The Nuclear Druid Page 5

  “Blood,” the Rat said, from the tiny screen on the arm of the Duke’s throne.

  “Correct,” the Duke said. “The next one is harder. We two weave a tangled web, with only one end.”

  We two weave a tangled web, Axel thought. Me and Meg. Meg and Colm. Colm and me. But it’s ended now. Colm’s gone. Only one end. And she’s carrying my baby.

  Sweat trickled down his forehead, tickling.

  My baby.

  The news of Meg’s pregnancy, which had filled him with such joy when she first told him, now seemed distant and unreal.

  A child of mine and hers. What will he or she be like? Will I live to meet him, or her?

  Only one end.

  The armor held his arms steady. The helmet kept him staring into the cross-hairs.

  “What are we?” the Duke said, and smiled at the camera.

  *

  “What are we?” Emnl smoothed her uwagi. She was dressed in white karate gi, her uniform of preference, since proper sentrienza clothes were not available. “I used to think we were teacher and student.”

  “Not anymore,” Meg said. She drew the line at continuing to teach Emnl karate, even though the alternative was dressing in damsel-in-distress outfits to satisfy Emnl’s sense of propriety. “Anyway, that wasn’t a question. It was the Duke’s second riddle. A tangled web—”

  “—we weave, when once we practice to deceive. Is there something you’re not telling me, sensei?”

  “The answer can’t be Shakespeare.”

  “Why not? My three-times-great grandmother knew him. In fact she fed him a lot of his plots. He understood tragedy better than most humans.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But only one end?”

  “There can be only one end to your rebellion. Your defeat. That would be a tragedy, Meg-sensei; and where is the modern Shakespeare to make a story of it? Not one human will remain to remember the past. But you could save your species, Meg. You could even save your homeworld. It would be so easy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Meg said, terrified that Emnl would spill the beans about her pregnancy in the Rat’s hearing.

  “You have a boyfriend now, don’t you? That man Axel? I like him. I think he would be a good father. What do you think?”

  “Answer the goddamn question!”

  “The answer is qubits, of course. Two quantum particles in an entangled state.”

  *

  “Qubits,” the Rat said.

  The Duke’s lips thinned. “That is correct. Let me see. I shall have to think of something harder …”

  *

  “Where do the Ghosts come from?” Meg repeated the question the Rat had just fed to her, and felt panic squeezing at her heart. “That’s not a riddle! That’s not fair! I mean, the Duke doesn’t know the answer, either!”

  “Probably not,” Emnl admitted. “But he wants to know. So do I, naturally. Where do they come from? Where do they get their arcane powers? Why do they look so much like you?”

  “Is this really the time?” Meg could practically feel the targeting lasers of the sentrienza ships crawling over her skin.

  “What better time could there be? If you do not answer the question under threat of death …”

  “We don’t know the answer! If we did, don’t you think we would have fried their asses by now?”

  “They look like you, but not like all of you,” Emnl pondered. “You come in many different colors. Your facial and musculoskeletal characteristics differ widely, as one would expect of a species that evolved in a variety of habitats. However, the Ghosts all resemble the human phenotype known as Caucasian. They exhibit a remarkable uniformity. Their DNA, too, while very similar to human DNA, has not a thousandth of the population-level or individual variation seen among you. They appear to have evolved from a very small population …”

  “Actually,” the Rat said over the speakers in the room, “my own theory, absolutely unscientific, has always been that the sentrienza kidnapped a bunch of people from prehistoric Europe and conducted a breeding experiment, selecting for unusual mutations like those carried by Colm Mackenzie.”

  “Sorry,” Emnl said. “We didn’t.”

  “Oh, well,” the Rat said. “It was too neat a theory to be true, I suppose. He’s starting to get impatient. Have you got any better ideas?”

  “I do, actually,” Emnl buzzed.

  She stood up with an swaying backwards jerk. Meg scrambled to her feet.

  “Patch me through to the sentrienza ships,” Emnl said.

  “And then what?” the Rat said suspiciously.

  “Oh, please just stop asking questions, for once in your life, Admiral Hyland,” Emnl said with a buzzing giggle.

