Icarus Descending (2 page)

These, then, were Cybele’s world-mates—her family, as it were. Her father raised her by himself—hers had been a glass birth—and except for the rare excursions to various Ascendant sites (and one to HORUS), she never left the compound. She trusted her father as each morning she trusted the sun to rise above the hazy bulk of the Blue Ridge. And so, when he told her that he would be performing an operation upon her, she was not afraid, even though she had heard how others screamed before the sedatives took effect.

“It’s very simple, really,” he had soothed her as he carefully clipped her hair, preserving some of it in glass vials for further work. “And this way, darling, we will always be together, somewhere.”

“We won’t die?” Her fifteen years in that near-solitude had left her oddly childlike; and so she had a child’s odd blend of fearlessness and terror when it came to death.

“We will die,” her father said in his soft voice, “but then we will be regenerated, because of
that
—”

He inclined his head to the wall opposite their seat, where vials and globes and steel chambers contained the essence of himself, culled through several years of painstaking operations.

“And it won’t hurt,” the girl said knowingly.

“Do not fear the dark, my darling. It may hurt, but we won’t remember. Only this, darling—you’ll remember only this—” And he stroked her bare head tenderly, tilting his own so that she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

In the end it
did
hurt, for Luther Burdock, at least. The next Ascension, while brief, lasted long enough for its fundamentalist leaders to attempt to destroy all remnants of the flourishing bioengineering industry. Luther Burdock was executed, but only after the geneticist was tortured and forced to watch his daughter’s death, over and over and over again, as Cybele and all her cloned twins were murdered.

This short-lived Ascendancy knew nothing of the subtleties of science. While meticulous in their murder of the geneticist and his cloned children, they failed to dismantle his laboratories. They did not even approach the compound in the mountains, where Dr. Burdock himself hid within twisted strands of DNA and several frozen canisters stored in a bomb shelter. And they could not destroy all the geneslaves already loosed upon the world; they could not even hope to begin to do so.

But there were too many industries already dependent upon Luther Burdock’s biotechnology. After a few brief skirmishes, the members of this Ascension met their own unhappy fates in chambers they had designed for others. Their successors found in Dr. Burdock’s laboratories an elaborate and detailed series of holograms explaining his work. They also found a vial of tissue and neurological fluid labeled KALAMAT 98745: the miracle, the clonal replica of his beloved only child.

These Ascendants were neither fearful nor hesitant when it came to matters of science. Kalamat they explored, refined, developed as though she were a new and fertile country—as indeed she was, in a way—and while she never forgot her father, it is doubtful if ever he would have recognized her in the thing that she became.

It was this same sister, the one we call Cumingia, who first told me of the plague, several months before I saw the image of Icarus flickering in the air of the nav chamber.

She said, “O Kalamat, a strange thing has come to Quirinus. The Tyrant Medusine Kovax has been given to the Ether—”

(—that is, her corpse had been thrust through the air locks into the void, because there is no room within the HORUS colonies for the dead—)

“—and many others of our Masters are sick, or mad. I think they may be dying.” She looked around anxiously, fearful of being heard by a Master who might mistake her message for one of treason. “Please, Kalamat—”

I was bent over a console, supervising the repair of one of the solex panels that give breath and light to Quirinus. It was my duty, an important one if tedious. I knew that I was supposed to feel honored to have such a task. On Quirinus lived members of the Ascendant Autocracy, who from the relative safety of their orbital stations ruled what remained of the poisoned Element. Those of us who served them were constantly reminded of our great fortune, that we would live our thousand days in HORUS and never have to look upon that blighted world.

Still I dreamed of it, and was dreaming now even as I worked. So when Cumingia crept up behind me, at first I did not hear her. When I turned, it was as though I turned to gaze at myself in a mirror—eyes, hands, face, mouth, all save the spot where Cumingia had carved her left breast and upon the smooth scar that remained incised the image of her inner self, the Cumingia, a shell from the seas of the Element. Cumingia’s duty was to guard the docking chamber of Quirinus. So she had been the first to greet the delator Horacio Baklas when he arrived, ostensibly to serve our Masters as psychobotanist.

