The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (23 page)

In my head, I say parts of the
Salat al
Janazah
, wishing the dead God’s mercy, even knowing that’s been
decided long ago, and they were not of the Faithful.

When Peter is done, I gather some fruits and nuts,
filling my satchel with the same species I got in trouble for
picking when I was a child. Then I take my humble meal into the
ship.

The airlocks pop for me as I approach. More
surprisingly, the ship is partially pressurized, warm.

I was able to restore some of the basic systems.
Water recycling is back online, if you’d like a shower.

I go to the galley, set out my harvest on the table,
and pry off my helmet for the first time. My hair still seems to be
as I left it, just like my beard, and—I assume—my face, since
Straker didn’t react like it had changed significantly. I should go
find a mirror, but I’m not sure I have the nerve yet. So I attend
to more basic needs.

I rifle through the cabinets for a receptacle for
water, finding plastic cups along with dishware that look familiar,
and where I expect to find them. I let the faucet run for several
seconds to clear out the unused plumbing, losing myself in the
water stream. The simple experience seems so much clearer now,
sharper. If I look hard, concentrate, I can slow it down, zoom into
the shimmering clarity…

I almost forget I was going to pour myself a
drink.

The water is cold and tastes metallic, but tasting
anything right now is…

I can feel something moving before I hear it—a
low-level EMR signature, behind me. I spin, hand on my gun, but
don’t draw.

In the corridor through the open hatch: She shimmers
out of the wall, her cloaking technology having visually blended
her into the ship. I suppose I should have done a proper sweep.

Her eyes have gone wide as she sees my face. I take
my hand off my gun.

“Long story,” I tell the Zauba’a Ghaddar, sheepish
and weary. “Bad ending.” Then I gesture to my meal. “Are you
hungry?”

Maybe I should have come back sooner, should have
come back immediately after the battle. Finished it. Now I’ve lost
my best opportunity. And inherited a responsibility I neither want
nor deserve.

But the procrastination, I expect, was all me.
Reason, pushing through the single-mindedness of our desire—our
need
—for vengeance. Or maybe I was just sick of the killing,
especially the killing of Normals that really have no chance
against creatures like us.

The delays certainly didn’t come from Peter. I knew
what Peter would do, would make me do. With both Thel and Asmodeus
out of our reach, the Keepers were the only remaining targets.
Without Thel, we could easily slaughter them all; hacked and shot
our way through the entire colony in one bloody afternoon, and been
done with the vicious, cold-blooded animals forever. And given
Peter’s still-fresh rage at losing his opportunity to kill Thel, we
absolutely would have, and not stopped to question or regret until
it was irreversible. Because the Keepers wouldn’t be coming back
from the dead.

So for six days I managed to stay away from Eureka,
by keeping Peter focused on a bigger target, on Asmodeus. We spent
most of those days and nights getting enough of the DQ’s systems
back online to give us a chance of tracking the Stormcloud through
the tenacious magnetite-laced haze that still blankets the Central
Blade. The key to that—Peter’s own idea—will be the ship’s
compliment of probe drones. But their batteries need to be
chemically reconstituted, and we’ll need to reset their frequencies
to ensure they’re not detected by Asmodeus.
Or
the Unmakers
in orbit—I won’t have our mission interfered with by another
impulsive railgun strike. Thel, Asmodeus and Fohat
must
be
dealt with face-to-face. That’s the only way to be sure.

The repair work has been both a wondrous and tedious
process: All I have to do is lay hands on the pieces of equipment,
and I can feel myself extend into them, my nanites doing the work
automatically. Even though I have no real education in the design
of any of the hardware or materials, I just need to focus on what I
want done, and then maintain physical contact until it is done.
Touch, think, fix. It became an exercise in meditation, and one, I
think, we both needed. It tempered Peter’s bloodlust by keeping his
head in being constructive, building instead of destroying. And it
kept me focused on what I could do with what I’ve become besides
killing.

