High Tower Gods

by C L Corona

Nothing about the process was going to be exciting. Just a quiet snipping and stripping, reducing the masked chimera down to units and parts, wires and fluids and gears. All the little bits and pieces that had made the chimera living, thinking, communicating would simply be shut down, as though it were no more a living being than a bed side lamp with delusions of grandeur.

  "Why are we here?" Martyn hissed. The weather had turned foul, a bracing sleet that kept sending the exetech's round bowler hat blowing off into the crowd. Despite the cold and rain, a good-sized mass of people had congealed about the makeshift stage rig and were watching the deconstruction of the chimera with varying levels of interest. "Are you enjoying this?"

  "Enjoying it?" Elian glanced sidelong and shook her head. "Hardly. But I will learn something from it."

  "What, exactly?" He eyed the mob. "That people are terrible and we should start over from scratch?"

  The crowd was getting restless, grumbling. Not just from bad weather, but infected by a palpable air of menace. Off to one side a small group of protesters were clinging to their placards, shouting for human rights for the chimeras, but they were in the minority.

  The crowd had turned ugly, screaming and chanting, revelling in the spectacle of the chimera's death. What had started out as something clinical and logical—the slow, obscene dismantling of a machine that no longer functioned as it should—had become a public display of the underlying currents of fear and loathing that Olsten’s murder had stirred up.

  The mistrust was a storm brewing; darkness clouded the faces around her, spittle and abuse raining from the screaming mouths, the thunder of stomping feet.

  "We need to get out of here." Martyn grabbed Elian's arm. "They're about to run down the stage." The small group of protesters near them were looking frightened, faces gone wide-eyed. One of the nearest, holding a placard that read "EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL", was punched by a men near her, and her placard ripped from her hands. The deluge was loosed as the one act of violence released the rest of the crowd from their constraints.

  Elian twisted free of Martyn's grip and pushed her way back through the crowd, away from the press of screaming bodies, and the remains of Ulixes' death.

  The bakkie was parked far from the mass of monstrous vehicles and the shuttles from the looping rockets. It stood in a circle of emptiness, as though the drivers of the other vehicles had sensed some contagion, some sickness it carried inside it.

  You're being dramatic. They've parked clear of it because it's a bloody great hulking monstrosity of rust and wire. "Let's get back to the hotel," she said.

  "What for?" Martyn clambered into the driver's seat and gripped the wheel tight enough that his knuckles turned yellow-white. "We've been effectively told to clear off, and there's nothing we can do now. Ulixes is dead."

  "The dead don't always stay dead." Elian looked back over her shoulder, through the grimy rear window to where the crowd was whooping and hollering. Fires had been lit—protest placards, most likely—and black smoke rose up over their heads. It looked like a scene from one of the tapestries in Sanursula's temple, depicting a future hell. "And I am not letting some jumped-up son of a millionaire bully me-"

  "What will you prove by going back?" Martyn asked. "That you're brave? That you don't care? Fine, but what's that actually going to achieve?"

  "I still have luggage there," Elian said.

  "Some hats and veils?" Martyn had turned blotchy. "You can buy more. You can even buy more little glass tubes and alembics and whatever else it is you think is so important. You're not exactly a pauper."

  "When I give you an order," Elian said coldly. "You'd do well to follow it. You are my assistant, not my grandson. I can still fire you."

  Martyn jerked the key, setting the bakkie's turbines churning as the flood of fire and alchemical juices ate through the rubbish packed into the fuel composter. The solar-fins spread out, and the engine coughed once as Martyn's foot slammed down on the accelerator. "No," he said. "I'm not your grandson, but it would hardly make a difference if I were. You will listen to no one but yourself."

  "A side effect of great age and wisdom."

  "Or senility," Martyn said, but he made no further arguments, merely jerked the bakkie through the streets.

  Here and there small protests had broken out into scuffles and fights, and more than a few chimeras littered the side walks, some of them charred ruins, others kicked and stamped and driven over until their bodies finally gave under the onslaught. Not a single one returned the blows done to them.

