The Naked God

  “Maybe. But as far as I’m concerned, she’ll need watching till the day she dies. And even then I’d be none too sure, she’s that tricky. I still think the First Admiral was wrong, we should have zero-taued the lot of them.”

  “Well rest easy; I’ve already told Consensus I’ll continue watching over her. I’m too old and jaded for another active assignment. Once this crisis is concluded I’ll move on to something else. I always rather fancied wine growing; fine wine, of course. The kind of vintage that would satisfy the real oenophile. After all, I’ve tasted enough rubbish while I’ve travelled round the Confederation. Some of our habitats have superb vineyards, you know.”

  Monica gave him a single surprised look, then snorted in amusement.

  “Exactly who are you trying to fool?”

  It certainly wasn’t a hero’s welcome. Only Collins bothered to report that the Lady Macbeth had docked, and they did it in a tone which suggested Joshua was slinking back home.

  Five serjeants greeted Mzu and the Beezling survivors, escorting them to their new quarters. They weren’t under arrest, Tranquillity explained, speaking through the constructs; but it laid down the guidelines for their residence quite austerely. A few friends were waiting for the crew in the bay’s reception compartment. Dahybi and Beaulieu vanished off with them, heading for a bar. Sarha and Ashly took a commuter lift together.

  Two deputy managers from the Pringle Hotel greeted Shea and Kole, ushering them away to their rooms.

  That left Joshua with Liol to take care of. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do about that. They were still orbiting round each other, though it was a closer orbit now. A hotel was out, too cold, Liol was family after all. He just wished they’d managed to sort out the problem of Lady Mac and Liol’s gung-ho claim. Though his brother had definitely become more conciliatory as the flight progressed. A good sign. It looked as though Liol would have to share his apartment. Well, at least he’d understand bachelor mess.

  But as soon as Joshua air-swam out from their airlock tube, Ione was in front of him, toes pressed with ballerina grace on the compartment’s stikpad. Doubts about Liol vanished. She was wearing a simple maroon polka-dot summer dress, ruffed gold-blond hair floating daintily. It made her seem girlish and elegant all at once. The sight of her like that summoned up memories warmer than any neural nanonics catalogued recollections could ever be.

  She grinned knavishly, and held out both hands. Joshua caught hold and let her gently secure him. They kissed, a tingle lost somewhere between just good friends and old lovers. “Well done,” she whispered.

  “Thanks, I …” He frowned when he saw who was waiting behind her.

  Dominique: dressed in a tight sleeveless black leather T-shirt that was tucked into white sports shorts. All curves and blatant athleticism. As overt as Ione was demure.

  “Joshua, darling!” Dominique squealed happily. “My God, you look so divine in a shipsuit. So well packaged. What can those naughty designers have been thinking of?”

  “Er, hello, Dominique.”

  “Hello?” She pouted with tragic disappointment. “Come here, gorgeous.”

  Arms that were disproportionately strong wrapped round him. Wide lips descended happily, a tongue wriggling into his mouth. Hair and pheromones tickled his nose, making him want to sneeze.

  He was too embarrassed to resist. Then she stiffened suddenly. “Oh wow, there’s two of you.”

  The embrace was broken. Dominique stared hungrily behind him, long fronds of blond hair writhing about.

  “Um, this is my brother,” Joshua mumbled.

  Liol gave her a languid grin, and bowed. It was a good manoeuvre considering he wasn’t anchored to a stikpad. “Liol Calvert, Josh’s bigger brother.”

  “Bigger.” Dominique’s eyes reflected slivers of light like coquettish diamonds.

  In some way he couldn’t quite work out, Joshua was no longer between the two of them.

  “Welcome to Tranquillity,” Dominique purred.

  Liol took a hand gently and kissed her knuckles. “Nice to be here. It looks spectacular so far.”

  A small groan of dismay rumbled up from Joshua’s throat.

  “There’s plenty more to see, and it gets a whole lot better.” Dominique’s voice became so husky it was almost bass. “If you want to risk it, that is.”

