Prophets

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Visions

No escape is final.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

None are more hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

—JOHANN WOLFGANG von Goethe (1749-1832)

Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534

“One aircraft,” Nickolai said.

The world went white, then red. The vibration threw him on the ground as he realized that there was no way he should be aware of hitting the ground. He landed on his side and felt the ground beneath him rumbling, oscillating in a great sine wave under his good arm. Around him there was a great groaning, as if the planet itself was in agony.

The light faded to red and he saw a distinct edge, a hemisphere engulfing them, marking the limit of the light, the red saturating everything outside.

Then the light faded a bit more and he could see the shadow of one of the nearby buildings. It stood nearly at the outside edge of the hemisphere, which was the only reason he could see it.

Nicolai watched the building disintegrate in slow motion, the shadow of the building dissolving. More detail became visible, even as his eyes adjusted. Flames rolled across the ground, too slowly.

“What is this?” he whispered.

The fireball crawled by, wrapping itself around the hemisphere.

The slow rumbling of the ground ceased, and the world stopped screaming its death cry. He pushed himself up and got to his feet.

“What is this?” he repeated.

Behind him, he heard the voice of Flynn/Tetsami. “They nuked us. The bastards nuked us.”

“How . . .” Nickolai raised his artificial hand before him. A nuclear blast should have fried the electronics. And his eyes—an EMP should have destroyed them and probably a good part of his brain, too, as closely as they were wired to it.

Kugara echoed him, “How are we still alive?”

“The Protean,” Flynn/Tetsami said. “It has an Emerson field that’s far beyond anything else . . .”

Kugara put a hand on his arm, the real one, and asked, “Are you all right?”

He watched the slow-motion holocaust outside the hemisphere surrounding them. He shook his head and said, “No.”

“Are you injured?”

“No. Leave me alone.” He stared out and wondered if it would be possible to walk through the barrier. Her hand stayed on his arm. “Please?”

Her hand dropped and he heard Flynn/Tetsami say, “Leave him be. It’s a bit much to absorb. As far as I can tell, we’re safe in here.”

He heard them walk away.

It took minutes for the hemisphere to fade. He stood at a razor-sharp barrier between the untouched earth and a sheet of black glass. The air was rank with the smell of fire. The air itself seemed to have burned, filled with a fine gray ash that limited visibility and made his nose itch.

Probably poison to breathe.

Not that he cared much. He had walked to the edge of hell, and now at least it looked the part. The only sound was a distant crackle that he suspected was the forest around them burning to the ground.

He coughed and wondered if the slow suicide of standing here was preferable to walking into the Protean den. He was certain that the structure would offer shelter from the radiation and the fallout. But at what price, he didn’t care to guess.

Damned or not, out here at least my soul is still my own.

Then he saw a humanoid shadow moving through the fog of smoke and ash. He coughed again, and tried to focus his eyes to better resolve the shadow, but suddenly his new eyes didn’t follow instructions. He blinked and shook his head, and saw the shadow approaching from another angle.

What?

His military training leapfrogged all the idle emotions he’d been having. The enemy had dropped paratroopers into the blast zone. He needed to take cover and warn Kugara and Flynn/Tetsami. They were the only ones armed. He turned toward the Protean crystal—

And only saw more gray ash and an approaching humanoid form. He turned around.

Surrounded.

He glanced back toward the first figure and realized something. There was only one shadow, fixed in his field of vision wherever he looked or turned his head. The approaching shadow moved with his gaze, left or right, up or down.

He heard a gentle clapping as the figure finally emerged completely from the gray haze around him. Mr. Antonio, his image anyway, stood in front of him, softly applauding him.

“You have done me proud, Mr. Rajasthan,” he said. “You have delivered Mr. Mosasa to a just and appropriate end.”

“How are you here?” Nickolai whispered, hoarsely.

Mr. Antonio tapped the side of Nickolai’s head, next to his right eye. “I never left you.”

“Why?”

“To see as you saw, my good servant. I see you desire your freedom, but not quite yet.”

“I did as you asked.”

“And more. But you have seen evil, have you not?”

Nickolai nodded.

“Then please, be well and bide your time until I tell you how that evil is to be dealt with.”

Nickolai stared into the effigy of Mr. Antonio, who he knew was not really there, and realized that he had no choice.

“Excellent decision, Mr. Rajasthan. In time you will see yourself first among your kind.”

“Nickolai, Nickolai!”

Nickolai opened his eyes to Kugara’s voice. He was momentarily disoriented, his last memory was talking to the image of Mr. Antonio in the midst of the ash. Now he looked up at Kugara’s face and above her a shining crystal ceiling that seemed to twist itself into some fractal vanishing point.

He sat up and asked, “What happened?”

“The shield dropped, and you collapsed.”

Nickolai felt his temple, and thought about the eyes that were wired deep into his brain.

“Are you all right?” Kugara asked.

“No,” Nickolai said, “I don’t think so.”