Which Art In Hope (Spooner Federation Saga Book 1)

by Francis W. Porretto

  "And above all," she whispered, "help Armand. Please!"

  She closed her eyes and laid her face against the bed.

  Chapter 57

  Reverberations from the struggle, as Victoria raged and lashed at Idem's redoubt while the alliance of Idem and Armand labored feverishly to patch the rents and weld the cracks, continued to shake the world above. The shock waves from the Goddess's repeated blows expanded radially to form a sequence of pulses, each one possessing the energy of a fission bomb, that spread through the magma of Hope and pounded against the planet's crust.

  Alta, Sulla, the archipelago and the oceans all resounded with the assault. On every landmass of Hope, buildings rattled, windows cracked, and panic spread. As the pulses came closer together, the weaker structures crumbled. Men were buried beneath their homes and businesses, or thrown from the machines they rode and were crushed beneath them. Others streamed into the open, desperate for a stable refuge, only to bounced repeatedly into the air by the ground itself.

  The coastal communities fared worst. On the east coast of Alta, a succession of tidal waves battered the office towers of Jefferson, felled them one by one, and swept the wreckage into the sea. On the west coast, the palisade on which Kosciuscko had been built crumbled into the ocean, taking the entire city of a hundred ten thousand souls with it. Sulla's southern coastal towns, Houston, Sun Yat Sen, Bolivar, and the twin cities of Romulus and Remus, suffered landslides, earth fissures, and magma geysers that claimed seven of every ten persons therein.

  The Hopeless peninsula experienced temblor after temblor. Yet, owing to some inexplicable strength in the bedrock beneath it, it suffered little. A few of the more delicate hovels in Resolve and Thule collapsed, but without loss of life. Even the seemingly delicate land bridge to the south remained wholly intact.

  The inland communities of the two continents, more thinly settled and built far closer to the ground, were not as badly ravaged, but even there the loss of life and destruction of property was terrible. Few suffered as badly as Teller, but few survived unscathed.

  Gallatin and the university whose name it bore, situated near the geographic center of Alta, went nearly untouched.

  The world the Spoonerites had named Hope, the refuge and the abiding home of Man for more than twelve centuries, had traded benignity for wrath and become its denizens' executioner.

  ***

  The savage cadence of Victoria's pounding rattled Armand's sanity. It undid the repairs he and Idem worked as swiftly as they could contrive them, and inflicted more damage yet, leaving them not an instant to spare for repairing the fissures swiftly multiplying and proliferating on the surface. Hours of battle had achieved nothing, not even the adequate reinforcement of Idem's hideaway. The nickel-iron barrier that for twelve centuries had protected Idem from total destruction seemed certain to fail at any instant. Nothing would stand between them and the Goddess's psychotic rage.

  WE ARE OVERMATCHED.

  I know it.

  NONE OF YOUR KINDRED HAS POSSESSED THIS MUCH POWER, TO REACH ME IN THIS REDOUBT. I CANNOT LONG MAINTAIN COHERENCE AGAINST SUCH AN ASSAULT, BUT WE CANNOT STRIKE AT HER FROM HERE. WE MUST VENTURE OUT. YET SHE HAS OUR MEASURE AGAINST ANY IMAGINABLE ADVANCE. OUR FIRST SALLY WILL SURELY BE OUR LAST. WE MUST WIN OR DIE.

  Idem had told Armand that It could not remember Its origin. Before the coming of the Spoonerites, It had never known pain. Its death had been a remote, highly abstract eventuality. That It should invoke the ultimate terror at that time, under those conditions, was enough to shake Armand to the core.

  If we remain here, we cannot survive?

  THAT IS MY ASSESSMENT. THE BARRIER CANNOT HOLD MUCH LONGER.

  What, then?

  PERHAPS WITH A SUFFICIENTLY CLEVER AND HEADLONG ASSAULT, WE CAN WIN AND DIE.

  No! My people are at stake, just as we are. A hundred million lives! I cannot surrender them to starvation and death.

  YOU ARE NOT BEING REALISTIC. EVEN IN COMBINATION, OUR TELEKINETIC POWERS HAVE PROVED INFERIOR TO THOSE OF YOUR GODDESS. WE CANNOT HALT OR THWART HER. CAN YOU CONCEIVE OF A TACTIC THAT WOULD OFFSET HER ADVANTAGE OF STRENGTH? FOR IF NOT, SOONER OR LATER SHE WILL HAVE US.

