’t think we’ll be at each other throats as soon as this is over? How typically naïve.”
Watts grunted and shook his head. “You’re assuming this’ll ever end.”
Ishimori grinned, and the others joined in with nervous laughs. Soon even Paul found that he had to echo them. He couldn’t say why, though, as he didn’t find a damn thing funny about it.
Ishimori fished into his shirt and pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes. He took one and handed the pack to Watts.
“Those things will fucking kill you,” the big man said. As the others cackled, he tugged a cigarette out for himself and then passed the pack on to the next man.
Ishimori pulled out a lighter emblazoned with the Mishiman sun. With a flick of his thumb, it produced a steady flame. He lit his own cigarette with practiced ease, sheltering the lighter from the wind whistling down through the trench.
It smelled of raw ozone, bringing news of a coming storm. The scent of burning tobacco shoved that odor away.
Watts leaned forward, and Ishimori lit the man’s cigarette too. One by one, they bent forward and shared in the communal fire, then took their individual pieces of it back to enjoy.
They sat there for a moment, each of them savoring every last drag of his smoke. Paul choked a bit on his but held it down. He’d given up smoking a decade ago when he’d retired from the Capitol Navy, and his lungs wanted to argue with his decision to renege on his unspoken promise to keep them clean.
Then the sirens started to howl. Paul wondered if he’d ever see his wife and son again.
12
Samuel struggled with the urge to curse as he led Severian back into the Cartel’s boardroom. Over the past two days, the battle against the mutant threat had gone just as he had predicted: badly. The undead legionnaires and their obscene kin had streamed out of the pit in an endless river of death that had flooded the streets of the city and all but washed the people who lived there away.
The Cardinal had offered Samuel the chance to leave on one of the Brotherhood’s rockets, but the monk had refused. As long as there was a breath of hope on the planet, he knew his duties laid here. At his request, the Cardinal had arranged for another meeting with the Cartel’s local council.
Oddly, the Brotherhood had not had to pressure the council for the meeting. “Constantine has been asking for you,” the brothers in the communications station at the Sacred Dome on Luna had told him.
That, Samuel hoped, would make this easy.
“Welcome, Brother,” Constantine said as his underlings escorted the two monks into the boardroom. “I’ve been hoping you could make it.”
Samuel glanced around the room. The sycophants, secretaries, and concubines had vanished, leaving only the four ambassadors behind. Constantine sat at the table’s head, framed in the dim light that streamed in through the wide, grimy windows.
Workers had stripped most of the opulent decor from the walls, and a few stragglers still struggled with the last bits. A pair of the workers dropped a giant, brassy cog on the floor, and it cracked nearly in two. They cursed, then scurried away in fear, but the Bauhaus ambassador dismissed them with a wave.
“Leave it,” he said. “It is only a symbol.”
The room stank of unbathed bodies, and each of the ambassadors bore stubble on his chin. The wrappings from countless meals sat crumpled in a corner
where someone had swept them away.
Constantine gestured for Samuel to sit, but the monk declined. He did not care to be seen as an equal to these men. He was not there to talk endlessly about the fate of the world. He had come to ask for their aid and then act.
Constantine nodded his understanding to the monk, then turned back to the ambassadors.
“How much time do we have?” he asked.
It was a question to which Samuel was sure the man knew the answer. It had been asked for the monk’s benefit.
“Twenty days,” said the Mishiman ambassador. “Less, maybe.”
The woman’s English was flawless. She’d dispensed with both her translator and the ruse that she couldn’t understand what the others said in front of her.
Constantine weighed her words carefully, then spoke. “Begin the evacuation.”
“Evacuation?” Samuel could not believe his ears. The Cartel was giving up?
Constantine ignored the comment and addressed the other ambassadors. “We will move all key personnel to the offworld colonies and reassess our situation.”
Samuel knew then why Constantine had asked for him to be present. This was no discussion, no meeting of the minds, but a passion play acted out for his benefit. This way, the cowards would not have to report their decision directly to the Cardinal. Instead, they would make him their messenger boy.
He was not about to let them slide away so easily. As the Cardinal’s representative here, he had a duty to lift the scales from their eyes and make them see the light.
Samuel spoke in a soft voice. “Am I to understand that you would abandon the Earth?”
The ambassadors averted their eyes from Samuel and glanced at one another. Only Constantine could meet the monk’s icy gaze.
“Yes, Brother. You understand well.” The man’s sadness weighed down his voice, and Samuel noted the sag in his once-proud shoulders. “We are finished here.”
The monk forced himself not to snarl. The ambassadors seemed to understand that the meeting was over, and they stood up to leave.
“Even with every ship you have, how many millions will you leave behind?” Samuel asked.
No one answered him. The ambassadors were too busy packing their briefcases, each of which had been stuffed to overflowing with reports, notes, and sheaves of other documents. Only Constantine remained in his chair, in no hurry to leave.
The monk felt his temper rising, and he began to shout.
“And do you think the Enemy will stop with this world?”
He’d hoped it would not be a rhetorical question, but the councilors all took it as such.
“He will not. He will follow you. He will follow you no matter where you run!”
The bureaucrats ignored his words. It was as if he wasn’t even in the room. The Imperial ambassador started for the door, with the others close on his heels.
Samuel picked up the sacred Book of Law that was chained to his wrist and slammed its bulk down onto the polished table with all his might. It sounded like a gunshot echoing in the large chamber.
Every head in the room turned to stare at the monk. The workers had all left at the word that the planet would be abandoned. Only the councilors, Severian, and Samuel remained.
“THERE IS STILL HOPE!”
