Do Comets Dream? Part 10

"You are commanded to the edge of the parapet!" they said in eerie unison. "The race is about to begin!"

The race-from the second to the sixth parapet-was an annual tradition, but each year the victor became the thanopstru only symbolically; today it was different. Today, as the climax to the launching of the armada to destroy Thanet once and for all, the thanopstru would be sent away for real. It would be the first time in history. And, it was hoped by all, the last.

As Artas lined up with the other compet.i.tors, the chanting of the crowd crescendoed. There were hate slogans for the Thanetians, spontaneously it seemed, but in reality whipped up by the city's crack corps of hate police.

They were there for him, those thousands, rooting for him, shouting for him. His mother would be raised up from her lowly station to become anything she chose, perhaps even the tertiary consort of Hal-Therion himself.

On this second parapet, the wind was whipping up his shoulder-length purple-blue hair.

If he won the race, the hair would be shorn.

It was, his mother told him once, his father's hair.

They were calling the names now, using the full formula of given name, matronymic, and clan name: "Beridon siv-Klastru sar-Toth. Anim siren-Taku es-Navik." As the announcer read each name the contestant stepped forward. Each was dressed in the best finery his family could provide. Anim had a cloak of woven chlorquetzal feathers and a headband of ravenlizard pelts; on her wrists were glittering wires of iridium. Beridon wore a tunic of s.h.i.+mmer-fire chased with t.i.tanium filigree, and a coronet of rare Northern rushes woven on a loom of ice. And so on and so on, until they reached the tenth name, which was his own: Artas siv-Taruna esSarion.

And he stepped forth. He was a little self-conscious about his garb; his mother could ill afford the sartorial extravagance of the others, and he wore little but a kilt of crushed paper and a neckpiece of ancient burial jades that had been in his family since an ancestor from the Thieves' Union had stolen it from a Mnemo-Thanasium. It did not matter. When he stepped forward, the crowd broke into a prolonged cheer.

For me! thought Artas.

The footrace was an ancient tradition, its origins so h.o.a.ry that even the Panvivlion could not describe them. It had been a way to select priests, even kings; in ancient times, a boy could rise to an exalted caste as a result of the footrace.

These days, the traditional run up the Mountain of the G.o.ds was replicated between the second and fifth parapet of the sacred citadel. Four ma.s.sive ramps, each one replicating every treacherous gully, every outcrop, of the actual mountain, were linked together and led to the s.h.i.+vantine Stairway, the steps that brought the runner to the very foot of Hal-Therion's throne. The four great streams that were the sources of life's elements were replicated in rivulets of quicksilver, liquid nitrogen, brine, and sulphuric acid. There were other obstacles, too: predators and fearsome beasts, strange twists and turns in the pathway. And from hidden sound devices in the artificial trees, there was the sound of the crowd, whose pleasure or displeasure could spur you on to disaster or victory.

At the sound of a whistle, the runners exchanged their ceremonial garments for the tunic of firestuff and the three sacred objects they would need to reach their goal. Artas held the baton of victory in his right hand; he would win by being the first to touch it to the entrance of the thanopstru sh.e.l.l. He placed the hoverboard on the ground; reacting to his unspoken commands, its sensors would carry him past all the obstacles. And around his neck he placed the amulet of his caste, lovingly forged for him at the caste elders' behest, to bring him luck.

He murmured a prayer to the G.o.d of celerity, and then he mounted the hoverboard. The other contestants were ready, too. The boards vibrated a little, let out a tinkling sound as they lifted off the stone terrace.

And then they were off!

Easy, easy, he told the board with his mind. Slow and steady.

The boards were shooting ahead, angled upward against the contour of the artificial mountain.

He skirted the first rivulet, the quicksilver. The suns' light was dazzling against the liquid metal. This was not a dangerous river if one did not accidentally swallow the toxic mercury, but the liquid nitrogen and the acid flumes could kill. He kept to one side of the stream, carefully rounding a ma.s.sive dendron tree. He had this part memorized. The first kid had gone whizzing uphill and had dashed himself against bare rock. Artas could not bear to look. Steady, he told himself, steady.

