The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [149]
Most of what we think of as intentions are actually excuses. Our behavior is far more mechanical than we like to believe; we refuse to see ourselves as robots reacting programmatically and helplessly to external and internal stimuli, so we make up stories to explain why we did what we did. Mostly, it’s easy. Sometimes, it’s not. Occasionally, we become desperately inventive, and even then can find no way to convince ourselves, or soothe our phantom guilt. Rationalization is a two-edged sword.
Christine Caine had killed thirteen people — thirteen being a number of ill omen — because some impish individual had wanted to test the power of malevolent IT. Then she had been left alone in her misery, to explain her actions to herself and others as best she could, even though no imaginable explanation could possibly have served her purpose.
How the imps must have laughed!
And now it was all going to happen again. This time it was happening in the land of Faerie — but that would not make it seem any less real, in terms of Christine Caine’s perceptions. Quite the reverse, in fact.
I had no idea what Christine was going through while I walked through the illusory forest. I had no idea what effect it would have on her if or when I finally got to explain it all to her, even if she proved to be capable of believing me. But I felt, at that point in my journey, that I hated and despised la Reine des Neiges, even though I understood perfectly well that she could not possibly see the universe in other than ironic terms.
Thirty-Nine
Of Moths and Flames
The giant moths were waiting for us at the forest’s edge. I think their design was based on luna moths, but I’ve never bothered to look them up. If so, even their models had been large by insect standards — but we were in a place where insect standards didn’t apply, and the moths which confronted us were unbelievably huge. Their wingspan must have been at least thirty metres; their wings were a creamy color, with every scale clearly distinguishable. Their thoraxes were furry. They didn’t come with saddles and stirrups fitted, so my hands and dangling legs had to cling as best they could to the warm fur. The odor of the fur was peculiarly sweet, like perfumed tobacco smoke.
Their compound eyes were made up of hundreds of units, each one as big as my fist. They glinted red in the fading twilight. I tried to meet the stare of the one set aside for me to ride, but it couldn’t be done. A human can’t “meet” the stare of an organism whose visual apparatus is like a pair of cluttered doorways or gigantic sacks of ripe fruit.
Rocambole, as might be expected, stepped on to his mount with all the insouciance of a creature which had learned to ride moths as soon as it had learned to walk like a man.
Night fell as we rose into the air, striking a neat poetic balance between lightness and darkness. The moon emerged from behind the battlements of the appalling palace, like a cleverly placed spotlight. The words convey a sarcasm I could not feel at the time, for I had never seen a moon like that before. It was a moon whose status as a world was manifest, but whose status as a sinister companion to the life-giving sun was even more obvious. I could see every crater, every plain of ancient stone, and every ghost that haunted those bleak expanses, with awful clarity.
We moved silently through the chilly air. The odor of the moths supported the illusion that we were drifting like clouds of warm smoke rather than actually flying. The huge wings moved, but awkwardly, like the fabric wings of some hopeful but ill-designed glider, flapping that way and this in response to the changing tension of wires and cables.
The stars were very bright, and far more numerous than those which could be seen from the Earth’s surface, filtered by the atmosphere. Unlike the unashamedly baleful moon, the stars seemed as aloof and uncaring as their distance entitled them to be — and yet I felt a slight attraction toward them, as if their patterns really were attempting to