Priam's Lens

ONE A Snake in Eden

The trouble with playing God is that the devil keeps popping up and spoiling the fun.

Humanity had grown and matured and finally spread outward to the stars as the dreamers had all hoped. Ancient Earth itself, birthplace of the race, was more a memory than a destination, and the starfields of an entire galactic arm had become the playthings of the new spacefaring race.

It had been a glorious time and, for humanity, a wondrous one, in which nationalism and tribalism had been almost vanquished; there was just “us,” and occasionally “them,” and when “us” met “them,” well, “us” tended to win.

They called it the age of homo in excelsis, the Ascent of Man, master of all he surveyed, the future ever brighter…

And then one day, the Titans showed up, kicked everybody in the ass, and that was that.

Even now, most people didn’t know what those Titans, which was what others called them after a while, really looked like. They’d come from somewhere in the direction of the Zuni Nebula, but almost certainly from far beyond that. They’d come in ships of pure energy that traveled in ways none could comprehend—ships that shone from some inner light and occasionally throbbed or rippled along their energy skins but otherwise did nothing. Ships that looked like nothing less than enormous winged moths of heaven, and they did the most awful thing, the one thing that humanity could neither comprehend nor allow.

They totally ignored everybody.

They didn’t answer any hails, they paid no attention to ships sent to contact them; they simply paid no attention. And when probes were sent, they were simply vaporized, not by conscious action but simply by being in contact with those great ships.

And when, even to get attention, the great weapons had been brought to bear on the newcomers’ huge shining vessels, the weapons had simply vaporized, too. The energy weapons were either absorbed or deflected or simply ignored.

The Titans did, however, like humanity’s planets. They liked them a lot, only they didn’t like them the way they’d been remade.

Helena had been typical of the kind of planets they liked. It had a stable population of almost three billion people when the Titans arrived, and a thriving economy; its primary job of repairing and building great spaceships and refitting the powerful interstellar drives was vital to the continuation of the whole region of planets. Still, nobody there had worked too hard unless they wanted to, there was plenty of recreation, robotics did the heavy lifting, and it was, as was typical of many mature worlds, a pretty nice place to settle down, have families, and live life.

All that life, all that energy, was connected to a vast interstellar empire that made them all proud to be a part of it. This busy hub of activity was right in the center of things and it knew it.

And then the Titans noticed it, and descended on it, and all communication with Helena ceased. In a matter of days, not a single intelligible signal went in or out. Some ships got off and out of there right at the start, but they could tell no one anything about what happened after that. The other ships never rose again, and any ships coming in or near also simply went quiet and off the tracking boards.

It wasn’t that others couldn’t see what was going on there. As usual, the newcomers simply didn’t pay any attention as long as you didn’t get too close, in which case you became part of the project.

The great shining ships simply remade the planet into some sort of personal ideal. They did it as simply as humans could remake worlds in a virtual reality chamber, only they really did it.

The actual method of matter to energy and energy to matter conversion couldn’t be divined; nobody had any instruments that could even measure it. But when it was done a world had been remade into a pastoral ideal. All traces of cities and road systems and any artifacts of humankind simply ceased to exist; even the air tested out as if no industrial activity had ever been there.

Of the people, it was hard to say. Scans showed hundreds of thousands of human beings still down there, having survived perhaps in shelters or cracks or perhaps by design, but there was no way to get to them, no way to find out what sort of life they might be managing in this idealized garden world. They probably would not starve; much of the vegetation was not alien or unknown but rather related to or based upon what had already been there, and the fresh water was probably about as pure as one could imagine.

But now there were millions, widely spread out, where before there had been billions. And they were stuck.

The three large continents of Helena now did have one new artificial thing each, though, to replace what had vanished. On each, fairly close to the center of each land mass, one of the great moth ships had settled and, like the worlds they’d changed, each had metamorphosed into a shining multicolored structure that stretched out for a thousand kilometers, no two exactly alike, all clearly from the same sort of minds.

Minds that were not seen, but minds that had most definitely moved in and stayed. Minds that still allowed nothing out.

