Читать книгу Banner of Souls - Liz Williams - Страница 19

CHAPTER 6

MARS

Yskatarina stood upon legs of iron and glass, artificial feet planted firmly on the old stone floor. Her hands rested on each side of a window, from which she gazed out across the Crater Plain. Used as she was to the dim vaults of Nightshade, the brightness of Mars hurt her eyes. She reached up and touched the setting of her eyeshade, turning it to maximum. The light made her feel bleached and weak; for a moment, she hated the need that had brought her to Mars. Then guilt kicked in once more. Elaki had required it, and Elaki must be obeyed. Conflict whispered inside her head, tearing at her. But now that she was so far away from Elaki, it seemed both easier and more difficult to think. Resentment was growing alongside the love.

The Animus had been left outside the Tower, at the Matriarch’s insistence.

“It is a male,” the Matriarch had said with palpable disgust. “We cannot allow it inside.”

Yskatarina had acquiesced with a semblance of grace, but she did not like it. It was as though her shadow had been torn from her, leaving her exposed in the light. She longed to return to the ship, but first there was business to be done.

From here, at the height of the Memnos Tower, one could see as far as the great conical summit of Olympus. The plain shimmered in the afternoon light, giving the impression of desert heat, but Yskatarina knew this to be deceptive. It was winter now in this northern region of Mars, with frost in the mornings in the shadow of the rocks and a bite to the air. She did not know what caused the shimmer, but she suspected some manner of force-defense. The Tower had been well guarded from ancient times. If she looked down, she could see the glazed crimson bricks of the wall, bare of lichen and moss.

Beside her, the Matriarch, dressed in red-and-black, exuded a satisfaction as chilly as the day. Yskatarina glanced aside at the Matriarch’s moon-face: the tight, pursed lips, the pale eyes embedded in bags of flesh, the moles that scattered the skin like ticks. She set her gaze once more upon the Crater Plain.

“You see?” the Matriarch said. “This is the first and last of the old fortresses, save only for the ruin in Winterstrike. Our ancestors built it in the days of the Age of Children, to guard against their enemies.” She reached up to touch the phial around her neck, an intricate silver cage, then let her hand fall.

“What kind of enemies were those?” Yskatarina asked, with seeming idleness.

“The forebears of the hyenae and vulpen.” The Matriarch’s mouth grew yet smaller and Yskatarina knew that she was thinking of the Animus. “Males, in the days when such creatures were commonplace. Ram-women. Syrinxes. The beings that later became what we call the Atrophied, like the Earthbones.”

“I know nothing of these beings,” Yskatarina said, tapping impatient fingers against the hard carapace of her bodice. “What are Earthbones?”

“A flesh-in-rock. Mounds of moving flesh, merged with the planet.”

Yskatarina frowned. “With Mars itself? How is that possible?” She wondered about Memnos mysticism. She did not know a great deal about their beliefs, only that they differed so crucially from Nightshade in their disdain for the male form. Nightshade had little use for superstition, and even less for warrior sects. Those days, according to Yskatarina’s mind, should be long gone. But if Mars’ rulers chose to play at being primitives, it was not for her to condemn them. All it meant was that they should prove easier to manipulate. She schooled her face into a becoming display of interest and turned to face the Matriarch, sending the pleats of her leather kilt swishing against the surface of her legs.

“Terraforming nanotech, mingling with genetic codes. What was once human became inextricably welded to the world. There was a fashion for it, once. Fanatics, psycho-ecologists—who knows? It was very long ago. But surely Nightshade knows more of these things than we do. That is, after all, why you are here.”

“I came to honor an old bargain. And to call in an old debt,” Yskatarina said.

“Haunt-tech.” The Matriarch spoke with a sour twist of the lip.

“Quite so. You have had it now for a hundred years, it and its many ramifications—black light, deeplight, the intricacies of shadow-space and entry to the spirit worlds of the Eldritch Realm. We note that you have made good use of it. Armor, weaponry, surveillance systems, ships. Above all, the advantages of the Chain.”

“It has proved versatile,” the Matriarch acknowledged.

“And now you need further expertise,” Yskatarina prompted. “You do not have more than a basic understanding of it. You cannot develop it further, without the assistance of Nightshade.”

“Do not tell her that we ourselves are learning more about haunt-tech and what it can do,” Elaki had said. “Or that our knowledge has made great strides of late. Pretend to her that we have always possessed such information.”

