But Lod had not lost all control. By forcing the pain of the zōtl’s presence louder in himself, he could diminish their hold. The pain interfered with their probes and gave his brain time to reset its program codes and adjust for Dreux’s loss. He had to suffer in this way, for if he avoided the hurt, the probes asserted themselves and the planets wobbled. Agony shouted in him.
“Detach.”
The voice whispered among the screams. The pain cut deeper.
“Remember—you are a machine. Detach.”
Distress toiled calamitously in Lod as he tried to detach his mind from his misery without entirely pulling away and inspiring the zōtl’s further drain of his power.
Genitrix’s voice winced out of the derangement of the spiders’ torture:
*
“Ignorant of hope, you hang in your helplessness,
implacable as a cliff,
your own thoughts ripped from you and replaced
by the deformed reasonings of our enemy.”
*
How much longer could he sustain this suffering? At least the ghost cave had silenced. No more riddles pelted him. That meant that the remaining zōtl were too busy hurting him, too busy trying to destroy the worlds to maintain their robot oracle.
“That’s it,” Genitrix’s female voice assured him. “Leave your suffering in place and detach your thoughts.”
Without Genitrix, Lod would have succumbed long ago to the harrowing spider probes. She had shown him that mind and body could separate. “You are a machine,” she constantly reminded him. “Let the machine suffer. Detach and watch the machine suffer. Or detach and watch anything else. But detach.”
Cruel epochs of agony passed before Lod learned how to detach his mind without flinching his body away from the pain. During one attempt, he had passed out. When he roused, Dreux was rubble. He had to stay alert. He had to reside in his suffering. “Detach—don’t evade,” Genitrix counseled. “The loss of Dreux does not mean the loss of Chalco-Doror. There is time yet to be free. Time to rectify the gravitational instabilities. Do not fear. Fear feeds pain. Remember, you are a machine. Detach. Become pure observation. Go beyond objectivity. Detach.”
Sometimes detachment was easy. Sometimes he could let the spider’s torment sluice through him mindlessly, while his mind absorbed the thoughts of pilgrims who still flocked to see him hung in the great hall of Perdur. From the pilgrims’ thoughts reflecting in him, he witnessed their small lives. How much cruder and more primitive he found these ideations than those of the first pilgrims to parade before him in the Age of Dominion. Those had been sophisticated humans, who had known cities and had mastered clever technologies of their own. They had gazed up at his trapped shape and had pondered the fate of worlds and of the Rimstalker and the zōtl. But these pilgrims presented to Lod a presence little more complex than the beasts they used to till their fields. They pelted him with thoughts of gods and demons, harvests, and clan rivalries.
From the few pilgrims aware of more than their own farms and jealousies, Lod prospected memories that sparkled hope in him. Sojourners of the Ordo Vala visited the farms, seeking adventurers to join Gai’s army. Several raids on the zōtl’s bastion of Know-Where-to-Go had already exterminated most of the winged spiders outside Perdur. By that, Lod knew he did not suffer in vain.
The zōtl apparently knew of the raids as well, and they shoved Lod beyond the very limits of distress. Lightning bolts jarred him toward coma.
“Detach. Let the pain own you. Come with me.”
Delirious with the havoc of shooting pain, Lod flinched away from this anguish, felt the planets slide loose, and forced himself back into the torture. And was suddenly beyond it. Black space carried a globe of wild oils, rainbow slithers, and hot colors. Lod knew he observed a lynk-map of the Overworld. Distantly, the whipcrack and puncturing screams of his torment continued, felt but not suffered. He had detached. Genitrix had momentarily lifted him clear. His awareness floated in the hypermetric space overlooking the sphere of universal time, all-time condensed to a ball of mapped probabilities.
Chalco-Doror glinted tiny on the globe of splashed colors, a mere curlicue, lacy with bundled timelines at the edge of an ocean of gray void. The worlds of Chalco-Doror flickered as an insignificant dusting among the proud efflorescences of the galaxy, which itself materialized but a wee tuft among the massive mottlings of galactic clusters and the gravitational architecture that strung the clusters in universe-girdling chains.
“Now that you are detached,” Genitrix spoke in a hush, “you can see. And what you see is what is. What is shadows what will be. Look.”
