The Myth of the Maker

by Bruce R Cordell

  “Yeah, otherwise it’d be too easy,” she grumped. “All right, which way?” Nothing resembling the interface they’d jumped through was evident.

  “The gate has to be nearby,” Raul said. “Otherwise we wouldn’t have appeared here. I’m surprised we don’t see it, truthfully. Let me ask.”

  Raul waved down a lone figure wearing a black leather duster walking along the catwalk in their direction. The purple light from the pit reflected from the figure in a particularly unsettling fashion. The newcomer seemed to truly notice her and Raul for the first time, and veered to approach them.

  As he drew closer she realized the oddity was with the man himself, not the unsettling light. The skin of his face and exposed hands wasn’t really reflecting light from the pit, but refracting it. She saw his jaw, his brain as if behind hazed gelatin.

  The refracting light hid it until he stopped before them, but the man’s features exactly resembled those of Jason Cole. Not to mention Coleson, who’d they’d left behind on Earth. In fact, he was a perfect ringer for the translucent Jason duplicate she’d met on Earth. Kate’s heart began to beat erratically in her chest and throat, fluttering like a trapped bird.

  “What are you doing in here?” demanded the lookalike, his voice a match for Coleson’s, an accusing finger jabbing as if he would pin them in place with it.

  “Don’t you know?” said Raul, advancing a lazy step. Kate’s ring tingled again, even as a new cocky surety infused Raul. “We were told to expect a tour of the facility by someone who looked just like you. Though he was less, mm, see-through.”

  The man may have blinked, though with his lack of skin pigmentation, Kate wasn’t certain.

  “A homunculus brought you to the Foundries? Why?”

  Raul said with easy confidence, “We’re emissaries from Mandariel. We’re here to seal the nonaggression pact between our nation and Megeddon.” Raul raised a fist. “And to discuss what to do about our common enemy, Hazurrium.”

  Knowledge unfolded behind Kate’s left eye like an incipient migraine. Hazurrium, also called the queendom, was a prominent power in Ardeyn, and currently ruled by Queen Elandine. Mandariel was a much younger nation, ruled by the Twelve Princes. The two powers were not especially friendly.

  The look-alike shook his head, obviously confused. So was Kate. What the fuck was Raul trying to do?

  “Listen,” Raul said. “The Betrayer himself asked us here to explore whether such a pact made sense. But ever since we’ve arrived, all we’ve gotten is delay after delay. The first interesting thing that happened to us since we’ve arrived was being asked if we’d like to look around, what did you call them?” He snapped his fingers, “Oh, the Foundries, right. Then we were abandoned here until you came along. What’s your name?”

  As if compelled by Raul’s sudden request, the duplicate Jason said, “I’m Gamma. First Lieutenant of War.”

  Kate guessed that Raul was being more than deceptively persuasive. He was actually exerting some kind of mental influence as he spun his lies. Unbelievable. Yet here he was, chatting up a clone.

  “And where is War?” said Raul. “He was supposed to meet us.”

  It took everything Kate had not to glance at Raul like he was a lunatic.

  “He is attending to private matters,” Gamma replied. A sour expression on the duplicate’s face revealed that he wasn’t exactly happy with whatever Jason was doing. Or maybe he didn’t know. Either way, Kate was relieved that the Betrayer – or Coleson – wasn’t around to end to their charade.

  “Then it falls to you to show us around the Foundries,” declared Raul, an approving smile breaking on his face. As if he couldn’t help himself, Gamma returned the expression. Kate managed not to snort. She wasn’t sure who she was more viscerally disgusted with – Gamma for being yet another version of Jason-fucking-Cole, or Raul for being such a fucking liar. Had Raul ever led her on in the same way? He’d be sorry if she discovered he’d tried the “not the droids you’re looking for” tactic with her.

  Both Coleson and the duplicate she’d met in the server room so many months ago – they’d been like Gamma. A person molded from the identity of someone else. Server-room Jason had died – melting away – before she’d understood anything. He’d apologized, though she hadn’t then known why. Separated from his “parent,” maybe he’d had second thoughts about his role in Jason’s plot, about leaving behind the ring containing the Trojan horse quantum code. Kate idly traced the curve of the cold band on her finger with her thumb.

