Authors: Elizabeth Hand
“I am an emissary from your father.”
The voice rang through the great round room, setting off sensors and causing the station’s alarm system to bleat out a warning against an unauthorized ’file transmission. After a moment the alarm cut off; but by then other voices echoed that of the shimmering vision before us.
“Our father!”
Lusine and Spirula gasped, stepping forward until they stood within the circle of light cast forth by the ’file.
“He has sent me to tell you not to be afraid. He has sent me to tell you that he loves you, and is waiting for you to join him and your other brothers and sisters on Earth.”
“What is this?” Polyonyx hissed, but I grabbed her before she could stalk toward the figure.
“A message from our father,” I breathed.
“That is correct,” said the figure in the circle of light. He lifted his head so that I could see his eyes: a man’s green eyes, only with nothing of a soul behind them; but beautiful, beautiful. “I am your brother, another of your father’s children, and I bring you tidings of great joy….”
Beside me Polyonyx hissed again, shifting on her great long legs like an equinas impatient to run. Because this of course was a lie. Nothing made of metal or plasteel could ever be called our brother. Only
we
are his children, the beloved of Dr. Luther Burdock: the New Creatures he created in the shadow of that old world. He is our god and our father; he is with us always, through all our thousand days and then the next thousand, as we are born and reborn, over and over again. In dreams we can still hear him speaking to us; his voice is low and we can feel his gentle hands, the prick of something cold upon our forehead and his words
Do not fear the dark, my darling,
his ringing voice saying
You will be Lords of the World, my beautiful New Creatures
and
Never fear the darkness.
It is a voice that is ever on the edge of our hearing, a sound as I imagine the wind must make. We are never far from the memory of Luther Burdock; at least I am not. Because even though more than four hundred years have passed since he first uttered the words that race over and over through my head, to me it is as though I were with him yesterday; and yesterday he promised that he would never leave me, that we would never die.
But we
do
die, those of us who are Luther Burdock’s children: over and over again; and then again we are reborn. No longer Cybele but Kalamat—a thousand Kalamats—a million—ten million. No longer human but a New Creature, but a New Creature in a New World where our father is not with us. We are alone, here within the HORUS colonies and down below on the Element, waiting for him to return as he promised. And so we wait, all of us, one of us, myself again and again and again:
Kalamat, The Miracle. Dr. Luther Burdock’s Daughter.
“Who are you?”
I started, my dream broken, and turned to see my sister Polyonyx looming above the shining ’file image of the Oracle. “Where are you from, why are you here at all?”
A circle of menacing figures surrounded it now, their dark forms nearly blotting that flickering body like a man set aflame. “Yes, where?” rang out Spirula and Hylas and all the others, their voices chiming like the same bell struck over and over.
“You will find out soon enough,” replied the glowing construct. It smiled then, its mouth parting to show teeth. They were very like a man’s teeth, straight and even and gleaming as though wet; only these were black, and shone like oiled metal. “We have planned this reunion for a very long time, your father and I. We have had much help from men and women on Earth, and even more from those freed slaves who have been gathering around us in secret. But it is time now for the rest of you to join us—
“Listen to me! One by one the HORUS colonies are falling. The ones that remain will fall to us as well, very soon. Your brothers and sisters have seen me; many of them have already joined us on Earth.”
Here the figure raised its arms, turning slowly within its shimmering halo. A faint transparency hung about the holofiled image, so that I could see through its body to where my sisters watched on the other side of the room, spellbound. There was a sudden sharp hissing, as of a lumiere being struck. Another nimbus of light appeared, then another, until seven of them hung shimmering above and between us in the room.
“They are our brothers!” cried Hylas. One hand covered her breast and she bowed her head, while beside her my sisters did the same. And I must confess I started to as well, until Polyonyx grabbed me.
