by Greg Chivers
It’s not that the hearing went against me. Materially, I can still claim a victory. The anarchist plot I concocted will be vindicated by two convictions in court, and Amos Glassberg, Minister of Justice, man of principle, will be forced to deliver a verdict he knows to be false, one that also exonerates me of any possible wrongdoing. And yet, his face at the end of it all – he was not beaten. The judgements he delivered on the two thieves were forced exaggerations, uncomfortable for him no doubt, but convicting those innocent Missionaries as terrorists would have broken him. He would have done it, I think, in the misguided belief that bending to the popular will would put him ahead of me in the polls, thereby safeguarding the city from the threat I present. He would have sacrificed his integrity, and then lost anyway, and it would have been delicious. Instead, I have this.
Sybil ushers in two men in grey overalls who lift the red-robed body and deposit it in a wheelbarrow with an unbecoming clank. The arms splay out at the corners and the legs point almost vertically into the air. Her face shows no record of our recent contretemps, but the memory will linger, even if she chooses not to show it. The stakes are too high. She is too close.
‘Do they always use a wheelbarrow?’
Her head tilts in contemplation. ‘I think so. It would make sense to have something more bespoke, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes. See to it, would you?’
‘Hmm, OK.’ She watches the body roll away, wincing slightly as one of the hands catches on a door frame.
‘What’s wrong, Sybil? You seem distracted.’
She waits until the corpse has trundled awkwardly out of sight. ‘I don’t know what we’re doing any more.’
‘I thought I’d made it pretty clear. I want to know what it does.’
Her gaze flicks away from the doorway to settle on my face, soft cow eyes narrowed into harsh focus. ‘Why?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It matters to me; I’ve worked for you for seven years.’
‘I’ll take your word on that.’
‘I have done unspeakable things.’ Her eyes close, shutting down unwanted memory.
‘And? It’s a little late for regrets, don’t you think?’
A snort of laughter escapes her. There is no mirth in it. ‘Whatever we’ve done, I’ve never had cause to doubt your judgement until now. You’ve become obsessed. You’ve forgotten why we needed the Antikythera Mechanism. It was only ever supposed to be the means to an end.’
‘Sybil, I can see how it might look like that, but there is a bigger picture here. If this thing merits even a fraction of the effort the great powers have employed to obtain it, it could be game-changing in our little regional squabbles. With sufficient power, elections are an unnecessary sideshow. The Greater Levant Co-Prosperity Sphere could become a reality in a matter of weeks instead of years. This could herald the end of Jerusalem’s dark age.’
Silence. Pinched lips press tight against her teeth. For a moment I watch as the pressure of exasperation building inside her threatens to crack the veneer of control. ‘How? Explain it to me. Make me understand and I will make it happen for you. I can’t do that if I can’t see the endgame.’
‘You can, and you will. At this stage in proceedings, your obedience is all I require.’
Her face goes hard and lean, jaw tight. ‘I—’
‘You wanted clarity. I believe I have supplied it.’
A muscle in her jaw twitches, then her cheek goes slack and she speaks in the dull monotone of resignation. ‘Well, you’ll have to deal with Vasily. He’s stopped being polite. He knows you’re stalling. He says if you don’t fucking deliver he can have an airborne brigade here in forty-eight hours and he’ll take it.’
‘Don’t you see? Doesn’t that prove to you what we have here? The threat is transparently bullshit – Vasily must be getting desperate even to think of making it. If it was that easy, Sov shock infantry would already be goose-stepping through the Lion Gate, but every soldier they have is tied up on the Ural Front. If Vasily is going heavy, it’s not going to be on behalf of some Politburo fag with a yen for antiquities. The great powers are prepared to go to war for the Antikythera device; I would be mad to give it away.’
Sybil takes a deep breath and frowns. ‘How can you say that when we don’t even know what it does.’
‘If they can find out, so can we. It’s ours, for fuck’s sake. Get me the nun.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one in charge – the fat one. The other one looks like a handful.’
Her frown deepens. ‘That won’t be straightforward. They’re being released from custody.’
