Steel Sky (23 page)

The Winnower is free.

Lem staggers to his feet, blood dripping from a gash in his side. With the palaestran backed against the concrete wall, the Winnower throws a series of swift punches to Lem’s face and stomach. Lem tries to ward off the blows, but his strength is gone. He stumbles and falls. He tries to right himself, but he cannot get his bearings. He collapses to the ground, his head resting against the Sacrament Rock.

“Would you like to know what offends me the most about you, Lem?” the Winnower says, circling him.

Lem tries to rise to his feet. A kick to his face knocks him down again.

“I think that after you’d killed this poor girl, you’d lose your nerve.” Once more the palaestran tries to rise. Again the Winnower knocks him down.

“You’d decide you wanted to live after all. You’d say it was traumatic dementia that made you do the things you did, but you’re all better now. You’d look for pity and support.”

Lem rests on his hands and knees, head bowed, breathing raggedly. Blood drips from his mouth and nose. Two shiny metal boots pace by him, just on the periphery of his vision.

“Someone would probably give it to you, too.”

The Winnower’s voice seems to come from somewhere very far away. Warm blood spreads across the concrete floor. Lem can feel it seeping out of his muscles, leaving them weak and cold. He struggles not to collapse. So much has been taken from him. All he has left is the pride that he has not fallen.

“Oh, and Lem?” the Winnower says quietly. “There’s one more thing . . .”

With an effort, Lem raises his head to look at the armored stranger.

A metal claw shoots forward, two sharp fingers extended. They sink without resistance into Lem’s eyes. He does not even have time to utter a sound before they rip into his brain.

Rena screams.

Lem’s body sags backward, hanging from the Winnower’s hand. The Winnower has to brace himself against the weight of the body, which threatens to pull him off balance. His fingers are lodged in Lem’s skull past the second knuckle.

“No! No!” Rena shouts. “Let go of him!”

“I’m . . . umf . . . trying.” Lem’s head bobs up and down as the Winnower tries to work his fingers free.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Struggling, Rena manages to work herself free of the chair, but her hands are still bound behind her.

With his free hand, the Winnower grabs the wrist of the hand that is stuck and pulls as hard as he can. He twists the hand in both directions but the fingers still will not come free. In desperation, he plants one boot against Lem’s chest and pushes. With a popping noise and a gout of blood, his hand comes free. Lem’s body drops to the floor. Shaking the blood from his hand, the Winnower turns and looks at Rena. “Now then,” he says.

Rena struggles to her feet and runs for the door, but with her hands bound she cannot undo the lock. She bends forward, trying to punch the code into the pad with her chin.

An armored fist closes around the fabric of her shirt and whirls her around. The Winnower grips her by both shoulders. Two empty sockets stare into her eyes. She is close enough to see the flush in his skin, the sweat running down his face from under the mask.

“Listen to me,“ he says. His voice is rough but subdued, almost loving. “This is the most important moment of your life. I’m not the only person who heard what Lem said he was going to do. There are half a dozen chatters and their assistants outside that door. They know they’ve got a story, a juicy bit of gossip to spread around to their ‘friends,’ and they won’t leave until they’ve got it. But what kind of story they find is up to you.”

Rena has stopped struggling, lulled by the calm yet forceful murmur of his voice.

“If they find you screaming and crying, they’ll decide you’re as crazy as Lem was. Maybe they’ll even tell everyone he went insane because you didn’t support him in his time of need. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. What counts is that it’s a good story. And that’s how people will think of you for the rest of your life.”

Rena stares into the empty sockets of the mask, but there is nothing there to which her eyes can connect. Only his voice reaches out to her, with a passion otherwise hidden by the mask.

“But if you are calm,” he says, “if you tell them tearfully but rationally how frightened you were, and how glad you are to see them, then they will call you a hero. Do you understand? You have to make them
like
you, make them think that you did what
they
would have done in your shoes. Then they’ll tell your story to their friends, and everyone will say how brave you are. They’ll want to help you get back on your feet. You’ll be a sensation.”

He releases his grip on her shoulders. She has become so mesmerized by his voice that she almost falls backward.

“Do you understand?” he asks.

She nods wordlessly, her hair falling across her eyes.

“Good.” He reaches around her and rips her bonds with his talons. The torn straps flutter to the floor. She rubs her wrists, trying to get the blood flowing again. She does not look at the body on the floor. “Remember what I said,” the Winnower says, stepping backward. He fades slowly from view, watching her with an expression that is almost a smile.

After a moment, she hears a knock at the door.

REFERENDUM

Cadell finds Thraso waiting for him when he walks into the ghost cells. Thraso’s eyes are two black slits.

“Koba’s teeth!” Cadell exclaims. “What happened to you?”

“What?” Thraso replies, affecting nonchalance. “Oh, the eyes.”

Cadell leans forward. On closer examination, he can see that Thraso’s eyes are not truly black. The whites of his eyes are actually a dark red, obscuring the boundary with the irises.

“Elective subconjunctival hemorrhaging,” Thraso explains. “I had my doctor apply an ointment that caused my eyes’ external blood vessels to burst.”

“Isn’t that painful?”

“Excruciating,” Thraso says with a slight smile. “What’s your point?”

Cadell blinks. He knows there’s no point in arguing with Thraso. “What happened to your narration?” he asks. “Your life story?”

“Thraso got tired of it. Thraso decided it was too much fucking work.” He shrugs. “Would you like to see your new office?”

Cadell grabs Thraso’s bicep. “I have an office?” He feels his face grow into an uncontrollable grin. Thraso retains only his ubiquitous enigmatic smile.

“You think I let my lieutenants languish in the cells like ordinary spectres?”