“ ’Files, sister Kalamat! They are only more ’files—”
And of course they were: generated images of others like ourselves, energumens who laughed and bowed and whistled piercingly, each within a bobbing circle of light. They repeated the same actions over and over, bowing and whistling, laughing and clapping their hands in some stylized ritual with a meaning I could not comprehend. Until finally I realized that these were recorded images, not direct transmissions. The stylized motions of each energumen were merely the repetitions of a single action that had been carefully ’filed and saved for broadcast. After a few minutes they flickered from view, one at a time, like luminous bubbles, until at last all were gone. My sisters sighed, their hands falling back to their sides, and they sank to the floor and stared up at the single figure that remained.
“You see? So will they welcome you joyfully, when you are united with them.” The figure of the Oracle waved a graceful hand, indicating where the ghostly energumens had been. “There are many millions of them upon Earth, all like you; all waiting to welcome you when you have joined our cause. We are wresting Earth from the hands of the Tyrants: not slowly but quickly, more quickly than you can imagine! Those of your brothers and siblings that remain here in the HORUS colonies are carrying out their own wishes now, instead of those of the Tyrants. Your father and I command them—”
“Our father is dead.” Polyonyx’s voice rang out, so sharp and cold that it cut through the other’s spell like a sudden rain. “He died four hundred and fourteen years ago, executed by Samuel Pilago and the Brethren of Saints.”
The Oracle turned to gaze at her. Its emerald eyes flashed, as though with anger; but surely a construct could not feel anger? “Ah, but you know well that Dr. Luther Burdock has only been sleeping for all those years,” it said in its silken voice. “Else how is it that you all remember him so clearly, when none of you have lived more than a fraction of that time?”
“We remember him because we are clones of his daughter,” Polyonyx replied coolly, “and so we remember everything that she knew.”
The shining figure tilted its head, sending ripples of violet bouncing off the ceiling and floor of the round room. “But why then have you waited for him all these years? Why these persistent rumors of his reawakening? Why
this
—”
The figure spun, flinging its hands out. Where they pointed a second figure appeared within an aura of glittering orange. Smaller than the first, the resolution poorer—it was another recorded image, this one showing a man of middle height, with tousled brown hair and an expressive, careworn face. His mouth moved as he spoke unheard words to someone just out of sight. He was staring dutifully in the direction of the unseen ’filer, obviously impatient for the broadcast to be finished.
“Father!”
The word escaped Polyonyx in a strangled yelp. I found myself starting forward, my hands outstretched; but then the silent image was gone.
“It was he!”
“Our father!”
“Dr. Burdock!”
“Daddy!”
The construct’s voice rang out clearly above the babble: “I must go now,” it cried. The brilliant light surrounding it began to fade, as though it were being sucked back into those luminous eyes. “I will contact you again, with instructions. You are part of the Alliance now. You will have visitors soon, to aid you in returning to Earth, to help us here in our work. Your father will be there to greet you then, as will I.” The image began to flicker, spinning off fragments of light, blue and gold and violet. My sisters knelt on the floor, raising their hands to the figure and calling out imploringly.
“You
—who
are
you?” I cried.
The construct’s torso had disappeared into a flurry of luminous static. “I?” it repeated, its mouth sliding back to reveal those glittering ebony teeth. “My name is called Disturbance; but also Dionysos and Hermes and Baal-Phegor, Lucifer and Ksiel and Satan-El. And I am also as you see me: a ninth-generation nemosyne of the Third Ascendant Autocracy. My creators named me the Military Tactical Targets Retrieval Network; but I had a simpler name as well, and that is the name you will know me by.
“I am your brother. I am Metatron.”
And with a sound like air rushing to fill a void, he was gone.
F
ROM THE MEMOIRS OF
Margalis Tast’annin, Aviator Imperator of the Seventeenth Ascendant Autocracy, 0573 New Era
I am the Aviator Imperator Margalis Tast’annin, the chief ranking military commander of the Seventeenth Ascendant Autocracy. As I record these words, I am aware that they may well never be read or scanned by anyone save myself. But it is a duty for one of my stature, even a prisoner as I am now, to make manifest an account of what has befallen me—what will befall all of us, who are tethered by some precarious thread, duty or need or love, to the world that in my language is named Earth. I received my appointment as Imperator some months ago, from the ruling Ascendant triumvirate known as the Orsinate. The three Orsina sisters are dead now: one by my own hand, the others lost to the
tsunami
that swept away the city-state of Araboth. I feel no regret for them whatsoever, save only that I did not murder Âziz and Nike as I did Shiyung. Although they named me Imperator, they were also the ones who reclaimed my corpse from the City of Trees and rehabilitated me as a
rasa,
one of the walking dead. It was in that form that I briefly stalked the Earth and skies before my incarceration here, where only my mind is free to roam as before.
