"How the hell did you do that?" said Dominic. "What kind of power have you got?"
"I don't know," said Owen. "I'm still learning. Hopefully, enough to stop Hazel, when I finally catch up to her."
"Can you bring back the city, and the people who died?"
"No. I'm only human."
"Those energy gyves aren't affecting you at all, are they?" said Glory.
"Afraid not," said Owen. "But I'll keep them on at court, if it will make everyone feel more comfortable."
"I should crash the ship into the ground right now," said Glory. "Rather than risk letting you run loose."
"Please don't. It wouldn't affect me at all," Owen said calmly. "Will you relax? I'm not another Mad Mind. I just want to talk to your Emperor. Find out what he knows about Hazel. Why she became… what she was, and why she came here in the first place. I need to know these things, if I'm to stop her. You have no idea what she's going to become, eventually. I'll still play the prisoner at court, for your sakes. I don't want to harm anyone. I just want answers to my questions, and then I'll be on my way."
"Why don't you just dig them out of our minds?" said Dominic. "You could do that, couldn't you?"
"Yes," said Owen. "But I won't. Because that would be inhuman, Defender."
* * *
They landed at Heartworld's main starport, in the capital city Virimonde. Owen was briefly startled. There had never been anything in the history of his world to explain where the planet's name had come from. It was just another sign of how much history had been lost when the First Empire crashed and burned. The starport was just a vast open space, crowded with starships of all shapes and sizes. Big brutal configurations, with little aesthetics and less grace. They were built for efficiency, and nothing else. About what you'd expect of an age that gave its ships numbers instead of names.
Dominic and Glory told a whole bunch of lies to the starport control tower as to why they'd come back to Heartworld so unexpectedly, invoking their authority as Defender and Investigator to get out of the ship and off the starport as fast as possible. Owen got rid of the energy gyves, with his captors' permission, since they'd only attract attention.
A commandeered luggage trolley on antigrav floaters got them to the edge of the starport, and then they set about walking through the city to the Imperial Palace. There wasn't much traffic, on the streets or in the skies. When Owen inquired about this, he was told that most people preferred to use the ubiquitous transfer portals, which could teleport you directly to your destination. When Owen not unreasonably demanded to know why they weren't using them, Glory explained that they were programmed to teleport people, and she was pretty sure Owen didn't qualify. God alone knew how much energy it would take to teleport whatever it was he'd become. So they walked. No one would notice; lots of people liked to walk in the city. For all sorts of reasons.
Owen strode along between Dominic and Glory, and no one paid him any attention at all. After a while, he wasn't surprised. The wide streets were packed with strange and exotic people, many only borderline human as Owen understood the term. Everyone was talking at once, and no one seemed to be listening. The air was full of all kinds of music, blasting from every direction at once, and songs drifted on the air like clouds. The buildings were all bright primary colors, soaring up into the sky. Advertisements flashed on and off, the razor-bright holos jumping out of everywhere and haranguing anyone stupid enough to make eye contact. Half of them offered goods and services Owen didn't even recognize. Everywhere he looked, the people and the ads and the storefronts were overpoweringly loud and in your face. And oh, the bright and glorious people, thronging through the boulevards, out and about to see and be seen, walking proudly like birds of paradise; aristocrats of the greatest Empire Humanity had ever known.
Even if they didn't all look like people. There were those who walked in their bones, wrapped in transparent flesh and skin, with just the faintest traces of blue and scarlet ganglia, for contrast. There were people who flew through the perfumed air on pure white feathery wings. People so wide and heavy that the ground shuddered under their every step, people with any number of limbs, or grafted protuberances that must have been alien in origin. And, of course, the many different sexes. People with genitals like the pulpy petals of some unknown flower, or spiked flails, or fleshy plug sockets. Hermaphrodites, with three or four sets of genitals. Owen didn't know what to do with himself when one of them winked at him.
