The Machinery of Light ar-3

by David J. Williams

  “Sometimes I need a little nudge.”

  “That’s for sure.” Maschler looks like he’s trying not to laugh. “Look, there are three ways to crack a fortress. You either blast your way in, you sneak on through, or else you …” His voice trails off.

  The Operative stares. “Or what? You’re telling me we’ve been invited to see Szilard?”

  “Why not? We’re all trying to stop the East, aren’t we?”

  “He’ll be suspicious as all fuck.”

  “Of course he will be.”

  “So what’s the angle?”

  Riley and Maschler look at each other.

  “Well?” repeats the Operative.

  “Maybe it’s time to show him the cargo,” says Riley.

  The sun’s face is one she recognizes. Even though she doesn’t want to. Even though she hasn’t seen it in so long. She stands in the midst of her own desert, endless wastelands stretching out on all sides as she looks up at what’s leering down upon her.

  “Hello Claire,” says Morat.

  “That’s not really you,” she mutters.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because you’re dead.”

  “Am I really?”

  “I saw you destroyed.”

  “And yet I live on inside of you.”

  “Only in my memory.”

  “More than enough. Shall we begin?”

  She says nothing. The light of his face is getting ever brighter. The sky beyond it is going black.

  “What the hell’s happening?” she mutters.

  “Control is forcing its way ever farther inside you.”

  “And you’re helping.”

  “Except for the fact that I don’t exist.”

  “You’re a part of my mind that’s been set against me.”

  “I seem to recall I was on your side.”

  “You were my worst enemy,” she says.

  “Only after you betrayed yourself.”

  “I never—”

  “Fooled yourself too. You know I speak the truth. You’re Rain. Yet you denied them again and again. In that SeaMech beneath Pacific. At the Europa Platform. And then afterward, when you helped to snuff all your brethren. Thus were the Rain undone by the very weapon built to complete them. Thus was—”

  “Not all of them.”

  “What?” asks Morat.

  “I didn’t kill all of them.”

  “Carson and Lynx and Sarmax aren’t in the same league as—”

  “I’m not talking about the original trio,” she snarls. She feels she should shut up, but she can’t. Not with Morat’s disembodied head looking down at her like that. “There are still other members of the Rain left.”

  There’s a pause. Morat flickers.

  “How would you know that?” he asks.

  “I’ve felt their minds.”

  Morat beams at her. “Oh good,” he says.

  So nobody’s getting off this ship,” says Linehan.

  “Give the man a hand,” says Lynx.

  They’ve come through into a wider set of passages. The lights are few and far between. All they can hear is the continued clanking of distant guns. They’re deep in the interior now.

  “And we’re staying in the bowels of this thing.”

  “It seems like the prudent thing to do,” says Lynx.

  “Because there’s no point in going near the hull.”

  “Given that nothing’s leaving: no.”

  Linehan nods. He gets it, though it took him long enough. Szilard knows which ship they’re on. It would have been hard to miss. But the commander of SpaceCom can’t afford to blow any more dreadnaughts just to get at rogue elements. He’s way past that luxury now. So all he can do is take precautions. Which is why nothing’s getting off the colony ship. At least until—

  “All debts will be settled when the war’s over,” Linehan mutters.

  “And a lot of them long before,” says Lynx.

  Linehan nods. They keep on moving.

  They leave behind the ledges where they rode out the launch and head out into the elevator shafts—riding cables, moving adroitly from one to the next. Spencer syncs up the zone with the topography that’s all around them. Shafts extend down beyond his sight, electric light flickering in the distance. Elevator cars clank past, packed with soldiers. Machinery’s everywhere. Spencer’s view is shot through with the false color of augmented zone-vision. For a moment it seems to him like this ship has become the universe, like everything around him is just the gears of existence turning: the guns raining death out into the beyond; the armor taking fire from the massed batteries on the Moon and at L5; the endless conveyor belts upon which nukes are slotted through the bowels of the ship and spat out into the vacuum beyond. But he’s leading Sarmax in the other direction, moving into the middle areas of the ship, getting extra stealthy.

  “We’re almost at the troop quarters,” says Spencer.

  “Roger that,” says Sarmax.

  Riley leads the way—the Operative follows him, and Maschler trails after. The Operative appreciates the way they move—like the professionals they are—and even though they’re probably not expecting him to try anything, they’re ready for anything he might. He wonders how he could have let them fool him back at the Elevator. He’s guessing it had more than a little to do with the fact that he had a lot on his mind.

  He’s got the same problem now. They descend a ladder into the ship’s main cargo hold. Riley hits a switch; lights flicker dimly all around. Auxiliary holds sprout off from the main one. Containers are racked up everywhere, faint vibration washing through them from the engines directly below. The Operative wonders if he’ll end up in one of those boxes. He can’t deny it’d be fitting. He feels like his life has come full circle, that these two men may as well be the ferrymen taking him across the Styx.

  “Is this the part where you try to off me?” he asks.

  “Even better,” says Riley.

