“He hasn’t been awake for four hundred years.” The woman glared at him, then turned to me. “They only found him fifty years ago,” she said, and sighed. “Fifty years and I should know: I was there. One of those scientists came out to our farm, looking for anything might have belonged to Burdock’s labs back then. He wanted to sift through the ruins back of our fields, but I wouldn’t let him. Showed him a gun and he went off quick enough,” she said, smacking her lips at the memory. “But then there were others felt differently about it, you know, a whole lot of fools here had their daddies and mamas worked for Burdock back then. Soon enough that scientist found what he wanted—”
She made a strange gesture, dipping her head and touching her head and breast with her closed fist. “God save us, he found it all right. Found him, found Luther Burdock, and after a few years managed to bring him back, like he was never dead at all. Poor soul,” she whispered, and for a moment a shaft of pity lit her dark eyes. “He wakes up and he don’t know all these years gone by. He thinks it’s only yesterday he had that girl and now she’s gone. Nothing left but them —”
And shuddering, she cocked a thumb at the energumens.
I looked at them and shivered. The man nodded eagerly. “It happens every time, the same way. He doesn’t believe it’s really her. He keeps thinking he’ll find her the way he left her, but when he realizes she’s gone—” He made claws of his hands and raked them through his thin hair, miming desperation and madness. “Happens every time.”
“How many times?” My voice sounded cold and much too loud. Because all of a sudden it all began to make sense to me, with that terrible kind of logic that adheres only in dreams. “How many times has it happened?”
“Who’s counting?” the man said, and cackled.
“He starts out by helping us, or wanting to,” the woman whispered. “Thinks he’s going to save us from his crazy star. Then he starts to look at all his old ’files and records, and the madness comes onto him, every year it’s the same.”
“But this time it’s worse,” the man broke in. “He’s obsessed about this imaginary star of his. And that robot Metatron backs him up, tells us all that the Doctor’s right, there’s this star headed right for us. Comes by every four, five hundred years, bang-o—but now who could count all that time? I know they say the Doctor saw it, I know they say he’s that old; but I don’t believe it. I think this Metatron just wants a way to kill off all us old people and send the young ones to their death. That’s what I think.”
I remembered the unearthly malevolent green eyes that had stared at me from behind Metatron’s metal mask. It was easy enough for me to believe that he would do such a thing.
“And Dr. Burdock?” I asked. “What happens to him? Tomorrow night?”
“The scientists will come,” the woman began; but before she could finish, a shadow loomed across the table.
“Will you help us with this packing?” one of the energumens asked in its clear, girlish voice. “Our fingers are far too big—” And it raised its clawed hands as it gestured for us to follow.
“I guess we’re just going to find out when everyone else does,” Jane said darkly. Her brown eyes were wide and shot with a desperation I’d never seen before. “God, I wish I had my pistol.”
I bowed my head. “I don’t think it would help this time, Jane,” I whispered, and turned to follow the energumen.
“You must be brave, Kalamat,” my father had told me in my dream. And so I made a show of fearlessness and went with the Sky Pilot and the Light Mother into the elÿon: myself and all my sisters. I had already told them that I had no intention of leaving this place where our father was; no intention of going forth to battle as the Oracle had commanded us. Brief as it was, my entire life had been tied up with a dream of my father. If I was to die now, I would die with him. And perhaps it would be as he had said, perhaps death would not truly claim me at all.
I was a fool. I thought my sisters would stay with me. I was expecting for Hylas, at least, and Polyonyx to follow me, and I was prepared to fight our brother Kalaman if he tried to prevent them and force them to accompany our brothers into war.
But my sisters did not care. They were being sent as janissaries to a place we had never seen, to a planet we had only ever glimpsed in dreams, but this meant little to them.
“O Kalamat! It seems sad, that you will not come with us, and that we will be going so far away,” said Hylas. But she did not look sad. We were on the viewing deck of the Izanagi, staring out at the gauzy stars, the tiny fractured wheels of the distant fallen HORUS colonies. Her eyes had a molten glow, like jet with a faint silvery sheen. “But then you would be leaving us soon, anyway…perhaps it is for the best.”
I nodded sadly, and with disappointment. Of course: why should my death matter any more than the myriad other deaths we had witnessed during our thousand days?
But then my sister suddenly grabbed my arm. “Look there,” Hylas said, her voice rising slightly. Her forehead creased and her delicate mouth bunched into a frown as she pointed at a dark celestial body, neither star nor HORUS station, that bloomed behind the thick curved glass of the viewing deck. “What is that? A comet?”
I moved closer to her and looked out the window. I could see it in the distance, an amorphous shape that stood out against the nether background like a ragged hole cut in black silk. “A comet would not be so dark,” I said, though the object had a somber halo, a dusky violet haze that surrounded it and seemed to pulse as we watched. “But I do not know what it is,” I went on, and added, “And really, I do not care.”
Hylas’s frown faded. She tilted her head, gazing at me with soft black eyes, and said gently, “At least you will see our father.” She reached out to trace the foggy outline of that strange radiant object upon the glass. A note of longing crept into her voice. “Will you tell him—will you let me know if he remembers me?”
A wave of sorrow overwhelmed me. I turned and embraced her. “You will know, Hylas. You will still be able to hear me within your mind.” I stroked her forehead, then leaned forward to kiss her.
“Perhaps,” she said absently. She pressed her face against the glass and stared at the strange pulsing glow. “But I do not think so. I think the sounds of battle will drive you from my mind.”
I nodded, then whispered, “But not your heart, sister. Do not let them drive me from your heart.” For the last time I looked upon her, the darkness at her back pierced only by the gleam of that black star without a name. Before she could see the tears upon my face, I fled the viewing deck.
The energumen Ratnayaka refused to allow Valeska Novus to stay with me during the elÿon voyage.
“I do not trust humans, Imperator,” he said, flashing me a grin with those pointed teeth. “Our history is one of betrayals by them.”
“As is my own,” I began tersely; but he waved away my protest with a frown.
“No! Had not the Oracle ordered that we bring you and your entire escort to Cassandra, she would not be alive now—” His pointed white teeth glittered like a gavial’s in the elÿon’s rosy light.
I had Nefertity accompany Captain Novus to her room. I would not trust my aide alone with the energumens—I had seen myself how they would cannibalize humans and each other—nor did I wish for the nemosyne to be left unattended. Ratnayaka was not happy with this arrangement, but Kalaman grew angry when he complained.
“You will answer to me, brother, until we set foot upon the Element. And then you may answer to whomever you please.”
Ratnayaka bowed, grimacing. He had removed the crimson patch from his eye; the wound there had begun to fester and seemed to pain him. I could see a speck of blackened metal embedded in the flesh, and guessed there had been a keek there once, or some other prophylactic monitor. But his remaining eye held enough black malevolence to intimidate an entire battalion of humans. When he turned it now upon his brother Kalaman, I marveled that the other did not cringe beneath its glare.