Aristoi, page 38
Zealously.
Time passed. Gabriel worked, slept, exercised. His dreams took on strange dimensions. He saw tiny robots at work, atoms as big as planets moving, sliding into place in an elaborate dance. For some reason this was all frightening, and when he woke from such a dream he would exercise until his unease went away.
His hair grew longer, began to cover the tops of his ears.
A space of time later, lying on his couch, he was surprised to look up from his work and see Remmy entering through a door behind the curtains.
Remmy was dressed in modern clothing. He pushed before him a serving cart with food supplies to refresh Gabriel’s stores.
Usually a robot did the deliveries.
Remmy answered Gabriel’s look of surprise with a shy smile and a quick nod. “I’m pleased to see you, Ghibreel,” he said. He still spoke Beukhomanan.
“You have been captured as well, then?” Gabriel’s tongue, without his reno’s vocabulary and guide to pronunciation, hesitated on unfamiliar words, and again on the word “captured.”
It should have been “yourself-captured,” he realized. His grammar was gone along with everything else.
“Yes, Lord Yuan took me,” Remmy answered. He pushed the cart toward Gabriel’s kitchen. “A lone horseman racing away from catastrophe? My lord’s aerial chariot discovered me easily. And I gather there was something in your dog’s head that made him easy to locate.”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “I suppose there would be.” Manfred wouldn’t have known not to answer a call on his reno.
Remmy began to restock Gabriel’s larder. Gabriel was struck by the remembered grace of his movement, the supple movement of the big shoulders and strong arms.
“I’m very happy that you’re not fighting God any longer,” Remmy said. “He said that you were beginning to help him.”
Gabriel sorted through various contradictory responses, settled for quiet inquiry. “Has Yuan Aristos told you that he is God?” he asked.
“No,” Remmy said. “Not in so many words. But I saw him die, and now see him stand before me in his resurrected form. I’m confident that he is divine, and I’m content that he smiles upon me and gives me work.” He smiled.
“I’m surprised he brought you here.”
Remmy looked at Gabriel with calm green eyes. “Apparently I was thought to be among the rebel angels, such as yourself. And once I was brought here, it was too late to return me to my world.”
“Are we off the world, then? I haven’t been out of this room.”
“I understand that we are across the world from my home, but beneath the surface. There is a whole network of . . . tunnels beneath the world, and ways to travel that I don’t understand.”
A secret subterranean base, in short. That was certainly consistent with Yuan’s melodramatic style.
“Are you being cared for?” Gabriel asked.
“Oh yes. I’m receiving lessons from some of the automata and minor angels. And soon I’ll be given something that will enable me to communicate through the angelic medium.”
Implant a reno in him, educate him. The only appropriate response, Gabriel concluded, was to be happy for him.
He was happy. It required hardly any effort at all.
“I’m glad you’re doing well,” Gabriel said. “Have you seen any of the others? Clansai, Quil Lhur?”
Remmy finished his task and flowed upright. “No,” Remmy said. “I’m not permitted.”
“Do you know if they’re alive?”
“I believe so.” He paused for a moment.
Gabriel nodded, then remembered to jerk his chin instead. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad none of them died on my account.”
“I, also. I hope they will all find grace and an understanding of the Lord.” Remmy approached Gabriel. “Lord Saigo corrected my error,” he said. “He told me that carnal relations between men are not sinful so long as they are not done for the wrong reasons. He said that I might spend time with you, if you wished.”
A skein of anger twisted through Gabriel’s thoughts. Saigo had sent Remmy here, not Yuan. Saigo had turned pimp, and— given that Gabriel was almost certainly monitored— perhaps voyeur as well.
He suppressed the anger. He knew it was not the thing to do.
“Under the circumstances,” Gabriel said, “I think this would be inappropriate.”
Remmy gave a little smile. “As you think best, Ghibreel.” And then he added, “I’m taking care of your dog, Ghibreel. Perhaps I’ll bring him sometime.”
