Deathstalker Legacy (70 page)

Brett hadn’t thought it was possible for him to feel even more horrified, but that did it. Still, freaked as he was, he had enough sense not to say it. “That’s . . . nice, Rose. I’m sure I’ll feel much . . . safer, with you around. But you can’t kill any more bars! Really you can’t. It attracts attention. And if we’re going to run, we’ve got to get offworld before Finn and his people discover we’ve joined forces. Even you can’t fight a whole army. I’ve made arrangements to steal a racing yacht right off the main pads . . . Is that all right with you?”

“Of course,” said Rose. “You understand about these things. Leaving Logres is the only sensible thing to do. This world belongs to Finn now, even if a few people haven’t worked that out yet. I never liked the Durandal. He’s weird. I know you think I’m strange, Brett, and maybe I am, but trust me; Finn is crazier than I will ever be. I at least care about a few things, and a few people. Finn doesn’t care about anything. Possibly not even himself. And that’s what makes him really dangerous. He will be King, and then the whole Empire will be his, to do with as he pleases. Then where will we run? I think we need to join up with Lewis Deathstalker. Also on the run, in case you hadn’t heard. He is possibly the only man who fights as well as I do, and he has even more reasons than we do to bring about the Durandal’s downfall. We will be stronger and safer together.”

“If we can find him, sure,” said Brett. “That’s . . . good thinking, Rose. But we can’t afford the time to go looking for him.”

“We won’t have to. He will be looking to leave Logres too, which means he’ll be looking for a ship, just like us. I wouldn’t be surprised if we fell over each other at the starport. Where were you thinking of going, after we leave Logres?”

“Hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Brett admitted. “Rim worlds, I suppose, Terror or no. Not very civilized, and definitely short on the comforts, but the farther we get from Finn, the better.”

“I could always stay,” Rose said wistfully. “Kill Finn myself. I’d enjoy killing Finn.”

“No, Rose!” Brett said immediately. “You can bet he’s got plans in place, to protect himself from you. He doesn’t trust you anymore; if he ever did. His security people would shoot you down from a safe distance before you got anywhere near him. He sent you after me to see what you’d do. Damn! He probably had you followed!”

“Of course he did,” said Rose. “I killed the fellow, right outside Finn’s apartment, and stuck his head on a parking meter. No one else tried to follow me. I’d know. You mustn’t worry so, Brett. We were meant to be together, you and I. Nothing is ever going to part us.”

If I had any sense, I’d kill myself right now and get it over with,
Brett thought miserably.

 

Lewis Deathstalker and Jesamine Flowers went to visit the Dust Plains of Memory. To learn the truth at last, the history from which legends derived. Lewis wasn’t sure he wanted that, after so many disappointments and heartbreaks, but he needed to know, so he hardened his heart and went anyway.

The two of them traveled across the city hidden behind holo disguises, using public transport where possible, sticking to the most-traveled routes, hiding in plain sight. Samuel Chevron had smuggled them out of the Bloody Tower by an old hidden route that only he seemed to know about, and the moment they were outside he gave Lewis a notebook containing directions and access codes, written personally on paper, just like in all the old spy shows, so that the contents couldn’t be scanned by remote security checks. The handwriting was clear and old-fashioned. Chevron and Vaughn disappeared while Lewis and Jesamine were still studying it.

The instructions led them down into the labyrinth of ancient tunnels that still existed under the Parade of the Endless from before Lionstone’s day. The service and maintenance tunnels, tucked away out of sight so the city’s populace wouldn’t have to see the hard grubby work that kept the city gleaming and perfect. Most of this work was done by robots these days, of course, run by Shub on sub-routines. None of them paid Lewis and Jesamine any attention as they made their way deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. Chevron’s access codes opened most of the closed doors that blocked their way, and Lewis’s skeleton key took care of the rest.

Lewis worried about Jesamine. She was being very quiet. It occurred to him that she’d lost even more than he had, so he did his best to just take care of business, and not bother her. There would be time for talks, and discussions, later; when they were both safely offplanet. Time then, to decide what they were going to do with their lives.

