Dusk (36 page)

“Explain.”

“Uncle Xander pulled some strings and made
sure he and I received a charter for the Anemoi. When we got here,
I worked as an instructor in Earth history for a few gyres before
the levy sanction. The society of Eurydice proliferated to the
point where migration upon sunset would have been a problem. The
leviance from Earth was first stopped because of population
problems. There was an abundance of resources and ore, but we could
not produce accommodations fast enough. Earth was wrenching on the
throttle to levy more people, but we had to slow down. I was
advisor on Uncle Xander’s Council of Nine, under Rex Mundi, who was
personally supervising the surveying of potential Druvidian sites
because he had been an eminent environmental engineer on Earth.
Right about when production began on the Druvidian project was when
things began to go sideways. Uncle Xander was summoned to one of
the survey sites, but was killed in an excavation accident. After
that, all Druvidian construction projects were halted, and
accusations of sabotage from Earth began to spread. There was a
research ship called the Zephyrus. It was a star skimmer class ship
built with newer gravity drive technology that was strong enough to
counter the gravity well of dark stars. The intent was to use it to
study a not-so-distant neutron star, but the ship was
decommissioned, and the technology was taken by the Ashan
government to engineer faster ships. Everything about the situation
seemed off-kilter to me from the start, so I signed up as a
military advisor. I organized the Archons, and after notice was
taken of my strategic abilities, I was appointed by Rex Mundi as
supreme commander of Ashan defense.”

“Why do you think Earth would sabotage
Xander’s expedition?”

“Well, common belief was that they wanted to
halt our progress, so that upon sunset, we would be forced to allow
transports from Earth in order to rapidly colonize the sunside.
From the onset, it seemed like keelrot to me. I personally believe
Mundi had Uncle Xander killed—his death was too convenient for what
Mundi was trying to do.”

“What was that?”

“Engender a schism against Earth.”

“So why did you go along with him?”

“Because going along was the only way I stood
a chance of getting at what was going on at all. Life in Eurydice,
however cosmopolitan, was still difficult, and Mundi had developed
himself into a full-blown cult of personality. Besides, the Uni had
begun to treat Asha like an imperial colony. They had started
shooting down barrage ships like a cranked out Dad slapping his
kids. That alone was hard to abide by. What side to be on was easy
to decide, but it quickly became clear to me there were other
problems. Firstly, the Druvidian project was going a little too
slowly for all the resources we were putting into it. Secondly, I’m
fairly certain Rex Mundi was an avatar.”

“What made you think that?”

“Well for one, his name was as arrogant as it
was trite. King of the World? In a society dominated by
sympathizers to the ancient Greek aesthetic, calling yourself Rex
Mundi is like introducing yourself as Taskmaster to a slave. It
wasn’t a name, it was a title, and it was diminishing to anyone who
bought into it.”

“So why did they fall for it?”

“I don’t think they did
fall
for it
per se. I think to an extent, most of Asha was in agreement with
him from the beginning. As you say, they only heard what they
wanted to hear, and he was happy to say it to them. Earth began
sending more and more ships, but they were cut off from
communications. We began intercepting them farther out. We placed
asteroid grids in their deceleration lines, and because we could
communicate faster because they were so far away from their High
Command, it was easier for us to respond to their more powerful
forces in a set place. After a team of Druvidian scientists
developed a form of instantaneous communication called the Whisper
Node, we mounted a counter attack on Eros and Mars to slow their
attack. We had a set of spies planted to subvert their attempts to
develop their own Whisper Nodes. Earth hammered at our forces, but
we whittled away at their defenses, and we minimized our
casualties, but their ranks seemed endless. Eventually they would
have overpowered us, even though it seemed like we were gaining
ground.”

“How do you know?”

“Because one of our spies informed us of a
plan of counter attack. The Whisper Nodes allowed us to communicate
directly with spies we had planted on Earth. Espionage became our
greatest weapon.”

