Soul Jacker

by Michael John Grist

  Someone is hurting Ritry Goligh, and I know I will do anything to save him. We are his chord, and we owe our lives to him.

  I pull back and see the same revelation in Doe's eyes. These are weapons we can use.

  thump thump

  thump thump

  The pulse grows louder. The hatch cover bangs against Ray's broad back. We are off So's route in my HUD, but there's nothing else to do.

  "For Ritry Goligh," Doe says, and fires her cannon into the opposite wall, ripping through like wet wool to the tunnel beyond.

  RITRY GOLIGH

  10. BONDS

  I can't go back.

  I rouse with this thought foremost in my mind, lying with one arm splayed off the bed in a bright room. It is a thought whole and complete, without fear or regret. It is a new foundation to build upon.

  I open my eyes to sunlight. The glare blinds me and I roll to my feet, pawing for the window blind, but this is not my apartment on Skulk 47 and I come up against glass. The surface is hot and I crack open my eyes. Inch by inch, a glorious view is unveiled.

  The godship fleet lies spread below me in ruin, burnished to a startling copper glow by the dawn sun, like a metal mountain range. Every contour of broken hull seems starkly alive, sparkling in the orange morning light. Hints of green jump out from the rusted ship graveyard, where windblown grass and small trees have nestled into culverts in the battered metal. Pink Arctic cherry blossoms spray across the red and white hulls like snowfall.

  I stand transfixed. My old view over blue tarps and homeless people on Skulk 47 seems so far away, as though the realm of an entirely different person. Bathed in this glow I remember the night before; staggering through the corridors of this twice-abandoned cathedral ship, cursing every god I could think of between swigs of vodka, for Ven and Heclan, for Tigrates and Ferrily and most of all for myself.

  Then I dreamed, and they were all with me. We ran through the ruined godships like children, skating over the waves on jetskis, laughing and loving with all my old friends and lovers together again.

  Then I wake to this. It feels like bliss.

  "You begin to see," comes a voice from behind.

  I know that this is Mr. Ruin. I even know what he will say; the intent building in the air like the rising smell of dust before a storm.

  I turn to face him. He stands at the door dressed in dapper gray; a smart gray waistcoat with black toggle buttons, a crisp white shirt open at the throat, gray sharply pressed suit trousers above black dress shoes. On his chin is a grizzled peppery stubble. His nose is aquiline and lean, his tan cheeks bright, his dark hair buzzed close to the scalp. The lines on his face mark him to be somewhere about forty, though he must be far older, if what he said about watching my artificial womb is true. His gray eyes burn with the reflected dawn and his teeth shine a polished ceramic white.

  Mr. Ruin. Everything about him exudes a genteel Calico class. I wonder if I should cut his throat or thank him.

  "You," I say.

  He smiles, dashes off the slightest of bows and in that brief moment I might have had him, if I'd wanted, might have brained him with an elbow or knee, but something holds me back.

  "Me," he says.

  We study each other, and the orange glow of dawn fades through the window, back to a normal Arctic gray. The room goes dull.

  "You set me up," I say, letting it all roll out. "You killed the Don's son, you sent Mei-An to hook me in then you waited at the shark arena. You laid out a suit for me and I put it on."

  He regards me coolly, as though waiting politely for me to go on. I do.

  "You've made it so I can't go back. No doubt Don Zachary's already repossessed the jack-site and my apartment, and killed Carrolla if he didn't get out. He'll have all the Skulks hunting me down. You've snipped off my old life like some errant hair." He seems particularly pleased with this metaphor. "What I want to know is why? What could it possibly be for?"

  Even as I'm speaking I work my peripheral vision around the room scanning for a weapon, but there's nothing I can use. The room is plain and functional, probably just as it had once been in its godship days.

  Ruin clears his throat politely. "I believe in potential, Ritry. I have watched and guided you all your life, so it should come as no surprise to hear that your potential is unique. You are capable of far greater power on the bonds than I, or indeed even the King himself. Would such a comparison offend you?"

