ANATEXIS

PART 11 - Entropy

He stood in front of the glass, lips curved in appreciation. Also curved was the bowl-shaped aquarium that adorned the luxurious lounge, and curved was the red silk-clad form descending the staircase. It was these last curves which had merited the first.

"You look divine, darling."

Stiletto heels clicked on the green glass plates which formed the stairs. Leroy Wescott was known to have a fetish for glass in all its utilitarian beauty, and the material was heavily incorporated into the decor of his vast mansion. Perhaps by subconscious selection rather than coincidence, the brunette's name was Gwendolen Verre.

The tycoon crossed the short distance to his mistress and took her hand, but to his irritation she whisked her fingers away from him and put more space between them. "Really, Leroy, we can't go on like this."

Wescott scowled. "What's this?"

"You know what I mean." She pouted. "I'm not here to be a mere toy."

"I told you: you're much more than that to me. But we can't be married immediately, Gwendolen. My wife is still 'missing'. Until they find her body - "

This was not the consolation Gwendolen Verre had hoped for, and she exploded. "And who's going to go to the bloody desert to look for her?" The coarse speech clashed comically with her elegant appearance. "She would have turned up SO much more quickly in a car trunk. Because if they don't find her, I'm going to have to wait seven shitty years."

Leroy Wescott's scowl deepened. The illusion of beauty was spoilt, and no expensive crimson dress, no heady perfume, no immaculate maquillage could salvage it now. "Even if she 'turned up' we would still have to wait. Tongues will wag if we rush into a wedding."

"I know, I know," Gwendolen said ungraciously. "I just wish you'd gotten rid of her properly instead of just dropping her in the middle of nowhere - " She irritably tapped her foot on the marble floor " - and then trying to score brownie points with the Dictator with that anarchist story."

"Shut your mouth, Gwen." The tycoon bit back with a venom that transformed his handsome face. The truth was, the woman was right - Dorothy should have been despatched permanently, rather than being shoved out of the way. Even if there was no possibility of her surviving the desert, he should have made sure...

I gave up everything to marry you, Leroy Wescott, and now you've grown tired of me. It wasn't just the guilt he had felt at his wife's words. It was her smile, her bitter little smile that mocked not only herself but her husband also. It was that coldness, the calm, quiet speech; he detested it. What he wanted was to break her down, tear away that superiority and that unquenchable pride...

But I've also grown tired of you, Mr Wescott. One supposes that we all come to loathe each other after awhile... How shall this be settled?

He would show her. He wanted her to suffer, and it would be settled by an agonisingly slow end in the desert - but first he wanted to watch her face as the helicopter took off from the burning sand.

"You - !" Gwendolen's eyes were bulging in their sockets, and she put her manicured hand to her face as if she had been slapped. "You're telling me to shut my mouth?" Her long-lashed eyes narrowed to spiteful slits. "I'm not your little blonde wife. You won't use me and dump me when you're done. And you won't tell me to shut up! I know too much about you."

"Oh?" Wescott's brows crushed together over his eyes, and he lunged forward to catch her arm.

She shook off his hold. "Don't forget - I've been your personal secretary for five years. I know all your dealings - oh yes! - and if you even think of harming me to keep that information close, then think again; I've arranged for it to go straight from my safe deposit box to Mariemaia Khushrenada's office!"

"You don't know anything, you stupid cow," Wescott said through his teeth.

"Who arranged your schedules so you could meet up privately with General Rourke?"

"They were just meetings! It means nothing!" He tried to grab her again; she dodged behind the great glass aquarium.

"Nothing? Custom manufacturing carried out by your factories for him and General Galvez? A string of secret commissions for Wescott Technologies?"

"You WON'T implicate me," he ground out, but he knew that the greed was exacting its price now. Lured by the profit of those private transactions he had naively turned a blind eye to the Generals' motives. He had let them persuade him with the explanations which seemed aboveboard, though it should have been clear that they were quite the opposite.

