Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

gushed
over her.
    Close your eyes, Callisto thought. This won’t hurt.
    ’No,’ Asgard said. She took a step towards the looming beast,
began to run. ’No, no, no!’ With a final yell she hurled herself at
his back.
    He looked around, startled, and swiped at Asgard with one giant
paw. She was flung away like a scrap of bark, to land in a heap on
the dust. But Night, off-balance, was stumbling backward, back toward
the sea.
    When his foot sank into the oily ocean, he looked down, as if
surprised. Even as he lifted his leg from the fluid the flesh was
drying, crumbling, the muscles and bone sloughing away in layers of
purple and white. He roared his defiance, and cuffed at the sea -
then gazed in horror at one immense hand left shredded by contact
with the entropic ooze.
    He began to fall, slowly, ponderously. Without a splash, the fluid
opened up to accept his immense bulk. He was immediately submerged,
the shallow fluid flowing eagerly over him. In one last burst of
defiance he broke the surface, mouth open, his flesh dissolving. His
face was restored, briefly, to the human, his eyes a startling blue.
He cried out, his voice thin: ’Reth Cana! You betrayed me! ’
    The name sent a shiver of recognition through Callisto.
    Then he fell back, and was gone.
    She hurried to Asgard. Her chest was crushed, Callisto saw
immediately, and her limbs were splayed at impossible angles. Her
face was growing smooth, featureless, like a child’s, beautiful in
its innocence. Her gaze slid over Callisto.
    Callisto cradled Asgard’s head. ’This won’t hurt,’ she murmured.
’Close your eyes.’
    Asgard sighed, and was still.
     
    ’Let me tell you the truth about pharaohs,’ Nomi said
bitterly.
    Hama listened in silence. They stood on the Valhalla ridge,
overlooking the old, dark settlement; the brightest point on the
silver-black surface of Callisto was their own lifedome.
    Nomi said, ’This was just after the Qax left. I got this from a
couple of our people who survived, who were there. They found a nest
of the pharaohs, in one of the biggest Conurbations - one of the
first to be constructed, one of the oldest. The pharaohs retreated
into a pit, under the surface dwellings. They fought hard; we didn’t
know why. They had to be torched out. A lot of good people, good
mayflies, died that day. When our people had dealt with the pharaohs,
shut down the mines and drone robots and booby-traps… after all
that, they went into the pit. It was dark. But it was warm, the air
was moist, and there was movement everywhere. Small movements. And,
so they say, there was a smell. Of milk.’
    Nomi was silent for a long moment; Hama waited.
    ’Hama, I can’t have children. I grew up knowing that. So maybe I
ought to find some pity for the pharaohs. They don’t breed true -
like Gemo and Sarfi. Oh, sometimes their children are born with Qax
immortality. But - ’
    ’Yes?’
    ’But they don’t all grow. They stop developing, at the age of two
years or one year or six months or a month; some of them even stop
growing before they are ready to be born, and have to be plucked from
their mothers’ wombs.
    ’And that was what our soldiers found in the pit, Hama. Racked up
like specimens in a lab, hundreds of them. Must have been
accumulating for centuries. Plugged into machines, mewling and
crying.’
    ’Lethe.’ Maybe Gemo is right, Hama thought; maybe the pharaohs
really have paid a price we can’t begin to understand.
    ’The pit was torched…’
    Hama thought he saw a shadow pass across the sky, the scattered
stars. ’Why are you telling me this, Nomi?’
    ’To show you that pharaohs have experiences we can’t share. And
they do things we would find incomprehensible. To figure them out you
have to think like a pharaoh.’
    ’You’ve found something, haven’t you?’
    Nomi pointed. ’There’s a line of shallow graves over there. Not
hard to find, in the end.’
    ’Ah.’
    ’The killings seemed to be uniform, the same method every time. A
laser to the head. The bodies seemed peaceful,’ Nomi mused. ’Almost
as if they welcomed it.’
    He had killed them. Reth had killed the other pharaohs who came
here, one by one. But why? And why would an immortal welcome death?
Only if - Hama’s mind raced - only if she were promised a better
place to go, a safer place -
    Everything happened at once.
    A shadow, unmistakable now, spread out over the stars: a hole in
the sky, black as night, winged, purposeful. And, low towards