Icarus Descending

5 Cisneros

NEITHER NEFERTITY NOR I had any need for sleep. Sleep is for humanity, to ease its tragic passage from dreams to waking, and eventually from dreams to death. I had already crossed over to the other side, and could only look back upon my own dreams as one would review a distant landscape from some unimaginably high lookout: as something lovely but detached from oneself, as though one did not breathe the same air they breathed down there, or sip the same passionately blue water.

So I no longer dreamed, but during my months in the regeneration vats the biotechnicians did not apply the usual course of neural treatments to my swollen brain. If they had, I would have been as other rasas are: a mere corpse with the use of limbs and locomotion, with no will, no speech, nothing but the faintest haze of memories to cloud my dull eyes.

But the Ascendants had more ambitious plans for me. Shiyung Orsina, the margravine who monitored my progress, had the twin vices of sentiment and vengeance to interfere with my rebirth; and so it was that I made my reentry into the world with my memories intact.

More than that. My masters wanted me to lose nothing of the decades of training I had endured, all that time of being heated in the crucibles of their wars and planning rooms, fired by my own ambition until I was as finely tempered and lethal a weapon as they could devise. To this end all of my memories were reactivated—a simple thing, really, merely a series of electrical pulses administered to the proper quarters of the brain, and then a wash of proteins to these same nodes. The result of this excessive stimulation was ironic. Like all successful Aviators, I had spent my life suppressing memories. To do otherwise was to court madness, because who could live with the knowledge of what we must endure, between the equatorial war zones and the orbital colonies above us? My own mind had already reached its limit of guilty horrors, like a sponge soaked in acid that is slowly eaten away by its burden. That was the cause of my degeneration in the capital; but now the Ascendants had squeezed me dry, plucked from my decaying body my mind like a small overripe fruit and set it into this new shining shell, where it could neither wither nor flourish, only continue. And with me my memories, fresh as yesterday’s rain. No, more so: because while I could no longer taste or smell or feel the rain upon my tongue, my memories of storms fifty years past were enough to whiten my sleepless nights with lightning and lancing hail.

And so, all unknowing, the Ascendants had imprinted me with the undoing of all their efforts. By electing my regenerated corpse Imperator, they thought they had created at last the ideal military commander: bloodless, heartless, but with the mind of a tyrant and the deathless teguments of their most sophisticated constructs. But they neglected to consider the power of memory, of desire that can outlive even the body. They had restored my past to me. In so doing they also restored my soul.

On the edge of the rise Nefertity stood in silence, watching the dawn stretch its cold gray hands across the prairie. I remained by myself, brooding on what could have befallen the HORUS colonies and wondering what I might learn when I sought out my masters once more.

Did I say I stood by myself? Ah, but it did not seem so to me! I was besieged with memories, like Androcles butterflies swarming about a corpse. The dead came back to speak with me, and others whom I had long forgotten—childhood friends and lovers; janissaries who had served under me at the battles of Nng Dao and Recife, and who died there when the Shinings came; fellow Aviators and cadets from the NASNA Academy, their minds and wills not yet broken by our Ascendant masters, their voices so clear and loud, I could hear them crying out across the years as though they stood no farther from me than did Nefertity.

And thus it was that Aidan Harrow came to me again. Or rather, I went to him, my memories leading me until all about me the prairie faded and once more I was a youth: my arms aching from early-morning fencing practice with my replicant tutor, my bruised knuckles poised above the door to his room while in the distance I could hear bells wailing to signal the start of first reflections. Our floor rector, a slender, sallow woman named Elspeth Mandodari, had sent me to awaken the newest cadet.

“He has a sister in the Auris Wing,” she said, adding in a voice tinged with disapproval, “A twin. But I’ll get her.”

It was common for cadets to sleep late during their first days at the Academy. The best of intentions and most sophisticated of alarms could not conspire against our need for sleep, especially since our days started before four A.M . In the summer this was not so bad. The Academy was located on the northeasternmost shore of the continent, on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean that was supposedly the first place in North America where the sun struck each day. By May or early June sun slanting through the gray-filmed windows would wake us at three-thirty; an hour later it would look as though it were midday outside. But even this had not been enough to rouse me during my first week at the Academy. Instead I was kicked out of bed by the boy who would later be my partner in Gryphon training, a bullying mulatto named Ivor French.

I had resolved to be kinder to the unknown somnambulist twin. I rapped gently at first on the heavy oaken door—a gesture more to ease my own conscience than to actually cause a stir inside, since to be heard at all one had to practically batter the planks with iron staves. But someone was already awake. A moment later a cheerful voice called, “ Entrez! ” And so I did, somewhat reticently, the door groaning as it swung in upon rusted hinges.

It was a standard first-level cadet’s room. That is to say, a tiny, narrow cell perfectly in keeping with the Academy’s original design some six hundred years earlier, which was as Le Couvent de Notre-Dame des Afflictions. Aidan’s room retained its air of sunlit penitence. It overlooked the eastern ridge of the rocky fell called Plasma Mole, several hundred feet above where the ocean moaned and throbbed in dutiful counterpoint to our own smaller sufferings. Like postulants, we were not permitted to bring with us any remnants of our former lives. This gave the rooms an air of uncanny expectancy, as though even after centuries of silence and retribution they still awaited some measure of passion, of temptation or betrayal. Beneath a single window waited a coffin-sized iron bedstead, with its immaculate white linens, stiff from being dried outside in the chilly maritime air, and a feather pillow flattened by generations of aching heads. The smell of dust and pencil shavings was almost lost beneath that of the last rugosa roses blooming on the stony edge of Plasma Mole. The room’s sole ornamentation, besides the gorgeous enameled slab of sky above a spavined wooden desk, was the plasteel representation of the NASNA motto and its blighted moon, hanging beside the bed. The whitewashed walls should have been almost painfully sunlit, the ceilings marbled with the viridian wash of reflected ocean.

But I was surprised to enter Aidan Harrow’s room and find it dark. Actually, not very dark; but to one accustomed to that ruthless blue northern light, it had the appearance of a hermit’s forest lair. I took two steps inside (four more would have brought me to the window) and shaded my eyes as though I had been blinded.

“Mandodari wanted to make sure you were awake,” I said, trying to keep disapproval from clouding my voice. A cerulean cadet’s jacket had been strung across the window and hung with other oddments of clothing in an effort to keep the sun out. I frowned and squinted. I still wasn’t certain just where the room’s tardy occupant lay.

“Mmm. Of course. Well, I’m up.”

A head suddenly popped from the heap of covers on the bed. A stray shaft of light struck his hair, a mass of auburn waves surrounding a pointed puckish face, sharp-chinned and with a small pointed nose. He was tall and lanky for his age, but that face was oddly childlike; or maybe it was just his expression, the slight threat of mindless violence that was never absent from his gray-green eyes. When he slid from the covers, I saw he was already fully dressed. Indeed from the rumpled look of his linen shirt and leather trousers, I gathered he had slept in his clothes.

“I’m Aidan Harrow. From St. Clive.” That was a tiny village in the southern maritimes, a day’s air travel from Plasma Mole.

I nodded stiffly. “Margalis Tast’annin.”

