The Naked God - Flight nd-5

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Given the development level of cancers we’ve seen on the de-possessed so far, there will be a rapid and extremely high mortality rate among their respective populations if they remain untreated.”

  “That’s a very clinical way of putting it, lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir. You should also consider, the possessing souls are either unaware of the damage they’re inflicting on their hosts, or are unable to cure it. Their energistic power is capable of repairing physical injury, but we haven’t seen them deal with this kind of illness yet. It may be they can’t.”

  “What are you getting at?” Lalwani asked.

  “Unless the biochemical environment on the planets they’ve removed from this universe is radically different in some way, then the possessed will all be suffering like this no matter where they are. In which case, if they don’t start to effect some kind of treatment, their host bodies might die.”

  Lalwani’s shock was so vehement she couldn’t prevent some of it from leaking into the general affinity band. Edenists in the asteroid automatically opened their minds, proffering emotional support.

  Reluctantly, Lalwani refused. “Thirty planetary populations?” she demanded, incredulous. She glanced from the lieutenant to the First Admiral. “You knew?”

  “I accessed the report this morning,” Samual admitted. “And I haven’t informed the President, yet. Let him get on top of the Assembly again before we break news like this.”

  “Dear God,” Kolhammer muttered. “If we pull them back from wherever they’ve gone, we won’t be able to save them. And if we leave them alone, they won’t survive either.” He gave Keaton a look that was almost a plea. “Did the medical office come up with any ideas?”

  “Yes sir, they had two.”

  “Finally! Someone with some bloody initiative. What are they?”

  “The first is fairly simple. We broadcast a warning to the possessed groups we know are still remaining in this universe. Ask them to stop trying to change the appearance of their host bodies. It should appeal to their own self interest.”

  “If they don’t just ignore it as propaganda,” Lalwani said. “By the time a tumour actually becomes noticeable, it’s usually too late for primitive medical treatments.”

  “Nonetheless, we will definitely proceed with that option,” Samual said.

  “And the second?” Kolhammer asked.

  “We formally request the Kiint ambassador for help.”

  Kolhammer let out a disgusted breath. “Ha! Those bastards won’t help us. They’ve already made that clear enough.”

  “Um, sir?” Keaton said. He gave the First Admiral a glance, and received a nod of permission. “They said they wouldn’t provide us with a solution to possession. In this case, we’re just asking them for material aid. We know they have a more sophisticated technology than ours; human companies have been buying upgrades and improvements for a variety of products ever since we made contact with them. And now with the Tranquillity incident we know they haven’t abandoned their manufacturing base as thoroughly as they claimed. They may well be able to produce the kind of medical systems we require in the quantities we’ll need. After all, we’ll only have a use for them if we solve the possession problem for ourselves. If the Kiint are as sympathetic as they assure us they are, then there is a good chance they’ll say yes.”

  “Excellent analysis,” Lalwani said. “We can’t possibly ignore the option.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” Samual said. “In fact, I’ve already requested a personal meeting with Ambassador Roulor. I’ll sound him out about the prospect.”

  “Good move,” Kolhammer said. “That’s a commendable advisory team your medical office put together, Samual.”

  It felt strange to be back. Quinn stalked through the ghost realm, observing the sect’s Edmonton headquarters. His peculiar, hazy perception of the real world from this shadowed existence might account for his new interpretation of the familiar rooms and corridors. Or it could just be time and a very different attitude to when he was last here.

  This had been home for many years. A place of refuge and of terror. Now it was just a cluster of gloomy chambers, devoid of any appeal or memories. The routine of the place hadn’t changed, though it was slowing down, much to the fury of the senior acolytes. He smiled as they shouted and brutalized the juniors. His fault. His word was spreading.