My hand drags from the dry skin of my forehead down the side of my face. ‘Do I look like I fucking care?’
Thankfully, the day’s disappointments have not diminished Sybil’s efficiency, and I have only a short wait for the rotund nun’s arrival. She smiles the deranged smile of the holy, but, needless to say, I am not taken in. I had Sybil look at the organization’s accounts – that farm complex out in the hills is turning a massive profit, and donations to the Mission’s city shelter far outstrip the meagre expenses of food and staffing. It’s a business, and a good one. I was going take it for myself if Levi Peres hadn’t been overcome by that bizarre messianic urge and let this frump off the hook. We’ll see; it might still work out.
‘Have a seat please, Mother Hilda.’ I gesture to the chair so recently vacated by her deceased opposite number in the Machine Cult. For a moment, she looks at it as if the body was still there, then the stupid smile reasserts itself and she gazes directly at me.
‘I cannot help you, Silas Mizrachi.’
‘No need for introductions then? Good, that’ll save us some time. What is it you think I want?’
‘Love.’
‘Oh, please fuck off! If we can’t make this an intelligent conversation, then I’ll have to end it painfully, and I don’t mean that metaphorically.’
‘By “intelligent”, you mean “limited in scope”. Very well. Despite what you think, I am no martyr; I fear pain like anyone else.’
‘Well, we’ll see about that. Tell me about the Antikythera Mechanism. What is it? What does it do?’
‘I can tell you what I know, but you will not like my answers.’
My hand twitches with the urge to strike, but after the last interview’s somewhat abrupt end, our reserve of relevant clerics is limited. ‘Why don’t we just try? And then I can decide for myself whether I like it.’
The smile subsides and the middle-aged woman stares at me with something like sympathy. Her eyes are green. For a moment I see the face of someone younger, a girl with golden hair and soft, pale skin. It feels like a memory of loss; then it’s gone.
‘The thing within the Antikythera Mechanism is a false god.’
The fatuousness of the answer breaks the spell of the moment. Sybil looks at me as if to say ‘You were warned’. It’s obvious I’m going to have to play the game to get anything out of this one.
‘How do you know it’s not a real one?’
‘God does not reside in machines, even if mankind chooses to see her there.’
A tortured breath escapes me. ‘Fine, let’s say you’re right. It’s a false god – whatever. What does that mean? What does it do?’
‘What false gods have always done – it warps the minds of men, bends them to its will, ultimately reducing them to mere extensions of its consciousness.’
‘Like mind control?’
‘Call it that if you will, but do not make the mistake of thinking this is some technological bauble you can use for your schemes, Silas Mizrachi. It is ancient and powerful beyond human understanding.’
I suddenly find myself mirroring her stupid, holy smile. It is, of course, the same Bronze Age bullshit priests have been peddling in this town for four thousand years. Obviously, she cannot perceive this object except from within her own paradigm, but there must be some reality underpinning the voodoo, or the Sino-Sovs wouldn’t give
a shiny shit about an antique.
‘How do you know all of this, Mother Hilda?’
‘It awoke in Clementine’s presence, and then it rose in response to a reading from The Book of Maccabees – a ritual of summoning for Dagon.’
‘Dagon?’
‘A Sumerian deity, a false god of the Philistines that placed itself as a rival to Jehovah. The consciousness within the Antikythera device might once have been known by that name, or others, but that is speculation.’
‘And can you conduct the ritual?’
‘No, the Lord has not blessed me with those gifts. Novice Clementine is the only one of us able to commune with it.’
The day’s disappointments vanish in an instant. The synthetic! Her Machine-built co-processors must be capable of interfacing with it. It’s not as if I needed proof the Antikythera Mechanism was nothing more than a hot piece of tech, but that clinches it. Somehow the Machines and the Soviets found out about this thing while it was under our noses in the city museum, or maybe Vasily’s telling the truth – his lot only want it to stop the other guys getting it. None of that matters now; the important thing is, the device might just be worth the hassle after all.
