Belisarius Cawl- the Great Work - Guy Haley Read online

  ‘I shall try not to be trite, nor mysterious, but straightforward,’ said Sedayne. ‘I know you have training in the arts biologica, Cawl. I don’t know about you, adept…?’

  ‘Acolytum Friedisch Adum Silip Qvo,’ said Friedisch, annoyed his name had already been forgotten.

  ‘Acolytum?’

  ‘I was days away from securing my first ranking when the war came to Trisolian,’ said Friedisch. ‘You will find me competent in several fields, notably–’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Sedayne, silencing him with a raised hand. ‘As I was saying, it will be apparent to you that I am old, and that I have but a little time to live. I am sorry to interrupt you, acolytum, but time is short. Please, be seated.’ He gestured to a nest of over-padded chairs. ‘I will tell you what you must know, and make the offer the Altrix here has no doubt intimated I will.’

  They sat. Sedayne moved with grace, but stiffness was setting in.

  ‘Adarnian vitality?’ said Cawl.

  ‘You know your rejuvenats.’ Sedayne nodded. ‘Stolen life, I regret to say.’

  ‘Illegal,’ said Cawl. He sipped his drink. Sweet and heady with a scent from the past, in it were trapped long summers and gentle lands gone into dust.

  ‘Then you know me a little already,’ said Sedayne. ‘I did not take it lightly, and I did not take it for myself.’

  ‘No? You wished to give the Adarnians a sense of purpose?’ said Cawl.

  ‘Droll,’ said Sedayne. His grey eyes hardened. ‘I heard that about you, that you undermine others by making light of what is important to them, while pompously declaiming your own worth.’

  Cawl shrugged. ‘I strive for perfection in the eyes of the Machine-God. I have yet to attain it. I do better than most though.’

  Sedayne shook his head. ‘You see, Altrix, this is the poor standard of inquiring minds in this benighted age. Machine-God!’ he snorted. ‘But I am sure we agree on some things, Cawl. Tell me, what is the most valuable thing in the universe?’

  ‘Knowledge,’ said Cawl and Friedisch simultaneously.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Sedyane. ‘It was for knowledge’s sake that I prolonged my life in so barbaric a way. Do you think I have no empathy for the sentient beings that died so that I could live? No. Similarly, it is for the sake of the same knowledge I had you brought here.’ He cradled his drink in long, veinous fingers. ‘I am one of the fortunate few who worked with the Emperor Himself. There are not many of us left now. Old age took many of us. The war many more. Soon there will be one less. I am dying.’

  Cawl sipped his drink again. Friedisch peered at his suspiciously.

  ‘I know you must have an interest in the biological work of the Emperor. You were a student of Diacomes, yes?’

  Cawl nodded.

  ‘He was a colleague of mine, a long time ago.’ Sedayne attempted a winning smile. He had cosmetically altered teeth, very straight, and horribly, unnaturally white. They looked bizarre in his chem-smoothed face, as if he were a plastek recreation of a man. ‘He was gifted, if deluded like all your creed. That was before I worked on the creation of the Legiones Astartes. I was the director of the carapace project.’

  False modesty wrapped his words, tight as apple skin.

  ‘Do you know that the black carapace was an unusual part of the Astartes program?’ Sedayne said. ‘It is the final stage implant, and unlike some of the other organs, that can, if necessary, be grown internally from seed germs, the carapace must be grafted in substantial pieces. Once in place, it encourages the human body to adopt it as its own, and it spreads. It is an engineered, controlled cancer.’ He smiled at his recollections. ‘This is now a matter of fact, and the signature element of Terra’s greatest warriors. No other gen-altered warriors have it. You will know a legionary by his carapace. It nearly was not so. It looked for a long time that we would not perfect it. Try as we might, we could not get the body to grow the carapace. It is far from the materials of the human body, being mostly a plastek compound with mineralised elements of rare sort. Nevertheless, it is crucial to the functioning of the Adeptus Astartes. Without it, their neural plugs are hard to implant, and without the plugs they cannot control their armour. As glorious a creation as the Legiones Astartes are, they are creatures of two parts, the biological, and the mechanical. Not so very different from the qualities your Cult finds so appealing, the union of man and machine, yes?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Cawl.

