by Al Robertson
‘Are you sure they won’t see us and zap us again?’ worried Leila.
‘No.’ Cassiel was absolutely confident. ‘We’re strictly passive. Just receiving a signal. They won’t even see us.’
The room shimmered and changed. For a moment, Leila lost all sight of it. Then vision returned, and with it emotions that leapt between surprise, fear and awe. They chased through Leila’s consciousness, for a moment overwhelming her. She remembered the gods looking down on her – vast brand icons, hanging in the sky. But there had always been six of them. The Pantheon always communicated a sense of choice, even if it was a limited one. The face that hung before her now, looking down from the apex of the pyramid, offered nothing but itself, on its own terms, for ever.
The eyes were cold blue jewels, wrapped around with gold bands. Each band was studded with multi-coloured crystals. White and green and red flared out, bright points in the two sunken sockets. The skin was a pale mesh, material that looked as if it had once been white but was now yellow. A bone pushed it out between and below the eyes, implying a nose. A flower-shaped diadem of red, green and white jewels, held together by another gold band, covered the space where the nostrils would have been. Sharp cheekbones cast dark shadows, hiding the hinge where the jawbone connected with the skull.
The mesh covered the mouth. There were no lips, just a series of small arches where yellow bone became white teeth. Its forehead was wreathed with golden leaves. A barbed halo of jagged gold spikes leapt up behind them, running all the way round the back of the head. The neck was invisible – there was just a glimmer of gold and red in the darkness beneath the sharp, protruding chin. Two shoulders, wrapped in gold brocade and studded with jewels, spiked jaggedly up. The image faded out beneath them. Leila imagined a rib cage, skeletal arms and hands, a waist and leg wrapped in more rich, dense, highly decorated clothing. It was all the wealth and power that had ever died in the past, alive and incarnate in the present.
‘Fucking hell,’ breathed Leila. ‘It’s like the richest sweathead you’ve ever seen.’
‘Deodatus…’ whispered the Caretaker.
‘It has to be,’ agreed Cassiel. ‘Didn’t Cormac think he might be a mind? The first one taken by the pit? That creature definitely started as a human.’ She almost sounded relieved.
Leila stared up at it. ‘Doesn’t look very human anymore.’ She turned to the Caretaker. ‘Bringing anything back?’
‘No,’ replied the Caretaker. ‘Which to be honest, I’m quite glad about. I don’t want to have that in my head.’ He shuddered visibly. ‘Poor guy. Looks like he’s been dead for a thousand years.’ He looked around the rest of the room. ‘I can’t fault his design skills, though.’
The rest of the room was transformed. The laser was now a thing of beauty, a brilliant, minimalist sculpture of ruby and white-painted metal. The rickety scaffolding was a labyrinth of gleaming poles, pale pine walkways and carefully enclosed ladders and stairways. The rough stonework of the walls had been bleached pale, giving it a subtle, clean, post-industrial elegance. A sunburst of colour-coded paths radiated out from the laser, guiding workers to equipment and supply stacks at the edges of the open space. The white floor gleamed. Taken together, it all implied a simple, perfect, unquestionable rightness.
‘It looks just like the Shining City,’ said Leila.
‘This is a suburb,’ replied Cassiel. ‘A little further down and we’ll be at its heart.’
The fallen minds had changed too. The flies were invisible. Each of them presented as a pressure man, a different version of the past overseeing a potentially radical transformation of the present. The workers toiled on as before. They had become more perfect versions of themselves. Faces shone with blank geometries of beauty. All wore pastel linens, draped around them to reveal the perfect proportions of their bodies. Replacement body parts became pale, minimalist sculptures, their beautiful practicality shining with a seamless blend of utility and wealth. They moved effortlessly through their workspace, blending together into a shining dance of tasked fulfilment. Leila looked round for the dead one, curious to see how he’d been remade. He was invisible, blanked out by the weave.
‘They look just like the sleepers in the Shining City,’ she observed.
‘They are identical,’ replied Cassiel. ‘Do you think Dieter woke them?’
