The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Gravely reassuring in their size and familiarity.

  It was completely still outside. A morning so insipid it couldn’t even coax native animals out of their burrows. Dewdrops cloaked every leaf, their weight bending branches out of alignment, making it seem as though every bush and tree was sagging from apathy.

  “For heaven’s sake come back to bed,” Susannah grunted. “I’m cold.”

  She was lying in the middle of their huge four poster bed, eyes closed, sleepily trawling the duvet back around her shoulders. Her dark hair fanned out across the rumpled pillows like a broken bird’s nest. Not as long as it used to be, he thought wistfully. The two of them getting together had been inevitable. Back together, in one respect. However you wanted to look at it, they were suited for each other. And there had been one argument too many with Lucy.

  Luca went back and sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at his love.

  Her hand crept out from under the duvet, feeling round for him. He held it gently, and bent over to kiss her knuckles. A gesture that had carried over from their courting days. She smiled lazily.

  “That’s better,” she purred. “I hate it when you leap out of bed every bloody morning.”

  “I have to. The estate doesn’t run itself. Especially not now. Honestly, some of the buggers are more idle and stupid now than they were before.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes it does. We still have a crop to get in. Who knows how long this winter is going to last.”

  She lifted her head and peered up at him in modest confusion. “It’ll last the same time as it always does. That’s what’s right for this world, and that’s what we all feel. So that’s the way it will be. Stop worrying.”

  “Yeah.” He looked back at the window again. Tempted.

  She sat up and gave him a proper look. “What is it? I can sense how troubled you are. It’s not just the crops.”

  “It is, partly. You and I both know that I have to be here to make sure it’s done right. Not just because they’re a bunch of slackers. They need the kind of guidance Grant can give them. Which silos are used for what, how much drying the grain should be given first.”

  “Mr. Butterworth can tell them that.”

  “Johan, you mean.”

  They managed to avoid each other’s eye. But the mild guilt was the same in both of them. Identity was a taboo topic on Norfolk these days.

  “He can tell them,” Luca said. “Whether they’ll listen and actually do the work is another matter. We’ve still got a way to go before we’re one big harmonious family working for the common good.”

  She grinned. “Arses need to be kicked.”

  “Damn right!”

  “So what’s with all the angst?”

  “Days like this give me time to think. They’re so slow. There’s no urgent farmwork to do at the moment, only the pruning. And Johan can supervise that okay.”

  “Ah.” She drew her knees up under her chin, and hugged them. “The girls.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted sheepishly. “The girls. I hate it, you know. It means I’m more of Grant than I am of me. That I’m losing control. That can’t be right. I’m Luca; and they’re nothing to me, they’re nothing to do with me.”

  “Me neither,” she said miserably. “But I think we’re fighting an instinct we can never beat. They’re the daughters of this body, Luca. And the more I settle into this body, the more it belongs to me, then the more I have to accept what comes with it. What Marjorie Kavanagh is. If I don’t, she’ll haunt me forever; and rightly so. This is supposed to be our haven. How can it be if we reject them? We will never be given peace.”

  “Grant hates me. If he could put a gun to my head right now, he’d do it. Sometimes, when I’m more him than me, I think I’m going to do it. The only reason I’m still here is because he’s not ready to commit suicide yet. He desperately wants to know what’s happened to Louise and Genevieve. He wants that so bad that I do too, now. That’s why today is so tempting. I could take a horse and ride over to Knossington, there’s another aeroambulance stationed there. If it still works I could be in Norwich by evening.”

  “I doubt any kind of plane would work, not here.”

  “I know. Getting to Norwich by boat is going to be a hell of a lot more difficult. And then winter will make it damn near impossible. So I ought to start now.”

  “But Cricklade won’t let you.”

  “No. I don’t think so. I’m not sure anymore. He’s getting stronger, wearing me down.” He gave a short bitter laugh. “Taste the irony in that.

