Zima Blue and Other Stories

  'I believe I see the tack of your argument.'

  'When the supernova happened, the chance of any one version of us surviving was absurdly small - yet one version of us was guaranteed to survive, because every possible quantum outcome was considered.'

  'How do you know all this?'

  'Isn't it obvious by now? The Kiwidinok showed me. And I mean showed me. Put it in my head, all in one go. Their consciousness - if you can call it consciousness - is blurred across event-lines. It's what they gained when they became less like us and more like machines. That's why they see things differently.'

  Sergio took a breath to absorb that.

  'And what did they show you?'

  'Dead worlds. Much like Earth, but where the initial conditions of the supernova collapse weren't quite right to avoid our annihilation. Where, if you like, God hadn't poked his finger into quite the right place. Worlds of ash and darkness.'

  He dug through his personal effects again, brushing aside the topsoil of junk. His hands found a small, flat bundle that he passed to Sergio. The oiled paper of the bundle unravelled in Sergio's fingers, exposing a cache of glossy grey cards much like those he had been shown in the seminary, shortly after his catechist had assumed residence.

  But these images were not the same.

  'I don't know how they did it,' the Founder said, 'but the Kiwidinok were able to interfere with the recording devices I took with me to Perdition. They were able to plant images on them, data from other event-lines. '

  'Where the supernova happened differently.'

  'Where we got crisped.'

  In each image the degree of laceration was different, but it was never less than a mortal wounding, so absolute that life had not managed to reestablish tenancy on dry land. In some of the images it was possible to believe that something might still live in the shrivelled, oddly shorelined oceans that mottled the surface. In others, there were no oceans to speak of at all, nothing much resembling atmosphere.

  'Mostly, that's how it was,' Ivan said. 'Mostly, we never made it through. This event-line, the one we're living in, is the freak exception: a remote strand on the edge of probability space. It only exists because we're here to observe it. And we're only here to observe it because it happened.'

  Sergio picked through the rest of the images, variations on the same desolate theme. He knew with utter conviction that they were real - or as real as any data shared between event-lines could ever be. These images were secrets that Ivan had kept for eighty years - images that spoke not of divine intervention, not of miracle, but of brutality. We survived, Sergio thought, not because we were favoured, not because we earned salvation, but because the laws of probability decreed that someone had to.

  'What now?'

  'Take what you have back to the Diocese. Make them listen.'

  'You're asking a lot of me.'

  'You're a man of God,' Ivan said, with very little irony. 'Ask Him for assistance.'

  'Why should I still believe?'

  'Because now, more than ever, you need faith. That was what was always missing - when we had proof we didn't need it. But our proof was a fiction. Our Order was a lie built upon lies. But tearing down the Order doesn't mean tearing down your faith, if you still have it. Me, I never found it, except in a particularly good thermal or at the end of a bottle. But you're a young man. You could still find faith, even if you haven't already. I think you'll need it too. It'll be a kind of jihad you'll be fighting.'

  'You'll find it harder than you imagine,' said a voice, which did not come from the figure in the bed.

  'Bellarmine,' Sergio said, turning around to face the Apparent, who had stolen quietly into the chamber. There was a whisper of scythed air, a flash of metal, and Bellarmine's hand acquired the cards from Sergio's grip. For a moment, the Apparent held them up to its face, feigning curiosity. Then it ripped them to shreds with a deft flicking movement.

  'I knew of the existence of these images,' the wasp-like voice said. 'It was hardly worth the effort of destroying them.'

  'Be careful what you say. The recorder's still running.'

  'My voice won't register. I'm addressing you directly via your catechist. If you play the recording to anyone in the Diocese, all they'll hear is you addressing an empty room.'

  Sergio reached over and killed the recording. 'Speak now, then. What's going on? How did you know about Indrani?'

  Bellarmine came closer. Sergio felt something crawl through his skull.

  'Isn't it obvious? Via your catechist.' There was a deeper timbre to his voice now that he was speaking aloud. 'You imagine that the device is passive; that it exists merely to offer guidance and to facilitate the viewing of holy data. But there's more to it than that. Behind my face is an array of superconducting devices, sensitive to minute changes in the immediate electromagnetic environment. It's how I sensed your nervousness on the balcony. The array enables me to read the data captured by your catechist - everything that you see and hear. You betrayed yourself, Menendez.'

  'How long have you known?'

  'We Apparents share such data as it conveniences us. I was informed of your indiscretion not long after the incident itself.'

  'Then why . . . no, wait, I see. You were waiting, weren't you?' Now that it was clear to him, he almost laughed at the obviousness of it. 'You kept the evidence from the Diocese, until such time as it might be useful in blackmailing me. That's clever, Bellarmine. Very clever. I'm impressed.'

  'You were nothing exceptional.'

