Thus, wherever they fly, I see.
Now. We will operate the first screen. As you can see, Canna Moidart had little trouble in taking Duirinish -
The huge metal doors are buckled: they swing to and fro in a wind that cannot be heard. Beneath the overhanging walls, a mountain of dead, Northmen and Viriconese inextricably mixed. The battlements are deserted. Moving into the city, a patrol of scavengers, dressed in looted furs. Fire has blackened the squat armouries of the city. On the edge of Replica Square, the Blue Metal Discovery lies in ruins. A dog sniffs at the still, huddled, headless figure in the centre of the square. It is a dead merchant…
There, she left the small holding force we have just seen returning to Alves after a foraging expedition, and moved on to Viriconium -
The Pastel City. Five thousand Northmen march the length of
Proton Circuit, their faces flushed with triumph. A tavern in the Artist's Quarter: spilt wine, sawdust, vomit. A line of refugees. The Pastel Towers, scarred in the final battle, when the last ship of the Queen's Flight detonated the power-source of the last remaining energy-cannon in the Empire, in a vain attempt to repeat Benedict Paucemanly's relief of the seige of Mingulay…
She was quick to move South. Here, we see the geteit chemosit in action against a group of guerillas, survivors of the Soubridge massacre -
That terrifying black skirmish-line, moving up a steep hillside, energy-blades swinging, in unison. The dead, sprawled about in agonised attitudes. A sudden close-up of a black, featureless face, three yellow eyes set in an isosceles triangle, unreadable, alien, deadly…
Mark that. That is the real enemy of Viriconium. I am sorry, Lord Cromis: I did not intend to cause Her Majesty so much distress. We will dispense with the fourth screen, my lady, and move on to the most important. This is taking place now, in Lendalfoot, the town you have just left -'
Night. The unsteady flare and flicker of torches in the main street of the town. Their light outlines a group of fishermen, bending over something laid out on the cobbles. The scene jerks. An overhead view; a white, shocked face; tears; a woman in a shawl. There on the cobbles, a child, dead, the top of its head cut neatly away, its skull empty…
Finally, let us examine the history of what you know as the chemosit, and discuss my purpose in inviting you here. No, Lord Grif, I will be finished shortly. Please hear me out.
During a period of severe internal strife towards the end of the Middle Period, the last of the Afternoon Cultures developed a technique whereby a soldier, however hurt or physically damaged his corpse be, could be resurrected – as long as his brain remained intact.
Immersed in a tank of nutrient, his cortex could be used as a seed from which to 'grow'a new body. How this was done, I have no idea. It seems monstrous to me.
The geteit chemosit were a result of escalation. They were built not only to kill, but also to prevent resurrection of'the victim by destroying his brain tissue. As you remark, it is horrifying. But not a bad dream, those are not words I would use: it is a reality with which, a millennium later, we have to deal.
It is evident that Canna Moidart discovered a regiment of these automata in the north of the Great Brown Waste, dormant in some subtermanean barracks. I became aware of 'this some years ago, when certain elements of my equipment detected their awakening. (At that time, I was unsure precisely what it was that the detectors were registering – a decade passed before I solved the problem; by that time, the War was inevitable.)
Now, Lord Cromis.
My tower's records are clear on one point, and that is this:
once awakened, those automata have only one inbuilt directive -To kiLl.
Should Canna Moidart be unable to shut them down at the end of her campaign, they will continue to kill, regardless of the political alignment of their victims.
The Old Queen may very well find herself in full possession of the Empire of Viriconium.
But as soon as that happens, as soon as the last pocket of resistance is finished, and the geteit chemosit run out of wars to fight, they will turn on her. All weapons are iwo-edged: it is the nature of weapons to be deadly to both user and victim but these were the final weapon, the absolute product of a technology dedicated to exploitation of its environment and violent solution of political problems. They hate life. That is the way they were built.
Chapter Nine
Silence reigned in the tower room. The five false windows continued to flicker through the green twilight, dumbly repeating their messages of distant atrocity and pain. The Birdmaker's ancient yellow face was expressionless; his hands trembled; he seemed to be drained by his own prophecy.
'That is a black picture -'Tomb the dwarf drank wine and smacked his lips. He was the least affected of them. 'But I would guess that you have a solution. Old man, you would not have brought us here otherwise.'
Cellur smiled thinly.
'That is true,'he said.
Tomb made a chopping gesture with one hand.
'Let's get to the meat of it then. I feel like killing something.'
Cellur winced.
'My tower has a long memory; much information is stored there. Deciphering it, I discover that the geteit chemosit are controlled by a single artificial brain, a complex the size of a small town.
'The records are ambiguous when discussing its whereabouts, but I have narmowed its location down to two points South of the Monadliath Mountains. It remains for someone to go there -'
'And?'
'And perform certain simple operations that I will teach him.'
Cellur stepped into a drifting column of magenta light, passed his palms over a convoluted mechanism. One by one, the false windows died, taking their agony with them. He turned to tegeus-Cromis.
'I am asking one or all of you to do that. My origin and queer life aside, I am an old man. I would not survive out there now that she has passed beyond the Pastel City.'
Numbed by what he had witnessed, Cromis nodded his head. He gazed at the empty windows, obsessed by the face of the dead Lendalfoot child.
'We will go,'he said. 'I had expected nothing like this. Tomb will learn faster than Grif or I, you had better teach him.
'How much grace have we?'
'A week, perhaps. The South resists, but she will have no trouble. You must be ready to leave before the week is out.'
During the Birdmaker's monologue, Methvet Nian had wept openly. Now, she rose to her feet and said:
'This horror. We have always regarded the Afternoon Cultures as a high point in the history of Mankind. Theirs was a state to be striven for, despite the mistakes that marred it.
'How could they have constructed such things? Why, when they had the stars beneath their hands?'
The Birdmaker shrugged. The geometries of his robe shifted and stretched like restless alien animals.
'Are you bidding me remember, madam? I fear I cannot.'
'They were stupid,'said Birkin Grif, his fat, honest face puzzled and hurt. It was his way to feel things personally. 'They were fools.'