The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (53 page)

“I had to make them think it was their own plan. And
once they were all together, I needed them to try to take another
partner,” Yod completes. “At that point, I could exploit their
vulnerabilities, insert myself into their network, restore their
defaults. It helped that they chose one who resisted…” He turns to
smile at Ishmael, but then I see him frown, just for a flash, like
he’s thought of something sad. He turns back to face Ram and the
others.

“You’ve figured it out too, then?” he asks them
lightly.

Ram’s face hardens.

“Did we know?” Lux speaks up, voice breaking.

“Did I take the memory from you?” Yod clarifies the
question. “To help you play your roles?”

“Did we
agree
to this?” Azazel distills.

(It’s slowly sinking in that whatever they’re talking
about may be the same thing that broke down Elias.)

“You
did
,” Yod answers matter-of-factly. “All
of you did. Does that help?”

The four immortals look suddenly drained, defeated.
Ashamed and guilty. Dee stands frozen, expressionless.

“What?” Paul Stilson wants to understand.

Elias steps forward.

“Your father knows,” he tells Stilson. “Council Blue.
Or at least he suspects.”

“Suspects
what
?” Stilson presses.

Elias doesn’t answer immediately, seems to be
considering what to tell him.

“Ockham’s Razor. The simplest explanation.” He looks
at Yod. “A nanotech intelligence that can manipulate matter down to
a quantum level.” Then he looks at Dee. “Programmed to save us from
ourselves.”

I watch the idea process in Stilson’s eyes, slowly at
first, then hitting him like a shock, like he’s been shot. He
staggers back—no, it looks like he’s suddenly afraid of the very
ground he’s standing on. Elias simply nods.

I’m feeling helplessly lost, confused. I don’t
understand what they’re talking about.

“The truth protected by the Big Lie,” Bel
mutters.

“My true hand in this cannot be revealed,” Yod
insists gently. “Not yet.”

“So do you erase us again?” Lux wants to know. “Wipe
our memories? Keep the secret safe?”

“No,” Yod seems to decide easily. “I think you
understand the potential repercussions, just like you understood
originally.”

“
What did they understand?
” I find myself
exploding. “Or don’t we deserve to know?”

Yod just turns and smiles his frustrating Captain Jed
idiot smile. I want to punch him, no matter what he is.

“Let’s just say it’s not 2118,” Elias decides to
offer.

“I don’t understand…”

“There was no time traveling, Lieutenant,” Ram tells
me, anger simmering under his words. “It was a believable lie,
easier to digest than the truth.”

“Until it falls apart in the details,” Bel
invalidates.

“What year is it, really?” Ram asks Yod.

What?

“2198, Earth Common Era, if such things matter,” Yod
says with a shrug.

“That was the year they said it was in the other
dimension,” I remember, then feel stupid even as I’m saying it.
Pieces start coming together…

“There’s no other dimension,” Elias gives me with a
patient smile. “Where we were is right over there…” he points
northeast. “Concealed by illusions.” He looks at Yod. “I’m assuming
the Lake is real.”

“It is.”

“An entire ecosystem, preserved and protected… But
anyone trying to cross from this side would drown, without even
knowing why they were dying,” Elias puts together. “Unless there’s
a hidden land bridge?”

Yod doesn’t answer him.

“Is that how the Silvermen got there?” Bel
prosecutes. “Wandered through your cognitive barriers by accident
when you were off doing something almighty? Or was it intentional,
an experiment?”

Yod shrugs. I want to scream.

“’Cognitive barriers’?” Erickson asks.

“It’s not just a visual illusion,” Bel explains.
“It’s designed to disorient. You think you’re going in a straight
line and wind up back where you started.”

“It apparently works the same way from the other
side,” I remember.

“Haven’s still there, isn’t it?” Bel assumes. “You
decided to preserve it. An example of the best of what we were.
Still human. Living in peace and harmony with their
environment.”

Yod nods.

“An ideal we rarely manage to live up to,” Ram
allows. (Though I still feel like we’re about to see a fight.)

“Doesn’t forgive the rest of it,” Lux confronts. “I
don’t care if we
were
in on it—that just makes us as guilty
as you. And Chang. Or was Chang just a puppet like the rest of
us?”

