Champion of Mars (36 page)

I stand. There is a presence behind me, but I remain facing the river. I have no wish to look upon the armour’s violent spirit. The forms the Armours Prime take in the Second World are always disturbing, and the blunt hostility it radiates chills me. If I look directly into its eyes, it may ensnare me, and then it would almost certainly tear me apart. Best to look away from it.

“Stay behind me, at all times,” I command. “Remain unseen.”

“Dost thou not wish to look upon me?” comes the armour’s mocking reply. Its voice is as fearsome and liquid as the armour itself, and there is a scent of blood on the air when it speaks.

“You will obey me.”

“Yes,” it says after a dangerous pause. “Yes. As the master has commanded me, then shall I obey.”

“It is not a request!” I say, trying to fill my voice with authority. “You will obey me.”

The armour growls by way of reply, its hatred of me palpable, but nevertheless I feel its attention shift from the back of my neck.

I go to the river. My reflection stares back. I welcome its familiarity. Other spirits change their shape on a whim, dazzling their human counterparts with their limitless imagination, but I am not as other spirits.

My form is tall for a woman of old Yerth, but short by Martian standards. I am slender, beautiful. My skin is pale, like marble with a blush of rose, a shade not seen on Mars for many thousands of years. My hair is long and brown. I frown, and update my garment and skin patterns to something more fashionable, excepting, of course, my tattoos. No one can ever alter those; they show us for what we are, what we were, and, if one has the skill, who we will be. Whatever short-lived relations beings might choose to have with one another within the halls of the Great Library, the tattoos ensure none would ever mistake a spirit for human.

I gaze down at the rippling, broken reflection and wonder why I never do change the way I look. I feel more real, maybe, when the face I see is always the same. Or perhaps there is more to it than that.

I risk a glance behind me, and as commanded, the armour moves out of my sight. I catch a glimpse of a hulking shadow knuckling along the sand, a hybrid of ape and bat, two pairs of glowing red eyes its only clear feature.

I see the doorway in, then. This world has rendered it as an archway of pale stone filled with a door of opaque green glass. It stands unsupported on the sand. The river and door aside, the desert is utterly featureless, a flat monochrome that fades into the dark.

“Mark this place well,” I say.

“I shall do as thou biddest me do.”

“You will address me correctly,” I rebuke. The armour speaks in an old form, and addresses me in overly familiar manner.

Another growl. “I will do as you bid me do. Mistress companion.”

I can hear the armour’s contempt. “Come,” I say. “Let us see if there is a way across this river.”

“Should we not fly across, mistress companion?”

“We cannot, the river is a barrier. We must find the approved portal and announce ourselves. We are in a private domain now, and we must play by the host’s rules.”

The armour snarls and snaps, but does not object.

We walk the bank and the river winds on. The door disappears behind us. Many hours feel to have passed; I am sure this is not so, but I have no way of knowing. A sickly mist rises from the surface of the water, chilling me.

The armour growls.

“What is it?” I say.

“Hearken,” it rumbles back. “Something approaches.”

I stand quiet and still, straining to hear. There are disadvantages to donning a full emulant form. I try to alter my physiology slightly, but my will is trammelled and I cannot. So, the Spirefather knows we are here. Our fate is in its hands now.

A creaking comes through the mist, the sound of wood on wood. A dark shape slides from the vapours: a boat, a long-prowed punt of an archaic type once used upon Mars’ canals.

A cowled figure works a paddling-oar fixed to the back of the punt. It ceases its labours and lets the punt whisper onto the sand. A long, pale hand beckons. I step forward. The armour’s footsteps follow.

“No,” says the boatman. “Only you.” It raises a palm to underline its statement.

“Mistress companion?” says the armour. It is insolent.

“I shall proceed alone. You will await my return.”

“My instructions to guard you cannot be guaranteed to be completed,” it replies. The armour is a ferocious thing, all need and violence. It still manages to sound as if this circumstance matters to it not at all.

“Await me here,” I repeat firmly.

“As you wish, mistress companion.”

