A Quantum Mythology (25 page)

They turned off the trade route and started travelling north after they met a bard heading south for the mighty battle. He had heard rumours of sightings of the black
curraghs
on a river further north. The river was said to have a fearsome spirit living in it that made it burst its banks and drown the surrounding land with remarkable frequency. The river was called the
Tros Hynt
.

Britha had a spear now and a dagger traded from Ysgawyn after he’d won a challenge. It was the dagger, not the spear, which she took into the woods on the darkest night, when the moon’s light was little more than a sliver in the heavens. It was the dagger that she worked her will and her blood magic on. It was the dagger that she whispered her purpose to. It would be easier to get the dagger closer to Bress.

He had known of them as soon as the first of his slave army became aware of them. They rode in with the points of their longspears pointed down. He recognised their horses first – Crom Dhubh had transformed them – but it took a moment for him to place the people without their corpse paint. They were members of some ridiculous warrior cult Crom Dhubh had controlled. At Crom’s behest they had hunted down those who still possessed some residual power in their blood and bones, leftover blessings given to their ancestors by the remnants of ancient civilisations. The warrior cult who thought themselves already dead, who consumed their prey to steal their power. They were nothing more than parasites as far as Bress was concerned. They were only still alive because
she
was with them.

He wore a simple
blaidth
and trews. No armour, not even his boots. His sword remained in his hide tent, only a dagger hanging from the belt at his waist. It didn’t matter. They were no threat to him.

They had come as far west as they could on the
Tros Hynt
, but beyond this point the river was simply not navigable. The hide-hulled
curraghs
were much smaller now that the ships did not have to carry so many prisoners. They held themselves steady in the water against the forceful current. He had left the giants submerged further upriver, but he could call them with a thought. His slaves pitched his hide tent on the driest patch of ground they could find in a small clearing close to the riverbank.

After raiding the surrounding area extensively for good horseflesh which he subsequently transformed with the Red Chalice, he had been ranging out for some time now but found little. He used the Red Chalice to control and interrogate those they did find but learned nothing. Then he drew the metal out of them again – he would create no more slaves. Whoever had arrived was keeping very quiet. He was aware of the mortal warriors heading south to die or be warped by the children of the Muileartach, but he gave them little thought.

‘I am Ysgawyn, son of—’

‘Be quiet,’ Bress said softly, but his voice carried. They had ridden in through the silent ranks of his Lochlannach. He could smell their fear.

‘Careful,’ the one called Ysgawyn hissed, but Bress was only looking at Britha. He could not read her expression, but he could sense the power born of the
Ubh Blaosc
in her blood. She had changed. This was not her first form. He did not like the pain he felt in his chest at the thought that she was little more than an
Ubh Blaosc
changeling sent to kill him.

‘We had an alliance,’ Ysgawyn insisted. ‘I demand you honour it!’

Bress turned reluctantly from Britha to look at the angry man. ‘You demand what?’

‘Your aid, access to your magics as per the terms of our alliance sworn in blood—’

‘Stop,’ Bress said. Ysgawyn did so. ‘There was no alliance.’

Bress didn’t look the man in the eye as Ysgawyn replied, ‘We served the same master and he has betrayed us. Where there should be death, there is more life than ever before.’

‘Are you a child? You slavishly worshipped my master and he used you for his own ends. Go and ask him for aid and magics. I suspect they will not be forthcoming as you appear to have little to offer in return. I owe you nothing.’ Bress started moving towards Britha and Ysgawyn opened his mouth to protest again. This time Bress merely looked at him and Ysgawyn knew to be quiet. ‘Was this not what you expected? Having made enemies of all others, did you hope for succour from me? Because you have travelled here with her, I will grant you a great boon. If you leave now I will neither kill nor enslave you, but if you say one more word to me …’ Bress let his voice trail off almost sadly. There were tears of frustration and rage on Ysgawyn’s face, but he turned and walked back to his horse. The Lochlannach watched him all the while.

