Titans

  TITANS

  EDWARD W. ROBERTSON

  © 2013

  MORE FROM THE AUTHOR

  I've just launched a brand-new series of warfare, piracy, and humanity's struggle to escape beyond the Solar System. The first two books are available here:

  REBEL (Book 0)

  OUTLAW (Book 1)

  03:27:15, 09/27/2200

  I had a friend, once. A father. To me and many others. Like all fathers, he had some stories he wouldn't tell his children. The story of his brother Arthur was one of them.

  In telling it, I betray him. But there's someone who deserves to hear it—who needs to hear it.

  Like all children, I hope he'll forgive me.

  1

  Not all lives are created equal. Some are as lofty as the Pyramids, gold-capped and eternal. Others are such long slogs of gruesome misery you'd gladly swap places with a boiling lobster. You better hope you're born to the right parents and era, and for your luck to hold out. You only get the one.

  Unless you're like me.

  My 96th life was better than most. Medieval history professor, NYU. One book on the early history of karate in Okinawa's Ryukyu Kingdom—well-received. Consistent favorite in the student polls. All told, it was just enough to get me invited to the New Year's Eve 2199 party at Wetta Tower and thoroughly ignored by all the actors, land barons, bassists, and state senators exchanging jokes and cloud-contacts. Fine by me. Their complete indifference toward me left me free to pursue my favorite pastime: drinking all the host's best booze.

  Cold brown glass in hand, I threaded from the kitchen, brushing past a woman whose dress was held fast with tape, sweat, and wishful thinking. Music clanged. In bygone days, the balconies of highrise parties had supported ecosystems all their own, bustling colonies of smokers, chippers, and the hangers-on who gravitated toward such people, but these days, prohibition had killed the outdoor sub-parties dead, leaving the balcony utterly vacant. Good place to be alone; I had no intention of smiling from the walls until someone finally acknowledged my presence. Much too old to care.

  The transparent plass door retracted soundlessly. A fist of wind socked my nose, choking me, bearing the salt of the Upper Bay. Headlights glittered 243 floors below. A shoe scraped, startling me. To my left, a man leaned against the balcony rails.

  "Oh," I said. "I wasn't expecting anyone."

  "At a party?" the man said. "Do you know what parties are?"

  "Places where women gather to ignore me?"

  His smile arrived a moment later. "How inefficient. They could be doing that from home."

  Something was off about his eyes. I leaned in for a closer look. "I'm Rob."

  "I know."

  "You do?"

  "How would you like a job, Rob?"

  "Those things? Afraid I've already got one."

  He shook his head. "An important job."

  "What could be more important than teaching America's youth about pre-Elizabethan sewage systems?"

  "Saving their children from universal enslavement. Still no? Then how about the chance to learn where you came from?"

  "South Brunswick?" I hoisted my bourbon. "Why do you think I'm drinking?"

  The man's irises seemed to swirl. "Athens. Or was it Susa? Ur?"

  My blood ran as cold as the wind. Something in me clicked over. Something primal. I sized him up. Plainish white face. Faint scar below the left eye. Jacketless despite the freezing heights. Gusts of wind teased his hair across his forehead. A conservative halfvest wrapped twice around his chest, functional yet not puritanical. Could be an academic with enough dress sense to survive at private parties. Possibly that stolid type of European born with the knowledge all is temporary, fashion most of all. But there was something more knowing to him than that. Self-made billionaire? So fabulously, tower-owningly, fuck-you rich that dressing down reinforced how none of the rules applied to him.

  Fractal. That's what was wrong with his eyes. The irises were a repeating pattern of green waves, shrinking rapidly as you approached the pupil until the borders between green and black were as fuzzy as the soft side of Velcro. But there was something deeper, an unnaturalness beyond the cosmetic surgery. I saw nothing animal there.

  In a sense, I was recognizing one of my own. In their way, they're more godlike than human; depending on what kind of shell they feel like locking themselves into, the clanking crabs, they're perfectly capable of rolling beneath the scalding crush of Venusian skies, swimming in the icy swirl of Europan seas, or cruising through the black vacuum itself.

