After a while, He no longer looked at them. He couldn’t destroy them – not yet, at least – because He would not show himself fallible. The creation had been a success, but He would attempt a more successful one. He set the scientists the task of creating a better HuMan, as He had named his experiment. In the meantime, He declared all female cohort second-class citizens. It amused him.
Trouble rumbled.
It could no longer be ignored.
Father and son went to war, and it was terrible: the skies above all the cities of Heaven burned as the two sides fought. The Lord God even flew himself, and although He had grown fat, He was still powerful – the most powerful – and although casualties fell on both sides, He would not be dominated.
The first son could see that they were losing, and he knew the penance for his sins would fall on his friends, for the Father loved his first son, and that was His weakness. He thought the first son had acted in impatience and ambition and He could understand those traits more than any desire for kindness and justice, for the Lord God considered Himself kind and just.
The first son and his friends fought harder as those around them fell, but they were too young, and there were too few of them. The Lord God and His armies were crushing the rebellion.
As defeat stared them in the face they made a plan: they would not stay here to be humiliated and paraded as part of his victory; instead, they would travel. They would go far from here and start again, build their own civilisation – the Architect would build it. Many wanted to come with them, and while the first son returned to Paradise to speak with his father they waited, out at the edge of Heaven, with instructions to leave without him should he not return. The Lord God was angry; He told the son to go and never return; He didn’t care about him. The first son was a disgrace and He had a second son. His roars made the palace shake.
As he left, quickly and quietly through a side-door, the first son saw the HuMans, the failures, in the gardens sitting beneath the apple tree they loved. He took pity on them and called them and their children, for it appeared the HuMans bred quickly. He would take them with him. They could be failures in his father’s eyes together.
And so they travelled, out to the furthest reaches of the suns of Heaven. They made a path of their own, the cohorts and the women and the HuMans, through the endless fields of Chaos, and found their way to the unchartered Hell beyond. They would find their new home here, somewhere beyond the cold darkness, the first son was sure of it. His enthusiasm kept their tired spirits raised on the long journey.
Finally, they found somewhere. The Architect studied it thoroughly and started to build.
They called it Earth, after the first son’s dead mother.
For a long time they stayed in their natural shape, but the HuMans bred fast, and soon they began to question those who were different, so the cohort became small. It was wisest.
After a while, the HuMans, with their short life spans, couldn’t remember that anything had ever been different.
But somehow, perhaps he had programmed it into them, they started looking for a Lord God – a deity. A creator. They had questions.
The cohorts contemplated long and hard on the appropriate course of action. Some wanted to tell them the truth about the creation, about the terrible Lord God, and how they had all come to be here. But the Lord God hadn’t been entirely wrong about the humans, as they now called themselves; for all that they were capable of great cruelty and anger, they had a belief in goodness and they needed to look up to something greater than themselves, a father figure who would judge them. The truth would destroy that. They would run to ruin.
Eventually the first son – the First among them – came up with a plan: he would take their own story thus far, but change it slightly to suit. He would be the Messiah they craved, the son of the benevolent God, and he would say he had been sent among them to die for their sins. He would pick some from those among them who now had the Glow – for the cohorts had spread their seed among humankind – to be his disciples, and they would use their long lives to spread the word and it would grow.
And thus it was that Lucifer, once the first son, the First among them, became Jesus of Nazareth and brought the word of God to the lost.
He was very good at it.
Afterwards, when it was done and the Good Book was written, there was celebration and merriment. The Architect, always the more serious of the three who had led the way, thought perhaps the rising again on the third day was a little elaborate, but he smiled as he watched the seed of the religion grow. Around the globe they repeated the stories, variations on a theme, until all the people of the Earth had a Lord God they could believe in.
As time passed and the cohorts sank into the background, pulling the strings of the world quietly from within their Network, the First and Mr Bright and Mr Solomon and many others were shocked at how like their original Lord God His creations could be. How they could be so cruel to each other, and all in the name of the kindly God the First had fabricated for them. Perhaps He had made them more than a little in his own image after all.
They bred and the world filled.
Mr Bright settled in his first city, Pandemonium, Londinium, London. He liked the cool air, so different from the heat and sand they’d left behind.
Time passed.
‘All the proof is here!’ Dr Cornell was pacing the room, unable to contain his excitement. ‘Everything. All I’ve researched, all I’ve believed in while the rest of the world called me mad – it’s there on that computer!’ He laughed a little maniacally. ‘I’ll be reinstated. They’ll probably make me a dean. Don’t you see?’ He looked at Cass. ‘It’s all there. The entire history of a conspiracy. We have to show the world. There is no choice! Just do it! Why are you hesitating?’
Cass said nothing. His eyes were still focused on the screen. Dr Cornell was right; everything was there. It might take people years to go through it all, and it would certainly shock, but it could not be denied as truth. The command on the screen flashed at him. ‘Send?’
He lit a cigarette and stared at it. Why was he hesitating? Sending the information out over the Internet had been his immediate suggestion; Dijan Maric would be able to turn it into a virus and it would be in every inbox in the world within days: the ultimate virus. The truth.
