by Neal Asher
A roaring had now grown distinct from the sound of the explosion, and it became evident this had little to do with the blast itself. Like shoals of grey sharks, the landing craft of the Theocracy filled the sky and slid overhead – hundreds of them. The three of them felt an urge to duck out of sight, but where was ‘out of sight’ with such a swarm of craft filling the sky?
‘We’re only small beer,’ said Fethan, ‘but best to get moving anyway. They might send someone out here once they’ve landed.’ He leapt down from the roof of the ATV and entered it. Eldene quickly followed him down then inside, but Thorn took a while longer.
‘CTDs are not something the Polity hands out like lollipops, you know,’ he commented, upon finally re-entering the vehicle.
With half an ear to the ensuing exchange, Eldene set the motor to spinning up its flywheel, before engaging the hydrostatic drive and getting them under way.
‘Seems John Stanton had no trouble getting hold of them,’ replied Fethan. ‘But why am I telling you this? You should know, as you came here aboard his ship.’
‘Sealed cargo and a hostile ship’s AI – so I didn’t get to find out very much. All I was sure about was the drug manufactories and pulse-rifles.’
‘Ah, so you didn’t get a look at the two Polity war drones and the U-space transmitter?’ said Fethan.
Thorn’s reply to this involved a physically impossible sexual activity in conjunction with the edible but prickly fruit of a bromeliad.
‘There is a girl present, you know,’ Fethan warned, and this time received an even briefer retort.
Eldene tried to suppress it – it seeming so inappropriate in present circumstances, and she had only understood half of what Thorn had suggested – but the giggle escaped her nonetheless.
‘Ignore him,’ said Fethan. ‘These Earthmen are just foul and uncouth creatures.’
That, coming from Fethan, had the tears running from her eyes, and she found that her suppressed laughter only escaped with more force.
‘Watch where you’re driving,’ Fethan added.
The little electric heater was an amazing device that folded into a case no larger than the palm of a hand. The grid opened out into a twenty-centimetre square that was suspended just off the ground by two U-shaped telescopic legs; the microtok was a flattened ovoid between these, simply supplied with water from a small filter pipe pushed into the damp ground. It was, Molat suspected, a device intended for cooking upon, but it put out a wonderful blast of warmth, and he could not summon the inclination to damn this piece of Polity technology. Like all proctors, he would have punished its possessor before adding the item to his own collection, but since that earlier possessor was presently rotting down into the thick loam of the planet, there was nothing much to do about him. Holding his hands out towards the square of red-hot metal, Molat looked across them at Toris.
‘We’ll head out for the landers. I for one will not surrender myself to the Underground in this uniform,’ he said, rather than relayed through his aug. It was more comforting to speak out loud in this darkness, and there was so much horror coming in over aug channels of late that he was beginning to develop an aversion to using them. Perhaps Toris felt the same, for he too replied aloud:
‘They’ll be going all out to attack our wonderful First Commander Aberil Dorth. We might be somewhere behind them or caught between the two of them.’
Molat didn’t like the tone he seemed to be getting from Toris ever since the destruction of the spaceport. Most proctors neither liked nor trusted Aberil Dorth – the man was psychotic at best – but that was not an antipathy you allowed yourself to voice aloud, or to even think if you could help it, since mistakes were easy to make over aug channels.
‘Nevertheless,’ he said. ‘That is the only direction we can head to find safety.’
Toris looked up, and seemed about to say something he might regret. However, a rushing rustling in the flute grass stilled further vocal conversation.
Toris: ‘What in God’s name was that?’
Molat: ‘It sounded big, and I felt the ground move.’
Toris: ‘You know there are heroynes and siluroynes out here?’
Molat: ‘Thanks for the reminder. That’s made me feel much better.’
