by Neal Asher
1
The question to ask is not how the Masadan Theocracy fell, but how such an idiotic regime managed to survive for so long. It allied itself with Polity separatists and arrogantly ignored how much this would annoy the Polity. It allied itself with one of the Dragon spheres, seemingly oblivious to the dangers inherent in adopting Dracocorp augmentations, and to the danger of betraying Dragon. Also deluded enough to think itself destined to win some future war against the Polity, it used a weapon obtained from Dragon to destroy a Polity space station, and grabbed Polity citizens to enslave in its shipyard on Flint. And, as if these actions weren’t suicidal enough, below it, on the world it ruled, it had created a slave underclass it treated with joyous sadism, thus ensuring the growth of an underground, truly under the ground, hoarding weapons and supplies and steadily recruiting more and more fighters. The Theocracy had set itself up for a fall, and so it did. Dragon came first and wiped out the laser arrays with which the Theocracy subjugated its people. The rebels took advantage of this and seized the surface of the world, and Polity intervention looked imminent. But, since this shit storm did not seem sufficiently catastrophic, a madman controlling a five-million-year civilization-destroying technology turned up too, in a world-smashing Polity dreadnought, seized control of anyone wearing a Dracocorp aug and incidentally began tossing about apocalyptic weapons like matchsticks. Did I say the Theocracy had set itself up for a fall? Violent obliteration might be a better description of what happened to it.
– From HOW IT IS by Gordon
Heretic’s Isle (Solstan 2457 – Present Day)
The light was different here; the sky a pale violet during the day and only during the night returning to the deep aubergine Jeremiah Tombs recognized. Sanders was here again, her blond hair tied back, and a gauzy wrap, which cycled a slow holographic display of a sun going nova, cinched about her naked body. She gazed at him with familiar pained frustration.
‘Good morning, Jem,’ she said. ‘How are you today?’
He began mumbling the words of the Third Satagent, and she just turned away, heading over to the steps that led down towards the sea. He touched the ball control on the arm of his chair to roll it to the terrace edge, and leaned forward to peer over the stone balustrade, watched her walk down.
Stunted flute grasses grew in spiky clumps on the rocky slope below, and near where the steps terminated at the pale-grey volcanic sands grew a stand of lizard tails, also stunted, and frazzled and curled like singed hair. Reaching the strand, Sanders strode out, glittering footsteps behind where her feet disturbed luminescent amoebae between the grains. At the shore she discarded her wrap and it fell through the air like flame. He looked away from such shameful nudity, but then his gaze strayed back as she entered the sea and began swimming.
This was all so wrong.
He wanted to shout at her, to tell her that she should not be outside without a breather mask or a scole to oxygenate her blood, for the air here was unbreathable – didn’t contain enough oxygen to support Human life. Then he realized that he too was outside, and bewilderment overcame him.
And he retreated inside himself, just as he had the last time, and the time before that. Just as he had been doing for longer than he could bear to remember.
Triada Compound (Solstan 2437 – Rebellion Aftermath)
Concentrating on the patterns, on the collections of colourful Euclidean shapes swirling through his mind, helped to keep the agony at bay. This vision seemed to be all Jeremiah Tombs possessed now his sight had faded to a dull snowy blur – that, and a memory of hellish yellow eyes poised above him, surrounded by the clicking whickering of glass scythes sharpening themselves against each other in the darkness.
How had it all gone so horribly wrong?
The chanting of the Septarchy Friars, which kept Behemoth from seizing control of the minds of all members of the Brotherhood, had not been enough to keep the creature from coming to the planet Masada to exact its vengeance. It destroyed the satellite laser arrays then hurled itself to the ground in fiery destruction . . .
No, that’s not it.
The agony surged through him and someone groaned, that noise turning into the perpetual chant of the Friars . . .
No, no, they are gone.
