Idols

by Margaret Stohl

  You are, still, a thing of beauty. The way your heart beats—a ball of pulsing gas. The way your blood moves—a river.

  “Why are you following us? What is this about? Just tell me. You don’t have to do this.” I’m shouting—I know I am—but I can’t help myself. I don’t want to link my mind up to this thing. I only want to use my voice.

  It feels safer that way, even if it isn’t—and I realize now just how afraid I am.

  Just tell me, it says. Everything about you and on you and in you grows. Grows and changes and dies. You are motion and speed and progress and decay. You are the universe as it expands and unfolds.

  I shout as loudly as I can. “I want you to stop. I want this to stop. Leave us alone. Get out of my head.”

  You consume everything, and then you consume yourself. You are your own destruction. Your whole life is destruction.

  “That’s not true. We create, not destroy.” My voice is even louder, but I can’t make it listen.

  Destruction compels. Destruction is your life force.

  “No. No—you’re wrong.”

  Let me in. I will destroy you, beautifully. Worthily. I will help you destroy your beautiful self.

  “Get out—do you hear me? Get out of my head!” I scream again.

  Then I open my eyes.

  My friends are surrounding me and their faces look foreign to me, like pearls in a necklace. A string of human beads.

  They feel so removed from me, it’s hard to remember I’m one of them.

  And I’m so drained I can barely speak.

  “I can feel it,” I finally manage to say. “It’s reaching out for me. Like it’s sort of shadowing me.”

  “Looking for you? Or just our base?” The Bishop leans closer.

  I push harder against the shadows in my mind. Against the Null thing. “It can feel me, I think. I’m not crazy. I’m not imagining things. It’s here and it knows I’m here.”

  “I wish you were crazy. I wish you were at least wrong.” Ro lays his forehead against my shoulder, and I feel my reach uncurling, my powers growing that much stronger.

  “It keeps talking about destruction. About destroying us. Maybe it’s just looking for us.”

  Lucas’s grip on my hand tightens, and my heart begins to pound. I know how much he hates using his power, and I hate myself for doing it to him. But we both know—we all know—we don’t have a choice.

  “It’s coming closer.” I open my eyes, dropping their hands. I feel the sickening vertigo I felt when we first approached the Icon in the Hole, just a hint, but I’ll never forget that feeling.

  It’s not like anything else on Earth.

  I look at the others and they feel it too. Panic rises like bile in my throat.

  I can’t hold it in.

  I vomit, spewing bile across my boots, the ground in front of me.

  Then, without warning, the spell is broken, and the temperature in the room plummets until I can see my own ragged breath.

  I wipe my face with my sleeve.

  “Maybe it’s not you they can sense. Maybe it’s not even us. Maybe it’s this.” Tima reaches for my chestpack, pulling it from me, yanking it open. Inside, wrapped in a length of cloth, in the very bottom of my pack, is the shard. The one piece of the Hole’s Icon I keep with me.

  Lucas and Tima and Ro stare at it as if it were a bloody knife. A murder weapon, which I guess it is.

  Was.

  At least, part of one.

  “Why do you still have this thing?” Lucas looks at me strangely. I can feel myself getting defensive, and I don’t know why. It’s not exactly like I’ve been hiding it from them all this time.

  Or have I?

  “I don’t know. It’s a reminder, I guess. Of what we did, back in the Hole,” I say.

  “Yeah, well, some of those things we don’t need to remember,” growls Ro.

  I reach for the shard—and yank my hand away, startled.

  “It’s hot.”

  And not just hot, but radiating heat. As if it is lit by an inner fire. I’ve never seen it like that.

  Something’s changing, I think.

  Yes, the voice says. It startles me again—as it always does.

  What do you want? I look at the shard as I think the words.

  That is ours.

  To reclaim.

  We move to unite ourselves.

  “That’s it,” Tima says. “It has to be. They know it’s here, so they know we’re here. Like knows like.”

  “She’s right,” I say. “It says the same thing. It wants all its pieces back.”

  Ro looks confused. “But how? And why not earlier? Why is it only coming for the shard now?”

