The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The only other reliable link they had was Ivanov’s affinity bond. This way she got to see the route to Archway Tower which the B7 AI had mapped out for them.

  It had been scary coming up through the accessway from the underground road tunnel, especially the thirty seconds out in the open when she had to scurry to the cover of the first building. After that, she could see not only where they were but where they were going. It was surprising how reassuring that knowledge was.

  Most of the buildings had some kind of route through them, interconnecting doors—all locked—or basement service corridors. Those that didn’t, the GSDI agents were planning on simply cutting through walls with their fission blades. Even that wasn’t necessary; Fletcher conjured a door into existence each time. It didn’t seem to matter what the wall was, ancient brick or modern reinforced carbon-concrete, nor how thick it was. The trick made Brent Roi very uncomfortable, but it saved a lot of time. Fletcher could tell if there were people ahead of them, as well.

  They wormed their way from building to building, staying away from the front rooms overlooking the road whenever possible. Going through pub lounges, shop store rooms, offices, even kitchens and one-room flats.

  Those people they did intrude upon greeted them with astonishment and fear. Then when they found out the little party was official in nature, they just wanted to know what the hell was going on outside. And rescue.

  Everybody wanted out.

  That part was the worst, Louise found. The tension from being caught was survivable; tension was a state she was growing increasingly used to. But the pitiful pleas of the residents were relentless, their eyes accusing as they clutched small children to them.

  “Isn’t there another route?” she datavised Charlie after they left a woman and her three-year-old boy sobbing miserably. “It’s awful having to refuse these people.”

  Brent Roi waved her through a small triangular door into a narrow disused hallway. The only light was coming through a filthy smoked-glass window above a bricked-up door.

  “Sorry, Louise,” Charlie datavised back. “The AI says this way is the most likely to get you there undetected by the possessed. It didn’t take emotional stresses into account. Just try and tough it out. Not much further.”

  “Where’s Genevieve?”

  “They reached Skyhigh Kijabe seven minutes ago. I’ve chartered a blackhawk to take her to Tranquillity. She’ll be there within the hour.”

  Louise tapped Fletcher on the shoulder. “Genevieve’s safe. She’s about to depart for Tranquillity.”

  “I’m gladdened to hear that, my lady. Hope survives.”

  Ivanov reached the end of the hallway and held his hand up. “Outside road.”

  The two GSDI field agents moved forward to the metal door. One glanced at Fletcher.

  “No one is near,” he said.

  The agent pressed a small block to the damp wall beside the door. It fired a narrow electron beam through the plaster and brick, then extended a microfilament with a sensor on the end. The image it relayed showed them a narrow street, deserted except for a couple of cats. With the sensor switched to infrared, the agent focused it on each visible window along the street in turn, searching for hot silhouettes. The AI had been using the overhead dome sensors to scan their immediate area the whole way, but the angle was all wrong to examine windows.

  Their caution every time they had to cross a side street was adding considerably to the journey time.

  “Two possibles,” the agent reported, datavising the coordinates to his colleague. The door was opened and he ran fast across the street to the building directly opposite. Their entry point was a window covered by a security grille. Cutting the restraint bolts with a fission blade took fifteen seconds; the window catch was a mere two. The agent vanished inside with a neat roll. Brent Roi was next. Louise followed, sprinting hard across the street. According to her neural nanonics it was Vorley Road, the last open space they had to cross.

  Getting in, she reminded herself. It was a long long way back to any vac-train station.

  This conglomeration of buildings was gathered around the base of the Archway skyscraper itself: a monolithic twenty-five storey tower that stood halfway up a sloping ridge of land that was topped by Highgate Hill. If it hadn’t been for the buildings along the street blocking the view, they would already be able to look out over the rooftops of the old city.

  Once they were inside, a service corridor took them straight to the tower’s lobby. A lift was already waiting for them, door open.

  “The tower’s net and power are still connected,” Charlie datavised. “The AI is hooked into every circuit in there. I can give you plenty of early warning if there are any glitches.”