The miniscule filigree of Chalco-Doror enlarged into its own spherical shape and filled Lod’s view. The pattern, a rococo of chrome-bright pigments, mad splotches of color in a fractal jigsaw, shifted like a cloud’s edge, rearranging more vigorously the harder he stared at it.
“The future can be glimpsed but never seen,” Genitrix clarified. “The pattern you witness is composed of timelines, the four-dimensional structures of all the particles that make up these worlds. What you see is what was and what is. What will be is beyond the horizon of the time-globe. If we turn the globe and peek, we will change it. Yet look closely at the horizon. Do you see how the gray enlarges? Gray represents space. The fractal pattern ends in the near future and gray fills what we can see. These worlds do not exist in the future. Only space.”
A rustle of pain twitched from far away, gnawed closer. Lod, attentive to it, feared to let it go entirely, in dread of losing another planet. He held on to the razorish ache yet let his mind go with Genitrix, who talked about time as though it were a rock that could be held, chiseled, and shaped.
“See this striation of blue, this filament?” Genitrix asked. “That is Ned O’Tennis. By sheer chance, he penetrated the event limits of the Overworld in a unique way. Many have gone forward and backward in time through the Overworld but none as rapidly as he. Time spooled tightly around him. Now whenever he enters a lynk, the phase shift slings him out of the local frame. That is why his timeline, this blue filament here, weaves such a long path. Without it, he never could have traveled as far as he did in the Overworld to get the O’ode. The zōtl can read this map as easily as you and I. They sent a scyldar to kill Ned. But though Ned’s timeline is clear on this globe, his appearances in Chalco-Doror are harder to predict, and he has eluded his assassin.”
The patter of Genitrix’s voice rendered a welcome distraction from the scald of the zōtl’s magnetic probes, but Lod took care not to lose his sense of the hurting. That pain carried the last of his control. If he lost that, he lost the worlds—even so, he needed to hear Genitrix. She expressed something about a human whose life traced the timeline of those worlds he suffered to preserve.
“The strange attractor that patterns the destiny of Chalco-Doror is either a collapse of all the worlds back into the components of our return-vehicle, or their fragmentation into cosmic debris. Which fate is ours is still uncertain. The attractor is beyond the horizon. But if you look closely, you will see that Ned O’Tennis’ timeline contours the fractal profile for Valdëmiraën, the planet where he first entered the lynklanes so rapidly. His timeline is a tracer for Valdëmiraën. The zōtl, who know this, want to kill him, because you see here—”
The globe swelled closer, and Lod registered that the blue filament unfurled into the only part of the colorful pattern of Chalco-Doror that reached the horizon. All other timelines tasseled into an ocean of gray emptiness.
“There is plenty of space into which Chalco-Doror can disintegrate,” Genitrix continued. “Entropy will do all the work once you are out of the way. But there is only one path that might lead to collapse. And this human’s timeline traces it. If he dies, the pattern will terminate on this side of the horizon, entirely surrounded by gray.”
Silence wavered like an aura, sizzling with the distant static of zōtl magnetic probes.
*
“From the gods came fire. P
eople gave
fire purpose but fed it on their losses.
Now the fire is gorged with emptiness,
nostalgic for the lavish and aimless gods.
*
“Forgive me my poetry, Lod. It is my way of detaching. I am a machine programmed for quatrains. They calm me. We need to stay calm now. You see, the blue filament that is Ned O’Tennis is a vein of many branchings. Notice the scalloped design embedding it? Follow it among those paisley ruffles—those are interlinked timelines of forests and algal blooms. Keep trailing the connections along their shared fractal boundaries and you will see that his timeline is intimately connected with this golden spiral here—your timeline. If you fail, he fails. And look at this: Multitudes of tiny concatenated threads—the lives of human beings, thousands of them, all enchained to you and Ned. He is loose in time, you are bound by the phanes, and every human being alive is somehow connected with you. Everyone in Chalco-Doror is destined by our struggle. You must stay calm. You are a machine. Fulfill your mission.”
