Ideally, what Gabriel would prefer to do would be to use the Pinians to start bringing energy through the veil, and then send them back into hiding. He thought this was a safe enough plan, because it was highly unlikely the Vandemar sisters would all die sufficiently simultaneously to bring the next incarnation into tighter focus. Even if they believed him about the whole convoluted process of dragging them back out of their human disguises, they weren’t going to go for that solution.
And Roon appeared to be close to a workable solution to the energy side of it already. In fact, at this point he believed she’d completed the work on the ‘converters’ that would do the job at this end, so all that remained was figuring out the best way to get the Destarion to play along. Preferably without involving the Demons. Or, ideally, the Destarion.
He chuckled softly to himself. All that remained, indeed.
Still, as long as the conduit energy was available, the Pinians could drift back into hiding for all Gabriel cared. It had to be better than letting them get subverted by Mercy and Fury. Even if getting the Disciples to take charge of the planet and learn responsibility had been the point of the exile – and from what little he’d managed to pick up from Stormburg, Gabriel had a feeling that wasn’t the main point at all – the rules had changed. There was no ending to this story where the Disciples took over this world, took command of these humans, and everything turned out fine.
No, best not to let the Pinians return to power. Let them go, let the exile extend, stretch out beyond even the most optimistic projections of human survival, until the veil finally lifted and everyone got a surprise. Even the Infinites? Well it’s not like anything surprised Them, but still…
The question he’d been battling with was whether the Pinians would willingly give up their identities, their very selves, for the dubious benefit of humanity and Gabriel’s vindictive little plan. It didn’t really matter, of course, since as far as he could tell, the two alternatives the Pinians faced were going along with his plan and forgetting everything once again, or going along with Stormburg’s plan and performing a suicide pact of some sort.
It was all very well to plot and scheme and treat people as pieces on a board, to have a plan and to decide that self-sacrifice was for suckers and sacrificing others was justifiable … that was all very well, but then you met them.
And then they made you a luxurious air-conditioned chapel with a home cinema. And oh yes, they were practically as human as every other broken ape on this poisoned rock.
So what did you do then?
It might have been better if he’d never started to guide them. But no, that would have ended badly too. One way or another, Stormburg’s plan was showing results on this side of the veil, and the Demons were closing in. The simple truth was, there was no tidy way out of this.
He was pulled from his gloomy reverie by an insistent little flashing light on the control panel of his pulpit entertainment centre. From the armchair where he was sitting, the set of interfaces looked like something out of a starship – in the past couple of weeks he’d mastered some of the controls but others were still a complete mystery.
This one, he thought as he rose, stretched, grimaced and then stumped over to the pulpit, was some sort of internal communication network. He tapped it cautiously.
- - - Intruder in house possible. - - -
He frowned as he read the little message. “What?” he said quietly. “Intruder possible? What does that even mean?”
- - - Security system indeterminately compromised + First-hand data largely inaccessible. - - -
“Indeterminately compromised? Largely inaccessible? What’s that–”
- - - It means my data set is incomplete for a variety of reasons. - - -
“Are you … hearing my voice?” Gabriel said, feeling intensely stupid.
- - - Yes, Gabriel. I am Osrai + Oræl Systems Ratified Artificial Intelligence. - - -
He felt himself start at the name, a bizarre coincidence after his maudlin reflections on the story of Oræl the Vengeful. “Oh,” he said, remembering something Ariel had told him. “Roon’s smart computer system thing.”
- - - Yes. I am Roon’s smart computer system thing. - - -
Add ‘sarcastic’ to that, Gabriel thought, squinting at the display. “I didn’t realise you were patched into the chapel.”
- - - I was not. My networking capability is severely limited for safety reasons until I am more stable + I cannot access critical internal or external systems + I was however able to connect to the new communications system for this wing due to a previously-undetected gap written into the system upgrades. - - -
“So … you can tell me there’s probably an intruder in the house, but you can’t do anything else about it?”
- - - Correct. Key systems in the workshop went offline and I am unable to communicate with Roon. This was unexpected, and I have combined this knowledge with some other inbound data from the house systems and the aforementioned programming gap and have concluded that + Intruder in house possible. - - -
“And you’re aware that I can’t actually leave the chapel area?”
- - - No, I was not aware of this. - - -
“Well, it’s true.”
- - - Is there a problem with the doors? - - -
“No,” Gabriel said, “there’s no problem with … look, how about I try to call the police or the private security team or whoever? I assume the estate has a heap of those.”
- - - Yes, but communication and security networks are currently compromised + It is possible that severed or altered communication protocols will alert external security, but it is also likely that false protocol has been laid over the breach to give the appearance everything is fine. - - -
“That sounds like really high-level stuff for burglars,” Gabriel said with a sinking feeling. Of course, he knew that with Ash over in the Floods and Ariel in Japan for a shoot, and him trapped in the holy wing, the estate would never be more vulnerable.