  “I’m just a simple boy from a provincial asteroid; of course I’m looking forward to the delights of the big bad habitat.”

  “Oh, we have several bad things you’ll never find in your asteroid.”

  “I can believe it.”

  She crooked a finger in front of his nose. “This way.”

  The two of them levitated out of the hatch together.

  “Humm.” Ione smiled with sly contentment. “Eight seconds total; that’s pretty fast even for Dominique.”

  Joshua looked back from the hatch to her amused blue eyes. He realized they were alone. “Oh, very neat,” he remarked admiringly.

  “Let’s just say, I had a premonition they might hit it off.”

  “She’ll eat him alive. You know that, don’t you?”

  “You never complained.”

  “How did you know about him?”

  “While you were on your approach flight I was busy assimilating memories from the serjeants. The two that are left, anyway. You had a hell of a time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll do all right, you and Liol. Just a bit too similar for comfort at the start, that’s all.”

  “Could be.” He squirmed uncomfortably.

  She rested a hand on each shoulder, smiling softly. “But not identical.”

  There was nothing much said while they rode the commuter lift down the spaceport spindle. Just looks and smiles. Shared knowledge of what was to come when they got back to her apartment. Coming from shared relief that they’d both survived, and maybe wanting a return to times past for the reassurance that would bring. It wouldn’t be the same, but it would still be familiar. It wasn’t until they got into a tube carriage that they kissed properly. Joshua reached up to stroke her cheek.

  “Your hand,” she exclaimed. A whole rush of noxious memories were bubbling forth: the corridor in Ayacucho, Joshua on all fours in the slush, his hand blackened and charred, the two girls clinging together, whimpering, and the furious arab snarling then horrified as the serjeant opened fire. The roar of bullets and stink of hot blood. Not a sensevise she’d accessed, remote and vaguely unreal; she’d been a genuine witness to the actual event and always would be.

  Joshua took his hand away from her face as she gave it a concerned look.

  A medical nanonic package had formed a thin glove to cover his fingers and palm. “I’m okay. The navy medics matched and grafted some muscle tissue; they’ve had a lot of practice with this kind of injury. It’ll be okay in another week.”

  “Good.” She kissed the tip of his nose.

  “You’re worried about a couple of fingers; I was scared shitless about Tranquillity. Jesus, Ione, you’ve no idea what it was like finding you gone. I thought you’d been possessed just like Valisk.”

  Her broad freckled face crinkled with mild bafflement. “Humm, interesting. I get surprised by other people being surprised. All right, it could have been possession. But you of all people should have worked it out. I as good as told you.”

  “When?”

  “The very first night we met. I said that grandfather Michael believed that we would eventually encounter whatever the Laymil had come up against. Of course, back then everyone thought it was an external threat, which was a reasonable enough assumption. Unfortunately, that also meant that Tranquillity was likely to be the first to confront it. Either we’d find it among the Ruin Ring, or it would return to Mirchusko, the last place it had visited. Grandfather knew we probably wouldn’t be able to beat it with conventional weapons, he hoped we’d discover what it was so we could develop some kind of defence in time. But just in case …”

  “He wanted to be abl
e to run,” Joshua concluded.

  “Yes. So he ordered a modification to the habitat’s genome.”

  “And nobody realized? Jesus.”

  “Why should they? There’s a ring of energy patterning cells around the shell, at the end of the circumfluous sea. If you look at the habitat from the outside, the ridge containing the water is actually a kilometre wider than the sea itself. But who’s going to measure?”

  “Hidden in plain view.”

  “Quite. Michael didn’t see any reason to advertise the fact. Our royal cousins know … I assume, anyway. The files are stored in the Apollo Palace archives. It gives us the ability to jump away from trouble, a long way away. I chose Jupiter this time, because we considered Jupiter safe. But ultimately Tranquillity could jump across the galaxy in thousand light-year swallows, and the possessed would never be able to follow us. And if the crisis gets that bad, I’ll do it.”