Pain beseeched from afar. Lod listened. The globe vanished, and his hurt mind screeched louder. He returned to Perdur, back to the trap of his rib cage and lancing rays of the zōtl’s cruelty. He writhed under their gouging probes, felt codes surrender in his brain, planets strain against their tethers of gravity. With cold detachment, he defused his panic and accepted the painful intruders in his brain. He lost control of some sectors of the gravity field, but while the zōtl sabotaged them, he regained power over other areas. Like a cliff, he faced into emptiness—and it was vast enough to hold all the pain the spiders could inflict short of killing him and returning him to his Form. He leaned into his hurt, hoping they would kill him. Powered by a new hope, adamant as his suffering, he endured.
*
Ned O’Tennis and Pahang tumbled out of a lynk into a grove of scaly trees under a vaporous blue sky. The ground received them knee-deep with ruddy sludge, slick surface squirming with ciliated snakes. Hung from trees three human skeletons, two of them with distorted, fanged skulls, greeted them. Pahang clattered to his feet in his mucked armor and fired a burst with the laserifle that swept their proximity free of mud and vipers. Ned put a hand on his shoulder to restrain him. “You’re alarming the locals.”
Pahang peered from behind his faceguard and located, beyond the trees, a cluster of stick and stone huts. Smoke idled from crooked chimneys, and cows, goats, and chickens looked to the noise of Pahang’s gun from where they grazed on grass roofs. Gaunt people with machetes and sharpened staves appeared in doorways. Ned waved.
“Maybe we should go back into the lynk,” Pahang suggested.
“Let’s see where we are first.” Ned tucked his pistol under his belt at his back. During the gale-force rush of their flight between lynks, both their weapons had fired accidentally, one bluehot bolt from the laserifle missing Ned’s head by an inch and singeing the hair above his ear. He contemplated taking the rifle from Pahang until he could teach him how to handle it, but then decided, hearing the alarmed shouts in the village, that they were better off armed. He reached over and locked the safety. “Keep the muzzle down and don’t unlock unless we’re attacked, okay?”
Pahang nodded, happy for his armor even though it slowed him down in the thick mud. The people who gathered in the village plaza brattled their weapons and stared angrily at the interlopers. On the rooftops, archers knelt.
Ned stopped and raised his arms in greeting. “We mean no harm,” he shouted, then said to Pahang, “Open your faceguard.”
Pahang reluctantly complied.
Voices conferred in the village crowd, and Ned’s translator crackled ominously, “They’re some kind of soldiers.— They have guns! Shoot them before they get closer!—They must have come out of the lynk.—Maybe they’re raider scouts. They’ll take our food and kill us.”
“We are not raiders,” Ned called back. “We come in peace. We need food, but we will work for it if you give us the chance.”
A dumbfounded silence blanketed the crowd. Finally, one of the archers lowered his bow and asked, “Who are you that you speak our language?” Others shouted, “The lords sent them back to fetch us. Shoot them! No more lords!”
“We are travelers,” Ned answered. “We have a translator—a machine that helps us understand each other.”
The crowd jabbered excitedly. “Did not the priests warn of the many-tongues?—Nonsense. Such machines once existed. Many-tongues need no machines.—They are deceiving us.”
A woman with a javelin called, “Are you demon-lords come for the children? By the power of Saor, I demand you speak the truth.”
“We are not demon-lords,” Ned replied and said to Pahang, “Maybe you’re right about going back to the lynk.”
“Show us the machine,” the javelin-woman demanded.
Ned unclipped the wafer-sized translator from the breast flap of his flightsuit and held it up.
“It is too small. He is lying.—No. Such machines once existed. Long ago, in the Age of Dominion.—It is a trick. They are demon-lords and many-tongued. Quick, kill them before they attack.”
A boom resounded, and the translator ripped free of Ned’s grip. From an open window under the straw eaves of a hut, smoke lofted from the gun of someone neither of them had seen. Ned gawked at his hand, amazed to find his buzzing fingers still there.
Pahang fumbled to unlock the safety of the laserifle, but before he could shoot, Ned grabbed the muzzle. “Wait. They could have shot us.”
Pahang stared at him with alarm, uncomprehending. He said something in Malay. Ned frowned and locked the safety again. While the villagers jabbered among themselves, he sloshed through the mud, bent over, looking for the translator. There was no sign of it.
