service."
"One that we all will enjoy," another prefect added.
Caesar ignored them. "My senses are no different."
"Your balance?" Donovan asked.
Caesar thought, "Seems to be better." The doctor nodded. "I feel … like I'm watching myself move from a great distance. Like I'm operating a remote controlled toy."
Ryall smiled slightly, "You very nearly are, imperator."
The Caesar didn't respond. He paced a few steps and then said, "You've given me some measure of mobility, doctor, and I thank you." Donovan bowed low and the leader continued, "But more must be done."
"Of course, lord."
"I need to feel. I need to smell." Caesar recalled his nearly involuntary sigh. "I would like to breathe again, doctor."
Donovan understood and nodded very slowly. "Mobility was one step …"
"One you haven't fully realized, doctor," Caesar interrupted.
"Granted," Ryall muttered. "Still, the body you are using is the most advanced unit ever produced on Larsa."
Caesar held up his hand and flexed his fingers. "Needs work."
"I could store your memory itself in that body, lord," Donovan began, "but the components that drive your higher logic functions and your sensors … they are still much too large."
The imperator looked around the room. He took a step toward the prefects when he felt the slack in the datacables tighten. He looked behind himself and saw that the coils were beginning to drag with him across the floor. Caesar reached for his lower back and ran his fingers around the circular connectors. He stroked the cables away from his body and lifted a few of them up as he looked toward Donovan.
"I don't care how long and hard you must work, I don't care whose help you employ," Maxentius said, "I must evolve."
XIII
THE MESSENGERS
157 Years Before the End
Conflict.
It attracted the male tender and he drew toward it in the Iberian Sea. His form coalesced by that of High Legate Toma Marcus. He served the Caesar, a lead figure in the death of humanity. The Messengers saw this.
"Status," Marcus said while he scanned the ocean with a monocular.
A sub-tribune held a computer display below his face and began to read, "The boats withdrew after their last attack. Aerial units say they retreated back to the coast. The same docks and villages as before."
Marcus sat down and placed the viewing device on the table. He rubbed his eyes and looked across the faces of his senior staff.
The tender didn't interfere, but he looked into the mind of the high legate. He sensed the frustration. More than three years here on Gela. Dozens of attacks on the port by fishermen with old weapons. He felt fear, too. One of the two legions sent here had been recalled only a month ago. Marcus worried that, if a full attack came, he wouldn't be prepared with only one legion.
"My lord," a centurion said as she ran into the room. "Word from Tiber."
Marcus straightened and pulled on the lower edge of his tunic. "Speak."
The young woman lifted her device and pressed the screen. Her eyes scanned it first and then she read, "Lord Imperator Caesar Maxentius the Ninth names High Legate Toma Marcus his Magister." The older man's head lowered but she continued, "The Senate of Tiberia has voted to support the imperator's actions to defend the island of Gela and the port of Ofun. The Magister shall use whatever force is necessary to quell these attacks and prevent further incursions upon the sovereign land of the Tiberian Empire."
Marcus nodded and stood. "Very well." His voice was nearly a whisper. The male Messenger listened to his inner mind. Finally. Action, after so long. Are we ready? 'Whatever force is necessary' … what does that mean?
The tender listened to each of the tribunes and generals in the room. Their minds also reeled with doubt and questions. Fear and excitement. Their respiration quickened and the high legate began to give orders for the movement of their forces.
The Messenger cast himself from that room and across the body of water. He found the shores of Dogura and the tiny villages targeted by the Caesar's eye. Families slept in huts by the beach. Substantial buildings stood upon the hillside. Ofun's attackers left the fishing boats, moved quietly between the structures and toward waiting vehicles that bore them from the coast.
The tender passed through the wooden walls and saw the dreams of the people inside. Surrealist, absurdist, realistic. Echoes of thought and memory. A child play by a pond, tossing food into red water. A young boy ran through the forest on four legs, hunting a rabbit. The father dug ditches in the scorching sunlight while his long-dead grandmother yelled at him.