‘And what of me?’ Britha asked quietly. Bress moved quickly to her. He lifted his hand to her face, long, powerful fingers almost touching her skin. She did not shrink from him. Her expression was guarded, but he could see water gathering in the corners of her eyes.

‘You can stay and do what you want. All I ask is that you don’t leave.’

She stared at him, saying nothing. The silence was broken by the sound of the remaining Corpse People galloping out of the camp, Ysgawyn hurling insults as he rode away.

‘Have you come to kill me?’ he asked, lowering his hand, clenching it into a fist before forcing it back to his side. She nodded, and a tear ran down her cheek.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. The trees, the clearing, the riverbank were filled with the silent Lochlannach, but they were, to all intents and purposes, alone.

Her hand moved to the hilt of her dagger. Bress glanced down at it but did not move.

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he asked quietly. She nodded as more tears ran down her cheek. He looked back into her eyes. ‘What did they do to you?’

She started to collapse. Bress gathered her into his arms, knowing how much she must hate this weakness. She started to beat him with her fists as she sobbed into his chest. He carried her to the ground with him and held her.

Fachtna came to. He concentrated, working out exactly how hurt he was. Then he registered the pain from his leg. He opened his eyes and looked down past the sword protruding from his chest. He screamed. Some half-formed thing, a corpse-like mockery of life with beating, pulsing rudimentary organs hanging down from rotted bones was chewing on his leg, harvesting flesh – and presumably the magics contained within – for itself.

Fachtna kicked out but only succeeded in bucking the creature up and down on his leg. Every movement caused the sword wound to widen, and blood coursed from the gash as pain shot through him. Fachtna brought to mind the calming exercises he’d learned in warrior camp and managed to control himself. He reached for the sword sticking out of him and closed his fingers around its hilt. He wanted to cry out as teeth tore into this flesh. He did cry out as he ripped the sword from his body, and his cries echoed across the plain. He felt darkness closing all around him as he started to drift away. He was bolted back into consciousness as a large chunk of his leg was torn away by the living-corpse-thing’s teeth. This time his scream was joined by his sword’s song. He only just had the presence of mind to use the correct magics to activate it.

He pushed the sword through the undead thing’s head, being as careful as he could not to cut off his own foot. It did not want to die even after he all but bisected it, and he started grabbing at it and flinging its constituent parts away.

The wards drawn by the
drui
on his bones and flesh told him he was being attacked. It was not dissimilar to Naga magics. If anything, this attack was more potent. He recognised this as the magics of the Muileartach.

He saw other shapes moving across the plain through the broad circle of standing stones. The stones were little more than markers for the great power in the earth many miles beneath the plain.

His wounds were starting to heal, but the process was being complicated by whatever the Muileartach’s spawn had filled the air with. Her magics weren’t trying to kill him, rather they were trying to change him, and they were ancient, and powerful, but the wards of the
drui
were trying to keep him safe.

Another of the living-corpse creatures reached for him. The shimmering blade of his sword flicked out and cut it in two as Fachtna staggered away. He knew there were too many to fight, unless his wards could protect him long enough to heal. He glanced down at the blood still pulsing through the wound in his chest. Even his armour was struggling to repair itself. In fact, it looked as if it was trying to grow screaming mouths.

It was a desperate act and he was no
drui
, but there was magic in his blood, too. As the closest of the things reached for him he shut his eyes and concentrated. He felt fingers brush against his armour. He felt them as he would on his skin. He stopped trying to fight the Muileartach’s magics. Instead, as he bled into the air, he simply tried to influence it, make it his and ultimately control it. He felt himself fuse with his armour, his flesh changing, becoming stronger, his feet growing into the earth, branching out for more material to fuel his transformation. Finally he opened his eyes. The living-corpse creatures were standing all around him. Staring at him. He smiled.

