by James Axler
Zakat glanced toward the purple-tinted walls of the gateway chamber. "The mat-trans must lead to the other facets of the stone."
"Perhaps," replied Dorjieff. "Perhaps not. The device's destination codes are locked on a specific point and have probably been for two hundred years or more. Where that point might be, if it exists any longer, is something I do not know or care to know."
Zakat chuckled. "And there lies the divide between us."
Dorjieff made a rumbling sound deep in his chest. "The stone must be not be made whole again. If you understand what I understand, you would flee shrieking from this place, back to the nest of perverts you call a religion."
"And what do you understand?"
"Assume there are people who have been trained to transcend the accepted laws of physics, who wield wild powers that are called — for lack of a better term — magical. Also assume there are ancient objects and places of otherworldly power that these people can access, using their energies as means of control and as weapons."
"And you're saying," ventured Zakat, "that the black stone is such a weapon?"
"I am saying that the forces flowing through it can be used as such. The forces flow through it unto like a tide. If a tide goes in two directions at once, you have a catastrophe that threatens not only the body, but the soul. The human spirit. That is what I safeguard, not this chunk of rock."
Zakat gestured negligently with the Tokarev. "You are a true martyr, old man, though I doubt Trai would testify you are fixated on safeguarding her spirit."
Dorjieff's face darkened in anger. "You understand nothing of the true nature of the stone."
Zakat smiled mockingly. "I believe I understand enough."
Dorjieff's lips drew away from his red-filmed teeth in a snarling grin. "Then do what I did, if you have the courage. Touch the stone," he taunted.
The smile fled from Zakat's face. He did not move.
"You are afraid," said Dorjieff, a note of triumph evident in his voice. "Not that I blame you for it, but how do you intend to command the forces flowing through it if you fear to touch it?"
Zakat wheeled defiantly toward the pedestal. He extended his left hand toward the open box, keeping the Tokarev in his right pointed at Dorjieff. He caught Gyatso's eye, who looked at him uncertainly.
"My faith," he said, more to reassure Gyatso than to challenge Dorjieff, "will protect me."
Dorjieff gusted out a laugh. "That we will see."
Zakat thrust out his hand, his fingers brushing the surface of the black stone. He felt a distinct tingling rushing up his hand, into his wrist, up his arm. He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, he experienced a vertiginous sensation of seeing in two worlds at once — the world of the senses, and the inner world of the black stone.
With his eyes, he saw Gyatso and the box and the cavern.
In the other world, he saw leagues of endless desert sprouting with black monoliths soaring heavenward. He saw towers and walls in the depths of the Earth, an infinite gulf of darkness, of swirling patterns of force locked forever in a symbiotic contest of order against chaos.
A sudden riot of emotion-fraught images exploded in his mind, triggering a terror so wild it was almost ecstasy, and he became aware of a mindless chittering, as of countless voices murmuring at once.
Zakat felt he was being examined, not by the stone, but by observers that used the black polyhedron as a form of sight more acute than the physical.
A jagged skyline appeared in his mind's eye, in which the hulks of buildings reared from a debris-scattered terrain like broken tombstones. Two monoliths, each at least a hundred feet high, rose from the high tumbles of twisted metal and shattered concrete. The dark windows gaped between tangles of creeping vegetation, but astonishingly, shards of glass still glinted here and there. For a dizzy instant, Zakat felt as if he plummeted through the shockscape of ruins, passing around and over the wilderness of rubble.
Then an animal's snouted face snarled into his, a shocking pink tongue protruding from between great yellow fangs. The brownish silver-tipped fur looked matted and mangy, and Zakat realized it was not the face of a living bear, but an example of the taxidermist's art.
His perspective seemed to broaden, and the bear's face receded. He saw a vast room, almost a man-made cavern. In niches behind shattered glass were elks, elephants, rhinoceros, wolves and other extinct species frozen in eternal postures of stalking or pacing.
