Fantasmagoria (34 page)

“I’m your
arch-enemy
. How many times do you think this has happened? Huh? This is how it goes. This is how it always goes. You’re no killer. Never were. Eventually you realize that, and I gotta put you down, reset the gear in your head that tells your memories where to go. Then we start all over. You see that cane in the corner?”

Jack didn’t take his eyes off Pimpernel.

“I walked with that cane for the better part of a century. Eventually I was confined to a wheelchair, but before that I had two legs. Know how I lost my leg?”

Jack squinted.

“You blasted it off. One time you even bit my spleen. We’ve been at this a loooong time, Jack. A long time.”

Jack knew he was being played. He knew Erasmus was telling him what he wanted to hear, bringing up the past to stir his emotions, get him to make a mistake. Jack knew. But Erasmus’s every word was like water poured into the cup of his soul. It filled a horrible emptiness, the absence of himself, his identity. Jack stayed silent and drank in the words.

“I found you in a rubbish heap in Futuria. You were a toy, a plaything for kids. That’s why you’re so hung up on them. I knew you from the old days, but when I found you, you had changed. Way back at the beginning, you were bolted to the ground and shot cotton balls out of your arm.”

Jack was stoic. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. But there you were, lying in the trash, complete with legs and a ray gun. I wound you up, told you that you were a killer. I mean, you look the part, what with that arm and all. And Rosa.” Erasmus chuckled. “A toy isn’t a toy when it thinks it’s the real thing. And I’ll say this for you—you always took pride in your work. Some guys, they never quite step up, ya know? But you always wanted to do a good job.”

“Guess I’m old-fashioned.”

“You’re not old-fashioned. You’re an antique! Like me and all the rest of this stuff. Why do you think I held onto it? This is all that’s left.”

Jack looked around the vault. A tube, like a snub pipe, was suspended vertically in a shaft of light. It had a hand grip at the base and was studded with buttons. “What is all this?”

“Artifacts. It took lifetimes to collect. Lifetimes. That’s called a light saber.”

“A what?”

“An ancient weapon of the Earthpeople.”

Jack stared at Erasmus.

“And this. This is what your friend Vernal was after.” Erasmus stepped aside. An oil lamp, like a small metal pitcher, was suspended in another beam. “He was going to trade you for it. He knew you were the only thing in the world I wanted more.”

Jack wanted to think that wasn’t true, that Vernal hadn’t lied to him, hadn’t set him up, but Jack knew Vernal. He remembered the scoundrel’s words in the Old Arcade. You don’t have to get out, he said. Just in. Teleportation. Right.

Fucker.

“He was going to sell you back to me, back into bondage, so he could make his escape and leave everyone here to die. You. Me. His sister. Everyone. Doesn’t make me seem so bad, does it?”

“What is it?”

“It’s called a Genix. It’s a mind-machine interface.”

“What do you do with it?”

“You rub it. Then the interface appears.”

“It looks like an oil lamp.”

“That’s because they patterned everything after Earth culture.”

Jack scowled. “Erthwhat?”

“Did you ever ask yourself why this world is so fucked up?”

The gunslinger shook his head.

“Of course not. You all don’t know any different! But put on your thinking cap, Jack, and try to imagine what life would be like if you could
transmute matter
. That you had such an advanced knowledge of physics, chemistry, genetics that you could create anything imaginable. You’d never suffer disease or death, just the long, long eons of . . . well, the same thing over and over. An eternity of reruns.

“There’s only one thing in the universe that’s truly unique, truly novel. Do you know what that is?”

Jack thought for a moment. He stepped through the little museum. The answer was right in front of him. “Culture.”

“Exactly. Infinite in its variety. This race, these Travelers we called them, they scour the universe looking for alien species. It turns out that physically, we’re not that different from each other. We all have to obey the same natural laws. But our dreams . . .

