Tentatively, the people of Ruin introduced themselves. From the far side of the room Herm spotted a fellow and waited for him to approach. “I fear,” Herm whispered, “that you’re about to discover why my father doesn’t appreciate visitors.”
No sooner had he whispered these words than a smelly man with unblinking eyes came and took her hand, bowed low, and kissed it. “Rame Onowa,” he said in a high voice, “at your service, ma’am.”
He glanced up to Herm, waiting for the winged man to make a more formal introduction. “Rame is an itinerant cave dweller-cum-philosopher,” Herm said, “who lives in the ruins out near, the Yesterday Hills.”
Rame was suitably attired in a hooded robe of moldy blue hair. His narrow hatchet face was covered with a beard and grime. His teeth were more orange than yellow. “So pleased to meet you,” Rame said, now pumping her hand vigorously. “So pleased to meet such a beautiful, beautiful woman. You’d … you’d certainly make a fine decoration for any man’s cave Miss, uh Miss …”
“Maggie O’Day,” Maggie answered, trying to pull her hand away.
“Ah! A beautiful name,” Rame said, then glanced toward Gallen and the bears. “So tell me, Maggie, what brings you to Ruin?”
Rame stood close and peered into her eyes, unblinking, as if trying to peer beneath any layers of deceit, and Maggie tried to pull her hand back. Suddenly, a memory but two weeks old flashed through her mind, terrifying her.
Never before had Maggie heard a war band of Vanquishers in flight: now she understood why men called these aliens dronon.
The falling sun of Avendon lay on the ragged gray hills, creating a cold silver blade of light on the horizon. In that blade of light, Vanquishers flew in such vast numbers they looked like a row of thunderheads stretching over the hills, their black carapaces glinting in the dying sun. Their flashing amber wings limned the clouds with a sickly yellow hue; even kilometers away, the beating of their wings created a deep moaning that was not quite song, not quite a sound of pain. Almost mechanical.
Machines. They were as mindless and unyielding as machines.
The Lords of Seventh Swarm. Maggie took one last glance at the dronon over her shoulder. The cloud of warriors sped forward. So close. So close. Out over the prairie, wind stirred clouds of pollen from the purple sage.
Maggie ducked into a gully, gasping, the scent of sage and dust thick in her throat. She put a hand on her swollen belly, holding the son who waited to be born. Behind her, Gallen stopped. He raised a hand to shade his eyes, half clutched it into a fist, shielding his eyes, then just held it for several seconds, so it became a gesture of denial, as if with one hand he could hope to hold the swarm at bay.
Sweat streamed down Maggie’s face. Her heart pounded. Her mind was numb from too many sleepless nights, from hours of running. Maggie couldn’t imagine the Vanquishers being more than ten kilometers out, flying fast. Maybe closer.
After months of nightmares in which the dronon caught her in darkness, then tore off her arms, it looked as if Maggie’s worst fears would come to pass. She fought her panic, but she was too battered to be tough anymore. She looked frantically for a place to hide.
“Hurry, my love,” Gallen urged, trying to steer her downhill. Maggie stumbled with weariness. “The gate must be here. The map says we’re right on top of it.” He clutched a map in one hand.
In the shadows of a creosote bush, a sparrow peeped querulously.
A whining sound approached overhead, the hum of a dronon antigravity drive. Maggie glanced up. A bullet-shaped vessel hurtled over the rise, its fore-end cluttered with sensor arrays. It was a dronon Seeker, a machine that hunted by scent.
A Vanquisher straddled the Seeker, hugging the vessel. The dronon’s wings were folded back, its head low against the frame of the Seeker.
It was the demon that haunted Maggie’s dreams, hurtling ‘toward them in the darkness like the angel of death. Its huge front arms, its battle arms with their serrated edges, were poised above its head, ready to chop down. The Vanquisher shouted in its own language. Maggie could not understand it, but dozens of mouthfingers beneath its jaws thumped loudly over the thin membrane of its voicedrum; the banging of its voice echoed over the gully, a sound of warning. Maggie looked for her reflection in its faceted eyes. Its translucent wings buzzed in a blur.
