The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Oh very clever. What happens if you don’t have a block to do that for you?”

  “I don’t know.” She couldn’t see a handle anywhere. “I suppose everyone on this world is taught how to use things like this. Most of them have neural nanonics, after all.”

  There wasn’t much room inside, enough for four seats with deep curving backs. Louise shoved her bag in the storage bin underneath, and studied the screen again. The block was interfacing with the taxi’s control processor, which made life a lot simpler for her. The whole activation procedure was presented to her as a simple, easy-to-understand-menu. She fed in their destination, and the door slid shut. The taxi told the block what their fee was (as much as the vac-train fare from Mount Kenya), and explained how to use the seat straps.

  “Ready?” she asked Gen, when they’d fastened themselves in.

  “Yes.” The little girl couldn’t hide her enthusiasm.

  Louise held her Jovian Bank disk up to the small panel on the taxi’s central column, and transferred the money over. They started to roll forward. The taxi took them up a steep ramp, accelerating fast enough to press the sisters back into their seat cushioning. The reason was simple enough, they emerged right in the middle of the traffic racing round the Kings Cross plaza, slotting in without the slightest fuss.

  Genevieve laughed excitedly as they zipped across several lanes, then slowed slightly to turn off down one of the broad streets. “Golly, this is better than the aeroambulance.” The little girl grinned.

  Louise rolled her eyes. Though once she accepted the fact that the control processor did know how to drive, she began to breathe normally again. The buildings rushing past were old and sombre, which gave them a dignity all of their own. On the other side of the pavement barrier, pedestrians jostled their way along in a permanent scrum.

  “I never knew there were so many people,” Gen said. “London must have more than live on the whole of Norfolk.”

  “Probably,” Louise agreed.

  The taxi took them a third of the way round the expressway, then turned off, heading back down to ground level. There were parks on both sides of the road when they started their descent, then buildings rose up to their left, and they were back on one of the ancient streets again. The pavements here didn’t seem so crowded. They slowed drastically, pulling over to the right alongside a large cube of white-grey stone with tall windows lined by iron railings and a steep state roof. An open arcade ran along the front, supported by wide arches. The taxi stopped level with a gate in the roadside barrier, which a doorman opened smartly. He was dressed in a dark blue coat and top hat, a double row of brass buttons gleamed down his chest. At last, Louise felt at home. This was something she could deal with.

  If the doorman was surprised at who climbed out of the taxi he never showed it. “Are you staying here, miss?” he asked.

  “I hope so, yes.”

  He nodded politely, and ushered them under the arcade towards the main entrance.

  Genevieve eyed the front of the stolid building sceptically. “It looks dreadfully gloomy.”

  The lobby inside was white and gold, with chandeliers resembling frost-encrusted branches that had dazzling stars at the tip of each twig.

  Arches along the long central aisle opened into big rooms that were full of prim white tables where people were sitting having tea. Waiters in long black tailcoats bustled about, carrying trays with silver teapots and very tempting cakes.

  Louise marched confidently over to the gleaming oak reception desk. “A twin room, please.”

  The young woman standing behind smiled professionally. “Yes, madam. How long for?”

  “Um. A week to start with.”

  “Of course. I’ll need your ident flek, please, to register. And there is a deposit.”

  “Oh, we haven’t got an ident flek.”

  “We’re from Norfolk,” Gen said eagerly.

  The receptionist’s composure flickered. “Really?” She cleared her throat.

  “If you’re from offworld, your passports will be satisfactory.”

  Louise handed the passports over, thinking briefly of Endron again, and wondering how much trouble the Martian was in right now. The receptionist scanned the passports in a block and took the deposit from Louise. A bellboy came forward and relieved the sisters of their bags before showing them into a lift.

  Their room was on the fourth floor, with a large window overlooking the park. The decor was so reminiscent of the kind Norfolk landowners worshiped it gave Louise a sense of déjà vu; regal-purple wallpaper and furniture so old the wood was virtually black beneath the polish. Her feet sank into a carpet well over an inch thick.

  “Where are we?” Gen asked the bellboy. She was pressed up against the window, staring out. “I mean, what’s that park called?”

  “That’s Green Park, miss.”

  “So are we near anywhere famous?”

  “Buckingham Palace is on the other side of the park.”

  “Gosh.”

  He showed Louise the room’s processor block, which was built in to the dresser. “Any information you need on the city for your stay should be in here; it has a comprehensive tourist section,” he said. She tipped him a couple of fuseodollars when he left. He’d been holding his own credit disk, casually visible through fingers splayed wide.

  Genevieve waited until the door shut. “What’s Buckingham Palace?”

  The AI was alert to the glitch within a hundredth of a second. Two ticket dispenser processors and an informational projector. It brought additional analysis programs on line, and ran an immediate verification sweep of every electronic circuit in Grand Central Station.

  Half a second. The response to a general acknowledgement datavise from five sets of neural nanonics was incorrect. All of them were within a seven metre zone, which also incorporated the failing ticket dispensers.

  Two seconds. Security sensors in Grand Central’s concourse focused on the suspect area. The AI datavised to B7’s North American supervisor the fact it had located a possessed-type glitch in New York. He had just framed his query in reply when the sensors observed Bud Johnson go cartwheeling over someone in a black robe crouched on the floor.

