The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (46 page)

“We need to talk to Long again,” I insist.

“And not let him off so easily,” Erickson agrees.

“I’m going to check on Bly,” I hint, getting up.
Erickson gets it and joins me.

Checking on Bly is mostly checking on his feeding.
He’s already gone through his first canister of nutrients, so we
set him up a liter of water. He’s still completely out of it.

“I like these people,” I tell Erickson when we’re
hopefully not being overheard (except for the Ghaddar—I can see her
listening from out in the main room). “I’d rather not start a brawl
with their pet immortal.”

“That would be ideal,” he agrees. “But if there’s an
imminent threat to all of them…”

“He knows a lot more than he’s telling.”

What I don’t point out: If these people are in
danger, we’re a big part of that danger.

We go back and be social.

Jane opens up over a dinner of savory soft-cooked
grains, beans and vegetables. She tells us some of the history of
her home, how the early Founders eventually stripped away all that
remained of the original work colony, replacing it with natural
materials as the planet greened. She says the ideal was to keep to
a simpler life, clean and healthy, sustained by the environment,
without relying on any of the nanotech or engineered biotech that
had become the scourge of so much of their world. The hardest part,
as I’d imagine, was in facing illness or death. The forbidden tech
could save a loved one—a parent, sibling, lover, child. They had to
embrace mortality, celebrate the temporary beauty of life.

I find I can’t imagine a world where that could
happen without struggle, without fighting to survive. But these
people haven’t had any enemies since the Event took away all
outside threats. And they seem to have plenty of resources: food,
water, air, fuel, a comfortable climate. They look strong,
healthy—Jane says it’s not unusual for her people to live to fifty
(which is nearly a hundred in Standard years). I catch myself
imagining staying here, never going “home” (or back to our world,
since I remember I don’t have any home there anymore thanks to
what’s in me).

I look at Rashid, and think about Abbas, hoping he
and his son are alive somewhere. And I think about what they came
so far looking for: A place for their people to live in peace, away
from the Unmakers, away from Chang. (How would they do in a place
like this?)

(Assuming this place is real—I still can’t be sure of
that. But the food is good, the water is clean. And I expect if my
sword was making a dream world, a VR, there would be fighting,
violence.)

Repaying the hostess, we help clean up, then tell our
stories over tea by dim light and fire heat. Cal and his female
friend come back to check on Bly, and get talked into joining us
for awhile. Our stories must be unimaginable, and not just because
we’re telling a history that never happened for these people. What
they must think of us…

Rashid has to push through some tears as he tells us
tales of Abu Abbas, and of his brave son Ishmael—a foundling,
apparently, rescued as a child from a raid by Air Pirates, even
though he didn’t need rescuing: he had already killed his parents’
killers. (I see Jane react with a flash of personal dread behind
her eyes, perhaps imagining what her own children would do in such
circumstances, if our worlds should ever meet.) There’s a long
silence after he finishes his tales—respect for our lost
friends.

I notice Terina has still not shared, keeping herself
closed. A stranger among strangers among friends. I feel for her, a
fellow exile.

Beds have been made up: a selection of cots and rolls
wedged into the main room and downstairs bedroom. It’s all so cozy
I actually have to wonder if they plan to try to take us in our
sleep. If they are, they’re really good at covering it. I don’t
sense violence in these people at all, despite all the fear they’re
managing to keep in check. But I still get the sense that they’re
hiding something. (And that’s fair—they don’t know us, they have
reason to fear us, and we certainly haven’t been totally
forthcoming ourselves.) Maybe they know they have no means to harm
us, and just hope we’ll move along peacefully if they keep playing
nice (not unlike the vibe I got from the Pax while they were
feeding us).

Jane and Anna plan to sleep upstairs in the
children’s rooms, with dutiful Cal camping out on the landing like
a guard (though he says it’s just in case Bly has problems during
the night). We thank her again for her generosity, assure her that
she’s been more than adequately hospitable (and hopefully reassure
her that we won’t be attacking her in her sleep).

She offers us the use of her indoor shower, which
feeds water heated from another plant-burning stove. There’s soap
that smells like it’s been made out of the oils of nuts and
aromatic plant extracts.

