The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “We are here to formulate future policy towards the possessed situation,” Kelman Mountjoy said. “It’s not something the old Confederation is capable of addressing satisfactorily.”

  “The old Confederation?”

  “Yes. We are proposing a restructuring.”

  Samual Aleksandrovich listened in growing dismay as the Kulu foreign minister explained the reasoning behind the core-Confederation idea.

  Stopping the slow spread of possession, strengthening the defences of the key star systems. Establishing a solid, economically stable society capable of finding an overall solution.

  “Do you propose including the Edenists?” Samual asked when he’d finished.

  “They were not receptive to the concept,” Kelman said. “However, since they have a reserve position along very similar lines, their ultimate inclusion is highly probable. We would have no problem continuing to trade with them, as they are by and large immune to the kind of infiltration that results from quarantine-busting flights.”

  “And they supply every Adamist world with energy,” Samual said scathingly.

  Kelman managed not to smile. “Not all,” he said softly. Samual turned to the President. “You cannot allow this to happen, it is economic apartheid. It transgresses every ethic of equality which the Confederation represents. We must protect everybody alike.”

  “The Navy isn’t even capable of doing that now,” Olton Haaker said sadly.

  “And you’ve seen the economic projections my office compiled. We cannot afford the current level of deployment, let alone sustain it for any reasonable length of time. Something has to give, Samual.”

  “In effect, it’s already given,” Kelman said. “The attack on Arnstadt and New California was an admission that we can no longer afford to indulge the current status quo. The Polity Council chose, and you agreed, that we had to lose those planets in order to help safeguard the rest. The core-Confederation is the logical conclusion of that development. It safeguards our entire race by ensuring that there will always be a part of it free from possession and able to search for a solution.”

  “I find it interesting that your proposal safeguards only your part of the human race. The rich section.”

  “Firstly, by ending the unrealistic level of subsidy our worlds extend to stage-two star systems, they will also contract and therefore become safer. Secondly, there is no point in the richer star systems impoverishing and weakening themselves when to do so will not result in a solution. We have to address the real facts, and do so with resolution.”

  “The quarantine works. In time, and if everyone pools their intelligence data, we can end the illegal flights. There is no more Organization; Capone has surrendered New California to Admiral Kolhammer.”

  “These arguments are the ebb and flow in the tide of obsolete politics,” Kelman said. “Yes, you’ve nullified Capone. But we’ve now lost Earth.

  Mortonridge has been effectively liberated, but at a shocking price.

  Zero-tau can de-possess someone, but the released body will be plagued with cancer and tie up our medical facilities for years. This has all got to stop. A line must be drawn under the past in order to free our future.”

  “You approach this as if possession is the whole problem,” Samual said. “It is not, it is a spinoff from the fact we have immortal souls and some of them are entrapped in the beyond. The answer to this—how we learn to live with such knowledge, whatever it is—must be embraced by the entire human race; from some delinquent mugger on a stage-one colony planet right up to your king. We have to face this as one. If you split us up, you cannot reach and educate the very people who are most likely to be blighted by this revelation. I cannot agree to this. I will not agree to this.”

  “Samual, you have to,” the President said. “Without funding from the core-Confederation worlds, there can be no Navy.”

  “Every planetary system funds the Confederation Navy.”

  “Not equally, they don’t,” said Verano, the New Washington ambassador.

  “Between us, the worlds proposing to form the core-Confederation provide eighty per cent of your overall funding.”

  “You can’t just split … Ah! Now I understand.” Samual gave Olton Haaker a contemptuous look. “Did they offer you the new presidency in exchange for pushing the transition? You might call this coalition the core-Confederation, but in effect you’d all be withdrawing from the actual Confederation. There is no continuation, certainly not in legal terms. Every one of my officers renounced their national citizenship upon joining; the Confederation Navy is responsible to the Assembly in its entirety, not special interest blocs.”