Beside her, there was a movement and a flash as Gallen spun and fired his pulp pistol.…
Maggie pulled her hand from Rame’s, lurched back, blinking tears, trying to recall what question the madman had asked her. The fear of the dronon weighed heavily on her, as heavily as it had two weeks earlier when they’d finally escaped Avedon only to find that the world gate they’d walked through led to a planet in the Carina Galaxy. The Lords of the Seventh Swarm had been so close on Maggie’s trail, had come so close to blocking all their exits, that Maggie convinced Gallen to borrow a space cruiser from the Tharrin governors on Certes, fly off into the frontier worlds of the Carina Galaxy, where Maggie hoped to give birth to her child in safety. Out here, there were no world gates. Travel between worlds might be more difficult, but at least, Maggie hoped, the dronon would not be able to track her so easily.
Indeed, they’d come to Ruin at the behest of the governors of Certes. The planet was not listed on any official star charts.
“I, uh, I uh, didn’t mean to frighten you,” Rame said as Maggie backed away. “I’m sorry.”
“We’re just here for a visit,” Gallen interrupted the two, taking Maggie’s hand, holding it, so that Rame would quit pawing at her. “We wanted to see the ruins.”
But Rame looked at the fear on Maggie’s face, and it seemed that he knew better.
“I’d take care of you,” Rame said. “If you were my woman, I’d take care of you.” He reached up with one grubby hand, as if to run his fingers over the smooth skin at the hollow of her throat. “Come see my cave,” he whispered urgently. “You’ll like my cave. It’s peaceful there. Got a waterfall in the back of it. There, in the dark places, I could teach you the secrets of the Qualeewoohs.” He stared at her, unblinking.
Gallen edged forward, almost blocking Rame with his own body. Maggie was not afraid of the man, not really.
There was a look of … peace in Rame’s dark eyes. A look of total contentment and surrender. Almost, Maggie wanted to fall forward into those eyes to feel what Rame felt. She caught herself and pulled away, wondering if Rame had some odd power, wondering if he’d purposely triggered those dark memories in her.
But she couldn’t imagine such a thing. No. She’d been having anxiety attacks like this for the past several weeks. It was the stress that caused her agitated state. The constant fear and running.
Herm pushed himself between Rame and Maggie, disposed of the man by saying, “Rame, would you be so kind as to wait on the veranda? The High Confab is coming, and we need someone to offer the proper greetings when she lands.”
“The High Confab? Here? Tonight?” Rame asked, his eyes growing impossibly more and more huge under his hooded cloak.
Herm said, “Yes, her attendants said she would come tonight, and she’ll need a proper escort.”
With a throaty cry of astonishment, Rame turned and trundled toward the veranda, to a set of stone perches where visiting Qualeewoohs might land.
“Who is this High Confab?” Orick the bear asked. For the past several minutes, he’d been sniffing around, watching the folks. No one had spoken to him, and he’d seemed more interested in food than conversation anyway.
“A figment of Rame’s hallucinations,” Herm told Orick, “a Qualeewooh who visits him in his dreams. Like many of the mad folks around here, Rame sleeps with a Qualeewooh’s spirit mask over his face. If you aren’t mad already, such things will drive you that way soon enough.”
A moment later, a beautiful woman appeared through the crowd, as brilliant and extraordinary in her brown silks and diamonds as the other folk were plain.
She must be one of Felph’s children, Maggie reali
zed. No one else looked a thousandth so elegant. She appeared to be no more than twenty, yet her eyes spoke of wisdom beyond her years. Auburn hair cascaded down her back to her waist, and her eyes were clear light brown.
Maggie realized that Herm had disposed of the madman just in time for this woman to make her appearance. Herm introduced her, with a slight, mocking smile, “May I present Hera, Felph’s fourth.”
“Fourth?” Gallen and Maggie said, confused.
“Fourth created being,” Herm said. “Informally, we call Lord Felph our ‘father,’ but I didn’t want to confuse you. We’re his creations, we have no mother or father in the common sense of the word.”
Maggie looked up to the Guide that Hera wore in her hair, a simple circlet of silver. “He calls you his daughter, yet he makes you wear a Guide?” Maggie said, disapproval giving an edge to her voice.