  I frown. King? Bonds? "What the fuck are you talking about?"

  His smile broadens. "Coarseness is certainly a part of your charm, though it too is merely a shield, keeping you from the reality you so cravenly seek. Ritry, do not be a child. You well understand what I am saying, and we are both fucking adults here, are we not?"

  I grunt. It might be galling to have this psychopath call me a child, if he weren't such a child himself in all his parlor tricks and games. "Stop blathering then. Stop feeding me a line of bullshit. If you care about potential, what about that poor sad case in the Napoleon suit? What kind of fetish is that, by the way? And what about his potential?" I click my fingers. "Cut off at the balls."

  Mr. Ruin allows a rich laugh. "Colorful. But what potential did he have, Ritry? The unconsidered life is not worth living, have you heard that expression? His life was deeply unconsidered. He was an animal following a base line of programming written from his birth, and to extinguish him from the bond-lines was no more consequential than the slaughter of a pig for its meat. Another pig will simply rise to take his place."

  "That is just weird," I say. "I hope you didn't take a bite out of him."

  He laughs again. "So angry. Ritry, dead flesh is of no consequence to me. The true vitality comes from the living, and the trails they leave behind. But to take your deeper, unintended point, in that sense did I take a bite from him? Only in the most ephemeral sense, and in no way that would impact him beyond death. It wasn't very nourishing or flavorful, but then I take my meals when the opportunity presents."

  A long moment passes in which I say nothing, just look at him. He seems content to merely look back at me. Is he talking about eating people or not? He doesn't have a weapon. Perhaps I could rush him, take him down and have an end to it, but I just don't know enough.

  "You're mad," I say instead.

  "To you, I know I seem it. But then why are you here? Are you mad too? Everything you have said so far, you knew before you came. You could have taken the old man's speedboat in any direction, to any city. You could have crossed the wall into Calico yourself, as you advised your good friend. A new life would await you on the other side, but instead you came here. What does that say about you, Ritry?"

  That is a galling question, because I have no good answer. A glib answer, that this seemed safer, more isolated, will not suffice. His gaze only pisses me off more, so I draw it away. His folder lies on the floor by my feet, and I pick it up. "I felt like taking a vacation. This is some kind of travel guide?"

  "An avoidance tactic? Very well. It is an education. Tell me, Ritry, how did you dream last night?"

  An involuntary shudder rushes through me. Ruin notices and smiles. "I could feel your dreams from here. They were good, the best you've had in years, were they not? That was the balm of forgiveness, of a clean break. That is my gift to you. It remains to be seen how you will invest the capital."

  I ignore him and instead flick through the folder, to the first page now buried somewhere in the middle. It is stained with Carrolla's blood, crumpled and spattered. I scan the page to the bottom and read it aloud.

  "'There is power here, Ritry, if you dare to take it.' What's that about?"

  Ruin smiles wide, showing those crazy white shark teeth. "Why ask when you already suspect? Here, let me ease you in." He taps his cane smartly on the deck, and I blink, tracking it. Did he have a cane before? "Do you know the story of Napoleon, Ritry, the would-be Emperor of a nation called France? It may shock you to learn I was there with him for it all; through his days as Emperor, through
his banishment on Elba, through his resurgence and back to exile again. You know this faintly, I believe, from a memory injected in your War days. But then I am quite old. To the point, however, you will not know of his second resurgence; the time he swept the Gaullic coast clean of pretenders and when the blood of his rivals ran in the ornate halls of Versailles. You will not know it, because I took it all."

  He snatches at the air with one gray-gloved hand. "I took the whole memory of it; 'Lagged', you would say, from his 'Soul' and from all the 'Souls' that might know it, and it was delicious. It made me strong, because Ritry, I am a predator." His teeth gleam menacingly. At that moment a rain cloud passes over the sun and the room grows cold. "I am a predator and so are you. We exist to hunt, and shorn of the hunt we are nothing. I suspected it in you from the start, and so I have watched you throughout. Why else are you so pathetic? No, don't deny it, you are. It is because you have curtailed yourself, locked yourself within a feeble, diminished life; a lion living off grass and leaves. It sickens me because it is unspeakably selfish. You are squandering such immense potential. I hope to unleash that potential and reshape the world, through turning the bonds on their head."

