Mother Death

4

What with the compression of time after so much racing through space, it felt to Ord as if he hadn’t been away from home for more than a long afternoon.

Or a few decades, at most.

Yet something else inside him, persistent and bittersweet, felt the press of the ages. These beautiful mansions had stood empty on these sculpted peaks for a very long time, and the splendid forests and meadows had grown wild, and every extraordinary city on the Earth had swollen until there was only one megatropolis encircling the globe… and not only had Ord been gone for a long time, but in some ways, he had never been to this place before.

Perched on a comfortable seat inside the luxurious Family transport, he studied his surroundings with a thousand heightened senses. For the last seven months, he had done little else. And likewise, the Earth had never stopped studying him. He could feel every stare, every subtle touch, and coursing through the air were the whispered questions:

“Is he the one?”

“Or a decoy?” “Or a lesser criminal, maybe?

“Or nobody… perhaps…?”

And then, as always:

“But if it is Ord, when how where do we act…?”

Even in its heyday, the gray-gold Sanchex pyramid had a foreboding, almost angry appearance. As it fell away behind him, Ord gratefully turned his eyes by the dozens, more and more of him watching the Chamberlain mansion—an enormous cylinder of tailored white coral laid over pink granite bones. And again, Ord had that divided impression of never having left, and seeing nothing that was truly familiar.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” a voice inquired.

Xo’s voice.

Looking up, Ord conjured a smile and flipped his tail in an amiable fashion, answering the question with gestures, then saying, “This is very fun. Sir.”

The Nuyen dropped to his knees, touching a shoulder while a private voice remarked, “I know it’s you, Ord. I know.”

It felt like an ancient trick. A trick tried often and one that had never worked.

With his public voice, the boy said, “I don’t blame the Nuyens for what happened. To my home world, I mean. My parents have explained it—”

“We tried to help you,” Xo interjected.

“Your brother tried his very best. Absolutely.” It had been an enormous public relations disaster, not to mention a tragedy. Anti-Family forces had outmaneuvered a young Nuyen, and nearly a billion civilians died in the crossfire. “I’m just sorry that I can’t visit your home today,” Ord claimed. “I would so much want to thank each of you personally…

Xo nodded. He was wearing a smooth face and the body of a young adult and the bright cheerful eyes of an imbecile. It was all decoration, all a ruse. No one else inside the transport suspected that this wasn’t one of the Nuyens’ young children. He was a full adult, modified and enlarged, and for most of humanity, indecipherable.

This wasn’t a fearful and simple and clumsy Nuyen, and that was another sign—perhaps the most powerful yet—that Ord didn’t belong in this place.

With his private voice, Xo promised, “We absolutely don’t want to harm you. We only want to help you, Ord.”

Then came a seductive argument—intense and focused, full of promises of forgiveness for every crime, known and unknown—and while Xo’s secret voices begged with him to confess and surrender, his public voice was saying, “On the first day of the year, my Family opens its doors to the Earth. It’s a show of friendship. Anyone can join us through his universal window. And if you come, I’ll give you a tour of my house.”

Ord said nothing.

With every voice, Xo said, “Think about it then,” and he rose, then retreated, nothing about him showing the slightest concern.

PRIDE AND SACRIFICE.

The words had been cut into the granite above the doorway, and as people filed inside, listening more to one another than their guide, Ord couldn’t help but leap up, touching the dense pink rock with his fingertips.

That was his habit, his little ritual.

Xo saw the gesture, and froze. Other Nuyens triggered a silent alarm that engulfed the Earth, then jumped across the solar system, alerting the appropriate AIs and humans. Before the little group of sightseers could reach the first stair, a multitude of defensive networks were begging for information and instructions. Ord watched the careful panic, and in the same moment, he concentrated on closer, more immediate hazards.

The mansion was a trap. Or more accurately, it was a series of ingenious, closely nested and independent traps.

Antimatter mines lay beneath the stairs and behind solid walls. Null-field generators waited to ensnare anyone foolish enough to stumble too close. Straight overhead, inside Ord’s old bedroom, an AI assassin waited to inject its victim with quantumware toxins and assorted eschers that would muddle the most sophisticated mind. But perhaps the most dangerous enemy stood behind him, pressing lightly at the small of his back, the dry, smooth, and worried voice saying, “Please don’t. Don’t touch the emblems, son.”

With a boy’s voice, Ord said, “I’m sorry. Sir.”

