The Restoration of Flaws (The Phantom of the Earth Book 5) (13 page)

“Hey, bub, what’s the word?” Luke said. He waited for Brody near check-in.

Millions of new faces lined up with them, the largest infusion of new blood Brody had seen since his arrival. They appeared youthful, innocent, naive, failed candidates from the Harpoons, most likely. Most were light-skinned. Brody nodded. “My children, my twins may be among them.”

“Down here,” Luke said, “you sure?”

Brody assumed the Summersets would treat the twins with
E. pigmentation
to aid their valuations with the Navitan traders. He scanned all the entrants with bronze skin—to no avail. “I don’t know what they look like. I don’t know who they are anymore.”

This was the worst part, Oriana’s and Pasha’s unknown fate. Brody thought about the first and only time he had seen his babies in the Natal Level in Palaestra’s Medical Center, where Damy had given birth to Oriana and Pasha, where they had waved their piglet fingers and toes, where he and Damy had embraced during the viewing.

The Summersets were an old house, successful in garnering bids for their candidates in the Harpoon Auction, but Lady Parthenia’s temper was well-known. Could Oriana and Pasha handle her hard hand? Had they received bids? If so, could Nero protect them?

Emotionless exiles filed into the lines near Brody and Luke. The new entrants filed in closer to the obsidian square.

“I’m ready,” Brody said, “but I have conditions.”

Luke nodded.

Turbines initiated, and it sounded like a shuttle was about to lift off. Hot air blew over the exiles. Many collapsed. Bots cleared the bodies while the Janzers found replacements. “We can’t leave them here,” Brody said. “We must release them all.”

“We can’t—”

“I won’t go without them.”

A Janzer moved closer to them. Brody put his shirt over his mouth and nose, and Luke did the same.

“You would sentence them all to death?” Brody said.

The Janzer turned away, drawn by a fight between three exiles on the end of a line.

“We’ll get our chance, bub, and when we do, you mustn’t fear, you mustn’t think, you mustn’t hesitate—”

“I won’t turn my back on these people, never again.”

Beimeni City

Phanes, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

Lady Isabelle, General Norrod, and Lieutenant Arnao led a column of twenty-five thousand Janzers over Artemis Square, the first deployment of the two hundred fifty thousand new servants ordered by Chancellor Masimovian. These would remain in the city for its protection.

Isabelle hand-signaled the Janzers, and they quickened their pace, their boots singing on the marble as they approached North Archway. Janzer snipers hung poised on the roofs and domes of the First and Second Wards. Aristocrats stood upon their balconies and terraces, half-nude or in golden tunics, their right hands lifted in salutes. Smoke billowed from eatery booths on the cobblestone paths between the buildings, where artisans displayed holographic works. Tourists tossed golden pebbles along the square’s edges, around the fountains and white palm trees—a wish for eternal life.

General Norrod halted and saluted the likeness of Chancellor Masimovian, who appeared above a Granville sphere at the center of North Archway. He stood over the balustrade of the third-highest terrace in his tower flanked by two Janzers. Chants of “
Masimo!
” and “
Serve Beimeni, live forever!
” broke out until the chancellor grinned and called for decorum. The emeralds and sapphires on his tunic glinted in the holographic light, while his maroon cape fluttered in the gentle winds.

The bastard’s on his Pleasure Level
, Isabelle thought.
He’s going to fuck those maidens while I’m down here?

She offered him the kindest smile she could conjure as she fiddled with her rings.

“My people …” Atticus’s voice boomed over Artemis Square, and all the squares in all the territories of the Great Commonwealth of Beimeni, “… we gather today to welcome the newest servants of the chancellor into our great city. Let us take heart in their dedication to our freedom and their service to the commonwealth. All hail!”

“
All hail!
” the Janzers repeated as a chorus.

“Give me your pledge!”

When the newborn Janzers finished dictating the Pledge to Beimeni, those citizens who’d gathered on the square, in the alleyways, in the gambling halls, and in the wards cheered and sang. Pockets of smoke lifted from grills, and the Janzers dispersed into their district coverage areas within the city.

