Not the End of the World

by Christopher Brookmyre

  The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, although worthless, were not without points of interest as works of sculpture. For one thing, not many statues tended to be made of lead. It wasn’t the lightest material when it came to transportation logistics, but then that would explain why he opted to send his own yacht around the world to collect them. Neither was lead very pleasing to the eye, but it did have radiation-insulating properties; not much of a consideration aesthetically, but extremely handy when you wanted to conceal a CHIB warhead inside.

  Luther switched off the TV, like that would make it all go away.

  The Light of the World was now off the coast of California. The timing of its voyage had been calculated for it to arrive during the AFFM and after the Festival of Light, at which Luther was able loudly to denounce the enemy one more time, as well as launch the protest movement that would be given irresistible force by the events to follow. He had been pouring particular condemnation on the filth-peddlers for months now – for as long, in fact, as he had been predicting the flood – but he needed that final, high-profile platform to underline God’s agenda for America before the action started.

  Now the talking was over. Liskey’s men were ready to rendezvous with the Light as soon as it was at the correct co-ordinates. One phone call – maybe only a few hours from now – and it would be time to transmit the detonation codes, whereupon the last, short, digitised stage of the months-long countdown would begin. The moment of destiny was almost upon him, and its anticipation should have been consuming him.

  But Luther could think of only one thing: Daniel Corby.

  Long they had talked into that portentous night: debating, advocating, hypothesising. Luther’s eyes had been opened to the vision that would finally save this tormented country, the Lord poetically revealing Himself through one troubled patriot. Corby could not understand God’s message, of course, because he was never meant to. Corby was merely its vessel, the parchment God’s Word was inscribed upon. Luther was the sole intended recipient.

  Unfortunately, it appeared Corby had not grasped that.

  If Luther needed any confirmation of his fears, it came when he accessed the Communion files requested by the FBI. He had gone in to wipe Corby’s name before he submitted them, but it was already gone. In fact, all traces of the man had been excised from the entire CFC computer system – Corby had anticipated that the authorities would look for a connection, given the content of his communiqué. He was protecting himself, but he was trying to protect Luther too, bless his heart, because in Corby’s warped mind they were co-conspirators.

  Luther saw now how divergent the two sides of an apparently harmonious conversation had really been. While he had been talking about fear of Allah, Corby was talking about fear of Muslims. While he was talking about the wrath of God, Corby was talking about the wrath of Christians. God had granted Luther a shining vision of how he could redeem America. Corby had seen only the shadows cast by that vision’s light, but it had been revelation enough to inspire a man like him.

  Luther’s last words to him came clanking back like the chains of Marley’s ghost: ‘You can’t answer this question yourself, Daniel, and I’d caution you once more against the risks of trying. Maybe I won’t be able to answer it either. But if I do answer it, you’ll know – you alone – and you’ll be strong.’

  He was simply telling the guy to keep his mouth shut about their conversation, and not to pull any stunts without Luther’s blessing – which he had no intention of ever giving.

  Once Corby’s job at CFC was done Luther had all but forgotten the man, so thoroughly immersed was he in realising the vision God had granted him. Seeds soon became dwarfed by what they grew into, oak over acorn. It was therefore easy to forget that Corby was out there, let alone consider that he’d be combing Luther’s every broadcast word for what he thought was a signal.

  And looking at it now, Luther’s calculated declamations of the movie business, the sharp-tongued Madeleine Witherson and in particular the AFFM must all have seemed pretty unambiguous to Corby. Whether he had meant to or not, he had given him the green light.

  Corby had sure learned a heck of a lot about bomb-making (and other things) since that abortion clinic in Pocoima. But then, he had been exposed to far better information than the amateurish crap he’d downloaded from the Internet back in those days: on Luther’s recommendation, Liskey had contracted him to set up the Southland Militia’s websites.

  So Corby certainly knew what he was doing this time, and so far he was getting what he wanted, too. But none of that guaranteed he would never be caught.

  It was not comfortable to think of him a few years hence, chatting in his death-row cell to some FBI agent about how he and President St John had once discussed whether fatalities were acceptable in restoring the fear of God to America. Even the Feds might notice a certain parallel.

  ‘Hey, come to think of it, that tidal wave didn’t hurt St John’s career any, did it?’

  Luther reached for the telephone. His conscience was about to get twelve stones heavier.

  (once upon a time) . . .

  Cody sipped back the last of her beer and watched Mitch pouring Armagnac into three plastic tumblers and a china mug. They didn’t have glasses, and the fourth matching vessel had fallen casualty last Sunday when Coop, in a gregarious gesture of flamboyance and flammability, set fire to his brandy and melted the tumbler.

