Dragonseed (41 page)

“If you thought I was dead, why did you send people to kill me?”

Cassie raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“Don’t act innocent. I’m wearing the body of a girl named Jandra. She had an Atlantean genie and a body full of nanite enhancements. She got them from a sky-dragon named Vendevorex. I don’t think Vendevorex invented the technology on his own.”

Cassie smiled. “Oh! Vendevorex. Wow. I haven’t thought about him in years. How is he?”

“Jandra remembers him dying,” said Jazz. “Of course, we both know that could be a false memory. Jandra doesn’t have any memories of meeting you, but that could have been edited as well.”

Cassie shook her head as she looked out toward the darkness of space that hung over the horizon. “I don’t have a clue who Jandra is.”

“But you know Vendevorex. How did he get the genie?”

“I gave it to him. I’m part of a debate committee to decide whether or not the dragon species should be regarded as hazardous bio-engineering waste and removed from the ecosystem.”

“Atlanteans shouldn’t care about that,” said Jazz. “You shouldn’t be
able
to care about that, because the city can’t care about it.”

“I know,” said Cassie. “You hacked the city to keep Atlantean technology from spreading. You made the most powerful, benevolent force ever seen on this world turn a blind eye on the continents so they could go feral. But, while the Atlantean master intelligence doesn’t care about what goes on beyond these shores, I still do, and so do some others. You didn’t hack our memories, Jazz. Some of the people here were involved in creating the dragons. They’re concerned about their spread. They were created as novelties. No one anticipated they’d become the dominant sentient species on the North American mainland.”

Jazz leaned against the glass wall. “Unintended consequences are what make life interesting. But what does this have to do with Vendevorex?”

“Vendevorex was one of a handful of dragons the committee captured for study. Usually we keep them in laboratory settings, but Vendevorex was clever enough to escape. He eluded capture for three days, this on an island where even the air is sentient. I finally tracked him down. He was frightened, but also defiant. His fighting spirit stirred something inside me. He reminded me of the person I once was.”

“I remember when you were a teenager. You were a real hell-raiser.” Jazz grinned. “If you’d had a few more years, I bet you could have knocked me off the top of the most wanted list.”

“Thanks,” said Cassie, her golden cheeks blushing rose pink.

“I didn’t say it enough back then, but I liked you,” said Jazz. “You were fully committed to saving earth from mankind. You were a rebel to the bone.”

“There’s some of that still inside me,” said Cassie. “That’s why I gave Vendevorex a genie and trained him to use it. I helped him escape back to North America. It was a form of rebellion against Atlantis; more importantly, it was a form of rebellion against you.”

“Me? How?”

“You prevented the spread of Atlantean technology by humans. Vendevorex would have no such qualms. I gave him the know-how to build other genies. I thought he would eventually spread the technology, and get around the block you placed on the island.”

“Clever,” said Jazz. “But there’s no way he could have linked into the Atlantean networks to make full use of the genie’s potential.”

“Vendevorex was smart. Since he couldn’t link to a database to guide his nanites, he devoted himself to the study of chemistry and biology. His mind would be the database.”

“Ah,” said Jazz. “That’s why Jandra has the periodic table memorized and can name every bone in the body.”

“It’s not as efficient as the Atlantean mind, of course,” said Cassie, “but it works.”

“You said you were on a committee trying to stop the spread of dragons. Why give one such a powerful tool? This is only going to lead to more powerful dragons.”

Cassie looked away. However, her reflection was clearly visible on the glass. She had the faintest hint of a smug grin.

Jazz added up all the clues. “Don’t tell me. You’ve buried a code in those genies. Vendevorex was supposed to keep propagating the genies until they reached a critical mass. They’d form their own network, one that would communicate with Atlantis, and wipe out the shackles I programmed. Atlantis would turn all of Earth into a paradise for humanity, wiping out the dragons as an environmental pollutant left over from careless genetic tinkering.”

Cassie raised her eyebrows. “Wow. That’s quite a guess.”

Jazz looked around the big, empty, dustless room. On the opposite wall, the earth was now in darkness, and the stars shone as perfect points, untainted by atmosphere. She spotted Mars and thought about the settlers there, and the good time she’d had two centuries ago intervening in their civil war. All the people worth knowing had long since fled the earth. “Do you remember how mom used to drag us to church?” she asked.

