Empire of Unreason (45 page)

“It will be,” McPherson said. “It will be. I’m sorry, Mr. Franklin. I
should have seen this coming. Sorry, fellows.”

EMPIRE OF UNREASON

“It’s not your fault,” Franklin replied.

Franklin thought the torture would begin immediately, but once
they had them strung up, the Coweta seemed in no great hurry to
begin. Of course, being hung as they were was torture in and of
itself. Franklin’s hands and feet went numb, while his shoulders
felt as if they were being slowly torn apart.

Around them, village life went on. The women were busy—

pounding corn in big mortars made of logs, weaving baskets of split
cane. The men, on the other hand, mostly sat about on the porches
and smoked. At one point a few of them got up and played a game
involving rolling a stone wheel and spears. As near as Franklin
could tell, they would bowl the stone wheel along the flat earth of
the square and then toss spears after it. Whoever came closest was
the winner. The stakes were the colonists’ possessions.

Franklin came to in the cool of evening, realizing that the heat must
have roasted his senses. The sky was beautiful, layers of color like a
storehouse full of Venetian silk. He wondered if it was the last
sunset he would ever see.

“Damn you!” The shout came from down the line. It sounded like
Robert. Franklin wearily turned his head.

A group of children—boys and girls mixed—were wielding long
cane switches, laughing and hollering. They were smacking Robert
and one of the rangers. As they struggled feebly in their bonds, the
children laughed even louder. Then they moved to the next man
down the line.

Franklin got his turn soon enough.

“Don’t,” he murmured.

One boy, perhaps ten, looked at him with quick, intelligent eyes,
then picked up a rock. It hit Franklin on the forehead, a pain as
sudden as lightning, followed by a slow dripping down the side of
EMPIRE OF UNREASON

his face. The beating with the canes wasn’t so bad, after that.

After the children, the women came by, singly and in clumps. They
slapped the men on the frames, spit on them, and cut them
shallowly on arms and cheeks with cane knives.

Once it was dark, the harassment stopped, and all Franklin could
hear was the labored breathing of his companions and the
occasional distant cry of an owl. He hung there, hoping it was a
nightmare, praying to awaken.

8.

The Prophet

Adrienne reached a trembling hand to touch the painting. She
found only a flat surface, roughened a bit by the texture of the
paint. Without sight, it would mean nothing to her, could not chill
her to her marrow. She would not recognize her son.

But recognize him she did, there and in the half a hundred other
images of him that ornamented the room. Here he was surrounded
by angels, there by shining creatures executed in what must be a
Chinese style. In another, the boy himself bore wings and a halo.

She stood in a temple whose god was Nicolas.

Again, she shivered, her earlier perverse humor completely fled. If
the malakim could make such changes in a child like Crecy—born of
natural parents—what had they been able to do with her boy? He
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was conceived shortly before her hand became what it was, a
conduit to the aether, a thing of no world. If Uriel changed her body
so, what had become of the child within her?

Uriel didn’t know, or pretended not to.

“You see?” Father Castillion said softly. “They will follow him
anywhere.”

“So will I,” she answered shortly. “So will I.”

Castillion gave her a worried look, but she ignored it.

They left the shrine and walked back into the muddy streets of New
Moscow. Those streets were more trafficked today, as those who
had been confined on the airships took their liberty. Many had even
taken up temporary residence in the abandoned houses, which was
odd, as they could not be as comfortable as their quarters aboard
ship. Larger, perhaps, but also colder and not as well furnished.

She noticed another thing. Many of her people avoided her when
they saw her coming.

“So you intend to go on?” Father Castillion asked mildly.

“Of course. I have not found my son and I have not found the tsar. I

must
go on.”

“You truly believe that the prophet is your son?”

“I have no doubts. He has much of his father in him, and something
of me. His is the face I saw in my vision.”

“A vision given to you by a devil.”

“The death, as I call it. Yes.”

“Why would such a creature carry your son’s face within it?”

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She paused. The day was clear. In the distance a mountain seemed
to float on the horizon, a world unto itself, like the moon. The day
before it hadn’t been visible at all, for the mist and clouds. “I do not
know,” she replied. “But I do know that my son is in danger,
surrounded by those who would ill use him. I know that I shall find
him.”

Crecy found her poring over texts a few hours later.

“I’ve found Swedenborg’s laboratory, I think,” the redhead told
her. “Someone’s, anyway.”

“Good! Is there anything left in it?”

“It was abandoned in a hurry, and the place is cluttered. I can’t
really say if they left anything of importance.”

“Let’s go.”

Six of the Lorraine guards fell in with them as they made their way
back through the streets. “Why so many guards, Crecy? The town is
occupied mostly by our own people.”

“I no longer trust our own people, Adrienne. One of them is a
murderer. Others think
you
are. I also do not trust this town. It
may not be as abandoned or unwatched as we think. Taking it was
altogether too easy.”

“I will trust your instincts, then. Is this it?”

They stood before a low building of split cedar planks. It looked
fairly snug and, like the shrine, a little bit alien. It certainly was not
a Russian house, nor yet European. Was it native in design or
something the Siberians brought with them?

Also like the shrine to her son, its door was large and round,
though without the elaborate carving.

