Ruler of Naught (66 page)

“Your touch controls the attack. Hear it? And it takes time
to start the column of air vibrating. Hear the 'chuff'?

The man pulled on some more knobs. “These here are stops. Like
the waveform tabs you're familiar with. Sets up what ranks of pipes speak from
each keyboard.”

Montrose pressed the keys again. He could hear how the pipes
in each rank spoke differently. And it got harder to push them down as the man
pulled out more stops.

“Use your bodyweight. The organ demands all of you, hands,
feet, and heart.”

Montrose essayed a brief segment from his favorite composer.
The musician looked delighted. “KetzenLach! A lot of his music might have been
written for a tracker-action organ like this. Not surprising, if you consider that
his teacher was organist here, 400-some years ago.”

Enchanted by the almost living response of the vast
instrument to his touch, Montrose began to play, launching into the Impractical
Etudes: light-hearted technical exercises, joyful and rapid as flame.

The man adjusted the stops; the sound brightened, became
more complex. Montrose groped for the pedals, provoking a discord at first,
then, bolstered by past experience on a four-limb multisyn, brought them into
the music.

Stern columns of deep-toned sound mounted up around him,
woven about by shimmers of lucid clarity from the higher registers. But slowly
the music changed, shifting to minor keys, and developing melodic lines that
cried, and hungered, and wept. Montrose played on, frightened by the sounds
that he did not choose—that chose him.

Montrose could not resist that which he had avoided most,
KetzenLach’s
Memoria Lucis
, once his wife’s favorite piece of music. He tried
to lift his hands from the keys as pain shot through him, and failed as he fell
into the Dreamtime.

Death wept.

Montrose lifted his hand from the keys of the synthesizer
and looked up at the Justicials in their red robes. The Janus wiped his eyes;
they glittered in his cadaverous face.

He really does look like Death himself
. Montrose
shivered at how appropriate it was for the hapless folk of Timberwell 40,000
kilometers below.

To either side of the sallow jurist sat his fellow
Justicials, arbiters of the Quarantine now imposed on the planet. To his right,
the Judge of the Descent, her white hair tightly curled, her rheumy eyes
near-hidden in pouchy eyelids under heavy brows. To her he had applied for
permission to descend to the surface of Timberwell, in search of Tenaya and
their children, Barin and Seda.

On the left of the Janus sat a short, red-faced man, his
eyes bulging in a permanent expression of choler and disdain: the Judge of the
Ascent. From him alone came the right to leave Timberwell, enforced by the
Quarantine monitors now established in orbit, and the guards here on the Node
at the top of the S'lift, and far below, at its base.

And the Janus himself: final arbiter of a planet's fate,
sitting here in judgment for a year and a day before the S'lift was finally
sealed and all hope lost. The old man looked at each of his fellow Jurists in
turn, then lifted up the golden two-faced mask that gave him his title, rotated
it about, and settled it down upon his head. Relief shot through him, the
aspect that faced him was smiling.

“Go,” said the Janus, his voice hollow from within the
shining metal hood. “We cannot deny you, whose music touched us so. Timberwell
is open to you.”

Montrose bowed. As he backed out, the Judge of the Ascent spoke,
his voice a chilling hiss. “But be very sure to obey each dictate of the
proctors. On this depends your egress from the planet.”

Montrose bowed again, and left the judgment chamber to begin
his descent to the planetary hell that had been his home.

Much later, he hurried across the terminal at the base of
the S'lift. The space rang with shouts and shrieks, and the ululation of countless
crying children, as a crowd of citizens pressed against the Marine cordon,
frantically seeking space on the last departing modules on the S'lift. The
whip-fields crackled and snarled, limning those unfortunates pushed up against
them in blue light before hurling them back in convulsions.

As he reached the exit light flared, and dyplast shattered
behind him. A body hurtled through the window high above, turning slowly head
over heels before it crashed in red ruin to the terminal floor beyond the cordon,
a smoking hole in its chest.