  And now before her stood one more duplicate, his mind yet another instance of Jason’s. Was he in lock-step with the original, or was he like a twin: a completely separate person in his own right? Server-room-Jason hadn’t struck her as someone who would have been so easily misled. Then again, he hadn’t had to deal with Raul’s “super power” for twisting brains into pretzels. She felt a little sorry for Gamma, despite everything.

  Gamma motioned them around the mouth of the monstrous pit. Kate glanced down. Amethyst light glittered far below, winking in code she couldn’t decipher. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “War has many projects,” Gamma threw over his shoulder, “If this one ever comes to fruition, we’ll have no need of alliances or treaties; we’ll have all the power we need at our fingertips.”

  “War mentioned he’d developed some kind of connection to a higher world,” Raul said. “To a place he called Earth. Is this the portal?”

  Gamma stopped in mid-stride, turning. Confusion wrinkled his face. “War told you about BITER? But that’s…”

  Raul cranked up the persuasion, “Yes, that’s classified. But War wants Mandariel’s friendship. He mentioned it – BITER – as a sign of good faith. Being called the Betrayer means you have to work double-hard to engender trust among your would-be allies.”

  Kate glanced into the pit again. The purple light at the bottom looked nothing like the portal they’d used to arrive in Megeddon. She couldn’t say that aloud without blowing their cover. So instead she said, “This doesn’t look like the… the BITER portal War described to us.”

  Gamma’s look of stark incomprehension, perhaps even betrayal, softened. “That’s because this isn’t BITER. Like I said, we’re taking it slow on the Pit Reactor. One mistake could blast Megeddon from existence in a flare of loose chaos.”

  Kate and Raul eased back a step.

  The ghost of a smile lifted Gamma’s mouth. “Well, if War wants you to see what’s in the Contact Foundry, so be it.”

  Kate said, “The Contact Foundry?”

  “BITER is in the Contact Foundry,” answered Gamma.

  Raul said, “That’s the spirit.”

  The clone led them another half turn around the pit, then ducked under a large arch. Inside, two massive crystal screens – three-stories tall if they were a foot – faced off across the length of the room. The tall surfaces rapidly flashed scenes, each lasting no more than an eyeblink: A city skyline. A highway system streaming with cars. A farm. An airport. On and on, and all of them from Earth.

  At the center of the space, midway between the two screens, a blurry smear hung in the air, like the one that’d formed when Coleson appeared in Brazil. Except this one stuttered, randomly appearing and disappearing. Noise, like the static from a dead channel, issued from it each time it appeared.

  A handful of clones, their skin apple red wearing armor nearly the same color, rushed about on scaffolding suspended along the edges of the display surfaces, pulling oversize levers and turning dials as if racing each other for a mad science prize. A handful of clones lay broken on the ground at the base of either monolith, burnt and unmoving. Pale smoke spiraled up from one of the bodies.

  “What’s happened?” Gamma demanded of the room. Except for some anxious glances from a few reds, no one answered.

  Gamma walked farther into the chamber, toward the stuttering discontinuity. “Answer me! Where’s Sigma?” he asked.

  One red homunculus threw a lever, then
glanced around long enough to gasp, “He went to investigate intruders on the other side of the link. He wasn’t gone more than a minute when the portal slipped. There was an explosion. The connection has destabilized.”

  Raul glanced at Kate. She silently mouthed the name, “Coleson,” at him. He considered half a second, then nodded.

  Gamma spared them a quick, “Excuse me,” and rushed to help the reds. Kate and Raul found themselves alone, standing a dozen feet from the discontinuity.

  “If we jumped through this, I supposed we’d show up back on Earth,” Kate muttered.

  “I expect so, yes,” he said. “It’s a gateway. A translation gate. Though I wouldn’t chance it at the moment. It looks… ill.”

  Kate studied the flickering hole in existence, then shifted her gaze to the crystal screens. They’d destroyed the quantum computer on Earth to unbalance Earth’s connection to Ardeyn. Here in Megeddon, the quantum computer’s analog might well be the twin imaging devices over which the clones swarmed.

