Chill. Part 14

It slithered away. He would have s.n.a.t.c.hed after it, but something held his wrist. Gently. More gently than he would have expected.

"Who are you?" he said, as the faceplate opened, too, and he became conscious of another burning on his face. The digestive fluid of the leeches, which he was feeling now as adrenaline ebbed. "Who are you? What are you? What do you want?"

Pain faded. Something sticky and cool bathed his arm; tender fingers-or something-picked around the edges of his wound, debriding. He blinked, saw bright silken fabric ripple before his eyes, and bent to peer around it to look for Chelsea.

She slumped two meters off, armor cracked open and bright swaths of green gel decorating her face, her shoulders, and a portion of her chest and collarbone that was marked with the angry red of acid burns. Petals hung all around her face and head like halos-a spray of enormous orchids, white harlequined with thick, wet-looking crimson-and something had disconnected her cable and hauled her to firm footing on a broad limb. That seemed friendly, but Bened.i.c.k was not comforted by the green coils at her wrists, waist, and about her throat.

Green coils that matched the tendrils restraining him.

"h.e.l.lo?" he said, as he was lifted to his feet. "h.e.l.lo, who are you?"

"Be still," said a voice, awkward and breathy. Not human, and more like the sounds of silk rubbing silk than those produced by vibrating vocal chords with air pus.h.i.+ng through them. "Don't struggle, mammal."

"Who are you?" As Bened.i.c.k lifted his face to return what felt like a stare, all he saw was a cl.u.s.ter of stems decked with five giant blossoms, mackerel-striped in violet and yellow, each of which bore a suspicious resemblance to a crested, patterned head with eyespots, frills, and a sharp-toothed, undershot, bulldog jaw. All five bent around him, turning like mirrors focusing light, and their fringes of ruffled petals lifted and flattened like the crests of a quintet of harpy eagles.

Behind the blooms, he had the impression of an asymmetrical body a.s.sembled of fat, irregular tubers and bladelike leaves as wide as his torso. They lay flat against the tubers now, like the plates of a spiny echidna, but he had reason to suspect that if the orchid was unhappy, they might not always look so sleek.

"We're the carnivorous plants," the voice said, words made of a sound like the rubbing together of hands. "Now be still, mammal. You're heavy. And you would not like the drop."

12.

this time of trial and desperation

The greatest and main abuse of Scripture, and to which almost all the rest are either consequent or subservient, is the wresting of it to prove that the kingdom of G.o.d, mentioned so often in the Scripture, is the present Church, or mult.i.tude of Christian men now living, or that, being dead, are to rise again at the last day.

-THOMAS HOBBES, Leviathan

The mammoth was still screaming.

Gavin, perched on Mallory's shoulder, hid his head under his wing as Prince Tristen and the angel Samael discussed options in low tones. Gavin would have imagined Tristen ruthless, but the First Mate had made it flatly obvious that he had no intention of slaughtering the infant mammoth unless no other humane option remained.

Unlike Tristen, the basilisk wasn't distressed by the uncertain fate of the mammoth, but rather the recurrence of what was becoming a chronic sense of deja vu. He'd been here before; he had seen this before-the broad strokes, if not the particulars. It shouldn't have left a worm of unease gnawing his complacency, but there was something about the mammoth, in particular, that came with a kaleidoscope of unresolving images.

Gavin had never suffered disorientation or the impermanence of memory before the last few days, and the experience was one he would have gladly forgone. Meat people lived with this all the time. It was no wonder every last one of them was clinically insane.

Mallory withdrew a step or two, head tilted, unwilling to intrude into this argument. Gavin, forcing his filters to process the overload of fragmentary remembrances, pulled his head from under his wing.

Whatever Tristen had just said, Samael protested. "Sentiment has no place when it comes to the engineering of biospheres."

Tristen had folded his arms. "Give the mammoth its chance."

"Because there's a place for an elephant on a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p?"

"The Builders made one," Tristen said. "They brought it here and ordained its birth in this time of trial and desperation. Who are we to gainsay their insight?"

