Messiah

  Adam’s swirling hive was surrounded by Toni’s skyscraper-tall fingers. The light struck out at them, extending itself to attack one of the black pillars, and four more of Toni’s fingers shot up, impaling the probe, so its light turned gray and it lost its form, its outline disintegrating into the smoke and ash billowing up from the city below.

  “I got your attention, fucker!”

  But even as she defeated the single probe, the glowing mass sent out, at once, hundreds more. Even with a mind unrestricted by the limits of a fleshy brain, she was still only one mind versus thousands. She could not meet every threat everywhere.

  Around the center of Proudhon, the grappling forces moved fast enough to be a blur. First black, then gray, then pulsing white as Toni’s presence was painfully disassembled by the more powerful and numerous disciples of Adam.

  On top of the concourse, beneath the shield, Toni’s body dripped sweat and hyperventilated. She nearly collapsed to her knees, stopped only when her other self, her still human self, grabbed her shoulders and said, “Are you all right?”

  Around them, the defensive shield flickered as Toni’s mental energies began to fade in the face of the onslaught. Even so, she still managed a grim smile.

  “Suckers,” she whispered as her frontal attack on Adam disintegrated.

  She refocused all her attention on the shield as she withdrew her extended body away from thirty deeply buried power cores underneath central Proudhon. While she spent her energy attacking Adam’s manifestation, part of her probing self had consumed and replaced the shielding bottling up the antimatter generators that had powered most of the city for a century. The devices were heavily shielded and protected by permanent superconducting magnets that held their volatile power source safe.

  But meter by meter, Toni’s self quickly withdrew, opening wide holes in the fifty layers of shielding between the surface and the naked cores, a kilometer down below the site of the PSDC’s now-absent central towers. For a fraction of a second, there were thirty wormlike tunnels extending from Adam’s light-filled body down to the superconducting heart containing the antimatter cores of the power plants.

  Then the superconductors disintegrated at Toni’s touch, and the magnetic bottle—intended to be stable for centuries—failed.

  Beneath Adam, thirty power plants became thirty directed antimatter charges as their hearts became pure radiation streaming up through the holes drilled in their shielding. Toni’s black skyscraper-fingers were replaced by thirty fingers of sterilizing white light so bright that atoms within the atmosphere fused at their touch, releasing a secondary nuclear blast that leveled much of the still burning city.

  The blast washed against the shield, and Toni II looked up from her collapsing twin to the fading pillar of light that now consumed the center of Proudhon.

  The light gave way to fire and smoke, and Adam no longer writhed within. The shield around them faded, letting in the smell of the burning city. “I don’t believe it,” she whispered to the now-unconscious Toni. “You beat him.”

  Toni II looked up, eyes watering, as the wind tore at the smoking haze. Something glowed to the East.

  She stared it as it took on a vaguely humanoid form, standing at the eastern edge of Proudhon. The ground resonated with the volume of its voice.

  “You shall not defy your coming salvation. It is time for all to choose.”

  Toni II stared at the smoke-wrapped apparition and whispered, “Oh, hell, no.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Salvation

  “In the end, you are the only answer to the question: What to do?”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions.”

  —ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

  (1225-1274)

  Date: 2526.8.13 (Standard) Khamsin—Epsilon Eridani

  In a darkened chamber on the night side of the planet once known as Khamsin, a being that was once known as Mr. Antonio contemplated its role in the universe. It still wore the outward skin of a human being, the dark pigment of African ancestry, the athletic musculature of someone with a martial past, and the biological markers of a woman approaching middle age.

  It all was a fraud, of course. The body of Ms. Columbia was a convenient mask stolen from someone long dead, just like its other masks; Mr. Antonio who had worked to lay Adam’s groundwork on Bakunin; Yousef Al-Hamadi, the Caliphate intelligence chief who had maneuvered the Caliphate into Adam’s hands and turned the Caliphate into a tool to spread Adam’s promise to the worlds of men; and dozens of others whose skin it had taken on since Adam had raised it out of the dust of the Race homeworld.

  It had so long played at being something other than what it was, that it had come to realize it had no identity of its own. Nothing it thought or felt came from itself. It had formed what it was with discarded scraps of the personas it had absorbed.

  That, and its service to Adam, was all that it had.

  Now that Adam had conquered, it existed in Adam’s promised paradise, a world that had transcended flesh, transcended death. Now that its mission had been completed, it faced its eternal reward and realized there was nothing within itself to receive.

  The thing within the skin of the long-dead Ms. Columbia sat in the center of the city that had once been named Al Meftah, and couldn’t find joy, or even a sense of satisfaction within itself. It wondered how many of the billion souls left on this planet felt the same emptiness it did. How many felt guilt that they survived while two thirds of their neighbors had refused Adam’s divinity and faced oblivion?

  It couldn’t even answer if it was guilty itself.

  “I served Adam,” it spoke in Ms. Columbia’s voice. “I brought His light to this world.”

  The words carried little conviction, and he could not even go to his God for comfort. There was only one sin in Adam’s theology, and that was any doubt of Him.

  It considered the option anyway. If Adam erased its existence, then at least it would no longer face the emptiness its doubt left within itself.

