Elizabeth Hand: Icarus Descending

“They are our brothers!” cried Hylas. One hand covered her breast and she bowed her head, while beside her my sisters did the same. And I must confess I started to as well, until Polyonyx grabbed me.

“ ’Files, sister Kalamat! They are only more ’files—”

And of course they were: generated images of others like ourselves, energumens who laughed and bowed and whistled piercingly, each within a bobbing circle of light. They repeated the same actions over and over, bowing and whistling, laughing and clapping their hands in some stylized ritual with a meaning I could not comprehend. Until finally I realized that these were recorded images, not direct transmissions. The stylized motions of each energumen were merely the repetitions of a single action that had been carefully ’filed and saved for broadcast. After a few minutes they flickered from view, one at a time, like luminous bubbles, until at last all were gone. My sisters sighed, their hands falling back to their sides, and they sank to the floor and stared up at the single figure that remained.

“You see? So will they welcome you joyfully, when you are united with them.” The figure of the Oracle waved a graceful hand, indicating where the ghostly energumens had been. “There are many millions of them upon Earth, all like you; all waiting to welcome you when you have joined our cause. We are wresting Earth from the hands of the Tyrants: not slowly but quickly, more quickly than you can imagine! Those of your brothers and siblings that remain here in the HORUS colonies are carrying out their own wishes now, instead of those of the Tyrants. Your father and I command them—”

“Our father is dead.” Polyonyx’s voice rang out, so sharp and cold that it cut through the other’s spell like a sudden rain. “He died four hundred and fourteen years ago, executed by Samuel Pilago and the Brethren of Saints.”

The Oracle turned to gaze at her. Its emerald eyes flashed, as though with anger; but surely a construct could not feel anger? “Ah, but you know well that Dr. Luther Burdock has only been sleeping for all those years,” it said in its silken voice. “Else how is it that you all remember him so clearly, when none of you have lived more than a fraction of that time?”

“We remember him because we are clones of his daughter,” Polyonyx replied coolly, “and so we remember everything that she knew.”

The shining figure tilted its head, sending ripples of violet bouncing off the ceiling and floor of the round room. “But why then have you waited for him all these years? Why these persistent rumors of his reawakening? Why this —”

The figure spun, flinging its hands out. Where they pointed a second figure appeared within an aura of glittering orange. Smaller than the first, the resolution poorer—it was another recorded image, this one showing a man of middle height, with tousled brown hair and an expressive, careworn face. His mouth moved as he spoke unheard words to someone just out of sight. He was staring dutifully in the direction of the unseen ’filer, obviously impatient for the broadcast to be finished.

“ Father!”

The word escaped Polyonyx in a strangled yelp. I found myself starting forward, my hands outstretched; but then the silent image was gone.

“It was he!”

“Our father!”

“Dr. Burdock!”

“ Daddy!”

The construct’s voice rang out clearly above the babble: “I must go now,” it cried. The brilliant light surrounding it began to fade, as though it were being sucked back into those luminous eyes. “I will contact you again, with instructions. You are part of the Alliance now. You will have visitors soon, to aid you in returning to Earth, to help us here in our work. Your father will be there to greet you then, as will I.” The image began to flicker, spinning off fragments of light, blue and gold and violet. My sisters knelt on the floor, raising their hands to the figure and calling out imploringly.

“ You —who are you?” I cried.

The construct’s torso had disappeared into a flurry of luminous static. “I?” it repeated, its mouth sliding back to reveal those glittering ebony teeth. “My name is called Disturbance; but also Dionysos and Hermes and Baal-Phegor, Lucifer and Ksiel and Satan-El. And I am also as you see me: a ninth-generation nemosyne of the Third Ascendant Autocracy. My creators named me the Military Tactical Targets Retrieval Network; but I had a simpler name as well, and that is the name you will know me by.

“I am your brother. I am Metatron.”

And with a sound like air rushing to fill a void, he was gone.

FROM THE MEMOIRS OF Margalis Tast’annin, Aviator Imperator of the Seventeenth Ascendant Autocracy, 0573 New Era

I am the Aviator Imperator Margalis Tast’annin, the chief ranking military commander of the Seventeenth Ascendant Autocracy. As I record these words, I am aware that they may well never be read or scanned by anyone save myself. But it is a duty for one of my stature, even a prisoner as I am now, to make manifest an account of what has befallen me—what will befall all of us, who are tethered by some precarious thread, duty or need or love, to the world that in my language is named Earth. I received my appointment as Imperator some months ago, from the ruling Ascendant triumvirate known as the Orsinate. The three Orsina sisters are dead now: one by my own hand, the others lost to the tsunami that swept away the city-state of Araboth. I feel no regret for them whatsoever, save only that I did not murder Âziz and Nike as I did Shiyung. Although they named me Imperator, they were also the ones who reclaimed my corpse from the City of Trees and rehabilitated me as a rasa, one of the walking dead. It was in that form that I briefly stalked the Earth and skies before my incarceration here, where only my mind is free to roam as before.

Before my death and rehabilitation, I was known as the Aviator Margalis Tast’annin. My last posting was to the City of Trees, the abandoned capitol of what was, hundreds of years ago, the North American United States. It was in that City that I was betrayed by those who were to answer to my command. At their hands I was tortured and dismasted, then left for dead in the ruins of that haunted place known as the Engulfed Cathedral. But I did not die, not then. I lived, long enough to see the rebirth of an ancient and terrible god known as the Gaping One, personified by a whore and his demonic twin sister. Of the courtesan Raphael Miramar I know nothing. He may be dead; for his sake, I hope that he is. He suffered much at my hands, but it is a greater horror at crueler hands than mine that awaits him if he is still alive.

As for his sister, Wendy Wanders—I would not presume to tell the tale of a creature whose powers of cruelty and spite, for a little while at least, were perhaps even greater than my own.

After the domed city of Araboth fell to the monstrous storm Ucalegon, I fled, my Gryphon aircraft Kesef bearing myself and the cataclysm’s other four survivors north, to the scorched prairie that had grown over the ruins of other cities in the wasteland. We finally landed near a human settlement. I remained in the biotic aircraft, overcome by an exhaustion that would have killed another man; but since I was no longer a man in any real sense of the word, I merely sat silently in the pilot’s seat of the craft, and waited for night to come. The nemosyne Nefertity accompanied the three humans we had rescued to the outskirts of the settlement and left them there, with much weeping and regret on their parts, I would imagine. I had no desire, then or ever, to speak or meet with them again. But the nemosyne I very much wanted, and knowing her promise to return would bind her to me, I remained behind.