  I have to will myself not to take a step back. What began as faintly amusing if bizarre is now repellently charismatic. The madness seems to burn up off him in waves, glowing through his cheeks.

  "Napoleon was hundreds of years ago," I say, "you're no more than fifty."

  Ruin laughs again, and the density of the madness radiating off him lessens. "Quite right. I am yet young, and in my prime! But answer me this, and be honest with yourself if not with me. You feel something here and it has fuelled you, has it not? You feel invigorated, flush with new strength. Why, your customary hangover has even failed to materialize. Wonders, praise the Lord! But heed this, Ritry. Dreams do not come from nothing. They are memories on the eternal bonds, trapped as though in amber, and the old power of this place," he stretches his arms out to encompass the godship, "has entered you, though you did not seek it. Seek it directly and the flow will be so much stronger. There is power in these bonds, Ritry, in the memories and traces through space we humans leave behind. There is power in breaking the bonds of life and memory just as there is in breaking the bonds of an atom. To that end, you have begun down your trail of crumbs." He points at the folder. "Follow the trail or do not, but do not try to bullshit me. The paths lie before you. Can you truly turn away now?"

  I drop the folder on the bed. "You're talking about harvesting the power of the Solid Core."

  Ruin clicks his fingers. "Precisely. It is a resource just as the hydrates under the Arctic pack were, worthy of fighting over. And out here, what is the cost? Every Soul who left their pattern in this place is long gone or dead. To swallow the marrow of their past is no different from gathering corn grown with the sun."

  "Or slaughtering a pig."

  "Ha! Indeed. Perhaps you will come to see that the two are not so very different. Did you grieve for your lost lover, Ven, when the mindbomb dropped upon your subglacic, or were you too busy scrabbling to survive? Life is a war, Ritry, and right now you are its biggest loser. But is that all you are, casualty of a specific kind of surrender? Are you the lion who will not bloody his claws or fangs for the pain it will cause his prey? So the lion pines and dies, and what does he honor any living thing that he will not do as his nature dictates, to the best of his ability? Whom do you honor, Ritry, to deny your own potential? Napoleon fought until the last and I honor him for it. He has become a part of everything I do, and in this I preserve him. Can any man hope for better?"

  I point at the folder. "So this is training. To bloody my claws."

  Mr. Ruin shrugs. "You will decide that. I will be watching. And remember, I too am a lion, though one far more powerful than you, and I have slaughtered other lions before. Should you disappoint? I need say no more, as you have seen my work in the McAvery's arena. Should you pursue your own potential on the bonds, however, and within the depths of the Solid Core? We will be Kings of this world together, Ritry. All others will tremble at our feet."

  He lets that choice hang for a moment. He talks pretty, but it boils down to a basic decision.

  "I do what you say or I die," I say, putting it as bluntly as I can.

  He smiles. "I would never be so coarse. But yes, in essence. Yet it's not much of a life to lose, is it? Skulking on the floating slums, hiding your light under a bushel. It would more be putting you out of your misery." His smile widens and his teeth catch the gray light. "Though the misery would not be over swiftly, I promise you that. I would dine well on your potential for years. Think about that, and farewell for now, Ritry Goligh. May your training be everything you wish for."

  He turns and strides from the room. I stand frozen for a moment as though I have been Lagged. His footsteps clang away, until abruptly they stop. I follow him out and peering up and down the habitation corridor, but of course there is no sign of him. Was he ever here? I wonder if I might be able to track his movements through the 'eternal bonds', if such things truly exist.

  I shudder to consider it. Did Mr. Ruin just command me to murder people and eat their Souls? I'm not so sure. He is undoubtedly mad, or mad from the viewpoint of the world I have always known, but perhaps that too is a kind of sane; just one that I have never considered before.

  Hmm.

