The Naked God

  “There are no odds, there is only cause and effect. The Tyrathca didn’t inform you of the Sleeping God when you first encountered them, because until the human possession crisis started they had no need to pray to it.

  You found me because you looked, Joshua. You believed I existed. Quinn Dexter has found his army of darkness, because he too has conviction.

  Greater than yours, I would suggest. Was he led to them by omnipotent entities playing chess with lives?”

  “All right. But you’ve got to admit, having you this close to the Confederation is a hell of a coincidence given there’s only one of you per galactic supercluster.”

  “That is not a coincidence, Joshua. I am aware of everything, because I am connected to everything. When you search for me, and have sufficient faith that you will find me, then you will succeed.”

  “Okay. Well, if I haven’t said it before: thank you. I’ll do my best to see your faith isn’t misplaced. Now, what was that last factor?”

  The singularity showed him, delivering his awareness to the orbital tower down which he rode down to Earth, with B7, Quinn Dexter, and …

  Joshua’s eyes flicked open. His crew broke off their conversations, looking at him in anticipation.

  “Louise,” he said. And vanished.

  Thick smoke and blinding yellow flame exploded out of the escape pod rocket motors. The noise was a sheer wall of energy that sent Fletcher and Powel flailing backwards. Light punched down into Fletcher’s eyes as he used the remnants of his energistic power to ward off the blast.

  The escape pod wobbled upwards, gathering speed. Flame splayed out from its base, scouring the surface of the ectoplasm pool. Embryonic shapes melted away under the incendiary heat. A cloud of clammy fumes billowed out, hurtling down the nave and both transepts. Brittle, ancient stained-glass windows shattered under the tremendous pressure. Horizontal jets of smoke and ectoplasm smog roared out over the deserted plaza.

  The escape pod smashed into the top of the cathedral dome and crashed through into the pre-dawn morning. Its trajectory was given a savage kick by the impact, sending it racing away in a low curve underneath the red cloud, out towards Holborn.

  Down on the floor of the cathedral, it was impossible to see anything.

  The air was coagulated with icy particles and vile acidic smoke. Fletcher sloshed about in the raging ectoplasm pool, trying to find anything that would give him his bearings. His mind could sense the possessed in the nave: their fear-ordered discipline was starting to crumble. Apart from them, nothing was clear. Chunks of debris were whistling down from above, splattering down into the turbid fluid where they immediately cracked open from the cold.

  “Anybody left standing?” Powel shouted somewhere in the murk.

  A vermilion glimmer began to pervade the churning mist as the light from the red cloud shone in through the gaping windows. Folds of darkness slipped across Fletcher’s vision. He stood still, not daring to move.

  Powel bumped into him. Both of them jumped.

  “I’ve got to get up to the gallery,” Powel said. “This is our chance, he’ll be as blind as us.”

  “I think the door is this way,” Fletcher told him. Even using his energistic power to bolster his legs, they moved reluctantly. He could feel nothing below his knees.

  The mist began to scintillate with white light. It abruptly turned heavy, sighing as it sank to the ground. The rumpled upper surface descended around Fletcher, leaving him totally exposed. A wide beam of red light shone down through the hole in the dome, illuminating the whole ectoplasm pool. On the other side, Dariat and Tolton were caught in the act of trying to reach the north transept.

  “Going somewhere?” Quinn asked. “There’s nowhere to run. The warriors of the Light Bringer are here.” With a theatrical motion, he gestured at the pool, conjuring its inhabitants up.

  A vast upwelling of ectoplasm sent waves of the fluid pouring lazily down the nave and transepts. The crown of an Orgathé slipped smoothly upwards, emerging into the crimson light.

  Quinn laughed uproariously as the monster rose into the universe.

  Possessed fled screaming through the cathedral doors. Powel and Fletcher were drowning in undead sludge that sent out eager pseudopods to smother their heads. At his feet Louise and Greta lay broken and defeated, shedding tears for the torment to come. It was Night as he’d always dreamed it would be.