After Behemoth destroyed itself, Hierarch Loman had the Friars silenced and grew in stature and power across the channels of the Dracocorp augmentations that all in the Brotherhood wore – their Gift from Behemoth. Loman’s every order became impossible to disobey.
Liquid over his eye, someone wiping. Vision blurred at first but slowly improving. A jab in his neck, and at once the pain began to recede.
‘Look,’ said a voice nearby, ‘either take him out back and put a bullet through his head, or let me get on with my work.’
‘Our people are first,’ came the gruff reply.
Clearer vision now, and Jem could see a female clad in white overalls as stained with blood as the soldier’s clothing. He wore fatigues the colour of old flute grass. He carried a rail-gun strapped across his back, with its lead coiling down to its power supply at his belt. Releasing the woman’s arm he stepped back and gazed down at Jem, his expression unreadable.
‘I don’t take orders from you.’ Her tone was didactic, precise. ‘I might have been born here, but now I’m a Polity medtech and my job is first to save lives, then to repair bodies.’ She gestured around her at something out of Jem’s sight. ‘None of these are in any danger now.’ She pointed at Jem. ‘He needs major reconstructive surgery just to stay alive.’
‘Yeah, I guess he does,’ said the soldier, his expression now registering puzzlement and even pity, which was not something Jem would have expected from such as him.
‘How the hell is it he’s alive?’ she asked.
‘Damned if I know – no one’s ever survived one of those bastards.’ His voice was gravelly, harsh, that of someone used to bellowing orders.
‘You misunderstand me: how is it that he is alive, in this compound? I cut away what was left of his uniform, so I know what he is.’
The soldier shook his head, shrugged.
The woman smiled. ‘So, Commander Grant, you’ve spent most of your life fighting the Theocracy and, like so many from the Underworld, you’re firmly atheist, yet it seems you’re not as immune to superstition as you would think.’
Jem’s vision began to blur again, and whatever she had given him seemed to be running through his body in waves. He felt terribly weary, wanted to sleep. He tried closing his eye, but vision remained.
‘Whadda y’mean?’
‘It’s only because of what he survived that you saved him and brought him here,’ she lectured. ‘There isn’t a Human resident on this planet who doesn’t regard the predators of this world with superstitious awe. Admit it.’
‘He’s got to be questioned,’ said the soldier, turning away. ‘We need to know what happened.’
‘Grant,’ said the woman as he moved to stride off.
‘What?’ he shot back, annoyed as he turned.
‘Perhaps you should retain that awe.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, oddly enough the hooder saved his life. I’ve already checked him over and there were signs of burn around the mycelia entering his skull. With perfect timing, it cut off his aug just as that device was being hijacked – cut it off while taking off his face.’
The words meant nothing to Jem as the two seemed to draw off down some long dark tunnel, but something about what they had just said impelled new memory to the surface of his mind.
Faith is dead.
After Behemoth’s demise and the Hierarch’s ascendancy, the Devil had come. It threw Ragnorak, the weapon the Theocracy was going to use to annihilate rebels who were truly underground, into the face of the gas giant Calypse. It burnt Faith and it killed the Hierarch – an object lesson in the consequences of hubris. And Faith, a cylinder world containing ten thousand souls, eviscerated by the fire of some appalling apocalyptic weapon.<
br />
Then through their Gift, their Dracocorp augs, the Devil seized control of the Brotherhood – their augs turned ashen against their skulls and their minds dancing to his pipes. Jem remembered trying to fight it, seeing his comrades from Triada Compound turned to zombies all about him, remembered failing as he ran into an encounter during which, in his own personal hell, something relieved him of his Gift. Then, all at once, Hell came back.
‘Isn’t that painkiller working?’ asked the soldier.
‘Yes,’ replied the woman.
‘Then why the noise?’
‘I don’t know.’
The hellish yellow eyes of the demons were back, and they were sharpening their knives again.
