A Dark and Hungry God Arises

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Where Nick was concerned, the questions were less personal, but no more ponderable. What the hell was he doing at Enablement? Were those warships here to chase him down, or protect him? Whom had he betrayed this time?

  Angus didn’t really care. For himself he wanted revenge, pure and simple: the exact nature of Nick’s plots and alliances changed nothing. And for Angus’ mission the only significant danger Nick represented came through his association with Milos.

  The messages which Milos had sent earlier had been beamed, not toward Operations or any other part of the installation, but to Captain’s Fancy—and Tranquil Hegemony. And both ships had answered.

  That made Succorso at least as fatal to Joshua as Morn was to Angus.

  With an emotional violence which had no effect whatever on the steady precision of his hands, Angus Thermopyle chimed Milos’ cabin and growled like a demonic cherub, “Wake up, baby boy. Come back from dreamland. We’ve got reality dead ahead, and it’s closing fast.”

  Then he silenced the intercom so that he wouldn’t have to answer Milos’ demands for an explanation.

  Trumpet’s final approach went smoothly. Milos did his job with inexpert but unobjectionable care. And Operations had no reason to treat the gap scout worse than any other ship. After all, the installation was more than adequately protected by its own guns, as well as by Calm Horizons’. Whether or not Trumpet would ever be allowed to leave was less clear.

  Finally Billingate’s grapples thunked into their sockets in her hull; power, air, and communication limpets were attached to her receptacles. Because his datacore left him no choice, Angus began powering down the ship.

  Putting himself, Milos, and Trumpet in debt to the Bill.

  At the same time he growled to Milos, “If you’ve got any special instructions”—his tongue still tasted like hell—“you’d better give them now. This isn’t a good place for surprises. Unless you improvise better than you use that board.”

  Milos dropped his nic into the growing pile beside his seat and lit another. Without looking at Angus, he muttered, “Is that what you call ‘reality’? A place that isn’t good for surprises?”

  Angus rasped a bitter laugh. “You haven’t got a clue what I call ‘reality.’” He gibed at Milos because he needed some outlet for his random bursts of anger. “When you find out, I fucking guarantee you won’t like it.

  “For your first lesson,” he added as he unbelted from his g-seat, “we’re going to go out and act like we really came here because we wanted to. Even if you spent your whole life in guttergangs until you left Earth”—a guess, but Angus trusted it—“you haven’t seen anything like this before.”

  Milos’ eyes flicked uneasily. “Is that a fact?” he drawled; but his attempt to sound unconcerned wasn’t a success.

  “Trust me,” Angus leered. Flexing his knees, he tested the pull of Thanatos Minor’s g. Then he moved, deceptively light on his feet, toward the companionway.

  Gripping its rails, he paused. “By the way,” he advised, “don’t make the mistake of thinking you can carry weapons here. You’ll be scanned down to your balls before you reach Reception. The Bill makes damn sure nobody but him has any firepower.”

  Nobody but him and the Amnion.

  Alarm forced Milos to look at Angus. “Will you get caught?”

  Angus grinned. “That depends on whether fucking Hashi Lebwohl knows what he’s fucking doing.”

  As he started up the treads he saw Milos furtively pull a stun-prod as small as a dagger out of his pocket and slip it into the padding of the second’s g-seat. Milos looked like he could no longer remember what smugness felt like.

  He definitely wasn’t going to enjoy Billingate.

  Angus took that as a form of reassurance.

  He was a coward: he wanted all the reassurance he could get.

  Together he and Milos rode the midship lift down to the airlock. There Angus stopped. Pointing at the control panel, he announced harshly, “Seconds are supposed to do jobs like this. Are you going to open it, or do I have to hold your hand?”

  Milos’ eyes were nearly opaque with anger and anxiety. In a tense rasp, he retorted, “You’re going first, Joshua. I’m not coming out until you make it through the scanners.”

  Angus had no response to a Joshua command. He couldn’t even shrug. He simply moved to the control panel and keyed the airlock doors.

