“God—look at them all,” breathed Jane. She turned to me, her face flushed. “Scarlet might be here, Wendy!”
“You’re right—” I felt a sudden rush of hope and fear at the thought of her small simian face peering up from the tattered folds of one of those ill-fitting uniforms. I grabbed Jane’s hand and together we started to push our way through the crowd, when our energumen guide stopped us, one huge hand clapping upon our shoulders.
“You’re to stay with me,” she said. “Up here, to the very front.” With what must have seemed surpassing gentleness to her—but forcefully enough to leave my shoulder bruised and aching—she turned us and directed us to the front of the immense chamber.
So with her guidance, we plowed through that mob. They were very well behaved for rebels, I thought. They scarcely acknowledged Jane and me at all, though some of the waiting energumens reached to stroke their sister as she passed among them, or called to her softly by name. I craned my neck, trying to see above the heads of the energumens and other geneslaves, but all I could determine was that the chamber was even larger than I first guessed. And there must have been an opening somewhere. The air was fresh, and carried with it the warm sweetness of a late summer’s night, the smell of honeysuckle and wild roses and the dusty scent of goldenrod. Beneath our feet the floor had a decided downward slant, like a steeply raked stage, so that those tall enough to stand on a level with the energumens would have been able to see quite clearly whatever was happening in the distance. The waiting crowd was quite still, the energumens and aardmen nearly silent, the argalæ sometimes calling out in their questioning owlish voices. Only the other humans spoke to each other in low tones, and turned to look at us curiously, though no one greeted us. And we never saw Miss Scarlet, though I scanned the crowd for her desperately, and stared at every aardman I passed in vain hopes that one might be Fossa.
After many minutes of jostling we finally reached the front of the cavern. The crowd thinned out, until there was only a long line of energumens standing straight and tall, their faces innocently alert in the glare of the electric lights. Their hoods were thrown back and their tunics draped in loose coils around their long legs. They resembled so many beautiful statues, save only for the weapons they held; stunners and sonic guns and even swords, all of them human-sized, and so too small for those fearsome warriors, but still intimidating. Our guide led us to the center of this line. Two of her sisters moved aside to let us stand between them.
“Metatron has asked that they be brought here,” she told them. “He said it is most important that they be able to see clearly.” The other energumens nodded, staring down at us with their eerie, nearly pupilless black eyes. With a slight nod of her head, our guide turned and quickly disappeared into the throng.
“It will begin soon,” one of the waiting guard told us, not unkindly. She moved aside to give us a better view. “Just a little longer until the moon rises.”
I looked behind us. There stood rank upon rank of blue-uniformed figures, large and small, gargoyle warriors and sun-pocked women who must have been farmers, men whose hands held their weapons uneasily and aardmen who gripped theirs in strong, gnarled paws. All gazing toward the front of the room where I stood, so that after a moment I had to turn away, frightened by the sight of all those eyes.
But what lay in front of me was no more reassuring. It reminded me of an operating theater in HEL, only larger and brighter: as though it really were some kind of theater, one where unspeakable rituals were played out within the looming darkness.
At the front of the great cavern was a round raised dais, brilliant white and surrounded by small spotlights set about the stone floor. Upon the platform gleamed six metal boxes, man-sized and coffin-shaped. They were set upon six broad steel tables like those I had seen in Trevor Mallory’s cellar, arranged in two rows of three; and in the center was a single empty table. I caught the same unforgettable scent that had tormented me at HEL, the sharp stink of iodine and alcohol and formaldehyde, the faint organic smells of neurotransmitting fluid and the saline solution used to preserve living tissue for transplants.
“Jesus, Wendy, what are they going to do?” Jane’s voice came through chattering teeth. I pulled her close to me and stroked her hand, as cold as my own.
“I don’t know.” The horrible thought seized me, that it was for me those cold chambers were intended. But before I could say anything, the already hushed space grew deadly still.
“The moon,” one of the energumens whispered, and pointed at the ceiling. I looked up, and with a gasp saw that what I had taken to be the closed darkness of the cavern’s roof was in fact a great hole gaping there, a ragged vent that opened onto the night sky. This was where the smell of honeysuckle came from. And now I could also hear the distant chittering of bats, and see them in a thin skirling cloud fleeing into the night sky. Faintest of all came the sound of the great river on its slow sad course about the mountain. As I stared, a faint gleam appeared on the lower lip of the cave’s yawning mouth, like a row of teeth suddenly illumined there. A pearly glow that grew brighter and brighter, until in the cave’s opening there appeared the curved rim of the full moon, so brilliant that I had to shade my eyes. At sight of it a great sigh ran through the cavern. Humans and half-human creatures alike raised their arms, as though they were looking upon the moon’s pale face for the first time; for the first time, or the last.
Gradually the sound of all those yearning voices ebbed, and the moon slowly tracked her milky path across the sky. Other noises began to fill the cavern; rustlings as of impatience, agitated murmurs, and the questing low cries of the argalæ. Beside Jane and me our energumen guardians stared fixedly at the raised platform, and so we set our gaze there too. There was nothing else to see, really, save the blue-clad troops of the Alliance stirring restlessly beneath the harvest moon.
And then suddenly a figure appeared on the dais, his arms raised in greeting. Silhouetted against the moonlight, a tracery of violet and pale lavender like veins beneath his metal skin: Metatron. Behind him marched a row of figures, human-sized and wearing hooded white tunics. There were twelve of them. They moved in utter silence, walking slowly until they reached the center of the platform. The last two bore between them a long silver capsule, like those already resting upon the steel tables. They paced to the single remaining empty table and carefully lowered the casket there. Then the other white-robed acolytes stepped silently across the dais until they stood behind the remaining capsules, faceless hooded forms like the ghostly figures of astral navigators in the most ancient of the Ascendants’ ’files. There was something about the slow, almost rehearsed precision of their movement, that made me think that they had done this many times before.
Retirement ceremony, that nameless old man had told Jane and me. The whole damn thing just happens again; it’s the same every time. I shivered, but even as I tried to look away, to seek vainly for some escape from the room, for some sign of help unlooked for—Miss Scarlet or Giles or even Fossa—I felt eyes upon me, his eyes, and helplessly stared up once more.
He stood there, a shining icon in black and lavender, and from within the perfect curves of his replicant’s face those other eyes gazed down upon me. Green as new leaves, green as poison, Eyes I dare not meet in dreams: the vernal gaze of the Boy in the Tree, the Gaping One, imprisoned or reborn in that hollow construct’s shell. His polished body reflected the liquid darkness above, the luminous moon: a lunar deity or a man made out of night. I tried to pull away from his gaze, fought against it as though it were a serpent casting its coils tight about my chest; but I could not. And then very slowly Metatron smiled at me, and in that smile I saw the death of all that I had ever held dear.