“I’ll get right on to it.” Véronique glanced at the door and blushed.
Carmitha saw Luca standing in the doorway, watching them. “I’ll be back for them in a little while,” she told the girl.
“You think all that’s going to help?” Luca asked as she brushed past him into the utility corridor running the length of the west wing.
“Careful,” she said. “You nearly said: that rubbish.”
“But I didn’t though, did I?”
“No. Not this time.”
“Three of the lads took him upstairs. Doesn’t look very good, does it? I mean, the state of him!”
“Depends on your attitude.” She went out into the courtyard with Luca trailing behind. Her caravan was standing close to the gates, curtains drawn and door shut. Still her small fortress against this realm. It was more her world than the planet was now.
“All right, I’m sorry,” Luca called. “You should know by now what I’m like.”
She leant against the front wheel and grinned wickedly. “Which one of you, my lord, sir?”
“That’s got to be quits.”
“Maybe.”
“So, please, what are the oils for?”
“Mainly aromatherapy massage, though I’ll use some in his bath as well; probably a lavender.”
“Massage?” The doubt was back.
“Look, even if we had Confederation medical technology, that’s not the whole story, not in this case. There’s more to curing people than slamming their biochemistry back into gear, you know. That’s always been scientific medicine’s problem, it’s only interested in the physical. Johan must fight this affliction both within and without. That’s not his original body, and the instinct to shape it into what he remembers as his own form must be broken. Powerful physical contact, exemplified by massage, can put him in touch with this body. I can make him acknowledge it, end this resentment and subconscious rejection. That’s where the oils come in; a crab-apple base is an excellent relaxant. The two combined should ease his acceptance of his true existence.”
“Amazing. You sound like an expert on the subject of possessed body rejection.”
“I’m adapting several old methods. There are some strong precedents here. This is not too dissimilar from classic anorexia.”
“Oh, come on!”
“I’m speaking the truth. In a lot of cases, young girls simply couldn’t come to terms with their developing sexuality. They tried to regain the body they’d lost by slimming themselves back down to what they were, with disastrous consequences. Now here on this planet, you all firmly believe you’ve become angels or godlings or crap like that. You think this is a real garden of Eden, and you’re the immortal youths frolicking around the fountain. Like a politician believing her own bullshit, you’ve convinced yourselves your illusions are as strong as reality. They’re not.”
His smile was devoid of conviction. “We can create. You know that. You’ve done it yourself.”
“I’ve carved matter, that’s all. Taken a magic invisible blade held firmly in my mind, and whittled away until I’m left with the shape I want. The nature of that matter always remains the same.” She glanced around the courtyard at the usual midday loungers taking their break in the small pools of shade close to the walls. Several sets of eyes were watching them idly. “Come inside,” she said.
Even with all that time sitting quiet in the forest, and her new powers, she hadn’t quite got round to tidying the caravan. Luca looked round politely as she cleared some clothes off her chair, and gestured him to sit. She took the bed. “I didn’t say anything in front of Susannah, but I suppose I’ve got to tell someone.”
“What?” he enquired charily.
“I don’t think it was entirely malnutrition. I could feel hard lumps of flesh under his skin. If he wasn’t so obviously wasting away, I’d say new muscle was growing. Except, it didn’t feel like muscle tissue, either.” She bit her lip. “That doesn’t leave a lot of choices.”
It took Luca a long time to link up what she was saying. Mostly because he was desperate to avoid the conclusion. “Tumours?” he said softly.
“I’ll give him a proper examination when I give him his first massage. But I don’t know what else it can be. And, Luca, there’s a fuck of a lot of it.”
“Oh Jesus H Christ. You can cure it, right? The Confederation doesn’t have cancer like we did in my day.”
“The Confederation can deal with it, yes. But there’s no single solution, no Twenty-seventh Century pill I can whip up a formula for and crank out in a chemistry lab. It needs working medical nanonics, and people who know how to use them. Norfolk never had any of that to start with. I think you’ll have to start calling in qualified doctors. This is all way outside my league.”
