A Dark and Hungry God Arises

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Savoring Milos’ tension, he led his second along the grime-crusted halls until he found a small knot of men and women waiting for a lift to the docks.

  With Milos pressing against him, he pushed his way into the middle of the crowd.

  As the lift opened and people squeezed aboard—while he and Milos passed out of range of one bugeye, into range of another—he activated his refractive jamming field.

  He didn’t doubt for an instant that it worked. He could trust whatever his databases told him about his equipment. False information could kill him—and then everything Dios and Lebwohl had invested in him would be wasted.

  Confident that he and Milos were effectively invisible to the Bill, he left the car when it reached the docks. But he didn’t linger there. The pressure of his need for movement swelled inside him: he wanted to run. As if he were eager, he went toward one of the general service lifts used by ships’ personnel to reach Operations or the cruise.

  Now he had to be more careful: his jamming field wouldn’t protect him from guards. And the closer he came to lifts that ran down to the depths of the rock, the more guards he encountered. They paid him no particular attention—which meant they hadn’t yet received orders to watch for him—but they were still dangerous, if only because they had eyes and guns.

  His heart beat faster and his nerves sharpened as if unknown or unused systems were coming on-line: computer-assisted reflexes; decision-making programs; survival instincts. Beads of oily sweat slid down his temples.

  There: a lift that went where he wanted to go.

  One guard stood outside, staring dully at nothing with eyes as empty as muzzles. Three people waited for the car to arrive, the doors to open.

  The indicators said it was going up.

  So much the better.

  When the lift opened, half a dozen men and women surged out. With Milos clenched behind him, Angus entered along with the other passengers.

  One level up, a man and a woman got off.

  Two levels later, the third passenger got off.

  No one got on.

  Now.

  As the doors swept shut, sending the lift upward again, Angus fired a precise laser needle into the control panel, burning a gap in its alarm circuitry.

  No warnings sounded, either in the car or in Operations, as he engaged the same locks that Maintenance would have used to take the lift out of service.

  For a few minutes, at least, he had a private elevator.

  As a precaution, he clamped one hand briefly over Milos’ mouth, reminding him to be quiet. Then he sent the car downward like a taste of freefall, toward the core of the rock. Where nothing lived except the Bill in his strongroom and Billingate’s fusion generator.

  Milos’ face looked like Angus’ mouth felt: thick with pain; sickened by ground-in ash. Still good. Angus showed his teeth and watched the indicators count the levels.

  He knew the one he wanted. His memory of the time he’d been locked up here was as vivid as his databases. You remember Morn Hyland. All his memories were vivid. She had a kid. Of course, there was no guarantee the Bill still used the same rooms. That’s what we were doing on Enablement—force-growing her kid. Come to that, there was no guarantee the kid was still alive. She calls him Davies Hyland, after her pure, dead father. The whole deal might be a lie. Now the Amnion want him back. Succorso’s treachery might extend to risking Milos, his only ally, for the sake of some unimaginable leverage with the Bill, with the Amnion. They want to study the consequences of having a mother who didn’t lose her mind. And the cells would be guarded in any case; watched by human eyes.

  Nevertheless Angus’ concentration held steady, like one of his lasers. He was moving. Personally he didn’t believe Succorso had lied—not about needing to get Davies away from the Bill. Succorso’s efforts to conceal his desperation only made it more convincing. And Angus’ datacore was incapable of doubt: the prospect of trading Davies Hyland to redeem Morn had engaged programming as compulsory as the pull of a black hole.

  Five levels to go.

  Fourthreetwoone.

  Stop.

  Milos staggered slightly, shifted away from Angus. A stupid mistake; dangerous. And slow. All Milos’ movements appeared tortuous to Angus, clogged with mortality. Reacting at microprocessor speeds, he caught his second by the shipsuit and hauled him close again.

  One hand behind him to keep Milos tight against his back, Angus stepped between the opening doors into the corridor.

