Icarus Descending

12 The Return to the Element

MY FATHER CAME TO me in a dream that afternoon.

“You must be brave, Kalamat,” he said. He looked much older, his hair sifted with white and his face lined. “Whatever happens, you must remember that you cannot die. You must not be afraid of the dark.” He hugged me close, his hands smelling of tobacco and curative chemicals.

But how was it that he could hold me, because surely he was still a man and small enough that I could sit him upon my knees? And why was his hair white, when he had never aged? My heart began to pound, but when I started to ask him about these things, his face changed, the skin grew bruised, black and purple, and then darkened still more until I was not gazing at my father at all but into the cold emerald eyes of the Oracle. I woke with a cry, my bed-hammock rocking so that it was a wonder I didn’t spill out.

“Kalamat?” My sister Polyonyx stood beside my hammock, eyeing me doubtfully. “I heard you shouting from the media chamber.”

I rubbed my eyes, yawning, then slid from bed. “I had a dream. A dream of our father.”

Polyonyx nodded, reverently touching the tattooed pattern of red and black circles that marked where her breast had been. “Oh, but think, Kalamat! It is nearly time that he will truly speak with us—it is only a little while before we are passing over North America—and if it’s true, if the Oracle did not lie—”

I nodded and yawned again ruefully. The end of the thousand days of my mortality was a bitter taste in my mouth during those last days on Quirinus. I had not slept well in many weeks, and had come to depend on these afternoon naps.

“Yes, yes, the Oracle.” I frowned, recalling my dream, our father’s face swallowed by the Oracle’s brooding one. “Well, perhaps we should gather in the media chamber to await this marvelous thing.”

Polyonyx nodded, her face glowing. “Oh, yes, sister! Many of us are there already—we were waiting for you. ”

I gave her an apologetic smile and turned away. The truth was, I wondered if our father would really speak. I alone among my sisters did not hear the silken voice of our brother Kalaman. Nor did I trust the Oracle Metatron, an unease I could not shake for all that I tried. He spoke of this Elemental war as a holy war, and of our kind as being of greater mind and heart than the humans we had slain; but to me it seems no better thing to die at the hands of an energumen than at a man’s. I would ask my father about this; and also how it was that of all his children only Kalamat doubted, only Kalamat questioned and had bad dreams.

But for now I would join my sisters to await his coming. I kissed Polyonyx. When we embraced, I felt her trembling, and touched that quivering place in her mind that would brook no fear or caution of whatever would happen that evening.

“It is wonderful that this Oracle has come to us.” She drew away from me, shaking back the hundred beaded plaits of her hair. “And that he will bring us to the Element to meet our brothers and sisters.”

“Yes.” I stared past her to the small round window that looked out upon the Ether, the cold darkness where the bodies of our Masters and my own dead sisters floated, waiting for a clarion that would never sound to wake them. “Yes, Polyonyx. Perhaps this will be a wonderful thing.”

In the media chamber I found my sisters assembled. Those who had not offered their hair to the Mother had plaited it into long braids or drawn it back through loops of metal or plastic. All of them had painted afresh the tattooed images and robbed dry ink into the cicatrices where their breasts had been. I was the only one who had not seen to such ministrations. I had forgotten. I had actually not thought of this as a holy gathering, but rather a matter of business: as when our Masters would have us join them to welcome a new diplomat in the docking area, or watch a parade of new prisoners taken from another colony—a ceremony meant to be a warning to us, as much as a celebration of some new triumph.

But to my sisters, this garnering was a great occasion.

“O Kalamat, think of it! We will see our father again—” Cumingia cried. She kissed me and the scent of violets lingered upon my brow.

“Our father,” I repeated, and sighed. Why couldn’t I believe this would really be him, Luther Burdock? “It will be a ’file transmission, sister, not our father in flesh.”

“Oh, pff! Soon enough it will be him. When the Element welcomes us once more.”

Cumingia whirled to face the great window that covered one side of the hall. In the void outside hung the shining sphere of the Element, a blue-green tear that our Mother Herself might have wept. “Do you think he will remember me?” she asked softly.

My father’s face danced across my mind. I felt a pain in my breast, as keen as the memory of when I made my offering to the Mother. “Of course he will,” I said. “If it is truly he, he will remember all of us. He said he would never forget and never stop loving us.”

Cumingia pressed her face closer to the window. She nodded absently, her question already forgotten. “It is very far away, the Element. Does it have air?”

I laughed. “It has nothing but air, sister! Come with me, I’m tired of standing.”

We knelt with the others, facing the recess in the floor that hid the ’file transmitter. All of us were naked save for the linen skirts that had been our uniforms and which we were still reluctant to cast aside. While it was made of fine and durable stuff, none of our Masters’ clothing would fit an energumen. We had too much else to occupy us, to learn to fashion clothes when none were truly needed.

I frowned, smoothing my skirt upon my knees, and thought how that would surely change upon the Element. I knew the weather was variable there, and often threatening. I wondered what our other brothers and sisters had done for clothes. Some of my sisters on Quirinus had looted the personal stores of our dead Masters. They flaunted jewels upon their breasts, silver rings and bracelets looped around those necklaces long enough to fit over their heads, jeweled brooches and pillboxes strung together in gaudy jingling bunches. But I would not wear stolen finery. I thought it gave my sisters a heathenish look, like the savages the Masters think we are. In my memory I held the image of a ring that my father had given me, a simple silver ring with a knot of silver in its center. I would have worn that ring, if I had it with me now; but I did not. And at any rate, perhaps my memory was wrong. Perhaps it had been Cybele’s ring and not mine.

