Outlanders - Tomb of Time Part 13

Lakesh favored her with a grave up-from-under look, the same way he had done when he peered over the rims of his spectacles. ' 'Perhaps in a way he did. Who knows if Domi was fated to die that day? By interfering in the flow of time and events, Sindri very well may have triggered another alternate event horizon. As it is, he didn't retrieve her a microsecond before her death because of any Sa- maritan impulses. No, it was either a whim or a component of a larger plan."DeFore didn't like what she was hearing. Chill fingers of dread stroked the base of her spine, and she s.h.i.+vered. ."Sindri deliberately lured us to the Operation Chronos facility in Chicago, is that what you're saying?"

Lakesh nodded. "Precisely. During my short time spent in Sindri's company, I found him to be a brilliant, cunning...yet possibly the most hate-filled man I ever met. And I've met quite a few in my two-plus centuries of life."

"I thought he fancied himself a scientist and a liberator."

"Oh, I'm sure if Sindri was questioned on that point, he would deny his hatred. He would claim hate is not scientific, and therefore he is incapable of feeling that emotion."

Lakesh's eyes acquired a faraway sheen, and his voice dropped to a husky whisper. "He would never suspect, much less admit that under the surface of his intellect a hatred hot enough to set the world on fire smolders continuously. Nor would he guess that his dreams of setting the world aright had their roots hidden in his hatred."

DeFore said quietly, "Maybe hate is all he ever had."

"No." Lakesh's voice was the rustle of coa.r.s.e cloth. "But it's all he has left."

Suddenly, he seemed to mentally shake himself and he knuckled his eyes. "Forgive me, Doctor. When I'm tired I tend to wax philosophical."

"And psychological," DeFore interjected with a jittery smile. "I wasn't aware you had the time to a.n.a.lyze him."

Peremptorily, Lakesh stated, "Let's just say I know the type."

His tone closed the subject, but DeFore guessed he had been thinking of the source of his renewed vitality, the child G.o.d-or demon-who had a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of imperator. Despite the explanations offered to her, not only by Lakesh but Brigid, as well, she had no idea of the true nature of the imperator. She knew he allegedly ruled some of the barons, but how many and for how long was still an open question.

Although all of the fortress cities with their individual, allegedly immortal G.o.d-kings were supposed to be interdependent, the baronies still operated on insular principles. Cooperation among them was grudging despite their shared goal of a unified world. They perceived humanity in general as either servants or as living storage vessels for transplanted organs and fresh genetic material.

The nine barons weren't immortal, but they were as close as flesh-and-blood creatures could come to it.

Due to their hybrid metabolisms, their longevities far exceeded those of humans. Barring accidents, ill- nesses-or a.s.sa.s.sinations-the barons' life spans could conceivably be measured in centuries. Grant figured that even the youngest of them was close to a hundred years old.

But the price paid by the barons for their extended life spans was not cheap. They were physically fragile, p.r.o.ne to lethargy, and their metabolisms were easy prey for infections, which was one reason they tended to sequester themselves from the ville-bred humans they ruled.The vast genetic engineering facility beneath the Archuleta Mesa in Dulce served as a combination of gestation, birthing ward and medical treatment center. The hybrids, the self-proclaimed new humans, were born there, the half-human sp.a.w.n created to inherit the nuke-scoured Earth.

None of the hybrids reproduced in conventional fas.h.i.+on. They reproduced by a form of cloning and gene-splicing, but it hadn't seemed reasonable they would rely completely on the subterranean facilities beneath the mesa. And if that were so, if they did not have access to a secondary installation, then extinction for the barons was less than a generation away. Or so all the Cerberus exiles fervently hoped when the Dulce installation was destroyed.

That hope vanished quickly when Lakesh informed them of the Area 51 complex, and the body of legends that had sprung up around alien involvement with the top secret facility. The so-called aliens weren't referred to by name, but they fit the general physical description of Balam's people. If that was indeed the case, Lakesh theorized that the medical facilities that might exist in Area 51 would be of great use to the barons, since they would already be designed for their metabolisms. Baron Cobalt could reactivate them, turn them into a processing and treatment center, without having to rebuild from scratch.

He could have transferred the medical personnel from the Dulce facility.

Baron Cobalt's forces had occupied the Dreamland complex in order to dole out the means of baronial survival as he saw fit. Kane and Domi were captured when they penetrated the enormous installation.

During their two weeks of imprisonment in Area 51, they been told about a mysterious figure called the imperator who intended to set himself up as overlord of the villes, with the barons subservient to him.

That bit of news was surprising enough, but it quickly turned shocking, when Kane said his informant claimed none other than Balam, whom they had thought was gone forever, supported this imperator.

