Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet

  It was, purportedly, a late spring evening in the martial capital of the UMC First Region, and the transitional bloom over the timbered valleys and steep hills far beyond the limits of Sodom was far more discernible from the upper-echelons of the Milidome. The maroon twilight of late sunset settled over the crescent horizon. Day by day, the metropolis inched its way into the wild land, presaging the expansion of martial order.

  Doctor Pope spent much of his time between engagements gazing out toward the city limits, conjecturing with concealed fervour. The sun now sunk deep beneath the skyline, and the view of the world was sifted through his own spectral reflection in the glazed wall, and the photochromic hue of the round-lensed pince-nez. The office behind him was a backdrop of white from wall to wall and the bleached light ignited the flame of turquoise in the unblinking eyes.

  An AI voice sounded:

  “Doctor.”

  The neutralist lifted his gaze.

  “Miss Robinson…”

  “Visitor13 is at the door.”

  “Of course.” The neuralist pushed the pince-nez back over his eyes. “Show him in, please.”

  The office doors opened like a black hole. Someone noiselessly stepped in. When the doors closed again, the white backdrop revealed a figure dressed in black.

  “Thank you for seeing me on short notice,” greeted Commissioner Eastman.

  Pope turned. There was the usual deliberate silence which preceded his words.

  “The day’s been quiet,” he said. “They are becoming progressively more so.”

  “That’s good,” said Eastman.

  “Indeed… Have a seat.”

  Eastman came forward and set his black briefcase on the floor by the desk before taking his seat. The neuralist sat across from him. He took out a black neural canister from the inner breast pocket of his suit and set it on the desk. “A little more anxiety than usual,” he said. “The intercourse is not quite what it used to be either. I think it may be time for an adjustment.”

  Pope held the canister up and examined the label on the front. “How long has it been since your last?” he asked.

  “Exactly one kiloday and two hundred and forty to the day.”

  “A while then,” the neutralist nodded. “We’ve made progress since then. You will find yourself pleasantly surprised.”

  “I look forward to it.” The contrived simper cracked across Eastman’s dead visage.

  “We’ll schedule an appointment for a full synaptic evaluation, along with a few other tests. Your prescription will be altered accordingly. Four days from today?”

  “Good.”

  “Good,” droned the neutralist. “Miss Robinson, kindly take note.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  With those words, the appointment was finalised. Eastman, however, remained seated. For a while the two men were the silent effigies of austerity.

  “There is… something else,” Pope surmised, after the long silence.

  “Something I feel you should know.”

  “Concerning?”

  “Well, as you well know, I am not supposed to say. However, since the martial in question is your patient as well as my client, I suppose we might say that one vow of silence abrogates the other, might we not?”

  In the solemn pause that followed, a Mona Lisa smile materialised on Pope’s face and the cobalt eyes glinted.

  “Saul Vartanian…”

  Eastman slowly nodded and the silence continued.

  Pope’s arms glided off the top of his desk. He took out two glasses and set them on the table. Out came a crystal bottle. Two measures of ambrosia trickled into each glass. Pope waited for Eastman to lean forward and raise his glass before he raised his own and drank.

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” asked Eastman.

  “The Nova Crimea incident,” Pope replied. “He almost lost his life. Ashamed as I am to say it, there is a part of me that’s disappointed he did not. His case has begun to weigh on me – I’m sure you feel it too.”

  “Yes.”

  “He is a martial of the highest caste. The longer his… condition… persists, the worse it reflects on us. And our predicament is not helped by the fact that the man simply refuses to die.”

  Eastman smiled and sipped his drink. The Adam’s apple undulated under the creaseless membrane of his skin. “It’s been more than two hundred days since Nova Crimea,” he said. “You haven’t heard from him since?”

  “He did send someone to pick up a prescription some time ago,” said Pope. “He had left a message. But, other than that, I have not, no.”

  Eastman finished off his drink and slowly set the glass on the table.

  “Who did he send for his prescription?” he inclined toward Pope as he asked the question, causing a flicker of intrigue to surface in the ice-blue orbs.

  “… Miss Robinson.”

  “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Please retrieve our most recent correspondence from subject Saul Vartanian, Ares; First Tier.”

  “Certainly, Doctor.”

  There was a pause as the request was carried out.

  “Was there anyone else mentioned in the memo?” asked Pope.

  Seconds later, the AI responded:

  “There was one other person, Doctor.”

  “The name?”

  “…Martial Celyn Knight. Caste – Elite; Second Tier.”

  Eastman inclined his head and leaned back in his seat.

  “I thought as much.”

  “The name rings familiar.”

  “She was the one who saved his life,” said Eastman, sipping the ambrosia from his glass.

  “Ah,” Pope whirred. “I remember now.” The enigmatic smile became more pronounced. “Yes… of course.” He took the crystal bottle of ambrosia and topped off Eastman’s glass as soon as it touched the table. “Cohabitation?”

  Eastman shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “It is all very strange.”

  “How so?”

  “For one, he has not set foot outside his home since he returned from his last assignment.”

  Pope considered the point.

  “Peculiar,” he said. “Not extraordinary.”

