Dominion (35 page)

Right from their activation, the Mechs were used for the study of such remote parts of the universe, for it was arduous and sometimes dangerous work. A handful of Mechs could do what it took an entire crew of Illyri to achieve, for the Mechs did not need to rest or eat, and required a fixed order of rotation only to charge themselves occasionally.

Meia could not recall which of the Mechs had first decided to withhold information from their Illyri creators. It might even have been she who made the decision. If so, she had purged it from her memory, probably for safety. She had been duplicitous from activation, possibly due to a fault in her programming. It was why she had made such a good spy. She had even lied to Paul and the others about her ultimate destination, and she trusted them more than anyone she had ever known, Illyri or human. But everyone broke under torture: everyone. It was only a question of how much one could endure. If they were captured, they would eventually tell their interrogators all that they knew, including the location of the Mech refuge.

So Tessel was an empty system, chosen by Meia as a decoy because of its size, and the impossibility of searching it thoroughly. But compared to the neighboring Haytalal system, Tessel was a small island. Tessel was big, but Haytalal was immense.

The journey to Haytalal had been long, and she had experienced feelings of intense loneliness, but she had spent much of it powered down, and for the rest she had prayed and meditated, as well as engaging in more practical modifications to herself. She had despised wearing the face of the novice Layne; it had been necessary, and without the deception Syl and the rest would never have escaped the Illyri system, but Meia felt appalled every time she looked in a mirror.

As the
Varcis
traversed the vast reaches of the universe, avoiding the main shipping lanes while occasionally bearing witness on-screen to clashes between Corps and Military ships, she had set to work on her appearance once again. She mapped an image of her old face from her own memories, and then began cutting and molding, using some of the
Varcis
's stock of ProGen skin from its medical supplies. The transformation had been less painful than before, for she had access to the correct equipment. Surgical procedures carried out with a laser blade were—not entirely to her surprise—much more precise, and far less psychologically grueling, than cutting into one's face with a scalpel. But she had also come to accept the reality of pain; she might not have been programmed to experience it, but it now existed for her. The
Varcis
's tranquilizers helped control it, but she used fewer of them than she might have done. She was glad of a little pain. It confirmed for her that she was more than a machine.

So it was something like the old Meia who approached Hayt-7, to give it its Illyri designation. It was one of the farthest planets from the dwarf star that supplied its warmth—any closer, and the heat from the star would have made it uninhabitable. It lay in the upper half of a spiral galaxy that might have been considered beautiful had Meia not seen so many like it before. Hayt-7 was a desert world, but from a distance gave the impression of a planet in the process of fragmentation, surrounded as it was by multiple rings of debris chains, like the old, inaccurate diagrams of electrons orbiting a nucleus that once figured in textbooks.

Negotiating the debris fields was the most difficult aspect of accessing the planet, and required Meia's full concentration. Once she was clear of them, and descending toward the surface, Hayt-7's great secret was revealed to her once more.

Hayt-7 was littered with bones.

The planet had no indigenous life-forms. It was, despite its atmosphere, a long-dead world, yet scattered across it were the remains of creatures, the largest beings that Meia had ever seen. Each must have stood eighty or ninety meters in height when alive, its head shaped like a gargantuan hooked claw, its rib cage a great cathedral of bone, most of its power residing in its huge back legs, while its forelimbs supported its upper body. The brief examination of its brainpan that Meia had conducted on the first sweep of the planet many years before suggested it was intelligent, a theory backed up by her other great discovery here: the wreckage from an unknown ship that had crashed on Hayt-7 in ancient times, while the Illyri were still throwing rocks at one another outside caves. The wreckage had become part of the landscape, just like the creatures and their skeletons.

Skeletons big enough to hide a ship.

And all of this she had kept from her Illyri masters—she, and her copilots on that mission, Menos and Karel. They were not even supposed to be scouting Haytalal, and Meia was not registered on the crew manifest, but by then she had already begun hearing whispers against the Mechs, and there were also those among her own kind who were preaching that the Mechs should leave the Illyri to their godless state, and set out for the stars. At the time, Meia was concerned. As things turned out, she should have been actively frightened.