Artas was nowhere near the head of the line. The front runner was Beridon, whom some considered the favorite, though Artas knew that in the betting parlors of the city she held a slight edge. His brother had bet some money on Beridon-"so as not to jinx you," he had told him with a smile.

Beridon was moving by leaps and bounds. She was even managing a few virtuoso turns, somersaulting onto the board, kicking her leg behind in a graceful arabesque-all hoverboard show tricks that did not really belong in a race for the future of the world. Grimly, Artas guided his board through the obstacle course. He knew she was just doing those tricks in order to confuse the others, to drive them to despair.

Steady! he told the board. Steady. His mind was focused now. Yes! Here, the hanging rock. There, the ledge with the treacherous tree. Another runner was trying to go around the tree and kept getting caught in its branches, with their heat-seeking, flesh-eating flowers waiting to snap off a child's hand or foot. There, the kid was loose now, but the board was spinning out of control- Up! he screamed with his mind, sending the board on a steep curve to avoid the killing tree. Perfect! He swerved now, pa.s.sing someone on the left. Higher up were the ravines of amethyst.

The crowd's roar was dull, distant.

He didn't listen to it. It was like the whisper of the wind. Artas concentrated as he rounded another rock formation. A tunnel now. He had it memorized, a zigzag path, two lefts, two rights, left, right, right, now suddenly a corkscrew, a gravity well wrenching his gut as he let the board up and around in a corkscrew, the tips of his toes clinging by sheer inertia. Then he was through. The next parapet was easier in a way. The obstacles were all in the mind. Monsters, creatures of darkness. A shadowbeast lurching from a cave. Fangs. Bloodshot eyes. You're not real, he thought. Concentrate. Concentrate. Smashed right through the illusion. Gore and entrails exploded around him but when he concentrated once more they had dissolved into thin air and- I'm pulling ahead!

Right in front of him, weaving through a forest of twenty-meter demon statues, some twins he had seen in the training camp, riding in tandem. They were doing figure eights around each other in the air. Each loop was greeted by whoops from the crowd below. Ignore them! he told himself. And buzzed right over the twins' heads, did a quick spin, caromed along an acid firewall-and then, breaking over a chasm where he could see straight down onto the sea of people far below, he heard the cheering-and his name-chanted, over and over, like a litany: Ar-TAS, Ar-TAS, Ar-TAS.

A whirlwind was chasing them now, spewing from a rock cleft, laced with hallucinogenic gases that plucked dark images from the unconscious. The whirlwind swept uphill, catching the twins in its path. Artas could hear them screaming.

The wind was after him now, tendrils of noxious fumes reaching out toward him, the ends of the tendrils shaped like giant claws. He dodged, darted, slammed the board against a mirror-flat basalt wall to switch gravities and soared up high over the whirlwind, catching a faint whiff, trying to block the nightmare figures that immediately flooded his mind- The final parapet of the race was just above his head-there were ma.s.sive metal rivets on its underside that bolted it to the artificial mountainside. The last part was all that remained of the ancient race-no hoverboards now, no hallucinogenic gases, just an uphill track, a straight run toward the throne of the s.h.i.+van-Jalar.

A series of rope ladders hung over the edge of the parapet. Anim es-Navik had already jettisoned his hoverboard, pus.h.i.+ng against its flexible surface to perform a death-defying catapult onto the first rung of the nearest ladder. Below, he could see that four of the contestants were still in the running.

The whirlwind still had the twins; they were spinning around inside it, and the wind was amplifying their shrieks, broadcasting them to the distant crowd. Artas wondered how they could still be alive. There was so much terror in that wind.

Suddenly the twins had outfoxed the whirlwind, broken free, and now, both riding a single hoverboard, were arrowing upward toward the base of the final parapet. Artas had to make the leap too now.

Good-bye, he thought at the hoverboard. The board steadied itself. He flexed his ankles three times, feeling the spring in it. In front of him, the sheer face of the artificial mountain. Above, the rope ladders dangling from the side of the next parapet. Beneath, the crowd, crawling around like hive ants. He stretched out his hand, gauging the swing of the rope ladder. The wind roared.

Artas leaped.