“The Travelers take stories, myths, legends, and they make them real. They build worlds just like this one, whole planets full of imagined realities turned to flesh and stone. Do you know what this world is, Jack? It’s an amusement park, just like the one upstairs. It’s one giant reality show built by a race of immortals for their own personal entertainment. It’s not a simulation, not an artificial reality, not made of holograms or constructs. Everything here is as real as anything else in the universe.”

Jack squinted. Erasmus had no face by which to judge his truthfulness. It’s one of the attributes that made him such an effective liar. Jack wasn’t sure what to believe. Erasmus was a psychopath, sure, but he had never been delusional. “And how do you know this?”

“I was there. At the beginning. And so were you, only you’re made of metal. Why do you think I look like this? We’re three thousand years old, Jack. My body has worn away, but I keep finding new ways to live. I told you. I’m the survivor. I’m the one who lives.”

Jack scoffed. “If that’s true . . .”

“Then what happened?”

Jack nodded, squinting in disbelief.

“One day, they just stopped coming. I suppose in the long march of eons, even gods have their calamities. One day they left and days turned to weeks, weeks to months, months to years. People remembered the truth at first, but after a few generations, it hardly mattered. It was all just a story you heard from your grandparents. Aliens or not, folks still had to live, still had to eat. Time passed, and the reality of this planet’s genesis just faded into new myths of our own.

“Evolution took over. Freed from the controls imposed on it, this planet took on its own natural history. New creatures evolved, like those damned Furies. We went feral, Jack. The whole planet went wild. Food ran out. Everything broke down. All the races started warring with each other, fighting for the biggest share of whatever was left. And then there was that damned beast.”

As if on cue, the room shook from the battle overhead.

“Kraxus.”

“Every few decades he’d rise up out of the depths someplace and wipe it out. Just eradicate everything. Things got so bad, I soon found myself in a life or death situation. I had a choice. Kill a child, or die. And you know what I found?”

“You liked it.”

“Not the killing. But I didn’t hate it either. But living! I was invigorated to be alive. After the little brat was dead, I felt wonderful. I like life, Jack. I’m addicted to it, really. It’s all the little things, the feel of a knife warm with your enemy’s blood, that last twitch you see as he bleeds out in front of you, the smell of his woman’s pussy on your face. I’m not afraid of death. I’m just not ready for it.”

“Not afraid?” Jack growled. “We’ll see about that.” He stepped forward.

“Stop!” Erasmus’s spider backed up. “If you kill me, the whole world is doomed. I’m the only one left who knows how to use the Genix. Every child everywhere on the planet. Dead.”

“Those things, those flying saucers or whatever, are they the aliens?”

“Machines. Sent by them, yes. They’re back. For whatever reason, they’re finally back. I don’t think they expected anything to be here. I think they thought we’d all be long dead. They’re wiping the planet like a chalkboard, erasing everything.”

Jack nodded to the Genix. “And that thing can stop them?”

“Yes. We can save them, all the little children.” Erasmus turned toward the artifact. “I just need to--”

“No.” Jack kicked Erasmus and forced him against the wall with a crash. Jack grabbed the light saber from suspension. He looked for the “on” button.

Erasmus cursed as the room shook again. Dust fell from the ceiling. “Do you hear that? How long do you think it will take those machines to tear that beast apart? They created him, for Goyen’s sake! We don’t have much time. Now--”

When he was calm, when he concentrated, Jack could see Erasmus’s spider-legs bolting for the artifact as if in slow motion. Jack could feel his mind turning faster than it ever had. That was Gilbert’s gift. And Vernal, in as much as he taught Elsa Jankins to accept that bad things happen, left Jack with a noble truth—in his own left-handed way. Sometimes, when nothing was clear, all you could do was follow your gut.

Maybe Vernal wasn’t delusional. Maybe he merely told a half-truth. The Black Hand couldn’t teleport anyone. Jack was sure of that. But aliens probably could. And if Vernal planned on abandoning the world—which, knowing Vernal, seemed likely—that meant the Genix, whatever it was, couldn’t stop the saucers. But maybe it could teleport Jack to Vernal, and Vernal aboard one of those ships. Or across the stars.

