This Day All Gods Die (40 page)

there would be nothing clean

about it. It would be a coward's death: an abandonment of all the people who had the most right to rely on him.

For him no death would ever be clean unless he took Holt Fasner down with him.

At last he regained his voice. "And what happens to us?"

he asked gruffly.

"Well, Director"—

command swallowed a lump of dis-

comfort—

"we're dead, I guess. This craft wasn't built for collision.

"But I'm not sure you're ever coming back, sir," he went on. "I'm not even sure we are. Once you're aboard, they can finish us pretty easily." He hesitated, then faced Warden squarely. "It might be more useful to take out their proton gun."

Warden paused as if to consider the idea. "If we do that, we'll save the Council," he mused. "So far, so good. But we'll kill UMCPHQ. Any other station in range will take damage. Some of our ships will die." For the sake of his crew, he made an effort to sound clear; sure. "If we burn that defensive's bridges for her, she won't have any choice. She'll have to hurt us as much as she can before she dies."

He wanted to stop there. The strain of projecting the confidence his people needed hurt him. But the shrouded fear in scan's eyes, and the stubborn set of command's jaw, told him that he had to continue.

"I have a pretty good idea what she wants," he stated.

"And I think I know how to deal with it. If I'm right, I can keep almost all of us alive. Whether or not I come back"—

he

shrugged—

"isn't germane."

Intending reassurance, he added, "You're safe enough.

Calm Horizons doesn't want to provoke a fight. She won't attack you."

But command reacted with flustered indignation, as if Warden had accused him of cowardice. "That isn't what I—

"

Warden winced inwardly. "I know," he interrupted, "if we're going to die anyway, we all want to make it count. Don't you think I feel the same? But suicide is easy." He forced an edge into his voice. "The job we swore to do is a little harder.

"I want to make this clear. You're going to deliver me safely to that docking port. And then you're going back to UMCPHQ. Without ramming that proton emitter. Or anything else. You do your job. I'll do mine. And maybe"—

just maybe

—

"something good will come out of all this."

Scan shrugged. After a moment command lowered his eyes and looked away. "Aye, sir," he said softly. "You can rely on us."

He may have meant, We're relying on you.

Thirteen minutes.

Warden hugged his chest tighter. "I know."

Too many people with too many needs relied on him. And as soon as he passed the threshold of Calm Horizons' airlock, he would be almost helpless to do anything about it.

The time seemed to pass swiftly, consumed by Punisher's absence, and Trumpet's. Communications exchanged stilted approach protocols and confirmations with the Amnioni. By careful degrees the shuttle nudged herself against the docking port.

When the small craft's external seals showed green, Warden Dios left his g-seat to face the doom which he'd brought down on his own planet; his own people.

His preparations were simple. From his pocket he took the black capsule and breathing mask Hashi had given him.

The capsule he tucked into his mouth between his cheek and gum. Then he inspected the mask and set its straps over his head so that it rode on his forehead, ready to be pulled down over his nose and mouth when he needed it.

Before he left the control cabin, he recorded commendations for his three officers in the shuttle's log. Contrary to his normal practice, he returned their stiff salutes. Then he turned his back on their clenched faces and headed for the airlock.

He didn't speak to his crew again, or to Calm Horizons.

Words would have been wasted. Communications negotiated the cycling of the airlocks for him; established the sequence.

Scan verified the integrity of the seals. For one terrible moment as the threshold ahead of him opened, he feared that his courage would fail. He'd never seen an Amnioni in person.

Apart from old Captain Vertigus, no one he knew had ever been aboard an Amnion vessel. And Morn and Angus deserved better than this from him. Humankind deserved better-But Trumpet's people were weapons which he'd forged with his own hands. He'd set them in motion—

and then he'd

set them free. Now he had to trust them, for good or ill.

Settling his mask over his mouth to protect his lungs from the acrid atmosphere the Amnion preferred, he crossed the airlock of his shuttle into Calm Horizons.