  'Of course not,' Ivan said, his voice a death-rattle. 'How could he be? When he was rescued by Indrani, he was just another priest green from the seminary.'

  'There must be others,' Sergio said.

  'Perhaps not,' Bellarmine said. 'You were especially weak, Menendez. You offered yourself to us.'

  'I broke no vows.'

  'Then why conceal what happened until now?' Quietly, Bellarmine addressed the Founder. 'You know too. He spoke of the matter with you, I see.'

  Sergio returned the recorder to his bag. 'You can't destroy this,' he said to the watching machine. 'The Diocese expects a recording, whether you like it or not.'

  'First you have to return to Vikingville,' Bellarmine said, and then took a step nearer to Sergio. But before he reached him, the Apparent stopped and leaned his faceless frame across the Founder's bed.

  'Go,' Ivan said. 'Get the hell out of here, while you still can.'

  Bellarmine knelt and retrieved the syringe that the Founder had dropped. With a series of mechanically precise movements, he plunged the needle into a rubber-capped bottle, congesting the hypodermic with something as clear and deadly as snake venom. 'You took this to fend off the fear of death. Now it will hasten its coming. Isn't that a kindness?'

  The Apparent snatched aside the yellowing sheets, exposing the man's hairless sternum. The Founder reached up and wrestled with Bellarmine's wrist as the needle descended towards his heart. Sergio took a step closer, watching as the man's jaw clenched in the agony of resistance, his free hand pawing impotently at the machine's chest.

  'Menendez! I'm a dead man anyway! Go!'

  Sergio dived forwards, trying to wrestle Bellarmine away from the bed, but the Apparent might as well have been some huge piece of industrial machinery anchored to the Temple itself. The descent of the syringe did not falter, even when Bellarmine flung Sergio across the room. Sergio hit the wall, breath ejected from his lungs, the hard edges of the Kiwidinok frieze pushing into his spine. His vision swimming in stars, he struggled to his feet.

  'I'm sorry, Ivan,' he wheezed.

  The needle reached his flesh, then entered, and as the tip broke the skin, Ivan's strength flew away like a flock of startled crows.

  'I won't let you down,' Sergio said. 'That much I swear. And you're right - this is the better way. Better faith than proof.'

  Bellarmine's voice was horrifically calm. 'You won't succeed.'

  'Good . . . thermals,' Ivan said, and then emitted a final gasp, his eye
s locked open, less in shock than sudden joy.

  Sergio was already running. He had almost made it to the chamber's door when Bellarmine reached him, impeding his progress with surprising gentleness.

  'I don't want to kill you, Menendez.'

  Behind Bellarmine, Sergio saw a second disconnected globe bob across the room, hued more yellow than silver.

  'You want me to betray Ivan - to return with a faked recording, is that it?'

  'Better to betray one man than a God.'

  The haversack slipped to the floor. 'If I refuse, you'll kill me.'

  The other Apparent loomed behind Bellarmine and then did something Sergio had not been expecting. Maybe the shock of it registered in his expression, because Bellarmine whipped around, momentarily relinquishing his grip. The other Apparent's cloak had parted to reveal human hands, gripping a weapon.

  There was a colourless flash and an intense pulse of pain throughout Sergio's skull. He began to scream, but the pain was already over, abrupt as a strobe. Bellarmine's armoured frame collapsed to the ground and quivered there, like a beached eel.

  'I hit him with an EM pulse,' said the other, whose voice lacked the machinelike quality of the fallen cardinal. 'Must have hit your implant as well; hope it didn't hurt too badly.'

  'Who are you?'

  One free hand reached up and snatched aside the alloy mask, which Sergio now saw was perforated with tiny viewholes. What lay behind it was the face of a very young man, drenched in sweat, curtained by lank, black hair. A face he almost recognised, as if seen through a distorting lens. 'I think you know my sister, priest. And I think we'd better get moving - the pulse won't keep him down for long, and I'll bet he doesn't need much time to reboot.'

  'What's happening?'

  'What's happening is, you're being rescued.'

  'You're Indrani's brother?'

  Haidar nodded. 'But I think we'd better run and save the questions for later - there are more of his kind between us and your little plane. It can seat two, can't it?'

  'At a push.'

  Behind them, Bellarmine made a sound like a squealing kitten, limbs thrashing. The silver ovoid of his face turned to Sergio, framed in candleflame. 'I will kill you, Menendez, if you run.'

  Sergio closed his fists around the nearest candelabrum, wrenching it from its sconce, amazed at his own strength. The flame extinguished immediately, and for a moment he was left holding the wrought-iron Kiwidinok fist as if he hadn't the faintest idea what to do with it. Then he saw the syringe, still jutting from Ivan's sternum. And the perfect mirror of Bellarmine's face, like a tranquil lake in moonlight.