  One window in his head showed him the time: 22:07:15.53 standard; late in Billingate’s artificial evening. Another reminded him of the security codes which would lock everyone else out of Trumpet until he or Milos returned. With his prosthetic vision, he watched the evanescent electromagnetic emissions of the servos and locks as the interior hatch lifted. Rage fumed and spattered through him, and accomplished nothing.

  After Milos joined him in the airlock, he closed and sealed the interior door, then opened his ship to the complex atmosphere of Billingate.

  The access passage ahead was awash with EM fields. Gossamer, multihued, and insinuating, they looked like webs or veils which his crude body would tear when he passed through them. But he knew that he was safe before he touched the first veil. His enhanced sight confirmed what his datacore told him: his computer and its zone implants, his lasers and powerpacks, caused no ripple in the shimmering aura of Billingate’s detection scan. Hashi Lebwohl had unquestionably known what he was doing when he designed Angus’ equipment.

  Impersonally Angus noted the absence of guards. That was good—from Lebwohl’s point of view. It meant the Bill had decided not to challenge Angus’ story directly. Instead he would rely on time and observation to reveal the truth.

  Angus wasn’t surprised. As a matter of policy, the Bill treated his sources of revenue politely. He spied on everybody; but he didn’t willingly offend paying customers.

  Over his shoulder, Angus muttered to Milos, “Come on. It doesn’t get much safer than this.”

  Without waiting for his second, he headed toward Reception.

  There were guards in the reception area, of course; but he ignored them. By the time Milos caught up with him, he’d already used one of the data terminals to verify his credit and link it to voiceprint id. Brusquely he motioned for Milos and said, “Your turn. Tell the nice computer your name so we’ll be able to spend your money.”

  Grinding his teeth, Milos gave the terminal a voiceprint to use for id. His glare suggested that he was thinking of new ways to humiliate Angus.

  With a grin to conceal the twist of fear in his stomach, Angus asked the terminal for two rooms in a bar-and-sleep on the cruise.

  Of course, he and Milos could have stayed aboard Trumpet in relative privacy. And the Bill was sure to monitor any rooms they hired on Billingate. But for that very reason they were safer in a bar-and-sleep. The Bill would worry less about men who didn’t try to hide from him.

  Because he wanted to nauseate his second, he booked rooms in a place called Ease-n-Sleaze, which was located near the center of the cruise. Then he took Milos by the arm and said in an acid whisper, “Look on the bright side. This way all those bastards you’ve been talking to can find you just by”—he logged off the terminal—“checking. Won’t that be nice? And you can see anybody you want without”—he tapped his head—“asking Lebwohl’s permission.”

  “Thanks so much,” Milos replied, making an effort to match Angus’ malice. “I didn’t know it was going to be this easy.”

  “It isn’t.” Angus bared his teeth. “I’m just trying to lull you into a false sense of security.”

  “Please don’t threaten me anymore,” Milos muttered darkly. “I’m already so scared”—he glared straight at Angus—“I could just shit.”

  Angus tightened his grip for a moment. “I know. But you ought to be careful what you do about that. Someday you’re going to get your balls bitten off.

  “Shall we go?” Dropping Milos’ arm, he gestured toward the lifts.

  Milos complied like a man who was so busy devising complicated forms
of murder that he couldn’t think about anything else.

  The cruise wasn’t Billingate’s sole lodging sector, but it was much larger than the alternatives. Occasionally the Bill had guests for whom he catered privately. And sometimes ships were willing to pay the extra charge for rooms which were better furnished and less exposed; perhaps because the captain feared he would never get his people back if he let them loose; perhaps because the crew had vices they didn’t want to share. But every other human who came to Thanatos Minor stayed either aboard ship or on the cruise.