And it was all damning now...

He stopped dead, no longer intent on catching the woman. Indeed, his bloodshot eyes no longer saw her - in his mind he was sitting opposite Rourke in the French restaurant, casually accepting the long white envelope the General passed to him.

"The Dictator is not to know?"

Rourke waved this away smoothly. "Only because it would take too long to secure her approval. It all ties in, Leroy, it all ties in. We are, after all, researching new possibilities into arms in her best interests."

Wescott had known under the surface this assurance was hollow, but he shrugged it off and opened the envelope to reveal a sheaf of light blue papers. At the top of the cover sheet were two bold letters: M D.

The ex-OZ officer stepped forward and presented Lady Une with a cloth-covered metal tray, the numerous vials and syringes clinking invitingly against each other. Une smirked. "An ample selection. This prison lives up to its name." She saw that her assistant was already wearing surgical gloves, and shook her head. "Only as a last resort. These will only make them babble, and I have no time or patience to sift through their full autobiographies. Though in the case of Galvez, he no longer has a voice to babble with..."

The man laughed unsurely, and his eyes were inquiring as they stood for a moment outside the door of cel 5.26.00. If Lady Une was rejecting the truth drugs, then there was but one other possibility, and it was a rather unsavoury one. "Is there... anything you require before you commence, Lady?"

Une cracked her knuckles in one decisive movement, sending ripples of fear down her assistant's spine. "Yes, there is." She reached up to her face, and removed her glasses.

Evening sunlight streamed in through the French windows, casting long grid shadows onto the floor. Held at the correct angle to the rays, the gold rim of Mariemaia's teacup glinted with unbearable brightness. Especially with the delicate porcelain cup in her hand, and dressed in another of her many military style suits, the Dictator seemed more doll-like than ever. Just a doll, and the palace a giant dollhouse, and the peace an illusion.

Relena drank her tea slowly, careful to keep her face free of emotion.

"How do you like the peppermint tea? I believe that peppermint is your favourite."

"It is very refreshing," Relena returned. "Thank you." The effort to make light conversation was sapping her depleted resources of energy. It was less than six hours after their return to Brussels, and the journey had been a tense one, with no opportunity for rest. Throughout the flight Mariemaia had interrogated the acting superintendent of the 1st MSD, Captain Yonoi, and many of the questions had met with vague replies. More still been been completely beyond Yonoi's capacity to answer.

The Dictator glanced at her watch as she raised her teacup to her lips. A sip, and then: "The time is 5:59pm. Where is Heero Yuy now?"

Relena only nearly missed spilling the tea. "Wha- what?"

The veneer of pleasant civility barely covered the sarcasm. "Where is he?" Unrelenting, merciless.

"I don't understand."

Mariemaia moved to her desk and picked up the receiver of the old-style ivory and gold telephone; it looked too large for her dainty hands. She placed it in the digital cradle, and at once the two unobtrusively placed speakers on either side of the desk activated.

Four seconds of held breath. On the wall the clock began to chime, and in perfect synchrony a voice came over the speakers: "Logging in at 0600 hours as ordered. Felix van der Waals reporting from Port Moresby."

"Agent van der Waals. Your timing is precise."

"Thank you, your Excellency. Mission accomplished."

The last two words made Relena's mouth go dry.

"I managed to attach the tracker to the Preterid's reactor coils during the post-test repairs, Excellency. Since then, Colonel Chang has of course departed the base, and the signaller has been showing up strong and clear. The Preterid was on the move for a total of four and a half hours, but has since remained static in China, near Beijing." Van der Waals paused, and the sounds of clicking keys issued. "Details of his location should be transmitting to you now, Excellency."

Mariemaia spoke into the microphone above the digital cradle, but her gaze was trained on Relena. "Very good. Proceed to Stage 2 of your mission then. Report back when that is done."

"Yes, Excellency. Logging out."

