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“Thank you very much,” Jay said contritely. She looked at her mother again, warmed by the sight. “I thought you didn’t use stuff like providers on this planet, that you’d gone back to nature or something?”
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“Humans are never going to evolve into anything like you,” Jay said sadly. “We’d just get too bored.”
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“So will you help us expelling souls?”
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“How come?”
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“Then Father Horst can’t do it for entire planets?”
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“Okay,” Jay said reluctantly. She was right out of arguments and hope.
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“Thank you,” Tracy said weakly.
“I don’t understand,” Jay complained when they returned to the chalet.
“What are you so happy about? Corpus won’t intervene.”
Tracy sat in one of the deck chairs on the veranda, for once breaking her own rule and ordering a cup of tea from the provider. “You worked an absolute miracle, poppet. Fowin’s evaluation immediately becomes Corpus policy. It’s going to allow us to start a brand-new human colony if the Confederation falls apart.”
“Why is that good? The possessed won’t spread to every colony, you said that yourself.”
“I know. But it’s knowledge, you see. Humans found out about souls before they were socially advanced enough to deal with such a revelation. Now that knowledge is going to act like a mental contaminate among every culture. It’ll split humanity into a thousand squabbling factions—that’s already started with Kulu and its idea for a core-Confederation of wealthy worlds. Recovering from such a catastrophe will take generations, and even then the resolution will be influenced by what’s gone before.
What Corpus will do is begin a colony of, say, a million people from scratch. Observers will be authorized to purchase or acquire ova and sperm stored in zero-tau from medical and biological institutes all across the Confederation. The new colony’s start-up population will be gestated in exowombs and cared for by AIs during their childhood. That way, the information they’re given can be carefully edited. We can start with a high-technology society equivalent to the Confederation’s level of scientific knowledge and let it develop naturally.”
“Fowin can do all that?”
“Any Kiint can do that. Too many of them have conformist thought routines if you ask me. At least the Agarn Kiint make an effort to push the envelope. Not that it’s helped them with the Sleeping God.”
“What’s that?” Jay asked eagerly.
Tracy gave her a solemn smile. “Something an old race left behind a very long time ago. It’s created quite a dilemma for this civilization of so-called philosophy gurus. Not that there’s anything they can do to affect the situation. I think that’s what upset them the most. They’ve been the undisputed masters of this section of the universe for so long, finding something infinitely superior to themselves is rather shocking.
Perhaps that’s why Fowin was so accommodating today.” She stopped as Galic appeared at the foot of the veranda’s steps.
“You did it,” he said.
“Certainly did.” Tracy grinned back.
He came up and sat in the deckchair beside her. Before long, other retired observers had dropped by to discuss the new colony. They had an enthusiasm Jay hadn’t seen in them before, making them younger. Not once that whole evening did they discuss the past.
After dark, the party moved into Tracy’s lounge and started calling up star charts and planetary surveys. Arguments about the merits of possible locations raged good-naturedly. Most wanted to see the colony in the same galaxy as the Confederation, even if it had to be on the other side of the core.
Some time around midnight, Tracy realized Jay had fallen asleep on the settee. Galic picked her up and carried her into her bedroom. She never woke as he covered her with a blanket and put Prince Dell on the pillow beside her. He tiptoed out and closed the door before returning to the debate.
Louise had fled for half a mile down the Holloway Road. It was narrow at the top end, the pavements lined by tall brick buildings with crumbling windowsills and gutters. Their ground floors were small shops and cafes whose drab and grimy fronts were firmly shuttered. Her footsteps rattled off the stern walls, an auditory beacon signalling to everyone where she was.
Further down, the road began to widen out. The buildings along this section were better maintained, with clean bricks, glossy paintwork, and more prosperous businesses. Narrow side roads branched off every hundred yards or so, consisting of attractive, compact terrace houses converted into flats. Silver birches and cherry trees in their front gardens overhung the pavements, to give them the semblance of a quiet rural town.
The slope began to flatten out, revealing at least a mile of straight deserted road ahead of her. The larger commercial premises had taken over on either side, their hologram adverts swirling over the broad pavements, forming a skittering iridescent rainbow. Traffic control informationals hung in the air above road lanes at the main junctions, flashing their colour sequences down onto the empty carbon-concrete.
Louise slowed to a halt, panting heavily from the exertion. She couldn’t see anything move behind her, but it was so dark behind her she’d hardly see any pursuers until they were almost on top of her. Travelling on under the illumination of the holograms would be a mistake.
Tollington Way was fifty yards ahead of her, a side road leading into the backstreet maze that proliferated behind every major London thoroughfare.
Holding her sides against the ache of breathing, Louise jogged for a hundred yards down it, then stopped and hunched down in the deep shadows of a doorway.