  Tima shrugs—or shivers, it’s hard to tell. “Maybe the Icons couldn’t detect it until we brought it underground. You know, where the roots connect them all.”

  She picks up the shard carefully. “If you think about it, it’s not so different from the ships being able to track Lucas’s cuff and the comlink feed. That shard is an actual piece of one of the Icons.”

  “Like the severed rabbit foot,” Ro says, pulling it out.

  Lucas stares from it to the shard. “Like knows like.”

  I take in the scene around me, and when I do, I know Tima is right. The roots are expanding, connecting, twisting toward us. Toward the shard.

  With every moment, the buzzing in my ears grows louder and the pain in my head starts to pound.

  It isn’t only us. I see the Bishop turn pale, wincing with an altogether new sort of pain.

  The Icon isn’t just reaching out for us, it’s gaining strength. If it keeps coming, connecting, growing—nobody here will survive.

  Do you care? the voice asks.

  I shiver. The voice can now find me without my trying to connect to it. It’s like a network I can’t extricate myself from—like the comlink we so desperately tried to find and repair.

  Only, now I’d give anything to disable it.

  Do the lives of other creatures trouble you?

  Curious.

  Why?

  The Bishop, sweating, looks around the room, where Belter soldiers with fear in their eyes prepare for a fight they have no chance of winning. “Then it’s settled. You’ve got to get out of here.” He offers me a shotgun, tosses another to Lucas. Ro slings his own weapon over his shoulder.

  “No.” Lucas looks at the Bishop. “We can’t leave you.” He presses one palm against his ear as he speaks. The buzzing is only growing louder.

  Ro steps up. “For once, I’m with Buttons. We’re getting you out of here.” He’s hurting too, but he won’t show it—except for the tight clench of his fists.

  Reluctantly, I take the gun the Bishop is holding out to me.

  “Now give me that thing.” The Bishop takes the shard from Tima, slipping it into his own pack. “I’m going to take this piece of No Face calamari and go deep. Try to draw this thing, whatever it is, down and away from the entrances. Away from you.”

  “Are you crazy?” I can’t stand to listen.

  He smiles. “Absolutely. I’ll head west to the tunnels. You head east to the exit through the mine shafts. If this works, you may still make it out.”

  I don’t know what to say. “What are you going to tell your men?”

  The Bishop pinches my dirty cheek. “I’m going to tell them thanks. And that it was an honor. And that we’re doing it for a good cause—and for a Grassgirl who just might save the world.”

  He reaches for me and I pull him into a tight hug. “That’s you, by the way.”

  “It was an honor,” I murmur into his ear. He pulls away, once again the soldier.

  “Now go save the world.” And with that, the Bishop is gone.

  From that moment on, everything starts to blur, though what I can see is burned in my mind, vivid as flame.

  We move through the interior of the mountain in the darkness.

  None of it seems real.

  One minute, people are screaming, runn
ing toward the tunnels.

  Then, the next—starting with the old and the young—people are dropping in place.

  Silenced. Motionless. Lifeless.

  The pulsing pain of the Icons grows in my mind.

  I can’t help them.

  I can’t stop running.

  It happens in slow motion. It happens in fast motion.

  It’s like I’m not really there. It’s like I’m the only one there.

  I don’t know where to look. I’m too terrified to look anywhere at all.

  So when the ground starts splitting all around me, I don’t see the cause.

  I don’t see the blast that hits the ceiling just above me, the Icon roots penetrating, growing downward.

  I don’t see the boulder-sized chunks of rock and plaster and plumbing pipes and retaining walls that smash like fireworks and rain down on me as if they’re falling from the sky.

  I feel it, though.

  Part of a support beam strikes me on the head and I fall in place, neatly, where I thought I was running.

  Now I’m not running.

  I sink and fold, like a puppet.

  Not a person, I think.

  None of this seems like it is happening to real people. To my friends. To the Bishop. To me.

  As I black out, I hear the voice from my dreams. The bird with the voice.

  It’s waiting for me, even now.

  Curious. Probing. Present.

  Will you survive this too?

  Will I?

  You do not fight. You save your strength. You hide.