Balam, the sole representative of the so-called Ar-chon Directorate and therefore the masters of the baronial oligarchy and the entire hybrid dynasty, hadn't escaped-he had been set free.

In the months since the ent.i.ty's departure, Lakesh had toyed with the notion that Balam had chosen to remain a prisoner in Cerberus for over three years until the resistance group was strong enough to actually make a difference in the war to cast off the harness of slavery. In essence he had made the Cerberus exiles partic.i.p.ate in a conspiracy to manipulate a conspiracy.

Lakesh turned toward DeFore, forcing a smile. "There's no point in both of us standing here wondering what the biolink telemetry actually means. I think we should-''

A soft bong emanated from the monitor screen. Both people's heads swiveled toward it so swiftly their neck tendons twinged in protest. Hearts trip-hammering, they stared in horrified fascination as the icons symbolizing Brigid, Kane and Grant flickered and vanished from the screen.

Chapter 15.

Lakesh focused on his ghostly reflection barely visible in the blank monitor. For an instant he saw a haggard and ancient face staring back at him-the face he had worn before meeting the imperator. The accusation hi the blue eyes was firm, and it was just as firm in DeFore's voice. "Dammit, don't ignore me! I had enough of that from Grant today. What are we going to do?"

Inhaling a deep, canning breath, Lakesh turned to face the agitated medic. "There's very little we can do,Doctor." He deliberately addressed her by the honorific, despite knowing her education as a physician was woefully incomplete, at least by predark standards. "Our only option is the time-honored practice of serving by standing and waiting."

DeFore's eyebrows drew together at the bridge of her nose as she tried to reason out the meaning of the old bromide. Gesturing to the gateway, she demanded, "Isn't there any way to override the transit block from here?"

"I fear not."

"Didn't Sindri overcome your own security blocks and beam bis walking stick in here?" she challenged. "You were the Project Cerberus overseer, right? This is the first fully functional and debugged gateway, isn't it, the template for all the units in the network? Are you saying he can do things with them you can't?"

Despite knowing what the woman was doing, La-kesh bristled. "Don't try to bait me with such an obvious ploy. Whatever methodology Sindri used to accomplish what he did was never made clear to me."

In truth, the problem had vexed Lakesh for a long time. He could only speculate that once Sindri grasped the fundamental principles of the quantum inducer operations, he approached the problem from a direction Lakesh had yet to figure out.

"There are many reasons why we're not receiving the transponders' telemetry at the moment," he went on in a reasonable tone. "It doesn't necessarily mean the jump team's life functions have ceased."

She nodded. "I know."

"Besides, there are other matters to occupy me. Your intriguing account of the so-called night-gaunts for one. You weren't very precise about them."

"I told you all I know," DeFore replied defensively. "Domi was the one who called them that."

His lips quirked in a patronizing smile. "Yes, I'm aware of the Ouflands superst.i.tions of faceless soul stealers. But inasmuch as you said they spoke, it's apparent they have mouths and therefore faces, even if you couldn't see them."

She frowned. "I don't know if it was an actual language or not. It sounded like gibberish to me.

Linguistics isn't my field."

"Can you reproduce some of the sounds you heard? If I hear the phonetics, I might be able the identify the root and therefore where the creatures came from."

Lines of concentration furrowed on her smooth brow. After a thoughtful moment, she said, "Di-ku.

That's what I heard most of all. Di-ku."

Lakesh's eyes widened then narrowed. "You're sure?"

"Of course I'm not sure," she answered gruffly. "It was chaos in there." Slowly, as if he were dredgingthrough his memory, he said, "During my investigations into the mythological origins of the Archons, I had occasion to read translations of Su-merian legend and lore."

"So?"

"Theirs was an agglutinative tongue, its vocabulary, grammar and syntax are unrelated to any other language, living or dead. If it was Sumerian you heard, then no wonder it sounded like gibberish to you."

Suspiciously, she asked, "I hope you're not get- ting ready to theorize that we ran into a bunch of time-trawled Sumerians."

"Hardly. However, the word di-ku means 'to judge' or 'judgment determiner.' I find it very significant, particularly since we know that the Sume-rian civilization was influenced by the Annunaki."

DeFore put out a hand, palm outward. "Stop," she said sternly. "Don't go there, all right? Not now. You know how I hate all that ancient astronaut c.r.a.p."

Amused in spite of the situation, Lakesh inquired innocently, "Even if it's the truth?"

"We don't know if it's the truth," she shot back. "It's only what Brigid claimed she was told."

Lakesh didn't deny it or argue with the woman. Even Kane had pointed out that all the history they knew of the barons, the nukecaust and even the Archons derived from secondhand and dubious sources, with very little empirical evidence to back it up. All they really had as a foundation was myth, often distorted and disguised out of all reasonable proportion.

