Resurrection, Inc.

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The room around them was sparsely furnished, intended to give High Priest Vincent Van Ryman space to pace and ponder. Neo-Satanist symbols decorated the walls, with the inverted star-in-pentagram logo prominent. Musty-looking books lined the shelves.

  Jones noticed Nathans moving with a carefully hidden sense of anxiety. The Enforcer worried for a moment, but other man maintained a good mask. “Now then, did I want to see you for something? Oh, yes!” Before Jones could spill out his discovery, Nathans continued, “You know that all the Elite Guard have their own specialties, their own turf, you might say. You, on the other hand, are not yet attached, and I have decided that you’re perfect to assist me in my less-than-official Guild duties.”

  “You mean helping with the neo-Satanists?” Jones swallowed, and tried to keep a whine out of his voice. He didn’t want Nathans to be angry or disappointed with him. “But, I really—”

  Nathans looked squarely at him. “Now, don’t complain. I see you standing there sweating, just waiting for me to turn my head so you can fidget! Stop this knee-jerk nonsense of revulsion toward neo-Satanism. It’s all a fairy tale. Anyone with a brain can see that. I know you understand my reasoning, Jones. You’re certainly intelligent enough, and I’ve explained it to you carefully.” He glanced at his fingernails.

  “We have to polish the human race. It’s time to scrape off the scum floating on the human gene pool.” Nathans let his control slip, and his eyes grew too bright; his hands shook. “But this social evolution business takes so damned long! We don’t live forever, you know. And since I’m doing all the work to set the wheels in motion, I want to be alive to reap some of the benefits.”

  He sighed, though, and some of the frenzy drained away. “Now that we have no way of knowing the results of the Danal experiment”—Nathans shot a sad and bitter glance at Jones; ashamed, the Enforcer hid motionless behind his armor—“I’ve had to find some other way to hurry us along.

  “Tonight is Walpurgis Night, you realize, one of the most important ceremonies of the year. In fact, this could be one of the most important events in the history of mankind. The High Sabbat should be a catalyst of something much more.

  “Now, Jones, I trust you completely. I’ll need your assistance with the preparations. This is very important. I’ve got cannisters of a chemical labelled Rhodamine 590 over against the wall. Take that and make sure it gets mixed into the vat of cheap red wine set up in the Sabbat grotto—but be careful not to get any on your hands. I also want you to check the pump systems and make sure all the new Sacred Fonts work properly. I just had them installed.” Nathans’s eyes twinkled beneath the carrot-colored wig.

  Be careful not to get any on your hands? “What is this Rhodamine? What does it do?”

  Nathans smiled, but it made Jones uneasy. “Ah, I looked long and hard for something like it. It’s a dye used with lasers, a brilliant orange red. But it’s also a mitochondrial poison, extremely toxic and wonderfully fast-acting. Ranks right up there with cyanide. Cyanide’s been done to death, of course, and I wanted something a little more exotic.”

  Jones stood motionless, wearing a puzzled and horrified grimace on his face. He wished he could put his helmet back on and hide behind it. “But… poison, sir? What for?”

  “For tonight’s communion, of course.” Nathans flicked his eyes at Jones. His gaze had an intensity that made the Enforcer want to cringe, afraid, then the man’s expression changed to one of indirect scorn. He motioned placatingly. “Look, I’m not going to ask them to do anything against their wishes—it’ll be their own choice completely, as it has to be. That’s why I had to find a fast-acting poison. I do feel sorry for the first victim or two, the ones who really don’t know.” He sighed. “But after that, after they all see how deadly it is, surely no rational, intelligent person would partake from a drink laced with poison? Would you? Of course not. But I’m betting that some of them will, and good riddance to them! Surely you don’t feel sorry for people like that?”

  Jones didn’t answer. He could hardly even move—Nathans couldn’t be serious! He suddenly looked at the man in a different light. No, not Nathans—it had to be some trick, a joke. A joke, right?