Aidan’s eyes widened. “The poet’s son? I heard you were here.”

With one hand he began smoothing the tangled hair back from his forehead. In the other he clutched a book. At a loss as to conversation, I tilted my head to read the title—purely a matter of convention, since the only book we were permitted to use in first level was the ancient talking edition of An Inquiry into Some Ethical Points of Celestial Navigation. I was quite shocked to see that this was not what Aidan held at all.

“That’s under interdict!”

I hadn’t meant to sound so prudish: I was genuinely stunned that someone would be so cavalier about flouting the rules. Punishment for even simple infractions was severe—most of the infirmary was given over to punitive devices, many of them quite new—and possession of contraband reading material was a serious offense.

“Are you going to turn me in?”

Aidan looked at me coolly, but his tone was innocently curious. If he had acted belligerent or even frightened, I probably would have reported him. As it was, I shut the door behind me and crossed the room to take the book from his hand.

“No. But you better get rid of it, or hide it outside. May I see?”

Even before I looked at it, I could tell, by its scent and feel, that it had not come from the Academy library. A flimsy plastic jacket protected its cover and spine, but even that couldn’t hide how old it was. I drew it to my face and sniffed. When I rifled the pages, dust smelling of cloves and hemp made me sneeze.

“It’s just a book.” Aidan’s voice cracked and he flushed. “From my father—from his library.”

The plastic cover was so old and desiccated, it was difficult to read the title. I opened it, holding it gingerly so that the loose pages wouldn’t fall out. It was printed on thick paper that had aged to the color of rich cream, much heavier and softer than the cheap fiber used for talking books. The end-pieces were marbled, yellow and blue and green. The title page held a little holo no bigger than the ball of my thumb, showing an elaborately stylized eye that seemed to follow me when I moved. Beneath it, title and author were jetprinted in a deliberately shaky hand.

Errores Maleficarum et Incunabula

By Michel DeFries

Beneath this was the legend Privately Printed in the Independent Commonwealth of California (later part of the Western Unity, and still later part of the Pacific Ocean) and a date some four hundred years earlier.

I stared at it curiously, and had started to turn the pages when I heard the electronic bell shriek the quarter hour, last call for first reflections. I swore, recalling Mandodari’s punitive use of the memory enhancer, which exhausted one even as it made sleep impossible for days afterward.

“Here—” I shoved the book back at Aidan and strode to the door. “Do something with it—get rid of it, if you’re smart. And do something about that —”

I glowered and pointed at the window draped with Aidan’s clothes. “—Unless you want to spend the rest of the week in the infirmary.”

The mockery vanished from his eyes. Nodding, he crossed to the window and tore down his jacket, sending socks and shirt flying. I left before I could see what he did with the book.

Nefertity and I left as dawn twined through the desert air. Nefertity wished to give farewells to the humans we had left in the valley. Not from any sentiment on her part—she was a construct, remember that, and I refused to believe her capable of any human feeling—but because she feared they might follow us and perish in the desert.

“Leave them be,” I said. I had already turned and was starting for my Gryphon, Kesef, where it crouched on the hillside. “We will find them again if we need them. The world is a small place now, Nefertity. Come.”

The nemosyne’s eyes blazed azure. I smiled, thinking of the woman who had programmed her. What a monster she must have been! But I said nothing, stepping over clumps of prickly pear and broomweed, kicking apart a nest of fire ants until I reached the Gryphon and called out to it.

“Kesef. Wake.”

The aircraft shuddered. Its deceptively fragile wings expanded like a bat’s, unfolding into long blackened petals. From its nose several long filaments extended, testing the air. I could hear it humming inside as it listened to whatever tales those slender filaments might tell: rain, sun, wind; radiation, mutagens, storms. I guessed sun and a hot northwestern wind. Here where the great coastal prairies had once stretched for hundreds of miles, it was nearly always sun and wind.

From behind me Nefertity called softly. “Where are you taking me?”

I pointed to the west. A man’s eyes would have looked down the sloping hillside onto an endless plain, gold and brown and green fading into a sky that daylight would soon scorch to white. I could see beyond that, to where the Glass Mountains rose and then gave way to the Glass Desert, where the few towns and cities had been embalmed in obsidian waves by the Second Shining. “To Cisneros.”

She joined me beneath the Gryphon. We waited until it unfolded the narrow ladder leading into its belly, then climbed inside.

“And what is Cisneros?” she asked.

She slipped into the seat behind me, the restraining belts crackling softly as they looped around her glowing torso. I lay back in my own seat, feeling it mold itself to the hard shell I still could not think of as my body. I closed my eyes for a moment before replying, “NASNA’s Pacific elÿon base.”

“Pacific? It is in the ocean?”

I shook my head as Kesef’s neural web descended to cover my face. “Yes. Off the west coast. The southern part of the Californian peninsula, I think it may have been in your time.”

Kesef hissed. In the broken lingo that Gryphons and Aviators use to communicate verbally, it asked how it could interface with me. I had no flesh for the web to adhere to save my right hand. I raised this and commanded it to use my eyes. An instant later I felt the cool dampish touch of the webs across them, my vision obscured momentarily as the gray mist resolved into an intricate pattern of cross-hatching and glowing orange grids. I felt the Gryphon probing my mind, its questioning clicks as once again it confronted the mass of cerebral tissue and neural wiring that had replaced my brain. Then silence as Kesef found the familiar strata of memory and command that had joined us for so long. I relaxed my hold on the arms of my seat, plunging into that blissful rush that signals the beginning of the biotic interface between Aviator and craft.

In front of me the interior of the Gryphon faded. In its place swam the image of Cisneros as I had last seen it, years before. Indistinct at first, then growing stronger and more lucid as Kesef’s memory banks fleshed out the picture I struggled to recall, until it seemed I stood there again, swaying slightly with that unconscious rhythm one developed after months at base. The landing platforms rising and falling on the Pacific swells, their bands of light pulsing from green to violet and silhouetting the tiny figures of Aviators and ground crew, like blackened cinders swarming in the darkness. In the distance flames shooting skyward from the offshore refineries, and the flashing lights of the fougas patrolling the prison on Tijuana Island. The smell of burning petrol; the silken odor of the spray as it salted my leather uniform and pooled on the metal platform beneath my boots. Above me the NASNA standard snapped in the night, its cloven moon a maleficent eye glaring at the full and resplendent orb shining above the sea. If I tilted my head back, I could read the glittering letters pricked out upon the standard:

Oderint dum metuant.

Let them hate, so long as they fear.

And over all of it the Ascendants’ fleet of celestial airships, blotting out the moon as they hovered above the loading docks, waiting to start their journeys to the HORUS colonies. Like vast ruby-colored clouds, like a second sky gravid with poisonous rain. The elÿon.

“Cisneros,” I whispered: a command for Kesef. But there was no need for me to speak aloud—already the Gryphon had begun to quiver like a greyhound before a race.

“And there?” The nemosyne’s sweet voice cut through the soft roar of Kesef’s solar engines as they fed greedily upon their energy stores.

“There I will confer with my advisers. I will learn what damage has been done to the HORUS colonies, and decide which station might hold our prize. Then we will go there and reclaim Metatron.”

