by Levy, Roger
‘I’m sorry, Alef. Right now.’
‘But I just need time.’
‘Either you accompany me or I bring him out myself. I don’t think you’d want that.’
Malachus had no choice, I saw. He was sure he was being monitored, too.
‘And you’ll see Pireve,’ he said, looking away towards the door.
* * *
In the rv room, I unhooded the cowl as I’d done almost every day for a week short of five years. I waited for Pireve to open her eyes, but only Pellonhorc opened his. They opened sharply and were instantly wide and focused on me.
‘Hello, Alef. Malachus.’
I hadn’t heard his voice for so long, it was like the first time. It took me back to that day in the church in JerSalem when he’d piled prayer books in the nave before smashing them to the ground, a boy like none I’d ever seen before. I remembered this shocking display of freedom, of unconsidered joy. How had that moment come to this?
Malachus said his greeting. Speaking to Pellonhorc, he sounded a different person.
I said, ‘Pireve hasn’t opened her eyes.’
Pellonhorc ignored me. ‘How is my organisation, Malachus?’
‘All’s well. I’ve left a few of Ligate’s die-hards imagining they’re planning something. From time to time, I cut them back. We’re more than steady. We have more power than we had.’
‘Good. Has Alef done what he intended?’
Malachus made a gesture towards me.
‘I’m asking you, Malachus.’
‘He has. It’s working exactly as it should.’
‘And the AfterLives? They’re popular?’
I tried not to show my astonishment. He should have no knowledge of the term.
Pellonhorc glanced from Malachus to me, smiling. The cowl was at the level of his neck, and the small movement of his head made Pireve’s perfect stillness more agonising to observe.
‘Yes, very popular,’ Malachus said, avoiding my glance.
There were two possibilities. One was that Pellonhorc, in rv, had left himself connected to the Song. I didn’t believe this; hypersomnia would have driven him crazy. The other possibility was that Malachus had periodically brought him out of rv to check on me and be updated. It had to be that.
‘What about Pireve?’ I said. Her eyes were closed. I desperately wanted her to say something. Had she too been brought out of rv without my knowledge, without a chance for me to speak to her?
‘Malachus has been advising me occasionally. I’m reassured that you and He have done everything you promised.’
‘Then it’s done.’ My voice was trembling. ‘I want Pireve. I need her, Pellonhorc. Please.’
I looked at Malachus for support. As far as my part was concerned, it was all over. I had done what Pellonhorc had asked. I had guaranteed his interim safety. He had only to be returned to rv and sent to the sea while my project researched a cure for his cancer. I was free, surely. I could have my Pireve. What was Pellonhorc doing?
‘I’m sorry, Alef. For the moment, Pireve will stay with me.’
For a second I could hardly speak. ‘I’ve done everything I promised.’
‘Please keep your voice down, Alef. This isn’t like you at all. When I come out, Alef, when He has reversed my trial, I want you there with me. You know you’re part of me, Alef. And you do want Pireve and her child, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered.
‘Good. It’s very simple, Alef. You have done your job and set up the procedure for my cure and life eternal so that it can be carried forward without you. You will go into rv too. Not in this unit, of course, but in the same sea. And when we come out, you will come out, and we shall all be together again.’ He smiled. ‘It’s a matter of trust. I trust you and He trusts you.’
And so it was. He knew there was nothing I could do. We dropped him, and Pireve, into the sea. And along with him we dropped the sarc with his father and Spetkin Ligate.
Yes, I knew I’d have to be there when he came out. I would go into rv too, but I wasn’t going to be asleep. Just as I’d done for that short time as a child, I was going to stay awake and in the Song. No one had ever done that for longer than a month and remained sane, but I couldn’t risk anything happening to my Pireve. Certain though I was that AfterLife would survive, I wasn’t taking the risk. And I wanted her back with all my heart, and I wanted so very much to see our child.
And so I entered rv too.
