The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The girl’s exquisite face made Beth scowl. “That’s her, isn’t it? That’s Kiera?”

  “Yes,” Rocio said. “The man on her right is Hudson Proctor, I don’t know who the other is. Some poor stud she’s wearing out in bed. The bitch is a complete whore.”

  “Well don’t tell Gerald, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it. Mind you, most of the possessed go sex-mad to begin with. Kiera’s behaviour is nothing exceptional.”

  Beth shuddered. “How much farther has Jed got to go?”

  “He’s only just started. Look, don’t worry, he’s got a clear route, the components are waiting. He’ll be in and out in less than ten minutes.”

  “If Gerald doesn’t foul it up.”

  Bernhard Allsop didn’t mind missing the big party. He didn’t get on with too many of Al’s bigshots. They all sneered and laughed at him behind his back. The possessed ones, that is; the non-possessed treated him with respect, the kind of respect you gave a pissed rattler. It didn’t bother him none. Here he was, at the centre of things. And Al trusted him. He hadn’t been demoted or sent down to the planet like a lot of lieutenants who didn’t measure up. Al’s trust meant a hell of a lot more than everyone else’s sniggering.

  So Bernhard didn’t complain when he drew this duty. He wasn’t afraid of hard work to get ahead. No sir. And this was one of Al’s top projects.

  Emmet Mordden himself had said so. Second only to the hit against Trafalgar. That was why work wasn’t stopping even during the party. Al wanted a whole bunch of machinery fixing. It was stuff connected with the hellhawks. Bernhard wasn’t so hot on the technical details. He’d tuned and overhauled auto engines when he was back home in Tennessee, but anything more complex than a turbine was best left to rocket scientists.

  He didn’t even mind that. It meant he didn’t have to get his hands dirty, all he had to do was supervise the guys Emmet had assigned to this detail. Watch for any treachery in the minds of the non-possessed and make sure they pulled the whole shift. Easy. And when it was over, Al would know that Bernhard Allsop had come through with the goods again.

  It was a long way through the corridors from Monterey’s main habitation quarters to the section of the docking ledge where the refurbishment was being carried out. He didn’t have a clue what went on behind all the doors he walked past. This part of the rock was principally engineering shops and storage rooms. Most of it had fallen into disuse since the Organization had taken over from the New California navy. Which just left miles of well lit, warm corridors all laid out in a three dimensional grid, unused except for the occasional mechanoid and maintenance crew.

  There were big emergency pressure seal doors every couple of hundred yards, which was how Bernhard got to learn his way around. They all had a number and a letter which told you where you were. Once you’d done it a couple of times, it was kind of like Manhattan, obvious.

  Pressure door 78D4, another ten minutes’ walk from the nutrient refinery chamber. He stepped over the thick metal rim and started walking along the corridor. It ran parallel to the docking ledge, though he could never make out a curve along the floor, even though he knew it had to be there.

  The doors on his left led to a couple of maintenance offices with long windows overlooking the ledge, a lounge, an airlock chamber, and two EVA prep rooms. There were only two doors on his right: a mechanoid service department and an electronics repair shop.

  A quiet metallic whine made him look up. Pressure door 78D5, sixty yards ahead of him, was sliding across the corridor. Bernhard felt his borrowed heart thump. They only closed if there was a pressure loss. He whirled round to see 78D4 sliding into place behind him.

  “Hey,” he called. “What’s happening?” There were no flashing red lights and shrill alarms like there had been in all the drills. Just unnerving silence. He realized the conditioning fans had stopped; the ducts must have sealed up as well.

  Bernhard hurried along towards 78D5, pulling his processor block from his pocket. When he pressed the keys to call the control centre, the screen printed NO NET ACCESS AVAILABLE. He gave it a puzzled, annoyed look. Then he heard a hissing sound start up, growing very loud very quickly. He stood still and looked round again. Halfway down the corridor, an airlock door was sliding open. It was the one leading out onto the docking ledge.

  One thing Emmet had emphasised time and again to reassure Organization members from earlier centuries: it was impossible for both airlock doors to open at once.

  Bernhard howled in terrified anger, and started sprinting for 78D5. He shoved a hand out, and fired a bolt of white fire. It struck the stolid pressure door and evaporated into violet twinkles. Someone was on the other side, deflecting his energistic power.