“Which explains why the Archons now are so
viscerally afraid of ‘espions’ from Earth.”

“Makes sense, they had sent a set of monitor
drones within the Set system that communicated info from warships
that had folded in past Asha in an attempt to catch us in a pincer.
Mundi knew this info, but would not give me the resources to
defend.”

“Why the reluctance? What’s the point in
hoarding resources to build a city that will be destroyed if you
don’t use them?”

“Because he was setting me up to take the
fall. So in the center of Eurydice, I had construction units erect
a stage with the debris from fallen Earth warships and frigates,
and I divulged the intel on the attack to the public. I convinced
them that we could win the war, but it would take a decisive
attack, something more resolute than the cakewalking and pandering
we had engaged in because of fear. I told them that the very stage
I stood on was evidence that we could win.”

“So what happened?”

“A plan had already been in the works to send
a team of saboteurs and spies to earth on an FTL ship disguised to
look like a near-light ship they had sent to Asha before the war to
confuse them long enough to stop them from countering the
attack.”

“Wait, there was only one ship sent before
they developed the faster-than-light ship you came on, so the only
ship you could mimic was…”

“The Paracelsus. Above all else, that is why
they detained you, and undoubtedly treated you poorly.”

“But they didn’t seem to want to hurt
us.”

“Denali, I’m sure, knew of the more sensitive
details of the Defiance, even though I’m sure his men were
underclassified. He would have known that more likely than not, you
were authentic, but I’m sure he knew something was off its
axis.”

“Would he know our connection?”

Highly unlikely. He would have known about
the Paracelsus, and the Mjolnir being disguised as it, and the
appearance of it in Ashan orbit would have been exceedingly
disturbing to him, but that would have been the end of it. Most
ties to Earth had been destroyed or inveigled into severe
classification levels.”

“Wait, if you’ve been locked in here for
hundreds of years, how do you know about Denali? How did Paeryl and
his men know about the Paracelsus when everything seems to have
been obfuscated into oblivion?”

“I am an interactive neural processor
remember. I’m tied into the units outside, the monitors, and the
fly-eyes. Plus, there is a discrete comm-sat comb installed here
that has absorbed transmissions to and from Eurydice and Druvidia
since we first came here. What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your heat signature is elevated.”

“I just want to know why. Why?”

“Because here, even though things weren’t
exactly stellar, I could see the Uni for what it really was. It was
a canker, a festering sarcoma draining Earth and humanity of any
pride or dignity that happened to emerge from the hardships it
created. And as the eminence of their attack shrouded over us, and
as our defenses were left crippled and inadequate, all I could
think of was Genivere Lim.”

“Why her?”

“Because all through the rest of my
Novitiateship, through Laureateship, all the way through the
Arcology, I never beat her. Not once. She was always one step
ahead. But it wouldn’t have been so bad if she had just been
better, smarter, or stronger. She wasn’t, and she wasn’t
appreciative. She just held her nose in the air, as if she deserved
everything she had. Like she was entitled to it. Like the day she
didn’t get anything she sought after, someone
else
must have
screwed up. I realized that was, always had been, and always would
be the Uni’s modus operandi, and I couldn’t just sit and watch as
they dozed us over—and I most certainly wasn’t gonna take the
goddamned blame for it. So I personally changed the programming in
the Mjolnir, sent the spies and saboteurs on a ship to Mars, and
destroyed the fold-relay units that could have conveyed warning of
an approaching ship, and I did it. The one thing I knew would put
the Uni back in its place.”

Cyrus was silent for a long while. Darius was
about to speak, but then waited. Cyrus looked down at his own
hands, shook his head solemnly, and then looked up at the image of
his son. “This is my doing. I brought this upon the Uni.”

“My actions were my own,” Darius
responded.

“Yes, but that notion, and everything else,
all of your reasoning came from me. From these lips to your ears.
I’m sorry, Dari. I…I don’t know what else to say.”

