Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  Click.

  Click-click.

  Nothing happened.

  “Did it fucking work?” Pallino muttered from the space behind. His stage whisper caught on the hard walls and echoed far louder than intended.

  Somewhere ahead of us through the door, a deep grinding noise arose.

  Thud.

  A ticking like the turning of some mighty clock resounded in that space, and the mighty gearworks began to turn, shaking off literal millennia of dust as the stainless steel teeth champed and bit for the first time since the Empire was young and the blood of the Pretender not even cold.

  Gibson staggered back, and I caught him.

  Valka cheered.

  The bowels of the earth groaned, gears squealed, and the doors began to open. A foul air rushed out, tepid with the scent of stagnation, the stink of air undisturbed and still for too long. I was glad our light came from glowspheres, for torches surely would have guttered and burned out. The doors ground open until the yawning gap between them was wide enough for two men to pass abreast and stopped. I think I understood the levers then. They’d controlled the width of the door.

  And the doors were open.

  A stair ran down a long ways, descending straight for perhaps a hundred feet.

  The air inside smelled foul. Gibson and I entered first, Valka close behind. As we approached the bottom of the stair, Valka held her light aloft, and its pale radiance washed over banks of metal consoles and rows of shelves lined with texts and artifacts of all description. I felt a numb dread pinching the back of my neck, and would in that moment have traded my left arm for my sword and shield-belt.

  “There should be a light somewhere,” Imlarros said, searching along the walls. “Our Order was not forbidden light in those days.”

  As he searched, Valka turned to face me, her eyes wide, face glowing in the light of her lantern. “Do you feel it? You can almost taste the history here.”

  “I don’t like it,” Pallino said. “Doran, take Gaert and scout out that way.” He pointed over the centurion’s shoulder down a passage to the left. “I’ll take Vidan round the other way. Had, you and doctor stay here until we clear it.” He turned toward Imlarros, “You said this thing makes a circuit around the core shaft?”

  “According to the maps, yes.”

  Pallino nodded, blue eyes snapping from me back to his centurion. “Means we’ll meet in the middle. Double quick. Shout if anything strikes you as off. We should be able to hear.” And then he was off, grumbling the while. “Wouldn’t let us bring nothing deadlier than a damn knife. I ask you . . .”

  “Are all your people like that one?” Gibson asked, eyebrow raised.

  Watching Pallino vanish round the bend in the path with Vidan in tow, I said, “Oh, Pallino’s one of a kind.”

  “Hadrian, come! I can’t read English!” Valka’s voice interrupted us.

  We’d stepped into a kind of vestibule that ran forward a hundred feet or so to the great circular hall of Gabriel’s Archive. The walls were hung with paintings whose shapes barely emerged from the gloom, darkly oiled. Straight ahead, on an island in the center of the hall, was a plinth that held a single document under filter glass, safe in darkness for so many thousand years. Valka held her light up that I might read it.

  The parchment inside was yellowed and badly stained by light and time, its edges crumbling, its ink fading away. The writing was English, but of an ancient mode. Not the block letters I knew well as Galstani, but a flowing script written in a strong hand.

  “In Congress,” I said in English, and translated it for Valka, following the declarative first line with a fingertip. “July 4, 1776.” I squinted at the next line, at an elaborate character I decided must be a T. “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united . . .” I paused, realizing some piece of what this document was, and whom it had belonged to. Forcing strength into my voice, I resumed speaking. “Of the thirteen united States of America.” Unbidden, my fingers curled into the familiar warding gesture, the old sign to ward off the evil eye. “Mericanii,” I said, seeing that Valka did not at once comprehend. I’d known intellectually that Gabriel’s Archive would be filled with artifacts belonging to the machine lords, but seeing the ancient name scrawled there on Golden Age parchment was something else entirely.

  As if on cue, yellow lights flared on, springing to life with a clangor and a deep thrumming noise from sconces high on the perimeter wall. Their light cast long shadows over formless shapes—foil sheets draped over artifacts, row upon row of filing cabinets and microfilm terminals.

  “I’m going to need to learn Classical English,” Valka said. “I wish I’d thought of it sooner.”