19

Close to the Oceanic Pole of

Inaccessibility, 6 Weeks Ago

There was no real way to handle it other than by going through the motions. What Lodup had seen and heard in the last twenty-four hours should have been more than enough to shut him down. He had worked underwater, at frightening depths, for his entire adult life. He had always known that the oceans, unexplored as they were and arguably as inimical to human life as space, had many more secrets to give up. It had never occurred to him that these secrets would be of this nature. It was so far beyond the realm of his experience and understanding that he couldn’t process it. He felt numb.

While he found that he wasn’t shutting down with the sheer enormity of it, he couldn’t embrace the wonder of it, either. He was left feeling as if the weight of all that black water between the habitat and the surface had a palpable presence and was pressing against the fragile breathing, diamond hull of the habitat, looking for a way in. He was left with a profound sense of unease by the twisted, dead, sense-defying city that he felt lurking in the water outside.

His berth was comfortable enough. It wasn’t very big, consisting of a wet room with bathroom facilities, a desalinated shower and a sink, plus a desk, bunk and under-bunk storage. He was looking for some kind of TV and started to wonder if there was a communal area when Siraja had, rather disconcertingly, appeared as an image on the wall. Apparently the entire wall could become a screen, if need be. The dragon-headed AI explained that Lodup only needed to ask for whatever media he wanted and it would appear. He explained that it all came from the habitat’s library as communication with the mainland was highly limited.

Lodup thanked him and asked how much privacy he had. Siraja told him he was monitored for his safety, but that this monitoring was low key and the AI understood the need for privacy. Lodup was coming to terms with the fact that he would probably struggle to masturbate in these conditions. He tried out the media system, requesting the most obscure music and films he could think of. The habitat had them all. There was also a detachable tablet he could use to read books, magazines and graphic novels.

Lodup unpacked and got himself fully squared away, a habit from his days in the Navy. Then he decided to go for a walk to meet the neighbours.

The dorm block Lodup was staying in was four storeys of tightly packed cubicles like his own overlooking an open central plaza that contained hanging plants, palm trees and other bits of decorative landscaping. Overhead UV strip lighting embedded in the breathing-diamond skin of the habitat provided the light required by the plants. Balconies connected the cubicles and a number of bridges crossed over the central area. Several similar dorm blocks adjoined the one in which Lodup was berthed.

It was quiet. There was little conversation and the cubicles appeared to be very well soundproofed. What little noise there was came from media being played inside cubicles with the doors open. Every so often one of the security guards patrolled the catwalks and balconies. They looked very heavily armed to Lodup and carried the same odd-looking SMGs as Yaroslav, as well as side arms, collapsible batons, restraints and a number of non-lethal weapons. The only difference from Yaroslav was that their SMGs lacked the underslung grenade-launcher mounted on a Picatinny rail. Instead they had another underslung weapon that Lodup suspected was some kind of short-barrelled shotgun.

Lodup had always been used to his own company, but even so, the quiet was getting to him and making him wish for a poker game, or a few beers and some pool with his fellow divers. He felt like he was staying in an unfriendly hotel in a completely alien culture.

Returning to his cubicle, he started to watch a film, but it only made him miss the surface. He switched to a nature documentary but couldn’t stick with that, either. He looked for technical specs to read for the equipment he was going to be using but discovered that he already knew them, which further increased his discomfort. Finally he settled for some music and some reading. By the time he felt it was late enough to sleep, he was pretty sure he would be too restless to do so, though he drifted off easily enough. He did not, however, dream well.

Breakfast came from a microwave-sized compartment that appeared in the cabin’s wall. It tasted like it should, but also as if there was something missing from it. He showered and then put on the dive suit, which he now knew was a thermal sheath designed to both conserve and provide heat, and to augment the artificial gills that had been implanted in his chest. Live bacteria held in tiny rib-like bladders within the sheath added to what little oxygen there was in the aphotic water at this depth as it flowed through the membranous smart material of the suit.

As he’d found out yesterday, the suit could be pulled up over his head, providing a one-way transparent hood. The material was thinner around the gloves to allow for delicate work and the heating properties increased. Fins could be grown from the feet, the size depending on space and speed requirements, and for long distances the fins could merge to form a self-rippling monofin. He strapped the diamond-bladed utility knife to his calf.

