The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  After that, the illusion of solidity had melted away like pillars of salt in the rain, exposing rickety shacks assembled from scraps of plastic and metal. They leant together precariously, one stacked against another to provide a highly dubious stability. The narrow strips of grass between were reduced to slippery runnels of mud, often used as open sewers.

  So now the survivors of Valisk’s latest change in fortune had moved again, repelled from the hovels of their erstwhile possessors, they were simply sprawling uncaringly across the surrounding grass. They lacked the energy and willpower to do anything else. Some lay on their backs, some had curled up, some were sitting against trees, some stumbled about aimlessly. That wasn’t so bad, Tolton thought, after what they’d been through a period of stupefaction was understandable. It was the sound which was getting to him. Wails of distress and muffled sobbing mingling together to poison the air with harrowing dismay. Five thousand people having a bad dream in unison.

  And just like a bad dream, you couldn’t wake them from it. To begin with, when he’d emerged from his hiding place, he’d moved from one to another.

  Offering words of sympathy, a comforting arm around the shoulder. He’d persisted valiantly for a couple of hours like that, before finally acknowledging how quite pathetically pointless it all was. Somehow, they would have to get over the psychological trauma by themselves.

  It wasn’t going to be easy, not with the ghosts as an ever-present reminder of their ordeal. The ex-possessors were still slinking furtively through the outlying trees of the nearby jungle. For whatever reason, once they’d been expelled from their host bodies, they wouldn’t leave.

  Immediately after Valisk’s strange transformation they had clung longingly to their victims, following them with perverted devotion as they crawled about shaking and vomiting in reaction to their release.

  Then as people had gradually started to recover their wits and take notice, the anger had surfaced. It was that massive deluge of communal hatred which had forced the ghosts to retreat, rather than the shouts of abuse and threats of vengeance.

  They’d fled into the refuge of the jungle around the parkland, almost bewildered by the response they’d spawned. But they hadn’t gone far.

  Tolton could see them thronging out there amid the funereal trees, their eerie pale radiance casting diaphanous shadows which twisted fluidly amid the branches and trunks.

  But the ghosts never went any further than the trees. It was as if the greater depths of the darkling habitat frightened them, too. That was the aspect of this whole affair which worried Tolton the most.

  His own wanderings were almost as aimless as anyone in the throes of recovery. Like them, he didn’t relish the idea of venturing through the shanty town, he also considered it prudent not to fraternise with the ghosts. Though somewhere at the back of his mind was some ancient piece of folklore about ghosts never actually killing anybody. Whichever pre-history warlock came up with that prophecy had obviously never encountered these particular ghosts.

  So he kept moving, avoiding eye-contact, searching for … well, he’d know what when he saw it. Ironically, the thing he missed most was Rubra, and the wealth of knowledge which came with that contact. But the processor block he’d used to stay in touch with the habitat personality had crashed as soon as the change happened. Since then he’d tried using several other blocks. None of them worked, at most he got a trickle of static. He didn’t have enough (any, actually) technical knowledge to understand why.

  Nor did he understand the change which the habitat had undergone, only the result, the mass exorcism. He assumed it had been imposed by some friendly ally. Except Valisk didn’t have any allies. And Rubra had never dropped any hint that this might happen, not in all the weeks he’d kept Tolton hidden from the possessed. There was nothing for it but to keep moving for the delusion of purpose it bestowed, and wait for developments. Whatever they might be.

  “Please.” The woman’s voice was little more than a whisper, but it was focused enough to make Tolton hesitate and try to see who was speaking.

  “Please, I need some help. Please.” The speaker was in her late middle-age, huddled up against a tree. He walked over to her, avoiding a couple of people who were stretched out, almost comatose, on the grass.

  Details were difficult in this leaden twilight. She was wrapped in a large tartan blanket, clutching it to her chest like a shawl. Long unkempt hair partially obscured her face, glossy titian roots contrasted sharply with the dirty faded chestnut of the tresses. The features glimpsed through the tangle were delicate, a pert button nose and long cheekbones, implausibly artistic eyebrows. Her skin seemed very tight, almost stretched, as if to emphasise the curves.

  “What’s wrong?” Tolton asked gently, cursing himself for the stupidity of the question. As he knelt beside her, the light tube’s meagre nimbus glimmered on the tears dribbling down her cheeks.

  “I hurt,” she said. “Now she’s gone, I hurt so badly.”

  “It’ll go. I promise, time will wash it away.”

  “She slept with hundreds of men,” the woman cried wretchedly. “Hundreds. Women, too. I felt the heat in her, she loved it, all of it. That slut, that utter slut. She made my body do things with those animals. Awful, vile things. Things no decent person would ever do.”

  He tried to take one of her hands, but she snatched it away, turning from him. “It wasn’t you,” he said. “You didn’t do any of those things.”

  “How can you say that? It was done to me. I felt it all, every minute of it. This is my body. Mine! My flesh and blood. She took that from me. She soiled me, ruined me. I’m so corrupt I’m not even human any more.”