  Air was surging past him, building to hurricane force and producing short-lived streamers of white mist that curved sinuously round his body.

  He hammered another bolt of white fire at the pressure door. This time it didn’t even reach the dull metal surface before it was negated.

  They were trying to murder him!

  He reached the slab-like pressure door and pounded against the small transparent port in the centre while the wind clawed at his clothes. Its roar was growing fainter. Someone was moving on the other side of the port. He could sense two minds; one he thought he recognized. Their gratification was horribly conspicuous.

  Bernhard opened his mouth and found there was hardly anything left to inhale. He concentrated his energistic power around himself, making his body strong, fighting the sharp tingling sensation sweeping over his skin. His heart was yammering loudly in his chest.

  He punched the pressure door, making a tiny dint in the surface rim.

  Another punch. The first dint straightened out amid a shimmer of red light.

  “Help me!” he shrilled. The puff of air was ripped from his throat, but the cry had been directed at the infinity of souls surrounding him. Tell Capone, he implored them silently. It’s Kiera!

  He was having trouble focusing on the stubborn pressure door. He punched it again. The metal was smeared with red. It was a fluid this time, not the backspill from energistic power warping physical reality. Bernhard dropped to his knees, fingers scraping down the metal, desperate for a grip. The souls all around him were becoming a lot clearer.

  “What’s that?” Jed asked. He hadn’t spoken to Gerald since they walked down the Mindori’s stairs, and even then it had only been to tell him the direction they were to take. They’d walked along together ever since, trudging past the feeding hellhawks. Now they were on a section of ledge unused by either Kiera or Capone. No man’s land. The purple physiology icons projected against his visor told their usual sorry tale: his heart-rate was too high, and his body was hotter than it should be. This time he’d steered clear of snorting an infusion to calm his jabbering thoughts. So far.

  “Is there a problem?” Rocio asked.

  “You tell me, mate.” Jed pointed at the cliff wall, fifty metres ahead. A horizontal fountain of white vapour was gushing out of an open airlock hatch. “Looks like some kind of blow out.”

  “Marie,” Gerald wheezed. “Is she there? Is she in danger?”

  “No, Gerald,” Rocio said, an edge of exasperation in his voice. “She’s nowhere near you. She’s at Capone’s party, drinking and making merry.”

  “That’s a lot of air escaping,” Jed said. “The chamber must have breached. Rocio, can you see what’s going on in there?”

  “I can’t access any of the sensors in the corridor behind the airlock. That section of the net has been isolated. There isn’t even a pressure drop alert getting out to the asteroid’s environmental control centre. The corridor has been sealed. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble concealing whatever the hell they’re up to.”

  Jed watched the spurt of gas die away. “Shall we keep going?”

  “Absolutely,” Rocio said. “Don’t get involved. Don’t draw attention to yourselves.”

  Jed glanced along t
he line of blank windows above the open airlock. They were all dim, unlit. “Sure thing.”

  “Why?” Gerald asked. “What’s in there? Why don’t you want us to see? It’s Marie, isn’t it? My baby’s in there.”

  “No, Gerald.”

  Gerald took a few paces towards the open airlock.

  “Gerald?” Beth’s voice was high, strained and excitable. “Listen to me, Gerald, she’s not in there. Okay? Marie’s not there. I can see her, mate, there are cameras in the big hotel lobby. I’m looking at her right now. I swear it, mate. She’s in a black and pink dress. I couldn’t make that up, now could I?”

  “No!” Gerald started to run, a laboured half-bouncing motion. “You’re lying to me.”

  Jed stared after him in mounting dismay. Short of letting off a flare, there was nothing more he could do to attract attention to them.

  “Jed,” Rocio said. “I’m using your private suit band, Gerald can’t hear this. You have to stop him. Whoever opened that airlock isn’t going to want him blundering in. And they have to be a major faction player. This could ruin our whole scheme.”

  “Stop him how? He’ll either shoot me or blow both of us into the bloody beyond.”

  “If Gerald triggers an alarm, none of us will ever get off this rock.”