When he was ready, he sat on his bunk and asked Siraja what he should do next. He was told that Hideo was coming to get him, and that he would be working with him and Andreas, an ADS operator.

When Hideo appeared at his door, Lodup felt almost pathetically happy to see a face he recognised.

‘You ready for this, bro?’ Hideo asked.

‘Sure,’ Lodup told him.

Hideo looked at him sceptically. ‘No, no you’re not, but you’ll cope, man, we all do.’

They walked along the balcony, passing others leaving their cabins dressed in either thermal sheaths or overalls. It was still very quiet.

‘This place ever liven up?’ Lodup asked.

‘It’s the job, man, it gets to you,’ Hideo replied.

‘People normally talk when they’re nervous.’

‘I’m right there with you, man.’

They made their way over a bridge and along several catwalks under the tent-like diamond ceiling. Lodup looked down into another landscaped central plaza where a group of personnel of visibly different ethnicities had gathered around a small statue of some kind. The murmuring coming from them didn’t sound like anything Lodup could identify as a language. He glanced over at Hideo, who shrugged.

‘Freedom of religion, man.’

The small statue appeared to be made of a material similar to the city outside.

‘Andreas is a good guy, but he’s German, so he’s a little intense,’ Hideo started. It sounded like he was talking for the sake of talking. Lodup kept glancing back at the ad hoc ceremony.

They arrived at the door to one of the cabins and Hideo reached out to touch it. The submersible pilot seemed surprised that the door just slid open. Every surface inside the cabin was a screen showing a documentary about germ cultures. The blood coating the walls obscured the images. A well-built man with a crew cut and a chiselled jawline was lying on the floor of the cabin. He was red also, his body covered with multiple gashes. His diamond-bladed knife was still gripped tightly in his hand.

Hideo and Lodup stared into the room.

‘Yaroslav is on his way.’ Lodup jumped as Siraja appeared next to him.

‘Why didn’t you know about this already?’ Lodup asked as the door to the red cabin slid shut.

‘I respect privacy,’ Siraja said, his voice low and reverent.

Lodup felt Hideo take him by the arm and pull him away. He noticed one of the security detail making his way towards Andreas’s berth.

‘What—’ Lodup managed.

‘It happens,’ Hideo told him. ‘Sometimes people crack before their rotation is up. I liked Andreas, but he was wound too tight.’

Lodup looked around at the blank faces of the men and women he was passing on the balcony. None of them looked like they’d been wound at all. What he couldn’t quite work out was why, after all the strangeness and now this, he still wanted to stay.

Charles Deane was too tall for a diver, Lodup thought. With his sideburns and his gangly body, he looked more like Abraham Lincoln than the dive supervisor of a secret underwater habitat. He was stripped to the waist, the top part of his thermal sheath tied around his midriff. His upper torso was covered with fading blue tattoos of ships, fish, mermaids and kanji script. They looked very old to Lodup.

They were standing on one of the jetties in the moon pool, next to Hideo’s submersible. An ADS was perched on the jetty next to the submersible, its armoured back split open, and Lodup couldn’t resist taking a look inside. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the soft, dark, faintly biological-looking contoured padded interior.

Sal had joined them and was sitting on a pack of crates nearby. The ex-Australian Navy diver looked less than happy, but she had greeted Lodup warmly enough. Sal was going to be piloting the ADS, having been transferred to their dive detail due to Andreas’s suicide.

‘Okay, nobody’s happy about what transpired this morning,’ Deane said. ‘Not a good start for the new lad, but we’ve still got things that need doing.’ Deane’s accent was odd. Lodup was pretty sure it had started out British – London, he suspected – but it had become mixed up with all sorts of other accents along the way. Lodup wasn’t quite sure what to think about the claims of longevity he’d heard with regard to the crew. He supposed the level of technology they were displaying made just about anything possible. Deane certainly looked as if he belonged in another age.

