Shadow Over Avalon (48 page)

“Not really, it’s all in the right approach. Start sneaking when attempting to steal, and that’s an open invitation to get caught. Attitude is everything.”

“Kai, can you pilot?” Arthur asked as he considered a problem with the craft.

“I’ve seen it done . . . why?”

“Automatic pilot mightn’t be a bright idea. It used to be fed into Archive terminals. Transports leave a faint ion trail, which we can fix if our passage is erratic. If pursuit misses one twist, fails to pick up the next for a while, they have lost us. I can handle that part, but it will take time. Can you take over for the run to shore, so I can get some sleep?”

“Any particular zone for landing?”

“You’ve that many caches?” Arthur said. “I am impressed. The southern landmass, with a deep layer of sand, if you can manage it. Pursuit won’t reckon I’ll use Shadow’s landing points. As it is much too obvious, that’s what we’ll do.”

“We’re going to keep this transport?” Kai guessed. “I suppose stasis devices are standard equipment for all vessels?”

“Usually, in case of a medical emergency, but using one is a bad idea, since they may be open to a tracer. Kai . . . did you lie when you told them you had no recollection of our sharing?”

“Not entirely. I get a few brief flashes now and then. Too little information to be of any use.” Kai peered into the darkness ahead of them. “Just a small point: I don’t have an aquatic adaptation.”

“There’s an old way used long before the innovation of stasis. I’ll breathe for both of us, so just pick a location close to shore.” Arthur pulled up detailed maps on his screen as he began maneuvering.

“But what if . . . ?”

“Get rest. You’ll need it. I’m taking us out into very deep water.”

Kai gave up watching and settled into a somewhat restless sleep while Arthur gave his full attention to direction. He wanted it to seem as if they headed to lands deemed irremediably lost, to the far west. At a set point in his plan, Arthur sent a deeper sleep suggestion to Kai than he had previously activated. He wanted absolute concentration for his next series of maneuvers. Hours later, Arthur relaxed the command and Kai joined him soon after, looking rather sober-faced.

“What’s troubling you?”

“Conscience. We spent so much effort evading the roles we didn’t want, and we wrecked the Archive. What if it wasn’t our spy? The quest . . . well it’s over, and we’re running away.”

“Pay more attention to the little details, Kai. We have enough evidence to justify what we did. As for the quest, it has just started. Submariners are neutralized for the moment, and Brethren wallow in the sea of orders Rowan issues, while the Nestines take full advantage. They won’t be watching for a small attack unit striking at their strongholds.” Arthur paused to set direction for their general destination. Kai could fine-set it later. “We recruit until we have a workable force, and then we play strike and run.”

“An independent army? I like the sound of that. Brethren are traditionally shock troops, not defenders. We create havoc, while Rowan and the Submariners consolidate. Now I understand why you want to keep this transport. It will give us the advantage of speedy relocation.”

“Exactly. While I’m resting, you can make a short list of those tested in battle, who also possess technological knowledge. I want people who don’t follow blindly. Wild cards are acceptable though. When we get them, we’ll train them in our own way. You have Copper’s knowledge of warfare, which we’ll combine with my Elite program. Both sides have kept very much to their own tactics, making a combination unexpected.”

Arthur yawned and stretched as he prepared to give up controls to Kai. He kept to himself his intention to recruit from forts as well as from Brethren. Kai couldn’t even begin to imagine how busy they were going to be. As soon as he had enough manpower, he would switch tactics to hold, but not for the alliance. They’d had their chance and flunked it. His army needed one loyalty – to him. He wasn’t going to rest until every Nestine served a more useful purpose by fertilizing crops with its ashes. If his plan worked, he’d turn authority over to the civilian population, so that he could devote his life to exploring the bad zones proscribed by Sanctuary. Kai might like a wandering life too. They’d make a great team. With that happy thought, Arthur willed himself to sleep.

As consciousness faded, a faint sense of being watched alerted Arthur, but he couldn’t rouse, he couldn’t move. His will pushed against a barrier too strong to break through. He fought against a black nothingness, and it won.

The wings of night swirled around a trapped spirit, engulfing it in a dark vortex. The captive essence landed in a group of insubstantial apparitions – those warriors from the Wild Hunt who waited with eternal patience for another angry soul to join their legions.

Memories returned like a flood tide and a silent scream formed. Each soul wore a mantle of pain, all of them trapped by self-inflicted corporeal errors, or those of others’ making. They sucked at the fury of a disrupted spirit to feed their own hunger for existence. He remembered the dreadful craving from his own waiting times.

Once more he stood with his comrades. So many lives remembered here, and every life and death in exact detail. Arthur had never died in his sleep before, though. Perhaps Kai, dozing at the controls, had caused a crash, or pursuers found their tracks despite all his efforts. Maybe someone picked through Kai’s thoughts. Locating their vessel, a seer could rig self-destruct or disable it for their easy reacquisition. Whichever didn’t really matter anymore, since here he stood, in this half-life, to continue his endless quest.

He bit down another scream, wanting peace, a final peace denied until he found the talisman. Sometimes he could remember a need to search for something in his corporeal form, but never for what, until this latest incarnation, where he had seen the sword. His almost-victory was snatched away.

The old one responsible failed to reckon on the species evolving so fast. Each incarnation brought Arthur closer to acquiring the talisman: his sword.

Viewing time as cyclic, he stood witness to land changing, developing beyond recognition, and those same developments crumbling into dust. Now the land resembled a time when the talisman throbbed in his hand. He knew, with blood running rivers deep from all the dead and dying, his rebirth must be imminent. Perhaps in the next life, he’d find it.