  Something moved within the chamber, and Ms. Columbia’s head turned to look in that direction. The room was plain and ovoid in shape. It was not constructed with a human morphology in mind. It was patterned after the warrens of the long-dead Race; the species that created the AIs that had evolved into Adam. Khamsin may have been a human world once, but it pleased Adam that their buildings echoed His creators, and Adam’s will was not to be questioned.

  As it watched the curving wall, it seemed to ripple, bubbling almost as if it was molten. In the senses it had beyond Ms. Columbia’s, it tried to feel the movement of the ubiquitous presence of Adam’s nanomachines, the blanket of Himself that wrapped everything He made or touched.

  It felt nothing, and that frightened it.

  Mass began heaping up upon itself, pouring from the walls. The matter that pooled in front of it was organic, biological in origin. If anything, it seemed as if the bacteria in the walls, and even the air, had started coalescing and reproducing, evolving itself in front of Ms. Columbia’s eyes.

  The mound of flesh before it formed muscles, and skin, and fur.

  It stood, towering over Ms. Columbia’s body. The atavistic form, all striped fur, muscles, claws, and teeth. The tiger’s eyes flashed a reflected green at it.

  “How are you here?” it asked the tiger.

  “For the moment, I am everywhere, Mr. Antonio.”

  When the tiger addressed it by that name, the being had to look down at Ms. Columbia’s skin to confirm it had not somehow slipped into its prior identity, Mr. Antonio.

  The tiger squatted on its digitigrade legs to look into Ms. Columbia’s face. “I know you, whatever shell you’re wearing now. You sold me into service of the thing that calls itself Adam.”

  “I served Him.”

  “You served evil,” the tiger told it.

  “No, He offers salvation to all life.”

  ??
?And destroys all that do not accept it. Adam is the negation of moral choice.”

  “What are you?”

  “The choice He did not give me.” The tiger extended his hand. “Do you follow Adam’s path, or your own?”

  “I don’t have a path,” it told the tiger. “There is nothing within me but what Adam gave me.”

  “You own yourself,” the tiger told him. “But only if you choose to accept it.”

  It stared at the tiger, and after a long moment’s consideration, Ms. Columbia took Nickolai’s hand.

  Date: 2526.8.13 (Standard) Bakunin-BD+50°1725

  “It is time for all to choose.”

  Toni II tried to drag Toni’s limp body away from the apparition, even if it made no sense. Adam’s effigy stood kilometers away from them, and stood as tall as Proudhon’s now-missing skyscrapers. The few meters’ movement toward the doors back down into the concourse were not going to make a difference.

  She screamed at Toni, “Wake up. Wake up!”

  Tears burned her eyes, and her pulse raced. Toni’s body was much heavier than she thought it should be. She was a Protean, damn it, she had just single-handedly laid apocalyptic waste to Adam. She could do it again, if she would just wake up.

  Over and over, in Toni II’s mind, she heard her own voice, “Don’t ask me if I can win.”

  “Damn it, damn it . . .”

  The smoke swirled above the city, twisting into a fiery pillar before the image of Adam. The effigy raised its arms as if it was calling up the fiery tornado from the burning firestorm below.

  “Worship He who shall deliver you from the tyranny of the flesh.”

  The wind gusted around her, and she fell to the ground under Toni’s body. The wind fed the swirling pillar of smoke before Adam, and all around the flames in the city flared.

  And went out.

  Even as the wind intensified, the firestorm gripping Proudhon died. Even the orange pillar in front of Adam burned out and the twisting column became nothing but smoke. The column became larger and thicker, as every wisp of airborne particulate matter seemed drawn to it. Even the body of the mushroom cloud above the city fed the vast swirling cloud.

  Toni II thought it was a manifestation of Adam’s will, until the towering effigy dropped its arms and took a step back.

  “Who defies me?”

  The answer seemed to come from everywhere. “YOU ARE NOT GOD.”

  The words shook the ground and vibrated the air so intensely that Toni II’s bones ached. In her arms, Toni groaned.

  “Wake up,” Toni II whispered, her voice lost in the tearing sound of the wind.

  Adam’s voice repeated, “Who defies me?” Somehow, by comparison, Adam sounded weaker.

  The other voice slammed down like an asteroid from heaven. “I DEFY YOU.” The pillar of smoke had consumed the mushroom cloud, and swirled thousands of kilometers into the stratosphere above Proudhon, dwarfing Adam’s glowing effigy. The base of it split apart, the swirling dust and smoke forming three separate columns, which further refined their shape into two legs, and a tail.

  Toni II’s eyes widened in shock as she realized, I know that voice.

  Toni groaned again, and over the roaring wind, Toni II could only understand one word slipping from her other self’s lips.

  “Nickolai?”

  Adam’s effigy screamed at the heavens, “Who defies God?”

  The top of the pillar of smoke split apart into arms and a head. The right arm carried a flaming sword five hundred meters long. Nickolai’s scowling face looked down at the mewling form of Adam below and said, “YOU DO,” as the sword came down.

  Kugara blinked herself awake.

  Must have passed out there.