Wave upon wave of these new gods, these all-powerful Titans, had swarmed from the direction of the Zuni Nebula; world upon world, system upon system, met the same fate: The worlds were not uniform, but they all were quiet, pastoral, and each had every obvious trace of its former inhabitants removed, even if the Titans left some of those inhabitants there. It was impossible to guess what life down there was like, or whether the humans there now would still be recognized as human, or if they, too, had been changed.

Across the once cultivated fields of the western continent of Helena a figure ran through the incredibly tall grass that now covered the land, so tall and so strong that the winds rippled it like water; a sea, even an ocean, of grass stretched as far as any eye could see.

It was a man, naked, scarred, limping slightly but not from any recent injury, his long hair and flowing beard giving him the visage of a wild beast. He was running through the grass that was taller than he, although he was a big man, barely glancing back, knowing he could see no pursuers in this vegetable ocean and hoping that, for the same reason, no pursuer could see him, either.

He headed for a rocky outcrop that rose from the high plains like an island in the sea, a jumbled mass of boulders and weathered white and orange rock that might have been sculpted by some mad artist. He made for it now as if his life depended on it, made for that outcrop with all the last bits of energy and will he could command, a look of desperation bordering on madness in his face and eyes, his mouth actually slightly foamed.

It was the look of a man who had known for some time that he was to be sacrificed, and who now was desperate to ensure that the sacrifice would not be in vain. Nothing about him indicated any hope beyond that, any sense that he was not in a desperate race with inevitable death.

He reached the base of the outcrop but did not immediately climb up into it. Now was when he was most vulnerable; now was when he had to emerge from the grass, however briefly, and for a moment expose himself to the view of anyone watching. He paused, nervously, tensely, listening, sniffing the air, wishing he had the kind of senses those who were after him so effortlessly possessed and used.

He heard nothing, nothing but the hissing of the gentle but persistent wind rustling the tops of the two-meter-tall grasses, creating the waves and ripples all around.

Finally, he decided to take the chance, since staying there too long would be just as risky. If he had not lost them, then this was the only place he could possibly have been heading. It hadn’t been clear what sort of trap that represented when he’d set out; it was one of those details that had been omitted in his instructions. One of many such, he reflected ruefully.

Quickly, now! Up and onto the rocks, and for one brief moment he chanced a look around at the tops of the grasses to see if there were any clear signs of movement. He could see nothing, but didn’t dare take enough time to really see if there was something out there or not; with the steady winds and rippling grasses, whatever might be there would have to be obvious to be seen.

Now he was concealed within the rocks, and could push aside a jagged pink boulder that looked as if it had fallen there ages ago and squeeze down inside a small cavity that revealed itself. As soon as he was in, the boulder rolled back over the opening, not quite covering or blocking it, but, he hoped, enough to fool anyone looking for him.

Now, in the cool dark, he slowly maneuvered his body down a widening passage he had been told to expect. It was reassuring that things here, at least, were going by the script. Deep within, the air suddenly smelled different, the sounds ceased, and there was the deadly stillness of a tomb.

Corning to a floorlike area in the rock, he felt around, finally pulled out a small device, and, hefting it, pressed a stud on one side.

The soft glow of a flashlight illuminated the small chamber, sufficient light for him to check on his things and ensure that nothing had been disturbed. He was astonished that it worked, that it was still here at all. He must have been the first one in here in almost a hundred years, and here was the flashlight, fully charged, as if it had been left here only yesterday.

There would be very little time once he began transmission. The Titan grid would seize upon it in a matter of seconds, take hold of it, eat it, dissipate it. Then the fun would begin. Then they would be coming for him from all around, sensing the energy activity. It was only in those precious few seconds that he had a chance of getting a message out. Everything they’d done up to now depended on that; everything he’d pledged, even his own life, was based upon that theoretical window between action and reaction that had sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. He still didn’t want to do it, but if revenge was the only thing left to him, he’d take it.

Still, he knew that if it didn’t work this first time, then he would die horribly and for nothing.

If it did, he might still die horribly, but maybe, just maybe, unlike the billions who had been snuffed out in the takeover, his death would have real value, real meaning. If, of course, the data got out, and if, as well, the Dutchman’s automated listening posts intercepted it and passed it along. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.