  All of Edmonton would soon be aware of his arrival. So far he’d taken over eight covens, and was ready to visit the remainder. Those that had fallen under his thrall were now actively pursuing the will of God’s Brother. Over the last few days he’d been dispatching several small groups to attack strategic sections of the arcology’s infrastructure. Generators, water stations, transport junctions; they’d all been damaged to some degree. It was primitive stuff, chemical explosives concocted from formulae loaded into public databanks centuries ago by freethink anarchists, the files replicated so many times they were impossible to erase. On Quinn’s orders, the possessed would only supervise the missions, never actually venturing to the target themselves. That was left to the faithful: useful, disposable, imbeciles. He couldn’t risk the authorities discovering a possessed in Edmonton, not yet. So for now such destruction would appear to be the work of a breakaway sect faction, fanatics who had split away from their High Magus. That way they would appear as sympathisers to the anarchist groups in Paris, Bombay, and Johannesburg that were also bombing and terrorizing their fellow citizens.

  The authorities would discover who was behind it eventually. But by then he would have established enough cells of possessed to bring about the Night.

  Quinn arrived at the temple, and surveyed it slowly. A tall chamber, more elaborate than the smaller covens. Pictures of violent depravity alternated with runes and pentagons along the walls. A wreath of small yellow flames flickered weakly around the tarnished inverted cross on the altar. He was drawn to the big slab as the memories of this place finally returned. There was the pain of his initiation, then more pain as he was used for further ceremonies. Each time, Banneth had smiled down serenely; a dark angel ministering to his body. Drugs and packages were applied, and an obscene variety of pleasure would be combined with his agony. Banneth’s laugh would wrap around him, taking on the power of an indecent caress. She/he/it, that terrible androgynous multi-sexed monster, conditioned him to respond to the torment in the way that generated the most enjoyment—for it. Eventually the two extremes of sensation merged, becoming one.

  A triumph, Banneth had declared. The creation of the perfect sect mentality. Birthing the serpent beast.

  Quinn gave the altar a curious look, seeing himself bound to it, skin glistening with sweat and blood as he screamed. The pain and the images were real enough, but he couldn’t recall anything before then. It was as if Banneth had created his flesh at the same time as his mind.

  “Quinn? Is that you, Quinn?”

  Quinn turned slowly, squinting at the ghostly figure sitting on the front pew. A face he was sure he knew, belonging to this place but from a long time ago. The figure stood, a hunched up adolescent in a torn leather jacket and dirty jeans. He was pitifully insubstantial. “It is you, isn’t it? You remember me, Quinn. It’s me. It’s Erhard.”

  “Erhard?” He wasn’t sure.

  “Damn, we shovelled shit together for long enough. You must remember.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” A novice acolyte who’d joined the sect around the same time as Quinn. One who lacked the strength to survive such a brotherhood. The same relentless battery of ordeals and punishments which had fortified Quinn had crushed Erhard. It had culminated in a ritual in the temple, one which Banneth had never intended Erhard to live through. There was rape and torture and drugs and burrowing parasites of Banneth’s devising; atrocities performed to the hot chants and wild laughter of the entire headquarters coven. Erhard’s final pleas had risen above their chorus, a thin wail of ultimate terror. Then Banneth had brought the jewelled sacrificial knife down in a fast slash
.

  The joy Quinn had experienced that day was almost orgasmic. He’d been the one tasked to carry the knife for Banneth.

  “It’s not fair, Quinn. I don’t belong here. I hate this place. I hate the sect.”

  “You never did feed your serpent beast,” Quinn said contemptuously. “Now look at you. You’re as much a loser now as you ever were.”

  “It’s not fair!” Erhard cried. “I didn’t know what the sect was like, not really. And then they killed me. You killed me, Quinn. You were one of them.”

  “You deserved it.”

  “Fuck you. I was nineteen. I had my life, and you took it away, you and that psycho fruit Banneth. I want to kill Banneth. I swore I would.”

  “No!” Quinn stormed. Erhard quailed, cowering back from the command. “Banneth does not die,” Quinn said. “Not ever. Banneth belongs to me.”

  The ghost edged forward, holding out a hand as though feeling the warmth thrown out by a fire. “What are you?”

  Quinn giggled quietly. “I don’t know. But God’s Brother has shown me what I’ve got to do.” He walked out of the temple, leaving the ghost behind.