* * *
SigEv 45 In sleep
The years passed, and they passed. I followed everything from my sarc. In my hypersomnic state, I roamed the Song, a wanderer and a searcher. I spoke to the System from my sleep. When I needed direct communication, it was easy for me to appear to be the manifestation of a program.
I maintained and expanded AfterLife, and I searched as carefully and discreetly as I could for Pellonhorc’s seeds of destruction, whatever and wherever they were. It was vital that Malachus and whoever took over from him remained unaware of my presence, and so I didn’t dare search too hard or intrude too obviously.
I found nothing. There seemed to be no seeds. Beyond the predictably suspicious activity of the Whisper, there was nothing.
Of course, I could not be sure of that, since I had to keep my investigations secret. If he discovered what I was doing, Pellonhorc might trigger his apocalypse. I was so terribly aware that he had always been more cunning than me. I could count the leaves of all the trees of all the forests that grew in my head while we were in in our separate sleeps, but I could never predict him. I pursued him and pursued him, and I was afraid that I would never catch him. We were two runners on opposite sides of the same Möbius strip, eternally chasing and chased.
And time passed, and time passed.
If there had not been more work for me, I think I would have gone crazy. As perfect as AfterLife was, nothing in the System was beyond all challenge. Just as old Earth’s goddery had failed to adapt to the departure from its source, except on Gehenna and the unsaid planet, so too might AfterLife fail. And if it failed, Pireve, my love, and our child, would die.
And so I toiled to make it central and to maintain it. It extended into all areas of human life. I introduced ParaSites to cater to every aspect of the human condition. I facilitated the functions of the Administrata, and they allowed AfterLife to become one of its taxable constants. I ensured, gradually, that the Song too would not function without its hidden codes and connections.
Yet in all of this, with all the infiltration of the System that I achieved, I could not uncover Pellonhorc’s secret.
And so it was that the years passed and passed, and AfterLife was more central to the System than anything else had ever been. It became so successful that the Whisper occasionally considered taking a serious interest in it.
And this was interesting, because each time the matter was raised at their Council level, they pulled away.
Why did they withdraw? Not because AfterLife was too powerful, since they had no way of knowing quite how powerful it was. They withdrew because Pellonhorc was exerting pressure on his organisation. Malachus and his successors, Jhira and Taktielle and all those others in their wake, all of them steered the Whisper clear of AfterLife.
Pellonhorc was not as active as I was, but nor was he in constant sleep. He, on his side of this Möbius strip that we pounded together, was keeping pace with me. I could sense the hammering of the soles of his feet against my own.
When occasionally for a brief period I truly slept, I dreamt of Pireve. Oh, my love! I would save her. I was going to retrieve her from Pellonhorc, and hold her to me forever. And I dreamt of our child. I thought of my own parents and their love. I was in such terrible torment.
But I held it in. It was essential that I was able to monitor the status of Pellonhorc’s disease. Every other sarc that tossed and turned in the vast sea was left until such time as its occupant was voted on, but there were of course three sarcs whose occupants were treated differently; mine, a
nd Pellonhorc’s, and Ethan Drame’s and Spetkin Ligate’s. These sarcs and the six lives they bore were the only and the entire reason for the existence of AfterLife, and these were brought at separate times into a retrieval chamber on the largest and the most secure rig to be serviced and for Pellonhorc’s condition to be checked.
Oh, how I wanted my Pireve.
* * *
SigEv 46 Setback
The progress of Pellonhorc’s disease was slow, but it was steady. It adapted to existence in the sarc, not extending itself but mutating subtly. How?
My clinical laboratories across the System, all fifty-eight of them, worked unceasingly on the biopsies and the models. All they knew was that this was a unique pathological presentation, and all of them worked in ignorance of each other. Each concentrated on a single facet of the problem.
And then, after years, we had a breakthrough. Yagheton, my brilliant lead researcher at the laboratory working on predictive mutation, contacted me. Like all the others, he imagined he was communicating with an AI.
