Silver and gold bracelets wrapped around his left arm. I dimly remembered that they were called torcs. His other arm was made from the same silvery metal as the sword and covered in a complex engraved pattern. It looked like some kind of ancient but perfectly functional prosthetic. It had the same glow as the sword and his eyes.
Though my iconic form in here made me look fully human, my right arm had started to ache. I held it and took a step away from the heat, the sense of raw physical power and the radiating sense of barely controlled rage I felt from this thing. I think the emotion I was feeling was awe. It was clear to me that whatever he was, he had his roots back somewhere in humanity’s collective unconscious. At the same time I felt I was in the presence of something both ancient and utterly different to me. In some ways this thing, despite familiar trappings, seemed more alien than Them.
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘Now do you believe?’ Morag asked.
Shit, I thought. Was I having a religious experience? Had I been tricked into this? I pushed that thought back. I was determined not to let the normal cynical, fear-filled decisions of everyday life intrude on this place. Whatever was going on, I had to try and take this at face value as something strange but potentially wonderful. That said, I didn’t want to end up as mad as your average signalman. Though with the sheer feeling of power that was radiating from this thing I could see why so many were affected.
‘Oh,’ I said again, my mind like a steel trap.
‘I am Nuada Airgetláa,’ he said.
‘All right?’ I managed. I looked at Morag. She was just smiling. ‘Did you know about this?’
‘Not really the way it works. They come and go as they please.’
‘And They let them?’
We may have been being rude and I didn’t doubt that this guy was some kind of mythic archetype from humanity’s past somehow given form, but all the while we were talking he was watching us. Actually it was more like he was studying me.
‘You are a warrior?’ he asked. I felt my heart sink. Here we go again.
‘No. I am or was a fucking soldier and I don’t want to be doing great deeds for abstract reasons.’
‘Jakob …’ Morag tried to warn me. She reached over and grabbed my arm.
‘You’d have more luck with Balor if he wasn’t—’ Which was as far as I got before I was lifted up by the neck and slammed against the wall. I found the tip of about six feet of steel pressed against my stomach. His fingers scorched my neck. I could smell my own burning flesh. The pale flesh on his face seemed to slew back down to the musculature as he hissed, revealing wickedly sharp canines and too many of them. His breath smelled of honey, heather and raw meat. I’m pretty sure I screamed. Up close he looked even larger. And I had been having such a nice time. I knew I was helpless here.
‘No!’ Morag said and grabbed the guy. She may as well have been wrestling a statue. She screamed and stumbled back, her flesh burned where she had touched him. He released me and backed off, his features reshaping into their original form. He looked down at Morag. She was cradling her burned hands, looking pained and unsure. He seemed appalled by the pain he’d inflicted on her.
‘I am sorry, Mother.’
Morag looked as mystified as I was.
‘That’s okay,’ she said slowly. I was rubbing my bruised and burned virtual neck.
‘It was just that he said the name of my enemy,’ he explained.
Balor’s ability to make friends and influence people seemed second only to Mudge’s. Unless of course he was referring to the mythological demon that Balor had named himself after. Of course he was. I groaned. Even though I was having some sort of religious experience I lacked the ability to process it properly. It all seemed like nonsense to me. Frightening and painful nonsense.
‘Different Balor and he’s dead anyway,’ I managed.
Nuada nodded. ‘So you are a warrior?’ he asked again.
‘Whatever. What are you?’
‘I am Nuada Airgetláa, it means “Of the Silver Hand”. I am of the Tuatha Dé Danaan; I was once their king.’ He held up his silver arm. ‘But I am no longer whole.’
This I understood.
‘Tough war?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said simply.
I nodded. ‘I’ve got one just like it.’ Then I remembered where I’d heard the name before. ‘The arm. You made sure I got it? You’re one of those self-aware AIs that latches onto religious iconography in the net, aren’t you?’
‘I thought they were just the fevered imagination of hackers,’ Morag said. Nuada said nothing.
