The Holocaust Piano
by Phaedra7veils
Chapter 12: The Gatekeeper
"I know you're awake," the douse of cold water that still trickled behind Katze's ears had brought him back, but when he tried to move, his head pounded and waves of nausea rolled over him.
The voice was vaguely familiar, deep and bass. Slowly, with his eyes still shut, Katze tried to piece together his last memories. He remembered walking through the doorframe to Raoul's penthouse because the door itself no longer existed. It had been blasted open and a curtain of filmy fibres was laced across the opening, the spidery fibers so closely resembling the parasitic threads which had encased the prospectors on Thallë, and Katze's dread had exploded into full-blown terror. It didn't stop him, however; he pushed through the webbing, past the entrance and into the hall.
There, he glimpsed darkness beyond any he had ever experienced, a blackness that seemed to absorb all light, when he was seized and held in polished metal cuffs at end of a complex system of hydraulic shafts. Katze looked up and shouted. The head, attached to a cyborg, was both human and inhuman. The head was Raoul's.
But it was not Raoul.
Blondies might be inscrutable, their expressions flat and calm, barely human, but still human. This one wasn't. It was made of flesh and blood, but the sentience reflected back at him was anything but human. It was as close to dead as anything Raoul had ever seen. Katze stared dumbstruck, unable to grasp what he was seeing. Then there was a moment of searing grief and loss before he shook off the wave of panic.
Psychetech warfare was brutal. After his recent experiences, he remembered how clever the illusions could be. The creepy thing about this particular illusion was how the possibility of it being real undermined his confidence that it wasn't. Forearmed with the knowledge of what Jupiter had wrought in the Underworld beneath the Guardian, it wasn't inconceivable to imagine anyone ending up as a mechanical robot partially integrated with human flesh, although the ruling Blondie would not be the first person one thought of in such a predicament. With the technology and knowledge that Jupiter had provided to the Elite of Tanagura, however, it was a possibility.
Katze remembered opening his mouth to scream, a reflexive reaction to release terror and panic, but something cold and metallic had pinched a nerve at the junction of his neck and collarbone, and he had blacked out instead. Now he lay on a smooth, flat surface, his body wracked from retching and coughing, and the voice of someone who was still human and, Katze judged from the placid tone of the voice, a Blondie, but not Raoul, trying to pierce the miasma of pain.
"You made it back to the planet. That was unexpected." A hand, heavy and capable of snapping his bones with one squeeze rested on his thigh. Katze lifted his knee in a feeble attempt to brush it off. It simply slid further up his thigh.
Yes, he had made it back to Tanagura. Barely. Impact with Amoi's atmosphere had been like ploughing through a swamp. In the past, he'd had his share of flights beyond Amoi and gravity had never hit him so hard. Leaden weight dragged his body toward sleep, and the effort to keep his eyes open and his head upright was unbearable. Except for quick cat-naps since the burning of Flare, the long stretch of sleeplessness took its toll, but something else was at work, something strange, seductive and powerful, glimmering at the fringes of his consciousness. To sleep was like being held in the arms of someone strong and nurturing. To remain alert and aware gave him all the usual physical ailments, the headache, sore eyes and heaviness of body except, this time, the chaser of anxiety was intensified as though cranked up a hundred notches tighter. Something about the planet had changed palpably within the time that he and Raoul had been gone.
Katze remembered rummaging through compartments in Merc's ship, strewing papers, coils of wire, half-emptied packages of instant food, bolts, cauter-pins, machine oil and other clutter until, under a bottle of eyedrops and a pouch of cough syrup, he found a bottle of pills marked with the arrow pointing up toward the cap. Upward for awake, Katze presumed, although had the ship belonged to anyone besides Merc, he wouldn't dare; that same arrow was apt to have an entirely different meaning in Midas. It tasted bitter, like some of the compounds used to manufacture the products the Syndicate sold under the Federation's noses. To be safe, he took only one and felt adrenaline pulse through his veins. Perhaps he was just feeling the withdrawal pains from the drug now. It hadn't helped his emotional condition. That remained stretched, edgy, and far too vulnerable, but it kept his body and mind able to finish the task at hand, which was to land the ship as close to Tanagura as possible without engaging the Amoian security fleet. He wasn't sure how accurate their sensors were now that Jupiter had malfunctioned, but he didn't dare take the chance.