  That is wise.

  I know.

  I know because it is what I do.

  I know because I am here for you and I have come a long, long way.

  I open my eyes to see death as it is happening. I see the end of life, everywhere I look.

  The tunnels are collapsing. Belters are falling all around me. So is rubble from the mountain itself.

  We’re going to die here, I think. This is the end of our story. This is how it goes.

  Not The Day. Just some day. Today.

  Thick gray smoke billows and drifts in and out of my view. My ears are ringing, and I can’t seem to keep my eyes open. Everything is blurry, but even so—I see them.

  I see Lucas, stumbling to his knees, holding a seeping red flower that blooms from the side of his stomach, picking a scrap of fallen metal from the soft skin of his own body.

  I see a man with a tendril of black obsidian impaling his chest.

  I recognize the silver marks of rank on his collar, like the Bishop’s.

  The birds that I now know won’t really come back.

  Not for him.

  He’s already gone.

  I think of the Bishop, who made his way down instead of up, running toward his own death just so he could draw this creeping black death away from us.

  I wonder if it’s over for him yet.

  The mountain is collapsing from the inside, the heart of the mountain being destroyed as the heart of the Bishop is stilled.

  Nobody is walking out of here but us.

  Not people, not birds, nothing.

  Damn birds.

  A pig and a Padre and now a Bishop too, I think. The Calderón brothers, both now as Silent as a City.

  And my parents and Ro’s parents and whole Silent Cities of parents.

  I want to cry but I know there is not time.

  I feel like I have to die instead. Like what I have seen, what I know, is poison. It leaches into me, spreading through every cell in my body, every hair, every breath—and there is nothing I can do to get away.

  To not see what I have seen.

  To not know what I know.

  My fingers curl around one silver bird before I know what I am doing. I tug it free from the dead man’s collar.

  To remember hope, now that it is gone.

  People are turning to dust and shadows and nothing, all around me. I crawl between bodies until I find an empty truck. I drag myself into the space between the car and the floor.

  Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass The Lords The Hole. Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass The Lords The Hole. Chumash Rancheros Spaniards Californians Americans Grass The Lords The Hole.

  It doesn’t help. Not anymore.

  I curl there in a ball, shaking. I pull my hands over my ears, closing my eyes until the shaking and the noise and the Icon stop.

  Waiting.

  Until the pain dies down. Until the smoke clears.

  Until the voices in my head quiet.

  “Dol. Listen to me. Get up. Run.” It’s Ro, forcing me to go on, to do what he says. What he does. To live.

  So I do. I follow Ro’s voice out of the dark.

  I clutch the silver bird in my fist and follow—until my fingers bleed and my footsteps stop and the Idylls are no more.

  Hope isn’t the thing with feathers.

  It’s not a thing at all.

  Not anymore.

  GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION

  MARKED URGENT

  MARKED EYES ONLY

  Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

  RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

  Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

  PRIVATE RESEARCH NOTES

  PAULO FORTISSIMO

  03/08/2048

  PERSES’S “CARGO” IS EXTREMELY TROUBLING. IF MY ANALYSIS IS CORRECT (HAH!) AND NULL IN FACT HAS DEVICES WITH THE ABILITY TO SHUT DOWN ALL ELECTRICAL ACTIVITY, DOWN TO THE CHEMICAL/BIOLOGICAL LEVEL, WE ARE WELL AND TRULY DOOMED. UNFORTUNATELY, DOC HAS CLEARLY ESTABLISHED THAT ON A GRAND SCALE, MANUFACTURING LARGE COUNTERMEASURES TO NULL’S “DEVICES” IS NOT FEASIBLE. THE ENERGY REQUIRED TOO GREAT, TOO MANY UNKNOWNS.

  MY BEST BET IS TO PURSUE A SOLUTION ON A SMALLER SCALE. CURRENTLY CONSIDERING ENGINEERING IMMUNITY (AND MORE) AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL. RESEARCH ON LIMBIC SYSTEM, INCREASING SURFACE AREA/MASS IN THE NEOCORTEX, UNTAPPED ENERGY, BRAIN WAVES, ETC.… IT’S ALL QUITE PROMISING, BUT I’M RUNNING OUT OF TIME. (I REALLY NEED TO MAKE SOME CALLS FOR HELP, BUT IS IT WORTH OPENING UP OLD WOUNDS?)