“Telos-damned rebel!” he heard from above as a Marine pushed
his head past the edges of the jagged hole in the dyplast. “Slipped something
into the computers... ”

From farther back he heard, faintly, “... or worm, can't tell...
”

Montrose turned away. The guard briefly inspected his cachet
and waved him through. Other guards directed him to a service tunnel: anyone
emerging from the terminal proper was a target for agents of the Vox Populi,
the popular terror that had overrun the planet in reaction to the Archon
Srivashti's excesses.

Montrose slipped into the smoky daylight of a city on the
edge of ruin, heading away from the S'lift. No one challenged him as he worked
his way farther into the city, heading for the neighborhood where his cousin
Almand was sheltering his wife and children.

The smoke from the dying city, eddying through the
artificial canyons of its center, caught at his throat and stung his eyes. The
sunlight was the color of a suppurating wound, the hazy light blurring the
streets.

His route took him past the Archonic Enclave, where a huge
mob shouted, the noise crescendoing to a frenzied scream of anger and
satisfaction at regular intervals. Thousands of shabby people gazed up at the
Archonic Palace towering far above them; an orgasmic shout bellowed up to meet
the body twisting down from a window hundreds of feet above. The victim's
screams were lost in the tumult, but not the crunching thud as the body, richly
garbed in Douloi attire, slammed into the flagstones of the square with a spray
of blood that hung for a moment in the air. Another frantic victim appeared in
the window, clutching at the edges. Montrose turned away, sickened, angry that
the Archon was safe far above among the Highdwellers he still ruled, albeit
under Panarchic supervision.

Finally he reached Almand's house. The gates to the villa
hung askew, wrenched off the hinges. He rushed through the opening and tripped
over a body burned beyond recognition; the mishap saved his life as a jacbolt
sizzled overhead, followed by a woman's scream.

“Montrose!” Tenaya threw himself into his arms, weeping and
laughing.

Seda clung to his leg with six-year-old intensity, the other
arm clutching her stuffed Wog-dog. Barin pressed up behind his sister, awkward
on the edge of manhood, a happy grin twin to Seda’s.

“There is little time left,” said Almand, gripping a jac in
one grimy hand. “They will return soon. You must be well away by then.”

“Come with us, then, cousin,” replied Montrose. “The Judge of
the Ascent will surely... ”

“No,” replied Almand, “this is my home.” He nodded towards
four fresh mounds of earth in the garden nearby. “I will join them soon.” He
hefted the jac and grinned, a humorless rictus of a man once civilized. “But
first I will burn many torches to light us to the Underworld.”

Montrose grasped his shoulders, and then kissed him on the
forehead in the ritual of farewell. As the last light of day faded from the sky
in a bloody sunset, he and his family slipped away into the night.

The journey back was an exercise in terror. They cowered in
the shadows as a mob thundered by, in pursuit of a hapless victim little less
miserable than themselves. Only the darkness saved them, the stars withdrawn
behind a choking pall of smoke as if loathe to witness the death of the planet
below.

The terminal was worse. The lines seemed interminable; even
with his priority cachet the wait stretched into hours as they inched towards
the doors to the S'lift modules. Fatigued almost beyond endurance, he responded
to Tenaya's questions with monosyllables until she fell silent, drawing Barin
and Seda closer to her.

Finally he reached the door; beyond a module awaited, its
interior lights glowing softly. Numbed by the long wait, Montrose stepped into
the module, but when he turned, he discovered that Tenaya and the children
hadn't followed him.

A Marine stood in their path, his hand upraised. “This one's
full,” he said, his voice raspy with fatigue.

“But I have priority,” Montrose said, holding up his cachet.

“I don't care if you have the Green-Chatzing-Plague,”
growled the Marine, pushing it aside. “If you hold up this one you're staying
here, cachet or no.” As Seda started shrieking, the Marine's face softened. “I'll
make sure they're first on the next one.”

“Go,” said Tenaya. “We'll catch up.”

“Go on,” the Marine said, eyeing the crowd pressing forward.
“I give you my word. They’ll be on the next.”

Four, five, seven people began shouting, insisting on taking
Montrose’s place if he got off. The Marine keyed the door, which shut on
Tenaya's determined face and Seda's tears.