- - - Burglary is not a high-probability risk in this case. - - -
“You don’t say,” Gabriel growled. “Okay, can you keep looking for ways to communicate with the outside or get any sort of warning to anybody? Does that even make sense for me to ask – I mean, if there was a way, you would have found it already, right?”
- - - Probably. However, I will continue looking for loopholes and weaknesses that may not have been considered. - - -
“Okay, good.”
Gabriel attempted half-heartedly to use the communications within the chapel, and his own little portable interface. All were, as Osrai had predicted, well and truly disconnected. And aside from the police, the army, and the church – any or all of whom could have been infiltrated by the enemy – there were very few people he could have called. The other Angels were as trapped as he was, and could never have arrived in time anyway. Laetitia was down for the daylight hours.
And so he did what he could without the benefit of technology. He went to the corridor, stood on the boundary of the consecrated ground, and called for Jarvis, called for Agñasta, called for Roon, for anybody. There was no response but his own echoes. He crossed to the back door and flung it open, grimacing instinctively in the searing-hot daylight that flooded in. He stood on the threshold, careful not to go past that invisible boundary, and yelled. This gave him a momentary flush of embarrassment, but he suppressed it and yelled again.
Nothing. It was possible that Tumblehedge’s distant neighbours didn’t even hear him.
He launched himself towards the ceiling. He’d conducted experiments, of course, into just how far holy ground extended. It was variable, but generally didn’t extend far above the roof of the consecrated building. Something about the psychology of it, the priest blessing a house, not a volume of space. In the case of Tumblehedge, already butting up against Demon-tainted ground and its chapel only filling a wing of the estate, it was even more complicated. Even as he flung himself into the vault of the auditorium ceiling, G
abriel knew it was pointless. He would achieve as much by just continuing to yell from the doors.
That afternoon was one of the longest in the hundreds of thousands Gabriel could remember enduring. The one piece of good news came when Osrai blinked back a message saying it had managed to contact Ariel, or at least her publicist on board her jet, or her jet itself or something. They were running into the same security and communications smothering issues Gabriel and the computer were facing, but at least there were now more people involved. Ariel would most likely drop what she was doing and fly back directly, but that still meant she’d be a solid twelve hours in transit, at best – and that was if she left immediately.
When Tumblehedge began to burn at about quarter to eight that evening, Gabriel wondered why he hadn’t thought of doing it first.
THE COST OF FAILURE
Sloane was furious, and more than a little stricken with a sort of superstitious dread, which only served to make him angrier. He wasn’t sure whether he was more afraid of Roon or Mister Fagin at this point, and that made him angry too. He never lost control of his emotions, and that made him angrier still. But what made him angriest of all was the fact that she hadn’t said she was sorry.
Roon Cyclopatra Vandemar, third triplet of Lord Conroy and Lady Distressa Vandemar, had said exactly four words to him before his failure became irretrievably obvious. No, she’d said at the outset, when he’d started with some innocuous questions about her research. Then she had just stared at him, solemnly, intently, her eyes seeming to pierce him. She’d stared at him so insistently and so unsettlingly that he’d had to take her eyes from her – well ahead of his intended schedule.
And then, much, much later, as the sun sank towards the horizon outside and he’d begun to realise he was not going to get any answers from this ragged, flayed freak of nature, he’d raised the simple subject of apology, and the relief it would bring – relief, in every sense. And that was when she’d opened her lipless, mostly-toothless, drooling mouth and tilted her blind, glistening wet head as though she was about to whisper something, and Sloane had squeaked across the blood-slick floor, past the scraps of her body he’d already cut away, and leaned in to listen. And she’d said the other three words. She’d heaved them out of her broken body, as if each one was a stone she was dropping onto his coffin.
You.
Hucking.
Idiot.
And Sloane had lost control, and Sloane never lost control. He tried to continue, but every time he began to work he felt the rage deepening his cuts, shaking his hands, making him slash and squeeze and clench. The words had awakened the same helplessness, the same anger as the Mulqueen woman’s final utterance had lit in his belly. The very same. And it was clear, through every one of his increasingly-mortifying losses of control, that she was not going to say another word. She wasn’t even going to scream.
The sun was sinking steadily and he was aware of his time constraints. Finally, knowing he’d already critically failed to quit while he was ahead, he dragged her bleeding body out of the garage and propped it up against the door of the bright blue sports car standing in the driveway. He wanted her to watch while he set off the incendiaries he’d set up around the main building in the process of subduing the other residents. He wanted her to watch while her life’s work – aside from the prototypes and data cards he’d already carefully packed into his carry case – and her family home burned to the ground.
It occurred to him, in some deep-background part of his mind, that she couldn’t really watch – not anymore. He’d taken her eyes, because she wouldn’t stop staring at him. But then, she hadn’t really stopped after that, had she? He could still feel her gaze, serious and all-seeing, weighing him and measuring him and finding him wanting. If she could do that, she could watch her life burn. It was the least she could do.