This was another skill at which he had considerable practice, thanks to his years as a gangster. Usually, this amounted to a few bribes, which wasn't to say he didn't try to skim it off by landing craft outside of Jupiter's immediate field of detection. Even so, he had to be inventive because clandestine landings were usually masked by other activity around the spaceport and, since Jupiter's failure, the only activity was departures, not arrivals. As he punched in coordinates that took him far over the desert beyond the air traffic monitors, then let him coast in close to the planet's surface like some sort of antiquated hover-bus, he wondered whether Iason had had a premonition that he would need these skills one day. He would not put it past the Blondie. Even so, his hands had trembled more than usual with the effort, as though palsied.
That would've been the effect of the stimulant.
There was always a price for ingesting such things and, with age, his body didn't metabolize things so well. His feet had tapped against the console supports as he wondered when had his nerves gotten this bad? When had he become so emotional? He had always been so cool and collected.
He had expected that sneaking into Eos Tower would be a lot harder than secretively landing Merc's ship. He figured if Raoul or Paviter instructed Tibór about what happened on Von, he would have no chance. He hoped that he was too insignificant to mention, that they had expected the distance and difficulties of transport from the moon to provide enough obstacles. In that case, his Pet-ring and an iris scan would grant him access. He preferred to be brought to Raoul with as little fuss as possible. Otherwise they would toss him out, the gates permanently barred. It was best to know where a person stood, if it was a clean break and Katze was a free man.
Right, Katze rubbed his aching head, like Riki had been free.
The stimulant didn't last long. He hadn't even reached the mesas which dotted the landscape beyond Dana Bahn before the surge of adrenaline abruptly plummeted, leaving him in worse condition than when he had first entered the atmosphere. He needed to sleep right now. Since there was no help for it, Katze glided the vessel into a shaded canyon on the north front of a butte, activated the cooling mechanisms, and before the engine's vacuum finished howling, dropped off.
It wasn't long before the dreams started to plague him. Edgy, disconcerting dreams suffused with sinister intent. He hovered at the edge of waking consciousness while these impressions scraped at him, unable to wake, unable to sleep restfully, and with the uncomfortable sensation that his subconscious mind was being probed, although for what, he had no idea. When he finally jolted awake, a mere six hours later, it felt like he had only slept for five minutes.
A look in the mirror told him everything he needed to know. His scar was still livid. His hair was still on the short side, although shaggy and in need of attention. Somehow, he had managed to evade registering the effects of Psychetech illusion-crafting on his physical body, and this actually made him feel more secure and centered since the downfall of Jupiter, like his feet were back on stable territory.
Yes, he was still a eunuch, still scarred, still weak, still less brilliant than Jupiter's genetic supermen, and no one would ever mistake him for a member of the Elite again, but he was, unequivocally clear and true, himself and there was a profound sense of power in that realization.
The walk to Eos took an entire day and was one of the most physically exhausting activities Katze had ever endured, like slogging through knee-deep mud. It was as though the planet's specific gravity had densified. None of his previous re-entries into the atmosphere had affected him this much. By the time he reached the gate, he was exhausted again.
There was no security left at Eos. The front door stood wide open. The building looked deserted. Katze walked in without being stopped.
There was the business of climbing endless stairs since the elevators no longer worked, then the door and then the cyborg with the human head. That meant this Blondie with the deep voice who wasn't Raoul was ... Katze opened his eyes, "Lau!"
"You've finally decided to join me," the Gatekeeper of Guardian's Underworld swept corkscrew spirals of hair over his shoulder.
"Why do I feel like–? Shit, my head–!"
"That would be the effect of withdrawal from Psychetech interference."
"Psychetech."
"Where your most intimate dreams came true."
