Saturnine

by Dan Abnett

  ‘I’m not in hiding, John,’ she said.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. They could be coming. And anyway, I’m surprised you’re still here.’

  ‘Where would I go?’ Erda asked. ‘The Earth is my home. Yes, I still like the old name for it. I live here, in a remote place, withdrawn, outside of the affairs of man. I have no power. Women and mothers seldom have. These days – for the longest time, in fact – humans generally have no power. Only He has. And He leaves me alone.’

  ‘Maybe He does,’ said John, ‘but the end is coming. Nowhere, not even a place as remote as this, will be safe.’

  ‘He won’t harm me,’ she said.

  ‘Erda, He’s not going to win. His children are going to destroy Him. The sons you made with Him are going to burn the world. And they will come for you once He is gone.’

  ‘My sons…’ she whispered.

  ‘They are not…’ he began. ‘They are not as you remember them The warp has taken most of them, even the best of them. They will show no mercy, no affection, no sentiment, no filial duty. They probably won’t even know you, and if they do, it will be to hate you as they hate Him. You have to go.’

  ‘What do you have to do, John?’ she asked.

  John shrugged.

  ‘Now?’ he asked. ‘I don’t have the first idea.’

  ‘Perhaps Ollanius will yet come,’ she said.

  Full night had fallen, the great bowl of desert darkness, blue as ink and frothed with stars. John stood in the earth lodge, idly studying a figurine. It was so old, so worn, he couldn’t tell if it was a trickster or a way-maker or both. Maybe Hermes Trisumagister, thrice great, opener of gates. And, as he recalled sadly, the emblem of the Jokers, Geno Five-Two Chiliad.

  Erda had come in behind him without him hearing her.

  ‘Interesting choice,’ she said, nodding to the effigy he was holding. ‘Azoth-Hermes. An opener of the way.’

  ‘I was drawn to it.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It’s very you, I think.’

  He put the effigy back on a shelf.

  ‘I was saying, perhaps Ollanius will yet arrive,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. He looked over at Erda. ‘There’s always hope. Well, there’s always been hope. I think hope is a quality the galaxy is close to exhausting.’

  ‘Will you wait for him? If he’s coming here, you can wait.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll wait a while. And if he doesn’t come, I’ll-‘

  ‘What? What will you do, John?’ Erda asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Get on with it, I suppose. Alone. Try to reach Him. You could help.’

  ‘How?’ Erda asked.

  ‘I need a way in. A way into the Palace.’

  ‘I can’t help you with that.’

  ‘You’re the most powerful of your kind,’ he said. ‘I mean, apart from Him.’

  ‘None of us have ever been as powerful as Him,’ she said. She sat on the heap of cushions, leaned back, and gazed at the silk canopy, which hung over her like a regal baldachin. ‘That’s always been the problem. He’s not just more powerful, He is a different order of magnitude. A freak.’

  ‘Really?’ That made him smile.

  ‘An aberration, even in terms of the Perpetual line, which is itself an aberration. You asked why we had never come together to stop Him or contain Him. There are many reasons, most of them trivial or personal, but the main one is that even together, en masse, the Perpetuals could not begin to match His power. We have many talents, many powers. We are what we are, transcendent mortals, who have often influenced the course of human life and achieved great things. We have been guides and steersmen, pilots and mentors, sometimes to whole nations and peoples. But He is something else, altogether. An engine of change, a font of power.’

  ‘A god?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at all. At heart, He is a man. He has a personality, He has traits and flaws. All of those are magnified, of course. He is, truly, quite wonderful. Kind. Funny.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Yes Funny. Witty. Articulate. Passionate. Incisive. Clever beyond genius. Charismatic. Devoted. Driven. Determined. From the earliest days of His life, He did what we all did. He saw His own power and tried to use it. He tried to steer mankind towards a better future. He tried to raise the human race up to achieve its potential. And, of course, because of His power, He was rather more effective than most of us.’

  ‘Is that what Perpetuals do, then?’ John asked. ‘Is that what they are?’