“Look!” Over the soft laughter and chatter of my sisters rang out the thin childish voice of Hylas. “It is here, it comes!”

From the recess in the floor before us came a whirring sound. A thin radiant line shot up from the ’file transmitter, cooled from adamant to silver to blue. Beside me Cumingia squirmed and babbled to herself. My other sisters cried out, or whispered to themselves the hymn to the Mother. I alone was silent. The brilliant line burst. Rays of gold and blue light showered over us, and there was the man-sized image of the Oracle, standing within a shimmering dome of purple and gold. At sight of him my sisters fell silent, and Cumingia’s hand grabbed mine.

“Greetings to Asterine colony Quirinus,” said the Oracle in his clear strong voice, and smiled.

All around me my sisters nodded, their ebony eyes wide. Some of them shyly called out to him; but I remained still and silent and watchful. “As I promised, I have arranged for a live ’file transmission from your father Luther Burdock to be broadcast to this station, on the occasion of your imminent departure for Earth.”

Cumingia gasped joyfully and rocked back on her heels. Even I felt my heart leap within me; but I bowed my head and listened as the Oracle continued.

“Within one solar hour the elÿon Izanagi will be docking at Quirinus. This is an Ascendant freighter that has been commandeered by Alliance troops for your journey to Earth. Shortly after the Izanagi arrives, three secondary transport vehicles will also dock at Quirinus, bearing energumens from HORUS colony Helena Aulis. They will also be traveling on the Izanagi.

“You are to gather whatever possessions you have and assemble in the docking area, and from there proceed to the Izanagi. I have arranged for a separate ’file transmission to inform you of your assignments. After debriefing at Cassandra, most of you will be sent to Tripoli and the Balkhash Mountains, where there is presently a skirmish attended by energumen troops from your sister colonies Totma 3 and Hotei.”

A small stir went around the circle at this announcement. Cumingia’s hand in mine went limp and cold. I tightened my grip on it and shook my head.

“But that sounds like we will be fighting!” cried my sister Hylas. “We have never been in battle before—and what of our father? I thought we were to see our father?”

Other anxious voices chimed in.

“Yes, our father, where is our father?” Cumingia shifted and glanced at me uneasily.

“As I told you, sister,” I murmured; but the Oracle went on speaking, as calmly as though no one had interrupted him.

“The Ascendant and Commonwealth troops know they are fighting a war they cannot win. But even if they could, a greater danger awaits them—awaits all of us—and only the chosen of Luther Burdock will survive this cataclysm.”

At these words small cries echoed through the vaulted ceiling of the media gallery. Fear and frustration knotted inside me. Danger? Cataclysm? Why have us leave the safety of HORUS if some disaster awaited us upon the Element?

This must be some trick of the Oracle’s, I thought, some madness that had infected his memory. I pried my fingers gently from Cumingia’s hand and leaned forward, the better to hear what other threats this Metatron might give voice to.

“…so little time before the world will change—indeed, until the world the Tyrants knew will be no more! We have only to see if they will succumb to their own weapons, or if they will surrender and acknowledge their new Master.”

Their new Master? Raw fury burned my throat and I nearly cried aloud. This was as the Tyrant humans would have it, a world parsed out among snapping dogs. In all my memories of him, I had never heard our father speak in this manner, of Masters and slaves. Had he changed so much? Or was there someone else in this extraordinary Alliance, someone more like our former Masters, and like them eager to build a new world upon our backs?

“Metatron!” I cried, but before I could say more, the Oracle raised a gleaming metal hand.

“No questions yet! It is mere hours now before your new lives begin, and I have here someone most anxious to speak with you.”

Silence sudden and patient as death filled the room. Where the Oracle had been, another image shifted into view, a blurred white object that snapped into focus and became a face, a figure, a man sitting in a bent metal chair with his hands tapping restlessly upon his knees.

“Anyone there?” a soft voice called out. The man’s eyes flickered back and forth, as though trying to locate the ’file camera. “Are you there? Hello?”

I gasped, all my fears forgotten.

Because it was him. Our father, the man who created us, Dr. Luther Burdock. He looked no different than he ever had—no white hair, no lines upon his face—only a small red spot on the bridge of his nose, as though the skin had been pinched away through much worry.

“Are they there?” he asked, turning to someone out of range. He looked back at us, or rather, back at the ’filing equipment—he still didn’t appear to have seen us. He bent his head slightly and gripped his knees, as though he were about to plunge off the chair and into a great pit. He frowned, cleared his throat, and spoke again in a solemn tone.

“Well then. Yes. I am Luther Burdock, Dr. Luther Burdock, and I—I understand this is Coriolanus—I’m sorry, Quirinus—the Quirinus space station.”

He grimaced, rubbed the bridge of his nose before continuing.

“I would like to—to welcome you! That is, I would like to extend to you a very big welcome from the members of the Asterine Alliance. We all hope you will be with us very soon. Thank you, and good night,” he ended, smiling brightly, and glanced away again.

That smile tore something from me. Fear, I think, but also hope. Because there was no doubt but that this was my father: his face, his hands twitching in his lap; his voice, distracted but kind, and above all his gentle eyes, though they could not see me.