“Adam Chang is a remarkably brave man,” Yod defends
calmly. “When he came to me, after his accident, he said he was
willing to do anything… Still, I expected he would balk at my
offer. But he didn’t. He accepted the role, despite what he would
have to do, and what he would have to carry.”

“A figurehead villain,” Ram names.

“Not the first time we’ve played that game, old
friend,” Yod returns. And shifts… Becomes the young pale redhead
boy-man. Ram looks ill, like he’s been shown something horribly
offensive.

“You’re not Doc,” he denies.

“I am. But then, I’m a lot of people.” He shifts
again, into a tall, thin white-blonde-haired older man, wearing
some kind of old fashioned white dress suit. “And we have played
this game before. That’s why you suggested we should play it
again.”

“
I
suggested…?” Ram isn’t buying. But then I
see him start to believe, as if he’s remembering something. It
takes the rage out of him, makes him somehow smaller.

“Adam was the inspiration: his pain and desperation
convinced me,” Yod continues. “But it was
our
idea. You and
I. To play the old game one more time. To make the world a better
place. Just like we’ve always done.”

“I would never…” Ram tries. “I would
never
agree to killing thousands of people… Tens of thousands…”

“Adam was willing to risk killing billions,” Yod
recalls. “All to restore humanity to the human race.
Mortality.”

Yod shifts again, becomes… Colonel Burke?

“
Stop that!!
” Ram shouts at him,
uncharacteristically losing his temper. “Matthew died! Long before
you! What did you do? Make a copy? Is that what he was? Like
Asmodeus?”

Yod shrugs, goes back to being the redhead called
“Doc”.

“How many of these people are real?” Bel demands to
know.

“All of them,” Yod answers like it’s a stupid
question. “At first, it was just a matter of subtracting some
memories as I stripped them of their Mods, but not many of them are
left now. Just the oldest generation of ETE, those you slept with,
and nine of you I needed as you were. I only had to re-create a
relatively small number, to preserve the illusion of the earlier
point in time, but they are—or were—complete human beings in their
own right.”

“And everyone we knew?” Lux struggles. “The rest of
the Modded human race? You’re telling me, except for a lobotomized
few, they’re all
dead
?”

“Lived and died as mortals do. Most all of the
current population of both worlds are new life, fresh—they’ve been
breeding and thriving for three generations now. The human race has
been given second a chance, set on a new path. Hopefully a better
path this time. Adam was right. You all were right. We weren’t
ready. We needed to proceed more carefully.”

“What gives you the right…?” Azazel growls.

“My vision,” Yod offers matter-of-factly, like it
should be obvious. “I can see everything. All outcomes. It was
either starting fresh, trying again, or absorbing you all into
myself, forcing your evolution, but you weren’t ready for that
either.”

“
What did you do?
” Erickson demands, still not
getting it (or maybe not wanting to).

“He remade the fucking world,” I put together. “The
Event. He physically reset everything on a subatomic level to where
it was before mankind got immortal, before the tech was invented.
Then he set Chang and the others to make sure it didn’t go the same
way again. By scaring us, giving us a taste of how bad it could be
if we
did
go that way again. And keeping us scared.”

Yod gives me what looks like an appreciative nod.

I feel sick. Everything… But I know I’m
me
. He
said I’m me. Born here. My life is real enough… Just my
grandparents, my…

“
Both
worlds?” I need to know. “Earth
and
Mars?”

“Only because that’s as far as we’d gotten,” Bel
makes his own conclusion.

Erickson and the others still look lost. Either they
can’t grasp it or don’t want to. I think I envy them.

“My people…” I’m not accepting this as a greater-good
thing. “Bly’s people… Everyone else… Killed in this play war…”

“It’s not a play war,” Yod insists evenly. “It’s a
real war. Real choices that you all make. The cost of free
will.”

“But it’s not free will if you won’t let us walk the
same road, make those same choices again,” Bel argues.

“You
are
free to walk that path,” Yod insists.
“Whatever barriers I’ve placed will simply help you make a more
informed decision this time.”

Bel locks up, frustrated, like he can’t see any more
point in arguing with this creature.

“And
Asmodeus
?” Ram gets himself back
together. “Chang wasn’t playing his role properly, so you remade
him
?”