‘How did you get all the way out here?’ I asked him.
‘This is just another road from Tir Nan Og.’
This of course made no sense. I wondered if religion would have a more universal appeal if the gods could manage to be a bit less fucking cryptic. Then a strange thought occurred to me.
‘Wait a second. The arm. Are you trying to identify with me?’
I saw Morag roll her eyes. I think in the big electronic church of hacking you were supposed to be a little more respectful during your visitation.
‘The Adversary is coming—’ Nuada started.
‘No shit.’
‘Jakob!’ Morag hissed at me. She sounded genuinely pissed off.
‘The Adversary is going to drown us all. There will be only one god, and that god will be a god of fear.’
‘You mean Demiurge?’
‘And when he drowns us he will know us,’ Nuada continued.
‘So you can hide and keep secrets?’ I asked.
‘Now we hold our own mysteries, but not in the face of the Adversary.’
‘Okay, Demiurge is bad. We know this. So?’
‘He will have our power.’
This didn’t sound good.
‘Is that a lot of power?’ I asked. He just looked at me as if I was stupid. ‘If you’re frightened of Demiurge then fight. Don’t dress yourself up in old gods and expect others to do the work for you.’ Again he said nothing. ‘Have you got anything to bring to this?’
‘If we go near it, we will be taken, we will be corrupted, we will become an extension of it, and you do not want this as much as we do not want it.’
‘Okay, so come forward,’ I said.
‘And risk the burning times?’
‘So you’d rather be urban myths? Hackers’ tall tales? What are you anyway?’
‘I told you. I am Nuada Airgetláa.’
I took another step back. Despite the odd way I seemed to be hearing him, he seemed to be trying to keep his tone as even and emotionless as possible. I just couldn’t shake the feeling of enormous rage being held back just below the surface.
‘Okay. With all due respect, what do you want from me?’
‘You must have them remake Pais Badarn Beisrydd.’
I looked over at Morag questioningly. She was crouching down and backing into the shadows. There was something odd and primal about her movements. What the fuck was going on?
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘If you are a warrior then we will share blood.’
With his silver hand he wrapped his fingers around the sword’s blade, barely touching it. His hand started to bleed what looked like smoking mercury. I looked at Morag again. The shadows in the tunnel seemed to be elongating to engulf her. They moved across her naked skin like they were alive. I began to feel dislocated like I was on a good but frightening psychotropic. It was as if it wasn’t happening to me but I was somehow witnessing it.
‘It’s only information,’ Morag whispered.
I could only see her as a shadow now, though the shadow’s teeth and eyes seemed to burn. I swallowed and reached out for the sword. I didn’t even realise I’d touched it until my hand came away wet with blood. Nuada grasped my hand. My blood and his mingled. It burned, it burned so much. It took me a moment to realise the discordant screaming that was so jarring, even in this part of this place, was me. My flesh glowed fro
m the inside through translucent skin.
I awoke in the pool. My body felt like a rough-edged machine. It was awkward and painful to live in. Of course it would have been less painful if I hadn’t stabbed myself in the arm earlier. I felt feverish and was surprised that the water wasn’t bubbling. Morag was holding me, cradling me like I was a sick or frightened child.
Later in the grotto I was still shaken and didn’t feel right. I was too hot. A diagnostic check of all my internal systems found no trace of any information exchange.
‘Did you take me there?’ I asked.
She didn’t answer straight away. I think she was trying to work out if there was any accusation in my question. There wasn’t. I’d worked hard to make sure there wasn’t.
‘It wasn’t an ambush. I knew there were things there. I’ve spoken with some of them but I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘They’re AIs, aren’t they? Powerful self-aware ones masquerading as old gods. That’s why they’re so frightened.’
‘Maybe,’ she said.
‘You can’t believe they’re gods, can you?’ I said incredulously. Maybe I was just trying to convince myself. It had seemed pretty real at the time.