  It was only twenty meters long—a blind passage formed in concrete, with no entrances except to the cells and no exits except by the lifts. Six cells, two lifts. Lighting and bugeyes lined the ceiling; more bugeyes than Angus remembered. With that many monitors, the Bill could study every atmospheric eddy and current—the molecular aftermath of moving bodies.

  He’d lived in forbidden space for so long that paranoia had become his ruling passion.

  Between one tick of his computer’s chronometer and the next, Angus grinned at the idea that he was about to justify the Bill’s paranoia.

  He was already in motion, already dropping to a crouch as he drew Milos out of the lift. The bugeyes weren’t enough for the Bill; of course not: he also had two guards in the corridor. They stood on either side of a door off to the left. One of them cupped an impact rifle with flexsteel probes instead of fingers. The other wore his gun built into his chest—a weapon like a small projectile cannon.

  Both of them were wired. Operations would receive everything their equipment saw or heard; would know it the instant they stopped transmitting.

  The indicators must have told them the lift was coming. They weren’t surprised when the door opened.

  Because they weren’t surprised—and because they had no reason to expect trouble—they weren’t braced for Angus’ attack.

  Speed. Accuracy. Silence. He’d been designed for such things. His lasers made no noise except the small frying sounds of flesh and hardened plastics as he shot one guard between the eyes, the other through his thoracic gun.

  Both men folded to the floor as if the sinews holding their joints together had been cut.

  Untouched, their transmitters went on functioning. Operations’ visual recordings of the event would show a blur, an odd ruby wink, an unlikely change of perspective. Anyone who saw those recordings would know that something had happened. But most of the time no one watched the recordings: only the computers watched.

  The computers might not know the difference between men who sat down or even stretched out on the floor to rest and men who fell dead. The Bill’s programmers might not have anticipated this situation. A little time might pass before preselected analytical parameters signaled a warning.

  After that, playback would take a few seconds. Whoever looked at the recordings would need a few seconds more to react.

  By the time the bodies settled and began to drip blood, Angus stood between them at the door they’d guarded. Milos pressed fright against his back, ground knots of fear into his shoulders, while his lasers probed the lock.

  It’s got to stop.

  As if Warden Dios had foreseen everything, planned for everything, Angus swept the cell open and found Davies waiting.

  When he saw his son, he caught his first glimpse of Nick’s real treachery.

  A shock as visceral as an electric charge fired along his nerves. Nick hadn’t said anything about this. And the idea had never crossed Angus’ mind. If he’d thought about the matter at all, he would have assumed the brat was Nick’s—would have assumed that Morn’s transcendent lust for Nick had inspired her to want his kid. Didn’t she love him? Hadn’t her whole body yearned toward him as soon as they first saw each other in Mallorys?

  But for that very reason Angus had not thought about whose son Davies was. The way Morn had given herself to Nick—instantly and without question—had hurt him more than he could admit. So he’d focused his attention exclusively on Morn herself; on snatching Davies as a means to rescue her. He’d closed
his mind to everything else.

  Yet one look at Davies made the boy’s parentage unmistakable.

  He had Morn’s eyes: they were her color; they held her open fear and revulsion and need. He stared at Angus as if he’d been hit by the same charge; as if they were instantaneously linked and fused by the same burning jolt. And his posture might have been hers as well. Even in dismay, his stance hinted at her suppleness, her grace.

  The rest of him, however—

  The rest was pure Angus. Slimmer and younger, perhaps, but Angus beyond question.

  His son—

  And Nick had prepared this surprise deliberately, in unmitigated malice. Which implied that there was more to come, that this was only the first.

  —a more vulnerable version of himself—

  Caught by shock and recognition like an instant of ineffable brisance, Angus gaped back at Davies and couldn’t move.

  —another baby for the crib.

  “Shit,” Milos croaked, strangling on distress. “Shit. Shit.”

