The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (21 page)

Today it’s Jeremiah
, he thought.
Tomorrow it could be me
.

Welcome to the Cerebral Core of Beimeni, Captain Barão,
Marstone sent.

Pull all data on Jeremiah Selendia.

Specify the time frame.

Day one, After Reassortment, to present day.

The data feed rushed overhead in the cosmos. Documents that outlined Jeremiah’s birthplace, his developers, his promotions, his conversions, his assignments from Chancellor Masimovian, building out the territories, hollowing the underground for the RDD, and classified documents, documents labeled LAURENTIA: blocked in Marstone’s Database.

Access data files labeled Laurentia.

Captain Barão, you are not approved for entry. Shall I request?

You require no request. I am Supreme Scientist of Reassortment and seek access to my predecessor’s information.

You should have all of Jeremiah Selendia’s research in the RDD’s database.

Marstone, open the files.

Access is not permitted.

Open. The. Laurentia. Files.

Access is not permitted.

Brody raised his arms and accessed the ZPF. He inserted his consciousness into Marstone’s, seeking the inner core, the center of its artificial intelligence from which it connected to the zeropoint field and where it stored its information—Beimeni’s secrets and desires and history and future. Brody manually pushed through the maze that formed in his extended consciousness and searched for the core. When he found it, he saw how indelible his presence would be. He pushed through.

Marstone, give me access to the Laurentia files.

Notes upon notes of interrogations and intelligence gathered by the Lady Isabelle, Lieutenant Arnao, and General Norrod streamed across his vision. The words PERMUTATION CRYPT appeared.
Marstone, show me the schematics for Permutation Crypt.

Reasoning.

Show schematics considering integrity and security.

Specify the form.

Brody didn’t know what to say.

Specify the form.

Three of the black bots on the edge shot maroon beams of light into each other’s eye slits and built a triangle of light around Brody.

Specify the form.

The form today.
Specks of metallic dust thickened, and the shapes of parallelograms hardened into renderings of alloyed rooms labeled with ancient Greek lettering and symbols Brody hadn’t seen since the Harpoons.
Marstone, bring me the origin of Permutation Crypt.

One facility was identified as HENGILL LABORATORY and next to it, a near replica called PERMUTATION CRYPT, with features similar to the asymmetrical Hengill Laboratory that now melted into parallelogram shapes inside.

Brody downloaded all the information Marstone contained on Permutation Crypt into a z-disk. When he’d finished, TYPE 3 ERROR flashed, and the many maroon eye slits glowed around the room. Brody dashed out of the center ring, sliding as the lasers reignited. Crawling through the doorway beneath the lasers, he connected to the ZPF, leveled the stunned Janzer guards with a telekinetic thrust, composed himself, and walked back through the DOC.

Silkscape City

Lovereal, Underground West

2,500 meters deep

Damy and Verne stood upon one of the city’s tens of thousands of oak rafts along one of its thousands of inlets. Even from their distance, the gigantic Harsailles Menagerie hung as high as the Granville sun and as wide as a moon. Its carbyne base dug deep, deep, deep into the Earth’s crust, surrounded by water.

Damy remembered a time when Silkscape City—so named for the synthetic silk spores that fluttered in its atmosphere and clung to crimson and golden tree branches—used traditional transports and didn’t have any streams at all, before the Janzers widened and deepened the Zwillerzweller River and nearly flooded Lovereal.

She wished she were on the Zwillerzweller presently, on her way to Dunamis City and on to Halcyon Village to visit her children. Instead, her breath rasped out of her under the intensity of Lovereal’s sapphire sun. Its rays hit the streams of water that fell from curved ivory poles on either side of the inlet, leaving hundreds of rainbows in their wake. Reanaearon migrant women rowed on either end of the raft, their porcelain skin covered with perspiration. How long could they row this way? Damy wondered. The migrants moved like bots, and their feathered capes fluttered in the sweet citrus wind.

They arrived at the major waterway that led to the Harsailles Menagerie.

“Damy?” Verne said. He pulled her to the front of the raft. “Check it out!”

Her mouth dropped, then lifted in the biggest smile she’d worn in years. Hundreds of
Sigillaria
trees, common during the Carboniferous Period of three hundred fifty million years ago, lined the fifty waterways that led to the menagerie, every one of them planted by her team.

