He knew the way. The lift took a very long time getting there. He thought about how often, since his first, forced, visit to the Source, he had had nightmares of being trapped in one of these fucking things. Almost as often as he had dreamed about drowning.…
The lift let him out at last, in the deceptively ordinary reception area before the unmarked doors that opened on darkness. He glanced at his watch, checking the time again as he crossed the open space. He had to make this take long enough, just long enough.… The guards, human and electronic, let him pass without comment; the doors welcomed him.
Reede stopped just inside, as the doors sealed shut behind him; feeling his heart miss a beat. His sweating hands tightened around the precious vial of silver fluid. I am the god of death.… “Master,” he said, straining in the blackness for an almost undetectable glimmer of red. “I have it.”
“Kullervo,” the Source’s voice whispered, perfectly clear to him now. Yes. He saw it now, the faint glow of ember-light. “The water of life? Bring it to me. Bring it here.…”
He started forward, shuffling his feet, moving cautiously despite the eagerness in the Source’s voice. He reached the seat in which he was always forced to sit, finding it abruptly in the darkness. He began to grope his way around it.
“Come here,” the Source said. “Come closer. Give it to me—”
Reede obeyed, moving like a man working his way through a minefield as he approached the dim, indefinable silhouette. He had never been permitted to approach this closely before. For all he knew, this could be another illusion, another projection—for all he knew, he could be here alone. But he thought not.
He collided with the impenetrable edge of something that abruptly stopped his forward momentum. He fumbled in front of him with his hands, finding a flat, cold surface that stung the hypersensitive skin of his fingers. “Here it is, Master.” He set the vial down on it, working by touch, and began to back away.
“Stop,” the Source said. “Come forward again.”
Reede unlocked his muscles and moved forward again, until he encountered the hard edge of the obstacle between them. He folded his fingers over the edge, clung to it, grateful that it was still there, separating them.
A sudden beam of blue-violet light struck him, falling on him from above, bathing him in blinding brilliance. He shut his eyes against the glare, his shirt fluorescing like a strange flower in the darkness. For you, Mundilfoere.… He let his hands drop to his sides, letting her memory form a sublime and exalted space within him, an adhani of perfect calm in which he endured whatever perverse scrutiny was being inflicted on his body and his soul. The light went out again, abruptly. He waited, motionless.
“So, you’ve actually done it…” the Source whispered. “You’ve synthesized a form of the water of life which we can reproduce, and sell—”
“Yes, Master.”
“You told Gundhalinu it was impossible.”
“I said I lied about that.”
“But you wouldn’t lie to me,” the Source whispered. “Would you—?”
“No, Master,” he said.
“You told me it would take a long time to find the answer. But you’ve found it already?”
“I had a lot of time to think, while I was recovering.” Somehow he kept the words uninflected.
“I’m sure you did. I hope you have given a lot of thought to humility, and futility.”
“Yes, Master.”
“And if I take this, I will find it to be as good as the original.”
“Better,” Reede said softly. “It’s better.”
There was a moment of silence. “In what way?” the Source asked.
“It’s stable. Just what you asked for. I found a way to extend its life outside of the mer’s body. Makes it easier to produce, and ship, and sell—”
A beam of blinding light struck the invisible surface in front of him like a sword, focused on the vial he had set there. He shut his eyes again against the brilliance; he could see its line of brightness through his closed lids.
And then, as suddenly, there was only darkness again. He opened his dazzled eyes, blinking uselessly.
“Well?” the Source demanded suddenly, his voice disintegrating with impatience. “What is it?”
“What—?” Reede broke off, as he realized the Source was not speaking to him now, but instead demanding an answer from the hidden data system that had just run an analysis on the contents of his vial.
He heard a sudden rustling in the darkness, as if something had moved abruptly, and a guttural noise that might have been a curse. He waited; invisible, implacable.
“Congratulations, Reede…” the Source’s voice murmured at last. “Or should I congratulate Vanamoinen? It is what you say it is … perfect. Better than before. You truly are a genius—” Something in his voice made Reede freeze with the sudden fear that his usefulness had ended, and he was about to die. But the Source chuckled unexpectedly, and muttered, “Who knows what new worlds you will conquer for me?”
Reede did not answer. Drink it, he thought. Come on, take it, you putrescent bastard. Drink it. “The first dose is yours, Master,” he said finally, trying to keep the urgent need out of his voice. “That’s why I brought it straight to you. So you could be the first.”
“What?” the Source said, with faint mockery. “You didn’t try it first on yourself, like you did with the water of death?”
“What’s the point?” Reede said harshly. “It wouldn’t do me any good. It’s yours, Master…” adding just the right note of bitterness, “just like I am.”
“Yes,” the Source murmured. “Yes, that’s fitting.”
Reede heard another rustling sound, as if someone had shifted his weight. He stared at the spot where he imagined he had set down the vial on the surface that separated them, stared so intently that he almost thought he could really make it out, limned with a faint corona of red; that he could really see a dark, shapeless form come down on it, covering it, taking it away. There was more rustling; he was sure now that the glow was brighter, that he could see clearly the misshapen lump that pretended to be a human form somewhere in front of him, when before he had not even been sure of that. It was happening, even here.