I did not share with her my fears—that there might be no HORUS colonies left where humans still lived and ruled. Instead I focused all my thoughts on Kesef and tried to blot out images of HORUS in flames.

Aviators are solitary, trained—bred, some say—to possess a single-mindedness that drives them with mad abandon into the inferno that any sane person would flee. Nowhere is this singular passion more evident than in our tryst with the Gryphons. When I was at the Academy, it was rumored that our aircraft were quite literally a compendium of Aviator traits: that the brains of brilliant commanders who had fallen in battle were enshrined within the circuitry and neutral fibers of the next generation of Gryphons, a biotic Valhalla. Sherborne Zeal was supposed to have been immortalized thus, and Ciarin Jhabvilos.

I never gave much credence to those stories, but my link with Kesef had seen me through the Archipelago Conflict and the Shining at Recife, and even through the first skirmishes of the so-called Volcanic War, fought in that nether region of the heavens where the air is filled with flames. Once I had interfaced with Kesef, I did not like to have my concentration broken. I raised my hand commandingly.

“Silence now! I will tell you when to speak again; when we reach our destination.”

The vision of Cisneros faded. In the darkened window in front of me I could see Nefertity’s reflection, a woman made of light. She did not speak, but long after we had begun our ascent, the reflected image of her eyes burned through whatever visions Kesef might have shown me of the world that shimmered far, far below us.

It took us most of that day to reach the Pacific coast. We passed above the Glass Mountains: dark brown and black, as though charred by the explosion that had turned the western prairie into a smooth expanse of congealed sand, blinding to look upon. Then the dun-colored reaches of the great Nevadan Desert. Never a hospitable countryside, it had been largely ignored by warring factions of Ascendants, and to my knowledge had never been the object of viral assault by the Commonwealth or Emirate. So, surprisingly, in this barren wilderness one saw signs of human habitation—tent cities where the roving Children of Zion lived; the domed prospects of lonely families tucked within the shadows of the Toiyabe Range; even tiny grids of yellow and green, brave efforts at hydroculture siphoning illegal waters from the Merino Aquifer. I had often glimpsed such ungoverned vistas from the air, particularly in the northern mountains and in areas like those ringing the California Peninsula, where the tremendous geological upheavals of the last centuries left huge fissures in the continent, unmapped and as yet unclaimed by the Autocracy. Aviators were supposed to report these homesteaders to NASNA Command. Months afterward you might see them at the Population Control Centers, each with a monitor clamped to her wrist; and then later set to work at the Archipelago’s hydrofarms, or shipped to the sunless tunnels of the L-5 mines, or strapped unconscious to a gurney at the Human Engineering Laboratory.

I did not inform the Ascendants of what I saw in my travels, then or ever. I had no great sentiment for those small lives stolen from the beleaguered countryside, but neither did I hold any love for my Ascendant superiors, with their slave-run farms and the research facilities where they enslaved corpses when living bodies were scarce. I wondered now if those people living on the edge of the world had glimpsed some revolution in the skies above; if one night they had seen the stars in their courses shift or go out, candles extinguished by a freezing wind.

Our journey was mostly a silent one. A few times Nefertity asked me about the habitations below us, but I ignored her. I had a sort of joy in those brief moments of flight with Kesef—the only joy I was capable of feeling—and occasionally I cursed myself for bringing the nemosyne with me. At the least I could have disabled her speaking mechanism, but I did not.

It is difficult to describe my feelings for the nemosyne. Referring to Nefertity as her, when of course she was a construct. It was only that her coding program had been female, Sister Loretta Riding of the Order of Divine Compassion. Nefertity was no more feminine than I was masculine—less so, since just months before, I had been a man, and she had never been anything more than a delicately shaped array of neural wiring and glass and plasteel. But she held within her datafiles thousands of years of women’s histories: folktales, songs, paintings, fables, poems: such a trove that I believe it somehow had shaped the rigid anima of a twenty-second-century robot and given it the sensibility of a living woman. Despite the unyielding touch of her plasteel hands and the uncanny radiance of her eyes, it was impossible to think of Nefertity as anything but she. But even when I was a man, I knew there were those who believed I was not human, but a monster.

I was not, no more than any Aviator is a monster. If I had been, I would have rejoiced in my incarnation as a rasa: deathless, since my corpse had been regenerated; fearless, since what could harm me now? Harm a creature who had died and been reborn with this adamant shell?

But I did not rejoice. I loathed it, with a hatred that would have been impossible for me to fathom before blood and sinew and bones, skull and arms and torso were torn from me, leaving only a human hand and two raving eyes trapped within an Ascendant tool. Perversely, it had been that hatred that kept me sane—at least as sane as ever I had been—even as now it was hope that was sending me westward with the waning day.

Evening fell, the late fiery evening that marks nightfall in that part of the world. We were still many miles from the coast, but already the sky was streaked with the lurid colors coughed forth by the floating refineries and manufacturing forms that choke the Pacific shores like kelp. As we grew nearer, excitement filled me, to be returning there after so long. Kesef battled the night wind that rose from the cooling ocean. I could feel the slender structure shaking all around me, its wings hugging in close as it dived and then soared back into the twilight like a nighthawk. There was no sound except for the hollow rush of wind around the Gryphon’s wings.

Behind me Nefertity sat in silence. Her body had cooled to a faint silvery gray, the color of dull metal. Only her eyes betrayed that she was anything but a common server. Anticipation of our arrival at Cisneros had whetted my desire for company; unexpectedly I felt the need to talk.

“We will be there very soon,” I said.

Silence. I thought she had retreated into her dormant mode, but then a flicker of gold speared her breast, and she replied, “The thought seems to cheer you.”

The golden threads spread like flame across her torso, captive lightning. Outside, stars began to show in the greenish sky. Below us there were no lights; only reflected sunset smeared across mile after mile of ruins, the fallen spires and spars of what had once been the great Pacific sprawl. I felt a pang, recalling other flights over this place.

“It is a place where I was happy once,” I said. “My second assignment was to Cisneros. I was very young, just a few years out of the Academy—”

“Where was your first assignment?”

“Buru.” Nefertity shook her head as I explained, “It used to be the primary assignment for all Aviators, a sort of training site. An island in the Archipelago. It is gone now—”

Swallowed by the rising seas that had claimed so many island and coastal countries; but no one mourned the fall of Buru, not even the cannibal janissaries who patrolled its capital before the deluge. “I was there as part of the peacekeeping force, keeping watch over the hydrofarms. My great fortune was to leave after only six months. That was when I came here.”

She leaned over to stare out the tiny round window, steadying herself as Kesef abruptly dropped a thousand feet. “And what is—was—down there?”

Beneath us the jagged ruins rose like tiny islands from channels of deep blue water. For centuries nothing had grown there. After the devastating earthquakes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the cities were abandoned, the vast farms and vineyards reclaimed by the desert. Then came the Split; and now the sea covered it all. As Kesef drew closer to the surface of the waves, the silence that had trapped us for so many hours began to give way. We could hear a hissing, and a sort of soft booming roar; then a series of crashes and booms, like the struts and spars of a ship giving way in a storm. Other tones rang out, some deep like the crush of machinery, some clear and sweet as bells. Beneath all of it was a steady throb, like the pulse of blood in one’s ears.