  I patted her on the back with my gloved hand. “You have plenty of time.” I moved away from the plinth, crossing toward a time-eaten standard striped red and white. A line of portraits marched along the inner wall, following along the bend of the main hall.

  “Shouldn’t we wait here, lord?” Tor Varro called. “For Pallino to clear the room?”

  I waved him to silence.

  The first showed an elderly man, pale and white-haired in a plain black suit with frilled white collar and cuffs.

  WASHINGTON, the placard read. I paused. “Washington.” The Brethren had mentioned Washington, had they not? But Brethren had spoken of a city. Not a man. Pondering this, I followed the line of portraits one to the next. Men and women—if mostly men—variously smiling or solemn. I remember their names: MONROE, JACKSON, JOHNSON, ROOSEVELT, TRUMAN, FORD, DELANEY, OVERTON, PEMBROKE. I followed the line, following Doran’s route along the curving hallway until I came to the last, where the first microfilm terminators began.

  FELSENBURGH.

  The photograph—no painting, this one—showed a man like unto the first: white-haired and dressed in black. But where Washington was old, weak-chinned and tousle-haired, Felsenburgh’s face was ageless as Kharn Sagara’s and handsome, with a sharp jaw and pointed chin. He looked almost feminine, with his wavy white hair in a tail over his left shoulder. He was rapier thin, his high-collared suit more reminiscent of a military uniform than court dress, with short boots and an impassive face only hinting at a smile.

  “Felsenburgh,” I said. I’d heard it before, but I couldn’t place it. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

  To my surprise, a voice answered. “Julian Felsenburgh was the last lord of the Mericanii.” Gibson had followed me round the bend. “The last human lord, that is.”

  I turned from the man in the photograph. “How do you know that?”

  “We all know it,” Gibson said. “The scholiasts were founded not to replace machines—as is often said—but to limit the march of science to prevent a second menace like the Mericanii demons from ever threatening humanity again.”

  Gibson leaned on his cane. “Felsenburgh was a technocrat. A businessman. He took power promising his machines would end injustice and bring about peace. They did, and the people cheered him. When he died, the Mericanii controlled almost all of Earth, and he turned his government over to his machines.”

  “Columbia,” I said, remembering the name Brethren had given me.

  Gibson cocked an eyebrow. “I take it you learned that name on Vorgossos, too?”

  I grunted my affirmative.

  “Every scholiast knows the story. We are forbidden to discuss it outside the walls of our athenaea under penalty of the Inquisition. We are meant to preserve knowledge, not necessarily to proliferate it. Certainly not knowledge of the Mericanii. Or Felsenburgh. Every scholiast knows his story. It’s our story.” As he spoke, Gibson sank into a seat atop a low filing cabinet. Jabbing his cane up at the man in the image, he said, “He sold humanity’s soul.”

  I was shaking my head in protest. “How is it I don’t know any of this?”

  Gibson raised an eyebrow. “I told you, we are forbidden to discuss
the history of the Foundation War—what little we still know, that is. Under penalty of Inquisition.”

  “But I should have heard of him!” I protested. But I had heard of him. The name was familiar!

  “Have you heard of Mao?” Gibson asked. “Or Mehmed? What about Vermeiren?” This time when I shook my head, it was only in ignorance. Gibson tapped his cane against the floor to punctuate his point. “Felsenburgh is nearly so ancient. To most of the people in the galaxy, the Earth is a goddess, not a planet. Not a place people lived. Twenty thousand years of history, Hadrian. Twenty thousand. To the plebeians, the Jaddian Wars—Prince Cyrus and Princess Amana—these are ancient history.”

  Felsenburgh was smiling down on me from his photograph. “That was only five thousand years ago.”

  “And how many hundred generations?” Gibson asked. “A mere thirty-one generations of your family is enough to take us back to the founding of your house. That was nigh eight thousand years ago. How many generations separate you from the God Emperor? You are his descendant—however distantly. A few hundred?” With exquisite ease, Gibson lay his cane flat on his lap. “There is more history now than even this Library can hold, much less any human mind. Felsenburgh was the great enemy of man—the father of daimons. Much of what he did and who he was is now simply the work of the Mericanii. Combine that span of history with the Chantry’s careful policing. You ask: ‘How have I not heard of Felsenburgh sooner?’ I say: ‘It is a miracle you have heard of him at all.’”