He heard a sigh of satisfaction, “At last,” the Source whispered. “It feels right.… Yes—it feels the way I remember it.”
Elation sang through him. At last … And there was still enough time: he had enough time to twist the knife. “There’s something I forgot to tell you,” he said. “Something else about the water of life. It isn’t just stable outside the body of a mer. It’s stable in the host.”
“What do you mean?” the Source rasped. “Stable for how long—?”
“Decades, at least. I’m not really sure. It’s working right now, taking the measure of your DNA, preserving every system and function in your body just the way it finds them at this exact moment. Nothing will change, everything will remain the same from now on.…”
“Then no one will need it more than once over decades,” the Source snarled. “There’s no profit in that—”
“I suppose not,” Reede murmured. “But that’s not the real problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“The real problem is what it does to you.”
“What—?” the Source breathed.
“The water of life was designed to produce longevity in mers, not human beings. The mers were bioengineered—their genetic makeup is far simpler than ours, far more streamlined. Our bodies were designed by trial and error; we’re a crude, inefficient mess by comparison.” Reede let a smile start; let the Source feel it grow, cancerous. “The water of life has a very narrow definition of ‘normal function’ for any given biological system. The only reason that human beings were able to use it to slow their own aging was because it was always breaking down. It never imposed limits on a human body for more than a day without interruption. It allowed the body the freedom it needed to change … to vary its natural cycle
s, its rhythms, its randomness. Chaos—” he said savagely, “versus Order.”
He pressed forward, on the cutting-edge of darkness. He could see a silhouette clearly now, as the space before him flickered, momentarily brightening. He could not tell what it was the silhouette of; but he was beyond caring. “Pretty soon your short-term memory is going to start failing. Pretty soon you’ll be living in isolation, because your immune system won’t be able to respond to an attack.… Pretty soon you’ll be perfection. The Old Empire thought they’d found perfection. That’s what destroyed them. They say perfection makes the gods jealous.…” He pushed away from the hard edge of the night, laughing as he heard the Source swear again, a guttural, viscous sound. He realized that he could see the shadow outlines of his own hands, his body, now.
“I don’t believe you,” the Source snarled, and he heard fear in it. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Reede’s mouth twisted. “‘Things change.’ Do you remember when you said that to me? I do. Now the power is in my hands. You told me Mundilfoere took a long time to die.… How long do you think you’ll take—?”
“Why is it so bright in here?” the Source shouted in sudden fury, into the air. “It’s too bright in here!”
“Blame me,” Reede said. “It’s my fault. It’s my doing, Jaakola. My virals are taking over your body and they’re taking over your entire citadel too. Soon you’ll have no defenses at all.”
“It isn’t possible—”
“Then why is it happening?” Reede whispered. Only silence answered him. “Would you like me to stop it? What if I could still stop it, would you give me anything I wanted? Everything? How much do you really control, how long is your reach? What secrets do you know … what’s enough to buy back your life?”
“What do you want?” the Source grated, the words like chains dragging. “What—?”
“I want you to beg. You made me beg for Mundilfoere’s life, you stinking, sadistic bastard … I want you to beg me for yours.”
“Stop it.…”
“What?”
“Stop it! Stop, stop it, by the Unspoken Name, I’ll give you anything you want, you lunatic, everything, name anything you want, just tell me there’s a way to stop it!”
Reede began to laugh. “You can’t stop it—there isn’t any way.”
He heard a strangled sound of disbelief, or rage. “You brain-dead puppet! You madman!” Something lunged at him across the barrier between them; he danced backward, still laughing, untouched. “You’re killing yourself too!” the Source bellowed. “You fucking lunatic, you’ll kill us all!”
“That’s the idea,” Reede said softly. “That’s what I’m here for.” He began to back away. “Your enemies are coming, Jaakola. I’d run, if I was you. I’d hide.… Not that it’ll do you any good.” He turned, moving toward the doors, able to see them now, a faint outline in darker gray.
“Kullervo!” The ruined voice shrieked obscenities somewhere behind him. The room brightened, graying like fog at sunrise, revealing the featureless wall, the doors, growing closer with every step. If he turned back, he knew he would be able to see it now—the face of his nightmares, still screaming impotently. He did not look back.
He reached the doors, and flung himself against them with all his strength. They gave way, dissolving under his impact, so that he sprawled through into the daylight beyond.
Jaakola was screaming at the guards now, screaming for them to cut him down. Reede scrambled up and lunged into the closest of them, catching him in the stomach, knocking him flat. He grabbed the man’s fallen stun rifle; even as he rolled for it seeing the other guard raise his own gun, knowing that it would be too late.
A wall of white fire blotted out the blue expanse of sky, as the meter-thick ceramic of the window behind the guard blew inward with a blinding roar. Reede flung up his arms, covering his head as a hurricane of transparent shrapnel hurtled through the space around him. He was slammed back against the wall beside the guard he had sent down, lacerated in a dozen places at once as the fragments kept falling, as time itself seemed to go into slow motion. Already—the citadel’s defenses were failing already, and somehow everybody already knew it. Gods—it was happening too fast.