  Three and a half seconds. There was a visual discontinuity. None of the sensor short-term memory buffers had registered the black clad figure before. It was as if he’d just materialized out of nowhere. If he had neural nanonics, then they were not responding to the ident request datavise.

  Four seconds. The North American supervisor took direct control of the situation in conjunction with the AI. A datavised warning went out to the rest of the supervisors.

  Six seconds. The full B7 complement of supervisors was on line, observing. The AI’s visual characteristics program locked on to the shadowed face inside the black robe’s hood. Quinn Dexter rose to his feet.

  South Pacific: “Nuke him. Now!”

  Western Europe: “Don’t be absurd.”

  Halo: “SD platforms armed; do you want groundstrike?”

  North America: “No. It’s completely impractical. Grand Central Station’s concourse is a hundred and fifty metres below ground, and that’s spread out below three skyscrapers. There isn’t an X-ray laser built that could reach it.”

  South Pacific: “Then use a real nuke. A combat wasp can be down there in two minutes.”

  Asian Pacific: “I second that.”

  Western Europe: “No! Damn it. Will you morons control yourselves.”

  North America: “Thank you. I’m not going to blast Dome One into oblivion. There are twenty million people living in there. Even Laton didn’t kill that many.”

  North Europe: “You can’t let him go. We have to exterminate him.”

  Western Europe: “How?”

  North Europe: “South Pacific’s right. Nuke the shit. I’m sorry about the other inhabitants, but it’s the only way we can resolve the situation.”

  Western Europe: “Observe, please.”

  Eleven seconds
. Bud Johnson’s face had turned purple. He scrabbled feebly at his chest, then pitched over onto the floor. People clustered round him. Quinn Dexter became translucent and quickly faded from view. The AI reported all the processors had come back on line.

  Military Intelligence: “Oh shit.”

  Western Europe: “Will a nuke kill him now do you think? Wherever he is.”

  South Pacific: “One way to find out.”

  Western Europe: “I cannot permit that. We exist primarily to protect Earth. Even with our prerogatives, you cannot exterminate twenty million people in the hope that you kill one terrorist.”

  Halo: “The boy’s right, I’m afraid. I’m standing down the SD platforms.”

  South Pacific: “Terrorist demon, more like.”

  Western Europe: “I’m not arguing definitions. All this does is confirm I was right the first time. We have got to be extremely careful how we deal with Dexter.”

  North Pacific: “Well at least shut down New York’s vac-trains.”

  Central America: “Yes. Isolate him in New York. You can creep up on him there.”

  Western Europe: “I’m going to have to say no again.”

  North Pacific: “In Allah’s name, why? We know where he is, that gives us a tremendous advantage.”

  Western Europe: “It’s psychology. He knows we know he’s here. He’s not stupid, he’ll realize we’ll find out about him appearing in Grand Central station. The question is, how long does it take us to find out? If we stop the vac-trains now, it shows him we are right up to speed and deeply worried by him, and also that we’ll go all out to stop him. That’s not good, that puts him on guard.”

  Central America: “So, he’s on guard? If he’s trapped in one place, it won’t do him any good. He’ll still be on death row. He knows it’s coming, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”

  Western Europe: “First thing he’ll do is mobilise New York to defend himself. And we’ll be back to one option of having to nuke the place.

  Don’t you see? Our arcologies are even more vulnerable than asteroid settlements. They are utterly dependent on technology, not just to protect us from the weather, but to feed us and condition our air. If you confine three hundred million possessed inside one, every single chunk of machinery will break down. The domes will shatter in the first storm that comes along, and the population will either starve or turn cannibal.”

  Central America: “I’m prepared to sacrifice one arcology to save the rest. If that’s what it takes.”

  Western Europe: “But we don’t have to sacrifice one. Certainly not yet. You’re being abysmally premature. Right now, Dexter will be skipping round arcologies, establishing small groups of possessed who’ll keep their heads down until he gives the word. While he’s doing that, we’ve got a chance. There will only be small groups in each arcology, which we really ought to be able to find. If other worlds can track them, so can we. Dexter is our problem, not the ordinary possessed.”

  Asian Pacific: “Put it to the vote.”

  Western Europe: “How wonderfully democratic. Very well.”

  Six supervisors voted for closing down New York’s vac-trains right away.

  Ten voted to keep them open.

  Western Europe: “Thank you so much for your confidence.”

  Southern Africa: “You have the ball for now. But if you haven’t dealt with Dexter in another ten days, I shall be voting to isolate him wherever he is. And then we’ll see if he can hide from a nuke as well as he can from a sensor.”

  The conference dissolved. Western Europe asked North America, Military Intelligence, and Halo to remain on line. Natural allies in the eternal warzone of B7’s internal politics, they obliged. His sensevise overlay program positioning and dressing them around his drawing room as though they were weekend guests just come in from a stroll round the grounds.

  “It’ll go against you eventually,” Halo warned. “They’re happy for you to take responsibility for the chase as long as Dexter hasn’t caused any noticeable damage. But the minute he gets noisy, they’ll revert.”