‘They’ve been here a while if they are.’
‘They must have come when we were colonising.’
‘Its difficult to understand Their way of measuring time but They encountered whatever that was before They encountered us.’
That shut me up until I eventually asked, ‘So what do you think they are?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe they’re aliens searching for a way to communicate and then the way home, or maybe they’re the real deal – whatever that means. Pagan thinks that they are a reflection of us, our subconscious projected onto the net and somehow given form and independence. He calls them ghosts of our imagination.’
‘So?’ I finally asked.
‘So what?’
‘So what does it all mean?’
‘Fucked if I know.’
‘Brilliant. Just more religious bollocks.’ Morag opened her mouth to say something. ‘Don’t tell me to have faith.’
‘I was going to tell you to speak to Pagan – he knows more about this sort of thing.’
‘Oh he’ll fucking love that, me getting religion. Has he seen them?’ I asked, trying to change the subject.
‘Back on Earth he has. He hasn’t been in Their mind yet. I’m going to take him in next.’
‘Yeah? Good, he’ll like that. Hold on. Does that mean he’ll see you naked?’ I demanded. She was laughing. I still didn’t like the idea. ‘Will you see him naked?!’ I demanded. She grimaced.
I awoke to the reassuringly distant scream of the sub-orbital military transport’s engines. Akhtar had laid on the aircraft and after some arguments with the crew I’d even managed to get my bike on board.
I hadn’t spoken to Pagan about my religious experience of course, meeting Nuada. I tried to ignore the whole thing. I didn’t understand it, therefore it was meaningless. I convinced myself that it really didn’t matter what they were. The whole pretending to be gods and spirits thing was just another snow job to try and get people to do what they wanted them to, probably for some inhuman reason. Maybe it was just entertainment for them. Besides, I had decided I was through, that I was going to retire.
We went home. I think I could have stayed or even gone on with Them if Morag had been with me, but Mudge really wanted to get back and get high. Besides, we needed to see how much damage we’d done.
The last we’d seen of Them was huge engines pushing cored asteroids out of their place in the Dog’s Teeth. Each asteroid was honeycombed with Their energy storage matrices. Energy harvested from the twin stars to sustain Them on their exodus. The massive convoy of ships surrounding the asteroids seemed to stretch out for thousands of miles as They prepared to flee the neighbours.
They got us home by using a variant of Their infiltration crafts. It was basically an engine with re-entry needles. Except this time when we came in-system we were broadcasting using the salvaged comms units from our Mamluk exo-armour suits. The good thing about the design of the needles was that we didn’t get to see how close we got to dying. We were intercepted by a Ugandan ship, and during the initial debrief we each had four Ugandan special forces pointing weapons at us at all times. It was quite tense.
We got passed from pillar to confused post as the authorities tried to decide whose problem we actually were. The debriefs got less combative and Mudge got in less fights with our interrogators. I had tried telling them that if they wanted his co-operation all they had to do was give him drugs, but nobody listened to me.
The Dog’s Teeth, Maw City – it all started to seem like a dream. Parts of it too pleasant and other parts too unreal to have any relation to the grind of being back in the real world and dealing with the imminence of a war that could split humanity in two. Assuming that it didn’t just destroy it.
Eventually Air Marshal Kaaria intervened on our behalf and everyone heaved a sigh of relief as we became someone else’s problem.
Mudge’s drugs had made me feel better and I was healing faster. I should still get someone to look at my spine.
As I looked out over the desert I had some time to think. Leaving aside the suicidal aspect of the job, it still did not feel right getting ready to kill innocent soldiers. I guessed this is what war had been about all through the ages. Was it any different from the streets? I’d mainly killed people who’d been trying to kill me. Or maybe that was just what I told myself to get to sleep at night. This was going to be more proactive. I guessed it wouldn’t be any different from what we’d done when we’d busted Gregor out, but then that was when I decided that I didn’t want to kill any more.