  They all crammed into the lift, which rose smoothly to the upper utility level. It opened out onto a world of artificial lighting, thick metal pipes, black storage tanks, and big primitive air-conditioning machines.

  Ivanov led them along a metal walkway to a spiral stair. The door at the top let them out on the flat roof. A flock of scarlet parakeets took flight as they emerged, startlingly loud in the warm air.

  Louise glanced round cautiously. The first rank of tall, modern skyscrapers encircling the old city were only a mile or so away to the north, their glassy faces shimmering rose-gold in the last of the twilight sun. To the south, the embargoed city swept away down the slope towards the distant Thames, a dusky mass of rooftops and intersecting walls. Patches of twinkling silvery light clung to some of the larger roads where the power hadn’t yet been cut to the hologram adverts. Not a single window was illuminated, the residents preferring to stay in the dark, fearful of drawing attention to themselves.

  Louise heard Fletcher laughing. He was leaning on the crumbling concrete parapet that ran round the edge of the roof, looking out towards the south.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I laugh at my own humility, lady. I look at this city which is supposed to be the closest to home I will ever come, only to find that it is the strangest vista I have encountered since my return. The word ‘city’ no longer encompasses the meaning it had in my time. You have the power and artifice to build such a colossus, yet it is I who has been asked to perform this scant task of finding one man.”

  “He’s not a man. He’s a monster.”

  “Aye, Lady Louise.” The humour faded from his handsome face, and he faced the ancient city. “They’re here, but of course you knew that.”

  “Are there many?”

  “Fewer than I had supposed, but enough. I feel their presence everywhere.” He closed his eyes and leant out a little further, sniffing the air. His hands gripped the top of the parapet. “There is a gathering. I feel them. Their thoughts are quietened, deliberately so. They wait for something.”

  “Waiting?” Ivanov asked quickly. “How do you know?”

  “There is an aura of anticipation about them. And unease. They are troubled, yet unable to walk away from their predicament.”

  “It’s him! It has to be. No one else could make a whole bunch of possessed do as they’re told. Where are they?”

  Fletcher took one of his hands off the parapet, leaving behind a dark sweat-stain print. He pointed along the Holloway Road. “Over yonder. I am uncertain as to how many leagues. Though they remain inside the dome. On that I would wager my hat.”

  Ivanov moved over to stand behind Fletcher, squinting along the direction he was pointing. “You’re sure?”

  “I am, sir. There.”

  “Okay. I’ve got a fix. We just need to triangulate.”

  “A splendid notion.”

  “I’ll take you over to Crouch Hill. That ought to be far enough. Then once we get a rough idea where the bastard’s hiding out, we can work out a route to get you close.”

  “If I may suggest, I simply walk. No man would accost me in this guise, and fewer will suspect my intent.”

  “Walk off into the goddamn sunset,” Brent said. “No fucking way.”

 
; “We can talk about it,” Ivanov said. “Fletcher, you got any idea how many there are in this group?”

  “I would suggest several hundred. Possibly even a thousand.”

  “What the hell does he want with that many in one place?”

  “I can advance no rationale to elucidate Quinn Dexter’s behaviour. He is, sir, quite mad.”

  “All right.” Ivanov took a final look across the city, fixing the line Fletcher had indicated. “Let’s move out.”

  They had just got into the lift when the AI reported an electronics glitch close to the Archway Tower. It immediately datavised a search update to Charlie. The glitch was occurring beside the electricity substation which distributed power to the Archway Tower among other consumers. A security camera revealed two people approaching the substation along a dark corridor.

  <> he warned Ivanov.

  The substation door crumpled from a blast of white fire. Three more glitches appeared around the base of the Archway Tower. Sensors showed possessed moving purposefully through the subway, freight tunnel, and utilities passageway. The substation transformers exploded as a barrage of white fire pummelled into their casings.

  Ivanov saw the lights in the lift flicker as the Tower’s emergency power cells took over. They were just passing the nineteenth floor.