The males defer to Terina , the Ghaddar and I take
first opportunities.

Terina goes first and takes an unusually long
time—I’m almost fearing for her safety enough to forgo privacy—and
eventually comes out with her long hair bound up in a borrowed
towel, asking for a comb. Her red-stained skin is barely lighter
than it was, despite the clay-paste residue being gone—long use
must semi-permanently dye the skin.

The Ghaddar is military quick, and takes her weapons
into the tight bathing stall with her. I realize as we pass that
this is the first time I’ve seen her face, her metal demon mask
hanging around her neck as she combs out her own long black hair
(she carries her own comb for the task). She’s prettier than I
expected she’d be. I can certainly imagine the rumors swirling
around her and Colonel Ram could be at least partly true (and I
certainly doubt she’d let just anyone be intimate with her—he or
she would have to be able to impress her, and the Colonel did earn
her loyalty, no easy feat).

When it’s my turn, I find myself hesitating. The
stall has a mirror. In it, I see the me I know, scar and all,
except for my eyes: metallic green, unreal. The effect makes me
dizzy—I can’t look myself in the eye.

But that isn’t my biggest source of distress. That’s
what’s coming next: This will be the first time I’ll see
myself—what’s under my L-As—since whatever’s been done to me.

The hardest part is unbuckling my belt and setting
down the sword, propping it up in a corner. I quickly realize I
can’t move very far away from it—more than a meter, and I begin to
feel pain, cramps and spasms throughout my body. When I move
closer, I get the vague happy feelings again. Thankfully, the stall
isn’t much more than a meter and a half square anyway, so it’s just
a matter of finding a corner to lean the blade closest to where I
am as I move around.

Slowly and carefully undressing, my shaky fingers
having trouble unfastening my L-As (or what still sort of look like
my L-As—they’re definitely heavier, more armored), I start to get a
look at skin that looks very much like mine, only missing my
multitude of scars. (So why do I still have the one on my
face?)

The most shocking change gets revealed when I get the
nerve to peel off my jacket and pants (which I do fast just to get
it over with). My muscle tone looks like it’s almost
doubled
. I’m all hard-sculpted, like my fellows that
obsessed over PT every waking moment of their off-shift time,
spending their duty credits on extra protein supplements on top of
max rations. And my muscles feel like metal under my skin.

I rotate in the mirror, look at myself all over, flex
my new muscles. I wonder how strong I am. I feel a thrill, flooding
me. Pride. Vanity. I look beautiful, perfect. It’s a body a warrior
would want. A weapon, like my sword.

My sword. My sword that controls what I feel, uses it
to control me.

I feel sick. I want to smash the mirror. The only
reason I don’t is because it would make me a bad guest—I owe Jane
and her mother more than a tantrum. I breathe, stuff it down, shut
my eyes so I can’t see.

I shower with my habitual speed, then find I don’t
need to dry off: My skin seems to suck up the water. (I realize it
did the same thing this morning, when the sky soaked me.)

I get dressed as quickly as I can, hands still
shaking. Then I go let the males know they can have their turn.

I’m dreaming the same dream again, stuck in the same
helplessly fluctuating shape in a transparent box, watching flashes
of people standing still.

Redhead cyborg is there, sitting in his chair, but
now it looks like the back of his head has grown into the rest of
the room. It doesn’t look like cables, exactly. It moves, flows.
But that’s not the most interesting parts:

Doc Long is there, except his eyes aren’t fucked
up—they match. His face is semi-frozen in a slow motion shout, all
twisted rage. It’s aimed at the redhead, close enough to be
spitting on him, but the redhead is just looking calmly back at
him, like he’s not even there.

I catch their fight in flashes, random stills. Long
ranting. Redhead just sitting calmly, letting him.

Then redhead is alone. Just sitting. Alone.

No. Not alone. We’re still there, we five. In our
little transparent cells. He acts like he’s ignoring us, but I know
he isn’t. I know he can hear me, feel me. But he’s elsewhere.

I realize there’s another clear cell. Bigger. On the
far side of the chamber. It looks like there’s a body in it. Human.
Male. Pale skin and light hair. Wearing skivvies. Stiff and inert
like a corpse or a doll. On display? Or in storage, put away to be
ignored like the rest of us?

