GRYCHN AWOKE with sweat cooling on her skin.
At first she thought she must have awakened from a nightmare. She often had dreams of the Rebellion, frequently seeing comrades die again as their images cycled out of hippocampal gray. But there were no war images lingering in her mind. Something else had awakened her.
Damiel lay beside her, still asleep. He had not awakened her. She looked at her ring watch–it was 0400. Something else had disturbed her sleep.
She listened carefully, thinking the boys might be having another nightmare and had cried out in terror. She heard the sound again–a faint, high-pitched hum.
She got out of bed and went to the window, just in time to see an iridescent blue sphere drifting away. Lady Blue!
For a moment, it seemed as though her heart had stopped. Then blood began pounding in her ears with her heart’s palpitations. Sweat poured from her skin.
She ran out of the bedroom naked, bolted down the hall, and jumped into the stairwell. P-grav slowed her descent through the air. All she could think about were her sons. The boys’ room was in the basement. When her feet hit the basement floor, she was off and running. She flung open the door to their room and rushed inside.
A faint odor still lingered in the air–noscamine. She remembered the smell–Ghost Cavalry used it in gas grenades to put villages to sleep before search and destroy missions.
As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see Craig and Chris asleep in their beds. She sighed with relief, but her sigh turned into a gasp when she saw that Alix’s bed was empty.
Lady Blue had visited.
She had taken Alix away.
Grychn collapsed on the floor. Her mind was numb with shock. She felt relief that Craig and Chris were safe, but the loss of Alix was just as hard to bear. How would she be able to tell her sons that they would never see their cousin again?
She had to find Saraltr and tell her.
Grychn climbed back upstairs. She looked in the peptide parlor first. Naked bodies were sprawled in a heap on the floor, gleaming with peptide and their own mingled secretions. She untangled them until she was sure Saraltr was not there.
She began looking through the house. The dream-gamers still dreamed, and would do so until dawn–the dream-game was as restful as REM sleep. Saraltr was not among them. Ghosts were still trapped in the seance room, but the people there had found more interesting amusements. A few people were still collared and shackled, skins still glowing with protons, but the dominatrices had left. Guests could be found in almost every room, engaged in various activities. Those who were still conscious were not surprised when a frantic, wild-eyed naked woman burst in on them–after a thousand years, surprises did not come easily. Most invited her to join them.
Grychn had looked through almost the entire house without finding Saraltr. Only one room remained. She had saved it for last, afraid it would be the one.
She opened the door. Saraltr was there, with Petraltr.
They lay together naked, with a pedimorph between them. Saraltr’s fingers still held the pedi’s tiny penis. Secretions matted its yellow curls flat to its skull. Its eyes were open and faded blue from waning peptide. Its chubby fingers clutched Saraltr’s breast.
Grychn could have killed just then. She had killed for less in her youth. Images of death rose in her mind: poisoned babies, bellies bloated; children with arms and legs torn off; frantic husbands cutting out their unborn sons from their dead wives’ bellies. That was the legacy of the Lords of Earth.
While Lady Blue was taking away her son, Saraltr was in the pederastic embrace of a pedimorph. She knew Detrs had been right to kill his parents; she had been right to become a terrorist. The old anger returned. The old rage burned bright again.
But she did not kill. She would never get away with it on Earth. She would end up at cyborg labor or be sentenced to serve in the legions. Someone had to take care of the boys.
She went back to the boys’ room and picked up her sleeping sons, carrying each of them over her shoulder with a strength she thought she had forgotten. They did not awaken–noscamine still gripped their brains. She strapped them into the back seat of her skimmer, climbed in herself, and shot away at Mach two.
She had decided to leave Earth. She would find a guerilla group to join. The rebellion would flare up again. The boys would fight by her side.
But first she had to figure out how to save her sons’ lives.
* * *
Damiel Bwaman stood in the window, watching Grychn carry the twins to her skimmer. As it streaked away, he smiled to himself. The Prophet had been right, as always. Lady Blue had come to take the boys’ cousin, just as she would come for them. Grychn would try to prevent that from happening. Damiel must be sure that it did. Future events depended on the twins joining their cousin in Lady Blue’s embrace.
Damiel shook his head. He wished he understood why what was to happen had to be. It seemed cruel and unnecessary. But he had faith in the Prophet; he would obey his orders.
Damiel went to his own skimmer and told the autopilot to take him home. As he flew over a countryside lightening with dawn, he dozed. His thoughts were not as troubled as they had been when he was human. Sailors’ xeno-DNA brought enough racial memories to push away human nightmares. His dreams were those of flight: soaring in the air on outstretched wings, wheeling in thermal updrafts, singing into the wind.