Molat turned off the little heater and stood up, blinking to clear the gridded after-images from his vision. Another hissing in the flute grass behind Toris had Molat pointing his rail-gun in that direction. Toris turned, with his own laser pistol gripped two-handed. Something odd about the grasses over there . . .? Then Molat realized what he was seeing: two deep dark eye-pits in which glittered eyes like faceted grey sapphires. Its huge head – which was the most yet to become visible – had the appearance of a bovine skull patterned with flute-grass stripes, and trailed two flat-tipped feelers from its lower jaw. The teeth, when they were exposed, had no camouflage, however, and gleamed like blue hatchets in the moonlight.
‘Siluroyne! Siluroyne! Oh fucking hell, I’m dead! A Siluroyne!’
Molat supposed that Toris didn’t even realize he was broadcasting, as the man fired his hand laser into that huge face. The monster bellowed and reared, its multiple forepaws opening out in silhouette against the sky like a huge clawed tree. Molat realized that Toris’s shooting had only pissed off something that had been intending to eat them anyway. It seemed to him there was only one way for him to escape. He reached out and, as hard as he could, shoved Toris towards the monster – before turning and running.
‘Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!’
Glancing back he saw the thing stooping down, its many forepaws closing in like a cage.
‘Oh God no! Please no!’
It was upright again now, and in two of its sets of claws it held Toris like a hot dog. Molat shut down his connection as the monster began crunching down the other man’s leg like a stick of celery, almost as if it wanted him to continue screaming, and knew that if it bit the human’s other end the screaming would stop. Molat ran hard and fast, not caring in what direction, just so long as it was away.
The first grabship brought in a chunk of asteroidal rock that was too huge to get in through the doors of the heavy-lifter bay. But such was the original architecture of the Occam Razor, Skellor found he could reposition whole floors and compartments, huge generators, ducts, and the numinous devices of the ship, and then actually part its armoured hull to allow such a mass of material inside. In the new bay thus created, Skellor kept the great stone positioned centrally by a balancing of grav-plates, and reached out to it there with an explosion of the ligneous pseudopods that were Jain, and himself.
High-speed analysis which was more like touch and taste soon rendered to him the chemical structure of his prize. He found large quantities of iron, silicates, and sulphur; lesser quantities of carbon, much of it turned into useful fullerenes by the heat of the explosions that had destroyed the moonlet; rare earths and radioactives – there was in fact very little on the periodic table that was not represented here. Having tasted, he then fed – his pseudopods thickening and hardening, and the asteroid, now laced with webworks of filament, visibly shrinking like a fly being sucked dry by a spider.
Soon there was no need for the grav-plates to hold the rock in position, as his pseudopods had become almost indistinguishable in girth from great oaks. Other asteroids, drawn into other bays, he treated in the same manner, but now almost unconsciously – like a man simply breathing or feeding. With more conscious application he created a superconducting network from the fullerenes to link together the eighty-four flat-screen generators and the U-space engines. The independent controls of these he found burnt beyond the recovery of any Polity technology; however, that recovery was not beyond him. With silicon and rare earths he rebuilt the little controlling subminds, understanding, as he did so, why the system was not centralized; how, with a ship this size, even the high-speed adjustments he could make through the net were not fast enough.
With other materials Skellor strengthened his grip
on the structure of the rest of the ship but, having discovered the utility of being able to alter its internal and external structure at will, he did not completely ossify it in the ligneous growth of the Jain architecture – so he kept the movable floors and walls, and the bridge pod that could be expelled from the ship with a thought. Even so, upon taking an external view through the sensors of one of the grabships, he saw that the Occam Razor was now very much changed in appearance: its great lozenge of golden metal was now marred by the grey and silver of Jain architecture, patterned like lichen.