Yskatarina had stared at her aunt. “Is that not true, then?”

“Haunt-tech is inordinately complex. If we knew a hundred years ago what we know now, then matters would have been a great deal simpler.”

Yskatarina frowned. “How so?”

But Elaki had only smiled a cold smile, and said nothing more.

The Matriarch’s face grew yet more sour. “That would seem to be so.”

Yskatarina smiled. “You received the demonstration versions? You have had time to see what they can do?”

Far out on the Crater Plain, she could see something moving. Reluctantly, she turned the eyeshade down a notch to let in more light, and raised the binocular setting. Something was passing swiftly amid a cloud of dust.

“What might that be, for instance?” Yskatarina feigned charmed surprise.

“You know very well,” the Matriarch muttered.

“Why, it is a ghost herd. Of—what?” Long disjointed legs, scarlet from the knee down, as if dipped in blood . . . Yskatarina was briefly covetous. “Some manner of mutated women?”

“Those are creatures known as gaezelles.”

“From the far past?”

“From the Age of Children.”

“They are quite beautiful,” Yskatarina murmured.

“And almost entirely useless. As are the other haunts and shades that your technology has recently conjured up out of the planet’s nanomemories and thin air. Sylph-beasts roam the slopes of Olympus. Demotheas have been seen in the woods of Elyssiane. Mars has become alive with spirits of old creations—whimsical nightmares, evolutionary dead ends. This has never happened before.”

“I used the words demonstration model. You surely were not so naive as to think we would give you something of power, straightaway?”

“Your aunt promised to help Memnos with the governing of Earth,” the Matriarch said. “I see no signs that this help, this power, will be forthcoming, and we need it. There are many elements on Earth that seek to break free of Martian control. What remains of the Northern Hemisphere is full of war-madams, carving out independent fiefdoms for themselves. We send excissieres, who are effective, but it is a costly and laborious business. I should like to send a permanent subjugating force.”

“And you shall have one,” Yskatarina promised. “We’ll help you raise the Sown.”

“When we last spoke to Elaki, she seemed well acquainted with the notion of the Sown. Nightshade must know a great deal about Mars,” the Matriarch said. “Much about its earlier genetic forms and fancies, about the nanotech that coils and changes beneath the crucible of its surface—technology that we have lost over the centuries. I should like to see the records of Nightshade. Your people must have been most meticulous.”

“We have had a long time to learn,” Yskatarina said, watching the Matriarch’s face with care as the truth slowly dawned. “A hundred years of feedback, from the haunt-tech that is already here.” Fully aware of the Memnos prohibitions about physical contact, she put an iron-and-glass hand on the Matriarch’s sleeve in seeming reassurance, and watched with satisfaction as the Matriarch snatched the sleeve away. “Do not worry. I am here to help.”

“You are here to sell,” the Matriarch hissed.

“Yes, and you knew there would be a price. Just like the previous version of haunt-tech.”

“It was a witches’ bargain.” The Matriarch’s face was still as stone. Once more, her hand drifted to the phial at her throat.

“But we are witches, your kind and mine, are we not? We hold the keys, here and now, to a world of transformation. With this new technology, updated, you can mine the past. You can revive ancient forms of being, converse with their unaltered consciounesses, uncover all the secrets that they hold. And you can raise an army, not just spectral fancies.”

“And the price,” the Matriarch said, bitter as frostbite. It was not a question.

The gaezelles were wheeling away to the north. Yskatarina watched them through the binoculars, the powerful red legs stirring up the dust, the long hair that streamed down their backs, their small curled hands. She sighed to see such grace.

“Ah, the price.” Yskatarina drew the Matriarch aside. “Elaki wants information. All the genetic data that you unearth must go to her. She is true to the original aims of Nightshade: the ultimate perfection of the sentient form.”

“She would appear to be some distance away from that,” the Matriarch said, with a dubious glance at Yskatarina.

“She wants your help, too, in another, related, matter,” Yskatarina said, forcing herself to ignore the slight. “But there is something else that I want.” The thought of betraying Elaki tore at her heart with implanted passion, artificial regret. If it had not been for that small, pure undercurrent of hate, Yskatarina would not have been able to continue. She added, in a gasping whisper, “Something you must do for me.”