Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda
garish holos capered around Owen no matter which way he looked, shouting in his ears as he walked through them. They didn’t seem to bother Glory and Dominic at all. Presumably they were so used to them they just didn’t notice them. Owen gritted his teeth and stared determinedly straight ahead. The streets were full of every kind of new humanity, and no one paid the barbarian from the future any attention at all.
Just when Owen was thinking at least it couldn’t get any worse, of course it did. Half a dozen naked men came striding down the street, burning alive. People moved unhurriedly to get out of their way. Flames leapt around the burning men, blasting out a heat so intense that those nearest flinched away from it. But no one seemed to be paying them any particular attention. For although the flames burned very fiercely, they did not consume. The flesh beneath the flames blackened and cracked, but that was all. The burning men walked down the street, looking straight ahead, their black and crimson faces twisted with endless suffering, their cracked lips moving silently.
“Penitents,” said Glory, amused by Owen’s shocked reaction. “They set themselves on fire, as a protest. They disapprove of how far we’ve progressed from basic humanity. They’re burning alive as a penance for the sins of the age. Show-offs.”
“Some burn for days, others last for months,” said Dominic. “And there are always more to replace those who fall. I find it reassuring, that there are still people crying out against inhumanity.”
“Even if it’s a really stupid way?” said Glory. “No one notices. No one cares. They’re just another pressure group.”
Dominic sighed. “That’s the problem with the Empire today; too many beliefs, too many faiths and philosophies. And far too many splintered factions, arguing endlessly over details and interpretations that only matter to them. You can find every kind of cause these days—from pagan animism to scientific determinism, from We Are All Property to making blood sacrifices to computers. Given how varied the human condition has become, it’s hard to find anything that everyone can believe in. We all live for the present, for the experience. Heaven can wait. We could have transcended, become something greater, but we dropped the ball. Partly because we were afraid; partly because we couldn’t agree on a direction; and just possibly because we saw the future of the human spirit, and knew we weren’t worthy.”
Owen thought about the Madness Maze, but said nothing. He couldn’t talk about the Maze without telling them about Hazel d’Ark.
Finally Owen Deathstalker came to the great and mighty court of Emperor Ethur, the oldest living human in the whole First Empire. Not that anyone could just walk into court and demand an immediate audience with the Emperor, but Dominic Cairo and Glory Chojiro invoked their ancient privilege of Defender and Investigator, and the jade-armored guards waved them on. An Investigator and a Defender of Humanity could always speak to the Emperor, if they claimed a real and present danger to Humanity itself. Owen thought they were pushing that a bit, but said nothing. One of the guards wanted to take his sword away. Owen gave him his best hard look, and the guard decided that he was needed urgently elsewhere.
Ethur’s Court was a place of freaks and wonders, under a great golden bowl half a mile wide. There were enough courtiers present to make up a decent-sized army, indulging themselves in every extremity of shape, just for the sake of it. From the aesthetic to the grotesque; from the tasteless to the bizarre; from women with bosoms so big they dragged along the floor, to people pierced through every organ, to wispy ghosts who were hardly there at all—every excess was represented somewhere. Braziers pumped perfumes into the air, and sharp atonal music formed a background to the constant babble of voices as everybody talked at once and no one listened. The courtiers played vicious, intricate games and hardly glanced round as Glory and Dominic and Owen passed by, heading for the Steel Throne. They were too normal, too ordinary. Too boring to be of interest. A few followed Owen with their eyes, sensing something different about him; something . . . disturbing. He smiled at them, and they flinched back.
At the very center of the court, under the very apex of the great golden bowl, on the Steel Throne set high on a raised dais, sat
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