It was from these outer structures that Skellor felt the harsh radiation of the nearby sun like a balm, as he sucked it in and converted it to his purposes. In truth, materials were not his greatest requirement here – but the energy to absorb materials, and to extend throughout the ship was. Almost unconscious, again, had been his earlier calculation that he would have drained all the Occam’s energy resources by doing what he now did, so would have had none left to drop the ship into U-space. As his work continued, his requirements for energy grew. The radioactive material from the asteroids was quickly refined and burnt away, and soon he was flinging out huge curving spines up to a kilometre long, between which he exuded nacreous sheets that were something like the meniscus of a bubble, which then turned deep black to absorb more of the sun’s energy – to grow, to keep on growing . . .
It took one of the grabships, blasted off course by some huge chemical explosion occurring in the load it was bringing in, and then crashing into a growing array of these sun sails, to raise Skellor’s awareness out of this incessant growth. Abruptly he realized that nothing more was now required; that he was ready to drop himself into U-space. Consciously bringing to a halt the expansion of himself throughout the ship, while retracting the sun sails, he found difficult. There was inner resistance from that part of himself that was Jain. It was that same separation of self that an addict experiences, and Skellor realized he must never allow himself to go too far along that way again. It would be so very easy just to lose himself in growth for growth’s sake, and forget all other purpose. In moments his will had reasserted itself, and he remembered his work, which was more important than anything, anything at all.
15
‘The monster was as greedy to fill itself as were Sober and Judge, and so, to save her husband from its jaws, Judge stole food from the compound when there was no sinning Brother to be found there.’
The picture explicated this with an animation showing Judge tramping a mountain path with a great sack of food slung over one shoulder. As she walked, she dipped a hand into the sack and crammed food into her great jowly face. The woman, just to be sure, closed the book to have a look at the cover, shrugged, then continued:
‘On the seventieth day Judge could find no more sinning Brothers in the compound and no more food in the warehouses, so, with much sorrow, chose to lead Brother Evanescent to the bridge.’
Brother Evanescent was obviously about half a second away from acquiring a halo and, considering all that had gone before, the woman clearly guessed what was going to happen to him.
‘The monster rose up before Brother Evanescent, but he was not afraid. “I am armoured with my Faith, the Word of God is my whip, and His Grace is my Spear!” he cried and, casting aside his white robe, the good Brother revealed golden armour that glowed in the sun. In his right hand he bore a long golden spear and in his left hand he bore a whip as hot as molten iron.’
The woman and the boy observed with some perplexity that the picture was precisely in concurrence with the text.
‘And so for one day and one night Brother Evanescent battled the monster from under the bridge,’ continued the woman. ‘Ah, now I see.’
The Brother kept attempting to spear the siluroyne whilst, with a bored expression, the creature leant an elbow on the parapet and knocked the point of his spear aside with one claw. In the background Sober and Judge were stacking wood.
‘With Faith you cannot come to harm.’
When the two workers gave the signal, the siluroyne picked up Evanescent, and plucked away his whip and his spear as if taking away dangerous toys from a child.
‘With God’s word you will chastise your enemies.’
As if preparing a kebab the monster threaded the spear through the back of the Brother’s armour, and used the whip to bind his arms and legs in place.
‘With God’s Grace your enemies will be brought down.’
The purpose of the two Y-shaped sticks on either side of the woodpile now became apparent. Once ignited, the wood burned as it never ever burned on Masada.
‘With all three, the world will fall at your feet!’
The woman and the boy watched as Brother Evanescent was sufficiently broiled, with implausible speed, then Sober, Judge, and the siluroyne opened up the hot parcel of his armour to enjoy a merry feast.
Loman cupped a blue rose, brought it close to his nose, and closed his eyes as the subtle perfume drew him back to his childhood. The pain of thorns penetrating the flesh of his palm was also a reminder, for at one time he had been destined to join the Septarchy and had briefly experienced their bloody discipline. Opening his eyes he surveyed the ordered beauty that stretched far away from him, and blurred into rainbow hues riding up round the inner arc of Hope.