But his true mission soon became known to us. He was one of those humans who had joined the geneslave rebellion, though at that time we knew nothing of the Alliance. Under pretense of carrying with him a new shipment of spores for our pharmacy, he had instead brought
irpex irradians,
the radiant harrowing, one of the thousand Tyrant plagues that have been set loose upon the Element. But we did not know that yet. We had yet to hear of the Asterine Alliance; yet to hear of the Oracle, or the rumors that our father finally had risen from his long sleep to reclaim his enslaved children.

“She is dead?” I stopped my work, scratching my head absently. “You are certain, sister?”

Cumingia nodded excitedly. “She claimed that she saw her father and brother coming to her through the air lock. She commanded me to open it, so that she could greet them. I watched as the Ether took her, and came here to tell you.”

I frowned. It was not a good thing, for one of my sisters to witness a Master’s death. “Was there anyone with you? Were you alone?”

“The psychobotanist Horacio Baklas was with me. He laughed and laughed to see her die. I believe he has brought a plague with him.”

And so it was, as we learned over the next few days. First Medusine, then Vanos Tiberion, then Hosi and Ahmet, and finally all the rest, all of our Masters died. Hosi impaled himself. Ahmet and Lisia Manfred took themselves together to bed until the plague passed over them and the chamber smelled of the sweetness of their blood. For the rest it was quick madness or the lingering hours while their blood turned; but for all of them it was death. One by one we brought their corpses to the air lock and watched them slide into the void. I felt no sorrow, to see their pale bodies floating past. We energumens, the cloned children of Luther Burdock, live only one thousand days apiece, and outside of Quirinus the Ether is full of the bodies of our kin. There are many more of our dead than there are of humans in that void outside the HORUS station, hanging motionless but seeming to move in slow mournful circles as the station spins upon its orbit. It seemed a small enough offering, to let the bodies of our Masters join ours in the darkness. So one by one we gave them to the Ether, until only Horacio Baklas remained.

“Thus you are avenged!” he cried to my sister, she who is called Polyonyx because of the anomuran crab that is drawn upon her left breast. “I have waited three years, but it is done now.”

He seemed saddened, Polyonyx told me later; but that is the way with our Masters. They bring about the deaths of their own kind, and then pretend regretfulness. He gazed at my sister and suddenly smiled. “You are free now, Polyonyx. All of you—your Tyrant Masters are dead. It was a specially designed virus, you have nothing to fear from it. You are free, child. You may go.”

“Go?” My sister frowned. It was odd, to be called
child
by a human small enough to sit upon your knee. She told me later that she thought this man Horacio Baklas must be mad. “Where will we go? We have jobs to do, here—”

Horacio Baklas shook his head. He was small, even for a man; he barely came up to my sister’s waist. “No more, Polyonyx.”

(That was another odd thing about him—he called us by the names we have given ourselves. Our Ascendant Masters call us all by one name, Kalamat. When there are males among us, they are named Kalaman. But Horacio Baklas insisted upon learning our true names.)

“Haven’t you heard?” he went on. “There is a war on Earth—what you call the Element—war between the human Tyrants and the geneslaves.”

Polyonyx looked puzzled. “War?” We had heard of wars, of course; the reason we were on the HORUS station was to serve our Masters while they planned their endless attacks upon other humans in other space colonies and on the continents below. It is something we can never understand about humanity. They are such barbarians that the ones who call themselves the Ascendants—our Masters—wage war upon their brothers in the Archipelago and the Balkhash Commonwealth and the Habilis Emirate, and in other places upon the Element. It is because there is not enough to eat there; or so I have been told. But to us the Masters are all as one evil thing. They are not like us, or the other geneslaves. Their origins go back aeons, to animals that they hold in contempt; they do not have the hands of Dr. Luther Burdock upon them. “We have not been told of this.”