  The Rat let out a surprised bark of laughter. “All right. Not as if we’ve got any other options.” Click. “You’re through.”

  Emnl drew herself upright. She spoke in the sentrienza language, a slurry of hisses and buzzes.

  The Flying Guns were hearing this. But what were they hearing? Meg felt as if her heart might stop. This much stress couldn’t be good for the baby. Then again, it didn’t much matter, if the sentrienza fleet was about to blow them all to pieces.

  Emnl stopped speaking. There was a long pause.

  Faintly, Meg heard cheering from the bridge. “What’s happening?”

  “They’re no longer targeting us,” the Rat said.

  “Correct,” Emnl said. “I told them who I am, and that they must obey me now. I told them to stand down and await further orders.” As an afterthought, she added, “Shall I tell them to blow the Duke’s mound to pieces, or will you do it?”

  *

  The Rat’s voice crackled urgently from the tiny screen. “Stand down. Best, stand down.”

  The Duke of Noom slumped in Axel’s cross-hairs. His fleet had betrayed him. His louche defiance was gone.

  Axel said, “What do you want me to do with him, sir?”

  “Take him prisoner. He may have valuable intelligence, and he knows a great deal about cosmological science and tech—”

  Axel shot the screen, cutting the Rat off in mid-sentence.

  “What did you do that for?” said Gil, perched on the back of the throne, aiming his three guns in three different directions at the confused slaves.

  “So that I can pretend I didn’t hear him.”

  Axel would never forget the horrors he had endured this day. He would never forget the men and women who had followed him into the mound, and how they had died. Nothing could make up for their sacrifice. But he could even the score a bit.

  “Guess you don’t believe in God,” he said to the Duke.

  “God is a faerie tale,” the Duke said, and actually laughed. He was not the ruler of a planet for nothing. “If you are going to shoot me, do it.”

  “You’d better hope the other guy doesn’t exist, either. Because if he does, you’re about to meet him.”

  Axel pulled the trigger.

  *

  Later, back on board the Unsinkable, Axel and Meg lay squashed into one of the single bunks in their shared berth. Axel rested his hand on Meg’s tummy, thinking about the miracle taking place inside. It helped to blot out his bitter ordeal in the sentrienza mound.

  “Did you get in trouble for shooting the Duke?” Meg said.

  “Oh yeah. The Rat tore me a new one.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Gil stuck up for me.” He yawned. “Anyway, we’ve got the sentrienza ships. We’ll be able to take them apart, reverse-engineer their drives.”

  “Yeah …”

  Meg’s ambivalent tone roused him. “What?”

  “I’m not taking anything away from you or your guys. I’m just saying … Emnl didn’t do that out of the goodness of her heart. She did it for her own reasons. God, I hate her.” Meg sighed. “I’m not a very nice person, am I?”

  “You’re never complacent.” Axel kissed her neck. “That’s one of the reasons I love you.”

  “Oh, Axel.” She
didn’t say she loved him back. She never did. He was used to that, but now that she was carrying his child, he’d hoped … Well, maybe she just needed time. Unwillingly, he thought of Colm in the pharmacy, Meg desperately reaching for him. He hoped Colm stayed gone.

  “You know what else?” Her voice pulled him out of it. “When we boarded the ships? There were like three sentrienza on each one. And twenty Walking Guns.”

  Walking Guns were semi-sentient weapons, which walked. And ran. And sometimes flew. And tore battlesuits apart like cheap chew toys. Axel had encountered several of them in the mound.

  “Shit. I hope we spaced them with bombs strapped to their backs.”

  Meg shook her head, her hair brushing his cheek. “They’re on board right now, with Emnl.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes, way. She’s got them following her around like a bunch of lapdogs.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “The Rat said we’ll need them.”

  They both fell silent, remembering that Betelgeuse was only one of the sentrienza’s roughly 500 star systems. Their victory here would only sharpen the sentrienza’s thirst for vengeance.

  Trying to stay positive, Axel said, “Well, I guess he’s right. Each Walking Gun is as good as another spaceship.”

  “If Emnl lets us use them.”

  “Won’t she?”

  “I sure hope so, but she’ll want something in return.” Meg rolled over, curling up with her back to him. “Remember, every gift that the sentrienza give has to be paid for.”

