But the neosatanist would not be taken by surprise. He crawled out from under the pile of branches at the other side of his hut and with his ancient but effective launcher hid behind the trunk of a felled tree. Colloni still managed to point his laser finger but only burnt the bark off the tree. The satanist answered in turn with a long salvo. The wood boomed with echoes.
In the same nanosecond Colloni's sympathetic nervous system took over the functions of the central and peripheral ones, and his brain, which was partly a machine, turned the Blessed One into a robot. Overloading the muscles and the blood-vascular system, Colloni performed a sequence of unimaginably fast movements. At that point ten missiles capable of blowing a aoth century bunker off the Earth's surface came flying straight at the Blessed One but each hit the neutralising blade of the Sword, which at a touch of a button, had unfolded instantly to a length of 92 cm. Luminous ricochets whizzed off into the darkness of the woods.
Taking advantage of the moment's peace that followed, Colloni folded the Sword and hid on the other side of the felled tree-trunk. Then, as he rose, he kicked away the launcher aimed straight at him and grabbed the satanist by the throat. Writhing, kicking and scratching with his long sharp fingernails, the wretch howled like the damned that he was, bared his teeth and tried to bite the Blessed One, who tightened the muscles in a skin-pouch placed under a wrist bone and, opening his right hand, caught an ejected dagger. He squeezed it hard till the blade glowed red hot before the satanist's eyes. The spectacular effect made the captive calm down.
Colloni took out his silver flask again and sprinkled holy water over the satanist. The poor devil gave out a terrifying roar, tautened like a string, then grew strangely limp, went green and flopped senseless on the ground. The Blessed One suspicious of trickery, waited till the friendly spirits had made sure the captive was unconscious. He slipped the dagger back into the skin pouch and looked at his fingernail: it was 03.50. Then he bent over the satanist and after a close examination declared him not fully satanised.
Colloni saw no point in prolonging the exhausting concentration of his powers. He straightened and put his mind in order, just as the infernal muscle pain that began to spread through his body knocked him off his feet.
It was already daylight when Colloni got up from the wet grass. After long actions the period of convalescence could last several days. The Blessed One stretched himself and ordered the Friend to fetch the strat. Ten seconds later the machine landed a metre from Colloni. He tied up the satanist and threw him into the boot. Ignoring the light requesting immediate contact, he launched the strat in a vertical blastoff, straight as a candle, that rammed him into his seat. He did not even bother to switch on the air conditioning, despite the unholy odour with which the devil-to-be polluted the atmosphere.
At I I.16, the sight of Colloni pulling the satanist out of the strat made the section flight controller freeze in his tracks. He almost choked on the katalla, then turned around and ran off like a madman. Colloni shrugged his shoulders, summoned the goods platform, threw the prisoner onto it, tapped in the destination room and without bothering with the lift went off for a bite to eat. He had not eaten for twenty hours.
Radziwill finally tracked him down just as he was finishing his meal.
"Colloni ... !" he started off with a threat in his voice. "I can take a lot. I've swallowed your scheming with the aliens, I've swallowed the assassination of the Lodestar, I've swallowed your insubordination during the mission in Hell, I've turned a blind eye to your illegal spells, but this ... You won't get away with this. I'm taking the mission out of your hands. And all your privileges. This time you've gone too far."
Colloni sighed, pushed away the old fashioned food receptacles and looked with contempt at the Blessed Ones scurrying out of the refectory. In less than twenty seconds the room was empty. He turned his eyes on Radziwill, looked at him as if hesitating, got up and asked in a conciliatory tone:
"Why all this shouting? There's nothing to get so het up about, Charles. That I disappeared for a few hours? It's not the first time and it won't be the last. You know full well I always work on my own and don't give a toss about your privileges. You can take them. As for our business, you're making a grave mistake. Time is running out and I don't think you'll find anyone who in two days will do the job McSonn couldn't do in four."
"Do you mean to say two days will be enough for you?"
"One. If everything goes according to plan, by tomorrow morning I shall know everything there is to know about the Golden Galley."
"Now I'll tell you something. The Galley is advancing in our direction at a speed fifteen times that of light, pushing in front of her a time mound that stretches for three parsecs. She's coming straight at us. That coward Glas announced an emergency alert for the whole Navy. The chief of Intelligence doesn't come off the line. Curious like hell. Tell me, Colloni, what was I supposed to tell him all those thirteen hours when I didn't even know if you were dead or alive?"
"You told him something though," remarked Colloni, not without justification.
"Out!" Radziwill rarely shouted like this. "Out! Get out of here! Take your stinking devil out of here and get out! You are no longer a Blessed One. I'll make sure the Pope excommunicates you before Sunday!"
Colloni left the refectory with an ironic grimace on his face. It was not the first time the Archangel had excommunicated him from the Legions. Usually two, three days later he had a visit from Radziwill's go-between who would shyly ask him to return to the fold. It was a matter of hours before it was clear to everyone how indispensable Colloni really was. The Department simply could not function without him, which was partly due to the efforts of his faithful staff and partly to his own. So there was nothing to worry about.