“The Pacific sprawl. Ruined cities. Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara. All lost in the Split.”

“All of them?” Nefertity’s jadeite eyes glowed in the darkness behind me. “Just—destroyed? Like that?”

I shrugged. “They were fortunate for a long time. The survivors of the first earthquakes seceded from the rest of the country. Eventually they joined with the Nipponian Empire. The Nipponians had a greater defense system than the Autocracy; when the Split came, their autoclaves went on alert and destroyed the forces sent to help them. Nothing was saved. The fantômes —those are the abos who still live there in a few places, a pathetic race—the fantômes say they still dredge up bodies from the caverns beneath the ruins.” I gazed down at the waves. “Listen—can you hear?”

Nefertity cocked her head and drew closer to the window. “Yes. What it is?”

“The sea gnawing at the foundations of the cities. The fantômes say it is the voices of the dead. They believe the sea is eating away at the world, bit by bit, and someday the rest of us will be devoured as well.”

I turned back to the cockpit, scanning the horizon for my first sight of Cisneros. Kesef continued to descend, until we skimmed only a few hundred feet above the water. Twisted girders and shattered pyramids broke through the surface, some of them strung with ragged banners to mark where the fantômes had staked out their territories. I imagined I could smell their squalid settlements, reeking of fish and salted flesh, and once I did see a tiny group squatting on the edge of a makeshift pier, their hunched bodies silhouetted by the light of a fire burning in a steel drum. They might never know that HORUS or the Autocracy had been destroyed. Generations hence they would still be eking their precarious living from the sea and the detritus of an earlier civilization. When finally I tore my gaze from them, I saw the floating city before me.

From this distance Cisneros at first appeared to be a mirage, the weary eye spinning færy domes and turrets from the endless artificial reefs stretching below. But as we grew closer, the shimmering globes of green and gold and blue and crimson took more solid form. I could pick out the tall, slender recon towers, the ancient satellite dishes like a field of white poppies turned toward the stars, the glittering blue-green residence domes. Behind it all, plumes of brilliant flame and blue gas spewed from the refineries, miles off but seeming near enough that their heat might singe one’s hair.

And hovering in the sulfurous sky like some mad dream of the floating city, the billowing mass of the elÿon: the biotic craft, half-living organism and half-machine, with which the Ascendants plied the nearer reaches of space.

“A Nipponian fleet!” Nefertity cried in amazement.

“No.” I gazed at the elÿon closest to us, an umbrella-shaped leviathan the color of sunset, its edges rosy-pink and blurred from the heat of its engines. “Although the Ascendants did claim many of them after the Split. The Nipponian vessels are much finer than those made by the Autocracy.”

“And so this is how you travel to the stars?”

“To the stars? No. Merely to the HORUS colonies.” I turned away impatiently: we were coming upon the floating city so quickly, it seemed we might overshoot it. “Brace yourself—”

I closed my eyes, once more feeling Kesef’s web probing for instruction. At my command the Gryphon stalled. For an instant we hung there as my mind filled with images filtered through Kesef’s optics. Beneath us shimmered an impossibly wide vista of grids, covered with the glowing geometric patterns used in guiding the elÿon during docking procedures. On the deck five or six people had gathered, shielding their eyes against the glow of the airships. I had not ordered Kesef to signal ahead of our arrival, and unexpected landings were rare at Cisneros. They stared up at us, their faces lost in the shadow of their uniform hoods; one man clutched frantically at a vocoder and shouted into it. Cisneros, at least, seemed still to be functioning as an Ascendant outpost. Suddenly Kesef dropped, a vertiginous plunge that once would have made me grin with exhilaration. Now I only braced myself and waited. A grinding noise as the Gryphon’s legs extended; a gentle bounce as we set down. We had landed.

Outside, the air was thick with fog. Within my metal shell I could no longer smell the mingled stench of sea air and burning petrol and the elÿon’s saline odor, but I knew it was there: I could almost see it, thick as the yellowish mist that roiled in luminous columns above the landing decks. Kesef’s ladder dropped from the belly of the craft, and I disembarked. The small group that had assembled drew back in nervous silence as I climbed from the Gryphon. I knew what they were seeing: a tall figure made of metal and black plasteel, an Aviator’s crimson leathers flapping from its long limbs. But where an Aviator’s helmeted enhancer should have covered its face, nearly colorless blue eyes glared out from a mask of scarlet metal, sculpted into the hawkish visage of a man.

“I am Margalis Tast’annin, Aviator Imperator of the Ascendant Autocracy.” My harsh voice boomed in the cool night air. “Who is the Commanding Agent here?”

Blank faces stared back at me. A few of them gasped when they heard my name.

Then, “Imperator!” a voice called out. “This way, sir!”

The others turned away, seemingly relieved that someone was taking charge. The little crowd broke up. A few technicians began to service Kesef. The rest hurried toward the command tower. Only one remained to greet me, a slight woman in cracked leathers burned nearly black. As my boots clashed against the metal deckplates, she raised her hand in the Aviator’s raptor salute, her voice strong and fearless as a young girl’s. “An honor to see you here, Imperator Tast’annin.”

I returned her salute. “I wish to speak to the Commanding Agent.” Behind me I heard the muted click of Nefertity’s feet as she climbed down the ladder. “My server will accompany us.”

Nefertity joined me, gazing calmly at the woman. The sulferous yellow fog combined with the elÿon’s crimson glow to make it seem that we were surrounded by some silent inferno. In the dense swirling mist the nemosyne looked like a revenant, her eyes cold and glittering. The Aviator gave a curt nod and addressed me again.

“I am Valeska Novus, Aviator Second Class. The Commanding Agent here is Caroline Shi Pei.” For the first time she seemed uneasy. “Will you—would you like to rest before seeing her, Commander?”

“No. I want to go now. I have many questions for her. You may tell the technicians that my Gryphon is called Kesef. The server answers to Nefertity.”

Valeska looked over at the technicians seeing to the Gryphon. “As you wish.”

We walked with her across the deck. The yellow fog clung to everything. It was difficult to discern distances from one tower to the next save by counting the number of landing grids, like enormous bull’s-eyes shining through the mist at our feet. Shadowy figures ducked in and out of passages and from beneath squat vehicles, some looking at us with fear, others merely curious. All wore the yolk-yellow uniforms of the Ascendant Autocracy. A few had wrapped thin blue scarves over their faces, so that only their eyes showed. I recalled that the fantômes believed the fog was poisonous, like the mutagenic rains spread by the Ascendants over the Northeast. It was not—at least no more poisonous than any other air in that noisome country. Beneath our feet the deck rolled, and there was a constant undercurrent of sound, as of cables straining and water crashing through empty lockers.

“We’re still feeling the effects of the storms from last week,” Valeska Novus explained, turning to look at me with calm hazel eyes. She was slight but strongly built. Her leathers seemed a little short in the cuff, her bare arms thick and muscular and crosshatched with deep scars. I could not guess her age: her dark hair was cut short and streaked with gray, but her voice was youthful. Her skin had that dark cast that comes from prolonged exposure to battle conditions in the Archipelago, as though one had turned one’s face too long to the poisonous sun. She was not beautiful, as Shiyung Orsina had been beautiful—there was no delicacy there, none of the artifice or cunning with which powerful women seek to enslave others if they have no great intellect. But she seemed fearless, which I thought attractive—my emotions could still be stirred by such things, though my body was not. I found myself thinking of Wendy Wanders as I had first seen her in the Engulfed Cathedral, her defiance and rage even in the face of death; and unexpectedly I laughed.

