A shiver always ran down Vartan’s spine when that gibbous blue orb was focused on him. As if the “spirit” eye really could see into his soul as the Messiah’s physical eyes could not.
“I see worry, hesitation. Some among you are unsure.” The Messiah’s voice came as a husky whisper.
“Messiah?” Petre asked, bowing his head so deeply that his long white ponytail rode up his back.
“You are my First Will,” the Messiah replied. “Speak.”
“You know they’re going to take precautions. Limit or even deny us access to the crew. After all this time, the moment has come to unleash our wrath, the long-held anger of the dead we host. We’ve promised—”
“They will indeed plan, devise, and do all in their power to keep us from the Ashanti and her crew.” The Messiah fingered his long-bone scepter. “The Prophets heard the universe last night and they sang. I heard them, and they allowed me to see.” He pointed a finger at the eye in his forehead.
“What did you see?” Petre asked.
“The time is not right to purify the crew. But it will be. When the universe determines we are ready. Look around you, at each other. We’re weak. Starved by their ration and tea. In the song of the Prophets I heard what their visions had seen. I have been given a glimpse.”
“Messiah?” Svetlana asked. “A vision of what?”
“Ah, Second Wife. An infant doesn’t run into battle before he can so much as crawl. In this ship, we are nothing more than a fetus. On the planet, at this Tyson Station, we shall become infants. Who then grow into children. Who finally become adults. When adults fight, they win. But only after they’ve grown, learned the arts of combat.”
“Messiah?” Vartan asked with respect.
“Second Will?”
“How, then, do we deal with the evacuation? What do the Prophets wish of us?”
“We will act submissively. Follow the Supervisor’s orders. Do as they ask. The Prophets tell me that our goal, and our only goal, is to get to the planet. To a place where The Corporation and its agents no longer control us.”
“And then?” Svetlana asked.
“Then we finally come into our own.”
Vartan chewed his lips, thinking back to the unending rage they’d lived with after the hatch was sealed. For so many of them, it had been the anger, the promise of retribution against Captain Galluzzi that had kept them alive. Given them purpose in the endless hell of their gopher-warren of a deck.
“Messiah,” Petre said. “We have detained five who would betray us. Just as you foresaw. They are bound, awaiting purification and immortality.”
“Five?” The Messiah shook his head, exhaled through the ruin of his nose. “The universe provides. This is my Will. Listen. Hear it. Make it so. We have but two days. At the end of them, we shall need our strength. To have fortified our bodies. To do that, we must feast. Each and every one of us must eat, fill our stomachs in anticipation. We are leaving the womb. Being born, and birth requires strength and energy.”
Petre reached down and removed the cleaver from its scabbard on his belt. Finely polished steel caught the light, gleamed along the razor edge.
Vartan ground his teeth. Glanced at the Messiah. Beneath the ruined nose, a grin split the man’s face. Raising his thigh-bone scepter, he said, “We shall need all of the buckets this time. I don’t want a single drop of the blood to be wasted.”
ENGAGED
I sit in the observation dome. An odor that one of the Prophets once called mutton-pork—that sweetly cloying and unmistakable scent of cooked human flesh—hangs in the air. The others are still feasting. Preparing for our “birth” as the figurative release from Deck Three will be. I absently run my fingernail down the lines of scars. Think of all the souls that have followed that path to rebirth and immortality. It is for them, for the universe, that I fight.
And the battle is now engaged.
My people do not understand the depth or intricacies of that combat.
After all these years, I have a face for my True Enemy. Since we were confined on Deck Three, I filled the role with Captain Galluzzi. Not that he really was the enemy, being nothing more than the universe’s tool, the one it used to create us.
If there was a parallel in human history it might have been Rome and the early Christians. But for Rome, there would have been no Jesus. But for The Corporation and Miguel Galluzzi, there would have been no Irredenta. Pontius Pilate had to play his part in the creation of the Christian messiah, Galluzzi served the same purpose in creating us.
But now I have Kalico Aguila.
The physical embodiment of The Corporation.
The Corporation had to play its role. The Irredenta had to be raised in the midst of its lies, deceit, and inhumanity. Trust me, we’d bought it all, been faithful followers and believers. Never questioned that The Corporation—and all it stood for—served the ultimate good. That it was kind, just, and caring.
Which made the Harrowing and Cleansing epically traumatic. When faced with brutal Truth, it was to discover that The Corporation had deceived us on every level. To discover that we’d been played for complete fools had been soul numbing.
So much so, that some never could justify themselves with the Truth.
But they’ve since been purified and will be reborn with a full and better appreciation for the universe and its fundamental Truths.
When first looking upon Kalico Aguila, I must confess, her scars gave me the slightest bit of hesitation. The woman has undergone an Initiation of her own, made her own sacrifices of pain and blood. I hadn’t expected that from a Corporate figurehead. But then, the universe makes no mistakes. The scars are there to warn me: Here is an opponent you must not underestimate. She will try and pervert the Truth. Seek to mislead the Irredenta from the Revelation, the True path, and the teachings of the Prophets.
