Planet Hate, page 15
And now interphaser travel was affecting the thing, Kane realized. Each time he traveled via the unit, the pain in his eye had become worse, triggering the visions of this monster’s early life. Since the interphaser utilized some form of molecular transfer, it was possible that in breaking down and remaking Kane numerous times a second, the unit had misread the infection, triggering it to grow. Kane was no scientist, but it was a theory at least, albeit a less than reassuring one. Yet, rather than pay heed to this warning sign, Kane had battled on, the urgency of things in light of Brigid’s disappearance and the fall of Cerberus too great for him to pause and think.
And now? Now, Kane realized, may just be too late.
Slowly, like a man waking from a deep sleep, Kane pushed himself up onto his knees and crouch-walked over to where the interphaser waited.
“You and me are going to have some words,” Kane snarled at the interphaser, “once all this is over.”
Kane carefully placed the pyramidal unit in its padded travel case.
As he closed the seals on the interphaser’s case, a sudden barking came from Kane’s left and he looked up, turning his head far enough that his right eye could see what was happening. Rosalia’s dog had returned, and it stared at Kane with infinitely pale eyes, moist tongue lolling out of its mouth and tail briskly wagging as it barked for attention.
“What’s up with you?” Kane asked, hefting the interphaser in its case as he made his way toward the mutt.
As Kane got closer, the dog turned and, with just a brief look over its haunch to make sure that Kane was following, began jogging off into the thick cover of the forest.
“Great,” Kane muttered with a shake of his head. “Now I’m taking orders from a dog.” With a resigned sigh, the ex-Mag walked hurriedly past the trees after his furry companion, away from the direction Grant and Rosalia had gone.
UP IN THE NEST high in the redwood’s branches, Grant peered up from Domi’s still body, scanning the edge of the nest where his curvaceous partner had disappeared. “Rosalia?” Grant called, his voice firm. “It’s clear up here now.”
Unlike the other members of the Cerberus crew, Rosalia had no Commtact surgically imbedded in her skull. Instead, the newcomer relied on a portable unit that she had to engage as required, a little like a cell phone. Sometimes, Grant reasoned, it was just easier to shout.
A moment later Rosalia reappeared at the bowl-like lip of the huge nest, climbing over its side with appreciable noiselessness. “How’s your friend?” she asked, seeing Grant kneeling by the albino form of Domi, checking her for signs of life.
Domi’s chalk-white skin felt warm to Grant’s touch, at least, which was a relief. Placing two fingers beneath Domi’s nose where she lay facedown on the nest, Grant stilled his thoughts. After a moment he felt the reassuringly warm pressure as Domi breathed out.
“She’s alive anyway,” Grant said, the sense of relief clear in his tone. He had known Domi a long time; losing her now after everything they’d been through with Brigid seemed unimaginable.
Rosalia nodded, turning her gaze upward as she scanned the higher branches of the trees. There were at least three more of the colossal nests up there. The occasional shriek of one of the monstrous birds echoed through the trees, and she spotted the shadow play of wings through the higher levels of the trees, call and response, call and response. “Do you have any idea what those things are?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
Grant peered up at Rosalia as he examined Domi. “Nothing I’ve seen before,” he admitted. “Look kinda like eagles. Big eagles.”
Rosalia nodded solemnly. “Rocs,” she said.
Grant shot her a querulous look at the word, reminded automatically of Ullikummis. “Like stones?” he asked.
Rosalia smiled, her teeth bright against the olive tan of her skin. “No, it’s spelled R-O-C—roc or rukh,” she told him. “You ever hear of Sinbad the Sailor? It was a children’s story from the Middle East, just entertainment. On his fifth voyage he encountered a great egg, which was the product of the gigantic bird called the roc. The story claimed that the roc had a colossal wingspan and would frequently snatch up full-grown elephants in its claws, spiriting them away to feast upon at its leisure.”
Grant whistled with incredulity. “That’s one big bird.”