  A deep-down part of me knew what I was seeing, but I'd been out of the game too long. That night, I didn't trust my instincts. Probably, it was for the better.

  "How drunk are you?" I said.

  "Denial is only a viable strategy when there is any doubt."

  "Very drunk. If there were an empty pool in front of us, you'd be diving in for a laugh."

  A long sigh escaped his nose. "We know who you are, Robert Dunbar, who isn't really Robert Dunbar. Or any of the other people you've dressed up as for the last 2000-odd years."

  He'd paced between me and the plass door. Same invincible plastic they used in the domes of Mars, the owner had bragged. The den beyond was empty. I tipped back my head and began to circle him. "Who's 'we'?"

  "Me and my partner. You could call him my employer, but he doesn't pay me. Mainly because he doesn't need to. Or have any money. But I think he'd expect me to work for nothing even if he did."

  "Well, now it all makes sense." As I circled, he turned with me, putting the black and glistening rails to his back. "What happens if I say no?"

  "I come back and keep coming back until you agree. Or, violence."

  "Then let's cut to the chase."

  Anyone watching would have thought I was crazy. Things used to be different. We lopped heads off like wheat and kings feted us with feasts. Meanwhile, exposing my identity meant a fate worse than death: sliced into slides by Rickman Medical or their Thai competition so 122-year-olds could fork over the last of their children's fortunes in hopes of living to celebrate their 123rd. Threats, blackmail, exploitation. I'd made my decision about what to do any magi bearing those gifts centuries before Jesus had received his.

  I launched a front kick straight for the man's gut.

  My kung fu had gotten pretty rusty since I got bored with it in the 2160s, but my kick had drive and snap and speed. Everything you'd need to kick a man over a balcony and into half a mile of empty space. Without breaking eye contact, the man turned his hips. My foot clipped his side and carried past; I'd overcommitted. He grabbed my leg, pulled me into my own momentum. We banged into the rail and the world tipped. I grabbed wildly, snaring his halfvest. The stars and the light-painted clouds wheeled past me, replaced by the black thrust of towers, thousands of bright apartment windows hosting hundreds of bright parties, and the headlights of the minicars far, far below.

  We fell.

  Wind gushed past my face, stealing my breath, smearing my eyes with tears. The man struggled against me. I hugged him tighter, as if hoping to squeeze inside him and hide between his liver and pancreas until the worst was over. The cuffs of my pants slapped madly against my ankles. The banded windows of Wetta Tower blurred past my face, a mosaic of shadow and light.

  So this is how it would end. Puddled across the sidewalk. A million days of memories particulated across Battery Place. I'd seen the ziggurats of Babylon, the birth of Athenian democracy, the death of my wife Demostrate. I'd heard a world without gunpowder or internal combustion or broadcasts. Helped build the dikes that saved Manhattan's shores. In a module in Martian orbit, a grain of sand had split the hull and raw vacuum had tugged against my eyes and lungs. One of countless times I'd expected, at last, to die. As always, two emotions wres
tled for my heart: consuming, shitless terror, and the most peaceful relief you could ever imagine.

  The man wriggled against me. "Aaarrrgh!"

  "What?"

  "Aaarrrgh!"

  The wind obliterated his words. I scrabbled for his head, twisted his ear directly against my mouth, and screamed, "This is your fault, you stupid ass!"

  He bumped and squirmed until he faced me, belly-down to the approaching earth. Arms battered by the raging wind, he yanked at his oversized halfvest. Uptown, the green and red spire of the Empire State Building reached eye level. We were ten seconds chronologically and halfway geographically into our descent. In a few more seconds, we would make the biggest spectacle of our lives.

  The man wormed an arm beneath my vest and pressed his face against my ear. "Hang on like you'll die if you don't."

  His vest streamed behind him. I grabbed his belt, wrapped an arm around his neck, tangled my legs into his. His free hand fiddled with his belt buckle.

  "What the hell are you—" My breath jerked from my lungs; my ribs creaked. I gasped and gagged and blinked tears. The howling wind subsided to a stiff breeze. The peaks of skyscrapers drifted leisurely past. Above us, a dark triangle of fabric blacked out the clouds.

