Transcendence (88 page)

“
What?”

“
Oh, lay back, silly.” And off slid her trousers. More lace, this time holographic lace panties that aroused primitive urges in Herrschaft.

He felt his erection return, this time through pure physical feedback from his intheflesh body. “‘Damn the torpedoes!’” he quoted, and laughed. Even he recognized the artificiality in his jest.

Lucilla again made that frown-looking smile, then her lips found his neck. Herrschaft faded away into the fivesen world of pleasure he had worried would not be his for some time to come. Oh, but here it was—and Lucilla, one of his past lovers, the one who above all others could ease his mind.

An emotion not completely unlike affection suffused him. When he opened his eyes to slits, he saw a woman’s face passing from one side of his neck to the other. It looked vaguely reminiscent of someone from long ago, long, long ago. . . .

“
I underestimated you, my always-faithful Lucilla. Where would I be without you?”

Herrschaft’s hands rose from his sides and began to caress Lucilla’s buttocks and the back of her thighs. He turned up the fivesen feed to shield himself from the past. It worked. This little oasis of pleasure was all that existed in the world. He’d let his defenses and staff take care of the buffoons who had dared penetrate his castle; there was nothing he could do that wasn’t already in motion. Let the invaders perish one by one in the halls of Feedcontrol Central—they already did their worst by trashing the comm systems. Herrschaft, himself, was in no danger from this handful of tired traitors. When feed was restored, the ill-fated invasion would provide a suitably dramatic ending to one chapter in his most popular subscription ever.

Herrschaft initiated a signal to rouse him when his feed was back live and let himself submerge into the comforts that only human contact can provide.

An unarmed man in white coveralls emerged from a doorway near the end of a seemingly endless hall. His hands rose high over his head, and one held a sheet of paper which he waved in the ancient signal.

“
Don’t shoot,” he repeated as he neared Nadir and the soldiers. He stopped only a meter from Nadir and let the paper flutter to the black-tiled floor as his hands came to rest at his sides.

“
You men better leave this building,” the man said. “If you go any farther, you’ll be killed for sure. A whole legion of guards are coming this way.”

With a grimace, the man turned and ran back the way he’d come. Paolo raised his rifle, but Nadir put a hand on the barrel. The folded sheet of paper drew his attention, so Nadir picked it up. Words and lines appeared and vanished as the page turned in his hand—the work of trace ink.

DONT SPEAK, it read. BUILDING HAS EARS. FOLLOW MAP. ASK FOR GENE. HERRSCHAFT IN CATACOMBS BELOW. DESTROY THIS NOTE.

Nadir’s eyebrows rose. It could be a trick, but to what purpose? If guards were, indeed, waiting in a trap, why wouldn’t they just wait for Nadir and his men to turn a corner—right up there, for instance?

I’m not alone in my beliefs
, Nadir assured himself.
Look at these men, look at Paolo
. He did so. The boy looked like Death personified, but still he stood beside his subbs. Five other men whom he’d never met before—including a Nik—awaited his orders to walk into the maw of death. Death had consumed more than 10,000 other soldiers in this assault.
I’m not alone!
And warriors aren’t the only ones who fight for change.

He studied the map, orienting himself, casting glances around at the doors near him until he felt confident that he could follow the directions. When he had finished, he took out a lighter and burned the paper.

“
Follow me,” he said. They ran to where the Feedcontrol employee had gone and discovered a staircase behind the door, as marked on the map. Just then, one of the EarthCo Warriors cried out and began firing into the corridor.

Nadir, feeling awkward without access to rifle-feed, stretched his neck to see what the man was firing at. He nearly caught the shrapnel from bullets shredding the paneling.

His soldiers fell back into the alcove and arranged themselves so all could fire at once. Nadir lay on his belly and stuck his rifle around the doorframe.

Ten meters down the hall, where this passage met two others, a metal ball the size of a small car rolled toward them. Bolts of lightning shot out at the soldiers. One man screamed and toppled backwards, tripping over Nadir’s outstretched legs and landing on the stairs leading down. Behind the ball, several human guards followed, handguns spewing projectiles. Nadir recognized the weapons as being downsized versions of his EMMA.

“
Their legs,” he whispered to the soldier nearest him. Nadir and the man concentrated fire on the exposed legs of the men hidden behind the deadly ball. Another blast of lightning struck another of the soldiers—the NKK regular. The man didn’t make a sound. He slumped down atop Nadir and his chest steamed.

Guards cried out as tiny rounds penetrated their shins. Soon, only the automated weapon still fought.

“
Forget that thing,” Nadir said. “Let’s go!” He got up and began running down the stairs. Three men followed.

One, two, three, Nadir counted, until they had descended 14 levels of ringing metal steps. His legs felt as if they were sacks of fire, his knees like daggers digging into the bone, but he kept running. The very fact that the other three men must have been in similar condition—yet still following him—pushed him on.

The door leading out of the stairwell was locked, but a short burst from the EMMA opened it. They ran through a damp cement shaft whose floor was plastic grating to the first corridor leading left. Overhead lighting was provided by antique fluorescence, most of which didn’t work. Bands of light and shadow engulfed them. At last, Nadir reached the elevator marked on the map; anyway, he hoped it was the one. He bent over, gasping, while the other soldiers caught up. An image of a Dark Ages torture chamber crossed his mind as he thought about how deep the elevator would carry them.

“
Bottom level,” he told the elevator when all four had crowded inside the dark car. Nothing happened. Paolo reached out and depressed a button on the bottom of a row of buttons. The car lurched, metal grated against the sides, and they started down amid a whine of electric motors. They rode in the darkness, breathing heavily, without speaking. Scents of injury and bodily waste weighed in the stale air.

After what felt like hours, the car stopped. The door opened, but Nadir couldn’t see anything beyond the car.