  The person I possess, possessing me in return. No more than I deserve, I suppose. And you know what? I do want to see that the girls are okay. Me, my own thoughts. I don’t know where that comes from. If it’s the guilt from what I tried to do to Louise, or if it is him, his first victory. Carmitha says we’re reverting. I think she could be right.”

  “No she’s not, we will always be ourselves.”

  “Will we?”

  “Yes,” she said emphatically.

  “I wish I could believe that. So much of this place isn’t what we expected. All I ever truly wanted was to be free of the beyond. Now I am, and I’m still being persecuted. Dear God, why can’t death be real? What kind of universe is this?”

  “Luca, if you do go looking for the girls, I’m going with you.”

  He kissed her, searching to immerse himself in normality. “Good.”

  Her arms went round his neck. “Come here. Let’s celebrate being us. I know quite a few things Marjorie never did for Grant.”

  Carmitha spent the morning working in the rose grove, one of a thirty-strong team gainfully employed to return Norfolk’s legendary plants to order. Because of the delay, it was harder work than usual. The flower stems had toughened, and new late-summer shoots had flourished, tangling their way through the neat wire trellises. It all had to be trimmed away, returning the plants to their original broad fan-shape. She started by deadheading each plant, then used a stepladder to reach the topmost shoots, snipping through them with a pair of heavy-duty secateurs. Long whip-like shoots fell from her snapping blades to form a considerable criss-cross pile around the foot of the steps.

  She also considered that the grass between the rows had been allowed to grow too long, but held her tongue. It was enough that they were keeping the basics of her world ticking over. When the end came, and the Confederation descended out of the strange blank sky to banish the possessing souls, enough would remain for the genuine inhabitants to carry on. Never as before, but there would be a degree of continuity. The next generation would be able to build their lives over the ruins of the horror.

  It was the thought she remained faithful to throughout every day. The prospect that this wouldn’t end was a weakness she could not permit herself. Somewhere on the other side of this realm’s boundary, the Confederation was still intact; its leadership pouring every ounce of effort into finding them, and with that an answer.

  Her belief faltered at what that answer might be. Simply expelling the souls back into the dark emptiness of the hereafter solved nothing. Some place devoid of suffering must be found for them. They, of course, thought they’d already found it by coming here. Fools. Poor blighted, tragic fools.

  Similarly, her imagination failed to embrace exactly what life on Norfolk, and the other possessed worlds, would be like afterwards. She’d always respected the mild culture of spirituality in which she’d been raised, just as the house-dwellers worshiped their Christian God. Neither gave the slightest clue how to live once you truly knew you had an immortal soul. How could anyone take physical existence seriously now they knew that? Why do anything, why achieve anything when so much more awaited? She’d always resented this world’s artificial restrictions, while admitting she could never have an alternative. “A butterfly without wings,” her grandmother used to call her. Now the doorway into an awesome, infinite freedom had been flung wide open.

  And what had she done at t
he sight of it? Clung to this small life with a tenacity and forcefulness few others on this world had contrived. Perhaps that was going to be the way of it. A future of perpetual schizophrenia as the inner struggle between yin and yang went nuclear.

  Far easier not to think about it. Yet even that was unwelcome, implying she had no mastery over her destiny. Instead, being content to await whatever fate was generously awarded by the Confederation, a charity dependant. Something else contrary to her nature. These were not the easiest of times.

  She finished levelling the top of the bush and pulled a couple of recalcitrant shoots out of the thick lower branches where they’d fallen.

  The secateurs moved down, slicing into some of the older branches. Apart from the five main forks, a bush should be encouraged with fresh outgrowth every six years. Judging by the wizened bark and bluish algae streaks starting to bubble out of the hairline cracks, this one had been left long enough. She quickly fastened the new shoots she’d left into place, using metal ties. Her wrist moved automatically, twisting them tight, not even having to look at what she was doing. Every Norfolk child could do this in her sleep. Others in the team were tending their bushes in the same way. Instinct and tradition were still the rulers here.

