“No problem, Al. The SD platforms are all armed with antimatter, along with half the fleet. The only Navy ships that’ll visit New California for a rumble are the ones on a suicide mission.”
“Glad to hear it. You all hear that, too?” He searched round, trying to spot any major-league dissenters with his ethereal senses as they all swore they heard and approved. There was the obvious ones; Kiera with her cool contempt, the rest were just jittery, or, like Silvano, sullen and resentful. But so far he was carrying it. “Okay, so we’ve done what we set out to when we walked into City Hall. We got us an entire planet, along with a haul of space factories. And the important thing is, we took out the nearest opposition. This planet is a fucking fortress now. That means we can ease up on watching our backs, and get on with running this shebang properly. Leroy, how’s the food situation down on the surface?”
“Nobody’s starving, Al. The farms aren’t producing as much as they did before. But they are producing. I think we can get them back up to the old levels if the lieutenants on the ground applied some pressure. We need to motivate them.”
“Okay. So food is something we can improve if we had the time. Mickey, your boys jiving you, or are they marching round like a bunch of krauts whenever you give the word?”
Mickey Pileggi licked at the beads of sweat that had suddenly erupted on his upper lip. “I got them under control, Al. Yeah. Sure thing.”
“Mickey, you’re full of crap. This whole fucking joint is going down the pan. We’ve been humping away at the Confederation so bad, we ain’t noticed the rain coming in.”
“That’s what you wanted.”
Al stopped in full flow, hauling back on his anger. He’d just been getting nicely into his spiel. “Kiera, stop being such a ballbuster. I did what I had to to protect us. Ain’t nobody here gonna argue with that.”
“I’m not arguing, Al. I’m saying the same thing as you. We are where we are, because this is where you’ve brought us.”
“You want to be somewhere else right now?”
“No.”
“Then shut the fuck up. I’m telling you, all of you; now is when we start getting things working properly again. You gotta start keeping tabs on the soldiers under your command, else everyone’s gonna finish up going AWOL like Webster. And that way, we wind up in deep shit. We gotta have things working smoothly around here again. If you don’t start exerting some proper discipline then the whole Organization’s gonna fall apart. And if it goes down, then we go down with it.”
“Al, the Organization is set up to keep the fleet working,” Kiera said.
“Hey, fucking lady Einstein, you just worked that out for yourself, or did one of the kids from the gym explain it when he was banging you?” Al chuckled loudly, encouraging the others to join in.
“I’ve always known it. I just wondered if you did.”
Al’s humour faded out. “What are you getting at?”
“The only reason we need the fleet is if New California remains in this universe.”
“Aw shit, not this crap again. Don’t you get it? If we leave, then the Confederation longhairs are going to be free to dream up some way of snatching us back. We have to stay here, it’s the only way we can see what’s coming.”
“And if you see something like that coming at you, Al, what are you going to do about it? A technology powerful enough to pull a planet back from the other side of the beyond. Launch a combat wasp at it? Believe me, if the Confederation ever gets to be that powerful, then we don’t stand a chance. But I don’t think they’ll ever learn how to do anything like that. We can do it because we’ve got the devil’s own power charging us up. No chunk of machinery can challenge that. If we leave, then I say we’re going to be a hell of a lot safer there than we are here.”
There was an itch in Al’s palm, running across his skin exactly where he gripped the handle of his baseball bat. He held off from making it real.
Her talk about the devil being behind them made him uncomfortable. A Catholic by birth, he didn’t like examining the implications of what he was now, nor why. “We ain’t pinning our future on what you think might be right, sister,” he growled. “If we want a certainty, then we stay right here.”
“The Organization can be transported down to the planet,” Kiera said, as if Al hadn’t even spoken. “We can use the SD network to keep our power base secure until we assume control of the cities. After that, we use ground troops to enforce order. Al was right about that. There’s been too much slippage allowed recently. We know we have to keep the farms and a lot of the industries going if we want any kind of decent life on the other side. It’ll take a strong, positive government to achieve that. And that’s us.”
“We can do all that crap, and still stay here,” Al said. His voice had become little more than a whisper. That worried those who had been with him the longest, though Kiera didn’t seem to notice the barely concealed danger. “When I want someone else to tell me how to run my Organization, I’ll let you know. Got that, baby doll? Or do I need to make it real plain for you?”