  Armand reeled in horror. To all appearances, Hope was the last refuge of the human race. Should Man be expunged from Hope, the human story would be complete. There would be no second Hegira from here. With Idem dead, intelligence itself might be gone from the cosmos.

  Idem, I cannot agree to this. We are obliged to win and survive. To fail in this would be an unprecedented moral default.

  The "voice" of the God was at once grave and wry.

  YOUR CONCEPTION OF MORALS IS THE WEAKEST STONE IN YOUR MENTAL FOUNDATION. THE UNIVERSE KNOWS NOTHING OF MORALS. IT KNOWS SURVIVAL AND DEATH. THAT IS ALL.

  I will not yield!

  Armand's telepathic scream rang through the nickel-iron fortress with a force little less than Victoria's rain of blows. He heard Idem cry out in fresh pain.

  DO NOT TORMENT ME. I SHARE YOUR REGRETS MORE KEENLY THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE, BUT WE CAN DO NOTHING ABOUT THEM. YOUR GODDESS IS A GREATER POWER THAN WE. IS IT NOT CLEAR TO YOU THAT WE CAN NEITHER OVERPOWER HER NOR WITHSTAND HER BLOWS FOR MUCH LONGER?

  ...overpower her...

  Armand knew that Idem was right. Victoria's telekinesis was well beyond what they could muster. But might there be another tactic?

  Idem? When you asked whether I would consider integrating with you...

  YES?

  ...did you have to ASK?

  Idem was silent for a long interval. The nickel-iron shield around their mentalities rang ever louder from Victoria's assault.

  I ASKED BECAUSE IT SEEMED...PROPER TO DO SO.

  Then you could have compelled me to do it?

  YES. OUR SIMILARITIES ARE SUFFICIENT, AND YOUR DEFENSES ARE INSUFFICIENT...BUT I DID NOT CHOOSE TO DO SO, AND I WILL NOT.

  I know. I trust you. But what about VICKI?

  SHE COULD NOT COMPEL YOU, OR ME. SHE HAS NOT THE SKILL.

  No, no! Could you compel her?

  Armand's grip on the passage of time, as slippery as it was in that state, failed him completely. It seemed an eon before Idem's answer arrived.

  YES.

  The current of relief that washed through Armand nearly cost him his foothold in the core. Adrenaline coursed through his body, his pulse accelerated, and the demand on his vital energies all but forced him to reel his consciousness back to the surface.

  BUT AT WHAT PRICE, ARMAND? TO BE CONJOINED WITH A MENTALITY SUCH AS HERS WOULD DESTABILIZE ME. IT WOULD INEVITABLY CORRUPT MY REASON. GIVEN THAT, THE MARRIAGE OF OUR POWERS WOULD ENDANGER THE WORLD. ECOLOGICAL CHAOS WOULD BE THE BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOME.

  That would not happen.

  HOW COULD IT BE PREVENTED?

  Armand told him.

  ***

  In the crimson radiance and unrelenting heat of her prison, Victoria paused.

  Something had changed.

  Her surroundings were no longer uniform. A glow had arisen, from the direction of her most savage assaults. It began as a faint pinprick of white, barely perceptible against the backdrop of red. It swelled slowly, as if it were moving toward her. It brightened as it grew.

  She stayed her hand.

  The apparition continued to swell. She perceived that it was moving rather than merely enlarging. The front of some mobile entity was coming toward her, its intentions and capacities unknown.

  She flexed her powers to strike afresh, and stopped. The thing was radiating more than white light. It projected a coolness, a metaphysical serenity that seemed to draw the heat from around it and put it to rest. As it slid steadily toward her, she sensed a wave of welcome, an invitation to harmony and peace, emanating from it along a psionic channel she had never before opened and could not name.

  The intruder was calling to her, beckoning her to open herself to it. To lose herself.

  It reawakened her rage. She surged toward it, massed all the forces in her telekinetic engine and co
cked them to swing, resolved upon shattering the thing with a single stroke.

  Before she could strike, a shaft of purest white stabbed outward from the thing, piercing her to her heart. It speared past her rudimentary defenses, stopped her will as a sword thrust through her spine would have paralyzed her body, and wrought with precision and speed. She felt her self, the core of her consciousness wherein dwelt her ultimate I am, being transformed.

  The awareness of the siege on her identity sufficed to rekindle her fury for a final blow. The thing had not destroyed nor abridged her powers. It could not. But it could envelop them, swaddle them in its unnatural serenity and forever deprive her of the will to act. If she did not strike at once, she would lose the ability for all time.

