Steel Sky (49 page)

The clops grumble and look at each other, but no one is prepared to step forward and challenge Second Son’s authority. Selachian is nowhere to be seen.
Typical,
Second Son thinks.
Never willing to get his hands dirty. Not even to rescue his own son.

Reluctantly leaving his entourage behind, Second Son walks along the narrow path carved into the rock face. The clops fall into single file and follow him. The shallow steps of the pathway are slick with mildew. Only a thin guardrail separates him from the cataract that plunges into the hydroelectric complex. The rail vibrates beneath his fingers.
Is that it?
he wonders, his heartbeat accelerating.
No, it’s only from the rushing of the water.

He moves on. The path curves around the river bend. Soon the city is lost to their sight. It is much darker here, perpetual twilight.
I didn’t realize the path would be so narrow,
Second Son thinks. He can hear nothing but the rush of white water. The wall of the great cavern looms above him. Ten meters ahead the guardrail ends. Beyond that there is no path, only a fissure in the rock where the tunnels begin. Second Son slows his pace. They’re cutting it close, he thinks.

Coming to the end of the guardrail, he stops. Someone behind him bumps into him. He looks up at the rock wall.
They forgot to set the explosives,
he thinks,
or else something’s wrong with the detonator.
He hears grumbling in the crowd behind him. The clops are impatient to move on.

Or am I here too early?
Second Son resists the urge to look at the chronometer on his ident.
What’s going on? I need more information,
he thinks.
I should never have stepped away from the monitors. That’s where my power is.

“What’s the holdup?” someone behind him shouts.

Second Son looks at his chronometer. He is late, not early. Something has gone wrong. The flesh of his arm is dead white with fear. His skin is dotted with sweat despite the moist chill in the air.

He will have to go forward, no matter what may happen. “Quiet back there!” he snaps, trying to keep the tremor from his voice. “I’m still assessing the situation.”

He takes a step forward, beyond the safety of the guardrail. As his foot touches the uneven ground, he hears an explosion above him. He looks up and sees a cloud of dust and debris erupting from the cavern wall. It is very high up, and it takes Second Son a moment to discern how very large the explosion is.

Finally,
he thinks. He turns to the crowd behind him. They are all standing very still, looking upward, mouths agape. Some are even smiling, enjoying the spectacle. They think they are safe.

“It’s going to collapse!” Second Son shouts. “Run!”

Still the crowd does not move. He turns the gain on his amplifier up to full. “
Cave-in!
” he screams.

The ancient warning finally strikes a chord of ancestral fear, and the clops begin to move. They jostle against one another. They quickly become jammed in the narrow pathway, the ones in back not understanding the danger.

Debris falls around them. Rocks the size of a man’s head drop into the river, sending geysers of water into the air. The echo of the explosion fades away, and is replaced by a deeper, more sustained rumble. Second Son looks up and sees cracks traveling across the rock’s surface, widening as they go.
This is it,
he thinks.
I’ve miscalculated. I’m going to die.

The clops on the walkway begin to move backward, slowly at first, then faster as the warning spreads through the crowd. Suddenly the bottleneck is broken and the clops begin a mad rush back along the pathway. Second Son follows them, taking a last look upward. Giant chunks of rock are slowly breaking free and sliding down the wall. He runs down the pathway after the fleeing clops, the overhang protecting him from most of the debris.

A huge slab of rock falls into the river. The splash it creates inundates him, nearly knocking him to his knees. The chunk of rock is so big that it sticks out above the surface of the river, so heavy that the swift current does not move it. Other stones fall, and Second Son feels the rock beneath his feet shift and sink.

He rounds the corner and runs into the small plaza in front of the hydroelectric complex. Behind him, the overhang crumbles from the rock face and crashes down onto the pathway. If he had been just a little bit slower, he would have been crushed. He runs out into the main plaza. Even here boulders have fallen from the cavern wall, shattering the marble paving. Clops, priests, and waterworkers all stand in the plaza looking up at the cracks continuing to spread across the cavern wall. Second Son takes a moment to look back. Huge portions of the rock wall have fallen, but his men positioned the charge perfectly; the rock has collapsed in upon itself for the most part, filling the tunnels. The hydroelectric complex is not damaged, and the river has not been dammed.

A loud noise causes Second Son to look higher up. Fissures have appeared along Koba’s left side. The statue’s arm shifts downward. The figure seems to shrug, as if coming alive after a century of inactivity. Second Son turns and runs, pushing the other onlookers aside. He rushes toward the safety of the buildings at the plaza’s edge. He can hear people screaming all around him. His heart constricts with superstitious fear. Has he gone too far? What if his advisors have miscalculated? What if the whole Sky collapses?