"Don't stare," Dominic said sternly. "Makes you look like a tourist."
"Couldn't we have flown to the palace?" said Owen, just a little plaintively. "I think I'm going into culture shock."
"No one flies anymore, except for the winged wonders up there," said Glory. "People either walk or use the transfer portals. Flying in a ship is… unusual. It would be noticed. Walking is fine. People walk to boast of their latest forms and adaptations, using their example to try and convert others to their particular cause or fashion."
Owen listened, but kept on looking about him. Even the wildest areas of his Empire had nothing to compare with this. He was beginning to feel like the barbarian Glory had named him, dazzled by his first glimpse of true civilization. Everywhere he looked he saw extreme forms and changes that had only the barest links to the basic human norm. Owen had to wonder how many changes you could make to your body and still be human inside. He remembered the Hadenmen and Wampyr of his own time, and shuddered briefly. The one thing he didn't see on the streets was anyone who looked like him. He felt obscurely lonely, in the middle of this exotic, alien crowd. His gaze fell upon areas marked Enter at Your Own Risk, and drew Glory's attention to them. She sniffed loudly.
"Some forms are so extreme they can be contagious; so powerful they overwhelm lesser minds. They're not forbidden, nothing is, but they're supposed to stick to strictly defined territories. Some always wander, but we shoo them back in as soon as they're noticed. See that street there?"
Owen looked down a side street marked Season of the Witch. Women in braids and beads and very little else were levitating, speaking in tongues, and juggling fire with their bare hands. Glory said something about exploring new spiritual directions, but Owen was pretty sure he was looking at the beginnings of the esper phenomenon.
Other segregated areas included Sexland, where hundreds of far too naked people, of far too many sexes, slammed together in a vast, sprawling orgy that appeared to have no beginning or end. The noise was overpowering. People were coming and leaving all the time, so that while individual elements changed, the orgy continued, perhaps forever.
"It's just another way to lose yourself," said Dominic, apparently unaffected by a sight that made Owen feel distinctly hot and bothered. "Another way to avoid thinking. People have been known to die there. Not the worst of ways to go, I suppose, but…"
Valhalla was a great open square bedecked with all kinds of flags and banners, packed with a seething mass of people all seriously intent on killing each other. Huge muscular types, mostly wearing furs, hacked and cut at each other with heavy axes. Screams and war cries filled the air, the dead piled up, and blood ran thickly in the deep gutters. Owen studied the ceaseless combat for a while, and though he admired the general enthusiasm, he had to dismiss most of the fighters as rank amateurs who wouldn't have lasted five minutes in the Arenas of his time.
"There are always those drawn to the simple, brutal joys of barbarism," said Glory. "Valhalla is open to all comers, so anyone stupid enough, or with enough self-image invested in their battle bodies, can just plunge right in and fight for as long as they like, or as long as they last. Supposedly it's all about survival of the fittest, and evolution in action, but again really it's just another way to avoid thinking about the complications of the modern condition, by acting like animals."
The next closed-off area was the province of the Psychonauts. Men and women sat or lay on comfortable couches, their faces empty, their minds elsewhere. Most of them looked skinny or actually malnourished, and their
clothes were filthy and ragged. Some were laughing, or crying. They reminded Owen of the poor malformed creatures he'd seen in the Madness Maze's annex: men and women driven beyond the limits of human consciousness, lost in the unlit depths of their own souls. He said as much, and Dominic was actually shocked.
"These people are heroes, Owen. They're all volunteers, flying on new drugs to see what they can do, and what can be learned from them. They dive into unknown psychic territories, access altered states of consciousness, thinking outside the limits of the body. Looking for answers that can't be found anywhere else."
"And what answers have they come up with?" said Owen.
Glory scowled. "Nothing of any use. A lot of them don't come back, from wherever they go. There's a hell of a turnover, but there's never an empty couch. They claim to be confronting the mysteries of the human condition, but since they're mostly too busy watching the pretty colors to feed or look after themselves, I'd have to put this down to just more escapism."