So for six days, we were creators instead of
destroyers, and I had time to learn some more of what my so
completely altered body could do. And in our idle moments, Peter
gave me access to his memories, took joy in showing me the planet
of my parents, playing teacher and guide through a world of wonders
that I’d only touched in what media files had survived the
Apocalypse. So many beautiful and amazing things…

And Peter actually seemed willing to let the Keepers
be, to make our Modded enemies priority, as they were truly the
greatest threat to all life on both planets. I’d thought I’d even
convinced him that using our power against others like us was the
only just and reasonable application for it; that we can’t use it
in any good conscience against what the Jinn call “Normals”, not if
we have any choice at all.

We—and the other beings like us—are simply too
strong, too powerful. And it’s not just that the still-mortals are
like fragile children with toy weapons against us. It’s also one of
the curses of Modded invincibility and immortality I’ve quickly
discovered: It makes a man not care. It makes a man forget
everything he used to value, including, most damning of all, human
life.

Asmodeus was right: I
enjoyed
the slaughter.
I’ve reveled in victories before, but it wasn’t anything like what
I felt at Eureka. The killing I did that night—and I
did
take part, no matter how much I convinced myself that Peter had
control and I was just a helpless observer… It wasn’t like I was
killing men at all. It was an easy rush that too-quickly turned
unsatisfying, frustrating, demanding more.

It’s no wonder we destroyed our world, that other
world, before Yod undid it all. Every wondrous act of creation I do
only frames that fundamental flaw in our nature. What the human
race could have done with these gifts… But instead, we apparently
gave in to the worst of what we are. Or so I’ve been told, by
individuals with questionable memories of that hell—and I did
doubt, but now that I’ve seen what just a few human beings given
such power have done, I have no reason at all not to believe in a
world so terrible that an even more powerful being would choose to
completely undo it.

During those days, Peter seemed to appreciate my
company, my “fresh and innocent” perspective, my playing the role
of his moral compass. But Peter apparently wasn’t as committed to
this new purpose as I thought he was, at least not enough to forget
his desire for easy vengeance. He bided his time, waited until I
was distracted, and subtly aimed me back here.

I’ve been making myself (and Peter) perform a daily
ritual each morning, so I (we) don’t forget my (our) humanity.
Peter, for his part, hasn’t protested or resisted—it even feels
like it’s been quality “bonding” time between us, a kind of therapy
for both our conditions.

I (we) take a walk in the forest, appreciating the
random beauty of life thriving on a world that—only a handful of
decades ago—had none outside of a greenhouse. I (we) watch the
leaves of the plants slowly open to the early light, losing myself
(ourselves) in the soothing rustle of the wind through the green. I
take off my (our) helmet to feel the sun and the wind on my (our)
face, and breathe deep, smelling the growth and the damp soil as it
thaws from the overnight frost. I drink cold clean water from a
canteen like it’s the finest-pick tea. I pick nuts and fruits and
eat them like a human being, savoring each bite.

And I perform
Salat
, facing west-northwest, a
simple survival blanket serving as a prayer rug, humbling myself
before God (the real God,
not
Yod, even though I know it’s
likely that I’m kneeling on top of him as I do so). Then I tend the
graves of Peter’s family and Declan Chance, and kneel in the dirt
while Peter says his own prayers for the welfare of their souls,
while I recite my own words in my head, asking God for His
mercy.

I know the Ghaddar is watching me on the ship’s
restored monitors as I do all this, just like she’s watched me all
week, poorly pretending that she isn’t. (Is she spying for Ram? Or
is this her own choice, to stay with me for some reason she won’t
say?)

Except for his graveside chanting, Peter has been
unusually quiet this particular morning. He’s been spending less
and less time filling my head with idle conversation, talking about
his world, his history, his culture, his wife and daughter—words
made real for me because I can see the memories in our shared
brain, that wonderful unbelievable planet of plenty. On a good day
(and I think there have been more good days), I can make him forget
how much he hates that world, or at least the people that rule it.
I can make him feel my wonder, feel what it is to see his home
planet through my eyes: The rich air, the unbelievably abundant
water, heat, a bounty of food that I can barely imagine. And in
remembering the good things, all the good things, he seems to
forget his rage, if only for minutes or hours.