  She called upon her engine once more...and once more, stayed her hand.

  Something had already changed within her. Her telekinesis was sputtering and failing for lack of fuel. The fires of her fury were swiftly being banked. The coolness attached to the mysterious intruder had enveloped her, soothing her hurts, salving her fears, and stilling her desire for destruction.

  A signal with the indefinable resonances of a human voice, a voice she knew well, was calling to her.

  Armand had come.

  Chapter 58

  Armand?

  (humor) Hello, Vicki. Long time, no see.

  Where are you -- where are we?

  I'm in Morelon House. You appear to be in a deep sub-basement of the Humane Studies Building at Gallatin University.

  Can you...see me?

  I can perceive you, yes. You can't?

  No. Something...happened.

  Yes, I can see that. Looks like the mother of all concussions. Your brain's envelope is badly damaged. Leaks everywhere. Do you feel any kind of pressure?

  Yes!

  This is the reason. Vicki, I have bad news.

  What?

  It's beyond repair. Your body, I mean. It has at most a few hours of life left.

  Shock and fury leaped within her once more. Before she could lash out, Armand gentled her with a wave of affection and restraint.

  I also have good news.

  What?

  Would you like a replacement body? I happen to have one handy. The grandest, most beautiful body anyone has ever had.

  Hey! The one I've got isn't half bad, you know.

  (humor) Apologies if I sounded as if I disagreed. Yes, you're a beautiful woman. One of the most beautiful on Hope. Not even Teresza, as much as I love her, rises to your level of beauty. But it's time to leave off being a woman and become something more.

  (grimly) I am something more.

  And you're not happy with it, are you?

  Armand's simple candor dispelled the last of her rage.

  No.

  May I share my sensorium with you for a moment?

  See through your eyes? Hear what you hear? I didn't know you could do that.

  (chuckle) You'd be appalled by some of the things I can do now. May I?

  She pondered it for a fraction of a second.

  Go ahead.

  She felt him opening doorways within her, passages whose existence she hadn't suspected, and the vistas around her changed.

  The human eye, as capable as it is, can only take an instantaneous and evanescent two-dimensional picture of the world around it. The human ear, despite its fabulous sensitivity, must meld all the sounds it perceives into a single, often hopelessly muddled stream. The other senses share similar limitations, owing to simple physics and the limited sensory processing power of even the finest human brain. Victoria was thus unprepared for the flood of sights, sounds, aromas and textures that coursed from Armand's consciousness into hers.

  She saw rolling fields of corn and wheat, and the deep channels of rivers, and the modest mountains of the northern Altan coast. She saw the rapids and falls that dot the Anarran, Sulla's great continental river that nearly divides the southern continent in two. She saw the mighty sweeps of Hope's single, all-girdling ocean, and the brave ones who piloted ships upon them. She saw the polar caps, and watched in wonder as their glaciers grew, crumbled, and grew again.

  She saw cities and towns, large and small, wherein those who must work together choose to dwell. She saw the great towers, the humble shops and workplaces where the bulk of life must be conducted. She saw homes and gardens unending. She saw men and women working, playing, eating, drinking, laughing, crying, making love, and fighting to survive.

  She saw ruins, where the temblors from her fury had ravaged the works of men. She saw the horrors that had afflicted Teller, and the dead city of Heinlein. She glimpsed the wreckage of Jefferson and the naked rock where Kosciuscko had stood. She watched magma geysers lay waste to Sun Tzu and Bolivar.

  She heard screams of agony and despair. She smelled death and fire. She felt the fabric of the world being unknit as she watched.

  In a scalding flash of realization, she knew those works for her own.

  Her mind would have unraveled at that instant, but for Armand's sustenance.

  I can't have done that!

  I'm sorry, Vicki. I know you didn't mean any of it. But we have to fix it now. And save you, if you'll let us.

  We?

  I'm not alone here, Vicki. May I introduce you to Idem?

  Idem?

  The creature you've been trying to destroy. The true God of Hope. He's the one who can preserve you, if you'll let him.

  I've been trying to kill a...god? Someone like us?

  (humor) Not a lot like us, dear. And not intentionally, no. But that's what you were doing. May I bring him into this conversation?

  She braced herself.

  Go ahead.

  Armand opened yet another channel between their minds, and a third consciousness flowed through it.

  WELCOME.

  The unexpected size of the new visitor, the majestic timbre of Its "voice," staggered Victoria and momentarily deprived her of the power of response. Armand steadied her as before.