Gavin forgave Tristen that last, because he said it with a mocking lilt, but he didn't blame Samael for his flinch, the contraction of all his motes and sc.r.a.ps as if around a blow-or the headshake that followed.

"Besides"-Tristen paused, his hand curling restlessly around the pommel of his sword as if to give the speaking weight-"are we not on Errantry?"

Samael looked away, unable to deny the truth of Tristen's statement. Instead, he fell back on the practical. "It won't reproduce."

Tristen's voice went wry, even m.u.f.fled through Gavin's feathers. "How do you know? Maybe somewhere out there is its perfect complement, already b.u.mbling through some Heaven on broad calf feet."

"We must consider lifeboat rules, My Prince. It will die," Samael said. "And whatever resources it consumes along the way to starvation may result in the deaths of other life-forms, ones with a better chance of long-term survival. It will starve, and perish in great travail and suffering."

"That is," said Tristen, in a voice so strange that Gavin stretched his head forward on its long neck, the better to listen, "the purpose and privilege of life, my dear Angel of Poison. And as your First Mate, I command you to respect it."

The angel made a small noise-perhaps of protest, perhaps of acquiescence. Gavin supposed that in the final a.n.a.lysis, the two were not mutually exclusive.

Tristen continued, "But surely I don't need to remind you of that. The mammoth gets its chance."

Mallory stepped forward, startling Gavin, who remembered not to clench his talons only when he felt the necromancer wince. Mallory had lived and prospered by staying aloof from conflicts between the powerful and by serving Samael quietly and well, so even Gavin was startled by what was said. "At the Breaking of the world, Samael, there were creatures such as this brought forth. Some lived and evolved, and some fell to the inevitable. If we could predict which species would survive and flourish, would we not be like unto G.o.ds?"

Mallory spoke with the conviction of experience, leading Samael to sigh and let his shoulders drop. "And its compet.i.tors?"

That was the glint of light off a toothy grin. Perhaps Tristen was ruthless after all. "Then they shall by the hand of G.o.d learn to adapt, won't they, angel?"

Mallory tensed beneath Gavin's feet, but Gavin did not need the unconscious warning. Gavin knew Tristen's expression of old: the Conn look of eagles, of certainty and command. They might be wrong, the family. They might even understand, in a sort of hypothetical, abstract fas.h.i.+on, that it was possible for them to be wrong. But neither before Rien nor since had Gavin met one who acted, even occasionally, as if she believed the possibility could apply to her.

It was a failing with which he had a sense he once had understood-in a sort of hypothetical, abstract fas.h.i.+on. As something that was possible. As something that could happen-had happened-to somebody else.

Now, staring through closed eyes at the improbable mammoth, comparing its ma.s.sive, present reality with the fragmentary oneiric memories that hara.s.sed him, he understood much better the hazards of grandiose plans.

But the principles of inertia did not permit what had been set in motion to be casually set aside. Whatever the Builders had intended, they had been earthbound souls, of limited vision. They had been less than what they sp.a.w.ned, constrained by a.s.sumptions and fanaticisms, their creativity rooted fast. The Conns had grown beyond their progenitors. And whatever their failings, their delusions, their tendency to overreach, the tragedies they might inflict upon those who looked to them for guidance- -the Conn family was not earthbound.

It seemed Samael knew the stare as well as he did, because the angel folded his leaf-litter arms over his scarred leaf-litter chest, grimaced, and shook his hair over his eyes. The argument was ended.

Samael said, "What would you have of us, First Mate?"

Tristen nodded a small acknowledgment and replied, "Free the mammoth, angel."

"And once I've freed it, First Mate? What would you have me do with it then?"

Tristen's smile was not promising. But-somewhat to Gavin's regret-Samael turned away before Tristen said whatever was on his lips.

Whatever its earlier panic, the mammoth went very still when the angel crouched beside it and pressed his hands to its trapped ankle. Its trunk snuffled toward him, hesitant, almost thoughtful. For a moment, Tristen thought it might attack-not that he expected any animal, no matter how impressive, to stand a chance against even a diminished angel. But the reaching trunk simply brushed Samael's cheek, snuffed deeply, and stroked his gra.s.s-fluff hair aside.

