by Ian Watson
By now, of course, Azul Petrov had seen with his own eyes an entirely different transformation. Once they had lifted off from Luxus Prime, Meh’lindi had slipped away to her sleep-cell. Another woman entirely had seemed to return – a woman with ivory features, dressed in a gown of iridescent silk, arrayed in cool green emeralds, with curly-toed slippers upon her feet, the quintessence of an elegant courtesan.
Who else was this who shared the ship with them? This superb twin of Meh’lindi’s, tall and chic! Sharing the same golden eyes, to be sure, and the same scarlet sash.
After dissolving her syn-skin, Meh’lindi had chosen not to resume her cling-tight assassin’s black tunic but this voluptuous disguise instead.
Why, this stranger was none other than Meh’lindi herself. In her throat, hardly noticeable at all, was some flesh-coloured valve.
After much scrupulous thought and prayer – like a scattering of hot ashes upon his soul – Jaq had outlined certain details to Fennix and to Petrov too.
He explained the reason for Meh’lindi’s double aura – and she had listened expressionlessly. He touched on the mind-invading hydra. He described secret inquisitors involved in a conspiracy. He named the Harlequin Man. He confessed to intruding into the Imperial palace. Names such as Ordo Malleus and Baal Firenze were on his lips... and even Slaanesh.
The simian astropath and the carbuncled Navigator had shivered as if the chill of space had invaded their bone marrow. Both prayed with Jaq. Meh’lindi prayed too, though she dedicated her prayers harshly to the shrine of Callidus. Only Grimm had refrained from prayer, taking himself off to anoint the engines with spittle and polish them.
PRESENTLY TORMENTUM MALORUM had jumped – to the middle of nowhere, into a void which contained no midpoint since it possessed no boundaries. Stars were sickly jewels utterly distant, adrift in endless emptiness, vain pinpoints of light in domineering darkness. Nebulae were haemorrhages of blood shed in milk.
Daemon-hatches blanked the portholes, closing out that stygian gulf with all its remote pathetic lanterns and luminescent veils. The five had feasted on grox tongues in aspic, upon caviar of Arcturan great-eels with embryo elvers curled in sweet juice inside the translucent eggs, on steaks of foetal whale from some waterworld, all washed down with gloryberry juice.
Such a menu was routine aboard Tormentum Malorum, yet upon this occasion the meal was ceremonial and sacramental. Jaq feasted to the glory of the God-Emperor, and for strength, and so that puritanical inhibitions should not impede whatever must be done. By now he was wearing a fresh black ornamented habit, replacement for the garment which gunfire had defiled. Grimm feasted to the glory of his gut. Meh’lindi consumed gracefully though indifferently. To her, a rat was as fine a source of protein as a ragout.
And at last, in that drifting catacombed chapel of jet and obsidian, Fennix had commenced his telepathic trawl.
SEVEN
Relevations
THE TASK TOOK Fennix almost three months. Daily he honed his telepathic sense and eavesdropped until he was exhausted. Such a swarm of messages to attune to, upon so many wavelengths of thought. Swarm upon swarm. Commercial messages, and military and bureaucratic and theological. Streams of data. Requests, decrees and proclamations. Messages of hope and horror, desperate appeals...
It was, so he said, as though at every moment a million lights were shining into a vast mirror, as though a million glittering pebbles were forever being tossed upon a bottomless lake, radiating a shimmer of ripples.
To aim or receive a particular message, to establish a mutual mind-to-mind link, was simplicity compared with this godly overwatch which he was undertaking.
A mere twelve weeks seemed almost miraculously short a span of time – a tribute to Fennix’s esoteric concept of astral telepathy. Of course, the assignment could never be completed satisfactorily. It could only be abandoned at a stage when several tantalizing inklings had been gleaned and correlated.
Fennix wasn’t one of those ciphers of the Administratum who could memorize entire texts verbatim for mechanical recital without any comprehension of the words. Fortunately he understood the hieratic language in which crucial inquisitorial messages were often couched.
Item, urgent ongoing enquiries into the assassination of an inquisitor upon a certain world of which none present had ever heard. Item, another similar assassination. Deep suspicions seemed to be stirring.