  Erda sat up, and looked at him. Her eyes were as blue as crystals.

  ‘John, I tell you truly, I have lived a long life, and I have no idea what Perpetuals are. I am one, and I don’t know. There are theories, and some seem convincing. The one I favour is that we are the next version of the human species.’

  ‘How does that work?’ he asked.

  ‘Through history, the human species has reproduced along fairly neurotypical and physiotypical lines,’ she said. ‘The standard, mortal human, flawed and wonderful. But there are outliers. In every generation there are anomalies. Non-heterosic mutations. People born with unusual gifts or traits, unusual skills. The most obvious, I suppose, would be the psyker. Like you, John. As you were originally, before the xenosforms manipulated you. Born with a rare gift.’

  ‘I’m a mutant?’ John asked wryly.

  ‘That’s just a word. You’re genetically atypical. That’s all psykers are. Random variations from the baseline norm. That’s how species evolve, John. That’s how they progress. Rogue variations to the genetic norm, sometimes in response to environmental factors. Some of those mutations are failures and die out. Some are advantageous. A longer beak, a stronger jaw, an opposable thumb. Mutants born with those advantages tend to survive, because they are advantages. They pass their genes along, and their offspring share that advantage, Longer beaks and stronger jaws become the new norm. The variant gene survives and becomes part of the baseline.’

  ‘And eventually, a species changes, and no longer resembles its earlier self?’ said John.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It takes a very long time. Longer even than a Perpetual might have patience for.’

  ‘So you think Perpetuals are outliers too?’

  Erda nodded.

  ‘I believe the Perpetuals,’ she said, ‘which have been appearing for al least the last forty-five thousand years, are abnormally advantageous mutations. The theory suggests that we are what you might call Homo superior. The next step along for the triumphantly successful Homo sapiens. We are the next evolutionary form our species is intended to take.’

  ‘Intended?’ he echoed, and frowned.

  She raised her hand apologetically. ‘That was the wrong word. I do not subscribe to the idea of a divine plan, or the work of god. I meant the process of nature, advancing a species, enhancing it. I believe that the Perpetuals are the early appearances of the next generation of humans. Freak outliers appearing in very small numbers in advance of the evolutionary curve. And I believe, not because nature has any sort of plan, but because we are a fully sentient species, our purpose is to shape and guide the human race. Marshal its course and trim its sails. Use our gifts and longevity to drive it towards the future, to the point at which we are the new normal. To the point at which Homo sapiens, collectively, become Homo superior’.

  ‘And that’s what your kind does?’ asked John.

  ‘Generally. Mostly through individual efforts. There are very few of us, after all. Some have chosen to. Some have chosen not to. They have relished their gifts, and elected to indulge their lifetimes, succumbing to the whims of their personalities. For we are all still human Some of us are selfish. Some insular, some petty, some lacking in altruism or empathy, with no care for the fate of the rest of humanity. In one instance I know of, one was psychopathic.’

  That’s a story I want to hear,’ said John.

  ‘And I’ll tell it sometime. It was long ago.’ She looked d
own, thoughtful. ‘And, of course, there are some who have not wanted to play the role. Ollanius is a great example of that. He is, I think, the oldest of us. He was always a man of faith, for he was born in an age when gods seemed real. He was never able to shake off the religiosity of his birth culture. Ollanius didn’t believe that Perpetuals should meddle in the affairs of man. He thought the guidance of the human race was god’s work alone. So he stepped aside, and lived his life, over and over again, never taking part. He wasn’t the only one.’

  ‘And the Emperor?’

  Erda grimaced. ‘You know, I loathe that term. It speaks to every part of His arrogance.’

  ‘Does He have a name, otherwise?’

  ‘Many. He has had many names over the millennia, none of them His own. I have no idea if He has ever had a true name. I knew Him as Neoth.’

  ‘Neoth? His name is Neoth?’ John shook his head in wonder. That’s crap. And a huge disappointment.’