  ◆◆◆

  It was an act of petulance, going back to the hotel to fetch the few scattered remnants of her stuff. Elian knew that.

  Even so, she was no prepared for the reception awaiting her. The bully-boys, sans master. And no sign of the bought-and-paid-for metro guard. Just two, very well-armed men, sitting on the couch with their knees spread, blunt-nosed, high power guns across their thighs like bizarre and deadly lapdogs.

  "Thought Mister Olsten said you were to head on home," said the first. He had a narrow moustache that traced the top of his lip like a fine line drawn by an artist with a delicate brush in grey paint. His companion had a rounder head, and fuller lips, and no moustache. "Looks like you're a stubborn bit of baggage."

  "I've come to collect my stuff-" Elian began.

  "What, this rubbish?" Moustache stood, and tossed Elian's crumpled valise on the floor. The sound of cracking glass accompanied the soft thud against the carpet. "Reckon you've no real use for it now."

  "That belongs to me," Elian said, and cursed herself for pointing out the obvious.

  Moustache's balder friend raised the nose of his gun and pointed it at her. "Heard some interesting rumours about you."

  Elian's nostril's flared, but she didn't move. She knew her limitations. A bullet would hurt, she'd feel every moment of pain, but the alchemy running through her would begin knitting her up almost as soon as the flesh tore. If they wanted to get rid of her, they'd have to do better—put her body through a wood-chipper, or burn her to ash. Bullet holes and blood might look bad, but they were not going to kill her.

  "So I'm not going to bother wasting the bullets," Baldy said, and swung the muzzle away from her and aimed at Martyn. "Your little friend here, on the other hand, he's not going to be a problem."

  "Don't you dare." Elian shifted to stand in front of Martyn.

  "Doctor Maxwell," Martyn said, his voice oddly even and formal. She could hear the unnaturalness of it, how the fear lay just beneath. "Doctor Maxwell, please. I don't believe the gentleman will do anything to me, if we leave the city."

  "Your little friend's smarter than you, even if he is junkie drop-out," said Baldy. "Maybe having all them letters and whatsits after your name don't really mean nothing in the long run."

  Elian raised her hands slowly. "I see," she said, and she sounded prim and foreign to her ears, as though Doctor Elian Maxwell had been replaced by an ageing spinster who gave elocution lessons to rich young ladies. "I believe it is in everyone's best interests if I were to withdraw, return to my vehicle, and drive straight home." She swallowed past the thick strange taste in her throat. Fear, or something like it, Elian mused. It had been a good long while since she'd felt it. Fear for Martyn? How remarkable. "If I do this, do I have your word that my assistant will be released unharmed?"

  Baldy glanced across and Moustache, who shrugged, then nodded. "I'm sure your little pet house boy will be just fine once we have proof you're back at the old homestead."

  "I see. And what proof would be sufficient?"

  "We'll know, darling. We'll be driving just behind, you see." Moustache beckoned to his partner. "Mr Olsten wants us to make sure you get back home safe. Me and Mr Grave will be travelling with your young friend here. As surety, like."

  No point taking a risk and doing anything other than driving directly to Wilderstrand. If she turned the bakkie off route, anything could happen to Martyn. "Would I be permitted to take my things?" She nodded at the bag
, at the mess of glass ampoules inside it. She could smell from here what the mixture was doing. It was a raw and unready and volatile mix. The ingredients had been the ones she'd used to blur the minds of the security men at the Olsten funeral.

  "Not a bloody chance. You'll be permitted to go downstairs, get in your fucking car, and drive straight home, Doctor Maxwell."

  Elian sincerely hoped that Martyn had picked up a bit more than tea-making techniques while he'd been at Maxwell House. That mixing up his specials had at least kept his basic alchemical skills in order. "Fine. I assume you will have no objection if my house boy were to bring my valise for me?"

  Moustache jerked his free hand at Martyn, who knelt slowly to pick up the bag. His nose wrinkled. He glanced at her and Elian nodded almost imperceptibly. "Careful," she said. "It's about as heavy as a bloody magical sledgehammer."