Might the Inquisition be at war with itself? Might the unnameable ordo (which Jaq understood to be the Ordo Malleus) be in conflict with the broader ranks of the Inquisition? The covert at war with the overt? (Not that the ordinary Inquisition was exactly visible – except when it chose to be flamboyant, often as a cover for more secret manoeuvres.)
Item, Stalinvast.
Disguised as drifting rocks, robot drones had been left behind to scrutinize that exterminated world. These had reported that alien ships were appearing in the vicinity. Eldar vessels.
Petrov commented from his own gleanings of Navigator gossip that for this to be so, there must already have been an entrance to the eldar webway somewhere within the Stalinvast system; an entrance – and an exit – large enough for starships. This gateway must have remained dormant and concealed for aeons during which human beings had festered upon Stalinvast. Had not the eldar been masters of the galaxy before their downfall and well-nigh obliteration?
In orbit around the corpse of Stalinvast the eldar had begun to construct a huge habitat.
Why there? What attracted the eldar to a totally devastated world where even the air had all burned in a planet-wide inferno of firegas begotten from the rot caused by the life-eater virus? Great resources were being brought to bear.
Item, a certain Baal Firenze was requisitioning an expeditionary force of Space Marines to raid that habitat and disrupt the aliens’ blasphemous plans.
Baal Firenze! Unless a namesake, this was the very same man who had once inducted Jaq into the Ordo Malleus.
Proctor minor of Jaq’s chamber. His superior, who had sent him to Stalinvast. Member of the hydra cabal. To be still alive and active, Firenze must have been rejuvenated at least once. Therefore Firenze must have been exonerated of conspiracy – unless the conspiracy had sunk its claws deep in the very heart of Jaq’s ordo.
Or unless Jaq’s book of secrets had never reached its destination.
The fact of Firenze’s activity was precious information.
An eldar event was about to occur around Stalinvast. And Firenze was intervening...
Firenze was intending to use regular Space Marines. (How could one possibly call such warriors ordinary?) Apparently he wouldn’t use a unit of the Grey Knights from Titan, such as Jaq had used on Zeus V. Was Firenze unable to avail himself of the ordo’s elite Knights? Ah, but Grey Knights did not generally fight mere aliens. They were destroyers of daemons. Perhaps daemonic outrages were occurring all over the galaxy and the Grey Knights were fully occupied in a dozen far-flung theatres of honor. Firenze’s mission might be a relatively minor one. Jaq’s instinct said otherwise.
Those “assassinations”...
Not perpetrated by Imperial assassins, surely!
Then Fennix had eavesdropped on a message of vehement urgency phrased in incomprehensible language. This message was being repeated over and over. Thus, though Fennix was no cipher, he was soon able to parrot snatches of it...
And Meh’lindi had stiffened.
For the message – which she proceeded to interpret – was in Callidus code.
‘Confirm report of apostate Tarik Ziz hiding on third planet of Whirlstar! Planet Darvash! Confirm report of heretic surgeons...’ Ziz had been Director Secundus of Meh’lindi’s shrine of assassins, deputy only to the Supreme Director. How could Ziz possibly have become an apostate, betraying his allegiance? Was there a war within the Officio Assassinorum as well as within the Inquisition?
What’s more, Ziz was still alive. High officials did not always relish death for themselves. In common with Firenze he
must have undergone some form of rejuvenation.
It was Ziz who had ordered the surgical experiment upon Meh’lindi.
Had Ziz done so without the Supreme Director of Callidus knowing or approving? Had the Supreme Director discovered and disapproved strongly? Maybe surgical implantation such as Meh’lindi had endured had been declared anathema, even if the technique had fascinated Ziz. That technique of specialized body implants restricted the range of options for an assassin. More sinisterly, it meant that a seemingly normal human being could physically become a monster in the style of someone possessed by a daemon, and yet still remain virtuous.
What if an assassin were to infiltrate the sprawling labyrinths of the Imperial palace, and there transform himself or herself into a semblance of a ravening genestealer or a tyranid? Such panic might ensue!
Why, a certain assassin – Meh’lindi herself – had already done the first of these things. She had entered the Emperor’s throne room with the shape of a genestealer hybrid hidden within her.
Tarik Ziz had been disgraced. Or rather, he must have fled...
THIS MUCH DID they glean from three months of astropathic snooping. A few frail threads of inklings.