Thraso leads Cadell down an aisle to a door in one corner of the cells. Cadell has seen higher-ranking ghosts walk through this door, but he has never come near it himself. It slides open as Thraso passes his ident over the panel. Beyond it is a narrow corridor with office doors running down either side. Thraso walks a short distance and indicates the access panel of one of the doors. “Go ahead,” he says.

Cadell puts his ident to the panel. The door opens to reveal an undecorated room with a desk slightly larger than his old one.

“Good day, Cadell,” the desk says.

Cadell grins. His old subroutine didn’t have enough memory allocated to it to remember his name. He sits down, running his fingers over the electrostatic tablet. It is a more modern model than his old desk, with smoother lines and better material.

“Like it?” Thraso asks.

“I love it.”

“Good. I have a new assignment to go with the new office.” Thraso leans against the edge of the desk. “I just got word of a new referendum that’s going before the Prime Medium. It’s still in the decision stage, but I wanted you to get first crack at it. I understand that this one comes straight from the Culminant himself.”

“You’re kidding!”

“It has theological as well as political implications. If you write it and it passes, it would be a coup.”

“What is it?”

Thraso raises his head and taps his chin with his finger. He loves a chance to appear philosophical. “It’s a question of the Prime Medium’s official position on a sensitive issue. They want to release a public statement: do they recognize the Winnower as a supernatural entity? Is he human, or is he the Dark Spirit of the Stone made flesh?”

“That doesn’t sound like the sort of question they usually concern themselves with. Why do they want to address the issue at all?”

“Think about it.”

Cadell bows his head for a moment. Then his eyes snap open. “Second Son.”

“Precisely. If the Winnower is a man, then he’s just another nut with a grudge against the upper classes. If, on the other hand, he is a Spirit of Divine Righteousness, then his judgment against Second Son at the party is an expression of divine will. That’s why this referendum is so important. If the people declare that the Winnower is actually an avatar of the Stone, then the family of Orcus is finished.”

Seeing Cadell’s troubled expression, Thraso adds, less flippantly, “Speaking of the party, how is Amarantha?”

“Not so good.”

“I’m sorry.” Thraso tugs gently at a lock of hair in imitation of a man reluctant to speak his mind. “You know, Cadell, this lawsuit is a dangerous move, both vocationally and personally.”

“I know, but she’s determined. And I have to support her.”

“If Orcus loses this power struggle, then it won’t hurt you. It might even help your career. But if he wins, then the first thing he’ll do to consolidate his power is crush his enemies, especially the little ones. Like you.”

“I know.”

“And that’s assuming she wins. She could lose.”

“Koba, I hope not.”

“He’s null-class. Veniremen are notoriously reluctant to rule against null-class citizens. And Amarantha . . . well, she’s a lovely girl, but there’s still a lot of prejudice against the Engineered out there, especially among the lower classes.” Thraso’s long face becomes longer as he purses his lips. “Perhaps you could convince her to dye her hair.” “Ha! You try it.”

Thraso smiles. In combination with his blood-red eyes, the effect is unnerving. “You know, Cadell,” he says, “you can serve her best from here, by working to provide her with a good home, a good salary.” “I know,” Cadell says, but he doesn’t.

DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN IDENTIFICATION

The man working the tiny DHI office is playing a video game when Orel arrives, hunched over his desk monitor so deeply that his spine forms an almost perfect semicircle. He does not look up when the door shuts, so Orel walks forward, clomping his feet as loudly as he can. The man still does not raise his head, so Orel steps closer to see what is so totally absorbing the man’s attention. Upside-down on the desk screen he sees a clumsy computer-generated monster with a skull’s face tearing into a crowd of clops with his claws, wading through them like a swimmer pushing his way through the shallow end of a pool on his way to deeper water. The office worker’s muscles twitch as if with electric shock as subtle movements of his fingers tell the Winnower who to eviscerate next.

Orel sighs. He doesn’t understand why the Winnower intrigues so many people, even the other waterworkers who normally disdain the preoccupations of the rest of the Hypogeum. He’s just another serial killer of the sort that pop up every few years, a little fancier than most, true, but it’s not as if he’s actually the demigod he pretends to be. So why this fascination? This fever? The Winnower isn’t nearly as interesting as, say, a young man leading an expedition into the Rat tunnels.

Eventually it becomes clear that the man behind the desk isn’t going to acknowledge Orel no matter how long he stands there, so Orel clears his throat and whispers, “Excuse me . . .”

With a sudden wipe of his hand, the man makes the game disappear and looks up with an expression of disgust that seems far out of proportion to the level of inconvenience that Orel represents.

“How may I help you today, sir?” the man asks.

Orel suppresses an urge to correct the man’s grammar and holds out his left arm with the panel of his ident facing up. There, where the date and time would normally be displayed, are the words “UPGRADE NEEDED” in bright blinking letters.

“In the reader, please, sir.”

There is a beige cylindrical machine like a miniature CT scanner fixed to the man’s desk. “It was doing this when I woke up this morning,” Orel says, placing his forearm in the machine. “I’ve had this ident for as long as I can remember, and I’ve never seen anything like this before. Neither has anyone else I’ve talked to.”

The man’s eyes twitch in Orel’s direction, conveying in a fraction of a second the message: “I can’t believe you’re stupid enough to think I care, but I certainly can’t be bothered to express myself verbally.” With the sudden chunking sound of metal on metal, something inside the machine tightens around Orel’s arm. Orel starts involuntarily, but the grip on his arm does not allow it to move a micron. The machine hums briefly while a smartkey inside it unlocks Orel’s ident and smoothly draws it away from him. The man behind the desk takes it from the other end of the machine.

“You need an upgrade,” the man says, tucking it under his arm. “Please wait here.” He disappears through a narrow doorway.