Shadow Over Avalon (33 page)

“Shadow doesn’t have a side, unless it is her own. She’ll be returning with her son soon for a replacement power pack. You tackle her with my problem, and I’ll try yours on for size. I’ve an idea you might get sent to sleep if you don’t dump your pet project.” Ector offered a hand up as Arthur rose. “Don’t collect any more demerit points. I don’t want to discipline you.”

Arthur found his leisure time curtailed by extra training on his return. This meant his time accessing the Archive ceased to exist for the next three days, but this was not the punishment intended, given his new knowledge about the sentient. The first night he was so exhausted he had no trouble falling asleep on returning to his dwelling unit. The dream sequence started immediately, almost as if it had been stalking him.

*

The cave seemed unchanged at first. Water dripped, slowly building on a crystalline structure rising from the floor. The old-young man sat in the same position by his fire, his white hair and beard looking out of place on an unlined skin. Smoke spiraled in lazy upward drifts to the sound of waves crashing against rocks. A sharp scent of ocean mingled with wood smoke.

“Those who would lead others must first govern themselves; my second lesson to you. There was no resistance to my company. Does this mean a return to wisdom?” The cave-sitter lifted fathomless black eyes to Arthur for the first time. They looked like openings to a bottomless abyss, black upon black, waiting to suck out life from the unwary.

“Why did my mother abandon me?” Arthur wondered if this subject would get an answer. He gazed at the fire rather than those compelling eyes.

“Which mother? You have had many rebirths.”

“The current one,” Arthur said, disturbed by the cave-sitter’s suggestion. He glanced at his hands fearing to have his deepest terror confirmed, to be in another body, yet unwilling to remain in ignorance. Those hands were young – his own.

“The current vessel is compatible to the first. That woman also sacrificed her heart for your safety.” The cave sitter stirred up the fire with a stick, sending the flames leaping. “Watch and learn.”

A young woman’s face appeared in those tongues of fire. She had long, fair hair and an elfin expression, a delicate beauty beyond comparison. Her love for the child she cradled in her arms elevated that beauty to the realms of the exquisite. She looked up at an intrusion Arthur couldn’t see, appearing to listen. Her face drained of color, of all emotion. In that moment, a terrible purpose reduced the loving mother to an empty shell. She now resembled a marble statue as she handed over her heart’s joy to unseen hands. There were no tears at that parting, no outcry, only the terrible hurt driving inwards. The picture faded.

“Why?” Arthur whispered.

“Your continued existence outweighed your mother’s wish to raise you. She did what she needed to preserve her child, heedless of personal sacrifice. The current vessel also armed her child with mighty weapons upon parting.”

“Was that her?” Arthur said.

“The first one. You will find the current incarnation without my help.”

“Just like all the others: you wave a bone in my face to attract attention, and then snatch it away when I get close enough to start gnawing. No one will answer those questions.”

“Ask me another. Without curiosity you will not grow, Arthur,” the strange man advised. “A ruler must be open to all threads of thought.”

“Why did animal life on the surface degenerate after death day? Why did they survive at all?”

The cave-sitter bowed his head. He seemed to forget Arthur’s presence for an unwholesome time as the drips of water fell, one by one. “They did not survive, Arthur.”

“But . . . how were they replaced?” Arthur closed his mind to the broader implications, frightened to acknowledge them in case the source of information suddenly dried up.

“If that were revealed, the need to correct a problem would be less urgent. Your people need a strong leader. They always have in times of crisis. I give you a clue to implement in your present incarnation.”

“I’m supposed to solve a mystery? If animals died, that means the chances of people surviving was nonexistent.”

“A leader must recognize and become intimately acquainted with the enemies of his subjects if he is to subdue threat,” the cave sitter said.

“‘Know thine enemy’?”

“Who is your enemy?”

“Ones who threaten my— no, ones who threaten those I love.”

“Who do you love, Arthur?”

The question slashed tangentially across his awareness. Who
did
he love? No individual came to mind any longer. Circe had refused to answer his vid calls, since his defection to the Elite.

He remembered looking down from the lofty heights of Sanctuary, watching as ordinary citizens went about their everyday concerns, safe in the knowledge that they were protected and innocent because of this, and then Shadow’s agony at the hands of Nestines. She had done no wrong and yet had come to such a terrible punishment that the very thought of it tore into his being. If Nestines won, those scuttling masses wouldn’t exist. Their lives would be snuffed out in pain and fear, ordinary lives, men, women and children – gone. Great anger began to build. An urge to protect flowed through him.

“The innocents. I love the innocents,” he said, his voice rasping with emotion.

“Love responds to love—hate to hate. You are learning hate from the one called Shadow. Her active usefulness is almost spent. Learn while you can.”

“Shadow can’t die. She is all that holds our alliance together.” Arthur was stunned by the information.

“Shadow must evolve into a higher form. Her replacement is ready to assume the mantle of power she holds in trust. Never grieve for a mortal until you see their bones picked clean, and then be sure you have the right set of bones.”

“She’ll live?” Arthur held his breath for the answer, suddenly terrified by a future without her, without the connection to her life through the Archive playbacks.

“Uncertain. Even I can’t predict an outcome to her release, save that it will happen soon.”

“
I
want her to live. I’ll not leave her side, if that is necessary to save her.” Arthur suddenly lost his fear of the killer cyborg. She had so little humanity he wanted to help her regain a life before she was taken.