“What loving father wouldn’t want to control his child’s thoughts?” Hera said. “It keeps me pure.”
Maggie grimaced, “It keeps you bobbing like a marionette on your strings, you mean.”
Hera fidgeted with the diamond rings on her fingers. “My father has our best interests at heart. He desires good for all people.”
I’m sure, Maggie almost said. But showing such sentiments would accomplish nothing. Felph’s children were his creations, mere things. Perhaps the girl was so naive, she believed the propaganda Felph fed her.
Or perhaps I’m wrong about him, Maggie wondered. Perhaps a loving but misguided father might seek to control his children this way.
“Maggie meant no disrespect,” Gallen said. Hera studied his blue eyes, long golden hair, broad shoulders. Maggie had seen that spark of interest in other women.
At that moment, Hera’s eyes went unfocused, and she immediately turned and marched toward a graceful staircase near the middle of the room.
“You must forgive us,” Herm apologized. “Lord Felph has sent word that he desires our presence. He wishes us to make an appearance en masse. Apparently he did not know Hera had already come down to the party. Please, forgive us.”
The winged man flushed in embarrassment, then flew swiftly up to the top of the staircase and waited for Hera to join him.
Then they disappeared into a door that opened seamlessly from the wall.
Somehow, Maggie was horrified by this. The poor girl, she thought. Lord Felph didn’t bother to ask her to come to him, simply ordered her Guide to bring her, so that in the midst of a conversation, Hera abandoned her guests.
Yet either Hera was too dumb to know how Felph abused her, or she wasn’t able to voice her own pain.
Lord Felph and his children did not come down immediately. For ten minutes Maggie waited.
Then suddenly music swelled all through the great hall—a stately march with many ringing bells. At the top of the grand staircase, white lights shone brilliantly, and the seamless hole opened once again.
Lord Felph came out. He was an old man, Maggie saw at once, stooped and graying. With rejuvenations and life extensions, the body he wore could easily have been a thousand years old. Maggie doubted it was his first. He wore no mantle of authority, made no show of ostentation in clothing. He wore only a simple frock of dark gray, much as if he were a monk back on Maggie’s home world. He wore no jewelry. The only glimmer came from his dark blue eyes, which glanced out over the crowd knowingly.
Yet as his children came out behind, each one shone. Though he lacked ornamentation, he lavished it upon his creations. A woman came to his beckoning arm, a woman with silver hair—not the silvering of hair crone gray with age, but rather a genuine silver sheen, as if it had been spun of metal. She wore a stunning dress of turquoise blue that flashed as she moved, yet Maggie’s gaze was drawn more toward the woman’s eyes. She studied Maggie and Gallen frankly as she descended the staircase.
Maggie felt a physical wrenching. Turn away. something in her mind told her. Turn away. Don’t let her see you.
For the woman’s eyes pierced Maggie, inspected her, and dismissed her all in a glance.
“Felph and Arachne, hooray for Felph and Arachne!” the employees cheered, shouting and clapping. Their jubilant cheers were answered by more subdued clapping from the scientists and poachers and eccentrics in the crowd. Maggie thought the employees’ level of enthusiasm sounded odd, strained. Perhaps Felph expected such accolades from them.
Behind them marched Herm, all dressed in a new outfit of elegant black, looking debonair.
Following him came Hera, and on her arm a tall man with a broad chest, incredibly handsome, with long flowing hair, a beardless face with strong jaws, and eyes of such a piercing black that they seemed to glitter like jewels. His light gray jacket and white pants all somehow worked together so that as Maggie looked at him, her gaze riveted to those dark and disturbing eyes.
“Hooray, hooray for Zeus and Hera,” the people all shouted, and Maggie had an odd sinking feeling. She knew little of mythology, only what her mantle downloaded to her, and she was disturbed by the naming scheme Lord Felph had chosen for his children.
Last of all, came a young girl, no more than twelve or thirteen. She was both lithe and strong, with a very athletic build. Yet, apparently without her even knowing, she was the most beautiful woman Maggie had ever seen. Her long amber hair fell in a casual braid over her left shoulder, and her eyes were of the deepest gray. She was more full-bodied than a Tharrin, physically stronger and more sensual. Indeed, she seemed the perfect combination of strength, grace, and sensuality, though she was not even well into her teens. Maggie watched Gallen’s eyes: he seemed riveted by her face, the astonishing sweetness of her smile.