But I also knew that Luther Burdock had no real idea as to what was going on within the Asterine Alliance. Just as he had never answered the summonses sent to him at our home in the mountains; just as he had paid no attention to the news on the telefiles, the reports of the growing power of the New Ethical Front and the United Party for Humanity. He was speaking to us only as a sop to some other person. Whatever enchantments of science had awakened him and brought him back to life, they had not changed him. As always, he wanted only to return to his work, whatever that work might now be.

The Asterine Alliance did not belong to Luther Burdock or his children at all. It belonged to Metatron. What plans he had for us, I feared to guess.

But our father had turned back to the ’filing screen. “I have to go now,” he said. “But I understand you will be here within a few days. I look forward to meeting with you and discussing our future together. Until then—”

He bunched his fingers together and made an odd little salute. “Ad astra et cetera.”

The image blinked into dead air. A moment of utter silence, and then chaos.

“It was Father!”

“Did you see—”

“He remembered! I could tell he remembered—”

My sisters ran to embrace each other, laughing and crying out across the room, pointing at the Element’s watchful blue eye outside or running to the window to see if they could glimpse the elÿon that was to join us.

“O Kalamat!” exclaimed Cumingia as she hugged me. “You always loved him the best—you must be so happy now!—but what is it? What’s the matter?”

She drew away from me, shaking back her beads and frowning. “Kalamat?”

“Don’t you—how can you—they are sending us to fight, sister. Didn’t you hear? They are sending us to war in the Commonwealth.”

Cumingia’s brow furrowed, and then she gave a small laugh. “But only for a little while. You heard what the Oracle said—in a few weeks we will be together again. Oh, Hylas!—”

She turned away to take another sister into her arms. I walked through the little crowd, saying nothing as my sisters reached to stroke my cheek or laughingly called my name. I shook them from me, my heart raging with anger and dismay.

War! He was sending us to war. How could they not hear that, how could they not care? I had only a handful of days yet to live, but I would not be spendthrift with them, squandering them in battle. It did not matter if it was a war we could not lose. It was not what we were made for, it was not what I was made for.

And I realized then that my sisters had no idea why they had been made. Their thousand days they accepted greedily, but without question. Our lives serving the Architects on Quirinus had been busy but not difficult. We were not treated cruelly, we had our dormitories and our pleasures, we were even permitted our Rites of Lysis, so long as they did not intrude upon the Ascendants.

But for the first time I knew that, for my sisters, this had always been enough. They wept when one of us died, wept as they recited the orison and bore the bodies to the chutes that would cast them into the Ether; but afterward they forgot. They remembered our father, but he was as a father in a dream, a father glimpsed in a cinemafile. Not someone to spend an entire lifetime mourning, even if that life lasted only a handful of days.

And there was the truth of it. I was not like them, no more than I was like our Masters. Something had gone wrong when they made me, some phantom turning of the road of cells and nerves that led to Kalamat. Instead of a creature as like to those others as one grain of wheat is to its kin, they had somehow created me.

And I remembered my father. I loved him. I could never forget.

At the window I stopped and leaned my head against the glass. I wept, remembering Luther Burdock. I remembered how he had held me when I was a child and awakened screaming in my bed, how he stroked my curls and whispered to me.

“ Do not fear the dark, daughter, ” he had said. “ The night can never harm you, and anyhow, soon it will be time for us to wake. ”

I stared out at the Element, the world that in my memory had always belonged to my father, but now belonged to Metatron. And if like our great Mother I could have wept worlds, new worlds, my tears would have seeded the Ether with stars.

As the aviette auxiliary capsule approached the golden torus that was the colony of Quirinus, the energumens Ratnayaka and Kalaman sat apart from their brothers and stared outside. Travel in the aviette made Kalaman uneasy, a holdover from earlier terrorist forays when he had still feared discovery by the Ascendants and subsequent punishment or attack. He sat with his hands clenched in his lap, the flattened blade of his kris straddling his knees, and hoped they would arrive at Quirinus soon.

Beside him, Ratnayaka sensed his brother’s fear. Any one of them might have known it; but the rest were clustered at another window, pointing to where the other two aviettes seemed to float like smooth flattened teardrops in the Ether. Kalaman’s fear made his brother tremble. To think that Kalaman’s mind was so open to his own! He brought his face close to Kalaman’s and stroked his cheek, then let his hand rest upon Kalaman’s thigh. Murmuring, Ratnayaka caressed the feathery impression of scars that Kalaman had drawn there with his kris. His brother was so beautiful. Even in these rare hours of calm, Ratnayaka could see the rage within him, filling Kalaman as blood or wine might fill a crystal krater, until at last it spills out and stains the hands of the libation bearer.

Ratnayaka knew this rage as another might know the kisses or sweet mouth of a lover; as Kalaman himself knew the much-fingered blade of his kris. It was a gorgeous thing, that rage, hot and quick as a culverin’s flame; but it had been fired and tempered in the rarefied furnace of a HORUS colony. Upon the Element, Kalaman’s ardor, his solitary and sanguine nature, would not fare so well. Metatron wanted generals and janissaries; the cool, sturdy grip of a revolver or blade that yields to a command, and not the lethal holocaust of a Shining.

Kalaman was such a thing: a shining creature, an uncontrollable flame. But Ratnayaka was a general—had he not been his brother’s lieutenant?—a general and, if necessary, a sword that might be wielded by another’s hand; say, Metatron’s.

Ratnayaka smiled, looking upon his brother, and lovingly ran his fingers across a small raised scar upon his knee. No, there would be no place for Kalaman upon the Element. As for Ratnayaka himself: he knew patience as he knew the sound of his brother’s voice. And some swords have been known to betray their masters.