He nodded. His face had that fanatical glow that comes so easily to humans. “Yes! For three years now we have worked in silence, planning, planning—and now the time has come.
Your
time has come—”

Unfortunately he now began to rave, claiming he saw our father, Dr. Burdock, walking to meet him through the empty chamber. After a few minutes he keeled over, his face twisted into that rictus of inspired glee that was to become all too familiar to us through transmissions from the battlefronts below.

Polyonyx watched nonplussed, finally picked him up and carried him to Cumingia, who was still tending the infirmary, though there were no longer any humans to minister to.

“This one is dead, too,” said Polyonyx. She gave the body to Cumingia, who shook her head sadly. “He said there is a war on the Element—on Earth—he said that the geneslaves have rebelled.”

At this news Cumingia grew agitated and called me. I notified the others, all of us who remained on Quirinus, and we gathered in the circular meeting chamber that our Ascendant Masters had called the War Room. There I looked into the faces of my sisters. There were thirty-three of us, all identical except for the color of our skin and the occasional cicatrix or tattoo drawn where a breast had been removed in our ritual offering to the Mother. High overhead the lamps flickered to a soft violet, signaling that evening had come to the station. The sweet scent of chamomile hung in the air, where my sisters Hylas and Aglaia had bruised the tiny flowers grown in our gardens and set them to steep in wide, shallow steel basins. When I counted that all of my sisters had arrived, I raised my arms. After a moment the chamber grew silent.

On the floor in the middle of the room lay the body of Horacio Baklas. As he was the last of the Masters to die here on Quirinus, it had somehow seemed that there should be some special ritual to accompany the giving of his body to the Ether. At least I felt that I should look upon his corpse before it was disposed of. He was unshaven, as are many barbarian Masters, and still wore the long yolk-yellow tunic he had arrived in. On his breast there was a round allurian disk, a ’file receiver that none of us had thought to remove. His expression was quite gentle, not at all the fanatical mask my sister had warned me of. He looked very small there, surrounded by energumens twice his size, his mouth slightly upturned as though smiling at some sweet thought.

Polyonyx spoke first. “This human poisoned his brothers and sisters and then died himself. He claimed there is a war going on. He said we are free.”

“Free?” My sister Hylas echoed my own thoughts. “But to do what?”

Cumingia shrugged. ‘To join the war?”

Our sisters Lusine and Spirula chimed, “A war! No war came here.”

Polyonyx shook her head, its single narrow braid swinging wildly. “But it did—this man brought it in his vials and destroyed our Masters. He said he was liberating us. He said we are free to go.”

Lusine giggled at the thought: a human freeing an energumen! It was absurd, not only because who had ever heard of such a thing, but also because the humans were so much smaller than we are. To think of being liberated by one of them! I scowled a little at the thought, but others laughed. How quickly it had all changed, and we had not had to strike a single blow.

“Go? But where are we to go?” cried Spirula. “Why can’t we just stay here?”

A ripple of approving laughter. Hylas began to sing in her piercing voice, the hymn of liberation to the Mother that begins, “All twisted things are yours, Divine, all spiral turnings and neural strands—”

That was when the Oracle appeared.

“Greetings, children!”

My sisters cried out, letting go each other’s hands and backing toward the walls. Only Polyonyx and I stood our ground.

The corpse had disappeared. Where it had been a radiance filled the room, a blinding aureole at the center of which burned the figure of a man. Only as he turned to gaze up at us, I saw that he was not a man but a robotic construct. But as I looked more closely, I saw that it was not like any robotic server I had ever seen; neither was it an android or replicant. There was something much more
human
about it: and now that I look back upon that first glimpse of the Oracle, I think that it was not his features so much as his expression that made him seem human: it was the glitter in his eyes, and the malice that glowed there like the sheen upon a plum. He was very beautiful, with limbs of some dark material—gleaming black in the shadows where his arms and legs attached to the torso, shining violet elsewhere. He had a man’s face, with a high smooth forehead and brilliant green eyes.

“The ’file receiver,” whispered Polyonyx, though I could read her thoughts as clearly as my own. Her hand twitched, gesturing to where the corpse of Horacio Baklas was swallowed by the flickering image generated by that allurian disk on his breast. “But where is it originating from?”