  Nathans continued, unaware of Jones’s thoughts. He spoke distractedly, as if preoccupied to the point of helplessness, “My problem for the moment is to make sure our High Priest is up to the task. He’s been cringing for weeks, hiding behind his Intruder Defense Systems. A bit emotionally disturbed, as he always has been.” Nathans mumbled to himself, and this alarmed Jones as well. Nathans had never talked to himself before.

  The Enforcer interrupted. Maybe by announcing his discovery, he could focus Nathans’s attention again. “I found out something very strange about the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patches last night, sir. I bumped into it by accident.”

  Nathans regarded him, caught up with his own workings for the evening’s High Sabbat. But his eyes widened in fascination and amazement as Jones described the maintenance openings, the raised city over the water.

  “The funny thing is, I know the team of hackers has been trying for weeks to uncover any scrap of information, but they always came up empty-handed. I certainly didn’t expect to find anything myself, but I thought I should at least try. So last night I sat down at the terminal and just punched in a routine query—and I got a direct answer. I read it—I know what I saw. But I tried again this morning, and The Net said it had no information.”

  Jones dropped his voice, as if sharing a deep secret. “It’s like someone was tampering with The Net. Diverting my queries and covering themselves so well that no one ever suspected. But I caught them off guard and got the information!”

  Fascinated, Nathans stared off into space. “We alter The Net all the time for neo-Satanism: it’s not that complicated if you have the right access and you know what you’re doing. But someone else is doing it, too! And without my knowing it! That’s remarkable—I never even thought… what a blind spot!” He tapped his fingertips together, and his eyes glowed as connections started to form.

  “There could be an entire underground world down there,” Nathans mumbled to himself. “If these tamperers are so carefully hiding all information about the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patches, we can assume that they live in—or at least attach some extreme importance to—whatever is down there. How much else don’t we know? Damn! That’s frustrating.”

  He drew in a quick breath, exclaiming to Jones, “And that means Danal might be alive! If he and that nurse/tech deliberately jumped into the patch, she must have known something. Hmmmm.”

  The Enforcer could imagine the mental wheels churning behind Nathans’s forehead; the process fascinated him, but he offered no suggestions himself. The man finally sat up.

  “I want you to keep this absolutely confidential, Jones. This could be vital information, depending on who these Net tamperers are… and if they have anything to do with Danal. What would they want with a Servant who had regained his memory?” He scratched his hairpiece.

  “I want you to go right away and—” He frowned. “No… damn! You’ll have to wait until dark. But before curfew, it has to be before curfew! Find a deserted street with one of these ‘maintenance openings.’ Take one other Guard to help you, and verify what you’ve just told me—see what’s under there. And you’d better go fully armed—people with an operation this sophisticated won’t take kindly to being discovered.”

  Overwhelmed by Nathans’s rush of words, Jones nodded and fitted his helmet back on.

  “But most important of all, I must have a report from you before the High Sabbat tonight. I have to know what you find, and I’ll need your help with the final preparations for the ceremony.” He smiled beneath his red mop of artificial hair. Jones’s uneasiness rushed back to him. “It’s really going to be something to watch.”

  35

  “Elite Guard!” Laina whispered. “What are they doing in here?” Two of the blue-armored Enforcers marched down the dim hall of the hospital complex’s se
curity wing, then vanished around the corner.

  “Don’t talk to me!” Danal hissed out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t even look like you’re talking to me!” As he walked beside Laina in her nurse/tech uniform, Danal kept his face blank and lifeless, as any Servant should. Next to them marched burly Rolf in his set of white Enforcer armor, their ‘security escort.’

  The checkpoint guard at the entrance to the high-security wing verified their story on his Net terminal. Rikki had come through again, planting the proper story, the proper authorizations.

  “I’m supposed to escort them wherever they go,” Rolf said ominously behind his polarized visor. “Orders.” The similarly uniformed guard passed them on, then went back to playing his Net interactive games.

  The halls of the vast hospital complex were quiet and drowsy in the early morning silence. Outside, a thick blanket of damp fog seeped into all the alleyways as the sun rose, muffling sounds.

  “This is wing six. Down that hall—it should be Room 29-A.” As Laina spoke, the heavy makeup made her face look artificial.