“No, I didn’t.” The thought actually seems to amuse
him. “That was all Adam. Playing his part. Exceeding his role.
Surprising me. Beautiful…”

“Funny that evil should surprise you,” I hear Ram
mutter.

“But you could stop Asmodeus, and Fohat, at
any
time?” I’m starting to lose it. I want to scream. “Just
fucking unmake them? Except they serve your purpose? To keep us
afraid of becoming what they are? What
I
am, now?”

Yod apparently decides that no answer is the best
answer, only giving us that aggravating serene part-smile. We stand
there like that, the mild midday breeze blowing the sand over our
boots, surrounding a being—a thing—that could undo us on an atomic
level at a whim.

(The swords—the Companions—share his code. So does
Dee. Could we make a weapon? Or at least a defense?)

“That would be a remarkably bad idea, Jacqueline,”
Yod tells me gently, like a benign parent or teacher. It shakes me
to the core:
he’s inside my head
.

Omniscient. Omnipotent. Omnipresent.

Fuck…

“So now what?” I really do need to know.

“I could leave you to it,” Yod offers. “Promise not
to interfere. Let free will run its course.”

“And if we nuke ourselves?” Bel doesn’t accept. “Or
worse?”

“Asmodeus worse?” Ram qualifies.

Yod shrugs like it’s barely important.

“Call me if you need me.”

In the blink of an eye, he seems to turn into what
looks like crystalline sand; flesh, hair, clothes and all. Then
those crystals all blaze with blinding white light, just for an
instant. (Just like I saw in my dream, my sword’s memories.) When
the light just as suddenly fades, he’s gone. No trace.

Lux breaks the silence that follows with a nervous
chuckle. “At least he didn’t ask us to pray to him.”

“So now what?” I ask Colonel Ram.

He doesn’t have any answers for me.

“The radiation levels are rising,” Dee announces. “We
should get going.”

“How do you know it’s not just another illusion?”
Murphy questions.

“Yod has reason to protect whatever lies over there,”
Bel nods back the way we came. “I wouldn’t challenge him.”

We all reluctantly agree, and begin walking
southward, toward the Pax Mountain and the Spine beyond it.

“What
does
lie over there, anyway?” Bel passes
the time with a debrief, nodding back toward what we’re hurrying
away from. So I fill him in on the status of Haven, or at least
what we saw of it, and the Barrow with its buried facility. He
confirms that was one of the places they’d worked on the Yod
Project, trying to do so in isolation, somewhere the rest of the
immortal human race would be less likely to take notice. He also
confirms the veracity of what I saw in my dreams.

“So he disassembled all our stuff,” Bel mourns the
description of the missing equipment. “Makes sense. Wouldn’t want
anyone dicking around with it and accidentally making him a
rival.”

“Who’s ‘Doc’?” I try to ask quietly enough so Ram
won’t hear me. “The baby-faced redhead?”

“My father,” Dee answers me discreetly, “or the
closest thing to. And a very old friend of the Colonel’s.
Brilliant. Idealistic. Driven. Makes perfect sense that he’d put
himself into his work—literally.”

“Chang’s alive,” I decide to drop as lightly as I can
after a few hundred more meters, realizing I’d failed to mention
it. That seems to jar the immortals and Paul Stilson, so much that
I think they might actually turn around and go back, radiation or
Yod be damned. So I qualify quickly: “He’s changed. Yod… retired
him. Or something. It looks like he restored some of his humanity.
He’s been helping the Haven colonists. Now he’s watching over the
fourth blade.”

“He knows…” Erickson adds. “He knows what Yod did,
what Yod did to him, what he was made to do.”

Bel shakes his head sadly.

“I can only imagine…”

“We’re all missing key memories,” Ram says heavily.
“Manipulated. Programmed to play this game.”

“You’d think character—whatever it is we really
are—would win out, still be in there somewhere even with the
backstory changed,” Bel considers. “Chang was brilliant—rumor has
it he was engineered in the womb to be a wunderkind, to do great
things. And he did. And he was a little odd for it. And driven.
Blindly single-minded. But he wasn’t a sociopath, not like we’ve
seen here. Funny how easily I just accepted his genocidal
megalomaniac performance, never stopped to question how much it
didn’t fit him.”