Wet sand rasps behind me. If I turn around I will see the armour lying on the shore, a creature from the blackest imaginings of the technophi who created it. It stares at me now, I know, wondering if it could kill me and get away with it.

“Come,” says the boatman. I step aboard. “Payment,” he says, and holds out his bony hand. I hand him the coins placed on my eyes at my arrival.

The boatman’s hand closes around white-green bronze, and I find myself somewhere else.

I stand at the edge of a plain, a homogenised version of the steppe that the city of Arn Vashtena overlooks. Far away is a mountain range, or at least, I take it for such. It is of such magnitude it can be nothing else, but then I see that no, it is not a mountain range at all, but the Library stacks, hundreds of metres high, full of billions upon billions of books.

There is the knowledge I seek.

I take to the air, my feet trailing a half-span above the grey heather. I draw closer to the stacks, and their full, unfeasible height is revealed. I come to one rack and settle to the ground.

It stretches away unending. Every book upon it is ruined. Their leathern covers are white with mould, the bindings peeling away, the pages spotted. I select one at random, dust showering around my feet. I open the cracked covers, and the contents fall upon the floor in pieces, fragments of paper dissipating in a storm of information, a cacophony of sounds and shattered images going to nothing. Somewhere a crystal bell, sweet and sad, chimes in mourning. Left and right, down the ranks of volumes, I look for the source of the sound. I see nothing, and gradually the chime falls away. I let the book fall to the floor. I select another, then another; all are the same. All go to nothing in my hands, singing unknowable snatches of data as they disintegrate. I try to access a book’s data before picking it up; it is useless, it could be a song or the soul of a man. It is unreadable and leaves the taste of death in my mouth.

The stacks are a wall of dead data. They stretch out of sight. I turn to the left, and accelerate away, rotting books blurring beside me. I come to a dead stop. Here is an aisle lined with more stacks, filled with yet more decaying tomes. I try more books, to the same end. I go on. After a time the aisle turns a corner, and I am obliged to go left. This happens many times, and I travel deeper into the stacks. I have no idea which way to go, for within this construct I am limited. This is the world of another mind, and for now I am essentially a part of it. I take random turn after random turn, wending my way further into the dead Library.

The song grows louder.
Stay away
. It draws off for a while, and my sense of danger recedes.

Aisle follows aisle, twist follows twist. The mouldering Library goes on forever. There is no end in sight until, quite suddenly, I find myself unable to proceed further, shelves looming around me. I turn back, but the way I have come is closed. Fighting down panic, I will myself upwards, but my efforts have no effect.

I hear the song again. “Stay away, stay away, stay away,” it calls, a steady rhythm. It is closer now. I can hear the individual voices in the spirit’s choir, and there is discord to it. Its voices do not sing as one; some babble nonsense, or scream and shriek piteously. It is broken, but strong, a dreadful chorus, and I can feel the wash of its power as it comes closer. Certain lower levels of my psyche panic under its influence.

The Spirefather, for it must be he, roars, a bellow halfway between childish frustration and torment. “Stay away!” An awful sound, voices unsynchronised, clashing and blurring. Then its voices drop, and the pounding of its breathless song starts up again: “Stay away, stay away, stay away.” The voice fades and grows and fades, as the singer negotiates the labyrinth, but it comes ever closer.

The roar sounds again, very close. Its song comes with it, an ensemble of mad voices chanting, over and over again. “Stay away, stay away, STAY AWAY!”

The essence of its being ripples through this Second World fragment, causing my mind to shiver into its multiple harmonies, and I must fight to pull them back together.

I am being hunted.

I attempt to rise into the air, but the Spirefather will not allow it. What now? I try to climb the shelves, but they crumble to wet sawdust, data tinkling as the books fall and shatter.

I look out of the Spirefather’s domain to where Yoechakenon meditates in the Heart Chamber. I open the armour-sphere’s mouth, try to shout a warning.

The sound dies in my throat. The words will not come.

This is a trap.

Y
OECHAKENON COMES OUT
of his trance. He has no need of sleep. I think for a moment that he has heard me. My relief dies; he has not.