  God meet God

  Elian had to trust that Martyn would get the hint.

  The part of her that was still human was small, but had become increasingly loud over the last few days. Partly, it was due to being around so many other people, and partly it was watching the chimeras die. They didn't deserve it. And she had a duty to them.

  She'd been the one to build in that secret failsafe that meant they could never—should never—be able to go against any programming and act with free choice. She'd given them blood, and turned that blood against them.

  Elian clenched her fists as she walked to the bakkie, coldly aware of the men behind her, their hidden guns shoved against Martyn's back. One wrong move, one mistake on her part, one ounce of undeserved trust, and Martyn would be a mess of meat and bone. And there would be no resurrection for him.

  There was no bringing back the dead, even if she could recreate her elixir. All gone, all notes destroyed.

  It had been a good while since Elian had driven the bakkie herself. She'd made all the modifications, converted the diesel engine to run on refuse and sunshine, and then abandoned the machine to Martyn's attention. It had felt too much like being back at work on the chimeras—melding machine and chemicals into an alien magic. But as she settled into the much-mended high front seat and gripped the leather-bound steering wheel, a wave of rightness swept over her. The bakkie was an old friend. One she'd abandoned, like she did all things she felt attachment to. She ran one hand on the cracked red leather, the seams where the splits showed the old yellowed foam and bare iron. "It will be fine," she said, to herself and the car. "Trust me, I haven't forgotten how." She flicked a glance at the car behind her. Sleek and white and anonymously modern. It would not stand out in the crowd. Through the tinted windows she could make out only the dimmest of shadows. No way to tell what was going on in there.

  The route out of the city was simple, and once she was on the main highway leading out into the desert, the bakkie would have the edge. It wasn't a fast machine by any means, but it was built for the dunes and raw elements. The city-clicker behind her was not. Elian gunned the engine into life, and the chatter of the compacter ground into a low growl as the power kicked in. Beneath her feet, the floor of the bakkie rumbled. "Good beastie," Elian said. "Let's go for a joy ride."

  ◆◆◆

  All through the city, the traffic was lunging in fits and starts, and the coiling black smoke from a dozen or more fires told Elian a story she didn't want to know. Chimeras being burned. That was the most likely explanation. People turning on their faithful servants. The streets were normally threaded with the mask-like faces of the chimeras going about their servile life. Now Elian saw only people, wearing their own masks of fear and anger. The mood of the city had turned violent.

  The city-clicker nosed her bumper, urging her on. There was still no way to tell if Martyn had done anything, was even capable of doing anything. The city high rises gave way to suburbia and little manicured lawns. Here, the mood was still uneasy, and blank-faced servants still mowed their patches of greenery, or walked dogs, picked up litter, did the small unnoticed things that let the city dwellers turn their time to decadence and luxury.

  Would they burn them too, Elian wondered. She'd passed the last stretch of farmland, watered by chimeras driving rain-machines, and the desert unrolled in an ocean of baked white; crested waves glittering under the noonday sun.

  Behind her, the city-clicker veered to avoid a sweep of sand that had taken over half the road. Elian had barely noticed the nascent dune, the bakkie had eaten it up under the vast tires, the powerful suspension flattening the bump into the mildest bounce.

  As long as she did what she was told and holed up in her little tower in the middle of nowhere, Elian would be fine. Martyn would be returned to her, maybe a little flustered and cranky, but he'd be whole. He’d be safe.

  And while they were secure and removed in the middle of the desert, back in the city, a massacre would be carried out. Had already begun. The first few chimeras were just the start of a larger movement. Anti-chimera attitudes had been brewing for years. Sure, the people were used to them, used to these human-shaped machines that did all their dirty work and let them live their lives of indolence and decadence. But it was never meant to be like that, not forever. The Chimera Three had wanted a better future than that. They'd wanted humanity to rise above its shackles of poverty and hard labour to become a race of unparalleled power. To turn their focus from forty-eight hour work weeks and drudgery to magic and stars.

  And instead—this. And even with their endless parties and their shining cities, humanity still turned on the chimeras, as though anything that went wrong was the machines’ fault.

