She half slumped to the floor, but her eyes were open. She stared around, dazed, and Zeus bent low and grasped a handful of her hair.
“Now, you prescient little bitch,” Zeus breathed into her ear. “You’re going to tell me exactly what you know about Gallen O’Day. What is he that I should fear him?”
For half a moment she did not speak, and Zeus looked around quickly. He did not want to be overheard, and he suspected that at any moment, Gallen or Maggie might come down this hall to the ship. He didn’t want Arachne warning them of his intent.
He took her by the hair and began pulling, dragging her toward the nearest door, an entry to the droids service chambers. Arachne recovered from being stunned and grabbed his wrists so he wouldn’t pull her hair out. She kicked, screamed. He considered killing her, but decided against it for now.
Instead he commanded the door to open, then commanded it to close as he passed, and he led her down the service tunnel, an entry broader than it was high, with minimal lighting. A hundred meters down the tunnel, he tossed Arachne to the ground.
“Now, bitch, tell me everything,” Zeus whispered. He placed the heel of his boot on her throat, ready to crush her esophagus if she didn’t answer.
“No!” she said.
Zeus was forced to punish her, but he dared not give a killing blow. Blood gushed from her nose, and both her eyes were beginning to blacken. Kicking her face again would gain him nothing. So he slammed her in the chest with his heel, driving her breast into her ribs.
She gasped in pain and began coughing. Whether she coughed blood, whether he’d punctured a lung, he did not care. He’d begun to lose patience.
“Tell me, big sister,” he growled. “I don’t want to be hard or, you. Were you lying? Who is Gallen O’Day?”
Arachne gasped, struggled to answer, and Zeus picked her up, by the material of her robe, pressed her against the wall.
“He’s … he’s Lord of the Sixth Swarm, you fool!”
The news astonished Zeus so much he stood up straight, let Arachne slide down the wall. He knew that if he were ever to gain position in this universe, he would have to fight the dronon. He’d imagined this would happen decades or centuries from now. Yet here sat Gallen, Lord of the Sixth Swarm, all unaware of Zeus’s intentions: Zeus only had to kill Gallen in order to take his place. It seemed … so fortuitous.
“You aren’t lying, are you?” Zeus asked.
Arachne coughed, spit blood. She shook her head. Zeus considered what to do next. As if reading his thoughts, Arachne said, “You don’t have to kill me. I won’t tell anyone.”
This annoyed him, the fact she knew his thoughts before he did. “Why not? Why wouldn’t you tell?”
“Because, I’ve already killed you,” she whispered. “I’ve told you the thing that will kill you. Nothing I do now will change that.”
Zeus feared she still withheld something, that she knew more about Gallen than she dared tell. She knew the Lord Protector could kill him, and she wasn’t saying how. He reached for her throat, and Arachne spit, “It’s not Gallen you should be afraid of, you fool! It’s power. It’s power!”
Zeus shook his head, not understanding.
“Imagine that today, even if you beat Gallen, even if you live out the day-why do you think he is here? He’s running from the dronon! The Lords of the Seventh Swarm are chasing him across the universe. Eventually they will find him.
“But what if they found you, instead? Could you beat them in single combat, could you best the dronon? Gallen knows he can’t. Death lies that way. Yet you run toward it. You seek his position.
“And what if you do happen to beat the dronon? What if you do gain a place of respect and power in this universe? What if ten thousand worlds elect you as their ruler, and you even manage to unseat the Tharrin? What then?
“I have already told you,” Arachne gasped, coughing. “Someone more ruthless and cunning than you will cut you down. If not in a hundred years, then in a thousand.
“And you will know, you will know all your life, that I told you it would happen. You will be forced to watch for it, to prepare. You will die the thousand deaths of cowardice before that one last one takes you by surprise.”
Zeus sat back and folded his arms. He’d always believed Arachne had more prescience than this, that she somehow saw what would happen an hour from now. In his heart he knew she really only understood people. Her knowledge was frightening, but more general than specific. She didn’t really know he would die by violence. Her theories were based only on some general beliefs about human nature and her own vain hopes for his demise.
But I won’t walk that path, Zeus told himself. When I am a leader, I will be kind. People will love me and protect me. They’ll keep my memories on file, my genome available on a hundred planets. They’ll build replicas of me for a hundred thousand years, until I am wearied by mortality, and even then, my consciousness will be stored in the Omni mind, so I’ll live as long as I desire.
He stepped back, wondering once again what to do about Arachne. He couldn’t let her go tell everyone he’d been beating information out of her.
“You said I don’t have to kill you?” Zeus asked.
“Yes, please, let me go!” she whispered. “I won’t tell what happened here. I’ll say I fell down the stairwell outside my room. You know how steep it is. No one will doubt me.”
Zeus nodded thoughtfully. “All right,” he said, as, if the matter were settled. He turned away.
Abruptly he spun back, kicking with all his might at where her head had been. Surprisingly, she had moved, just a bit, so her chin was lifted to connect precisely with his heel. She’d relaxed her neck enough so it snapped cleanly.
She pitched sideways onto the floor, her neck twisted at an exotic angle, blood pooling on the stone floor by her nose.
Zeus stood, astonished, confused. She’d known at that last moment he would spin, deliver the death blow. She hadn’t tried to run from it. She’d embraced it.
Indeed, she knew Zeus so well, she must have come to meet him this morning, knowing she would die.
If that were true, she’d sacrificed her life. But why? To deliver a message? To tell him that Gallen was Lord of the Sixth Swarm? No, she hadn’t wanted to tell him that.
No, her message had been simple: walk away. Walk away from power. You are too imperfect to hold it. It will lead you to destruction, and will bring misery to others. Felph created you by mistake. You are a mistake.
It was a hard message to hear. Obviously, Arachne held Zeus in low regard. Certainly, it had been a hard message for her to deliver, considering what it cost her.
If she bore the message knowing the consequences, then should I not listen? Zeus asked himself.
Too late. Too late to ask that question. I’ve killed my sister. I am committed to a course of action. I must move forward.
Yet Zeus knew that he wasn’t committed. Arachne had given him the answer. Live in the desert. Hide. You don’t have to kill Gallen, you can try to hide from what you are.
Am I so ugly, Zeus wondered, I must remain hidden, covered? Zeus looked for a place to hide Arachne. He couldn’t let her corpse be found. The solution turned out to be obvious. Down the corridor from him were recycling chutes where droids disposed of excess food, which was ground into compost.
Arachne always liked the gardens, Zeus thought. Now she would feed the flowers. He pulled her down the hall and slid her into a chute. She would stay in the gardens forever.
Zeus used a strip of cloth from Arachne’s dress to wipe her blood from the floor, tossed it after the body, then went to begin the hunt.
Chapter 27
Gallen looked through one of the Nightswift’s viewers for signs of a Qualeewooh flying over the red desert. He was searching the sky, one square kilometer at a time, scanning images of the rim rock, and the yellow-and-orange sands below. The ship’s long-range sensors could give good visuals on any Qualeewooh within fifty kilometers.