The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (47 page)

“He could have stopped you at any time,” I say it.
“He
let
you do this.”

But then Chang starts chuckling sickly, shaking his
featureless head violently.

“
Let
me? Don’t you see?
I DIDN’T DO THIS AT
ALL!!
”

He stands up on the table. I’m up out of my chair,
sending it to the floor.

“I
couldn’t
do this!” Chang insists. “Even
with the most advanced nano-writers on the planet, the fastest
splice uploading we could manage, every compression shortcut, I
could barely pull off what I thought I did, and I had to pull
enough power to crash the entire planetary grid to do it! Bringing
all of you here—it’s not just that it would have overloaded my
equipment—it would have taken more power than the whole planet
could produce… Only
one
thing
could have… and He’d
have to convert the mass-equivalent of a mountain range into energy
to do it…”

Way in the back of my mind, I’m wondering if this is
part of what spooked Mark Stilson so badly, the impossibility of
the numbers (and I’m sure they ran the numbers)… but the rest of me
is putting together something even more world-shattering:

“Yod did this.”

Chang spreads his arms like he’s embracing the sky,
his silhouette doing a drunken spin on the table.

“This is Yod’s better world!
This!!!
”

Bel is shaking his head, not believing, not able to.
Lux is also shaking her head in denial. Kali’s eyes are wide with
horror. Azazel looks like he’s been shot. The others just look
confused, disturbed.

“
YOD! DID! THIS!!!
” Chang shouts at the
sky.

He finally seems to gather himself, as if making the
declaration has forced some measure of sanity on reality. He looks
down at me.

“So be it, then. Ragnarok: Come meet me in three days
time. Prepare in any way you see fit. With me or against me, we
will give Yod the world He wants.”

He’s gone in a blink, even from Lisa’s vision as I
feel her collapse on the deck, released. Star and Fohat look as
stunned as we do. But then Fohat grins evilly, turns and exits.

Star crouches over Lisa to see if she’s okay, her
hands shaking badly, chewing her lip as her eyes fill with tears.
She looks like she’s trying to say something. To Lisa. To me. But
then she pulls away, stands up, turns away and leaves. The hatch
slams behind her, and I lose Lisa’s feed.

Bel gets up and leaves in a hurry without saying
anything. Lux shoots me a look of pain and concern and goes after
him. Azazel is trying to stay stoic in his bulky armor. Kali has a
look of absolute horror on her face.

I walk around the table, get close to Paul and his
companions, tell them:

“You need to warn your people. Think of the worst
thing you can imagine. I don’t care if your Council is having some
kind of existential crisis. We’re going to need you.”

I turn to Abbas.

“Your people are the most vulnerable in the firing
line. We need to find someplace to move them, to…”

“No, my friend,” he cuts me off. “This is our world,
our land. We will fight for it, even against a demon.” Jon and
Sakina look as determined as he is. I want to argue with him, but
have to accept. I lock forearms with him, then embrace like
brothers.

“We’ll be ready,” Kendricks says before I can ask.
Two Gun and Murphy give me nods.

Azazel and I go looking for Bel. Kali follows close
behind, but doesn’t say anything. She feels like a coil wound to
breaking.

We find him up on top of the garden dome. He’s got
his armor charged, making himself look like he’s on fire, red-hot.
He’s facing west, toward Chang.

“
I should have seen this
,” he hisses as I
approach. “I’m a scientist. I pride myself on being able to
fucking think
. Even if I don’t know the tech, didn’t build
it… I should at least have some common fucking sense… Why didn’t I
see this?”

Lux is sitting a supportive but cautious distance
away. There are tears in her eyes. Azazel goes and comforts
him.

Bel turns to face me, getting cooler. He’s also
crying.

“Why didn’t I see this? Why didn’t I
question
?
Obvious fucking questions… I was
there
. I remember I was
there, when Chang set this up. He
told
me what his
capacities were. I knew. And I never even questioned how Yod was
going to send so much more on the same splice. It’s basic math.
Except I never once asked about the numbers… I’ve just been sitting
here all this time accepting it: I sneak in two more whole beings.
Star sneaks in you and three more. And all your toys. Double
Chang’s load. Double. No question. Not one…”

“Could Yod do this on his own?” I have to ask. He
shrugs, shakes his head.

