The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (55 page)

“I certainly wouldn’t miss that last part,” Bly
accepts with a wicked grin. “Long stakes, you say? Inserted where,
if I may ask?”

Lux looks like she/he might actually jump for joy.
(Azazel goes full eye-roll.)

“Lieutenant…” Erickson calls to me as our groups
prepare to seperate.

“Jak,” I correct him. “Call me Jak.”

“I… I just wanted to say thank you. We got ourselves
into quite a mess. You comported yourself well.”

“Is that an ETE thing?” I rib him. “Talking like
you’re out of some dry-ass old-lit story?”

“My brother’s thing,” Elias answers while Erickson
tries to formulate a snappy reply. “My thing is more egotistical
asshole.”

“You’re working on it, though,” I give him.

“Like the pirate said: I’m sure we’ll meet again.
Jak.”

Erickson decides it’s better to shut up, and offers
his hand. I make him hug me instead. Then Elias.

Ram makes one of his formal pledges to Terina. Then
we say our final goodbyes and good-lucks and head southeast, while
they start heading west.

As we walk away from each other, I’m trying to
remember some old saying about endings and beginnings, but all that
keeps popping into my head is Yod’s story about a man made of
salt.

Jonathan Drake:

Lieutenant Straker continues to reassure us that
there’s no looming threat of bot attack, so we keep a good pace
across the narrow valley to the Spine. I find I’m grateful for her
decision to join us, and not just because we’ve lost the company of
Erickson and Azrael, though—practically and tactically—that
is
a big part of it. Talents like hers are certainly
precious, given our situation. But she has a good heart, and is
impressively brave in ways that have nothing to do with those new
abilities.

I do miss Erickson. His eagerness and enthusiasm,
even his clumsiness—that apparently gone now, thanks to whatever’s
been done to him. In the last days he’s grown into a leader, into
the warrior he wanted so badly to be. I’d like to think that had
nothing to do with whatever’s been done to him, that it was all
just there, in him, all the time, waiting for its time.

And Azrael: despite learning that he’s some kind of
machine, I enjoyed his company as much as I valued his skills. (Is
it strange to be fond of a machine, a programmed thing, as if it’s
alive? Colonel Ram seemed to be close friends with him, even
knowing what he was from the beginning.) (Does his being a machine
make him really less alive than us? He feels like he has a soul—is
that illusion, wishful thinking? Are our souls any more real?)

I’m getting maudlin. There’s been too much death—I
still don’t know the full count of our losses (only one: my
step-mother Fatima, who raised me as her own after the loss of her
own son). But I’ll be facing that tally soon enough. I catch my
feet slowing when I think about it. I don’t want to face it. I
can’t imagine what it’s like for my father.

He marches at our head, Terina and I behind him (the
Ghaddar has scouted ahead, while Rashid brings up the rear, Murphy
and Straker in the center of our line). He’s kept the silence since
we divided our companies. His limp is gone, his leg and arm wounds
healed along with his damaged hands. By Chang.

I look at my own hands, barely see any scarring, even
though the flesh had been burned and torn away. Nor do I feel
anything unusual inside of me. Tessarius Regin told us the last man
to sever himself from that sword died of something left in him. I
feel fine. Better: even my bruised collar bone seems healed.

Could Chang always heal others? Or is this some new
gift, given by Yod?

I try to make sense of his apparent transformation
(over all the other wonders and terrors we’ve seen): Chang is a
villain, a true monster, the remorseless (or so I imagined) killer
of many thousands. Now he’s a healer. A helper. Humble. And visibly
crushed by the guilt of what he’s done, possibly for all of his
eternal life, even though he knows that his very mind was altered
to make him do it all.

Or was it? That’s what I can’t be sure of. If my
memories were changed in some extreme way, would it so
fundamentally change who I am, or would I still act true to myself,
no matter what? Is that why Chang continues to blame himself for
everything he’d been manipulated into doing, because he did it,
willingly, and whatever drove him to it is poor excuse?