Her soaking leggings were chafing her thighs, the T-shirt was disgustingly cold and clammy, and her feet felt as though they were shrivelling up. She was shuddering all over now from the cold. High above, small green lights flashed on the dome’s geodesic structure.
“Now what?” she gasped up at it. Charlie would be watching her through the sensors, seeing her infrared image constricted into a small ball. She datavised a general net access request. There was no response.
Escape and hide, Charlie had told her. Easy to say. But where? No one was going to open their door to a stranger on this night. She’d probably be shot just for knocking and asking.
A cat yowled and jumped off a nearby wall to run along the street. Louise was rolling to the ground and bringing the anti-memory weapon smoothly to bear before the noise had even registered properly. The cat, a furry tabby, loped
past, giving her a disdainful look.
She let out a brief sob as her muscles went limp. The weapons control program was still in primary mode. She took it off line as she climbed painfully to her feet, swatting dirt from her knees and the front of her waistcoat.
The cat was still visible, silhouetted against the hologram haze curtaining the end of Tollington Way, its tail swishing about arrogantly.
It was obvious she was still too close to Holloway Road; her pursuers would come down it, searching every side road. Fletcher said they could sense people without even having to see them.
Louise accessed the map of central London she’d stored in a neural nanonics memory cell, and began to walk away from the light. The anti-memory weapon was slipped back into her waistcoat pocket. She couldn’t work out which was the better way of avoiding search parties; staying in one place (assuming she could find a disused room or warehouse) or constantly moving round. The odds were uncomputable, principally because she didn’t know what she was facing. An organized systematic hunt, or a couple of possessed ambling round in a disinterested fashion.
Studying the map was almost meaningless, it didn’t relate to anything.
Without any goal, any destination, one street was the same as any other.
Its only use was in preventing her from crossing any of the main roads.
Maybe I should just find somewhere to hide. That’s what Charlie suggested.
On an impulse she called up the Ritz’s address. The map had to switch magnification factors the hotel was so far away from her.
That was out, then. Pity, no one would think to hunt for her there.
“Andy,” she whispered in shock. The one person she knew in London. And who would never turn her away.
She retrieved his eddress and ran it through the London directory she’d loaded along with all the other junk data recommended as essential personal survival tools for the arcology. Some people didn’t include their physical address with their net code. But Andy had. He lived in Islington, somewhere on Halton Road. A tiny blue star burned on the map.
Two miles away.
“Sweet Jesus, please let him be there.”
They chained Fletcher to the altar with manacles that had an electric current running through them, nullifying his energistic power. They ripped his clothes off, and cut obscene runes into his flesh. They shaved him. They burned a pile of Bibles and prayer books at his feet, and used the ash to smear a pentagon around his body. They hung an inverted cross above his skull, dangling by a rope that was fraying and rotting.
Ghosts slithered past, offering their desolate expressions in sympathy.
“Sorry,” was their only whisper. “So sorry.” Past heroes, humbled and degraded by their emasculation. The possessed spat at them, jeering them out of the way.
St Paul’s was illuminated with the mealy light from smoking iron braziers and racks of candles, leaving the vaulting ceiling invisible. Its new incense was the smell of sweaty bodies and fried burgerbap onions.
Prayers had been supplanted by rock music coming from a ghetto blaster, with the sounds of copulation heard between tracks. With his head forced back awkwardly against the stone, Fletcher could see several young possessed scrambling monkey-fashion over the stained glass windows, painting them over with sticky black fluid. A dark shape moved into his limited field of view.
Quinn bent over him. “Nice to see you again.”
“Enjoy your taunts while you can, you inhuman monster. You will issue them no longer once this day is through.”
“You’re good. I admire that. You got off Norfolk in time, which wasn’t easy. And you got down to Earth, which is fucking impossible. Very good. What did you do? Make a deal with the supercops?”
“I know naught of what you speak.”
“Shit. Okay, I’ll put it in real slow retard-speak for you. Who brought you down to Earth?”
When Fletcher didn’t answer, Quinn ran his hand over the iron band securing the man’s forehead. “I can have them increase the voltage you know. It can get a lot lot worse.”
“Only while I remain in this body.”
“Not such a dumb asshole after all.” Quinn crawled sinuously onto the altar beside Fletcher and moved his hooded head right up close. “Before we go any further,” he whispered, “what’s she like to fuck? Come on, you can tell me. Is she hot stuff? Or does she just lie there and take it like a corpse? Just between us. I won’t tell anyone. Does she give good head? Does she like it up the ass?”
“You are unfit to live, sir. I shall relish your fall, for it will be a great one from the height of your arrogance.”
“Don’t tell me you never tried her out? That Louise? She was with you for weeks and weeks. All that time. You must have.” Quinn withdrew a fraction, vaguely puzzled. “Shit, you’re the one that’s not human.”