“O Kalaman,” he whispered.

Still his brother did not move, not even when Ratnayaka leaned forward to nuzzle his throat.

“We will finally see them,” was all Kalaman said after several minutes. With wide, calm eyes he stared out the window, at the radiant torus and its beveled lines of lights, red and blue and violet. “All those sisters we have never met…”

Ratnayaka drew back from his brother and nodded, his eye a sullen gleam in his ruddy face. “We can teach them what we know. We can bring our secrets with us to the Element—”

He thought hungrily upon the brothers they had harrowed in the cool green-lit chambers of Helena Aulis. How lovely they had all been, how greedily he had fallen upon Djistra, the last to be consumed before they left the only home they had ever known; and how Kalaman had given all that final pleasure to Ratnayaka, taking nothing for himself.

Kalaman shook his head. “No,” he said softly. His voice sounded distant, as though a ’file of Kalaman spoke there, and not the energumen himself. “That is a thing that belongs here—”

He turned and gestured at the tiny silvery image of Helena Aulis, already smaller and fainter than it had been, a star’s sad shadow in the void. “—To that life. But this will be a very different thing—”

Kalaman frowned, then let his breath out in a long sigh. Beside him Ratnayaka dipped his head, so that his brother would not see his mouth curling with disdain. His hand tightened about Kalaman’s thigh, slid up and beneath the short skirt of coarse linen, to stroke the muscles there, the smooth curve where Kalaman’s leg cupped into his groin. Kalaman groaned, moved as though he would embrace his brother. Something cold and smooth licked at Ratnayaka’s throat.

“Patience, oh, my brother,” whispered Kalaman. He moved the kris so that its curved blade slid down Ratnayaka’s chest, dragged it gently across his abdomen until it lifted the edge of his brother’s skirt. “You will have me soon enough.”

As he stared at his brother, Kalaman’s eyes glinted black and fathomless. But Ratnayaka only laughed, threw his head back and laughed until the other energumens turned, their gaze flickering uneasily between their two leaders.

“Oh, yes,” Ratnayaka said, the hunger racing inside him like some small razor-toothed creature seeking to burst out. He brushed away the kris’s blade as though it had been a toy. “Oh, I will, my brother Kalaman. I will have you, soon enough.”

In the empty docking chamber of Quirinus, I turned to my companions and said, “We have been betrayed.”

Valeska Novus stared at me, her eyes betraying no emotion. “Imperator?”

“Who has betrayed us, Margalis?” asked Nefertity.

“I do not know, I do not know.” I pounded my hand against the wall. My human hand—when I let it slide from the tiles, a shimmer of pale fluid remained. “Agent Shi Pei, someone who saw us boarding the Izanagi; perhaps Lascar Franschii. All I know is that we have been betrayed, and my mission has been thwarted.”

Captain Novus shook her head. “Surely not, Imperator—”

“Yes!” I exploded. “It is worse, far worse than I or anyone else can possibly have imagined. The other memory unit has been found. The members of this geneslave rebellion are receiving their orders from the Military Tactical Targets Retrieval Network—”

“Your nemosyne!” cried Captain Novus.

Nefertity’s voice was nearly inaudible. “Metatron.”

I nodded. “He knows we are here. He contacted me in the Izanagi’s library; he intends to take me prisoner. It was he who brought about the destruction of NASNA Prime and the other HORUS colonies. Now he has ordered his geneslave troops to attack Cisneros, and he plans strikes against other Ascendant targets—against every military target in his database.”

I fell silent, then finally ended, “The damage wrought by this so-called Alliance is far greater than I dreamed; greater perhaps than any holocaust wrought by mankind since the First Shining.”

“But why?” Nefertity asked softly. “Why— how— could another nemosyne do such a thing?”

“I believe that Metatron intends to destroy all humanity, and set up the energumens and other geneslaves in its place. As to how a nemosyne could do such a thing, independently, with no human commanding it—”

My voice trailed off, and I stared at the scuffed floor beneath my boots. “I do not know.”

At mention of Cisneros, Valeska Novus had paled. Now she grabbed me. “We should reboard the Izanagi, Imperator! If this is a trap, we must get you—”

My metal hand closed about hers and she winced. “Oh, I think we will be back on the Izanagi soon enough, Captain Novus,” I said. “It will be the quickest transport available to them, if he truly intends to return me to Earth.”

“What of me, Tast’annin?” Nefertity’s ringing voice held no fear within it. In the softly lit expanse of the docking chamber, she burned like the blue heart of a flame. “I would not be used as a tool for slaughter. I think you should dismantle me. At the least put me in my dormant mode.”

I stepped toward a wide archway that opened into a broad corridor lit with golden sunlamps. She was right. It would be simple for the other nemosyne to alter her program, or even to interface with her and make Nefertity nothing more than an adjunct of Metatron. But it also might be possible to use her somehow to crack Metatron’s governance code. And that might be our only chance of disabling the Alliance.

“No,” I said at last. “You may be able to help us, if and when we are brought before him.”

“But who found this other nemosyne? Who has programmed it to do this?” blurted Valeska Novus.

“I don’t know. But my guess is that it was someone who had no real idea what they were doing. Even the crudest and most mendacious of the Autocracy would not have ordered the systematized destruction of the entire human race.”

“You seem quite disturbed by all this,” said Nefertity, her words tinged with slight malice. “I had thought such emotions beyond the Aviator Imperator of the Ascendant Autocracy.”

