Майкл Гир - Requiem for the Conqueror

The Praetor beamed at him, suddenly crafty. "Then it won't hurt you to know your Chrysla was a most remarkable woman. She provided me with a great deal of warmth in my last years. You know, she had a mole on her right breast-just under the nipple. When we would lie together,

sweaty and loose jointed, after making love, I would kiss it just-2'

The look of triumph in the old man's eyes barely registered as Staffa leapt, catlike, to the top of the hospital unit, reaching down to grab the Praetor

by the corners of the jaw, steel fingers ripping up and out, crushing the tongue against the roof of the old man's mouth as he twisted. The vertebrae popped hollowly. Possessed, Staffa continued to twist, hardly aware of the blood that leaked onto his fingers. Thews bulging on his arms, Staffa heard himself screamthe sound of a wounded animal.

He swayed, a gray mist washing from his vision in tattered streaks. Breath sobbed in and out of his lungs. He blinked aware for the first time that the door gaped open. Skyla and Ryman Ark crouched to either side, rifles ready, expressions haunted by the sight.

He tried to think, to sort out what had happened and why, but the thoughts wouldn't form. Something hidden in my mind-something keyed by the phrase. How did I miss it? How badly will it affect my judgment?

Staffa turned and started for the door, his brain numb, as if drugged. Behind him, the gruesome remains of the Praetor stared sightlessly into the greenish-yellow rays of the sunset of an empire.

Magister Bruen's steps scuffed hollowly as he entered the cavernlike chamber. He paused, a thin hand braced on the gritty rock of the wall, and took a second to rest before walking out among the waiting people. The nagging ache in his hip reminded him of the long descent to this lowest level. He panted and wiped at his age-lined forehead, refusing to look at the shining machine that dominated the far wall with its banks of gleaming lights.

Overhead panels sent a soft white glow down to illuminate the ancient rock walls of the Seddi cavem. It filled the recessed hollows with diffused rays that feathered the shadows into a gray haze.

Bruen ignored the ominous flashing signal on the huge computer. Others of his party filed down the passageway behind him. Magister Hyde's wheezing gasps sounded too loud in the rocky confines. To this hidden chamber under neary two kilometers of honeycombed Targan rock, came somber-robed men and women. No one spoke as they stepped out of the stair-lined tunnel.

The brown-robed Initiates crowded nervously along the walls, anxious eyes shifting as the two elders in white Magister's robes passed to stand before the gleaming machine.

Bruen cast a loathing glance at the brushed metal and multicolored lights of the Mag Comm. He hated it, could feel its miasma permeating the very air. What do you want of us now? Slippery fingers of fear tugged at his soul. A queasy tightness cramped his gut.

Magister Hyde, resplendent in white robes, stood beside Bruen and pulled nervously at his fingers. As if the Mag Comm recognized their presence, the lights flickered in unfathomable patterns. Bruen considered the monster. Where had the machine come from? Who had originally

built it in the long forgotten recesses of the past? It represented a technology the Seddi hated and couldn't live without. In the silence, a faint shuffling of sandaled feet scuffed the stone floor. The air carried a metallic tang mixed with the taint of human sweat.

Magister Bruen rubbed his rounded belly, grimacing at the shimmering mass of the golden wired helmet resting in the holder next to the reclining chair — the single piece of fuiture in the cavern. He looked nervously toward Magister Hyde and the sober-faced Initiates flanking him. Bright worry filled Hyde's eyes. A worry Bruen hoped his own features didn't reflect.

Bruen could see himself in the mirror-bright surface of the machine's metal — a small man, rounded, squat, arms and legs rubbery from years of scholarship and teaching. His drawn face displayed his age, each line of his deeply etched visage a hash mark of the passing years. The march of decades had sagged his flesh, adding to the dissipation of his now frail body. His Seddi robes made of coarsely woven Targan cloth were off-white and hung loosely about him. His head had lost all but a few wisps of snowy hair over the years. Now, his bald pate gleamed.

Only his eyes betrayed the unquenchable spirit that drove him now — despite his advanced years — to stand in the vanguard of events. Events which would forge humanity in a vortex of fire, blood, and pain — or destroy them all.

"Too old," he had muttered to himself so often, "and too Rotted much is at stake to get out."

He lived the curse of an. old man: to hold to ideals; to dedicate one's life to the destiny of the species and an unattainable abstract. And then, when the final moments came, the Fates laughed as the warrior — girding for the final battle — looked in the mirror to find himself past his day. So old, so tired. The moment had finally come. leaving humanity an old, old man for a champion.

Existence proved bitter fare at best.

The machine remained a frightening enigma with its meanings hidden in the banks upon banks of mysterious boards forged in the distant past by a lost technology. Bruen filled his ancient lungs and experienced a stitch of pain in his brittle ribs.

A distasteful task this — one that came of being the highest ranked Magister of the Seddi priesthood. The huge comm had called from its lair deep under the temple in Vespa. Normally, the machine ran programs for Seddi scholars who studied social reality. For those endeavors the Mag Comm employed complicated statistics Bruen's colleagues barely understood; but they used them to plan covert Actions throughout Free Space, predicting trends of behavior, manipulating data, producing historical facts for their consumption and illumination.

Behind those panels lay their only ally in the coming conflagration.

Ally? Of what sort? Bruen swallowed nervously, ignoring the pain in his feet.

The summons light-a glaring angry amber-blinked on and off, calling to him to communicate.

Bruen stared uneasily at the huge computer. After all the years the Seddi records claimed it had functioned passively, why had it awakened? Why had it developed an interest in the doings of men? What motives beyond Seddi ken did it now advance?

The Seddi had cared for the Mag Comm for centuries, keeping careful track of the periodic maintenance. They had recorded in detail each of the repairs they had asked the machine to lead them through. For centuries, the Mag Comm had been a giant passive machine, answering questions, responding to programmed data. Then it had changed. Bruen had been in this very room when the Mag Comm flashed to life, as if totally aware in an instant, printing commands, flashing lights, asking questions. The shocked Seddi had answered, falling under the huge Mag Comm's sway, becoming its servants.

Bruen-an Initiate then, young, full of religious ambition and vigor-could recall those days with crystal clarity. At first he'd thought it a miracle to see the machine come to life, long dead lights gleaming brightly, a low pervading humming growing in the dim recesses of the subterranean cavern.

Heart in his throat, he had run for the upper chambers, panicked and shouting for the Magisters. When a human watches a God come to life before his very eyes, existence is forever altered.

And the works of the Seddi had been transformed.

What have you made us? What is your purpose? The old unsettling questions prickled like thorns in Bruen's mind. And now I have to face you again. Do you know what we've plotted? Are you playing with us even now? How can mere men hope to stand against you and your powers? As if we had even the slightest