by Neal Asher
‘Deal the cards, Julius,’ he said as he pocketed the sweating explosive.
Julius did as bid and they all took up their cards.
‘We cannot do it yet. We don't know how quickly the other three can get back here. It would be best to wait until the start of the next game. That way we'll know they are back at their home bases.’
Three hours later the General's summons came.
‘Now,’ said Carroll, and offered round his cigarettes, ‘we go out with the rest and try to get as close to the Reaper and the General as possible, remember, on my signal we go for it. As agreed, you, Ellery, go for the General and you, Julius, go for the Reaper. I'll keep mine back to finish either of them you might miss or not completely scrap. Remember, your discs appear blue to you, don't run without them.’
They stood and joined the fighters leaving the building. Pulling the bombs from concealment they edged towards the General and the Reaper rather than the hexagons indicated by their wristbands. Glancing at his wristband Carroll was surprised to see that neither colour nor number was showing. This then was his reward. From this game he was exempt. But the next? There would be no next.
Suddenly there came a shout from behind. Carroll swore and broke into a run. He did not have to look back to know who had shouted, obviously the extra time had been enough for Kruger to free himself.
Ellery took the lead as they sprinted towards the General and the Reaper. He slid to a halt as the General raised his baton, pulled out his bomb and touched his cigarette to the fuse. As he was doing this Carroll saw the Reaper's skeletal hand shoot into the box on the arm of its throne. Ellery's arm came back for a grenade throw. A stab of ruby light from the Reaper and Ellery became sheathed in flame. He did not have time to scream. His arm continued through its motion and the bomb travelled in a text book arc, then what remained of him slumped to the ground, dead so much quicker than Kruger, as he had burnt in a hotter flame.
Carroll counted as the bomb flew through the air. ‘One hundred and one, one hundred and two, on –’ He never reached three because the bomb exploded early, a yard from the General's head, which disappeared, and trailing smoke he fell back and hit the ground like a bag of tools. Subliminally Carroll saw exposed and twisted metal, wires and shattered circuitry, and cogs rolling across the ground.
The turbine of the Reaper's throne burst into life just as Julius threw his bomb and Carroll touched his cigarette to the fuse of his. A smoky orange flash knocked the Reaper's throne sideways and blasted his robes away to expose metallic skeleton. It was not enough. Carroll hurled his bomb just as the Reaper fixed its attention on a second disc.
Another stab of ruby light dropped Julius screaming in flames, just before Carroll's bomb blew the Reaper from his throne in smoking pieces. A wreckage of electronics and mechanisms strewed all around, some still falling even as Carroll stepped in amongst them in search of a blue disc. The throne, still partially intact, still had that box on its arm containing most of the discs. Carroll stepped up, searched it, grabbed his own and then turned to the fighters who stood watching in stunned amazement.
‘Your own discs are blue! Grab them and run!’ he shouted, and then he ran towards the forever setting sun. He did not look back.
Chapter Six
He had run for at least ten miles.
He was sure of this because he felt as exhausted as he used to feel on a training run and that had always been with a twenty pound pack on and over rough terrain, not this unchanging flatness. But then, on those training runs he had not recently fought for his life, though it had not been unusual to run with injuries like the bruised ribs he now had. He glanced back and saw that the building was almost indiscernible now. He looked forwards and wondered just how far he had to go and what his destination was to be. And he ran on, trying not to think of his thirst, and how foolish he had been not to bring supplies.
It was after what had to be least twenty miles when he looked aside and saw the Clown keeping pace with to him. He slowed to a walk.
‘I can communicate with you now,’ said the Clown. ‘The longer they forego that ridiculous disc-ringing ceremony the easier it is for me to do so.’
‘Where am I heading?’ asked Carroll between gasps.
‘To the edge of what you call the steel plain, then beyond. You are close now. Look.’ The Clown pointed.
Carroll peered ahead and saw that below the sunset a line could be discerned, a horizon.
‘You see, the steel plain is just one face of one of the matter converters I used to construct the solar disc.’
Carroll felt his heart and stomach tighten and he suddenly felt very small. So massive a construction and it was only a tool.
‘Matter converter,’ he repeated, ‘a tool, a machine bigger than a city... How long–’ he stopped when he saw the Clown's pained expression and what could only be described as a crack dividing him in two.
‘They play the game yet,’ said the Clown, and another crack appeared. ‘They think you will die just like the rest, that I have no plan–’ another crack appeared then another and another, and before Carroll the Clown broke apart, flew to pieces, and disappeared.
What the Hell! thought Carroll, and looked ahead towards the edge of the steel plain. There, very faintly, he could see indistinct shapes. He set out towards them at a trot.
The first shape Carroll came to was a desiccated corpse so far gone with age that when he touched it with is foot it collapsed to dust.
‘They think you will die just like the rest.’
He did not know exactly how long it would take for a corpse to get into such a condition in a place like this, but what he did know was that this corpse had been here for a very long time. He moved on, slowing to a walk as he saw another corpse, then another. In all he saw six, two of them burnt, the other four all desiccated. He wondered again about the duration of the game, and he also wondered about the duration of the Clown's game, whatever it might be. How many had died permanently in the Clown's cause? He did not want to be one of their number. He did not want to die again.