  “Oh Jeeze.” He shook his fist helplessly at Gerald’s crazy lurching run.

  The loon was fifteen metres from the open airlock.

  “Take a hit,” Beth said. “Chill down before you go after him.”

  “Fuck off.” Jed started to run after Gerald, convinced the whole world was now watching. And worse, laughing.

  Gerald reached the open airlock, and ducked inside. By the time Jed arrived half a minute later, he was nowhere to be seen. The chamber was standard, like the one Jed had come though last time he’d gone inside this bloody awful maggot nest of rock. He moved along it cautiously.

  “Gerald?”

  The inner door was open. Which was deeply wrong. Jed knew all about asteroid airlocks, and one thing you could positively not ever do was open an internal corridor to the vacuum. Not by accident. He glanced at the rectangular hatch as he passed, seeing how the swing rods had been sheered, the melted cables around the rim seal interlock control.

  “Gerald?”

  “I’m losing your signal.” Rocio said. “I still can’t access the net around you. Whoever did it is still there.”

  Gerald was slumped against the corridor wall, legs splayed wide in front of him. Not moving. Jed approached him cautiously. “Gerald?”

  The suit band transmitted a shallow, frightened whimper.

  “Gerald, come on. We’ve got to get out of here. And no more of this crazy shit. I can’t take it any more, okay. I mean really can’t. You’re cracking my head apart.”

  One of Gerald’s gauntleted hands waved limply. Jed stared past him, down to the end of the corridor. A dangerous geyser of vomit threatened to surge up his throat.

  Bernhard Allsop’s stolen body had ruptured in a spectacular fashion as the energistic power reinforcing his flesh had vanished. Lungs, the softest and most vulnerable tissue, had burst immediately, sending litres of blood pouring out of his mouth. Thousands of heavily pressurized capillaries just beneath his skin had split, weeping beads of blood into the fabric of his clothes. It looked as though his double breasted suit was made from brilliant scarlet cloth—cloth that seethed as if alive. The fluid was boiling away into the vacuum, surrounding him with a hazy pink mist.

  Jed attacked his suit wrist pad as if it was burning him. Dry air scented with peppermint and pine blew into his face. He clamped his jaw shut against the rising vomit, turning bands of muscle to hot steel as he forced himself not to throw up. This spacesuit wasn’t sophisticated enough to cope with him spewing.

  Something loosened inside him. He coughed and spluttered, sending disgustingly tacky white bile spraying over the inside of his visor. But his nausea was subsiding. “Oh God, oh Jeeze, he’s just pulped.”

  The pine scent was strong now, thick in his helmet, draining feeling away from his limbs. His arms moved sluggishly, yet they were as light as hydrogen. Good sensation.

  Jed let out a snicker. “Guess the guy couldn’t hold it together, you know?”

  “That’s not Marie.”

  The processor governing Jed’s spacesuit cancelled the emergency medical suppresser infusion. The dosage had exceeded CAB limits by a considerable margin. It automatically administered the antidote. Winter fell across Jed, chilling him so badly he held a gauntlet up to his visor, expecting to see frost glittering on the rubbery fabric. The coloured lights flashing annoyingly into his eyes gradually resolved into icons and digits. Someone kept chanting: “Marie, Marie, Marie.”

  Jed looked at the corpse again. It was pretty hideous but it didn’t make him feel sick this time. The infusion seemed to have switched off his internal organs. It also implanted a strong sensation of confidence, he could tackle the rest of the mission without any trouble now.

  He shook Gerald’s shoulder, which at least put an end to the dreary chanting. Gerald squirmed from the touch. “Come on, mate, we’re leaving,” Jed said. “Got a job to do.”

  A motion caught Jed’s attention. There was a face pressed up against the port in the pressure door. As he watched, the blood smearing the little circle of glass began to flow apart. The man on the other side stared straight at Jed.

  “Oh bloody hell,” Jed choked. The balmy feeling imparted by the infusion was gusting away fast. He turned frantically to see the airlock’s inner hatch starting to close.

  “That’s it, mate, we’re outta here.” He pulled Gerald up, propping him against the wall. Their visors pressed together, allowing Jed to look into the old loon’s helmet past the winking icons. Gerald was oblivious to anything, lost in a dream-state trance. The laser pistol slid from lifeless fingers to fall onto the floor. Jed glanced longingly at it, but decided against. If it came to a shootout with the possessed, he wasn’t going to win. And it would only piss them off. Not a good idea.

