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they gazed at Balam, reminding her of babies trying to reason out the
intricacies of a mirror. They saw their own reflections in Balam's blank,
masklike face at once familiar and terrifyingly alien.
The barons were Balam and Balam was the barons. His fathomless black eyes
surveyed them, and power seemed to pour forth, a naked strength far greater
than the barons, the elite of the world, could ever aspire to achieve. It was
a power that had seen epochs come and go, mighty empires rise and fall into
ruins. In his eyes Erica saw the scorn, and a pride so old that the imperial
dreams of the barons were but infantile fan-tasies beside it.
Balam came to a stop, yet somehow he continued to move. His huge eyes seemed
to leap from his head and enter Erica's mind, enter all of their minds.
Star-ing transfixed, she heard faint, agonized cries, and distantly she knew
it had been torn from not only her lips, but those of the barons, as well.
An unreasoning, undiluted terror filled her, as if her consciousness were an
empty cup. After a long, tor-mented moment of anticipation, a nonvoice
insinuated itself into her brain. The voice was neither male nor female, young
nor old, neither high nor deep.
You have squandered all that was given to you
, came the words.
Created to unify the Earth, to mingle my race's blood with that of humanity,
to forge a tribe greater than the sum of its parts, you cast aside your legacy
in favor of petty dreams and ambitions
.
Faced with a crisis as are all races, you have bent your intellects to seeking
individual advantage over your brethren. You are not a unified whole you have
fragmented yourselves, you scheme and plot. It is no wonder that you are now
at the mercy of the humans you claim you rule. I propose to deal with the
matter decisively and at once.
The image of the eyes withdrew, receded from Er-ica's mind, but she still felt
Balam's presence there. All of the barons were gasping, their faces slick with
sweat, their eyes glassy. The psionic address had shaken
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James Axler - Outlanders - Doom Dynasty them severely. She recoiled from the
sensation of queasiness awakening in her belly, and the sudden twinge of pain
stabbing between her eyes. Judging by Balam's voice, his vocal cords were
weak, if not at-rophied, so it was no wonder he preferred telepathic
communication. She shivered, her skin prickling as if ants crawled over it.
Erica dredged her memory for what she had been told about the Archons after
her resurrection. She re-called how twentieth-century exobiologists had
pos-tulated that all Archons were anchored to one another through hyperspatial
filaments of psionic energy, much like the hive mind of certain insect
species.
Despite the fact she was still mentally reeling, not just from the telepathic
communication but the sheer shock of actually being in the same room with
Balam, she remembered more and more of those briefings and the underlying
reasons for creating hybrids. The-orists had argued about the insurmountable
problems standing in the way of communicating with extrater-restrials. They
had claimed that human beings would have nothing in common with alien
life-forms, no matter how intelligent.
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The theoreticians had overlooked the pivotal pos-sibility that aliens would
acknowledge the same prob-lem and take measures to correct it. The Archons'
solution was a long-range hybridization program, combining the genetic
material of humankind with their own race to construct a biological bridge.
From what Erica remembered, and the little she understood at the time, the
program had been instituted hundreds of years ago, long before the nukecaust.
For that matter, it was still an open question long after the nukecaust. Were
the Archons truly aliens, a species apart from humanity, or simply different?
No one knew for certain if they had their origins on an-other planet, in
another dimension or even another time plane.
Erica could only imagine the thoughts careening and colliding within the
oversized craniums of the barons. For the entirety of their artificially
prolonged lives, the barons believed they served the will of the
Archons or they convinced themselves they were the Directorate's servants, and
therefore any action they undertook to safeguard their positions as the
overlords of humankind was justified.
But their probing intelligence needed proof, and without it, doubt inevitably
ate away the belief struc-ture.
With the events of the past year, the foundation had been weakened to the
point of complete collapse.
Although none of the barons spoke of it, they had ceased to subscribe to the
belief in the Archons. In which case, they were no longer content with their
roles as the plenipotentiaries of a higher, grander au-thority.
They had reached this conclusion tentatively, by degrees over a period of
time. When they finally did, they were as absolutely certain of it as they had
been certain of the existence of the Archon Directorate.
Now, dealing with the appearance of Balam, their minds were in utter turmoil,
fears, desires and thoughts all crashing into one another.
In other words, Erica reflected, trying to repress a sour smile, Daddy came
home and found the house in a mess.
Baron Cobalt was the first to speak, gasping out a defense. "We have
squandered nothing. We have the right to defend ourselves by any means we deem
nec-essary."
Balam turned his immobile face to Cobalt. The baron struggled visibly to
reclaim his dignity and choke down his fright. "I attempted only to restore
our unity, to salvage something of what you had given us. It requires a
single, strong vision, and that was mine."
Balam's lips did not move, but the thready non-voice said, The concept you
proposed of a single gov-erning power is a sound one. Yet a creature who
schemes as you did, to make your brethren beggars at their own demise, to doom
their dynasties, shall not serve as that power, as the imperator
.
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James Axler - Outlanders - Doom Dynasty
"I cannot be blamed for taking action."
You can be held responsible for putting a price on the lives of your brethren
and therefore upon unity
.
Balam's expression did not alter, his facial muscles so much as twitch, yet [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]