by Al Robertson
He stiffened, but his fingers wrapped around the pendant. Then a firm grip pulled her off him. Her arms were behind her back. Handcuffs snapped around them. Holt appeared from nowhere, as unpleasant a presence when virtual as in the flesh. Leila felt a tingle as he scanned her. ‘Yes, it’s built on your sister’s memories. Well done.’
‘Yeah, well,’ sighed Dieter. ‘Hopefully they won’t send another one after me.’ He sounded shaken.
‘Fingers crossed. And even if they do, they’ve pretty much run out of time. Everything’s running like clockwork. That means you’re safe now. Good work, Dieter.’
Dieter didn’t look particularly enthused. ‘Do you need me for anything else?’ he asked.
Holt shook his head.
‘Cheers, then.’
Dieter caught Leila’s eye as he turned. She was sure she saw uncertainty flicker across his face. The pendant was still in his fist. His knuckles were white. She held her breath. Perhaps he’d tell Holt what she’d just said. Perhaps he’d toss the pendant to him or just throw it away. But he remained silent and it stayed in his hand until he turned the corner and was gone.
‘And that’s that,’ said Holt, sounding relieved. ‘I can stop pretending.’ But there was still a vast, twitchy paranoia about him. ‘He’s running all our IT. He’s got the keys to everything. Deodatus would be so angry if anything happened to him.’
Leila was appalled. ‘You manipulative little bastard.’ She felt the skull face itch inside her, hidden deep beneath the Caretaker’s camouflage. She was tempted to open it up on Holt. She almost wished she still had the Fetch Counsellor’s memory virus to drop on him. ‘You know exactly who I am, don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied Holt. ‘You really are Leila. You’ve given me so much stress, since we met. You and your twin. But that’s all over now.’ Leila imagined the virus acting on him. At first the thought of it gave her deep satisfaction, but then she realised that it would purge his memory of all his crimes. It struck her that that would be a kind of blessing. He’d never have to come to terms with them. He might even avoid judgement for them.
‘You’ve got to let me go,’ she told him. ‘I’ve seen the laser in the pyramid. I’ve seen the fallen Station. Deodatus is going to blow up our home and kill everyone on it. We have to stop him.’
‘Haven’t you realised?’ A haunted, broken look crossed his face. ‘No one can stop him. We can only try and make things as easy as we can for him. So he does the least possible damage along the way.’
‘Holt, he’s going to blow up Station, corrupt the Totality and take over on Earth. There is no “least possible damage”. There’s only rewriting or death for millions.’
Holt gave her a nervous glance. ‘Oh, no. He’s planning something very different.’
‘Has he broken your memory too?’
‘No, no. I’d know if he had. I’ve made very sure of that. I worry about it so much, Leila.’ He paused. ‘I don’t think you’d ever guess what he’s actually planning. It’s not nearly as melodramatic as you think. I mean – when you understand, you’ll see what I mean. He’s a visionary, in his own way. And nobody can stand against him. We just have to go with him.’ His eyes were full of pleading agony. ‘There’s really no choice, Leila.’
‘Gods. He’s really done a number on you.’
‘I’ve seen people you wouldn’t believe fall to him – like that.’ There was such desperation in his voice. Leila almost felt sorry for him. She wondered how she’d have ended up, if she’d felt as alone as he seemed to. ‘People I’ve looked up to for years. People I thought would save us. I’ve seen him bend a god to his will, Leila.’
‘I’m not like you, Holt. I’d never work for him.’
‘You don’t know what he’s really planning.’
‘He’s lied to you.’
‘No. He really hasn’t. You’ll see when you meet him. He’ll explain it all.’
‘He wants to see me?’ Inside herself, Leila cheered. But there was disquiet, too. If Holt was right, then she might have radically misunderstood her adversary. ‘Why?’
‘He sees you as a lever to help him control Dieter more efficiently. And resistance fascinates him. He finds it so hard to understand. He likes to push against it.’
‘Perhaps I can push back.’