“It’s just a story,” Rosalia reminded him, “made to entertain. There’s likely very little fact to be found there. I was just reminded of it.”
Grant peered over at the corpse of the deceased mother bird, assessing its size for a few seconds, his mind racing. “These things weren’t up to grabbing elephants,” he said, “but they could no doubt lift a person. That’s most likely how Domi ended up way up here without a line.”
Then he looked at Rosalia appreciably, thinking over what she had said. “You’re pretty knowledgeable, huh?” he said.
Rosalia smiled. “I paid attention in school,” she told him.
With swift efficiency, Grant ran his hands over Domi’s unconscious body, checking for broken bones or any wounds he might not have noticed by sight alone. She seemed okay, and Grant decided to move her, rolling her gently onto her side. As he did so, the albino girl began to groan, and Grant spoke to her quietly.
“It’s all right,” Grant assured her. “You’re okay now.”
Domi’s eyes flickered open, two bloodred orbs appearing from behind those thin white shutters. “The birds…?” she asked.
“They’re gone,” Grant assured her. “For now.”
“What happened?” Domi asked weakly, scrunching her eyes as she tried to recall. “I remember knocking the egg over the side, and then it all got kind of…hectic.”
“You’re fine,” Grant said as he pulled a small med kit from his coat and removed a tiny antiseptic spray, the container no longer than his thumb. “Just a few cuts.”
“What about the girl?” Domi asked, but as she said it she remembered how the pretty teenager had ended up. Even now, her boyfriend had likely suffered a similar fate in one of the other nests that littered the trees around them.
Grant made Domi sit up, then he applied a little of the antiseptic salve, spraying it on the lacerations that marked her back and shoulders. As he did so, his Commtact came to life.
“Grant, it’s Kane,” the familiar voice at the other end said. “How is everything?”
“We’ve found Domi,” Grant replied. “She’s a bit dinged up but she’ll be fine. I’m just checking her out now. How ’bout you?”
“Still feeling kind of woozy,” Kane said. “Whatever hit me really knocked me for a loop.”
“Hang tight,” Grant advised. “We’ll be back with you soon as we can. Then we can jump outta here and get back home.”
“No, something’s spooked the mutt,” Kane explained. “Could be important. I’m checking it out now.”
“Wait a minute. I thought you couldn’t see,” Grant challenged, concern in his voice.
“I can see better,” Kane told him vaguely. “You concentrate on getting Domi back on her feet.”
With that, Kane broke off the Commtact link, and Grant muttered a curse beneath his breath. He was worried for his friend.
“What is it, Grant?” Domi asked.
Grant rolled his eyes. “Kane—what else?”
Domi winced as Grant applied more of the antiseptic salve, dragging her breath through clenched teeth as the spray froze her wounds. “They’ve built a new ville out there,” Domi explained, “on the ruins of Snakefishville. They’re calling it Luilekkerville.
“They have Magistrates guarding the gates,” Domi continued, “but the gates themselves are left open. I used two of them, and they were easy to enter and exit—no fuss, no muss. The ville is very welcoming, the people are real friendly. It’s kind of…weird.” As an outlander, and a somewhat freakish-looking one at that, Domi had suffered her fair share of rejection by ville folk, Grant knew.
“And that’s Ullikummis’s influence?” Rosalia queried. “But he’s warlike, aggressive.”
“That’s the weirdest part,” Domi explained. “The people of Luilekkerville place an enormous emphasis on worship, their cathedral dominates the place, standing roughly where the old Admin Monolith used to be.”
Grant nodded, knowing all too well the traditional layout of the villes.
“But they talk about Ullikummis as a force of love, like he’s something mystical,” Domi continued. “I snuck into the sermon and the preacher there didn’t even use his name, just spoke about how love was a rock and a rock couldn’t be broken.”
“What about the stones?” Grant asked, recalling the way that the insidious things imbedded themselves in people and took control of their thoughts.