“I hear what you say, Al.” The tone was amused indolence.
“That’s smart of you. Now I want the rest of you guys to start doing like I’ve said. We need a crackdown like God’s foot is stomping through the clouds. I want things up and jumping around here. Put the word out to your soldiers, as of now you shape up or ship out. And out is where you don’t want to be.”
Al told Emmet and Silvano to stay behind after the others trooped out. He flicked a switch to turn the wall clear, and waited impatiently as transparent waves skidded about in front of him. With his mind all het up, it was hard to cool down his energistic power. Eventually, the wall stabilized, giving him a view across the SD Tactical Operations Centre.
Five people were sitting behind the long ranks of consoles; two of them playing cards.
“The bitch is good,” Al said. He was surprised more than anything.
“She used to be married to a politician,” Silvano said. “Knows how to sound plausible.”
“Certainly convinced me scooting our asses out of here is a good idea,” Al muttered. He turned back to his two senior lieutenants. “Emmet, is what she said right? Can we take the planet out of their reach? I mean, right away?”
Emmet wiped a hand across his forehead. “Al, I can make the machines we’ve got work for you. Do a few repairs, make sure everything’s plugged in where it oughta be. But, shit, questions like that … That’s out of my league, Al, way out. You need a theoretical physicist, or a priest.
But even if they can learn how to do that, it’s not gonna be tomorrow. We’d be safe there a long time. And could be we’d learn how to keep ourselves there. Shit, I just don’t know, Al.”
“Ha.” Al sat himself down, annoyed by how badly he’d come out of the clash. “And we don’t get to find out, neither. God damn that bitch. Now she’s declared for the running away option, I’ve gotta make my stand to stay here. And you can be certain she’ll start shouting her idea about.”
“Leaving this universe has a strong appeal to the possessed,” Silvano said. “It’s intrinsic. Perhaps you should bow to the inevitable, boss.”
“You think I’m gonna knuckle under to that whore?”
“Not to her, no. But she’s backing a winning idea.”
“I still need the hellhawks a while,” Al said. “Emmet, you done anything more about building another feeding trough for them?”
“Sorry, Al, haven’t had time.”
“You’ve got it now.”
Banneth was making her preliminary preparations to Kilian when one of the senior acolytes pounded on the door of her sanctum. Kilian gurgled weakly as she eased the slim tube deeper inside him.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” Banneth promised him cheerfully, and fastened a clamp around the incision to stop the bleeding. She stripped the thin isolation gloves from her hands as she walked over to the door.
“A body, High Magus,” the acolyte panted
. “There’s a body in the temple.”
She frowned. “Who?”
“Acolyte Tilkea, High Magus. He was butchered. We didn’t authorize it. Tilkea is one of the better ones.”
“I see.” Banneth datavised a codelock at her sanctum door, and strode off towards the temple. “How awful, a corpse we didn’t authorize.”
“Yes, High Magus,” the acolyte agreed nervously. Like everyone in the headquarters, he never knew if she was joking or not.
Even by the standards of the sect, the killing was fairly extreme. The remains of acolyte Tilkea were suspended from strands of carbon wire above the altar, arms and legs extended wide. Large hooks punctured the skin above his shoulder blades, as well as his buttocks, wrists, and ankles, fastening him to the wires. His chest had been split open from throat to crotch, ribs levered apart to allow the internal organs to spill out. They’d splattered down on the altar, along with a small lake of blood. Banneth circled the corpse carefully, while a gaggle of acolytes stood at a respectful distance. It was ironic, she thought, that a death in the temple where they themselves had killed hundreds over the last few decades should invoke such trepidation. A sign of the times.
The blood was still warm. Banneth took a small medical block from her pocket, and pressed its sensor pad against Tilkea’s glistening liver.
“This happened within the last half hour,” she announced. “Was he on duty in here?”
“Yes, High Magus.”
She datavised the headquarters network processor, and instructed it to review the security systems. Nobody had left the building within the last hour. “I want every door guarded by a team of five acolytes. You can issue the hand weapons, chemical projectiles only.”