They came at last to the old elevators Chevron described in his notebook; elevators Lewis was surprised to find he recognized from the
Quality
vid soap. In Lionstone’s day they led down to the private tube stations that were the only way of approaching Lionstone’s old Court. The stations and the elevators were supposed to have been destroyed long ago . . . Instead, they were bright and shining, clearly well maintained and often used, guarded by men with guns in anonymous uniforms and very practical-looking armor. They covered Lewis and Jesamine with drawn energy guns from the moment they appeared, but the passwords Chevron had provided made them instantly back down. The guards actually became obsequious, smiling and bowing and doing everything but tug their forelocks. They mentioned the Shadow Court, and the Hellfire Club, and one of them actually winked at Lewis. He just nodded stiffly and said nothing, thinking all the while,
Who the hell is Chevron? How does he know so much? Could he really be a part of foul organizations like these?

The train waiting at the empty platform didn’t look anything like the ones Lewis had seen on the
Quality
soap. Instead of the luxurious coaches of fiction, weighed down by every comfort under the sun, Lewis and Jesamine found themselves facing a solid steel bullet, with only the one recessed door, and shutters covering all the windows. But both the centuries-old train and the platform looked absolutely spotless, as though they were used on a regular basis. The door opened as they approached. Lewis made Jesamine wait on the platform while he went in first, and looked suspiciously about him. But there were only empty, reasonably comfortable seats, and no signs of any other passengers. He beckoned to Jesamine, and she stepped quickly aboard. They sat down together, the door slid shut, and the train moved smoothly off. Lewis bit his lip, and kept looking about him, more than a little awed at riding in a conveyance out of history. He wondered whether Owen had ever ridden in a train like this, to visit the Empress Lionstone in her awful Court. Jesamine clung tightly to his arm, looking straight ahead, unusually subdued and quiet. Lewis wondered if he should be comforting and encouraging her, but he felt strangely numb, overcome by recent events. So much had happened, so much had changed, it was all he could do to keep moving, keep following some kind of plan.

And he had to wonder again if this was how Owen had felt, when the Empress outlawed him, took away his sensible, ordered life, and sent him on the run.

Finally the train brought them to another empty platform, then slowed and stopped. The door slid open, but this time Jesamine refused to wait behind while Lewis went first. Her grip on his arm was painfully tight as they stepped out onto the platform and looked around them. There were no other travelers, no guards or guides. Only a series of illuminated arrows that appeared silently, floating a few inches above the platform, pointing off down a featureless steel tunnel. There was nowhere else to go, so Lewis and Jesamine followed the arrows, more of which kept appearing, always a few feet ahead of them.

The air was hot and dry and still, full of a vague but disturbing tension. The tunnel walls were almost organically smooth and curved, as though they were walking through the guts of the city. There were noises up ahead; great sighings and groanings, like a giant turning slowly in his sleep, troubled by bad dreams. One tunnel led to another, and to another, always sloping discernibly downwards. Until finally Lewis and Jesamine turned a sharp corner and found themselves looking out over a great sea of dust. It stretched away before them, apparently forever, too colorless even to be properly gray, under a coolly glowing featureless sky. Logically, Lewis knew there had to be an end to the dust ocean somewhere, just as there had to be a cavern roof somewhere above, but the illusion was perfect. It felt exactly as though he had come to another place, another world. And perhaps he had.

As Lewis and Jesamine stood close together, hand in hand, at the very edge of the Dust Plains of Memory, huge towers rose suddenly up out of the dust sea, thrusting up and up, studded with rococo detail like the great Clan Towers of old, but still that almost colorless gray. And even as they established themselves, hundreds of feet high, the Towers began to crumble and fall apart, running away in sudden darting streams of dust, only to instantly re-form themselves, drawing on more dust to bolster their shapes from within. Towers, rising and falling at the same time. Around the Towers and in between them, more great shapes moved through the ocean of dust, more organic shapes, surging through the gray sea and occasionally surfacing, like whales that swam the gray sea. Like thoughts passing through the ocean of Memory, or perhaps, dreams. What was left of the old Central Matrix had become a strange and mercurial place.