  “I’m sorry, really I am. But you have to learn not to think like that. If you do, you’re letting her win. You’ve got to put that behind you. It’s over, and you’ve won. She’s been exorcised, she’s nothing but a neurotic wisp of light. That’s all she’ll ever be now. I’d call that a victory, wouldn’t you?”

  “But I hurt,” she persisted. Her voice dropped to a confessional tone.

  “How can I forget when I hurt?”

  “Look, there are treatments, memory suppressers, all sorts of cures. Just as soon as we get the power turned back on, you can …”

  “Not my mind! Not just that.” She had begun to plead. “It’s my body, my body which hurts.”

  Tolton started to get a very bad feeling about where the conversation was heading. The woman was shaking persistently, and he was sure some of the moisture glistening on her face had to be perspiration. He flicked an edgy glance back at her unnatural roots. “Where, exactly, does it hurt?”

  “My face,” she mumbled. “My face aches. It’s not me anymore. I couldn’t see me when she looked in a mirror.”

  “They all did that, all imagined themselves to look ridiculously young and pretty. It’s an illusion, that’s all.”

  “No. It became real. I’m not me, not now. She even took my identity away from me. And …” Her voice started trembling. “My shape. She stole my body, and still that wasn’t enough. Look, look what she’s done to me.”

  Moving so slowly that Tolton wanted to do it for her, she drew the folds of the blanket apart. For the first time, he actually wished there was less light. To begin with it looked as though someone had badly bungled a cosmetic package adaptation. Her breasts were grossly misshapen. Then he realized that was caused by large bulbs of flesh clinging to the upper surface like skin-coloured leeches. Each one almost doubled the size of the breast, the weight pulling them down heavily. The natural tissue was almost squashed from view.

  The worst part of it was, they obviously weren’t grafts or implants; whatever the tissue was, it had swollen out of the natural mammary gland.

  Below them, her abdomen was held anorexically flat by a broad oval slab of unyielding skin. It was as though she’d developed a thick callous across the whole area, fake musculature marked out by faint translucent lines.

  “See?” the woman asked, st
aring down at her exposed chest in abject misery. “Bigger breasts and a flat belly. She really wanted bigger breasts. That was her wish. They’d be more useful to her, more fun, more spectacular. And she could make wishes come true.”

  “God preserve us,” Tolton murmured in horror. He didn’t know much about human illnesses, but there were some scraps of relevant information flashing up out of his childhood’s basic medical didactic memories.

  Cancer tumours. Almost a lost disease. Geneering had made human bodies massively resistant to the ancient bane. And for the few isolated instances when it did occur, medical nanonics could penetrate and eradicate the sick cells within hours.

  “I used to be a nurse,” the woman said, as she ashamedly covered herself with the blanket again. “They’re runaways. My breasts are the largest growths, but I must have the same kind of malignant eruptions at every change she instituted.”

  “What can I do?” he asked hoarsely.

  “I need medical nanonic packages. Do you know how to program them?”

  “No. I don’t even have neural nanonics. I’m a poet, that’s all.”

  “Then, please, find me some. My neural nanonics aren’t working either, but a processor block might do instead.”

  “I … Yes, of course.” It would mean a trip into the lifeless, lightless starscraper to find some, but his discomfort at that prospect was nothing compared to her suffering. Somehow, he managed to keep a neutral expression on his face as he stood up, even though he was pretty certain a medical nanonic package wouldn’t work in this weird environment. But it might, it just might. And if that slender chance existed, then he would bring one for her, no matter what.

  He cast round the dismal sight of people strewn about, holding themselves and moaning. The really terrifying doubt engulfed him then. Suppose the anguish wasn’t all psychological? Every possessed he’d seen had changed their appearance to some degree. Suppose every change had borne a malignancy, even a small one.

  “Oh fucking hell, Rubra. Where are you? We need help.”

  As always, there was no warning when the cell door opened. Louise wasn’t even sure when it had swung back. She was curled up on the bunk, dozing, only semi-aware of her surroundings. Quite how long she’d been in this state, she didn’t know. Somehow, her time sense had got all fouled up.

  She remembered the interview with Brent Roi, his sarcasm and unconcealed contempt. Then she’d come back here. Then … She’d come back here hours ago. Well, a long time had passed … She thought.

  I must have fallen asleep.

  Which was hard to believe; the colossal worry of the situation had kept her mind feverishly active.

  The usual two female police officers appeared in the doorway. Louise blinked up at their wavering outlines, and tried to right herself. Bright lights flashed painfully behind her eyes; she had to clamp her mouth shut against the sudden burst of nausea.

  What is wrong with me?

  “Woo there, steady on.” One of the police officers was sitting on the bed beside her, holding her up.

  Louise shook uncontrollably, cold sweat beading on her skin. Her reaction calmed slightly, though it was still terribly hard to concentrate.

  “One minute,” the woman said. “Let me reprogram your medical package. Try to take some deeper breaths, okay?”

  That was simple enough. She gulped down some air, her chest juddering.

  Another couple of breaths. Her rogue body seemed to be calming. “Wha … What?” she panted.

  “Anxiety attack,” said the policewoman. “We see a lot of them in here. That and worse things.”

  Louise nodded urgently, an attempt to convince herself that’s all it was.