With a deafening noise, Koba’s forearm comes loose from the wall. At first, it descends with impossible slowness, then it falls faster. And faster. As it falls, it ruptures under its own weight. The people still in the plaza scatter, but they do not move fast enough. Over a dozen of them are caught beneath the huge fragments. The ground shakes under the impact, a great tremor throwing Second Son against the wall. The giant hand shatters on the pavement only ten meters from the front door of the hydroelectric complex. A finger the size of a subway car breaks off and rolls across the plaza — pointing, it seems, at Second Son. When the dust settles, he sees the remnants of the arm scattered diagonally across the length of the plaza. He is suddenly aware of how quiet it has become. His ears still hurt from the thundering roar of falling rock. The tremors have stopped, and disbelief has surpassed fear in the minds of the people in the plaza. They wander dazed among the wreckage, trying to determine who among them is alive and who is dead.

Far above them, a portion of the Sun, like a wedge of pie, flickers and goes dark.

SAVED

When she sees the identity code on the comm panel, her heart leaps. She is just preparing for bed — she is dressed only in a smock, and her yellowing hair is undone — but she hits the receive button immediately.

Her daughter’s image appears above the pad. The reception quality is poor: bits of her keep shivering off to one side. She must be projecting from an old public booth.

“Hi, Mom,” she says.

“Ama, where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried to death about you!”

“I know,” Amarantha says. “I’m sorry.” She is leaning against one side of the booth, so that her left arm disappears out of the field. Her electrician’s uniform looks as though it has been slept in. Her beautiful hair is hidden beneath a soiled cap.

“Are you all right? Where are you?”

“I can’t tell you,” Amarantha says. The booth is poorly lit. Her dark projection seems to suck all the light out of the room. “I have to keep moving. I’ve been sleeping outdoors for two days.”

“What’s going on, Ama? Security people have been to your domus. They’ve confiscated your things.”

“I thought they might.”

“They’ve been harassing me, too. They think you’re involved in an assault on Second Son.”

“I was.”

Amarantha’s mother puts her hand to her mouth. “By the Stone! I knew you should never have gotten mixed up with him. I knew it would be nothing but trouble.”

“No, you didn’t,” Amarantha says hotly. “You thought it was wonderful, me dating such an important person. You were all excited about it.”

“Let’s not argue now, Amarantha. This isn’t the time.”

“I’m not arguing, Mother. You’re the one who’s arguing.”

“All right, all right.” Her mother raises her hands in exasperation. “You didn’t really try to shoot him, did you?”

“I’m only sorry I didn’t hit the little bastard.” Amarantha’s green eyebrows bunch together. Because of the dirty respirator hiding the rest of her face, her mother cannot tell if their motion indicates anger or amusement. Her eyes are reddened and ringed with exhaustion.

Amarantha’s mother struggles to speak. Conflicting emotions within her vie for expression. Finally she simply asks, “Why?”

“It’s a long story. I don’t have time right now.” Amarantha turns her head and looks around, as if afraid that someone is behind her. As the fabric pulls tight, her mother notices a dark bulge in Amarantha’s jacket, a frightening and unfamiliar shape. “Mom, you’ve heard about the cave-in?”

“Why?” Amarantha’s mother asks, her stomach turning with fear. “You didn’t have something to do with that, too, did you?”

“No,” Amarantha says quickly. “I wasn’t anywhere near. But Second Son is going to say I set off the explosion.”

“
What?
What the hell is going on, Ama?”

Amarantha takes a deep breath, then explains: “It took me a while to figure it out. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t tracked down after I tried to shoot Second Son. I was hiding, but Second Son sees everything through the cameras, so how could I possibly be eluding him, no matter how much I ran?” Amarantha’s hand shakes as she rubs her forehead. She is weak with exhaustion. “He was
saving me
. He was planning to bomb the statue all along, and he was letting me run around loose for a while so he could blame it on me. He needed a scapegoat, and I’m perfect for it. He’s going to say I set off the explosion trying to kill him.”

“But why?” Amarantha’s mother asks. “Why would he do something like that?”

“Who knows?” Amarantha says bitterly. “The man is insane.”

Amarantha’s mother glances involuntarily over her shoulder at the camera on the ceiling. “I don’t think you mean to say that.”

“You’re right. The word ‘insane’ doesn’t even
begin
to describe him.” Amarantha looks at her chronometer. “I’ve got to go. I just wanted to let you know what was going on.
I didn’t do it.
All right? No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what evidence Second Son cooks up, remember:
I didn’t do it.
”

“Oh, Ama,” her mother says. “Please come home. I’m sure we can work something out . . .”

“Don’t!” Amarantha turns her head away. “Don’t start now, Mom. I couldn’t handle it.”

Her mother reaches out to touch her, but her hands disappear into the space between their holograms. “Amarantha,” she says. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mom. And . . . I’m sorry.”

“For what, dear?”

Amarantha reaches to the side and pushes a button. “Whatever,” she says. Her image shrinks and flickers out, leaving only ghost shadows in the air.

There will be no more darkness, no more shadows in men’s eyes.

There will be no more hunger, no more thirst of the body or of the soul.

There will be no more gates, no more bars, no more locks, no more barriers between man and man.

There will be no more fear. There will be no more fear. There will be no more fear.

There will be no more death.

“Hymn of the End Time” (apocryphal)

THE SLOW, INEVITABLE SLIDE

Reluctantly, Edward presses the comm button and tells Marta he is ready for his next patient.