“Imperator?” Valeska looked startled: rasas were supposed to be as devoid of emotions as the corpses they were generated from. She paused beside a recon turret, steadying herself as the deck pitched and rolled, then asked, “Did you come from Araboth, Imperator? We had heard it was destroyed by a cyclone, and there were no survivors.”

I told her of the fall of Araboth, of the great tidal wave that had engulfed the Quincunx Domes, and how there had been no survivors save myself and my robotic aide. I did not tell her of the three we had left at the desert settlement, nor did I mention that I had murdered the margravine Shiyung Orsina.

“And so the other Gryphons were lost?” Valeska cried despairingly. “How terrible!”

I smiled. “No mourning for those thousands of lives, Captain Novus? Only for a handful of aircraft?”

She shook her head. There was not a trace of embarrassment or apology on her strong features. “It’s a terrible thing—first we lost NASNA Prime last fall, and then came the rebellions. And now this. I am glad you—survived—Imperator.” She tilted her head toward Nefertity. “And your server? Is it very new? I haven’t seen one like it before.”

“Very old,” I replied tersely. I wondered what “the rebellions” referred to; also why there seemed to be no other Aviators at Cisneros. “Are we near to finding Agent Shi Pei?”

Valeska pointed. “That tower there.”

It was one of the tall central towers, spiraling up from the middle of the platform like a ship’s mast and painted yolk-yellow. But the salt air had eaten away at the paint so that dull bronzy red showed beneath, the color of the previous Ascension; a grim reminder like a wound that will not heal. I thought of the last Commanding Agent I had met with here, and asked, “What became of Agent Bristol?”

Valeska shrugged. “There was a purge after the destruction of NASNA Prime, and he was executed. He was suspected of collusion with geneslaves from one of the Wyalong platforms—they destroyed a hydrofarm off the coast of Brisbane. They are destroying outposts everywhere! Is that why you are here, Imperator? To lead us against the rebels?”

She gazed at me questioningly, but of course from my metal face she could tell nothing. I had in fact heard none of this. The Orsinas, the corrupt siblings who had ruled Araboth, were notorious for their attention to the trivial if colorful details of familial intrigue, and their failure to keep abreast of the current political situation. Between my months in the City of Trees and my time in Araboth’s regeneration tanks, I was as guileless as a Paphian courtesan. But I only nodded and asked, “What is your most recent news, Captain Novus?”

She stopped in front of a door in the tower and looked at me uneasily. “There is no news, Imperator. We’ve lost contact with all but two of the HORUS colonies. Our contacts tell us that it is the same with the Commonwealth and the Habilis Emirate—their stations in HORUS have either been destroyed or taken by rebel forces. These are only rumors, of course, but…”

Nefertity had not spoken this whole time. Now when her voice rang out, Captain Novus started.

“With all this talk of treachery, perhaps we should not be so ready to follow her, Margalis.”

Valeska’s mouth rounded in amazement. “Your server acts as consul to you? And she calls you—she does not address you by your title?”

“That is no business of yours, Captain.” My voice was cold, but in truth I liked her bluntness. It had been a long time since anyone had reacted to me with anything but fear. “I think we will meet no trouble here, Nefertity.”

“My apologies.” Valeska bowed stiffly, held the door open for Nefertity and me. Inside, a spiral staircase twisted above us. One could see at a glance how it had suffered from years of neglect—it listed dangerously to one side, and there were risers missing and yellow paint peeling everywhere. Windows no wider than a finger let in air and dull blades of hazy yellow light. For the rest, the darkened tower was lit only by silicon panels, their ruddy glow coarsened by time to an angry blackish red like smoldering embers.

The stairs rang as we climbed, the whole place vibrating as though the tower were only a bamboo pole thrust into damp sand. The windows afforded no view whatsoever, and Valeska wrinkled her nose and coughed at the stale air. Finally we reached the top, a narrow platform scarcely large enough to hold all three of us. Valeska stepped around me and reached for a metal door, pressed her hand against a scanner, and waited while the ancient mechanism whirred and clicked. Finally the door slid open, and we stepped inside.

Up here one could feel how the tower really did sway and shudder as the wind gnawed at it. The small round room seemed expansive after the stairwell. The walls were of clear plasteel, so that we could look out onto the whole of Cisneros spread beneath us. Old electrical boards and monitors lined the transparent walls, and cables were strung haphazardly across the floor. A single swivel chair was pushed close to the window, and here sat the tower’s solitary inhabitant. I recognized the soiled yolk-yellow uniform, with the coded blue lumens that indicated its wearer was a rehabilitated criminal, a political prisoner whose mind had been broken and reshaped by the Autocracy.

“Agent Shi Pei.” Valeska spoke respectfully but without deference—Aviators submit to no one save Imperators and Supreme Ascendant Governors. “It’s Captain Valeska. The Aviator Imperator Margalis Tast’annin has come to see you.”

A long silence. Valeska glanced at me and repeated, “The Aviator Impera—”

Before she could finish, the chair whirled about. A low voice greeted me.

“Imperator Tast’annin. Forgive me for not meeting you earlier on deck. I just learned of your arrival.”

The Commanding Agent made no move to stand, only smiled furtively and stared at a point somewhere past where we stood. She spoke in the high nasal accent of the Asian provinces. A dark-skinned woman with the fragile features of the Commonwealth’s eastern mountains, she held a slender porcelain carafe in one hand and a thimble-sized cup in the other. The bridge of her nose was tattooed with the butterfly ideogram that means spy. The floor beneath her chair was littered with broken candicaine pipettes. An empty carafe rolled across the room when she kicked it.

“Agent Shi Pei. Your predecessor showed more civility toward me when I last visited Cisneros.”

Agent Shi Pei sighed deeply, poured herself a thimble of whatever the carafe held—syrupy rice brandy, I would guess—and drank it quickly. When she raised her eyes to mine, I saw that one was dark brown. The other was a prosthetic of marbled blue and violet, chased with flickers of gold: a keek, a cerebral/optical monitor. Coupled with her obvious drunkenness, it gave her a slightly deranged appearance.

“Ah! but things have changed since then. My predecessor is dead now and I am not, Rasa Imperator Tast’annin.” She pronounced the word rasa with a faint teasing disdain, smiled broadly, and gave a slight hiccuping laugh. I began to think she was mad as well as drunk, but that might make it easier for me to hide my ignorance of whatever had befallen the Autocracy during the last few months.

“Agent Shi Pei! I demand a full report of your activities since Agent Bristol’s execution. Where are the other Aviators assigned to this post? What has become of the HORUS colonies?”

Agent Shi Pei raised a delicate eyebrow above the prosthetic keek. “You don’t know?”