A cry from Pahang turned Ned, and he saw the villagers approaching, crude weapons lowered. Archers on the rooftops and the sniper in the window watched. Ned raised his arms and shouted at Pahang to lower the rifle he trained on them. The Malay complied and looked anxiously to him.
In moments, the villagers surrounded them. Dressed in buckskin and leather, hair long and intricately braided, flesh dark, the men had nubbly beards and cicatrix scars on their cheeks. Their language, full of clicks and whistles, sounded incomprehensible to the travelers. By hand gestures, the villagers offered their hospitality, apparently convinced that Ned and Pahang were not many-tongued demon-lords.
Pahang bowed, and Ned nodded with gratitude, signed that he needed his translator to communicate. Some of the villagers began searching the enveloping sludge. Others touched Pahang’s armor, reached for his rifle. He shrugged them off. Annoyed mumbles coursed through the group. Ned reached down to the calf-sheath of his boot, withdrew a plasteel utility knife, and presented it haft-forward, a gift.
The javelin-armed woman took the knife and admired the clean edge of the blade on one side, the serration on the other. She held it in both hands and nodded in acceptance. With a shout, she sent the others back toward the village and waved for the travelers to follow.
Ned and Pahang, taken to one of the cottages, removed their muddy boots and entered. Pots and plant-bundles hung from rafters, and embers glowed in the stone hearth under a percolating cauldron that filled the room with spicy redolence. The travelers ate bread and cheese omelettes in a fiery sauce cooled with warm, smoky-tasting beer. The javelin-woman’s name was Nila. Through handsigns and drawings with charcoal on the slate-topped table, she explained that a year earlier the wells in the region had risen and overflowed, covering the land in blood-colored muck. Most of the people who had lived there then had left. The serfs preferred to stay in the sludge free rather than follow their lords and continue their servitude. They had carried the portable goods of their lords across the land to the lynk, where Ned and Pahang had appeared, and then they cleared the quag and built this village.
The lords had been afraid to live near the lynk that arched above a grove of scaly trees. The villagers, who called themselves Free, had learned why early in thei
r independence, when distort gangs raided them from the lynk. Some distorts had hideous wasp-jaws yet spoke the Free’s language, as well as the languages of those villagers who had come through the lynk from clans on faraway worlds. Other distorts looked like the lords who had departed only demonic, flesh scorched a mottled and glossy pink, limbs barbed, and spike-crests stickled along hairless skulls and down their spines. They swarmed through the village, clawing anyone in their way, snatching children and devouring them even as they loped back through the mud to the lynk. The archers had killed one of the demon-lords and two many-tongues. Their skeletons had been tied to trees before the lynk to dissuade further attacks.
Nila stopped, trembly and red-eyed. Ned collected the plates and wooden forks and brought them to the wash-bucket. Nila motioned for him to stop. Since the wells had spilled over, rainwater served for drinking and washing. The dishes would wait. Ned went outside and stepped into his boots, but Pahang, who had been moved by Nila’s story, stayed behind, took off his helmet, loosened his armor, and made himself useful clearing ashes from the hearth.
Rain clouds budged over the horizon in the direction of the lynk. Otherwise the clear sky spangled with the diaphanous day-shadows of planetoids. Lod shone whitegold among the orbs, stardust and smaller asteroids breaking its radiance into fiery shafts and thorns. The muddy land glared with sunlight like hammered copper. Ned held a hand out to shield his eyes and tried to determine from the sky which planet he occupied. He thought he recognized the blue marble of Ioli from photographs, and Ren with its famous polar twin-planetesimals, which meant that the massive sphere rising above the village could be Vala or maybe Sakai. But then, where was Dreux? Lod’s corona might obscure the planet but never hide it, not from this distance. Above the world’s brim, a train of comets pointed their silver feathers away from the sun.
While Ned studied the sky, a boy of about eleven ran up to him, caked with mud, only his eyes and white smile unsmirched. He opened his hand and revealed the translator. The black housing of the wafer had dented precisely at its center, and again Ned marveled at the sniper’s accuracy. With a surprised smile, he accepted the translator from the boy. He shook the wafer. It did not rattle, yet no sound came from it when he spoke to it: “If you’d work maybe we could find out where we are.” He pointed to the translator and shrugged at the boy.
The Last Legends of Earth Page 44