“Oh shit.” He held his hands up in front of his face, fingers held wide. They were shaking. “We can’t go back. We just can’t.”
“Luca, you’ve been changing your body as well. Nothing like as bad as Johan. But you’ve been doing it. Smoothing out the wrinkles, tucking in the old gut. If you’d like me to examine you, I’ll do it now. No one has to know.”
“No.”
For the first time, she felt sorry for him. “Okay. If you change your mind . . .” She started opening the caravan’s little wooden cupboards, preparing the items she wanted to take up to Johan’s room.
“Carmitha?” Luca asked softly. “What the hell were you doing, going to bed with Grant for money?”
“What the fuck kind of question is that?”
“You know exactly what I mean. A girl like you. You’re smart, young, you’re bloody attractive. You could take your pick of any young man you wanted, even from landowner families. That’s been known. Why that?”
Her arm shot out, and she caught his chin in a tight grip, making it impossible for him to look away from her furious expression. “This day’s been a long time coming, Grant.”
“I’m not—”
“Shut up. You are him, or at least you’re listening. And this time you can’t close your mind. You’re too desperate for any sight of outside. Isn’t that right?”
He could only grunt as her fingers squeezed tighter.
“He made you think, didn’t he? That Luca. Made you stop and take a look around your precious world. Well he’s right to ask, why did I have to whore myself with you? The reason I did it is easy enough. You admire my independence, my free spirit. Well that independence costs. It would take me an entire season tending the groves to earn enough money to replace a single wheel on this caravan. One broken wheel, one half hidden rock in the mud, and my freedom is taken away from me. The rim is made from tythorn, I can saw and plane a new section for myself if I have a mishap. But the bearings and spring-spokes are made in your factories. And we need sprung wheels because there aren’t any proper roads. You don’t build them, do you, because you want everyone to use the trains. If people had cars, that would skew the whole economy away from you, your ideal. And I’m not even going to go into how much a horse like Olivier costs to buy and feed. So there’s your answer, plain to see. I do it for the money, because I have no choice. I was born your whore. You’ve made everybody on this planet your whores. Your landowner freedoms are bought at our expense. I let you have me, because you would pay well, that gratuity you so kindly leave behind means I don’t have to do it often. You’re a commodity, Grant, you and the other landowners. You’re valuable currency, nothing more.” She shoved him away hard. The back of his head cracked into the curving planks of the caravan, making him yelp and wince. When he put his hand round to dab at his skull, it came away with a smear of blood. He gave her a frightened look.
“Heal yourself,” she told him. “Then get out.”
For a city which banned all commercial overflights, there were a surprising number of skywatchers in Nova Kong. Their attention was inevitably directed at the Apollo Palace, charting the movements of the ion flyers, planes, and spaceplanes which came and went from the building’s la
nding pads and courtyards. The volume, arrival time, and marque of vehicles was a good indicator of the kind of diplomatic and crisis management activity being dealt with by the Saldana family staff. Kulu’s communication net even had a couple of very unofficial bulletin sites devoted to the topic; carefully monitored by the ISA to make sure no active sensors were being used.
With the onset of the possession crisis, the skywatch enthusiasts gave the palace airspace the kind of coverage matched only by the city’s defence array sensors. Civilian craft such as those used by junior ministers and waggish royal cousins had vanished. Now it was only military vehicles darting in and out among the ornate rotundas and stone chimney stacks. Even so, their squadron insignias gave some clues away about their passengers and cargo. The gossip bulletins were well served by the skywatchers (with a few contributions of ISA disinformation).
This particular morning when the city was overcast with grey clouds sprinkling sleet across the boulevards and parks, they faithfully recorded the arrival of four flyers from the Royal Marine 585 Squadron in amongst the twenty other landings. 585’s dedicated role was logistics, a description broad enough to cover many sins. As a consequence their presence went unremarked.