He had puter-modelled the activity of Pellonhorc’s growth, and he was trying from there to reverse-bioengineer and thus exactly replicate the causative metavirus in naïve cells harvested from Pellonhorc’s skin. Once we had that confirmation of our understanding of it, the task of providing a cure should have been relatively straightforward.
‘It’s done.’ He looked exhausted. ‘I’ve replicated it.’ He was talking to me, but his eyes were on a bank of other screenery.
GOOD
‘It isn’t good at all. We have it isolated. I’ve closed the laboratory.’
WHY?
‘It’s the perfect killer. I’ve never asked this, we were given the biopsy material without any history, but where did it come from?’
NO RELEVANCE
‘You always say that.’ His head dropped. ‘Damn AI. You know the metavirus responded to any of our investigations by mutating and adapting, like it had some military-grade active defence mechanism.’
THIS IS IN PREVIOUS REPORTS. TELL ME WHAT IS NEW
‘But unlike a weaponised organism, it was neither contagious nor infectious.’
ONLY TELL ME WHAT IS NEW
‘For about an hour after replication, it was fine. We hadn’t even started our analysis. And then there was activity.’ Yagheton wiped a hand across his forehead. ‘It makes no sense. It’s as if the replicated metavirus – reversed to its original state, remember, prior to any of the states it achieved in response to investigation – came into existence with all the memories of the evolved versions.’
THERE MUST HAVE BEEN AN ERROR IN THE REPLICATION PROCESS
‘There wasn’t.’ The researcher looked baffled, but he was clearly also exhilarated. ‘There’s more. Immediately, without any stimulus, it took a further significant mutative step.’
WHAT STEP?
‘The replication process confirmed that the metavirus was genetically specific to Pellonhorc. Not even to his family, but to Pellonhorc himself. As if it was designed with him in mind.’ His eyes flicked and his hands moved in the air and across keys.
WHAT STEP?
‘It suddenly became highly infectious. It still has the characteristics of a cancer, but now, when we try to analyse it, it throws off that specificity to Pellonhorc and becomes faster-acting and universally malignant.’
INTERESTING. THIS IS NEW. ARE YOU SURE OF THIS?
‘Yes. We have two contaminated technicians. We’ve put them in rv. Their sarcs will have to be dropped in the sea.’
NO. INCINERATE THE SARCS. INCINERATE THE REPLICATED MATERIAL. HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN IN CONTACT WITH THE MATERIAL?
‘Just those two.’
HOW MANY WERE IN CONTACT WITH THOSE TWO BEFORE THEY SHOWED SIGNS OF INFECTION?
‘Five, and they’re in quarantine. I know –’
HAVE YOU COMPLETED YOUR NOTES?
‘Yes. They’re filed.’
HAS ANYONE GONE ON LEAVE SINCE YOU COMMENCED REPLICATION?
‘No.’ He looked irritated. ‘We follow strict cross-contamination procedures. The extreme mutation couldn’t have been predicted. None of our models suggested that.’
I saw sweat at his forehead. Yagheton was my best researcher, my best hope. I had permitted him to take his wife and children with him to the laboratory. I had permitted no one else such a thing, but he was good. He said he wouldn’t take the job unless I allowed that. Had they distracted him?
He said, ‘I don’t see how it could have been a naturally existing metavirus. Some of the chemical codes are impossible to track. I’ve never seen such a thing before. It’s not possible that any metavirus could have achieved this level of complexity without passing through at least five evolutionary stages of such virulence that pandemics would have resulted.’ He glanced very briefly at my representation. ‘Five pandemics are missing. So tell me, where does this sample come from?’
IS ANYONE OUT OF THE LABORATORY?
‘No. No one’s on leave. Why?’
WAIT
I came away from him and immediately triggered full precautionary procedures. All my research clinics were provided with emergency features, but this was the first time I had needed to employ them. I isolated Yagheton’s laboratory. All external doors were sealed, fire controls were disabled and an electrical fire was initiated, safely destroying everything and everyone.
