Elizabeth Hand: Icarus Descending

I shook my head. “It was not in Wichita. There are records at the Academy that show it was brought to the old capital, to Crystal City. There were bunkers there that could withstand a thousand Shinings.”

“But it was not in the capital.” The nemosyne’s eyes glittered green and gold, sentient stars plucked from the sky. “You died there searching for it.”

“You are right. It was not in the City of Trees; but that does not mean it was destroyed. I believe it was stolen by rebel janissaries and brought to safety.”

I tilted my head back until I commanded a view of the sky: the stars cool and unmoving on that field of blue-black, broken here and there by shimmering traces of gold where the atmosphere had been torn by celestial warfare. “I believe it is up there.”

The nemosyne followed my gaze. In the western aspect of the sky a pallid star slowly moved through the constellation 201 Sikorsky, that which for three thousand years had been named Delphinus. It was no true star but one of the failing HORUS stations, like the one that had been my home and commanding outpost until its destruction that autumn by rebels from the Balkhash Commonwealth. Such a little time had passed since then—not even a year—but I felt as distanced from that earlier life of mine as I did from the celestial station passing overhead.

I thought then how long it had been since I looked up to see the stars. In Araboth the Quincunx Domes had blotted out all but the smeared impression of light and shadow beyond their curved worn face. Before my brief tenure beneath the domes, I had been in the City of Trees, where I had seen the stellar explosion that marked the destruction of the NASNA Prime Station. Seven months, then, since I had seen the night sky. As I gazed upward, I felt that same agony of love and longing that had ever gnawed at me when I looked upon the stars: a yearning more powerful than any you will ever know, unless you have since childhood been pledged to NASNA’s cohort. In all the battles I have ever been in upon Earth, I always found some moment to step away from the flames and stench of burning flesh and renew the pact I had made with the stars. Because they are always there, cold and watchful eyes gazing down upon the play of horrors we enact again and again upon the Earth. It is a sort of balm to me, to think of them there unchanging; and with them the steady slow promenade of the HORUS colonies as they mark their lesser orbits through the sky.

So it was with a sense of calm and reassurance that I watched the pale fleck of light edging through that constellation in the western sky. I wondered which of the HORUS colonies it was: Helena Aulis, I thought at first, or perhaps its sister-station of MacArthur. I stood for many minutes, as it left the stars of 201 Sikorsky and entered those of Lascan; but then slowly an unease came over me.

Because the station that I watched was not where it should be. Over the years the orbital patterns of HORUS had grown as familiar to me as the map of scars and renewed tissue on my own hands; but there was something wrong with this. At this time of year, midsummer, there should have been three man-made stars charting that path through Sikorsky. Instead only one of the Ascendants’ splendid lights wove its way through the stars, slowly and steadily as a barge through water.

“Something is wrong,” I said to myself. Nefertity gazed at me curiously, and I went on. “They can’t have changed their orbits. MacArthur and Helena Aulis should be there—”

My metal hand stabbed at the sky, blotting out the stars. “But they are not. And there—to the northwest, see?—we should be able to see Quirinus by now. But it is not in its accustomed place.”

Nefertity turned to see where I pointed. “Surely you are mistaken?” she said. “Perhaps it is the wrong part of the sky you are looking at. Or perhaps in the last few months their orbits have changed.”

I shook my head. “No…” My unease grew, even as that single light reached the edge of the horizon and disappeared into the darkness there. “Something has happened,” I went on slowly. My mind raced, seeking some explanation. I was looking at the wrong part of the sky; I had lost track of the time of year; for inexplicable reasons the Ascendants had changed the orbits of their colonies. But I knew my knowledge of the stars, at least, had not suffered any change. As for a change in the orbits of the HORUS colonies—that could not have happened, not so quickly. The Ascendant bureaucracy was a tangle of willful diplomats and cold-eyed Aviators, with a failing communications network linking them. Even the most minor changes in the stations took place only over a period of years, unless—

Unless there had been some kind of rebellion.

“Something has gone wrong,” I said. I turned to Nefertity, whose glowing eyes were still fixed upon the sky. ‘The HORUS colonies have been disrupted, and no one in Araboth told me. No one told me, or—”

My voice died: the rest of my thought was too frightening to speak aloud.

Or no one knew.

I clenched my hand into a fist, the leather straining against the metal joints. What could have happened? A rebellion among the Ascendant Autocracy; assassination, poison, plague—only some terrible misfortune could have disrupted HORUS. But if that was the case, who now was ruling? With Araboth fallen, and the NASNA Prime Station destroyed months ago, and myself absented from the Governors—who was left?

Nefertity’s delicate voice intruded upon my thoughts. “And among all this confusion, you still believe that other nemosyne is somewhere within those space stations? How would they have gotten it there?”

“The celestial warships,” I said dully. “The elÿon fleet—even after the Third Shining, when travel between the continents became almost impossible, the Autocracy was still utilizing the elÿon for passage to HORUS. I believe it was during the decade after the Third Shining that Metatron was brought to HORUS for safekeeping. Until then records show that it was housed at the Republic’s military command in Crystal City; but after the Third Shining there is no further mention of it. I made much study of this at the Academy, and elsewhere when the data were available. I thought at first it had been taken to the ancient capital, but I found no trace of Metatron in the City of Trees, though I did find an ancient arsenal there. Its weapons stores were intact; and this led me to believe that someplace nearby—Warrenton, perhaps, which is where the Aviators lived once—there might also have been an armory that had remained untouched during the Shinings and subsequent Ascensions. Perhaps even an airfield from whence rebel janissaries might have held rendezvous with the elÿon.”

Nefertity made a small noise, a sound that in a human woman would have been a sigh. She glanced over her shoulder to where Kesef crouched in the darkness, then up into the sky.

“So you believe it is there,” she said softly. Her arm when she raised it left a glowing arc of pale blue light in its path. “There? Or there?”

Her voice was mocking but also tentative, with a note that might have presaged fear.

“It could be anywhere. It could even still be here on Earth—in the mountains outside the abandoned capital, or even somewhere in the Archipelago, although I don’t think that is possible. Because over the centuries others have searched for it. Surely it would have been found by them. Or, if it were destroyed, there would have been some record, somewhere—such an important piece of military hardware couldn’t just disappear completely.

“No, I think it is up there, in the HORUS colonies. There are more of the HORUS stations than you can imagine—”

At least, I thought grimly, there had been more of them. In my service to the Ascendants I had visited many. Now I began to tell Nefertity of their history.