"We have to find the answers somewhere," Dominic said stubbornly.
"You find answers by looking outside, not inside," said Glory.
And then all three of them looked round sharply, as loud screams sounded from up ahead. Suddenly people were running past them, in a riot of shapes and colors, scattering like panicked children. They were all running from something, their faces desperate with the simple need to get away, pressing relentlessly on and trampling the fallen underfoot. Dominic and Glory and Owen stood their ground, like three rocks in a roaring flood. Glory Chojiro's hands were immediately full of energy guns from her sub-space pockets. People ran by on every side, and the street up ahead was quickly cleared of everyone but a crowd of assorted people advancing down the street in perfect lock-step. Their feet hit the ground in a single great crash, and their faces were set in a frozen masklike expression. There was something subtly inhuman in the way they all moved and looked, and a cold breeze caressed the back of Owen's neck as his hackles rose. His hand went to his sword belt. He'd just realized that every pair of eyes tracked with every other pair. As though there was only a single thought, a single intent, behind them.
"It's a group mind breakout," said Dominic. He sounded almost sick, disgusted. "This is the closest we have to an obscenity, Owen. The death of individuality in a gestalt of increasing power, where everyone involved surrenders to the mass-mind. No more personality, no more needs or passions, just instinct and appetite and flocking behavior. And the bigger the mass-mind gets, the more powerful it becomes, sucking in weaker minds against their will."
"What causes these group minds?" said Owen, keeping a watchful eye on the group as it advanced towards them.
"No one knows," said Glory. "It appears to be spontaneous, something to do with overcrowding and peer pressure. Maybe it's the ultimate escape from the pressures of being human. All we know is, it's happening more and more often."
"So what do we do?" said Owen. "Knock them all out, and then ship them off to your House of Correction to be fixed?"
"No," said Glory. "There is no cure for what they've become."
Owen suddenly felt the pressure of the mass-mind, reaching out to touch his thoughts. It felt like a psychic hole, into which anything or anyone could fall forever. There was nothing human about it anymore. Owen roused the power within him, but was honestly lost for what to do. Like so many other things in this brave old world, the mass-mind was beyond his understanding.
The sound of approaching running feet brought him back to himself, and a small army of people in brilliant jade armor crashed suddenly out of a side street. They all had energy guns in their hands, and harsh focused expressions. They opened fire on the group mind without any warning, not even bothering to pick targets. Bodies exploded into bloody mists, and scorched body parts flew up into the air. The street was suddenly full of the stench of spilled blood and burnt meat. The mass-mind tried to scatter, like frightened birds, but it couldn't break out of its pattern. The jade-armored newcomers pressed forward, firing their powerful guns again and again without cease or mercy, until all the bodies that made up the group mind were dead, just burnt and bloody pieces in the street.
"They never had a chance," said Owen.
Something in his voice alerted Dominic, who quickly put a restraining hand on Owen's sword hand. "Don't even think of interfering, or expressing an opinion. That's the Emperor's Praetorian Guard. Everything they do is the Emperor's will. And they did the only thing they could. The group mind was a threat that would only have become more powerful. There are times… when an inhuman response is the only answer we have to an inhuman threat."
"Kill the thing, before it spreads," said Glory. "Everyone sucked into the mass-mind was already dead, in every way that matters."
"What about the ones sucked in against their will?" said Owen. "What was their crime?"
"Not being human," said Dominic. "Don't judge us too harshly, Owen. We have tried everything else we could think of, and this is the only action that works."