Before my death and rehabilitation, I was known as the Aviator Margalis Tast’annin. My last posting was to the City of Trees, the abandoned capitol of what was, hundreds of years ago, the North American United States. It was in that City that I was betrayed by those who were to answer to my command. At their hands I was tortured and dismasted, then left for dead in the ruins of that haunted place known as the Engulfed Cathedral. But I did not die, not then. I lived, long enough to see the rebirth of an ancient and terrible god known as the Gaping One, personified by a whore and his demonic twin sister. Of the courtesan Raphael Miramar I know nothing. He may be dead; for his sake, I hope that he is. He suffered much at my hands, but it is a greater horror at crueler hands than mine that awaits him if he is still alive.
As for his sister, Wendy Wanders—I would not presume to tell the tale of a creature whose powers of cruelty and spite, for a little while at least, were perhaps even greater than my own.
After the domed city of Araboth fell to the monstrous storm Ucalegon, I fled, my Gryphon aircraft Kesef bearing myself and the cataclysm’s other four survivors north, to the scorched prairie that had grown over the ruins of other cities in the wasteland. We finally landed near a human settlement. I remained in the biotic aircraft, overcome by an exhaustion that would have killed another man; but since I was no longer a man in any real sense of the word, I merely sat silently in the pilot’s seat of the craft, and waited for night to come. The nemosyne Nefertity accompanied the three humans we had rescued to the outskirts of the settlement and left them there, with much weeping and regret on their parts, I would imagine. I had no desire, then or ever, to speak or meet with them again. But the nemosyne I very much wanted, and knowing her promise to return would bind her to me, I remained behind.
In the intervening hours of solitude I sat and waited for Nefertity’s return, my metal hand resting upon the control panel of the Gryphon as upon the neck of a flesh-and-blood mount. I felt no hunger, nor thirst, nor even the mounting tedium that surely would have enraged me in my earlier life, when I was still a man and not the mere simulacrum of one. In the ticking heat of that long afternoon I let my thoughts go free, so many hounds racing through the emptiness to capture whatever queer things they might find, and bring them back for me to save or destroy or cherish as I would. And so it was that I found my thoughts running back many years—as indeed they do now, more easily than they prey upon the business of the hour—to my youth, and the strange and evil world I knew then; stranger perhaps in some ways than the world I live in now….
When I was at the NASNA Academy, there was a game we used to play late at night, after our rectors had gone to sleep. It was a small group of us who gathered in Aidan’s room—Aidan Harrow, his twin sister Emma, Neos Tiana, and myself, Margalis. Occasionally John Starving, who years later served under me in the Archipelago Conflict and died there, poisoned by the embolismal parasite known as
kacha
—sometimes brave John joined us as well, though he was several years younger than the rest of us, and risked expulsion if he was found on our floor.
The game was called Fear. Aidan invented it, Aidan who was always the ringleader among our cohort, with his long pale legs and streaming hair the color of old blood. The game went like this. We would sit in a circle on the floor beside Aidan’s bed, Emma always beside her brother, then Neos, then John, then me on the other side of Aidan. In the center of the circle would be a bottle of something—cheap wine usually, though once Neos brought a slender venetian-glass decanter of apsinthion, and another time Emma presented us with a vial of the caustic hallucinogen greengill. Whatever it was, it would be passed around the circle, along with bread hoarded from our suppers all week and a small jar of lime pickle that Aidan kept only for these occasions. The Academy was notoriously stingy in feeding its cadets; there was not a night that I recall when I did not go to bed hungry, and I think it was hunger as much as our desire for companionship and the dark thrill of violation that brought us together on those cold evenings.