“What are you talking about?” demanded Si Cwan.
“This …” Olivan said, his voice getting weaker, “is … not real. Not … my son. My … my technology … created … it …”
“It?” Nik wasn’t faking. He clearly had no idea at all what Olivan was talking about.
“This … is no son of mine … it is … a clone … of me …”
I felt a distant buzzing in my head, as if my brain was going to start leaking out of my ears. Nik stared at his father—or sire, or whatever—and tried to speak, but his voice choked. Si Cwan was standing a few feet away, still dangerous, but for all the threat Nik posed right then, Cwan might as well have been a million miles away. “What?” he finally managed to whisper … which, given the circumstances, is probably all I would have managed to say.
“You heard me … clone … programmed … hardwired into your brain … to obey me … so you could …” He coughed up a larger glob of blood. It was pretty disgusting, really. Part of me just wanted to scream, My God, die already!“… so you could … be me … so I would … live on … you have … no free will … no nothing …”
“I do!” shouted Nik defensively. “I … I can think on my own … I can …!”
“Good … here’s … here’s your … chance … look … here … here comes … the water … at least I die … knowing that you … you …”
His voice trailed off, his eyes widening. At first I thought, in the insanity of the moment, that he was seeing some sort of great, final destiny approaching him at a rapid pace. But then I realized what he was looking at.
It was the water.
It was subsiding. The wave generators were working to pull the water in reverse. Not only that, but I could already hear great drains opening up, siphoning off the water that had threatened to overwhelm the entire facility.
“They did it,” I whispered, and then, louder, I practically shouted, “They did it!”
Olivan saw it happening, saw it all.
“I … hate … Scotsmen …”
And with those parting words, Olivan let out a raspy sigh that I had heard all too frequently in my life—a death rattle.
I’ve wondered about him any number of times since then. What it was he saw in Si Cwan that he hated so much. What he saw in Jereme, their mutual teacher. I think that maybe, sometimes, there are people in this world who are just so consumed with fury that if there’s anyone out there better than they are, that they just get dragged down by it. There’s two different kinds of people in the galaxy: those who see people who are better than they are and are inspired to aspire … and those who see people who are better, and only want to tear down the other people in order to make themselves feel better. I think Olivan was one of those.
Either that, or he was just a creep.
I’m not talking about Nik.
I guess that’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?
Nik stood there, just kind of shaking his head. “He’s lying,” he whispered. “This … this is all crazy …”
And suddenly he became aware of Si Cwan advancing on him. So did I. Si Cwan stepped over to his father, yanked the sword out of his chest without giving the body a second look, and turned toward Nik.
Nik started to back away. He stepped to the side of the landed shuttle, moving back farther, even farther, shaking his head.
“Fight me,” grated Si Cwan.
“No, I … I have to sort this out,” said Nik.
“You are a murderer. There’s nothing to sort out. You killed Jereme, and the manager of this place, and who knows who else, and you will die for it, here and now.”
“Si Cwan, no!” I shouted. “You can’t!”
He seemed surprised that I would say that, and I realized he was taking it as a question of his ability rather than a moral dilemma. “Yes, I can,” he said reasonably.
“He’s not fighting back! He’s confused, he’s—”
“We’re not confused,” Kalinda said. “We know what has to be done. It is our right, as the aggrieved parties … as Thallonian nobles …”
“There’s no Thallonian Empire anymore, and your whole order of nobility is gone! You have no authority!” I practically shouted.
“I have a sword. That’s all the authority I need.”
Things were spinning out of control. Nik looked like a lost child. It was hard to believe that, earlier, he had been a ruthless killer; now he seemed completely adrift. His willpower seemed to have died with Olivan. He kept backing away from Si Cwan, farther and farther, his eyes wide, his hands up defensively.
I ran toward Si Cwan and grabbed his free arm. He could have shoved me away, but I could see he had no desire to treat me so roughly. “Robin … this is not your affair.”
“The hell it’s not! He dragged me around like a sack of wheat! But he also saved my life! You bet it’s my damned affair! Back off, Si Cwan!”
“No.”
I had never heard him like that, the one word just … just thudding down on me like an anvil. He was so … so alien. So distant from me, in so many ways. It was like … like I didn’t matter to him. Like nothing mattered to him except killing. I felt as if I didn’t know him at all. Like this Si Cwan was a stranger to me.
I pulled on his arm again. “I mean it, Si Cwan!”
There was something in his eyes, then, that was so cold. This teacher, this Jereme, must have meant the world to him, to have unleashed something so terrible, so implacable in him. It was like his eyes were dead. Like shark’s eyes.
And that was when we heard a scream.
We turned, and Nik wasn’t standing there anymore. Instead, where he had been, there was a hole. When he’d stepped back, the ground had opened up beneath him. And I instantly realized what had happened. He had fallen into one of the subterranean areas similar to what I had tumbled into days ago.