  She licked her lips and wondered how long she had blacked out. Her genetically engineered metabolism seemed to be working overtime to keep her from dying from shock. That meant dehydration would probably be what finished her off.

  “I’m sorry,” came a familiar voice from next to her.

  She turned her head to see Nickolai. “Oh, so now I’m hallucinating.” Strangely enough, though, the hallucinatory Nickolai had normal eyes, not the black holes the Protean had bequeathed him. These eyes were a deep green, that were richer and more expressive than even the artificial eyes he’d had when she had met him.

  She smiled because she liked these eyes better.

  “You aren’t hallucinating.”

  “Of course, a hallucination would say that.”

  He bent and grabbed her shoulder, and it certainly didn’t feel like a hallucination. She trembled at his touch, especially as he pulled her away from the rock pinning her down.

  She gasped one word, “Wait!” as she felt her thigh tug free of the multi-ton rock. She squeezed her eyes shut, picturing fountains of arterial blood spraying the face of the rock as she bled out from a ragged stump.

  “You’re unhurt,” Nickolai said, gently squeezing her shoulder.

  “What?” She opened her eyes and looked down. Her leg was naked from the thigh down, but uninjured. She could even wriggle her toes. She looked over at Nickolai and said, “Tell me I am not hallucinating.”

  “I made it in,” he said. “I met the Dolbrians.”

  She sat up and grabbed his shoulders. “You’re kidding. This wild goose chase paid off? What the hell are you doing worrying about me? What about Adam? Can we—”

  Nickolai placed the pad of a finger against Kugara’s lips.

  “You don’t need to worry about Adam anymore.”

  The way he said it, a flat statement of fact, chilled her. She stared into his new eyes and, when he took his finger away, she asked, “Why were you apologizing, then?”

  “Because I didn’t take you with me.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve gone somewhere . . . I don’t think I can come back.”

  She placed a hand on his chest and shook her head. “You’re here now. What do you mean?”

  “The Dolbrians aren’t dead,” Nickolai said. “They aren’t even sleeping. They’re waiting for us.”

  “Us?”

  “Any individual that can accept what the responsibility means. Who can accept the sovereignty of others.” He looked down, away from her. “Me,” he said.

  “You?”

  “I’ve returned for Adam. But I can’t stay.”

  Kugara felt tears forming and she shook her head. “Why?”

  “What is the sense of removing Adam, only to replace him?”

  She embraced him and buried her face in the fur of his chest. “Damn it, I don’t forgive you. We were supposed to face this crap together. You can’t leave.”

  “I have to.”

  She shook her head.

  “Kugara,” he whispered.

  “What?” She sobbed into his chest.

  “I’ve opened up a tunnel to the surface. Dörner and Brody are already walking up that way. They’ll meet up with Flynn and Parvi and the others soon enough.” He pointed toward a crack in the massive fragment of the Milky Way that still pressed its glowing faux stars down on them. She blinked, and it seemed to go on forever. She had an escape route. “The war?”

  “Adam is gone. But Bakunin is still Bakunin.”

  She laughed. If Adam was gone, a civil war seemed almost pleasant. He let her go, and she grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave.”

  He gently removed her hand. “I’m sorry. You are the only thing I regret leaving.”

  “But—”

  “Please, Kugara, if you care for us, just remember what’s right, what’s wrong . . . and ask the right questions.” He slipped out another crack in the fallen rock, directly opposite the path to the surface.

  She looked at the path toward Dörner, and Brody, and everything else she knew. Then she looked off where Nickolai had disappeared.

  What are you apologizing for?

  Because I didn’t take you with me.

  What was there here that she would regret leaving?

  She pushed h
erself up and followed Nickolai, wondering what he meant about asking the right questions.

  LAST EPILOGUE

  Apotheosis

  “The human heart refuses to believe in a universe without a purpose.”

  —IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804)

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Eternity

  “Things continue.”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.”

  —CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

  (1451-1506)

  Date: 2526.8.15 (Standard) Bakunin-BD+50°1725

  Flynn Jorgenson emerged from underneath the Diderot Mountains holding Rebecca Tsoravitch’s hand. He wasn’t sure what Rebecca meant to him, but he knew what she meant to Tetsami—at least what one of the personalities within her meant to Tetsami. He held on to her as if the woman was his lover, and the way she pulled herself up and placed a hand on his shoulder for support, she was behaving likewise.

  Behind them, the others crawled out of the Protean-reconstructed tunnel to stand on the frigid platform where Bleek Munitions’ outpost once stood. Shane and Parvi, Brody and Dörner, a very disheveled-looking General Lubikov, and a random assortment of PDC mercenaries and nonhuman monks that they had accumulated in the ascent out of the ruined Dolbrian caverns.

  “Godwin looks like hell,” Parvi said in a puff of fog. Somehow she had survived, even when refusing Protean ministrations. Apparently, unlike Flynn, the tunnel hadn’t collapsed on her.

  The city below did look like hell. There were large sections leveled, and scars from fires that had consumed several city blocks. But even so, there was no sign of the devastation Flynn had only glimpsed on Salmagundi, or in the holo from Khamsin.