  “Now I get it. That’s how you knew the Udat’s wormhole vector.”

  “Yes.”

  When the tube carriage arrived at Ione’s apartment Joshua was feeling comfort as much as excitement. Neither of them took the lead, asking or pressing the other, they simply went to the bedroom because it was what the moment had ordained. They both slipped out of their clothes, admiring each other. Almost dreamily, Joshua tasted her breasts again, regretting how long it had been. Both of them showed off the old skills, knowing precisely what to do to each other’s flesh to invigorate and arouse.

  Only once, when she knelt in front of him, did Ione speak. “Don’t use your nanonics,” she whispered. Her tongue licked along his cock, teeth closing delicately on one ball. “Not this time. This should be natural.”

  He agreed, complying, making the encounter raw, and relishing every second of their performance. It was new. The big jelly-mattress bed was the same, so were the positions they accomplished. This time, though, they had honesty, openly celebrating the physical power they exerted over each other. It was as emotionally satisfying as it was sensually rewarding.

  Afterwards they spent the night sleeping in each other’s arms, snuggled up like childhood siblings. The loitering contentment made breakfast a civilized meal. They wrapped themselves in huge house robes to sit at a big old oak table in a room mocked up to resemble a conservatory. Palms, ferns, and delecostas grew out of moss-coated clay pots, their multiplying stems interlaced with broad iron trellises to produce verdant walls. The illusion was almost perfect but for the small neon-bright fish swimming past on the other side of the glass.

  House chimps served them scrambled parizzat eggs, with English tea and thick-cut toast. While they ate, they accessed various news broadcasts from Earth and the O’Neill Halo, following the Confederation’s response to Capone, the build up of forces for the Mortonridge Liberation, rumours of the possessed spreading among the asteroids, appearing in star systems previously thought clean.

  “Quarantine busters,” Ione said sharply at the item on Koblat being taken out of the universe. “The idiots in those asteroids are still letting them dock. At this rate the Assembly will have to shut down interplanetary flights as well.”

  Joshua looked away from the AV projection. “It won’t make any difference.”

  “It will! They have to be isolated.”

  He sighed, regretful at how easily the mood had gone. Forgetting everything for a day had been so comfortable. “You don’t understand. It’s like saying you’ll be safe if Tranquillity jumps across the galaxy where the possessed can’t find you. Don’t you see, they’ll always find you. They are what you become. You, me, everyone.”

  “Not everyone, Joshua. Laton mentioned some kind of journey through the afterworld, he didn’t believe he’d be trapped in the beyond. The Kiint have as good as admitted we don’t all wind up there.”

  “Good, build on that. Find out why.”

  “How?” She gave him a measured look. “This isn’t like you.”

  “I think it is. I think it took that possessed to make me realize.”

  “You mean that Arab in Ayacucho?”

  “Yeah. No kidding, Ione, I was staring death and what comes after right in the face. Bound to make you stop and wonder. You can’t solve everything with direct action. That’s what makes this Mortonridge Liberation so ridiculous.”

  “Don’t I know it. That whole miserable campaign is nothing more than a propaganda exercise.”

  “Yeah. Though I expect the people they do de-possess will be grateful enough.”

  “Joshua! You can’t have it both ways.”

  He grinned at her over the rim of a huge tea cup. “We’re going to have to, though, aren’t we? There has to be some solution to satisfy both sides.”

  “Right,” she said cautiously.

  Chapter 05

  In any given month, there would be between two and seven armada storms rampaging across Earth’s surface, a relentless assault they’d persevered with for over five hundred years. Like so many things, their name had become everyday currency. Few knew or cared about its origin.

  It had begun with chaos theory: the soundbite assertion that one butterfly flapping its wings in a South American rain forest would start a hurricane in Hong Kong. Then in the Twenty-first Century came cheap fusion, and mass industrialisation; entire continents elevated themselves to Western-style levels of consumerism within two decades. Billions of people found themselves with the credit to buy a multitude of household appliances, cars, exotic holidays; they moved into new, better, bigger homes, adopting lifestyles which amplified their energy consumption by orders of magnitude. Hungry to service their purchasing power, companies built cities of new factories. Consumer and producer alike pumped out vast quantities of waste heat, agitating the atmosphere beyond the worst-case scenarios of most computer models.