Zakat felt a persistent tug. Rather than resist it, he traveled down a broad staircase, past a monstrous, pale blue shape tilting down from the ceiling at a ninety-degree angle. He could not identify it, though its sleek bulk and dimensions reminded him of a wingless Tu-114 fuselage.
At the same time, he became aware of a rhythmic vibration, like the beating of an unimaginably gigantic heart. He found himself floating through a forest of stone, like a geologist's dream. He passed glittering geodes, clusters of the crystals the size of washtubs, mineral formations of all sizes and shapes.
Hidden somewhere among them he felt the pulsing of energy, black yet bright, beckoning him with a siren song of seduction, whispering to him of power and of the price he must pay…
He blinked, snatching his hand back, almost but not quite giving voice to a cry of primal panic.
Dorjieff laughed. "Come now, Comrade. You barely tickled it. Grasp it as I did, hold it within your hand so you may see and feel what I did. And understand."
Zakat despised the shiver that shook his shoulders as he turned to face Dorjieff. "Like I said, I understand enough."
"And like I said, you know nothing," Dorjieff retorted.
"You have nothing more to say, old man," replied Zakat. "You seem to have a problem accepting that. Your position here has been usurped."
With a speed surprising for a man of such bulk and age, Dorjieff lunged forward. All the memories of his training hadn't been drowned in wine, and with two lightning-swift moves, he disarmed Zakat.
Swinging the barrel of the automatic in short half arcs to cover first Gyatso, then Zakat, then Gyatso again, he growled, "You'll die first, you half-breed hell-spawn. As for you, Father Twilight, I will use you for the same kind of target practice you proposed for me. But my hand is not as steady, nor are my eyes as clear as they once were. There will be many near misses. You'll have to be patient with me."
Zakat only smiled. "I am exceedingly patient, Dorjieff. Get on with it."
Dorjieff aimed the pistol at Gyatso, his finger tightened around the trigger, but he did not fire. The gun, his hand and his entire forearm began to tremble, locked in a muscle spasm. He looked in stunned agony at Gyatso, who gazed unblinkingly serenely at him.
Softly, Zakat said, "What was it you said to me about this half-breed hell-spawn's power? Oh, yes, 'The secret of Bon training consists of developing a power of concentration surpassing even that of men like yourself, who are the most gifted in psychic respects.'"
The sweat of effort beaded on Dorjieff's forehead and streamed into his eyes. He did not, could not blink them. In a crooning whisper, Zakat continued, "I will allow you a limited freedom of movement. You may turn your wrist and lift your arm. Point the gun at your face, won't you?"
Groaning, his entire body shuddering with the strain, Dorjieff did as Zakat requested.
"Very good, thank you. Now, if you will please open your mouth and place the barrel inside of it…?"
A keening wail of terror issued from Dorjieff's lips, but he obeyed, his arm trembling. His mouth gaped wide as he inserted the short barrel of the Tokarev, and his lower teeth rattled against the metal trigger guard.
Affectionately, as if he were speaking to a lover, Zakat whispered, "Will you please pull the trigger? If you pull it, all of this ends."
Dorjieff's hand convulsed. The Tokarev made a popping sound, like the bursting of a balloon in another room. A tiny twist of smoke puffed from his open mouth, followed a microinstant later by a gushing torrent of scarlet. He staggered, limbs flailing
, the pistol clattering to the floor.
Dorjieff hit the ground on his back, fingers and feet twitching. He uttered only a liquidy burble before his body stilled.
Zakat turned away, ruefully rubbing the aching spot on the center of his forehead. He knew that without Gyatso's mind augmenting his own force of will, he wouldn't have been able to induce Dorjieff to commit suicide. The old bastard had not lost all of the strength that had earned him the title of Tsyansis Khan-po.
Gyatso nodded, approving the manner in which Dorjieff had been dispatched. "And now?" he asked.
Grigori Zakat reached out and snapped down the lid of the box. It moved easily on its oiled hinges and closed over the stone, the hasp sliding and snapping into the lock. At that sharp click, Gyatso jumped, a sudden fear visible on his face.