Even the beasts of the holde and Heaven, it seemed, could recognize an angel of the lord.

Samael, however reduced his circ.u.mstances, was perfectly competent to infiltrate himself between the beast's foot and the tree roots, and ease the one loose from the other. The foot glided up, Samael stood, and the mammoth backed away, moaning and swaying. The angel regarded it, frowning, wiping his hands on his trousers until the beast whirled and vanished into the leaves and trunks.

Tristen felt Mallory at his elbow, and turned in time to catch the sidelong glance. "Hope it eats figs," was all Tristen said.

Mallory winked, surprising him, and Tristen winked back. The necromancer's face lit up around a startled smile. Tristen glanced away, back at the angel, pausing to wonder just for a moment what it was like to be Mallory, with a head even more full of dead people than the Captain-and by choice.

When he was done wondering, he started forward, one hand on Mirth's hilt to keep it from swinging. A sense of praise and excitement filled him; the sword was pleased. I didn't do it for you, he told it, but that didn't seem to affect its happiness.

"Push on," he said, and didn't turn back to make sure the others had fallen in behind him. They'd follow.

Giving people something to follow was pretty much the only thing Conns were good for.

Arianrhod and her angel strode side by side over warm, shallow water. The sea of the Heaven was illuminated from below, water reflecting rippled light over their clothes, on the undersides of their arms, underneath their chins. The light seemed to catch in the folds of Asrafil's coat, to gild the bare skin of his skull and his pale fingers. The water's surface dimpled under a languid stride that took each wavelet into account without ever seeming discomforted by them.

Arianrhod esteemed his grace even as she hurried to keep up. But his hand was always there when she stumbled, his coat cast around her shoulders when the cold wind whipped steam from the balmy water below. Fish in jeweled colors and vivid patterns flashed beneath the surface, schooling or as individuals. Arianrhod thought she and Asrafil would have been more comfortable like the fish, just swimming. She wondered how she would have managed the waters with the unblade across her back. Probably it wouldn't impede her at all.

The fish were not only in the waters. Dark, k.n.o.bby lozenges flitted past the overhead panels, fins and elaborate mouth barbels fanning as they glided on elecromagnetic currents along the walls of the Heaven. s.h.i.+p cats, synbiotic plecostomi as big as a man, scrubbing the walls of the world. They breathed air and hovered on their own gravity nullifiers. This was their breeding ground, where they returned to sp.a.w.n.

It was beautiful.

Arianrhod said the angel's name. "Wait," she added, and put her hand on his coat sleeve.

He stopped at once, turned to her, and laid a steadying palm against her elbow when she stumbled on a wavelet.

"Have they found us?" she asked. "Or are they still seeking at random?"

"I have kept us to the places where their angel cannot sense," Asrafil said. "Its power wanes as other powers wax, and the territory it controls is shrinking. As long as we remain beyond the disputed borders, it can locate us only through extrapolation and guessing."

He left unsaid that the guesses of an angel were often very good indeed.

"I would like to better understand where you are leading me." She could defy him. She was a Conn and an Engineer both, and if she ordered him he would have to obey her. But he was also the angel she served, and in many ways she trusted his wisdom as greater than her own.

"To parley with one of those powers," he said, reluctantly. "I will speak more if you order it, but know that I have promised to hold some information private, and I will be breaking a vow at your command."

She considered, and wondered if angels could be said to have a sense of honor. Asrafil had never betrayed her trust. Was it fair of her to command him to betray another's? She dropped her head to stare at the tossing water, her lip caught between her teeth. He s.h.i.+fted restlessly.

"We are pursued," he said gently. "You know it. How shall we then tarry, beloved? Come with me, and you shall soon see with your own eyes the answer to your questions, and the power that will make you Captain and return me to my rightful place as your servant and master."

"I tarry because we are pursued," she answered. She laid a hand over his on her arm, as if he escorted her. "And I know how to further delay our pursuers. Listen, Asrafil. There is a Heaven that Tristen Conn will not easily leave, if he but enters."

