The Madness Season Read online

  Forgive me, my world. I did what I could. Forgive me that it wasn't enough.

  Footsteps. I feel them first, through the ground against my face: alien footsteps, a horribly familiar rhythm. Tyr. The sharp odor of burning flesh assails my nostrils, and I hear the sizzle of their weaponry as it turns our few survivors into so much roasted meat. Killing those remaining few who risked all for freedom, and lost; cleansing the Earth of its rebellious vermin, once and for all.

  Including me.

  The footsteps approach. I become aware of the sound of my breathing, the blood welling up from one lacerated lung. I don't dare cough, though the sticky fluid fills my mouth and throat, and threatens to choke me. Because then the enemy will know that I live. Death in battle is one thing, and I had been willing to risk it in order to save my people. But to be fried to a crisp by the Tyr's cleanup crew offers neither honor nor purpose, and so I lie as still as possible upon the cold, wet earth, and try to minimize the roar of my breathing. My body is cold, my blood pressure minimal, my heartbeat slow under the best circumstances. Perhaps they will mistake me for one of the dead; if so, it won't be the first time it's happened.

  The footsteps surround me, stop. A scanner purrs—then silence. They have no need to speak, these alien warriors, but share each thought and purpose in a kind of species unity that we, being individuals, can't begin to comprehend. But apparently they have judged me dead—or dying— for they move on wordlessly, seeking out another wounded shadow to receive their judgment.

  I live.

  That thought takes form slowly, almost reluctantly. I live. Will live. Want to live, despite all that the Subjugation will mean. My powers of healing are excellent. I know; if I can survive the next few hours— and find shelter before daylight— I have no doubt that I can and will recover. Surely I can learn to play the game that the Subjugation will require, and adapt to the Tyrran will.

  To survive. Is there shame in that? I did what I could to save my planet, risked giving up a longer life than most men even dream of. But that war is over now. And the need to survive is a powerful master. A jealous god. Is there such defeat, in bowing to his dictates?

  I wonder what time of night is passing. How long the battle lasted, after I was struck down. The darkness of the sky is absolute, shrouded in cloudcover, unblemished by the light of day. Except ... I catch sight of a narrow band of gray rising almost lazily from the far horizon, and I feel my body shiver in pain and fear as I know myself far from any hope of shelter.

  I look around, desperately. There is no possible source of shade, not anywhere. And even if there were, I couldn't get to it. Not like this. I must face this first day unprotected, offer up my blood to that vicious, hungry star. ...

  I did fly into sunlight during battle, I remind myself, although the heavily tinted glass surrounding my cockpit protected me from the worst of the radiation. I seem to remember that the sun can't kill me. Burn me, yes, in the course of a long day's passage, and evoke a defensive reaction from my radiation-sensitive body ... but it cannot, in and of itself, kill. I remember that, somehow. And try to believe it, as the sun rises into the heavens.

  I feel it first on my outstretched hand.

  . . . My outstretched hand . . . Burning away the timefugue. . . sunlight? ...

  Into a fever that is even more painful: reality.

  I looked down at my hand, at the beam of light that had fallen across it, and moved it out of harm's way.

  It took me a moment to remember where I was, and then a moment longer to realize what was happening.

  We were flying through a sunlit sky. Which meant that we hadn't left Earth yet. I felt a lurch of wild hope within me; was it possible we weren't going to leave Earth after all? I leaned toward the window, and dared to look outside. A calculated risk. I saw a field of brilliant white, seething with deadly radiation; it was too painful to look at for more than a moment, and as I fell back into my seat, shielding my eyes against the glare, I could feel the fever starting. My own fault, I thought. I should have stayed in shadow.

  "Be still," a captor warned. A little late.

  "Where are we going?" I didn't expect to be answered. But to my surprise, the Honn-Tyr seated opposite me spoke. "Ustralya. The Kuolqa-Angdatwa."

  Through the thickness of his accent I made out the remnants of a familiar label: Australia. A land bathed in sunlight, when much of North America was clothed in darkness. That prompted a new, and much more immediate fear: did they know the advantage it gave them, to bring me here?