  Cody’s legs were pleasantly sore, arms too. They ached with a hard-earned languid weight that felt so good; a satisfying heaviness to her arm as it raised the cold brown bottle to her salt-bitten lips, a pleasant, hanging lifelessness to her calf muscles. She had been in the water much of the day, working on the outside of the Sado Masochist, cleaning, adjusting, checking, preparing. Most of the morning had been spent underneath, a time-haze of concentration as she worked to eradicate the jamming problem that had been recurring with the umbilical socket on the belly of the sub. The umbilical linked the SM to Slave,their remote-controlled ‘drone’ submersible. Rock and shell fragments were getting trapped between the rubber insulating layers inside the socket, and these were being ground against the sides by the pull and twist of the cable. The rubber was being worn down – salt water didn’t help – and although there was no danger of water leakage (with so much insulation on the other side of the sub’s wall), the couplings linking lengths of the umbilical were catching on the exposed metal in the socket’s snout. This was preventing the slack cable from paying out, and occasionally causing Slave to writhe and squirm at the other end like a dog tied outside a grocery store.

  ‘OK, what we drinkin’ to?’ Mitch asked, holding out his cup across the table.

  ‘Luthah Saaaint John,’ barked Taylor, fake Southern accent, standing up and holding his brandy against Mitch’s.

  ‘Amen, brother,’ said Coop, joining them with the mug.

  ‘Amen,’ Cody concurred, raising her glass to the others, grinning.

  Mitch said nothing. He gave a weak smile, avoiding, she noticed, Cody’s eyes. The others seemed too preoccupied (or maybe just too drunk) to acknowledge his discomfort.

  ‘Gaawd bless his soul,’ continued Taylor. ‘And when we’re all of us dead, may he look down upon us from Heaven, us suff’rin’ damnèd souls below in Hell, and give us a goddamn vulcanology grant!’

  ‘Praise the Lord!’

  This time Mitch laughed, but there was sadness in it, if you knew what to look for. It was difficult to hide much from anyone who had been down there in the blackness with you. Down there in the abyss.

  There was a unique intimacy of shared awe and shared quiet fear as you descended together in the sub, your words trading only navigational and technical observations, but your voices exchanging frank confessions of fragile humanity. The darkness and the silence, the vastnesses, the feeling of being so alien: it stripped down all the levels you ever built around yourself, the people you presented to the world, the people you thought you were, the civilisation you thought your
species had achieved. It stripped you beyond naked. Beyond the flesh. Beyond the rational. Beyond the soul. You didn’t get to be female or male, black or white. You were barely a consciousness. All you were was there.

  And whoever said that all the darkness in the universe couldn’t snuff the light of one candle had never seen the way that endless nothingness swallowed the blazing fires of the SM’s floods until they seemed like dying embers on a moonless forest floor.

  Down there, you were grateful that there was someone beside you just because they reminded you of what a human being was. Reminding yourself that you were one too was usually the next step. You saw each other differently in the SM,while two avatars guided the sub, took the readings, the photographs, the samples, spoke to topside. It wasn’t like stepping outside of yourself: it was like the skin shed you. The avatar got on with the job, wore the clothes of the geologist or the seismologist, the colleague, the fellow professional. You became passengers, or maybe kids in the back seat. And the people you saw beside you . . . you didn’t fear them or feel threatened by them, like you would up above. Maybe it was because, down there, you were truly equal.

  Equally insignificant.

  Taylor was soon pouring second shots. ‘What I still don’t understand,’ he said, measuring out the last of the bottle, ‘is why he would spring for the SM if he was gonna shut the project down in a few weeks.’

  ‘Who knows, man?’ Cody offered. ‘Maybe he found himself a new hobby to spend his allowance on. Just got bored playing with his oceanography toys. We should look on the bright side. CalORI still got itself a state-of-the-art sub out of it, and more than just a paint job for the Gazes.’

  ‘I heard that,’ agreed Coop. ‘Course, he might ask for the Stella Maris back if he ever finds out what we’ve been calling it.’

  ‘He could be planning to take it back anyway,’ Taylor said. “Cause if his prophecy comes true he’s gonna need it to get around town.’

  Everyone laughed, but when the laughter stopped, they all found themselves involuntarily looking at Mitch. There was a moment’s silence.

  ‘I’ll fix us some coffee,’ he said, getting up from the table. He chucked Cody lightly on the shoulder with his huge knuckles as he moved around behind her, a gesture of reassurance or apology, or something.

  ‘Shit, we out of UHT?’ Mitch asked, kneeling down in front of the fridge.

  Coop put his hands up.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said. ‘My fault. We’re not out, I just left the carton through in the Brain.’

