Elizabeth Hand: Icarus Descending

On the floor in the middle of the room lay the body of Horacio Baklas. As he was the last of the Masters to die here on Quirinus, it had somehow seemed that there should be some special ritual to accompany the giving of his body to the Ether. At least I felt that I should look upon his corpse before it was disposed of. He was unshaven, as are many barbarian Masters, and still wore the long yolk-yellow tunic he had arrived in. On his breast there was a round allurian disk, a ’file receiver that none of us had thought to remove. His expression was quite gentle, not at all the fanatical mask my sister had warned me of. He looked very small there, surrounded by energumens twice his size, his mouth slightly upturned as though smiling at some sweet thought.

Polyonyx spoke first. “This human poisoned his brothers and sisters and then died himself. He claimed there is a war going on. He said we are free.”

“Free?” My sister Hylas echoed my own thoughts. “But to do what?”

Cumingia shrugged. ‘To join the war?”

Our sisters Lusine and Spirula chimed, “A war! No war came here.”

Polyonyx shook her head, its single narrow braid swinging wildly. “But it did—this man brought it in his vials and destroyed our Masters. He said he was liberating us. He said we are free to go.”

Lusine giggled at the thought: a human freeing an energumen! It was absurd, not only because who had ever heard of such a thing, but also because the humans were so much smaller than we are. To think of being liberated by one of them! I scowled a little at the thought, but others laughed. How quickly it had all changed, and we had not had to strike a single blow.

“Go? But where are we to go?” cried Spirula. “Why can’t we just stay here?”

A ripple of approving laughter. Hylas began to sing in her piercing voice, the hymn of liberation to the Mother that begins, “All twisted things are yours, Divine, all spiral turnings and neural strands—”

That was when the Oracle appeared.

“Greetings, children!”

My sisters cried out, letting go each other’s hands and backing toward the walls. Only Polyonyx and I stood our ground.

The corpse had disappeared. Where it had been a radiance filled the room, a blinding aureole at the center of which burned the figure of a man. Only as he turned to gaze up at us, I saw that he was not a man but a robotic construct. But as I looked more closely, I saw that it was not like any robotic server I had ever seen; neither was it an android or replicant. There was something much more human about it: and now that I look back upon that first glimpse of the Oracle, I think that it was not his features so much as his expression that made him seem human: it was the glitter in his eyes, and the malice that glowed there like the sheen upon a plum. He was very beautiful, with limbs of some dark material—gleaming black in the shadows where his arms and legs attached to the torso, shining violet elsewhere. He had a man’s face, with a high smooth forehead and brilliant green eyes.

“The ’file receiver,” whispered Polyonyx, though I could read her thoughts as clearly as my own. Her hand twitched, gesturing to where the corpse of Horacio Baklas was swallowed by the flickering image generated by that allurian disk on his breast. “But where is it originating from?”

“I am an emissary from your father.”

The voice rang through the great round room, setting off sensors and causing the station’s alarm system to bleat out a warning against an unauthorized ’file transmission. After a moment the alarm cut off; but by then other voices echoed that of the shimmering vision before us.

“ Our father!” Lusine and Spirula gasped, stepping forward until they stood within the circle of light cast forth by the ’file.

“He has sent me to tell you not to be afraid. He has sent me to tell you that he loves you, and is waiting for you to join him and your other brothers and sisters on Earth.”

“What is this?” Polyonyx hissed, but I grabbed her before she could stalk toward the figure.

“A message from our father,” I breathed.

“That is correct,” said the figure in the circle of light. He lifted his head so that I could see his eyes: a man’s green eyes, only with nothing of a soul behind them; but beautiful, beautiful. “I am your brother, another of your father’s children, and I bring you tidings of great joy….”

Beside me Polyonyx hissed again, shifting on her great long legs like an equinas impatient to run. Because this of course was a lie. Nothing made of metal or plasteel could ever be called our brother. Only we are his children, the beloved of Dr. Luther Burdock: the New Creatures he created in the shadow of that old world. He is our god and our father; he is with us always, through all our thousand days and then the next thousand, as we are born and reborn, over and over again. In dreams we can still hear him speaking to us; his voice is low and we can feel his gentle hands, the prick of something cold upon our forehead and his words Do not fear the dark, my darling, his ringing voice saying You will be Lords of the World, my beautiful New Creatures and Never fear the darkness. It is a voice that is ever on the edge of our hearing, a sound as I imagine the wind must make. We are never far from the memory of Luther Burdock; at least I am not. Because even though more than four hundred years have passed since he first uttered the words that race over and over through my head, to me it is as though I were with him yesterday; and yesterday he promised that he would never leave me, that we would never die.

But we do die, those of us who are Luther Burdock’s children: over and over again; and then again we are reborn. No longer Cybele but Kalamat—a thousand Kalamats—a million—ten million. No longer human but a New Creature, but a New Creature in a New World where our father is not with us. We are alone, here within the HORUS colonies and down below on the Element, waiting for him to return as he promised. And so we wait, all of us, one of us, myself again and again and again:

Kalamat, The Miracle. Dr. Luther Burdock’s Daughter.

“Who are you?”

I started, my dream broken, and turned to see my sister Polyonyx looming above the shining ’file image of the Oracle. “Where are you from, why are you here at all?”

A circle of menacing figures surrounded it now, their dark forms nearly blotting that flickering body like a man set aflame. “Yes, where?” rang out Spirula and Hylas and all the others, their voices chiming like the same bell struck over and over.

“You will find out soon enough,” replied the glowing construct. It smiled then, its mouth parting to show teeth. They were very like a man’s teeth, straight and even and gleaming as though wet; only these were black, and shone like oiled metal. “We have planned this reunion for a very long time, your father and I. We have had much help from men and women on Earth, and even more from those freed slaves who have been gathering around us in secret. But it is time now for the rest of you to join us—

“Listen to me! One by one the HORUS colonies are falling. The ones that remain will fall to us as well, very soon. Your brothers and sisters have seen me; many of them have already joined us on Earth.”

Here the figure raised its arms, turning slowly within its shimmering halo. A faint transparency hung about the holofiled image, so that I could see through its body to where my sisters watched on the other side of the room, spellbound. There was a sudden sharp hissing, as of a lumiere being struck. Another nimbus of light appeared, then another, until seven of them hung shimmering above and between us in the room.