Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

shocked Hama.
    Reth laughed. ’A Virtual? I didn’t suspect you were so
sentimental, Gemo.’
    Gemo stepped forward, her mouth working. ’But I remember your
cruelty.’
    Now Reth faced Hama. ’And this is the one sent by Earth’s new
junta of children.’
    Hama shrank before Reth’s arrogance and authority. His accent was
exotic - antique, perhaps; there was a rustle of history about this
man. Hama tried to keep his voice steady. ’I have a specific
assignment here, sir - ’
    Reth snorted. ’My work, a project of centuries, deals with the
essence of reality itself. It is an achievement of which you have no
understanding. If you had a glimmer of sensitivity you would leave
now. Just as, if you and your mayfly friends had any true notion of
duty, you would abandon your petty attempts at governing and leave it
to us.’
    Nomi growled, ’You think we got rid of the Qax just to hand over
our lives to the likes of you?’
    Reth glared at her. ’And can you really believe that we would have
administered the withdrawal of the Qax with more death and
destruction than you have inflicted?’
    Hama stood straight. ’I’m not here to discuss hypotheticals with
you, Reth Cana. We are pragmatic. If your work is in the interest of
the species - ’
    Reth laughed out loud; Hama saw how his teeth were discoloured,
greenish. ’The interest of the species.’ He stalked about the echoing
cavern, posturing. ’Gemo, I give you the future. If this young man
has his way, science will be no more than a weapon!… And if I
refuse to cooperate with his pragmatism?’
    Nomi said smoothly, ’Those who follow us will be a lot tougher.
Believe it, jasoft.’
    Gemo listened, stony-faced. ’They mean it, Reth.’
    ’Tomorrow,’ Reth said to Hama. ’Twelve hours from now. I will
demonstrate my work, my results. But I will not justify it to the
likes of you; make of it what you will.’ And he swept away into
shadows beyond the fitful glow of the hovering globe lamps.
    Nomi said quietly to Hama, ’Reth is a man who has spent too long
alone.’
    ’We can deal with him,’ Hama said, with more confidence than he
felt.
    ’Perhaps. But why is he alone? Hama, we know that at least a dozen
pharaohs came to this settlement before the Occupation was ended, and
probably more during the collapse. Where are they?’
    Hama frowned. ’Find out.’
    Nomi nodded briskly.
     
    The oily sea lapped even closer now. The beach was reduced to a
thin strip, trapped between forest and sea.
    Callisto walked far along the beach. There was nothing different,
just the same dense forest, the oily sea. Here and there the sea had
already covered the beach, encroaching into the forest, and she had
to push into the vegetation to make further progress. Everywhere she
found the tangle of roots and vine-like growths. Where the rising
liquid had touched, the grasses and vines and trees crumbled and
died, leaving bare, scattered dust.
    The beach curved around on itself.
    So she was on an island. At least she had learned that much.
Eventually, she supposed, that dark sea would rise so high it would
cover everything. And they would all die.
    There was no night. When she was tired, she rested on the beach,
eyes closed.
    There was no time here - not in the way she seemed to remember, on
some deep level of herself: no days, no nights, no change. There was
only the beach, the forest, that black oily sea, lapping ever closer,
all of it under a shadowless grey-white sky.
    She looked inward, seeking herself. She found only fragments of
memory: an ice moon, a black sky - a face, a girl’s perhaps,
delicate, troubled, but the face broke up into blocks of light. She
didn’t like to think about the face. It made her feel lonely.
Guilty.
    She asked Asgard about time.
    Asgard, gnawing absently on a handful of bark chips, ran a casual
finger through the reality dust, from grain to grain. ’There,’ she
said. ’Time passing. From one moment to the next.
    For we, you see, are above time.’
    ’I don’t understand.’
    ’Of course you don’t. A row of dust grains is a shard of story. A
blade of grass is a narrative. Where the grass knits itself into
vines and trees, that story deepens. And if I eat a grass blade I
absorb its tiny story, and it becomes mine. So Pharaoh said. And I
don’t know who told him. Do you see?’
    ’No,’ said Callisto frankly.
    Asgard just looked at her, apathetic, contemptuous.
    There was a thin cry, from the ocean. Callisto, shading her