  Something happened far above him. His head jerked up. “Fuck!”

  Andy Behoo had spent the whole time pressed against his window, watching the ugly red cloud creeping across London. Hot air helped to magnify the incursion with awful clarity. Above the arcology’s crystal dome, the stars shone down with cold beauty through a storm-free sky. It would have been a lovely dawn.

  Now he knew he wouldn’t even see that. His neural nanonics had crashed.

  The front edge of the cloud was less than a quarter of a mile away.

  Underneath it, the eerily pervasive red light helped to illuminate the vacant streets.

  He’d clung to this window when she left, staring after her mutely; so he knew which street she’d taken. If she came back, he would be able to see her. That alone would give him the courage to leave the tenement. He would go out and fetch her home. Louise would make the end liveable.

  The crimson light inside the cloud flickered and died. It was so sudden Andy thought there was something wrong with his eyes. All that remained of the frightened city were outlines so faint he could be imagining them.

  He scoured them for signs that the SD weapons had begun their slaughter.

  Nothing moved in the dead silence. He looked up.

  There were no stars anymore.

  The wormhole interstice opened a million kilometres above the sun’s south pole. Its edges immediately expanded. Within three seconds it was over one and a half billion kilometres in diameter, greater than Jupiter’s orbit. Fifteen seconds later it reached the size Joshua had designated: twelve billion kilometres across, just wider than the entire solar system. It moved forwards, enveloping star, planets, asteroids, and comets alike.

  The interstice contracted to nothing.

  All that remained was a single human figure in a black robe, tumbling wildly through space.

  In Tracy’s lounge, Arnie got up and thumped the top of the television.

  The picture didn’t return.

  “What’s happening now?” Jay asked.

  “Corpus doesn’t know,” Tracy said. Her hands trembled at the revelation.

  Over seventeen million possessing souls in various arcologies were exorcised from their captive bodies as Earth moved into the wormhole.

  Joshua arranged its internal quantum structure in a fashion similar to the conditions Dariat and Rubra had used to expel the possessors from Valisk. There was one difference: they didn’t become ghosts, this time they were torn cursing in anguish straight back into the beyond. From Earth, orbiting thirty thousand light-years from the centre of the galaxy, the glorious blaze of the core stars had never been visible.

  There was too much dark mass spread throughout the spiral arms, interstellar gas clouds and dust storms absorbing the light spun off from the densely packed supergiants. Astronomers had to turn their telescopes outwards, studying other starpools to see what such a spectacle might be like.

  You had to be a lot closer in towards the centre to see the core’s corona starting to expand over the shielding plane of dark matter. Even then, it would only be an exceptionally bright crescent nebula stretched across the night sky. To witness its full glory, a planet needed to be perched right at the root of the spiral arms where the core appeared as an iridescent cloak of silver-white light across half of space, outshining the local sun. Regrettably, such a place was lethal; a fierce outpouring of intense radiation from the tightly clustered stars would immediately sterilise any unprotected biological life.

  No, to gain a full appreciation of the galaxy’s native beauty, it had to be observed from outside. Above the spira
l arms, and away from the radiation.

  Joshua chose a location 20,000 light-years out from the core and 10,000 to the north of the ecliptic. The solar system emerged there to be greeted with the sight of a majestic bejewelled cyclone shining fiercely against a blackness devoid of any constellations.

  The Kulu system was the next to arrive. Then Oshanko. Followed by Avon.

  Ombey. New California. They no longer emerged one at a time. The singularity was capable of creating wormholes simultaneously. Joshua shifted his participation to the executive, selecting what was to be taken. Gateways were opened into the realms where the possessed had fled with their planets. Lalonde, Norfolk, and all the others were returned to their stars, then moved out of the galaxy.

  The Confederation soon formed its own unique, isolated stellar cluster sailing serenely through intergalactic space. Eight hundred stars orchestrated into a classic lenticular formation with Sol at the centre, and the rest never more than half a light-year from each other.