I hesitated. If she learned of my ignorance, of how vulnerable I was, she might lie to me. I did not fear harm from her; I could kill her in an instant. But then it might be impossible to learn about the rebellions. I decided to tell her the truth.

“I have heard nothing. I spent most of the last year in the City of Trees and a regeneration chamber in Araboth. I barely escaped the Quincunx Domes before they were destroyed. I know nothing of what has happened, save that NASNA Prime was destroyed last winter. Last night I saw the sky for the first time in many months. The pattern of HORUS has changed.”

Agent Shi Pei’s other eyebrow rose, and something like dismay tugged at her mouth. “This is the first you learned of it?”

I nodded, and she let out a low whistle. “ Tell me ,” I said.

Agent Shi Pei sighed. “Last October NASNA Prime was destroyed. A strike by the Commonwealth, we thought at the time. But then we received an SOS from one of the Commonwealth stations—an incomplete transmission, something about an insurrection. When a peacekeeping force reached the station, we found no one left alive but seven energumens. They attacked the boarding party but were overcome by our soldiers. But within a week all members of the original force who remained were dead. Some kind of plague, either engineered by the rebels or else accidentally loosed by the janissaries.”

“And the energumens?”

Agent Shi Pei avoided my eyes as she reached for her rice brandy. “They survived,” she said drily. “We received a transmission from them informing us of the death of the janissaries.”

“I see.”

I turned to stare out the window. Below us I could see small figures moving to and fro, a cluster of uniformed figures crawling over and beneath Kesef like so many yellow jackets. “Where are the Aviators assigned to Cisneros?”

“Most have been called into combat by the interim government at Vancouver. Captain Novus and two others remain, to provide me with some protection.”

“What of the other HORUS stations? Helena Aulis? MacArthur?”

Agent Shi Pei took a long sip of her brandy before replying. “We don’t know,” she said at last. “Or rather, I don’t know. Occasionally we receive word that someone—one of your Aviators, usually—has picked up some kind of strange transmission in flight. The talk is all of treachery, of overthrowing the Autocracy; but as far as we know here on Cisneros, the Autocracy has already been overthrown.”

“Who commands this elÿon fleet, then?”

“I do.”

“And who commands you?”

“No one.”

I looked back and caught Valeska Novus staring at me grimly. “No one?”

Agent Shi Pei shook her head. “As far as I know, this is the largest remaining fleet that has not been seized by rebel forces. The last relay I received from the Autocracy was in April. That was over two months ago. Since then there have been scattered relays—one from Jhabvala 6, another from the Vancouver bunkers. Oh, yes—and several transmissions that claim to be from the energumens on MacArthur. They say that they have overthrown HORUS and are launching an attack on Earth.” She coughed and took another sip of brandy.

“That is all?” I tried to keep my voice from betraying fear and rage. “An insurrection in the Autocracy, and you can speak of it so calmly? Why was nobody informed?”

Agent Shi Pei laughed shrilly, the marbled keek rolling wildly in its socket. “Who is there to inform? The HORUS colonies are in the hands of rebels. We have heard they have formed an Alliance throughout HORUS and the other stations; that they intend to bring this Alliance to Earth and declare war upon us. Some of my people think it has already begun. They hear things, they tell me—messages, rumors…”

Shi Pei snorted. “Rumors! New ones every day—stray radio transmissions, ’files sent from unidentified sources. Last month we even had a replicant arrive to tell us of an explosion at the Port Lavaca refinery—the replicant had no human escort, no point-of-origin program, nothing. In the middle of the night files appear in my bedroom with messages for me. The Autocracy is slain or scattered, HORUS is gone completely; HORUS has been retaken, the Autocracy is saved. What can I believe? The only thing I know for certain is that there was a coup on the Helena Aulis station. The energumens there rioted and murdered the entire station colony, and from ’files that were broadcast to neighboring stations, it appears that the victims were cannibalized. A single aviette escaped with Livia Marconi and her advisers aboard and landed at Vancouver three months ago, but I have heard nothing since then. And the city of Araboth is fallen, but you knew that.”

Suddenly Shi Pei’s face seemed immeasurably aged, as though the mere recitation of these horrors had been enough to exhaust her. She ran a hand across her forehead and sighed. “I’ve tried contacting my former superiors at the embassy at Kirliash in the Commonwealth, but so far there’s been no response. Two Aviators flew to the old capital, where you were last year; my last message from them was that the entire city was in revolt against the janissaries. There are other strange things, too. Six weeks ago I received a disturbing report from the Chief Architect at the Hotei station.”

She paused, ducking her head in the manner people of her country employed when embarrassed for another. “He said—well, he claimed to have seen that eidolon your people talk about.”

I frowned. “What thing is that?”

Agent Shi Pei flicked her fingers in distaste. “That millenial star, whatever you call it—”

“The Watcher in the Skies,” Captain Novus finished for her. “It was only a single report, Imperator, and a week later the Chief Architect went mad. Copper poisoning, we think.”

I shook my head impatiently. The Watcher in the Skies—another legendary apparition of the HORUS colonies. “Don’t tell me about phantoms. What else has gone wrong?”

Agent Shi Pei sighed. “Well, as for us—there hasn’t been a supply ship here at Cisneros in six months. It’s all I can do to keep my troops from defecting and joining the fantômes,” she ended bitterly. “There is justice in this, Imperator. Slaves always rebel; even geneslaves, it seems. With your education, you and the other Aviators should have known that.”

She spat the last words at me. I looked away, recalling the empty spaces between the stars where the HORUS stations should have been.

You should have known.

She was right, of course. If I had not been so driven by hatred and my need for vengeance in Araboth, I might have learned of this sooner. Only days sooner, but it might be that we had only days left. For a few minutes the room was quiet. I could hear Valeska Novus breathing, Agent Shi Pei prying the cork from another bottle of rice brandy. Nefertity remained motionless and silent, watching us with her calm eyes.

At last I said, “I wish to have an elÿon for myself and my server.”

Shi Pei’s hand shook as she poured another measure of brandy. She held the tiny cup up to me, then drank it in a gulp. Tears sprang into her one eye as she stared at me incredulously.

“An elÿon? After what I’ve told you? For what—yourself and a taomatan ? A fembot?”

I nodded and she hooted, banging her fist on the arm of her chair. Angrily I clenched my right, human hand. I had long before decided that I would simply kill anyone who tried to stop me, but to my surprise Agent Shi Pei rose and took a few unsteady steps until she stood before me. She bowed, arms crossed in her country’s mark of obeisance, then made a clumsy gesture with her fingers meant to be the NASNA salute.

“Of course, Imperator! Did you think I would refuse? But who else is left to command me?”

For an instant I saw a cold glitter in her eye—a look I had seen before in the eyes of traitors, a shaft of betrayal and guilt that quivers where it cannot be dislodged. Agent Shi Pei noticed my expression and quickly looked away. “Though it is madness, I think, to travel to HORUS,” she added with a sullen frown.

“I intended to go before I knew of all this. But now it seems I waited too long.”

I stalked impatiently toward the window, turned to look back at her. “Have you ever heard of a replicant kept by the Autocracy in one of the stations? An unusual construct, very old, very finely made. It might resemble that—”

I pointed at Nefertity. Agent Shi Pei regarded the nemosyne wearily, and finally shook her head.