Somehow, Zakat knew it was the first time in the memory of the lamasery that the box had been closed. He was suddenly conscious of a formless presence in the cavern — a presence not in the rock walls, but beyond them.
It was a sense of a faraway inhuman intelligence that had instantly become aware of what he had done. Zakat saw nothing, heard nothing, yet he felt a powerful surging of an icy energy. The aura of the cavern was suddenly oppressive, the very air throbbing with menace.
Zakat kept his left hand on the silver lid of the box as he half turned to face Gyatso. "Now we plan and make our final assessment."
Gyatso cocked his head slightly to one side. "Assessment? I do not understand."
"Of the price we must pay for power." Zakat laughed as he turned to glance at Dorjieff's corpse. "It may be more appropriate to say the price we must persuade others to pay."
9
Three a.m., Lakesh thought sourly. The midnight of the human soul, when the blood trickles at low tide and the heart beats slowly. He remembered reading that more people with terminal illnesses died at three o'clock in the morning than at any other time.
Lakesh rarely slept more than five hours out of twenty-four, so he often found himself alone in the central control complex of the Cerberus redoubt.
He stared reproachfully over the rims of his spectacles at the image of a slavering black hound filling the monitor screen in front of him. Three snarling heads grew out of a single corded neck, their jaws wide open, blood and fire gushing between great fangs. Because the security cameras transmitted in black-and-white and shades of gray, he couldn't see the garish colors of the large illustration on the wall. He'd seen the crimson eyes and yellow fangs enough times over the years, as well as the word written in exaggerated Gothic script beneath it: Cerberus.
Like everything else in the redoubt, the image of the three-headed hound had weathered the nukecaust, the skydark and all the catastrophes that followed.
Built near the close of the twentieth century, the Cerberus installation was a masterpiece of impenetrability. The trilevel, thirty-acre facility was equipped with radiation shielding, and an elaborate system of heat-sensing warning devices, night-vision vid cameras and motion-trigger alarms surrounded the plateau that concealed it.
Lakesh looked up from the canine heads snarling still and frozen on the screen to the huge Mercator-relief map of the world sprawling across the expanse of the facing wall. Pinpoints of light shone steadily in almost every country, connected by a thin, glowing pattern of lines. They represented the Cerberus network, the locations of all functioning gateway units across the planet.
The installation had been built as the seat of the Cerberus process, a subdivision of Overproject Whisper, which in turn had been a primary component of the Totality Concept. At its height, the redoubt had housed well over a hundred people. Now it was full of shadowed corridors, empty rooms and sepulchral silences, a sanctuary for thirteen human beings. There was one other, a fourteenth, but for him — or it, Lakesh was never quite certain — Cerberus was a prison.
Actually, all the redoubts linked to the Totality Concept became prisons after January 19, 2001. That was why Lakesh hadn't opposed the proposal that he be placed in cryonic stasis. Nor was he the only volunteer among the personnel in the Mount Rushmore installation. The resources of the vast facility were already strained, and it had suffered unforeseen damage during the nukecaust. Some measures had to be taken to preserve the command post.
Constructed inside of Mount Rushmore, to serve as both the central Continuity of Government seat, as well as the coordinating station for the Totality Concept redoubts, the so-called Anthill became more of a tomb every day.
Very few of the contingency plans worked, especially after the desperate military personnel remaining in other installations began to arrive by mat-trans unit. After a few months, there were just too many people to support and the jump lines were blocked so no one else could find refuge from the horrors of the rad-blasted landscape.
Life in the Anthill became an endless interlocking chain of crises, one after the other, coming so fast they seemed to trip over each other. The Overproject Excalibur genetic experiments soured, essential machinery broke down, radiation leaked in, the nuclear winter disrupted not only the local ecosystems, but also all those across America. Lakesh remembered wishing he had refused the evacuation order and stayed behind in Cerberus, known also as Redoubt Bravo.
Lakesh shook his head, trying to drive away the memories. There was no point in dredging them up. When he was resurrected fifty years ago, the handful of people remaining in the Anthill complex didn't even remember those days. Only the present and the future mattered, and essential to those were the Archon Directorate's edicts to rebuild the world in a new image.