  “Let’s break those.” She pointed to the screens. The gate was only a byproduct of the flickering surfaces. The magical mechanisms keeping the gate open must lay inside them.

  “Agreed. But right now?” asked Raul. “It’s crowded in here. Perhaps we should wait until odds shift in our favor.”

  “We might not get another chance,” she replied. “Use your mind control ability to tell everyone to leave.”

  He gave her a measured look. “It’s not mind control. It’s the ability to make people think I’m someone other than I am, or fast talk my way out of some situations. Anyway, it’s hard for me to affect more than a couple of people at once.”

  Kate grunted noncommittally.

  “And if you’re wondering; no. I’ve never fast talked you, Kate. You’d remember.”

  He knew her well. She decided to believe him, but not let him completely off the hook. “For your sake, I’d better not find out otherwise,” she said. Then, “Focus on Gamma. He’s the one in charge here.”

  Raul sighed. He studied the transparent clone of Jason who was directing his red-hued siblings on the scaffolding. “How should I play this, I wonder?” he muttered. Then he walked over to Sigma and tapped the clone on the shoulder.

  “Not now!” Sigma said.

  “War has a message. He says–”

  “I thought you were an envoy from Mandariel?”

  Raul shook his head impatiently. “That’s just my cover. We’re actually agents War employs beyond the walls of Megeddon.” Even from where she was standing, Kate’s brain prickled at the surge of invisible persuasion rolling off Raul. Gamma must have felt it too, because he began to stammer, all the while looking at Raul as if the man had just declared he was Santa Claus.

  “Listen, this is War’s message,” Raul continued. “You need to head to the west wall immediately. War’s waiting there. He needs you. He’s hurt; he just survived an assassination attempt, but more assassins are coming. And take your friends!” He pointed at the other clones.

  Gamma nodded slowly. Then all expression drained from his face. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “I said–”

  Gamma punched Raul in the face. The prickling sensation ceased as Raul’s head rocked back. The clone followed up with a roundhouse kick to Raul’s midsection.

  “Hey!” she yelled, and tried what she’d done to Coleson in Brazil. Last time, it just sort of happened. It was like trying to remember a word just on the tip of her tongue that was just out of reach.

  No. It wasn’t a word, it was a feeling, a sensation like conviction. And then she had it.

  Electricity curled out of nowhere and zapped Gamma. The clone’s clear skin hazed where lightning burned him. But it didn’t put him down. Slowed and hurt, he continued advancing on Raul, expertly jabbing, kicking, and elbowing like an MMA fighter. Given that he was a clone of War, it made sense that he was adept with weapons of all kinds, even his empty hands.

  For his part, Raul gave up ground in measured steps, circling rather than letting Gamma back him up against a wall. Kate’s lightning bolt had distracted Gamma, at least. Enough for Raul to unsheathe his red-hilted short swords, one in each hand. He wove blades in swift patterns between himself and the clone. Gamma stopped advancing, but a happy grin split the duplicate’s face. That probably didn’t bode well. Crap.

  Raul cut and parried Gamma’s panther-quick strikes, shouting, “I can keep this poser busy, mi chula. Destroy the gate generators!”

  He did look as if he could handle himself, so Kate decided to believe him. She turned to the nearest screen, wondering what she should try first. A grenade would be handy, but she was fresh out. She could try the lightning again, but a tightness behind her eyes when she tried triggering it for a third time suggested she needed wait a bit, unless she wanted to burn out her mind.

  A couple of the red clones on the scaffolding shot her worried glances as she approached, but continued their frenzied work. They seemed convinced they could salvage the connection if given enough time. Maybe that’s what she should do: distract them from affecting repairs – or whatever they were doing – long enough for everything to fall apart.

  She lifted the ring, the one Jason had called the Ring of Desire, but which now served as the focus of her power in Ardeyn to shepherd souls. From it she called the warrior spirit that nestled within. She learned his name even as it passed her lips, “Darneth, come forth. Aid me!”

  Thick mist steamed from her ring, forming the ghostly image of a figure in armor wielding a phantom blade. “As you command,” the spirit whispered. She shivered. It was damn spooky, despite everything.