  No, I told myself. They couldn't possibly. The Tyr's ruling palace—the Kuolqa-Angdatwa—had been erected amidst the ruins of Sydney as a gesture of contempt for the soldiers Down Under, who had persisted in fighting long after the rest of us had accepted defeat. That's all. That it was daylight there so soon after I was taken prisoner was . . . well, bad luck. Damned rotten luck, to be blunt about it. But that was the extent of it. Surely.

  We dove through the cloudcover with a suddenness that left my stomach in midair. Damned Tyrran pilots! I was only just recovering from that when we pulled into a tight circling pattern. I glanced out the window again, squinting against the glare. There: the Kuolqa-Angdatwa. Like a fat, stone spider it sprawled amidst the ruins, embracing fragments of buildings and pavement as though it had itself wreaked the destruction. A few bits of buildings remained intact, impressive in their decay. Like the Romans, who left the last wall of the Temple standing as a witness to the magnitude of what they had destroyed, the angdatwa squatted amidst the ruins of free Earth smugly, contentedly, its very position saying: Here. See what I have conquered. See what I chose to destroy.

  I closed my eyes, but it was long before the vision faded.

  We landed.

  There was a jerk as the skimship was secured—to what, I couldn't say—and then the portal split open, and sunlight poured in. They unstrapped me and made me stand, and instinctively I reached into my pockets—for my sunshades, my cap, my thin cotton gloves, the dozen and one bits of clothing that would protect me from the worst of the radiation—but those things had been left on the ground in North America, where my captors had strewn them. Along with my pills.

  "Move!" I was struck in the back, forced to march forward. It was a choice between the sunlight and their wrath, and of the two, Tyr anger was infinitely more lethal. Daylight can't kill me, I told myself, reassured by my memories. I stepped into the puddle of light— like walking into fire, but I managed it—and then, reluctantly, stepped outside.

  —And I had remembered the particulars, what it would do to me and why, but Christ, I had forgotten the pain! It hit me in the face like a panful of burning coals, and air like molten glass seared my throat and lungs with every breath I took. I could feel the fever rising as my body fought to adapt, and I was glad that my temperature had begun to rise on board the skim-ship; I could never have faced this, cold.

  Had it hurt this much on that terrible day when I lay cold and bleeding on an exposed plain of mud? Or had I simply lived such a sheltered life since then that what little tolerance I'd once possessed had faded away? I could hardly move, couldn't see at all, just staggered forward when the point of a Tyrran weapon forced me to go: one step, two, then countless numbers—an endless march through the center of Hell, with my body racing to adapt. Blood pressure up, heartbeat pounding, all my vital signals readjusting themselves according to those terrible, alien instructions. Eyes readjusting as I walked. I could almost see my surroundings by the time the thrust of a Tyrran handgun sent me through a doorway, and into shadow.

  I leaned, gasping, against the nearest wall. A big risk, not to keep moving; angering the Honn-Tyr meant courting death. But my body was in shock from adapting so quickly; I needed a minute to pull myself together.

  To my surprise, no one disturbed me. I waited for the fever to peak—it did so quickly—and then tested my vision. A little blurry, but functional. The fever would make terrible demands later, exacting a high price for its alteration of my metabolism, but for now it accomplished what it had to. My senses were altered, my muscles stiff with pain, my heartbeat pounding within my ears so loudly that it took effort to concentrate on anything outside my body—but there was a purpose in all of that, and I knew it would be futile to fight it.

  Honn-Tyr surrounded me: a dozen in all, waiting with the stillness that was the hallmark of their species.

  And another creature, far more imposing. A Tyr, I guessed, but not a Honn; taller and more deadly, with sharp spikes jutting out of its bony plates at strategic points, and gleaming scales on its torso that made its belly resemble that of a snake. Where the Honn had two small arms, nearly vestigial, tucked beneath their major pair, this creature had four taut, sinewy limbs wrapped in serviceable muscle; where the Honn had a minimal tail that served them merely for balance, this creature had a length of chiton and muscle that culminated in a spear point of sharpened bone. All of it guarded by bone plates, and bits of bone plates, that slid over each other as it shifted its weight in much the same way that medieval armor had done, steel glistening on steel as it moved.