Gabriel rose from his couch and held the curtain back as Remmy took his cart out the door. He knew better than to try walking through the door. Outside he caught a glimpse of dark-paneled corridor, fine carpet of the same wine shade as the room hangings.
Gabriel paced for a moment in anger, until he realized he was walking the same circle he’d trodden into the carpet. He made a deliberate effort to break free of the conditioning and sat, facing the wall, until he calmed himself.
He was being monitored, of that he was certain. Every heartbeat, every indicator of stress. If turbulent thoughts came, the watchers would know.
Best to keep everything calm. In time, he managed it.
Time passed. Gabriel worked, slept, ate, and in between tried to think of nothing at all.
Remmy didn’t come again.
In solitary confinement, Gabriel knew, people were forced deep inside themselves, deep into their memories, their psyches. But Gabriel didn’t want to go there— inside was everything he was trying to forget.
He concentrated on work. Sometimes, when his attention wavered from his assigned task, he found that his left hand was doing something odd, drawing patterns on his thigh or the desktop. He jerked his eyes away from the sight.
He didn’t want to look at it. He didn’t want to know. His left side was not a part of him, not really.
It was someone else’s hand, he decided. Not his. Nothing to do with him.
Visions of dancing atoms haunted his dreams.
After a long space of time Yuan came to him. Gabriel assumed a Posture of Submission.
“You have done very well on your assigned tasks,” Yuan said.
“Thank you, Aristos.”
“Do you still wish assistance?”
Hope brightened in Gabriel. Perhaps he would have his daimones back. “That would make the job easier, yes.”
“I will assign you assistants from those captured with you,” Yuan said.
Gabriel’s heart leaped. “Thank you, Aristos.”
“You will meet only in the oneirochronon. Your team will be very carefully monitored at all times. You must be very prudent in what you say and do.”
“I will be careful, Aristos.”
Yuan formed a mudra of approval. “Very well.”
“Thank you, Aristos. I am very grateful.” Gabriel dropped to a lower Posture of Submission, his forehead to the carpet. Yuan gave an approving smile and left.
“You are making progress, Gabriel,” he said. “Remember your new purpose, and you will do well.”
Gabriel returned to his sofa and entered the oneirochronon. Electronic walls patterned around him, red-draped ones. Evidently the environment had been carefully chosen. Gabriel pulsed out messages, heard answers. Clancy, White Bear, Quiller, and Yaritomo appeared.
They adopted Postures of Formal Regard. A bolt of energy shot up Gabriel’s spine at the acknowledgement of his authority.
He returned their greeting.
“We have been asked to assist with the terraforming of Dürer,” Gabriel said. “I would like to gather data and make assignments.”
Their oneirochronic forms shimmered before him. He wasn’t receiving their true expressions, he realized, there was some interference, an oneirochronic sensor, that muted their appearance, softened the focus somehow.
“Is it your wish that we do this?” Clancy asked. The censor did not entirely conceal the directness of her gaze.
Gabriel blinked tears from his realworld eyes. “Yes.”
“Then we shall do as you ask.”
The team began to function. There were no social aspects to the meetings, only assignments and labor. The work was slow— there were no daimones to supervise the detail work— but in the end excellent. Meetings were scheduled, problems raised, solutions found. The others never called Gabriel “Aristos,” apparently having been warned not to. None of them seemed quite themselves: they had to have been subjected to various degrees of personality modifications as well as having their renos and daimones switched off.
Occasionally Gabriel would find his left hand doing something odd, as if it were conducting invisible music. There was a strong metallic taste on his tongue. He chose not to think about what that meant. It wasn’t his hand. It didn’t belong to him.
One day Zhenling came to Gabriel in his room. She looked magnificent, her bladelike form clothed in a long black cassock covered in cloth-of-silver embroidery. Gabriel had seen some of the young fashionable men in Vila Real wearing something similar.
Gabriel adopted a Posture of Submission.