  “Right this way,” says Maschler, heading in toward one of the auxiliary chambers.

  A desert with a population of one. A woman with the feeling that the face that’s leering down at her is getting a little too close for comfort.

  “The Rain’s out there,” she says.

  “Where?”

  “At L5.”

  “With Sinclair?” asks Morat.

  “They’re guarding him.”

  “I would put it the other way around.” One eyebrow raises. It looks obscene. “He shielded them from you when you were Harrison’s servant. And he thinks we haven’t figured it out since—”

  “He’s playing all the angles,” she says. “You can’t hope to beat him, Stephanie, please listen to me, you have to kill him now—”

  “Spare me,” snaps Morat. “The president can’t hear you. She doesn’t micromanage interrogations.”

  “She leaves that to something even colder than her.”

  “If you like,” says Morat. He seems amused. “But I’m pleased to wear this face while I tear your skull apart.”

  “So now we see your real one.”

  “Oh,” says Morat, “let’s not get all literal here. I’m not Control. His mind’s aware of what we’re saying, but I really am part of you. That’s the point, you see. You think you’re whole, but you’re really scattered piecemeal. Taking you apart is just a matter of putting it all together.”

  She says nothing. Wind brushes sand onto her face.

  “Can you detect Sinclair?” he asks.

  “No,” she says.

  “You’re both blind to each other,” says Morat. “As it should be.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Once posthumans get into the mix, the whole game changes, no? Especially if what makes them posthuman is mental. Especially if it can be replicated.”

  “Isn’t that the big question? A man can be modified, but—”

  “Can he beat that which is born into it? He might deceive himself that he could. Lynx
and Carson and Sarmax certainly did. In the end they couldn’t even keep their own team together. Who would have thought they would go out so early?”

  “They’re dead?” She manages to keep the edge from her voice, but it’s as though Morat has heard it anyway.

  “My condolences,” he says. “Carson’s fucked you over for the last time.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He’s going to kill Szilard for his president.”

  “Going to?”

  “Or he’ll fail in the attempt while our backup team finishes the job. Either way, he’s dead. And there’s no way off L2—”

  “You’re an idiot,” she spits. “You’re a fucking idiot. If you’re going to kill Carson, then fucking kill him. Don’t try to use him. Don’t give him the slightest chance—”

  “Sounds like you want him dead.”

  “I do want him dead. I want him to live forever. Whatever. He’s far more of a threat to Montrose than Szilard ever could be.”

  “Abstract pronouncements. All of Montrose’s enemies now live on borrowed time.”

  “As does Stephanie Montrose. The fucking Eurasian fleet’s steaming in toward you, or haven’t you noticed? And for all we know, Leo Sarmax is in control of it by now.”

  “Or else he’s dead in the Himalayas,” says Morat. “What does it matter? It’s still the same hardware. Still the reason why Montrose needs to attain control of you—along with total possession of the L2 fleet. The last thing she needs with the East’s spearhead coming straight at her is to not be able to trust her second-in-command—”

  “I’m not sure that’s how Szilard sees himself.”

  “You summarize the problem nicely.”

  “Your real problem’s Sinclair. He’s the one who’s ten steps ahead of everyone else.”

  “More than that,” says Morat.

  “What are you saying?”

  “You know exactly what I’m saying.”

  She stares up at that face.

  “We both know what Sinclair is,” he adds.

  She shakes her head. “Carson said that Sinclair had mapped it all out.”

  “Go on.”

  “All the possibilities, every which way the game might break. Said he gave him a very specific set of instructions that allowed him to thread his way through the maze.”

  “More retrocausality,” says Morat. “Somehow he can see what’s coming—”

  “Presumably. But …” Haskell hesitates.

  “What is it?”

  “I—went through something similar at the Europa Platform. Everything converged on the moment when the combat started.”

  “I suspect Sinclair has a slightly wider purview.”

  “The question is how far it extends.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He told Carson there was a moment coming up past which he couldn’t see.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” says Morat.

  “I’ll say,” says the voice of Jason Marlowe.

  They’ve come through into a new part of the ship. The ceilings are much higher now, the walls far wider.

  “Waste of space,” says Linehan.

  “Not really,” replies Lynx.

  They’re looking at a vast garage of vehicles. Most of them are crawlers. Rigged for some heavy terrain from the looks of their treads …

  “Ready to tame the red planet,” says Lynx.

  “I thought this wasn’t really a colony ship.”

  “It’s not,” says Lynx. “This is in case it needs to pacify the Moon or something.”

  “Or something?”

  “Or land dropships on Earth. Give me a fucking break, man. I’m no strategist. I’d thought the sole point of this ship was to rig as many guns as they could fit on it.” He gestures at the vehicles. “What they want with this shit, who the fuck knows. Maybe it was in case of inspections by the Eurasians under some fucking Zurich armaments limitation line-item—”

  “Where exactly are we going, Lynx?”

  “Told you already. We’re getting away from the hull—”

  “Stop bullshitting me. You know more than that.”

  “And trust me, you don’t want to.”