Also unremarked was the arrival over the previous thirty-hour period of warships from (among other planets) Oshanko, New Washington, Petersburg, and Nanjing, which were now parked in low equatorial orbit. They had brought respectively, Prince Tokama, Vice-President Jim Sanderson, Prime Minister Korzhenev, and deputy speaker Ku Rongi. Such was the secrecy surrounding the high-power guests that not even the Kulu Foreign Ministry had been notified; certainly the embassies of the planets concerned knew nothing.
It was left to the Prime Minister, Lady Phillipa Oshin, to greet them as their flyers touched down in an inner quadrangle one after the other. She smiled with polite firmness as a Royal Marine tested each guest for static, which they accepted with equal aplomb. The palace cloisters were unusually empty as she escorted them to the King’s private study. Alaistair II rose from the deep chair behind his desk to give them a more cordial welcome. There was a fierce log fire burning in the grate, repelling the chill which washed off the frozen quadrangle outside the French windows. The chestnut trees around the prim lawn were denuded of leaves, leaving the branches glinting under encrustations of ice like clustered quartz.
Lady Phillipa sat at the side of the desk next to the Duke of Salion; while the guests were in green leather chairs facing Alaistair.
“Thank you all for coming,” the King said.
“Your ambassador said it was important,” Jim Sanderson said. “And our diplomatic relationship is old and valuable enough to get you my ass over here. Though I have to say I should be back home where I’m visible to the voters. This crisis is about appearing confident more than anything.”
“I understand,” Alaistair said. “If I might make an observation, the crisis is now developing outside the arena of public confidence.”
“Yeah, we heard Mortonridge is in trouble.”
“The rate of advance has slowed down after Ketton,” the Duke of Salion admitted. “But we are still gaining ground and de-possessing the inhabitants.”
“Good for you. What’s that got to do with us? You’ve already had as much help as we can reasonably provide.”
“We believe the time has come to make some positive decisions on the policies we adopt to defeat the possessed.”
Korzhenev grunted in amusement. “So you called us here in secret to discuss this action rather than take it to the Assembly? I feel as if I am a member of some old cabal plotting revolution.”
“You are,” the King said. Korzhenev’s smile faded.
“The Confederation is failing,” the Duke of Salion told the surprised guests. “The economies of the developed worlds like ours are suffering badly from the civil starflight quarantine. Stage two planets are paralysed. Capone has acted with singular brilliance with his infiltration flights and the strike against Trafalgar. Our populations are in a state of physical and emotional siege. Quarantine-busting flights continue to spread possession slowly but surely. And now Earth, the industrial and military core of the entire Confederation, has been infected. Without Earth on our side, the whole equation is changed. We must take its loss into account if we are to survive.”
“Just hold on there a minute,” Jim Sanderson said. “The possessed have got a toehold in a couple of arcologies, is all. You can’t sign Earth off that easily. GISD is one tough mother of an agency, they’ll crack whatever heads they have to in order to clear the possessed out.”
Alaistair looked at the Duke, and nodded permission.
“According to our GISD contact, there are now at least five arcologies host to the possessed.”
Prince Tokama raised an eyebrow. “You are well informed, sir. I had not been told of this development before I left Oshanko.”
“Half of the Royal Navy auxiliary vessels are doing nothing but running round on courier duty for us,” the Duke said. “We’re keeping as current as we can, but even that information is a couple of days old now. According to the report, the worst situation is in New York, but the other four arcologies will fall within weeks at the most. Govcentral has been commendably quick in closing down the vac-train routes, but we believe that ultimately the possessed will spread to the remaining arcologies as well. If anyone is capable of surviving Earth’s climate without technological protection, it is a possessed.”
“And that isn’t even the big problem,” Alaistair said. “Lalonde’s population was roughly twenty million, of which we can assume a minimum of eighty-five per cent were possessed. Between them, they had enough energistic power to snatch the planet from this universe. New York’s official population is three hundred million. By themselves they have more than enough power to remove Earth. They won’t even have to wait until the other arcologies are taken over.”
