Wil McCarthy - To Crush the Moon

“It will be a pleasure, Sire.”

But Natan is striding forward now, the look on his face almost angry. “I’m remembering something from my classical literature, all of a sudden. That word, ‘ako’i.’ It isn’t a name at all. It’s an old term meaning, like, ‘professor’ or something.”

Bruno turns, looks over his shoulder. “You surprise me, Deceant. And you’re absolutely correct; Ako’i is not my name.”

Radmer is not accustomed to feeling like a spectator, but the two men have locked eyes, locked step in some ephemeral way, and he’s on the outside. He has nothing to say, nothing to add, no tasks to perform. He simply wants to see what these men will say next, what they’ll do. A sense of terrible importance hangs over the moment.

“Your name is Toji,” Natan accuses.

And Bruno smiles sadly. “No, that’s not it, either. But you’re very close.” He murmurs something to the fax machine, and a perfect diamond crown tumbles out into his waiting hand.

Bruno had never asked to be a king, and in many ways he’d felt himself wildly unsuited to the role. But he had learned how to play it, and more than that, to feel it. Because people could tell the difference between a leader who spoke from his heart, and one who was just going through the motions. He was an inventor, yes. A scientist and lover, yes. A father and a hermit and a failure, yes. But he was once a king as well, and he consequently understands the power of myth, to rally the spirits of men when cold reality’s at its grimmest. He has left Natan and Radmer behind, instructing them to gather raw material to feed the fax. He himself has other business.

And he’s young again! Immorbid! His black hair flowing almost to his shoulders, his black beard bristling, his veins coursing with élan vital! A medical-grade fax machine was a rarity indeed in the Iridium Days; this one may have been the last in all the world, in all the universe. Perhaps the very one he’d once employed himself, to seek the final remnants of the shattered Nescog. And he remembers with perfect clarity: by the end there had been no working collapsiters . He and Eustace Faxborn—newly widowed in some accident or other—had broadcast Royal Overrides in every band of the spectrum, had scoured the heavens for even the lowliest maintenance ping in response. But they had gathered only silence, and eventually the project had been shut down. So why are there packet acknowledgments—recent ones!—in the fax machine’s history file today? Why indeed?

His mind feels fresh. His scars and wounds have fallen away like hosed-off grime. He has designed himself a suit of Fall-era battle armor, and it fits him more perfectly then he could ever have dreamed or remembered. And with its impregnable power all around him, he feels like a king indeed, or more than a king, for the people of this world have never seen anything like him. He bounds across the dunes at a speed no mere human could sustain. He leaps and twirls, firing weapons into the ground for the sheer bleeding hell of it.

In no time at all he comes upon the wounded Dolceti, eight men and a woman huddled miserably in their hollow in the sand, and he alights among them, striking a pose that feels appropriate for the moment.

“We are successful, my friends,” he says to them through his suit’s loudspeakers. He’s tried the radio, too, but the Dolceti don’t have receivers, and anyway all the police channels seem to be drowning in interference, or in voices at such high volume that Bruno hears them only as noise. Why? From where? Is it some communication channel of the robot army? Is it something else entirely? He doesn’t know, and for the moment he doesn’t much care.

“Succor awaits,” he says to the Dolceti. “Walk into the dunes, into the ruins. Along the walls, there are flickering lights that will show you the way. Enter the top of the bronze tower, and speak with Radmer and Natan. There you’ll be healed. There you will be equipped with such armor and weapons as you’ve only heard of in stories. For the journey out of this place, and for all that follows afterward.”

But Bordi says to him, “The hair and skin look nice, sir. Truly, it’s a miracle. But you forget yourself, yes? You’re not in command here.”

“Are you sure?” says Bruno. “Then I’ll ask you, as a friend, to follow this recommendation. Time is short, and we have much to do.”

From his sprawled position on the ground, Zuq looks up at Bruno with a smirk. “God’s eyes, Ako’i, in that costume, with that hair and those eyebrows, you look like the King of Sol.”

And Bruno, sensing his moment, places the diamond crown atop the Gothic dome of his helmet, and says, “Your mother didn’t raise any fools, lad. That’s good. Now go, do as I say, and I’ll be with you shortly. I must tarry here awhile, to contemplate matters strategic.”

In fact, he needs to tarry here for a good bit of brooding—perhaps even tears—because all this has reminded him too much of his beloved Tamra, for whose smile he would gladly trade this world and all its people. Fortunately, no one is offering him that trade. No one ever will. The past is gone.

Unless perhaps some device could be constructed to interfere with it—an arc de commencer, so to speak. Bruno has never really wondered how such a device might be built, how it might operate, but perhaps now, with his mind restored to youthful vigor, is the time to give it some thought. Might he right the wrongs of his past, wiping this world’s very existence from the stage of history?

But the Dolceti—unaware of the apocalypse he so idly contemplates for them—are rising to their feet, appraising him with new eyes, weighing his stance and his words, murmuring quietly among themselves. It’s Bordi who breaks the moment, bowing his head and saying, “I always thought there was something funny about you. Now, at last, I understand. And what of the Queen?”

Bruno shakes his head. “If she were here… if she were here none of this would be happening. We used to say she had Royal Overrides for the human soul. But not the Eridanian one, alas.”

“Hmm. We owe you no fealty; you know that. You’re not our king. Or perhaps you are and always were, and your authority supersedes that of the Furies, or any other worldly power. It hardly matters, in this hour of doom. Can you save us from the armies of Astaroth? If not, then who could? I know a good bet when I see one, Sire. My sword is yours to command.”

To which Bruno answers, “Having seen your sword in action, Captain, I know full well the value you offer. Now look me in the eye and tell me you’ll fight bravely, for your world and your people.”

“You know I will.”

“Indeed. Now go.”

And they do, hauling their bodies up and limping off into the dune field, while Bruno sits his ass down to commence the aforementioned mope. He will not, he realizes now, tamper with the flow of time. Even if he could, even if he would , his very presence here in the ruins of Lune is evidence that he shan’t. Do people possess nerve endings which extend, in some ephemeral way, into the future? For even in this state of unnatural vigor, Bruno senses nothing ahead of him. He is immorbid, yes, but not immortal. He cannot imagine any future beyond the next few days.

Indeed, the hour is later than he’s thought, and the situation more dire, for as the disc of the sun slips behind the Stormlands’ eyewall to the west, over the vanishing silhouettes of the Dolceti, a bird calls out from the east, from somewhere among the scraggly trees clinging to the hills there.

ThooRAT!

ThooRAT!

Should omens be believed in this place? Bruno doesn’t know, but before another minute has passed he spies a trio of tattered figures approaching him from out of those same stony hills, from the teeth of the storm itself. There’s dust and worse raining down all around them.