‘I suppose he must have done,’ said Leila. ‘This must be his army.’ She paused for a moment, puzzled. ‘But all this – it looks like it’s been going on for a long time. And he’s only had Kedrov and the Pornomancer’s weaveselves for a couple of days.’
‘You can ask him about it when you find him,’ Cassiel replied briskly. ‘Right now, we have to keep moving.’ She pointed towards the sloping passage that led down to the room below. ‘That’s our next stop.’
‘It’s a long way down,’ said the Caretaker. ‘How do we get there?’
‘Simple,’ replied Cassiel. ‘First, we turn off the local weave. We need to see the truth of things again…’ Deodatus and his false paradise vanished. Once again, they were looking out over fly-blown corruption. ‘Then we wait for a few seconds.’
‘What for?’ asked Leila.
‘You’ll see.’ Cassiel reached an arm towards the Caretaker, pulling him close against her.
‘What the fuck?’ he complained. ‘Cassiel, I can’t move!’ Then her hand covered his mouth and he couldn’t speak either.
A low boom echoed down from high above them. Every fallen mind stopped, their corrupted heads turned up towards it. A moment’s silence, then there was a series of increasingly loud crashes, pounding out from the opposite side of the pyramid. One final crunching thump, then a cloud of dust rose up from somewhere behind the laser. As one, the minds ran, vanishing behind it. The flies swarmed with them. The workers carried on as before, completely oblivious.
‘What is that?’ asked Leila.
‘My distraction,’ replied Cassiel. She held up a hand. ‘Nanogel holds a lot of energy. I left a little of myself behind some loose blocks. Sent a detonate command, and boom! We’ve got an avalanche. Now, get ready to move fast.’
Leila only had time to say ‘What…’ before Cassiel reached up, grabbed the iron ring with her free hand, and pushed them all out of the passage and into empty space.
They plummeted towards the ground. Leila screamed. There was muffled howling from the Caretaker. Then, instant deceleration, and Cassiel was landing on two feet, the Caretaker staggering next to her, a long thin strand of nanogel falling back into her shoulder and becoming her arm again. ‘Run,’ she ordered and they hurtled towards the passageway, Cassiel half pulling, half supporting the Caretaker.
‘Someone’ll see us!’ gasped Leila.
They passed a worker. It didn’t register them. ‘Nobody’s looking,’ replied Cassiel. Then the ground sloped, then they were halfway down the passageway, the Caretaker spluttering, Cassiel sprinting with sure-footed confidence.
‘What about the guards?’
‘Checking out the avalanche.’ They burst out into the lower room. Leila had a brief impression of more spotlights and a circle of dark rectangles. Cassiel pulled them through a door and into a smaller store room. The Caretaker bent over, gasping. Leila turned to Cassiel.
‘And just how are we going to get out again?’
‘They’ll sweep the exterior, find no one there. Take them ten minutes or so. Then they’ll run an internal search. Just to be sure. But that’s enough time for us to break that.’ She nodded back out into the main room. ‘And if Redonda’s right, that’ll shut them all down.’
‘I hope my past is worth it,’ puffed the Caretaker as he pulled himself back together. ‘All this just to find out I’m some vacant old bore would really piss me off.’
They looked back out at the main room. It was empty but for a circle of twelve vast, rectangular servers, lit by more tripod-mounted spotlights. The
units were equally spaced, forming a round henge. Age had written itself across their casings, pitting and corroding them. The spotlights forced shadows across them. Leila thought of the broken skin of the pyramid. The trilithons looked as old, if not older.
‘The tunnel’s been cleared,’ noted Cassiel. ‘The fallen minds must have found the servers down there, bought them out and started them up.’
All were active. Lights flickered across each one. A low, steady hum poured out of them, reminding Leila of the soft drone of fly swarms.
‘They must hold the Shining City,’ said Leila. ‘Dieter’s in there.’
‘And once we’ve shut them down, that’s it. The corruption wiped out. Deodatus and the fallen minds neutralised. Victory.’
‘I’m going in before you turn them off,’ said Leila firmly. ‘I’ll find Dieter and get him out.’
