Even worse, he began to suspect that the alien in front of him wasn’t really alive. The tone of his speech, his gestures—or rather, the lack of them—his looks, reminded Gill of the artificial intelligences. The AI jet drivers and the food handlers were twins of the creature, born from the same printer—except that the alien seemed to have even fewer feelings than them. The god was an automaton of flesh and bones. Even if he was hatched from a male and a female of his species, he couldn’t experience the independence of a real kyi; his purpose was to serve.
The alien touched a cube made of black stone reaching up to his waist, and the block woke up to life. A translucent miniature hologram bordered by strange symbols rose above the stone; it was a map, on which the creature picked a place.
After a few moments, the godly base and everything inside disappeared from the prophet’s hall, replaced by a familiar sight scanned from orbit. Gill immediately recognized the Roch-Alixxor mountain range. Judging by the hue of the acajaa fields on the horizon, it had to be close to the harvest time. The ice tongues of the famous glaciers reached much farther downhill than he remembered—another proof that the hologram had to be hundreds of years old. No doubt, from the times of the Kids’ War, which happened 652 years ago!
Although the alien was gone, his voice could still be heard.
“The news didn’t reach Alixxor yet to ruin their morale, and Olgarh already launched the attack through the western pass. And the problem’s right here,” the god exclaimed. “They were found by the rebel scouts.”
The image followed a huge alpine valley flanked by steep walls, at least three miles high, traversed by a massive glacier on which tens of thousands of soldiers were marching uphill.
Several large infantry units were closely followed by packs of slingers mounted on battle moulans, their tail spikes covered in sharp metal sheaths. Some of the giant animals carried huge siege weapons, while others had long poles with metal spikes fitted on their sides, to break the enemy ranks during frontal assaults.
Their banners representing Zhan’s angry eye were waving in the harsh, freezing wind of the vardannes, which covered their armor and weapons in a thick crust of ice. The temple column was on its way to attack the rebel-held city of Alixxor!
In front of the army, a row of pathmakers had laid wooden bridges over the large crevasses opened in their path. The rickety decks cracked and creaked from all their joints at the hurried passing of the bloodthirsty horde. Sometimes, the icy whirls of a turbulent river flowing deep under the glacier could be glimpsed in the purple abyss of the crevices.
Suddenly, a light shimmered on a nearby cliff, quickly followed by another one across the valley. One by one, other lights joined the chatter. Before long, a storm of signals lit the summits along the path while the army in the valley marched on, entirely oblivious that its moves were closely watched from great heights.
The eye in the sky reached the line of the pathmakers, and then it slowly drifted over the narrow valley unfolding in front of them. After several large curves, it reached a large depression opened in the right wall. In that very place, the glacier turned left toward the jagged slopes of a nearby peak, while the path followed a large valley bordered by gentle hills leading down to the wondrous Alixxoran plains. Far away, at the horizon, the top of the pyramids and the towering crowns of the murra trees could be seen above the purple mist like the magical islands of a warm, peaceful ocean.
A few more steps, just a few more, and nothing would remain between the sharp steel of their sarpans and the city of the Eternal Pyramids! The rebel capital would fall, ending the bloody war…
The eye in the sky moved back to the ice tongue, stopping at the right wall of the valley. It changed its spectrum and swept the ice diligently in search of something: the snow was still white, but thousands and thousands of red spots became visible under it. Thermal targets, some small, others large—a whole army was buried under the snow, completely hidden, waiting to ambush the temple soldiers!
Gill felt the excitement surging to the tip of his tail, for he was seeing the battle of the Klikoh Glacier, the turning point of the rebellion that saved the Antyrans from Baila’s rule! A rebellion that eventually became the Shindam’s dictatorship…
Without warning, the canyon disappeared, and the hologram of the godly cavern crashed again into Baila’s great hall. At first, Gill thought that the base was empty, but then he saw the god shaking uncontrollably in a corner while he listened to a new message in the neck implant. The god’s eyes became reddish, his cheekbones taking on the same jellylike consistency of the feet nodules. His original inertia melted away, despite his inner struggle to keep calm and cold. All his anxieties, so carefully hidden until then, burst open like a horde of unstoppable guvals.
Before Gill had a chance to realize what was happening, a strange vibration whipped the air, greatly amplified by the giant cavern. In a couple of seconds, the source became visible: a ship appeared on the right side of the hologram, landing in front of the others. This was perhaps the missing party the god had talked about earlier.
“Great Baila, your sons returned from the Mordavia temple with wonderful news!” the god exclaimed, deeply agitated. “Give us your light, to all of us who honored the seal of the covenant!”
The words took Gill by surprise. Ikkla, the nostril of the inner kyi, woke up with a painful awareness of their meaning, wrinkling his head spikes. “Give us your light, to all of us who honored the seal of the covenant!” was a ritual saying of the Inrumiral narrative, and he just heard it coming from the mouth of a god! The newly acquired insight dispelled his awe rather brutally: Antyra’s Book of Creation Inrumiral wasn’t written by the grays to “convince” the Antyrans to worship them as their gods—they actually believed in the same religion! Suddenly, the humility of the creature in front of the prophet and his use of ritual phrases made perfect sense. But then… who’s Baila? Who are the gods of the gods?
“The cloning line is valid,” the hologram of the god mumbled in a low voice, more to himself, while his eyes shimmered and twitched in the muffled fight to regain his unliving rigidity.
The god became speechless, overcome by emotion. After a brief moment of confusion, in which he apparently didn’t know what to do, he fell on the floor, bending his right knee in front of him. He rested his head on his thigh and covered it with his skin hangings.
This time, though, he didn’t rise up. He dropped like a lifeless object, like a bizarre trophy from another world, becoming part of the rock, as dead and cold as the gray heart of the stone. Maybe he died, thought Gill. The possibility didn’t surprise him at all, coming from such a strange creature. After all, he knew of a few Antyran animals capable of dying from a good scare.
A group of aliens dressed in rubberlike suits emerged from the ship, this time looking very much alive, despite the deadly glare in their eyes.
Gill couldn’t help but wonder if they belonged to a different, albeit related, species because as fragile was the first creature, as big and strong were the newcomers. They had muscular arms and legs, without the slightest trace of skin hangings or jelly nodules. On the other tail, their heads were not nearly as large; in fact, they looked funnily small on their oversized bodies, although they had the weird bulge above their eye sockets. And another small detaiclass="underline" they were identical!
When they saw the first god lying on the floor, they turned their surprised eyes toward Gill and sped up their steps. As soon as they reached the body, they stopped and bent their heads in submission. That was all. No lying down, no hatching knees… not that they would have been able to do it even if they wanted to, judging by the girth of their legs.