The Naked God

by Peter F. Hamilton

  But they all agreed the woman’s body ought to be seen by human specialists as soon as possible. For herself, Stephanie decided she should be amongst the last. It was the responsibility thing again, she wanted to know everyone else was okay.

  “But you’re no’ responsible for them,” McPhee had said. “They all flocked to Ekelund’s banner. It’s their own bloody stupid fault they’re here.”

  “I know, but we’re the ones who tried to get Ekelund to stop, and failed miserably.” She shrugged, knowing how feeble she sounded.

  “I’ll wait with you,” Moyo said. “We’ll go through together.”

  “Thank you.”

  McPhee, Franklin, and Cochrane looked at each other, and said what the hell. They all joined the queue, standing behind Soi Hon. The old eco-guerrilla was in his trademark dark jungle fatigues, with his felt bush-ranger hat tilted back as if he’d just finished an arduous job. He eyed them with wry amusement and bowed to Stephanie. “I congratulate you on remaining true to your principles.”

  “I don’t think it really matters, but thank you anyway.” She sat on one of the many boulders, resting her wounded hip.

  “Out of all of us, it was you who achieved the most.”

  “You held off the serjeants.”

  “Not for long, and only to further an ideal.”

  “I thought you valued ideals.”

  “I do. Or I used to. That is the problem with this situation. The old ideals don’t have any relevance here. I applied them as did the political forces behind the Liberation. Both of us were very wrong. Look what we did to people, how many lives and homes we ruined. All that effort poured into conflict and destruction. I used to say I belonged to the land.”

  “I’m sure you thought you did what was the right thing.”

  “Indeed I did, Stephanie Ash. Unfortunately, I didn’t think enough, for it was not the right thing to do. Not at all.”

  “Well hey, it don’t matter no more, man,” Cochrane said. “The fat babe’s been singing out loud for a while now. We’re like going home.” He offered Soi Hon his joint.

  “No thank you. I do not wish to introduce poisons to this body. I am simply its custodian. I may soon even be held accountable for any ills I have inflicted. After all, past the end of this queue we shall be facing them again, will we not? And we will only be equals.”

  Cochrane gave him a sour look and dropped his joint, grinding it into the mud under his heel. “Yeah, right, man,” he grunted.

  “What about Ekelund?” Stephanie asked. “Where’s she?”

  “Back at her command post. She refused the offer to return.”

  “What? She’s crazy.”

  “Undoubtedly, yes. But she sincerely believes that once the serjeants have gone, then this land will be free. She intends to found her paradise here.”

  Stephanie looked back at the patch of scabrous land that was Ketton.

  “No,” Moyo said firmly. “She has made her own decision. And she certainly isn’t going to listen to you of all people.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Even at the rate of one possessed every few seconds, it took over seven hours for everyone to be repatriated. The procedure was simple enough.

  Where Tinkerbell touched the cliff face, several oval tunnels had opened up, leading deep into her interior. Their walls shone with a soft aquamarine light that grew progressively brighter until it eventually filled the cleft. You just walked through, vanishing into the light.

  Stephanie wasn’t the very last in. Moyo and McPhee had quietly and insistently stood behind her. She smiled in good-natured surrender and passed over the threshold. The air thickened in conjunction with the light, slowing the movement of her limbs. Eventually it felt as though she was trying to walk through the crystal itself. There was an insistent pressure exerted against every part of her. She felt the force move through her flesh, enabling her to speed up again. The aquamarine glow faded away, showing that her body had become transparent, a pattern of light conducted by crystal. When she looked round she saw the body she’d possessed standing behind her. The woman was holding her hands up, an expression of revulsion and satisfaction straining her face.

  “Choma?” Stephanie asked. “Choma, can you hear me? There’s something I need to do.”

  “Hello, Stephanie. I thought this might happen.”

  Occupying a serjeant’s body was the simplest thing. One waited for her, immured in crystal, completely passive with its big head bowed. It didn’t matter which direction she walked in, she was always walking towards it.

  They merged, and it thickened around her, returning the opaque aquamarine light. The sensations were peculiar; the exoskeleton had no tactile nerves, yet it was somehow rigged to provide proof of contact. Her soles were definitely pressing down on a surface, air drifted over her as she moved forwards. The aquamarine light cleared from her eyes, allowing her to focus with remarkable clarity.

  She walked out of the oval tunnel, back onto the crusty trampled-down mud of Ketton Island. The rivers of coloured light which emanated from Tinkerbell’s internal coruscations meandered over the ground. Nothing else moved.

  It was a long slog back across the island to its central town. Even in the serjeant’s robust body it took her an hour and a quarter. Tinkerbell departed when she was a third of the way there, arching away above her in a opalescent blaze, then shrinking at an improbable speed. Stephanie began to pick up her pace. The air was stirring, slowly expanding again now the serjeants had gone, a gentle breeze gusting out over the edge of the cliff. Their wishes remained for a while, of course, impregnated on the fabric of this realm. But without their active presence to reinforce them, what was normality here began to return.