  Raayat-Tyr, I guessed. One of the Unstable Ones. I had heard rumors of them—all violent—but what unnerved me more than anything else was the extent of its natural armory. The Honn were the Tyr's bred warrior caste, and they weren't nearly so well protected.

  What role had nature cast this creature in, that it made its martial cousins look so vulnerable by comparison?

  "You are ready?" it asked me. Its voice was more fluid than that of its shorter companions, its palate kinder to English phonemes. Surprised by that question, I nodded and pushed myself away from the wall, into the pooling of sunlight. There was no pain this time, aside from that of the fever itself. I had adapted, at last.

  It
indicated a somewhat circular tunnel, then entered. I followed. Six of the Honn-Tyr accompanied us.

  The interior of the angdatwa was dimly lit, and formed more like a rabbit warren than anything else.

  Twisting tunnels cut their way through miles of mortared stone, floors and walls varying in height, width, and texture as we progressed. Halls twisted chaotically, turned back on themselves, and merged by the dozens in intersections that were no more than rough-ceilinged caverns. There was no regular pattern that I could discern, nor any doors or other openings that might lead to adjoining chambers. Small patches of something green—perhaps some alien lifeform, or maybe a synthetic substance—glowed dully, stuck to the ceiling at random intervals to serve as a minimal light source. The resulting semidarkness was soothing, but powerless to blunt the edge of my fever. It was too late for that, now; I was fully adapted, and must wait for the proper biochemical triggers before the process could begin to reverse itself.

  Just when I began to think that we were going to walk this labyrinth forever, my guide halted. The Unstable One touched the wall to one side of him, just so and in a certain spot. I saw no markings.

  Barely a moment after he had touched the wall it split open, and a doorway the width of a Honn-Tyr was revealed.

  He gestured toward the opening and I passed through, expecting him to follow. But the door closed behind me, so quickly that I felt it brush my clothes as I entered the chamber it guarded. I found myself in a dark room, almost but not entirely without light.

  While I waited nervously for my eyes to adjust, I strained my other senses to the utmost, anxious to gain some clue as to where I was, or what was going to happen to me. My capacity for smell had been damaged by the sunlight, but it was still acute enough to tell me that I was not alone. One, maybe two different kinds of creatures were with me; as for just how many of them there were, I couldn't tell. The first smell was somewhat familiar, and might be Tyr; mercifully, the fever had made me much less sensitive to its fetid power. As for the second . . .

  I sought its source, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and slowly a crouching form became distinct from the shadows surrounding it. Like a panther it was, but an alien version—more graceful in line than its Earth-brethren, more upright in posture, with taloned claws resting where a panther's shoulders would be; vestigial wings, which nature had redesigned for combat. Even if I had not known what it was, I would have recognized it as a hunting animal; its form, its poise, its aura of tense alertness, everything about it identified it as a predator of formidable capacity. A potentially deadly adversary, whose darkcolored fur was marked with random daggers of black, whose muscles rippled purposefully beneath the sheen of its alien coat. Its eyes fixed upon mine and held me, entranced, until I forced myself to look away.

  A hraas. I had never seen one before, and hoped never to again. The sight of it awakened fear within me on a level so deep within, so primitive, that I could do nothing to control it. I could read its purpose—its only purpose—in the set of its body. It wanted to hunt. It wanted, more than anything, to hunt me. I wondered what contract the Tyr might have made with its blood-thirsty intelligence that managed to keep it under control; it did not strike me as a creature that would tame easily.

  As if sensing my fear, it rose slightly from where it sat; delicately curved talons flexed beneath the smooth fur of its paws as those gleaming eyes fixed on me, colorless jewels set in a bed of ebony velvet; its hunger was palpable. Only when the figure beside it rasped a command did it settle, with a growl, into its former stance. Tensely. Waiting.