Has it been there all this time? I didn’t see it
before. Or didn’t care about it. Just another piece of forgotten
junk. History. A keepsake, like we are. No longer useful, but still
somehow treasured.

I call out to it, but it doesn’t answer. It’s dead,
shut down. Deactivated. Not needed or wanted.

I never bothered to look at it before. It wasn’t
important. An obsolete device, kept out of human sentiment. Like
me. Like us. We five. So I look.

Dee. It’s Dee.

Time has passed again. I think I’ve been offline.

Long is back. Now he’s on his knees in front of
redhead, looking broken, deeply traumatized, sobbing. When I get a
shot of his face turned up where I can see, he’s got the mismatched
eyes. In flashes, he looks like he’s pleading, begging, like a man
who’s lost everything and just wants to die. And he hasn’t come
alone:

Ram is there again, standing off to the side,
watching. This time, he’s got that look he gets after a bad, bloody
battle. He even looks physically battered.

Bel is there too, loitering in the shadows like he
doesn’t want to be here. And Astarte. She comes in, clings to Ram,
and he holds her. Both Bel and Astarte are crying, have been
crying. Looking at Long. Something horrible has happened. They all
look like they’ve been through a battle, like Ram. As the
flash-images progress, I watch them heal, repair, while Long just
shuts down, sobbing.

Then Ram and Bel and Astarte are gone, no
explanation. It’s just redhead and Long.

Redhead gets up, all the living cables sunk into his
nervous system moving with him. He stands over Long. Touches him.
Touches his face. Long looks up…

The feed starts moving in quick fits and starts, as
if the action is finally happening at a rate I can process. Long is
convulsing. Redhead’s touch…

I see Long start to change. It looks like his skin is
dissolving, or being eaten by something, something black. It covers
him, consumes him, converts him, turns him…

Oh no.

Then something starts happening to redhead. Piece by
piece, maybe cell by cell, he starts turning into light. He’s
turning into bright white light. Coming apart. Just before it
finishes, he turns his head to face me, gives me a little sad smile
like he’s sorry about something…

Jed. It’s Jed. Younger, but it’s his face.

And then he’s gone.

Everything is gone.

I feel the light taking me apart, tearing me apart. I
fight it. I won’t let it. I call out to my friends, the others like
me. We Five. We have to fight it. We have to fight it or we’ll be
gone and…

I wake up to sunlight and screaming and the
clattering of heavy metal.

My new reflexes are impressive: even out of a dead
sleep, I manage to catch the big piece of blackened steel coming at
my head.

It takes me two slow seconds to recognize it, since
it’s not where it’s supposed to be. It’s one of Bly’s shoulder
plates.

I’d made my bed on a mat right next to his borrowed
bed. Erickson and Elias took narrow and not-too-comfortable-looking
cots wedged into the bedroom with me. Both are sitting up, then
getting up quick, like something’s on fire in the room. The Ghaddar
is in the doorway—she’d slept out in the main room with Murphy,
Terina and Rashid.

Another piece of Bly’s armor flies off the bed and
tries to bean me. I realize I’m smelling something sharp and musky
and human, like when one our scouts or perimeter snipers came off a
long posting, sealed in an H-A can for too many days without a
shower, but it’s combined with undertones of rotten
flesh—infection, burns. The first image that flashes through my
mind is that Bly has gone wrong and burst open…

I jump up. Bly is thrashing on the bed, sitting up.
His armor is coming off in sections, come loose from him. Even his
helmet flops around on his head. He’s panicking, like he can’t
breathe or is on fire. He definitely can’t see—his mask is twisted
too far sideways. He tries to pull off the helmet.

“It’s okay! It’s okay!” I’m telling him as I let him
feel my hands, then get my fingers up under the jaw of his mask.
Pry. Try to find release catches…

The mask pops off, and then the helmet flies off as
he throws it away from him. He takes a long, gasping breath like a
man who’d been buried alive, still flailing, wild-eyed, dazed—I
grab his hands, hold on. His skin is slick, and he’s strong, but so
am I.