Bloodlines

by Loren L. Coleman

  Davvol pulled himself erect. “Yes, I’m sure he cherishes the solemnity of his position.” He walked over to the other man. “It’s only an artifact he guards—a machine.” Something so easy to give up in return for life, thought Davvol. “I’m sure there is something he cherishes more, perhaps something he is more afraid for than his own life.”

  The elder man stared back. His expression twisted between loathing and hatred, and then he spit into Davvol’s face.

  Davvol did not flinch or move to wipe away the spittle. He felt it trail slowly down his left cheek. It didn’t matter, he promised himself. The image was there in his mind—the other man’s weakness. This insult only proved to him how little he still owed these people. He turned back to his Phyrexian masters.

  “He has a daughter.”

  Gatha stood in the Grand Vault, as it had now been formally named, the focal point for the creation of Metathran warriors. It was also the central hub to the various labs and workshops in which the bulk of the work for the Bloodlines project—and to a lesser extent the ongoing Legacy project—was accomplished. He still could not help admitting to being impressed by its sheer magnitude—the arches, the central pillars that housed most of Rayne’s mana-focusing lenses, the space—Urza certainly did not think small. Neither did the young tutor.

  Gatha paced a short path alongside one of the gestating cradles, its curved nose sticking out of the large socket into which it had been plugged until full gestation of the Metathran warrior was achieved. This one was his warrior, one of those which would owe its existence—not exactly a life—to Gatha. His hard-soled boots beat a slow rhythm against the polished stone floor. One hand trailed along the side of the cradle, over rough gear teeth and the alternating smoothness of polished metal and glass viewports that looked into a dark interior. He did not attend the “birth” of them all, but this one might be special. He would know soon.

  Timein found him there. “Master Gatha,” the younger man said by way of address, voice devoid of any emotion. The senior student waited for acknowledgement before continuing.

  Gatha glanced over and nodded curtly. Six subjective years had done little for Timein except to sharpen the student’s mind. Still a tall and gangly body that looked ready to fall apart in a strong breeze and an adam’s apple that almost split through the skin on his neck, at least his voice had lost the reedy tenor of youth. Timein began to bring him up to date on some of the minor experiments being conducted in real time, leafing through a stack of reports he carried in his knobby hands. As he listened Gatha compared and admired his own features in the reflection of a cradle viewport.

  Eight years, again subjective, had brought Gatha into the comfortable stages of manhood nearing thirty. He now wore a trimmed goatee that he reached up to stroke while listening to Timein’s report. He had filled out physically, and his mind had never been so brilliant. A tutor, one of the youngest ever, though he fell shy of Teferi’s mark by a solid two years. Master of time, he considered himself. He felt himself second only to the Master Mage Barrin and Chancellor Rayne, who lived in the more extreme slow time and rarely ventured forth. Eight subjective years, passing in between moderate slow-time environments and real time, while for Dominaria forty-two years had passed. In the moderate fast-time envelopes, where much of his actual work was accomplished by students, over seventy years of research and production had accrued. Preoccupied with their own relative immortality and the fate of Dominaria as real time progressed, most other tutors and scholars underused the fast-time outposts. Gatha prided himself on never wasting opportunity.

  “Results of recessive gene enhancements, post-birth, negative.” Timein’s voice barked out the word, bordering on disrespect and definitely capturing Gatha’s full attention. “Surviving subjects show high rate of mutation, considered inadequate for further bloodline development.”

  Wheeling, Gatha strode over to Timein and snatched the report. It still smelled of fresh ink, and his thumb smeared one of the red circles that highlighted various figures. Gatha’s strong hands wrinkled the parchment, clutching it tightly. Teeth clenched hard enough for his jaw to ache, he read down the list of three years’ relative work—wasted. The red circles were no doubt Timein’s notations, calling attention to numbers that supported the student’s own predictions of four months ago. Gatha spared the student a quick glance, but Timein had settled a careful mask into place. The preparedness of the student allowed Gatha to place an easier handle on his own rage.

