She had activated the balcony beyond the Steinway, but I knew that this was not all that she meant. “Of course,” I said, thinking, Is this her death? Is this what she has foreseen since before birth? Is it my death? “Of course I’ll come,” I said.
A. Bettik and Theo started out onto the ship’s balcony with us. “No,” said Aenea. “Please.” She took the android’s hand for a second. “You can see everything from inside, my friend.”
“I would prefer to be with you, M. Aenea,” said A. Bettik.
Aenea nodded. “But this is for Raul and me alone.”
A. Bettik lowered his head a second and returned to the holopit image. None of the rest of the score of people in the library level and on the spiral stairs said a word. The ship was dead silent. I walked out onto the balcony with my friend.
Nemes still held the boy out over the drop. We were twenty meters above her and her siblings now. I wondered idly how high they could jump.
“Hey!” shouted Aenea.
Nemes looked up. I was reminded that the effect of her gaze was like being stared at by empty eye sockets. Nothing human lived there.
“Put him down,” said Aenea.
Nemes smiled and dropped the Dalai Lama, catching him with her left hand at the last second. “Be careful what you ask for, child,” said the pale woman.
“Let him and the other two go and I’ll come down,” said Aenea.
Nemes shrugged. “You won’t leave here anyway,” she said, her voice not raised but perfectly audible across the gap.
“Let them go and I’ll come down,” repeated Aenea.
Nemes shrugged but threw the Dalai Lama across the platform like an unwanted wad of paper.
Rachel ran to the boy, saw that he was hurt and bleeding but alive, lifted him, and turned back angrily toward Nemes and her siblings.
“NO!” shouted Aenea. I had never heard her use that tone before. It froze both Rachel and me in our tracks.
“Rachel,” said Aenea, her voice level again, “please bring His Holiness and the Dorje Phamo up to the ship now.” It was polite, but an imperative that I could not have resisted. Rachel did not.
Aenea gave the command and the ship dropped lower, morphing and extending a stairway from the balcony. Aenea started down. I hurried to follow her. We stepped onto the bonsai cedar platform … I had helped to place all of the planks … and Rachel led the child and old woman past us, up the stairway. Aenea touched Rachel’s head as the other woman went past. The stairway flowed uphill and shaped itself back into a balcony. Theo and A. Bettik joined Rachel and the Dorje Phamo on it. Someone had taken the bleeding child into the ship.
We stood two meters from Rhadamanth Nemes. Her siblings stepped up to the creature’s side.
“This is not quite complete,” said Nemes. “Where is your … ah, there.”
The Shrike flowed from the shadows of the pavilion. I say “flowed,” for although it moved, I had not seen it walk.
I was clenching and unclenching my hands. Everything was wrong for this showdown. I had peeled off my therm jacket in the ship, but still wore the stupid skinsuit and climbing harness, although most of the hardware had been left in the ship. The harness and multiple layers would still slow me down.
Slow me down from what? I thought. I had seen Nemes fight. Or rather, I had not seen her. When she and the Shrike had struggled on God’s Grove, there had been a blur, then explosions, then nothing. She could decapitate Aenea and have my guts for garters before I got my hands clenched into fists.
Fists. The ship was unarmed, but I had left it with Sergeant Gregorius’s Swiss Guard assault rifle still on the library level. The first thing they had taught us in the Home Guard was never to fight with fists when you could scrounge up a weapon.
I looked around. The platform was clean and bare, not even a railing I could wrench free to use as a club. This structure was too well built to rip anything loose.
I glanced at the cliff wall to our left. No loose rocks there. There were a few pitons and climbing bolts still imbedded in the fissures there, I knew—we had clipped on to them while building this level and pavilion and we hadn’t got around to clearing all of them—but they were driven in far too tight for me to pull out and use as a weapon, although Nemes could probably do so with one finger. And what good would a piton or chock nut do against this monster?
There were no weapons to find here. I would die barehanded. I hoped that I would get one blow in before she took me down … or at least one swing.
Aenea and Nemes were looking only at each other. Nemes did not spare more than a glance at the Shrike ten paces to her right. The female-thing said, “You know that I am not going to take you back to the Pax, don’t you, child bitch?”