"Dreams? Whose dreams? I never wanted to be Elite." Katze considered his dreams. Maybe there had been a trace of fantasy, but it wasn't deep enough to be considered one of his most intimate dreams. No, those were more closely tied with dignity and liberation, and they moved beyond his personal desires and needs.
"No, I suppose that was Raoul's, some secret longing for atonement no doubt, some latent regression into human feeling," Lau removed his hand, only to grasp Katze's chin and turn it so that the scar was fully exposed. "Psychetech illusions only work to the extent that your mind will stretch to accept them. Some things are just too much of a stretch. With others, it's surprising what we can believe. From the things it seemed you were willing or not willing to accept, I think you're a very curious fellow."
Katze's forehead furrowed, so Lau clarified, "You would've never believed that you could be accepted into Elite tiers but, ever since your foray into Guardian's Underworld, you've always wondered if, with our technology, it would've been possible for you to regenerate those part of you which Jupiter maimed. So your fantasy was generated."
Katze wanted to know, "Is it?"
"Yes–" Lau replied.
Katze could hardly believe his ears.
"–at a price."
Katze's eyes narrowed. As Lau unlaced the complicated bands which secured his Blondie tunic, he felt afraid. The Blondie's insinuations during the Enclave just after Jupiter's demise gave him ample reason to feel nervous. His eyes darted around, trying to pierce the gloom that covered the wreckage of Eos Tower's pinnacle suite. The shadows and cobwebs offered no quick exits and who knew what monstrosities lurked there. Lau instantly read Katze's thought and chuckled in amusement.
"Not what you think, although–" he left the suggestion open, as though to dangle it like some sort of tantalizing offer.
Katze shook his head. Perhaps he was no longer dressed up like an Elite Doll. Perhaps he was no longer attractive to the senses. Even so, he preferred not to be treated like a Pet.
Lau finished, pulled his tunic open and lifted his shirt. Gleaming metal strung with tubes and wires ran the length of his torso. As with the inhuman thing which now carried Raoul's head, he was laced with android mechanisms, far fewer of them, to be sure; he was still more human, than robot, but the first incursions into his flesh were irrevocable. "Long before the Tenebrians began their assault on Jupiter, I made my most intimate dream come true. Blondies may live longer than the rest of you human beings, but they still age and die. I wasn't too keen on it, and Jupiter's technology gave me the means to defeat my mortality."
"By amputating your humanity?" Katze accused.
"Now, now!" Lau covered up his mechanical components. "Have you been sleeping all these long years, Katze? What has Jupiter's Amoi ever been but a long, slow amputation of humanity?"
"Was it necessary to destroy Raoul as well?"
"Destroy?" Lau looked puzzled. "Oh, you mean–! That isn't Raoul. Never was. At least not the Raoul you ever knew. Only a head was required for that Apheliotroph and the rest of the clone went into biocellular recycling. I'm not sure what Jupiter was thinking about with that particular model though. It doesn't seem to be any different, energetically, than pure cyborg. Perhaps it wanted to see what the interface would be like between the two patterns of electrical synapses."
Relief poured over Katze.
"If that's not Raoul, then where is he? What have you done with him?"
"I haven't done anything to him."
Katze's skepticism must've shown, for Lau chuckled again.
"It's true that, when we received word that he arrived, I brought my task force of Apheliotrophs in order to arrest him, or at least restrain him from interfering with our plans but neither Raoul, nor his entourage, were anywhere to be found. Instead, Eos was deserted and in ruins. And that is where things stand at present."
Katze exhaled a breath he hadn't even known he had been holding. "Then why infect Jupiter with MORT?"
"That wasn't us. It was unnecessary for our purposes. In fact, when Jupiter was taken out of commission, it became a real nuisance, especially it looked like our power supplies were going to be cut off. So much executive administrative power and skill for the planet was enmeshed in its programs. It wasn't that Jupiter's aims were in alignment with ours, precisely, but they weren't an obstacle or interference either, so we saw no need to circumvent its operations."
"Your purposes?"