  If you are a historian, Reader, perhaps you wonder at my ignorance. For have I not referenced the Golden Age unceasing since this account began? Have I not talked of Rome and Constantinople? Have I not spoken the names of Alexander the Macedonian and of Dante a dozen times and quoted Marcus Aurelius and Shakespeare? Kipling, Serling, and the rest? I have. All these curiosities I owed to the man before me. To Tor Gibson of Syracuse. But he could not teach me everything, try as he might. Much of what I have learned and referenced I have learned since I returned here to Nov Belgaer. A Poet-in-Exile. As I have written this account, I have read and learned much that was forgotten and buried. Read and learned because of this conversation. To arrest my own ignorance.

  “Suzuha,” I said, remembering at last.

  “What?”

  “Suzuha mentioned him—Kharn Sagara’s daughter, clone . . . whatever. She mentioned him once. I didn’t think to ask who he was at the time . . .” Turning, I looked back into the face of the man who had hung the noose around humanity’s neck and kicked the stool. “Was it Caligula who said he wished humanity had only one neck for him to squeeze?”

  Gibson looked on with me. “A common misconception. Caligula only wanted to strangle the Romans, if Suetonius is to be believed—and I’m not so sure he is.”

  Felsenburgh didn’t look like a maniac. In his plain suit, his knowing smile might only have concealed some private joke—not the damnation of so many billion lives. Even now, the true history of the Foundation War is a mystery to me. I suspect it is a mystery to all but Brethren, who alone of all living creatures survives from those hateful days. Thinking about Brethren before the image of Felsenburgh sent a chill through me. Fewer than a million people had survived Felsenburgh’s machines, almost all of them from the earliest offworld colonies.

  “Do you think he knew what he was doing?” I asked. I did not look at Gibson, but peered into Julian Felsenburgh’s pale blue eyes.

  Tor Gibson took in a deep breath. “Do I think he thought his machines would enslave mankind and destroy it? No. I’m sure he thought he was a hero. I’m sure all these people thought they were heroes.” He gestured at the line of paintings and photographs depicting the high lords of the Mericanii. “But then, so few of us truly think themselves evil. They simply think good and evil matters of opinion, and seek to impose their opinion—which is evil—on good. Nothing is evil in its beginning, it only grows that way. The Mericanii thought they were bringing peace and freedom to the world, but they couldn’t control their machines.” I had nothing to say, and so let the silence stretch. Gibson broke it a moment later. “Do you know the difference, Hadrian, between magic and prayer?”

  Now it was my turn to be confused. “What?” I turned to look round at my old tutor.

  “Humility,” Gibson said, tapping his cane on the tile. “The suppliant prays to superior powers, while the magician commands inferior ones. The only problem is that the daimons were not inferior powers at all. Felsenburgh may have birthed his daimons—summoned them, if you will—but he could not control them. I said he sold humanity’s soul. I wasn’t being dramatic. Creating his machines was a Faustian bargain, one we’re all still paying for. I think he had no notion what his creations might become, which is why he should never have made them.” My tutor grunted in a most unscholarly way. “There is a reason why in Galstani our word for scientist,” he said the Classical English word, “is the same as the word for magus.”

  “That’s why there are scholiasts,” I said, following.

  “Gather all the thinking people in the galaxy in one place, put them in a tower, and teach them humility.” He shook his head. “Brother Imlarros derided me as a philosopher on our climb down here, do you remember?” I did. “The Golden Age ended because men forgot philosophy in their pursuit of knowledge. They traded a love of wisdom for progress, and it destroyed them.” In a small voice, he added, “The ancient Christians were right to name pride the greatest of man’s sins.”

  “Thought I told you to stay by the doors!” Pallino came hurrying into sight, his man Vidan following on his heels.