  It filled several of the middle levels of the installation. Toward the surface were the various worksheds and storehouses which supported the docks and the shipyard, as well as the hermetic Amnion sector; toward the core were the Bill’s personal strongroom, his surgical facilities, and Billingate’s power station. Between the surface and the core lived, drank, slept, worked, caroused, cheated, fucked, raped, pandered, pleased, and fought the people who supplied—and the people who enjoyed—Billingate’s more personal resources.

  Perhaps because of the constriction of the halls which the denizens called “streets,” or perhaps because there were millions of tons of rock impending overhead, the cruise seemed to throng with people. Billingate’s population was reputed to number roughly five thousand; but the cruise gave the impression that twice that many men and women were here at any given moment. Of course, some of them came from the ships docked around the installation. The rest must have been missed by uninformed estimates.

  After the first assault of smell and light, after the first look at the crowded streets and windows, bars and dens, the most remarkable aspect of the cruise was the proportion of women. Women were rare in what human space called “entertainment/lodging sectors.” Those who lived on stations generally had their work or their families, and little reason to mingle with transients. And women who were themselves transient—who traveled or crewed on ships—visited entertainment/lodging sectors for what those places supplied, not because they wished to be used as supplies.

  On the cruise, however—

  The Bill must have scoured human space to attract so many. From sinkholes on Earth and the depraved recesses of stations, from illegal shipyards and desperate ships, he must have begged, purchased, and betrayed them by the hundreds to get them here. According to how they were viewed, they were either the glory or the slime of the cruise: women who enjoyed what they did, what they got, and became rich; women on nerve juice or other drugs who barely kept themselves alive; women with surgical adjustments, bioretributive and otherwise, who had no choice. No spacefaring illegal who came to Billingate could honestly say that he’d ever had so much beauty and ruin to choose from.

  On special occasions, Angus himself had taken advantage of a woman or two here. But that was before he’d known Morn; before he’d debased her as far as his hate and his considerable imagination could go; before she’d begun to break his heart.

  Now he tasted the air, watched the lights, and leered at the women as if he were in his natural element at last. But neither he nor his datacore had any interest in female recreation.

  For his part, Milos pursed his mouth and frowned like a man who found most women—and perhaps sex itself—vaguely disgusting.

  Angus had no time to enjoy his second’s disgust, however. He had other priorities.

  The air which greeted him as he left the lift was exactly as he remembered it: too hot; inadequately processed; clotted with smoke, perfume, sweat, rot, estrogen, vomit, booze, and every other human stench he could think of. The lighting may have been deliberately garish, full of colors that screamed and shades that whimpered; or it may have simply been made garish by the accreted grime of the atmosphere.

  Nevertheless neither the air nor the light blinded him to the EM aura of the bugeyes which ranged along the ceiling in all directions, or the telltale emissions of the guards and wires with communications prostheses. As impartial as death, the Bill tried to keep track of everything that happened on Thanatos Minor.

  Some of the guards were easy to spot. They were obvious because they patrolled the cruise as if they had nowhere particular to go; and because they carried weapons—or had weapons installed in their arms. Angus counted six within fifty meters. But others—the “wires,” he called them—were disguised. Their communication equipment was hidden in their clothes or their bodies, or camouflaged as something else—an artificial hand here, a prosthetic jaw there. Still Angus recognized them all. Their EM emissions were as plain as placards. Anything he said in their hearing would be instantly recorded in the Bill’s data banks.

  The computers and personnel charged with sifting and collating such information must have been inundated by it.

  One of the wires had a more complex emission signature. That attracted Angus’ attention. When he located its source amid the jostling surge, he found himself looking at a man whose head had been cut off and attached to a mechanical neck which could swivel in any direction. That, Angus decided, was the duty officer in command of this section of the cruise.

  With a slight nudge, he turned Milos to glance at the man. “Watch out for that goon,” he whispered. “If we do anything the Bill might not like, he can react faster than Operations.”

  Milos nodded. Scowling at a woman with a pneumatic bosom, he breathed, “What are we going to do that the Bill might not like?”

  Angus grinned humorlessly. “Don’t ask me. You probably know more about that than I do.”