“It was His tech, His breakthrough… I have no idea… I
never asked…”

He’s questioning his own mind, his own ability to
think, and coming to the conclusion that he’s been sabotaged in the
most intimate way imaginable. He’s coming apart.

So I try asking something simpler. “Could Yod kill
Chang?”

“Yod is Yod down to the molecular level, in every
part of Him… He can interface with anything.
Anything
. He
could have absorbed Chang, assimilated him into Himself. Broke him
down on an atomic scale.”

Then I make it worse, go ahead and confront what’s
breaking him:

“What about his mind, our minds?
Could
Yod
change us, affect the way we think?”

“
We’re not even us!
” he spits at me. “We just
think we are. Our memories are just files, downloads. Yod could
have sent anything. We might not even be real! Ever! Our future—the
one we
think
we remember—could be a fiction to motivate us,
give us a backstory… As for our brains… Yes, he could tweak them,
dull them. Maybe that’s what Chang was talking about—he had to
think, force himself to think, just to recognize the fucking
obvious! And I didn’t see it at all! I’ve been looking right at it
this whole fucking time, and I never once questioned it!”

I let him sizzle for a few seconds in the wind. Our
cohorts look variously crushed, reality ripped away from under
their feet.

I ask my next question. Gentler:

“What did Yod tell you? What better future did he
offer?”

Bel doesn’t answer. Kali does for him:

“The human race—the modified human race—was going to
be offered the option of evolving. Dropping the flesh-shell
entirely. To become like Yod. Or one with Yod. And everything. The
entire universe.”

“Unity and omniscience, omnipresence,” Azazel
sums.

Bel chuckles, but doesn’t cool. I wonder how long he
can keep this up.

“Maybe we just weren’t ready,” he guesses. “As a
race, a species… We weren’t ready for what we had, for what we’d
done to ourselves. Maybe He thought Chang was right, or partly
right. So He hit the proverbial reset button.”

“But He’s made it so we’ll proceed with caution this
time,” Lux says what I’m starting to think, “put the fear in
us.”

“Then why are we here at all?” Kali demands. Bel
shrugs.

“Object lessons, maybe. ‘Don’t let this happen to
you.’”

“Or maybe we’re supposed to protect it, foster it,”
Azazel hopes.

“Or slug it out endlessly with Chang so the mortals
don’t forget what they’re supposed to be afraid of,” Kali stays
dark. “At least He isolated the Big Show here. Safely away from
Earth.”

I take a deep breath. Brain altered or not, I’m
having another thought, but I decide it’s best not to voice it, not
right now:

If I was Yod, I’d want to be here to do the
protecting and fostering myself, make sure it went right.

That means Yod isn’t erased. Yod is here.

9 October, 2117:

Before I even open my mouth, I realize I’m about to
give the most bizarre pre-battle speech in history.

“Thank you all for being here.”

It’s an exclusive performance, just for my deeply
unsettled fellows from a shared reality that may never have
existed.

“I know we all have reason to doubt what we are, our
memories of our lost world, even how we think and what drives the
choices we make. But I’m asking you for an act of faith, to believe
that there is something real here, something worth saving. I’m
asking you to trust that certain universal values don’t change, and
that all human cultures throughout history have adopted those
values for good reason. And if you can’t trust your own minds, your
own values and motives, then look to the thousands on this planet
who value their lives, and the hundreds who stand ready today to
fight and perhaps give up their own lives so that others they care
for may have theirs. So if we act today by free will or by whatever
programming we’ve been given, trust that saving lives, that helping
others, is still the best thing we can do today.”

Bel nods his agreement. He’s been quiet these last
few days, but this morning he at least looks alive, focused,
gathered and reinforced by anger if nothing else. Lux gives me a
little smile and nods when I meet his eyes.

“Real or not, I like what I am, I like this life,”
she tells us. “Why shouldn’t I think the mortal meat want to keep
theirs?”

