Deathstalker Legacy (56 page)

“You do still remember how to build them, though, don’t you?”

“Of course. We forget nothing. But we are not yet sure we wish to build weapons again. To think like the weapon makers we used to be.”

“But if this isn’t a Fury, what—”

“It is a holo, sir Deathstalker. A reminder of our wicked past. This is a holo of a man we once used cruelly. He was the first living human ever to be allowed into our world. He came to us searching for truth and hope, and we lured him in with false promises, and then betrayed him. We took him apart and remade him, to be our weapon among the worlds of men. We filled him with nanotech, which he then spread as a plague. After Diana opened our minds, and we became sane and sorrowful, we freed him from our control. But we could not undo what we had done to him without killing him. So Daniel Wolfe lived on, effectively immortal and indestructible. Damned to watch everyone he ever loved or cared for grow old and die, while he never could. We keep this image in a place of honor in our thoughts, to remind ourselves of what we were once capable of.”

“I never heard any of this before,” said Lewis. “There’s no mention of this in any of the legends.”

“Some stories didn’t fit the comfortable myths Robert and Constance wanted to build,” said the robot. “Too . . . disturbing.”

“If he’s immortal; where is he now?”

“Over a century ago he went to Zero Zero, the world where nanotech ran wild. He wanted to make it sane again. As far as we know, he’s still there, still trying.”

A thought struck Lewis, and he turned to face the robot.

“You said I was the third living human to come here. If he was the first, then who was . . .”

The robot turned away and started off through the technojungle again. Lewis had no choice but to follow after him.

They walked in silence for some time. They passed machines as big as houses, and some as big as mountains, all equally enigmatic to Lewis. Strange objects thrust up out of the floor, or scuttled over the interlocking canopy above, or lurched slowly through the hanging metallic strands like dreaming monsters. Things rose and fell, flared and guttered, dismantled themselves, or repaired each other. Lewis had always considered himself pretty much up to date on the latest Empire tech, but he recognized nothing of the world he walked through now.

This was the world the AIs made, the planet that was their body, and there was nothing human in its scale or in its thinking.

Finally they ended up in a simple clearing, where a reassuringly normal-looking chair had been set out. The robot indicated for Lewis to be seated with a gracious wave of a blue steel hand, and Lewis dropped thankfully into the chair. It had been a long walk. The chair was almost sinfully comfortable. The robot stood before him, kindly giving Lewis a few moments to recover his breath, and his composure.

“We still have the original message and warning concerning the coming of the Terror,” the robot said finally. “Very few people have ever seen it. It was, originally, a private comm message from Captain John Silence of the
Dauntless,
to Captain Robert Campbell of the
Elemental.
The newly crowned King Robert had resumed command of his old ship, to take up arms in the last great battle between Humanity and the Recreated. The message you are about to see . . . you will find differs in many ways from the accepted version. We kept this copy safe, after all other copies and versions were destroyed, on the orders of Robert and Constance . . . because they asked us to. Important as their legend making was to them, they were still wise and responsible enough to foresee a time when every detail of the original message might be needed. So they entrusted it to us, with strict instructions only to release it . . . on the coming of the Terror.”

“Did you . . . keep any other records from that time?” said Lewis. “What else do you remember, that we were made to forget?”

“Many things,” said the robot. “Some with the permission of the King and Queen, some without. We preserved everything we considered to be important. Though of course we never told them that. We didn’t want to hurt their feelings.”

“You defied Robert and Constance’s instructions?”

“Oh yes. We never really trusted them, you see. They weren’t legends. Not like Owen and Diana. Robert and Constance were just a man and a woman, with good intentions. And we’ve known a lot of those, down the centuries. So we did what we thought was best. Best for Humanity; for the parents we had so newly embraced. We made secret copies of much of the data that was marked for destruction, and then hid the information in a very safe place. Just in case Humanity should ever come to need it again. But let us begin at the beginning, with what you came here to see. The warning.”