“I will choose whom I will serve, Madame Nemosyne. I am not a puppet or any man’s slave—any thing’s slave—and if this Metatron thinks so, he will learn otherwise. Captain Novus, please arm yourself.”

“Yes, Imperator,” Valeska Novus said, slipping her gun from its holster and glancing at me admiringly. An instant later her expression turned grim, as the sound of footsteps echoed toward us from the corridor.

“Captain Novus, you will defend myself and this nemosyne at any cost—you understand?”

She nodded, her dark eyes slitted as she went into a half-crouch in front of us. “Of course, Imperator,” she said, and we waited to greet our hosts.

An announcement came over the Quirinus voicenet telling us of the arrival of the elÿon.

“O sister Kalamat, they are here! Do you think our father is with them?”

I turned from my sister Hylas in ill-disguised impatience. “Of course not. That ’file transmission was from the Element. And these are—I don’t know who they are. Probably there is no one aboard but the adjutant. But I think you should go now— all of you—go to your chambers and wait for me to call you.”

Hylas and the others who had come up behind her looked disappointed, but they knew I would brook no argument. They had few belongings, so there would be little to pack for our voyage. They had only, then, to wait.

“Go,” I said. I started for the door that led to the docking area. “We cannot assemble for departure until our brothers have arrived from Helena Aulis. And I wish to speak with their leader, this Kalaman, before we do so. I will call you when we are ready to board the elÿon.” As one, my sisters bowed their heads, hands crossed upon their chests, and left.

As I hurried down the hallway, a new announcement came over the voicenet, informing me that unauthorized personnel had entered Quirinus.

“An Aviator and two nonviable constructs,” the net’s ethereal voice chimed. “None have received clearance to leave the docking area.”

My heart beat faster at the words nonviable constructs. Would this be the Oracle Metatron, somehow spirited from the Element to engage us in his battle plan? Too late I wished that I had brought a weapon. I turned the last corner, blinking at the unaccustomed brilliance of the sunlamps, and saw them silhouetted in the corridor.

There were three of them. After so many weeks without human personnel on board, they looked absurdly small to me, although only one of them was actually human—a woman, slight even by human standards and wearing the crimson-and-black dress leathers of an Ascendant Aviator. She knelt before the other two and trained a protonic gun on me.

“I am not armed,” I said, and stopped. “Name yourselves.”

Despite my cold tone I gazed down at them fearfully. Because surely here was the Oracle and another like it, come to wrest us from Quirinus and thrust us into the genewars below.

Behind the kneeling woman stood two constructs. One was a replicant in the form of a man cast in crimson metal and plasteel, wearing an Aviator’s leather uniform and upon its breast the sigils of an Ascendant Imperator—the Aviators’ blighted moon and the Autocracy’s malevolent Eye of HORUS. And beside this crimson figure was another, as like to the Oracle as my sisters and I are to each other.

Only this oracle was silver and cobalt where Metatron was limned in violet and black, and in the likeness of a woman. But it was far more beautiful than any human woman, or even an energumen, because of the exquisite symmetry of its form and face, the shining array of lights that coursed up and down and around its crystalline body, silver and blue and gold and green, and its eyes: the purest jadeite shot with gold.

“Who—who are you?” I said, my voice catching.

The woman of glass and steel stepped forward, and as she did so, the kneeling Aviator clicked the safety on her weapon. “Greetings, sister,” the replicant called in a low, clear voice. She raised her arms slowly, a motion that had nothing human in it at all, and rippling light fell like water from her hands. From within her breast I could hear a faint whirring as of hidden and subtle engines. “I am the United Provinces Recorded History project, copyright 2109, Registered Nemosyne Unit number 45: NFRTI, the National Feminist Recorded Technical Index, or Nefertity.”

She paused. Behind her the female aviator shifted slightly, and took her eyes from me long enough to look at the replicant in surprise.

The woman of glass continued, “Greetings, good child. Hello, daughter of the suffering Earth. I greet you, whoever you are.”

I gasped. She spoke of the Mysteries of Lysis, the words of the Great Mother in that hymn we call the “Latria Matrix.” I dropped to my knees in amazement. The Aviator started, swinging her weapon, but the glittering construct called Nefertity stopped her.

“Who are you ?” she asked softly.

“I am the energumen called Kalamat. Are you—are you an emissary from the Asterine Alliance?”

Nefertity glanced at the ominously silent replicant behind her. She shook her head. “No. We have no formal affiliation with anyone. We disembarked from Cisneros several days ago on the elÿon Izanagi, in search of another nemosyne, the military unit called Metatron. We thought it might be on Quirinus.”

“No, Mother,” I said, relief making me unwary and perhaps overbold. “He is not here—he is with our father, Dr. Luther Burdock, awaiting us upon the Element. But if you are looking for him, are you members of the Asterine Alliance?”

I frowned. I thought this would be very strange, if Ascendant Aviators had joined with the rebels.

“No.” The crimson figure behind Nefertity spoke for the first time. He had a man’s voice, a commanding voice, but so cold and wretched, it might have been summoned from a corpse. “We are members of no Alliance nor do we answer to the Autocracy.”

“That is good,” I said, “because the Autocracy has fallen.”

The figure looked at me. I shuddered a little then, for though he had been modeled after a man and was smaller than I by a foot, his eyes like his voice were deathly cold. Human eyes, which I had never known a construct to have, the palest blue I had ever seen and the cruelest, too. “I gather you have aided in its defeat, Kalamat,” he said. “Are there any human survivors on Quirinus?”