They walked on, giving the Praetorian Guards plenty of room as they gathered up the scattered remains for easier disposal. Owen wasn't sure how he felt about what he'd just seen. He had to wonder just how hard the powers that be had looked for another answer. The three of them headed deeper into the city, and the chattering crowds quickly returned, as though nothing had happened. Dominic and Glory tried to distract Owen by talking of many things: of memes—thoughts and ideas that spread like a virus, infecting people with the latest fashions and fads until those affected built up an immunity; of ideas running loose from the minds that created them, imposing themselves on weaker minds and warping their bodies into new shapes and capabilities. Politics and religions had become memes, endlessly mutating and multiplying.
And up and down the many streets, news channels and adverts and ideological hard sells assaulted Owen from every side. The loud and garish holos capered around Owen no matter which way he looked, shouting in his ears as he walked through them. They didn't seem to bother Glory and Dominic at all. Presumably they were so used to them they just didn't notice them. Owen gritted his teeth and stared determinedly straight ahead. The streets were full of every kind of new humanity, and no one paid the barbarian from the future any attention at all.
Just when Owen was thinking at least it couldn't get any worse, of course it did. Half a dozen naked men came striding down the street, burning alive. People moved unhurriedly to get out of their way. Flames leapt around the burning men, blasting out a heat so intense that those nearest flinched away from it. But no one seemed to be paying them any particular attention. For although the flames burned very fiercely, they did not consume. The flesh beneath the flames blackened and cracked, but that was all. The burning men walked down the street, looking straight ahead, their black and crimson faces twisted with endless suffering, their cracked lips moving silently.
"Penitents," said Glory, amused by Owen's shocked reaction. "They set themselves on fire, as a protest. They disapprove of how far we've progressed from basic humanity. They're burning alive as a penance for the sins of the age. Show-offs."
"Some burn for days, others last for months," said Dominic. "And there are always more to replace those who fall. I find it reassuring, that there are still people crying out against inhumanity."
"Even if it's a really stupid way?" said Glory. "No one notices. No one cares. They're just another pressure group."
Dominic sighed. "That's the problem with the Empire today; too many beliefs, too many faiths and philosophies. And far too many splintered factions, arguing endlessly over details and interpretations that only matter to them. You can find every kind of cause these days—from pagan animism to scientific determinism, from We Are All Property to making blood sacrifices to computers. Given how varied the human condition has become, it's hard to find anything that everyone can believe in. We all live for the present, for the experience. Heaven can wait. We could have transcended, become something greater, but we dropped the ba
ll. Partly because we were afraid; partly because we couldn't agree on a direction; and just possibly because we saw the future of the human spirit, and knew we weren't worthy."
Owen thought about the Madness Maze, but said nothing. He couldn't talk about the Maze without telling them about Hazel d'Ark.
Finally Owen Deathstalker came to the great and mighty court of Emperor Ethur, the oldest living human in the whole First Empire. Not that anyone could just walk into court and demand an immediate audience with the Emperor, but Dominic Cairo and Glory Chojiro invoked their ancient privilege of Defender and Investigator, and the jade-armored guards waved them on. An Investigator and a Defender of Humanity could always speak to the Emperor, if they claimed a real and present danger to Humanity itself. Owen thought they were pushing that a bit, but said nothing. One of the guards wanted to take his sword away. Owen gave him his best hard look, and the guard decided that he was needed urgently elsewhere. Ethur's Court was a place of freaks and wonders, under a great golden bowl half a mile wide. There were enough courtiers present to make up a decent-sized army, indulging themselves in every extremity of shape, just for the sake of it. From the aesthetic to the grotesque; from the tasteless to the bizarre; from women with bosoms so big they dragged along the floor, to people pierced through every organ, to wispy ghosts who were hardly there at all— every excess was represented somewhere. Braziers pumped perfumes into the air, and sharp atonal music formed a background to the constant babble of voices as everybody talked at once and no one listened. The courtiers played vicious, intricate games and hardly glanced round as Glory and Dominic and Owen passed by, heading for the Steel Throne. They were too normal, too ordinary. Too boring to be of interest. A few followed Owen with their eyes, sensing something different about him; something… disturbing. He smiled at them, and they flinched back.