  Sedayne sat back, getting into his stride. He was a man who enjoyed regaling others with his achievements. ‘Much of the black carapace work was undertaken by servants of Amar Astarte, a name which is already ill-favoured, when not so very long ago it was spoken with respect. She was one of the greatest genotects of this era, perhaps any era. Her work outshone that of the gene-witches of the Selenar. You know of them?’

  ‘Of course!’ said Cawl. ‘We are not entirely ignorant.’

  Sedayne was unoffended by Cawl’s waspishness. Instead he seemed to approve. ‘Good, good, you fight your corner. That is good,’ he said, stroking the side of his glass with his forefinger. ‘No one will remember her, in a few hundred years. The favour of the powerful means so much, and she no longer has it. I didn’t rate her myself. The work I received was substandard. It didn’t work, so I fixed it. I made the carapace possible. You could say that the success of the Emperor’s own Legions was only possible because of what I did.’ Sedayne sipped his wine with a triumphant expression. ‘Now, imagine what you could do if you shared that knowledge.’

  ‘Is he joking?’ said Friedisch suddenly. He set his untouched glass aside on a low table. ‘He is joking, isn’t he?’

  ‘He certainly seems very pleased with himself, Friedisch, old friend,’ said Cawl.

  Sedayne’s expression darkened. ‘Why shouldn’t I celebrate what I have done? I have achieved so much. What have you done, Cawl, but dodge your responsibilities? Whereas you,’ he curled his lip at Friedisch. ‘You are a red-robed, Martian nobody.’

  ‘Well, this is getting off to a flying start,’ said Cawl. ‘I believe there was something you were going to offer me. If it is simply this tedious lecture, I think we’ll be going, eh, Friedisch?’

  ‘Let’s,’ said Friedisch.

  ‘I am offering my knowledge!’ said Sedayne loudly. His mood turned as quickly as badlands weather. ‘I am offering you everything that I am, and everything that I have learned. Your religion purports to worship knowledge. Here I am offering it, and you scoff at me.’

  Cawl smiled. ‘I’m sorry if we insult you. But there are a number of things that trouble me about this. If this is such a marvellous offer, why drag me and my friend here halfway across the galaxy at gunpoint? I have to say that your underling has been nothing but threatening from beginning to end. This leads me to believe that you think I might turn down your offer, so I have to wonder, why me? And why is it inevitably not going to be as attractive as you are attempting to make it sound?’

  ‘Name me the methods of direct knowledge transfer,’ said Sedayne.

  ‘Engrammatic reproduction,’ said Cawl. ‘Psychic rip, genophagy, noospheric upload. There are many, but they are flawed.’

  ‘They all are,’ agreed Sedayne.

  ‘Diacomes thought there was another way,’ said Cawl.

  ‘He did.’

  ‘The direct grafting of one consciousness, via machinic connection through the infospheric medium, from one mind to another.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know he utilised xenos technologies for this,’ said Cawl.

  ‘I do,’ said Sedayne.

  ‘Technologies that were proscribed.’

  ‘They were and are,’ admitted Sedayne. ‘That didn’t seem to stop you working for him. In fact, if I am correct about you, I would hazard a guess that it’s why you went to him in the first place.’

  Friedisch gave Cawl a questioning
look. Cawl ignored it.

  ‘The technology is dangerous for both parties,’ said Cawl. ‘He never managed to do it, you know. When I left him he had been trying for hundreds of years.’

  Sedayne leaned forwards. ‘Does that trouble you?’

  ‘What do you think!’ snapped Cawl. ‘You are obviously intent on using this technology on me, in which case I will effectively die. So thank you, but no thank you.’

  ‘I offer you all my experience, all my memories, my discoveries. It is a gift,’ said Sedayne.

  ‘Yes, a gift with a guarantee of my mind being wiped, and a high probability of death or insanity for the new being created. The only thing certain about it is failure. Diacomes turned the brains of his test subjects into gruel, director,’ said Cawl. ‘I was there. I wanted no part of it then, and I certainly want no part of it now. Good day.’

