The Soul Consortium

by Simon West-Bulford

  “Fortunately for us, Sunny’s gift enables us to still make predictions—he can see specifics in the Codex and by, shall we say, ‘subtracting’ what he sees in reality, the remainder is the aberration.”

  “Keitus Vieta,” Sunny repeats and pulls out another picture. “Very important. Remember.” He stabs a knuckle hard into my chest as I take it from him. “You remember,” he insists loudly. “The Watcher must remember. Always remember. Save us.”

  This time there is no optical illusion in its design, but the meaning of the picture is still cryptic. At the center of the canvas is a silhouette—the profile of a man with arms and legs outstretched, surrounded by a bubble. A line, like a spear, has pierced the man’s heart, plunged through to the other side of his torso, then penetrated the wall of the bubble. A glowing, cratered ball—possibly a moon—rests on the tip of the spear outside the bubble, and where the skin of the bubble has been broken, a whirlpool has formed, sucking matter inside.

  “This is important?” I ask Sunny.

  He’s nodding frantically, pointing at the picture. “Keitus Vieta. You. Must. Remember.”

  I look back at Kayne. “What does he mean? I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do we, but Sunny insists that this picture was specifically drawn for the Watcher.”

  “And who is the Watcher?”

  “We don’t know, but Sunny says this part of his prediction is for a far distant future, so none of it means much to us. Why he is so insistent on showing it to you is yet another mystery.”

  “Does he think I’m the Watcher?”

  “No,” says Kayne.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he told us the Watcher’s name, and it isn’t yours. It’s someone called Salem Ben.”

  EIGHT

  It’s cold in my room and I lie on my bed, cushioning the back of my head with my palms, watching sand drift in the ruddy afternoon light through the window. I miss the warm sunlight of my home. But not just that, I miss everything. I miss the comforts, the security, my family, and I miss fresh air.

  The stench of death finds me again, a reminder of the picture Sunny painted. He told me I would find that place. But where should I look? And what will I do when I find it? Who are they, and how did they get there? I should have these answers by now. But I don’t. The thought of that grisly discovery distracts me from rational thought. And what I think should be a simple answer eludes me.

  I sit up straight, drawing in, then expelling a decisive breath. What I have to do now is what I have always done when the answers evade me: list the ten main things swimming around in my head. And I must not permit myself the luxury of emotional distraction or any conjecture until the list is complete. It has served me well enough in the past.

  I pull out a data pad from the shelf next to my bed and begin my list.

  1. Keitus Vieta or Abbot Deepseed? Which is he? Whoever he is, the resurrection is bogus, and perhaps this is the crux of the matter. He told the others he died, then came back to life in the same body, which was miraculously rejuvenated, but he has provided no explanation. (And nobody has the courage to press the matter.) Naturally, this new abbot is under the impression that the real abbot’s body has already been destroyed (as is their custom), but Makeswift showed me the corpse when I arrived. The logical explanation is that the genoplant is still operational, but that does not explain his change in personality; there is no doubt the others think of him as a different man.

  2. Vieta is most likely not a clone from the genoplant. On my second day here I visited the generators to check Makeswift’s assertion that the power to the genoplant has been severed, and though I have limited knowledge of the technology, the lines have definitely been cut long ago.

  3. Is it a coincidence that the murders began after the abbot’s alleged resurrection? It’s when everything changed for them, but even before Deepseed’s death, they noted a presence in the monastery.

  4. Watching for signs of secrecy within the order is important. The murderer has a pattern. Each of the victims loses a personal possession before he is murdered, so the culprit will be hiding these items. As part of his pattern, the murderer also brands his victims with the Eye of Pandora after they have died.

  5. You cannot sense what the senses deny. It’s a phrase I heard long ago, but I never understood what it meant until today. A smell of death pervades the entire monastery, yet the monks seem not to notice it. Whether it is denial as the motto suggests, I don’t know, but wherever the stench is coming from, I feel certain it is the same hellish place Sunny captured on canvas. And according to him, I am going to be the one who finds it.