  Down in the basement, the possessed were smashing every communications conduit they could find, tearing the cables out of the wall. The AI watched the Tower’s net connections fail one after the other. Independent power cells kept the internal processors running, but it could now only access them through the communications blocks carried by the GSDI field agents, cutting down on the bandwidth available for surveillance and initiating possible counter-moves.

  Security sensors on the ground floor showed fifteen possessed running up the stairs into the lobby. They immediately started slinging small bolts of white fire at the sensors and any other electronic system. Just before the last camera failed, Charlie saw a lift door being broken down with considerable force.

  <> he ordered. <>

  The AI had already established a link to the lift’s controlling processor. It applied the failsafe brakes and slammed it to a halt on the thirteenth floor.

  Louise yelped in shock as the lift floor abruptly tried to shunt its way upwards, accompanied by a strident alarm siren. She grasped at the handrail as she lurched against the wall.

  The doors flashed open. Charlie was datavising orders to her as Ivanov was shouting: “Move it! The possessed are coming.” Everyone charged out into the corridor. Black apartment doors lined both walls. Smoked-glass windows at either end let in a murky glow from the setting sun. Emergency lights shone brightly above both of the stairwell doors.

  Charlie told one of the GSDI agents to leave his communication block in the corridor, tucking it away unobtrusively in a doorway, enabling the AI to maintain contact with the tower’s net. “The possessed are now heading up both stairwells,” Charlie datavised. “Five in one, four in the other. The remainder are waiting downstairs. You’ll have to shoot your way through them. I suggest you use the anti-memory where possible.”

  “Gets my vote,” Ivanov said. He drew the small weapon, holding it in his left hand. His right held a compact automatic pistol.

  Fletcher and Louise drew their own weapons. The agents and Brent were checking their machine guns.

  Ivanov opened the stairwell door cautiously. Concrete steps with metal rails wound down the shaft in a rectangular corkscrew. The sound of running boots echoed upwards.

  “They know we’re here,” Fletcher said curtly.

  The AI tracked glitches rising up the stairwell and computed the approximate distance. Both GISD field agents entered the time into the trigger mechanism on their grenades and dropped them down the shaft.

  Louise hunched down next to the wall, her hands pressed against her ears.

  Explosions roared below as the chemical shrapnel grenades detonated. Then the agents tossed their gas incendiaries over the rail. Billows of flame scoured the battered stairs, searing against the groggy possessed.

  Screams trilled along the length of the stairwell.

  “Let’s go,” Ivanov said. He took off down the stairs.

  Louise was third in line, behind one of the agents, with Brent pounding along behind her. She’d put a host of programs in primary mode, an auto-locomotion so she could tear round the stairwell corners without slipping, adrenaline suppresser working through the medical nanonic to keep her calm, weapons control so she’d be able to aim the anti-memory tube properly, peripheral motion analysis, heart-rate control as a counter to the adrenaline suppresser, making sure her straining muscles received enough blood, tactical analysis, which was synchronized with the AI. It informed her that possessed from the lobby were starting to invade the bottom of the stairwell in support of their injured comrades. After descending another two floors, the agents would drop more grenades, and they’d all switch stairwells.

  A thick streamer of white fire plunged up the centre of the stairwell, its tip swelling rapidly.

  Louise flung herself back from the rail. Brent and one of the agents stuck their machine guns over the edge, shooting off a suppressing deluge of static bullets.

  The plume of white fire burst open, spitting out a shower of incandescent sparks. Several of them landed on Louise’s legs, stinging hard as they burnt their way through her leggings. She batted at them with her free hand, putting an axon block in primary to dull the pain. Her tactical program was urging her up. Neuroiconic icons began to flash warnings about capacity reduction in her neural nanonics.

  A bolt of white fire flashed like lightning. It hit the GSDI field agent who was covering the rear of the group, penetrating straight through the back of his skull to char the brain. He crumpled instantly.