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The alchemical lanthorn painted the interior ochre, but the scent
was all cedar, prickly and pleasant but covering more disturbing
scents she could not quite identify. Several long tables were littered
with standard alchemical apparatus—a furnace, carefully insulated
by brick from the wooden structure, crucibles, and glassware. One
table held an articulator connected to a vox next to which was an
odd pair of spectacles, thick lensed and set in heavy metal frames.

“What’s this?” Crecy asked, indicating the vox. It was a brass funnel
with a fine tympanum fixed in its base.

“It’s a voice box—a device like a talos, made to allow the malakim to
speak in earthly voice—like the head that Bacon built, all those
years ago.”

“I thought Swedenborg heard angels in his head, as you do.”

“I suspect he only hears one, as you did in your youth or as King
Louis did. Even if he ingested philosopher’s mercury, it is difficult
for more than one of them to adjust to a human mind without
recourse to some—device.” She lifted her hand as an exhibit. “The
more lofty the spirit in question, the more true that is; and I
suspect that Swedenborg is trying to communicate with the loftiest
spirits of all, and they with him.” She lifted the glasses curiously
and fitted them upon her nose. They were Swedenborg’s, for they
smelled of the perfume he scented himself with, something like
plums.

As she put them on, matter vanished, revealing the vortices and
tensions of the aether. For an instant, she could only imagine that
somehow her hand had been activated, but then she understood
that it was, of course, the glasses themselves. Swedenborg had
developed his own method of both seeing and communicating with
malakim of all sorts.

She took the glasses off. Perhaps she could find some of his notes
among these things.

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“Hold there!” Crecy’s voice snapped. Adrienne glanced up to see a
pale young man, staring at them wide-eyed. His mouth worked, but
only nonsense came out. Crecy had drawn her
kraftpistole
and had
it pointed at him, and the Lorraine guards were likewise ready.

“Are you Swedenborg’s assistant?” Adrienne asked mildly. He was
bald, whiter than any man she had ever seen. His eyes were blue—

all blue, with no whites. A sudden suspicion struck her even as he
leapt forward.

Crecy’s weapon jetted straight through the young man’s chest and
out his back, which did not seem to much perturb him, though his
form billowed like a particularly dense puff of smoke expanding.

He contracted, however, just in time for the next round of missiles—

this time from the Lorraine guards—to punch through him,
drawing long streamers of substance from his back to trace the
path of the bullets.

Crecy yanked Adrienne out of the way, her sword pulling free.

Adrienne opened the eyes of her hand.

What she saw was unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was,
for certain, a malakus, but even the simplest of their kind was more
complex in form than this. The harmonies in this one were as
simple and regular as the parts of a machine. She felt she could
take it apart and reassemble it, given time.

And then she saw the link, the thin strand that burrowed off into
the distance, and she understood.

Meanwhile, the thing had walked straight through Crecy, or,
rather, flowed around her. It now did the same to Adrienne, feeling
like nothing so much as a gust of air, contained in one place. It kept
running, past them, through the door.

Crecy fired again, but it had no more effect than her first attack.

Adrienne snapped the link she saw and watched the thing collapse.

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It retained its form, which sent a small, confirming chill up her
back.

“What
is
that?” Crecy asked.

“A new kind of malakus, an artificial one. A talos that builds itself.”

“What?”

“I need a moment to think. Gather that thing in a bag or sack of
some sort and bring it to my laboratory on the ship. Then seek out
my students. I want them to see this.”

“Where is Elizavet?”

Linne, Breteuil, and Lomonosov indicated that they did not know.

Crecy shrugged. “She was last seen with Mr. Linne, here, helping
him gather wildflowers.

“Really?” Emilie commented, a bit of ice in her voice.

“That was this morning,” Linne said in an uncomfortable tone. “I
have not seen her since.”

Adrienne sighed. “Well, no doubt it involves some sort of mischief.

She will hear I want her soon enough, and there is no time to spare.

Prepare yourselves—I’m going to show you something rather odd.”

Crecy had wrapped the “man” in sheets. Now Adrienne unwrapped
it, an easy thing, for it did not weigh very much.

Linne’s mouth dropped in horror. Emilie and Lomonosov retained
a more clinical attitude.

“What is it?” Lomonosov asked.

“You tell me.”

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“Is it safe?” asked Emilie.

“Yes.”

They began to poke and prod at the thing, gasping as they found
themselves able to push their fingers into it.

“There is a surface tension,” Lomonosov observed. “It takes some
pressure to puncture it. How much does it weigh?”

“Just under ten pounds.”

“Extraordinary.”

Linne was still white, trembling a bit. “God did not make that,” he
muttered.

“No, he did not,” Adrienne agreed. “No more than he makes taloi or
flying ships.”

“No malakus has so much material substance. The most any of
them has ever manifested was less than a pound.”

“It might just be a new variety,” Emilie countered.

“It might,” Adrienne said, “but I think Linne is correct. I think this
is a new invention of man—or jointly of man and malakim, more
likely. A meeting of our two sciences. You remember our
speculation that greater malakim make lesser ones from their own
substance? I think this thing was made by Swedenborg—from the
substance of a malakus, with its permission and cooperation. And
whatever device he used to make it, he also used to manufacture
this substance.”

“He can make malakim that are manifest in matter?” Linne asked.

“Not
very
manifest,” Lomonosov remarked, poking at the “body”