‘You’re sure you’ll be able to persuade him to come with you?’
Leila squeezed the pendant. ‘I’ve got his true past ready to push back into him. That’s all I need.’
‘I’m going in there too,’ added the Caretaker.
‘Are you sure?’ Cassiel asked. ‘Much easier if you don’t.’
‘Dude,’ replied the Caretaker. ‘She’s got to find her brother. And I’ve got to find myself.’
Cassiel sighed. ‘OK. I’ll give you five minutes. Then I’m cutting the power cables and shutting it down. I’ll stay out here and keep an eye on things. Any trouble beforehand, I’ll warn you. And you’ll need to crash out of there as quickly as you can. Now, let’s take a proper look at it…’
The room shifted before them as she bought the weave back up. Floor, ceilings and walls shimmered into whiteness, becoming a perfect vision of white marble. The servers vanished. In their place was a small, round temple, simple pillars supporting a perfectly proportioned dome. It gleamed whitely. Leila was reminded of a particular persistent advert for dental treatment that had done the rounds a couple of years back, of the way it reduced happiness to a pure, shining smile. The temple radiated the same reduced perfection, implying a world so simply perfect that nothing could ever go wrong.
‘We’ll soon crack that,’ Leila said. She called the cuttlefish into being. It shot over to hover in front of the temple. She felt a sudden, deep affection for it. It had come from her brother, passed through one of his closest friends and now lived within her. It was almost family. It squirted information back at her. ‘Same security as the pit that Ambrose and I fell down. We’ll be in there in seconds.’
‘Get ready,’ Cassiel told the Caretaker. ‘Leave your body in the store room.’ The Caretaker moved into its far corner and sat down. ‘See you in there,’ he called out to Leila, then closed his eyes. His head tipped forward as his weave systems reached out, winding up to create a virtual version of him and write it into the Shining City. A moment, and it appeared. ‘Good to go,’ he said. He waved his hand around a little. ‘I quite like being a ghost.’
The cuttlefish pinged Leila. ‘We’re in,’ she said, then, to the Caretaker: ‘Let’s go.’
‘Five minutes,’ warned Cassiel as they approached the temple. Leila set an internal timer going. The Caretaker peered at his watch.
As they approached it, they saw that the view beyond it had changed. The other side of the white room was no longer visible. Instead, there was a dark sky, scudded over with white clouds. Long, low buildings shone down a wide empty avenue, curving away to the right. A tower climbed up and out of sight. The landscape stretched far into the distance, mausoleum pale. There were sleepers too, dark masses scattered across the streets.
‘So let’s go,’ said Leila. She squeezed the pendant one last time for good luck, then stepped into the Shining City.
Chapter 31
The city’s air was cold and still. Leila took a deep breath and felt its chill touch fill her. She was lying on the floor, gasping. The rotunda had looked like a stable portal into the city, but when she’d stepped into it she’d fallen as she’d fallen down through the black pit at the heart of Mikhail’s chamber. There was the same vast, rushing roar howling in her ears, the same lurch in her deep self as gravity took her and snatched her down. She dry-heaved again, and then rolled on to her back. The coldness of the stone was a mercy, shocking her back into herself. The worst of it seemed to be over. She sat up. She was on her own. Leila queried the cuttlefish. The Caretaker had entered the portal with her, then vanished. Maybe his avatar’s still buffering, she thought. There was no time to worry about him. At worst, he’d have dropped back into his body and would now be lying next to Cassiel, swearing. She told the cuttlefish to locate Dieter. While it rummaged through local log files, looking for traces of her brother, she glanced around.
She stood on a broad, sharply curving boulevard. The white buildings along it were simply styled, emanating an absolute mathematical harmony. The pavements and road were full of sleepers. To her right, a tall, elegant tower lifted up into the darkness with needle sharpness. Deodatus hung before it, his ancient face gazing down on the city. She wondered if the image would have time to react when the servers were turned off. Perhaps he’d flicker and, along with the city, just disappear. Perhaps his dead mouth would open and scream. But for now, he was all serene control. It comforted her profoundly to know that he would soon be shut down.