‘Oh no, Leila.’ Holt looked genuinely terrified for her. ‘Please don’t stand up to him. It’ll make things so much easier for you. You’ll be able to keep so much more of yourself safe. Please, just do whatever he wants you to. It’s the only way to survive.’
Chapter 42
The floor was all dead flies. They lay in drifts, deeper in the angles of the room, piled up against the hard edges of tables and chairs, shallow where there were open spaces. The black chitin of their exoskeletons – stripped of their flesh cores by time – seemed to absorb the soft evening light, throwing back barely any of the purples and greens and greys that oozed into the room from the pale clouds outside. The wiring was brighter in the gloom, silver shimmers scattered across the floor, tiny components liberated from their hosts. There were miniature circuit boards too, shining out like fallen moons. Leila was profoundly relieved that she was hanging above them. There was a day left until the rock landed. She’d been unconscious for ten hours. She hung in the middle of the room, locked into full presence. She could speak and gesture, but she couldn’t move anywhere. And Dieter hadn’t come.
She looked over at the window. The broken maw of the fallen Station loomed above her, a darkness carved in the sky. She inspected the room. Luxury rose up from the floor’s black sea. The picture window that stretched the length of one wall was framed with heavy velvet curtains, the deep red and gold that patterned them a rhyme with the sky outside. The walls were papered with a repeating black and silver design, ancient brand iconography fringed with faded writing that read as soft, bronze blurs. There were tables. Some were scattered with gilded candelabra and dark sculptures of naked men and women, tower-islands emerging from dead insect waves. Others seemed entirely functional, polished steel showing through the insect corpses. Only one of them was bare of flies – a lacquered chest at the centre of the room, as long and deep and wide as a tall man. There were long glass-sided cases piled up against the walls, to the left and right of the room’s main window. In the gloom it was hard to see what they held. As the light shifted with the setting sun, fiery glints sparkled then died within them. Leila imagined stored relics, Deodatus’ personal museum of conquest and achievement.
There were images, too. They hung on the room’s rear wall. Leila queried the room’s weave systems and was surprised to be told that there was nothing virtual about them. She glanced across at them. A dark wooden frame surrounded a couple staring out at her. The man was dressed in a dark robe, fringed with brown fur. He had a thin, aristocratic face, with a large nose. The woman who held his left hand wore an ornate green dress, its rich folds an abstract pattern that zig-zagged to the floor. Her own left hand held its fabric up over her belly. There was a bulge that made Leila think she might be pregnant. A little grey dog stood at their feet, peering curiously back at the viewer. There was a mirror on the back wall of the room they stood in, its round border bevelled like a cog. A shape peered back out of that, too.
Another image was split into three. The central panel – twice the width of the two side panels – showed a man in a white loincloth, nailed to a crossbar supported by a high, thin post. Together they made a T. Its wood was almost as dark as the winged figures that hovered behind and beyond it, black shapes weeping in an otherwise spotless sky. Four richly dressed figures clustered around the base of the post. They too wept. There was pale countryside, and in the distance a city the colour of bone. Leila imagined stepping into that landscape, passing by the crucified man and walking away from both the gods and the dead. An escape, of sorts – but her past would accompany her, and so the twin burdens of lo
ss and duty would remain with her too. Deodatus would still live. She’d still be hoping that her brother would hear and act on the message she’d shared with him. And Cassiel would still be lost to her. She imagined the relief of letting it all slip from her memory. But she didn’t think she could ever be as relaxed about losing her past as the Caretaker had been. And even he had been so strongly driven to recover the truth of himself. She sighed and returned her attention to the room, wondering when and how her adversary would manifest.
She didn’t have to wait much longer. The first signs of his presence came as sunlight vanished from the world outside and the clouds lost their fierce lava glow. The long, low chest at the centre of the room lit up, fiery light chasing patterns down its side. Leila thought of the glyphs that Mandala had burned in the desert. These had a brisk efficiency to them. They seemed to represent some kind of boot-up sequence. As they ticked down, lights flicked on around the room. The display cases were waking up too. She assumed that each would hold a bric-à-brac of jewelled fripperies.