“I haven’t thought about that in a long time,” said Cassie.

“I recently had a reminder of the fire and brimstone sermons. I was buried in a pit of fire, neither dead nor alive, in constant agony. If things had gone badly, it might have lasted for all eternity. It’s sheer luck that I escaped. Luck and my complete lack of any moral qualms about stealing another woman’s body.”

“Sounds rotten. Have you decided to mend your ways?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Let me show you something,” said Jazz. She opened her hand. The chrome coating her palm boiled, bubbling up into a silver marble an inch across. She rolled it forward and caught it between her fingers.

“What is it?” said Cassie.

Jazz held it out. “Take a close look at the writing on the surface.”

Cassie frowned, leaned forward, and squinted. She picked it up, holding it only a few inches from her face, and turned it slowly.

“I don’t see any wri—” she stopped in mid-word as the gold coating her face and lips begin to crack, flaking away like the shell of a boiled egg, revealing pale flesh beneath.

Cassie dropped the marble. It bounced on the floor. A small mouth opened to devour it, then froze. Jagged cracks ran across the surface of the onyx tile.

“What’s happening?” The metallic shell that coated her fell away in fine flakes. Her black silk slip now sported a sheet of scaly dust, as if she’d just developed the world’s most severe case of dandruff. Her black ink hair stopped seeping from her scalp, leaving her bald, missing even her eyebrows.

“Call for help,” Jazz said.

Cassie glared at Jazz, her eyes full of hate. Slowly, her features changed; hate funneled away, leaving only fear.

“It’s silent,” she whispered. “You’ve made the city go silent.”

“Not yet,” said Jazz. “This is only a test run. The marble is a jammer. It emits a coded radio pulse that scrambles the Atlantean datastream. You’ve vanished from the city’s awareness. You can’t even use your own genie to communicate with your nanites. I’m immune because I encoded the pulse.”

“This is… this is monstrous!” said Cassie, backing away, leaving a trail of dust. He body looked pink and raw. Despite being taller than Jazz, she looked vulnerable in her girlish body, with the absurdly thin limbs that were the fashion in Atlantis. “Disabling my genie is like gouging out my eyes! You’ve made your point! Turn it off!”

“If I turn it off, you’ll be back online, and Atlantis will know what you know.”

“But… But…”

“Don’t fight this. You had a good run. A thousand years. Try to appreciate the adrenaline rush.”

Jazz willed an underspace gate to open in the air near her hand. She grabbed the edges of the rainbow, wrapping her fingers around it. Her nanites generated an electromagnetic field that let her fold the light. At the center of the rainbow, a slender black arc thinner than a human hair curved from her grasp like a scimitar.

“Have you ever seen what happens if you hit something with an underspace gate only a few nanometers wide?” Jazz asked.

Cassie clenched her fists. Despite the thinness of her limbs, Cassie’s muscles would be finely tuned, and fast. Her nerves had been created cell by cell in absolute perfection, while Jandra’s body still clunked along on the nervous system she’d been born with.

“Jazz, you can’t seriously be thinking of killing Atlantis. There are six billion people here! Killing the city is the same as killing them. Not even you are that black-hearted.”

“I snapped a baby’s neck before I came here,” said Jazz. “A scaly baby who bit the shit out of me, but still… I wouldn’t place bets about my holding onto any moral limits.”

“But… why? Why is it so awful to let the city help people? The city takes care of us.”

“Atlantis turned mankind into a race of eternal children,” said Jazz. “I’m tired of being the world’s only grownup.”

Cassie lunged forward, her fist aimed for Jazz’s nose.

Jazz stepped aside, twirling the underspace blade into her sister’s path. Cassie fell past her, landing with a wet smack on the stone floor. Jazz looked down at her sister’s hands, which had fallen near her feet, severed by the world’s sharpest scalpel.

Cassie twitched on the floor. Her exsanguination became a dark pool before her. Jazz had little appetite for gore.

She went to the black table, picked up the coffee cup, and took another sip. She was braced for the bitterness now. Jandra’s tongue was no longer virgin; this time, the liquid washed across her taste buds with a mix of sharpness and heat that was almost pleasant.