  Cawl stood.

  ‘Wait,’ said Sedayne.

  Cawl tensed. Herminia was staring at him. She shook her head emphatically and drew her gun. The guards levelled theirs at Cawl.

  ‘Since you put it like that,’ said Cawl.

  Cawl turned back to see Sedayne also had a weapon in his hand. It was small, perfectly formed, built to an aesthetic standard of a higher age. It was one of the most beautiful and dangerous things Cawl had ever seen.

  ‘I thought people like you got others to do their dirty work for them,’ said Cawl. ‘You have your own gun. Remarkable.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Sedayne.

  Cawl sat. Friedisch hadn’t moved.

  ‘Experience taught me it’s always best to be armed,’ said Sedayne. ‘Hear me out. I perfected Diacomes’ techniques. It will succeed. Minutes, that is what it will take, minutes to grant you my lifetime’s knowledge. You will be wondering why I chose you.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Cawl. ‘I was on my way out of the door, but I assume I’m going to find out whether I want to or not.’

  ‘You have memcore alterations recommended to you by Diacomes. You were one of only eleven apprentices that he took on.’

  ‘Then approach one of them.’

  ‘I did. The first three were with him before he perfected the memcore alterations. Two of them are in any case dead. Two are unaccounted for. Two went insane. Three more died during the war, the last died when, well, Herminia killed her trying to bring her in. That leaves you. You have the memcore alterations. You are also knowledgeable yourself, and intelligent. Think what our intellects might achieve together.’

  ‘It is not together, is it, director? I know that one intended effect of these memcore alterations is an increased receptiveness to mental overwriting. It’s one of the reasons I left him. He was using us.’ Cawl sighed. ‘Diacomes was almost successful during my apprenticeship with him,’ said Cawl. ‘It is theoretically possible to blend minds, permanently, but Diacomes found that the donor mind always suppresses and ultimately supplants that of the host body. Always. It would have been the great failing of his work, had all of his test subjects not gone mad or died. I’d say those were bigger failings, on balance.’

  Sedayne smiled regretfully. ‘A pity.’

  ‘You know what I say is true.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I won’t believe you if you tell me you overcame the problem.’

  ‘I won’t, because I haven’t. You will have my knowledge, all of it. But you will also be me. We’ll make a fine pair, you and I. You won’t be lost. You will live on, in me, a tiny piece at least. A whole new lifetime of discovery awaits us, Belisarius Cawl. You may watch it through my new eyes. Your eyes.’

  ‘I’m not going to do it.’

  ‘You will,’ said Sedayne.

  Cawl laughed at Herminia and the guards, and at Sedayne, all of whom were pointing weapons at him.

  ‘It will do you no good to shoot me. Then we both lose.’

  ‘That is why I am not going to shoot you,’ said Sedayne. ‘The Altrix will shoot your friend instead.’

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the bullet was out of her gun.

  Friedisch fell to the floor. Fyceline drifted between the tech-priest and the scientist. The back of his chair was a bloody mess of stuffing and splintered wood. It was the only reason he was still alive.

  ‘Belisarius!’ said Friedisch. His hands paddled in the pool of blood filling the hollow in his gut. ‘I am shot!’

  Cawl fell to his knees by his friend’s side. He gripped Friedisch’s hand in his own. It was slippery, hot.

  ‘A small calibre bolt pistol,’ said Sedayne dispassionately. ‘Enough to kill. If we are quick, and complete the transfer now, I might be able to save him.’ He smiled his skull’s smile again. ‘Once I am you.’

  Another age, another place, another grand intellect looked down on Cawl with contempt.

  It was a repeated theme in Cawl’s life.

  Insect, the mountain said. Useful. Find us. This is what you seek. Take it. Come to us. Be our slave. You will free us. We will bring you to us. We are here.

  Knowledge speared Cawl hard. Information was agony when delivered so forcefully, but he felt its sweetness all the same.

  Now

  Cawl came round with a gasp. His body had not moved, and the sense of dislocation was so pronounced he swayed and almost fell.