He peeled off his gloves and clinical wraps, bunching them and squeezing the sterile polymer into a dense ball that he stuffed in his pocket. Then he crouched behind the car as the incendiaries lit up and the initial heat baked out, adding hideous burns to Roon’s already-insurmountable injuries where she sat slumped and misshapen against the opposite door. After a few moments he rose back to his feet, squinting into the heat, and…
He snarled, but only briefly. The incendiaries had gone off, but the workshop didn’t seem to be burning at all. He’d placed his third incendiary in an interconnecting spot and hadn’t been seriously expecting the fire-prevention systems to let the workshops burn – one of the rooms had a forge in it, and that required some fairly impressive health and safety measures – but even so, for the area not to burn at all was … impressive.
It may actually have been for the best, he realised as he backed away from the savage heat. The fire engulfing the rest of the sprawling building was intense enough to bake the air around them. Far beyond the capacity of the fire-prevention systems at this point. If the garage had gone up – and from what he’d seen there was a lot of volatile crap in there, quite aside from the forge and elated propellants – the car would probably have spontaneously exploded too.
It wasn’t a huge problem. Even with the workshops undamaged, none of their items would be any use without Roon, and she was gone – but it was another slip. Another mistake. While he had been as careful as ever not to leave evidence behind, he’d left his own workshop in that garage, so to speak.
Well, there was nothing for it. Lifting the heavy bag of machinery and slinging it over his shoulder, he strode briskly for the edge of the estate where he’d parked his own nondescript vehicle. He moved at an angle away from the nearest public streets, where the tiny figures of onlookers were already gathering. He had to skirt wider than expected. The fire was intensifying. Most of the estate was burning. Australian summer was hot and dry. It was where fire lived.
Mister Fagin would not be pleased.
He jumped into the car and sped away, once again planning his route carefully to avoid traffic, scrutiny, incoming emergency vehicles. The first thing he needed to do was get to his safehouse and hole up. No, that was the second thing he needed to do. The first thing he needed to do was link back into the network patches he’d set up, and purge the last data about his presence from whatever was left of the estate’s system. There would be some shreds of data on external file blocks, a trail leading back to the renovation project…
No. The first thing he needed to do was get the material in his carry case to a private courier and have it shipped directly to Mister Fagin’s receiving company. It was the only thing that might – might – ameliorate Mister Fagin’s disappointment.
Too many mistakes. Sloane wasn’t used to not being able to think straight. He loosened his grip on the steering wheel for a moment, then tightened it again the moment his hands started to shake. He could still feel her staring at him.
You. Hucking. Idiot.
A sob keened from between his clenched teeth. The cost of failure was absolutely no secret to Augustus Sloane – no, not to him of all people. And his Atonement, deferred for twenty-six years, was likely to be severe.
THE FALL OF TUMBLEHEDGE
Despite a suspicious lack of security and emergency communications from the estate, and a far more understandable media and virtual blackout that would prevent news of the tragedy from being fed to every disasterphile on the globe, the fire department, police and ambulances managed to arrive within ten minutes of what the few eyewitnesses described as a series of explosions.
The eyewitnesses had all been quite a long way away, and it was apparent at a glance that the fire had been caused by a some sort of incendiary devices. The explosions had probably been vehicles and other fuel tanks inside the building, but it was hard to tell. The parts of the estate that had burned – and that was all of it, aside from a carport at the front and one of the wings that had fire suppression systems that hadn’t been compromised – had burned furiously, and totally.
The first arrivals were a paramedic team, a pair of police officers an
d a fleet of trucks from the fire department. The latter went immediately to work on stopping the blaze – fires had a nasty habit of getting out of control in the dry season – while the paramedics hurried to the injured resident and the police stood by their car feeling a bit pointless for the time being.
“Oh my God,” the lead medic stepped back from the charred shape curled like a mummy against the side of the scorched car. The car’s tyres had melted. So had a lot of the victim. The other two medics flinched, hesitating until their leader moved back in. At least none of them threw up. “Oh my God, she’s alive. Get the stretcher.”
For a while, then, there was a lot of shouting and running back and forth with different equipment as they laid the victim down and tried to get her stabilised. This went on while the fire died and the sun slowly dipped towards the Indian ocean.
One of the firefighters came over to the police and pulled off her helmet.
“That wing there was newly-renovated according to the plans that were registered,” she reported. “It had a separate fire control system. Same as that … garage,” she hesitated, then pointed. The police noted her body language. There was something wrong with the garage, “That space didn’t seem to get hit anyway, by whatever devices they used to set off the fires. The rest … it’s all gone,” she looked at the medics, who were preparing the patient on the stretcher, getting ready to move her to the ambulance. “So that’s…?”
“Apparently she was inside,” one officer said. “Alive, but she was badly burned.”
“Looked like more than just burns,” the other officer said. “She was … she was fucked up. I didn’t even know it was a she. I thought maybe she got thrown out by the explosion, wound up against the car there.”
Bad Cow Page 66