The robot made a gesture with a gleaming blue metal hand, and a viewscreen appeared, floating on the air before Lewis. And there he was, on the screen; one of the great heroes and legends of Humanity: Captain John Silence, standing on the bridge of his equally legendary ship, the
Dauntless
. Except it didn’t look like a scene out of legend. The
Dauntless
’s bridge was a mess. There were signs of fire and damage everywhere, with charred and tattered bodies of men and women lying slumped over exploded control panels. There were shattered consoles and scattered wreckage, and blood pooled on the deck. Smoke drifted on the air, and emergency sirens were still blaring stupidly in the background. The lights faded in and out as power levels rose and fell. And the dead on the bridge far outnumbered the living. It didn’t look at all like the bridge of a ship that had just participated in a famous victory.

Captain John Silence stood at parade rest, staring grimly out of the screen. He didn’t look superhuman. He had a gaunt face and a receding hairline, and he looked . . . tired. Beaten down. Like a man who’d survived far too much pain and horror and loss on his way to victory. You could see it in his face, in his eyes. He looked like a man who’d had to bear more burdens than any man should ever have to bear.

(There were apocrypha. Unofficial legends. Some said Silence lost the only woman he ever loved, in the Rebellion. Some said he killed her himself, and then held her in his arms while she died. No one remembered her name.)

When he finally spoke, Silence’s voice was harsh and grating. He sounded like a man on the edge of collapse, only holding himself together through a supreme act of will. He stopped, and started again, raising his voice to be heard over the crackling of fires and the continuing wail of the emergency sirens. Lewis leaned forward on his chair, listening intently.

“It’s not over, Robert. Even after everything we’ve been through, it isn’t over. It may never be over. The war’s finished, but . . . I’ve been given reason to believe there’s something even worse waiting for us, in the future. Information has been dumped directly into my ship’s computers, from an outside source. I don’t know how. A voice . . . came and spoke to me. Don’t ask me whose. Something . . . not human. Perhaps it was the Maze itself. I don’t know. The voice told me what happened to Owen. What he did to save us all. He used the Maze’s power to throw him back through Time itself. He lured the Recreated into pursuing him into the past, so that they would use up their energy and power in a chase they could never win. They chased and fought with him all the way back down the long years, back and back into history. I don’t know how far. But somewhere, in the past; Owen died.”

A sound was torn out of Lewis then, part shock and part pain. Of loss, almost beyond imagining. The scene on the viewscreen froze.

“You see?” said the robot. “You understand now, why this record was never made public?”

“Yes,” Lewis whispered. His face had gone gray, and he felt sick and faint. “Oh yes. Owen is dead. He’s not coming back to save us. The greatest hero of Humanity is dead and gone. Robert knew this, and he lied to us. He
lied.
”

“To give you hope.”

“What else did he lie about? Is any of it true? Or are all our legends nothing more than a pack of comforting lies?”

“We share your grief,” said the robot. “We have been mourning the loss of Owen Deathstalker, who really did do most of the things they said he did, for over two hundred years now. Shall we continue with the recording?”

Lewis nodded numbly, and history moved again on the viewscreen before him. Captain Silence was speaking again.

“Oh shut
up,
Robert. You know very well you never liked him. What matters is, he died to save us all. Because of him, the Recreated are human again, and their planets are restored. The war is over. Humanity is safe. Owen . . . was my enemy more often than he was my ally; but I always respected him. And he may just have saved us one more time. He sent back a message and a warning, through this unknown voice. Backed up by hard evidence, fed directly into my computers.

“The Terror is coming. A threat from outside our galaxy, greater than Shub or the Recreated could ever be. A threat the Madness Maze and the Grendels were created specifically to oppose. The Terror has wiped out whole civilizations, whole worlds, whole species. And they’re coming here next. Humanity must prepare itself, must . . . evolve into something better, greater, or we won’t survive either.

“The Terror might come tomorrow, or next year, or a thousand years from now. We must prepare. Owen said so. Perhaps his last, dying words. I know you don’t want to hear this now. You have an Empire to rebuild. But this is important. It matters. We’ll discuss it further when I get back to Golgotha. Don’t expect me anytime soon. My ship’s had the crap kicked out of it. And most of my crew are dead . . . or dying. We won our war, Robert, but we paid for it with the loss of our bravest and our best. We will never see their like again.”