His initial scream had been in startlement from the plunge. But then … my God … the real screaming started. From below, in the darkness, and I realized what was happening. That … that thing, that gelatinous mass of whatever the hell it was, was pouring over him, consuming him, devouring him.
“Si Cwan! We have to help him!” I cried out.
“What’s happening?” He genuinely didn’t know, although he could certainly tell from the howling beneath that it wasn’t anything good.
“There’s a thing down there! It’s carnivorous! It’s killing him!” And now I could hear other things, aside from his shouts … a sick sound, like … like slurping, like strips of meat being pulled off bone. “Hurry, hurry, oh, my God, hurry!”
He just looked at me blandly. “Why?”
“Why? Why?” I thought I was losing my mind. “Get a rope! From that craft! There must be something! There must …” And then I charged for the hole. “Lower me down, I’ll reach him, we’ll form a chain, I’ll—”
Si Cwan reached out, wrapped his arm around my waist, and for what was certainly not the first time that day, I was hoisted off my feet. Si Cwan’s expression never changed. He just carted me away as I struggled, try as I might to resist. I pounded at his chest. I doubt he felt it. I was beginning to wonder if he could feel anything. Kalinda’s expression was less cold-blooded. There was a trace, just a trace, of compassion on her face. But she did nothing to come to Nik’s aid, nothing at all.
And I protested and shouted, and demanded to know how he could be doing such a thing, and eventually I noticed that Nik’s cries had stopped. There was nothing now except a faint slurping from whatever-the-hell that was that lay beneath.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I kept saying, “I … I can’t believe it …”
“He killed my teacher,” Si Cwan said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world. “The only thing I regret is that I did not take his life with my own hand.”
“But what if he truly didn’t have free will! What if … what if—”
He seemed about a hundred feet tall as he looked down at me. “I do not deal in ‘what if.’ I deal
in ‘what is.’ ”
He gave a disdainful glance at Olivan’s shuttle, which he had used as a Trojan horse to get the drop on his opponent, and started down the hill. Kalinda lagged behind and, to my surprise, she took my hand and looked at me with what appeared to be understanding.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice.
But I don’t entirely think that she was. And I know that Si Cwan wasn’t.
And the thing I keep coming back to is that, in many ways, Nik—whatever he was—came across, in the end, as only a child, swept up in events that were more terrifying than he could possibly comprehend. There is nothing so sad in this universe as a lost child, I think.
MOKE
EVERYTHING HAD SEEMED TO HAPPEN in slow motion. One moment, his mother was running toward him, but so slowly, as if the ground was moving under her feet, forcing her to keep her distance. And then there was a roar, an explosion from just behind his ear, and suddenly his mother was sailing through the air, like a bird, or an angel. And then she was on the ground, with a hideous black scorch mark across her chest, and an expression on her face that would have been comical if it hadn’t been so horrific.
He cried out to her over and over again, and the man who was holding him was laughing. Laughing at her. Laughing at him.
And then the laughter began to diminish, drowned out as it was by a steadily increasing pounding. The pounding got louder and louder, and it was the rumbling of thunder. And there was a flashing of light behind his eyes. His mother had always taught him to count between the blaze of lightning and the crack of thunder, and in that difference lay the distance between the two. But the thunder in his head and the explosion of lightning in his eyes was simultaneous, and the storm was right there in his head.
He tore his gaze away from his mother and looked up at the man who was holding him. The man, Temo, was laughing contemptuously, and then he looked at the boy, and was so startled that he lost his grip on him. At that moment, Moke could have torn away from him, could have run. But he did not. Instead he turned and faced him, and whatever the man was seeing in his eyes, it was so frightening that the man fell to the ground as if the strength had gone completely out of his legs, the gun in his hand forgotten.
I must be terrible indeed, thought Moke, as if his mind was outside his body, and then he added with satisfaction, Good. That’sgood.
The people of the town were starting to emerge. They thought that the danger was over. Idiots. Idiots. All of them. There was that old woman, the Maestress, who was always saying bad things about his mother, and there was the Praestor, and the writing man, and the one who took care of people when they died, and all the others, one by one coming out to see what had happened. Or else to see for themselves that his mother was really, truly going … going away …
Dying … you can say it … your mother is dying …
He could not see his own eyes, of course, but if he had, he would have seen the blackness that was seething within. Blackness that was matched by the skies above. The people of the town were pointing, murmuring in confusion and fear. Good. Let them be afraid. Let them know. Let them know what was going to happen, because it was all their fault, all their fault …
His terrified child-mind cried out, Maaa … I want to come with you.
And with perfect clarity, he was certain he heard his mother’s voice in his head, with the reply, No, my love … you have to stayhere …
Stay here? With them?
Them … and this man … Temo … and the other man, Tapinza. His ma had said that he was responsible for all this, too. They were to blame, everyone in the town was to blame …
Except Mac. He wouldn’t be punished. He had tried to help. He had even saved his mother once. He was not Moke’s father, but that was okay, he was close, and he deserved not to be punished …
… but the others were going to be.
