David Williams - The Burning Skies

We were seduced,” says Szilard.

He steps away from Linehan, steps out onto the lunar map that dominates the floor. “That’s far enough,” says Linehan. Szilard stops. Looks back at him. Holds up his hands in what looks almost like a protest. “But we were,” he says.

“ Perhaps Sinclair was, too. Because it wasn’t just their lack of inhibition. Any sociopath can do as well. What made the Rain so lethal was a radioactive creativity. Seeing patterns where ordinary people see only chaos. An ability to grasp opportunities invisible to anyone else. It wasn’t just the telepathy either. Look at the games they’ve been playing. So twisted you can’t even follow the threads. They’ve got all of us wrapped up in the same fucking web and all they need to do now is suck out the goddamn juice.”

“ Why are you telling me this?” asks Linehan.

“ Because you’re just one of the victims,” says Szilard.

“ Yeah?” asks Lynx. His voice echoes from an open hatch in one of the mainframes. “Is that a fact, Jharek?”

“ It is. You’re using this man.”

“ I’m giving him the chance to kill you.”

“ And I wish you’d let me go ahead and do it,” says Linehan.

“ You’re just a jackal on a leash,” says Szilard.

But Linehan only laughs. “I’m riding shotgun on history, and I’m about to put the head of my original boss all over that wall . It doesn’t get any better than this.”

“ Maybe you should ask your drug-snorting Rain razor what he intends to do with you once I’m dead.”

“ Hey Lynx,” says Linehan, “what’s next?”

“ We unleash the war.”

“ And what’s my rank?”

“ My bodyguard.”

“ And what’s yours?”

“ I thought I’d start with commander of the L2 fleet.”

“ Fucking cool,” says Linehan, “let’s do it.”

• • •

Two men sit in a room in some structure beneath the Himalayas. The pieces of that structure are like a grid within Spencer’s mind. He’s trying to grasp the nature of this place. He’s trying to focus on the face of Sarmax, but it’s as if the walls are blurring around him—as if the floor is undulating beneath his feet. Everything’s starting to swirl inside his head.

“ Fuck,” he says.

“ Don’t fight it,” says Sarmax.

“ Ayahuasca,” says Spencer. “It’s resurging—”

“ Is that what it feels like? Being mind-melded with the Manilishi can’t be easy—”

“ Fuck’s sake—”

“— especially now that bitch has been trying to pull your strings. And all the while we’ve been pulling hers.”

Spencer stares at him. But he can no longer speak. Pressure keeps on growing in his chest. The images of the pages of the book pulsate within his head. The face of the Manilishi blazes like some dark sun inside him.

What the hell are you doing?” she mutters. “Having my way with you once more.” Though really he’s just holding onto the wall right in front of her while the ship shakes about them, dropping through ten thousand meters. The dome of Congreve is visible below. Haskell’s struggling to remain calm. Carson’s smile isn’t helping. Nor is what he’s doing to her mind.

“ You miss the essence of the problem,” he says. “The Rain weren’t some mythical force. They were just men and women who had been engineered to think without fetters. The solution to an equation no one had even dared to postulate. Not a question of ends—”

“ But means. Carson, I know this. But—I— fuck!”

“ Sure you do. But you were never asked to prove it. You were kept within the system and everything stayed nice and simple. And all the while the ones with whom you were bred were out in the cold thinking like normal humans never could. Putting together a plan more convoluted than a goddamn Gordian knot.”

“ Which was nothing compared to what you were doing.”

“ Which just proves the point,” he says.

“ Even though none of it was your fucking idea.”

“ At least I know a good one when I see it.”

“ Christ, Carson, you’re hurting me.”

“ Someday you’ll forgive me.”

“ I’m damned for ever having known you.”

“ But let’s try to make the most of it, anyway,” he says. “Some kind of process, right? But what? What was it that the Rain were made of? Sinclair knows it all, and everyone else is in the dark. But somewhere in you—”

“ No one besides Sinclair? Not even the Throne? Or you?”

“ I know only fragments.”

“ What did you use to bind me to Spencer?”

“ Death.”

“ What?”

“ We killed you. When we got back to Earth.”

“ That was a risk.”

“ The Throne said you’d have to be executed anyway unless we could find a way to harness you. And the Praetorian med-teams know what they’re doing: simultaneously flat-lined you and Spencer and then shocked you back while your minds were wired together on the zone. Sinclair had already given me the sequence and Harrison was the one who gave the order but I’ve no idea how he—”

“ And why not Lynx?”

“ Too risky. It had been done to him once already, right? And Spencer’s mind had been dosed with ayahuasca, which made him particularly receptive. But the real question isn’t what was done to him a few days ago or what was done to me and Lynx and Sarmax more than two decades back; the real question is what was done to you and the rest of the Rain when you were in the fucking incubator . The first team was jury-rigged and the second was created wholesale. And only Sinclair knows that formula—”

“ And Harrison—”

“— thinks he does, but his files are rigged with false data.”

“ You really think you’ve beaten the Praetorians?”

“ You’re the one who’s done that. It’s what you were designed for. Though finding out how much of you goes beyond anybody’s planning is what I’m setting in motion tonight.”

“ I’ll tell you what I know,” she says, and she can’t help but say the words. She can’t help but tell him everything she can and then some. She has no idea what he already knows. She has no idea how she knows what she does. It doesn’t matter. Her mind twists and turns and it’s all she can do to hang on …

“ I was to be the key node in the Autumn Rain mass-mind.”

“ Go on.”