“Decide what it is you wish to preserve, if it should be salvaged, before you commit to a dubious cause that may cost the lives of those deserving compassion.” The cave-dweller’s eyes took on a look of profound sadness seeming to stretch back countless eons into time immeasurable. “Now learn a real lesson of authority. Those who would lead must accept losses for the greater gain. No individual, however important, is irreplaceable.”

“It hurts.”

“Each death cuts to the bone. I can still remember the first sacrifice I made. Knowing he would die in agony, I still sent a man to his doom. An entire community survived in consequence, but it didn’t alter my guilt, nor ever has. Some can accept this burden. Others bow under the weight. This is the measure of one who would lead.” The cave-sitter lowered his head. His fire flared until it colored everything red, then yellow to white.

*

Arthur woke disturbed. He had his wish. His instructor provided answers outside Arthur’s imagination, proving insanity wasn’t an issue. Knowing the surface had become lifeless agreed with Ector’s line of reasoning. Arthur recognized the cave sitter as reticent in the extreme. He was being forced to think for himself, whether he wanted to or not. Insanity would have provided a feasible explanation.

Two nights of dreamless sleep followed. Arthur used the renewal of strength to form his own pocket of memory block. He had it in place when he next accessed the Archive.

As Copper had made a point of ignoring her since he regained consciousness, Shadow spied on him through a console vid eye, while Ector tried to reason with him. Even though she told Ector to stay out of this argument, there he was, interfering.
Damn him
.

“What difference does it make now you know she’s part mechanism? I’m cyborg, yet you still talk to me.” Ector had Copper cornered in the Outcast’s sleeping unit and paced the floor.

“It’s different. You’re a Shade.”

“Shadow is and has always been a hybrid between our races. Why is my implant right and hers unacceptable?”

“She wasn’t a Shade when I first saw her. You took her.” Copper turned his back to stare blindly at a holo projection of wind ruffling through long grass; someone had tried to make his quarters more like his natural environment.

“Face it, man, you saw her as human despite the differences already present.” Ector avoided a low table as he continued to pace in the small dwelling unit. “
I
didn’t know she had our blood at first. We nearly lost her due to our ignorance, and don’t imagine she would’ve lasted more than a few days on the surface, even if she hadn’t run into the saurian. Her emergent telepathy, with an active band, would have drawn Nestines to her like flies to a corpse. They isolated her from all protection, set her adrift with imperfect memory—a sitting target no one could protest or care about.”

“If that’s true, why didn’t they kill her at birth as they do all other mutations?” Copper whirled around to stare down his antagonist.

“Some of us, the extremely gifted, don’t manifest ability until after puberty. The first sexual experience seems to be the key factor.” Ector grinned at Copper’s pained expression. “So someone else beat us both through the gate we covet. What of it? She accepts us as companions, albeit reluctantly. Beyond that, you’re as out of depth as I am. If Shadow wanted sex, both of us would be fighting over position.” Ector looked away for a moment. “There was a time she started to show emotion, like life returning to the dead. Then something unforgivable happened, and she became as she is now. I was interested in the emergent woman. That time has gone. I regard her as a friend, which is all she will permit.” Ector sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. He started for the door.

Shadow wanted a word in private with him. How dare he discuss her like a sex object? She watched to see which direction he’d take, damn him to the deeps.

“Wait. What did Shades do to her that made the woman die inside? She is a sister. I expected the revolting consequences of her altered state with despair. This hasn’t happened. Why not?”

“The damage the Nestines caused is identical to Helga’s. I can only propose Submariner blood, and one other factor, as to why,” Ector said, turning again to the argument.

Prickles ran up Shadow’s spine. She wanted to shout to Ector, wrench him from that room. He couldn’t – wouldn’t betray her. She faced the screen.

“What other factor?” Copper demanded.

“You will do some very fast talking on my behalf if she’s watching this interview, as I suspect.” Ector swallowed, looking toward the view screen, his guilt visible in the set of his expression. “I don’t want to lose her friendship, but if it’s the price of alliance, I hope she will understand. She must have conceived days before exile and we didn’t detect it on retrieval. I ordered her saved because I discovered her telepathic talent. She wasn’t pleased when we found out about the child, and
I
had to tell her.” He shuddered in remembrance. “She was being trained as an operative. No one suspected she had our gills until she had a reaction, when they started to function without natural ports. The child had to be removed before treatment began.”

“She was bearing Dragon’s child?” Copper sat down on his bed, cradling his head in his hands. “There wasn’t any memory of him until I released it. Why would losing a burden upset her? Many women miscarry or abort.”

“We have devices for gestating an early child outside the womb. The child survived.”

“Shadow knew? Didn’t she want it to live?”

“Remember our warning about seers? They caught me as an adolescent. I spent three miserable years enduring their attempts to mold me in their image. Shadow is too powerful for them. That child, unprotected while we worried over her, represented easy pickings. He vanished from our care before we knew the nature of the threat. She found him with her mind. They bonded. She gave him every protection against them she had at her disposal, and then . . . he shut her out.”

“An unborn infant? I’m expected to believe this gibberish?”

“It happened
despite
your skepticism. The child wouldn’t have attracted seer’s interest without possessing exceptional gifts. He was
aware
even at that early stage in gestation. Retrieval was unfeasible, we would’ve gotten a dead embryo back, unrelated to Shadow. We were and are obliged to wait. Eventually, they won’t be able to hide him, if he still lives. Shadow retreated from grief at that time. She wanted her child.”

“Why didn’t you force the issue?” Copper looked up with a challenging expression. “That child belongs to its father. She would know that.”

“Cut off a fingernail to fall into a container with another thousand such parings. Could you identify your own offering by sight once the mixture is stirred?”

“But a child?”