Sulfurous light appeared to cloy and cling on the odd textures of the walls, so that the grown metal surfaces seemed lambent with energy and intention. The sight made his prosthesis ache in its socket. He had the impression that he'd stepped into one of the antechambers of hell.

The voice of communications reached him from the shuttle's airlock speaker, informing him that the locks were about to close. This was his last chance to flee and die; to spare himself the outcome of his own choices. But he knew better.

The shame of his self-inflicted wounds went with him everywhere: there was no escape from it. Instead of retreating, he watched the defensive's airlock iris shut. Then he turned to confront what lay ahead.

Like the outer door, the inner opened like an iris, admitting him to the alien body of the ship. As he crossed the threshold, he caught the first handgrip he could find so that he wouldn't float away; out of control.

Casually adrift in the absence of g, three figures waited for him. Just for a moment, however, he refused to look at them. While he struggled to gather his courage, he glanced around at the hold to which the docking port gave access.

The strong hue of sulfur in the light seemed to thicken the air, throb on the bulkheads. The huge chamber may have been meant for cargo: he saw irregular structures which resembled gantries, festooned with cables like rough vines; stubby transport sleds on magnetic tracks. But the way the Amnion used space made no sense to him. Even for a vessel that couldn't generate internal g, the arrangement of machines and equipment looked incoherent to his human eyes. Was it actually possible to load cargo this way?

Determinedly he distracted himself from panic with simple curiosity until one of the three figures spoke.

"Warden Dios." Despite the absence of thrust distortion, Warden recognized the voice. "I am Marc Vestabule."

Holding his breath in autonomic trepidation, Warden turned.

Two of them might have been clones of each other. They wore no clothes: crusted skin the color of oxidation apparently took the place of apparel. The general shape of their bodies was hominoid. Heads marked with eyes and mouths sat atop torsos with arms and legs. Still there was nothing even remotely human about them. As far as Warden could tell, they had four eyes apiece, spaced around their heads so that they could see in all directions. Teeth as keen as daggers crowded their lipless mouths. Each had three arms and legs positioned on their torsos for near-ideal utility—

and agility—

in zero g.

They carried no weapons because they needed none. They were at home here; obviously capable of outmaneuvering him.

And the crusted mass of their heavy bodies conveyed an impression of tremendous strength. They projected lurid IR auras which told him nothing. He couldn't read their emanations.

They must have been guards for Marc Vestabule, who scarcely resembled them. He was human enough to make Warden's skin crawl.

He was dressed like a man in a black shipsuit made from a material Warden had never seen before; a fabric which seemed to shed light like water. The shape of his limbs and chest and features appeared normal. Above his boots, pale, ordinary flesh reached as high as his knees. However, the legs of his shipsuit had been cut away at the knees to accommodate thick knobs of crusted Amnion tissue. A human hand and wrist extended from one of his sleeves; but his other arm was bare, covered only with scabs or rust from shoulder to forearm. Half his face showed no mark of mutation or injury. On the other side, a viscid Amnion eye stared without blinking over a partially lipless mouth and pointed, rending teeth.

Like the guards', his aura was a nauseating swirl Warden couldn't interpret.

A receiver in his ear and a pickup at his throat indicated that he could talk to the bridge—

or whatever the Amnion

called their control center—

whenever he wished.

Warden swallowed hard to moisten his throat; make himself breathe. Marc Vestabule had once been human: that was beyond question. But the Amnion had transformed him until only parts of his former shape remained.

With an effort, Warden fought down terror—

a blind, ata-

vistic dismay which seemed to spring straight from his genes.

Somehow, he thought, prayed, it must be possible to deal with such creatures. It must be possible to stifle panic enough to understand them. Or oppose them.

But he could barely force air into his lungs. To speak or move was beyond him. The ghouls of his darkest nightmares had appeared; images of a damnation he'd risked for his entire species. Yet these creatures weren't true damnation. By its very nature, damnation was human. Anguish and terror and excruciation were humankind's essential legacy: every child born inherited them. The Amnion were worse. Ultimately even eternal agony and dread were more humane than the doom they offered.