  It was a lot brighter when Stephanie trotted up to the boundary of the town. The air had thinned considerably now, allowing the continuum’s persistent blue-white glare to shine down with unrestrained power. Every step sent her gliding a couple of metres above the ground. Gravity had reduced by about twenty per cent, she guessed.

  Ekelund’s headquarters were prominent at the very centre of the razed town, the big tent perched atop a mound, faintly luminous. She came out as Stephanie bounced her way up the slope, lounging against the tentpole, smiling softly.

  “It’s a different body, but I’d know those thoughts anywhere. I believe we’ve had our last goodbye, Stephanie Ash.”

  “You have to leave. Please. You’ll destroy Angeline Gallagher’s body and her soul if you stay here.”

  “Finally! It’s not my well being you’re concerned about. A small victory for me, but I consider it significant.”

  “Come back to Mortonridge. There are still some serjeant bodies available to host your soul. You can live a life again, a real life.”

  “As what? Trite little housewife and mother? Even you can’t live your old life again, Stephanie.”

  “I never believe that a baby’s future is preordained. After birth, you’re on your own to make what you can from life. And we are being born again in these serjeant bodies. Make what you can of it, Ekelund. Don’t kill yourself and Gallagher out of misplaced pride. Look around! The air’s all but gone, the gravity’s failing. There’s nothing here anymore.”

  “I am here. This island will bloom again once it’s free of your influences. We came here to this realm because it offered us the sanctuary we needed.”

  “For God’s sake, admit you are wrong. There’s no shame in it. What do you think I’m going to do, stalk you and gloat?”

  “Now you get to it. Which of us was right. That’s what it’s always been between you and I.”

  “There is no right. An entire army flocked to your banner. I had a lover and five mismatched friends. You win. Now, please, come back.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? At least tell me that.”

  Annette Ekelund’s stubborn smile flickered. “For the first time ever, I have been me. I haven’t had to defer to anybody, to ask permission, to conform to what societ
y expects. And I’ve lost that.” Her voice shrivelled to a hoarse whisper. “I led them here, and not one stayed. They didn’t want to stay, and I didn’t have the strength to force them.” A tear emerged from her left eye. “I was wrong. I got it wrong, God damn you!”

  “You didn’t bring anybody here. You didn’t order us. We came because we desperately wanted to. I was a part of it, Annette. When we lay there on the mud after the harpoon strike, and the serjeants were going to throw us into zero-tau, I helped. I was so frightened that I poured every drop of my power into leaving Mortonridge behind. And I was glad when we got here. We are all to blame. All of us.”

  “I organized Mortonridge’s defence. I brought about the Liberation.”

  “Yes, you did, and if it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. It could even have been me. We’re not responsible for the way to the beyond being opened up. Ever since that began, the outcome was inevitable. You’re not to blame for fate, for the way the universe is put together. You’re not that important.”

  Annette had to suck hard to fill her lungs with air. The sky had become very bright. “I was.”

  “So was I. The day we took the children over the firebreak, I’d accomplished more than Richard Saldana ever had. That was how I felt. I loved it, and I wanted more of it, the way my group looked up and respected me. Typical human failing. You’re nothing special, not in that way.”

  “Smug, smug, smug, God I hate you.”

  Stephanie watched the dry flakes of mud lift gently from the ground, flicked up by the last wisps of air. They floated around in a lazy cloud, rebounding off each other, slowly moving higher. There was no gravity left, the only thing keeping her feet on the ground was sheer willpower.

  “Come with me.” She had to shout, the air was all but gone. “Hate me some more.”

  “Would you die with me?” Annette yelled back. “Are you that fucking worthy?”

  “No.”

  Annette yelled again. Stephanie couldn’t hear her, the air had gone. <>

  Annette was clawing at her throat, gulping wildly as her skin turned dark red. Her desperate motions pushed her away from the ground. Stephanie kicked off after her and grabbed a thrashing ankle. Together they tumbled away from the top of the mound. The universal white light had turned the mud fields a glaring silver; crinkled cliff tops ignited into magnesium splendour. Ketton island melted away into the glaring void.

  Stephanie and Annette soared ever onwards, drowning in light.

  “Are they really worth it?” someone asked.

  “Are we?”

  Cold aquamarine light clamped around them.

  Luca didn’t have to guide the horse; it simply followed the route he’d taken so many times before, plodding along without hesitation. A great circle round the middle of Cricklade estate: through the upper ford in Wryde stream, around the east side of Berrybut spinney, over Withcote ridge, taking the narrow humpback bridge below Saxby farm, the fire track through Coston wood. It gave him a good overview of his land’s progress.

  On the surface it was as good as any previous year; the crops were later by a few weeks, but there was no harm in that. Everyone had pulled together and made up for the lost weeks following the possession.

  <>

  And now there was enough food for everybody, the coming harvest would enable them to see the winter months out without undue hardship. Stoke County had emerged from the transition exceptionally well. There certainly wouldn’t be any more marauders, not since the battle of Colsterworth station. Good news, considering the reports and rumours trickling out of Boston these days. The island’s capital hadn’t been so fast to embrace the old ways. Food there was becoming scarce; the farms immediately round the outskirts it were being abandoned as citizens roamed across the countryside in search of supplies.