Domi shook her head. “They’re not using them, not as far as I could see anyway,” she said. “Maybe the Mags have got them under those hoods. I couldn’t check that, but the people haven’t been given obedience stones, so that part of the ritual wasn’t evident anymore. They’re just, I don’t know, letting Ullikummis into their hearts. They believe in him, Grant, believe in this utopia his followers have promised.”
Grant shifted in place uncomfortably. “Snakefishville was just a pile of rubble two months ago,” he told Rosalia. “Easy to believe in utopia when your god comes along and rebuilds your home from the dust up, I guess.”
Domi nodded in agreement. “He’s bringing them what they want. Security, a home, order. He’s doing exactly the same thing the barons did, before they evolved into their true forms as the Annunaki. It’s the same old trick dressed up as something new.”
“The Program of Unification all over again,” Grant rumbled. “Only now we know where it’s all going, and it’s nowhere good. This shit ends with the extinction of free will, and with it the end of mankind as we know it.”
“And you have to remember what happened in Tenth City,” Domi said, worry in her tone.
Rosalia was bemused. “What happened in this Tenth City?” she asked. “I never heard of it.”
“It was a combat training camp,” Grant explained, fixing her with his steely gaze. “Ullikummis presided over about two dozen local farmers, hardening them and forcing them to fight one another in brutal bouts. Those who failed, he would kill—sending them to be cremated.”
Rosalia nodded emotionlessly. “Sounds ghastly,” she said.
“It was,” Domi acknowledged, “but there was more to it than that. The whole ville did something to people’s heads, gave them tanglebrain, tricked them into obeying Ullikummis’s commands. Brigid believed it was something to do with the architecture, somehow enhancing subliminal suggestions made by the Annunaki overlord himself.”
Grant smiled in irritation. “We closed Tenth City down,” he told Rosalia, “used explosives to wipe it off the face of the Earth.”
Rosalia nodded. “Sounds about right for you,” she said. “Subtlety was never a Magistrate’s strong suit.”
Grant let the veiled insult pass.
“So now we know he doesn’t even need to use the stones to make people obey him,” Domi growled angrily. “Just a promise of something better is enough.”
“It’s as it has always been,” Rosalia observed. “People wish to believe in a better future, to have hope even when there is none. This…religion that Ullikummis has created is a promise of a better tomorrow, a mind-set for a better way of living.”
“But it’s a lie,” Grant snarled impatiently.
“Until everyone believes it,” Rosalia suggested archly, “at which point it would supersede and so become the truth. That’s the nature of religion, is it not?”
“All the more reason to put a stop to it,” Grant growled, pushing himself up from the nest bed, his muscles tense.
Rosalia watched Grant with dark eyes, marveling at his building fury. As an ex-Magistrate, Grant naturally hid his emotions, but this growing cult seemed to wear at his patience, making his anger bubble just below the surface. Like Kane, he was frustrated, too, at the loss of Brigid Baptiste, and that frustration was expressing itself as rage.
“They no longer need the obedience stones—they’ve come to accept him now,” Domi argued bleakly. “I don’t know how we fight this anymore.”
Rosalia turned to the petite albino girl, a catlike smile forming on her lips. “Don’t give up too easily, Domi,” she said. “Even belief systems can be rocked if you can find their weakest point.”
Grant let out a low whistle. “That’s asking a lot,” he said. “Now, me and Kane, we’ve faced down aliens with tech far superior to our own before now, we’ve battled our way through alternate dimensions and we’ve even stopped an attack by angels from outside of space-time. Yeah, seriously. But turning back the tide of a whole fucking religion—that is asking a lot, even for us.”
Rosalia’s smile became wider. “You scared by a little challenge, Magistrate?”