I’ve seen men change. Bad things happen. Trauma.
Loss. Desperation. I even question what’s changed in me. I still
remember my parents, seeing them die. I was terrified at first, but
then rage took me, and then I didn’t even care that those monsters
were going to kill me next. I remember that moment, that sensation,
over all the rest of the horror. All I wanted in was to kill them.
And not just the two who killed my parents and tried to rape my
mother.
All
of them. And I think if I had the opportunity,
the power to do so, I might well have killed every single Zodangan,
including their children, so they could never harm anyone ever
again.

And if I could, if I did, I can’t imagine how I could
live with myself. (It’s no small irony that I consider Captain Bly
a friend, a hero.)

That power, right now, is in the hands of a select
few. It was almost in my hands. I have to remember one very
important thing:
I didn’t want it
. I was willing to have Bly
cut off my arm not to have it.

Yod called Chang a brave man. But he also said Chang
had agreed to his role of genocidal monster. Assuming he had free
will.

Do any of us, if Yod can simply change our minds,
literally? And even if he doesn’t, he still has what seems like
full control. He led all of us into a trap, used us so he could
correct one of his mistakes. (Assuming it was a mistake. The
immortals don’t seem to think so, knowing Yod better. Was it a test
of our character, our choices? Or just the whim of a thing that
thinks it’s God?)

I can’t begin to understand what I’ve seen and heard,
but somehow I feel like I
should
forgive Chang, even though
I can’t imagine it ever being possible.

I realize Terina has been walking closer to me than
she needs to. And she should be the one walking at our point—she
knows the land and where she left our people, after all. She
doesn’t speak to me, but I catch her looking at me (though she
immediately looks away when I do, every time). And the way she
cried when she thought I was… This gives me a rush, and I start
thinking of possibilities, both wonderful and dangerous.
(
Does
she feel something for me? Or is it just my
imagination, my own hope?) I feel a thrill, giddy and anxious at
the same time, so much so that I have to question whether the sword
(or Chang or Yod) did leave something in me, change something.

I think… Oh… Heh… I think I may be in love.

In any case, I keep silent, pretend to ignore her
back, but she doesn’t move away when I edge a little closer.

And so we walk together.

Our reunion is both joyful and painful.

There
are
so few of us left.

Sarai is looking better, even standing. But I know
Fatima is dead (still, I’d hoped it was a mistake, but I don’t see
her), as are so many others that I have known all my life. My
family.

We all embrace in turn. Even Ambassador Murphy,
even
the Ghaddar, embrace everyone in their turn.
Even
the strange Unmaker is greeted like an old friend, as
soon as Abbas introduces her and sings her praises.

And Terina: she’s vigorously thanked for bringing us
back, and allows us to touch her for the first time, at least to
grasp forearms. (Again, I catch her looking at me when I’m turned
away.)

There’s a lot of laughter and smiles and tears all
around. And stories, told breathlessly. (What is not told is the
revelation that Yod remade our world all those years ago, remade
our grandparents with new memories and new lives. I lock eyes with
my father enough to understand: We must never speak of that.)

After a shared meal, we visit the still-fresh graves
of our fallen family, reverently dug into the slopes of this far
away mountain, surrounded by green life.

My father leads us in
Salat
, something we’ve
been neglecting because of our adventures. We all bow facing west,
facing home, and pray to the true God, submit to His will.

But in that ritual of faith my mind is invaded by
Kuf
, a flash of blasphemy: Should I be praying to God, or
Yod? No. I shove the idea out of my mind, freshly angry. Yod is
not
God, only a manufactured approximation, another attempt
by proud men to be more than what they are. No amount of power will
change that.

I touch my forehead to the dirt and re-affirm my
faith. Submit to His will.

After a brief shared meal, we must move. The day’s
already getting late, the evening winds beginning to blow at our
backs like a good omen, pushing us east.

Erickson Carter:

My brother has wandered off. Again.