  Three figures were marching along the corridor, one of them with desperate reluctance. Quinn recognized him. Acolyte Kilian. They’d met a few days ago. All three frowned as they passed their invisible watcher, puzzled by why they suddenly felt so chilly.

  Quinn followed them. He knew where they were going, he’d taken this route himself enough times. Soon he would see it again: Banneth. That’s all it would be, this time. Just a look, a reminder of that face. Nothing fast would happen to Banneth. It had taught Quinn well, in that respect. The most delectable punishments were the slowest ones. And when Night came, it would be in tandem with eternity.

  Darkness has arrived. Even when the acolytes didn’t whisper it, the phrase hung in the smoky air of the sect’s Edmonton headquarters. A threat more menacing than any sadism the sergeant acolytes could bestow.

  Banneth knew what that meant. The AV projectors were broadcasting a constant coverage of the New York situation, which the entire headquarters coven was obsessed by. The arcology’s continuing isolation. Rumours of free possessed. Portents wherever you looked. And many of the coven looked very hard indeed.

  Their work suffered as a consequence. Income from the scams and hustling were well down in every coven across town. Even she, the High Magus, couldn’t rack up much enthusiasm. What chance did the lesser maguses have?

  When she did rage at the sergeant acolytes, they just shuffled their feet and muttered dourly that there was little point continuing their old activities. Our time has come, they said, God’s Brother is returning to Earth. Who cares about knocking off dumb-ass civilians. Given the creed of the Light Bringer sect, it wasn’t an attitude she could effectively argue against. The irony of the situation didn’t escape her.

  All she could do was keep listening to the rap from the street, hunting out clues. It was a thin source of information, especially now. Like a great many of Earth’s arcologies, Edmonton was slowly shutting down as it spewed out its own fear. Commercial districts were reporting increasing absenteeism. People were calling in sick, taking holidays. Parks and arcades were nearly deserted. Football, baseball, ice hockey, and other game fixtures were played to small crowds. Parents kept their kids away from day clubs. For the first time in living memory it was always possible to get a seat on metro buses and tube carriages.

  The vac-trains weren’t shut. Keeping the routes open was a bravado example of Govcentral confidence, intended to reassure people that Earth was still safe. Passenger numbers were under thirty per cent. Nobody wanted to do anything that brought them into contact with other people, especially strangers. Civic utility companies had to threaten employees with lawsuits to keep essential services going. Government workers were intimidated with the prospect of disciplinary proceedings if they didn’t perform their duties as normal, especially the police. The mayors were desperate to provide the image of normality in the hope the public would follow their cue. A desperation that was taking on increasingly surreal dimensions in the face of such stubborn public reticence.

  Banneth kept dispatching sect members to wander through the eternal half light gullies that were downtown streets, hunting any sign of a score. The usual broken inhabitants shuffling along the sidewalks would huddle away from them in sealed-up doorways, sniffing suspiciously as they strutted past. Cop cars swished along silently, creating whirlpools of silvery wrapping foils; the only vehicles moving at ground level. They slowed as they drew level with the sect gangs, examining the sullen faces through misty armoured glass before tooting the siren and accelerating away. Forcing them to go out was a mostly futile exercise. But she had persevered while the world slowly choked on its own paranoia. And now it seemed as though she’d got lucky.

  Acolyte Kilian was doing his level best not to shake as the sergeant acolytes hurriedly left him alone in Banneth’s inner sanctum. The chamber was buried at the centre of the skyscraper which the sect used as its headquarters. As with the Light Bringer covens the world over, the original layout of rooms and corridors had been corroded and corrupted as acolytes burrowed their way through walls and ducts like human maggots. Haphazard partitions were hammered and cemented up behind them, creating a bizarre onion-layer topology of chambers and cells that protected the core. Banneth had dwelt there for nearly three and a half decades without once ever venturing out. There was no need now, everything necessary to make her life enjoyable was brought to her.