I checked his notes and reran all his modelling calculations. Yagheton had made some insignificant errors, but he was right. He had replicated Pellonhorc’s metavirus in a medium of Pellonhorc’s own cells. I had two more laboratories repeat Yagheton’s work, with precisely the same results – he would have approved of my diligence – and I had three more attempts to replicate it in non-Pellonhorc pluripotent cells, and they were unable to. I incinerated all five laboratories, as I had Yagheton’s, and I updated my remaining laboratories with the research findings.
One thing had come from this. I was sure I knew what Pellonhorc had done – what he called his seeds were simply his own disease. This was his threat: if this god of his was not going to heal him, then he would visit the same thing on everyone else. It was, I strongly suspected, impossible to find a cure.
But why did Pellonhorc alone have such a disease? How?
Was there a god after all? I returned to Gehenna in my mind. I roamed over it in the Song. Was this possible? Was Pellonhorc right?
No, Yagheton had been right. There was no evolutionary route for a metavirus to develop a facility such that clinical manipulation alone would trigger such a jump.
Had he engineered it, then? Pellonhorc himself?
In my head, I heard Pellonhorc’s voice. No, He engineered it.
One thing was certain. There would be no cure for this, any more than Pellonhorc might live forever.
I would lose my Pireve. My child. Everything.
Forty-five
RAZER
The drumming of the engine had ground every contour of the cocoon into Razer’s bones, and she ached all over. She cursed Maerley and felt bad about it and cursed him some more. He had said something just as she’d closed him away to his death, the beginning of an apology. He’d always been a perfectionist. She wriggled, but there was no position in which she could be comfortable. This wasn’t like Maerley at all.
But now she forgot about the aches, watching the rig as it swelled and sharpened. As it grew closer, it seemed to settle and become motionless, and Razer was aware of an accelerated motor roar.
The rig was not settling at all. This was her vessel matching itself to the rig’s motion. Away and deeper still beside the rig’s great hull, she noticed a small shoal of sarcs gathered at one of the tanks. Five of them. Two of Maerley’s, and three more. Razer adjusted her visuals. A sudden brilliant explosion of turbulence marked the opening of a hatch in the tank. The turbulence rose and when she looked again, the sarcs had vanished and the tank was sealed once more.
The gloves started spreading her fingers, and Razer suddenly knew wh
at this was. It hadn’t been an apology Maerley had been starting to give her at all, but an explanation.
The screws that had been digging into her shoulder blades were next to activate, pulling the chest plate down hard enough to tense her spine. Her ankles were gripped and the mask came tight. She wriggled as the swimrig compressed and sealed her in. For a moment there was no air, then a hiss and she could breathe.
The vessel bumped up against the rig’s substructure, and the hollow thump of a hookstrike rang through her skull. Dark water began seeping into the sub. In a moment it was a spray, and then a foamy wave at her face.
As the sub cracked and broke apart, she thought, thanks a lot, Maerley. And then she thought of Tallen.
* * *
Tallen
Tallen watched the mechs handle the great cart with its burden of sarcs. The humechs were there, but they were different. No, it was just Lode who was different.
Tallen felt unwell, and it wasn’t a bodily unwellness.
Beata said, ‘We do not understand,’ and left a space as always for Lode to say the next thing, but the other humech said nothing. Lode was shimmering and imprecise, dull but glittering in places, and somewhere within the shimmer-cloud was a face entirely unfamiliar to Tallen. He vaguely remembered how Beata and Lode had fixed themselves for him when he arrived here. How long ago had that been? He wanted to return to that beginning, the forming of Beata and Lode, but this shining face was not a memory searching for him, as those faces had been. This was all of itself.
He had done something a short time ago, but what had it been? He had opened the tanks; yes, that was it. He had brought these three sarcs aboard the rig. And two more.
The remembering gave him a moment’s relief, even though he had no idea why he’d let them into the rig. He’d brought those three aboard before, but not the other two.
And where were the other two now?
And still there was something more he’d done, something terrible.