Killing Cassie was an act of mercy. The centuries had left her sister soft; she would have been ill-prepared to face the world to come. The risk Atlantis represented was too great. Maybe Cassie had failed to undo her programming over a thousand years, but what of the next thousand years? Jazz had never learned the true origins of Atlantis. It was obviously an alien construct, but who had sent it here, and why? What would happen if they suddenly showed up to fix it? She had no choice but to kill the city.

Of course, Atlantis was probably a more formidable opponent than Cassie had been. If she was serious about doing this, she needed allies. Her long-wyrm riders had been laughably ineffective. Her best angel had been thoroughly trashed by a sour-faced little man with nothing more than a bow, an arrow, tenacity, and brains.

Bitterwood had killed her, true, but she didn’t feel angry about this. Instead, she had a grudging admiration. The people of Atlantis were spineless hedonists. They reminded her of the world of her youth, an entire planet full of people with the mentality of locusts, devouring all the pleasures the world could grow, ignoring the wastelands left in their wake. Bitterwood, born and bred in Jazz’s new world, was a true man; fearless, clever, and full of conviction. He was living proof that her world was a better environment for humans than this false paradise. There were more important things in the world than being safe and healthy and entertained.

For a man to be truly great, he must struggle against monsters. With the right weapons, Bitterwood would make a valuable ally.

Darkness crept across the ocean, lapping the shore of North America.

THE SUN WAS
low over the hills to the west as Vulpine walked along the Forge Road, admiring the decaying scarecrows Sawface and his Wasters had placed along the highway. Word of the blockade had apparently spread quickly throughout the human population. In recent days, the stream of humans attempting to reach the fort had ended. This meant that humans were staying on their farms. Now that the earth-dragons that had been raiding them were organized once more into an army, home was the safest place for a human to be. In a few weeks, they would go out and plant their crops. Rebellions were easier to sustain in early winter, when food was plentiful following harvests. Once the crops were in the ground, the rebellion would effectively be finished. Few people would abandon crops to join a hopeless cause. By this time next year, the rebellion would be only a bad memory.

As pleasing as the results of the scarecrows were to Vulpine, the stench of the road was unsettling. He lifted into the air, climbing, climbing, till he was almost a mile high. In the dying light, it was difficult to be certain, but it appeared as if activity within the walls of Dragon Forge had greatly reduced. The streets were empty. Only a few spotters remained along the walls with the wheeled bows that caused such terror among the sun-dragons.

Most importantly, only one of the smokestacks of the foundry was spewing smoke. It was too soon for yellow-mouth to have manifested in many victims yet, but even one or two would be sufficient to spread terror. The foundry was faltering, no doubt because the workers were hiding in their bunks, afraid of encountering anyone with the disease.

Dropping from the sky back toward his camp, he saw the squad of valkyrie engineers still working on the thousands of iron bits spread upon the large tarp near his tent. These were the remnants of the war engine Sawface had destroyed. It was a shame—the machine had looked impressive in its short run. It obviously had design flaws—exploding after the bridge collapsed being chief among them. Still, he could only imagine what the valkyrie engineers and the biologians could accomplish if they’d gotten their talons on a working prototype.

Arifiel was present, speaking with her fellow valkyries. She broke away as she saw Vulpine, flapping her wings for a short flight to his landing target. Arifiel was a veteran of Blasphet’s recent attack on the Nest. She still bore a rather unattractive festering burn wound on her shoulder as a reminder. It didn’t slow her, however.

“How goes it?” Vulpine asked.

“My engineers are still analyzing the placement of the fragments. We’ve interviewed the earth-dragons who witnessed it up close, but their capacity for describing a device of this complexity is somewhat limited.”

“I value Sawface for his ability to demolish a stone bridge with a hammer blow more than for his verbal prowess,” said Vulpine. “Still, the report from Bazanel should be complete any—”

“Bazanel is dead,” said Arifiel.

“What?”

“Chapelion’s messenger arrived while you were visiting the other checkpoints. I was present when he gave the news to Sagen. A human assassin killed Bazanel and stole the gun. The secret of gunpowder had already been given to a valkyrie. She gave it to Chapelion, who shared the news with his advisors. A few days later, all of his advisors were slain by an assassin too—a young human female. Unfortunately, no copies of the formula survived, and Chapelion didn’t bother to memorize the formula.”