  They’ve made their way into some high-ceilinged chambers positioned around the spine of the ship. Below them are hundreds of grav-couches. Each one contains a power-suited Russian soldier. Those soldiers have received orders to stay put. Unexpected accelerations could tear through this ship at any time. If that happens, Spencer’s hoping he can hold onto his current perch. He can practically feel hundreds of eyes staring through him. He makes himself as one with the ceiling as possible, gets busy figuring out the next step—hesitates a moment, then leads the way into another duct.

  Deja-vu: the auxiliary cargo chamber looks disconcertingly like the cargo hold in the Antares rocket that lifted the Operative from Earth several days back. For a moment, the Operative’s brought up short, thinking about all that’s transpired since—all that scrambling to stay alive, making sure all those others died. He follows Riley to a pressurized door set into the wall. Riley keys codes, breaks the seal—

  “You sure you want to do that?” asks the Operative.

  Riley says nothing. There’s a hiss as the door slides aside. The room that’s revealed is small. A raised platform is set into its center. Lying on that platform is something that looks like a cross between a suit of powered armor and a sarcophagus. Screens atop it show vital signs.

  “Voilà,” says Riley.

  “You are shitting me,” says the Operative.

  “Not even vaguely,” says Maschler. He’s standing in the open door, his expression wary while Riley leans over the sarcophagus and keys in more codes. A visor slides back. The Operative recognizes the face behind it.

  So you made it,” says Haskell.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” says Marlowe.

  “Lovers reunited,” says Morat.

  “That would be tricky,” says Marlowe, “since I’m dead.”

  He looks even worse than that. Another disembodied head—a second sun burning in the leaden sky. But his face is the one she remembers from right before she killed him: that strange mixture of boyish wonder and unreflecting mind. He looks like he’s genuinely pleased to see her. Like maybe he still loves her.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” she says.

  “I was here all along,” replies Marlowe.

  She nods. She feels that Control’s probably almost at her center. Everything’s shifting around her. Desert blooms in fast-forward, becoming jungle. She feels she’s no longer alone—feels the eyes of all too many predators upon her body.

  “I can hear them, Jason.”

  “Them?”

  “The surviving members of the Rain. I can feel their minds.”

  “How many triads?”

  “That’s your first question?”

  “That’s the only question, Claire. What does Sinclair have left? What has he kept in reserve?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “You can’t tell?” asks Morat.

  “It’s fuzzy,” she says. “There could be one. There could be many.”

  “Your powers are still in their infancy,” says Marlowe. “You’ll know soon enough.”

  “You’ll be both searchlight and laser when we figure out how to really switch you on,” says Morat. “The rest of the Rain won’t stand a chance against you. And then we can neutralize Sinclair from a distance.”

  “But why not execute him right now?” she asks.

  There’s a flicker of hesitation up there. Around her, the jungle abruptly starts to wither. She shivers as the temperature plunges, watches as greenery shrivels.

  “You can’t, can you?” she asks.

  “No,” admits Morat.

  “Montrose no longer controls the L5 flagship,” she says.

  “Montrose no longer controls the L5 fleet,” says Marlowe.

  The temperature keeps dropping. Snow’s falling in sheets. Vast ice
sculptures are visible in the middle distance. The suns above her are growing faint.

  “Sinclair’s taken over up there,” she mutters.

  “Apparently,” says Morat.

  “But the L5 ships are still fighting the East?”

  “Oh yes,” he says. “Still coordinating with the rest of the American fleet. Still firing on the oncoming Eurasians.”

  “Normal communication is being maintained,” says Marlowe. “It’s the higher-ups we can’t get through to.”

  “Classic Rain takeover,” she says.

  “Probably,” says Morat.

  “You have to let me out of here.”

  “You have to help us,” says Marlowe.

  “We need you back in the game,” says Morat.

  “So release me.”

  “First we need you to allow us control.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “You’re about to find out. We’ve almost broken through.”

  She feels that’s correct, like the final wall in her mind is paper-thin, about to be torn. She feels something bearing down upon her that she can’t hope to avoid. The snow intensifies, swirls against her face. The ground starts to freeze beneath her feet.

  “So now we move to the real question,” says Morat.

  “Why did you kill me?” says Marlowe.

  “Don’t you dare go there,” she says.

  But he already has. And it’s already set something in motion that she knows she can’t stop. Some kind of chain reaction going off within her as though she’s nothing but thousands of tiny gears and pulleys now cranking into operation—ten million dominoes toppling in long lines across vast illuminated floors—and she’s powerless to stop it. She’s on the ground now, and it’s all ice beneath her while she lies on her back and snow falls into her open mouth and eyes. Her innermost desires are exposed to the light—and the face of Jason Marlowe is streaking fire as it drops burning from the sky toward horizon …

  “I didn’t know what compulsions he’d been rigged with,” she whispers.

  “You don’t know what compulsions you’ve been rigged with,” says Morat. “Why didn’t you shoot yourself too?”

  “Maybe I should have.”

  “Carson might not like that.”

  “Who cares what he likes?”