  “It gets more peculiar,” said Eastman. “I personally searched the Surveillance Database, with the supervision of the Guard. We traced Martial Knight’s movements around the metropolis over the last sixty days. Every tenth day, without fail, she leaves her home on the north end of Durkheim, between 0800 and 0900. She makes a pickup on Republic Alley off Nozick Prospect in Durkheim Sky City, then proceeds to deliver whatever it is she’s carrying to Vartanian’s home in Haven District. She never remains there for more than a few minutes. As far as we can tell, she does not even enter the house. The delivery is never planned in advance. The only relevant correspondence we found on the Nexus was one rather indeterminate message sent from him to her precisely one hundred and seventeen days ago.”

  Pope looked to be absorbing every detail of the account, computing a hypothesis.

  Eastman continued: “She makes her pickup from a dreg mess run by a non-martial ex-patriot by the name of Duke Maclean.”

  “Dreg mess?”

  “Yes,” Eastman replied with a vague nod. “They are food aid dispensaries, unsanctioned by us. They generally receive funding from the civil world.”

  The advent of a sneer surfaced on Pope’s stony countenance.

  “Altruism…” he muttered contemptuously.

  “I also checked Maclean’s record with martial customs and came across a number of highly unusual items consigned to him within the last one hundred days.”

  “Such as?”

  “Five fully clothed mannequins for children’s wear.”

  There was a brief pause.

  “Perhaps Mister Maclean has some peculiar sexual interests…”

  “Did you hear anything about Vartanian’s last assignment,” asked Eastman, “in Dolinovka?”

  “I understand it was quite a ruthless
success.”

  “It was … But, did you hear anything else?”

  Silence.

  “What happened?” asked Pope. The cobalt eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

  Moments later, Eastman leaned over the side of his chair and took out a black file from his briefcase. The insignia of the Vanguard Branch was on the front.

  “He brought something back with him.”

  He handed the file to Pope, who opened it and removed the bound contents. The front page of the document was marked in bold: “DEBRIEFING”, and below it were all the other details of the assignment in Dolinovka, Kamchatka.

  “Third page before the last,” Eastman instructed.

  The neuralist skimmed through the early and middle pages of the file nonetheless. A number of minutes passed before he reached the third page from the last, an annexed report from the infirmary in Fort Gen, Kamchatka. His reading became more meticulous as the eyes flitted from side to side, then up and down the first page of the infirmary report, then the second. After a while, the pages dropped from Pope’s hands and the solemn visage rose.

  “A child.”

  Eastman slowly nodded again. “He overdosed on neurals shortly after he brought her in. He remembers nothing of the mission. It is not clear he remembers anything of the preceding days either.”

  “Overdose combined with post-traumatic denial,” Pope diagnosed rapidly. “Common among defectors… What did they do with the civilian?”

  “I don’t know. I imagine she was transferred to the D.P camp in same area.”

  “Curious…” Pope muttered, nodding. “Very curious.”

  “There’s more.”

  Pope laid the debriefing document down and refilled the two glasses again.

  “Go on.”

  “We checked his web history on the Nexus,” Eastman continued. “Vartanian has accessed the network a number of times in the last one hundred and twenty-seven days – every time with the same entry. He was searching the martial database,” The effeminate took a sombre dip. “He is looking for someone.”

  Pope sipped his drink and hummed contemplatively.

  “Who?” he asked.

  Eastman did not answer, and, in the silence of his omission, the answer was implied. Just as Pope was about to raise the glass to his lips, he froze. His gaze became as bleak as fog and the glass slowly lowered again.

  “Vincent Caine…” he murmured in awe.

  The two men remained staring at one another. A minute later, Pope rose from his chair and gave Eastman his back, setting his sights out, over the astronomical vista beyond the glazed walls of his office. The dusk had since ripened to a thick blackness.

  “Has this ever happened before?”

  “No,” said Pope, the verve in his eyes renewed.

  “How could he know?”

  “I don’t know.” Pope crossed his arms at his back, took a deep breath and an elusive grin surfaced with the exhale. A moment later, he turned back.

  “What do we do?” Eastman asked.

  Pope remained silent.

  “I don’t know if you are aware,” the commissioner added, “but you should be receiving a mandatory visit from him sometime soon. A minimum of one appointment every one hundred days – those were the terms of settlement agreed with the court after Nova Crimea.”

  “I remember.”

  Pope took the crystal bottle once again, keeping one arm crossed at his back as he did so. He topped both glasses, drank and examined his empty glass thoughtfully as he spoke: “Whatever he does will make no difference. One way or the other, this will be Vartanian’s last cycle. That much is almost certain. We must allow it to run its course.”

  “And until then?”

  Pope set the glass back down on the table. “We do what we always do,” he said: “As little as possible … and, above all; remain silent.”

  Eastman took up the glass and downed the drink.

  “Understood,” he said.

  He then took his black case and stood up, leaving the debriefing file on the desk.

  “I’ll see you in four days, Doctor.”

  The doors parted and the commissioner was gone.

  Pope gazed back at the view over the city. His sights found the faraway district of Haven.

  C. 5: Day 588