  It was after the then largest storm in history raged across the Eastern Pacific in early 2071 that a tabloid newscable presenter said it must have taken a whole armada of butterflies flapping their wings to start such a brute. The name stuck.

  The storm which had swept up from mid-Atlantic to swamp New York was ferocious even by the standards of the Twenty-seventh Century. Its progress had been under observation for hours by the arcology’s anxious weather defence engineers. When it did arrive, their response systems were already on line. It looked as though a ragged smear of night was sliding across the sky. The clouds were so thick and dense no light could boil throughout to illuminate their underbelly—until the lightning began.

  Then the rotund tufts could sometimes be distinguished, streaked with leaden grey strata as they undulated overhead at menacing speed. The energy levels contained within would prove fatal for any unprotected building. Consequently, the ability to deflect or withstand the storms was the prime requirement of any design brought before the New York civil engineering review board for a building permit. It was the one criterion which could never be corroded by backhanders or political pressure.

  The tip of every megatower was crowned with high-wattage lasers, whose beams were powerful enough to puncture the heart of the heavy clouds.

  They etched out straight channels of ionized air, cajoling the lightning to discharge directly into the superconductor grids masking the tower structure. Every tower blazed like a conical solar flare above the dome residents, spitting out residual globules of violet plasma.

  Amid them fell the rain. Fist-sized drops hurled out by a furious wind to hammer against the domes. Molecular binding force generators were switched on to reinforce the transparent hexagons against a kinetic fusillade which had the force to abrade raw steel.

  The noise from this barrage of elements drummed through the dome to shake the gridwork of carbotanium struts supporting the metro transit rails.

  Most above-ground traffic had shut down. Right across the arcology, emergency crews were on full standby. Even the shield of lasers and superconductors were no guarantee against power spikes in such conditions. In such times, sensible people went home or to bars, and waited until
sharp slivers of pewter light started to carve up the clouds, signalling the end of the deluge. A time when fear was heightened. When more primitive thoughts were brought to the fore.

  A good time. Useful.

  Quinn looked up at the old building which was home to the High Magus of New York.

  Under cover of the storm, sect members were piling out of the vans behind him. Only ten possessed so far: a manageable number for what he had in mind. The rest, the acolytes and initiates, followed obediently, in awe of the apostles of evil who now commanded them.

  Faith, Quinn mused, was a strange power. They had committed their lives to the sect, never questioning its gospels. Yet in all of that time, they had the reassurance of routine, the notion that God’s Brother would never actually manifest himself. The bedrock of every religion, that your God is a promise, never to be encountered in this life, this universe.

  Now the souls were returning, owning the power to commit dark miracles.

  The acolytes had fallen into stupefaction rather than terror, the last doubt vanquished. Condemned as the vilest outcasts, they now knew they’d been right all along. That they were going to win. Whatever they were ordered to do, they complied unquestioningly.

  Quinn motioned the first team forward. Led by Wener, the three eager acolytes scampered down a set of steps at the base of the wall, and clustered round the disused basement door at the bottom. A codebuster block was applied, then a programmable silicon probe was worked expertly into the crack between the door and the frame. The silicon flexed its way under the ageing manual bolts, then began to reformat its shape, pushing them back. Within thirty seconds, the way in was open. No alarms, and no give away use of energistic power.

  Quinn stepped through.

  The difference between the headquarters and the dingy centre on Eighty-Thirty street surprised even Quinn. At first he even thought he might have the wrong place, but Dobbie, who now possessed magus Garth’s body, reassured him this was indeed where they should be. The corridors and chambers were an inverse mirror of the Vatican’s splendour. Rich fittings and extravagant artwork, but sybaritic rather than warmly exquisite, celebrating depravity and pain.