"Apheliotrophs are cyber/human-clone hybrid engineered by Jupiter to displace the human population. We've succeeded. There is no longer any need on Amoi for human life except in its capacity as cellular cattle for our biological replacement tissue or as goods to be sold off world in exchange for resources."
"Displace us —Why?"
The tiniest seed of human sentience, a moment of compassion seemed to ripple through Lau's eyes. It was gone so quickly Katze wondered if he had imagined it, "Because you are imperfect. You break down. You can be easily injured. You deteriorate. You die. And you have a history of messing things up."
Katze wanted to argue further, but it seemed pointless. If Lau's ideals were wrapped up in a physical body that never aged and never died, if that was perfection, then nothing Katze could say would change his mind. Any regards to the quality of consciousness which resided within that body seemed irrelevant to the former Blondie.
There were some other burning questions, "How is it you and the Apheliotrophs managed to escape the virus? I mean, not even the androids escaped."
The life in Lau's eyes had moved to such a deep place that it no longer seemed to exist.
"I don't know that we have," he said.
"Is there any reason why you are keeping me here then?" Katze sat up with difficulty. "What do you intend to do with me?"
"You will stay with us to ensure Raoul's compliance should he resurface at any point," Lau explained.
"A hostage?"
"So to speak."
"That will never work. You were a Blondie. You should know he would sooner let me die than let me interfere."
Lau laughed. "You overestimate the power of Jupiter's indoctrination. Without the restraint of Jupiter, Raoul has regressed. At any rate, it is impossible for you to leave the tower. In fact, I wouldn't recommend you leave the suite. In my experience, the interaction between Apheliotrophs and humans doesn't have a very positive effect on humans."
Katze recalled Kyrie and Manon Kuga's madness.
"Other than that," Lau turned to leave, "you are free to wander at will."
So that was how it was! Free to wander because Lau knew he wasn't free at all. He was hemmed in by boundaries of a horror which he couldn't fully imagine, one that sent two young men at the height of their physical strength into catatonic shock. Katze recalled the metallic creature with Raoul's head and shuddered. He did not want to think of the extent to which humans had been brutalized to create these monsters and wondered at the type of thinking which even conceived of it.
From Lau's candid admission, the Apheliotrophs were not free and clear of the Tenebrian invasion just yet. He wondered how they managed to avoid the breakdowns that all the other cybernetic machinery had experienced, if there was some hidden purpose that the Tenebrian Priestess Cult had in store for them, for which they had been spared.
Katze rubbed his aching head. He truly wished he had an Elite mind, capable of plucking out the patterns in these random threads and weaving them into a new strategy.
Right now, there were more pressing concerns, like hunger and whether or not there was anything to eat in the wreckage of Raoul's apartment. He pulled himself to his feet and tottered out of the former front vestibule.
The suite looked more like an underground cavern than an apartment. The furniture was scattered and broken as though it had been blasted out of place by an enormous explosion, but one which wasn't incendiary. Giant cobwebs draped over everything. The windows were covered with a smoky film that almost completely blocked all light, except for three that had been shattered where sunlight poured in like great spotlights, illuminating only a small area beyond their field, and the charged magnetic-particulant painting of the Kressellian Raiders caught in a Solar Flare which he had noticed back when Hilarion first set up the piano. The rest lay in almost impenetrable shadow.
The entire floor of blue granite or marble or whatever polished stone it was had been laced with fibers that now looked like roots. They had smashed the tiles. Chips and fragments of polished stone were scattered in tiny heaps of rubble around the room. Curious, Katze followed one of the roots into the Great Hall where the Holocaust Piano once stood. Instead of the pianoforte, a black energy field thrummed and pulsated.
"An interesting mystery, isn't it?" Lau suddenly spoke. Katze tensed, startled by the human voice. "We still haven't deciphered what it is. It seems to repel those who touch it."
Katze stretched out his hand.
"Of course, you are welcome to try–" was the last thing he heard before his fingers stroked the edge of that all-consuming darkness and were suddenly seized. Lau was wrong. Like a vortex, the energy field sucked him in and Raoul's apartment disappeared.