  The strange thing is, I'm not alarmed. The effect of the dream is still with me, and the dawn has buoyed me up. In fact I feel a ravenous hunger, but not for more canned goods. I have a taste for something else now, something far more powerful, and I cannot see the harm. The people here are gone and cannot be hurt any further.

  I start back through the dead cathedral ship with the memories of a thousand lost Souls rubbing up against my mind, as if the ship itself is a Molten Core and I am the Lag.

  11. YLEP

  I have lost everything, but I feel better than I have in years. Standing at the highest point of the godship complex, atop a makeshift section of metal decking riveted to the Ylep's keel, I feel alive.

  The Arctic Ocean swirls in the Arctic Basin, spinning down the drain we dug with all our depth charge explosions, and I feel good. The sky is gray, the sea is gray, and I can never go back to the Skulks again. I have lost Carrolla, who was the closest thing I had to a friend, I have lost the home and habits that saved me when the tsunami never came, and I feel like a weight has been lifted off.

  It feels like forgiveness for all my many crimes.

  Tears roll down my cheeks as I breathe in the fresh rain and salt air. There used to be ice in all these places. We are not only parasites come to consume the decay left behind, we are predators too, come to take what is ours. I am a predator, and always have been.

  The cathedral ship lifts me, and I can feel the waves of memory Mr. Ruin spoke of rising like an EMR tide. Probably I can ride them, if I try.

  I leaf through the folder he left behind, skimming the story of the godships; cruiseliners repurposed into arks, each carrying some five thousand of the faithful along with thousands of plants and animals. Cathedral ships, was the name they used. I've seen footage of them in their prime; vast city-states that drifted serenely on the rising waters like mini-Calicos, each geared with the best flood defenses and buoyancy aids money could buy.

  They roamed the empty middle oceans far from any land, on the theory that they were unsinkable and too heavy to carry far enough to dash upon the rocks of the nearest landmass.

  Back then, when the wall around Calico was half its current height, the godships seemed the safest place in the world. Their sermons became legendary, broadcast around the narrowing, shrinking coastal cities of the world. They were a light that people looked to, the hope to restart creation if the long-predicted global tsunamis finally came about. We had torn up the sky and torn up the sea, and their god's wrath was coming to strike us all down.

  Then it came, and it struck the cathedral ships first. They were at their yearly convocation near the
pole when the great Arctic ridge burst wide open. The global tsunami hit and kept hitting, as the planet's crust vented massive internal pressures. Wave after wave lofted their ships and shifted them inexorably toward coastal barriers.

  The chaos lasted for days and they broadcast throughout, confident in their faith. But the waves kept on coming, and coming, and as half the world perished in flooding, so every last godship in the world was swept thousands of miles to break on distant mountain slopes.

  There was no escape for them, and no survivors. Their god's flood, which they thought would save them and scour the world, only served to scour the world of them and their god.

  I can feel their Souls now, rising beneath me in this graveyard of thousands. I feel not only their growing terror as the last days drove them to their death, but everything else as well: the ties of love and faith between lovers and families and friends, all the good times and bad built upon each other like layers of cells in a brain. They stretch out forward and backward, massed around this spot where their threads in the bond-weave of consciousness were abruptly pinched off.

  They make me strong. Both the good and the bad lift me up, like radioactive isotopes harnessed for enormous power. I only need to plunge into this weave like I would plunge into a Soul jack, and squeeze.

  I do it. I reach out like I'm reaching out within an EMR, feeling for the flows in the godship wreckage and synchronizing my thought patterns with theirs; like a jack but with no Molten Core or Lag, only a great field grown ripe with the past.

  I sink in my teeth.

  Wellbeing floods through me. Old bonds rupture and release a power I've never felt before, rushing like a drug. I have never felt so strong, so confident, so self-assured. The lives of these people billow like wind in my sail, saying this is my place and this is my world, and I cannot be stopped. I not only feel smarter and more competent than ever before, but I become those things. I become a better version of myself, buoyed by a sense of belonging and ownership I've never felt before, in this world that never wanted me. I am more real now than I ever was.