  He smashed the candelabrum into the ovoid, the thin reflective patina crumpling under the impact.

  Haidar whistled. 'You don't just burn your bridges, priest. You cremate the bastards.'

  It took far longer to reach the ground than he'd expected, and along the way Haidar had to shoot three more Apparents, leaving each one in a state of palsy. 'Bellarmine's probably on his way already,' the man said. 'He'll have alerted the others by now, so we won't have the element of surprise. Not that we really need it, with this little toy.' He waved the EM gun ahead of them, like a crucifix. 'It's a real weapon, left over from before the Synthesis. Not that the Synthesis exactly ended wars, either, but you get my drift.'

  'How does it work?'

  'Screws the nervous system. Not the central processor - that's mainly optical, but the servosystems that drive their musculature. With your implant, it would have fried the interface points, where it couples to your neurons, but it wouldn't have touched the data inside it.'

  'That's good. All we have is what's in my head.'

  'And mine too,' Haidar said. 'Don't forget, I was there all the time; heard every word he said.'

  Ahead, daylight burned a hole in the darkness, catching the nested edges of the Kiwidinok figures engraved around the corridor walls. 'What were you doing here?'

  'Ivan knew about Indrani,' Haidar said. 'But he didn't find out about her the same way Bellarmine did. Fact is, Ivan heard the story from Indrani herself. Or from me, which is much the same thing.'

  'I don't follow.' While he spoke, Haidar doused another pair of machines, each pulse of the weapon triggering sympathetic echoes somewhere in Sergio's cortex.

  'Indrani sent me,' Haidar said. 'To put the story right. Took her nine years to build up courage, but I guess she knew it wasn't going to be easy. And she trusted the old guy. Figured he wasn't part of it all, and she had to get an audience with him before he croaked.'

  They reached the outside. Sergio was relieved to see his ornithopter still resting intact, like a perched dragonfly of blown glass.

  'Part of what?'

  'What happened to you out there, in the caravan.' Haidar paused to discard his cloak, revealing a tight-fitting, ribbed surface suit flashed with decals of clan affiliation. 'Listen, it wasn't quite how you thought it was. I know because I heard you tell the Founder, and I don't think you were lying.'

  They sprinted towards the ornithopter. 'How was it, then?'

  'The crash was no accident, for a start. You said it yourself - it was as if the squall took the plane unawares. Well, the squall wasn't planned, but you were pretty much guaranteed to crash then - someone had monkeyed with the plane.'

  'Someone wanted me to crash?'

  'Not fatally, but enough to keep you from getting home, so you'd have to seek shelter in the caravan, and then fall prey to my sister's undeniable charms. Worked, didn't it?'

  'Only someone in the Diocese could have done that.'

  'It's the Machinehood. They're everywhere, right? Seems they see themselves as the next phase in evolution, and the Order's how they're gonna subjugate humanity without anyone noticing. They do it to most of the priests fresh out of the seminary, is what Indrani reckons - set them up for a fall and watch it happen.'

  'They knew.'

  'What?'

  'The other priests. They knew what had happened to me. I assumed it was because my lies weren't very convincing. I never stopped to think something similar might have happened to them as well.'

  'Old Ivan was right, priest.'

  'What?'

  'You really were green.'

  They reached the waiting ornithopter. Sergio opened the cockpit, frantically adjusting the seat to make room for a passenger behind him, ratcheting it forwards. 'Think you can squeeze in there? It's a long flight back to Vikingville.'

  'Hopefully we don't have that far to go.'

  Sergio followed him into the enclosure, slamming the canopy down and bringing the little flying machine to sluggish life, its wings quickening with shivers of excited chitin. 'Let me get this straight,' he said, fingers dancing over the controls. 'They set us up for a fall and some of us take one. They learn about it through our catechists - and then we can always be controlled, if we threaten to turn against the Order.'

  'That's about the size of it.'

  They were aloft.

  'It's elegant. Cynical, but elegant. But it wouldn't work without outside assistance.'

  'Ways and means,' Haidar said. 'With Indrani, it was just another form of blackmail. The clan was in hock to the Asymmetrists - we depended on their consecrated machines to make a living. Someone from the Order - someone who must have been working for the Machinehood - contacted Indrani and let her know what was expected of her, and what would happen if she failed. That her family would be ruined. That she'd probably starve.'

  The ornithopter's shadow grew smaller, wings beating furiously to gain altitude, each thrust sending rainbow moire patterns down their length.

  'How did you infiltrate the Order?'

  'There are tunnels under the sand, left over from the wars. Some of them reach beneath the dome. Being good clanfolk, we know all about 'em. And my disguise only had to fool the machines from a distance.'

  'Bellarmine was suspicious.'

  'Couldn't read me like the others. Must have crossed his mind that I was someone really high up, or a new fac
tion amongst the Machinehood. Either way, bad news.'