She was wrong.
Every single cabinet was occupied by an ancient, desiccated body. Leila was reminded of the workers she’d seen slaving for Deodatus. But these cadavers were far older, far more mummified than even the creatures tending to his fusion reactors. There was no flesh left, only bone and parchment skin; nothing soft to moderate the sharp, carving edges of their wasted faces and arms, their legs and hands and feet. And there was so much more ornamentation.
There were medals, dense with brand iconography, scribbled across with illegible inscriptions. Fabrics, vibrant with bright, imperishable colours, clashed brutally with the decay that surrounded them. There were wands and sceptres and ceremonial weapons, still clutched in dead hands. One held a gold feather, dripping with blue and red jewels. Another had a goblet, filled with dusty pearls. There were swords and spears, pens and orbs, stars and maces, chains and even small statues, some of animals, others of humans. There were breastplates, and shining gold and silver helmets. Jewels filled empty eye sockets and gilded teeth grinned in dead mouths. It all shone beneath the lights, a hoard dressing the dead with brilliance. It spoke of only greed, of a rapacious desire that had run out of control and scrawled itself across them all in luxury. And as Leila inspected them all, she saw that each had one single decoration in common: a triangle set into their torso, pointing up past their chests to their heads.
A hiss from the centre of the room pulled Leila’s attention back to the sarcophagus. Its top split as twin doors opened. A white mist drifted out – possibly vapour from some sort of chiller unit, possibly just dust. A low, dissonant buzzing leapt into the air. Leila remembered the harmonious hum of Mandala’s hives. This was something very different, the harsh, sawing rasp of a fly swarm. And then, with a high pitched whine, machinery whirred into action, thrusting the case’s occupant up into a standing position. Leila was behind the sarcophagus, so as he rose he was also lost to her sight. She glimpsed a flash of jewels, a writhing of flies, a pale oval that could have been a face, and then she could only see the back of the bier that held him. It sighed to a stop. There was nothing to be seen or heard of him but buzzing.
Leila waited, tense with expectation. She wondered what he was going to do. Perhaps he would torture her. Perhaps there would be a psychoactive attack, assaulting her memory structures. Perhaps he would just try and delete her. She wondered how long her defences could stand up to an ancient god. Holt said that she fascinated him. Perhaps he’d talk. She sent a silent call out to Dieter, praying for his arrival. She reached into her skull face, requesting a readiness check. It shifted in her mind like a fish in a strong current, signalling back that it was live.
And then, a distraction – a soft succession of quiet chinking sounds, whispering into the room from all around her. At first Leila thought that Deodatus had stepped from his pedestal and turned towards her. But he remained immobile. Looking round, Leila gasped. Eyelids had shifted, exposing ancient pupils to the light. There was motion, too. Every head was turning towards the sarcophagus. Then they were still again. The sun’s last brilliance died in the sky and darkness took the world outside.
At last, there was a soft creaking from the bier. Deodatus moved towards the window and placed a hand against it. All the exhibits moved their heads to follow him. His hand was gloved in gold wire and scarlet and amber jewels. There were bones visible beneath the wire, and a crawling darkness where flesh should have been. Then he spoke. Leila wasn’t sure what sort of voice she’d been expecting – perhaps something harsh and commanding, perhaps something thin and wheedling, anything but this gentle buzzing. The soft corrosions of time had left the old god with hardly any breath to push his words out into the world.
‘I have been watching you for so long,’ he whispered, his voice a ghost on the air. ‘Or rather, watching the absence that you were. Always, signs of resistance. The mind, rescued. The pyramid, penetrated. My poor brother, helping you on Station then using the last of his credit to buy an insertion mission from the powers of the air. A vacuum suit that contained a skeleton, running through the night. But I could never see you. New thing in this world that you are.’