‘Sybil, I think young Clementine should show us what our new toy can do. Have one of the “guest rooms” prepared for her in the annex. You’ll need tech support, but keep the bodies to a minimum – people you can trust – and don’t tell them what it’s about. The device’s value halves with every person who knows what it can do.’
The smile I direct at the seated nun is entirely genuine. ‘Thank you, Mother Hilda, you’ve been most helpful. You can go now. Sorry to have taken up your time.’
She stands up, her expression suddenly sombre. At the door, she hesitates. ‘It’s not what you think it is, Silas Mizrachi. No good can come from worshipping false gods.’
‘Thank you for your concern, but really, there’s no need to worry on our behalf. We can handle everything from here.’
Sybil watches the woman walk away, then turns her gaze to me. ‘You let her go?’
‘I did, didn’t I?’
‘I didn’t think that was the plan.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘Shall I …?’ Sybil’s implication is unmistakeable. Mother Hilda is a loose end. All I need to do is nod, and she will make a call and the fat woman will die peacefully in her sleep, to be discovered by her mournful congregation when she fails to turn up for morning prayers. It would be the simplest thing, and yet something prevents me: a memory of loss, a soft, pale face crowned with golden hair.
40.
Clementine
His face is predatory triangles, scalene cheekbones gleaming in the yellow light from the ceiling, isosceles nose; the rest of him is shadows. Silas stands silent at the centre of the cell while a guard secures the door behind me and handcuffs one of my wrists to the bars. The air is dry and still, with a faint scent of pine. Whatever this place is, it’s cleaner than the city jail, but empty. I saw no other prisoners on the way in, only one corridor of three vacant cells before we reached this one.
The metal is cold on my wrist. I blink three times and the low-light filters descend invisibly over my eyes, cutting through the contrast that blinds the human optic nerve. In the darkness along one wall I see Levi’s skinny form huddled on the fold-down bench. He looks lost in the fabric of an outsize orange prisoner’s uniform and he doesn’t move.
‘We haven’t done anything to him, before you ask.’ A glint of white in Silas’s grin briefly overloads my image intensifiers and the rest of the room plunges into darkness as they overcompensate. When my vision returns, it is striped in cautious shades of grey. ‘We had a perfectly civilized conversation with young Levi Peres, and he was very forthcoming. If you cooperate too, I foresee no need for the unpleasantness I’d feared.’
He takes small steps in a semi-circle around the point where I am chained, his gaze dissecting me, trying to perceive the juncture at which my illusion of humanity fails.
‘What do you want? We’ve confessed. We’ve made no attempt to implicate you. We’re going to die. You’re going to win your rigged election. Isn’t that enough?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ My voice is an idiot echo bouncing from the bare walls of the cell.
‘I want you to show me how to use the Antikythera device.’
‘Use it?’
‘After I spoke to your Mother Superior, my scientists were finally able to put the pieces together. We know what it is now: a mind-control device; it emits signals at the same EM frequencies as synaptic transmissions. We can turn humans into puppets. With something like that, there’s really no limit to what I could achieve.’
‘Like what?’ The words are thin and high, a little girl’s.
‘Oh, I don’t know … Make something out of this wretched city – a proper country perhaps? A device like that could make diplomacy a great deal simpler and more rewarding.’
‘I don’t think it’s something that can be used. Hilda called it a demon.’
‘Or a false god. I know.’ There is laughter in his voice.
‘It’s dangerous. It hurts people.’
‘Yes, you said as much, but we have an understanding of how it works now. With your help we can make sure it never hurts anyone ever again.’
‘My help? Please, listen to me – I don’t think you understand. I don’t know what your scientists have told you, but I have only brushed against this thing twice, and I think the only reason I survived those encounters was because it was newly woken from a dormant state – even the thing killing Levi is just a sub-routine it reeled off without thought, an ancient preservation reflex, and I couldn’t save him. It has had days now to assimilate data and establish parameters. If it gets a foothold in another consciousness, it could spread through humanity. There is no limit to the harm it could inflict. For all we know, this thing could be responsible for any number of the disasters in humanity’s past. You know what I am. Believe me when I say it is beyond me. It is beyond any human technology. It’s not a god; it’s something far worse.’