“Never. But that doesn’t mean anything, Imperator. They might have any number of such things up there—” She flapped her hands, indicating the ceiling. “I have never traveled to HORUS; besides, I am a rehabilitated war criminal. I would not be privy to such matters.”

I nodded curtly. “Of course. Very well: ready an elÿon for me.”

Agent Shi Pei’s mouth twisted into a cold smile. “Ah! but which one do you want? I would advise against the Caesaria —”

She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I knew her adjutant in his earlier life as a saboteur for the Commonwealth. He suffered from hallucinations before he was chosen for his present position.”

Behind me Valeska cleared her throat. “Perhaps you should prepare a formal request, Agent—”

Shi Pei made a rude sound and glared at the Aviator, her prosthetic eye rolling wildly. “Haven’t you been listening, Captain Novus? Who would I petition? He is an Imperator—surely he has wonderful reasons why he wants an elÿon. Who am I to stop an Aviator—even a rasa Aviator—from going to a second death?”

Her laughter rang harshly through the room, and suddenly I saw the rage behind that single amber eye. Probably she had been a high-ranking officer in the Commonwealth before she was taken as a prisoner of war, rehabilitated, and then sent here as a test of her new loyalties. That would account for the keek. It would also explain her drunkenness—alcohol and drugs impair the stability of the prosthetic monitors—and her casual acquiescence to my request for an airship. I felt a fleeting kinship with Agent Shi Pei, and when I spoke again, my voice was less cold.

“The construct I am looking for is called Metatron. I believe it might have been brought to Quirinus two hundred years ago.”

Captain Novus shook her head. “We lost contact with Quirinus last month, Imperator.”

“Plague!” Shi Pei cut in gleefully. “A traitor got on board, a psychobotanist supervising the disbursement of provisions. Strain 975, irpex irradians, introduced via a shipment of rice from Mudjangtang. According to the notice of death filed by the station computer, only the energumens survived.”

She tugged at a flap of her uniform and removed a long black cigarette, lit it, and smoked in staccato fashion. “Of course you and your consul would not have anything to worry about from plague, Rasa Imperator.”

Irpex irradians: the radiant harrowing. One of the older microphages, dating to the Second Ascension. Even as the bodies of its victims succumbed to the quick wasting and dehydration of the disease, their minds grew more acute, seeing in the air subtle colors that have long been lost to the rest of us. In their last hours they rave ecstatically, of lights and angels and the thoughts of men darting like goldfinches through the air. Perhaps two solar days might pass between the plague’s inception and death. Survivors have described the smell of the corpses as being reminiscent of lilies. Not the worst of the plagues created by the Ascendants, except that without its serum antitoxin there was no survival rate whatsoever.

“I am moved by your concern, Agent Shi Pei,” I said coolly. “Perhaps now I could make use of your expertise in a matter of less importance—”

She tapped her cigarette ash onto the floor, her nostrils dilating so that the butterfly tattoo seemed to flutter. “Of course, Imperator.”

“Some months ago there was a research subject who escaped from the Human Engineering Laboratory, in the Northeastern United Provinces. Subject 117, a young girl named Wendy Wanders.”

Shi Pei frowned. “I have no jurisdiction over HEL. The Ascendant Governors—”

“She is no longer under HEL’s control, and according to what you have told me, there is some doubt as to whether there are any more Ascendant Governors. I want to find this girl. She escaped into the City of Trees and lived there for several months, disguised as a young man named Aidan. I was with her immediately before my death; I believe she is still alive. I want her found and brought to me.”

Agent Shi Pei and Valeska exchanged glances. Finally Valeska said, “That City was retaken by Ascendant janissaries in January, Imperator. As Agent Shi Pei told you, there has been some trouble, and it has been necessary to use viral weapons to restrain the rebels there. As far as I know, any survivors of the original invasion were detained as a recreational labor force by the new governing body there.”

I smiled grimly at the thought of Subject 117 drafted as a prostitute by the Ascendants. “Then it should not be difficult to trace her.”

“If she survived.” Shi Pei tossed her cigarette across the room. It struck the window in a burst of sparks and dropped to the floor. “And if I can reestablish contact with the City.”

“She survived. I’m sure of it.”

Shi Pei raised her eyebrows. “And what does the Aviator Imperator want with this young girl? I assume the obvious reasons no longer apply to a rasa. ”

I crossed to the window and ground out the smoldering cigarette beneath my boot, gazed down upon the smoky yellow lights and softly swirling mist. “She was an empath engineered as a terrorist, a suicide trigger. When I last saw her, she was somewhat confused—it appeared her empathic abilities had been impaired, by grief or stress. I may have a use for her in spite of that. If what you say is true—if there is a geneslave Alliance planning war against us—then we may need humans like her fighting with us. Wendy Wanders. Find her for me.”

I continued to stare out the window. Behind me I heard a click as Shi Pei withdrew a vocoder and repeated the name. “Anything else, Imperator? Requests for aid from the Emirate’s fleet? Messages for the dead in Elysium?”

“I’d like to see a roster of the elÿon in port. We’ll leave immediately.” I turned in time to see Valeska looking anxiously at the nemosyne. “My server won’t need clearance, Captain Novus. You may accompany us to the elÿon and vouch that we are not allied with the rebel forces. Agent Shi Pei, I trust you will carry on your duties here until you are relieved of them.”

I glimpsed Agent Shi Pei’s bitter smile as I strode toward the door. She followed, stooping to pick up a heavy book with marbled cover. She flipped through it, marked a page with a bit of torn paper, and handed it to me.

“Here—I think this is the current list. Remember about the Caesaria. ” She made a mocking bow as Nefertity and I passed.

In the doorway I paused. I reached out and rested my metal hand upon Shi Pei’s shoulder. The derisive lines faded from her face; her brown eye rolled nervously, then blinked closed as I squeezed her. A moment later she cried out, buckling beneath my grip. When I let her go, she staggered against the wall. Valeska stared openmouthed, her Aviator’s composure shaken.

“The empath. I will be expecting to hear from you within one solar week, Agent Shi Pei.” Without another word I tramped down the stairwell.

The book Shi Pei had given me was heavy, with creamy thick pages and gilt edging, its covers an expensive swirl of violet and blue and yellow. Rather an archaic means for a Commanding Agent to track the comings and goings of an Ascendant staging area; but inside I found a meticulous record of just that, page after page of transport duties, arrival times and departures and ports of call, with the names of the various elÿon transcribed in an elegant hand whose delicate characters resembled ideograms more than our Arabic alphabet. The violet ink made the tiny figures difficult to read at first, but eventually I puzzled it out—

General Li

Angevin

Izanagi

Stella d’Or

Caesaria

Pierre Toussaint

Esashi

Of the seven listed on the page Shi Pei had indicated, I had only ever traveled aboard the Angevin and Izanagi. Both had been appropriated by Ascendant forces, the Izanagi being a stalwart Nipponian vessel, the Angevin a Gaulish freighter. The rest were mostly Ascendant vessels, built on the North American continent, and I was wary of them. My Academy training notwithstanding, I had seen too many Ascendant-made vessels sabotaged—it took only one disgruntled technician or clever geneslave to infect a nav program and bring the whole enterprise crashing down. Nipponian vessels were sturdier, their minds harder to infiltrate. I chose the Izanagi and handed the book to Valeska.