A motor whined and the bed vibrated underneath him as the section under his back tilted upwards to slowly bring him to a sitting position. His right eye seemed sealed shut, the vision of his left eye was blurry, but a woman in white stooped close and squirted something in it, and it began to clear. He tried to blink to speed the process but nothing happened. It was as if his eyelid had been glued back.
Like clumsy mist giants, vague memories bumbled through his mind. There had been a fire somewhere, explosions, shooting . . . and clearer than anything else at all, strange Euclidean shapes that somehow made up an overall pattern. A clicking sound sent cold fingers crawling down his spine and he swung his attention to its source: some kind of machine looking like a big chromed insect mounted on a pedestal. They had Polity technology here!
He surveyed his surroundings further. His bed stood in a row of ten on one side of the aisle down the centre of what looked like a pond workers’ bunkhouse. There were ten beds on the other side of the aisle. Five of the beds were mechanized hospital beds like his own, and all occupied, whilst those remaining were bunk beds separated out singly, a further eight of which were also occupied. The walls of the bunkhouse had recently been painted white, obliterating the words of holy scripture and guidance usually scribed across them, which was puzzling.
Medical machines occupied spaces between the beds; some he recognized as of Theocracy manufacture, others, like that insectile thing, were smaller, neater, Polity machines. Directly across the aisle from him, a medic, a man clad in white, was helping the occupant out of one of the mechanized beds. Burns ran down the side of the patient’s face, one arm and the side of his body ugly under some kind of transparent coating. There must have been some sort of major accident in which Jem himself had been involved. He shuddered and returned his attention to the woman, who next manipulated something at his throat. A sound issued from there, part sigh, part groan.
‘Okay – that’s the voice synthesizer keyed in,’ she said.
Abruptly he remembered waking here before, and trying to speak – trying to demand that she not use anything but Theocracy technology on his body – but his mouth had been frozen and all he could do was issue sounds from the back of his throat. He tried again and, even though his mouth remained frozen, the machine at his throat complemented the sounds issuing from there.
‘I do not require some godless Polity machine to enable me to speak.’
She stared at him for a long moment, then said, ‘In ancient times they used to call it being in denial. Surely you’ve heard enough to know by now?’
Two columns of yellow eyes opened, and from somewhere issued a horrible whickering and clicking. Then all swept away in a swirl of those Euclidean shapes.
‘I seem unable to blink,’ he stated.
‘Surely the reason for that’s obvious, if you think about it?’
‘What have you done to me?’
‘Kept you alive. You’re the only known survivor of an attack by a hooder, which is why you are alive.’ She sounded angry now. ‘Your fellow proctors haven’t been so fortunate.’ She gestured to the other beds. ‘I’ve processed three hundred cases through here and you’re the only one of your kind I’ve seen.’
Faith is dead.
‘That is ridiculous, remove these restraints at once.’ But even as he spoke he felt terrified by something rising in his consciousness. Faith is dead? What did that mean? He tried to make a connection through his aug, his Gift, but got nothing.
‘Or is it more than denial?’ she wondered. ‘Tell me, Tombs, what do you remember?’
‘Some sort of incident . . . an accident.’ He paused to collect his thoughts. ‘Obviously it was major or else I would now be in a city hospital rather than in this temporary medical centre.’ He tried to gesture to his surroundings, but still his arm was restrained.
‘The Underground?’ she suggested.
Ah, it was obvious now.
‘I see – those maggots planted a bomb did they?’
She gazed at him incredulously, then just shook her head and walked away.
Jem inspected his surroundings again and began to wonder if his assessment of the situation was true. There were Polity machines being used here, and the scripture had been painted out on the walls . . . Perhaps, though this place bore some resemblance to a pond workers’ bunkhouse, it wasn’t that at all. With sudden horror he realized. He was a prisoner of the Underground! They had done something above, at Triada Compound, and snatched him. Those in the other beds were rebels injured during whatever had occurred. Perhaps he too had been injured but, what seemed certain, soon they would start interrogating him. He tried to fight against his restraints, but moved not at all. Polity technology; they had a nerve blocker on him, which was probably why he couldn’t speak properly. He could do nothing.