And in that moment, the whirlwind caught him by his toe and spun him around. Suddenly his head filled with images-the deviving chamber-he knew the death must come, had been told about the ritual blows, the insertion of the wireprobes into the skull, the toxins seeping into the blood-nothing to fear. He had always known it must be this way.

The fumes were spiraling around him now. He could see other images. Himself, millennia hence, trapped, drowning, unable to claw free from a coffin of a prison-monsters now, bogeymen, night-creatures, all gazing at him through the gla.s.s-being speechless, unable to feel, touch, taste the world except through sensory organs of metal and pseudo-flesh and- Fire now, racing through the alleys on an unknown city. A woman's hair flaming. A girl on fire, trying to quench herself in a lake that was beginning to boil-people racing through the streets-a man's face melt ing - piles of charred flesh- a crowd of hollow-eyed children pointing at the sky, chanting Artas, Artas, Artas-but not in admiration. No. In hate.

No! he cried out in his mind.

You're going to kill a whole planet, a voice whispered.

No! he screamed.

And then, out of nowhere, it seemed that a hand reached out for him. Grabbed his wrist. Yanked him out of the miasma of nightmare. Thrust him against the lowest rung of the rope ladder. The wind was whipping his face, las.h.i.+ng his hair against his cheeks. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, still tormented by the terror. Whose hand was it? You! he thought. The one I saw this morning! What are you to me?

Artas, the voice whispered. It's me, Adam Halliday-the kid from the future.

Artas hung on to the ladder. It was swinging in the wind. With a supreme effort, he heaved his body up to the next rung-and the next- Stay with me, he told the inner voice. Please-I need someone- I can't help but stay with you, said Adam. I'm stuck inside your mind.

Artas squeezed his eyes tight shut. Thought of all the training exercises, all the times on a rope ladder such as this with only a few meters between him and the training floor-not like this, swinging in a roaring wind, kilometers above ground level. He thought of his mother.

And then there was another image in his mind. A beautiful woman from another world. A woman who could reach into the very depths of his being.

The vision flickered and was gone. Then there came the voice of the child.

The inner voice said, I can't get out of your mind.

Artas whispered, Stay.

Everything was blurry. There was no crowd, no compet.i.tion. Only the rough rope against his sore palms, shredding skin now. He pulled himself up. In his mind he saw the angel, the boy from the future, whatever he was-floating against the starstream, arms stretched out toward him, drawing him up out of h.e.l.l-in an ocean of stars-his hands strangely webless, alien-his hair glittering against the streaking starlight-pulling him, up, up, up-and- There was the final run now, a dash of a few hundred meters, all up a steep smooth slope toward the throne of the s.h.i.+van-Jalar. Only a few in the race-three or four at best. He couldn't really see them because of the sweat pouring down his face, spurting into his eyes. His eyes smarted, his lips were stung by the briny taste-and here the wind was fierce, unrelenting.

He ran.

He was dimly aware of the others. They too were like him, all the hopes and dreams of their families riding on this one dash toward glory. They too were full of hatred for the Thanetians. They too were pumped up with slogans and pep talks from trainers and religious leaders. They too had drunk themselves silly on potions designed for strength, agility, and indifference to pain-potions that also led to hallucinations and secret terrors. They too were afraid.

Perhaps, they too had received visitations from angels-they too believed themselves to be the chosen one. But only one angel could be a true angel. For angels do not lie.

Look! There were the twins. They were whooping as they ran, but Artas was faster. He swept by them. And now there was someone else, just ahead. He didn't remember seeing that kid before. Someone running in a cloud of luminescence. Someone haloed in rainbow light. I've got to catch up to him! I've got to! he thought. He was aware of pain, fiery pain in his ankles and thighs, but he couldn't stop. There was that one person left to beat, to overtake.

He ran.

Catching up now-catching up- He could see the stranger's facehis own face.

Then, for a split second, he was in a gla.s.s cage, and a dozen faces in one-piece jumpsuits were staring at him with pained, compa.s.sionate eyes. Then the vision faded.

He wasn't even thinking of winning anymore. All he was thinking of was running. Not here, not uphill in the burning suns' light, but in the tall purple gra.s.s beside the ocean-not for an audience of millions but for himself alone-he ran.

I am a comet.

