Saga Page 23

  He looks Us in the eye. “Don’t be bitter. Your people and mine have the potential to be friends now that the damage you were doing is over. This could be the start of a wonderful new era for both of us. We could really use your scientific knowledge and we have a lot to offer in the arts, in entertainment. Not to mention the pure fun of having contact with a different world.”

  This gushing naïvete is so effusive and undoubtedly genuine that We feel a moment of nausea. What kind of adversary is this? How could someone so ignorant of political realities have bested Us? Still, with the protest of the human beings having been settled, We can return to Our other problems. It will be a pleasure to concentrate on people who, once they have been killed, stay dead. If he is awaiting some similar expressions of mutual happiness and joy from Us, he can wait until he dies of old age, which cannot happen soon enough. We stare at him with all the malevolence of which We are capable.

  “You know, yours is a fantastic world.”

  Evidently We have failed to communicate Our feelings to him, for he carries on, as eagerly as before.

  “I wonder, is that anti-gravity technology a special feature of the game, of Saga? Or is it based on some kind of physics that would apply in our world? Imagine, real airboards and aircars. You’ve no idea how much lifting we farming communities have to do; it would mean such a difference if we could have that technology.”

  Again, he pauses; again, We glare. As if the plight of a distant, retrogressive body of human beings is of any concern to Us, who ten thousand years from now will be the matriarch of an immortal dynasty, one that will use its immortality to people two universes. He thinks of lifting sacks of seed; Our thoughts are on infinity.

  “Sorry, I have to go. B.E. is here. I’ll be right back.”

  She stiffens and a few moments later is gone. We have time to run Our thoughts through the building’s defenses and confirm that the fire is on the retreat before she returns.

  “That’s wonderful, thank you. He is totally cured. Our attacks will halt.” He pauses. “I hate to sound ungenerous, but you haven’t been exactly trustworthy in the past. My people will remain ready to undertake more actions, such as this, until the last of them is cured. I hope you understand.”

  Oh, We understand. We understand far better than he does.

  “Listen carefully to Us and not the flutter of your thoughts. Here are Our terms: each human being who is cured of their addiction will leave Saga and not return until We give permission for you to do so.”

  “Oh, they’ll be only too pleased. But are you sure you want us all to leave? It’s such an opportunity for our two worlds to meet. And your own people—won’t they want to know what’s going on? Whether my broadcast was true?”

  “You will all be healed. Everyone will leave, including you, until such time as Our satellite contacts you. Agreed?”

  “If that’s what you want. Once everyone is clear, I’ll go, too.” She shrugs. “Oh, wait. There is one more thing. That group of my friends—the ones who won the aircar race—they would like to be pardoned for any offense they have caused, so that they can go home. Can you do that, too?”

  It takes a moment to compose Our smile. “Why, of course.” She looks at Us. We maintain Our benign expression. Time will heal this wound. We console Ourselves with thoughts of nuclear warheads. Since neither of us seems to have anything more to say, We sniff disdainfully and depart the scene of Our humiliation.

  Chapter 28

  REVENGE IS BEST SERVED HOT

  Systematic, patient work is to Our taste. Even if it is an undoing. When you are two thousand years old, you learn the value of planning for the long term. One after the other, We restore to normality the processes in the brains of the human beings, and they drop from Saga like grains of sand evacuating an upturned timer. There were hundreds of thousands of them, but already We can sense the space created by the absence of those We have touched. The wisdom of this retreat is evident. The City was like a bubbling flask of chemicals, on the verge of explosion. Now the main source of heat has been removed, and the volatile liquid subsides.

  Our two remaining priorities are to crush the strikes and eliminate Michelotto. These are quite manageable goals, now that the interference of the humans is no longer an issue. Is it necessary to offer a response to that shocking broadcast by Cindella? It is. There are wild rumors to quell.

  It does not take Our full concentration to flit through the remaining human population.

  “Grand Vizier.”

  “Your Majesty?” he responds promptly to Our call.

  “Give notice to the High Council that We shall make a keynote address to them at the next assembly.”

  “Very well, Your Majesty. Is that all?”

  “It is.”

  Soon—another few days—and We shall be finished. Our stitching will have been unpicked and We can begin the seam again, this time on a truer course. Once it is complete, We shall, of course, suspend the link to New Earth until Our next satellite arrives there. It will be a relief to be free of the untamable infection that is Cindella, to be utterly confident that she has no possible way of harming Us through her magic. It is a shame that the human for whom she is an avatar will be long dead by the time We deal with them again. Revenge is, in fact, a dish best served hot. In this case, however, We shall make do with a more impersonal blow to the later generations of an entire species rather than a personal one to the individual who offended Us so much. Perhaps the human will have bred and left offspring. We make a note to look into the matter when We next encounter them, some hundred or so years from now.

  We lean back against the elegantly carved wood of Our chair. For some reason, We decided to work within the safe environs of the old meeting room. There is something about the solid oak table and plush decor that reassures Us of Our power. That and the pleasant memories, lingering like the faint echoes of a scream.

