End of the Century (64 page)

The minds that it had discovered, then, would become Omega's agents in the past. Working in these gaps in history, these lacunae, they would have two primary missions. First, to advance the course of civilization, wherever possible, so as to speed the birth of Omega itself; with an earlier creation and longer life, it might be possible that Omega could solve the problem of surviving the heat death of the universe in time. Second, to seek out any means of journeying to or creating another universe and identify any intrusions into our universe by another; but while such intrusions, though rare, could be found throughout history, none seemed to offer the exit that Omega sought.

The emulations of these agents, these lacunae, were brought together in a single simulated environment to share intelligence and information
wherever possible. This new simulated environment became known by the lacuna who occupied it as the School of Thought, and it was here that the emulated Sandford Blank found himself.

The School of Thought was variable, infinitely mutable. Sometimes it was an endless plane stretching out to the horizon in every direction, with a black starless heaven arching overhead. Other times it was an impossibly immense, infinitely large library, every possible life of every possible person who might ever have lived encoded in the pages of the innumerable books upon its endless shelves. Still other times it was a featureless void, or a boundless ocean, or a trackless forest.

On this occasion, the emulation of Sandford Blank found himself in a more pastoral setting. A stream gently burbled by a short distance away, and on the opposite shore rose a crystal dome supported by columns of white stone. The ground beneath Blank's emulated feet was soft, carpeted with lush green grass, and rose at a slight incline from the banks of the stream. And everywhere he looked were other lacunae, in the temple on the opposite shore, in small boats punting down the stream, in the gondolas of hot air balloons which drifted overhead, or seated on the hillocks that were scattered irregularly throughout the landscape.

The emulations of all of the lacunae coexisted in the School of Thought, though theirs was not an atemporal existence. Rather, all times were one, as the subtle mechanisms within Omega were constantly sending and receiving communications from all points in history. So it was that Blank found himself facing emulations of other lacunae, some of whom were long dead when Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee and some of whom would not be born for years, centuries, or millennia yet to come.

Nearby where Blank stood were a collection of men and women seated in a rough circle on the small carpeted hillocks that rose from the ground. There was young Quexi, her smooth skin and luxurious hair white as ivory against her gray gown, her eyes glinting violet. Next to her was Michel Void in doublet and hose, and Niveus in the striped tunic of a senator of the Roman
republic. A short distance off sat Iokanaan in his desert robes and Stillman Waters in his Carnaby Street suit.

Blank crossed the short distance and found a seat amongst them, waiting for his audience with Omega.

“You have that look again, Kongbai,” the young Quexi said. “Are you in communion with your past self?”

Blank nodded. The emulated lacunae could feel the synchronization of communion as a strange twinge at the back of their minds, as new memories were uploaded from their organic counterparts and integrated into their virtual minds.

“Yes,” Blank answered. “There's been a spot of bother, I'm afraid.”

“Ah, you don't know the half of it, guv,” Stillman Waters said, lacing his hands behind his head, leaning back with a smirking grin. “I've nearly just had my bollocks handed to me by a Russian necromancer and assassin, and let me tell you, those bastards are no fun at all.”

A side effect of the communion with Omega, besides the synchronization of memories across the vast reaches of time, was that the lacuna's organic mind entered a trancelike state and the body's autonomic processes came momentarily under Omega's influence. The various systems that regulate the body's healing and maintenance were engaged, and any damage due to entropy or injury, age or abuse, was corrected. With regular engagement with Omega, the aging process could be virtually arrested for a period of centuries, the lacuna's lifespan extended from three score and ten years to something nearer three or four hundred, barring catastrophe. In addition, the well-regulated muscles of the body performed at peak efficiency, giving the lacuna speed and strength unmatched by any but the most highly developed physical specimens.

So it was that when lacunae met one another in the School of Thought, it was often while recuperating from some physical trauma.

“Was I with you, my boy?” asked Michel Void, drawing the simulated smoke of an illusory pipe into his emulated lungs.

“No, my friend,” Blank said, somewhat sadly. “This was somewhat after we parted company, I'm afraid.”

“Oh,” Quexi said, clapping her alabaster hands together. “Then I was there, surely?”

Blank's face tightened. “No,” he said at length. “I'm afraid you were not with me at this point in history, either.”

Quexi's brow knit, quizzically, but she let the matter slide.

It could be disorienting, talking to those you remembered from past organic lives but whose memories were synchronized with other eras than one's own. Michel Void had died in the seventeenth century, old age finally overtaking him after centuries in Omega's service. The Quexi who now smiled and winked a violet eye at Blank remembered sharing adventures with him at the end of the eighteenth century, and had no memory of leaving Omega's service and shutting her mind off to the summons to communion. And Blank knew that his past self would one day meet the young Stillman Waters, and train him as Michel had trained Blank, but in the era that Blank remembered Waters's birth was still decades away. The most recent memories of the emulation of Waters who now lounged a short distance were of a skirmish that occurred in the middle of the twentieth century.