“Inform the Izanagi’s adjutant that we will be boarding and departing as soon as the ship can ready itself. Have the technicians place my Gryphon Kesef on board.”

She saluted and disappeared in the warren of towers on the main deck. Nefertity watched her go impassively, then turned her unblinking eyes on me.

“So now we will travel by starship?”

I laughed, my boots making a hollow boom on the metal grid beneath us as we walked. “Starship? No. There are no starships, Nefertity. Only a few old military vessels retrofitted for commercial transport between here and HORUS.”

She nodded. A fine rain had begun falling. It softened the edges of things, turned the glaring landing lights into golden halos, and made Nefertity look as though she were encased in glowing blue velvet. “And it is a long trip, to these space stations?”

“Not really.” From a speaker overhead a tinny amplified voice announced the hour and number of the shift that was due to change. A sudden frantic rush of yellow-uniformed personnel seethed from previously unseen doors and tunnels; there was much swearing amid the clatter of boots and the nearly silent hiss of rain. Then abruptly all was still again, as though the inhabitants of an overturned beetle’s nest had burrowed safely back into their holes. The platform’s rocking subsided to a gentle swell. From somewhere in the fog above us a kittiwake moaned, and I could hear the beating of its wings as it passed into the mournful darkness. I looked at Nefertity and said,

“The elÿon are all biotic craft, controlled by the thoughts of their adjutants—it is an old technology, and the Nipponian fleet was supposed to be the most sophisticated. And no, it does not take very long to reach HORUS. Perhaps three or four solar days; but time runs strangely in the elÿon. For humans, at least. For you it may be different.”

A smile glinted in the nemosyne’s face. “And for you? Does time move differently for rasas as well?”

I did not reply. In my short life as a rasa I had noticed that, without sleep, the weight of constant visual and aural stimulation sometimes made it difficult to recall where I was. Memories would flood me: I could not remember if I was still a student at the Academy, or on board a fouga in the Archipelago, or back in the Engulfed Cathedral with my madness. Then there were the jagged impressions of my death, mostly images of lights—sudden gashes of green or yellow brilliance, like sickly lightning—and noise, muted roarings or poppings that I imagined now had been the sound of my brain disengaging from my body’s functions. But I could not always control the flow of remembered impressions. Now I could not recall what it had been like to be aboard an elÿon. I ignored Nefertity’s question and hurried across the deck.

Valeska met us at the transport center. She looked flushed from running, and no longer carried Agent Shi Pei’s elegant logbook.

“It should be ready,” she said a little breathlessly. “Your Gryphon has been sent ahead. Here—we can take this up—”

She motioned at one of the elevators, a cylinder like an immense candle that stretched into the air, until its tip was swallowed by the glow of the elÿon fleet. From here I could not make out individual craft. Their sheer bulk and the hazy gleam that emanated from them made it impossible to tell for certain where one ended and the next began, like trying to untangle a shimmering mass of sea nettles. As our elevator began to rise, Nefertity turned, peering through the dirty window at the behemoths floating overhead.

“They are not what I expected,” she said at last. Valeska stared at her curiously, and the nemosyne continued. “I thought they would be like ships. They are ships, of some kind?”

Valeska turned to me with eyebrows raised. I looked past her, taking in what Nefertity saw: huge vessels that seemed to be as much animal as machine. The comparison to the medusæ was apt—the elÿon had been modeled on sea nettles and jellyfish and other cnidarians. They were amorphous leviathans, their central bodies umbrella-shaped and with a faint translucence like the swollen bladders of the Portuguese man-of-war. They floated like untethered balloons high above the decks of Cisneros, emitting that bizarre rubeous glow, with long gassy blue streamers occasionally billowing behind them as one or another shifted slightly in the wind. Their polymer walls shifted in size and shape to accommodate changes in air pressure, temperature, light or darkness, so that to watch one taking flight was to see a vast opalescent bubble churning through the marine haze, like an immense Portuguese man-of-war drifting above the calm Gulf. Their interior climate was equally dreamlike, controlled by the thoughts of human adjutants imprisoned in navigation cells deep within the elÿon’s labyrinth of fuel canals and living quarters.

As we grew nearer to the fleet, we began to hear them. A sort of low, droning sound, a bass counterpoint to the slap of waves against the platform now far below us. Nefertity stared at the elÿon, the growing radiance of her torso and face attesting to her absorption. Valeska looked uncomfortable, as though wanting to speak. After several more minutes of silence I asked her if she had any questions for me. She dipped her head, tugged at the peaked collar of her leather uniform, and finally nodded.

“Yes. Will you—am I to accompany you? To HORUS?”

I gazed down upon the floating city. Set with beveled squares of green and violet, its landing grids like yellowing embers: from here it was a delicious toy, a glittering lozenge one might hide in a pocket as a bribe for a beloved child. Nefertity stared at it, her eyes impossibly wide and bright. Valeska kept her own gaze hooded, only glancing at me covertly to see what my reply would be.

For the first time since I had awakened to that second horrible birth in Araboth’s regeneration vats, I felt a twinge of an emotion besides hatred or vengeance. I tried to imagine what Valeska would like to do. It would be an honor of sorts for her to accompany the Aviator Imperator to Quirinus, even if it was a futile mission. It seemed probable that we would find nothing in HORUS save rebel geneslaves and the bones of their victims; and travel aboard the elÿon was always a dreadful prospect. Under the best of circumstances, embarkations from the HORUS colonies were often little better than forays into madness and exile. At last I spoke, keeping my eyes fixed on the window.

“What would you like to do, Captain?”

A minute passed before she answered. “I would like to go with you, Imperator.”

In her tone I heard that note that often colors Aviators’ voices, something between the voice of a child accepting a dare and the bitter resignation of a prisoner to her fate. She went on, “I have never been to HORUS. My tour here began only six months ago; but as Agent Shi Pei said, we have lost all contact with the Governors. And since most of the other Aviators have left to join the fighting, she has been reluctant to part with me. I had lost hope of ever receiving another detail. I think—I think I would like to accompany you.”

I nodded. “Very well. There will be gear on board you can use.”

“Thank you, Imperator. I’m not familiar with the Izanagi. I assume there’s some crew?”

Meaning human crew, besides the adjutants.

“I doubt it,” I said.

As the glass elevator crept closer to the elÿon, the air grew warmer and blindingly bright, the glowing fleet blotting out the soothing darkness of the night sky. Even when I closed my eyes, I could still see vast unfolding petals of crimson and salmon-pink. The droning sound grew louder, swelled into a single profound boom, boom. A throbbing gargantuan voice: Izanagi’s voice. For an instant it seemed that our elevator and all it contained were engulfed in flames. Then the booming was abruptly silenced, the radiance disappeared as though a huge hand had covered the sky. With a wrenching sound the elevator opened.

Before us a soiled ribbon of gray carpeting led into the gaping mouth of the elÿon. Nefertity hung back from the door, and I heard Valeska sigh, a noise that was almost a shudder. Without a word we boarded the Izanagi.