“Your Dr. Clancy has been caught attempting to subvert our renos,” Zhenling said. “While ostensibly trying to do her work, she was trying in subtle ways to alter the programming.”
Admiration flooded Gabriel’s heart. Yes, he thought. That’s what an Ariste would do.
He pressed his forehead to the floor. “I apologize for her behavior and accept full responsibility,” he said.
“Was this done with your knowledge?”
He straightened and looked up at her so that she could see his sincerity. “I knew nothing of it,” he said.
Her tilted dark eyes seemed to search his thoughts. “Clancy will be subjected to readjustment,” Zhenling said. “She will not be present at your next work session.”
Gabriel bowed. “The decision is fair, Ariste.”
“Come sit with me, Gabriel.”
Gabriel joined Zhenling on the sofa. “I wanted to see you,” she said, “to let you know that I will be leaving Terrina in a few days to return to my domaine. A puppet is an inconvenient thing to have to work through, and I wish to be there in person. Captain Yuan Aristos will be leaving as well, to supervise work elsewhere.”
A hint of panic throbbed in Gabriel’s throat. “Who will give me instruction?” he asked.
“Saigo Aristos will supervise you and your team.”
Saigo was the most hostile of the three. He would use any excuse to kill Gabriel.
Gabriel was going to have to be very careful.
“I understand,” he said. “I will submit to Aristos Saigo’s instruction.”
“Good.” Zhenling looked at him for a moment, as if on the verge of speech. In the end she said nothing.
“I hope my work has been satisfactory,” Gabriel said.
“Yes,” she said. “Very.”
“Captain Yuan Aristos suggested that if my work was good, I might be granted access to my daimones again. They would make the work go faster, and make things less lonely.”
Zhenling turned away, color coming to her cheeks, then mastered herself and looked back. “I wish Yuan Aristos would not make these promises,” she said. “He should not raise false hopes.”
Gabriel looked at her in rising desperation. She shook her head.
“We can’t give you your daimones, Gabriel,” she said. “Not ever. It would be too dangerous.”
Tears sprang to Gabriel’s eyes. He had no daimones to stand between him and his emotions: the agony of life in this forsaken room, confined to its bleak terrain and that of his own mind, was to a brand that consumed his hope with blazing fire.
He collapsed, weeping, face down on the couch. Zhenling reached out a hand, hesitated, then touched his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Gabriel,” she said.
“I was promised!”
“You will,” she hesitated, “you will have to cope.”
Gabriel sobbed on. Zhenling stayed for a moment, hand on his shoulder, then quietly rose from the couch and made her way out.
“I never intended this,” she said quietly, and left.
Gabriel tried to master his emotions and failed. He spent the next few days in blackest despair, refused food, ignored his work.
It was the thought of Saigo gloating that sent him back to his tasks.
The team, without Clancy, without a hopeful Gabriel to motivate it, was less effective. The work dragged on. Gabriel found that it barely interested him any longer.
Saigo appeared daily in order to make assignments and walk Gabriel through his exercises. “Any further attempts to subvert our renos will be met with reprisals,” he said.
“I understand.”
He looked at Gabriel from out of his melancholy eyes. “This was once an Aristos.” he said. “We are surely in obvious decline.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“Why don’t you kill yourself?” Saigo suggested.
Gabriel had considered it. The means were available.
He chose, however, to work on. Sometimes Gabriel would realize that his left hand was moving in the air, as if casting a spell. He chose to deny it. Not mine, he thought.
His long hair brushed his shoulders.
Much later, weeks probably, Gabriel was eating a meal he arbitrarily chose to call “dinner,” in that it followed meals called “breakfast” and “luncheon.” There was a bad taste in his mouth and his appreciation of the food was soured.
Then he was interrupted.
There was a crash, a sizzling sound. The deep red curtains on one wall blew inward, as if from a violent wind through a suddenly-open window. Overhead, the crystal chandelier pealed like a carillon.