  She gestured to the nearest clone and yelled, “Eliminate that one!” Darneth’s hollow gaze lingered on her for an instant, as if in protest of his fate. Then he complied, rolling upward to threaten the red she’d pointed out. The homunculus heard her, too. It turned from whatever desperate task that had consumed it to defend itself.

  The spirit moved slowly toward the clone, then paused in midair, light from the screens flickering through it. It wasn’t attacking, which was fine. Her goal had been to distract. Not that she’d have minded if Darneth had followed through. But she’d never met Darneth before, had never helped ease his spiritual pain, nor commanded him either: she hadn’t built up any trust with him. She sensed, through the vague connection they shared, that he wasn’t willing to risk his own continued existence by becoming corporeal enough to attack, and be attacked in turn.

  Kate glanced at the next nearest homunculus, whose attention remained fixed on his controls. The tightness behind her eyes had eased somewhat, so she released a stroke of lightning, striking him in the back. She couldn’t help feeling slightly guilty at–

  Screeching and smoking, the red spun around. Hate filled his eyes, and he leaped from the scaffolding to close the distance between them, smoke streaming from its wound. If the red hadn’t misjudged the distance, it might’ve gone badly for her. But the red smashed hard onto the floor at her feet. It didn’t get up.

  She stared at the body, her mouth hanging open. He was dead. She’d killed him.

  “Katherine!” came Raul’s warning.

  He still sparred with Gamma, and from the wet blood spotting his clothing, he’d taken a couple of serious hits. Why had he called out to her? She glanced around to see a newcomer enter the Contact Foundry.

  A thing, half crow, half leprous Jason clone, stood in the entrance. A fell light flickered between the feathers of the thing’s wings, forking into the floor. A caw burst from its clacking beak-mouth. The insidious sound made her brain ring like the clapper in a bell.

  Then it went for her.

  She dodged left, putting the flickering mouth of the translation gate between herself and it.

  The monster came on, unconcerned about the discontinuity in its path. It opened its mouth, and tentacles with even tinier mouths writhed within. She screamed; she couldn’t help it.

  It brushed the trans
lation gate as it came for her. Scarlet light outlined the fluctuating hole in space, emitting a blast of heat intense enough to curl her eyelids.

  The beast’s hungry caws turned into a steam train whistle of pain. Half the creature was pulled through the gate… but the other half remained behind. That half slumped in a spray of red fluid that spattered and sizzled on the gate’s white-hot margin.

  “The connection’s degraded!” a red on the scaffolding yelled, his voice horrified.

  “Fix it,” barked Gamma, his attention divided between Raul and the unfurling disaster.

  Kate glanced at what remained of Mr Crow who wasn’t clever enough by half. Nope, it wasn’t getting up, whatever it was. She backed away from the wildly fluctuating gate, then hurled another eye-searing bolt at the red who looked most intent on his work. The jagged light cut deep into the clone’s side. It staggered mutely, then dropped over the edge to lay unmoving. The sound the body made hitting the floor made her feel slightly sick.

  Pain speared between her eyes. As if she’d run the fifty-meter dash, fatigue pulled at her limbs and a wave of dizziness made her stagger. If she kept hurling her unearthly power, she was going to burn herself up.

  She needed some kind of weapon.

  Hands shaking, she rifled through the belongings of the red who’d tried to tackle her. A crash and an answering cry of pain from Raul’s made her fumble and drop the short sword she’d pulled from the clone’s belt, so she grabbed the rod that was sheathed next to the sword. The moment her fingers touched the rod, they tingled. She left the sword where it lay and straightened. A nugget of knowledge opened in her mind – the thing was a kind of war wand employed in Ardeyn called an “ashur.” She sensed that the ashur was an ideal way to break stuff.

  She spun and pointed the liberated wand at one of the crystal screens, currently displaying a satellite view of a large city on Earth. She concentrated, and the wand spat a line of green energy at the nearer crystal panel. It was like the time she’d smashed a window with a hammer to break into an abandoned motor home – the crystal shattered with a peculiar barking crash, shards raining down on the closest reds.