Eventually he reached the edge and the last of the shapes. Here stood a resurrection machine, though one very different from those he had seen before. It was comprised of a cylinder approximately seven feet in height and four in diameter, its top a hemisphere and its bottom resting in a vase-like pedestal. Tubes and hexagonal ducts fed into it from all around from sockets in the steel ground. It was predominantly black and silver and its surface was deeply pitted. The door inset into the cylinder confirmed that at it was indeed a resurrection machine, though perhaps a very old one. He approached with a degree of suspicion.
On a yard-high stalk of blackish metal a short distance from the machine stood what looked like a metal sunflower, and which Carroll assumed to be a control console, though he could discern no buttons or switches. A chaotic coloured pattern as from immiscible coloured liquids swirled together decorated its top surface. He reached out to touch this and light ignited under his fingertips and followed their course. Not knowing how this might benefit him or not he stepped past the console to the main machine, only there to find a skeleton slumped at its base.
‘What were you promised then?’ he asked in a cracked voice.
The skeleton leant up against a cluster of tubes that disappeared like the roots of a tree into the ground. It was curled up with his knees up against his chest and his ragged clothes pulled tightly around it as if against cold. Empty eye sockets gazed up at Carroll. Why? Carroll turned away with a shudder, his throat dry with thirst and his body weak with exhaustion. Why had this one decayed and the others merely dried out?
He walked away from it to the edge and a breeze of moisture laden air gave him his answer like a taunt. An increase in the dampness of the air had allowed the corpse to go through the slow process of decay by the bacteria it carried, unlike those corpses further back. It seemed a horrible irony to Carroll, considering that this man had probably died of thirst. He shook his head and looked
down.
The steel surface dropped at ninety degrees to the horizontal. The steel plain ended in a steel cliff. Carroll squatted down and touched the edge, the corner. It was sharp, almost as if freshly machined. From that edge the cliff dropped down into mistiness. Far below the ground was grey, mottled with large patches of red. More steel? Though Carroll wondered if it was truly steel he stood upon. He was beginning to doubt it could be anything so prosaic.
The mottled grey and red extended to a sunrise only slightly higher than before. There was nothing else. Of course, Carroll realized, if the Clown was telling the truth, and he saw no reason to doubt that he was, then ninety odd million miles of plain lay between here and the very edge of the sun. He moved away from the edge with a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach and unquestioning awe. What now? Where was the Clown? He moved back to the resurrection machine and sat down with his back against a cluster of tubes. His position in repose was exactly the same as the skeleton's.
♠♠♠
Red were the bars that caged him, red the prison, red the sky above and red the ground below. All colour and substance extended in discs around him. He was trapped, held as he had been held so many times before. But this time he had to be free. This time there were things he had to do. He reached through the gauzy fabrics of space, round all that enclosed him, to tap energy he had spent many years accumulating and had been waiting for many years to employ. The bars crumpled. The rings broke and fell away. And he was free, hurtling above a patchwork of hexagons where men died and burnt, then hurtling above an expanse of a substance like steel, but which was infinitely stronger.
♠♠♠
‘About time,’ said Carroll, getting unsteadily to his feet. His voice was hoarse, his face sick white, and his eyes red rimmed. He had been waiting for too long. He knew he was dying of thirst.
The image of the Clown hovered before him seemingly stronger than it had ever been before, its bell-toed shoes hovering a foot off of the ground. ‘You have your disc?’ he asked, and this time his voice possessed power.
Carroll nodded and took out and displayed his disc. The Clown slid to one side and came to a bobbing halt beside the console. ‘Quickly, here!’
Carroll staggered over to stand next to the Clown.
‘Place your disc here,’ the Clown directed his attention to a small slot in the top of the console. Carroll did as bid. The disc sank halfway into the slot. ‘Touch your fingers now to red, green, red, blue, yellow, then red and blue together.’
Carroll reached down and woodenly stabbed his fingers at the coloured patches. As he hit the last to colours the disc dropped into the console and he felt a wrenching sensation in the pit of his stomach. He fell against the console, gasping.
‘Quickly now, enter the machine,’ said the Clown, and as he said this he peered up and to the side. Carroll followed the direction of his gaze and saw something silhouetted against the starlit sky, something lit by the occasional flickers of ruby light. He pushed himself from the console and moved drunkenly to the machine. The door stood half open. He entered, taking one last look at the object in the sky. It was a throne he realized as the door closed upon him; a throne in which was seated a manlike form with the head of a jackal.
Suddenly a crashing explosion shook the machine, instantly overlaid by a flash of white and heat and a sense of dislocation, sickening in its intensity. Then the door opened and he was somewhere else.
Carroll reeled forwards and out, the skin of his face loosening with the touch of airborne moisture and his ears popping because of a sudden change of pressure. He glanced up expecting to see Anubis bearing down on him and instead saw a steel cliff reaching up into starlit space and curving away on either side to be lost into misty distant. He took a pace forwards and something crunched under his boots like shingle. Then he realized: boots.