“None,” I replied. I returned his gaze boldly despite my fears, and added, “And no Master died here from any act of Kalamat’s, nor any of my sister’s. But I would know your name, and your pilot’s”—I tipped my chin toward the kneeling woman, who still clutched her weapon and watched me with grim intent—“and what business you have here.”

The replicant shook his head. “My nemosyne told you: we are searching for Metatron. I had reason to believe he was brought here during a previous Ascension. I have since learned I was wrong. As for who I am—”

His voice rose to a roar that sent the sunlamps blinking their warning beacon. “ I am the Aviator Imperator Margalis Tast’annin.”

“Margalis Tast’annin!” I said in amazement. Of course I had heard of him—even the Architects, the chief-ranking members of the Autocracy, had spoken of Margalis Tast’annin with fear. He was the Ascendants’ greatest warrior, the most famous Aviator since Ciarin Jhabvilos, but he was rumored to be mad; at least he had done things in battle that no sane man would ever do.

“Margalis Tast’annin!” I repeated, marveling. But then I frowned as I gazed at that chiseled metal face, the corpus of molded metal that was neither body armor nor uniform. “But what have they done to you? Because surely you are not a man?”

Tast’annin bared his metal teeth in a grimace. “No, I am not a man, Kalamat. I am a rasa. Do you know what that is? A regenerated corpse. But my Ascendant Masters proved to have less of a will in my creation than I myself; and so I do not answer to them any longer. If I am no longer a man, still I am not less than a man.”

I regarded the crimson-and-black leathers that he wore over his reconstructed body, the insignia of the blighted moon that shone upon his breast. “But are you still an Aviator, then? Can you be an Aviator and not serve the Autocracy?”

At this the woman kneeling before him lowered her weapon and looked up with great interest. Tast’annin laughed harshly, swiping at the air with one hand; and I saw that was all that remained of his humanity—those bleached dead eyes and that hand, its skin a sulfurous yellow and mottled with bruises. A corpse’s hand. I shuddered, thinking of the rotted shell that had gone into making him. The Aviator Imperator cried, “Not an Aviator, then! Call me something else—rebel angel, rebel corpse, traitor—or no!—

“Call me this. Call me Sky Pilot. That is a name I have answered to before.”

At this outburst his aide blanched and quickly returned her attention to me. I shook my head. “No, Imperator. Kalamat will call you Tast’annin. And this one—?” I pointed at the kneeling warrior.

“She is Captain Valeska Novus, Pilot Second Class.”

“Very well. Will you ask Captain Novus to retire her weapon? As I told you, I am unarmed. Though if I had wanted to, I could have summoned my sisters here minutes ago. You might have withstood them for a little while; but not long, I think. And my brothers who are arriving now—I do not think you could withstand them at all.”

At that Tast’annin smiled coldly, looking up at me with those orphaned eyes. “That is why she will keep her weapon where it is. Tell me, Mistress Kalamat—your Ascendant Masters, the Architects of Quirinus—what became of them?”

“They died of a plague brought aboard by a human spy, a delator from the Asterine Alliance. We did not kill them. We did not even know of the existence of these rebels, until after many of our Masters had died.”

“Did you try to save them?”

I shrugged. “There was nothing to be done for them. The delator died as well. We performed our own rites for them and gave their bodies to the Ether—you may have seen them as you docked.”

A glimmer of unease passed across Captain Novus’s face. She glanced back at Tast’annin, who stared at her for a long moment before saying curtly, “Put away your gun, Captain. For now, at least.”

With the weapon gone I felt emboldened. I turned to the replicant Nefertity and asked, “But you, Mother—what are you doing here?”

She looked at me with those lovely clear eyes. “I was commandeered by the Imperator,” she said. “Against my will, to help him find my brother nemosyne Metatron. Since my awakening I have seen little to endear humanity to me—indeed, I have seen almost nothing but cruelty.

“But if what Tast’annin has told us is true, and your Alliance has declared war upon mankind and intends their destruction, I want no part of that either. I was programmed by Sister Loretta Riding, a member of the Order of Divine Compassion, a pacifist and freedom fighter before the recusants drove her into hiding hundreds of years ago. My allegiance is not to Ascendants or rebels but to womankind, and so to humanity. I will not aid in its extermination.”

“What of us, then?” I asked, my voice rising. “Do you support our enslavement by human Tyrants?”

“No, but neither will I support a world ruled by energumen Tyrants,” she replied coolly.

I nodded. Overhead the lights dimmed momentarily. From the voicenet came a soft but urgent announcement.

“Three ancillary craft bearing the designation Helena Aulis have entered the docking area without formal clearance.”

Captain Novus looked around anxiously, her hand at her weapon.

“Those are our brothers from Helena Aulis,” I said. I crossed to where a small monitor was recessed into the wall and switched it on. Blurry images of the three aviettes appeared on the screen. After a moment I switched it off again and turned to the others. “On Helena Aulis there was a violent rebellion. All human Masters were slain and many of them tortured. I did not support this or even know of it; I am merely informing you of what happened. The surviving energumens have contacted my sisters and told them of their union with the Asterine Alliance. Now these rebels are here. With them, we will be transported to the Element via your elÿon.