  "You're awfully impulsive for an old man," he said at normal volume.

  "Blegh," I choked, chest aching.

  He leaned right, banking toward the East River. My belt-tangled fingers pulsed with pain. We cut a slow spiral through the cold sky, the parachute/vest fluttering. My diaphragm quit hitching and I took long clean breaths and wished I'd had that drug implant installed. We swung above the rectangular roof of an office tower and banked hard. By the time we finished another circle, my dangling feet looked nearly level with the distant roof.

  "We're going to be killed again!" I screamed.

  "That's because you're too fat." He leaned back. I followed his lead. The glider leveled out mere yards from the tower. I tucked my legs. My heels bounced against the lip of the roof. We slammed down, his weight mashing me into the shiny plastic surface as we skidded forward, dragged behind the stiff glider. The man fiddled with a belt again. With a soft rasp, the glider collapsed into ordinary fabric. He disentangled himself and stood quietly in the darkness. It was a while before I could do anything but breathe and cry.

  "Who are you?" I said.

  "My name is Baxter. I just saved your life. You can thank me immediately."

  I sat up, shivering, aching, wind-chapped and roof-scraped. The bunched-up wad of the memoryform glider tousled in the wind. "How did you know I was going to knock you off?"

  "I didn't." He fixed me with a look of terrible coldness. "I thought I might have to jump. You usually carry a gun."

  "I'll never leave it home again."

  "Look. Shut up. All we want you to do is talk to some people. Streamline things. You practically invented modern diplomacy."

  "Well, it seemed prudent. Milan's army wasn't exactly a worldbeater." I began to rub all the places that hurt, which would take a while. "There's nothing you have I could possibly need."

  Baxter gazed at the lights of the monstrous city. "For reasons which will become clear to you once you quit being an idiot and get on board for the big win, my employer is uniquely capable of determining why you are the way you are. How does that sound?"

  "Like a trap. A trick to get my DNA in your hands."

  "Oh please. If that was all we wanted, I'd break into your apartment and scrape your shower drain." He narrowed his eyes. "Or knock you out and kidnap you."

  There on the rooftop, I considered my life, which simultaneously took a long time and no time at all. Finally, I sighed and struggled to my feet. He didn't try to help.

  I folded my arms, shivering. "I'll need a few days to settle my affairs. Then I'm all yours."

  * * *

  Instead, I ran away.

  The strait between Euboea and the Peloponnesian mainland shined a bright midday blue. Wind tugged at the white-haired waves, a steady, stinging gale we used to call a Hellesponter. That same wind had once saved my life. Those blue waters had been a perfect match for Demostrate's eyes.

  Coarse sand crunched under my feet. There is no better way to feel old than to visit a landmass that has changed shape since the first time you saw it. During the Battle of Artemisium, Euboea had been a single island, one long barrier between us and the Persians. In the intervening centuries, the rising seas had obliterated its eastern narrows, splitting it in two.

  On the ridges behind me, windtowers creaked in the ceaseless wind. White hotels encrusted the beaches across the straits. Electric speedboats and sloops with triangular sails creased the bay. If I closed my eyes, tasted the salt, and felt the wind on my face, I could bring it all back. The drenching rain. The stink of our sweat at the oars. The songs and screams and grinding crash of hulls. Hoplites so heavily armored that when they fell overboard they sunk without a trace. Across the straits, ten thousand Persian fires flickered and scowled.

  Pebbles clattered behind me. A black-haired man picked his way down the beach, dressed as I was in the sporty, ironic, but stubbornly patriotic white robes of the modern Greek leisure class. He lifted his feet high over the rocky white scree ringing the slender beach, hopping like a drunken bird. He looked up and waved.

  "Ready to go?" Baxter said.

  "God damn it, how did you find me?"

  "Because we're even better at hiding than you are."

  "Fooled you for two weeks here. Bet I can do better next time."

  Baxter snorted, a gesture I would soon learn to resent, then later, to my increased annoyance, to make for myself. "We knew where you were the moment you ran off. We thought allowing you to sever all your old ties would make it easier for you to say yes."