DeFore pa.s.sed a hand over her face and said wearily, "Sorry, Lakesh. I'm worn and wrung out."

"Why don't you go the cafeteria?" he suggested gently. "You haven't eaten since your return, and I can tell you're exhausted. I'll apprise you of any change."

She sighed heavily, loath to leave the control complex. "It never gets any easier, does it? The waiting and wondering?"

"No," he answered bluntly. "I wish I could say it did, but it never does."

DeFore left the ready room, walking around the long table that served as its only furniture. Lakesh watched her go, once again thanking whatever mysterious fates had brought the woman to his attention.

But at the same time he thanked them, he also feared them. If Reba DeFore ever learned the true circ.u.mstances of her exile from her ville, he would earn her undying hatred, and he knew he deserved every atom of it. Despite all the rationalizations and justifications he employed, guilt still consumed him, more so now that he was an exile himself.

Lakesh's usual method of recruitment was to select likely candidates from the personnel records of all the villes, then set them up, frame them for crimes against their respective barons. He had used the ploy to recruit Brigid Baptiste, Reba DeFore, Benjamin Farrell, Donald Bry and Robert Weg-mann, knowing all the while that the cruel, heartless plan had a barely acceptable risk factor.

It was the only way to spirit them out of their villes, turn them against the barons and make them feelindebted to him. This bit of explosive and potentially fatal knowledge had not been shared with the exiles other than Kane, Grant and Brigid, and they had occasionally held it over his head, as both a means of persuasion and outright blackmail.

It wasn't as if Lakesh hadn't undertaken enormous risks himself in his covert war against the barons.

Before, as a member of the Cobaltville Trust, he straddled the fence between collaborator and conspirator. Unfortunately, the suspicions of Salvo, a fellow Trust member and Magistrate Division commander, had been aroused by his activities. He pulled Lakesh off the fence and onto the side of a conspirator because he suspected him of not only being a Preservationist, but of arranging Kane, Bri-gid and Grant's escape from the ville.

Part of this suspicion was true, but the other part was a deliberately constructed falsehood. Salvo had bought into a piece of mole data that Lakesh himself had sent burrowing through the nine-ville network some twenty years before. Salvo was convinced of the existence of an underground resistance movement called the Preservationists, a group that allegedly followed a set of idealistic precepts to free humanity from the bondage of the barons by revealing the hidden history of Earth.

The Preservationists were an utter fiction, a straw adversary crafted for the barons to fear and chase after while Lakesh's true insurrectionist work proceeded elsewhere.

Salvo believed Lakesh to be a Preservationist, and that he had recruited Kane into their traitorous rank and file. When Baron Cobalt had charged Salvo with the responsibility of apprehending Kane by any means necessary, the man presumed those means included the abduction and torture of Lakesh, one of the baron's favorites.

Lakesh had been rescued and taken back to Cerberus, but the retrieval increased the odds the redoubt would be found. Although the installation was listed on all ville records as utterly inoperable, Lakesh extrapolated that Baron Cobalt would leave no redoubt unopened in his search for him.

After all, the baron had witnessed a group of se-ditionists using his own personal gateway to transport elsewhere, so logically, his quarry had to have a destination. The matter stream modulations of the Cerberus unit were slightly out of phase with other gateways so they couldn't be traced. The baron's only alternative was a physical search of every redoubt. In spite of Grant, Kane, Brigid and Domi's efforts to lay false trails hi other redoubts, Lakesh knew far too many things had happened since his rescue to be able to return to any of the villes, either as a conspirator or collaborator.

War had come to the baronies. Baron Cobalt had disappeared, and the imperator was setting into motion momentous events that would eventually result in a violent climax or a terrifying synthesis. The doctrine of unity had been decisively shattered, and Lakesh had no idea what might take its place. For the majority Of the ville-bred citizens, the concept of a living outside of a narrow, structured society would be akin to insanity. Lakesh knew the people of the baronies would not be as resilient as Kane, Grant and Brigid Baptiste when their entire belief system collapsed into the rubble of lost dreams and meaningless dogma.

For most of their lives, Kane, Grant and Brigid had subscribed to the doctrine of unification. In the case of Kane and Grant, they had dedicated their lives to serving those ideals. As Magistrates, the two men enforced the many and contradictory laws of the villes, enjoying their reputations of being both ruthless and incorruptible. Both men followed a pat-rilineal tradition, a.s.suming the duties and positions of theirfathers before them. They did not have given names, each taking the surname of the father, as though the first Magistrate to bear the name was the same man as the last.

As Magistrates, the courses their lives followed had been charted before their births. They were destined to live, fight and die, usually violently, as they fulfilled their oaths to impose order upon chaos. Kane's life had taken a different route, but he learned later he was following the secret path laid down by his father.