Understanding—

and opposition—

were out of the ques-

tion.

Almost involuntarily, hardly knowing what he did, Warden shifted the capsule in his mouth until it rested between his teeth.

But then, by some trick of fear or will, he heard the answer Hashi might have given him. Oh, surely it is not necessary to understand them, Hashi replied in Warden's mind.

Their imperialism is genetic. They desire the conquest of all life as we desire air. So much is simple.

They are only to be feared when they are able to understand us.

What had Vestabule said? The process by which I became Amnion enables me to retain certain resources of memory, language, and comprehension. For this reason I have been invested with decisiveness. In dealings with your kind, my former humanity may assist me to function effectively.

If that was true—

and Hashi was right—

the time had

come for real fear.

Suddenly Warden passed beyond primitive terrors and visceral abhorrence. With a clarity that astonished him, he recognized that he needed his fear too much to let it paralyze him.

Fear was strength: it made him human. And if Vestabule could in some sense think and act as if he were human, then only another human might hope to resist him.

Carefully Warden pushed the capsule back into his cheek.

The air he pulled into his breathing mask tasted of treachery.

Human malice: human deceit. Hope. He grinned as if he'd already won a contest more profound than any challenge Marc Vestabule could present.

"I'm Dios," he announced through the mask. "I don't know what you want to 'discuss,' but I would rather talk about it someplace smaller." Less exposed. More private. "All this"

—

he gestured around the hold—

"gives me hives."

"There will be no difficulty, Warden Dios." Without the distortion of thrust static, Vestabule's voice sounded like his alien skin: caked with rust; as if his humanity had been corroded by disuse. "Your requirements will be satisfied.

"A chamber has been prepared. There we will negotiate." Despite his resources of memory, language, and comprehension, he couldn't use words like "negotiate" and

"discuss" without discomfort. "When we have gained mutual satisfaction, you will convey your commands to your ships and station."

He turned. With an awkward gesture, he asked Warden to follow him.

A chamber—

Apparently Vestabule had no intention of letting the UMCP director see Calm Horizons' "bridge"—

or

any other vital part of the ship. Warden nodded to himself. It was comforting to think that the Amnioni still considered him dangerous.

From his grip on the wall he pushed off so that he coasted between the guards after Vestabule.

Neither of them reached out to take hold of him. Instead they followed at his back—

too close for comfort; not close

enough to grab him quickly. Another small comfort: Vestabule meant to try persuasion before coercion.

From the hold Vestabule entered a corridor like a gullet, crooked and misshapen. As the space around Warden became constricted, it seemed to concentrate the light. The surfaces seethed like brimstone. More and more the passage ahead resembled a descent into fire.

But he didn't have far to go. After twenty or thirty meters, Vestabule halted at an irregular depression in the wall. When Warden reached it, it proved to be a door. Vestabule's palm on a sensitive plate beside it caused it to slide open.

Vestabule led him into a chamber the size of an interroga-tion room. Light from sources he couldn't identify filled every corner. A console had been set or grown into one wall. He didn't know enough about Amnion technology to be sure of its function, but he assumed it was a communications terminal.

Other than that, the room contained nothing except two chairs rooted to the floor, facing each other. Both offered zero-g belts

—

presumably for comfort.

Why did the Amnion want him here? To negotiate, Vestabule had said. But he'd also said that Warden would be allowed to return to UMCPHQ when the "discussion" was done, and that was patently a lie. How many other lies had the Amnioni told?

When Warden had asked, How can I trust you? Vestabule had replied, Because we are Amnion. Unlike humankind, we bargain openly. Also we fulfill our bargains. Then he'd added, There is this in addition, however. We gain nothing by harming you.

The lie was there, but Warden couldn't name it. He would have to wait until it was revealed.

He didn't think he would have to wait long.