Ilium

55 The Equatorial Ring

“Thinketh, Himself,” hissed Caliban’s voice from the shadows of the firmary, “would teach the reasoning couple what ‘must’ means! Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord? So He.”

“Where the hell’s that voice coming from?” snapped Harman. The firmary was mostly dark, light coming from the glowing tanks that were emptying one by one, and Daeman roamed from the semipermeable wall to the cannibal table, trying to find the source of the whispers.

“I don’t know,” said Daeman at last. “Air vent. Some entrance we haven’t found. But if he comes into the light, I’ll kill him.”

“You may shoot him,” said the Prospero hologram standing against the counter near the healing tank controls, “but it is not certain that you will kill him. Caliban—a devil, a born devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick; on whom my pains humanely taken—all, all lost, quite lost!”

For two days and nights, forty-seven and a half hours, one hundred forty-four revolutions of the asteroid from Earthlight to starlight, the two men had overseen the faxing out of the healing tanks until only a dozen or so bodies were left. They knew now how to call up external holos of the linear accelerator accelerating in a most linear fashion directly toward them. They could see the huge thing now, approaching wormhole first, visible and awful in the clear overhead firmary panels, thrusters burning blue behind. Prospero and the virtual readouts assured them that they had almost ninety minutes left before impact, but instinct and their vision told them otherwise, so both men quit looking up.

Caliban was somewhere near. Daeman kept his thermskin mask down for the light-augmenting lenses, but also used Savi’s flashlight, playing it under the cannibal table, light glinting on white bones there.

They’d thought the trip from the domed control room was the worst—the long swim-kick through kelp and half-light, waiting for Caliban to attack at any minute—but although twice something green-gray moved in the shadows, and twice Daeman had fired Savi’s gun at the movement, once the shadow-thing swam away, and the next time it tumbled out, dead, flechettes glinting in its gray flesh. A post-human corpse in the kelp. But now, after forty-seven and a half hours more without sleep and eating only rancid lizard flesh, there was no worst. This last hour was the worst. At least they’d stopped by the entrance to the grotto, pounded the ice-skim with their boots and gun butt, until they could refill their single bottle with spheroids of vile, scummed, much-lusted-after water. At least they’d done that. But now the water was gone and neither man could leave his post and leave the firmary to go for more. Besides, they’d taken plastic sheets from the tops of the tanks and nailed them up over the semipermeable entrance membrane so that they’d be warned by the ripping if and when Caliban entered the firmary that way, so they couldn’t easily go out that way if they wanted. Now both men’s tongues were swollen and their heads ached abominably from thirst and fatigue and the bad air and fear.

They’d had little problem with the dozen firmary servitors. Several were allowed to continue to work at their tasks of faxing out the healed bodies, while others—whose duties got in the men’s way—were incapacitated. Daeman had fired the gun at one, but that was a mistake. The flechettes tore paint and metal fragments from the servitor, and shattered one manipulator arm and ripped off an eye, but did not destroy it. Harman solved the problem by finding a heavy piece of pipe in the tank farm, wrenching it free—allowing liquid oxygen to steam into the already cold air—and bashing the servitor into immobility. The remaining servitors went into retirement the same way.

Prospero arrived when they powered up the holographic comm sphere atop the control panel, and the magus made sure their adjustments were correct on the tank voidings. First, they shut off the incoming faxnodes. Then they immediately faxed the arriving Twenty-somethings back to their Earthly nodes before any repair was started. Prospero said that there was no way to hurry the work of the blue worms and the orange fluid, so they left those tanks to cycle. The humans floating naked who were near the end of their healing were faxed back early. Of the six hundred and sixty-nine tanks in the firmary, all but thirty-eight were empty now—thirty-six of those were extensive repairs and two were regular Twenties who had faxed in and begun normal repair just before Harman and Daeman had managed to shut off the fax computers.

“Also, it pleaseth Setebos to work,” hissed the unseen Caliban’s voice.

“Shut up!” shouted Daeman. He moved between the glowing tanks, trying not to float in the low but appreciable gravity there. Shadows danced everywhere but none of them were solid enough to shoot.

“Falls to make something: piled yon pile of turfs, and squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk,” whispered Caliban from the dark. “And, with a fish tooth, scratched a moon on each, and set up endwise certain spikes of tree, and crowned the whole with a sloth’s skull atop, found dead i’ the woods, too hard for one to kill. No use at all i’ the work, for work’s sole sake; Shall someday knock it down again: so He.”

Harman laughed.

“What?” Daeman walked and floated back to the virtual controls where the holosphere allowed Prospero to stand. Parts and pieces of servitors were everywhere underfoot, mimicking the cannibal table farther back in the shadows.

“We have to get out of here soon,” said Harman, rubbing his reddened eyes. “The monster’s beginning to make sense to me.”

“Prospero,” said Daeman, moving his eyes from shadow to shadow in the shadowy forest of softly glowing tanks. “Who or what is this Setebos that Caliban keeps going on about?”

