Grayne had told them a little about such things, but she had not mentioned that the armor clambered over one’s limbs and trunk with a life of its own. The suits practically put themselves on as the breeds danced and squirmed. Herza and Frinna tried to pull free and failed. Those who finished first expressed nervous amusement at the expressions of their fellows.
The helmets fell limp over their shoulders like split hoods until, at Pahtun’s command, they rose up, stiffened, and sealed airtight. Yet from within, Tiadba felt no oppressive closeness. Her breath came easily and the air seemed fresh. She felt only a slight itching at the joints, which she soon learned to ignore.
“They become a second skin,” Pahtun said, “only more subtle and talented. Your armor protects you from endless misery; it is an ancient crafting still wonderful to my eyes—and yet, it has limits. It senses any slip or slide of the rules, such as they are out there. Your armor will transform or translate sensora in the Chaos, so that you may see light and shadow, color and shape. It helps you stay rooted to something like a surface, or travel over something like a landscape—reliably enough to make progress in your journey, presumably to a destination where the Chaos is held at bay.
“The Chaos is not entirely without form or character. There is a kind of weather—some places are more transformed than others, some almost untouched. While there may seem to be, for ages at a time, a thin coating of consistency in what we observe, in truth, the rules are ever-changing. Failure to learn and adapt quickly will have terrible consequences. And so, your armor will adapt and learn, and so will you.”
Two of the escorts carried out a flat egg mounted on a slim black tripod—a portable reality generator, able to place a suspension around their entire group for several wakes.
“Within the Kalpa, the semblance of ancient reality is maintained by our generators. If your armor should weaken or fail, these smaller units may protect you for a time.”
However, surrounded by such protection, they could not make progress toward their goal. Next he introduced their weapons—never to be used recklessly or aggressively, which might attract unwanted attention. They consisted of curved, glowing blades called claves. The blades did not so much cut as accelerate change, Pahtun said. “Claves goad the Chaos—accelerate its own tendencies. The effects are unpredictable—what they strike may or may not disintegrate or cease to function.
“There are no other weapons—except your wits.”
Flight and hiding were always better choices. And so most of their training consisted of being taught how to be elusive—without any real clues, as yet, about what they would be eluding.
“Why do we not send you with vehicles—flying machines, spacecraft, transports through and over the
ground?” Pahtun asked. “There’s a law of size applicable to our generators—a scaling law. To protect more than a small group of breeds, our generators must become unwieldy. And for any generator of reasonable size, an object in the Chaos may not move much faster than you can run—for that would exceed its ability to remap. As well, moving too quickly, in too great a force, attracts vortices of contradiction and failure that we call ‘twistfolds’ and ‘enigmachrons.’ These can be awful traps. They devour and incorporate whatever they capture, armored or not, bonding it with the Chaos. You will no doubt encounter victims of such—recent, and ancient. The victims of the Typhon fade slowly. Some of the monstrosities that once were human have been studied by angelins—Chaos watchers—in the Broken Tower since before I was made.
“And they’re still out there.
“Your armor is particularly vulnerable in the zone of lies, just within the border of the real. These are the middle lands, where the Defenders, the last rank of generators protecting the Kalpa, gradually ease their protection, and then give way to the Chaos. Crossing the middle lands must be done cautiously. Your armor must not become fully active—competing fields generate unpredictable results. I will accompany you into the zone to monitor your progress. I have not lost a marcher yet, not at that stage. But many other trainers have seen their marchers snatched prematurely, caught up in an intrusion or a twistfold.
“There are regions in the Chaos which seem to possess a constancy even across long ages. One of these is the Necropolis—the remains of the Kalpa’s nine lost bions. The Typhon has drawn up these ruins and combined them with the perverted remains of other cities. Here, the Typhon presents its warning of things to come—a cruel mockery of Earth’s greatest citadels, which once spanned the globe. Now, their remains, or their essences—their imagos—have been gathered and rearranged within sight of the tower. Some of these ruins still seem inhabited—if that is the word—by hopeless phantoms. Those who once lived, do not, yet persist and act, and that which never lived takes on unexpected life.
“Let me now describe areas of great danger and opportunity. One is a kind of road or highway across the Chaos, known as a ‘trod.’ Trods appear and disappear, forming serpentine pathways or lanes through all regions.”
“What are they?” Tiadba asked.
“The trods serve as paths of conveyance. Even in the Chaos there are hierarchies of rule or misrule, power or weakness, grandeur or pity. The highest and most powerful figures or shapes—we dare not call them knowing or intelligent—use the trods to move about. Among them are the Silent Ones that have caused so much damage to our marchers, and which even in Sangmer’s day were active and powerful.”
“What do they look like?” Nico asked.
Pahtun shook his head. “Many shapes,” he said. “Some in the tower monitor their comings and goings. Unfortunately, they tell us little down here.”
The marchers stood beside the dome shed, grimacing and stretching and still getting used to their armor.
“The old matter that makes you and fills the bulk of the Earth was once sustained by the suspension that kept the Typhon at bay—but when that pulled tight around the Kalpa and the reality generators became necessary, we had to abandon everything outside. Primordial mass in the Chaos ages unpredictably,
forming pockets of geological change and destruction, no longer limited by the simple rules of gravity, physics, nor even old space and time. The Typhon seems to relish that instability—whatever amuses the Typhon stirs the Chaos and torments old Earth.”
“You keeping talking about the Typhon as if it were alive,” Nico said. “Is it really someone bigger and more powerful than the Eidolons—whatever they are?”
“I am as ignorant as you,” Pahtun answered after a short pause. “Some humans once regarded the unknown forces of nature as magnificent enemies or implacable gods. To me, the Typhon is not part of our nature—neither magnificent nor an enemy whom one might respect. It is a scourge and a disease. But you’ll soon live it for yourselves, and whatever theory keeps you alive, that’s the one you should hold and cherish.”
Macht and Khren seemed intrigued, but this didn’t satisfy Nico, the philosopher. Perf, Shewel, and the other females looked lost or bored. Denbord and Tiadba just listened and tried not to voice their opinions.
Seeming to sense Tiadba’s quiet skepticism, Pahtun knelt beside her on the sandy floor of the channel. His head still rose over her, even as she stood tall in her armor.
“You have a question,” he said.
“We’re going where we have to go,” Tiadba said. “But who made us that way?”
“Shapers, I suppose, following the orders of an Eidolon. I’d like to meet the old twitch someday and give him my opinion.” Pahtun wriggled his fingers and then touched his nose, breed-style. “Ages ago, when I was younger, to salve my own guilt, I snubbed the laws of the City Prince and sent outposters to study the Chaos.” He stopped for a moment, his face crinkling, and Tiadba thought this was the first time she had seen such an expression on a Tall One. She didn’t know what it meant—sadness, wonder, loss?