  6. Through years of experience I have developed an instinct for finding the right evidence to solve most mysteries. And it is purely on instinct that I am considering Sunny’s other painting now, because it seems to have no relevance to this case, yet he insists I must remember it. It depicts a man inside a bubble with a spear running right through him. The spear continues on through the skin of the bubble where it produces a whirlpool, and on the outside, on the tip of the spear, is a moon. Sunny wanted me to see it, but it was intended for someone called the Watcher.

  7. These monks have never heard of the Watcher, but Sunny knows his name to be Salem Ben. Who is he? Does he have a connection to the murders and the abbot?

  8. Words spoken in haste can often reveal a person’s true intent, but they are not as revealing as the subtle signs made during eye contact. It is of course a misconception that avoiding eye contact during an interview reveals deceit, but it is a misconception of which I believe Brother Tennison Redwater—the gardener—is unaware; he did not look away from me the whole time I interviewed him. It’s a sure sign he was determined to convince me of his honesty. Why? I don’t believe he is the murderer, but he knows something. I saw fearful secrets in his eyes. But are those secrets relevant to this case?

  9. Even if Brother Kayne is not permitted to fully embrace technology, he is passionate about it and not ashamed to challenge the order’s abstinence from it. Kayne is a strong example of the contradictions between the order’s ideology and their practical needs. And this highlights the issue with the gardens. The monks shouldn’t be able to grow anything on this planet without technological aid, but evidently they do. I should speak to Tennison about it. Perhaps it will also give me more insight into whatever he’s hiding.

  10. Now I come to the evidence I find most disturbing and least able to grasp or define: aside from the obvious issues with his resurrection and altered personality, there is something fundamentally wrong with the abbot.

  That’s my ten, and they persist in my mind for a reason, a reason which is only now becoming clear. The smell of death and Sunny’s picture, the original abbot’s rejection of technology and his subsequent action to shut down the genoplant. A theory is forming, one I sincerely hope is wrong, but I need to see the gardener to make sure.

  Brother Tennison is where I expected to find him, kneeling down in the garden, tending to his crops. He sees me approaching from the monastery, nods courteously, and takes a moment to wipe a gloved hand across his forehead.

  “Potatoes?” I ask him as I bend down to examine the leaves.

  “Carrots.” He smiles at my ignorance.

  “Ah. Good crop?”

  He digs into the ground, pulls out one of the orange vegetables, and shakes the soil from it before handing it to me.

  “This is good?” I ask, shaking my head.

  “As good as always. We’ve never had a failed harvest in eight hundred years.”

  “That’s quite an achievement … almost miraculous, wouldn’t you say? Especially considering the conditions on Castor’s World.”

  The smile falls from Tennison’s face as he looks down and pats the soil around another carrot. “I’m an experienced gardener.”

  “Really? Surely even the most experienced gardener has—”

  “No. Not me.” He’s still looking down, patting the soil much harde
r now.

  “Look.” I lean forward, try to offer my ultimatum in a reasonable tone. “Whatever it is you’re afraid of telling me, I probably know about it already. I’m just giving you the opportunity to come clean to me instead of the abbot.”

  Tennison looks up, anxiety drawing lines around his eyes. “The abbot?”

  “Yes.”

  He bites his lip, pinches his brow, then nods—the signs of a man about to concede. “All right, but the abbot doesn’t need to know about this. If he’s told, he might—”

  “I won’t tell him. I just need you to confirm my suspicion. There’s more to the success of this garden than its gardener.

  Am I right?”

  He sighs. “You’re right. These crops couldn’t possibly survive without carbonisers and hydro-accelerators. Abbot Deepseed, not the impostor, but the real abbot … he saw to it personally that all the machines used by the order were switched off—”

  “But being a man with very little knowledge of technology he didn’t know how.”