  It would have been better if the chimeras had not been invented. If the slate could be wiped clean and humanity build itself back up again from the dust and ashes.

  Elian's hand jerked on the gear lever, almost rocketing her into the wrong gear. Shit.

  The slate was being wiped clean. In a way that was almost perfect in its simplicity. Make a chimera a murderer. Have that murder be huge and public and grotesque. And execute the chimera in a spectacle that would boil the blood, turn the drugged-up masses into a perfect weapon of erasure.

  There would be death, there would be riots. Old orders would fall with the smashing of machine bones and alchemical brains, and new, benevolent gods would rise with promises on their lips.

  It was so beautifully simple, and she'd been a part of it.

  Elian swerved. Behind her the city-clicker jolted, wavering off course, its narrow wheels skidding across the sand.

  Martyn had better be more of an alchemist than he let on, Elian thought. He was smart enough, she knew that much, but he'd never had to think fast under pressure. And certainly not with a gun to his head. There was no point hoping. Elian closed down the small part of her that still occasionally worried about other people. It was a hindrance at the best of times. And Martyn, well, who was he really to her.

  A friend, came the unbidden thought. Elian gritted her teeth. One friend. And a hundred thousand children.

  Martyn had chosen, in his own way, the path that had led him to her. Now he had to be smart enough to choose a new way. The chimera had never even been given a choice. The bakkie careered off through the dunes, jolting her in the hard seat. Even the bakkie's suspension would struggle a bit with the dunes and hard-packed ripples of sand off track. There was no way the clicker could follow. Once they realised where she was headed, they'd be stranded in the sand.

  The clicker swerved, juddering and fishtailing, and Elian heard a strange metallic shriek, before the clicker was lost behind the high arching wave of a dune. A loud crack of gunfire reverberated through the baking air, and Elian bit her tongue, hard enough to draw blood.

  If that was Martyn, then at least she was not going to waste his death. She cut around a succession of sand walls, curling the path back toward the road. Once the tyres hit the tarmac, she let herself glance backwards, but there was no sign of any vehicle or human on the road. Elian breathed in deeply, tasting heat and sand and death. There was little junk left in
the hopper, but the bakkie was running on full solar now, the desert sun a perfect feeder source. Elian flipped the wing panels open to spread wide. It would cut down on her pace, but the bakkie had always been a work horse made for power and not speed, and the last thing she needed was to lose charge in the fuel cells.

  From this distance it was impossible to know how many chimera had already fallen, were standing in perfect servility while their human owners burned them alive or disassembled them. Elian drove, and the desert fell away behind her.

  ◆◆◆

  The city had turned into a war zone. Albeit a war where one army stayed still and smiling while the other army ran them through with pikes.

  It wasn't a war. It was genocide. And Elian had made that genocide possible. Elian, and Judakael. It was his code that dictated the chimera's morality. Her secret alchemical fluids that had made sure that they would have no choice but to follow that moral code in every circumstance. It left no place for the greys of life, only stark black and whites, and always in humanity's favour.

  "Damn it all." Elian lurched the bakkie up onto the pavement next to a large No Stopping sign. The nearest traffic maid responsible for handing out violation slips was currently sitting in a squalid mess on the tarmac, fluids seeping from the mess of cogs and wires and gel-compounds. Its mask—a pleasant, smile-eyed blankness based on the dear sweet maid face paint of the comic Ghima operas, was smiling gently and serenely up at Elian through a haze of scratches and scorch marks.

  A strange ticking sounded hollowly from its chest carapace. Broken clockwork trying to connect, to keep moving. A hand stirred, and the sweetly modulated voice—Aleksia's again, pitched higher and slightly faster—called out, "Low Profile Alert. This One must hand you a violation agreement. All violation agreements are recorded on CityCin, and will be brought to the attention of the courts. This One wishes you a pleasant day."

  The disconnected fingers jerked, trying to print the violation slip from the broken wrist. A snarl of paper spooled out and Elian reached down to take the offering. The slip was covered in smears of jagged ink. No words or numbers, just a scrawl of nonsense.