  Satisfied that he’d located all the guards in his vicinity, he launched himself into the throng, heading down the congested street toward Ease-n-Sleaze.

  Milos probably did know more than he did about what he might do. His datacore didn’t answer that kind of question. It kept track of the guards for him, collating auras and vectors so that he seemed to know where they all were without effort; but so far it hadn’t unlocked any new information—or issued any new directives. Apparently his only immediate assignment was to install himself on the cruise and behave as normally as possible.

  That meant a room in Ease-n-Sleaze; it meant a seat in the bar and a few cheap drinks. Which suited him fine: for a while longer, he could cherish the totally false impression that he was doing exactly what he would have done anyway.

  Some distance down the street, Milos caught up with him. Anchoring himself at Angus’ elbow, he muttered, “I hope you’re having fun. You probably think this place is heaven.”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  Milos didn’t appear to notice Angus’ contempt. In a low, raw voice, as if he needed to swallow and couldn’t, he said, “It’s like a city that’s been taken over by a guttergang. Just one. Completely. No factions, no levers—no way to change anything. No escape.”

  “Nobody to betray in exchange for a little protection,” Angus put in. Then he added, “Except me. And if you do that, you’ll have to live in places like this the rest of your life. The cops’ll fry you as soon as they get their hands on you.”

  Milos’ expression gave Angus another piece of reassurance. The nausea lurking at the back of his gaze was unmistakable.

  The crowd rolled around Angus. Men and women bumped into him and stumbled or strode past; on their way, some of them flicked light fingers along his shipsuit, looking for valuables he didn’t carry. Just for exercise, he would have liked to catch one of those hands—he could have done that easily—and break it. Nevertheless he let them go. He didn’t want the guards and wires to focus their attention on him.

  A woman stopped in front of him and offered to sell him a vial of nerve juice. A man lurched into his way and asked if he had any nerve juice to sell. A creature, apparently hermaphroditic, paused to clutch his/her crotch and stroke his/her breasts invitingly. Angus dismissed all such interruptions with a snarl and steered Milos on toward their destination.

  The sign was like a shout blazoned up one wall, aggressive yellow and green:

  EASE-N-SLEAZE

  BAR & SLEEP

  FUN & FRO
LIC

  YOU NAME IT:

  IT’S HERE

  As if he were coming home, Angus pulled Milos into the crowded doorway.

  Left to the bar: right to what passed for the front desk. Angus went right. At a small counter with nothing on it except a data terminal stood a man with a doomed and bitter air; he gave the impression that to punish a no-doubt minor infraction his employer—the Bill or some subsidiary profiteer—had implanted an unstable explosive in his stomach. He didn’t look up as Angus slapped a palm on the counter and said, “Rooms.” Instead he asked distantly, “Id?”

  “Voiceprint,” Angus replied.

  The man snorted as if this were an inferior answer. He touched a key on his terminal, then waited for Angus to go on.

  Distinctly Angus articulated his name.

  After a glance at his readout, the man sighed as if he were contemplating the gulf of his fate. “Four twelve.”

  At a nod from Angus, Milos announced his name.

  “Four thirteen,” the man responded in the same tone.

  “Messages?” Angus inquired.

  Still without raising his eyes, the man pointed at his readout. “There’s a message here for me. It says to make sure you pay for everything up front.”

  Milos frowned a question.

  Angus shrugged. “The Bill just wants us to remember he doesn’t trust us.”

  Turning his back on the counter, he moved to the lift.

  On the fourth level they found their rooms directly opposite the lift. Milos hung back as Angus approached four twelve, scanning hard for electromagnetic data.

  Bugeyes along the corridor there and there. An intercom, id tag jack, and palm plate outside the door: normal wiring; no booby traps. If the room itself held any surprises, their emissions didn’t leak through the door.

  “Anything to worry about?” Milos asked tensely.

  Angus ignored the question. He wasn’t worried himself: he was simply cautious. Balancing his weight so that he could jump in any direction, he told the intercom his name.