Kitabı oku: «Apocalypse Unseen»

The Road to Outlands—From Secret Government Files to the Future

Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, DC. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology...a question to a keeper of the archives...a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quote

Legend

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

The Earth’s first monster was called Anu and he arrived from the heavens in a spaceship. Oh, there had been horrifying things before Anu—dinosaurs and giant things that lived in the ocean’s depths and saw in a range beyond the visible spectrum, creatures which one might describe as monstrous. But Anu was a monster inside, where it truly counts.

Anu was a self-styled explorer from an immortal race called the Annunaki, who hailed from the distant planet of Nibiru, many light-years from the planet he dubbed Ki after his sister and consort, the planet which we now call the Earth. Anu was a strange kind of explorer, looking not for new lands or resources but rather for new experiences, ones that might stave off the crushing ennui that threatened to quiet his race forever when time itself had failed. The Annunaki were bored—of life, of experience, of pleasure.

Anu first visited the Earth in a period when the apekin—or humans—were still cowering in the trees from saber-toothed tigers. He landed amid the wild greenery in a starship shaped like a dragon. The starship was called Tiamat, and she was a semisentient device as eternal as any of the Annunaki race. The journey across the gulfs of space had exhausted her, which was reason enough for Anu to step from her loving womb and onto the soil of this new planet; a planet that waited untouched and ignored on one of the pale, squid-like tentacles of a barred spiral galaxy that would one day be known as the Milky Way. Such was the impact that Tiamat’s arrival would make on the locals that, many years later, she would be erroneously considered responsible for the creation of the Milky Way itself.

Anu strode from Tiamat’s bridge and inhaled his first breath of the Earth’s atmosphere, taking in the blue-skied vista spread before him. He was a tall creature, nine feet in height, with scales of gold laced with green like brass touched by verdigris, his thick tail circling behind him for balance as he stepped from the widening aperture on Tiamat’s shell and out onto the boarding ramp that extended from the ship’s nose. He wore an ornate cloak patterned after one of Nibiru’s most prominent flowers, its scarlet weave so dark that it was almost black, a perfect match to his red-black eyes. His neck was thick and corded, the ideal plinth for his long head, whose skull seemed to arch back and outward from a curved face with almost flat features, like a visage reflected on the back of a spoon. At the apex of his head, spiny protrusions emerged from his skull, thick, twisted bone struts running in a spiky array that jutted like the spokes of a wheel. In years to come, Anu would be remembered by the Earthlings for his crown, though it was not decorative but a part of his skeleton.

Anu breathed the air as he stepped from the widening, circular aperture. He knew that it could do him no damage; Tiamat had already tested and confirmed as much before he had taken his first step from her protective shell. To Anu, the air tasted sweet in that way that water from a different source often tastes different.

He took a moment, the grand explorer, the alien, to survey this world he had discovered like a gem amid the night sky of space. According to Tiamat’s sensors, it teemed with life, something that so few worlds did. There were other races, of course—Anu knew as much and had convened with them, as had others of his own race. But, for better or worse, such races were scattered vast distances from each other, as if a law within some grand, hidden design had stated that no two sentient races may coexist within one hundred light-years of one another. Perhaps there was a plan at that, one hidden from all but the most enlightened of the higher beings. Anu had considered this during his long journey to the planet Earth—or Ki, as he was already calling it—but reached no firm conclusions, only more questions.

The Annunaki were eternal beings. And they were something else, too—multidimensional. But it was possible to see the Annunaki through humans’ eyes, and as Anu stepped from Tiamat’s boarding ramp and out onto the green carpeted plains that would one day become Kenya, he was seen by the first man who would ever have a name. The man cowered behind a deciduous bush, where he had been plucking perfectly round, purple berries that he planned to store for eating later, back at his dwelling—which was admittedly little more than an indentation in the ground, but served to keep the wind from touching him at night. The man had stopped plucking berries, his purple-stained fingers poised in midpluck, as the dragon ship landed and the figure emerged. The whole sequence had taken almost ten minutes, from when the man had first noticed Tiamat as she gracefully came to rest, barely making a sound beyond the displacement of the air left in her wake, to now, when the aperture had appeared on the dragon ship’s face and the golden figure of Anu had emerged to stride majestically down the tongue that rolled before him to touch the soil. In all that time, the man—we might call him Adam, although that is not the name which Anu gave him—remained in place, unmoving, perhaps unable to move, as he watched an occurrence play out that was so far beyond his comprehension that he could barely fathom it. It was like hearing something in a foreign language, so impossible was it for Adam to interpret.

As Anu stepped onto the planet, Adam coughed, suddenly choking on his own breath, the taste of berries and stomach acid flooding his throat with a hot surge. He doubled over, taking great racking gasps of air as he tried to clear his throat, pressing his arms against his chest and sides, the berries crushed and forgotten. It was shock, seeing this creature from another world, this...god...?

When Adam finally managed to draw a breath without coughing—still hunched over like the apes his kind still resembled—he stared at the ground between his feet and saw golden, clawed toes. He looked up, turning his head slowly, still feeling that twitch on his insides where the choking cough threatened to restart.

The creature from the stars was standing beside him, legs widespread, cloak fluttering in the light, warm breeze, watching him with eyes as dark as newly spilled blood.

Anu spoke in a voice the like of which had never been heard on this planet. The words were incomprehensible to the apekin, but the sound fascinated him. It was duotonal, like someone humming against a sheet of paper, split and yet conjoined, a sound that was two sounds at once. The voice, like everything else about the Annunaki, was multidimensional.

Adam heard the sound and did the only thing that seemed natural: he fell to his knees, bowing down before Anu, peering up at those eyes like blood.