He is worried. Beings that habitually communicate at the speed of thought need little time for discourse. He is weighing up the possibilities. Maybe he thinks that I have not found the Spirefather yet, or that I have and it is unwilling. I am touched by his faith in me. The armour is not back yet, and if I had been destroyed it would have returned. He has no idea of the dangers I face.

No, his main concern of the moment is himself. Through the armour sphere I can hear sounds coming from the corridor. He listens for a moment, checking his breath so it does not dull his hearing. Nothing disturbs the sepulchral air of the chamber. He remains tense. It comes again – a bang, followed by a scraping noise. He reaches for the glaive and moves stealthily to the doorway surrounding the Heart Chamber. I watch him stand there.

The sounds are coming down the shaft: high-pitched screeches have joined the scrape of metal on metal. The noises are distorted, echoing in the gravity slide. If the sounds are any kind of language, it is not one I understand.

There are two defensible points available to him: at the base of the gravity slide’s shaft, and here in the doorway of the Heart Chamber. The gravity slide’s exit is promising – he can chop at whatever comes down the shaft with impunity – but if there are many of them, or if they are reckless and use the slide rather than the service ladder, they could perhaps come quickly enough to assail him in a group, and the floor there is treacherous with bones.

The doorway to the Heart Chamber is very wide, which means he could be fighting more than one opponent at once, but at least there is room to use his glaive to its fullest effect, and he will be nearer to the armour and I when – should – we return.

He makes his decision. He steps back into the chamber. The doorway, then. Not ideal, but he has been in direr straits.

I try to ignore the fact that he has died in some of them.

Now he will be using his memory aids, recalling the reconstructed being. He will mark it for nerve clusters, arteries and tendons that he can inflict terminal damage upon swiftly, for it is likely they will come at him as a mass. They do not appear to be daunting opponents, and he should prevail provided that their numbers are not limitless. He does not consider for a moment that the creatures might be placid; the makeshift machetes we saw in the fists of the skeletons were not the tools of peace-loving folk.

This is what he thinks. I cannot read it directly, a third-degree connection is limited, but I have known him for a long, long time.

A racket from the foot of the gravity slide, the clatter of bones kicked aside, the bark of simple words. An uncouth conversation grows in violence, although whether this is in recognition of a lost companion or out of frustration at the lack of plunder, I cannot tell.

The creatures’ shadows slide along the wall in the corridor. Yoechakenon will ready the spirit of the glaive now; it will not be long before they tire of the bone pile and notice him.

Time will tell what manner of foe they are, he will say to himself. He is not afraid, let them come.

I
RETURN MY
attention to the world within.

Another roar. Very close now, followed by a mad babble of half-heard words and the dragging of clumsy feet. There is a groan and a crash and the sound of thousands of books falling, and the smell of musty pages comes to me between the stacks.

“I am trapped,” I say. “Yoechakenon...” But he cannot hear me. I am cold. I fold my arms under my breasts.

I close my eyes and let out a hesitant breath. My inactivity is serving no-one – I have to look for a way out. I drop my arms to my sides and pace the dead end I find myself corralled in. The bookshelves rear up, impassable as cliffs. The Spirefather roars again. He is further away now. He will find me soon.

I am limited here, but I am far from helpless. I close my eyes and reach out into the stacks. It is a disgusting sensation, akin to plunging oneself into a pile of corpses. I persevere, searching for any piece of uncorrupted data.

My eyes snap open. There.

I float into the air, as high as this construct will allow, and draw myself backwards. I allow myself a run of several hundred spans, and then accelerate.

I am travelling faster than the speed of sound when I hit the stacks.

Books explode into pieces, bits of putrescent data smearing themselves across my psyche. I keep my mind fixed upon this single source of pure information, weaving down aisles, bursting through shelves where my way is blocked or the route is long.

A bellow sounds behind me. The Spirefather knows where I am. The noise of pursuit follows me, the insane song, the crashing of shelves smashed into sticks. I fly faster. The Spirefather is gaining, but slowly; I have some time.