He looked to the thoughts of the conscious mother. She lay awake in bed, pondering the next day's meals. There wasn't enough food for them all and she would go without again.
The Messenger moved to another building and watched a fisherman cradle his infant child.
"Go to sleep," he told his wife. "It is my turn."
The child cried and the father tempted her lips with the nipple of a bottle. She suckled for a moment but then spat it out and cried again. The father's head rolled back and he swore quietly.
Why won't you sleep?! he screamed in his head. Please, just go to sleep! His mind fired in a rage and his thoughts cried in anger. And then he did something that surprised the tender. He kissed the child's forehead. The emotions that boiled within his mind began to subside. He cradled the baby and all seemed well.
Then the Tiberians came.
It began with a volley of rockets fired by a line of gyrocopters. Dozens streaked through the air and rent the sand and stone open with explosions. The dreams of the sleeping vaporized into nothingness. The Messenger was flooded with their bursts of fear.
Another volley tore into the seaside huts. Wood splintered and pierced the skin of the people inside. They didn't react because the detonations knocked them unconscious or worse.
The tender stood and watched.
The gyrocopters roared overhead and their cannons fired hundreds of projectiles into the homes and vehicles. More rockets were launched and the larger homes on the hill quaked and cracked. Screams finally began to be heard above the destruction. People fled into the streets.
The male drifted into the wrecked remnant of one structure. The colorful dreams were gone. Their emotions were silent. Before, their thoughts seemed tethered to these people's minds, forming a tapestry all around the Messenger. Now the strings had been cut. The tapestry was tattered and no spark was left in these people.
A woman screamed and the tender saw. Her fisherman husband lay dead, clutching, protecting the dead body of their child. She wailed.
The Messenger felt the damage done to this world's tree.
The female tender dwelled with a family near the Getulian Desert in the nation of Ghattaffan. The mother, Minah Gaber, was working in a marketplace. She stood behind a cart filled with baskets of fruits and other items.
"Fresh dates!" she called. "Apples from the east!"
An older woman approached and looked over the goods. "How much for the apples?"
Gaber smiled and said, "Only two dira each." The older woman didn't see this as a deal. She was ready to scoff when Minah said, "Buy four and get the fifth free."
Her wrinkled brow lifted and she said, "Done." She removed the bills from her pocket and counted them out. She gave four to Gaber as she deposited the fruit in her canvas bag.
When the customer left, Minah began to speak to herself in her mind.
Thank you, God, for this. I beg you to please send another.
As she finished the thought, a man approached, chewing part of his sandwich, and said, "Give me a box of almonds."
She smiled and pulled a white paper box from under the cart. "Three dira, please."
Without a word, the man tossed three bills onto the cart and took the box from her hands.
Minah gleefully put the m
oney away and thought to herself, Thank you, God, again. I humbly ask you to send another customer to me.
The tender looked about and saw no one who would approach. Still, Gaber seemed pleased. She hummed music and trumpeted the goods she had for sale to each person who walked past. The lunch period ended and the market quieted considerably. Minah, whose dark desert skin contrasted with her wide, white smile, began to hum.
The Messenger looked deeper in her mind. She scanned through her memories and saw the connective tissue of her faith. She was Ramani, a centuries-old offshoot of the Median Church. The female withdrew as the threads grew muddled. She needed to look into the past further than this one person could remember. She sought the minds still tied to the roots of this world's tree.
Ancient Badaria … many thousands of years ago. Scattered tribes with multiple deities began to unify. Years after that, wars eliminated whole nations. Gods mingled in the people's minds; some were lost through attrition. Ice crept upon the world an age later. Many thousands of people risked the grinding ice of the north and walked across the ocean to eastern Isinnia. Others sailed and reached western Eridia and western Isinnia. They took with them the deities of the old lands.
War continued in the new regions for centuries. One victorious tribal nation exalted their deity of the sky above the rest, becoming the first major monotheist group. Ohr Zahd, they called it, and whosoever they conquered were compelled to worship him. Through the ages, new leaders and new priests adjusted the message. Books were written. Holy scriptures composed by