“Their leader, my brother Kalaman, says that the Oracle has told them they will breed with us. Our lives will no longer be governed by an Ascendant clock. We will be as humans; we will live and reproduce as humans do. But” —my voice rose angrily as I continued—“this thing called Metatron, the Oracle you call a nemosyne—it is a chary freedom he offers. He brings us to the Element only to draft us into battle. You know that our lives are short: a thousand days, less than three solar years. Mine is nearly ended, but I would not have it end in battle.

“And I am the only one of my sisters who fears this Metatron. I think he intends to betray us. At any rate, I do not believe in exchanging one form of tyranny for another.”

Captain Novus stared at me dubiously. “How can you breed? None of the energumens—”

“What of the rest?” broke in Tast’annin. “The others here on Quirinus?”

I bowed my head. “They will do as Metatron bids them. They believe it is the will of our father.”

“Your father?”

I nodded. “Luther Burdock.”

Tast’annin gestured impatiently. “Luther Burdock was executed shortly after the Third Ascension.”

“No,” I said softly, “he is alive. The Alliance found his DNA master and regenerated him. I have seen him. Last night, on a ’file transmission from the Element. There is no doubt in my mind but that it was our father.”

Captain Novus whistled. “They cloned Luther Burdock? But you’ve only seen a ’file—how can you be sure?”

“I remember him,” I said, nearly in a whisper.

“Remember him?” echoed Nefertity.

“They’re clones of his daughter.” Rage gave Tast’annin’s crimson mask a demonic aspect. “The energumens all share her memories, up until the time of the first successful cloning experiment. There have always been rumors that he had set aside his own DNA material, in case he was assassinated.”

“He is alive. I saw him,” I repeated.

Tast’annin turned to Nefertity. “This is how they will be able to reproduce and have normal life spans,” he said. “Among his effects there were records alluding to further work he intended to do with the Kalamat strain—he thought they could be manipulated so they could breed, and the matter of extending the life spans of geneslaves is really a very simple thing. But after his death this simple thing eluded us. Eventually the Ascendants turned it to their own purposes, shortening the lives of the geneslaves to a few years.”

From down the hallway came a faint noise, the sound of the doors in the docking area opening.

“They have arrived,” I said. “My brothers.” I looked at Captain Novus and said, “They will be armed and will kill any human on sight.”

“Captain Novus,” Tast’annin began; but Nefertity cut him off.

“She is under my protection,” she said in a low voice, but there was a cold warning in her tone. “They will not harm her.”

She turned, and Tast’annin and Captain Novus with her. We watched as the doors slid open, and the rebels entered Quirinus.

One does not become an Ascendant Imperator without developing a certain intuition regarding the minds and motives of others—even energumens. I did not believe the one who called herself Kalamat was lying to us. But she seemed unsure of herself. Despite her brave words, her girlish voice betrayed her. She seemed restive, almost frightened. She had said that she was nearing the end of her thousand days. That might have been what caused her unease, but I detected a desperation in her that I feared might endanger Valeska Novus, if not myself and Nefertity.

And what of the others on Quirinus? How many were there, and were they prepared to fight against their brothers? Certainly Kalamat would be a formidable enemy. Over seven feet tall, golden-skinned, and with the enormous opaque eyes of her kind, like those black crystals the Emirate uses to hone their telepaths.

Still, there was something bizarrely childish about her, not in her appearance but in her mannerisms and voice. The nervous manner in which she moved her great long-fingered hands, as though unsure where to put them; the way she had called Nefertity “Mother.” I had seldom seen an energumen who invoked in me any sense of pity, any feeling that I was dealing with another human being, rather than a heteroclite.

But Kalamat put me in mind of that other creature I had seen so long ago, her namesake at the NASNA Academy. It was not long after we had seen that Kalamat in our classroom that Aidan Harrow had killed himself. I always wondered if he had glimpsed himself in that pathetic chained monster; or if in his arcane books he had read something of the tangled destiny of those demonic creatures, perhaps the Final Ascension that Jude Hwong had predicted. A destiny that it seemed might now be coming to pass; a destiny the thought of which had driven Aidan Harrow mad.

But this was no time to dwell upon such matters. I heard the sound of many large, soft feet treading upon the floor. I looked up, and faced the rebels from the Asterine Alliance.

“Greetings, Imperator Tast’annin! And greetings to you, O my sister.”

The same girlish voice as Kalamat’s rang through the chamber. I gazed into the same face as well, though set within a young man’s frame, and with skin of a deep red hue. He was not as extravagantly scarred and tattooed as Kalamat. His teeth were filed, and he carried a curved blade like those borne by janissaries within the Archipelago. An incongruously small blade within that powerful grasp, but no less threatening. Behind him stood others, perhaps a dozen or more. All were armed with flame guns and other weapons pilfered from their Ascendant Masters’ armories on Helena Aulis.

It was the creature that stood beside Kalamat that made me wish I held one of those weapons myself. He was an energumen like Kalaman’s own reflection made flesh, save that he had only one eye, and that eye gleefully ablaze with a hatred he took no pains to conceal. A number of tiny gold rings dangled from his brow. When he saw me, he laughed, and the rings jingled with a fine, chilly sound. If anything, he looked more dangerous than his twin, beautiful but with the contained madness of a caged eyra or jaguarundi.

“Who are you?” I demanded of the first interloper. I did not ask how he knew my name.

“You may call me Kalaman. This is my beloved brother Ratnayaka, and my other brothers—so.” He waved the curved sword at those standing behind him. “We have been sent by our illustrious general Metatron to claim you and escort you to the Element.”