  Tennison looks downward as another monk shuffles past with an armful of vegetables. “That’s right,” he says, waiting for the monk to walk inside the monastery. “Deepseed thought that cutting the power lines to the under-soil generators would be enough to switch them off, but he didn’t realize the power lines were only a backup system. The technology uses geothermal energy to maintain power …”

  “Go on.”

  “I chose not to tell him. I knew if I told him, he would rebuke me for my lack of faith in Mother Pandora and order me to switch them off. I couldn’t allow that to happen so I said nothing.”

  “I see.”

  “It was the right thing to do,” Tennison insists.

  “I don’t disagree, but I’m afraid the abbot’s technological ignorance may have done far more damage to the order than anyone could have guessed.”

  “How?”

  “Brother Makeswift told me that the abbot switched off the genoplant. If he didn’t do that correctly, then—”

  “Great Mother!” Tennison rises from the dirt. “Could it still be operational?”

  “Yes, but only partially. You’d better take me to it. I have a terrible feeling I know what we’re going to find.”

  NINE

  Tennison and I run through the archway of the monastery only to collide with Brother Kayne in the lobby. “Come quickly,” he says, catching his breath and grasping my arms. “They … they’re dead.”

  “Who?” asks Tennison.

  “Brothers Veguelle and … and Makeswift. Horrible!”

  “Where?”

  “Sunny’s chamber. Follow me.”

  Chasing Kayne, we run through the monastery watched by startled monks en route, and eventually arrive, gasping for air at the entrance to another massacre.

  This time the blood is not confined to one area of the room, and the display of sheer brutality flaunted in Sunny’s bizarre gallery causes the three of us to stare openmouthed in disbelief. The two victims are lying in a lake of mingled blood and black paint.

  Veguelle’s broken form is the most disturbing exhibit: the plump monk, no longer suffering from obesity, shows no sign of ever even having a stomach; only the torn entrails smeared with globs of jaundiced fat provide any remaining evidence. His face, battered into pulp on one side—possibly with the repeated use of the broken mallet on the floor—is frozen in its last moments of screaming, one eye spilling open like a split plum over his cheek. His right hand still twitches as the fingers attempt to grip a bloodstained hammer.

  I have seen such savagery only once before. I was young, and the images haunted me for months, bringing nightmares and a recurrent nausea that almost stopped me eating. Now, however, I have learned the art of detachment—a way to examine the details and separate them from the emotional trauma. But this time my skills are tested to the maximum.

  Brother Makeswift’s body is less desecrated than Veguelle’s but no less gruesome to look at. His body, though still in one piece, is arched across the remains of Veguelle’s lower half; the neck has been snapped back, leaving the head facing us in a freakish pose, and the branded Eye of Pandora stares at us from his forehead. Smashed canvases, spine-ripped books, and splintered tools litter the chamber. The stench of fresh slaughter is finally overpowering the underlying reek of death that has dogged me since my arrival.

  “No,” Brother Tennison whispers as he sinks to his knees. A moan escapes him when he realizes his robes have soaked up some of the carnage from the tiles, and he shudders into a fit of weeping.

  Brother Kayne already glimpsed the chamber before he ran to find help, but the full horror is only now bridging from his eyes to his mind as he blinks and swallows repeatedly. He’s either going to pass out or throw up; I know the signs.

  I have to shake the men from their shock before the full effect takes hold. “Brother Tennison, please go to my chamber and find my backpack. You’ll see a DNA-coded firearm inside. Bring it back quickly. Understand me?”

  The tear-wrecked man looks at me.

  “Did you hear me? We need to act fast if we are to capture the murderer before he cleans himself up. And we need to be armed if this is anything to go by.” I suddenly regret pointing at Veguelle’s remains.

  But Tennison proves he is made of stern enough stuff to cope. Inhaling loudly, he nods, steals one last glance at the bodies, then rushes from the chamber.