‘Stalinvast,’ Jaq said slowly to Meh’lindi. That eldar habitat in orbit there. It’s significant in some way...
‘Take some doing to get inside that!’ piped up Grimm. ‘Huh, eldar snobs!’
Oh yes, there was ancient animosity between the elegant eldar and the rough-hewn dwarfs. Grimm wouldn’t wish to go near an eldar habitation, would he?
The squat scratched his head. As his hair grew back, his pate resembled a red scrubbing brush. He seemed to be massaging his brains. 'These Harlequins, hmm? Crazy guys who stage big song and dance ceremonies... ‘
‘Exactly how much do you know about Harlequins?’ asked Jaq.
‘Well, I could recite one of our shorter ballads on the subject, if I could remember all of the hundred thousand words.’
Baal Firenze was – or soon would be – heading towards Stalinvast to interfere with the eldar ceremony. Wherever Baal Firenze went was germane to Jaq’s own tormented quest.
From within his gown Jaq took his Tarot deck. He stroked the wrapping of flayed mutant skin. Yet he did not unwrap the cards. Nevertheless, in that moment much became clear to him – save for one aspect, which must wait for elucidation.
Inquisitorial analysts regarded the eldar activity around Stalinvast as a blasphemy. Why, so it was, in the simple sense that alien intrusion into a corner of the cosmos which had recently been inhabited by human beings under Imperial sway was a desecration. A deeper blasphemy would be for the eldar deliberately to stage one of their own sacred ceremonies in such a venue, exploiting the catastrophe which planet Stalinvast had suffered.
In the past the eldar had suffered racial cataclysm. Their own home worlds had all been devastated. Stalinvast was an emblem of devastation – one which the eldar dared to venture near.
Eldar Harlequins were intended to perform a sacred ceremony concerned with the devastation of a whole world...
The secrets of the eldar and the anguish of the human race were converging, so it seemed. Firenze, apostle of the hydra, intended to wreck that ceremony. The cabal’s stated desire was one day to rid the galaxy of aliens – and of Chaos too – by means of a psychic tsunami, a tidal wave of mind-fire. The eldar would be among the victims of this mind-fire.
Who else but Jaq himself had been responsible for devastating Stalinvast?
Jaq said carefully, ‘When Firenze and his warriors attack the habitat there’ll be mayhem. We’ll have a chance to get inside if we seem to be prisoners of an eldar—’
‘Of an eldar aspect warrior?’ Grimm groaned. ‘Oh, my ancestors.’
‘Or if we seem to be collaborators with the eldar...’ Jaq eyed Meh’lindi with harrowing intensity. ‘If we’re to succeed, we need someone who can mimic an eldar.’
Once, Meh’lindi could have done so – using polymorphine to alter her body. Once – before Tarik Ziz had ordered the implants of the genestealer physique in her. The whereabouts of Tarik Ziz and his heretic surgeons were now known.
‘I serve you,’ Meh’lindi said simply. In her face there was no clue to her feelings. ‘The name of that sun is Whirlstar. The name of that world is Darvash.’
Previously, she had been wont to say, “I serve”. Now she had said, “I serve you.”
Jaq had been holding his breath. His breath sighed from him in an exhalation of pity. ‘Oh no,’ said Grimm. ‘Oh no.’
‘Yesss,’ hissed Meh’lindi. ‘I wish to be free of the alien beast inside me.’
Did she dream of avenging herself upon Tarik Ziz, who was no longer her Director Secundus, and who therefore no longer commanded her sworn loyalty?
On Darvash seemingly there were rogue surgeons who could dissect Meh’lindi alive again, to slice and scour out what had once been inserted into her. She had once sketched for Jaq, in privacy, a mere outline of the surgical atrocity which had been perpetrated upon her. To go through that process again, in reverse, would be abominable. To go through it in dubious surroundings would be terrifying. To persuade – or to force – Ziz to comply would require such ingenuity, such guile; or perhaps such brutal violence.
‘I serve,’ repeated Meh’lindi. Had she ever really defected from her shrine? If Ziz supposed that she still served the Callidus shrine which was hunting for his skin, that would pose such a problem. Naturally she would need to seem to serve Jaq, not her lethal guild.
‘Whirlstar,’ she said tonelessly to Azul Petrov. ‘Planet Darvash.’
