The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Smash the fucker into bedrock, curse you.” But through eyes blurred with tears he could see the acolytes slowly sinking to the floor in front of Quinn. It was like a wave effect, spreading across the temple. Wener was the closest to Quinn, his simple face alive with admiration and excitement. “I’m with you,” the lumbering acolyte yelled. “Let me kill people for you. I want to kill everyone, kill the whole world. I hate them. I hate them real bad.”

  Garth groaned in mortification. They believed him! Believed the shit was a real messenger from God’s Brother.

  Quinn closed his eyes and smiled in joy as he gloried in their adulation.

  Finally, he was back among his own. “We will show the Light Bringer we are the worthy ones,” he promised them. “I will guide you over an ocean of blood to His Empire. And from there we will hear the false lord weeping at the end of the universe.”

  The acolytes cheered and laughed rapturously. This was what they craved; no more of the magus’s tactical restraint, at last they could unleash violence and horror without end, begin the war against the light, their promised destiny.

  Quinn turned and glanced down at magus Garth. “You: fuckbrain. Grovel, lick the shit off my feet, and I’ll allow you to join the crusade as a whore for the soldiers.”

  The candlestick clattered to the ground, with the roast remains of Garth’s hands still attached. He bared his teeth at the deranged possessor standing over him. “I serve my Lord alone. You can go to hell.”

  “Been there,” Quinn said urbanely. “Done that. Come back.” His hand descended on Garth’s head as if in anointment. “But you will be of use to me. Your body, anyway.” His needle-sharp talons pierced the skin.

  The magus discovered that the pain of losing his hands was merely the overture to a very long and quite excruciating symphony.

  Chapter 02

  It was designated Bureau Seven, which somewhat inevitably for a government organization was acronymed down to B7. To anyone with Govcentral alpha-rated clearance, it was listed as one of the hundreds of bland committees which made up the management hierarchy of the Govcentral Internal Security Directorate. Officially its function was Policy Integration and Resource Allocation, a vital coordination role. The more senior GISD Bureaus produced their requirements for information and actions, and it was B7’s job to make sure none of the new objectives clashed with current operations before they designated local arcology offices with carrying out the project and assigned funds. If there was any anomaly to be found with B7, it was that such an important and sensitive responsibility did not have a political appointee assigned to run it. Certainly the chiefs of Bureaus 1 through 6 changed with every new administration, reflecting fresh political priorities; and several hundred minor posts among the lower Bureaus were also up for grabs as a loyalty reward to the new President’s retinue. Again, no junior positions were available in B7.

  So B7 carried on as it always had, isolated and insular. In fact, just how insular would have come as a great shock to any outsider who investigated the nature of its members—that is, a shock in the brief period left to them before being quietly terminated.

  Although the antithesis of democracy themselves, they did take the job of guarding the republic of Earth extremely seriously. Possession was the one threat which actually had the potential not just to overthrow but actually eliminate Govcentral, a prospect which hadn’t arisen for nearly four hundred and fifty years, since the population pressures of the Great Dispersal.

  Possession, therefore, was the reason why a full meeting of all sixteen members had been convened for the first time in twelve years. Their sensenviron conference had a standard format, a white infinity-walled room with an oval table in the centre seating their generated representations. There was no seniority among them, each had his or her separate area of responsibility, the majority of which were designated purely on geographical terms, although there were supervisors for GISD’s divisions dealing in military intelligence.

  An omnidirectional projection hung over the table, showing a warehouse on Norfolk which was burning with unnatural ferocity. Several museum-piece fire engines were racing towards it, along with men in khaki uniforms.

  “It would appear the Kavanagh girl is telling the truth,” said the Central American supervisor.

  “I never doubted it,” Western Europe replied.

  “She’s certainly not possessed,” said Military Intelligence. “Not now, anyway. But she’d still have those memories if she had been.”

  “If she’d been possessed, she would have admitted it,” Western Europe said indolently. “You’re building in complications for us.”