Colloni, smiling apologetically to his staff, climbed up the emergency stairs onto the next floor. In general, Colloni always smiled when he was not alone. Just as he wanted, the satanist was in room 657938, still in shock. The Blessed One took him, together with the platform, to the parking for private strats, bundled him back into the boot and departed for his fortress.
It stood on a finger of land jutting into the ocean, wholly protected by the curse AIDS IV. Coming out of the gentle curve of a turning, the strat flew straight into the cave on the face of the cliff towering above the stormy sea. The security life probes recognised the configuration of atoms that was Colloni and let him through, lowering the barriers. He left the prisoner in the care of a Guardian whom he instructed to take him to the Penitence Hall, while he headed for the communication room. Putting a smile back on his face, he called out the mist of Lottlna. He did not wait long. Soon, out of the billowing clouds in front of the console, there emerged the figure of Kaa.
"Al, it's you, Colloni." For some reason he was always called by his surname. . . "Have they given you the sack again? You really are incorrigible."
"Radziwill told me that half an hour ago."
"I'm not surprised. Well, I don't suppose you've knocked on my door to moan about your character."
"No, I haven't. I've got a problem. I need a conditional curse. It's your speciality, isn't it?"
"One could say that...
"Very good. It must be a permanent curse, extra-temporal, written into an object, automatic with injunctions. For a soul. Something special. I'll configure conditions myself. To be more specific, I need a shell curse with executive powers, general rules and punishment. The punishment ... The conditioning must be strong, the accursed is going to be a neosatanist."
"Are you all there?" snapped Lottlna, playing nervously with her purple hair.
"McSonn asked me the same question yesterday."
"Apparently Radziwill isn't the only one with something like a brain."
"Perhaps," Colloni waved his hand. "When will you have the curse ready?"
"I don't recall having agreed."
"When will you have the curse ready?"
"Are you serious?"
"Christ! I'm so serious you'
d be surprised if you weren't enough already."
"You can be trusted to come up with something weird."
"Well?"
She got up from the waterbed and started pacing the room. The mist surrounding her showed glimpses of her dwelling.
"The devil take you, Colloni. Do you always have to spoil every weekend? All right, for you - four days."
"I'm sorry Kaa, I need to have it by seven at the latest."
"By seven when?"
"By seven tonight."
"You need treatment."
"I've been telling Radziwill that for years. If you won't do it for me do it for money."
"Ha, ha, ha."
"I'll be honest with you."
"At long last."
"Shut up. The situation is this: Five days ago the Intelligence offered the Legions a deal. In return for a considerable sum of money the Blessed are to try and explain a certain problem. I know they won't, at least not before the deadline. The deadline is tomorrow night. If you fix me that curse I'll get what the Legions can't. What do you think the Intelligence will do then with that pretty sum?"
"How pretty?"
"Like fourteen million."
Lottlna swallowed.
"M ... million?"
"Million. We'll split."
Kaa sat down on a sofa.
"You'll have your curse. At seven tonight."
"God bless you," said Colloni.
He switched off the mist and sighed. After a while he noticed his own hand wiping sweat off his own forehead. Tough old Colloni was growing nervous with age.
The neosatanist, still unconscious, was lying on a marble rack, already undressed, washed and disinfected. Colloni hacked into the Brain of the Blessed Legions, by now off limits for him. He identified his captive as one Michael Condway: thirty years of age, successfully avoiding periodical consecrations; wanted by the Legions as well as by the police. His record showed few offences but even those would earn him a death sentence. An average worshipper of Evil, except for being a loner.
The friendly spirits established he would come round in seven hours. Of course, Colloni could try to revive him earlier, but there was no guarantee the patient would survive the cure.
Colloni instructed his spirits and had a nap.
At 18.5 0, the spirits awoke him. He got up, had something to eat, looked through the indigestible information service (not a word about the Golden Galley), and washed it down with Sardway 2086. Then he went to the post room situated on the top floor of the fortress. He was proud of his hideout. In fact, he would not be alive without it. According to his latest poll, his death would give pleasure to over six thousand people.
The packet from Lottlna arrived at 19-17. It contained a nickel ring with an inscription: "3 5%". Colloni smiled at it and began configuring the curse. The procedure gave him a headache. When he finished, he slipped the ring into his pocket and floated down to the Penance Hall, or to be more precise onto the gallery above it. The floor, the walls and the ceiling were covered with a complex system of mirrors focused on the marble rack. Wherever he looked, the man lying in it saw himself, himself, his torturers and what they would be doing to him. Fear was an indispensable part of the penance.
Condway woke up at 19.37. A bit late. Colloni immediately switched on the air tubes.
"Welcome, welcome, Michael. Did you sleep well?"
The neosatanist only hissed in reply. His body was covered with hundreds of electric needles and with every move each of them increased the torture.
"Very well, very well, we've had a nice chat, now let's get down to business."
Condway chose to remain silent.
"You know very well that your life is in my hands. I can kill you whenever I feel like it and they'll thank me for it. Were I for instance to strangle you now you would undoubtedly go straight to Hell, but not as a devil. I have bad news for you: You haven't yet satanised completely. Do you understand what that means for you?"