There was no prohibition against discussing the subjective futures of their past selves, but it was considered impolite and somewhat distasteful, and as a matter of course most lacunae tended to avoid such topics whenever possible.

That did not mean, however, that they did not feel free to discuss their lives in more general terms.

“Tell me, Brother Sandford,” said Iokanaan, scratching his chin through his full beard, “whatever became of your friend? The one to whom you told the story of my death and who was inspired to write a drama strange and beautiful.”

Iokanaan's past self had acted as lacuna in the days of Tiberius Caesar, laboring in Levant to help lay the groundwork for a body of thought that would help ensure the dominion of Rome for centuries to come. He had run afoul of the tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, and suffered the one wound from which a lacuna could never recover, but in the moment that his head was cleaved from his shoulders, he had entered communion with Omega, and all that he knew or had learned in life was saved in the School of Thought. The emulated Iokanaan, remembering his death, had become obsessed with the topic, and rare was the conversation that he was not able to bring around to the subject of his own demise.

“I have not seen my…friend…in some time,” Blank answered. “But he was recently released from imprisonment, so perhaps his situation improves.”

Before the Judean could reply, a soft glow suffused the air around Blank, and a sphere appeared, hovering above his head.

“Excuse me, friends,” Blank said, rising. “Perhaps we'll continue this conversation another time.”

The sphere was the interface with Omega, and as it descended, Blank disappeared from the view of his fellow lacunae and found himself in a featureless white void.

And then he opened his eyes and was once more in the portrait gallery at the top of the York Place house.

Alice

A
LICE FELL, ENDLESSLY
.

There was no hunger, no thirst, no sleep, no rest. Only whiteness, only falling.

Alice fell.

There were no visions, but memories plagued her. Movies she'd seen, books she'd read. Whatever the unknown beings—the Dialectic?—had done to her, they'd unlocked her memories, somehow, so that she remembered everything in startling clarity, in exquisite detail. She remembered falling, the first time, her father on the floor upstairs. She remembered glimpsing the highway lamppost, just before the flash, Nancy giggling like a madwoman in the passenger seat. She remembered her grandmother's last days, and her mother's
disapproval, and her classwork and her friends and the teachers and strangers and all…

She retreated into comfortable memories. Unable ever to sleep, she lulled to the memory of her father reading to her.

“
Alice couldn't see who was sitting beyond the Beetle, but a hoarse voice spoke next. ‘Change engines—' it said, and was obliged to leave off.
”

She remembered her upstairs bedroom, lying in bed while her father sat on the bedside chair, the ancient copy of Lewis Carroll's complete works in his hands.

“‘
You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!
'

“‘
If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, ‘you'd go out—bang!—just like a candle!
'”

Alice could remember the comforting weight of the quilt over her legs, the soft rustle of hair on fabric as she turned her head to the side, looking at her father sitting beside her.

“‘
That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: ‘it always makes one a little giddy at first—
'”

It occurred to Alice to wonder whether she might not be crazy, after all. Maybe all of this, not just everything since reaching London, but everything that had happened since she was seven years old, lying in bed, listening to her father read the story of that
other
Alice, had all been a dream. Could she wake up from it now? Could she open her eyes to find her father standing over her, seven years old again?

Ever drifting down the stream—

Lingering in the golden dream—

Life, what is it but a dream?

Galaad

After countless turns, dead ends, and backtracking, Galaad and the others came to another chamber which, while only a fraction of the size of that
which housed the gwyddbwyll-playing dragons, was still massive compared to the cramped confines of the labyrinth. Not so massive, though, that Galaad didn't feel crowded when he discovered that the room was not empty.

The Red King stood there as though waiting for them, this impression only strengthened when the passage to the labyrinth sealed shut behind them as soon as they'd entered. The Red King was not alone, however, but was flanked on either side by dark figures, each of whom bore naked red blades like his in their hands. As Galaad's eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the chamber, though, and he looked again at the faces of the Red King's lieutenants, their skin given a ruddy cast by the red light of their blades, he realized with a creeping horror that they were familiar to him.

The one on the right had a face blackened and cracked, his eyes impossibly large and white, his black tongue sticking out at a strange angle from his split lips. Galaad could even fancy that he saw a glint of copper in his mouth.

The one on the left had a face that was smoother and unmarred, his mouth hanging slack behind his blond beard, his eyes half-lidded and dull. He was stripped to the waist, and from his right shoulder to below his rib cage on his left side was a jagged line that glinted with metal and glass. One arm seemed positioned higher than the other, his head canted disturbingly to one side, as though he had been cut in two and reassembled improperly. Which, Galaad realized with an icy chill, was exactly what had happened.