"I understand now. I cannot tell you where Heero rests..." Relena's voice was soft compared to the enhanced volume of the speakers, yet there was a measure of anger that made it compelling. "Whereas you have made sure of the Colonel's whereabouts. Because he is unpredictable, you've decided to keep him on a long chain." Her hands shook, and the cup rattled against the saucer. "I would never have done that to Heero!"

Mariemaia chuckled. "No. And so you couldn't be sure of him. He flew away time and again. And the last time he flew - he fell."

The face framed by blonde hair twisted in grief, turning away from Mariemaia, but the Dictator strode forward to recapture the gaze, the lilac eyes blazing. "Look at me."

Relena did so, albeit defiantly.

"I will not relinquish my control. I have learnt from my father's mistakes, and from those of one Relena Peacecraft." Now as she stood over her honorary adviser, there was both contempt and fascination plain on her visage. It was as if Relena were merely the subject of study, as if she were a scientific specimen on the dissection table. "I've learnt that when you find destiny, you must never let go - never."

Objectified, Relena felt that this degrading exchange was the culmination of a life of helplessness. But she would strike a blow now, even through her tears. "Destiny is not something you can control, Mariemaia. That is the lesson you should have learnt."

In cell 5.26.00, Une uncrossed her legs, the black leather boots squeaking as she did so. In response to this, Rourke sneered, "For someone so recently a prisoner, your getup seems rather flamboyant."

True enough, her thick maroone jacket was a rich slash of colour in the bare white-tiled cell. Une smoothed down the gold epaulettes on her OZ uniform and smiled with genuine charm. "This is a little luxury I permit myself in order to work at higher efficiency. There is much to do and little time, so I am glad you have opted to cooperate."

Rourke's nostrils flared in amusement. "Is there room for me to refuse? And considering that the Dictator intends to place my head on the block, your takeover of this prison has almost been an opportune reprieve for me."

"Especially if helping me can bring Mariemaia down, no?" Une tilted her head to one side. "You've saved your secrets for us. What a noble disposition."

Rourke's cuffed hands moved up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I don't know what you've negotiated with Galvez, but on my part there is little nobility. The truth is, I would have readily divulged everything to Mariemaia under torture. She could have squeezed every drop from me, had she asked. But she never had the opportunity to ask."

Une gave a shrug of her attractive shoulders. "I will accept my allies in all their unlikely forms." She reached over to start the recording disc.

The former General began.

-

The moment of Rourke putting a bullet through Dekim Barton's brain should have signalled the beginning of their rule. Galvez and Rourke had recognised early on that the power lay with themselves, and that as the lions of the military pride, they could send Mariemaia after her grandfather and divide the world between themselves. What they had not accounted for was the upstart Lieutenant Colonel and his handpicked pilots. The 1st MSD - then simply known as 'Chang's division' - had made it impossible to quickly overrun Brussels as originally planned, and soon Mariemaia was safely esconced in her Dictatorial Palace, her power consolidated.

Having missed the initial opportunity, they bided their time, building their forces for a full-scale coup launched from off-capital bases. Now that Mariemaia's armies would not be so easily overcome, they needed to explore the hitherto unconsidered possibilities. They needed some kind of advantage...

Along the way Galvez recruited a young computer scientist called Davison, his task to refine and modify the ZERO system. And at the same time, he pursued the advancement of the other half of the equation. For having superlative systems of control was useless if there were no superlative controllers.

Pilots. Galvez had nursed the obsession from his youth, and co-conspirator Rourke was frequently appalled by the extent of his mania. It had been a stomach-turning experience to see the decaying remains of Baron von Richthofen in Galvez's vault, and that was but one of the better preserved trophies in his closet of unmentionables.