  ‘I…’ He was hot, tired. Something troubled him, the way the ancients said that someone had walked over their grave. ‘I have the most peculiar sensation. I…’ He looked to his companions. ‘I remember. Friedisch. I remember how it happened.’

  ‘Cawl,’ Felix came to his side. ‘Magos, are you well?’

  Cawl felt decidedly unwell. Curious alien subroutines were rushing through his neural infrastructure, judging him.

  ‘I am fine,’ he lied, simultaneously enacting a cortical purge, while his own defensive hunt phages sorted out the pain from useful data. They chased out the mountain’s inquiring spirits, latching onto what was needed and keeping it close. He felt immediately better.

  ‘Do you have your map?’

  ‘Um, no…’ said Cawl. ‘No I do not. Instead, well, something else has occurred.’

  The mountain rumbled. Far beneath them, something stirred.

  ‘Cawl!’ Felix shouted as the tremor built in strength. ‘It is happening again.’

  ‘No,’ said Alpha Primus. ‘This is something different.’

  The floor vanished into nothing, and they fell suddenly away into the dark.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tainted blood

  The hybrid strained against its chain, forcing Keltru to lean back and brace himself as best he could on the slippery floors. As they went deeper, Imperial stonework faded away, and the ferrocrete petered out. Glossy green-black took its place completely. There were walkways here and there, and where a run of side tunnels had been coopted by the Chapter to lay their dead to rest stone and brass effigies stared out from tomb walls, but blackstone predominated. That part of the Pharos had not yet awoken. Green lights flashed deep in the walls, the beginnings of processes that raced round angular circuit loops, never quite catching each other. Perhaps the dead really did hold sway in the tunnels the last Scythes of the Emperor trod, but whatever ruled the mountain stirred, even in those sacred environs.

  The hybrid strained and lunged, dragging them deeper into the mountain. The air was thickening. The scrabble clack of alien claws upon the stone echoed from silent apertures. There were many openings, of all sizes, and those that were not plugged with shrines or tomb doors glared blackly at the Space Marines as they passed by. The presence of air, though enabling sound, enabled silence too. There was a difference between the silence of vacuum and the silence of a tomb. The latter was alive, watchful, disturbing because it could be broken.

  They came to a large cave that was unevenly fluid in shape and pierced with many holes, resembling a stone organ
in the living body of the mountain. There were more lights in the walls there, languidly switching about in unknowable mineral currents. Otherwise it was dark, too dark even for the alien eyes of the hybrid to see.

  The floor of the chamber was some way below the level of the tunnel. The Terminators went first, their power-armoured brothers pulling on cables to prevent them falling. When the heavier brethren were down, the rest followed, skidding down slick rock to the lower level. Doror lost his balance and banged into the back of the Terminator-clad Ren, almost sending them both down. Bokari slipped and clashed down the stone, sliding out of control into the bowl of the floor. He fell several dozen feet, his suit light flashing off rounded corners and black entrances.

  Eventually he came to a stop.

  ‘Brother?’ Thracian asked.

  ‘I am unharmed,’ Bokari said. ‘There is something here, on the floor.’

  The Terminators trained their suit lights on him. Bokari got onto his hands and knees. Around him fragments of bone and chitin lay in pools of light. He picked up a partial skull and examined it.

  ‘Genestealer,’ he said.

  The hybrid jerked on its chain and hissed. Keltru yanked it back, tugging it off its feet.

  ‘Sliced clean through. Particle beamer.’ Bokari got to his feet. ‘They’ve been picked clean, partially absorbed. Look.’ He panned his stablight onto a skeleton half sunk into the floor. Strands of milky white trailed from it, as if the floor were acid, and the remains were dissolving into it.

  ‘The devourers devoured,’ said Ren.

  ‘A little irony to ease our death,’ said Thracian. ‘Bokari, get out of there. Keltru, which way?’

  Keltru payed out a little chain. The hybrid moved its mutilated head around, casting for psychic spoor. It pulled hard towards the largest tunnel on the far side of the room. ‘That way.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Thracian. ‘Move out.’

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Doror. ‘The floor!’