I moved back, reaching for Jane’s hand. My heart was pounding, my mouth dry. Because, looking at the man sitting there before us, with his shock of long hair and his deceptively mild brown eyes, I had no doubt whatsoever but that this was Luther Burdock—whoever he was, and however old he was—and that he was completely, utterly insane.
The room was silent. Jane took my hand, looking from Burdock to myself and back again. At their workstations the energumens turned blank, unsurprised faces toward us, then one by one swiveled back to their monitors. The argala whistled and murmured to herself. The remaining aardmen crouched with eyes fixed on Luther Burdock, the stumps of their vestigial tails thudding against the cold floor.
For several minutes all was still. And then, from somewhere in the darkness of the caverns echoed the sound of footsteps. A measured tread, a sharp clicking as of metal boots striking the stone ground; but boots that belonged to an extraordinarily light-footed soldier. Jane and I looked around anxiously, but Dr. Burdock was oblivious.
“Savages,” he said to himself. He bared his teeth and jabbed at something invisible. “ B-brutes. i
In the labyrinthine passages the unseen figure approached slowly. A minute of silence when he reached the bridge; I could barely see a slender form moving behind the scrim of water and candlelight. Then came a small thump as whoever it was jumped to the floor. Jane pulled away from me, her head craned to see what was emerging from the darkness.
A soft sound as he entered the chamber. The aardmen growled softly. Luther Burdock alone seemed not to hear it; not to hear or care. The mad fire in his eyes was extinguished. Once again he looked at us quite calmly, only a sheen of spittle upon his lips showing that he had ever been anything but this placid figure.
“We still have a great deal of work to do,” he said absently, his brown eyes soft and bland. “So much to do, and so little…”
I looked away, to where that unseen person began to cross the room. The leaping candlelight touched him, a little at a time. I saw his feet first, dainty as a stag’s but sheathed in black metal; then his legs, also metal and coiled about with violet plasteel tubes. Then his torso, a confection of lavender and jet glass and chrome; and finally his face. A face that might have been carved from crystal, then stained with the crushed fruit of grapes and plums and all dusky things. A man’s face, elegant and serene—save for his mouth. That was too wide and thin, and coiled as in laughter; but even the most sophisticated of replicants do not hold smiles well.
“Greetings to our guests,” he said in a low, mocking voice. “I see you have found our spiritual father?”
My heart froze inside me. “Who—?” I gasped, stepping forward while Jane stared at him in dismay. “Who are you?”
The replicant turned until its eyes met mine. Emerald eyes, jade eyes, eyes that had swallowed every precious green thing in the world and held them hostage until the moment they would seize me again.
“Wendy Wanders,” he said softly, and the hand that gripped mine was strong and sharp as an osprey’s talons. “Well-met in Cassandra, sister mine.”
It was the Gaping One. The hypostate I had called the Boy in the Tree, the demonic godling who had tormented me before fleeing me at the Engulfed Cathedral—but he had fled only his human form, it seemed. Now he had found another.
“No—” I stammered. “You are—you’re—” But before I could finish, the replicant bowed its head.
“Metatron,” he said with exaggerated modesty. An energumen glanced up at that voice, loud and clear as though announcing itself to a great hall; then turned back to its work.
“You know each other—very nice,” said Dr. Burdock.
“Wendy?” began Jane, reaching for me, but I pushed her away.
“How did you get here?—what are you doing?—” I spat. “You were—you died back there—”
The replicant only looked at me, runnels of violet light flickering up and down his breast and across his face. “Oh, no,” he said, and raising his voice, recited,
“ ‘ The immortal Gods alone have neither age nor death. All other things almighty Time disquiets. ’ ”
Then he smiled again, showing that perfect curve of a mouth filled with perfectly even, ebony teeth. “There are great advantages to my present condition,” he said calmly, and turned to Luther Burdock. “Doctor—there is some problem with the plasma cultivar, and as you said, we have so much to do before tomorrow evening. Perhaps you could—?”
Dr. Burdock started. “Mmm? Yes, of course, thank you thank you.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, then looked at us apologetically.
“I’m sorry; but it really can’t wait, you know. Time and tide and—well, Icarus. But you’ve been shown quarters? Given a—um, a uniform, and all that?”
“No!” Jane exploded. “We haven’t been shown anything, and I’d like to know what in hell is going on.”
Dr. Burdock pursed his lips, glanced over at Metatron. “Oh. Well…?”
“What is going on,” the replicant said in that slightly hollow, breathy voice, “is a war. A Great War, perhaps truly A War to End All Wars.
“At least,” he added slyly, “it might be a war to end all men.”
“How can you be party to this, Burdock?” demanded Jane. She pointed angrily at the energumens. “These are—well, they’re geneslaves, is what they are, mutants and—well, I don’t even know what that is,” she ended, glaring at Metatron. “How can you defend them?”
Dr. Burdock raised his head. His eyes were ineffably sad. “Defend them?” he said softly. “But of course I must d-defend them. Didn’t you hear me? Don’t you understand? I created them. They are my—my children.”
He gazed at an aardman lolling on the floor, its long legs splayed behind it like a dog’s. “Those—what you call the aardmen—they were mine—my dogs, you see, Great Danes, I bred them quite carefully for many years. But this was not what I had in mind—”
He clenched his fingers into the semblance of a clawed hand and bared his teeth “You see? Not that. Not a sort of monster. Dogs, ” he said firmly. “They were supposed to be—well, they were supposed to be people, but like dogs.”
Beside me I could hear Jane whisper, “He’s a complete idiot.” I recalled her at the Zoo, lovingly tending her cougars and red wolves and stags, and thought again how she had hated to see any of the others, the hybrid creatures that spent their pathetic lives hobbled halfway between humanity and wild things, doomed to die behind glass-and-iron bars.
Jane herself continued to stare balefully at Dr. Burdock. “Well, what the hell good did you think it would do? ‘People like dogs?’ And those other things—hydrapithecenes, sirens, those things they use as whores?”
Metatron looked on amused as Dr. Burdock shook his head. “No! You don’t understand— none of those were mine, none of that was what I meant at all. It’s so different now. All of that, out there—”
He flapped his hand, indicating the ceiling and the world beyond. “Why, everything’s changed utterly. Everything’s ruined. Dead, or dying, poisoned…much much worse than in my time, you understand? Much worse. In my time you could still drink water without worrying about mutagens, you had to wear hoods and shades outside, but there were still people to wear them—not everyone had died because of the sun, or the wars. And we didn’t have our politicians and armies floating around in space. It was—oh, it was quite different, we thought it was a horrible world, but it wasn’t like this. ”