A machine entered, a slick, seamless night-black thing on eight disk-shaped wheels. It had a prow like a dreadnought battleship and a crudely-formed seat behind.
Time to go, Gabriel, said the Voice.
Chapter Seventeen
LULU: A knife! Let it sing me to sleep.
Gabriel looked at the machine and concluded that he was in deep trouble.
Hurry, said the Voice.
Gabriel rose slowly, wondering what to do, and then a blazing hope kindled in his heart and he ran for the machine and jumped aboard just as it started to move. Gabriel ducked to avoid the low clearance as the machine scrambled through the hole that it had melted in the wall— applied nano at work here— and swung with a hum into the corridor. The seat was slick and difficult to maintain. Numbered doors began to speed by. The machine’s wheels were muffled by the thick red carpeting.
I have subverted the base’s renos, the Voice said, but I don’t know when some hardwired alarm might go off. That’s why I went through the wall instead of the door. It would have set off any number of alarms, and I couldn’t suppress them all.
Where are we going?
The medical unit. I’m going to give you your reno and daimones back.
Gabriel’s heart leaped.
Doors sped by. The outpost had been built to a massive scale, but the architecture was merely functional and the place seemed largely uninhabited.
If Gabriel had ever wanted a secret subterranean base, it would have looked far more interesting.
Here. Gabriel almost lost his seat as the machine jerked to a halt. This thing had not been built with his comfort in mind. Gabriel’s left hand lifted by itself and pointed toward a door.
Quickly. It’s local night here, and most of Saigo’s people are sleeping, but you never know when someone might want to check your room or the nano lab— and I’ve left a mess in both.
Gabriel could imagine. The machine was obviously nanobuilt, and would have had to get its mass from somewhere. The floor, most likely, the walls, the furniture.
The machine was crude, obviously an improvisation. It had taken the Voice months to build. Gabriel could have designed a much better mechanism in a matter of days.
Can we release the others? Gabriel queried. He entered the medical lab through its sterilizing door, saw gleaming black-and-yellow floors, immaculate countertops, equipment standing ready.
Not without triggering alarms, the Voice said. Over there. Gabriel’s left hand pointed to a tall wing-backed chair upholstered in soft dark leather.
Gabriel sat. He knew that the back and wings of the chair were contained tachline projectors and receivers, sensors, a dedicated reno. From here he could reprogram his own implant reno.
This may take some time, the Voice said. The toad Yuan has disabled all your reno’s functions except the biomonitors, which are feeding data right into his own renos. We have to turn off the biomonitors, switch to a false data feed, and then enable everything else. Yuan’s filled everything with traps and alarms, so I’ll have to proceed carefully.
Can I help?
No. Just shut up and stay that way.
Gabriel shut up. Spasms of anxiety tweaked at his nerves— if he was caught now he would be killed. He could feel things happening in his head, little flashes of awareness as if subsystems were being tested. A voice began to sing in his head, Psyche’s, then Spring Plum’s, then a chorus, and his mind filled with beauty like an endless unfolding origami flower, opening to a realm of possibility.
At your service, Aristos!
He sprang from the chair and laughed aloud. His daimones snarled for vengeance.
Gabriel is himself again, he thought.
Not quite, the Voice reminded. You’ve spent months adjusting to a status of submission and dependence. You can’t throw off that conditioning in a moment.
Gabriel considered this. What’s the next step, then?
Procure a weapon and kill everyone in your path, starting with Saigo. Before he can use the new Mudra of Domination.
Sounds good. His daimones rejoiced. Where can I get a gun?
Saigo’s personal ship is docked here, and there is an armory on board. Saigo sleeps in his stateroom, however, and you may have to get by him. I’ll have to use the machine to burn our way past the locks.
Gabriel ran for the door, mounted the machine again. It started up with a whine. How many other people are here? he asked.
Four therápontes, not counting the one you killed in Roméon. Our people actually outnumber theirs.