“Yes,” said Aenea. She returned the creature’s stare with a solid intensity.
Nemes smiled. “But you believe that your spiked creature will save you again.”
“No,” said Aenea.
“Good,” said Nemes. “Because it will not.” She nodded to her clone-siblings.
I know their names now—Scylla and Briareus. And I know what I saw next.
I should not have been able to see it, for all three of the Nemes-things phase-shifted at that instant. There should have been the briefest glimpse of a chrome blur, then chaos, then nothing … but Aenea reached over and touched the back of my neck, there was the usual electric tingle I received whenever her skin touched mine, and suddenly the light was different—deeper, darker—and the air was as thick as water around us. I realized that my heart did not seem to be beating and that I did not blink or take a breath. As alarming as that sounds, it seemed irrelevant then.
Aenea’s voice whispered from the hearpatch on my folded-back skinsuit cowl … or perhaps it spoke directly through her touch on my neck. I could not tell. We cannot phase-shift with them or use it to fight them, she said. It is an abuse of the energy of the Void Which Binds. But I can help us watch this.
And what we watched was incredible enough.
At Nemes’s command, Scylla and Briareus threw themselves at the Shrike, while the Hyperion demon raised four arms and threw itself in the direction of Nemes—only to be intercepted by the siblings. Even with our altered vision—the ship hanging frozen in midair, our friends on the balcony frozen into unblinking statues, a bird above the cliff face locked in to the thick air like an insect in amber—the sudden movement of the Shrike and the two cloned creatures was almost too fast to follow.
There was a terrible impact justa meter short of Nemes, who had turned into a silver-surfaced effigy of herself, and who did not flinch. Briareus threw a blow that I am convinced would have split our ship in two. It reverberated off the Shrike’s thorned neck with a sound like an underwater earthquake played back in slow motion, and then Scylla kicked the Shrike’s legs out from under it. The Shrike went down, but not before two of its arms seized Scylla and two other razor-fingered claws sank deep into Briareus.
The Nemes siblings seemed to welcome the embrace, throwing themselves onto the tumbling Shrike with clacking teeth and flying nails. I could see that the hurtling edges of their rigid hands and forearms were razor-sharp, guillotine surfaces sharper than the Shrike’s blades and thorns.
The three beat and chewed on each other in a wild frenzy, rolling across the platform, throwing bonsai cedar chips three meters into the air, and slamming against the rock wall. In a second, all three were on their feet, the Shrike’s great jaws clamping on Briareus’s neck even as Scylla slashed at one of the creature’s four arms, bent it backward, and seemed to break it at a joint. Still holding Briareus in its jaws, the huge teeth chewing and scraping at the silver form’s head, the Shrike whirled to confront Scylla, but by then both clone-siblings had their hands on the blades and thorns on the Shrike’s skull, bending it backward until I waited to hear the neck snap and see its head roll away.
Instead, Nemes somehow communicated, Now! Do it! and without an instant’s hesitation, the two siblings threw themselves aw
ay from the cliff face, toward the railing at the abyss-end side of the platform. I saw what they were going to do—throw the Shrike into space, just as they had done to the Dalai Lama’s bodyguard.
Perhaps the Shrike saw this as well, for the tall creature slammed the two chrome bodies against it, its chest spikes and wrist thorns sinking deep into the forcefields around the struggling, clawing siblings. The trio whirled and tumbled and bounced up like some demented, three-part wind-up toy locked into hyperfast berserk mode, until finally the Shrike with its kicking, clawing, visibly impaled forms slammed into the sturdy cedar railing, tore through it as though it were wet cardboard, and went hurtling out over and into the drop, still fighting.
Aenea and I watched as the tall silver form with flashing spikes and the shorter silver forms with flailing limbs fell, fell, grew smaller and smaller, fell into clouds, and were swallowed. I knew that those watching from the ship would have seen nothing except a sudden disappearance of three of the figures on our platform, and then a broken railing and an emptier platform with just Nemes, Aenea, and me remaining. The silver thing that was Rhadamanth Nemes turned its featureless chrome face toward us.