  “Do you want a full personality debrief to confirm her authenticity?” Southern Africa asked.

  “I don’t think we should,” Western Europe said. He absorbed the mildly polite expressions of surprise the representations around the table were directing at him.

  “Care to share with us?” Southern Pacific asked archly.

  Western Europe looked at the Military Intelligence supervisor. “I believe we have crossover from the Mount’s Delta?”

  Military Intelligence gave a perfunctory nod. “Yes. We confirmed that the starship was carrying two people when it docked at Supra-Brazil. One of them slaughtered the other in an extravagantly gory fashion right after docking was completed, the body was literally exploded. All that we can tell you about the victim is that he was male. We still don’t know who he was, there’s certainly no correlating DNA profile stored in our memory cores. I’ve requested that all governments we’re in contact with run a search through their records, but I don’t hold out much hope.”

  “Why not?” Southern Pacific asked.

  “The Mount’s Delta came from Nyvan; he was probably one of their citizens. None of their nations remain intact.”

  “Not relevant, anyway,” said Western Europe.

  “Agreed,” Military Intelligence said. “Once we’d stripped down the Mount’s Delta, we ran extremely thorough forensic tests on the life support capsule and its environmental systems. Analysis on the faecal residue left in the waste cycle mechanism identified the other occupant’s DNA for us. And this is where the story gets interesting, because we have a very positive match on his DNA.” Military Intelligence datavised the sensevise’s controlling processor, and the image above the table changed.

  Now it showed an image taken from Louise Kavanagh’s brain a few minutes before the warehouse was fired; a young man with a pale, stern face, dressed in a jet-black robe. The viewing angle was such that he looked down on the members of B7 with a derisory sneer. “Quinn Dexter. He was an Ivet shipped to Lalonde last year, sentenced for resisting arrest, the police thought he was running an illegal package into Edmonton. He was as it happens. Sequestration nanonics.”

  “Oh Christ,” Central America muttered.

  “The Kavanagh girl confirms he was on Norfolk, and both she and Fletcher Christian strongly suspect he was the one who took over the frigate Tantu. Following that, the Tantu made one unsuccessful attempt to penetrate Earth defences, and immediately withdrew, damaging itself in the process.”

  Western Europe datavised the sensenviron management processor, and the image above the table changed again. “Dexter got to Nyvan. One of the surviving asteroids confirmed that the Tantu docked at Jesup asteroid.

  That’s when their real troubles started. Ships from Jesup planted the nukes in the abandoned asteroids.” He pointed at the image of Nyvan which had replaced Dexter. It was a world like nothing previously seen in the galaxy, as if a ball of lava had congealed in space, a crinkled black surface crust riddled with contorted fissures of radiant red light. The two atmospheric aspects were in constant conflict, supernatural and supernature boiling against each other with harrowing aggression.

  “Dexter was there on Lalonde at incident one, according to Laton and our Edenist friends,” Western Europe said remorselessly. “He was on Norfolk, which we now recognize as the major distribution source of infection
. He was at Nyvan which has elevated the crisis to a completely new stage; as far as we can tell one which has proved as hostile to the possessed as it is to the ordinary population. And now we are certain he arrived here at Supra-Brazil.” He looked directly at the South America supervisor.

  “There was an alert at the Brazil tower station fifteen hours after the Mount’s Delta arrived,” South America said tonelessly. “Just after its descent, one of the lift capsules suffered exactly the kind of electronic glitches known to be inflicted by the possessed. We had the entire arrivals complex sealed and surrounded within ninety seconds. Nothing. No sign of any possessed.”

  “But you think he’s here?” East Europe pressed.

  South America smiled without humour. “We know he is. After the alert, we hauled in everyone who came down on the lift capsule, passengers and crew. This is what we got from several neural nanonics memory cells.” Nyvan faded away to show a slightly fuzzy two-dimensional picture, indicating a low-grade recording. The figure in the Royale Class lounge wearing a blue-silk suit, and slumped comfortably in a deep chair was undoubtedly Dexter.