  “What do you make of this, Timein?”

  Gatha had learned years ago that Timein did not volunteer information, not to him at least. Though a promising sorcerer, Timein made no secret of the fact that he disapproved of the Bloodlines project. The trouble he occasionally stirred made it easy for Gatha to sidetrack the younger man’s own studies, keeping him junior through extended assignment in slow time. It helped, more often than not, having an assistant nearly as brilliant as himself. Also, Gatha was not about to let Timein remain in real time where the sorcerer could conceivably age and learn faster and be promoted over him. That wouldn’t do at all.

  Timein merely shrugged. “I made my opinion known months ago, Master Gatha.” A not-so-subtle method of reminding the academy tutor that Timein’s opinion had also been right. “I imagine Masters Urza and Barrin will not care to hear that this tampering post-birth exceeded their guidelines.”

  Ah, a threat—Gatha smiled at the challenge. As he had noticed years ago, Timein simply did not know when to stop while ahead.

  Waving over a junior artificer who worked on a nearby cradle, Gatha ignored his young charge. “This cradle,” he said, kicking at the device that held his latest Metathran experimentation, “is to be unplugged at once and the subject delivered to my workshop.”

  If the other experiments had failed as badly as the report suggested, a similar procedure used during this Metathran warrior’s gestation would prove similar. Autopsy would provide that answer and perhaps a suggestion for new paths.

  The artificer turned back toward her workspace.

  “Do it now,” Gatha ordered, though he knew standard practice for artificers as ordered by Chancellor Rayne was to always keep an orderly space. Likely, the girl was going to set about putting tools away or some such bother. “The subject is within hours, perhaps minutes, of full gestation. I do not want it brought to full term.” Damn the standard procedures.

  Timein had evidently caught the nuances of Gatha’s early termination of the Metathran gestation, connecting the tutor’s displeasure with the report he now held. Gatha noticed the gaze of frustration and sorrow which his apprentice directed toward the failed experiment. He almost laughed, wondering what Timein’s reaction would be if privy to Gatha’s more recent alterations, most of those with the tacit permission of Urza Planeswalker. To recapture his attention, Gatha held up the report Timein had furnished and slowly ripped it down its length.

  “This report,” he said with a quiet hardness, words underscored by the tearing sound, “has obviously been exaggerated to the point of error. I will visit these labs myself.” The report was in two pieces now. Gatha folded them together and proceeded to tear again, this time across the shorter axis. “Timein, you will take the rest of the reports to my office and compile all data.” He quartered, refolded, and tore the report again. “Let me know what Barrin’s people are working on as well.”

  The fragments of the report went into an outer pocket. Gatha frowned at the smudge of red ink staining his thumb. He reached over and rubbed it out against the dark blue border of Timein’s sleeve.

  The student mage could only stare in dumbfounded silence. When Gatha nodded a dismissal, Timein blinked away most of his shock and then turned to do as he had been bid. In Timein’s years on Tolaria, Gatha doubted the apprentice sorcerer had ever seen data purposefully destroyed. The shock value, seeing it wash over that gaunt face, had been exquisite.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Gatha whispered after the departing figure.

&nb
sp; The report concentrated on the past. Only the present, the now, mattered. Behind him, the echoing clangs of a cradle being unplugged from the central machinery ran out, echoing in the cavernous theater. Now, Gatha had other projects to begin.

  * * *

  Karn discovered himself actually stalling. The silver golem had been asked to summon Gatha into the presence of Barrin and Urza and had already managed to be sidetracked by two other errands.

  In the timelock, passing into the slow-time area where Gatha had settled his own quarters and a modest workspace, Karn had paused to study the device. Without a cushioning effect a human body could not withstand the transition of extreme temporal changes. The instant alteration in blood flow that occurred on the cusp, one part of the body extremely slower than the other, made for radical embolisms and instant hemorrhaging. Here, in the timelock, slow-time waters were pumped out of the same well that served Gatha’s facilities. They were then misted into a series of chambers, which stood just outside the radical change in temporal flux. The density of mist in each chamber stepped up the farther one penetrated, preparing the body for slow time. The water was then reclaimed and returned to the water table via another shaft. It was very efficient, a variation on the first device built by Jhoira, who had noticed water’s tendency to retain the temporal qualities of its original environment and so could be used to alter time in small areas.