  He put his arm around her. “Try to think good thoughts for the baby,” he whispered.

  Meg let out a spluttery, miserable little laugh. “The baby. Yeah.”

  “Our baby.”

  “Yeah.”

  CHAPTER 8

  COLM DID NOT KNOW how long he’d been standing on the river bank when a child’s voice said, “Sir?”

  He turned to see one of the little boys. Hralf’s children.

  “Lord Lizp is back.”

  “Who?”

  The boy pointed to the blockhouse. The door stood open. White smoke rose from the chimney.

  “Go on home,” Colm said. “You’ll catch your death.” He fumbled in the pocket of his dress uniform. His fingers felt as numb as twigs unattached to his body. “Here, give these back to your mother.” He returned the spoons he had borrowed.

  He stumbled back to the blockhouse. The turbine thundered in its pit. The generator was still running. Blowing on his fingers, he followed the sound of voices to a room he hadn’t noticed last night: a little break room off the passage between the turbine hall and the battery room. A cheerful blaze burned in a brick fireplace. In front of it sat Dhjerga Lizp and two strangers, a man and a woman.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again,” Colm said.

  “I told you I’d be back later,” Dhjerga said. “Have a sandwich.” He was eating a piece of flat bread rolled up around so much meat and cheese that it threatened to slide out onto his knees. He was no longer clad in grubby, worn khaki. He had on an extraordinary outfit of black leather drainpipe trousers, a bright blue shirt with bell sleeves, and a snow-white fur vest. He even had a fob watch on a chain. His shaggy hair was slicked back and secured by a gold band.

  The other two people wore the same type of clothes—the woman had a split leather skirt instead of trousers. They looked to be in their late twenties, and shared the familiar Ghost look: pale skin, strong features, brown eyes and brown hair.

  Colm had always reckoned there must be female Ghosts. Those little boys logically had to have a mother. You can’t have people without women. But he’d never seen a female Ghost before. This one was frowning skeptically at him. Her fur-trimmed bodice outlined an hourglass figure. Gold pins held her caramel-brown hair in a knot, showing off an elegant neck.

  Colm cleared his throat and said to Dhjerga, “Lord Lizp?”

  “It’s just a courtesy title. This is the Lord Prefect of Lizp Province.” Dhjerga nodded at the young man, who was kneeling in front of the fire, singing bread on a bayonet. “My little brother. And this is my little sister. They’re twins, if you couldn’t tell.” Colm did a double-take. “For fuck’s sake, Dryjon,” Dhjerga added, “at least say hello.”

  Dryjon was gangly, long-limbed, awkward-looking. He met Colm’s eyes for an instant. “You are the mage from Earth who will help us overthrow the Magistocracy?” His voice carried more confidence and authority than his wispy appearance suggested.

  “Er,” Colm said. “First I’ve heard about that.”

  “But you are from Earth?”

  “Yes, but not recently. It’s quite cold here, isn’t it?” Colm shuffled nearer the wonderful warm fire. The smells of wood smoke and toast were making him dizzy. His wet dress uniform steamed.

  Dhjerga laughed, and reached under his stool. “I brought you some proper clothes.” He dragged out a bundle of leather and fur. “These are warmer, and you won’t stick out as much.”

  “You can change in the washroom down the hall,” the young woman said frostily.

  In the freezing pissoir, Colm struggled with the Ghost clothes, teeth chattering. He felt a right berk wearing a blousy shirt and leather trousers, as if he were playing a part in some historical drama. The fur vest was nice and warm, but its toggle fastenings foxed him as he was accustomed to zips. He had even more trouble with the boots. During his military career, he’d worn EVA boots, combat boots, or dress shoes. As a civilian he had worn sneakers or shitkickers. Normal footwear, made of various smart polymers. Never had he touched, much less put on, a pair of boots all too evidently sewn from pieces of dead cow, creased into shiny ridges by someone else’s feet, and smelling like someone else’s feet, too, with side laces and tassels. He forced his feet in. They fit OK. He had a strange taste in his mouth. Rotten eggs. Bile. Panic. He laced the boots up and went back to the break room.