Jack didn’t know that any of those suppositions were true. Maybe Erasmus was right and Vernal was going to sell Jack back into bondage. It was all a guess. But Jack knew Erasmus was the king of liars. That was written in stone. And if the king of liars wanted his hands on the Genix, Jack’s gut said to keep it from him.

Even if that meant the end of the world.

In less time than it takes a hummingbird to beat a wing, Jack Fulcrum drew the light saber and sliced Erasmus Pimpernel clean through his glass helm. The water inside the tank flash-boiled from the heat of the blade and the floating brain was obliterated in a cloud of steam.

The mechanical walker collapsed with a clatter. Its feet contracted and froze like a dead arachnid’s.

Jack turned off the weapon and threw it to the ground. He looked at his dead boss. He wished he could spit. Jack grabbed the Genix and walked out of the room.

The ground shook in spasms from the melee above as Jack knelt at the body of his friend. Vernal’s frozen eyes were fixed on the vault. Half of one arm was still outstretched in rigor.

“Here it is, Vern. Just what you wanted.” Jack stuffed the Genix under Vernal’s arm and patted it. Then he closed his friend’s eyes.

As he turned to leave, the Genix began to glow.

Jack walked past his drowned colleagues, past Archie’s twitching limbs, past Zen-ji’s slumped corpse, and up to the surface. After all he went through, he realized, he was going to die anyway. Everyone was. At least he was ready.

Jack shook his head and walked out to join the end of the world at the hands of those who had created it.

(THIRTY-SEVEN) I Am Come

Kraxus was down. He was crumpled in a fetal ball, tail tucked under his body, as the biodroid sucked the energy from his wounds. He was dark, limp, inert, more like a giant rubber suit than a monster-god of destruction.

The sun peeked over the horizon, and the world was still. Dawn of the last day.

The Apocalypse. Judgment Day.

The first last rays of morning stretched across the Destroyer’s eyes—shut and still—and the entire planet sighed with the resignation of its fate.

But something stirred, something deep and ancient—that single, fundamental drive that defined the first plasm of life and which it bequeathed to all its heirs.

The will to live.

By taunting the biodroid with a kill stroke, Kraxus had tricked his enemy into lowering its energy barrier.

The World-Eater opened his eyes. With a heave of his tail, he pushed himself onto the giant robot and clung tight with four powerful arms. The Destroyer hugged the biodroid so close that the machine’s drills and torpedoes and eye weapons were no use, and it could not engage its shield. The invader fired in all directions and engaged its jets, but with the Destroyer attached, it was too heavy to escape.

Kraxus called forth his power. His spines began to pop and glow as he drew dark energy directly from the fabric of the universe. The sheer magnitude flowing through his quantum pores charged the air around him and great arcs of lightning struck the hills, the clouds, the sea, and the last buildings of the city, faster and faster, until the Destroyer’s spines shone as bright as the sun.

And with a bowel-wrenching roar, Kraxus bit the biodroid’s neck, rent its metal with his teeth, and unleashed—at point blank range—the very energy of creation. The blast tore at his mouth, at his jaws, burning parts of himself away, but the Destroyer did not relent. He poured forth himself, his soul, into the invader until there was a great eruption in his arms and he was knocked to the ground.

When the smoke cleared, a mile-wide crater had replaced downtown.

And the biodroid had fallen.

With it fell the commanding intelligence of the alien fleet, and all around the planet, the last few saucers dropped from the sky to the raucous cheers of the people below.

And the feral world limped on for one more day.

§ § §

What followed shook the very foundation of the planet. Those standing before it died instantly. Those in the ensuing miles who poked their head from shelter to witness it went mad. Those lucky few left hiding in the rubble shut their eyes and clutched their ears in the vice of their hands.