‘I can’t do a complete reconstruction.’
She was back, placing a chair down beside his bed, something wrapped in white cloth under her arm. This item she placed on the bed beside him as she sat. Then she took another object out of her pocket – a small hand mirror – and put that on the bed too, face down.
‘You will get nothing from me,’ he said. ‘You may have taken my Gift but I am still a member of the Brotherhood.’
‘At this juncture, shock tactics can sometimes restore memory.’ She nodded to herself. ‘But I’m not a mindtech so I can’t be sure – in fact there’s no one here with that training – I just checked.’
‘I will reveal nothing, even under electro-stimulation.’ That he had nothing to reveal was the most frightening thing. They might not believe him and just continue torturing him.
‘Yes, you religious police were big on electro-stimulation.’
Whickering clicking.
His gaze shot to the insectile machine. Was that what they would use?
‘Physical reconstruction from your neck to your knees went well,’ she said. ‘Using cellweld techniques, carbon muscle frame and collagen foam I was able to rebuild most of it, though you can no longer produce spermatozoa and it will take about a month for the muscle to grow into the frames.’
What in Smythe’s name was she on about?
‘I’ve used transparent syntheskin over this, which will gradually acquire skin colour as your skin cells multiply through it – we used up all the precoloured stuff elsewhere.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I’ve used the same skin on your right arm, and your fingernails will regrow, but I was unable to rebuild your left arm. Until such time as the Polity gets here and ships in supplies, you’ll have to make do with a prosthetic.’
He was beginning to see the shape of it now. This was the interrogation, though he had yet to identify the thrust of this woman’s technique.
‘You have a very convoluted method of making threats,’ he said, trying to remain calm. But he physically remembered . . . something . . . a line of agony ascending from his knees, yellow eyes watching, and something sharp, ever so sharp . . .
‘I could do very little about your face.’
‘Some new rebel interrogation technique,’ he said, a ball of terror growing in his chest. ‘We are so much better at it.’
She bowed her head. ‘Yes, the Theocracy was very good at inflicting pain. Some think it a shame it was snuffed out so quickly. Others want some p
ayback on those of you that survived, which is why Grant has an armed guard on this building.’
Grant?
Faith is dead, jabbered a voice in his mind.
She raised her gaze to his face and he saw her wince.
‘You said earlier you did not need a “godless Polity machine” to enable you to speak and you also wondered why you cannot blink. Here are the facts: the hooder, one that apparently goes under the title of the Technician, inflicted damage upon you that should have killed you. However, it very meticulously sealed blood vessels as it cut, and it didn’t take off your breather mask until it reached your face, where it did the most damage. This might be just the standard way hooders operate. We can’t be sure. You’re the most we’ve ever found of one of their Human victims.’
‘The Technician does not exist. Hierarch Chalden declared it a myth propagated by those whose faith is not strong enough. Anyone caught spreading rumours of its existence must be subject to punishment six.’
Faith is dead.
A sound issued from the voice synthesizer. A glitch, obviously, for it sounded like a giggle.
‘Punishment Six. Yes, that’s when you pin someone out naked over the spring growth of flute grass, so the sprouts steadily punch through their bodies.’
Jem suddenly felt flute grass underneath him, dry old grass, papery against his remaining skin. But it wasn’t the grass making that sound in the darkness all around him. Stars above? No, even rows of them, yellow . . . He began to recite the First Satagent, as he had then.
‘Religious babble,’ she said. ‘After it took off your mask it took off your face. It took all the soft matter off your skull even as far back as your tonsils. Why it left you one eye is a mystery. Perhaps it’s an artist, not a technician. You cannot speak because you have no lips or tongue and you cannot blink because you have no eyelids.’