It would certainly be his head in the noose no matter what. There was no way to record all this, no way to input it into fancy data capsules or hand off to your Personal Agent like back in the old days here, those days that now seemed more like a dream, a fairy story from the distant past made up by people to give themselves hope when they had none. No, everything was in his head, and that would have to be the data source.

He had been born near here, in a town that no longer existed, into a civilization that no longer existed, but he’d been one of the lucky ones to get out before the Fall. Back now after all these years, he was astonished that this old butte survived. When he’d seen it, the only thing in the entire region that looked familiar, he’d begun to hope once more that perhaps not all had been wiped away. The Titans might have godlike, unimaginable powers, but they did have one characteristic that gave some comfort that they weren’t absolute, weren’t perfect: like the humans they barely noticed, they would just as soon cover something over as rebuild it. They kept a great deal of the landforms and seas the way they were because to make too radical a series of changes could unbalance the whole thing. Not that they couldn’t create anew from scratch—they’d certainly done it with several planets considered dead and worthless by humans. But if it could be done by just fudging a little here, a little there, and sweeping some of the dirt under the rug so it looked clean, that was good enough for most.

Maybe this time a little laziness would cause them to stub their toe. That laziness had caused them to unknowingly leave a loaded gun buried here, one they didn’t know about and certainly never dreamed could hurt them. Maybe…

He wasn’t kidding himself that he had the key to human salvation, or even a good answer to the greatest threat in all creation, but when one side had almost “Let there be light!” kind of power and your side had spitballs and rubber bands, well, maybe something that could really hurt them would at least make them notice, and that’s what he wanted to do more than anything else in the world.

He wanted to hurt them. He wanted to hurt them bad.

If this really could hurt them. If in fact it either existed or could be built or brought up to operational levels before it was snuffed out. If there was anybody left out there with enough freedom and guts and stubbornness and all the rest to find it, put it together, and use it.

He thought he heard something, something like a rock falling inside the cavern. He was still and so was the air inside, and there was no sound of interior water. Rocks didn’t just fall, and he knew it. He couldn’t stall any more. He wasn’t up to outrunning them, and in here he could hardly hide from them. The hell with it. What the hell was he prolonging life in this place for, anyway?

The power was on; it had been building up for more than two years now, taken from a deep geothermal plant embedded well down in the mantle of the planetary crust. That was why they had never noticed it. Crusts moved, and mantles shifted on geologically active worlds, and they hadn’t even guessed that the controlling force was right under their theoretical noses.

He slid down into a rocky seat that had once been much more elaborate, and much more comfortable, when this place was active, the remnant of a planetary defense unit left over from the days when godlike beings from the remotest regions of the galaxy hadn’t been needed to make humans die. No, human beings did a lot of killing themselves, and civil wars had always been the worst.

No civil wars now. No, indeed. And all those billions and billions who’d died in those wars—what would they think now? Would they think their cause still just and true and worth the horrors of war if they saw what the result would be for their descendants?

There was another sound of something dropping and hitting against the sides of the cavern. He tensed, then found himself curiously calm, curiously detached all of a sudden. He reached down, fished out the spindly headset he’d cobbled together from bits and pieces scrounged out of a hundred buried ruins and put it on. Instantly he could feel the connection, feel the raw power that was there at his command. One shot.

Had both the moons been up? Of course they had. He’d worked out the lunar tables a million times. So long as they were fully in the sky this shot would find the spots on it. Find, record, relay, broadcast.

Priam’s Lens. The great secret that never got finished because it ran out of time. But the math was right, the theory was correct. Full on. They could have it, and all his innermost secrets and feelings as well. He couldn’t stop it. There wasn’t exactly time, nor were there optimal conditions for a nice, neat package. Somebody would have to sift the wheat from the chaff.

He froze for a moment, almost feeling them around him. It was now or never. He shut his eyes, leaned back, and gave the mental command to fire.

There was an enormous roar, as if a great and terrible wind was contained inside the cavern, and it rushed out and past and out and was away at the speed of light. He felt as if he were falling into a great abyss, and his mind burned, and he couldn’t help it. The animal part of him, the only part that could function, screamed in pain and terror, screamed so loud that it echoed horribly back and forth along the walls of the cave in an inhuman and terrifying wail.