  Then the shock passed. Intuitions as fast and blinding as light blazed through Angus. An involuntary howl built up in his chest, an animal roar of helplessness and outrage.

  Davies beat him to it. As if he’d been ripped open with a flensing knife, he started screaming.

  At the same time he launched a fist like a missile at Angus’ head.

  Only Angus’ equipment saved him. Microseconds after his son began to scream, he keyed codes to activate a different kind of jamming field.

  The bugeyes in the cell went deaf and blind with distortion as Davies’ fist slammed into his father’s cheek.

  DAVIES

  vents were moving in too many different directions at once. The woman accompanying the Bill had been ordered to get answers out of Davies, torture him if she had to. He didn’t know how much time he had left. After she closed the door and went away, he pretended to relax as long as he could: five minutes at most. Then he surged up off his cot and began to pace the small cell again, six steps on one side, five on the other.

  Nick Succorso had given Morn to the Amnion. In all likelihood, he’d handed her over to compensate for his failure to deliver her son. And to punish her. But in the end his reasons didn’t matter. Only the fact mattered. By now she was probably an Amnioni herself. Her son was all that remained of her.

  He needed some way to control the hurricane of grief and blind white rage storming around his heart.

  Six steps. Five.

  Morn Hyland. Nick Succorso.

  And Angus Thermopyle.

  The Bill had told him that Angus Thermopyle had come to Thanatos Minor.

  Down in the center of the storm, in the small, clear space created and sustained by the coriolus energies of his distress, he knew the three were connected; intimately bound together. They necessitated each other. He simply couldn’t remember how or why.

  He’d never seen his father. His only impression of the man came from the things Morn and Nick had told him, as well as from what he could see of his own body; from studying his face in the san mirrors of his room aboard Captain’s Fancy. He’d spent hours in front of those mirrors, trying to understand where Morn Hyland left off and he began. But those hints had given him no sense of his father as a solid, actual presence separate from himself.

  He had no defenses—

  Angus Thermopyle’s sudden appearance in his cell hit him like a translation across a dimensional gap. Ash-faced and urgent, Angus swung open the door and stalked into the cell as if he’d leaped into being from the core of Davies’ blocked memories.

  In that instant Davies lost the distinction between himself and Morn. Ambushed by her fundamental desperation, he became her as if he’d never been anyone else.

  He hardly noticed the pudgy man clinging like a cripple to his father’s back. Without transition, as instantaneous as intuition, he began to remember.

  He sat up on the edge of the berth.

  Angus reached into one of the compartments along the bulkhead, selected a scalpel, and handed it toward him. “Take it.”

  Davies’ fingers closed involuntarily.

  In a voice like acid, Angus said, “Put the edge on your tit.”

  Helplessness compelled Davies. He didn’t need to watch what he was doing. Blindly he moved the scalpel until the blade rested against his nipple, his woman’s breast, intense silver against brown. The nipple was erect and hard, as if it were ready to be cut.

  “You can understand me,” Angus said thickly. “I know you can, so pay attention. I can make you cut yourself. If I want to, I can make you cut off your whole tit. Remember that when you think about breaking my neck.

  “I’m going to break you. I’m going to break you so hard you’ll start to love it, need it. Then I’m going to break you some more. I’m going to break you until you don’t have anything but me to live for.”

  Davies’ depths were full of anguish, a wail he was unable to utter.

  Angus tapped buttons on the zone implant control.

  Fighting to survive, another part of Davies’ mind grappled with information he’d known before and hadn’t understood, hadn’t appreciated. Angus had given Morn a zone implant. He’d used it to take away her freedom, her will, her self: he’d used it to degrade her utterly.

  But comprehension changed nothing. Davies was lost in her.

  Obedient to the commands of the radio electrode in his brain, helpless beyond bearing, he replaced the scalpel in its compartment. The zone implant control demanded a smile: he smiled. It told him to kneel in front of Angus: he knelt.