  No big deal. Nothing badly amiss. The baby’s fine—the medical package would insure that. Just stay calm.

  “Okay. I’m okay now. Thank you.” She proffered a small smile at the police officer, only to be greeted with blank-faced indifference.

  “Let’s go, then,” said the officer standing by the door.

  Louise girded herself, and slowly stood on slightly unsteady legs. “Where are we going?”

  “Parole Office.” She sounded disgusted.

  “Where’s Genevieve? Where’s my sister?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t care. Come on.”

  Louise was almost shoved out into the corridor. She was improving by the minute, although the headache lingered longer than anything else. A small patch of skin at the back of her skull tingled, as if she’d been stung.

  Her fingers stroked it absently. Anxiety attack? She hadn’t known there was such a thing before. But given everything she currently had to think about, such a malaise was more than likely.

  They got into a lift which had to be heading down. The gravity field had risen to almost normal when they got out. This part of the asteroid was different to the cells and interview rooms she’d been kept in until now.

  Definitely government offices, the standardized furniture and eternally polite personnel with their never-smiling faces were evidence of that.

  She took a little cheer from the fact these corridors and glimpsed rooms weren’t as crushingly bleak as the upper level. Her status had changed for the better. Slightly.

  The police officers showed her into a room with a narrow window looking out over High York’s biosphere cavern. Not much to see, it was dawn, or dusk, Louise didn’t know which. The grassland and trees soaking up the gold-orange light were a brighter, more welcoming green than the cavern in Phobos. Two curving settees had been set up facing each other in the middle of the floor, bracketing an oval table. Genevieve slouched on one of them, hands stuffed into the pockets of her shipsuit, feet swinging just off the floor, looking out of the window. Her expression was a mongrel cross between sullen resentment and utter boredom.

  “Gen.” Louise’s voice nearly cracked.

  Genevieve raced across the room and thudded into her. They hugged each other tightly. “They wouldn’t tell me where you were!” Genevieve protested loudly. “They wouldn’t let me see you. They wouldn’t say what was happening.”

  Louise stroked her sister’s hair. “I’m here now.”

  “It’s been forever. Days!”

  “No, no. It just seems like that.”

  “Days,” Genevieve insisted.

  Louise managed a slightly uncertain smile; wanting for herself the reassurance she was attempting to project. “Have they been questioning you?”

  “Yes,” Genevieve mumbled morosely. “They kept on and on about what happened in Norwich. I told them a hundred times.”

  “Me too.”

  “Everybody must be really stupid on Earth. They don’t understand anything unless you’ve explained it five times.”

  Louise wanted to laugh at the childish derision in Gen’s voice, pitched just perfectly to infuriate any adult.

  “And they took my games block away. That’s stealing, that is.”

  “I haven’t seen any of my stuff either.”

  “The food’s horrid. I suppose they’re too thick to cook it properly. And I haven’t had any clean clothes.”

  “Well, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Brent Roi hurried into the room, and dismissed the two waiting police officers with a casual wave. “Okay, ladies, take a seat.”

  Louise flashed him a resentful look.

  “Please?” he entreated without noticeable sincerity.

  Holding hands, the sisters sat on the settee opposite him. “Are we under arrest?” Louise asked.

  “No.”

  “Then you believe what I told you?”

  “To my amazement, I find sections of your story contain the odd nugget of truth.”

  Louise frowned. This attitude was completely different to the one he’d shown her during the interview. Not that he was repenting, more like he’d been proved right instead of her.

  “So you’ll watch out for Quinn Dexter?”

  “Most assuredly.”

  Genevieve shuddered. “I hate him.” />
  “That’s all that truly matters,” Louise said. “He must never be allowed to get down to Earth. If you believe me, then I’ve won.”

  Brent Roi shifted uncomfortably. “Okay, we’ve been trying to decide what to do with the pair of you. Which I can tell you is not an easy thing, given what you were attempting. You thought you were doing the right thing, bringing Christian here. But believe me, from the legal side of things, you are about as wrong as it’s possible to be. The Halo police commissioner has spent two days being advised by some of our best legal experts on what the hell to do with you, which hasn’t improved his temper any. Ordinarily we’d just walk you past a warm judge and fly you off to a penal colony. There’d be no problem obtaining a guilty verdict.” He gazed at Genevieve. “Not even your age would get you off.”

  Genevieve pushed her shoulders up against her neck, and glowered at him.

  “However, there are mitigating circumstances, and these are strange times. Lucky for you, that gives the Halo police force a large amount of discretion right now.”

  “So?” Louise asked calmly. For whatever reason she wasn’t afraid; if they were due to face a trial none of this would be happening.

  “So. Pretty obviously: we don’t want you up here after what you’ve done; plus you don’t have the basic technical knowledge necessary to live in an asteroid settlement, which makes you a liability. Unfortunately, there’s an interstellar quarantine in force right now, which means we can’t send you off to Tranquillity where your fiancé can take care of you. That just leaves us with one option: Earth. You have money, you can afford to stay there for the duration of the crisis.”

  Louise glanced at Genevieve, who squashed her lips together with a dismissive lack of interest.

  “I’m not going to object,” Louise said.