When Kane, Grant and Brigid were recla.s.sified as outlanders, or nonpersons, they could never return to Cobaltville. As far as Kane was concerned, the war was over. The nukecaust made the planet the property of someone-something-else, and humans like himself were exiles on the world of their birth.

Only Lakesh's theory that the nukecaust happened because of an alteration in the probability wave gave him even a dim light of hope. If the Archons turned the wave in a direction it was not supposed to flow, then perhaps the course could be redirected.

It was a small, almost ridiculous hope, but neither Kane, Grant nor Brigid had anything else on which to base a reason to continue living. Faced with the choice of bleak acceptance of the reality or a faint chance of salvaging humanity's future, they chose the faint chance.

According to Kane, it was the only human choice to make. Fortunately, the crucible of spiritual fire did not destroy Kane, Brigid and Grant. It cleansed them even as it scorched them, driving them forward, keeping them from accepting or surrendering to the forces arrayed against them. They declared war on the dark forces devoted to maintaining the yoke of slavery around the collective necks of humankind. It was a struggle not just for the physical survival of humanity but for the human spirit, the soul of an entire race.

Over the past two years, they scored many victories, defeated many enemies and solved mysteries of the past that molded the present and the future. More importantly, they began to rekindle of the spark of hope within the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the disenfranchised fighting to survive in the Outlands.

Victory, if not within their grasp, at least no longer seemed an unattainable dream. But dark clouds arose from the nuke-scoured caldron of the h.e.l.lzones, building to a critical ma.s.s. The war that ended a civilization and began another two centuries before had entered a new and far more deadly phase-and it was one that Kane and his friends had unwittingly brought about.

Lakesh started to walk into the control center and grimaced at a stabbing pain in his right knee. The pain was brief, but it was familiar. He knew the symptoms of arthritis and with a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach he realized the imperator's gift of restored vitality was no more substantial than the dogma of unity.

He saw Bry seated at the main ops console and Farrell at environmental station. They were engaged in a casual conversation, talking of matters mundane and ordinary. Lakesh fervently wished he could join in, but he couldn't force his mind away from the crisis. He knew he should have antic.i.p.ated Sindri's involvement in Domi's resurrection and taken precautions. But he had not, and now he feared disaster for all of humankind was afoot in the night.

He strode up the aisle between computer stations.Usually the sublime hum of computer noise comforted him, but tonight it ate at his nerve endings. Once again, renegade technology cast a threatening shadow on a world that already had seen its fair share of darkness.

Somewhere out there existed an immensely powerful tool for ma.s.s destruction, and it was in the hands of a madman possessed of an overwhelming need to avenge his own birth.

Chapter 16.

Grant heeled away from the railing as the echo of his cry still vibrated in the air. Sindri didn't move, didn't so much as flinch as Grant lunged toward him. He met the big man's expression of bare-toothed, wild-eyed, homicidal fury with a bland smile.

Too maddened by rage to even think of unleath-ering his Sin Eater, Grant closed his hands around Sindri's upper arms and hoisted him up effortlessly, holding him at eye level.

"Let her go!" Grant roared out the words, his breath fogging the faceplate of his hood. *'Let her go, or I'll rip your f.u.c.king arms off and hammer them down your throat!"

"I have no doubt you could do so," Sindri replied, his voice calm. "And I always intended to release her.

Under a condition, of course."

"Of course," Brigid spit angrily. "What is it this time? More of your 'bow, yield, kneel' s.h.i.+t?"

The occasion was rare when Brigid used profanity and when she did, it meant she was stressed-out indeed. Kane, although equally angry, wasn't partic- ularly surprised by Sindri's ploy. As Brigid had pointed out earlier, Sindri never did anything without holding out an ace. He glanced down into the shaft at s.h.i.+zuka in the alcove. Her dark eyes silently implored him, but he wasn't sure what she wanted him to do.

Growling deep in his throat like a lion infuriated beyond all sense of self-preservation, Grant roughly reversed his grip on Sindri, spinning him and dangling him over the railing by the ankles. He shook him, bellowing, "I'm not playing these games with you, p.i.s.sant! Let her go, or I drop you straight on your head!"

"You can do that," Sindri agreed, still striving to sound unruffled and in control of the situation. "But you'd kill her, too."

Grant opened his hand around Sindri's right ankle and the little man cried out involuntarily in fear, kicking at the air. His voice trembling in anger at the indignity of being held upside down like an infant, Sindri shouted, "Oakshott!"

Grant's brow furrowed in confusion. He exchanged a swift glance with Kane and Brigid. "What does that mean?"

"It means," Sindri retorted, "the process of killing s.h.i.+zuka has already begun. Look."