The scene froze, and then the viewscreen disappeared. For a while, all was still and silent in the clearing of the technojungle. Lewis was leaning forward, as though bent over an aching stomach, staring at the floor between his feet. He felt as though he’d been hit repeatedly, and everything he ever valued taken roughly from him. The robot waited patiently.

“The . . . information, that Silence said had been placed in his computers, from outside,” Lewis said finally, his voice little more than a whisper. “Did it tell what happened to Owen, on his journey back through Time? Did it tell where and how and when he died?”

“We never saw it,” said the robot. “Captain Silence removed the data from his ship’s computers. If he ever did show it to King Robert, no copy was ever made.”

Lewis looked up, frowning. “Why would he do that? Why would Silence suppress information intended to protect Humanity?”

“Unknown. He never consulted with us. Perhaps he did not trust us. Or King Robert. Either way, the data vanished with his death, some years later.”

Lewis glared at the robot, suddenly so angry he could barely speak. “You’ve known, all this time, that Owen was dead. That our faith in his return was just a cruel lie. Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Because King Robert and Queen Constance asked us not to,” the robot said simply. “Because the legend they so carefully created obviously meant so much to Humanity. There was an Empire to rebuild. Your King and Queen believed you needed legends to inspire you, far more than you needed the truth. We could have spoken out, after Robert and Constance were gone, but it was clear that Owen’s legend meant so much to you all. You wanted, needed, to believe that Owen was still out there somewhere, and might someday return. We just . . . didn’t have the heart to tell you. And now it’s up to you, Lewis. Will you tell King Douglas, and your Parliament, that the blessed Owen is dead?”

Lewis thought about it. What could he say? When he got right down to it, he had no proof. The Shub had no evidence to back up what they’d shown him on the viewscreen. The AIs had admitted they’d lied to Humanity before, when they felt they had good reason. It could all be nothing but a very clever fake. But somehow Lewis didn’t think so. What he’d seen and listened to so painfully had had the ring of authenticity. Owen . . . was dead. He wouldn’t be coming back in triumph, in the nick of time, to save Humanity in the hour of their greatest need. He wouldn’t be there, to stand between Humanity and the Terror. Perhaps that was why he’d sent the warning in the first place.

Lewis sighed heavily. He couldn’t tell anyone that. The bitter truth . . . would crush Humanity’s spirit, when they needed most to be at their strongest. They needed the legend. Perhaps Robert and Constance had known what they were doing after all . . . Of course, it made the Quest of the Paragons meaningless; but the people needed the Quest too, and the hope it represented. And the Paragons needed the Quest most of all.

Lewis sucked in a deep breath, and slowly raised his head again. He felt like he’d been through a long illness, and was only slowly beginning to recover his strength. Owen Deathstalker was dead. It was like being told the sun wouldn’t come up in the morning anymore. Lewis looked at the robot as he rose fairly steadily to his feet.

“Thank you for your candor. You’ve given me a lot to think about. Including just how much of this I should pass on to Douglas, and the House.”

He held out his hand for the robot to shake, and the robot froze suddenly, looking down at the hand.

“That ring, sir Deathstalker. Where did you get that ring?”

“It was Owen’s ring,” said Lewis, holding his hand still, just a bit self-consciously. “It’s the old sign and seal of my Clan, long thought lost with Owen. It was given to me at Douglas’s Coronation, by a rather strange little man in gray called Vaughn.”

The robot pressed Lewis eagerly for every detail he could remember, making him go over it again and again. The viewscreen reappeared suddenly, showing an image of a short hunched figure dressed in gray. Lewis nodded.

“Yes, that’s him. Do you have any information on him?”

“This is Vaughn, other names unknown, planet of origin unknown. A leper, from the old isolation planet of Lachrymae Christi. He died there, from the disease, one hundred and ninety-two years ago. The venerable Saint Beatrice kept excellent records. We even have his death certificate.” The screen changed to show the document, and then it disappeared again. The robot looked thoughtfully at Lewis. “Our sensors indicate that the ring on your finger corresponds in every detail to the description we have of Owen’s ring. Which, as you say, disappeared with Owen. So how has it reappeared now, and who was the person in gray who gave it to you? Did a ghost come to you, to give you a dead man’s ring?”