Silence.
"The third level. For ever. It's not what you were wishing for, satanising yourself all these years, is it? Luckily, luckily for you, my heart has suddenly gone soft. I can save you."
"How?" groaned Condway.
"There is such a thing as penance. Of course, normal penance won't do you any good anymore. But I, with my extraspecial papal dispensations ..." Colloni lazily switched on the lights in the Penance Hall. "Do you see those instruments?" Disregarding the electric needles, Condway was looking around nervously. "With their help I'm sure you'll make an excellent atonement for your whole life in just a few hours."
Condway shuddered.
"I'm not doing it out of pity. It's give and take. When you've done sufficient penance, I will kill you. Thanks to these instruments, you won't be dragged to Hell, at least not outright. Now, listen carefully. Immediately after your death you will fly straight to the star Altair, I'll graft the directions onto you under hypnosis. Once you get close enough, you will find for me a certain thing, you'll have the description grafted into you as well. You should find the thing without too much trouble, as a soul you'll be able to find smaller things. You will inspect it thoroughly and find out all there is to know about it. You must do it within three hours. If after that time you don't return and pass all the information to my friendly spirits ..."
"Then what?"
"Have you heard of conditional curses?"
"It can't touch me as a soul."
"As a soul - not, but if you have an extratemporal condition installed now, you may activate it after your death. In this way the curse will act on you the man - the living, material being - and thus modify you the soul."
"It'll do me no shit."
"You think so?"
"I think so."
"Well, imagine then that the penance doesn't take place, or rather hasn't taken place at all. You're automatically pulled down to the third level. By cancelling a few hours beforehand the penance you had as a man, I thereby change your future as a soul."
"What's the guarantee you won't reconfigure the curse after I've done the job?"
"You just have to take my word for it. But you should know it's the word of the One Blessed by the World. Will it do?"
"It'll do. But...
"But?"
"I don't understand what good is a penance which is not desired by the penitent?"
Colloni smiled.
"And you don't desire it?"
Condway opened his mouth, and shut it. He said not a word more.
Colloni switched off the air tubes and checked exactly how far Condway had already satanised himself. Tricky. Michael was on the verge of complete satanisation. Bad. Even with the most intensive programme of torture the penance would not be over before three o'clock.
Colloni switched on the brain controlling the tortures and went to bed. Just before he fell asleep he sent a spirit to check if Radziwill was ready to apologise. Radziwill was.
The Last Day
The friendly spirits woke him up at 02.30. He took a shower, had something to eat, said a prayer, looked at several registered mists with hypocritical messages of sympathy and floated down to the Penance Hall. The instruments and hypnotisers had already carried out their work. Condway looked more like an android after an exercise autopsy than a live human being. By normal standards he should be unconscious but thanks to his faith in Satan, or perhaps his pride, he was aware of everything that was happening around him.
When the lights dimmed, he called out in a weak voice:
"Hey, you, Blessed, are you there?"
"What's the matter?"
"I thought about what you'told me and I've come to the conclusion it's all crap."
"Oh, interesting." Colloni was flabbergasted by the stamina of the man.
"As far as I know, all the Blessed Ones have their friendly spirits and Friends. Why haven't you sent them to that bloody ship?"
"You are well informed. As for the Friend, he is a material being, though temporarily bodiless, charmed into an ob
ject, usually a precious stone. In practical terms he would have the same chance of getting to the Galley as any other man. As for the spirits, they live with me in a kind of spiritual symbiosis. If I sent even one of them further than sixty two kilometres it would cost me my life. I'm telling you this, for I know you won't talk to anyone. Ever. At any rate, now you understand why you've been so lucky."
Condway grunted something in reply but despite various voice amplifiers Colloni did not understand a word of it.
He shrugged his shoulders and switched off the machinery.
Michael Condway died quickly, with no moaning or dramatic scenes.
The smile faded from the Blessed's face. Suddenly, he felt strangely vulnerable. He cursed and went for a drink of Sardway 2086. Meanwhile Condway, free at last and bodiless, liberated from pain, rose towards the starry and hospitable sky.
The cool air permeated him like an invisible smoke. The space that surrounded him was familiar as if all his life he had done nothing but observe every blade of grass, every stone, every hill and every tree. When he closed the eyes he did not have, he was able just as easily to fly above the earth, knowing well the way he would only now embark upon. He could just as easily listen to the hum of the night's silence, for he no longer had ears. And all the scents circulating above the overcrowded planet, he could smell with the whole surface of his body. The body he no longer had. Which he did not want to have.
He wanted to free himself from that cumbersome, mindrestricting burden. He stretched out, grew slender, like an eagle in flight following its prey; the urge to fly, for fast, sense-numbing flight, rose within him like lava inside a volcano. And when it burst out - with great heat, with breezy coolness, with fountains of colours never seen before by his dead eyes, with cascades of sound never heard before by his dead ears, with all this which he had never experienced during his whole damned life ... If he could, he would have cried for the universe, senseless though it is.
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