The final stage of that rebuilding, the Program of Unification, was well under way when Lakesh was awakened. The rallying cry of Unity Through Action had already spread across the length and breadth of the Deathlands by word of mouth and proof of deed. The long forgotten trust in any form of government had been reawakened by the offer of a solution to the constant states of hardship and fear — join the Unification Program sponsored by the barons and never know want or fear again. Of course, any concept of liberty had to be forgotten in the exchange.
Not every human was invited to partake of the bounty of the barons. Only the best of the best were allowed full citizenship. The caste distinctions were based primarily on eugenics. Everyone selected to live in the villes, to serve in the divisions, met a strict set of genetic criteria that had been established before the nukecaust. The original drafters of the Unification Program had in their possession the findings of Overproject Excalibur's Human Genome Project, as well as actual in vitro biological samples. In the vernacular of the time, it was known as purity control.
After the Program of Unification was established, the in vitro egg cells were developed to embryos. Through ectogenesis techniques, fetal development outside of the body eliminated the role of the mother until after birth. The ancient social patterns that connected mother, father and child were broken, a break that was a crucial aspect of the Unification Program. For the program to succeed, the existence of the family as a unit of procreation — and therefore as a social unit — had to be eliminated.
Sometimes, a particular gene carrying a desirable trait was grafted to an unrelated egg, or an undesirable gene removed. Despite many failures, when there was a success, it was replicated over and over, occasionally with variations.
Kane was one such success, developed secretly by Lakesh. At the thought of him, the furrows in Lakesh's forehead deepened into ruts. He knew he shouldn't worry about Kane, or Grant and Brigid. Too many times in the past, Lakesh had forced himself to accept their deaths, only to see them reappear alive, if not completely whole. They seemed to lead exceptionally charmed lives, but like any other resource, luck had a way of running out.
In his more metaphysical moments, he viewed the three of them as a trinity, the human counterparts of the heads of Cerberus, each one symbolizing different yet related aspects of the soul.
It always surprised and comforted him that such contrasting personalities worked so well together
. Even Domi, the least disciplined of the redoubt's staff, displayed a remarkable resourcefulness. But there were two residents of Cerberus who didn't quite mesh with the other parts of the efficient machine Lakesh dreamed of constructing.
One of them was Beth-Li Rouch. Initially, she seemed to be the perfect candidate for his plan to expand their sanctuary into a colony. She was certainly beautiful, young and vital. After Lakesh selected her from the personnel records of Sharpeville, he put into motion a variation of the ploy he had used on Brigid Baptiste, Donald Bry and Robert Wegmann: he framed them for crimes against their respective villes.
Lakesh knew it was a cruel, heartless plan with a barely acceptable risk factor, but it was the only way to spirit them out of their villes, turn them against the barons, make them feel indebted to him.
Beth-Li was the only exile he had chosen not for technical knowledge or expertise, but solely because her genetic records indicated that she and Kane would produce perfect offspring, superior in every way.
He had eliminated the other women in Cerberus for a number of reasons. DeFore, though healthy, had a family history of diabetes. Domi was a genetic question mark due to her upbringing in the Outlands, close to hot spots and hellzones, and he didn't need to conduct medical tests to ascertain if she possessed undesirable traits. Her albinism was the most obvious indicator.
Brigid Baptiste of course had a splendid pedigree, as he had reason to know. However, even if she hadn't suffered the accident in Mongolia, Lakesh would not have wanted her to breed with Kane — or anyone, for that matter. Her gifts were unique, far too valuable to have them diverted by pregnancy and motherhood.
It continued to dismay and distress him how Kane opposed his plan to impregnate Beth-Li. Only recently had his resistance become overt. Before that, his refusal to cooperate had been known in predark psychological terminology as passive-aggressive behavior. Therefore, Lakesh had been pleased when Kane volunteered to go in search of Beth-Li and Auerbach.