The Navigator frowned. He hadn’t heard of that sun or that world. Unsurprisingly so. If the place was well known, would Ziz have hidden himself there?
On an ormolu-framed screen Petrov summoned the Gazetteer of Known Worlds. His fingertips touched the little icons, to scroll through the illuminated entries. Celestial co-ordinates which hopefully would be accurate. Descriptive notes which in many cases would be sheer legend.
‘Ahem,’ said Grimm to Meh’lindi. ‘You do speak eldar, don’t you?’
Of course she did! Prior to her earlier imposture she had learned that lilting alien tongue with her head in a hypno-casque. No assassin ever erased a language from her mind. Languages were weapons. Was not almost everything potentially a weapon?
‘Emperor be with us,’ prayed Jaq.
Let Whirlstar not be thousands of light-years and weeks of warp travel distant, or because of time-distortion Firenze might already have arrived at Stalinvast long before Tormentum Malorum could put in an appearance.
Besides which, there was the question of fuel. ‘Darvash,’ said Petrov presently...
No, not too far. Only a fraction of immensity away from the nowhere where they now drifted.
A WEEK LATER Tormentum Malorum was falling down the gentle gravity gradient within the inner haven of the Whirlstar system. That lurid orange sun was rotating so rapidly that it wasn’t a sphere but an ovoid, flattened at the poles and stretched at the waist. Darvash spun quickly too. Its day was only ten standard hours. It was a desert world, of rust and ochre, bronze and apricot: a citrus-fruit pitted with eroded craters. Coriolis forces whipped frequent sandstorms across the terrain, obliterating landmarks. Remarkable that such a world possessed an atmosphere which was breathable when not choked with dust. Filter masks and goggles might be de rigueur – and really this would be ideal for maintaining an incognito.
According to cryptic notes in the Gazetteer, the atmosphere was artificial in the sense that photophagic microbes in the sands – nano-orgs – manufactured oxygen and nitrogen, somehow transmuting elements.
Deep in the past, before the human race had ever spilled across the stars, something had apparently visited dead dusty cratered Darvash and had introduced these nano-orgs to begin the process of rendering the planet habitable.
THIS PROCESS HAD ceased at an early stage. Here and there on the world, great enigmatic buildings sprawled, of sand
bonded molecularly, tough as adamantium, their vast internal spaces braced with arches. It was in the gloom of these ancient edifices – lit by mirrors and glass cables – that human townships sheltered, hive-like tiers surrounded by food-gardens of phosphorescent fungi and algae.
Darvash was home, seemingly, to the “sand dancers”.
There was only a single space port. But a single space port did at least signify fuel.
BEFORE LANDING, THERE were two problems for Jaq to resolve. So he cloistered himself in his sleep-cell with Meh’lindi.
Ever since the decision to find Tarik Ziz, she had uttered hardly a word. Was she honing her spirit for the ordeal which awaited? (Let that ordeal at least await her – and not prove spurious and unavailing!) Was she anticipating the devout destruction of Ziz on behalf of her shrine, after he had been of use – and of abuse – to her? Was she recalling how Ziz, prior to his presumed rejuvenation, had been rated omega-dan in fighting skills? She had performed her exercises relentlessly in silence.
‘My brave assassin,’ murmured Jaq, ‘shall we let our astropath live, knowing what he now knows about us?’
Fennix might transmit what he knew to anyone in the Imperium. Had not a previous astropath, Moma Parsheen, cheated Jaq? Meh’lindi considered the question. She was still wearing Sirian silk and curly slippers.
That body of hers, which had once solaced Jaq, and once only! For it to be cut apart so radically, albeit to free her from a lurking monster! Would the reverse-surgery even succeed? To be... deprived of her company... would be unfortunate.
She said, ‘There is a bizarre relationship between Fennix and Azul Petrov.’
‘Eye to eye, as it were?’
‘Oh yes: blind eye to warp eye!’
Black gem, to poached egg... Both she and Jaq had observed this. ‘It’s a perverse bond, Jaq.’
A bond such as Jaq and Meh’lindi experienced, though of a different sort? Thus did Meh’lindi touch upon her own relationship with Jaq, and his with her. Theirs was a bond which they could not express openly on account of other loyalties. Hers, to what she was. His, to the salvation of humanity, and to Him-on-Earth...