  Unlike several High Maguses she was aware of, Banneth didn’t go in for ostentation. Her senior acolytes were permitted whatever decadent luxuries they could steal and bribe for themselves. But they lived several floors above her, decorating their apartments with expensive hedonistic amenities, and harems of beautiful youths and freakish supplicants. She indulged herself on somewhat different levels.

  When Kilian started to look round, he found he was in a place that was way beyond the worst-case scenarios that acolytes whispered among themselves. Banneth’s sanctum was an experimental surgery. Its mainstay was a broad bench desk with high-capacity processor blocks and shiny new medical equipment. Three stainless steel tables were lined up in the middle of the floor, with discreet leather restraint straps placed strategically round the edges. Life support canisters were arranged around the walls, like huge glass pillars. Aquarium-style lighting caps shone brightly on their contents. Kilian really wished they didn’t, the things inside were enough to make him shit his pants. People, in a few of them. Suspended by a white silk web in some thick clear fluid, tubes going into their mouths and noses (those that still had mouths and noses). Always with their eyes open, looking about. Acolytes he remembered from not so long back; with new appendages grafted on; others with parts removed, their incisions raw and open to reveal the missing organs. Then there were the less than human creatures, made worse by having very human pieces attached. Clusters of organs bound together by a plexus of naked pumping veins. Animals, game cats and gorillas with the tops of their skull removed, and no brain left inside. Pride of place on the wall above the work desk was taken by an ancient oil painting of a young woman in a dress with a stiff bodice and long skirt.

  Although Kilian had never been in the sanctum before, it was the place where everyone came eventually, either for boosting or punishment. Banneth performed both types of operation herself. Now he stood as still as his trembling limbs would allow as the High Magus walked briskly across the floor to him.

  Banneth’s face had a male jawline, a blunt protuberant blade of bone. But that was the only masculine feature, the eyes and mouth were soft, very feminine. A shaggy pelt of straw-blonde hair completed the enigma. Kilian glanced nervously at the white shirt Banneth wore. Everyone said the High Magus got aroused at the sight of fear. If her nips were jutting, then she was in the feminine stage of her cycle.

  Dark circles of skin were definitely tenting the cotton. Kilian wondered if it really made a differenc
e. Banneth was a hermaphrodite—by design, so rumour said. She looked as if she was about twenty, either as a male or a female; though age was an easy enough cosmetic adaptation. Nobody knew how old she really was, nor even how long she had been High Magus. In fact, legend and rumour were all that existed about her past. Questions were discouraged.

  “Thank you for coming to see me,” Banneth said. Her hand stroked Kilian’s cheek, the cool skin of her knuckles drifting gently along his cheekbone. An appraisal by a gifted sculptor, finding his exact form. He quivered at the touch. Pink eyes with feline irises blinked in amusement at his reaction.

  “Nervous, Kilian?”

  “I don’t know what I’ve done, High Magus.”

  “That’s true. But then a barely human grunt like you doesn’t know much of anything. Do you? Well don’t worry yourself too much. Actually, you’ve been quite useful to me.”

  “I have?”

  “Amazingly, yes. And as you know, I always reward the devout.”

  “Yes, High Magus.”

  “What can I do for you now, I wonder?” She began to circle the apprehensive acolyte, grinning boyishly. “You’re how old now? Twenty-five, isn’t it? So I ask myself what does a nice young boy your age always want. And the answer’s a much bigger cock, of course. That’s pretty standard. I can do that, you know. I can snip off that pitiful rat-sized cock you’ve got now, and replace it with something much better. A cock that’s as long as your forearm and as hard as steel. You would like me to do that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Please, High Magus,” Kilian whimpered.

  “Was that a ‘yes please,’ Kilian?”

  “I . . . I just want to help you. However I can.”

  She blew him a kiss, still prowling her circuit around him. “Good boy. I asked to see you because I’d like to know something. Do you believe in the teachings of the Light Bringer?”

  Trick question, Kilian screamed silently. If I say no, she’ll do whatever she wants as punishment; if I say yes she’ll ask me to prove it through endurance. “All of it High Magus, every word. I’ve found my serpent beast.”