‘So we’re going to keep Mr Satakano’s first shift very simple. Eastern quadrant.’ Lodup caught a brief change in Hideo’s expression. The submersible driver didn’t look happy, but it was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared. ‘I want a survey. Use a towfish, and Big Henry’s coming to help. You find anything, you set up to dredge. There should be a structure there according to the model, but it’s been buried by silt over the years.’

‘Seed-pod, Chief?’ Hideo asked. Lodup glanced at the submersible pilot but said nothing.

‘Nothing that grandiose, lad. I think we found all we’re going to find of them, start of the last century.’ Deane’s accent made such a mangled mush of the words that Lodup had to play them back to understand them. ‘The bioengineers are looking for a harvest.’

‘If the tech’s active,’ Hideo persisted, ‘the building could have a large network. That means—’

‘Anything active, I think we would have felt it before now.’

‘Tell that to Hidepole’s crew,’ Sal muttered.

‘Different time, different protocols in place. We’ll send AUVs in first to check it out, mind,’ Deane told the Australian. Sal nodded. ‘Okay. Lodup, you’re support diver – most of the work’s going to be done by Sal and Hideo, you’ll ride in the submersible unless you’re needed.’

‘Chief,’ Lodup said, ‘if it’s all the same to you I’d like to get wet, see what it’s all about. Familiarise myself with the gear, and the conditions.’

Deane looked at him for a while, as if he was trying to make his mind up about something. ‘Okay, lad. The gear’s mostly instinctive, and I believe Siraja downloaded the safety protocols for you – most of them’re what you’ve been used to. You listen to Sal and Hideo and do what they tell you, okay?’

Lodup nodded. He didn’t like being called ‘lad’, and in fact he felt that Deane had a somewhat patronising attitude towards all three of them, but the dive supervisor appeared to be practical, competent and have a degree of common sense.

‘Off you go, then,’ the Brit told them.

It was almost like driving as Hideo took the sub through the sunken streets of the strange city. The submersible’s lights cut through the grotesque shadows thrown by the backlit statuary.

Lodup was holding on to the railing surrounding the submersible’s flatbed. He’d felt the cold, rushing sensation through his chest again as the folds of skin protecting the mechanical gills opened. His respiratory system collapsed and his red blood cells became more efficient. Sinuses and other cavities filled with a saline solution, and his metabolism changed to become a thermo-conformer rather than a regulator. Oddly, he felt neither the cold nor the pressure, although he was aware of both. He felt like the living dead. A drowned man still moving.

Sal kept pace with the submersible, just behind and above them in the powerful-looking
ADS
exoskeleton. She piloted with a finesse Lodup had rarely seen in
ADS
jockeys. He had watched her climb into the exoskeleton, and how it sealed itself, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being consumed.

Further behind, shining their own lights through the crystal-clear water, were two
AUV
s. They looked like a cross between a stubby torpedo and a technological cuttlefish.

It was clear that going through the streets was a mixture of Hideo showing off his piloting skills and a tour for Lodup’s benefit, as it would have been quicker simply to pass over the strange city. Seeing the metropolis close up was as disturbing, if not more so, as seeing it from far away. It wasn’t just the giant statues – every structure appeared to contain bas-reliefs of odd-looking people and other animalistic forms. There were creatures with serpentine heads, and occasionally vaguely insectile, multi-limbed, armoured creatures with angular, slab-like heads. Worse still, the strange architecture of the city played tricks with perception, causing optical illusions. He kept thinking there was movement in his peripheral vision.

‘This isn’t right,’ Lodup subvocalized, the words turned into a short-range ultrasound transmission. ‘These aren’t statues, are they?’

He heard Sal’s reply in his head. ‘The boffins think it was some kind of petrification effect. Probably caused by nano-technology.’

‘These things existed on this planet?’ Lodup still couldn’t quite believe it, despite what he was seeing. Nobody replied. ‘This petrifaction effect – either they were attacked, or they did it to themselves, presumably?’ Again, nobody replied. ‘Can it be reversed?’