I don’t have to view everything through his memories.
The ship has an extensive library of media, still intact: Music,
books, movies—more than any collection of files my people had
preserved or acquired. I tell myself I’ll take the time to delve
into them properly, once our enemies are found and dealt with,
assuming I have that time. In the interim, I play music while we
“work”, a habit of Peter’s which I quickly become accustomed to.
(But sometimes I notice subtle “stutters” in the sung parts, and
Peter admits that the governments of his home world have been
censoring their art and media for what they consider “offensive”
content.)

In all of this, I have to be constantly careful. I
have to steer his memories away from his daughter, his wife.
They’re wonderful memories, but they always end in horror and hate.
I’ve gotten better at it, day by day, or maybe he’s letting me
distract him. For longer and longer each day.

But then I lose control when we dream.

When we dream, I
become
him. I experience the
profound joy of the birth of his baby girl, watch that life come
into the world, a miracle. I watch her grow, watch her wonder and
smile and laugh and play and learn.

I have to hold him there, when we wake. I have to
keep him from thinking forward, from reliving her murder, her
terror. I usually fail. And so we start each day with rage, with a
desire for revenge that we know can never be sated, not even if we
went back to Eureka and killed every last Keeper.

Hence the need for our morning ritual.

I also fail when we dream of his wife, because we
often dream of their passion for each other, of making love with
her, of the pleasures of her body, her scent, her taste, what she
likes and how she responds. I find myself withdrawing from those
moments, ashamed—I have no business there. I can feel that he’s
similarly uncomfortable, both of us stripped bare before the other,
me inside his most intimate and private and emotionally powerful
moments.

I’ve never been in love, and only had awkward sex
once with the daughter of a Trader, an act I interrupted before I
risked impregnating her. I’m sure I was disappointing, but she was
kind, and discreet. Her name was Sorah. She was gone when they came
the next season, likely dead. I didn’t ask, as if I had no right
to. I kept my grief to myself, all my imagined happy futures
undone. And I swore I’d never let myself feel that way again.

(But then Terina came into my life. And I know
whatever might have been between us was likely even more fantasy
than what I had with Sorah, but I grieve losing those possible
futures as well. Except this time it’s me that didn’t come back. I
wonder if she asked what happened to me. I wonder if she
grieved.)

When I show these memories to Peter, however
unintentionally, I feel his impulse to comfort me, to think
fatherly thoughts, reassure me that I will find love again. But
then he remembers that I won’t, and he won’t, and our happy
memories turn to hopelessness.

Every morning we wake up in what had been Peter’s and
Maria’s cabin, in the bed they shared, and I can feel the void gut
him fresh as he remembers that she’s gone, they’re gone. Murdered.
And the only thing that feels like it will even temporarily fill
that void is more murder.

And every morning, it takes me hours to soothe that
hunger away, to keep Peter in the moment. Walking. Breathing.
Eating. Drinking. Praying. Feeling the sun and wind. Smelling
tenacious life all around us, enjoying its simple beauty.

Slaughtering more humans won’t protect that beauty.
We have to focus on the real monsters, the ones who can and will
destroy it all.

But today, we don’t go back to the ship, back to
listening to music while we work. Today, we
keep
walking,
much further than our usual hike. And we don’t turn back.

I realize quickly enough where he’s leading me, even
though he doesn’t overtly think it. We’re headed southwest.
Up-Canyon.

I know I should try to stop him. I’m not sure why I
don’t.

It may have been Peter’s persistent rage that prodded
us here, but now my own curiosity pushes me to proceed
willingly.

We’ve been circling the colony site for
three-quarters of an hour. Watching. Listening. Waiting. We’ve even
let ourselves be visible through the growth. I’ve been telling
myself that’s all we’re going to do—see and be seen; get a look
over the place in daylight and remind the murdering animals that
the Reaper is still around. But there’s been no sign of snipers, no
chatter on any of the Keeper channels. So we dare an open approach,
hoping to instigate a response.