Elizabeth Hand - Icarus Descending

Retirement ceremony, that nameless old man had told Jane and me. The whole damn thing just happens again; it’s the same every time. I shivered, but even as I tried to look away, to seek vainly for some escape from the room, for some sign of help unlooked for—Miss Scarlet or Giles or even Fossa—I felt eyes upon me, his eyes, and helplessly stared up once more.

He stood there, a shining icon in black and lavender, and from within the perfect curves of his replicant’s face those other eyes gazed down upon me. Green as new leaves, green as poison, Eyes I dare not meet in dreams: the vernal gaze of the Boy in the Tree, the Gaping One, imprisoned or reborn in that hollow construct’s shell. His polished body reflected the liquid darkness above, the luminous moon: a lunar deity or a man made out of night. I tried to pull away from his gaze, fought against it as though it were a serpent casting its coils tight about my chest; but I could not. And then very slowly Metatron smiled at me, and in that smile I saw the death of all that I had ever held dear.

“Welcome!” he cried, his raised arms stretched toward the moonlit sky. Behind him the waiting figures tilted their heads back, so that shadows slashed the cowls of their pristine white robes, poured from their breasts to cover the silver capsules beside them. “Welcome to all the Alliance; welcome to Icarus!”

From a thousand throats, human and animal and heteroclite, came an answering roar. Only the other figures on the platform did not to reply. They remained stiff, hands resting uneasily at their sides, their hooded faces staring at god knows what as the cries and howls of the Asterine Alliance filled the cave. Smiling, Metatron waited until the voices died, until the last echoes flew from the cavern like the bats who had fled before them. When he dropped his hands, silence fell upon the crowd, sudden and ominous as a cloud extinguishing the sun’s warmth. He turned toward one of the white-robed figures, and in a low, clear voice said, “We are ready.”

The figure turned to Metatron. I could see nothing of his features, but somehow it seemed to me there was a reluctance in the way it responded, reluctance or perhaps even enmity. The acolyte nodded curtly, took a step until he stood directly above the silver capsule on the center table. He seemed to hesitate, and glanced up to where Metatron stood with coldly glowing eyes. The replicant nodded, still smiling, and the acolyte turned back to his task.

He bent over the capsule, his hands sliding from beneath the long cuffs of his robe to grasp a set of heavy-looking handles set into the metal casket. As he bowed, he tossed back the hood of his robe. For a moment his face was obscured as he yanked at the cover of the steel pod.

With a soft sucking noise the lid popped open. The white-robed acolyte fell back, glancing up at the silent Metatron. Then he turned to look out upon all those assembled in the cavern. His gaze swept across the line of energumen guards. I heard Jane gasp as it rested on her, then moved to link with mine. His eyes were blue, blue as irises, and showed no recognition of me whatsoever. His face was smooth and unlined, his hair black; but there was no doubt who it was. It was Trevor Mallory.

I had thought that our arrival upon the Element would be met with some fanfare, that there would be a boarding party or some other group of rebels there to greet me. But there was no one. The Maio server gave me a cool goodbye—“Farewell, Kalamat”—and left. In front of me, the loading ramp unfolded and spiraled down into the twilight. For a moment I felt a heart-stopping terror: we were still in the frozen wastes of the Ether, and in an instant I would be dead from trying to breath in that airless place. But air filled my lungs, warm and with a sweet taste like watered honey. I breathed deeply, and were it not for the sorrow that cut the edge of my exhilaration, I might have laughed with joy.

The Izanagi had docked beside a great shining mist-shriven tower, wrapped about with gangways and stairs and chutes for the unloading of freight and personnel. In the air around us I glimpsed other elÿon, bobbing like slowly deflating balloons. Fougas drifted between them, their smooth sides gleaming dull gray. Some had been sloppily painted blue and stenciled with the symbol of the Asterine Alliance, a pyramid surmounted by a black star. But most still bore the insignia of their original affiliates—the white hand that was the sigil of the Balkhash Commonwealth, the Emirate’s yellow stars, the Eye of HORUS and blighted moon of the Autocracy’s NASNA Aviators.

Behind me I heard footsteps. I drew back until the rosy shadows cast by the elÿon fleet hid me. I watched as my sisters left the Izanagi, and with them the brothers I had never known. They were quiet, silenced perhaps by excitement or trepidation, though my brothers held within their eyes something of hunger or desire, a small spark of untriggered violence that I had seen before, in the fearful goading eyes of some of our Masters. They had daubed themselves with symbols of their allegiance, tattoos and scarifications of pyramids and stars. One of them bore in his arms something as limp and shapeless as a suit of our Masters’ astral vestments. As he passed me, I saw this was the desiccated corpse of the vessel’s adjutant, a forlorn creature that had been half-dead before we boarded. Down the ramp he went, to be given whatever obsequies they provide such hapless things on the Element.

A few minutes later my brother Kalaman appeared, and with him the one-eyed rebel called Ratnayaka. Between them they carried a figure that fought furiously, cursing as they held him up by his arms, so that his leather boots hung a full two feet above the metal flooring.

“Let me go!” he shouted. His voice sounded thin and surprisingly fragile in the open air. He looked frail too, where he dangled between my brothers, his crimson leathers askew upon his angular metal limbs and the red mask of his face twisted into an agony of rage and despair. “I will not serve him—I will not —”

At that sight a great sadness filled me. All the fury and controlled venom of the Aviator Imperator stretched like a taut line between Kalaman and Ratnayaka until I feared he would snap, and these last traces of his command fall limp as the adjutant’s own body within my brothers’ arms. But Tast’annin’s strength and rage, at least, did not fail him. He railed ceaselessly as they bore him away, and while from another throat his last words might have sounded peevish or frightened, to me they rang in memory like my father’s own voice, proud and deathless and indomitable—

“ I will not serve him! I will not serve —”

That was the last I saw of him; the last I saw of any of them. Within minutes they were gone, the tall loping figures of my brothers lost in the fog. Of all the passengers of the Izanagi, only I remained. Obviously I was not deemed important enough to require an escort, energumen or replicant, to see me from the vessel. I stood alone behind the curved metal balustrade overlooking the long gangway that wound like a silver stair through mist and clouds of tiny flying insects, until finally it disappeared beneath the tops of trees that crowded the side of what I now knew must be a mountain. From below I could hear voices, my sisters calling out to each other and the hollow booming sound of a robotic Watchman shouting orders. For some minutes I stood and listened, until abruptly the voices ceased, as sharply and suddenly as though they had come from a vocoder that had been switched off. The silence was disconcerting, until I realized that probably they had all been herded into one of the other elÿon. I strained to see through the mist, looking from one narrow spiraling stair to the next, seeking to find any of my sisters ascending to their new lives aboard the warrior vessels. I never saw them again.