  Other, more subtle, astronomical modifications were made, seeds of the changes to come.

  Quinn didn’t understand why he was still alive. During the cataclysm, Edmund Rigby’s pitiful soul had been wrenched from the prison he’d forged at the centre of his mind. He no longer had any contact with the beyond, no interdimensional rift to bestow his fabulous energistic power. No magical sixth sense. And he was floating through empty space, with air to breathe.

  “My Lord,” he cried. “Why? Why did you take the victory from me? Nobody has served you better.”

  There was no answer.

  “Let me go back. Let me prove myself. I can make Night fall. I will ride the dark angels into heaven, we will tear it down and sit You upon the throne.”

  A human figure appeared in front of him, bathed in gentle starlight.

  Quinn drew in an excited breath as he drew closer. It was spat out in disgust as he recognized the face. “You!”

  “Hi, Quinn,” said Joshua. “Ranting won’t do you any good. I resealed the opening to the dark continuum, the fallen angels aren’t coming to rescue you. Nobody is.”

  “God’s Brother will win. Night will fall with or without me at the head of His army.”

  “I know.”

  Quinn gave him a suspicious glare.

  “You were right all along, though not in a way you imagined. This universe ends in darkness.”

  “You believe that? You accept the gospel of God’s Brother?”

  “Your gospel is a load of shit, and you’re the only arsehole to squirt it out, Quinn.”

  “I will find your soul in the beyond. When I do I will crush your pride and—”

  “Oh, shut up. I have an offer for you. In words you’ll understand, I want you to lead the lost souls to your Lord.”

  “Why?”

  “Many reasons. You deserve to be erased from time for what you did. But I can’t do that.”

  Quinn started to laugh. “You’re an angel of the false Lord. That’s why you have the power to snatch me away from Earth. Yet He won’t let you kill me, will He? He is too compassionate. How you must hate that.”

  “There are worse things than death and the beyond. I can deliver you to the fallen angels. Do you think they’ll be happy to see someone who failed to free them?”

  “What do you want?”

  A circular opening in space expanded behind Joshua. “This leads into Night, Quinn. It’s a wormhole that takes you straight to the time of God’s Brother. I’ll allow you to go through it.”

  “Name your price.”

  “I’ve told you, lead the damned souls out of the beyond and into your Night. Without them, the human race will stand a chance to grow. They are a terrible burden on any species who discovers the true nature of the universe. The Kiint, for instance, cloned mindless bodies to house their lost souls. It took them thousands of years, but every one was brought back, and loved, and taught to face the beyond as it should be faced. But that’s the Kiint, not us. We’re going to have a big enough task helping the living over the next few decades. There’s no way we can deal with all those billions of lost souls, not for centuries. And all that time, they’ll be suffering and inhibiting our development.”

  “My heart bleeds.”

  “You don’t have one.” Joshua drifted to one side. There was nothing between Quinn and the opening now. “Now tell me, do you want to meet God’s Brother?”

  “Yes.” Quinn stared greedily into the absolute blackness revealed by the opening. “Yes!”

  The souls who had been cast back into the beyond brought with them a devastating tide of bitterness and fury as they raged impotently against the atrocity. Freedom existed, it was possible to regain a life. Now there was only purgatory again. No chink existed in the barrier between them and reality. They screamed their wrath, at the same time pleading with those they could dimly sense moving on the other side. Begging to be let back, for just one last taste of sensation. None of the living heard them any more.

  A fissure opened. One small precious gap leaking the most gorgeous human sensations into the cursed void. They flocked around it, rejoicing in its magic. And there was enough for all to feast upon. Every lost soul knew the touch of air upon skin, saw myriad constellations shimmering against the night sky.

  Quinn screamed himself raw as he was possessed by a hundred billion lost souls. Their violation was total, devouring the import of every single cell that was him.