From the kitchen came the sound of ice tinkling in a glass. Brian Freeman had left them to it. Unlike Dr Cornell, he wasn’t interested in wading in with his opinion.
‘This is your choice, Cassius,’ Mr Bright said. He hadn’t moved from the armchair during the hours Cass, Freeman and Dr Cornell had been sifting through the overwhelming mass of information. One leg was crossed casually over the other and he had recovered and his composure. His eyes twinkled merrily. ‘You can send that out to the world, open their eyes – that’s up to you. But you know this human race as well as I do: they are insatiably curious. In fact, you sum up their curiosity, the way you wouldn’t stop coming after me, the way you had to know.’ He smiled. ‘What do you think they will do with all this knowledge?”
Cass looked over at him. ‘What do you think they will do?’ He was surprised to find that he wanted Mr Bright’s opinion.
‘I think at first the focus will be on the finances. No one will truly believe in men who have lived for ever, and so they will presume each of us is a code name for some corrupt society or other. The careful balance we have built will crumble. The Bank will fall, definitely. Governments across the world will fight for the money in the X accounts. More than likely, we will have an Armageddon of our own making. If not, then finally someone, somewhere, will look for the cohorts. They will want to bring them down. They will see all this as some kind of deceit, which of course it has been. What will start as curiosity will end in a witch-hunt, and perhaps we will be forced to fight.’ Mr Bright got to his feet and went to the window and looked out. He couldn’t see the houses beyond Brian Freeman’s gates, but he knew they were there.
‘They w
ill not forgive us for being different. Ultimately we will probably have to become, to assert our authority through physical might – but this time the weaponry you have invented means we will probably die. As will a great many of you.’
Brian Freeman came in with four glasses of whisky on a tray. Mr Bright smiled his thanks as he took one.
‘And all of that, Cassius Jones, I could live with, if you’ll excuse the pun. Perhaps we have been too controlling. Perhaps we should never have changed the story of our journey, but we did. If we had to fight and die because of it, then c’est la vie. Things were always thus. But that wouldn’t be the end of it, would it?’
‘What do you mean?’ Cass asked.
‘Don’t listen to him!’ Dr Cornell snapped, brushing Freeman’s offered drink aside and sending the glass clattering to the carpet.
‘Take it easy!’ Freeman put the tray down and grabbed the old man, forcing him down into a seat. ‘Take it fucking easy, mate.’
‘People have a right to know the truth,’ Dr Cornell shouted. ‘I have a right to be vindicated!’
‘The truth,’ Mr Bright said calmly, ‘is often only a matter of perception.’
‘No, the truth is right there in that computer,’ Dr Cornell snarled.
‘And for a long while, people will still think that is madness. It’ll only be the money that interests them. Maybe for as long as your lifetime.’
‘You’re wrong. There’s too much information there. And the original scrolls will be found and carbon-dated. It’ll be enough.’
Cass could see the desperation in his eyes. He was close to cracking. Releasing these files would never restore his life, but they would give him peace. Cass looked back at Castor Bright and repeated his question. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Once the fighting was done here, you know what they’d do – in your heart you know: finally, maybe not this century, but eventually, they will look Heavenwards. They’ll want to find it.’
‘But the Walkways are locked.’
‘Yes, they are, for now. But you all have such tenacity: you will die trying to find a way, until you succeed. What is here, all that has been built, that we have all worked so hard to create, will become worthless, because everyone will want Heaven. And when they do find a way to undo the locks, then they will meet their Lord God. And he will destroy them.’
‘Don’t listen to him, Jones.’ Dr Cornell leaned forward in the chair. ‘You can’t listen to him – I’ll send it myself. I’ll—’ He lunged forward, but Brian Freeman pushed him back again.
‘Don’t even think about it.’
There was a long pause.
‘Sometimes,’ Mr Bright said, so softly Cass could barely hear it, ‘it is only the greater good that matters.’
Cass looked from Mr Bright to Dr Cornell. The greater good. They were Bright’s words but Cornell no doubt thought that what he wanted Cass to do was also in everyone’s best interests. Cass wasn’t so sure. Was releasing the truth for the greater good? Was Cornell right? Did the world have the right to know? Or was the old man driven simply by his own need for vindication and that was a good argument to hang it on? Cornell might believe his motives were altruistic, but Cass wasn’t so sure. The Network had been his life’s obsession and he had been ridiculed for it. This was his opportunity for a moment of glory. Then there was the power, Mr Bright – always in the shadows, pulling strings and making decisions that affected them all. Was he acting in the greater good?
Cass thought of the students who had killed themselves after the Experiment. They had been innocent and Bright had used them. Their truths had been lost and their families would never know the true circumstances of their deaths. Could he live with that? Would releasing the truth to the world actually make any difference to them now? He looked at the silver haired man whose eyes had lost a little of their sparkle over the past nine months or so. He found that he didn’t believe that Bright had acted in malice, no matter how terrible his deeds. What had those decisions cost him? And now that the Walkways were closed for good, how would Bright and the Network change? Was there an opportunity to really make them work for the greater good now? Cigarette smoke burned the back of his throat. He thought of the Glow. He thought of Luke. He thought of everything he had learned about himself. He thought about the world he realised he loved in all its grittiness.