The gardens of the Septarchy were beautiful indeed, which was something Loman always found surprising, considering the gardeners themselves could have little appreciation of the colours; but then perhaps, with the Gift, they saw them through the eyes of others? He turned now to the First Friar and studied the man: he was emaciated, almost as if he suffered some wasting illness; his dark robes, tied close to his thin frame with twists of rope made from human hair, were worn thin and losing their dye through too-frequent washing, but of course the First Friar would not know this, since sewn in the place of his eyes were the ancient memory crystals that once contained the truths of the first colonists.
‘They say you construct your gardens by scent alone, and that there is a whole landscape of olfactory meaning that those of us with eyes cannot appreciate,’ said Loman.
‘The power of myth must never be underestimated,’ replied the Friar.
Loman stared beyond the cropped lawns and intricate stone gardens towards the great colonnaded sprawl of the main Septarchy halls. In their white uniforms the platoons of soldiers, marching in to take up positions around the beautiful white buildings, seemed in perfect consonance. The First Friar and the two young acolytes – with their sewn-up eye-sockets – could not see this, but would know soon enough. Loman glanced around at his bodyguard scattered between the borders and neat shrubberies, then at Tholis – who was Claus’s replacement and a man thoroughly aware of the precariousness of his position.
‘Subtle,’ he said, returning his attention to the Friar. ‘But in the end plain power is what must not be underestimated.’
‘That is something I never do,’ said the First Friar, at last beginning to sound worried.
‘Why then do you persist in occupying the upper channels with your prayers and your chants?’ Loman asked.
‘They are offered to the glory of God,’ said the Friar.
‘They were intended to keep Behemoth from taking hold of our minds, and now Behemoth is dead they are no longer needed.’
‘How can you – the Hierarch – say that prayer is no longer needed?’
Loman sighed and, shaking his head, held out his hand towards Tholis. The man did not need the brief instruction Loman sent him via aug. He drew his pistol and placed it into Loman’s still-bleeding hand.
The First Friar now tilted his head. ‘Why have soldiers entered the Septarchy halls?’ He turned towards Loman, and the Hierarch could feel the questioning probes coming through so many channels of his aug, his Gift. He replied with a simple statement: ‘One whole quarter of Hope used for your damned Septarchy halls and damned useless gardens.’
Now he could feel the spreading noise as people in the area nearby, s
o accustomed to bloody pogroms, reacted with panic. The Friars themselves were not panicking, accustomed as they were to being above such pogroms. No one had been killed yet, as the soldiers herding the Friars out of the halls and into their gardens were showing greater restraint than they normally showed with other citizens. This, Loman knew, was not out of any respect, but through fear of the power these Friars had enjoyed under previous Hierarchs. It was time, he decided, for someone to die and, so deciding, pointed the pistol just to the First Friar’s right and fired four times. Both acolytes dropped: one of them dead before he hit the ground, the other coughing up blood from shattered lungs until Loman fired again, opening a closed eye-socket and blowing out a froth of brains across the close-cropped grass.
‘No! You cannot do this!’
Loman carefully clicked the pistol’s safety switch across then tossed it back to Tholis who caught and holstered it in one swift movement. The Hierarch was pleased with this new commander of his guard, for the man so quickly anticipated his orders that it almost seemed unnecessary to give them. Already two of the guard were closing in to take hold of the First Friar, even as Loman unhooked from his belt the sculping tool he had taken from Amoloran. The Friar did not have eyes, but he screamed as if he did when Loman cut and gouged the two memory crystals from his head, then continued screaming as the neurotoxin worked its way through the exposed raw flesh of his eye-sockets.
‘Release him, now.’
With the two bloody crystals in his right hand, Loman stepped back while the First Friar fell face-down and in his agony seemed to be trying to bite the ground. Glancing down to the Septarchy halls, Loman saw his soldiers now needing to use more brutality to get the blind friars out into the open. He sent instructions to Tholis:
‘Finish it on their lawns and throw their bodies into the flower borders.’