Damiel had been among the first of the immortals. He was nearly a thousand years old. If he had not undergone hybridization, he would already have suffered entropic dementia. No one knew for sure how long his hybrid vigor would persist. No one but the Prophet, and he had not said. But those thoughts did not concern a sailor’s mind. Entropy must be served eventually.
Damiel had nothing more to prove to himself. He had had more lovers than he could remember. He had killed more men than he cared to remember. He had been one of the most powerful War Lords. His treatises were still studied by students in the colonies and had not yet been forgotten on Earth. He had won the Ceres’ Cup.
His xenogenes had also brought him wisdom. He knew now the cybermind had to be destroyed, that men were better ruled by other men, no matter how prone to error human minds were. If he died in the struggle, so be it, so better to serve Entropy.
For a thousand years, he had feared death.
Now, in his own twilight, he knew there was more to fear. But he was not afraid.
There was Entropy to serve.
* * *
In the breakfast room of her own house, with sunlight streaming in through open windows, accompanied by a gentle breeze carrying the scent of blooming flowers, the events of the past night seemed like scenes from a bad dream. But Grychn knew the nightmare had been all too real.
She was eating breakfast with Craig and Chris–she could easily have done without eating, but eight-year-olds were always hungry. She drank a cup of coffee and picked at a pastry, while a servbot tried to keep up with the boys’ appetites.
Grychn had not yet told them what had happened to their cousin.
As she watched them eat, Grychn again felt the warm thrill inside that was the physiologic manifestation of love. She could not stand the thought of losing them. There must be some way to keep them out of the clutches of Lady Blue. She would have to figure something out before she could leave Earth.
“I can’t wait for Alix to get here so we can go fishing,” Craig said, cramming a piece of toast in his mouth.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Chris scolded.
“I’m afraid Alix won’t be coming,” Grychn said softly, with a lump in her throat.
“Why not? Is he sick or something?” asked Chris.
“Is he grounded? Did Saraltr find out about ...” Craig stopped, realizing he might not want Grychn to find out either.
Grychn had trouble continuing. “No, he’s not sick or grounded. I’m afraid you won’t be seeing him anymore at all.” She stopped. The words seemed stuck in her throat.
“You mean Lady Blue came for him,” Craig said.
“Neato,” Chris said. “Did he get to go with Lady Blue?”
Grychn was incredulous. They knew! “Yes,” she replied. “He went with Lady Blue. What do you know about Lady Blue?” She could not remember ever discussing the subject with them. She had always felt too uncomfortable about the concept to talk to them about it.
“Everyone knows about Lady Blue,” Chris said.
“Yeah, Alix told us all about her,” Craig added.
“What did Alix tell you?”
“He said Lady Blue came for you just before you were about to grow up.”
“But only if you had been good.”
“Yeah. She takes you to a secret place in the center of the Earth where children never have to grow up.”
“All you have to do all day is play.”
“They have all the toys and things you could imagine, and if you break something, you just throw it away and get a new one. You can stay up as late as you want. There aren’t any nandroids to boss you around.”
“Yeah, and nobody makes you do things you don’t want to do. Nobody wakes you up at night. You get to sleep in your own bed.”
“Who’s been waking you up at night?” Grychn asked. She did not know what he had meant.
“Nobody,” Craig stammered. “I mean you don’t have to hear someone snore.”
“I don’t snore,” Chris said angrily.
“The hell you don’t.”
“Don’t swear boys,” Grychn said automatically.
Grychn did not know what to say. She had had no idea an entire myth had evolved to explain Lady Blue. Well, why not? That was the purpose of myths, wasn’t it, to explain away unpleasant realities.
“Do you think Lady Blue will come for us someday?” Craig asked.
“That would be neato,” Chris said. “We would have a great time playing with Alix. Do you think she’ll come for us?”
“Maybe.” I hope not, she said to herself.
“When?”
“Yeah, when?”
“Not for a while yet.” Grychn did not have the heart to tell them the truth. “You’re not even close to growing up yet.” She hoped that was true.
“Do you think we’ve been good enough?”
Grychn was about to cry. She turned her face so the boys would not notice. “Yes, you’ve been good enough. You’ve been very good,” she said, voice cracking.
“Oh boy, I can’t wait,” Craig said.
“Me either. Let’s go fishing. Can we go fishing?” Chris asked.
Grychn nodded her head.
The twins scrambled away from the table and ran outside, picking up their fishing poles and tackle boxes. A nandroid followed dutifully behind.
After they left, Grychn did cry. When she finished, she did not feel any better. She was a little ashamed of herself. Ex-interplanetary terrorists were supposed to be tougher than that. But it was hard to be tough when you were going to lose two little boys.
Alix was six months older than the twins. Grychn hoped that meant she had six months before Lady Blue came again. Six months did not seem like a very long time.
* * *
Later that day Grychn received an invitation to her father’s wake. She had not seen him for a long time. He brought back too many uncomfortable memories. Since it would be the last time she and the boys would see him alive, she decided to go.