She will be ruthless.
Praise be to the universe. I am warned.
To do battle with Kalico Aguila, I need my people united. The feast serves not just as a means of eliminating dissension among the ranks, but as a reminder of our unique identity. We are the chosen. We are the living dead. The vehicle through which they shall become immortal.
Staring out at the billions of stars, I am made humble. Aware once again of my failings, my weaknesses, and overwhelmed by the responsibility that has been laid upon my shoulders.
I am Blessed by the knowledge that I am no longer alone. It’s not just me, but all the human beings I have incorporated into my flesh and bone. They pulse with my blood, live in each cell of my body. I am they, they are me.
As long as the Irredenta are united, without divisions and rancor, we shall win. The universe, in its wisdom, has prepared us. Marked us as separate.
At the time, I didn’t see the genius of the Initiation. I was lost in the moment and trying to comprehend when Guan Shi began to scarify her flesh. I thought it a penance. That the pain and mutilation was a way to atone for guilt and previous sin.
And yes, the terrible agony of scarification is an offering to the universe—each of us sacrificing and suffering at the most personal level. What more intimate and honest sacrifice is there than to proffer from our own bodies?
Accepting that belief, I have given more of myself than any of my people. I can think of no other way to prove my devotion.
And the scars serve the dead. Not only are they a path leading to immortality, they demonstrate the willingness of the pure to suffer on their behalf.
How simple of me to think that’s all that the Initiation was.
Only today—face to face with Kalico Aguila—did I realize the universe’s true genius: the scars set us apart. The Irredenta will never fit into Corporate society. They separate us from the rest of humanity in a way that can never be bridged. They unite us as a people in a way that no feasts, no shared experiences ever could.
I pity Kalico Aguila.
She has only The Corporation to serve.
I have been chosen to fight for the universe.
16
When she peered down into the glass of whiskey, Kalico could see no facial features, just an outline of her head and hair against the gleam of the dome overhead.
Inga’s was full—the suppertime crowd having trooped in for whatever the kitchen offered. The place felt reassuring; the clank of mugs on chabacho wood, the tinking of silverware on plates, and the jovial calls from the miners and locals somehow came across as jarringly normal after her day on Ashanti.
She barely acknowledged Shig as he climbed onto the stool beside hers and flicked a finger Inga’s way for his traditional half glass of wine.
Kalico shot him a sidelong glance. “If there was ever a day when I’d expect you to drink a full glass, this is it.”
He shifted on the stool, expression thoughtful. “I’ve canvassed the literature. The Unreconciled are delightfully unique.”
“Excuse me?”
“They’ve taken an entirely novel approach to anthropophagy and mixed it with teleological eschatology.”
“Repeat that in a human language, please.”
“Religious philosophy has always preoccupied itself with what happens at the end of time. For Christians it’s the rapture, the four horsemen, and judgment day. End of Days for the Muslims, or perhaps the return of the Twelfth Imam for the Shia. In Hindu mythology Kali and Shiva destroy the fourth cycle and restart time at the end of the Kali Yuga. Among the Central Americans, it was the turning of the Katun, the great wheel of time. For the Zoroastrians, a monster comes to destroy the world. The Norse thought it would be Ragnarok, the battle of the gods.”
“Got it.”
Shig gave Inga a smile as she placed his half glass of wine on the bar before lumbering off to mark it on her board.
“Usually,” Shig said, “the end is preceded by an apocalypse. You know, the usual chaos of famines, plagues, warfare, boiling oceans, maybe a meteor, or flood, or wildfires. Cannibalism? Consuming the universe, purifying it through digestion and sexual reproduction? Becoming a living grave for the dead you have consumed? That’s remarkably novel and innovative.”
“How can you be so jazzed over something that creep-freaked me half out of my skin?”
He gave her a wink, his other eye twinkling with amusement. “When I was young, I was constantly amazed by the workings of the religious mind. It doesn’t matter what the tradition, each one depends on some mystical acceptance that defies common sense: an immaculate conception; a great tree that holds up the sky; gods who can change sexes and colors; bringing the dead back to life; emerging from a hole in the earth; or maybe they fell from the sky. No matter how outlandish, people choose to believe this stuff. Can’t help it really.”
“That’s why The Corporation regulated religion as thoroughly as it did. No one has ever figured out whether—when you chalk up the total body count—religions or governments killed more billions or caused greater suffering. When you get into those kinds of numbers, it’s a wash. Both are equally dangerous to human life, liberty, prosperity, and happiness.”
“The Unreconciled are proof of that.” Shig fingered his glass. “I’ve studied cults like the Aghori Hindus who seek to immerse themselves in corpses as a means of achieving purification. By embracing death and corruption, they seek to attain a state of non-duality. The hope is that it will help them break the eight great bonds that keep the soul from achieving moksha. Um, moksha is the transition into illumination, emancipation, and spiritual fulfillment.”
“But not cannibalism?”
“Only by a matter of degree. The Aghori may ingest something derived from a corpse, but in doing so, they’re hoping to find their own illumination. Not acting for the benefit of another by eating a whole person in an attempt to purify him or her.”