“
You the soldiers?” the crackling voice of an old
man asked.

“
I’m EarthCo Warrior Sub-Boss Hardman Nadir,” Nadir said with more pride than he thought still existed in him. “And these men with me are the only knights left in the world.”

The old creature sniggered and turned on a lighter. The tiny glow of the machine illuminated a face that seemed to have been carved from old granite. Wads of wax filled the spots where eyes should be. Strands of grey hair stuck out in clumps on the scalp. Part of the face cracked open to reveal pink gums and a lolling tongue. Below the head stretched a sinewy neck, and below that a gown sewn from plastic sheeting. It looked vaguely male.

“
I’m told you’re here to set us free,” the old man said. “I’ve been waiting for you for almost
. . .
five decades.”

“
You can lead us to Herrschaft?” Nadir asked, incredulous. What had he gotten himself and his men into? Is this where his glorious rage would end? Is this how his stormcloud that began forming in Africa, that swept across that continent growing larger, across the Atlantic Ocean, across EarthCo’s historic homeland of America to Feedcontrol Central—is this how he would repay the thousands who put their lives in Nadir’s hands?

He felt overwhelmed by the enormity of his actions. Until this quiet moment in a dripping chamber, he hadn’t stopped to consider whether or not, on balance, he was doing the right thing. What was the value of vengeance? Was it worth the lives of 10,000 soldiers?

“
Come,” said the old man, who turned and began walking along the muddy floor. “My name’s Dareen. Forty-seven years ago, I was a member of Herrschaft’s elite Personal Guard, back when he still needed guards for his person.” A frog-like sound erupted from the man, then mutated into a fit of coughing. Nadir realized the man had been laughing. They continued along the lightless shaft.

“
My final duty had been to protect the Director during his burial here,” the lighter cast around before the man, weaving a figure-eight that lingered on the retina, “beneath the catacombs.”

Nadir stopped suddenly and felt one of his men bump into him. “Are you saying that Herrschaft’s dead? What are we doing—”

“
Ach,” the man said, “don’t be an idiot! As I was saying, me and another seven of Herrschaft’s Personal Guard was brought here with him as the Director rolled his crippled old body
. . .
hmmm! down here in his wheelchair. It was like a portable resuscitator
. . .
hmmm, that’s what it was, I ’spose. Watch your step.”

They passed through what had once been an airlock, but the doors were missing. At the other side, a single lumniglobe hanging from a domed ceiling cast pale blue light through the round chamber. Dozens more of the fixtures had been arranged in what must have once been artistic fashion, fastened to one another by rusty lengths of pipe. Pigment-paint covered the walls, recapturing a forest scene with animals and a lake in the background, but rot had eaten away most of the fresco. The floor was seamed with hairline cracks that ran in circles around the room. Just off center, the cracks grew so large that great slabs of ragged concrete stood up a few centimeters higher.

“
Right over there,” a bony finger protruded from a yellow plastic sleeve, “is the entrance to the vestibule. ’Course, none of this exists on any schematics.” They crossed the floor, boots grating on sand and bits of cement, to another airlock. This one was still sealed.

The pruneface spun around to stare into Nadir’s eyes. “We carried the old sonofabitch through here, down to an antechamber. An escalator carried us down again, along a steep shaft that was a hundred meters long if it was a centimeter! None of us thought anything about the blocks of stone hanging partway down from gaps in the ceiling.”

The man’s cataractic eyes ceased looking straight into Nadir’s, instead seeing something just behind him. Nadir pivoted on his heel to see if this were the trap, if guards had descended on them. Only his four soldiers stood behind him. They were beginning to look anxious. The squawking voice continued:

“
We carried Herrschaft in his resuscitator through another airlock, then rode another escalator up ten meters. More blocks of stone were suspended there. When we reached the burial chamber
. . .
hmmm, are you beginning to understand? When we reached the burial chamber, we lifted the old body out of its lifesupport machine and dropped him into a basket. This hoisted him up to the top of a huge plastic tank and then lowered him inside the liquid. . . .
I can’t tell you what it was, but the old sonofabitch could breathe the stuff, though he looked like he was choking at first. A cap seal descended from the chamber’s ceiling and locked him in the cylinder. The end.” The old man turned from Nadir and began spinning the airlock handle. He spat once or twice, then grinned sheepishly up at the EarthCo Warrior.

“
Does ya have a nicey for me, hmmm? I don’t get much to eat down here. Nobody but a few knows I’m here, hmmm?” A gnarled hand extended palm-up.

“
I think he wants something to eat,” said Paolo.

Nadir reached into his belt for a battle-bar, high in protein and carbs, and handed it to the old man. With a vulgar munching and smacking of gums, the bar vanished. The man went back to work on the handle.

“
So we took it that it was time to leave, right?” the croaking voice continued. “Right? Hmmm! Soon’s we went up the last escalator, and got on the first one that’d lead us up to the vestibule, Patrick heard these motors, ‘Big motors,’ he said. A second later, those huge stones was rolling down out of the ceiling, down onto the escalator as it was bringing us out of the burial chambers. There.”

The airlock popped open, puffing a cloud of dust. Its weather-stripping ripped as the door swung out. “Patrick was crushed beneath that first block, but I was ahead of him! I run run run up the screeching steps just past where the next block falls. That one separated me from the other men, so I didn’t know what happened to them until later.”

The old man moved into the airlock, pumping his legs as if running up the steps in his tale. “Then the top stone fell just in front of me. I dodged the falling slabs of granite—see, it cracked all to pieces after it hit the escalator—and clawed my way past the still-standing pieces out to the airlock. Evil bastard must’ve been trying to save credits. He had the stones cut too thin. Ha!” He began spinning the inner door’s handle.