  Carmitha went down four rungs on the stepladder, and started cutting at the next level of branches. A little knot of foreign anxiety registered in her mind. It was gliding towards her. She hung on to a sturdy trellis upright, and leaned out to look along the row to spot the source. Lucy was running along the grass, dodging the piles of shoots, waving her arms frantically. She stopped at the foot of Carmitha’s ladder, panting heavily.

  “Can you come, please,” she gasped. “Johan’s collapsed. God knows what’s the matter with him.”

  “Collapsed? How?”

  “I don’t know. He was in the carpentry shop for something, and the lads said he just keeled over. They couldn’t get him to stand, no matter what they did, so they made him comfortable and sent me to fetch you. Damnit, I’ve ridden the whole way out here on a bloody horse. What I wouldn’t give for a decent mobile phone.”

  Carmitha climbed down the stepladder. “Did you see him?”

  “Yes. He looks fine,” Lucy said a shade too quickly. “Still conscious. Just a bit weak. Been overdoing it, I expect. That bloody Luca thinks we’re all still his servants. We’re going to have to do something about that, you know.”

  “Sure you are,” Carmitha said. She hurried along the row towards the thatched barn where her own horse was tethered.

  When Carmitha rode into the stable she dismounted and handed the reins over to one of the non-possessed boys Butterworth/Johan had promoted to stablehand. He smiled in welcome and quietly muttered: “This has got them all shook up.”

  She winked. “Too bad.”

  “You gonna help him?”

  “Depends what it is.” Since she’d arrived at Cricklade, a surprising number of its residents had popped over to her caravan to ask for her help with various ailments. Colds, headaches, aching limbs, sore throat, indigestion; little niggling things which their powers found hard to banish. Broken bones and cuts they could heal up, but anything internal, less immediately physical, was more troublesome. So Carmitha started dispensing her grandmother’s old herbal potions and teas. As a result, she’d taken over tending the manor’s herb garden. Many evenings were spent pounding the dried leaves with her pestle, mixing them up and pouring the resulting powders into her ancient glass jars.

  More than anything, it eased her acceptance into the manor’s community.

  They’d rather turn to naturalistic Romany cures than consult the few qualified doctors available in the town. Properly prepared ginseng (sadly, geneered for Norfolk’s unique climate, so probably with its original properties diluted) and its botanical cousins remained preferable to the kind of medicines which Norfolk’s restricted pharmaceutical industry was licensed to produce. Not that their stocks were very large; and Luca had given up trying to negotiate more from Boston. The townies hadn’t got the factory working.

  She found it strange that the simple knowledge of plants and land which was her heritage, and which had hidden her from them, had earned her their respect and thanks.

  The carpentry shop was a tall single-storey stone building at the back of the manor, in amid a nest of bewilderingly similar buildings. They all looked like oversized barns to her, with high wooden shutters and steep solar-cell roofs; but they housed a wheelwright’s, a dairy, a smithy, a stonemason’s, innumerable stores, even a mushroom house. The Kavanaghs had made sure they had every craft the manor needed to be virtually independent for its basic needs.

  When she arrived, several people were milling around the entrance of the carpentry shop with the embarrassed air of someone who’s been forced to endure a family row. Not wanting to be there, yet unwilling to miss out.

  She was greeted with relieved smiles and ushered through. The electric saws and lathes and tenoning machines were silent. The carpenters had cleared their tools and lengths of wood from one of the benches and laid Johan out on top, head propped up on spongy cushions, body wrapped in a tartan blanket. Susannah was holding a glass of ice water to his lips prompting him to drink, while Luca stood at the end of the bench, frowning down in thoughtful concern.

  There was a grimace on Johan’s rounded adolescent face, turning his usual lines into deep creases. Sweat glistened on his skin, sticking his thin sandy hair to his forehead. Every few seconds a big shiver ran down his body. Carmitha put a hand on his brow. Even though she was prepared for it, she was surprised by how hot his skin was. His thoughts were a bundle of worry and determination. “Want to tell me what happened?” she asked.