Slicing through the emptiness. The lonely gray s.p.a.ces between the stars. I am a comet.

He ran.

At the edge of time and s.p.a.ce, the angel stood with outstretched arms, a mirror image of himself.

Artas, the angel said.

Are you my mother?

No.

But she's the reason I'm running -she's the reason I'm giving up my life-so she can be someone-so her caste won't stop her from becoming anything she chooses.

Oh, Artas, no, I'm not your mother -but- Someone like his mother, though, only with dark, haunting eyes and hair that fell in dusky ringlets-a strange half-smile-a woman he'd never seen before and yet who somehow knew him, understood his innermost thoughts.

You must be an angel! he thought.

He ran toward the angel, ran toward the warm embrace of love and light, but suddenly.

Cold! Bitter, unforgiving emptiness! And rage, terrible rage, rage directed inward at himself, ripping himself apart, and- The eyes of the s.h.i.+van-Jalar.

They seemed to penetrate his very soul.

He closed his eyes. I'm dying, he thought. And fell prostrate at the feet of the high throne.

Chapter Nineteen.

Instrument of Fate WITHIN THE LIMBO of the dailong's simulation matrix, minds past and future revolved and intertwined with Data's consciousness. Artas's elation blended with Adam's certain knowledge of the comet's future. His mother's pride and sorrow melded with Counselor Troi's empathy and torrent of child-rage that engulfed her.

As Artas looked up, the G.o.dlike countenance of the s.h.i.+van-Jalar was made brilliant by the confluence of the two suns' radiance. He raised his arm; his hand held an orb of power, encrusted with precious gems, and containing a rare liquid, the ambrosia of the G.o.ds, which was refined peftifesht, a thousand times stronger than the brew served in the taverns of the prost.i.tutes' quarter.

"Artas," said the s.h.i.+van-Jalar, his voice reverberant and strangely calm above the sea of cheering far below. "You have achieved what no other child has ever achieved in our five-thousand-year-old history. For though there is a footrace every year, and a thanopstru is selected each season to rides in honor at the head of the parade of honor along the sacred Boulevard of Righteous Hatred-you are actually going for a ride in the great comet. May the spirits of the five thousand who went ahead of you be always present to guide you in your holy mission."

Artas remained prostrate in front of the great throne. Except for that one moment, when he had stared right into the face of the most high, he had kept his eyes downcast, as was proper in the presence of the one who spoke in the place of all the G.o.ds.

"Come closer, boy," said the s.h.i.+van-Jalar. "Come-sit here. At the foot of the throne. I'm going to have a talk with you-and no one else shall hear what we say to one another." He clapped his hands. Miraculously, the entire council retreated into the background. Guards came forward and clamped a wall of metal s.h.i.+elds around the throne.

"You will be the thanopstru. Do you know what that means? Do you truly, truly know, child?"

"It means I will rain fire on our enemies, and they will perish."

"What do you know about Thanet?"

"They are our enemies. We hate them."

"And why, my son, why?"

"It has always been so."

"But why has it always been so, my son?"

"Because we hate the Thanetians. It's our whole reason for being. The G.o.ds created us to hate each other-and to try to destroy one another. My teacher said the whole universe is about duality. I don't know what that means, but I think it's that we need to balance them against us."

The s.h.i.+van-Jalar nodded slowly. "In a few short hours you will undergo a metamorphosis that many have theorized about, but no one has truly experienced. The fact is, Artas, that no one knows what it will be like-only you will know, and no one alive today will be alive when you arrive to find out the things you will know."

"Why not, Holy Father?"