The ambassadors looked to the monk now, hesitation in their eyes. Although they had made up their minds to leave, Samuel knew that he still had time—just not very much of it.
Constantine stared at the monk as if he were little more than a child in a room full of adults. Samuel knew that the councilors had debated this course of action for days. Even profit-driven souls such as these would not so easily give up an entire planet to the Enemy.
People like these obeyed the cold logic of the balance sheet, not the warm mysteries of life. Still, for them to agree to abandon their corporations’ investments in an entire planet—and not just any planet but the very cradle of human life—meant the issue had to have become dire beyond words.
“What hope?” Constantine asked. The tone of his voice said that he knew there was none, but Samuel thought he detected a hint of desperation under the world-weary cynicism.
Samuel had his answer ready. He had known it since he’d first stepped into this boardroom days ago. He just had to convince these men he was right.
“Fulfill the Chronicles! Give me twenty soldiers and a ship!”
How much simpler could it be? So it had been written, and so it should play out. Samuel cursed the fact that he did not have these resources himself. The Brotherhood had long ago left behind Earth for Luna, and its holdings on the mother planet were limited.
Till now, the Cardinal had been able to rely on the goodwill of the megacorporations to provide his followers with what they needed in any situation. None of them wished to incur the Cardinal’s wrath. Had the situation here become so desperate, though, that they would be willing to deny Samuel such a comparatively minor request?
“What could twenty do that our armies could not?” Constantine asked.
The ambassadors nodded at this, and Samuel swallowed hard. It was a fair question, but he had the answer. These men knew nothing of the strength of individuals, the power of a small team to do what entire brigades could not. They lacked the imagination necessary to even conceive of such answers to their problems.
As the Cardinal had once said, “When you have a large enough army, the solution to every issue is war.”
Samuel spread out his fingers and put his hands on the table before him, framing the Book of Law in his arms. “They can go where an army cannot. They can go down into the earth.”
He paused for a moment, letting the import of his words sink in. “They can destroy the Machine.”
Samuel gazed into the ambassadors’ eyes one by one, searching for any sign of hope. Instead, they wore their disbelief like armor that turned away his words as if they were mere rain. Their armor, though, had become so rigid that it no longer allowed them to move. It might as well have been a coffin, for they would soon be buried in it.
Samuel opened his mouth to speak one more time.
“I know how this must sound to men of science, men of commerce. But I am a man of faith. And I am asking you—I am begging you—to have faith.
“Not in me. Not even in this.”
Samuel rested his hands on the Book of Law before him. He knew that all the answers they required were written there, ready for all who were willing to read them. But he could not rely on that now, for these people would not open their eyes to its wisdom. He had to urge them not to have faith in the Chronicles.
“But faith in man. Faith that the ones you will leave behind deserve a chance.
“Please.”
13
Dorothy Lamb scrambled around her family’s apartment, packing like mad while her son sat on the floor of their parlor, listening to the radio. Outside, the sirens howled like banshees, signaling that the end was near.
She tossed some of Peter’s clothes into the suitcase, alongside hers, then raced into the kitchen to find some food and water. Take things that will last, she told herself. There’s no telling how long we’ll be gone.
She pulled the packs of wartime rations off the shelves of the pantry. She tried to grab too many at once, and several fell to the floor, where they broke open, spilling across the tiles. She cursed to herself, knowing there was nothing to be done about that now.
She rushed into the parlor, where she found Peter trembling on the floor, his face in his hands. He had just turned ten, and he looked so much like his father, it hurt her to think about it. The notion drew her eyes to the mantel, where the family photo sat: Paul, she, and Peter all together. She could barely recall having been so happy, and the picture had only been taken last year.
She dumped the rations into the suitcase, then swept the photo from the mantel and tossed it in too. On the radio, the announcer’s voice blathered on with the same thing he’d been saying all day. Now, though, a note of hysteri
a had crept into his voice, confirming to Dorothy that despite the Cartel’s much-vaunted preparations, something had gone horribly wrong.
“…all civilians must move out of the city to controlled checkpoints. The following streets are still accessible: Bastion, Bleeker, Haight, North Tower, South Tower, Sterling…”
Just twenty minutes ago, they’d been listing the streets that were closed rather than the ones still open. Dorothy knew time was running out.
She checked their tickets once more, tossed on her coat, then pulled Peter to his feet and helped him into his. She took a moment to wipe the tears from his face before picking up the suitcase, taking him by the hand, and racing out the door.
She didn’t bother to close it behind them.
Down on the streets, the chaos was worse than Dorothy had imagined. They’d tired of waiting for an elevator and had walked down the thirteen flights of stairs to the lobby, which had been clogged with people trying to get out or perhaps find some respite from the crowds outside.
Not seeing any better option, Dorothy grabbed Peter by the wrist. He held on tight to her too. It almost hurt, but she preferred that to the thought of never being able to hold his hand again.
“Whatever you do,” she said to her son, “don’t let go.”
Peter nodded at her, struggling to put a brave face over the terror gripping his heart. She kissed him on the forehead and pulled him close as she led him toward the doors.
As they reached the exit, the elderly doorman, Mr. Goodman, stepped in front of her to stop them. “You can’t go out there, Mrs. Lamb,” he said in a pained voice. “It’s the end of the world.”
Dorothy frowned, wishing that the man would get out of her way and stop trying to frighten them. As it was, she thought Peter might curl up into a ball at any moment.
“I thought they’d give us more notice,” she said. “We have to get to the transport. Paul’s arranged a spot for us.”
“I don’t think any more transports will be leaving now, ma’am.” Mr. Goodman removed his red cap, looking as if he’d just been told of the death of a respected friend.