  Another white-armored Enforcer stood at attention outside Room 29-A. Without hesitation the three imposters walked up to him. The guard tensed, but seemed reassured by Rolf’s presence.

  “We have to let them in,” Rolf said gruffly. “The nurse/tech has special treatment for the patient. I’m supposed to escort her and her Servant, but… ah, because of the importance of this patient, I’d feel better if we both watched over them. Cover your ass—get me?”

  The other Enforcer agreed. “Good idea.”

  Confident, the other guard punched in the electronic combination for the door, stepping aside to let Laina and Danal enter first. Rolf and the guard stepped into the room side by side.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, Rolf wrapped his massive armored arm around the other Enforcer’s helmet. With a twist he wrenched off the helmet to reveal the startled face of a pimply youth. Before the exposed Enforcer could speak a word, Laina jammed a hisser into his face. Rolf stuffed the helmet back on the tranquilized guard’s head as he slithered to the floor. He caught the unconscious Enforcer under the arms and eased him down to keep his armor from clattering too much.

  Danal paid no heed to this, but stood gawking at the sterile room’s only inhabitant. The neatly made bed bore a quaint patchwork quilt; a lamp and small writing desk added homey but pathetically ineffective touches of comfort.

  Sitting in an overstuffed chair and staring at them was the hideously disfigured remnant of a woman. Growths and tumors like rivulets of melted wax tangled her face. Most of the hair on her head had been swallowed up by crumpled ridges of insanely growing skin. But two hardened and intelligent eyes stared coldly at them from between twisted eyelids. When she breathed, air came through her distorted nose and mouth in a whistling, sucking sound.

  Yet behind the havoc of her face, Danal could see the ghost of Julia’s appearance, a hint of the woman to whom he had once opened his heart. But the eyes them selves spoke differently. Danal thought he recognized her gaze, but he had seen it only a few times before—eyes set on the face of a woman masquerading as a Servant….

  “Zia!” Danal gasped.

  She turned her face disbelievingly toward Danal, the Servant, scrutinizing him with sudden interest. As she drew a labored breath to speak, she looked as if all of the questions canceled themselves out in her mind.

  “Van Ryman—you were Vincent Van Ryman. I thought you’d come back to haunt us, one way or another.” Zia paused and pulled another sucking breath through the opening of her mouth. She smirked in a hideous grimace. “I take it you’re the welcoming committee for the Francois Nathans Fan Club?”

  But Danal didn’t hear her. All words caught in his throat as the implications of Zia’s presence hit him like a sledgehammer. She wasn’t Julia. He staggered, taking half a step backward. Tears flooded his eyes again; his throat burned.

  Julia was dead after all, leaving nothing but a walking mindless automaton, empty. Danal’s hope shattered into sharp pieces. He hung his head and shuddered, trying to say her name out loud. He needed to sit down, to collapse, but he locked his knees instead. He barely felt Laina gripping his shoulder. It didn’t matter anymore.

  Danal spoke toward the floor. His voice carried a bleak, devastated undertone. “So what happened to you?”

  Zia linked her fingers together and cracked her knuckles. Danal saw that even her hands were covered with tumors and malformed growths. “What the hell does it look like happened? Apparently the surface-cloning process doesn’t always work like a charm.” Her fingers jerked convulsively, as if she wanted to tear the fabric of the chair. “The bastard guaranteed it would work.” But then her volatile expression changed, leaving only a dry bitterness.

  “And what’s Joey doing now? He must be all high and mighty alone in the mansion. He was a slimer, always more important than the rest of us. I was supposed to be with him—he took your place, and I was supposed to be Julia. Sure! Simple. Piece of cake. Just give us a few weeks of your time, Zia, and we’ll touch up your face a bit. Make you look just like Julia. Surface-cloning, the magic of modern technology. Besides, it was all for the good of neo-Satanism.”

  Her bitterness oozed out of the words, making her pathetic. “Joey and I would pick up right where you two left off, and nobody’d know the difference… except for our radical change in philosophy.” Zia shrugged. “But you did that already once before, so we weren’t losing sleep over it.