  “A hell of a lot of your fleets are made up from national detachments,” Verano said hotly. “They will be taken back along with fleet bases. You’d be left with ships you couldn’t support in star systems you couldn’t defend.”

  Kelman held up a hand, raising his index finger, which silenced the ambassador. “The Navy will do as you say, Samual, we all acknowledge that. As for legality and ownership, ambassador Verano has a point. We have paid for those ships.”

  “And the core-Confederation would become the new law,” Samual said.

  “Precisely. You want to protect humanity, then become a realist. The core-Confederation will be brought into existence. You understand politics probably better than most of us; you would never have been appointed First Admiral otherwise. We have decided this is the best way our interests are served. We are doing it so that ultimately a solution will be achieved. It’s in our own petty selfish interest to make sure a solution is found, God knows I have no wish to die now I know what awaits. If nothing else, you can trust us to put unlimited resources into the problem. Help us safeguard our boundaries, Admiral, bring the fleet over to the core-Confederation. We are the guarantee of ultimate success for our whole race. That is what you were sworn to protect, I believe.”

  “I do not need reminding of my honour by you,” Samual said.

  “I apologise.”

  “I will need to think about this before I give you an answer.” He rose to his feet. “I will also consult my senior officers.”

  Kelman bowed. “I know this is difficult. I’m sorry you were ever put in such a position.”

  Samual didn’t speak to his two aides until he was back on the Marine flyer and heading up to the orbiting station that was serving as his new headquarters.

  “Can the remaining star systems afford to keep the Navy going by themselves?” al-Sahhaf asked.

  “I doubt it,” Samual said. “God damn it, they’ll be left absolutely defenceless.”

  “A neat piece of applied logic,” Keaton said. “They are going to be left defenceless anyway. If you don’t bring the Navy to the core-Confederation, then you will have achieved nothing for them, and weakened the core-Confederation at the same time.”

  “Are you saying we should go along with this?”

  “Personally sir, no I don’t. But it’s the oldest political squeeze manoeuvre there is. If we’re left out in the cold we can achieve nothing. If we join up, then there’s the opportunity to influence policy from inside, and from a considerable position of strength.”

  “Lord Mountjoy isn’t stupid,” al-Sahhaf said. “He’ll be willing to negotiate with you in private. Perhaps we can maintain the CNIS throughout the class-two star systems, continue to provide the governments intelligence on possessed movements.”

  “Yes,” Samual said. “Mountjoy would favour that, or something very similar. It’s the ebb and flow of politics.”

  “Do you want to meet him, sir?” Keaton asked.

  “That almost sounds as though you’re putting temptation in my way, Captain.”

  “No, sir!”

  “Well, I don’t want to meet him. Not yet. I am not prepared to see the Navy disbanded and junked through my stubbornness. It’s a powerful force to counter the possessed at a physical level, and that must not be lost to the human race. I need to talk this through with Lalwani,
and see if the Edenists would consider supporting the fleet. If they can’t, then I’ll meet Mountjoy and discuss handing it over to the core-Confederation.

  We must remember that military force ultimately exists to serve the civilian populace, even though we might despise their choice of leaders.”

  The intensity of the cold was astonishing. Waves of it slithered right through every part of the escape pod, washing the heat away. The temperature sink was so profound it began to alter the colour of plastic components, bleaching them like a dose of ultra violet light. Tolton’s breath condensed into a layer of iron-hard frost on every surface.

  They’d taken the survival clothing from the supply lockers, and he’d put on as many layers as it was physically possible to do. He looked even fatter than Dariat, his face shrouded by thick bandages of cloth he’d wound round and round to protect his ears and neck. His exposed skin had acquired its own sprinkling of frost, each eyelash resembling a miniature icicle.

  The pod’s power cells were draining away as fast as the heat. At first the environmental circuit had chugged away merrily, heating the air and extracting the water vapour. Then they ran a simple analysis and realized that at their current rate of use the cells would be empty in forty minutes. Dariat slowly shut down all the pod’s systems, like navigation and communications, and thrusters. Then when Tolton was snug in two heated suits and all his insulated clothes, he switched off everything except the carbon dioxide scrubber and a single fan. At that consumption rate, the power cells should have lasted two days.