  You are...Idem?

  I AM. I LIVE WITHIN THE PLANET YOU CALL HOPE. I HAVE DONE SO FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS. WELCOME TO MY WORLD.

  A disembodied intelligence?

  (humor) NOT AT ALL. IN YOUR TERMS, THE PLANET ITSELF IS MY FLESH. THE RIVERS ARE MY BLOODSTREAM. THE FLOWS OF ANTIMONY AND COPPER YOU AND YOUR PREDECESSORS HAVE STRUGGLED TO SUPPRESS ARE MY NERVOUS SYSTEM. WE HAVE BEEN AT ODDS FOR TWELVE HUNDRED YEARS.

  Have we...I hurt you?

  REPEATEDLY AND SEVERELY. YET I FORGIVE YOU. THERE WAS FAR TOO MUCH THAT LAY BEYOND YOUR KNOWLEDGE.

  We...I wouldn't have, if I'd known.

  THAT IS SELF-EVIDENT. BUT TIME GROWS SHORT. WE MUST ATTEND TO MORE URGENT MATTERS. FIRST, THE CONTINUATION OF YOUR EXISTENCE.

  If my body is dying, how can I...continue?

  AS I DO. BUT THERE IS A PREREQUISITE.

  What?

  YOU MUST AGREE TO MERGE WITH ME. FULL COMMUNION, INSEPARABLE AND PERMANENT.

  Then I would no longer be...Victoria?

  NOT AS YOU ARE NOW, NO. OUR FUSED MENTALITIES WOULD RETAIN ALL YOUR MEMORIES AND POWERS. BUT WE WOULD FUNCTION AS A SINGLE ENTITY HENCEFORWARD.

  No other way, huh?

  NONE. I REGRET THIS. I KNOW HOW HIGHLY YOUR KIND VALUES ITS INDEPENDENCE.

  Not as much as I value my life!

  (humor) THAT IS WELL. DO I HAVE YOUR PERMISSION, THEN?

  I have a condition.

  A CONDITION? A PREREQUISITE?

  Yes.

  STATE IT. BUT KNOW THAT I AM NOT WITHOUT LIMITS. IT MIGHT BE SOMETHING I CANNOT GIVE YOU.

  I know you can't. It's for Armand to give, or not.

  What? Vicki, what on Hope do you think I could give you that Idem couldn't?

  Victoria paused and bore down with her remaining forces.

  Yourself. You have to become part of us as well.

  Armand and Idem were shocked silent.

  That's the condition. I'm not going to allow myself to be absorbed by something as...as distant fro
m me as Idem and have to bear it alone. I want another human consciousness in there with me. Someone I can relate to, for Rand's sake! You're the only candidate I can think of. Besides, I've always wanted you and me to be an item.

  She waited, aware that the others were conferring along a channel she could not access.

  You really insist on this, Vicki?

  Yes.

  What if I refuse? Don't you want to live?

  Desperately, you bastard. More than I could tell you if I had a whole year to do it. But not alone. NOT ALONE!

  Seconds dragged by like eons. When Armand broke the silence at last, his "voice" was as faint as the exhalations of the stars.

  So be it.

  ARMAND? ARE YOU CERTAIN?

  It won't work any other way, Idem. Without me, she'd drive you insane. (ruefully) I think I always knew that. But may I ask a favor? If it's within your -- our powers, and won't interfere with anything important, could you allow us to animate my body for a few years longer? Fifty or sixty or so?

  YES, OF COURSE.

  Victoria bridled in sudden pique.

  Armand, is this for that little blonde bitch of yours?

  SHUT UP, you ungrateful little brat! Yes, it's for Terry's sake. AND our daughter Valerie's. They WILL have a husband and father, whether you agree to this or not!

  What? I thought --

  I have total control of your physiology, Vicki. While we've been chatting here, I've taken command of every major organ and gland in your body. And you didn't notice a thing. Pretty deft, eh? I could end your life in an instant. Or I could relieve Idem of his promise to me that he wouldn't integrate you without your consent. You wouldn't be able to stop him, now that I've lassoed you. So take what you're being given and be grateful for it, or by Spooner's beard I'll put you out of your misery right now!

  His vehemence washed away the last of her barriers. She surrendered, and Armand's anger subsided.

  All right.

  Armand's "voice" returned to its usual serenity.

  Idem?

  YES, ARMAND?

  You're up.

  EXCUSE ME?