Each guest stood on his own stair, and they were being lifted, spiraling their way up through the famous structure.

With a stronger voice, Xo asked, “What would you like to see first?”

“The penthouse, please.” The boy smiled at his adoptive parents. “I want to see where Alice lived after she came home again.”

The Nuyen smiled and said, “Naturally.”

Ord could feel Xo’s invisible bulk. Family members were given more and more talents as they grew, and Xo was a respectable age. But he was oddly transformed. Ord smelled weird abilities laid over his ape bones. Dark matter and profound energies clung to him, reaching for kilometers in every direction. There were eschers and quantumware toxins as well as charismatic talents at least as powerful as Alice’s old systems. And woven into everything were talents that Ord couldn’t quite weigh. Yet.

An enormous quantity of human genius had spent the millennia doing nothing but making ready for Ord’s return.

Ord always nourished a healthy sense of fear. But glancing over his shoulder, a genuine terror took hold. What if he had come all this way for nothing? Instead of answers, what if he was captured? Dismembered? Or worse?

How could he help rebuild the Great Peace if he were dead?

Unless that’s what Alice wanted to have happen. My death saves the galaxy, somehow. It was a seductive, fatalistic notion that found a ready home inside him. It spread through him like an explosion, then he just as abruptly realized where that crippling notion had come from… and he threw it aside…

Xo.

For an instant, Ord considered fleeing.

But that was another one of Xo’s tricks. Ord crushed the idea, telling himself that he wouldn’t leave, that he would see this through, whatever happened…

Xo sensed a change. “Yes?”

“In the histories,” said the boy, “there’s a Nuyen with your name. Xo was a friend of the Chamberlains’ baby.”

“Ord,” said Xo. “Which, by coincidence, is very similar to your name.”

“Is it?” He almost laughed. “Alice became Ord’s friend.”

“She manipulated him, you mean. She practically enslaved him.” Xo said the words with every mouth, in a great chorus.

“Are you the same Xo?”

“I am. Yes.”

People were startled. Unnerved. The boy’s father bristled, then with a wounded tone said, “Sir,” twice. “Sir. I don’t understand. I was led to believe that only youngsters served as tour guides—”

Ord explained, “He thinks that I’m dangerous, Father.”

The parents clung to one another, horrified by the idea.

“But I’m not dangerous. Not even a little.” He stared at his childhood friend, saying, “There was another Baby. A Sanchex. What was her name?”

“You know,” the Nuyen replied.

“So where’s Ravleen? Giving tours, like you do?”

Silence.

They had already risen through most of the mansion. The cylindrical walls were covered with an elaborate, ever-changing mural. Originally, these projected images showed historic moments of glory, the Chamberlains always front and center. But old successes had been replaced by stark images: Living worlds were turned to molten iron and steam; panicked faces evaporated in storms of hard radiation; a trillion refugees fought for berths on scarce, overcrowded starships, sometimes with nothing but fingernails and teeth.

“The Chamberlain legacy.” Their guide’s voice was booming. “This is why they were disbanded. This is why they earned our scorn. And this is why my Family—those who would never hurt you—are disarming and neutralizing the outlaw Chamberlains.”

The razored sense of tension was infectious.

Staring at the nightmarish images, the boy’s eyes changed in subtle ways, pulling the face with them.

Suddenly he was intrigued by the carnage. Awestruck.

“Alice’s final days of freedom were spent in here,” Xo declared. Then he paused, openly glaring at the boy.

“Mama?” the boy squeaked.

With hands and tails, then their bodies, his parents surrounded him, pretending they could actually protect him.

The stairs suddenly deposited everyone on the landing, standing before a thick crystal door that shouldn’t have been closed.

Xo whispered something too soft to be understood.

“Where’s the penthouse?” asked the boy. “I want to see the penthouse!”

Xo said, “No.”

He said, “We have to leave now. I’m sorry.”

Then the boy gave the door a little kick, blubbering, “Why? I want to see it! I want to see where Alice was…!”

Ord was standing on the opposite side of the door, watching, carefully cutting the final tethers to his camouflage. He had woven that child from ordinary matter, then convinced the childless couple that he was theirs, and genuine. And that’s how they regarded him now, still trying to shield him, riding the descending stairs with the other dumbfounded guests.

Only the Nuyen lingered.

With a mixture of terror and awe, Xo touched the crystal door softly, using a thousand hands.

“Why did you have to come back here?” he asked. “When you could be anywhere, doing anything, why did you have to pick on little me…?”