  Angus’ penis protruded from the open seal of his shipsuit. For some reason, he seemed furious as he forced open Davies’ mouth and drove himself into him, gagging his son fiercely until he came.

  Roaring with inarticulate revulsion and protest, Davies flung a fist at Angus’ head. All his young strength and every gram of Morn’s absolute agony went into the blow.

  The jolt of his fist on Angus’ cheekbone saved him. It was physical, present: he felt it like a kick in his knuckles, elbow, and shoulder. The impact anchored him for a second against the insane violation of Morn’s memories; momentarily separated him from her. Without that reprieve, he would have had to kill his father; would have had no choice. Nothing less could protect him from what Angus had done to Morn.

  During that instant Angus moved.

  He shrugged off Davies’ blow as if he barely felt it. So quickly that Davies couldn’t see how it was done, Angus blocked his fury aside, spun him around, caught him in an armlock. His own momentum and Angus’ charge slammed him at the wall, hammered his forehead against the concrete.

  Giddy with pain, he thrashed in Angus’ grasp, fought like Morn to break free. If he didn’t fight, he would remember more: remember weeks of abuse and contempt; remember abjection; remember selling his soul—

  —remember something worse.

  But he couldn’t get loose. Angus’ grip was only more honest than the power of Morn’s zone implant, not weaker. Sure as flexsteel, he tightened his hold until Davies could hardly breathe; hammered Davies’ head at the wall again. While phosphenes and pain whirled like lost nebulae across his vision, draining the force from his muscles, denaturing the barriers which had preserved him from Morn’s cruel past, Angus hauled his head up and hissed like murder into his ear, “Shut up! Shut up! You’ll get us killed if you don’t keep your fucking mouth shut!”

  The man behind Angus went on moaning, “Shit. Shit,” as if he didn’t have the strength to cry out.

  A trickle of blood ran into Davies’ eyes, but he couldn’t see it through the phosphene dance. Angus had beaten him up, he remembered that, pounded and kicked and cudgeled his flesh to make him vulnerable, mar his beauty so that it would be less frightening. “You—” he panted. “You vile—”

  “Listen to me.” Angus pulled his grip tighter. “Listen, you little shit. I can hide us visually, but I can’t block sound. Not without distorting every bugeye in range, and then
he’ll know exactly where we are. He’ll track the distortion. I’ve already set off alarms in Operations, in his strongroom. Goddamn it, I’m trying to rescue you! All you have to do is shut up!”

  Past a chaos of blood and hurt, Davies choked out, “You raped me, you sonofabitch!”

  “What’s he talking about?” Angus’ companion begged. “He’s crazy. Doesn’t he want to be rescued?”

  Snarling in frustration, Angus pulled his son off the wall, spun him, hit him in the stomach hard enough to stun his diaphragm. While Davies gaped for air he couldn’t get, Angus lashed a hand at the other man, jerked him closer.

  “Help me hold him!” Angus whispered hotly. “We’ve got to stay together. If he opens his mouth, jam your fingers down his throat.”

  As if he were strong enough to carry them both, Angus heaved Davies and the other man toward the door.

  Davies stumbled, but Angus and the other man kept him upright. Blinking blood from his eyes, he forced his legs under him.

  In a knot of arms, a tangle of feet, the two men half carried him out of his cell toward the open door of a lift.

  Morn must have been someone else, a separate individual, but he couldn’t tell the difference.

  “Angus,” he said, “Angus, listen to me.

  “I can save you.

  “I’ll testify for you. When you go back to Com-Mine, they’ll charge you with illegal departure. I’ll support you. I’m not much of a cop anymore, but I’ve still got my id tag. I’ll tell them you left on my orders. And I’ll tell them there was no supply ship. It was a hoax—that other ship set it up. I’ll tell them to arrest Nick Succorso. I can’t save your ship, but I can save you.

  “Just give me the control.” His voice was husky, full of need. “The zone implant control.”