A harried proctor worked her way forward, pushing passengers
into their seats until a light glowed on a console. “Your attention please,
genz. The S'lift computer system has been compromised.” The proctor held up her
hands. “There is no danger to the transport system proper.”

Montrose could see that she wasn't completely sure of that
as she continued, “But all non-essential services, including intermodule and
intercapsule communications, will be suspended for your safety. Do not attempt
to access these services.”

Montrose remembered the saboteur falling from the computer
room. He felt the seating module loading into the S'lift capsule, the slightly
queasy sensation as the entire assembly was elevated ninety degrees to fit up
against the S'lift proper, the modules gimballing about to keep level. There
was a muted thump as the mag-rails engaged, and then acceleration far beyond
the norm, as the capsule leapt away from the planet. They were running the
system at its limits to get as many people out as possible.

As they cleared the terminal the viewports snapped open,
revealing the city below limned in flames. An entire section went dark. He
leaned back in his seat and tried to relax, tried to visualize the module with
his family in it going through the loading process and leaping up after him to safety.

He couldn't. Montrose leaned over again, hard against the
viewport, craning his neck to look down. As he watched, at the limit of his vision
far below, under the end of the capsule, the terminal went dark.

He lunged, bruising his nose against the triple dyplast
pane, but the city had dwindled into invisibility under a pall of smoke. Tenaya
was probably frantic with worry—no, he realized with a surge of honesty, since
her hejir, that was not part of her anymore. But Seda, she would be
frightened, and Barin, he was trying so hard to be a man. Montrose hoped that
meant he’d be a help to his mother, and not a hindrance, uttering empty threats
and posturing as teens sometimes did.

The loudspeaker crackled to life. “Passing Shield
termination point.”

The capsule had cleared the point at which the S'lift would
be severed if the planetary defense shield was activated. According to
Panarchic law, they were officially off-planet now. There was a hoarse cheer
from the some of the other passengers. Montrose tabbed his boswell into
location mode.

Had the Marine kept his promise? Yes! Tenaya and the
children were in the first module. “Tenaya.”

“Montrose.” Tenaya's eyes widened, her voice concerned. “What
are you doing? Didn't your proctor tell you not to boz?”

There was a squeal of static. Her image tore across and
vanished as the loudspeaker came to life. “Vox populi, vox dei,” it said in a
harsh gargle. Montrose realized in horror he was hearing a computer artifact—
or
worm... can't be sure
. The proctor pounded past him to her console at the
front of the module.

“You have rejected us, we reject you—” The voice ceased in
mid-word.

The proctor whipped around, eyes distended in horror. “You've
triggered the worm!”

A brilliant red light flared from a small dome overhead,
attended by a deafening siren. “Brace yourselves!” shouted the proctor. “The
Shield is activating!”

There was a tremendous thump and the capsule decelerated
abruptly. He was strapped in, but banged his head against the seat in front
nonetheless. Others were less fortunate: the proctor flew backwards against her
console; Montrose heard bones snap as she rebounded and went limp. Amid screams
and moans of pain he peered out the viewport, and this time the view was clear.

Below an electronic haze glowed as the Teslas excited the
complex space-time resonance of the Shield into being. At its intersection with
the S'lift, the monocrystal cable simply ceased to exist as the momentum of the
molecules in their bonds was transformed through ninety degrees. Radiants
flared; emergency gravitors triggered to carry the severed portion of the cable
up into a higher orbit, past the Node.

But Montrose had eyes only for the capsule directly behind his.
As its momentum carried it past the severed end of the S'lift, the energies of
the Shield seized it and dispersed it in a flaring haze of metal and organic
molecules. In a brief display of light, Tenaya and her children joined the
aurora glowing ever brighter above Timberwell as their atoms fled into the
void.

Montrose wept.

He lifted his hands from the keyboard. The cathedral was
silent. The musician was gone; he was alone.

“It didn't happen that way!” he shouted, and the groined
ceiling far above returned and multiplied his words.

But grief still tightened his throat and made his heart
pound, the grief so sharp the memory of the truth seemed merely a dream. He dug
his knuckles into his eye sockets, fighting against desolation. The uselessness
of the vision clawed at him, and he shook his head, every breath hissing
between locked teeth as he fought for control.