Azazel puts a gauntleted hand on his shoulder.

“I can’t imagine ever walking away from a good
fight,” he says in a convincing semblance of good humor.

But Kali won’t look at me. This existential crisis
seems to have hit her the hardest. I can only imagine what faith
she had in Yod, what future He’d promised her (even what impression
He’d made on her, since I have no memory of Him myself), even if
all of it is fiction, part of a false back story to give motivation
to a manufactured pawn.

What’s carried me through this is I have my other set
of memories—the set that this reality and the people in it support
as real—strong and intact. I can compare the new memories and my
current personality and behaviors to that person, to the Mike Ram I
was and was known as in this world, and have faith that I’m still
that man, or at least a pretty good facsimile.

Kali and Bel (and Star) still carry
memories—authenticated by this world around us—that they know
weren’t theirs, that belonged to those they overwrote. I can’t
imagine what that’s like, to suddenly see yourself as an unreal
construct that’s replaced someone you have better reason to believe
was real. I’ve watched Kali spend more and longer chunks of time
acting like Fera, even self-flagellating when Calliope Tostig slips
back, like she’s trying to be that real person and shake off what
she may believe is a fiction, a copy of a ghost, a technological
parasite sent to control a convenient body.

I’m sure she’s not alone in those doubts, but she’s
so far rejected all of our attempts to provide whatever comfort we
can.

She lingers after the others leave our meeting space
to prepare. I stand over her, consider touching her. Decide against
it.

“I need you,” I tell her. “As Kali. As Fera. As
whatever you decide you are, even if it’s just for today. If you
value these people…”

She whips her head up and glares at me. Tears are
flooding her eyes, but her mouth is twisting into a snarl. Her
claws flex. I don’t know if she’s telling me that I don’t know her,
because my memories are probably just as fictitious as hers, or
that I should know better: Kali the professional soldier never
really cared for people, except the very few she did (and they may
have never existed).

I leave her to make her own decisions.

I get one piece of good news as Bly comes to let me
know “Your Terraformers are here.”

I meet Paul in the pre-dawn darkness outside the Main
Gate. Against the stars, I can make out the shadow-shapes of four
ETE transports.

“Your Council came around?” I assume. He shakes his
head.

“I fed them everything. My father wouldn’t even speak
to me. Not one word.”

Spotlights pour down from the hovering ships,
creating circles of blazing light on the ruddy ground. The effect
isn’t unlike the Council’s avatar theatrics. But dozens of
sealsuits of assorted colors begin dropping out of the ships,
easing down smoothly using their tools, forming ranks behind Paul.
Paul folds away his mask, and gives me a defiant grin.

“Fuck ‘em.”

Murphy and Two Gun surprise me next, showing up at
the main lock as I come back inside. Murphy has two-dozen neat and
stoic-looking H-K ranked behind him, all in survival gear and laden
with extra ammo. Two Gun has maybe twice that many Cast fighters,
armed to the teeth, including Mak.

“We were hoping there would be room on the ETE ships
to catch a lift,” Murphy asks assertively. “There isn’t enough room
in your Siren’s Song.”

“Our home is in as much danger as anyone else’s,” Two
Gun shuts me down before I can discourage them. “More.”

“We can’t hold the line here,” Murphy goes practical.
“We have to stop him now. Before he can use his railgun.”

I nod. Embrace both of them.

My heart soars and almost immediately sinks as I look
at them. I’m putting too many vulnerable mortals in a fight they
should never have had to face. But I also know I can’t stop them,
and shouldn’t try to.

We get loaded up and iced off and spun up, kicking
off an hour before sunrise. We’ll come in low so the shadows of the
breaking dawn will conceal us as we hit the Stormcloud.

I get the discreet signals I’m expecting, letting me
know the Knights and the Nomads are already in place, snuck in
carefully in the dark of night, cloaks layered to defeat heat
sensors.

I try one last time to get through on the UNMAC
bands, even trying the dedicated channel Anton had been using. I
get stubborn silence. Hopefully they see what’s coming and decide
to be a part of this world, not just another enemy.