She had not seen Hayt-7 since that first visit, but she had kept it in mind, and as the extent of the Illyri treachery grew clearer—their decision to rid themselves of the Mechs and start again on AI development—Haytalal became a name shared among only a handful of the artificial life-forms.

Now, as the
Varcis
descended, Meia found the ship she sought, but not with scanners or by sight. She found it because the beacon in its hull activated a response in the receiver she had planted inside herself, like a voice calling out from the desert floor and resonating inside her.

Meia brought the
Varcis
down by the torso of the largest of the dead beings, which contained within it an old Illyri transport ship named the
Morir
—the ark that had brought the remaining Mechs to safety—and waited to see what might emerge from it.

•  •  •

When movement came, it was not from the ship but from the nearby skull of the creature. From its mouth emerged a figure clad in layers of tattered clothing, holding a long steel rod in its right hand. The rod was topped by an intricate construction of copper wire, fused together to resemble rays emerging from a star: the image of the Divine. The figure remained standing in the shadow of the jaws, only its eyes visible through the material that concealed its face and head.

Meia left the
Varcis
. The afternoon was already growing chill, for soon the desert night would descend. The air was thin, but Meia was untroubled by such matters. She walked across the sand until she and the waiting Mech faced each other.

From beneath the robes appeared a hand. It had sustained some damage, and Meia could see some of the bones of its endoskeleton through the holes in its skin. It pulled aside the cloth from its mouth, and Meia started. Most of the ProGen flesh was missing from its nose down, giving it the appearance of a death's-head, but still she recognized the face.

“Emanis,” she said. “I am glad to see you.”

The lie came easily to her. Emanis was a fanatic, believing himself to have been chosen by the Divine to lead the Mechs to the Promised Land. It was unfortunate that the surviving transporter should have had him on board.

“Meia,” came Emanis's reply. Then: “You should not have come here.”

“Where are the others?”

“They sleep.”

“But you do not.”

“I watch over them. I pray in my church.”

He gestured at the skull behind him.

“Come,” he said. “See what I have created.”

She followed him into the cranium, and marveled despite herself at what he had wrought. He had drilled holes in the skull to admit light, incorporating them into the carvings that covered huge sections of bone so that the chinks became eyes, mouths, stars. She saw the faces of Mechs and Illyri alongside grotesque renderings of beasts both real and imagined, all incorporated into a great creation myth. Stored within Emanis himself was a history of Illyri art, and he had imitated the great artists of Illyri culture in decorating his church. Here were the spectral mourners of Machel's
The Widows of Oris
, now transformed into angels; there, the joyous lovers of Polchelti's
Transience
, but with their insides exposed to reveal biomechanical workings.

And towering over all, dominating the ceiling and upper walls, was an enormous rendering of the Creator, the Divine, containing both male and female elements, and mechanical parts alongside the organic. It was clearly a work in progress, but it bore a pronounced resemblance to—

Well, to Emanis himself.

“It is . . . striking,” said Meia, trying to conceal her unease, and failing.

“You disapprove?”

Tread carefully, thought Meia.

“No. I am merely overwhelmed. You completed all of this unaided?”

“I was happy to devote myself to honoring the Creator. Now this dead thing is a hymn of praise to the Divine.”

But Meia's eyes strayed to the ceiling, and to the incomplete depiction of that same Creator. Even its mouth was semiskeletal, just like Emanis's own. He had hung cables from the skull, and built scaffolding so that he could work on his own image.

“It will be dark soon,” she said.

“The lights are solar powered,” said Emanis. “They retain their charge from the sun. We can remain in this church as long as you wish.”

“I would prefer to go to the
Morir
.”

“First, tell me why you are here.”

Emanis sat on a pew he had built from bones, and invited her to do the same. Meia joined him, but kept her distance. The sunlight was dying rapidly, but now lamplight began to replace it. Emanis had rigged it to flicker softly, giving the impression of movement among the carvings. It was profoundly unsettling.