And then Galvez had shown him the two Gundam pilots' bodies. With their extraordinary abilities, these pilots embodied the elements which could create exceptional soldiers, if only they could be harnessed. What shocked Rourke was not that such mangled forms could yet house living souls, but the fact that Galvez had so singlemindedly recovered them in the last conflict, altering records to cover his trail. From their first appearance in the theatre of war in AC 195 Galvez had already aimed to make all five pilots - and their ace OZ counterpart the Lightning Count - a part of his collection. The disappointment over losing a chance to secure Zechs Merquise, Duo Maxwell and Quatre Raberba Winner had been bitter indeed. And the fact that the remaining Gundam pilot had been the main obstacle to their success was especially infuriating.

Testing began as soon as the avaricious Leroy Wescott was gulled into contributing to their effort. Only his empire of companies was able to supply the many components needed in the complicated installations which enabled the transmission and absorption of brainwaves. Designed by the genius of one Professor Miyashiro, these 'installations' - the cylindrical glass suspension tanks - were meant to isolate as well as support, with the only link to reality being inbuilt brainwave channels. Once an external stimulus pushed the occupants into consciousness, they would be unaware of anything except that stimulus. If the stimulus were a combat situation, it would be perfect.

Perfect for the control of say, mobile dolls. Thusly had Professor Miyashiro conjectured, and thusly had he perished in the first tests which tapped into the subconscious of Heero Yuy and Trowa Barton. For contrary to their outer serenity, they had not the peaceful, inactive brainwaves of comatose children. The noise-distorted, sawtoothed spikes belonged to men whose last conscious thoughts had been saturated with aggression, sadness, and incredible physical suffering. That chaotic intensity could not be contained or endured by a sane mind, let alone bent to the Generals' purpose.

As the danger of the situation escalated they abruptly cut the power to the suspension tanks, but they had already lost the one man who had understood anything of the experiment, Miyashiro himself. With the extrication of his body from the wreckage they reached a dead end; Yuy and Barton could never be used for the coup.

But Duo Maxwell could be. This was the final possibility left on the piloting front, and the search for Deathscythe's pilot stretched over three years. His subsequent capture, thanks to Marja Milankova's profiling, was meant to tie in with the reworked ZERO system and give Rourke and Galvez the edge they needed to spring their coup.

Except that their efforts were superseded by the arrival of ANATEXIS.

-

Here the General's soliloquy ended.

"So besides Quatre Winner, Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton, and Heero Yuy are alive."

"In a sense," said Rourke dryly. "Though Maxwell could well have been killed in Chang's attack on New Guinea." Then he shifted in his chair to show Lady Une the raised pink scarring on his neck. The souvenir from his encounter with a certain under-gardener at the Summer Pavilion was a permanent one. "And let's not forget your Lightning Count of the OZ, whose weapons expertise extends to blunt instruments."

A peal of silvery laughter issued from the Lady at this, and she retrieved her spectacles from her silent assistant. "Thank you. I can see clearly now."

Having put to sleep the nominal guards left at Galvez's mansion, Felix van der Waals was now standing at the door of the basement vault, waiting for the code generator to do its work. Clamped to the door locks like a set of ravenous jaws, it skimmed through millions of combinations, its red diode winking steadily until, with an affirmative burp, the red light turned to green. Not much of a challenge there.

A push of the gundanium and steel doors, and he walked in, but only after attaching the infra-red viewer firmly to the left lens of his glasses. If there were attackers in the darkness of the basement, he would want to have advance notice. Because Stage 2 of his mission was to seek out what Chang Wufei had found so interesting, and he was not about to let any hostile surprises foil him.

Moving in with cautious tread, he saw the same dull blue glow, inhaled the same cool conditioned air that Wufei had. He also saw all the disembodied parts, but the grisly shrine to the paragons of piloting left Agent van der Waals largely unconcerned. After all, he had spent two years as a student in a cybernetics lab, handling fresh specimens more often than not. Curious now, he allowed himself to tour the vault like a museum, the infra-red eyepiece assuring him that there was nothing in the vicinity above nineteen degrees celsius. Meaning, nothing which could be human and pose a problem at the same time.