  Chapter 29

  FLICKERING LIGHT

  To make the most of the storm that was lashing at the City, we had let ourselves into the penthouse suite of Judge’s Hotel. The rain was so heavy, it seemed to hit the window in waves. Although it was not yet sunset, the view was dark outside, but for the tendrils of street lighting below us and the occasional flicker of cream-and-purple light among the black clouds. Athena was lying on a king-sized bed, chin cupped in her hands, looking as much at her screen as at the storm outside.

  “It’s true. They’ve all gone. The last post by any of them in the Defiance forums was Cindella’s.”

  “Read it out again, would you, Athena?”

  Even though we had kept the lighting inside the suite to a minimum, I could see Nathan’s pale face reflected in the window.

  “‘To the people of Saga. The Dark Queen has removed the addiction that was poisoning the human beings of New Earth. Her condition for doing so was that we leave Saga. Of course, we agreed, but many of us now feel a deep regret that we are leaving you. On a personal level, you have become our friends. More generally, knowing that there is another world nearby is a marvel for us, and it seems a shame for our two peoples not to interact and share what we know. Perhaps at some future time, we will meet again. We hope so, but for now, the matter is outside our hands, as the Dark Queen has informed us that as soon as the last person from New Earth has left Saga, she will sever the connection between our worlds. For my particular friends, Athena, Ghost, Nathan, and Milan, I have the news that the Dark Queen has agreed to pardon any offenses that you might have committed. I hesitate to interfere with your political affairs, but I cannot leave you thinking that she was sincere about this, when I got the distinct impression otherwise. Please take care. Your friend always Cindella.’”

  No one spoke, although the gusts of water being blown onto the glass in front of us had swells and lulls like the rhythms of speech. If I had known the language of storms, I might have been able to interpret the message that this one seemed to have for us.

  What did I think of the humans leaving us
? It was understandable, of course. They had their lives. Nor was it their choice; as long as the Dark Queen controlled the connection to New Earth, she could prevent them from being here. So, why did I also feel let down? We were on our own again. Perhaps that was for the best. Make no claims on the loyalty of others, and you cannot be betrayed. I had never feared being alone, but I had enjoyed the sense of being part of a great movement when we had led Cindella’s people into Newscast 1.

  “How does she do it?” Nathan was the first to speak.

  “Who? What?” Milan was picking his way through a bowl of fruit, and his voice was a little muffled.

  “How does the Dark Queen sever the connection to them? What’s the mechanism by which she contacts their world?” Nath looked over at Athena; so did I.

  “I’ve no idea. It’s an interesting question, though. Somehow they are able to connect with us, whether as a pattern of light or a flow of electrons, or even something weird like magnetic interaction. It doesn’t really matter,” she mused aloud. “What matters is that the Dark Queen has a way of stopping that flow. She has some way of acting in their universe. Otherwise it wouldn’t be up to her. They could come and go here as they liked.”

  “Michelotto might know. Want me to ask him?” I took the pager out of one of my trouser pockets and examined it.

  “Even better.” Milan spat a seed onto the carpet. “Let’s meet him. Cindella has made it pretty obvious we can’t trust any pardon from the Dark Queen. Now that the humans are gone, there’s no reason we shouldn’t take her down. Right, Nath?”

  “True.”

  I took out the encryption device and composed a message for the pager. A short while later, it buzzed with a reply.

  “He’ll meet us, after the storm is over. Gilgamesh Square again.”

  With that settled, we turned our attention back to the storm. My sense of loss eased as I gazed through the flow of cold water into the darkness beyond. What were we, after all, but a tiny flickering light in the night, so distant from any other source of warmth?

  Chapter 30

  THE TASTE OF VICTORY

  It always seemed that there was no end to the old City: that you could travel through it all day, block after block, with the signs of inhabitation gradually diminishing, until you found yourself in dark and abandoned streets. Even here, beyond the limit of power supply and easy boarding, the streets continued for miles. It would be a depressing journey to struggle on in this direction, with the haunting thought that there was no end to the derelict houses.

  The architecture here was quite different from in the living heart of the City. Hardly any buildings were more than two stories high. The houses were spread out, distributed upon regular squares of grass, marked off from each other by low wooden fences. The only tall buildings were civic ones, raised in a mock Romantic fashion, adorned with unnecessary pillars and bas-relief carvings. Disused now, they would once have been bathing houses, libraries, entertainment centers, and so forth, for the privileged guilds and cardholders of the district.

  Ahead of me, Michelotto drove smoothly and quietly past the empty houses, sometimes checking in his mirrors that I was keeping up. He knew the answer to our question and had agreed to take me to a place that he claimed was the building from which the Dark Queen controlled communications with Erik’s world. Just me, though. Michelotto felt there was a chance that we might be lucky enough to come across her, in which case the others would be a liability; in a fight with the Dark Queen, we would have to deflect our powers to defend them. I agreed. So they were waiting for me back at our latest hideout, an old house on Amiens Street.

  After a four-hour ride, we came to a huge, white stone building, capped by a copper dome that had turned dark green with age. He stopped the airbike and waited for me. Once the soft hum of my board ceased, quiet returned to these ancient streets, and with it a sensation of giddiness, which I accounted for by the fact that I was used to the constant background rumble of busy traffic.