The greater good. He stared at the screen and then looked into Dr Cornell’s desperate eyes. He knew beyond certainty that if he deleted the files it would destroy the man, just as surely as if he were to shoot him between the eyes.
The greater good.
He knew what he had to do, and his heart raced with the relief. His choice was made, and he thought that perhaps it was the only choice he’d ever had.
He pressed the key.
Dr Cornell yowled like a broken animal when he saw Cass delete the files, and he yowled until Brian Freeman chloroformed him. Cass had known he would be destroying the old man when he’d made his decision.
‘What do we do with him?’ Freeman asked.
‘Keep him unconscious,’ Cass said, before Mr Bright could speak for him. ‘Get him and all this stuff back to his house. When he wakes up, who’s going to believe his story?’
‘They’re going to have to put him in the nuthouse,’ Freeman muttered. ‘He’s snapped, poor bastard.’
‘Yes they will, and yes he has,’ Cass said. ‘It can’t be helped.’ He looked at the old gangster.
‘Haven’t you got anything to say about this? About what I’ve done?’
Freeman drained his whisky. ‘I’m not so different from him.’ He nodded in Mr Bright’s direction. ‘I’ve lived a lot of my life in the shadows. I understand the need for secrets. I’m all for knowledge, Cass, son, but not for everyone. Just for me.’
Cass smiled. He was coming round to that point of view himself.
Epilogue
It was New Year’s Day, and the two men stood side by side at the vast windows and looked down over the sprawling city of London as they listened to the news on the radio. One smoked a cigarette, the other a thin cigar.
‘Investigators still have not been able to locate the cause of the devastating fire at the Harwell Institute in Oxfordshire last night. They have, however, confirmed that one of the dead bodies is that of Cassius Jones. Detective Inspector Jones had been on the run from the police after they sought him for questioning over the deaths of two men earlier this year. Jones was responsible for uncovering a network of corruption in his own force only eight months ago, but there has been speculation that he suffered some kind of mental breakdown in the aftermath of the violent deaths of his brother’s family. The other bodies have yet to be identified, but are—’
The elder of the two men clicked a button on the small remote control in his hand and the woman’s voice was cut off. From upstairs somewhere came the sound of a computer game being played, and the room started filling with the scent of rich, expensive coffee as hot liquid filtered through the machine on the table between the offices. It was a brand new year. It was a brand new era.
‘Are you ready to get to work, Mr Jones?’ he asked, his eyes twinkling.
‘Yes I am, Mr Bright.’ Mr Jones smiled too, but he continued to stare out of the window for a little while. He no longer had to look up. There was nothing to look up for. Everything that mattered was here on Earth. He turned and paused, automatically adjusting his expensive new suit, and enjoying the feel of the silver against his chest. The history had never been deleted. How could it be? But Cass had passed that final test. He’d made the choice that he’d always been destined to make. Beneath it, his shoulder moved with ease. There was no longer even a scar to show that he’d ever been injured. Mr Bright had been right; Cassius Jones was beginning to learn what the Glow could do for him. He smiled as he looked at the office doors. The brass plaques had been taken down and replaced with more stylish aluminium. Mr Solomon’s name-plate was now lying in Mr Bright’s desk drawer, a nostalgic memento. Cas
s looked over at Mr Bright’s door, and then back to his own. MR BRIGHT and MR JONES. He smiled again, and rocked on his feet, enjoying the feel of the thick crimson carpet beneath his Italian leather shoes. He hadn’t changed much, including the large painting of the fallen Angel on the wall: Mr Solomon had had good taste, and he liked the sense of history that came with it.
Behind his desk, Mr Jones took a deep breath and turned on his computer. He had a lot to get through before taking Luke for lunch, and then after that he had the first meeting of the new Inner Cohort. He looked at the small silver ornamental engraving sitting on his vast desk. The words shone out at him, reflecting in the winter sunlight pouring through the glass behind him:
Better to Reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
Wasn’t that the truth? he thought, as he lost himself in the morning’s work.
THE END
Acknowledgements
It’s so hard to know where to start with these now that this trilogy is done. There are, I’m very lucky to be able to say, just too many people who have helped me on the way. Of course, as always, huge thanks to Jo Fletcher and Veronique Baxter and all the team at Gollancz, especially Gillian Redfearn, my new editor, and Jon Weir, my publicist and drinking buddy. For inspiration I need to thank Michael Marshall (Smith) and John Connolly whose work made me realise you could write crime that was still a bit on the weird side. A big thank you to Tony Thompson for writing books that give me so much of my research, and I still owe him a dinner. Ray Marshall at Festival Films for liking it so much he bought the TV rights – a man of taste obviously, who has also become a friend, mentor and colleague over the past two years. Stephen Jones for making sure I got a meeting with Jo Fletcher way back when, and all at the British Fantasy Society for making this writing journey less lonely. You all totally rock.
Also by Sarah Pinborough from Gollancz:
A Matter of Blood
The Chosen Seed: The Dog-Faced Gods Book Three Page 33