The senior acolytes hurried to obey. When she stood up, Banneth saw the writing on the wall behind the altar. Someone had used Tilkea’s heart as a sponge, scrawling in blood: <
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Banneth dispatched a dry laugh down the affinity bond. <
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The program’s visualization took the form of a three dimensional spider web that filled the entire universe. Strands were all primary colours, crossing and recrossing against each other, a weave that stretched away to an infinity where they blurred into null-grey uniformity. Louise’s mind hung in the centre, looking in every direction at once.
What her neural nanonics were showing her was Earth’s communication net.
Or at least, part of London’s informational structure. Then again, it might have been just the Ritz’s internal house network. She wasn’t entirely sure, only that this was what surrounded her room’s net processor … when she ran this particular symbology protocol, anyway.
There were some interpretations which were like cybernetic coral, others that had cartoon roads, looping gas-giant rings, even one that was an intertexture of glowing liquids. But this, she felt, was the most real.
Information taxis were flooding back towards her, silent sparkles of light riding the strands down to the centre, condensing around her like a new galaxy. A response to the latest questor she’d fired into the digital aether; the fiftieth variant on that one basic inquiry: find a connection between Quinn Dexter and Banneth, any category. She’d tried multiple combinations of the most preposterous phonetic spellings, removed time restrictions so that the questors could search centuries-old memories, allowed fictional works (every media type from books onwards) to be incorporated. If she could just get that first connection, discover a single positive reference, then the questors and news hounds and directory extractors and credit profilers and a hundred other search programs installed in her neural nanonics could be unleashed on Banneth like dogs after a hax.
The information taxis loaded their passenger files into the analysis program she was running in primary mode. “Oh hell,” she groaned. The neuroiconic display vanished, and she propped herself up on her elbows.
Genevieve was sitting at the room’s desk, running an English geo-historical tutorial through her processor block. She gave her big sister a sympathetic look. “Zeroed out again?”
“Yep.” Louise leaned over the side of the bed, and hunted round for her shoes. “Not a single file entry, not that combines them.”
“You’ve just got to keep asking.” Genevieve indicated the pile of flek cases on the desk. “Computers aren’t smart, just fast. Garbage in, garbage out.”
“Is that so?” Louise wasn’t going to quibble about Gen’s new-found interest of boning up on educational texts. It was better than games.
Trouble was, the knowledge was superficial.
Like min
e.
“I don’t know enough,” she confessed. “Even with the program tutors to help me format the questor.” It wasn’t just her inability to get a lead on Banneth that bothered her. There was still no response from Joshua.
She’d sent half a dozen messages now without so much as an acknowledgement from Tranquillity. “I need professional help.”
She was back. Andy Behoo sighed helplessly as soon as he saw her walk in.
The magic was only slightly soiled by Genevieve trailing after her. This time he didn’t even bother to say anything to the customer he was serving before he abandoned them. Louise was standing in the middle of the shop, looking round with that same slightly befuddled expression as the first time. She smiled lightly when she saw him approaching (not too fast, don’t run—you’ll look pathetic).
“Back for some more?” he asked. God, what a stupid thing to say. Why not just yell out: I don’t have a life.
“I’d like to choose some programs, yes,” Louise said.
“Excellent.” His eyes tracked up and down in a fast sweep, feeding the image into a memory cell. Today she wore a lemon-yellow dress made from a sparkly fabric that was tight around her bottom; and a pair of antique wire rimmed sunglasses. An odd combination, but very stylish. You just had to have considerable poise to carry off the effect. “What can we get you?”
“I need a very powerful questor. You see, I’m trying to find someone, and I’ve got very little information about them. The NAS2600 questor can’t locate them for me.”
Interest in what she was saying actually diverted Andy’s eyes from her cleavage. “Really? It’s usually pretty good. Your friend must be very well hidden.” And pray it’s her loathsome fiancé.
“Could be. Can you help?”
“What I’m here for.” Andy walked back to his counter, working out in his mind what he could do to use the situation. He plain didn’t have the nerve to ask her outright if she’d like to come for a drink with him after work. Especially not with Genevieve at her side. But there had to be some way he could get to see her again, outside Jude’s Eworld.
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