  REGARDLESS, IF I’M RIGHT (HAH, HAH!) THEN I WILL NEED TO START THE BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING AT THE VERY BEGINNING. AND MY BOUNCING BABY COUNTERMEASURES NEED TO BE HERE SOON, BEFORE OUR VISITOR ARRIVES AND, GOD FORBID, TURNS OUT THE LIGHTS.

  THAT WOULD AT LEAST GIVE US A CHANCE TO FIGHT BACK.

  GOOD THING I’M A SODDING GENIUS.

  13

  FOUR

  I follow Ro through the twisting passages until the room widens into some kind of storage area. A Belter supply truck is there, waiting for us.

  Along with Lucas and Tima.

  Thank god.

  “Dol!” Lucas calls to me through the smoke, and I can barely hear him over the muffled sound of walls collapsing behind us.

  Not distant enough—it sounds louder with every moment.

  “Come on. We’ve got to get this open. The entrance to the mine is on the other side.” Lucas gestures with his head, and I see he’s attempting to open one of the massive sliding doors that line the wall. Tima pushes too, but doesn’t have the strength to make a difference.

  “Come on!” she yells, gritting her teeth.

  Lucas isn’t much better off. He doesn’t use his arms—he’s only pushing with his shoulder. I try not to look at the massive splash of red on his shirt.

  “You’re hurt. Let me.” We both duck, instinctively, as a rumble of collapsing rock echoes behind us.

  Louder by the minute.

  Lucas shakes his head. “Hear that? We don’t have much time.”

  “Step aside, kids, this is a man’s job.” Ro pulls me back and Lucas drops gratefully to the ground. Then he pushes, burning hot, until the gate groans into an opening. Light spills from the vent tunnel into the tunnel where we stand.

  Tima doubles over, trying to catch her breath.
/>   “Lords in hell! That felt good.” Ro wipes sweat off his face, grim. “Now let’s get the hallelujah out of here.”

  I don’t have time to smirk at his use of the Padre’s favorite curse, not now. The opening in the gate looks wide enough—barely—to drive through. Must have been where they hauled things in and out of here, because the gate is much larger than where we came in. But I can tell Lucas is right, it leads to the outside. I feel the air rushing in, smell the cold.

  I try not to listen to the sound of the mountain falling behind me. Lucas is leaning now against the side of the truck, which Ro is attempting to start—something that involves handfuls of wires of every imaginable color.

  “I don’t know what wire connects where—”

  The constant stream of profanity tells me it’s not coming quickly enough.

  Tima shakes her head and reaches in front of Ro and turns the key, which was already in the ignition.

  She shrugs. “Remember the rabbit’s foot?”

  Ro looks up with a grin as the truck’s engine splutters to life, vibrating the seat beneath him.

  He motions for Tima and me. “Get in.”

  Tima climbs up, Brutus scrabbling up after her. I hesitate, turning to help Lucas. He presses his shirt into his bloody side, wincing as he pulls himself into the truck.

  I still hesitate. “The Bishop. What if—”

  Ro looks at me through the window of the truck, shaking his head.

  “I know. I don’t want to leave him back there, either,” he says, quietly. “Any of them, dead or alive. But we don’t have a choice.”

  “That’s what we said last time.” I look down to where his boots are stained red and brown. Blood and mud. I’m not sure I want to know how it got there. But then I don’t ask, because he’s trying to pull me up next to him, and it’s time to go.

  I don’t want to.

  “Dol. It’s what the Bishop wanted.” Lucas forces the words out between his teeth.

  Tima holds out her hand to help me in.

  I can’t bring myself to go.

  “Are you sure?” I look from Lucas to Ro, but I don’t have to ask.

  They’re sure. I see it in their faces. Both of them.

  They’d do anything to fight this fight—except risk my life. Which means they’ll do anything to go.