I thought of the cables of crystal and stone threading though the reactor spaces, of the whisper on the noosphere channels and the power and heat draining from the world around this… tomb.
‘We must go,’ I said, and was already lifting Thamus-91’s remains and moving for the hatch out to the world above. Ishta-1-Gamma followed. As we climbed back up to the outer skin of the god, I looked back and thought for a second I saw a face looking up at me from the black circle of the hatchway. I began to climb faster and did not look down again.
She advanced from the door as it sealed behind her. I watched her as I parsed the symbols walking across the parchment spooling from the data-font. I saw her reach out and take an inert plasma coil-disc from my tertiary workbench. She did not look at it, but rolled it between her hands. The gesture had no purpose to it. It was enough to make me halt all my activity. You must understand, nothing in the Priesthood of Mars is without purpose; everything is of the machine and no part of the machine lacks purpose.
I watched her as the data-font clattered and the buzz of cogitator and power transfers dimmed from a cackle to a hum. She seemed to realise what she had done after three seconds. Her noospheric halo flashed through static as she replaced the coil-disc on the workbench, blurting the canticle input of harmony across all primary frequencies.
I waited.
She had not been the same since that first excursion into the Artefact-ZA01. We had made a full report to Atropos about the demise of Thamus-91. The senior magos had accepted the data, but had requested no clarification or further analysis. I could not help but form a list of possible ideas as to why: the senior magos was uninterested in what had happened, the data that we supplied needed no further clarification or the incident held no new data. This last possibility clung to me. Atropos did not ask for further data because the magos knew what had happened. It had happened before.
Ishta-1-Gamma had demanded more data access. The reply from Atropos had been simple. If we wanted answers, wake the machine. If we wanted knowledge, wake the machine. If we wanted to perform our duty to Omnissiah and knowledge, wake the machine.
We protested, but neither of us had demanded to leave. We had remained, and begun work to do just what Atropos had said. We had worked to wake the machine.
Why? Even now I am not certain as to the answer, or rather, I am not certain there is an answer that would satisfy logic. We like to think that choices are rational, like the turning of cogs, that we leave the weakness of the irrational behind as we shed the weakness of flesh. But the question that does not arise in all the coda of the Omnissiah is whether the irrational fears that pulse in blood and beat in our chests when we wake in the night are not weakness, but warnings left on the edge of the darkness.
We were priests of the machine. Knowledge is sacred, and there is nothing higher than knowledge lost to the past. The artefact… the Titan in that tomb… there was knowledge in it, great and terrible knowledge waiting just out of sight yet close enough to grasp. You cannot understand, perhaps, what that means, what that demands of us. It calls to the truth of all we are. And so we worked to wake the machine – I to kindle energy in its metal, Ishta-1-Gamma to allow a human to interface with its systems. She worked with a focus and diligence that I have never seen.
We assayed the artefact further, accessed rituals from the Collegia Titanica archives granted us by Zavius and created test rituals that grew sacred theory into a harmony and order. Weeks, weeks and weeks with the cold and silence, weeks of the finest work perhaps I have ever been a part of. All of it bringing us to a threshold.
Her aura expanded for a second, flashed with bright and subtle formulae.
A brighter flash, a spiral of calculations in the data link.
I replied.
In truth, the same possibilities and questions had been rising unbidden in my mind with regular frequency since the first expedition into Artefact-ZA01. But I could not form a full and logical chain of inference from them.
She reached her hand inside her robes and removed a data-cylinder of milled brass – 0.75 cm in diameter, 6.6 cm in length. She placed it on the workbench. I looked at it.
I looked back at the data-cylinder, then picked it up.
Ishta-1-Gamma transmitted a negation.
she transmitted.
she transmitted, and paused. Data silence filled the link.
I considered what she had said for three full cycles of thought. I admit, she spoke fears that had followed me too.
I held the data-cylinder up between us and crushed it between my digits.
‘Initiate the second incarnation of power transfer,’ I said, and the body of the god-machine shook. Plasma cylinders slid out of their magnetic sheaths and slammed into the fuel conduits around the Titan’s reactor core. I watched through a visual feed piped from sensors in the reactor wall. Some of my kind see no value in such direct observation – all can be seen in data, they claim. The eye is merely an imperfect sensor and its output is of no value. But, to me, to watch such a moment, imperfect though that perception may be, is to look on the face of god.
Glowing primary plasma flooded though flow coils and poured into the reactor core. Magnetic fields caught it, spun it, moulded it into a roiling globe of blinding light. Output data danced in my sight. Energy was draining from the Titan’s reactor core, but I had anticipated this. In an instant I had flooded the core with eight times the fuel needed for ignition, more than could drain before we could complete the ritual.
I stood in the centre of Artefact-ZA01’s enginarium compartment. Stuttering blue light filled the space as relay-linked lumen globes lit and died one after another.
Atropos had not joined us in person but watched from a haze of distorting holo-light. Choirs of servitors crowded the space, each sheathed in layers of thermal and energy insulation.
The 441 mm thick trunk of cables passing power from the reactors outside the Titan buzzed and oozed heat into the freezing air. I had set six Solex grade reactors to work in sequence, like the lumen globes in the compartment they lit as the power drained from the others. From these, we were consuming enough raw energy per second to power a manufactory for a month.
Through the open doors at the end of the space, Ishta-1-Gamma and her own cohort of servitors filled the bridge. Zavius sat on the princeps’ throne, sheathed in a black body-glove and coiled with interface cables. The neural connection spike that would link his mind and body to the Titan sat poised just behind the socket in the base of his skull. Ishta-1-Gamma’s hand rested on the lever that would close the connection once primary systems had power.