  ‘No, that’s just how I knew Him. It was what He called himself when I met Him. We were roughly coeval.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘In the time of the First Cities. He was a warlord even then. A king. And He was doing exactly what most of my kind do. He had taken on the stewardship of the human race. He had a greater understanding of the universe than anyone, such was His power. He saw the dangers of the warp, the fragility of humanity, the recurring flaws of our species… credulity, anger, false-faith, yearning. Everything that was terrible and also wonderful about humanity. When I met Him, He had already begun on His path to shepherd mankind towards a brighter future.’

  She looked at John. ‘I believed in Him, John. I adored Him. Most of us did. It was hard not to love Him, hard not to be in awe of Him, harder still to perceive the dangers of His ambition. He wanted to achieve what most of us dreamed of, and He had the will and power to do it. Not just do it, but do it faster and more completely than any Perpetual could. He had the means to accelerate our efforts and accomplish, in just a few generations, what might otherwise take millions of years’

  John drew up a stool, and sat down facing her.

  ‘Go on,’ he urged.

  ‘Over time He located, and tried to recruit, every single Perpetual on Earth,’ said Erda softly. ‘Some of us joined Him, others decided not to. Some of us fought Him. Several of the greatest conflicts in world history were caused by rival Perpetuals trying to thwart His programme. Did you know that?’

  ‘I suspected so,’ said John.

  ‘He prevailed, John, though there were eras when He was badly set back. Over time, disaffection grew among our kind. Even the best of us could barely keep up, and I think He resented that. He is quite ruthless, and He is astoundingly arrogant. I suppose it would be hard not to be if you were Him. He was always right. He never looked for advice or counsel. He reshaped the world, and drove it forward, and He would not be questioned on the merit of His plan. To do so was… heresy.’

  John raised his eyebrows. ‘Hilarious. But you stayed at His side.’

  ‘For far longer than I should have,’ she replied. ‘Most of us divorced ourselves from His efforts. He was taking risks. One by one, Perpetuals allied to Him slipped away. He was glad to see the back of them, I think. He was tired of their objections, and weary of their caution. He wanted results. He became angry with minds that could not match His speed of thought and His genius. So most of us left Him. They went away, into other lives, or went into hiding, or left the home world. A few stayed. The Sigillite, of course. He was always married to the cause. And, as I say, I stayed longer than I should have.’

  ‘Erda, what risks was He taking?’ John asked.

  ‘The acceleration, John. He had no patience. He believed He knew everything He needed to know. He constantly pushed ahead. That’s the irony. We are immortals, but He couldn’t bear to waste time. Natural evolution takes millions of years. He refused to wait that long. He’d worked for twenty, thirty thousand years, and felt that was more than time enough. The natural stewardship of the Perpetuals, born through the evolutionary cycle, was not rapid enough for His needs. So once most of the natural Perpetuals had left His side, He built his own.’

  ‘The primarchs,’ John whispered.

  ‘The primarchs,’ she said, with a small nod. ‘They’re not actual Perpetuate, in any biological sense. They’re the artificial equivalents of the Perpetuals, functionally immortal beings born from His blood and power and vigour, coded to accelerate His programme even faster. They were designed to live long enough to see His plan through to the end, and not die away so quickly, the way humans did, and they were indoctrinated from birth to follow His word, and not have opinions of their own, like naturally occurring Perpetuals. They were made to service His dream. He took what nature had wrought in the Perpetuals, and He built His own pathologised version. And through them, their genetic lines, the Legions.’

  ‘He didn’t do that alone.’

  Erda was silent for a moment. Outside, the desert air sighed, and the neck bells of livestock clunked.