  “That little crap artist, South Pacific,” North America complained. “Telling me to nuke New York! Who the hell does she think she is?”

  “She always favours the blunt approach,” Western Europe said. “We all know that. That’s why I like her so much, makes one feel constantly superior.”

  “Inferior or not, she’ll carry the day eventually,” Military Intelligence said.

  Western Europe walked over to the tall glass-panelled door, and let his two Labradors in. “I know. That’s why I found today encouraging.”

  “Encouraging?” North America asked, astonished. “Are you kidding? I’ve got that Dexter bastard running round loose in New York.”

  “Yes, exactly. Something went wrong for him. He was on his knees when he appeared, and he vanished within seconds. He was glitched. Another factor in our favour.”

  “Maybe,” Halo said. He sounded very dubious.

  “All right,” North America said. “So what now?”

  “You need to do two things. In forty minutes, I want you to close down all New York’s vac-trains.”

  “Forty minutes? He’ll be long gone.”

  “Yes. As I said, he knows we know he’s here. We have to play along with that, but make him think we’re lumbering along five steps behind him. So close the vac-trains. He won’t be in New York, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “You hope.”

  “I know. Once he’d been exposed there he had no option but to leave. New York is closed to him now, out of the equation. To do whatever he wants to do, he has to maintain his mobility. He probably took the shortest ride out there is, figuring the police would close down the vac-trains pretty fast; but that’s beside the point.”

  “Okay. How long do you want them shut down for?”

  “That’s the second thing. We have to work on the assumption he was leaving. Therefore, he’s more than likely left a group of possessed behind him. You have to find them, and eliminate them. Keep the arcology sealed up until you do. In fact, keeping the individual domes isolated might be a good idea if you can manage it.”

  “You really think that’s what he’s doing?”

  “Yes. He wants to inflict maximum devastation on this planet. He’ll seed as many arcologies as possible with his followers. And when he gives the word, they’ll hit the streets, and we’ll be faced with the exponential curve again.”

  “The AI is monitoring the arcology’s electronics anyway.”

  “Yes. I’m sure that’s effective on Kulu and other modern worlds; but you and I know it can never access everything, not here, not in the old areas. There’s over five hundred years’ worth of electronic junk plugged together out there; we’re dealing with millions of old systems, quirky one-offs, and non-standard patch ups. The AI is a good sentry, but don’t make the mistake of becoming dependent. The best source we’ll have is probably the sects.”

  “The sects?”

  “Certainly. The one set of idiots who’ll support the possessed without having to be forced. Dexter knows that, they’re the ones he’ll go to.”

  “All right, I’ll get on to it.”

  “So what are you going to be doing?” Halo asked Western Europe.

  “Same as before. Engineer an encounter. We have to get our people close to him while he’s visible, and therefore vulnerable.”

  “Vulnerable to what?”

  “If he’s out in the open, an SD strike. Or if our contact is through an agent, we can try for electrocution or a memory scramble.”

  “Memory scramble?”

  “Yes,” said Military Intelligence. “The CNIS believes they can kill souls by firing some kind of mentallic virus at the possessed. It’s the opposite of a didactic imprint. They’re researching it now.”

  Western Europe started making a fuss of one of the dogs, scratching its belly as it rolled around on the carpet. “Do try and stay up to date,” he chided Halo.

 
“It won’t be available before the end of the week,” Military Intelligence warned.

  “I know. I doubt I’ll manage to arrange an interception by then anyway.”

  “How’s that angle coming along?” Halo asked.

  “The Banneth connection is just about covered. I’m not sure about the Kavanagh girls; they’re a long shot, and a pretty random one at that. But I’m working on it.”

  Louise spent an hour using the room’s desktop processor block and got nowhere. The directory provided her with enough entries under Banneth (173,364—once she’d removed the deceased), but no matter how she tried to cross reference that with Quinn Dexter the result was always negative.

  She racked her brains to remember everything Dexter had said back in the hangar at Bennett Field. Banneth was female, she remembered that for certain. And Dexter said she’d hurt him. That was about it, really.

  Somewhere, somehow, those facts should link up. She was sure they did.

  But finding the connection was beyond her woeful programming ability. The idea that had begun back when they got in the taxi was becoming more and more attractive. If she dared.

  Why not? she thought. There’s nothing dangerous about neural nanonics, not physically, the rest of the Confederation uses them. Joshua has a set. It’s only Norfolk which doesn’t allow them. She raised her arm, and looked at the discreet medical nanonic package bracelet. Also banned on Norfolk, yet it was helping her pregnancy. That settled it. She grinned, emboldened by her decision. I have to take responsibility for myself now.

  If I need neural nanonics to help me on Earth, then I will get myself a set.

  They hadn’t left the room since arriving at the hotel. Lunch had been a snack delivered by room service. Genevieve had flopped on her bed in weary disgust at the inactivity, and activated her own block. She was smothered by a laser-haze of grid lines and feisty fantasy beasts which leapt about enthusiastically at every excitable shouted command.

  “Gen?”

  The projection shrank. Genevieve blinked up at her, trying to focus.