This keeps me worried for him, for his safety as well
as his mental health. He stills seems very detached from the world.
Or, perhaps, just alternately attached to it.

In some ways he acts as if he’s still traumatized by
what Yod showed him (what he apparently had already figured out on
his own—Yod only confirmed his fears). Dazed. In shock. Crushed by
the revelation of an intelligent force capable of literally
unmaking and re-making the world, including us. But in other ways
he seems almost reborn, like he’s looking at the world for the
first time with new eyes, appreciating every detail of the physical
environment.

Does the knowledge—whatever Yod showed him—somehow
make it all more precious, because it
could
be undone again
at any time?
I
can only see it as terrifying, and have no
reason at all to trust Yod’s assurances that he won’t just do it
again at a whim.

Either I’m managing to keep going because I’m in some
form of denial, or on some level I realize I have no other good
choice. Reality is as real and as constant as I’ve always known it,
and the people who live in this world are apparently real people
(however manipulated their lives may have been). And they need
help. And I
can
help, maybe now better than I could
before.

Besides, Yod isn’t the only threat that could end
this world, and he might well be the most benign. So I need to deal
with the malignant first: Asmodeus. And Earth.

Where did Elias go?

We’ve been walking west through the valley between
the Pax mountain and the Spine. Dee says he’d come across
devastated Pax settlements in the area, many killed and wounded,
others likely hiding, unable to get to the relative safety of their
Hold. I only hope we can do more for the living than the dead.

Besides my brother’s behavioral symptoms, my only
other outer distraction is the way Lux has been looking at me, made
worse by a distinct scent in the air of female sex.

“Ignore it,” Paul Stilson tells me discreetly,
apparently understanding my distress from experience. “I’ve almost
got her convinced we’re all asexual.”

And now I’m quite sure I’m blushing (much to Lux’s
visible delight).

“Are you going to contact your father?” I distract
myself with more practical concerns. “Tell him he was right?”

Stilson shrugs. “I haven’t decided. I don’t know
whether the confirmation will allow our people to move forward
again, or drive them into further shutdown. And I admit: I’m still
more than a little frustrated with my father’s complete refusal to
share his reasons for what he ordered, even though I think I
understand it more.”

“I’m…” I try to put what I’ve been thinking into
words. “I’m not sure it would make any difference if they knew.
We’re still stuck with the same world, the same threats.”

“And one we can’t do anything about,” he focuses on
the revelation, “a being that could remake the world out from under
us.”

“Including us,” I go ahead and say, sharing that
dread. It actually gets a chuckle out of him. “What?”

“I’ve been trying to understand Ram and the others,
what it must be like for them: unable to trust who and what they
are, knowing they’ve been manipulated by some scheming and
untouchably powerful entity.”

“And now that applies to all of us,” I follow.

His mouth twists into a bitter smile.

There is so much I want to say to this man, have been
wanting to say to him for a long time. But I walk with him in
silence, sure I’ll sound like a blubbering sycophant as soon as I
start singing his praises. I can only be happy that he seems to be
accepting me into his company, as if he sees me as an equal, or at
least worthy to be a part of his team of eccentric super humans. So
I don’t ruin the moment with words.

Where is Elias?

I try something: I put my hand on my sword hilt,
reach out with my mind. Making physical contact with the sword
still only results in a vague feeling of warmth, and perhaps a
subtle vibration through my glove. But then I feel Elias: to our
right, maybe a hundred meters away, and up…

Through a gap in the trees, I see him. He’s climbing
up the mountain, steadily but casually heading for the crest,
diagonally so that he doesn’t fall too far behind. Stilson sees
him, too, so needs no explanation when I peel off and start
up-slope.

I think I know what he’s doing: Going for elevation,
up out of the green, he can see over the valley, see all the way to
the point in the Divide that seperates the North and Central
Blades, below which is our White Station. But he’s still heading
upwards, toward the crest, like he wants the best view, or maybe
wants to see over the other side.