  Jhoira. She was rarely far from Karn’s thoughts, his first true friend after the golem gained sentience. He had thought her dead once, only to regain her companionship and then lose it again as she moved on to a life that did not include Tolaria. He saw her occasionally, perhaps once every decade, but for Jhoira time had already mended the wounds of separation. Karn could expect no such relief. Ironic, that with Tolaria’s ongoing mastery over temporal mechanics, he had yet to find a way to distance himself from a pain better than fifty years old.

  After his emergence into the slow-time environment, Karn stopped by the side of a small, fragrant flower garden to pick a chrysanthemum. Its deep purple reminding him of Jhoira’s darker hair, and its sweet scent the light perfumed oil she had worn on occasion. Finally the golem admitted to himself that his delays were moving further from the realm of plausibility and toward the denial of his task. He abruptly handed the flower to a passing female student and set off for Gatha’s tower without an answer to her look of surprise. Stopping to smell the flowers simply was not a cure for his pain or a fair delay in his mission.

  Still, memories of Jhoira were not so easily set aside. Drawn to make human contact, the golem could not help establishing relationships with those around him even though he recognized each one as another potential loss—more pain to deal with.

  Gatha had set up a stasis field in his small workshop where failed Metathran warriors could be brought and kept in isolation while he ran his own tests. Four subjects currently crowded that field, two of them so deformed as to look more animal than humanoid. A third was hunched over, misshapen but recognizable. The fourth looked perfect in every regard, right down to the blue skin and Thran script that appeared as tattoos but were actually natural marks—never two identical. These creations would remain in stasis indefinitely. The alternative was to destroy a failed subject since the regular stasis fields were used to store viable warriors for use during the time of a Phyrexian invasion. Karn couldn’t say for sure that destruction wouldn’t be preferable, and therein lay another problem. Gatha didn’t care. The tutor was brilliant but reckless. Karn had compared him to Teferi at first, but Teferi had been a spoiled boy who grew out of his troubles and into a responsible wizard. This Karn did not say to Gatha but hoped it would be implied.

  “Don’t look so glum, Karn,” Gatha said as he noticed the golem’s arrival. “You’re too bright to be gloomy.” Gatha chuckled at his own joke, then glanced back to the warriors. “I’ve been expecting you. Barrin’s unhappy again, I take it.”

  “He wants to see you right away.”

  Gatha returned to his observation of the Metathran, shaking his head either at Barrin’s summons or something to do with the fourth warrior subject. There it was again. A lack of any real concern for anything but what he focused on at the moment, and here every moment cost severe delays in real time where Barrin and Urza waited.

  “Look at him,” Gatha said. “Perfectly formed. Beautiful.” He ran one hand back over his head to smooth back his own hair. Karn had noticed in the recent years that Gatha preferred to display his own tattoos, as if this somehow related him to the Metathran warriors and their own markings. “And completely psychotic. It can attack when angry or pleased, or it might simply curl up and become catatonic for days.”

  “And those others?” the golem asked, nodding toward the malformed warriors. He watched the young tutor’s face for any sign of misgivings but found none.

  “Older subjects.” Gatha dismissed them with a wave of his hand, then reached up to stroke his goatee. “No, this one is the closest I’ve come yet to my goal. My fast-time laboratories will be concentrating on data from its gestation for several subjective years.”

  “No,” Karn told him. “They won’t.” He hated to be the one to bring such news to Gatha, but Master Barrin had been direct: If Gatha did not respond immediately to a summons, Karn should deliver the news himself. “Your fast-time labs are being diverted to other projects. Bloodlines work, but under another tutor and this time overseen by an academy scholar.”