“Caliban’s mother’s god,” said the magus.

“And you said that Caliban’s mother is out there somewhere as well.” Daeman held the gun in one hand and rubbed his eyes with the other. The firmary was all blurry, and only partially because of the drifting steam from the spilled liquid oxygen.

“Yes, Sycorax still lives,” said Prospero. “But not on this isle. No longer on this isle.”

“And this Setebos?” prompted Daeman.

“The enemy of the Quiet,” said Prospero. “Like both his congregation of two, a bitter heart that bides its time and bites.”

Buzzers went off above the console. Harman activated virtual controls. Three more healed humans—almost healed, at least—were faxed away. Thirty-five remained.

“Where’d this Setebos come from?” asked Harman.

“Brought in from the dark with the voynix and other things,” said Prospero. “A minor miscalculation.”

“Is Odysseus one of those other things brought in from the dark?” asked Daeman.

Prospero laughed. “Oh, no. That poor fellow was sent here by a curse, from that crossroads where most of the post-humans have fled. Odysseus is lost in time, made to wander longer by a wicked, wicked lady whom I know as Ceres, but whom Odysseus knew—in every sense—as Circe.”

“I don’t understand,” said Harman. “Savi said she discovered Odysseus only a short time ago, sleeping in one of her cryo couches.”

“That was true,” said Prospero, “but a lie as well. Savi knew of Odysseus’ voyage and where he seeks to go. She used him as surely as he used her.”

“But he is the Achaean from the turin drama?” asked Daeman.

“Yes and no,” said Prospero in his maddening way. “The drama shows a time and tale that’s cleft. This Odysseus is from one of those branchings, yes. He’s not the Odysseus of all the telling, no.”

“You still haven’t told us who Setebos is,” said Harman. His temper was short. Six more humans faxed out of their tanks, finished and healed. Only twenty-nine remained. It was twenty minutes until the time they’d set to make a run for the sonie. The linear accelerator was close enough to see out the window now with no amplification. The wormhole was a sphere of shifting light and dark.

“Setebos is a god whose hallmark is pure, arbitrary power,” said Prospero. “He kills at random. He spares at a whim. He murders vast numbers, but with no pattern or plan. He’s a September eleven god. An Auschwitz god.”

“What?” said Daeman.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the magus.

“’Saith,” hissed Caliban from the darkness down by the cannibal table, “He may like, perchance, what profits Him. Ay, himself loves what does him good; but why? Gets no good otherwise.”

“God damn it!” roared Daeman. “I’m going to find that bastard.” He took the gun and bounced down toward the darkness. Five more human bodies faxed away and their tanks emptied with a whoosh. Twenty-four remaining.

There were bodies on the floor here, bodies on the table, parts of bodies on the chair. Daeman held Savi’s flashlight in his left hand, her gun in his right, his cowl and night lenses in place, but still the darkness through shadows. He watched and waited for movement out of the corner of his eyes.

“Daeman!” called Harman.

“In a minute,” shouted Daeman, waiting, using himself as bait. He wanted Caliban to leap. There were five flechette rounds in the gun right now and he knew from experience that they would fire rapidly if he held the trigger down. He could put five thousand crystal darts into the murdering son of a bitch if . . .

“Daeman!”

He turned back to Harman’s shout. “Do you see Caliban?” he shouted back at the lighted control area.

“No,” said Harman. “Something worse.”

Daeman heard the pressure valves roaring and the soft alarms then. Something was wrong with the tanks.

Harman pointed to various virtual readouts flashing red. “The tanks are draining before the last bodies are healed.”

“Caliban found a way to interrupt the nutrient flow from outside the firmary somewhere,” said Prospero. “These twenty-four men and women are dead.”

“Damn!” roared Harman. He pounded his fist against the wall.

Daeman walked into the tank forest, shining the flashlight into the draining tanks.

“The fluid level’s dropping fast,” he called to Harman.

“We’ll fax them out anyway.”

“You’ll be faxing corpses home with blue worms boiling in their guts,” said Daeman. “We have to get out of here.”

“That’s what Caliban wants,” shouted Harman. Daeman couldn’t see the control console now. He was deep in the rearmost row of tanks, in the dark places where he had been afraid to go before. The gun was heavy in his hand. He continued to shine the light from tank to tank.

Prospero was droning on in his old-man’s voice—

“Shut the fuck up!” shouted Daeman. “Harman, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” said the older man, slumped over the control panel. “We have to go, Daeman. We lost these last twenty-four. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Harman, listen to me!” Daeman was standing in the back row of the tanks, flashlight beam steady. “In this tank . . .”

“Daeman, we have to go! The power’s dying. Caliban is cutting the power.”

As if to prove Harman’s point, the holosphere faded and Prospero winked out of existence. The tank lights went off. The glow of the virtual control panel began fading away.

“Harman!” shouted Daeman from the shadows. “In this tank. It’s Hannah.”