The cuttlefish was still looking for Dieter. She moved over to inspect one of the sleepers. It was a man. His body was beautifully proportioned. He wore a pastel chiton, identical to the ones the idealised laser workers had. A small blanket covered his head. She lifted it up. A face gazed up, as pale and emptily beautiful as the moon above. She let the blanket fall again. He slept on, his chest rising and falling in the perpetual night.
The cuttlefish nuzzled her. It had found Dieter. It was also flashing confusion, requesting permission to double-check the Shining City’s location. Error codes she didn’t fully understand seemed to hint at some sort of geo-spatial anomaly. Leila agreed, then told it to jump her to her brother.
The world changed and there he was, concentrating hard in his circular workshop.
She’d watched him work so often. For an instant, memories overwhelmed her. She remembered him as a child, infuriating their mother by taking apart every piece of tech they owned to see how it worked, then as a teenager, recreating the same cluttered workspace in squat after squat. She remembered the tools he’d built to heal her. And she saw him as he now was, still beavering away, believing that she’d rejected her afterlife and let herself die a true death. She fingered the locket at her throat. The memories that would restore the true past to him shifted within her.
‘It’ll work,’ she reassured herself. ‘He’ll come back with me.’
Little had changed since her last visit to this space. The two low couches were still in the centre of the room. But the original Deodatus victims were gone. Instead, the rapidly-assembled fetches of his new victims shimmered on them. Each lay still, apparently unconscious. Memories of the Pornomancer’s death agonies and of Kedrov’s desiccated body ran through Leila’s mind. Whatever else was happening, it was a relief to see both of them lying dormant, if not entirely at peace.
Dieter moved between them, blurring between different versions of himself. He was adjusting transparent, flexible pipes that ran into the back of each of their heads. The pipes soared up and disappeared into a globe of dark black-blue liquid. It looked like a drop of deep ocean tossed up by a storm and suspended in midair. It was about the same size as the exercise balls Leila used to bounce around on at the gym. When she focused on it, it seemed to expand, filling her field of vision then stretching into her mind. It was the raw stuff of memory, dense with the life experiences of Kedrov and the Pornomancer. To help Leila heal, Dieter had created a similar ball of his own memories, making it easier for her to draw on them as needed.
But why these two? she wondered. And what for?
D
ieter had said he was raising an army for Deodatus. But the pyramid looked like it was already well supplied with workers, and had been for a long time. And in any case, it was difficult to see how memories of vastly acquisitive art collection and production line sex could help create more of them. She thought back to the previous two victims – a professional eater and a military psychiatrist with a developed interest in torture – and wondered about them, too.
But time was pressing. Leila needed to reclaim her brother for herself. She let him see her.
‘Fuck!’ said Dieter. A spanner dropped from his fuzzed hand. It hit the floor and rang out an echoing clatter. ‘Leila. What are you doing here?’ His voice skipped between different versions of itself, as if it had been run through a broken auto tuner.
‘I’ve come to get you out of here. And sort this mess out.’
‘But you’re dead.’ He looked flabbergasted.
Leila stepped forwards and put a hand on his shoulder. Her other hand gripped the locket at her throat. She tugged and it came away. She held it tight in her fist. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ve been lied to. Deodatus rewrote your memories of me. I didn’t kill myself. We were together in the same flat for two years. Until that fucking box screwed you up.’
Disbelief and shock rang through him. ‘No,’ he said.
‘You succeeded, Dieter. You healed me and you helped me live.’ She thought of her own experience of being rewritten. ‘Look back into your past. There’ll be discontinuities. Jagged edges, where memories are missing.’
‘It’s so painful,’ he said softly, to himself as much as her. He put his hand on hers and let it rest there for a moment. Then he pulled it away from his shoulder and stepped back. ‘Gods,’ he said, and his voice had a torn quality to it. ‘Deodatus told me the Pantheon might construct a version of you to use against me. I never thought they’d stoop that low.’ He stumbled back, resting against the end of Kedrov’s bench. He couldn’t look at Leila. ‘Please, go. Just go.’