  “Brother Kayne.”

  He seems to be in a trance.

  “Brother Kayne!” I shout, moving between him and the view of the butchery. “Look at me.”

  He appears startled for a moment, then rights himself. “Yes … ah … yes.”

  “Did you see who did this?”

  “No … I heard … I heard Sunny and Brother Veguelle shouting. I called to them, and I was about to go and intervene. I was in the passage right outside, but Brother Makeswift came past. He told me to call the abbot, and then he went in. I … I hesitated and …”

  “Yes?”

  “I heard Veguelle accusing Sunny of the murders and Brother Makeswift trying to calm them, but all I could hear was fighting. The sounds were awful. I waited too long … I … I waited too long …”

  “Please try to stay calm, take a deep breath. Did you see Sunny leave the chamber?”

  “I heard someone leave.”

  “You heard? Didn’t you see?”

  “No, I was already turning back. I heard someone behind me scuffle out of the room, but he was already around the corner before I could see who it was. I … I suppose it must have been Sunny. It was only then that I went to look, to see if anyone needed help and … oh, Great Mother!” Kayne shakes his head, trembling. “I didn’t want to look any closer, and I didn’t want to go to the abbot, so I came looking for you.”

  “So the abbot doesn’t know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “And you touched nothing in here?”

  “No.”

  I glance around the room, begin to see details in the aftermath that corroborate Kayne’s story, but he could be lying. Kayne could be the murderer, but for the moment, the facts seem clear: just as Kayne said, Veguelle challenged Sunny, even came armed with a hammer. They argued. Makeswift entered, but Veguelle’s accusation had already tipped Sunny into a violent episode, and the three of them fought. Veguelle and Makeswift were unprepared for the extent of Sunny’s rage, and he killed them. That much seems apparent to me, but there is evidence that someone else entered the room while Brother Kayne was trying to find me. The remains of a book, a glass of water, a box of painting equipment—all had been moved slightly, leaving sticky traces of smudged blood. Somebody was looking for something.

  “Brother Soome,” Tennison calls, jogging toward us along the passage. “Your firearm. It isn’t there.”

  “But I checked it this morning. It was—”

  “I can assure you it isn’t,” he insists. “But I—”

  “Taken.” Brother Kayne grips my arm. �
��A personal object. Taken.”

  I stare at him for a moment, and before Kayne’s fear can infect me, I face Tennison. “Do you have anything we can use as a weapon? Anything at all?”

  “Here.” He pulls a small black device from his robes. “I was about to tell you. I stopped at the utilities area. We keep an ignition pistol there for incineration purposes. Will that help?”

  “It had better,” I say and take it from him. “We’re going to see Abbot Deepseed. Or whoever he really is.”

  TEN

  Deepseed’s chamber is decorated in the same gothic flavor as the rest of the monastery—antique furnishings dark with wood-stained grain and rose-red trimmings, gold-studded chests and cabinets, and a stout desk fixed at its center. The abbot is not there when we arrive, but there is evidence he has been here recently.

  A set of objects is piled neatly at one end of the desk, and a chill wriggles between my shoulder blades when I realize what they are and what they represent.

  “You expected to find Sunny here? With the abbot?” asks Kayne.

  “That was my first guess,” I tell him as I pick up the closest object—my firearm. There is no charge in the power cells, and the metal feels strangely cold. Even the colors seem duller than I remember, as if the gun has lost some undefined but integral part of itself.

  Six large silver coins are also stacked on the desk.

  “Those are Brother Makeswift’s,” Tennison says, sliding them into his hand. “He uses them … used them to demonstrate primary Codex predictions to students. But they’re … so cold.”

  I place the gun back on the desk, knowing it to be useless and having no desire to keep it. “Makeswift told me he’d lost them. Then later he told me the murderer likes to take personal belongings from his victims. Do you recognize anything else here?”