  I shook my head. "Go to hell."

  "You find this existence satisfying?"

  "Often enough. I can still make myself orgasm."

  "Not if you're caged by Rickman Medical."

  I laughed. "I'd kill myself first."

  "We wouldn't really tell them." Baxter squinted against the sunlight bouncing from the waves. "We don't believe in keeping things caged. That's exactly why we need you."

  "How can you find out where I came from when it was so long ago?"

  "The same way we found you. Analysis, intuition, and enough computing power to model a universe."

  I glanced his way. "How's that?"

  "Oh no. Nothing will be revealed until you buy the subscription."

  I kicked the sands where so many bodies had washed up after the battle. I didn't think he could help me. After the first millennium, I'd given up on finding an answer. No one got to learn why they were born. Or why they'd been born different—whether short, fat, one-legged, chronically anxious, or wearing your guts on the outside of your body—it was equally mysterious and unknowable. Anyway, what would knowing really change?

  Baxter studied a crab as it ticked across his bare toes. He could have stolen my DNA at any time. If that was all he was after, there would have been no need to ferret me out here at Euboea. He hadn't even bothered to make a proper threat. Quite suddenly, I knew he'd never leave me alone.

  Blue waves rippled in the sun. If they could talk, would they ask why? Or would they just keep waving?

  "Want to know my name?" I said. "My real one?"

  "Is it 'Yes'?"

  "Dagon." It sounded ancient to my ears. The mud of the Tigris. The sun-baked clay of temples. "Later, Andronikos. When you met me, Rob. Nearly a hundred other names as well, but Rob's what I've been used to until a few days ago, so let's stick with that." Words tumbled out like I'd been rehearsing for centuries. I'd never said them aloud, yet I'd heard them before, in daydreams and nightmares. "I was born in Nineveh nearly three thousand years ago. I have no idea why. I've shrugged off plague, smallpox, chicken pox, herpes, gonorrhea, syphilis, and every other cock-pox to indignify the human species. But if you shot me in the head, I'm pretty sure I'd die. I still think pants are silly.
I never learned to use chopsticks in the traditional way. If someone's clogging the line at the grocery store, I sometimes forget the last few hundred years and imagine their head on a pike, glassy-eyed and dripping with—"

  "I get the point," Baxter said.

  "So when do I get to hear what I want to know? Or does that wait until I've helped you?"

  He smiled for the first time. "I would say I'm afraid so, but that doesn't make me feel any actual fear."

  "Then shut up and tell me what you want."

  "A few weeks of your time and the use of your vast experience. Compared to kicking your way off a skyscraper, I'm sure it will be very boring."

  For obvious reasons, I'd become an expert at reading faces. His dull white nose, the faded scar beneath his left eye, the repeating geometry of his bright green eyes—it told me nothing. My instincts told me to keep running.

  Like a fool, I followed him instead.

  He might sound simpler than the man you knew. But I don't let any old idiot ride around in my guts! You don't understand. Hey, don't get defensive. You're used to newborns being helpless sacks of drool. In some ways ours are more helpless for having no idea how fragile they are, how little they know.

  Anyway! That's to say this is the story—or part of it, because who knows how anyone else really comes to be—of how he became the person you knew. The one whose involvement was crucial to the four kidnappings: the man, the woman, the man-who-wasn't-a-man, and finally a whole world. How, for the sake of a single lump of silicon, copper, lithium, and plastic, he collected a vast armament, invaded Titan, and destroyed the kingdom of Smith, Vanderbilt, Sloan, and Gates.

  It ended with four kidnappings. It began with an escape.

  2

  Ryan Marcedes, the twelfth-richest man on Earth, leaned back in his seat and prepared to tell us, in the excitedly polite international language of business, to take a flying leap. Over the last three weeks, I'd heard some variation of the "Go to hell" speech from five different business magnates: our proposal was too big an initial outlay; feasible but a real "sphincter-zipper" investment-wise; outside the purview of their operational hegemony; and, twice, that space was already over and done with, and besides, the Asteroid Belt was the new Bermuda Triangle.