Icarus Descending Read Free Page B

expression was quite gentle, not at all the fanatical mask my sister had warned me of. He looked very small there, surrounded by energumens twice his size, his mouth slightly upturned as though smiling at some sweet thought.
    Polyonyx spoke first. “This human poisoned his brothers and sisters and then died himself. He claimed there is a war going on. He said we are free.”
    “Free?” My sister Hylas echoed my own thoughts. “But to do what?”
    Cumingia shrugged. ‘To join the war?”
    Our sisters Lusine and Spirula chimed, “A war! No war came here.”
    Polyonyx shook her head, its single narrow braid swinging wildly. “But it did—this man brought it in his vials and destroyed our Masters. He said he was liberating us. He said we are free to go.”
    Lusine giggled at the thought: a human freeing an energumen! It was absurd, not only because who had ever heard of such a thing, but also because the humans were so much smaller than we are. To think of being liberated by one of them! I scowled a little at the thought, but others laughed. How quickly it had all changed, and we had not had to strike a single blow.
    “Go? But where are we to go?” cried Spirula. “Why can’t we just stay here?”
    A ripple of approving laughter. Hylas began to sing in her piercing voice, the hymn of liberation to the Mother that begins, “All twisted things are yours, Divine, all spiral turnings and neural strands—”
    That was when the Oracle appeared.
    “Greetings, children!”
    My sisters cried out, letting go each other’s hands and backing toward the walls. Only Polyonyx and I stood our ground.
    The corpse had disappeared. Where it had been a radiance filled the room, a blinding aureole at the center of which burned the figure of a man. Only as he turned to gaze up at us, I saw that he was not a man but a robotic construct. But as I looked more closely, I saw that it was not like any robotic server I had ever seen; neither was it an android or replicant. There was something much more human about it: and now that I look back upon that first glimpse of the Oracle, I think that it was not his features so much as his expression that made him seem human: it was the glitter in his eyes, and the malice that glowed there like the sheen upon a plum. He was very beautiful, with limbs of some dark material—gleaming black in the shadows where his arms and legs attached to the torso, shining violet elsewhere. He had a man’s face, with a high smooth forehead and brilliant green eyes.
    “The ’file receiver,” whispered Polyonyx, though I could read her thoughts as clearly as my own. Her hand twitched, gesturing to where the corpse of Horacio Baklas was swallowed by the flickering image generated by that allurian disk on his breast. “But where is it originating from?”
    “I am an emissary from your father.”
    The voice rang through the great round room, setting off sensors and causing the station’s alarm system to bleat out a warning against an unauthorized ’file transmission. After a moment the alarm cut off; but by then other voices echoed that of the shimmering vision before us.
    “Our father!” Lusine and Spirula gasped, stepping forward until they stood within the circle of light cast forth by the ’file.
    “He has sent me to tell you not to be afraid. He has sent me to tell you that he loves you, and is waiting for you to join him and your other brothers and sisters on Earth.”
    “What is this?” Polyonyx hissed, but I grabbed her before she could stalk toward the figure.
    “A message from our father,” I breathed.
    “That is correct,” said the figure in the circle of light. He lifted his head so that I could see his eyes: a man’s green eyes, only with nothing of a soul behind them; but beautiful, beautiful. “I am your brother, another of your father’s children, and I bring you tidings of great joy….”
    Beside me Polyonyx hissed again, shifting on her great long legs like an equinas impatient to