  Dhjerga applauded. “Now you look like a human being.” He kicked the young woman’s stool. “Give him your seat, Diejen.”

  “No, really,” Colm demurred.

  “I don’t mind standing,” the young woman, Diejen, said. “We shan’t be staying long, anyway.” She stood up. Colm’s exhausted body plopped onto the wooden stool of its own accord. A pile of rifles and shotguns lay underneath it. Diejen’s voluminous split skirt had concealed them until she rose. Careful not to kick the weapons, Colm stretched out his hands to the fire. Returning sensation prickled his fingers, but he didn’t feel the slightest twinge from his esthesia implant.

  “Now then, sir, what’s your name, and what can you do?” Dryjon said in a business-like tone, juggling his piece of toast. He stuck the bayonet into the other side and held it to the flames.

  “My name’s Colm Mackenzie.” The Ghosts mouthed the unfamiliar syllables, and again Colm seemed to hear that strange echo of gibberish behind his own words. “As to what I can do? I can fly spaceships, and I’m a pretty good mechanic. But I can’t do what I expect you’re thinking of. I can’t do magic.”

  “You said he was a mage,” Dryjon said.

  “That’s what’s so odd,” Dhjerga said. “He was.”

  “There are no mages on Earth,” Diejen said, flatly. She was standing by the door with her arms folded. “And if there were, we wouldn’t require their help.”

  “I think we do,” Dhjerga said. “I’m on the run. If you try to hide me, you’ll be in trouble, too.”

  “You could always go back to the front and do your duty,” Diejen said, but she looked away as she said it.

  “I suppose I could,” Dhjerga said. “The Romans are human, you know. Every last one of them. We were told that we were only killing copies, but it isn’t true.” His hands shook, and bits of cheese fell on his lap as he bit into his sandwich.

  Diejen said, “No one’s saying that the war is right. I hate the war. I wish we had never begun it. The old ways were better! I wish we could turn back time to when we were little.”

  “Well, I gave up
on trying to invent a spell to turn back time years ago,” Dryjon said. He dropped his toast into the fire. “Oh, by Scota’s grave.” Colm leant forward and picked it out, half-blackened. “That was the last piece of bread.”

  “I’ll eat it,” Colm said.

  “Really? Have some of this instead.” Dryjon pushed a wicker trug towards him. It held meat, cheese, butter, and some rather wizened green apples. “Slim pickings, sorry.”

  Colm sank his teeth into an apple. He hadn’t eaten a real apple in a decade. This one tasted heavenly. “Best piece of fruit I’ve had in years. Did you bring all this with you from …?”

  Diejen said from the doorway, “You can’t fetch food. It’s neither living nor dead. We got these things from Hralf’s family. What sort of a mage are you?”

  “No kind of mage,” Colm said, piling scraps of salt pork on the less charred half of the toast.

  Dhjerga broke his brooding silence. “He is. A good meal, a bit of a rest, and he’ll be right as rain.”

  Colm’s voice was rough. He had to pocket his pride and disappoint Dhjerga at the same time. “I don’t need food, I need tropodolfin. It’s a … a medicine. I’m not a mage like you, it’s … it’s chemical.” He tapped the left side of his skull, in reference to his esthesia implant, knowing it would mean nothing to them.

  “And there I thought you were a druid, with that hair,” Dryjon said. Again came the echoes of gibberish, but this time one of the echoes coincided with the word druid, like two instruments hitting the same note, and Colm understood it. Draoi.

  “Are you speaking Gaelic?” he burst out in astonishment.

  If only he’d actually studied Gaelic in school. If only he knew more than the few words his father had taught him.

  Dryjon and Dhjerga both stared at him. Colm took their looks for incomprehension. But then Dhjerga said, chewing, “Well, we’re not speaking your English.” Béarla. The Gaelic word for English. “And you’re not, either. I know you think you are. I thought when I was on Juradis that I was still speaking the Teanga, and I was mystified that you all were speaking, it, too. But …” He waved the heel of his sandwich. “It’s a part of the fix. When I got a fix on you, I also got a fix on your language. And now the same thing’s happened in reverse, I’m guessing.”