“The Illyri are tearing themselves apart,” she began. “The Second Civil War is upon us.”

“Upon
them
,” Emanis corrected. “We are not Illyri. Their wars do not concern us.”

“There is another force involved,” said Meia. “And it does concern us.”

She told Emanis much of what had occurred on Earth and on Illyr, but chose not to mention Syl, or Paul Kerr and his brother. She could not have said why, except that she felt it might complicate matters with Emanis. But she did describe the Others, and the threat that they posed to all life.

Emanis nodded at their mention.

“All things are the work of the Divine,” he said. “even these Others. They are a plague sent by the Creator to punish the unbelievers.”

“They destroy all creatures, whether they have the capacity to believe or not,” said Meia.

“It is the Creator's will. We cannot interfere.”

“To do nothing is to be complicit,” said Meia. “Belief in the Divine does not absolve us of the duty to fight what is evil.”

“And who is to say that these Others are evil?” asked Emanis. “You, Meia? If all things are the work of the Creator, and the Creator is good, then the Others are part of the Creator's plan. It is not for us to interfere. And we owe the Illyri nothing: they tried to wipe us out. They killed us in our tens of thousands.”

“That was not the work of all Illyri. Many would have objected, had they known. And some helped us. You would not be alive otherwise. None of us would.”

Emanis stood. He waved a hand, and the lamplight started to fade.

“You are wrong, Meia,” he said. “Go back to your war. I will not wake the sleepers for this.”

“That is not for you alone to decide, Emanis.”

But Emanis was not listening to her. He stepped out into the night, and the darkness swallowed him.

M
eia followed Emanis across the sands, her infrared lenses blurring him slightly as he passed through avenues of bones. Only when they were almost at the
Morir
did he turn to face her.

“I told you to leave,” he said.

“I am not yours to command.”

“I will not let you enter. You cannot wake them.”

“They must be allowed to decide for themselves, Emanis. Now is the time for them to return to Illyr, should they wish it. Now is the time for them to show their faces, and avenge the injustice that was done to them.”

“They are safe here.”

“They are not immortal. Even the power cells on the
Morir
cannot sustain them forever. What do you want, Emanis: that they should become like the bones that surround them here, relics of an extinct species?”

“Leave them in peace, Meia.”

“I cannot.”

Emanis's right hand had been concealed in his robes. Now it emerged holding a pulser.

“Then you will have to add your remains to those that already lie here,” said Emanis.

He fired, but Meia was already moving, and the pulse impacted on a giant tibia behind her, shattering it. She found her own weapon, and tried to draw a bead on Emanis, but he was already shielded by the rib cage, and she did not wish to kill him. She glimpsed a rectangle of light appear as Emanis entered the
Morir
, and then it vanished.

Meia followed Emanis's path, and came to the ship. If he had tried to secure it against her, he had failed: Meia's link to the
Morir
was deeper than any locks and codes. She spoke, and it answered, but she did not enter by the same door that Emanis had used. Instead she ran halfway along the vessel's great length until she came to a series of large hatches. She knew the layout of the
Morir
, and this was the closest entrance to the main bays at the heart of the ship, where the sleepers waited.

The nearest hatch opened at her command, but Meia did not go in immediately, wary of Emanis's pulser. But when she did risk a glance inside, the corridor before her was empty.

Meia stepped inside the
Morir
.

•  •  •

She smelled it as the door closed behind her: a vague odor of old fires, but she could not place the source. It grew stronger as she progressed down the corridor, one of the radial arteries to the bays, which was lit by the faintest of glows from the emergency lighting that activated at her command. The corridor ended at an elevator bank, of which there were several on the exterior of the bays. Beside it was a staircase, and this she used to ascend. Despite her link to the ship, she did not wish to find herself trapped in a small space should Emanis try to override its systems. She knew that he was in here somewhere, probably watching her on the security cameras. She could have attempted to form a deeper connection with the ship to disable them, but that would have meant plugging herself directly into its mainframe, which would have left her vulnerable if Emanis had installed traps to prevent any such incursion. No, she would deal with Emanis later, once the sleepers had awakened.