  Seated beside it, behind a human-style desk, was a Tyr. But neither Raayat nor Honn, in size or in structure. If the Raayat's body had expressed the promise of power, this Tyr was its culmination. Fully armored, it appeared more insectoid than mammalian, and its spikes and crests were strongly, powerfully built. I realized, with a sinking sensation, just what it was—and who.

  "Kuol-Tyr," I said, bowing. The Governor of Earth—or its Tyrran equivalent. Progenitor of Earth's conquerors, and the focus of the planet's alien consciousness. Too important a personage to be bothered with unimportant business; that it had seen fit to meet with me personally boded ill for my eventual fate.

  Its two forward eyes, surrounded by rings of sharpened bone, were fixed upon me. When it spoke its voice was steady, not the hesitant whisper of the Honn-Tyr, but the full-bodied, rasping voice of Earth's ruler.

  "You have come willingly."

  "Tiye Kuolqa," I answered, and bowed my head submissively.

  "I have questions. You will answer."

  A tightness was growing inside me. I managed to nod.

  "You will answer completely, and without deception. Your alternative is death. There is no other. Do you understand?"

  "Yes," I whispered. Aware that if the Kuol were to permit it, the hraas could have me rendered down to a pile of tasty tidbits before I could move to defend myself. My eyes were adjusted to the darkness now, and as the Kuol-Tyr stood I could see just how tall it truly was. And how well armed. If the hraas didn't do me in, the Kuol-Tyr certainly could.

  "How long have you lived on this planet?" it demanded.

  The abruptness of the question threw me. Not that I was surprised to hear it. I had dreamed those very words in a thousand nightmares, said in every place and by every being that the Conquest might make possible. But in each of those dreams, no matter what my response, I failed to save myself. I died.

  Because there was no magic number that the Tyr would find acceptable; if it knew to ask the question, it knew too much already for any answer to be safe.

  What could I say? To be caught in a lie would mean certain execution; to tell them the whole truth, if they didn't already know it, might be even more damning. I dared not speak.

  "How old are you?" it asked me—and then, coldly, "How many Earth-years have you seen? Answer me, if you value your life!"

  Silence was not the most intelligent refuge. But it was, I discovered, the best that I could manage.

  It snorted; whether in disgust or anger, I couldn't tell. At last it drew a flat, printed sheet from out of its baldric and held it out to me. After a moment I stepped forward and took it. A list was inscribed on it, in bold black print. Seventeen items. I squinted, trying to read in the darkness.

  They were names. My names. Identities I had designed, entering them into the census net in order to disguise my longevity. All of them. If there had been even a single one missing, or one here that was not mine . . . but there wasn't. I'd been found out.

  "You are not human," it told me.

  I looked up from the list, to meet its hooded gaze. "That's not true," I said quietly.

  "You read the names. Yes?"

  I brandished the paper. "These are human names, Tyrran numbers, in accordance with census custom —"

  "The names are human, yes. And the writing is in your current tongue. But the light by which you read it" —and here it paused, letting the full impact of its words hit home— "is not sufficient for human vision. It is according to that, that I judge you."

  Christ. Trapped by the spectrum. It would do no good to explain that my vision was unusually sensitive, capable of interpreting frequencies that were normally invisible to the human eye, because that would lead to other questions. Ones which I dared not answer. I cursed myself for being careless, even as I felt a cold knot of dread forming in my stomach. How could I have dreamed this confrontation so many times, without ever finding a means of controlling it?

  "Your age, now." Its voice was unforgiving; if I stalled too long, it would kill me for my silence. "Tell me."

  I stiffened, and did some quick arithmetic. Even a lie was damning, but the truth would be far worse.

  "Five centuries."

  "Your birth-year?"

  "Eighteen forty-two," I answered, quickly enough to make it sound genuine. "Old calendar.

  Pre-Conquest. "

  It stared at me for a long, long while, and then said coldly, "Humans do not live for five centuries."

  "Some do," I retorted.

  "How many?"

  The fever was numbing my brain, making it hard to answer. Hard to evaluate all the truths and half-truths at my disposal, or choose an appropriate lie. If I told the Kuol that there were no others, and it had found others, I was in serious trouble. But if I told it how many there really might be, might it not see fit to hunt them down?