General Norrod and Lieutenant Arnao returned to the Department of Peace while Isabelle strutted past the open cedar doors and beneath the widest arc at the center of North Archway. She made her way around Masimovian Center’s concentric, polychromatic, entertainment and gambling buildings, and dashed into Masimovian Tower. She entered the Pleasure Level, an open space bathed with Phanes’s sun, filled with essences of potpourri that burned from a hundred pedestals.

The chancellor either didn’t see her or he did and ignored her. His bare feet pushed aside burgundy rose petals along the white marble. He stepped down into the steaming spa lined with freesia and unhooked the golden chains that held together his cape. It slipped off his body. His maidens, nude but for the pearl lace draped from their heads to their breasts, surrounded him. They pulled off his tunic, singing softly.

The closer Isabelle drew to the spa, the stronger was her desire to unsheathe her sword and be rid of them all. One of the maidens spotted her. She covered her nipples with her hands. The others turned, and Atticus opened his eyes.

“I hope I’m interrupting,” Isabelle said. “
Leave!
”

The maidens cooed and swam out of the spa. Steamy water dripped down their bodies as they scurried into Atticus’s bedchamber. A keeper bot labeled FARRIS tended to the potpourri, refilling the pots, lighting others.

“Farris,” Atticus said, twisting his lips, “my robes, if you will—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Isabelle said.

She slipped out of her cape and bodysuit, letting them fall to the ground.

With the chancellor roused, she knew this wouldn’t be difficult. She slipped into the spa and weaved her way to him. She squeezed Atticus’s biceps, and his manhood beneath the water. She rubbed her breasts against his chest, and in his ear, she said, “I once wore the pearls of the maidens.” She kissed his neck.

“Seems you were destined for a greater path,” he said, pulling her to him, “a loftier path, a path to my tower and all its riches.”

“Let us put aside the quarrels for today. I bring news sure to warm your heart, more so than the potions from Natura or any of those … maidens.”

He massaged her breasts and kissed her.

She slid her lips to his other ear. “Zorian lied to us, Atticus. He knew the locations of both BP strongholds all along.” She licked his neck and rubbed her cheek next to his, and in his other ear, she said, “I have their western location. We’re adjusting our contingency plans with new prehistoric additions.”

“Oh,” Atticus groaned, “how I love surprises.”

Beimeni City

Phanes, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

“Was I wrong to reinstate you to the RDD?” Masimovian said. He sauntered beside Antosha through the Gallery of the Chancellor, beside the statues representing the thirty territories of the Great Commonwealth.

Antosha suppressed a smirk. The chancellor had contacted him through Marstone, less hostile about Pasha Barão’s coma than what he called Antosha’s “reckless use of commonwealth resources.” He was sounding more like Prime Minister Decca by the day, and Antosha wondered whether he should delay no more, put an end to Masimovian and Decca and all the traitorous sheep.

Yet, if he acted too soon and without the people’s blessing, an underground commonwealth of over three hundred million could descend into chaos; too late, and he risked the chancellor’s wrath. His strategy required a delicate balance.

“Gods no,” he said, stopping in front of the statue representing Phanes, a chiseled rendition of the Fountain of Youth. “The Lorum technology is unpredictable, but I shall tame it. Once I’ve perfected the synsuit, I’ll apply the technology to Sky City’s terradome, its ground, and a transport tunnel to Beimeni, and our return to the surface will be finished—”

“We’ve been without a terradome resistant to Reassortment for centuries and you think an alien genome and a bit of luck is all that’s necessary to secure our future upon the surface?” Masimovian looked down and shook his head, then raised his head, and with pouty lips, he said, “I’ve taken great risk with your trials and offered great coin to achieve conversion, and you lied, you—”

“I stand by my word, Chancellor. This conversion is for your benefit—”

“
Don’t.
”

Antosha noted the sweat over the chancellor’s brow, the twitch in his cheeks. He softened his tone. “Sky City is but a temporary solution,” he said. “For total victory, you will require a cure, or Reassortment’s destruction, and neither is possible without the organism’s synthesis, its origin. An ill-equipped strike team will not succeed in the Western Hegemony’s premier synbio laboratory.”

“Neither will a strike team comprised of neophytes.” Masimovian drifted to a liqueur cart, his robes dragging across the marble floor. He gestured to offer Antosha a drink. Antosha refused.