“They’re
wonderful
,” she said, even as her stomach turned at the sight of the unfinished menagerie.

The engineers had assured her construction proceeded as normal, but the habitat looked further from completion than she’d hoped. When it was finished, it would be encapsulated in the largest structure in the commonwealth, capable of housing life from all Earth’s history.

“What’s
she
doing here?” Verne said.

Damy sighed. Upon the marble stairs that angled up to the menagerie, Minister Tatiana Avalonia stood. Her bronze skin glistened, her head wrapped with lotus silk of many colors, her blue-gold eyes encircled by dark mascara. Her entire outfit was made of gold, shaped like leaves, the metal strung together with gold chains, snaking from her breasts down to her crystal stiletto heels.

The raft kissed the dock, and the migrants tied it to the railing. Verne held Damy’s hand and helped her onto the emerald-studded walk. Minister Avalonia quickened her graceful step. Two keeper bots on either side of her waved massive crimson leaves attached to crimson stems.

Damy exhaled and asked Verne for a canteen. She drank so fast that water slipped out of the side of her mouth and chilled her neck. She wiped her lips and took a deep breath, preparing for Avalonia. She and Verne climbed the stairs. The sounds of drills and clanks from diamond on diamond rose up around them, along with the smell of burning alloys.

“Minister, you grace us with your presence,” Damy said.

The bots canopied the leaves over Avalonia. “Save your courtesy
and
your excuses for Phanes,” the minister said. “I’m here to put you back on schedule. I finished a debriefing with your engineers and scientists in the menagerie. Convenient how you’re
never
on time for these meetings.”

Damy looked to Verne and back to the minister. “What meeting?” she asked, and Avalonia scowled. “And, Minister, the menagerie
is
on schedule, the construction proceeds—”

“I see a monstrosity surrounded by scaffolding. I see trees and plants from the Earth’s past but few animals other than those hideous
Effigia
and
Mammuthus
.” Damy wanted to remind her of the many other species the team had rendered into existence but held her tongue. This wasn’t the place or the time for an argument with the minister. “The aristocrats seek entertainment in this venue,” Avalonia added, “not these passive, heaping … grotesque …
creatures
you’re populating here—”

“You mean they seek a slaughter—” Verne said.

“You will speak when spoken to, worm.” Avalonia stepped toward Verne, her canopy moving with her. “Interrupt me again, and I’ll see to it your next assignment is in the Lower Level.” She turned to Damy. “We’re less than two years away—”

“Excuse me,” Damy said, “but without Vernon Lebrizzi we’d have no schedule. And that sort of entertainment isn’t what this project’s about. We’re not introducing land-based carnivores to this habitat.”

“Miss Damosel, your reputation has
not
held true. Give the aristocrats a show, or go home.”

Avalonia removed her headpiece and swung her long, colorful hair around her body, brushing Verne on the chin. He blinked and closed his mouth. She strutted down the steps. The bots resumed fanning her as she sauntered onto a ministerial raft lined with polished mantle-stone, topped with rose petals.

What a jerk
, Damy thought,
a jerk with no understanding of the true importance of the project, the proper and significant conversions, the creation of a lost time, a lost world
.

No, all Avalonia cared about were the figures estimated by traders in Navita for the Prehistoric Consortium, owners and sponsors of the menagerie. The menagerie’s internal structure included a spiral-tracked elevator, “a twisted straw inside a giant cup,” as Verne called it, designed to allow visitors to view the flora and fauna through glass enclosures. Slides down the menagerie’s borders allowed for a different, elegant exit for the paleobiologists and paleobotanists from Damy’s team who traversed it daily. The traders estimated that upon completion, the menagerie would bring in one hundred million benaris in its first year and billions over time from the commonwealth’s aristocrats.

“I don’t give a darn if the consortium and the traders lose on this venture,” Damy said.

She expected Verne to nod mindlessly as he’d done in the past when she mentioned the Navitan traders, but this time he didn’t hesitate or wither in his response.

“You only care about the science.”

Damy nodded, and as she looked into Verne’s eyes, she saw something unfamiliar. What was it? A longing? A desire? Confusion? She wished she could read minds as easily as Brody. She did feel a tingle in her belly, a sensation she used to get around Brody, all those years ago.