A breeze pushed at his robes. No tree or blade of grass stirred. The robes of other watchers belled out as their eyes became hungry in anticipation of another new spirit coming to join them. Souls sometimes burned out by whatever held them earthbound, or rejoined flesh to fulfill a quest, and then a gap in the ring of warriors appeared. Stronger winds pushed at him, whispering of new life. Unable to fight, he let it happen.

A gust took him, propelled his essence outward, away from the others. He rushed through night, over stunted moors, where even stars hid behind a thick blanket of cloud. Ahead, a fire like a beacon snared him as a shark to blood. He saw the face of the one who tended it as he drew closer . . . that one, from his dreams in this recent incarnation.

The cave-sitter turned matte-black eyes upon him when he reached the circle of light. Trained warrior responses sent Arthur’s hand to reach for a weapon never there in these waiting times. Frustrated, he tried to channel the will he enjoyed in corporeal flesh, during his recent incarnation, and accomplish the same end.

“Resistance is an exercise in futility, Arthur.”

“Should I enjoy watching you gloat?” The forces holding him pushed down on his shoulders. Arthur resisted, arranging his legs to squat instead of kneel. From that position, he managed to sit cross-legged. A chilling guess had become reality in those moments. The cave-sitter had used the same words to warn against resistance that the Archive uttered. He knew now with certainty they were the same entity.

“Interesting.” The cave-sitter threw another branch on his fire. “So you think yourself defeated, and a captive?”

“I’m here, aren’t I? Waiting with the Wild Hunt again, in between entertaining you.”

“You dream, nothing more.” Another hunk of wood joined the blaze. Sparks flew skyward.

“I’m alive?” Arthur squashed down a surge of hope, aware of how devious his companion was. “What do you want?”

“There are truths you must learn.” The black eyes met Arthur’s over the fire. “I intended to use your body as a vessel for my essence to escape from Archives. I needed the neural pathways without your essence cohabiting, and I almost got my wish, but then you joined in a gestalt with your brother. I thought I had prevented such a possibility when I directed his steps into death. I underestimated your need to belong. The forces you released smashed through my bonds and I now wear the form I wore when I first visited your world.”

“Who . . . what are you?” Arthur resisted naming this being. He wanted more than a convenient handle. He wanted answers. The figure of power he remembered from a past life did not claim spacecraft skills, however restricted his wording in the language of those times.

“Later. For now, watch and learn.” A gesture from the being sent a huge wall of flame between them. It flattened to form a golden mirror-like surface that smoothed into multifaceted moving images.

Arthur, trapped and horrified, writhed as it pulled him into glowing light. A helpless spirit without substance, he saw the actions of others through many windows. A tug in any direction that caught his attention brought him into the head of the person responsible. Full sensory playback paled into insignificance beside this experience. He
was
the Archive. Windows flashed before him, data surged into his memory base.

*

Gregor swallowed another stim tab, so close to victory that he dared not sleep. He walked over to a window, looking down, while he waited for the effects to kick in.

Did those endless lines of people who shuffled on the sidewalk just trying to move really care what he did, or how he did it, as long as they benefited? Did anyone care what the black-band wearing proletariat thought? Did ethics have any place in a world drowning under the weight of its own population? Would anyone find out that he bartered his skills to be on the first hibernation ship to leave Earth for another world? Did he care?

He fingered the metal band of his own silver identity wristlet. It gave him access to better quarters and medical facilities. He had received an education, and he might even receive permission to breed one day, unlike the sterilized black-bands. He wanted more. The right to walk down a street, and not have to share that same space with another living soul.

A communit buzzed, calling his attention back into his laboratory. He depressed a button on the console. The face of a fat, balding man flickered into view.

“Wojuk, how long do you estimate your drones will take to hatch?” Director Greenley asked, wiping a sheen of sweat from his shiny pate.

“Around a year. I base that on the longest normal gestation period of all the species used in this amalgam.” Sweat started under the collar of his white lab coat. Not from heat in his air-conditioned paradise, but from fear. Who else worked in similar fields of research? Had they made a breakthrough? Would he lose his place on the ship?

“We don’t have a year. Speed it up. Do whatever.” The screen went blank.

Gregor let his breath out in a hiss. The species he used, the genomes spliced together with so much care to create the greatest intelligence, and it came down to ‘Do whatever’. And if he didn’t, who else would, and steal his place? He plucked a hair from his dark brown thatch and fixed the root to a microscope slide. So, they wanted fast, did they? They wanted smart?

Ian Greenley was only a silver band, too. Gregor wondered who controlled the controller. What price did Greenley pay for the power he wielded?

Five minutes later, Gregor added human alleles to the beginnings of a new race. He sent a short current pulsing through haploid cells. His mouth curved up in a smile when he saw activity through the lens of his microscope. Aiming the comment at a now absent Greenley, he said, ‘Let there be life,’ and giggled at his own blasphemy.

*

“What do you mean, Dexter? The drones aren’t viable? What good are they if they can’t perpetuate themselves?” The fat, beringed hand banged down on a rare, real-wood desk. “Didn’t you read Wojuk’s data?”

“His notes stopped short.”
Just before you had him terminated
, John Dexter thought but did not say. He wondered if Greenley had another geneticist waiting to take over from his research for a place on the first ship. How many of us vying for the same berth? How many prepared to step on dead men’s shoulders, like he had with Wojuk?

“Fix it.”

John saw his death in those black, pig-like eyes. He knew then what alleles he must use. The drones needed invertebrate characteristics to reproduce. They needed a queen. The solution wasn’t perfect, or natural, but who expected natural in a Harvester? He cast a guilty look at Greenley, aware that no-one was supposed to name the drone species before the Director decided on a handle. That was what everyone called them, though.