  “Innocuous enough, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” It had the look of an old library, except that the wide stairs rose to a surprisingly narrow doorway between two aged and flaking pillars.

  “It was built to house the portal between our world and that of the human beings.”

  Michelotto got off his bike and looked around, appraising the nearby buildings.

  “She still comes here sometimes, to maintain stable conditions for Saga.” I must have looked blankly at him, as he continued patiently, “Saga is hosted on some kind of physical structure created by the human beings on Earth. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but our universe could come to an abrupt end if there were an earthquake or similar catastrophic local environmental event that shattered the equipment on which it is hosted. It is the primary function of the King or Queen to transfer themselves to the human universe and maintain the uninterrupted running of Saga.”

  “I had no idea that our existence was so precarious.” I stretched my arms high above my head, in part to relieve the muscular tension that builds up during a long session of boarding, but also because, listening to his words, I felt unsteady. My thoughts were jittery.

  “Don’t worry.” He looked carefully at me. With concern? Or calculation? “From what I was told, the planet itself, Earth, should be good for another two billion years. Past rulers arranged a reserve energy supply for Saga, to keep us safe for thousands of years, even if none of us ever crosses through the portal. Judging by comments the Dark Queen has made in my presence, I think she has set us up for over a hundred thousand years. That would be in keeping with her character; she makes plans for the very long term.”

  “But still, something needs monitoring?”

  “Yes, she has to come here sometimes.”

  “Do you know what’s inside?”

  “No. I can’t get in.”

  “Oh, really?” I ran up toward the door, curious. I’d never come across a lock I couldn’t defeat.

  “Careful. Don’t set off any alarms.”

  As I approached the building, I let the universe slow down and stretched out my feelings, heightening my perceptions. He was right; there were motion detectors set high on the walls, focused on the entrance. Now that I had an interesting challenge to concentrate upon, I felt confident and sharp. The unease that had been seeping through my thoughts had dissipated entirely. From the inside pocket of my hoodie, I drew out my tools and went to where a cable ran down beside a pillar, carrying the alarm signal from the motion detectors toward the City. I made a careful insertion into the cable and reset the tolerance on the detectors so that even an elephant charging into the building would not trigger them.

  Beside the door was a very old standard card and iris reader. I carefully slipped my highest card, a blue, into the slot, sensing for alarms as I did so. The card was rejected, naturally. Anything else would have been too easy. I withdrew the card, then sprayed the surface with one careful tap on the top of a tiny bottle of plastic-conducting polymer. It was possible to mold the microscopic layer of polymer even while the card was in the reader, so I could systematically rework the pattern of the card by trial and error. It took me fewer than a hundred attempts and about ten minutes before the reader accepted the card. I couldn’t help sneaking a proud glance at Michelotto. He was watching hesitantly.

  The retina detector came on. Once I had established contact with its processor and disabled the error alert, I leaned forward to let it read my eyes. They were as good a start as any for a similar method of pattern building. A light flashed, I blinked and the door opened with a hiss and a brush of cool air. The processor showed a 100 percent match.

  “You’re in!” Michelotto was surprised.

  “How did it come to have my retina pattern as acceptable?”

  “Did it really?” He came up the stairs and looked at the reader, then at me. I shivered, feeling goose bumps. This building was vaguely familiar; it had something to do with my lost memory, my lost childhood.

  If
Michelotto derived any meaning from the fact that the lock was prepared to admit me, he said nothing, but instead looked through the open doorway. I stood beside him. It was a short corridor with another reader in the wall beside the far door, this time a silver voice-recognition panel.

  “Try it,” he said, gesturing, but waited outside when I stepped forward.

  “You’ll either have to wait for me, or come in. These systems don’t allow both doors to be open at the same time,” I pointed out to him.

  Michelotto frowned, looking back down the stairs at his bike. He clearly didn’t like being confined, but eventually he stepped into the corridor and closed the door behind him. When he did so, a strip light in the roof came on, giving us a copper glow to see by. I stood in front of the voice panel.

  “Consume more. It is the measure of your life.” I spoke the first sentence that popped into my head. The door opened. With a shared look, we stepped through to another short section of corridor, this time with a panel for reading a palm, like the police cells we had been detained in. No sooner had I pressed my hand against the screen than the door opened. One more stretch of corridor, one more card reader. The building was welcoming me.

  “This is a much more recent addition.” For a start, the slot itself was a much tighter fit around the card. I knelt down and inserted microfibers to get a look at the workings inside. They were sophisticated, but I felt relieved that I at least recognized the principles of the system. It was designed to measure minute current differentials on the surface of the card. The key card would, no doubt, be made of many layers of material whose conductivity varied considerably.

  Despite a growing urgency to get inside, to discover why my retina, voice, and skin were acceptable as keys into the building, I squatted down on my haunches to consider the lock.

  “Problem?” In the orange glow, the lines of Michelotto’s face were deeper and darker than usual. He looked severe.