  “I just felt a bit faint, that’s all. I’ll be all right in a while. Just need to rest up. Food poisoning, I expect.”

  “You never eat any,” Luca muttered.

  Carmitha turned round to face the audience. “Okay, that’s it. Take your lunch break or something. I want some clear air in here.”

  They backed out obediently. She motioned Susannah aside, then pulled the blanket off Johan. The flannel shirt under his tweed jacket was soaked with sweat, and his plus fours seemed to be adhering to his legs. He shuddered at the exposure to the air.

  “Johan,” she said firmly. “Show yourself to me.”

  His lips tweaked into a brave smile. “This is it.”

  “No it isn’t. I want you to end this illusion right now. I have to see what’s wrong with you.” She wouldn’t let him look away from her eyes, conducting a silent power struggle with his ego.

  “Okay,” Johan said eventually. His head dropped back onto the cushion in exhaustion after the small clash. It was as though a ripple of water swept down him from head to toe: a line of twisted magnification that left a wholly different image in its wake. He expanded slightly in all directions. His flesh colour lightened, revealing the veins underneath.

  Patchy grey stubble sprouted from his chin and jowls as he aged forty years. Both eyes seemed to sink down into his skull.

  Carmitha drew in a startled breath. It was the sagging jowls which clued her in. To confirm it, she unbuttoned his shirt. Johan wasn’t quite a classic famine victim; their skin was stretched tight over the skeleton, with muscles reduced to thin strings wound round their limbs. He had plenty of loose flesh, so much it hung off him in drooping folds. It was as if his skeleton had shrunk, leaving a sack of skin that was three sizes too big.

  There were big hints that this wasn’t just caused by lack of eating. The folds of flesh were strangely stiff, arranged in patterns that mocked the muscle pattern belonging to an exceptionally toned twenty-five-year-old.

  Some of the ridges were pink, as if rubbed sore; in several places they were so red she suspected they were long blood blisters.

  Shame welled up in Johan’s mind, responding to the dismay and tinges of disgust in the three people surrounding him. The emotional oscillation was so powerful Carmitha had to sit on the edge of the bench bes
ide him.

  What she wanted to do was turn and leave.

  “You wanted to be young again,” she said quietly. “Didn’t you?”

  “We’re building paradise,” he told her in desperation. “We can be whatever we want to be. It only takes a thought.”

  “No,” Carmitha said. “It takes a lot more than that. You haven’t even got a society that functions as well as Norfolk’s old one.”

  “This is different,” Johan insisted. “We’re changing our lives and this world together.”

  Carmitha bent over the trembling man until her face was a couple of inches from his. “You’re changing nothing. You are killing yourself.”

  “There’s no death here,” Susannah said sharply.

  “Really?” Carmitha asked. “How do you know?”

  “We don’t want death here, so there is none.”

  “We’re in a different place. Not a different existence. This is a giant step back from reality. It won’t last; it’s built on a wish, not a fact.”

  “We’re here for eternity,” Susannah said gruffly. “Get used to it.”

  “You think Johan is going to survive eternity? I’m not even sure I can get him through another week. Look at him, take a bloody good look. This is what your ridiculous powers have reduced him to; this … wreck. You haven’t been granted the power to work miracles, all you can do is corrupt nature.”

  “I’m not going to die,” Johan wheezed. “Please.” His hand gripped Carmitha’s arm, a hot, damp pressure. “You have to stop this. Make me better.”

  Carmitha gently pulled herself free. She started to study his self-inflicted impairments properly, trying to work out what the hell she could realistically achieve. “Most of the healing will be up to you. Even so, this convalescence will stretch the concept of holistic medicine to its limit.”

  “I’ll do anything. Anything!”

  “Humm.” She ran her hand over his chest, tracing the creases in the flesh, testing them for firmness as she would ripe fruit. “Okay. How old are you?”

  “What?” he asked, bewildered.