“A valid observation, however, the Halo will surely remain,” Ku Rongi said. “That is the main source of commerce with the Confederation. Trade with the Sol system will be diminished, not erased.”
“Hopefully, yes,” the Duke said. “Our GISD contact says they don’t yet understand how the possessed penetrated Earth’s defences. So the possibility exists that they may be able to spread among the Halo asteroids as well. The other problem facing the Halo is that when the Earth is removed to some other realm, its gravity field will go with it. The Halo asteroids will physically disperse.”
“Very well,” Prince Tokama said. “I am sure your analysists have produced a definitive report on the outcome of these events. So assuming we are deprived of Earth, and at least some of the Halo’s resources, what do you see as the most effective policy to proceed with?”
“Olton Haaker and the Polity Council have just ordered a full scale Confederation Navy attack against Capone’s fleet,” the Duke said. “It should close down the Organization’s rule, and allow the possessed on New California to do what comes naturally. They’ll shunt it away, thus eliminating the threat of any further infiltration flights and antimatter terrorism. What we propose is taking that policy to its conclusion.”
“The industrialized star systems should align themselves into a core-Confederation,” Lady Phillipa said. “At the moment we’re dangerously overstretched trying to enforce the quarantine and supporting actions like Mortonridge. The cost simply cannot be sustained, not with the economic slowdown we’re all suffering from. If we contract our spheres of influence, the cost is considerably reduced, and the effectiveness of our military forces in maintaining security over a smaller volume of space is correspondingly improved. Given that increased security, we could begin trading among ourselves again.”
“You mean no one else would be allowed to fly in?”
“Essentially, yes. We would extend the government authorization process we have in place today to cover commercial starships. Any vessel registered in one of the secured star systems would be allowed to resume flying between systems, subject to a r
easonable security inspection. Ships which came from unsecured systems would not be permitted to dock. In other words, we stake out our perimeter and guard it very well indeed.”
“And the other planets?” Korzhenev enquired. “The ones we leave out in the cold. What do you foresee for them?”
“They’re the principal source of our trouble in the first place,” the Duke said. “They do not police their asteroid settlements effectively, which encourages quarantine-busting flights and with them the prospect of possessed getting loose inside another star system.”
“So we just abandon them?”
“By withdrawing our present unconditional military support, they will be forced into taking the responsibility they’ve so far avoided. With the present quarantine in force, their marginal industrial asteroid settlements are inviolable anyway. In effect, we have been subsidising their suspended status for the owners. Once that situation is ended, the asteroids will be mothballed and their populations returned to the home star system’s terracompatible planet. In itself that will considerably reduce the number of routes by which the possessed can continue to spread. We may even rid ourselves of their incursion into this universe entirely. If they see they cannot reach fresh planets, then those who remain will take themselves away to this new realm of theirs.”
“Then what?” Jim Sanderson asked. “Okay, we regain most of what we’ve lost in financial terms. I’m in favour of that. But it doesn’t solve anything long term. Even if the possessed clear out and leave us alone, we still have to consider the bodies, the people , they’ve stolen and enslaved. There’s hundreds of millions of them depending on us to rescue them, billions probably by now. That’s a healthy percentage of our whole species. We can’t ignore that. The whole issue of souls and what happens to us after death has got to be thoroughly addressed. That’s what I was hoping for when I came here today, something new.”
“If there was an easy solution we would have found it by now,” the King said. “The amount of research and effort focused on this is like no other endeavour in our history. Every university, every company and military laboratory, every febrile mind in eight hundred inhabited star systems has been working on it. The best anybody has come up with is the possibility of a doomsday anti-memory for the souls in the beyond. One can hardly consider such mass slaughter as a valid answer, even if it can be made to work. We have to start looking at this from a different angle altogether. In order to do that, we must have stability and a reasonable degree of prosperity as an umbrella to work under. Society will have to change in many ways; most of which will be profoundly unsettling. One doesn’t even know if it will ultimately reinforce or obliterate our faith in God.”
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