  His body soared through the opening, carrying the burden of humanity with him. The wormhole closed behind them, cutting off the sight of the stars which humans had always known as their own.

  Chapter 15

  Though it would never be told this way, Louise actually spent most of the summoning ceremony unaware of what was happening. After Courtney shoved her down on the bench she rolled onto her side, fighting the dreadful nausea. Little of anything Quinn said registered through the pain and misery. The backlash from the energistic power marshalled by the possessed set off concussions of fright inside her skull.

  Then the solid rocket motors ignited, smothering her in choking smoke.

  She was on the floor retching desperately as the Orgathé drew up level with the gallery.

  She lay there shivering between peaks of flame and ice, crying wretchedly. Then all the external sensations began to die away, abandoning her in a stinking grainy grey smog that obscured everything save a few yards of the gallery.

  Footsteps crunched on the powdery debris that’d showered down when the escape pod hit the cathedral’s dome. They stopped beside her. She moaned, aware that the person was bending down. A hand stroked the side of her head, tenderly brushing the hair from her eyes.

  “Hello, Louise. I said I’d come back for you.”

  It was the wrong voice. An impossibility. But so utterly right. Louise blinked up, and tears flooded her eyes again. “Joshua!”

  His arms went round her, and he kept saying: “Shush, it’s all right, it’s all right,” as he rocked her shaking body against him.

  “But Joshua—”

  He kissed her gently, tapped his forefinger on her nose. “It’s okay, it’s all over. I promise.”

  “Quinn,” she gasped. “Quinn, he’s …”

  “Gone. Over. Finished.”

  Her head swung from side to side, seeing the tendrils of smog slowly withdrawing from the gallery. The cathedral below was shockingly quiet.

  “Here,” Joshua said. “Let’s get you sorted out.” He pulled the wrapping off a medical nanonic package, and applied it gently to her face where Quinn had struck her.

  She realized her neural nanonics were back on-line, and hurriedly put her medical monitor program into primary.

  “It’s all right,” Joshua said softly. “Our baby’s fine.”

  “Huh,” Louise grunted. “How do you know about …”

  He kissed her hand. “I know everything,” he said with that beautifully wicked Joshua grin. The very same one which had started all this. Louise thought
she might even be blushing.

  “If you could hang on to the questions for a moment,” he said. “There’s someone you have to say goodbye to.”

  Louise let him help her up to her feet, glad of the assistance. Every part of her seemed to be aching and stiff. When they were standing, she just couldn’t resist giving him another kiss, making sure he was real.

  And no way was she going to let go of his hand. Then she saw Fletcher standing behind him.

  “My lady.” Fletcher bowed deeply.

  She drew a sharp breath. “The possessed.”

  “Gone,” Joshua said. “Except for Fletcher. And he’s not exactly possessing anybody any more; this is a simulacrum body.” He offered his hand to the solemn naval officer. “I wanted to thank you in person for looking after Louise through all this.”

  Fletcher nodded gravely. “I confess I have been curious as to what man might be worthy of Lady Louise. I see now why she speaks of no other.”

  Louise knew for sure she was blushing this time.

  “Am I now to return to that purgatory, sir?”

  “No,” Joshua said. “That’s something else I wanted to tell you. You were there because of your own decency. Leaving your family and your country, mutinying against your king, were all terrible crimes. You convinced yourself of that, and imposed your own punishment. Purgatory was what you believed you deserved.”

  Fletcher’s eyes darkened with remembered pain. “In my heart I knew what we were doing was wrong. But Bligh was cruel beyond any man’s endurance.

  We could withstand no more.”

  “It’s over now,” Joshua said. “It’s been over for nearly a thousand years. What you have done for Louise and others this time is enough to pardon a hundred mutinies. Have courage, Fletcher, the beyond is not all there is. Sail through it. Find the shore that lies on the other side. It is there.”

  “I could never doubt a man of your valour, sir. I will do as you say.”

  Joshua stood aside.