Anu peered down at the apekin creature inquisitively, pleased with this new aspect of the thing’s nature. “You are not timid, then?” he said. He spoke the words in his own tongue; they left his mouth with a sound like wind through autumn leaves. He reached down then, touching one golden hand to the apekin’s head, pressing it gently against the top of the primitive creature’s skull. Anu placed just a little pressure there, and the apekin bowed his head, until he was staring at the ground between Anu’s feet.

“Better,” Anu declared, a thin smile appearing on his wide mouth.

The apekin remained in that aspect as Anu surveyed the lands around him, taking in the new plants, the trees, the texture of the air. Here was a playground that might stave off the crushing boredom of life eternal, at least for a while. He breathed deeply of the air, consuming it through the flat, flared nostrils that resided on his face like the craters of some unknown moon, as he turned back to regard the apekin bowed low before him. This was something he could use and could get used to. These hairy mammals with their smells and their finite life spans could serve to reignite the pleasure centers of the bored Annunaki.

But when to share his discovery? Anu wondered. Perhaps tomorrow or next week or in a thousand years’ time. For time meant little to a race that knew infinity and resided outside of its wide borders. First he would experiment a little, see what these apekin were capable of, and what they could endure.

“Come, creature,” Anu said, placing a clawed hand under the apekin’s chin until his head tilted to look at his new master. “Creature. Creature. No, you need an identifier, a name by which you may be referred.” Anu was already thinking of the Annunaki’s slave class, the Igigi, none of whom had ever earned a name. They were devoted and simple creatures, superior, Anu suspected, to the apekin prostrating himself before him, but still uncomplicated compared to the Annunaki. It pleased Anu to think that by naming this first man, he might further subjugate the Igigi, reminding them of their status as slaves to the eternal race. And so he spoke a name, one that would survive throughout man’s history. Not Adam, not that—but Cain.

* * *

THE DOME SAT on the shores of Lake Tiamat. It was four hundred yards across and perfectly round as if a giant sphere had been buried in the ground, leaving only its top third visible. The shell of the Dome was colored the silver of clouds, making it almost indistinguishable from the sky into which it towered. Inside, Anu conducted his trials. He was loath to call them experiments; they were really just games that put the local apekin through their paces, testing them to—and beyond—their limits. Anu might be excused the latter—he had no prior knowledge of the apekin, and only by testing them could he hope to determine where their limits were and of what merit such limits were.

The apekin needed sleep and food, far more so than the Annunaki, who could go without such things for months, even years, at a time. The Annunaki lived outside of time, while the apekin were bound to it in such a way that it afflicted them with a disease called aging.

Aging. The Annunaki had bypassed that millennia ago, their bodies immune to the ravages of time, their minds playing host to the memories of all of their race, perfectly held for instantaneous recall. And more, they had invested in the genetic shunt, a download of personality which allowed them to be reborn as they were, over and over, to regenerate their minds into new forms, each genetic template held safe in the wombship, Tiamat.

Anu had spent the past six months on Earth, toying with the apekin and the other creatures who existed on this untouched paradise. He had tested diseases, manipulated DNA, made the apekin serve him, service him and entertain him. He had driven them to madness and to death, called upon them to fight with wild creatures for his pleasure and to fight with one another to the death. He had made mazes and traps to test their intelligence, used mirrors and refraction to throw their senses. Simple tricks all, but tricks that were beyond the apekin’s understanding.

But the apekin were learning; that was something of which they were eminently capable, Anu had concluded. They took observations from the trials, learned lessons, reached conclusions that made them better at surviving without injury. If they could learn, Anu concluded, then they could be taught.

Cain had survived all of the trials. Anu’s first test subject, Cain had proved shrewd and wily, and he had learned quickly how to please his master and never to trust him. Cain was strong, muscular for his species. He could kill a man with his bare hands and utilize simple tools that he fashioned himself—shaped rocks, carved sticks. Cain showed the kind of spirit that Anu associated with the eternal, a spirit that might live beyond his time here on Ki, on Earth. Anu had found one other like him, a female of remarkable intellect for an apekin, and there seemed to be a bond between her and Cain almost from the moment that they met.

Cain was a servant of Anu, which meant he had safety in the Dome, safety from those prowling saber-toothed tigers and their ilk, each one looking for a hot meal that was slow on its feet and wouldn’t fight back. Cain was safe inside, and so he served Anu without complaint. Every morning he would run the circumference of Lake Tiamat, an artificial body of water created from the overspill of Tiamat’s tanks, genetic ooze, waste product expelled after the long journey across the field of stars. The dragon ship resided beside the lake, disgorging her innards in a display of regeneration comparable to anything Annunaki, her fish-scale skin slowly replenishing where it had become blistered by the heat of atmospheric entry.

Cain seemed to have some ragged notion linking survival to physical prowess, and so, Anu guessed, that was why he ran. He tried to teach the female, the one of remarkable intellect, and she watched him run the circuits around the lake with bright eyes of emerald green.

* * *

TIME PASSED AND the trials continued. Until the day that Anu became bored with the Earth and, moreover, bored with the company of grunting apekin with whom he could not hope to do more than play fetch. He wondered about adding a spark to these listless creatures, and consulted with Tiamat’s data banks to design a structure within their DNA that might make them more interesting. He implanted that DNA structure into the ova of the female whom he had observed enjoying the company of many males of her tribe. The twist would make her children more rugged, more hardy, more interesting. It would spread, in time, though that was time Anu no longer wanted to endure on this blue-green marble. His servants, the Igigi, let the female go, scared and confused, to spread Anu’s gift among the apekin. Anu watched her leave, wondering if he might return to Nibiru to tell the others of his discovery here, that they might add texture to the planet and thus make it interesting again.

Anu was not a monster because of his size or his skin or his otherness. He was a monster because of his heartlessness, his callousness. Because of his evil.