* * *
That night, Grychn was again awakened.
Before the sleep cleared from her brain, she was afraid Lady Blue had come already. She listened for the terrible high-pitched whine. She heard a terrified scream from the boys’ room.
She ran to their bedroom naked, not taking time to find a gown.
As she entered the room, Craig sat bolt upright. When he saw her come in, he cowered back in bed and whimpered, closing his eyes tightly, as though he was terrified of her. When she touched him, he jerked away, keeping his eyes closed. She grabbed him and held him to her breast. She felt him take her nipple in his mouth and start to suck on it. His penis stiffened against her belly.
She shook him.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Grychn,” he said. “It’s you. I thought ...”
“Who did you think I was?”
“Nobody. I was having a bad dream, I don’t remember what it was about.”
“It’s alright now. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Go back to sleep.” She held him until he fell asleep. As she held him, she remembered how his lips had felt on her nipple and the stiffness of his little penis on her skin. She was ashamed of the wetness that dripped between her legs and afraid of the feeling inside.
* * *
Grychn and the twins flew to the Lord General’s wake in the skimmer, since it was only five hundred kilometers away. They climbed to twenty thousand meters to cross the mountainous Great Divide, then dropped to eight thousand and streaked over the inland sea at wave-top level. The boys liked flying over water at Mach two, the sonic boom made a nice roostertail behind them. In less than thirty minutes they could see the flowering trees of New Wichita.
Grychn parked the skimmer on the beach, and the three of them walked the short way to the Cyber Palace.
The palace was a shimmering double duodecagron, a thousand meters in height, impossibly balanced lengthwise on one vertex. It was actually supported within a p-grav field. They stepped into a lift-tube and floated to the top of the palace.
A wake was always a grand party and was invariably held before the honoree had died, so he could enjoy one last party. Not that death actually occurred, but it was said interfaciation with cybermind was as close to death as one would care to get.
The wake for Lord General Williams was held on the resort island of New Wichita, which was moored in the approximate center of the Kansas Sea. New Wichita was an artificial island and named after the ancient city over whose ruins it floated. Over a thousand years ago there had been dry land where the sea now lay–land that had produced a fair percentage of the Earth’s food supply. The water to irrigate those crops had been pumped from a vast underground reservoir, the Oglala aquifer, at a rate faster than replenishment occurred. Wells were drilled continually deeper until the aquifer was drained dry. An earthquake caused the empty aquifer to collapse, which resulted in the overlying land sinking into a great basin, which filled with water, forming an inland sea. Several kilometers beneath the floor of this new sea were deposits of salt, which had been mined when the area had been above water. Water leeched in through the old mine shafts, dissolving the salt and forming vast flooded caverns.
When cybermind was being developed, it was determined that these caverns were now the most geologically stable structures on Earth. Cassions were dropped, and the caverns pumped dry. Cybermind had been built inside those caverns five hundred years ago and had been expanding ever since. Deep inside the earth, beneath five hundred meters of water, it was impregnable to attack.
The Cyber Palace was both a monument to cybermind and the only portal of entry to its physical presence. It was also the traditional place to hold wakes.
At the penthouse level, Grychn and the boys stepped out of the tube and crossed a foyer. Grychn handed her invitation to a receptoid, who scanned it and announced them. They went down the line of dignitaries, shaking hands and kissing lips, until they got to the Lord General.
Grychn dutifully kissed him, holding her lips firmly together, and the boys kissed his cheek. She would have preferred to leave, but since there seemed to be a lull in arriving guests, it would be rude to leave him immediately.
He noticed that and smiled.
“Well, Grychn, it seems we shall have a little time to ourselves. Let me get you something to drink.” He signaled a servbot. “Do you still prefer wine?” She nodded. He handed her a glass and then turned and spoke to the twins. “Why don’t you two boys go try out the game room? I had it set up especially for you. I think there are some refreshments there.”
“Oh, boy!” Craig squealed. “Thanks, General.”
“Yeah, thanks, General,” Chris echoed.
They ran across the ballroom to another doorway. There was no mistaking where it led–noise and lasewires spilled out from the game room.
The Lord General watched the boys dash through the door and disappear. He was over a thousand years old, but still looked like he was in his twenties, with unlined skin, firm muscles, sharp eyes. The only outward sign of infirmity was a slight tremor in his hands.
“It’s a shame our relationship is not better,” the Lord General said. “I’m really quite fond of those two boys. They’re the last of my line, you know. It’s quite vindictive of you to keep them away from me so much.” He smiled at her. “After all, I forgave you. And you hurt me more than you can imagine.”
“You never cared about me.” Her voice was still bitter.
“I might not have been the father you wanted, but I did care for you.”