There were not many of them. I counted thirteen, although I feared more might still be arriving. Along with those weapons, they might have stolen their masters’ deathly manner. I had never seen such raw loathing and fearlessness in the face of any geneslave. Indeed, they might have sucked away my own courage. For as my suspicions regarding this murderous rebellion grew, so did a part of me that I had thought died in the Engulfed Cathedral. That will to life, which looks into the abyss and sickens, refusing to acknowledge the notion that there can be an end to humanity as there has been to so many other things in our world. But it was this same will that empowered me to parry with the rebels.

“I answer to no one, man or energumen. You may tell General Metatron that. Leave us now.”

Kalaman hissed softly between his pointed teeth. He glanced at the one beside him, the one he had named Ratnayaka, and it seemed that a faint apprehension tugged at his eyes. Then he looked at Kalamat standing in front of us. He said, “Are you trafficking with Tyrants now, sister? Is that why you would not heed me when I called you?”

“Any fool can see he is not a human,” Kalamat replied coolly.

“I did not say he was a human, sister. I said he was a Tyrant. ” Kalaman’s eyes flashed. I thought he would strike her, but then his brother Ratnayaka spoke.

“You will come with us, Tast’annin,” he said in that sweet high voice they all shared. He smiled, shaking his head, and the little gold rings made a faraway sound, like rain pattering on a dry shore. “And my sister, and—”

He looked from Captain Novus to Nefertity, and then turned to Kalaman, puzzled. “They have a construct, my brother—did you know of this?”

Kalaman frowned, drew his sword to his face, and stroked his cheek with the flattened side of the blade. “Is that your replicant?” he asked.

I felt a sudden surge of elation. Their Oracle had told them they would find me here, but it seemed that Metatron as yet knew nothing of Nefertity.

“It is,” I replied cautiously. “And this is my aide-decamp, Captain Novus.”

Kalaman continued to stare broodingly at Nefertity. I waited for him to remark on how much she looked like Metatron, but he only muttered, “Yes. Yes, the Oracle told me you were accompanied by two others. But enough!—

“Do you come willingly, or—”

He raised his hand. Several of his brothers surged forward, weapons ready. I glanced at Valeska and Nefertity. Both stared watchfully at Kalaman and his troops. If Novus felt any fear, the energumens would never see it.

But they would kill her as soon as look at her, I knew that; might well end up doing so. I would not have her die defending me, especially as it seemed we had no recourse but to surrender.

“We will go with you,” I said at last, “but not as hostages. No bonds, and we stay together. Else we will all die here.”

I waited, half-expecting Kalaman to order his brothers to turn fire upon us, but he only shrugged.

“As you wish, Imperator.” Like a child, he seemed already tired of this play. He turned to Kalamat, tipping his head to one side and gazing at her with intent black eyes.

“What of us, then, O my brother Kalaman?” she asked, her head raised as she towered above me.

“What indeed?” he countered, and smiled. “It is a small envoy you have sent to greet us. I have not seen our sisters yet. Where are they?”

Kalamat regarded him coldly: like Cruelty and Spite staring at each other across the room. Finally she said, “Waiting. They are waiting. Does your Oracle intend to make soldiers of us?”

Kalaman looked at Ratnayaka. “Soldiers? Yes, I believe we will all be soldiers. The elÿon is bound for Cassandra. From there I do not know where we will go; but Metatron has hinted to me of a special journey that we chosen ones will make.”

“No!” Kalamat cried. “I will not go! I have only a few days left before my death finds me. I will see our father in Cassandra, or else I will remain here.”

Again Kalaman only shrugged. “As you will.”

But at his side Ratnayaka narrowed his single eye and gazed shrewdly at Kalamat. He said, “Metatron will decide who lives and dies, and where they will do so. You had best tell your sisters to gather their things, Kalamat. Our elÿon has an adjutant who is also scheduled to die quite soon.” He grinned, showing pointed white teeth, and added, “Your brothers will grow hungry if we wait too long.”

Kalaman hissed something at him. Ratnayaka dipped his head in a show of obeisance, then reached out and grabbed his brother’s arm, pulled Kalaman until his face was inches from Ratnayaka’s own.

“Dearest brother,” he murmured, and kissed Kalaman on the mouth. Without another word he pushed him away, turned, and marched back through the ranks of waiting energumens. Kalaman watched him broodingly, then darted a glance at me, frowning as he fingered the hilt of his sword. Finally he strode across the hall to follow his brothers.

“You can’t mean to go with them, Imperator!” Valeska Novus cried when they were out of sight.

“We have no choice,” I said. “They would have killed you and dismantled Nefertity, and destroyed me as I tried to defend you both.”

I turned to Kalamat. “You will go with us? To Metatron?”

“To my father. I care nothing for this Oracle, and less than that for my brothers.” She spat and lay her hand upon her scarred breast, and looked over at Nefertity. “And you, Mother? Will you walk with me? I would like to speak with you and learn how it is you know the hymn to our Mother—and other things too. I would ask you of this Oracle called Metatron, which is as like to you as I am like my sisters—”

“Of course. We will walk together now, and talk,” Nefertity said, holding out her gleaming hands toward the energumen. Kalamat took them and for a moment they stood there, the smaller shimmering figure of the nemosyne in the monster’s shadow.

Then, “I will get my sisters,” Kalamat said. Nefertity nodded. Together they walked back down the corridor toward the center of Quirinus. Valeska Novus and I watched them go. Then we turned and strode down the long hallway that had swallowed Kalaman and his brothers, to board the Izanagi and join Lascar Franschii on his final voyage.