  The face at the port had vanished. “Come on.” He tugged at Gerald, forcing him to take some steps along the corridor. Thin jets of grey gas started to shoot out of the conditioning vents overhead. Green and yellow icons appeared on his visor, reporting oxygen and nitrogen thickening around him. One thing Jed clung to was that the possessed were no good in a vacuum; suits didn’t work, and their power couldn’t protect them. As soon as he got back out on the ledge he was safe. Relatively.

  They reached the airlock hatch, and Jed slapped the cycle control. The control panel remained dark. Digits were flickering fast across his visor; the pressure was already twenty-five per cent standard. Jed let go of Gerald and pulled the manual lever out. It seemed to move effortlessly as he spun it round and round. Then it jarred his arms. He frowned at it, cross that something as simple as a lock should try to hurt him. But at least the hatch swung open when he pulled on it.

  Gerald stumbled into the chamber, as obedient as a mechanoid. Jed laughed and cheered as he pulled the hatch shut behind him.

  “Are you all right?” Rocio asked. “What happened?”

  “Jed?” Beth cried. “Jed, can you hear me?”

  “No sweat, doll. The bad guys haven’t got what it takes to spin me.”

  “He’s still high,” Rocio said. “But he’s coming down. Jed, why did you use the infuser?”

  “Just quit bugging me, man. Jeeze, I came through for you, didn’t I?” He pressed the outer hatch’s cycle control. Amazingly, a line of green lights on the panel turned amber. “You’d have snorted a megawatt floater too if you saw what I did.”

  “What was that?” Rocio’s voice had softened down to the kind of tone Mrs. Yandell used when she talked to the day-club juniors. “What did you see, Jed?”

  “Body.” His irritation at the insulting tone was lost under a memory of wriggling scarlet cloth. “Some bloke got caught in the vacuum.”

  “Do you know who he was?”

/>   “No!” Now he was sobering up, Jed desperately wanted to avoid thinking about it. He checked the control panel, relieved to see the atmosphere cycle was proceeding normally. The electronics at this end of the airlock were undamaged. Not sabotaged, he corrected himself.

  “Jed, I’m getting some strange readings from Gerald’s suit telemetry,” Rocio said. “Is he okay?”

  Jed felt like saying: was he ever? “I think the body upset him. Once he realized it wasn’t Marie, he just shut up.” And who’s complaining about that?

  The control panel lights turned red, and the hatch swung open.

  “You’d better get out of there,” Rocio said. “There’s no alert in the net yet, but someone will discover the murder eventually.”

  “Sure.” He took Gerald’s hand in his and pulled gently. Gerald followed obediently.

  Rocio told them to stop outside a series of horseshoe-shaped garage bays at the base of the rock cliff, a hundred metres from the entrance they were supposed to use to get into the asteroid. Three trucks were parked in the bays, simple four wheel drive vehicles with seating for six and a flatbed rear.

  “Check their systems,” Rocio said. “You’ll need one to drive the components back to me.”

  Jed went along them, activating their management processors and initiating basic diagnostic routines. The first one was suffering from some kind of power cell drop out, but the second was clean and fully charged. He sat Gerald in one of the passenger seats, and drove it round to the airlock.

  When the chamber’s inner hatch swung open, Jed checked his sensor reading before he cracked his visor up. A lifetime of emergency procedure drills back on Koblat made him perpetually cautious about his environment.

  “There’s nobody even close to you,” Rocio said. “Go get them.”

  Jed hurried along the corridor, took a right turn, and saw the broad door to the maintenance shop, three down on the right. It opened for him as he touched the lock panel. The lights sprang up to full intensity, revealing a basic rectangular room with pale-blue wall panelling. Cybernetic tool modules stood in a row down the centre, encased in crystal cylinders to protect their delicate waldos. A grid of shelving covered the rear wall, intended to hold a stock of spares used regularly by the shop. Now there were just a few cartons and packages left scattered around—apart from the large pile in the middle which the mechanoid had delivered.