The light changed. The breeze blew again. The air thinned. I felt my heart suddenly beating again … pounding loudly … and I blinked rapidly.
Nemes was in her human form again. “So,” she said to Aenea, “shall we finish this little farce?”
“Yes,” said Aenea.
Nemes smiled and went to phase-shift.
Nothing happened. The creature frowned and seemed to concentrate. Still nothing occurred.
“I can’t stop you from phase-shifting,” said Aenea. “But others can … and have.”
Nemes looked irritated for a second but then laughed. “Those who created me will attend to that in a second, but I do not wish to wait that long, and I do not need to shift up to kill you, bitch child.”
“That’s true,” said Aenea. She had stood her ground through all of this violence and confusion, her legs apart, feet firmly planted, arms easy at her sides.
Nemes showed her small teeth, but I saw that these teeth were elongating, growing sharper, as if being extruded farther from her gums and jawbone. There were at least three rows of them.
Nemes held up her hands and her fingernails—already pale and long—extended another ten centimeters, flowing into gleaming spikes.
Nemes reached down with those sharpened nails and peeled back the skin and flesh of her right forearm, revealing some sort of metallic endoskeleton that was the color of steel but which looked infinitely sharper.
“Now,” said Nemes. She stepped toward Aenea.
I stepped between them.
“No,” I said, and raised my fists like a boxer ready to start.
Nemes showed all of her rows of teeth.
23
ime and motion seem to slow again, as if I can once again see in the phase-shift mode, but this time it is merely the effect of adrenaline and total concentration. My mind shifts into overdrive. My senses become preternaturally alert. I see, feel, and calculate every microsecond with uncanny clarity.
Nemes takes a step … more toward Aenea to my left than toward me.
This is a chess match more than a fight. I win if I kill the unfeeling bitch or fling her off the platform long enough for us to escape. She does not have to kill me to win … only neutralize me long enough to kill Aenea. Aenea is her target. Aenea has always been her target. This monster was created to kill Aenea.
Chess match. Nemes has just sacrificed two of her strongest pieces—her monster siblings—to neutralize our knight, the Shrike. Now all three pieces are off the board. Only Nemes—the dark queen—Aenea, humankind’s queen, and Aenea’s lowly pawn … me.
This pawn may have to sacrifice himself, but not without taking out the dark queen. Of that he is determined.
Nemes is smiling. Her teeth are sharp and redundant. Her arms are still at her sides, long nails gleaming, her right forearm exposed like some obscene surgical exhibit … the interior not human … no, not human at all. The cutting edge of her forearm endoskeleton catches the afternoon sunlight.
“Aenea,” I say softly, “step back, please.” This highest of platforms connects to the stone walkway and staircase we had cut to climb to the overhang walkway. I want my friend off the platform.
“Raul, I …”
“Do it now,” I say, not raising my voice but putting into it every bit of command I have learned and earned in my thirty-two standard years of life.
Aenea takes four steps back onto the stone ledge. The ship continues to hover fifty meters out and above us. There are many faces peering from the balcony. I try to will Sergeant Gregorius to step out and use his assault rifle to blow this Nemes bitch-thing away, but I do not see his dark face among those staring. Perhaps he has been weakened by his wounds. Perhaps he feels that this should be a fair fight.
Fuck that, I think. I do not want a fair fight. I want to kill this Nemes creature any way I can. I would gladly accept any help from anywhere right now. Is the Shrike really dead? Can this be? Martin Silenus’s Cantos seemed to tell of the Shrike being defeated in some far-future battle with Colonel Fedmahn Kassad. But how did Silenus know this? And what does the future mean to a monster capable of traveling through time? If the Shrike was not dead, I would appreciate its return about now.
Nemes takes another step to her right, my left. I step left to block her access to Aenea. Under phase-shift, this thing has superhuman strength and can move so fast as to be literally invisible. She can’t phase-shift now. I hope to God. But she still may be faster and stronger than me … than any human. I have to assume that she is. And she has the teeth, claws, and cutting arm.
“Ready to die, Raul Endymion?” says Nemes, her lips sliding back from those rows of teeth.
