Flame. Acid. Then I pulled the trigger and nothing happened.
I switched to bullets and emptied the clip. Despite the noise and muzzle flash, my barrage was as useless as firing rounds into a sandbank. When I ran out of lead, I tried hypersonics. No discernible effect; if anything, the rustling around me grew louder with gleeful anticipation.
The battery powering the hypersonics went dead. I dropped the gun and pulled the ‹BINK›-rod from my sleeve, pressing the activation button immediately. With luck, I'd banish a few more cellules from this plane of existence before a flood of them rushed down my throat.
Embers in all directions. The mound towered above me, twice my height.
"It's okay," I said to Sebastian — not from calm acceptance, but because I didn't want Satan to see me panic. "Your nanites will keep you safe; and I'll join my friends in whatever comes next, Gretchen. Oberon. Myoko. Pelinor. Impervia. The Caryatid. Annah." I took a deep breath. "Rosalind. I'm going to die like Rosalind, Sebastian. Unless you do something."
Glowing embers showed the Lucifer was almost within reach. "In the name of Most Merciful Compassionate God," I said. "Praise be to God, the Lord of all Being; All-Merciful, All-Compassionate, the Master of the day of judgment. Thee only do we worship and of thee do we beg assistance."
I lifted the ‹BINK›-rod to swing it at the mound… then suddenly, an idea blossomed inside my beleaguered brain. Inspiration. I dropped to my knees and whacked the rod hard on Sebastian.
To be honest, I doubted it would work — the nanites protecting the boy might resist the ‹BINK›-rod's effects, might even knock the rod from my hands before it made contact. But either the nanites couldn't resist or they were smart enough to recognize I had Sebastian's interests at heart. The ‹BINK›-rod came down… made contact… and the boy disappeared.
The gunpowder heap loosed a furious hiss, like a poisonous snake cheated of its prey. It hurtled toward me, no longer teasing out the moment of fear but trying to avalanche across the gap before I too escaped. The leading edge slammed against my legs, knocking me off my feet; but as I fell, I had time to swing the rod, slap my own chest with the tip…
…and the sandy roar fell silent. The burning embers vanished. I finished my fall and struck dust that billowed up in clouds on my impact.
A weight clinging to my legs sloughed off: gunpowder grains that had traveled with me on this abrupt trip to wherever. They dropped limply from my clothing into the dust, all sign of malice gone.
I looked up. I was inside another laser cage, much bigger than the one I'd just left, but still delineated by thin violet beams outlining a cube. Those beams showed this cage was still working, isolating the captured cellules from the Satanic overmind outside. It made perfect sense; since this was where Spark Lords sent bits of Lucifer, they'd erected a special holding cell to separate the parts from the whole.
Beyond the cell ceiling, stars shone untwinkling in a pure black sky. There was no sun, but amidst the starry waste floated a large cloudy blue moon. I knew it wasn't really a moon at all — I'd seen photographs from OldTech space missions, and I recognized the Earth when I saw it.
My homeworld. My planet. Drifting overhead as I stood in a laser prison on the moon.
"Pretty, isn't it?" said a voice behind me.
I turned. It was Annah.
25: EARTHRISE
For a moment, my heart surged with joy; then the joy was crushed by depression. "I know you're not real," I said. Dull weariness washed over me. "You're just another doppelganger — a collection of all the cellules sent here over the years. I don't know how you realized that looking like Annah would torment me… but frankly I don't care." I still held the ‹BINK›-rod in my hand; I waved it in warning, like showing a cross to a vampire. "Come any closer, and I'll hit you with this. Unless I miss my guess, that will send you back to Niagara Falls. One tap brings you here. Another returns you to wherever…"
My voice trailed off. The Annah in front of me had brought out an identical ‹BINK›-rod. "This is the one Jode stole from Mind-Lord Priest. I was standing over Jode when I shot Knife-Hand Liz. The rod was right at my feet. I fired my gun, then dived to grab it; I used it on myself a millisecond before the Ring of Knives men tried to shoot me."
I stared at her numbly. Forcing myself not to believe.
"It's true, Phil," she said. "I got out in time. Didn't you notice I was gone?"
"There was an explosion," I mumbled. "Nothing but charred heaps of…" I didn't finish the sentence. "Annah?"
"Yes, Phil. It's me." She held open her arms.
I walked forward — knowing full well it might be a Lucifer trick. But I didn't care. If this vision of Annah transformed into a slurry of maggots that choked me to death, so be it. I was numb to fear, numb to hope, numb, numb, numb.
She wrapped her arms around me. I laid my head on her shoulder. She kissed my hair, but said nothing.
For a long time we just stood there, body to body. Her breath soft beside me; the smell of her skin and hair slowly working into my consciousness.
At some point, I put my arms around her too. But neither of us spoke as the Earth slowly drifted overhead.
We might have stood that way forever. What broke the spell was something bumping hard against my leg. I looked down and saw an amorphous black blob trying to wrap itself around my ankle. It was the size of a housecat but made of gunpowder grains that glinted in the Earthlight; I shook it off in disgust and it slid away, leaving a haphazard track in the moondust.
Annah unwrapped her arms from me. "There are lots of those things here," she said as she watched the blob weave away. I could see she was right; the cage held more than a dozen masses of similar size, moving apparently at random across the lunar surface. They showed no sign of intelligence — deprived of contact with Satan, they seemed as mindless as worms.
"They're used to being part of a larger consciousness," I said. "This laser cage cuts that connection; I guess it sends them into shock."
I told Annah what I'd learned from the good Lucifer… and as I talked, questions rose in my mind. If the good Lucifer had eventually come to its senses after being blocked off from the whole, why hadn't that happened to the wandering blobs in this cage? Were the blobs perhaps too small to regain their intelligence — not enough cellules, so not enough collective brainpower? Did the "angelic" Lucifer have a stronger self-identity than the Satanic version? Was it just that the angel had Spark Lords caring for it, and somehow the Sparks had nursed it back to sanity? Or could this version of the laser cage be different from the one in Niagara: not just sealing off the cellules from the hive mind outside, but suppressing their mental capacity so they couldn't collect their thoughts?
No answers, just questions… and when I'd finished my explanations, Annah had a question of her own. "If I understand this correctly," she said, "Dreamsinger sent Jode to this prison too. Jode had that rod which let him escape; but while he was here, wouldn't he have lost touch with the main consciousness just like these blobs?"
"You're right. Yet he kept enough intelligence to use the ‹BINK›-rod for his return." I shrugged. "Maybe the difference was that Jode was ready for the experience. He expected to get sent here. Maybe that expectation let him retain intelligence long enough to use the rod." I looked around at the scuttling blobs. "Or maybe every Lucifer retains intelligence for a while. It's only prolonged separation from the hive mind that makes them stupid. Or even… look, Jode knew in advance he'd get banished here. He could have prepared some sort of device, a clockwork attachment that swung the ‹BINK›-rod a few minutes after he'd arrived on the moon. That way it wouldn't matter if he went mindless — the rod would tap him automatically, so he'd return to Earth, and immediately link back with the hive."