  Ivanov and the remaining agent whirled round, their weapons trying to find a target.

  “Where the fuck did that come from?” Brent yelled.

  Charlie knew there was only one answer. Instinctively, his affinity bond made Ivanov turn to face Fletcher. “Well?” the detective demanded.

  “He is here,” Fletcher said with trepidation. “I feel him even though he hides beyond sight.”

  The possessed were clattering up the stairwell again. Neural nanonics and blocks were beginning to glitch.

  Charlie tightened Ivanov’s grip around the anti-memory weapon. “Through here,” he ordered. Ivanov went through the door to the tenth floor, arm swinging in wide arcs to cover the corridor. It was deserted, a copy of the thirteenth floor. Louise and Brent followed him while the last agent dropped a couple of grenades over the rail. They all started to run for the second stairwell. The grenades didn’t go off.

  “Is he still here?” Ivanov asked.

  “Close,” Fletcher said. Fury and frustration boiled into his voice. “I cannot see him. The devil!”

  “Shoot it where you think he is. It might work anyway.”

  Fletcher stopped running and lifted the anti-memory weapon, his thumb pushing the trigger button forwards. He glanced about the sombre corridor as though trying to make his mind up. The trigger was suddenly pressed, sending a cone of bright ruby laser light stabbing out.

  “It is useless,” Fletcher cried. “Useless.”

  The energistic glitch had crashed just about all of Ivanov’s neural nanonics. He certainly couldn’t receive any datavises. That meant the possessed were very close now.

  <> Charlie said. <>

  <> Ivanov said. He looked round wildly. <>

  <>

  <>

  Fletcher had put his arm protectively around a tre
mbling Louise. He suddenly fired the anti-memory again, sending the beam over Brent’s head.

  “Careful with that thing,” Brent shouted.

  Fletcher ignored him. “The others are almost here.”

  Three machine guns lined up on the stairwell door.

  “Get away,” Ivanov told Louise, waving her towards the window at the end of the corridor. Then he saw what was behind her, and let out a fast yell of delight. “Yes! Oldest trick in the book. Fletcher, cover for me. We can get her out.” <> he accused Charlie.

  There was a fire evacuation chute beside the window, a big doughnut of composite on thick swivel pinions. Ivanov grabbed Louise and hurried her along. He pulled the release lever at the side of the chute, shoving it through a hundred and eighty degrees. The window fell out, an alarm sounded, and water rained down out of the ceiling sprinklers all along the corridor. The doughnut swung round to lock into place in front of the open window. A fabric stocking concertinaed out, the pressure it had been stored under making it pour outwards like a liquid. It fluttered away from the side of the tower as it kept on expanding, the free end sinking towards the black ground far below.

  <> Charlie protested. <>

  Louise was staring at the top of the chute in bewilderment as the cold water soaked her to the skin.

  “In you go,” Ivanov shouted above the alarm. “Feet first.” His laugh was manic.

  “No,” Louise stammered. She took a frightened step backward.

  A twin of the stairwell door materialized in the wall next to the original. Brent fired his machine gun straight at it. Skeletal hands with long red nails slithered up through the solid floor at his feet and clamped around his ankles. He got out one panicked shout before they tugged him down. Then all he could manage was a grunt of disbelief as his shins sank into the carpeting as though it was nothing more than quicksand.

  Fletcher grabbed hold of the flailing Halo detective and exerted his own energistic power to counter the destabilising floor. Two possessed walked out of the stairwell at the far end of the corridor. They were dressed as Roman legionaries, but armed with stainless steel crossbows. The GISD agent crouched down and opened fire with his machine gun. Bursts of lightning followed the bullets through the downpour of water. The legionaries stumbled as the bullets struck them, twanging against their bronze breastplates. But they managed to stay upright, limbs moving in jerking motions. One raised his crossbow and fired. The bolt struck the agent on his knee, severing his lower leg. Blood foamed out of the severed limb, and he topped to one side, stunned into stupor by the pain.