Her strengths—probable speed, strength, and inhuman construction. She may be more robot or android than human. It is almost certain that she does not feel pain. She may have other built-in weapons that she has not revealed. I have no idea how to kill or disable her … her skeleton is metal, not bone … the muscles visible in her forearm look real enough, but may be made of plastic fibers or pink steel mesh. It is unlikely that normal fighting techniques will stop her.
Her weaknesses—I do not know. Perhaps overconfidence. Perhaps she has become too used to phase-shifting—to killing her enemies when they cannot fight back. But she had taken on the Shrike and fought it to a draw nine and a half years ago—beaten it, actually, since she had gotten it out of the way to get to Aenea. Only the intervention of Father Captain de Soya’s ship, lancing her with every gigavolt available on the starship, had prevented her from killing all of us.
Nemes raises her arms now and crouches, clawed fingers extended. How far can the thing jump? Can it jump over me to get to Aenea?
My strengths—two years boxing for the regiment during my Home Guard tour—I hated it, lost about a third of my matches. The others in my regiment kept betting on me, though. Pain never stopped me. I certainly felt it, but it never stopped me. Blows to the face made me see red—early on, I would forget all of my training when someone hit me in the face, and when the red mist of fury cleared, if I was still standing, I tended to have won the match. But I know that blind fury will not help me now. If I lose focus for an instant, this thing will kill me.
I was fast when I boxed … but that was more than a decade ago. I was strong … but I have not formally trained or worked out in all the intervening years. I could take hard blows in the ring, which is different than giving in to pain … I’d never been knocked out in the ring, even when a better fighter had sent me down a dozen times before the fight was called.
Besides boxing, I’d been a bouncer at one of the bigger Nine Tails casinos on Felix. But that was mostly psychology, knowing how to avoid fighting while moving the obnoxious drunk out the door. I had made sure that the few actual fights were over in a few seconds.
I had been trained for hand-to
-hand fighting in the Home Guard, taught to kill at close range, but that sort of business was about as rare as a bayonet charge.
While working as a bargeman, I had gotten into my most serious fights—once with a man ready and willing to carve me up with a long knife. I had survived that. But that other bargeman had knocked me out. As a hunting guide, I’d survived an offworlder coming at me with a flechette gun. But I had accidentally killed him, and he had testified against me after he was resurrected. Come to think of it, that’s how all this started.
Of all my weaknesses, this was the most serious—I do not really want to hurt anyone. In all of my fights—with the possible exception of the bargemaster with the knife and the Christian hunter with his flechette gun—I had held something back, not wanting to hit them as hard as I could, not wanting to hurt them too badly.
I have to change that way of thinking immediately. This is no person … this is a killing machine, and if I do not disable or destroy it quickly, it will kill me even more quickly.
Nemes jumps at me, claws raking, her right arm pulling back and then slashing like a scythe.
I jump back, dodge the scythe, almost dodge all the claws, see the shirt on my left upper arm shred, see blood mist the air, and then I step in quickly and hit her—fast—hard—three times to the face.
Nemes jumps back as quickly as she came in. There is blood on the long nails of her left hand. My blood. Her nose has been smashed flat so that it lies sideways on her thin face. I have broken something—bone, cartilage, metal fiber—where her left brow was. There is no blood on her face. She does not seem to notice any of the damage. She is still grinning.
I glance at my left arm. It burns ferociously. Poison? Perhaps—it makes sense—but if she uses poison, I should be dead in seconds. No reason she would use long-acting agents.
Still here. Just burns because of the slashes. Four, I think … deep, but not muscle deep. They don’t matter. Concentrate on her eyes. Guess what she’ll do next.
Never use your bare hands. Home Guard teaching. Always find a weapon for close-in fighting. If one’s personal weapon is destroyed or missing, find something else, improvise—a rock, a heavy branch, a torn piece of metal—even stones wrapped in one’s fist or keys between the fingers are preferable to one’s bare hands. Knuckles break more quickly than jawbones, the drill instructor always reminded us. If you absolutely have to use only hands, use the flat of your hand to chop. Use rigid fingers to impale. Use clawed fingers to go for the eyes and Adam’s apple.