He gives a bland smile. ‘Honestly, you’re as bad as the nun. We’re not the mindless primitives you take us for, you know, and contrary to what you may believe, I am not incapable of taking advice. I accept that there may be risks involved. I am not proposing that you should commune directly with the intelligence.’ He gestures to a white metal box beneath Levi’s bench that shows pale grey in my vision. ‘You can start by showing me how to control the code within Peres; that should suffice until we’re ready to move on to grander things. This cell has been fitted with a suite of sensors so we can record whatever’s happening in the electromagnetic spectra, study it, and reproduce it at our leisure. In the event of any mishaps, the entire cell is sheathed in copper and silver mesh to prevent transmissions outside. If this thing does pose a risk as you claim, it is only to us.’
A silence hangs between us.
‘Why would I help you? We’re going to die anyway. Me in the execution chamber, Levi probably sooner when he’s wiped clean.’
‘Because there is a chance, Clementine, that I might let you live if you prove yourself useful, and what are you if not a creature of logic?’ Another look assesses my worth, measures it against possible risk. I am a limited variable within this man’s calculus. ‘Surely even a glimmer of hope is preferable to the certainty of death?’
Adrenaline shivers through my body. It is the base animal response – fight or flight. Levi was terrified of this man – he ran and ran and it didn’t work. Two options; one is proven ineffective. What am I, if not a creature of logic? What choice do I have? Everything that has happened to us happened because of him. It must end.
‘You have The Book of Maccabees?’
‘That curious Talmudic apocrypha with the ritual in it? Yes, the nun mentioned it. Is it really necessary?’
‘Any intelligence needs an identity, even your warehouse watchdogs. The being within the Antikyther
a device could have many names. We know it responds to Dagon.’
‘A name is one thing, but why do we need the scripture? It seems pointlessly elaborate.’
‘It’s code. I don’t know how it works – the data almost certainly isn’t the words themselves – it could be intonation, rhythm, specific combinations of sounds or even concepts. I can only guess.’
‘Fine, do what you have to, but keep the theatrics to a minimum. I don’t want any distractions.’
‘All I have to do is read, although you might want to step back. If Dagon rises and seizes control of Levi, he could start moving unpredictably. If it goes wrong, so could I. For your own good, stand clear of us both.’
My words elicit a frown, but Silas Mizrachi retreats, pressing against the cell door to maximize the distance between us. With my free hand, I rest the battered old book on my knees. It opens in a waft of mildew and dust. The words of the ritual are black in a precisely printed neo-gothic script.
‘I will need to touch Levi.’ I rattle the chain of my handcuffs against the bars to prove his unconscious form is beyond my reach where it lies on the bench. Silas eyes me suspiciously, then looks around for the lackey who has already absented himself. ‘There will be danger, but I think not yet. I was reading to Levi for hours before Dagon rose.’
‘Do you have to call it that?’ With visible distaste he shoves Levi along the bench until his bare ankle is within my grasp, before retreating hurriedly to the cell door, where he presses himself back against the bars and watches.
The harsh German sounds of the words bring with them the memory of reading to Levi as he lay helpless in Hilda’s bed. I remember that time it seemed to bring him peace. The pulse in Levi’s calf quickens beneath my fingers as the words flow. It’s happening faster now. The pain along my spine is my antennae extending, an animal’s instinct, a wolf’s ear twitching at sound.
In this cell, I am in a dead space, a caged hole in the electromagnetic world. Silas is a blank, stripped of any devices that could render him vulnerable to infiltration – he’s cautious. The box containing the Antikythera device is another emptiness, the thing’s transmissions trapped within by layers of alloyed metals. The only activity is the code animate within Levi, which barks and growls unintelligibly through the VLF and microwave bands. It senses me, but does not attack instinctively as it did before. The defeated fraction of its essence caged within my consciousness functions as a kind of inoculation – I am marked with its scent.