"Because, my son, we cannot know for certain if we have yet conquered the speed of light. We have reached an accommodation with it, certainly; our drones, carrying weapons of ma.s.s destruction, will travel by a new superluminal drive, and be delivered to our enemies almost instantly. But a thanopstru needs the intelligence of a living brain to power it, and there is a warping that occurs at the moment when we cross the speed of light, something modern science has been unable to overcome-a flattening effect combined with an increase in ma.s.s almost to the level of infinity for one minuscule microsecond, enough to destroy a living thing. The transwarp drive in the thanopstru is an experimental thing; it has never been tested. There are three possibilities. If the drive functions perfectly, you will arrive in the Klastravo system at the same time as the drones of lesser destructive power, and Thanet will be no more-this time without the possibility of recovery, for its very atmosphere will have been stripped away. Secondly, it may function well enough, but your consciousness may be destroyed on the way, so that there will be no one with the finely tuned reflexes and psychic control of the thanopstru's quasi-neural functions; if so, the destruction wreaked by the thanopstru will be random at best, and the comet may even explode harmlessly in s.p.a.ce, or fall into Klastravo and be pulverized. The third possibility is the strangest one of all to contemplate. What if the superluminal drive malfunctions? What if you are forced to travel at sublight speed, a five-thousand-year journey, toward a planet only partially destroyed by the drones?

"Think of the irony of such a scenario! The world that you reach will already have been devastated by the drones, but you will destroy all that remains of it-any straggling remnants of humanity, any attempts by the Thanetians to regain the status of a civilized world. Your task, Artas, will have been the total annihilation of people five thousand years in the future, who may have no awareness whatsoever of this war, this ancient hatred-or whose knowledge of it may be only in the form of myth. Do you understand this? Could you contemplate such a possibility and not self-destruct in shame and horror?"

"I don't need to understand this, Holy Father," Artas said. "I am an instrument of fate. I will be the thanopstru."

"Yes, my son, you will. And thus it is that you must understand your destiny completely. We and the Thanetians are brothers, as the dark is brother to the light, and the day to the night. For eon upon eon this sacred war has been going on. You learned in school that this is the war that keeps the universe in balance, that it is as much a law of nature as gravity and the speed of light. You have learned about the five-thousand-year cycle and how it renews the cosmos. But the truth is far less clear-cut than that. The origins of the war are shrouded in mystery. One of us colonized the other; in my communication with the computers of past epochs, I have never managed to discover who came first. Some say the war began over a woman; some over an a.s.sa.s.sination. The five-thousand-year cycle exists because that is the time it takes to travel between our worlds-unless, somehow, the secret of faster-than-light travel ever gets solved completely, which, perhaps, has happened this time. Every five thousand years we crawl up from the slime, every five thousand years it seems that we get to the brink of awesome new discoveries about s.p.a.ce travel-and then we launch our weapons.

"Perhaps, one day, there will be complete annihilation, and the cycle will end. Or perhaps the secret of the warp will come sooner in one cycle, and we will actually speak to our enemies face-to-face, and somehow it will end. Or perhaps there will be a time when a new civilization is born out of the consciousness of the dailong that has no memory of the war at all, just vague legends. And yet somehow the war will go on, and the innocent will perish.

"You cannot know what world it is you will destroy. You cannot know whether they will hate us, or even know who you are. Fate, that is all you must be. And you must accept that.

"And before you accept G.o.dhead, you must comprehend it. You are blind fate, my child, you are the instrument of retribution upon the innocent as well as the guilty."

Artas could not truly understand what the s.h.i.+van-Jalar was saying. But he realized he might have five thousand years in which to contemplate its meaning, If he read the s.h.i.+van-Jalar's meaning at all rightly, the Holy Father was telling him that the design of the thanopstru was flawed; that there was only a slim chance that it would all work as planned. The third possibility was the most likely- Five thousand was an incomprehensible number to the boy; it was, after all, as long as the entire span of recorded history.

But Artas was full of pride, a pride that was also a little like pain. And then came the goblet of ambrosia, poured out of the orb; the wine had been fermenting within the orb for five millennia, and now it was time to drink. First came the ritual strangulation for four small werreti-beasts, and their blood was added to the goblet. Then the incantation to the seven war G.o.ds was uttered.

"Take this cup," said the s.h.i.+van-Jalar. "And with the first draft, cast off your ident.i.ty. Forget Tanith. Forget boyhood. Forget this beautiful world, forget the ones you love. Forget even the taste of this ambrosia. Forget all tastes, all sights, smells, sounds; where you are going is only the cold and the emptiness. Forget, Artas."

"I forget," said Artas.

And he drank deep.

"Until Thanet is destroyed, you shall never sleep."

"I shall never sleep." He took another draught of the bitter peftifesht.