  Tolton’s heated suits went through their inventory of power cells a lot quicker than they’d expected. The last one was exhausted fifteen hours after they’d entered the mélange. After that he started drinking soup out of self-heating sachets.

  “How much longer is the hull going to hold out?” he asked between juddering sips. He was wearing so much clothing he couldn’t bend his arms, so Dariat had to hold the sachet nipple to his lips.

  “Not sure. My extra senses aren’t up to that kind of work.” Dariat beat his own arms against his chest. The cold didn’t affect him as badly, but even so he’d clad himself in several woolly sweaters and some thick track suit bottoms. “The nulltherm foam has probably gone by now. The hull will just evaporate away until it’s so thin the pressure from the mélange implodes us. It’ll be quick.”

  “Pity. I could do with feeling something. Bit of pain would be a nice sensation right now.”

  Dariat grinned over at his friend. Tolton’s lips were jet black, the skin peeling away.

  “What’s wrong?” Tolton croaked.

  “Nothing. Just thinking, we could try firing one of the rockets. Maybe that would heat the pod up a bit.”

  “Yeah. It would push us out to the other side quicker, too.”

  “ ’Bout time that happened. So, if you could have anything you wanted waiting for us, what would it be?”

  “Tropical island, with beaches stretching on for kilometres. Sea as warm as bathwater.”

  “Any women there?”

  “Oh God yes.” He blinked, and his lashes stuck together. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Lucky you. Do you know what a sight you are?”

  “What about you? What do you want waiting on the other side?”

  “You know that: Anastasia. I lived for her. I died for her. I sacrificed my soul for her … well, her sister anyway. I thought she might be watching at the time. Wanted to make a good impression.”

  “Don’t worry, you already have, man. I keep telling you, a love like yours is going to make her giddy. The chicks really dig that kind of mad devotion crap.”

  “You’re the most insensitive poet I’ve ever met.”

  “Street poet. I don’t do the roses and chocolates routine, I’m too much of a realist.”

  “I bet roses and chocolates pay more.” When there was no answer, Dariat took a close look at Tolton’s face. He was still breathing, but very slowly, air whistling past the fangs of ice crusting his mouth. There were no shivers any more.

  Dariat rolled back onto his own acceleration couch and waited patiently.

  It took another twenty minutes before Tolton’s ghost rose up out of the bloated bundle of fabric. He took one astounded look at Dariat, then put his head back and laughed.

  “Oh shit, will you grab a load of this. I’m the soul of a poet.” The laughter degenerated into sobbing. “The soul of a poet. Get it? You’re not laughing. You’re not laughing and it’s fucking funny. It’s the last funny thing you’ll ever know for the rest of all eternity. Why aren’t you laughing?”

  “Shush.” Dariat’s head came up. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear them? There’s a billion trillion souls out there. Of course I can fucking hear them.”

  “No. Not the souls in the mélange. I thought I heard someone calling. A human voice.”

  Chapter 14

  It had been a long night for Fletcher Christian. They’d kept him chained to the altar with electricity coursing through him while the madness whirled all around. He’d seen Dexter’s followers chopping up the beautifully crafted wooden model of St Paul’s which Sir Christopher Wren had built to show off his dream, throwing splintered fragments into the iron braziers which now illuminated the building. The silent slaughter as people were dragged up to the altar where Dexter waited with the anti-memory weapon. Fletcher wept as their souls were destroyed in readiness for their bodies to be replenished by those from the beyond, personalities more compliant to the dark Messiah’s wishes. Salty tears leaked into the runes mutilating his cheeks, stinging like acid.

  Courtney’s crazed shrieking laugh as Dexter ravaged her until blood flowed and skin blistered.