Whoever else was moving in on him wasn’t prepared for that: four lithe forms, briefly illuminated in the blast of energy, moved swiftly back out, their survival reflex overcoming any immediate plans. Besides, where was this poor creature going to go? If, of course, something that screamed like that could possibly survive.

Once outside, they looked around in the bright, clear sunlight, trying to figure out what had happened as best their minds could. Nothing seemed to have happened; it all looked the same.

The noise, the inside light, the screeching had all stopped, too. They froze, acting as one, listening, then clicked their needlelike nails and nodded in agreement, and three of them slid back in while the fourth guarded the entrance.

Infrared, which hadn’t worked before, now did. Whatever had raised the temperature here and blinded that part of their abilities was gone, spent in that single blast and roar. Now, halfway down, they saw the quarry. It was still lying there, but it seemed to be coming around, groping for some kind of support. Whoever or whatever it was, it was now apparently blind. They didn’t mind that, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t and wouldn’t play with it before the kill.

Utilizing a type of telepathic connection and using their nails to time actions with a series of clicks, they made their way around and down toward the prey, who could now be heard breathing hard, sounding panicked and confused. Whatever he had done, it had hurt him.

A Wild One for sure. They didn’t quite think in words like that, more in a series of holographic concepts and pictures and actions. They had been specifically bred to hunt and kill Wild Ones, particularly the sick and injured. They liked it. It was their identity, their function.

Below, enough of his senses had returned that he knew they were there, knew that they were there to kill him. He couldn’t remember very much, not even who or what or where he was nor how he’d come to this, but he knew that those who hunted and killed had him trapped.

He pulled himself out and tried to stand, but he was horribly dizzy. As he put out a hand to steady himself on the rock wall, he heard the clicking. Behind him. In front of him. Above him.

Animal survival took over. If two predators were on either side and one was up where the exit clearly was, you went for the one. He couldn’t see any of them, not in this darkness, but he got the impression that they could see him. He heard a tinkling bit of cruel laughter as he tried to lash out in the direction of a close-by set of clicks. They would do their clicking at his level, but he quickly realized that they were having their sport with him, that at no time were they where the clicks led his ears to believe they were.

There was a click, and something cold, hard, and metallic drawn softly and quickly across his back. He whirled and lunged for where he thought the attacker had gone, but all he managed to do was run into the opposite wall of the cave and draw more derisive laughter, made all the worse by its echoing within the cave. They would never let him climb out, but it was narrow and he could feel the airflow toward the exit. If he moved quickly, he might catch the one above off guard or cause the bottom two to be momentarily off balance. It was better than staying here, anyway.

With all the remaining energy in his aching body he moved as fast as he could up and along the steps and rock gradations toward that airflow. He actually made it most of the way, could almost see the entrance notch, when two small forms on either side of the path rushed out, one in front and one in back, and this time the nails drawn across his chest and back bit deeply and painfully into his flesh while spinning him around. He almost lost his balance and fell, but shock from his previous ordeal and adrenaline now kept him going, ignoring the pain, rushing for that notch and the open sky.

One of them dropped from the upper area right in front of him, and he pushed on right to it, now visible as a small shadowy shape, pushing at it with all his might. Twenty centimeters times four fingers worth of thick, sharp needle nails penetrated his abdomen, and more went through his crotch, penetrating and ripping at his scrotum. The pain was nearly unbearable, but the attacker was small and light enough that his sheer size and bulk carried him on, screaming in pain, walking right over the one who’d so wounded him and up, out, into the sunlight, into the warmth!

Bleeding, in agony, he nonetheless managed to get him-self out of the crevice and onto the side of the rocky outcrop itself. He was wounded, perhaps mortally, but if he could just get down there, just get into the tall grass and lie down, at least they might not get his body!

A small naked form suddenly popped up right in front of him, a form so amazing to his sight that he stopped dead, staring, as she clicked those needles that she had for fingernails. There was a sound on either side of him, and he turned to see absolutely identical copies of this one in front of him crouched on either side, and he heard a fourth behind.

“My god!” the last part of his sanity and humanity cried out. “You—Oh! My God! Not you!”

And with that the pack, who understood not a word, tore him to shreds and fought over the tastier internal organs.