  ‘He did not,’ she said. ‘I was still with Him then, one of the last few. Me, my colleague Astarte, a few others. I had misgivings, we all did, but He was very convincing. Compelling. And by then, He had become more powerful than ever. He needed a geneticist to work with Him, and that was my art. And He needed a biological source. A gene-stock rare enough to mix with His own. A Perpetual.’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Me. I was the other source. A genetic donor. He is the Father of Mankind. I am the surrogate mother. And the clinician. And the midwife. We made twenty fine sons. But He allowed me no influence. I was just a biological instrument. And once they were born, I began to properly understand the future He had prepared for them. The bitter destiny. The aggressively rapid and unnaturally savage evolutionary jump-start He was driving towards. No good ever comes of coercing nature, John. Through His sons, He would force the human race into the future, force it into submission, and defy the warp to do it. He had built artificial Perpetual-analogues and weaponised them, ready to resist the unbending cosmos. He was planning a crusade to retake the stars. To claim back in a bloody century or two what had taken millennia to lose in the first place. That was when I stepped away too. Astarte stayed, and finished the work on the Legion gene-build. But I left. I was heartbroken and bereft, but I stepped away.’

  ‘No, not quite,’ said John. ‘This part I know. Eldrad told me. You didn’t just step away, Erda. You tried to stop Him.’

  ‘I tried to save my sons.’

  ‘You scattered them.’

  She sat forward, and stared at the ground, her hands across her mouth.

  ‘I did. I took them from Him. I cast them onto the tides to spare them from His terrible ambition.’

  ‘Shit,’ John murmured. ‘What did He do?’

  ‘Raged, for a long while. I was gone by then. I hid for a long time. But He never tried to find me. I always thought that odd. I always expected His vengeance, for He could be vindictive, but it never came. Eventually, I came here, a place I’d always loved. I was born not far from here. I withdrew from the world, and He never came looking for me.’

  She glanced at him, and smiled sadly. ‘Because, I suppose, it was academic by then. He had moved on, fired and driven, as always. He sent the Astartes on their crusade anyway. A programme of reconquest, as He had always planned, but in truth it was just an excuse to find His sons. And His scattered sons were found again, of course, and returned to His side. I had failed. My efforts merely delayed His programme. I tried, John, but I did not stop Him.’

  ‘Will you try again?’

  ‘No, John. It’s too late.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Everything is broken, John.’

  John slumped. ‘Oll’s not coming. I can’t do this alone.’

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My fundamental objection to Neoth’s Great Work,�
� she said firmly, ‘is His haste and urgency. To supplant the natural flow of life with an artificial version that tramples ethics and morality and wise prudence. Artificial Perpetuals, John. That was His plan, and look, see how it has worked. And you, John, earlier you chided me and my kind for not taking action. You called us derelict that we had not made a concerted effort to block Neoth’s progress, and that we should feel ashamed that you, a fake and neophyte immortal, should be doing what we should have long since done. You are an artificial Perpetual too, in a way, John, or at least, you were. I have no reason to trust your judgement, for you, like Him, and like my poor accursed children, are trying to hasten the movement of fate.’

  ‘So, you’d leave it up to the cosmos and natural order, and see how everything turns out in the end? Erda, with the greatest respect, none of us are going to live to see what that end is.’

  He moved across, and sat down beside her. The trays that had brought his repast were still on the low table. He picked up the beaker he had drunk from earlier.

  ‘Kintsugi,’ he said. ‘I love kintsugi work. To take time and huge skill to rebuild a broken thing.’ He ran his fingers along one of the beaker’s crooked golden seams. ‘Other cultures would discard it. Broken pottery. But no. The craftsman puts it back together, fusing each piece with gold. And he uses gold because he doesn’t want to hide the fact that it was broken. It wears its scars and turns them into beauty. I think kintsugi pieces are more wonderful than the original, unbroken pots.’

  ‘I agree,’ she said. She smiled broadly. ‘I am braced for your staggeringly crude analogy, John, so get it over with.’

  He laughed. ‘Fine. I was building to a big finish there.’

  She took the cup from his hand, and turned it over.

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘The cup is us. The Imperium. Humanity. Terra. Everything is broken, but it can be repaired.’

  ‘If we just make the effort,’ he said. ‘Apply a little meticulous skill. And if we’re not afraid to let the scars show afterwards.’

  ‘It’s still about force, not nature,’ she said. ‘The aggressive application of unnatural force.’