  Sacrilege. Murder. Barbarism. It never stopped. Each act pounding away at the few senses he had remaining. He recited the Lord’s Prayer over and over until Dexter heard him, and the possessed closed in, screaming some obscene chant in counter. Their cruel words slipped into him with the force of daggers, their joy in evil tormenting him into silence. He feared his mind would snap from the pressure of such depravity.

  Throughout it all, the font of energistic power increased along with their numbers, spreading out to engulf mind and matter alike. This was not the shared longing he’d known on Norfolk, the genuine appetite to hide from emptiness. Here Dexter absorbed what strength his followers offered and forged its shape with his own damned desires.

  As the sullied red light crept through the open door, mocking the night, Fletcher finally heard the cries of the fallen angels. On top of everything else, their diabolical poignancy nearly broke his resolve.

  Surely not even Dexter could think of letting such beasts loose upon the earth.

  “No,” Fletcher wailed. “You cannot bring them forth. It is madness. Madness. They will consume us all.”

  Dexter’s face slid into view above him, coldly radiant with satisfaction.

  “About fucking time you understood.”

  Lady Macbeth emerged from her jump deep in interstellar space, one thousand nine hundred light years from the Confederation. The sensation of isolation and loneliness among those on board was nothing to how small that distance made them feel.

  Star tracker sensors slid out of their recesses, gathering up the faint harvest of photons. Navigation programs correlated what was there, defining their position.

  Joshua triangulated on their target, an unremarkable point of light only thirty-two light-years away now. Their next jump coordinate sprang into his mind, blinking purple at the end of a long neuroiconic tube of orange circles. The star was slightly to one side of it, a distance that represented relative delta-V. Starship and star were still moving at very different velocities as they orbited the galactic core.

  “Stand by,” he said. “Accelerating.”

  There were groans across the bridge. They dried up soon enough as he activated the antimatter drive. Four gees pushed everyone down into their couches except for Kempster Getchell; the old astronomer had gone int
o a zero-tau pod after the second jump. “Too much for my bones,” he’d complained gamely. “Fetch me out when we get there.”

  Everyone else stuck it out. Not that the crew had a choice. Seventeen jumps in twenty-three hours, each one fifteen light-years long. In itself, probably a record. Nobody was counting now; they’d devoted themselves entirely to keeping the systems functioning smoothly, a professionalism not many could match. Pride had increased to accompany an edgy anticipation as the Sleeping God star grew closer.

  Joshua remained in his acceleration couch, piloting them to each coordinate with his usual sublime competence. Nothing much was said as the Orion Nebula shrank away behind them. It was smaller in every star tracker scan, dwindling down to a diminutive fuzzy patch of light the last familiar astronomical feature left in the universe. Every fusion generator was running at maximum capacity, recharging the nodes fast.

  That was why Joshua used high gees between coordinates, instead of the usual one tenth. Time. It had become the most precious commodity left to him.

  Instinct drove him on. That enigmatic, bland star holding steady at the apex of the sensor lock was giving out the same siren song as those strikes in the Ruin Ring once had. So much had happened on this flight.

  So much of his own hope had been invested now. He couldn’t, didn’t, believe that it had all been for nothing. The Sleeping God existed. A xenoc artefact, powerful enough to interest the Kiint. They’d been right all along, the discoveries made throughout the flight continually emphasising its importance.

  “Nodes charged and ready, Captain,” Dahybi reported.

  “Thanks,” Joshua said. He automatically ran a vector check. The old girl was performing well. Three more hours, two more jumps, and they’d be there. The flight would be over. That was the part he found hard to credit. There were so many roots elevating the Lady Mac to this encounter. Kelly Tirell and the mercs back on Lalonde. Jay Hilton and Haile (wherever they were now). Tranquillity escaping the Organization fleet. Further back than that, a single message being passed across 1,500 light-years of empty space, loyally relayed from star to star by a species that never should have escaped their sun’s expansion in the first place. And Swantic-LI, finding the Sleeping God originally. Improbable chances in an event chain 15,000 years long linking that single unlikely meeting to the fate of an entire species.