That would do.
Raidriar used the reserve, the portion held back. During their confinement, he could see that Ausar had fought with everything he had. How like him, always overextending. Forever passionate, but frequently out of control.
It was what set them apart. This made Raidriar a king, while making his former friend simply a glorified warlord.
Raidriar sprinted forward, feet steadying. The girl was obviously expecting weakness in him such as Ausar displayed. What tenderness she showed for the fallen man. Raidriar noted it with a portion of his mind as he slammed into her, knocking the crossbow aside before she could shoot.
The bolt loosed, hitting the ground and bouncing off stone into the darkness. The woman grunted, reaching for Raidriar, but he twisted away while grabbing the hilt of her belt knife. He whipped it free, dancing to the side on the pillar, the knife out.
Freedom. He could taste it.
Yes, there was tenderness in the way she held Ausar’s arm. Had he taken a lover in this new form, with his mind still like that of a child? The old Ausar would scream to know of it.
“I could have let the crossbow bolt hit as I reached the pillar,” Raidriar noted, “but it is not for one such as you to kill a god.”
“Raidriar,” Ausar said, reaching out, lifting his head. “I . . . I am ready to talk . . . as you wished to do those weeks ago, when we stopped our fight.”
Raidriar inspected the knife. A fine weapon, forged from folded steel. It would do. “I think not,” he said.
Then he slit his own throat.
SIRIS WATCHED the God King’s body slump lifeless against the pillar. This time, it would not heal, would not recover. In this position, his soul could escape through the hole in the ceiling.
“What,” Isa said, “was that?”
“Freedom,” Siris mumbled. “How long has it been?”
“Almost two years,” Isa said, recovering her knife and shivering visibly. She kicked the God King’s body, making sure it was dead, then stepped up beside Siris again.
So short? Hell take me . . . I could have sworn we were in there for a millennium.
The Dark Self growled within him.
“Come on,” Isa said, kneeling and triggering the platform. It rose slowly into the air, stone grinding stone. “A lot has happened since you were imprisoned.”
As the stone pillar reached the roof, Siris watched the two figures below slowly consumed by darkness. One of them escaped her bindings and ripped the sack from her head.
Siris was left with the image of her scrambling for his broken, pitiful excuse for a sword, clutching it as the other figure ripped free of his bonds . . .
DEVIATION
THE FOURTH
URIEL WIPED digital spreadsheets from the top of his desk, sliding them out of the way with an annoyed gesture. He grouped others, bringing them down and arraying them beneath his fingers.
The numbers. What did the numbers say? Mr. Galath . . .
Why? Why couldn’t Uriel make sense of the world like he could these sheets and statistics? He was never wrong—not with numbers. When they’d demonstrated the Sympathetic Thermal Conduction mechanisms, who had guessed the exact bids that each participant would present? Uriel. When Mr. Galath had come forward with his Advanced Artificial Entity matrix, who had predicted to the day—to the day—how long it would take the government to develop regulations? Uriel.
The numbers didn’t lie. War. Why would Mr. Galath want war, after all of these years? Any of their devices could have been used militarily. They’d always put protocols in place to prevent such things. Now . . . now they went to militaries and took bids.
What was the man working on? The new secret—it had to be incredible, amazing, transformative.
Uriel would find the answer. Men should make sense. If they listened to reason, they would make sense. Perhaps if governments focused more on what was logical, rather than killing one another, the world would work as it was supposed to.
Adram passed by. “Staying late?” he asked.
Uriel didn’t look up.
Adram patted him on the shoulder anyway. “Look, no hard feelings. I don’t mind that you tried to sabotage me.”
“You don’t?” Uriel asked. That didn’t make sense, even if he had been chosen by Mr. Galath. Uriel looked up, but Adram really did look pleased.
“You should be angry at me,” Uriel said. “I tried to stop you from getting your way.”
“Nah. It’s cause and effect, Spunky. It’s like . . . you’re hardly a person. No offense there! It’s a compliment. You’re like a machine. Data in, data out. No emotion!”
Uriel pressed his fingers against the table until the tips were white. The display warped, spreading a little halo of color around each finger. “Did he say . . . ?” Uriel barely kept his voice in check. “Did he say what it was about? The special meeting?”
Adram leaned down. “I’m gonna live forever, Uri boy.” He winked, grinning, then stood up straight. He obviously shouldn’t have said anything, but the bounce to his step as he moved off—humming to himself and doing a little slide on the carpet as he took the corner—spoke volumes of his euphoria.
Live forever? Impossible. Even for Mr. Galath.
Or was it? Uriel turned back to his spreadsheets, then hunkered down. He spent an hour teasing information from accounts that were nested inside subsidiaries and shell corporations, and a strange string of answers began to form. The moon? What was Mr. Galath doing on the moon? And these bunkers around the country? Uriel couldn’t think what else to call them, judging by the specs and supply lists.
Mr. Galath was getting ready for war. What have I become a part of? Suddenly nauseous, Uriel sat back in his chair. No place on the planet would be safe. If the greatest mind of their time wanted war, then what safety could there ever be?
His eyes drifted to the picture of his son sitting in its little frame on the desk. Uriel stared at that picture, taken two years ago. In fact, he looked at it so often that he was sometimes surprised when he saw Jori in person—the child didn’t quite look like the picture.
Uriel knew that little piece of paper better than he knew the son it represented.
What am I doing? he thought. Death was coming. Destruction. Hell . . . it was already here, in most of the world. And Uriel worked late nights, looking at a picture instead of holding his son?
He stood up and shoved his chair aside and looked at the clock. Seven. Jori would be home from practice for dinner in a half hour.
A half hour. He could make that.
He didn’t bother to shut down his desk or its screen as he left. That felt sinfully negligent to him, and so he found himself smiling.
He had worked all his life for Mr. Galath. The man had taken Uriel’s sweat, but he would not have Uriel’s blood. Not tonight.
CHAPTER
FIVE
THE SCHOLARS of ancient days had a great deal to say about the soul. They claimed that the idea of an immortal soul was simply wishful imagination. Instead they spoke of the Quantum Identity Pattern: a state of matter that could be attuned to a certain configuration—a set of memories and a personality.