Inevitably, he came to the separate, recessed platform and its five pillar-like cylinders, two carrying their silent wards. They were instantly recognisable as the Gundam pilots Yuy and Barton from the last war, and Van der Waals whistled tunelessly as he tapped the glass rather irreverently with his fingers. No doubt this would be of capital concern to Her Excellency.

I'm so cold -

Van der Waals shivered suddenly, and wondered why he had thought this. The vault was still at a comfortable nineteen degrees, despite the much lower temperatures being sustained within the tanks. And he never felt cold; he was famed for having the constitution of an ox.

I've been lost all my life.

Van der Waals frowned and scanned his surroundings warily. One of his fellow students in the cybernetics lab had once tried to spook him with theories of 'transmitted remnant experience'; that dead parts still carried the imprint of their owners' minds, and that you could hear them if you passed within their range.

"Maybe," said Van der Waals aloud to the inert forms in the basement. It was bravado, but bravado helped dispel some of his anxiety. "I won't discount that. But I've seen enough and I'm already on my way out, so excuse me." He was turning to ascend the steps up to the rest of the vault when he saw a small instrument panel that had escaped his notice on the way down. It was clearly labelled with the words "R. LIGHT SAFETY 1" above a gold-plated dial, and the temptation to turn up the illumination on the dim basement was too great to resist.

He turned it.

The lights on the right side of the platform - nearest the tank containing Barton - grew brighter as he manipulated the dial. Incandescent rather than fluorescent, their elements produced a comforting heat which radiated down on Van der Waals instantly. The ambient temperature began rising: nineteen, twenty, twenty-one degrees. And now that the yellow of the lights was interfering with the blue glow of the nutrient gel, Trowa Barton's face seemed a sculpture in cyan, the gel ripples that caressed his cheek as green as a rock pool.

As green as the eye which opened with exquisite slowness and rotated down to look at Felix van der Waals.

"Aaah, skeit," Van der Waals swore. A new thought, wholly his own, remained unspoken:

Never feed the animals

"It's a reflex action," said Van der Waals as he defensively backed his way to the stairs. "The body is responding to the light, like it would to any stimulus." But he readied his gun all the same. He wouldn't have to shoot, of course. He wouldn't need to. After all, Barton was a wrecked body in a glass coffin, and he was safe. All he would have to do was get out of the vault, contact the Dictator, get her to send down all the lab technicians she wanted, and his mission would be accomplished...

The green eye watched him all the way to the top of the stairs, then seemed to lose interest, gazing dispassionately into the corner instead, where bundles of wires trailed the ground. Van der Waals was greatly relieved by this, until he heard the buzz-hum of high voltage electricity, and saw that the wires were moving, the connectors at the end being drawn to sockets at the base of the glass tank.

Multiple connections met with a simultaneous click. There was no magic in it; both the sockets and the connectors were ringed with electromagnets that had been turned on together with the lighting. But to Van der Waals, this terrifying phenomenon was too much, and he emptied his gun into the tanks in panic. The bullets ricocheted off the glass leaving only superficial fractures patterned like spiderwebs.

Having demonstrated the strength of Wescott Technologies' reinforced glass, Van der Waals ran. He did not wait to see Heero Yuy's eyelids flutter, nor heed the whine of machinery pulling into place... He did not even hear the sounds of destruction, for in his mind there was a roaring that eclipsed everything.

Only when he reached the door of the basement did he realise what he had done. There was no neo-classical mansion left to greet him at the top of the stairs - instead, towering above the rubble was a humanoid metal giant. Like a parody of the pilots imprisoned in their tanks, the damaged Virgo's complex innards were exposed; charred plates clung to its torso by bolts that were already tearing.

It was an MD, a mobile doll.

And it lifted its gundanium leg to crush Felix Van der Waals underfoot.