Resplendent by Stephen Baxter Page A

proportions.

    Beyond his looming shoulder, she could see Asgard, pacing back and forth along the beach.

    ‘Great plan,’ Asgard called. ‘Now what?’

    ‘I—’

    Night raised himself up on his hind legs, huge hands pawing at the air over her head. He roared wordlessly, and bloody breath gushed over her.

    Close your eyes, Callisto thought. This won’t hurt.

    ‘No,’ Asgard said. She took a step towards the looming beast, began to run. ‘No, no, no!’ With a final yell she hurled herself at his back.

    He looked around, startled, and swiped at Asgard with one giant paw. She was flung away like a scrap of bark, to land in a heap on the dust. But Night, off-balance, was stumbling backward, back toward the sea.

    When his foot sank into the oily ocean, he looked down, as if surprised. Even as he lifted his leg from the fluid the flesh was drying, crumbling, the muscles and bone sloughing away in layers of purple and white. He roared his defiance, and cuffed at the sea - then gazed in horror at one immense hand left shredded by contact with the entropic ooze.

    He began to fall, slowly, ponderously. Without a splash, the fluid opened up to accept his immense bulk. He was immediately submerged, the shallow fluid flowing eagerly over him. In one last burst of defiance he broke the surface, mouth open, his flesh dissolving. His face was restored, briefly, to the human, his eyes a startling blue. He cried out, his voice thin: ‘Reth Cana! You betrayed me! ’

    The name sent a shiver of recognition through Callisto.

    Then he fell back, and was gone.

    She hurried to Asgard. Her chest was crushed, Callisto saw immediately, and her limbs were splayed at impossible angles. Her face was growing smooth, featureless, like a child’s, beautiful in its innocence. Her gaze slid over Callisto.

    Callisto cradled Asgard’s head. ‘This won’t hurt,’ she murmured. ‘Close your eyes.’

    Asgard sighed, and was still.

     
    ‘Let me tell you the truth about pharaohs,’ Nomi said bitterly.

    Hama listened in silence. They stood on the Valhalla ridge, overlooking the old, dark settlement; the brightest point on the silver-black surface of Callisto was their own lifedome.

    Nomi said, ‘This was just after the Qax left. I got this from a couple of our people who survived, who were there. They found a nest of the pharaohs, in one of the biggest Conurbations - one of the first to be constructed, one of the oldest. The pharaohs retreated into a pit, under the surface dwellings. They fought hard; we didn’t know why. They had to be torched out. A lot of good people, good mayflies, died that day. When our people had dealt with the pharaohs, shut down the mines and drone robots and booby-traps … after all that, they went into the pit. It was dark. But it was warm, the air was moist, and there was movement everywhere. Small movements. And, so they say, there was a smell. Of milk.’

    Nomi was silent for a long moment; Hama waited.

    ‘Hama, I can’t have children. I grew up knowing that. So maybe I ought to find some pity for the pharaohs. They don’t breed true - like Gemo and Sarfi. Oh, sometimes their children are born with Qax immortality. But—’

    ‘Yes?’

    ‘But they don’t all grow. They stop developing, at the age of two years or one year or six months or a month; some of them even stop growing before they are ready to be born, and have to be plucked from their mothers’ wombs.

    ‘And that was what our soldiers found in the pit, Hama. Racked up like specimens in a lab, hundreds of them. Must have been accumulating for centuries. Plugged into machines, mewling and crying.’

    ‘Lethe.’ Maybe Gemo is right, Hama thought; maybe the pharaohs really have paid a price we can’t begin to understand.

    ‘The pit was torched …’

    Hama thought he saw a shadow pass across the sky, the scattered stars. ‘Why are you telling me this, Nomi?’

    ‘To show you that pharaohs have experiences we can’t share.