Maybe it’s the heat
, she thought,
maybe I need more water
.

“Don’t let her get in your neurochip,” Verne said. “At least the chancellor appreciates what we’ve accomplished.”

“Does he?” Damy said.

She didn’t realize how closely she and Verne now stood together on the steep stairs or remember when he put his arms around her, but she found herself easing into his grasp the way a kitten might ease onto a feather bed.

“Avalonia cares only about the benaris,” Verne said and nuzzled her ear.

Silkscape City

Lovereal, Underground West

2,500 meters deep

She’s
always
with Verne
, Brody thought.

He paddled on one end of a raft, a keeper bot on the other. He saw Minister Avalonia dash down the stairs, swing her hair over Verne, and strut onto her raft. He watched Verne and Damy together.

His gut curdled.

What had this trader done to his eternal partner?

For sure
, he thought,
she wouldn’t willingly allow him to hold her. She must be dizzy with the heat.

Was it normally this hot here, or were their coolant systems malfunctioning? Brody sniffed his shoulder, soaked in sweat, much like the rest of his fatigues. He hoped he didn’t smell as bad as he assumed he did. Dark circles lined his eyes, and the cut on his arm throbbed. He figured the injury had resulted from his slide along the ground in the Cerebral Core or happened when he’d pulled himself through the exit. Or had it come from when he fell on North Boardwalk? It was all a blur. He expected the DOC to issue a warrant for his arrest and needed to warn Damy, to usher her to safety and pick up their twins in Halcyon Village. He’d spent the boat ride wondering if they should flee south or east, or whether he should turn himself in and leave his heirs with the BP.

Now he didn’t know what to think.

After the bot helped Brody secure the raft to the dock, he activated his recaller and scurried along the walk. Damy seemed like a dark silhouette next to Verne in the dusk. She pulled away when she saw Brody. Her lips moved, though he couldn’t hear her, not with all the drills. She moved down the steep marble steps with Verne guiding her descent.

“What’re you doing here?” Damy hugged him. “I thought you were going to Portage today?” He had told her that morning he was going back to visit with Minister Kaspasparon, that he had to reconcile his past before Pasha’s and Oriana’s Harpoon Exams.

He couldn’t lie to her any longer. He’d crossed the chasm into new territory, and he knew time was limited.

The Janzers who patrolled Lovereal stirred nearby.

“Captain,” Verne said, “welcome to the Harsailles Menagerie.”

Brody didn’t like this trader’s grin, or his tone, or his suspenders. He shook Verne’s hand and winked, a firm shake, a firm wink that undoubtedly said,
Leave.
“Darling, did you forget?” he said to Damy. “You were going to show me the new vegetation today so we might figure out what my lab could do to help yours.” To Verne he said, “Can you give us some time?”

“Where do you expect me to go?” Verne said.

Brody looked at Verne, then at the moat. “The engineering offices are on the other side of the island.”

“Why can’t I come with you?”

Brody looked at Damy in a manner he knew she’d understand. She turned to Verne. “Why don’t you check in with the engineers … push them to move forward the construction … alert them to Minister Avalonia’s angst—”

“They don’t care about the minister, that much I know, though I’m sure they’d love to hear from you—”

“You don’t need a chaperone,” Brody said.

He pulled Damy away from Verne.

“We’ll be back,” Damy said over her shoulder.

“Take us somewhere secure,” Brody said. “We need to talk.”

Damy hand-signaled the Janzers. Brody suppressed a flinch, but they fitted Brody and her with hardhats and fur-collared capes. The sight of the capes nearly made Brody pass out. “I guess we’re going somewhere … cold?”

Damy didn’t answer. They ascended through the menagerie’s layers, layers of the Earth’s history, and only now did Brody understand the immensity of the Harsailles Menagerie. The elevator moved slowly enough for Damy to tell him what he stared at, though he’d heard her talk of this project enough to have an idea. She pointed out swaying, seaweed-like
Charnia
on the level labeled PROTEROZOIC EON, a mostly underwater habitat. At CAMBRIAN PERIOD, a sharklike creature with a pair of spiny, downward-curving appendages on its underside swam by. “These are the
Anomalocaris,
the largest predator in the Cambrian’s ecosystem,” Damy said. At PALEOGENE PERIOD, she said, “These are the
Mesoreodon
.”