Somehow he had been transported, clothing as well. He gazed back at the booth in wonderment and there saw a flash of blue on its floor, unsteadily he reached back inside and grabbed up his soul disc and placed it in his pocket. It would not do to lose his life. Next something else penetrated the haze of his mind and he peered down again. Shingle? No, not shingle, but soul discs, millions of soul discs. Carroll felt numb and just stood staring at the ground in vacuous confusion.
‘Towards the sun,’ came the Clown's voice out of the air after a time that could have been minutes or hours to Carroll. He checked around him and could see no sign of his eldritch guide. What he did see though, and what impinged on his awareness more than all else, was a pool of scummy water gathered in a depression in the grey ground. He went to the pool and drank his fill.
Almost immediately his head cleared, and once sated he sat on a pile of soul discs and gazed across their scattered redness into the distance. From the cliff those red areas had appeared vast. One disc for every human to have died on Earth? He drank more of the metallic tasting water then stood and walked on. He was not surprised when on his way he passed two more corpses, bones gleaming whitely and flesh fallen away like something washed up on a beach. These, Carroll realized, were more recent. Such was the way of it. He wondered if he would be joining their number to pave the way for some other to walk on this sunset path.
♠♠♠
For how long or for how far he walked Carroll had no idea. He drank frequently at the many pools, gradually rehydrating himself, and he walked. Once he stopped to lie down upon a pile of soul discs. Then on waking he walked again. In time the cliff became a small square object behind him almost hidden by the haze that seemed to hang over everything. And the further he got from it the more disconcerted he became. As strange as the game board was it seemed familiar now in retrospect. He could not judge the passage of time because the sun did not move, and he could not judge distance because there was no curve to the horizon. All around him the red and grey ground disappeared into immeasurable distances.
After a time he could not judge he saw something far ahead of him which he at first took to be illusory. Eventually it stayed constantly in his sights and he knew it was real, though it seemed to be moving. When he got closer he heard a gravelly crunching and the whine of electric motors. At first he considered avoiding this thing, then he decided he did not care. Soon it came clearly into view: a machine like a huge insect mounted no shiny serrated wheels. He watched as with slow deliberation it rolled forwards picking up soul discs one at a time in tweezers at the end of its front appendages, placing them in a slot mouth as if to taste them, then spitting them out and moving on to the next. He watched it for a while then moved on. Was it searching for specific discs? He gazed around at the redness stretching into hazy distance and wondered how many it had checked, and how many it had left to do. The he left it to its task and went on his way.
Hunger became his constant bane, but all he could do was fill his gut with water and walk on. Twice more he fell asleep on piles of soul discs, there to have nightmares in which the only thing he remembered was the fear. Eventually there came a time when he sat down on a pile of soul discs and found no inclination to get up again. Almost as if this was what he had been watching for the Clown reappeared.
‘And where have you been?’ Carroll asked hoarsely.
‘Leading Anubis astray,’ replied the Clown.
Carroll nodded blankly and stared into the distance. It seemed to draw his eyes from his head. He snapped his gaze away.
‘People could never live here,’ he said with an edge to his voice, vaguely aware that he had forgotten something important.
The Clown gestured at the surrounding desolation. ‘This is not what I intended. The Four trapped me before I had time to finish my creation.’
‘Yeah,’ said Carroll noncommittally, feeling annoyed and sorry for himself. ‘Why are you a Clown? Is it because you like practical jokes? The kind that end up leaving corpses scattered across your creation?’
‘Before the Four trapped me in my soul disc my form was very much different from this–’
; ‘Yeah,’ Carroll interrupted, then bowed his head to stare at the green scummy water around his feet. ‘Saw a machine earlier ... it was searching... I think.’
‘Yes, it was a library robot that survived the ruin of my ship. All the discs were kept together there in chronological order, and the robot is trying to do the job it did there ... trying to keep the discs in order.’
Carroll glanced up. ‘What's it looking for?’
‘The disc of the first sentient on your planet.’
‘And when it has found that?’
‘It will look for the second.’
Carroll shook his head and rested it in his hands. Such awe inspiring futility, he could think of nothing more to ask about it, but that the robot did search like that posed another interesting question.
‘How do the Four get their discs ... like ... me?’
‘When they destroyed my ship sections of the library came down intact. All that you see around you is a small portion of the whole. But library collections do not apply to you. Your disc, like the discs of some of your fellows, were ones recently recorded and taken directly from the receiver.’
‘Receiver–’ began Carroll, and wished he had not.
‘Yes, a gravity pulse receiver within the solar disc. The main recorder is in what is called the red spot on the planet Jupiter of your solar system. It records each of you then transmits the information here.’
Carroll tried not to think too much about that. ‘Where the Hell am I going?’ he asked instead.
‘You are going to my ship,’ replied the Clown.
Carroll took that in and went on, ‘And why am I going to your ship? Not to re-catalogue your library I hope.’
‘You are going to my ship to get weapons, equipment, whatever you may require to steal my soul disc.’
‘I see.’ Carroll took his head out of his hands.
Weapons and equipment were words that revived him. He knew what to do with weapons...