“Your judgements have neither value nor relevance to me.”
“Oh yeah? There’s one judgement I might interest you in. I’m gonna find out what she’s like. My people will bring her here for me, and then you can watch me and Courtney go to work on her. I’ll make you watch. See how long you can keep that assholing superiority going then. Motherfucker!”
“You will have to find her first.”
“Oh I will. Believe it. Even if the morons I’ve got out there now don’t do it, His army will bring her to me. And then that last little thread of defiance you treasure will snap. You’ll scream and plead and cry, and curse your shitty false Lord for his divine inaction.”
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. The age of miracles may be past, but His messengers still walk amongst us. You will fail. It is written.”
“Bollocks. There are no messengers. And I’m busy burning the book it’s written in. It’s my Lord who comes, not yours. And He doesn’t move mysteriously. God’s Brother is very blunt, as you’re going to find out. Unless I spare you.”
“I would never be sullied by your mercy, sir.”
“No? Then how about sparing Louise? Join us. Get on the winning side.
I’ll give her straight back to you. Won’t touch a hair on her head.
Promise. And that’s a lot of hair.”
Fletcher gave a short, bitter laugh.
“I mean it,” Quinn said smoothly. “You’re smart, tough. I could use people like you. You were some sort of officer, right? Half these shitbrains I’ve got working for me can’t find their own ass with both hands. I could put you in charge of a whole bunch of them. You can make out any way you like, then. Marry Louise. Live in a palace. It can’t get any better.”
“I apologize, for I am mistaken. I had thought you dangerous. I see now you are merely small. Our Lord Jesus was offered the kingdoms of the world, and refused. I believe I can resist coveting another man’s wife and some fine living. Have you not yet learned that in this wretched state we can create anything we desire for ourselves? You can offer nothing of any value; you may only rain down empty threats.”
“Empty!” Quinn shouted in rage. “He is coming. My Lord, not yours. If you don’t believe me, ask the ghosts. They can hear the dark angels draw near. His Night will fall. That is the new miracle.”
“Day follows night, as it is now and always will be. Amen.”
Quinn backed off the altar and stood up. He held an anti-memory weapon in front of Fletcher’s face. “Okay, fun-time’s over, dickhead; tell me what this is.”
“I do not know, sir.”
“You were shooting it about pretty freely before. Was it meant for me? Is that why the supercops let you down here? Were you trying to find me for them?” Quinn beckoned.
Frenkel stepped forwards and dumped Billy-Joe’s body on the altar next to Fletcher. The young man’s head flopped about. His eyes were open, unfocused, and he was still breathing.
“We found him like this down at the bottom of the Archway tower. The big black dude managed to shoot him with one of these gadgets before my troops took him out. Now, I can understand a weap
on that forces possessors out of their host body. Every fucking scientist in the Confederation must be working on that right now. But this is a little more powerful, isn’t it? Billy-Joe wasn’t a possessed, but it still kicked his soul’s ass out of there.” Quinn smiled, fangs pressing up into white lips as he sensed the worry trickle into Fletcher’s thoughts. “Or did it do more than that? Huh? Those supercops play for the highest stakes there are. They know I can just come back in another body and start the whole crusade up again. Because I can’t die, now can I? We’re all immortal now.”
Fletcher’s face became a mask of stubborn determination.
“Ah,” Quinn said softly. He held the weapon up, regarding it with a new respect. “Let’s try a little experiment, shall we?” His hand made a pass over Billy-Joe, applying energistic force to open a pathway to the beyond. A soul struggled its way up into Billy-Joe’s body. He sat up, wheezing for breath, looking round avidly.
“How about that?” Quinn marvelled. “No strain, no pain. We can speed up the whole resurrection game.” He grinned down at Fletcher. “You know what, in the wrong hands this little toy you brought me could be really dangerous.”
The tenement on Halton Road consisted of three low-cost apartment towers intended for the poor and the elderly. A third of the residents still fell into that category, the rest worked in the black cash economy or lived off the dole, spending their days stimmed out on cheap activant programs and home-synthesised drugs. There were no other amenities for them. The ground between the twenty-storey towers was a concrete yard walled in by rows of small garages. Fading white lines marked out baseball and football pitches, though the baskets and goal posts had been torn out of the ground decades ago. Despite its classical urban erosion demeanour, it was a perfect site for The Disco At The End Of The World.
Andy had been dancing on the worn concrete since sundown, embracing the communal madness. Out of all London’s residents, the type that lived in the tenement had the least to lose when the possessed came marching out of the darkness. So … sod it. If you are absolutely going to get captured by the evil dead/tortured/your body consumed by ghouls/live the rest of eternity as a zombie slave, you might as well have one last decent party before it happens.
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