“Then how could you have done what you did? It was years before I could trust another man.”
“Was our transgression that disturbing?”
“It was for me. I was only twelve years old.”
“And I was over nine hundred. When you get to be as old as I am, maybe you will finally understand.”
“What is there to understand?”
“Lust is the only feeling that withstands the test of time. Greed, power, jealousy, ambition all fade. Lust is the only desire that persists. But passion is hard to maintain. Your senses become jaded, desire harder to arouse. Yet you want to feel the passion again, you want to experience the desire. So you do what you have to do. You do whatever act is necessary. You were a very attractive girl. And you were physically ready.”
“But I wasn’t emotionally ready. I wanted you to love me. I needed your love, not your lust.”
The Lord General shrugged his shoulders. “I had my own needs. You will eventually find you have the same desires. Then you will seek passion in whatever way it takes.”
“Not that way.”
“We shall see. Eight hundred years is a long time.”
“I should have killed you.” Fire burned in her eyes. “I should have killed you after the first time. I knew how to do it.”
“Who had you killed then?”
“I helped Marc Detrs kill his parents.”
“I thought their deaths were suicide?”
“That’s what you were meant to think. That’s what everybody thought. But we did it and made it look like suicide. I should have done the same to you.”
“But you didn’t. So we both have to live with that fact, don’t we. Someday you’ll understand. Someday you will feel the ennui of the immortal.”
The arrival of some more guests allowed Grychn to leave. She kissed him on the cheek like a dutiful daughter and left to mingle. She did not know that many of the other guests–her father’s and her social circles were not too congruent.
She wandered out to a balcony and watched the wind kick the sea into whitecaps. The wind always blew over the Kansas Sea.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” a voice said from behind.
She turned and smiled when she saw the sailor standing next to her. “Hello, Damiel,” she said and kissed him.
He smiled but looked puzzled. “I thought you might have been mad at me.”
“What made you think that?”
“When I woke up you were gone, without saying goodbye or even leaving a note.”
“Oh! That’s right. I had to leave in a hurry. I guess I forgot about you. Sorry.”
“What happened–if you don’t mind telling me.”
“I don’t mind. Lady Blue came and took my nephew. I panicked and took my own boys home. I was afraid she would come back for them.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have any children, but I think I know how you must have felt. I’m glad it wasn’t me you ran away from.”
“It wasn’t you.”
“Then maybe we can get together sometime?” Grychn hesitated before answering. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I don’t think I would be very good company. I’m worried about the boys. I need to find out if there is some way to avoid Lady Blue’s curse.”
“Maybe I can help?”
“How?”
“Lord Surgeon Edbryn is my good friend. He’s the best genosurgeon on Earth. If anyone can answer your questions, he can.”
“Can I trust him?”
“Absolutely. You have my word on it.”
She hesitated again.
“What’s the matter now?” he asked.
“Can I trust you?”
He kissed her. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll call Ed and set you and the twins up with an appointment to see him.”
“OK.” She did not have much choice after all. “Have you paid your respects to the Lord General?” she asked.
Damiel laughed. “Yes. We reminisced about the old days. He was bad enough as a War Lord. I’m not sure I like the idea of him being a ghost.”
Grychn smiled. “I think I like that idea just fine.”
A gong sounded. The interfaciation was about to begin. Grychn and Damiel walked hand-in-hand out to the ballroom.
A central dais had risen from the floor, upon which sat a crystal sarcophagus. The Lord General stood on the dais. He removed his robe. He was naked. His body was still well muscled; his stomach was flat. Grychn wanted to look away–his nakedness brought back too many memories–but she was caught up in the spectacle and could not.
A medroid placed a psihelmet on the Lord General’s bald head, and he climbed into the crystal sarcophagus, lying on white cushions. The top closed and sealed. The sarcophagus filled with liquid DMSO, and there was the faint whine of a compressor. A filigree of frost formed on the outside walls. The temperature inside would be close to absolute zero.
The psihelmet interfaced the Lord General’s mind with cybermind, which was just such a collection of networked human and machine minds. Millions of macroprocessors were linked to millions of human minds whose bodies lay frozen in suspended animation, forming a massive gestalt consciousness. A special low-temp neuropeptide was carried into the frozen brains by the psihelmets, which catalyzed thought processes, allowing them to occur at such reduced temperatures. As long as there were no technological failures, the frozen minds would live until the heat death of the universe, some billion years hence. True cognitive immortality had been achieved.
Interfaciation to cybermind was considered quite an honor, a reward for a lifetime of service to Earth.
The dais and sarcophagus began sinking, soon disappearing into the floor. The sarcophagus with its frozen Lord General would be transported to the ancient salt caverns far below, there to rest until the end of time.
The guests resumed partying.
Grychn sent the boys home with their nandroid. She went home with Damiel.