He staggered to his feet, bleeding, deafened. He saw the eyes of the man who lay beside him staring up at him, wide and unblinking; saw the dagger of shattered ceralloy protruding from his skull. There was no sign at all of the other guard; as his vision cleared he saw a spray of red splattered across the far wall like graffiti. He heard more explosions in the distance, dimly; felt them through the floor as the entire structure shuddered. There was no more shouting, no screaming, no sound at all now coming from the room he had just escaped. It was dark again in there, as he looked through the doorway.
He turned back in stunned disbelief to the gaping breach in the wall, the blue vastness of the sky beyond it; saw smoke tendriling upward as the thorn forest caught fire below. Smoke stung his eyes and throat as he stooped down to pick up the guard’s rifle. He turned away again, stumbling toward the lift. He beat his fist on the callplate; laughed incredulously as the doors opened to him and he found the lift waiting.
He gave it an override command, preventing it from stopping until he had reached his destination. He slumped against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor as the lift dropped him level after level, its velocity varying from sluggish to precipitous. He stared at his bloody, stupefied reflection gaping back at him from the polished metal, wondering whether Niburu and the others were still waiting, or had gotten clear and gone up already.
If they weren’t crazy they’d gone, they’d saved themselves. If they hadn’t, he cursed them for fools; if they had he cursed them for abandoning him when he suddenly wanted so badly to live … wanted to live, had to live, to get back to Tiamat—because he had unfinished business there. What he had left undone there was more important than life itself, even his own life—
And he knew all at once that he would not die here like this—would not, could not. That if he had to murder and maim and crawl over broken glass, he would do it, because this was not his destiny; his destiny lay on Tiamat and he had to go home.…
The lift car slammed to a stop, jarring every bone in his body; its doors opened halfway, jammed. He squeezed through, cursing, into a bedlam of panic-stricken workers, soldiers bellowing futile orders, falling masonry and the stench of burning plastic. He saw a mob off to one side; saw that they were fighting over a hovercraft. He sprayed them with the stun rifle, clearing a path to it; dodged over helpless fallen bodies and squeezed into its cab.
He sent it spiraling up through the vast inner column, like a leaf caught in an updraft; through the access canyons toward the docking bay where Niburu and the others would be waiting for him, had to be, had to be crazy if they were still there, had to be still there.…
He landed on a loading platform, seeing barricades ahead. He fought his way out through the instant mob that formed around the hovercraft, wondering where the hell anybody thought they were going to go in it. Just away from where they were, maybe— He staggered as the citadel shuddered around him; ran on toward the barricade, with his heart in his throat. The guards blockading the access swung their weapons toward him.
He slowed, and dropped his own weapon. “I’m Kullervo!” he shouted. “I’ve got clearance, I’ve got to get through, they need me inside!”
They hesitated, staring at him. “Something came through about Kullervo—” the man in charge said.
“Couldn’t make it out, sergeant,” someone said. “Garbled, like everything else—”
The sergeant frowned, then gestured. “Go on,” he said. The other guard shouted, and the sergeant ducked aside as something smashed down between them. “What the fuck is happening here?” he bellowed.
Reede ran on, not sure the question was meant for him; certain that he didn’t want to answer it.
The access corridor to Docking Bay Three was filled with acrid smoke and armed
men. Reede shoved his way through them, half afraid that by the time he reached the end there would be nothing left to find. At last he emerged inside the bay’s lower level, seeing the vast chamber still intact, its docks rising and falling away for stories on all sides.
There was motion everywhere, noise and smoke, the looming hulls of freighters cutting off his view, until it was impossible to make sense of anything his eyes and ears fed to his brain. He swore, looking left and right, up and down. All the citadel’s systems must be choked with the poison of his virus program by now; there would be no way he could call up the LB’s location or communicate with its onboard systems—no way to find out whether they were even still here.
He found a ladder, began to climb the scaffolding, hoping it might give him a better line of sight.
“Kullervo!” A voice called his name as he pulled himself up onto the platform. He turned, saw Sparks Dawntreader pushing toward him through the mass of semi-rational human bodies that lay between them. Dawntreader gestured frantically. “This way!”
He shouted in acknowledgment and relief, began to run toward the half-visible beacon of Dawntreader’s red hair, dodging workers and soldiers.
“Kullervo!” Someone else shouted his name, behind him; a hand clamped over his arm, jerking him around. He was face to face with the sergeant from the barricade. The sergeant’s eyes were black with fury. A gunbutt came at him out of nowhere, struck him in the side of the head, clubbing him to his knees. “The Master wants you back, you miserable fuck.” The guard’s fist closed over the front of his shirt, dragging him to his feet. “They said you did this! I ought to kill you myself—”
Reede swayed, his hands pressing the side of his face; he was knocked reeling into the metal wall of the bay as someone else slammed between them.
Dawntreader. Sparks collided with the guard, knocking him off-balance. The guard pitched backward down the ladder-well with a strangled cry, and disappeared from sight.
“Are you all right?” Dawntreader was beside him now, supporting him with an arm around his waist.