Her appearance brought an enthusiastic explosion of shouts from the townsfolk. “Athena! Yay for Athena!” they cheered.
The people of Ruin all continued applauding Lord Felph and his creations. Audio recordings played the sounds of thousands more people cheering and clapping, so that the walls fairly shook with the tumult, though fewer than a hundred guests had gathered.
Suddenly, out through the east windows on the veranda, fireworks began to explode, shooting high into the air, forming brightly colored rainbows that whistled over the verandas and waterfalls.
Lord Felph descended.
Maggie found it hard to look at Felph’s children. She found she was shaking, and her breath came ragged. Slaves. They were all slaves, wearing their silver Guides.
As Felph and his creations reached the bottom of the stairs, Felph raised his hands, and the people of Ruin quieted their cheering. Felph stood nodding and blinking pleasantly in the bright lights, while his servants circled him and continued clapping, shouting, “Jolly good! Well done! Hurrah for Lord Felph!”
Felph held his hands higher, begging them to quiet.
“I hope you have all had an opportunity to eat, and to meet the newest additions to our planet—our guests!” Felph waved toward Gallen, Maggie, and the bears. His voice came out somewhat weak and raspy.
This was followed by more enthusiastic cheering and much nodding of heads, including a few calls for a toast.
But, Lord Felph would have none of that.
“And now, my good friends, my employees,” Felph called, raising his hands for silence, “I would like you all to leave!” This last word he shouted, so that it echoed from the ceiling of the room. The music had just stopped, and the echoing booms of the fireworks died away in Maggie’s ears.
Moreover, the cheering died on the lips of the planet’s people, and all of them stared, gawking at Lord Felph.
One flabby fellow called into the silence, “But ah haven’t ‘ad a chance for a bite, yet!” though he stood with both fists holding a silver platter generously filled with cakes and meat.
“I brought you here to meet my guests, nothing more,” Lord Felph said with a flourish of his hand, waving the people all away. “I gave you ample time for that task, and if you squandered it, it’s your own damned fault. As for food, if you like, you may each grab a plate as you depar
t, and drain a mug, too. The florafeems are still on the terrace, and they’ll depart in a few minutes. It has been so nice of you to come. But really, you must leave, now!”
The guests stared in dismay, unwilling to believe Lord Felph would throw them out.
Felph hunched, alone in the spotlight. All around the room, it began to grow ominously dark as lights dimmed, so that only the old man could be seen. He eyed the guests, chin thrust out, glaring as if in mute rage, till at last he could hold still no longer.
He stomped his foot on the floor with all his might, so that the sound of it rang out. Then he bent forward and began howling, a strange, inhuman shout that sounded of genuine pain. “Noowwwww!” he cried, stomping again. “Get out nowwww! I can’t bear your presence any longer. I can’t tolerate it! Get out while you still can! Nowwwww!”
As the old man bent low, his face twisted in pain, his eyes stared out accusingly on the people of Ruin.
Maggie’s heart began pounding in fear. Lord Felph panted, and slobber dripped down his chin.
“Careful, careful,” someone whispered in the crowd behind Maggie, “he’s in one of ‘is moods!”
Those closest to Felph began backing away slowly, raising their hands as if to prove that they weren’t armed. Perhaps they imagined he had a weapon and would begin shooting. Those near the tables of food each grabbed plates, while some of those closest to the doors actually took off sprinting for the terrace. One woman fell and shrieked as a heavy man trampled her, then several other people began screaming, perhaps believing that Felph had unleashed some security droids on the crowd with orders to shoot.
In moments the room emptied of all but Maggie, Gallen, the bears, and Felph’s children. Even of Felph’s servants, only the faithful Dooring remained, smiling broadly.
In the sudden silence, Felph began chuckling under his breath, the sound reverberating from the high walls. He then stared at the retreating figures, who turned to shadows out on the veranda.
Lords of the Seventh Swarm Page 5