‘Standing by for primary neural interface,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma.
‘Plasma in reactor core reaching saturation,’ droned one of the servitors wired into the flux monitors. ‘Primary ignition yield will be achieved in three… two… one…’
‘By the soul of this machine and the truth of iron, ignite!’ I said.
‘Compliance,’ droned a servitor.
A spear of lightning stabbed down into the roiling ball of plasma held at the reactor’s core. I saw it strike, saw the light pour out, blinding even to machine eyes. The body of the Titan shivered. Every light in the compartment blew out. Static poured out of every speaker grille in the chamber. The holo-image of Atropos vanished.
Then silence.
I waited in darkness.
Then I felt it. A low vibration pulsing through the floor, an electro-song on the edge of hearing. Indicator lights lit on access panels. The optical feed to the reactor cleared.
‘Light is brought to dark,’ I intoned. ‘Fire kindled in the forge. The wheel turns.’
‘All praise to the machine!’ echoed the servitors.
The power drain was slowing, dropping as the reactor output grew.
The noospheric words flashed into my mind. I flinched.
‘What?’ I blurted.
‘Standing by for first phase neural connection,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma. Princeps Zavius had closed his eyes.
‘Take this fire to your soul and be illuminated,’ I intoned, counting the sacred five seconds and holding down the switches on the power governor console. Plasma was pulled from the reactor core into conduits. Heat and power flowed into cold metal and cable. And, for a moment, through the touch of my hand on its heart, I felt the god-machine’s spirit wake.
Hollowness.
The ache and hunger of aeons.
The sound of a scream that never ends caught in metal.
My consciousness almost failed at the vastness of it, but it was partial, incomplete, a half-soul of iron. And behind that presence, like a shadow gathered at a god’s back, was a waiting dark. I saw it then. By my oath to cog and data, I saw what had been. The ghosts flowed through my sensors and data connections, and perhaps through the cells of my flesh. I saw them moving in the spaces in which I stood. I heard their voices speak from long ago. They were there – figures in robes of emerald and fire-orange, and they spoke in tongues that were not the tongues of machines or men. And for a moment, a long black terrible moment, I saw what they had done.
I saw their dream, the dream of not just connecting man and machine, but of the machine as a sepulchre for the souls of those it consumed. I saw the devices they had wrought and bound into the heart of these machines. I saw the machine walk, and the dead scream in the minds of those who guided them to war. I saw the core of black iron nested at the root of the machine, sealed beyond sight, and the threads of crystal and stone branching from it though every limb and fibre of the walking god. And I saw the moments and thoughts and dreams held in that black heart, frozen for millennia, sent down to sleep and dream without end at the root of mountains.
And then the vision passed.
‘Initiating first phase neural connection,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘All is known in the machine.’
I tried to shout, to warn her. Cold static poured from me. I could not move, but only watch as Ishta-1-Gamma pulled the lever that sent the neural connection spike into the socket at the base of Zavius’ skull.
I think I was moving across the compartment. I think I was reaching for the lever to break the connection. I think that is what I was doing… I am not certain, though, because at that moment Zavius opened his eyes.
Everything stopped. Nothing was moving. Not power, not the sparks running up the power cables, not the flicker of lights on consoles. Everyone else was gone. Ishta-1-Gamma, the servitors, Zavius, all of them.
The words were rolls of data thunder, crushing me down to the deck. I raised my hand to catch myself. An invisible force bent it around. Servos and hinges snapped. Cogs fell to gathering ice as they tumbled.
Black iron, cold iron and shadow and a hole at the centre of all…
And I was screaming, and the blurred figure was stepping closer as the image of the inside of the Titan faded and folded into a static blizzard and blackness. I could feel something pulling me, something that felt like a hand.
‘Help! Glavius, help us! Help him!’
And the figure was gone and I was standing as blue cords of power wormed over the walls. Zavius was convulsing on his throne. His eyes were red, pupils swallowed by haemorrhages. His mouth was a bloody pit. Pieces of teeth and tongue spilled from his lips as he screamed. Smoke rose from the neural connection. The skin of his skull was charring and peeling, the bone beneath already black. His brain was cooking inside his skull. Ishta-1-Gamma was trying to pull the cable free from his head. I could see the metal of her fingers glowing and distorting with heat as she struggled.
‘Shut down the power!’ she shouted. I pivoted and lunged at the reactor governor controls. I could still see into the reactor core through the remote pict feeds. The spinning ball of energy was distorting, burning bright and flowing with black veins. I began the emergency shutdown ritual, slamming levers down.
Crimson warning indicators lit.
‘It will not comply!’ I shouted. The reactor output spiked. Power lashed out of the console and through my hands. I flew backwards and slammed into the compartment wall. Damage and system errors screamed through my awareness. Frost was spreading over Zavius’ face. Ishta-1-Gamma flinched back, her hands smoking and glowing with heat. Zavius’ body convulsed again. The bones of the Titan creaked and shook around us.
‘The neural connection is overriding all control,’ called Ishta-1-Gamma. ‘It has to be shut down from within.’ She was trying to lift one of the back-up mind-interface cables, her damaged hands slipping. Smoke was rising from Zavius, coiling in the air. Ishta-1-Gamma gripped the interface cable. Her hood fell away from her head, and I saw that it was a pure construction of polished brass and chrome. Socket plugs marched in a line from the base of her skull to her forehead. She paused for an instant, the cable held level with her face. I understood in that moment what she was going to do.
Divination - John French Page 14