  “Merciful Allah,” North Pacific exclaimed. “We’ll have to shut down the vac-trains. It’s our one advantage. I don’t care how good he is at eluding our sensors, the little shit can’t walk a thousand kilometres along a vacuum tunnel. Isolate the bastard, and hit him with an SD platform strike.”

  “I believe even we would have trouble shutting down the vac-trains,” South Pacific said significantly. “Not without questions being asked.”

  “I don’t mean we should issue the order,” North Pacific snapped. “Feed the information up to B3, and make the President’s office authorize it.”

  “If the public find out there’s a possessed on Earth, there will be absolute pandemonium,” North Africa said. “Even we would have trouble retaining control over the arcologies.”

  “Better than being possessed,” North America said. “Because that’s what he’ll do to the arcology populations if we don’t stop him. Even we would be in danger.”

  “I think his objective is more complex than that,” Western Europe said.

  “We know what he did to Nyvan, I think we can assume he wants to do the same thing here.”

  “Not a chance,” Military Intelligence said. “Even if he could sneak around up in the Halo, which I doubt, he’d never acquire enough nukes to split an asteroid open. You can’t remove one of those beauts from storage without anyone knowing.”

  “Maybe, but there’s something else. Kavanagh and Fletcher Christian both say that Dexter is here to hunt down Banneth and have his revenge on her. I checked Dexter’s file; he used to be a sect member in Edmonton. Banneth was his magus.”

  “So what?” asked North Pacific. “You know what those crazy brute sect members do to each other when the lights go off. I’m not surprised he wants to beat the crap out of Banneth.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Western Europe said patiently. “Why would the soul possessing Quinn Dexter’s body care about Dexter’s old magus?” He looked questioningly round the table. “We’re dealing with something new, here, something different. An ordinary person who has somehow gained the same powers of the possessed, if not superior ones. His goals are not going to be the same as theirs, this craving they have to flee the universe.”

  North America caught it first. “Shit. He used to be a sect member.”

  “And presumably remains so,” Western Europe agreed. “He was still performing their ceremony on Lalonde; that was incident one, after all. Dexter is a true believer in the Light Bringer teachings.”

  “You think he’s come back to find his God?”

  “It’s not a god he worships, it’s the devil. But no, he’s not here to find him. My people ran a psychological profile simulation; what they got indicates he’s come back to prepare the way for his Lord, the Light Bringer, who glories in war and chaos. He’ll try to unleash as much mayhem and destruction on both us and the possessed as it’s possible to do. Nyvan was just the warm up. The real game is going to be played out down here.”

  “Well that settles it then,” North Pacific said. “We have to close the vac-trains. It’ll mean losing an entire arcology to him; but we can save the rest.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic,” Western Europe said. “Dexter is a problem; a novel one, granted. He’s different, and more powerful than all the others B7 has faced over the centuries. But that’s what we are here for, ultimately, to solve problems which would defeat conventional government action. We simply have to locate a weakness and use it.”

  “An invisible megalomaniac as powerful as a minor god has a weakness?” North Pacific said. “Allah preserve us, I should like to hear what it is.”

  “The Kavanagh girl has escaped him twice. Both times it was due to the intervention of an unknown possessed. We have an ally.”

  “On Norfolk! Which has bloody vanished.”

  “Nevertheless, Dexter does not command total support from the possessed. He is not invincible. And we have what should be a decisive advantage over him.”

  “Which is?”

  “We know about him. He knows nothing about us. That can be exploited to trap him.”

  “Ah yes,” the Halo supervisor said contentedly. “Now I understand the reluctance for a personality debrief on the Kavanagh girl.”

  “Well I don’t,” South America declared querulously.

  “Personality debrief requires a much more invasive procedure,” Western Europe said. “At the moment Kavanagh is not aware of what has happened to her. That means we can use her ignorance to get very close to Dexter.”