  “Joey’s genotype was a perfect match to yours, a model case for the surface-cloning technique, and we couldn’t hope for anything better. His disguise grew on his face like it belonged there.

  “Me, on the other hand… well, I didn’t get along quite so well with Julia’s chromosomes. Something went wrong. The clone infection went rampant, and my new face grew in every which direction.” She snorted, “Not something to write home about.”

  Laina’s eyes widened as she listened, but she said nothing. Danal didn’t know whether to resent the malformed imposter because she was not Julia, or pity Zia as another one of Nathans’s victims. “Why does he keep you here? Why bother? Why doesn’t he just kill you”—Danal’s voice cracked—“like he killed Julia?”

  Zia made a rude noise with her mouth. “Francois Nathans is too genteel for that. He needs to keep me quiet about his botched plan, but I was one of his favorite tools, remember. Malleable, willing to make the greatest sacrifices for a good cause.” She scowled. “Obviously, I can’t go anywhere. And even without my rather shocking appearance, I don’t have an identity on The Net, since I was supposed to take Julia’s place. I need surgery every week or so, otherwise my nose and mouth grow together, and my eyelids seal shut. But Nathans takes care of me just dandy—what more could I want in the whole wide world?”

  Before Danal could say anything, Zia rapped her fingers on the arm of her chair. “I haven’t set off any alarms, you know, but I damn well could. What do you want coming here? This was a big risk… just to visit me? Touching. How come you didn’t bring any flowers or candy or get-well cards?”

  Danal mumbled his words through a gauze of grief. “I thought you might be the real Julia.”

  Zia shrugged bitterly. “I tried to be. But I ran into some unforeseen complications.” She laughed again at him, a hooting sound from her misshapen mouth, then she stopped abruptly. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

  Danal swallowed and clenched his fists, helplessly angry at her. But he would not let it bother him, he would not provoke her—it wasn’t her fault. He said his words through gritted teeth, coming to a decision as he spoke, “I’m going to stop Nathans. I have had quite enough of him.”

  “Ah, the brave hero, fighting for what’s Right!” Zia taunted. “Then you’d better hurry up—tonight’s Walpurgis Night. ”

  Danal started as he realized she was right. “Walpurgis Night. I forgot.”

  Laina met his eyes. “What’s that?”

 
; “A long time ago, back in Eastern Europe, all the witches gathered in the Hartz Mountains and had their greatest Sabbat of the year. May Day Eve—Walpurgis Night. It’s usually a big deal for the neo-Satanists. Nathans will have a sacrifice or two, kill a few more people.” Danal’s voice began to shake. “My imposter will do the sacrifice, pour more blood on the hands of Vincent Van Ryman.”

  Zia smiled with her lumpy mouth. “Understatement rears its ugly head—oh, it’s much more than that this time. You’re a great hope for us all if I know more than you do—and I’ve been stuck here in this single room!

  “This is going to be the last of the High Sabbats, and Nathans is going to wipe out all the followers of neo-Satanism. He’s lost patience with them and wants to end everything with a bang. He’ll poison them. He’ll trick them, as he always has. Audience participation in a big way… and this time they’ll all die.”

  Her voice quavered, and suddenly she looked pathetic, not defiant at all, all traces of sarcasm replaced by defeat. “When Nathans comes to visit every once in a while, he tells me his upcoming plans. He likes to talk about his grandiose schemes, and there’s no way I can shut him up. He thinks I’m interested.”

  She scratched absently at one of the waxy tumors on her cheek. “He told me—me!—that anyone who joined such a sham as neo-Satanism was incapable of rational thought. Anybody who couldn’t think for himself didn’t deserve the benefits of society. Do you think it means they’re all incapable of rational thinking? I think it means they were misled by a charismatic leader and some sophisticated gimmicks. I was misled, too—I fell for it. Is that a crime worth dying for?”

  “Have you done anything to stop him?” Laina asked.

  Zia laughed in a grating, burbling sound. “Me? You’ve got to be kidding! I’m cooped up here with a guard at the door every day. What the hell am I supposed to do? Look at Nathans and turn him to stone? I’m almost that ugly, but not quite.”