Masimovian took up a pipe from the cart and lit it. “This obsession with Barão’s kin will be your undoing.” He put his massive arm around Antosha, the gemstones on his armlets digging into the supreme scientist’s skin.

Masimovian puffed and led him along the gallery promenade. “You have tremendous potential, and I foresee you will go far—”

“Thank you for your kind words, Chancellor.”

“I wasn’t done. I should add that if you fail, I won’t hesitate to send you back to the Lower Level, and this time,” the chancellor stopped and removed his arm from Antosha’s shoulders, “not to the High Castle of the Controller.”

And I’ll see to it your death is slow,
he thought,
when I succeed.
“I understand—”

“Who will you send to this synbio laboratory in place of the Barão boy?”

“Dr. Shrader.”

“The Legend?” Masimovian threw his head back and guffawed. “He’s not trained in Beimenian ways, hasn’t even tested in the Harpoons.”

“He’s no legend—”

“He
is
, Antosha, he is a savior to the people, one you cannot take from them, ever.”

“Now he lives, now they’ll see—”

“Gifted as you are, at times you make no sense. The only reality that exists is the one we allow the people to experience.”

The snowy flecks in Antosha’s eyes rotated rapidly, then floated as if in space. “This mission is our opportunity to do that, my chancellor. Dr. Shrader’s familiarity with the labs in Hengill and Livelle are an advantage. He
will
remember all he knew, or I shall see the truth for him. Where Captain Ruiner Holcombe and Oriana Barão require metamorphic synsuits, the engineers, scientists, and guard will recognize Shrader in his
true
flesh—”

Screams echoed over Masimovian Center, and Chancellor Masimovian rushed to his terrace.

Beimenians streamed between the polychromatic buildings, many nude and dripping wet.

“It’s at the Fountain, my chancellor,” Antosha said.

Antosha and Masimovian dashed through the gallery’s glass archway, into the Great Hall, and onto the tower’s triangular terrace overlooking the south of the city. Chancellor Masimovian activated a Granville sphere above them, and the feed to Fountain Square surrounded them; he focused upon the Athanasia Pool. Antosha smelled the fire as the Granville simulated neural signals congruent with the burning flesh of the man who moved deliberately up the pool’s marble stairs. The sight of the empty pool struck Antosha odd. On any given day, hundreds of thousands or even millions of Beimenians might visit Fountain Square. He’d never seen it like this. What would those who came today say when they returned to their territories?

The cries for help mixed with the cries of pain, the trampled and the dead. Thirty Janzers surrounded the man, who didn’t peep as his tunic turned black against his skin, which charred and melted around the bones on his face, arms, hands, and feet.

Masimovian’s lips moved, but no sound escaped.

“A traitorous deed, my chancellor,” Antosha said, “defiling the waters and vapors of eternal life this way.”

The Janzers activated their batons and pulse rifles. The man took one more step, ignoring a Janzer’s warning, and they shot him. He fell upon the stairs, his blood staining the ivory marble, flowing into the pool and into its fountain’s uptake. The fountain’s marble layers trickled pink.

Beimenians gathered on the roofs and terraces of the First and Second Wards. Antosha heard their gasps, for when the man collapsed he extended his burning hand and ignited the forbidden phrase, spelled with burning oil, along the steps.

The letters formed with colorful flames, the many-hued tendrils emphasized by the Granville sunset over the Dunes of Phanes. Antosha couldn’t help but smile. The Janzers unfurled hoses and cleared the body and blood from the stairs, then began to drain the pool. The cost to replace the athanasia gene therapy lost this day would be high, but no amount of coin or cover could shield the chancellor from this humiliation. Isabelle had chosen their martyr well.

“To Reassortment with the Beimeni Polemon,” Masimovian swore. “I will rid the world of their poison—”

“To do so, my chancellor, you
need
victory against Reassortment. After that, not even the BP could defy you.”

The chancellor faced him.

“Let me choose my team,” Antosha said.

Masimovian rubbed his stubble goatee. “The gods alone know the wisdom in this Timescape Mission and Dr. Shrader’s purpose. You’re confident in this new synsuit?”