Until that moment, Moke had had no concept of death. He had just somehow assumed, deep down, as was typical for children, that his mother was always going to be there. But he was not stupid. He saw it in her eyes, in the trembling of her body, in the hole in the upper portion of her ruined body … she was going to be leaving him. He imagined that such a journey, such a happenstance, was a lonely and frightening thing. If that was the case … then he was going to make certain that his mother did not make that journey alone.
If she was going away … she was going to have company.
Lots of company.
The thunderheads rolled in with staggering ferocity. The roiling of the sky matched the fearsome blackness in Moke’s eyes, and the wind began to howl with a noise that sounded eerily like it was issuing from a living throat.
He saw the stunned looks on the faces of Tapinza and the townspeople. They were looking at the unmoving body of his mother, stupidly trying to figure out how in the world she was doing all this. One final gesture of contempt for the woman they had tormented for so many years. But, obviously, they didn’t realize, hadn’t realized, ever …
But Moke had known. In his subconscious mind, in his inner resources … he had known. Known that whatever power his mother might or might not have had … it paled in comparison to his own. But he had never been willing or desirous of utilizing it because, on some level, he needed to feel that his mother was the powerful one. That she was in charge. That was simply the way of the world, the way things were supposed to be, and Moke didn’t want to think that he was more formidable than his mom.
Except that he was.
He was not operating on conscious thought. It was purely the unfettered agony of a child who had inhabited the local weather patterns and unleashed a storm front of epic proportions. There was a chance that, if left untampered with, the weather might have brought a storm into the region on its own. But Moke was not about to leave matters to chance—oh, no. Because his mother was going away, and he couldn’t go with her, and he was going to make sure that when she went wherever she did, all the people who had been cruel to her and hurt her were going to be right there alongside her. And they would have to explain to Kolk’r why they had done the things they had done, and he hoped that Kolk’r would send them to a bad place for a very, very long time, maybe forever. But the first order of business was making sure they were there to be sent, and that, at least, was something Moke could attend to.
Seconds earlier the skies had been clear, although thick clouds had been on the horizon. Now there was such blackness that it was hard to believe there had ever once been a sun beaming down upon the world, or that the sun would ever come again. The townspeople sensed great disaster at hand, sensed that this storm was unlike any they had ever known. Here there would be no dancing in the streets, no laughter, no heads tilted back in supplication and thanks as big, warm rain droplets cascaded from on high, bringing life and joy to a grateful populace. No, this was a pure elemental display of a child mad with grief. The people did not yet fully understand what was happening, and as was so often the case, that which they did not understand, they feared. However, as it so happened, this was one of those instances where the fear was well placed.
Moke looked upward, his arms outstretched, as if welcoming the gathering storm. Day had been transformed into night, and on a world that had known only heat for the most part, there was a frightening chill in the air. The townspeople tried to run, but now the winds had come. It battered them, keeping them from getting indoors, battering at them like so many invisible rams. They cried out, they screamed, they protested, but all such noises were carried away by the winds, drowned out by howls like a million damned souls that would soon be adding still more to their number.
Temo, released from the nearly hypnotic spell of those darksome eyes, shook himself out of his momentary stupor. He looked down, saw the gun that had slipped from his nerveless fingers, and—grabbing it up—aimed it squarely at Moke. But Moke’s attention whipped around, centering completely on Temo. Moke was the eye of the storm, the center of concentrated calm in the midst of a whirl
ing mass of destructive force. But Temo was just on the outside of the eye, part of the chaos, and very vulnerable.
Temo was fast, but he was not faster than light. A crack rent the air, as if splitting it in two, and a lightning bolt lanced down from a cloud black as pitch. It slammed through Temo, and for a moment it actually looked as if it had impaled him. The force of the electricity lifted Temo off the ground, tossing him through the air in much the same way as his plaser blast had sent Rheela tumbling down the first steps into oblivion. For one horrific moment, he actually danced in midair, convulsed by the force of the electricity that fried every molecule in his body. Finally it released him, allowing him to crash to the ground and lie there twitching for some minutes thereafter, even though his blackened and smoking body was already lifeless.
The people had seen what had happened, and realized that they were next. They redoubled their efforts, trying to run. Had they thought to converge on Moke simultaneously, they might actually have succeeded in stopping him. He was, after all, still a child, heir to the frailties of the average living creature. But they were too caught up in their screeching panic to want anything other than to run for their lives. Instead, the wind scattered them like tenpins.
Praestor Milo staggered to his feet, trying to find some order in the chaos, and then something hit him from on high. It struck just above his forehead, knocking him to the ground and leaving a large welt of swelling blood. He looked down in confusion at the thing that had just flattened him. He had never, in his life, seen a hailstone. Nor had anyone else in the town. But they were about to see more than enough for a lifetime, as more began to fall.
The stones pounded down upon the helpless citizens, and they tried to run, but could not—there was nowhere to go. The hailstones crashed through the roofs of their dwellings, smashing through them like falling anvils, blasting apart windows. People were struck, bruised, battered.