"I'm getting sick and tired of blacking out," was his first cogent thought, which, in the absence of any other sort of sensory stimuli, sounded as though it had been spoken out loud.
At least the headache was gone.
Since he was perfectly lucid and aware while in this condition of free-floating through some sort of void, he hadn't blacked out at all. He was trapped in darkness with only his thoughts to keep him company and, for lack of any other stimulation, they were getting old fast. He wasn't really sure how long he had been floating like this. It seemed like forever and, now that he was conscious, it was boring enough for him to make him wish he wasn't.
He was so caught up in thoughts about how bored he was, he never even noticed the music: piano music, strains of song which sounded both distant and close at the same time, as though filtered down to the bottom of a swimming pool. When he finally heard it, he followed the sound. It wasn't that it led him any place in particular, just that images coalesced and grew clear: pearly daylight streamed in through the polished windows of Eos Tower, the blue tiles lay intact, the walls were free of spiderwebs, and the musician seated at the bench of the Holocaust Pianoforte was someone he knew.
"Raoul!"
There seemed to be some sort of barrier between them. He was invisible and inaudible to Raoul, for the Blondie never registered his presence. He kept playing. What phrases of the song that Katze could hear clearly were both sweet and sorrowful, and although it was tempting to relax and just listen to the music, his agitation wouldn't go. There was too much urgency in making a connection. He wondered how to break through the strange, watery, almost gelatinous barricade and suddenly felt fibres extending from the palms of his hands like roots. He felt them flowing through the substance until they managed to pierce it and open a clearing wide enough for him to step through.
Raoul looked up, like waking up.
"Katze, you finally made it back." He pushed the piano stool back as he rose to his feet.
Katze rushed to throw his arms around him.
Raoul reeled back, startled by this uncharacteristic show of passion.
"Back? What are you talking about?" Katze clung fast. "I was never here."
Slowly, as though growing accustomed to the thought of Katze willingly embracing him, Raoul inched his large hands around the other man. It was not from the solidity or heaviness of his hands that Katze knew he was real, that his touch was not illusory, but from the warmth. Raoul's hands radiated with it. A gentle warmth also poured from Katze's own body, especially from the region of his chest. He wanted to impress this upon Raoul so that, if there were any doubts, if there was any reason to believe he wasn't real, the impression of that warmth would remain. So he held onto Raoul for what seemed like hours.
"Come, I want to show you my latest project." Raoul finally broke off, leaving Katze with the uncomfortable sensation that he had not really connected with the other man at all. Raoul might be aware of his presence, but seemed to be caught in some sort of alternate reality and the two separate dimensions weren't quite synchronized. Since there appeared to be no other choice, Katze decided to play along. He allowed himself to be led by Raoul over to the painting of the Kressellian Raiders caught in a solar flare, next to the Turner and the Altdorfer.
Raoul reached his hand out and touched the painting. Katze held his breath. He knew next to nothing about art besides its value on the black market, but he knew enough that charged particulant paintings were so fragile, so easy to destroy that they came with ridiculously stringent packaging technology for transport. They were a nuisance and he hated it everytime he had to fence one. If this were a real painting, then what Raoul was doing would surely destroy it. Raoul stirred the air which caused the magnetized particulants to swirl and the image to evaporate. The spaceship disappeared in what seemed to be a solar storm. Katze had resolved himself to the possibility that the painting was ruined for good when some new imagery started to emerge from the surface, images of planets and their asteroids, of the entire Glan system. He braced himself, a strange prickle crawling up his spine. By the time the painting settled, he realized he was looking at a military chart of their sun and all its planets.
"We must focus on the Federation colonies first," Raoul was saying, "before we can hope to subdue Novaterra."
"I'm sorry," Katze blinked. "I'm not hearing you properly. I thought you just said that you intend to invade Novaterra."
"Once the Apheliotroph army is complete, yes."
The Holocaust Piano – chapter 11 << >> The Holocaust Piano – chapter 13