Chapter 12
The dog wended its way between the trees and Kane followed at a jog, the carry case for the interphaser slung over one shoulder. He was edgy now, conscious that one half of his vision was missing and he could be literally blindsided if he didn’t exercise caution. Kane had always displayed a remarkable talent he referred to as his point man sense, so named because he’d always taken point back in his days as a Magistrate. This point man sense made Kane seem almost preternaturally aware of possible threats around him and able to react with exceptional speed. As such it had saved his own life, and that of his partners, on numerous occasions. Though it seemed supernatural, Kane’s point man sense was in fact a remarkable combination of his natural five senses, an exceptional focus of his mind so as to become somehow more aware of the environment around him. But with his vision compromised, Kane suddenly found himself relying on his other senses—and most especially his sense of hearing—more than ever before.
Up ahead, the dog hurried on, its feet padding against the soft underbrush of the forest as it made its way to whatever it had found in Kane’s absence. Kane just hoped it wasn’t a bitch in heat or some muddy pool that only a dog would think noteworthy.
He need not have worried.
As he hurried past a clutch of tightly bunched birches, their trunks so close that two had become wrapped together in their upper limbs, like silver-skinned Siamese twins, Kane saw the dog come to a halt. The mutt was standing at the edge of a hole that sank deep into the ground. The hole was wide in its center and followed a jagged stretch like a fault line, tapering off after about forty-five feet until finally it closed up. The line stretched off through the trees, curving a little as it snaked through the forest. Several of the trees along the quakelike line had fallen, and two poplars stuck out at diagonals where their roots had become entangled in the hole’s walls. Occasional wisps of some light, amber-colored mist were drifting out of the hole, settling in pockets along its length.
The dog peered into the hole, sinking low on its haunches and sniffing at the air, getting its nose well into the gap. Kane sniffed, too, more warily and from a greater distance, scenting the air. It smelled a little like tangerines or some other pungent fruit, yet remained faint, enticingly out of reach. The smell was familiar, but he couldn’t place it immediately, needed to think. The dog ceased sniffing at the hole, turned to Kane and barked once, seeking his approval.
Kane held his hand out for the dog as he approached the hole, still scenting the air for himself. His nose wrinkled. The smell was odd, and yet it was definitely something that Kane had smelled before. The broad-shouldered ex-Magistrate checked around him as the dog nuzzled against his hand, pushing itself against his palm affectionately. Over there, almost directly in front of where he stood, Kane could just make out the rebuilt towers of Snakefishville, or whatever the place was called now, through the trees.
The rent in the ground looked like the result of an earthquake. Kane realized almost immediately what would have caused it: the subterrene boring machine that had been used to destroy Snakefishville. Although this area had suffered from earthquake activity historically, this crack looked recent, had doubtless occurred sometime in the past few months. The subterrene was probably the catalyst.
Kane took another step closer, peering into the dark hole and letting the subtle fragrance drift around him, the amber mist playing at his booted feet. The nameless dog watched Kane, its head tilted at an angle wonderingly.
The gap looked dark within, the rough sides of the open soil like a wound falling away into the absolute darkness of shadow. Kane pulled a small tube from its storage place inside his jacket, unclipping the top of the xenon beam and letting the powerful, miniature flashlight illuminate the area at his feet. The xenon beam gave one-thousand candles of light, bathing the dark trench in artificial daylight. Even so, Kane could make out little other than various tree and plant roots, insects scurrying away from the light behind the drifting tendrils of mist. The trench itself seemed to be some kind of shelf arrangement, and at best Kane could see fifteen feet down before the remainder disappeared beneath the hooked lip of the surface.
The yellowish mist continued to drift around his boots, scenting the air with a faint, too-sweet smell like rotten fruit.
The dog seemed to watch Kane encouragingly for a moment. Then, with a shake of its head, the scruffy hound began to clamber down into the trench, making its way along a steep slope and into the pit beyond.
“Kane to Grant,” Kane subvocalized, engaging his Commtact. “Definitely got me a little something that’s worth taking a closer look-see.”
Grant’s basso voice rumbled back over the Commtact after a moment. “I read you, Kane. We’re still patching up Domi here. Can join you in maybe five, ten minutes. You able to wait?”