  The idiots weren’t capitalising on their existing industrial infrastructure by producing goods to trade with the farming communities for food. There was so much the city could provide, basic stuff like cloth and tools. That needed to happen again, and soon. But the indications he’d got from Lionel and the other traders weren’t good. Some factories were up and running, but there was no real social order in the city.

  <>

  Luca shook his head irritably. There were a lot of his thoughts roaming free these days. Some of them obvious, the ones he relied on to keep Cricklade going; others were more subtle, the comparisons, the regrets, odd mannerisms creeping back, so comfortable he could never drive them out again. Worst was that eternal junkie ache to see Louise and Genevieve again, just to know they were all right.

  <>

  Luca put his head back and yelled: “You never loved them!” The piebald horse came to a startled halt as his voice carried across the verdant land. Anger was his last refuge of self, the one defence which Grant could never penetrate. “You treated them like cattle. They weren’t even people to you, they were commodities, part of your medieval family empire, assets ready to marry off in exchange for money and power. You bastard. You don’t deserve them.” He shivered, crumpling down into the saddle. “Then why do I care?” he heard himself ask. “My children are the most important part of me; they carry on everything I am. And you tried to rape them. A pair of little children. Love? Do you think you know anything about it? A degenerate parasite like you.”

  “Leave me alone,” Luca screamed out.

  <>

  Luca gritted his teeth, thinking about the gas Spanton used, the way Dexter had tried to make them worship the Light Bringer. Building up a fortress of anger, so his thoughts could be his again.

  He tugged on the reins, wheeling the horse round so he faced Cricklade.

  There was little practical point to this inspection tour. He knew the condition the estate was in.

  Materially they were fine. Mentally … the veil of contentment furled around Norfolk was souring. He recognized the particular strain of forlorn resentment accumulating over the mind’s horizon. Cricklade had known it first. All across Norfolk, people were discovering what lay beneath their external perfection. The slow-maturing plague of vanity had begun to reap its victims. Hope was withering from their lives. This winter would be more than the physical cold.

  Luca crossed the boundary of giant cedars and urged the horse up over the greensward towards the manor house. Just seeing its timeless grey stone façade, inset with white-painted windows, brought a peaceful reassurance to his aching thoughts. Its history belonged to him, and so assured his future.

  <>

  He bowed his head, embittered by his deteriorating will. Anger was hard to maintain over hours, let alone days. Weary, weepy dismay was no defence, and those emotions were his constant companion these days.

  There was the usual scattering of activity around the manor. A circular brush ejecting a puff of soot as it rose out from the central chimney stack. Stable boys leading the horses down to graze in the east meadow.

  Women hanging sheets out to dry on the clothes lines. Ned Coldham—Luca couldn’t remember the name of the handyman’s possessor—painting the windows on the west wing, making sure the wood was protected from the coming frosts. The sound of sawing drifting out through the chapel’s empty windows. Two men (claiming to be monks, though neither Luca nor Grant had ever heard of their order) were slowly repairing the damage Dexter had wrought inside.

  There were more people bustling about in the walled kitchen garden at the side of the manor. Cook had brought a team of her kitchen helpers out to cut the shoots of asparagus ready for freezing. It was the fifth batch they’d collected fro
m the geneered plant this year.

  Johan was sitting beside the stone arched gateway, a blanket over his knees as he soaked up the warmth of the omnidirectional sunlight.

  Véronique was on a chair beside him, with baby Jeanette sleeping in a cradle, a parasol protecting her from the light.

  Luca dismounted and went over to see his erstwhile deputy. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Not so bad, thank you, sir.” Johan smiled weakly, and nodded.

  “You look a lot better.” He was putting on weight again, though the loose skin around his face remained pallid.

  “Soon as they gets the glass finished, I’m going to start getting some seeds set,” Johan said. “I always like a bit o’ fresh lettuce and cucumber in me sarnies during the winter. Wouldn’t mind trying to grow some avocado as well, though it’ll be next year before they fruit.”

  “Jolly good, man. And how’s this little one, then?” Luca peered into the crib. He’d forgotten just how small newborn babies were.

  “She’s a dream,” Véronique sighed happily. “I wish she’d sleep like this at night. Every two hours she wants feeding. You can set your clock by her. It’s really tiring.”

  “Sweet little mite,” Johan said. “Reckon she’s gonna be a proper looker when she grows up.”

  Véronique beamed with easy pride.

  “I’m sure she will,” Luca said. It pained him to see the way the old man was looking at the baby; there was too much desperation there.

  Butterworth wanted confirmation that life carried on as normal here in this realm. It was an attitude that was growing among a lot of Cricklade’s residents, he’d noticed lately. The kids they were looking after had been receiving more sympathetic attention. His own resolve to stay at the estate and ignore the urge to find the girls was becoming harder to maintain. It was a weakness he could date back to the day Johan had collapsed, and then accelerating after the battle of Colsterworth station. Every step he took on the sandy gravel path around the manor seemed to press blister-sized lumps deep into the flesh of his soles, reminding him of how precarious his life had become.