“Then don’t say anything. It is true you
molded me into the man I am, but no mere words, ideas, or
indoctrination could have given me what I felt here when I gave the
command to the saboteurs in the Whisper Node, and when I pressed
the button to launch that ship with my own hand.”

“Well, if there is nothing to say, at least
there must be something I can do.”

“That is exactly why I left the Xerxes system
here. Something Uncle Xander found in the Bereshit Scar triggered
all of this. It is too dangerous for the Apostates to venture so
deeply into the darkness, but not for you.”

Cyrus nodded and stood. He didn’t know what
he would be looking for, or even if he would know what it was if he
found it, but even if he had to walk there alone, he would look
anyway. It was the least he could do to quell the storm that was
building in his own heart from the moment he discovered his son,
his own flesh and blood, had consigned the entire Earth to its
ghastly fate.

• • • • •

“What do you think of these people?” Uzziah
asked. He sat next to Tanner just outside the large iris built into
the wall of what Milliken was sure was a crater. Milliken and the
others were milling around inside, canvassing the equipment and
rooms they were allowed into. Uzziah and Tanner sat on a mound of
packed dirt, their shoes forgotten behind the iris at their
backs.

“I mean that’s what you do right, observe
people and their habits?” Uzziah scratched at his beard, irritated
by the day cycle’s exertion as he and Tanner basked in the light
that streamed through two peaks at the far edge of Milliken’s
crater.

Tanner noticed the denizens of this crater
had positioned their strangely open civilization in the wide wedge
of light that stretched across the impression in the earth. “They
love sun... and their freedom. And they are disturbingly
agoraphilic.”

The people went about their menial tasks, but
even though none approached them, few went for very long without
casting long, uncomfortable looks in their direction.

“But why do they all congregate here? Where
are their homes? Don’t they have better things to do than to mob up
here?”

“Look closely for a moment.”

Uzziah watched them for a long moment. Some
sat, some were standing. Men and women moved around in what looked
like chaos, but the movements had a hive-like stability. There was
a large round tablet in the center of the crater that they all
seemed to avoid. Two of the older men had stood there while Uzziah
and Tanner had been observing and had addressed different parts of
the milling crowd. The areas of the crowd they had spoken to had
stopped what they were doing and had given the older men their
undivided attention until the two men had finished speaking. As he
observed, an individual woman caught his eye. She was reading to
four small children. It was her animation and intensity that drew
Tanner’s eye to her. She held the book steady in her hand, but the
rest of her body moved expressively, with an odd grace that only
came with self-assurance. She stood erect, her stance sure as she
pantomimed some notion that made the children jiggle with laughter.
Then a man passed by them, watching his own feet as he walked.
There was another man standing next to some unrecognizable effects,
talking to a rather tall, particularly skinny woman. Her movements
were less direct than the storyteller, but she too stood with her
head raised, shoulders back, and as she acknowledged the man who
had stood about a meter away, awaiting attention, she excused
herself with a motion that was zephyrical—as if the wind alone had
carried her away.

Uzziah let his eyes pass over the crowd to
the opposite edge of the clearing. The distance was great, but his
eyes had been laser corrected to military specs, and he could make
out forms that must have been a circle of women suckling their
children, except most of the children seemed relatively advanced in
age. Those younger and older in the group seemed to be at the wide
end of the wedge of light, while the rigors of the group seemed to
take place in the more shaded area at the tip of the wedge. And
then he realized what looked like human bric-a-brac was only chaos
to one who looked upon the scene darkly. There was reason within
the throng. These people did indeed have better things to do at
home, and they did them here because this was their home. “Oh.”

“Yeah. It’s like a longhouse community, only
no need for shelter because it never rains and there are no
predators.”

“Wouldn’t they burn or dry out or something?”
As soon as he asked, Uzziah noticed that not one of them moved for
very long without drinking from small wineskin-like pouches they
all seemed to carry. Some took small breaks from their work to dip
their pouches in thin channels that ran between them.