  “Close to …” South Pacific trailed off. “My God, you want to use her as a lightning conductor.”

  “Exactly. At the moment we have one chance for proximity, and that’s Banneth. Unfortunately there is only a limited degree of preparation we can make with her. The possessed, and therefore presumably Dexter, can sense the emotional content of the minds around them. We have to proceed with extreme caution if he is to be lured into a termination option. If he learns someone is hunting him, we could lose several arcologies, if not more. Moving the Kavanagh girl back into the game doubles our chances of engineering an encounter with him.”

  “That’s goddamn risky,” North America said.

  “No, I like it,” Halo said. “It has subtlety; that’s more us than closing down the vac-trains and using SD fire to incinerate entire arcology domes.”

  “Oh heaven preserve we should let our standard of style drop when the whole fucking world is about to go down the can,” South Pacific groused.

  “Does anyone have a substantial objection?” Western Europe enquired.

  “Your operation,” North Pacific said hotly. “Your responsibility.”

  “Responsibility?” Australia chided lightly.

  There were several smiles around the table as North Pacific glowered.

  “Naturally I accept the consequences,” Western Europe purred volubly.

  “You’re always such an arrogant little shit when you’re this age, aren’t you?” North Pacific said.

  Western Europe just laughed.

  The three Confederation Navy marines were polite, insistent, and resolutely uncommunicative. They escorted Joshua the entire length of Trafalgar. Which, he thought, was a hopeful sign; he was being taken away from the CNIS section. A day and a half of interviews with sour-faced CNIS investigators, cooperating like a good citizen. None of his questions answered in return. Certainly no access to a lawyer—one of the investigators had given him a filthy look when he half-jokingly asked for legal aid. Net processors wouldn’t respond to his datavises. He didn’t know where the rest of his crew was. Didn’t know what was happening to Lady Mac. And could make a pretty good guess what kind of report Monica and Samuel were concocting.

  From the tube carriage station a lift took them up to a floor which was plainly officer country. A wide corridor, good carpet, discreet lighting, holograms of famous
Naval events (few he recognized), intent men and women looping from office to office, none of them under the rank of senior lieutenant. Joshua was led into a reception room with two captains sitting at desks. One of them stood, and saluted the marines. “We’ll take him from here.”

  “What is this?” Joshua asked. It definitely wasn’t a firing squad on the other side of the ornate double doors in front of him, and hopefully not a courtroom either.

  “The First Admiral will see you now,” the captain said.

  “Er,” Joshua said lamely. “Okay, then.”

  The large circular office had a window overlooking the asteroid’s biosphere. It was night outside, the solartubes reduced to a misty oyster glimmer revealing little of the landscape. Big holoscreens on the walls were flashing up external sensor images of Avon and the asteroid’s spaceports. Joshua looked for Lady Mac among the docking bays, but couldn’t find her.

  The captain beside him saluted. “Captain Calvert, sir.”

  Joshua locked eyes with the man sitting behind the big teak desk in front of him, receiving a mildly intrigued gaze from Samual Aleksandrovich.

  “So,” the First Admiral said. “Lagrange Calvert. You fly some very tight manoeuvres, Captain.”

  Joshua narrowed his eyes, unsure just how much irony was being applied here. “I just do what comes naturally.”

  “Indeed you do. I accessed that section of your file, also.” The First Admiral smiled at some internal joke, and waved a hand. “Please sit down, Captain.”

  A blue-steel chair swelled up out of the floor in front of the desk.

  Alkad Mzu was sitting in the one next to it, body held rigid, staring ahead. On the other side of her, Monica and Samuel had relaxed back into their own chairs. The First Admiral introduced the demure Edenist woman beside them as Admiral Lalwani, the CNIS chief. Joshua responded with a very nervous twitch of greeting.

  “I think I had better start by saying the Confederation Navy would like to thank you for your part in the Nyvan affair, and solving the Alchemist problem for us,” the First Admiral said. “I do not like to dwell on the consequences had the Capone Organization acquired it.”