The Red King grinned evilly behind his full red beard, and his eyes flashed in the dead white of his face. He opened his mouth and spoke to the trio, but in words none of them could understand. Then he paused, and laughed, and motioned the undead warriors on either side of him to advance.

“He sends our own dead against us,” Artor snarled, raising Hardspace before him. “He'll pay for that.”

Pryder, on the far side of Artor from Galaad, wore a softer expression, mouth working, eyes wet, looking at what had become of his brother's lifeless body.

It was clear to Galaad that whatever animated the two servitors of the Red King, it was not Artor's fallen companions. If something stared from behind the dull and lifeless eyes in those expressionless faces, it was some foul
thing from the pit, or some mindless spirit held in the Red King's thrall. Galaad's cosmology was not wide enough to encompass such beings, but he knew that the evidence for them was before him and approaching rapidly.

The Red King seemed content to let his undead servants fight his battles for him and hung back while the two advanced, their red blades held before them unwaveringly.

“Pryder, mind your flank!” Artor called, as the undead warriors neared.

With the Red King standing watch, there were two red skyblades to their two blue, but as he held none of them, Galaad felt not at all comforted by the odds. That their opponents had already died once, and still stood, did not seem to factor in Galaad's favor, either.

The burnt thing that had once been Bedwyr lurched towards Galaad, swinging its red blade gracelessly, but Artor stepped in, turning aside the undead's blow with Hardspace.

Galaad hazarded a look to Artor's other side and saw Pryder standing, his sword's point to the ground.

“Gwrol,” Pryder said, gently, “do you not know me, brother?”

The unthinking thing that had been Gwrol did not speak in response, its only answer coming in the form of a mighty swing of its red blade.

Perhaps Pryder could not move in time, but Galaad had seen him parry a blow in a shorter span than that, and in less trying circumstances. Maybe it was more likely that Pryder simply could not bring himself to raise a blade to his brother, whether living or dead, or that he had decided that he had no desire to continue without Gwrol at his side. Whatever the reason, Pryder's arms remained at his sides while the undead warrior completed its thrust, and that was all that it took.

Pryder stood stock still, hands at his sides, looking at the lifeless face of his dead brother. Then he turned his gaze and looked at the hilt of the red blade pushing against his chest. The blade's tip protruded some feet behind him, the red sword piercing him cleanly through the heart. The undead warrior, emotionless and silent, whipped the sword back and out of Pryder's body. Surreally, Pryder remained standing for a moment, looking almost as though he would turn and walk away, but then his eyes went white, the pupils rolling up in his head, and he crumpled and fell in a heap, lifeless.

Everything that followed came in a hurried blur. Artor, a roar thundering from his throat, wheeled around and struck out with Hardspace, slicing overhead at the undead Gwrol. Hardspace struck true and cleaved the undead warrior from the top of his head down, one arm and leg flopping disturbingly in one direction, one arm and leg in the other, the head and trunk shaved neatly in two and peeling apart down the middle like an overripe fruit.

At the same moment, the burnt thing that had been Bedwyr, maddeningly silent, lashed out with its own red blade at Artor's back.

Galaad did not have time to see if the undead warrior's blow had struck, but thrust forward with his lance, its tip digging into belly of the burnt thing, and his thumb found the jewel stud on the haft.

The burnt thing that had been Bedwyr seemed to glow with a red light from within for the briefest moment and then came apart in all directions with a deafening explosion, raining down viscera and hunks of bone on everything in sight.

Galaad dropped the lance, lacking the time to be disgusted, and raced to Artor, who was just now falling to his knees.

Cradling the High King, Galaad's heart stopped in his chest when he saw that the undead Bedwyr had struck true, after all. A large part of Artor's left shoulder and a section of his back had been sliced cleanly away, and blood, bile, and other humors now poured forth from the exposed viscera.

“The…Red King…?” Artor managed.

Galaad looked up and saw that their opponent had gone. He had evidently not stayed to watch the results of his undead minions' battle against the trio.

His nostrils filled with the stench of burnt flesh, his clothing draped with bits of gray, stringy meat and charred skin, Galaad wrapped Artor's cloak around the High King's shoulder, staunching the flow of blood as best as he was able.

“Help me…to stand…” Artor commanded, Hardspace still gripped in his right hand.

Galaad thought to object, but saw little reason. If Artor preferred to meet his death on his feet rather than on his back, Galaad felt privileged to assist.

“Come…along,” Artor managed to choke out. He experimented with using Hardspace as a crutch, and while Galaad had expected to see the tip sink into the floor, it held fast. With Galaad on his left side to support him, leaning on Hardspace in his right, Artor was able to hobble forward.

“Now…” Artor swallowed heavily, his cheeks pale and bloodless. “Where…is that…damned White Lady?”

Galaad clutched his buckler disk in his left hand, his right arm wrapped around Artor's back, supporting him, and they staggered together out of the chamber and through the open archway in the far wall.