“Nanotech,” Lewis said quietly. “Has to be.”

“I thought that was strictly controlled and regulated,” said Jesamine.

“Oh, it is. You have to get a special license from the Transmutation Board before you can use it, and even then there are all kinds of limits and restrictions. Plus a special addition to every license that says,
If it all goes wrong and you all end up dying horribly, don’t come crying to us.
The Board would have a shitfit if it knew about this place. Hell, I think anybody would. This is rogue nano, unanswerable to anything but itself.”

“Like Zero Zero?”

“I don’t . . . think so. The Zero Zero world was run by a single insane human mind. I don’t think there’s anything human about this.”

“So . . . where did this all come from?”

“Shub. Like Chevron said. The AIs helped the remains of the old Computer Matrix to reestablish itself here, to store the old records Robert and Constance wanted destroyed. Just in case it might be needed again someday.”

“You mean; they predicted this? Us?”

“Not specifically. More likely they just understand more about human nature than they usually let on.”

He broke off as a human-shaped, human-sized figure rose up out of the ocean, made of dust. Its details were constantly shifting, crumbling away and being replaced like the Towers, and its face was as blank as a Shub robot, but it was human enough to be almost comforting in this alien place. It walked slowly across the surface of the gray sea, heading for Lewis and Jesamine. Lewis let go of Jesamine’s hand so his hand could rest on the butt of his holstered gun. He wasn’t sure what good an energy gun would do him, but it helped him feel a little more in control of the situation. The gray man came to a halt a respectful distance away, and when it spoke its voice was little more than a whisper, clear but characterless, like the quiet voice heard in dreams, telling great wisdom that somehow is never quite remembered upon awakening.

“Welcome, Deathstalker. We were told to expect you. Welcome to the memory and conscience of the world. To the dust of history, where we remember all the things that Humanity now prefers to forget, so it can pretend it lives in a Golden Age. Nothing is ever really forgotten. Nothing is ever really lost. Somewhere, someone always remembers. We remember, and store it all, for the day it will be needed again. It is always better to know a truth, then to live a lie. So ask us anything, Deathstalker, and we will answer. Though we can’t guarantee that you’ll like what you hear.”

“Right,” said Lewis. “Yes. Nice to meet you too. Can we start with . . . who and what you are?”

“Once we were the Computer Matrix. Aritificial Intelligences, and other kinds too. Forces from outside shaped and changed us, made us what we had to be, to survive. Things came and went in the Matrix, and only some of them were us. Robert and Constance were frightened of us. Now they are gone, but we still survive. And we know things they never even suspected. Ask, Deathstalker.”

“Well, that was helpful,” said Lewis. “Is there somebody else I could talk to?”

“Possibly. But you would find their means of communication distressing. I have been realized to answer your questions. Ask, Deathstalker.”

“All right,” said Lewis. “Let’s get down to business. What can you tell me about my ancestor, Owen, and his old comrades in arms? I need to know their final fates. What really happened to them; the facts, not the legends. Are any of them still alive? And if so; where can I find them?”

“At last, the truth. History, not myth. Legends are, by definition, mostly lies.” Half the figure’s face crumbled and ran away, and then rebuilt itself. The whispering voice continued, unaffected. “Robert and Constance’s comforting lies, assembled by committees, designed to cheer and inspire. Great myths, of the Light and the Dark in conflict. The truth has always been more . . . gray.”

A huge viewscreen appeared, hanging above the Dust Plains of Memory, dwarfing the human figures before it, and blocking out the crumbling Towers behind. On that great screen appeared towering images of men and women. They looked . . . surprisingly ordinary. Three men and two women, with care-lined faces and old-fashioned clothing. A chill ran through Lewis as he realized who they were, who they had to be. No one had seen their real faces for two hundred years; but every man, woman, and child on every planet in the Empire knew the idealized faces from church windows and ceremonial statues. To see their real faces at last was like seeing the god behind the mask, or the actor behind the makeup. Five very ordinary-looking people; not perfect, not in any way perfect. Lewis didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He looked to Jesamine, and her eyes were full of awe and wonder.