  Turning to face the chiliarch, my lictor, I said, “Well, did you find anything?”

  “Room’s clear,” Pallino said. “But Valka and the scholiasts said you two’d wandered off.”

  “If the room’s clear, there’s no harm done,” I said. “I was just looking.” I gestured up at Felsenburgh, as if the ancient dictator’s portrait explained everything.

  Pallino made a frustrated sound and turned away. I caught him mutter something like, “. . . supposed to do my job when he won’t let me?”

  “Pallino!” I said, and the dark-haired officer turned. “Thank you.”

  We went past the portraits of the other Mericanii dictators and returned to the vestibule. Valka was still standing over the document in its plinth—or perhaps had returned to it. She did not notice my approach, but stood with head bowed, arms crossed. “. . . has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing . . .”

  She was speaking Classical English.

  She was already speaking Classical English.

  “You learned that quickly?” I was unable to keep the shock and awe from my voice.

  Valka looked up. “No! No, no . . . I . . .” she smoothed her hair back behind her ears, “I had the alphabet stored already. The sounds. I’m only practicing. I’ve no idea what any of it means.”

  “Neither do I,” I said.

  Valka’s face turned downward. “But you speak it, don’t you?”

  “I do!” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I understand any of . . . this.” I flapped my arms at the room about me, at the document, the tattered flags, the microfilm displays, and sealed cabinets. At Washington and Felsenburgh. “I think this is going to take longer than we thought, Valka.”

  “Longer than you thought, maybe,” Valka said. “But I’ve followed you around for decades, Marlowe. Now ’tis your turn.” Brushing past me, she raised her voice. “Pallino! Doran! Are we clear?” The centurion and chiliarch alike flashed all-clear signs from where they stood by one of the arched entrances to the main corridor. “Wonderful! Let’s get to work!”

  * * *

  And work we did.

  Reader, you have heard perhaps that I learned to speak the tongue of the Mericanii in a matter of days. I did not. I learned to speak the English of antiquity as a boy—as yo
u have seen. It was Valka who learned in a week. The details of our lives have blurred and blended with the centuries, that we have become one flesh in the minds of the galaxy. I fear I have done her an injustice in not chronicling her work much until now: the time she spent learning Cielcin from Tanaran while I slept, the ages spent poring over scans and holographs taken from Cielcin ships after battles, and so on . . . But I have not described its details because I cannot remember them all, and because to describe all Valka learned of the Cielcin in her years working beside me would be to write quite a different sort of book.

  What she learned of the Mericanii those years at Nov Belgaer would have filled at least a dozen volumes, though we wrote not a single line. By Primate Arrian’s orders, half a dozen members of the Curators were posted at the gates to Gabriel’s Archive to ensure none but my party went inside, nor any document came out. The great doors were left open, but a chain-link fence and gate were installed before them. With the primate’s consent, I posted as many of my own men on the gate—anything to ensure the protection of the Archive and to forestall Tor Aramini’s bombs.

  Of those days in the Archive, I shall say little. Much of what we read and discovered was meaningless to either of us: records of men and events and places unknown. Much of the microfilm had rotted, and many of the documents crumbled in gloved fingers, forcing us to resort to tools.

  Valka glowed every day. The doctor was in her element, her joy plain to see. I wondered at the scholiasts’ strange sufferance of her. They knew she was Tavrosi. Perhaps they underestimated the fidelity of her memory—or perhaps they hoped the secrets of their library would get out.

  Who can say? I did not ask Arrian or Imlarros—I did not even ask Gibson. We were allowed to read and to study and granted as much time as we desired in that pursuit. None challenged us, and no summons came.

  A year passed, and two.

  While Valka and I turned through Gabriel’s Archive with Gibson and Varro at our side, the men enjoyed their well-deserved rest. A cheer went throughout the Tamerlane, I learned, when they got the news, and another when Corvo informed the soldiers their time in Sevrast would count against their service. The twenty-year rule governing time in the Legions had been suspended in the face of the Cielcin crisis—soldiers served for life in those days—but each man’s clock still counted the days, hoping for an end to the violence it seemed would never come.