Kalico suppressed a sense of panic. “These were normal, everyday people, Shig. What we saw . . .”
Shig stared thoughtfully at the back bar. “Understand that as bizarre as their beliefs are, those people reflect the horror and despair they lived every day for seven years. The transportees didn’t have enough to eat, so they ate each other. To assuage the guilt, they chose to believe they were keeping the dead alive within themselves.
“And the entire time each of them was asking, ‘Why did this have to happen to me?’ The only thing that made sense was that the universe chose them specifically for the purpose of bringing about its renewal. The reason their ordeal had to be so terrible was because of the grand scope of their coming endeavor: universal purification and renewal. Not only did that assuage survivor’s guilt, but it made their actions inevitable and heroic.”
“What was with the white makeup? The too-much jewelry? Being buck-assed naked? Is Batuhan out of his fricking mind?”
Shig arched a knowing brow. “Everything he did in that display was calculated. The white color? Symbolic of purity? Accented by the black eyes and mouth? Perhaps to represent a living corpse? And he wanted you to see the scarification, the lines leading to his penis. Death and sex, the ancient dance and balance of life.”
“Then what was with the jewelry? He said it was taken from the dead.”
“That they might be witness. In place of a name, he wore a possession from the dead.”
“You ask me, they were nothing more than a collection of trophies. The kind a serial killer keeps as mementos of his victims.”
“Anything but. That man believes.”
“So, how do we fix them? Reprogram them?”
“You don’t. At least, not on Donovan. A psychiatric hospital in Solar System might. For now, this cult of theirs is how they cope. Maybe, in a couple of years, you might start trying to talk sense to them.”
She sighed. “Let me guess. You’re telling me that offering counsel to them now would be a waste of time because they’re too close to it. Bonded by a rite of passage. They’d just see it as an attack and hunker down on the core belief.”
“Correct.”
“A true believer? Is that why Batuhan had to be such an arrogant prick? It’s like he was purposefully picking a fight. Daring me to do my worst. What would possess him to act like such a hard ass?”
“You really don’t know?”
“Do I look like I do?”
“It’s the only defense he has. Sheer blind faith in himself and his cause. Unwavering, unquestioned. As his makeup symbolized, it’s all black and white.”
“Come on, even mystics question. Can carry on give-and-take conversations.”
“Not when they’re scared.”
She gave him a disbelieving glare. “Batuhan? Scared?”
“Oh, yes, Supervisor. If you ask me, that’s the most frightened man I’ve ever seen. Shaken, terrified right down to his bones. His nightmare—the terrible fear that haunts his soul—is that he’s unworthy, incapable of attaining the task before him.”
“Came across as pretty sure of himself and his cause.”
Shig’s expression turned thoughtful. “Most great mystics are terrified. What they often call ‘The Dark Night of the Soul.’ Or sometimes, ‘The Cloud of Unknowing.’ It’s the sense of being unworthy of the task God has chosen for them. Think St. John of the Cross, or St. Teresa of Calcutta. The only defense Batuhan has against his gnawing and deep-seated self-doubt is to project a complete, absolute, and unwavering certainty in his cause. The greater his self-insecurity, the more absolute and unbending his public face will be. His greatest fear will be that his mask will slip, that someone will glimpse his terror.”
“Shig, seriously, do you think that putting them down out at Tyson Station is the
best thing we can do? Even telling them what to watch out for, half of them will be dead within six months.”
Shig lifted his glass of wine, touched it to his lips, but she wasn’t sure that he actually tasted it.
After he placed it back on the bar, he said, “Supervisor, Donovan is all about making the best decision out of nothing but bad choices. Do you choose what is just, what is moral, or what is correct?”
“God, I hate you sometimes.”
“That’s why being me is so much fun.”
17
Allison Chomko descended the stairs into Inga’s and found the tavern doing a good business. The first rotation of Ashanti’s crew had come down with the latest shuttle. People had volunteered to personally escort the malnourished and frail crewmen, to ensure that they didn’t get into trouble. And, most of all, to be sure that no one got devoured by the local fauna. Donovanians considered it bad luck to be eaten on a person’s first night planetside.
She and Dan had been of two minds about allowing the Ashanti’s crew into either The Jewel or Betty Able’s until it was learned that the Supervisor had provided each spacer a hundred Port Authority SDRs in advance of their Corporate pay back in Solar System.
Granted, it was only thirty crew people, and with only a hundred SDRs to their names it wouldn’t be good business to pick them completely clean the first time they set foot in either establishment. The best that could be hoped for was that they’d think kindly of The Jewel or Betty Abel’s. That they’d come back sometime when they were flush.
Allison picked out Kalico Aguila seated at the bar next to Talina Perez’s chair. Even as she spotted her, a bowl of the house chili was placed in front of the Supervisor. Would have been—in the old days—that Aguila would have had a marine guard to watch her back. That she didn’t showed how far the woman had come since that long-ago day she set foot on Donovan surrounded by twenty marines in battle tech who were toting hot weapons.
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