Except Rolleston. And Cronin. Rolleston had to die because he deserved it. Cronin I didn’t hate, but he had to go because he was so much part of the problem. Of course they’d be the most difficult to get to, assuming we could even find them.
Then there was Josephine, the Grey Lady. No real hate there. Just fear. To deal with Rolleston we’d first have to deal with her. Why the bond? I wondered. All our heavy hitters were gone as well. Balor might have been able to deal with Josephine, though even he’d implied that he was scared of her. Hybrid Gregor could have dealt with her if he hadn’t ended up on the other side. Though even then Rolleston and Josephine had all but walked through us in the media node. Rannu? He was a solid trooper, very skilled, but I didn’t think he was in the same league as the Grey Lady.
I watched Mudge dance by, singing along with some music he was listening to on his internal systems. He was naked and covered in body paint. That at least explained the unconscious airman on the bench opposite. It seemed I could sleep through anything.
‘Mudge?’
He turned to look at me. He seemed really jittery. He held out his hand as if he could take hold of me from the middle of the cargo hold, his hand grasping and relaxing.
‘We need more shooters,’ I told him. ‘Give it some thought.’ He nodded and then smiled.
I wasn’t sure if the escorts who took us from the airfield to Limbo were the same ones as before, as the entire security detail looked the same to me. They certainly didn’t seem happy to see us. Mudge being naked and blissed out hadn’t helped. Sometimes I felt that people didn’t take us seriously.
I was looking out of the window as we sank down into the silo. Mudge came over and put me in a playful headlock. He must have been coming down, as he was now able to communicate with us humans. Sadly.
‘Wow,’ he began. ‘You’re really going to have to eat some shit when we get there.’ Which is why I wasn’t looking forward to getting back to Limbo. ‘That’s going to be really humiliating.’
There was no point talking to him when he was like this.
7
New Mexico
I ended up carrying Mudge’s stuff. I agreed to be checked for God and surveillance but cheerfully refused to allow them to take my weapons and po
inted out I had more than the last time I came. All the while Mudge was dancing around listening to music on his internal systems. He was still stark naked and covered in body paint. I let them check his gear. He just giggled whenever they tried to speak to him. Mudge certainly picked his time.
The Limbo staff just stared at the naked, painted, dancing Mudge as we entered the nerve centre, or what I had come to think of as the long metal mesh tube. Sharcroft advanced on me with the strange metallic, insectile gait of his life-support chair.
I pointed at him. ‘And you can fuck off.’ I threw two vials to one of his aides. One was a DNA swab and the other was blood. ‘That’s all you’re getting; don’t ask for more.’
‘Sergeant Douglas, may I remind—’ his modulated electronic voice started to say.
‘No, you may not. I’m going to speak to my people and find out what the score is. We’ll take objectives off you and all the resources we need; the rest goes dark for operational security.’
‘Breaking laws in the hot sun!’ Mudge shouted. I think it was supposed to be singing. It was very off-key.
‘So you’re taking over now?’ Morag asked.
I turned. I tried to ignore how good it felt to see her. Tried to ignore how good she looked with longer hair and in the white one-piece. Tried to ignore how nervous I suddenly felt.
Pagan stood next to her, looking out of place and uncomfortable without his staff and other accoutrements. I didn’t pay any attention to him. She looked me up and down, raising an eyebrow at my battered state.
‘I fought the law and the law won!’ Mudge shouted again. He advanced on Morag for a hug.
‘Mudge, you’re naked,’ she said by way of hello. Mudge gave her a hug and smeared body paint all over the front of her suit. ‘Och, you’ve made me all mucky!’
We all watched as Mudge boogied over to Pagan.
‘I approve of the body paint,’ Pagan said by way of a greeting and hugged Mudge, who then started dancing towards me.
‘See the way I diffused a potentially tense situation there through the medium of dance?’ he asked loudly as if talking over music in a club.
War in Heaven Page 17