  This grabbed the tutor’s attention as nothing else could. “Barrin’s orders?” Gatha did not bother to hide his anger, even when Karn confirmed it with a slow nod. “We’ll see about that.”

  He grabbed up his cloak and strode immediately for the door, leaving the golem to follow or not as he pleased. Karn trailed behind, feeling miserable. He received only slight justification in the obvious foresight of Barrin’s orders. Apparently the only way to motivate Gatha was to deliver such blows.

  * * *

  Barrin and Urza had commandeered a classroom which could seat one hundred students comfortably. It was the closest empty room at hand when Urza had reappeared. The planeswalker spent so little time on Tolaria these days, hounded by Phyrexian negators and not wanting to lead them back. The Weatherlight visited less often for the same reason.

  Occasionally, some cases at the academy still required Urza’s presence, and Gatha was certainly one of them. The rogue tutor stood alone in the dead space that separated where Urza and Barrin sat from the first level of seating where Karn now waited. A thin, placating smile on his face, Gatha affected an air of someone wronged at great trouble and personal expense—a child, convinced in his own superiority and put upon only for his smaller size and fewer years.

  On the surface, the young tutor bore up under the rebuke admirably. Standing in silence, a slight flush to his skin and the hard cast to his eyes were the only signs of his inner feelings. Hands clasped behind his back, he simply nodded to every point made by Barrin and bowed to Urza’s final demand.

  “You must adhere religiously to the guidelines as set down for the Bloodlines project and exercise more discretion when it comes to the presentation of your work.” Urza waited, then prompted for a reply. “Is that understood?” he asked.

  “Yes, Master Urza. Of course.” He was unable to hide the spark of anger that still smoldered behind his narrowly focused eyes. “My fast-time laboratories. Without them—”

  “Without them,” Barrin interrupted, voice hard, “you will be forced to slow down and adhere to the guidelines we’ve set. Your third generation subjects tend toward anger and brutality, even in their early years, and your rate of mutations are far above the average.”

  Urza rubbed at his chin with his right hand. “Anger and brutality are fine, each in its place, but these are unfocused.” He shook his head. “Most third generation subjects show an increased lack of emotional focus. That’s a step backward, and you’re leading in that direction. We need to discover what is setting us back. We’ll commit more generations to
the fast-time pockets, try to generate data at better rates. If we solve this problem, you may get those labs back.” He waited, and this time Gatha volunteered a curt nod. “That is all.”

  Gatha bowed his leave from the two of them. He did not look at Karn at all on his way out, a fact the golem did not miss.

  The silver man made as if to leave, unsure of whether or not to follow. In the end he waited, and Barrin set Karn’s obvious problems aside for now.

  “He will ignore us, Urza.” said Barrin. “He’ll be more circumspect, for a while, but nothing will slow Gatha down except to further strip him of resources.”

  Urza, as was typically the ‘walker’s way, concentrated more on his own concerns. He shuffled a paper from out of a nearby stack, glancing over the report. “Why the step backward?” he asked again to the room in general. He glanced up. “You have more to say about Gatha?”

  “He’s incorrigible,” Barrin snapped, “drunk on power and his own genius and now bitter that we’ve interfered with his fast pace plans. We’ll regret every day that we do not curtail him.”

  “You once thought the same about Teferi.” Urza actually allowed a touch of humor to his voice. He continued to scan the report.

  Barrin shook his head forcefully. “Teferi deserved a good switching, but he did not destroy lives. Urza, this man is out of our control, and it is affecting the work of other students and tutors, raising again the same moral issues I’ve wanted to avoid—we’ve wanted to avoid—in the past. Gatha takes too many chances.”

  Urza evidenced no reaction, unimpressed by the dramatics. The mage sighed, feeling his years. He tried a new tack.

  “Do you know how many of his failures are stacking up in the stasis chambers? Some of our newest students, those born on Tolaria, are now trying to discover magical ways to cure deformities we’ve left for them as a Legacy.”