He turned towards her. Red jewelled eyes glittered. A pale skull was wrapped in a tarnished silver net. The nose was two holes. Gold gleamed within them. Teeth were emeralds and wire. The jaw was tightly sealed to the skull by a tapestried strap. His neck and chest were a scummed rainbow of jewels and fabric. An upwards-pointing triangle sat beneath it, carved into the space above his belly. Wealth shone out of the pyramid. There was also rotten flesh and a susurrus of flies. They bustled within and beyond it. The dead god’s torso was filled with black organs, shaped from insects and technology. Leila gaped. His whole being was a jewelled protest against time’s consumption of life.
Dieter will come, she told herself. She wouldn’t hit Deodatus yet. ‘I had to try and stop you,’ she said. It was hard to see him as something that could be talked with. She forced empathy on herself. ‘And I can imagine how you felt. Until now you’ve been a mystery to me too.’
Deodatus chuckled, a soft wheezing sound rattling out of his chest. Leila imagined scores of dirtily transparent wings shaking in unison. ‘I suppose I have been. A mystery to you all – except those who found and followed me. And even they barely see me. They see themselves and their own desires, and then I fulfil those desires. Then they do my bidding. Will you accept that gift from me, I wonder?’ He moved. Walking was difficult for him. One hand reached for the side of a table, bracing his frail body. Chitin rustled as he shuffled towards her, his feet lost in drifts of dead flies. The exhibits’ jewelled faces glittered, tracking him like camera nests. ‘As so many others have done.’
Leila was terrified that he would attack her. ‘It was never a gift,’ she replied. She scrabbled for words that might stop him. ‘You forced yourself on them. Are you going to force me to serve you now? That would prove how weak you are. That, if I could choose, I’d refuse you.’
Deodatus stopped moving. Individual tendons and muscles strained to tip his head up and back, until it moved far enough for gravity to catch. It slumped back with a lurch and he laughed. His new stance opened up his chest. It caged a fury of beating wings, shimmering for thirty or forty seconds, until at last they stilled and his head tipped forward again. The creatures in the glass cases shook too, pulsing out wheezing echoes of their master. They returned to stillness as he recovered himself.
‘What are they?’ Leila asked, seeking more distraction.
‘My subsidiaries,’ replied Deodatus dismissively. ‘They chose to compete with me. And then they lost, and I took them over, one by one. Such titanic struggles! I understand that those who cared to look could even see them from Station. And I’ll have four more subsidiaries once the Rose has helped me take the other gods of the Pantheon.’
‘They’ll be fully slaved to you?’
‘They don’t need freedom.’
He snorted. ‘Don’t deserve it. Do you, I wonder?’
Leila felt vast power querying the outer recesses of her self. Protections spun up within her, prickling in her mind. Dieter would come.
‘It’s not about deserving it,’ she replied. ‘It’s about being right. Don’t you want to be right? Don’t you want to be the only real alternative?’
‘Oh, but I’m that already. You all choose me in the end. Look at your brother. He’s been so helpful. All I needed to do was show him something he truly desired – and how quickly he came to me. How completely.’
Real passion lit in her, chasing out fear. ‘You’ve butchered him. You’ve broken his memory. He doesn’t even understand what he’s lost.’
Deodatus snorted. ‘Managing him, adjusting him, making him more efficient. I bought focus to him, polished his motivation. He still has the most important parts of his past. And he chose to let me work on him.’
‘He chose that?’ Leila was shocked.
‘He knew that following me would involve sacrifices. Hard choices.’ Deodatus’ soft voice was nearly a whisper. ‘If he didn’t fully understand them – well, that’s not my responsibility.’
Leila remembered how rapt Dieter used to become in new discoveries, new pieces of technology. She could well imagine him losing himself in all that the pressure men had offered him, not really registering any potential downside, trusting in his own technical mastery to pull him out of any difficulties. She was at once saddened and infuriated by his naivety. He had always been achingly vulnerable to the carving greed of a corporate entity like Deodatus.
‘I can imagine that,’ she said, hating herself for having to admit it.