Tristen kept the lead as his party maintained a steady pace through the next nine hours, pa.s.sing through a variety of microenvironments in various states of reconstruction. It might have been pointless bravado, but it couldn't hurt-and while the angel was close to invulnerable, he was also close to immaterial. And it was to him that Mirth whispered suggestions-not so much words as the vague sense of rightness or wrongness, the chance turn of the world.

The group pa.s.sed through domaines and anch.o.r.es, Heavens and corridors-and a holde full of giant, sleeping machines. They hung like strings of beads on racks stretched floor to ceiling, hundreds of meters tall, filling the width of the holde to where it curved from sight. They were yellow and black, green and blue, some marked with checkered livery. In their brilliant colors, with their blades and buckets and manipulators, they looked to Tristen like engines of war. But he could see no means for them to maneuver, unless by friction of the soil under their caterpillar treads. They would be useless in microgravity, worthless in a vacuum.

He said as much: "Are those for fighting planetside?"

"They are for terraforming," Mallory answered. "You use them to reshape planets. The Builders sent them against the time they foresaw, when we would reach a destination."

"And cannibalize the world to settle a planet," Samael said.

Gavin snaked his head from under Mallory's black mane. "What would you want with a planet?" he asked.

Tristen pursed his lips, craning over his shoulder to glance from angel to necromancer. "He asks a good question. And why this-discrete machinery, Samael? Why not something like you? Or like Gavin? A colony tool. Something with a personality, free will. Multiple uses."

"The Builders could not have antic.i.p.ated that your sister the Princess Cynric would develop the colonies," Samael said. "They sent us prepared with the technology they had available at the time."

"Huh." Tristen folded his arms over his breastplate. It was a th.o.r.n.y thought, that the Builders might not have foreseen what their creation would grow into.

Mallory leaned back, staring up, and said with elaborate casualness, "What a pity they can't be made to mult.i.task."

It sparked an idea, as Tristen was sure had been intentional. The necromancer's sideways glance gave it away, which Tristen presumed was intentional, too.

"So these are sc.r.a.p," Tristen said.

"They're necessary resources!" Samael protested. "When we make planetfall, they will be the primary tools we use to make our new home habitable. They are not essential now, but they will be when the world is no longer our home. They must be conserved and protected. Would you eat your seed corn?"

Tristen felt a pop like a pleasantly stretched spine, except this click was in his mind. It was as if someone had delineated a limit of the angel's program with bright lines.

He said, "You mean they would be essential supplies. If we had not, in the centuries since they were loaded aboard the world and set in mothb.a.l.l.s, developed technology that renders them obsolete."

"First Mate," the angel said, very carefully and precisely, "are you ordering that these terraforming engines may be repurposed as salvage?"

"I order and reinforce it," Tristen said. "And when we have contact again, please pa.s.s my instructions to Nova, that it may obtain the Captain's agreement."

He was pretty sure that painful-looking curve of Samael's rose-petal lips, tugging the corners of his nose, was a smile.

In the shadowy, emergency-lit control center, Caitlin's hands rested almost motionless on contact pads that detected her involuntary micromovements and converted them to inputs. Practically telepathic, the interface allowed her to work at the speed of thought. The only drawback was the training and experience required not to wipe out several subsections when Nova pinged in before her, manifesting as a sparkling violet mote.

Across the frost-rimed tangle of wires, panels, and hologram tanks making up their temporary ops center, Jsutien registered the angel with a flick of his eyes but otherwise did not comment. He was awake, but Caitlin was not sure he was aware. At least he was not raving. His breath steamed in intermittent clouds around his face; soon they would need to divert more energy to heating, though it griped Caitlin to admit it. Before her, Nova hung glimmering, turning, awaiting recognition.

"Problem?" Caitlin asked, longing with no particular hope for rea.s.surance.

Nova's denial still took her by surprise. "No. I have a possible location on one of the pursuit teams."

"Tristen?" Caitlin asked, because she could not force herself to ask after Bened.i.c.k.

"Based on proximity and extrapolation, that seems most likely," the angel said.