  ‘Well go git it, boy,’ commanded Mitch, with an exaggerated pointing gesture.

  ‘Yes cap’n, right away Cap’n.’

  Mitch poured the coffee into four mugs and carried them over to the table. Taylor up-ended the rest of his brandy into his mug with a shameless grin.

  ‘You’re an utter goddamn Philistine,’ Cody told him.

  ‘"Remnant of Kaftor,’” he quoted, holding up his mug as if to toast himself, then taking an obviously savoured gulp.

  ‘Hey, now knock it off,’ Cody warned. ‘We wanted to hear all that shit again, we’d have brought Maria ‘stead of you.’

  A tributary offshoot of Maria’s archaeological preoccupations meant they had all been very frequently corrected on the maligned Philistines’ cultural superiority to the Israelites. Taylor and Coop were always pulling her chain about it.

  ‘Hey guys, I think you should come see this,’ Coop called, his voice partly muffled by the wood around the tight stairwell.

  ‘Forget it, Coop,’ Taylor replied. ‘Right now I have just enough energy to crawl to bed, and maybe enough to digest all this shit once I get there. Any extra expenditure would seriously jeopardise all that.’

  ‘Just bring the milk, Coop,’ added Mitch.

  ‘I really fuckin’ think you should take a look at this,’ Coop persisted, his voice now devoid of any mischief or humour.

  Mitch sighed and put down his mug, then got up and headed for the Brain. Cody looked at Taylor, who shrugged with a ‘search me’ widening of his eyes, before getting up too.

  ‘Jesus, I hope he hasn’t found something real gross floating in the milk again,’ Cody muttered, walking down the stairs. ‘I’m like one mouthful off barfing as it is. That second helping of – oh shit . . .’

  ‘Smartass theory, anyone? Coop asked, his face bathed in the blue light of the sonar screen.

  The Gazes Also was represented by a transparent scale overlay on the centre of the image, the SM showing up as a blurred lozenge right alongside. North of them both was a bullet-shaped object, moving nearer to the centre by the second.

  ‘I’d put it at twelve, fifteen feet,’ said Coop.

  ‘Shark?’ Taylor offered.

  ‘Could just be the image, but it looks too wide to be a fish. Moving pretty slow, too. But whatever it is, it’s definitely comin’ our way.’

  ‘How deep?’ Mitch asked.

  Coop adjusted the calibrations on an adjoining computer screen. ‘Less than ten feet,’ he said. ‘It’s just below the surface.’

  ‘Whale?’ Cody suggested.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Coop agreed. ‘Why don’t someone get up top, check out if you can see anything? And if this thing doesn’t go deeper or change course, we better get ready for impact.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Cody.

  ‘Me too,’ Mitch grunted, bending down to the bulkhead and lifting a flashlight. Cody cut off the CD player as they made their way back through the galley and out on to the aft deck.

  Mitch swept a beam of light across the surface of the water. ‘See anything?’ he asked. Cody shook her head. ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Wait,’ Cody said. ‘Back there.’

  ‘What?’ Mitch trained the beam where Cody had pointed, maybe twenty yards away from the boat.

  ‘Bubbles, I think. Gone now. Shit.’

  ‘You see anything?’ Coop enquired.

  ‘Nothing, Coop,’ Mitch shouted back. ‘Some bubbles, is all.’

  Mitch swept the flashlight across the glinting blackness again, the pair of them straining at the rail, trying to penetrate the opaque shield with their feeble vision.

  ‘Jesus, guys, tell me you see something,’ Coop yelled, a heightened concern in his voice.

  ‘What’s wrong, Coop? We near to impact?’

  ‘Please, God, tell me you see something.’

  ‘Talk to us, Coop, what you got down there?’

  A few moments later Taylor appeared behind them on deck with another flashlight, furiously plunging its beam towards the water as if the light would cut the surface with a splash.

  ‘Three more shapes just pulled away from it,’ he said, urgency in his voice.

  ‘So it’s a school of dolphins, maybe?’ Cody asked, hopefully.

  Taylor shook his head. ‘It didn’t break up. It’s still there, still moving. Three shapes plus it.’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Mitch breathed. ‘Talk to us up here, Coop,’ he shouted. ‘Tell us what you see.’

  ‘It’s slowing down,’ Coop replied, ‘but the other things ain’t. Two of them are headed straight for the boat, and the other one’s broken off and veering to one side. Looks like it’s makin’ for the SM. Impact in about three fuckin’ seconds.’

  Reflexively, all three of them ran to the side, Mitch and Taylor aiming their flashlights at the SM where it bobbed gently a few yards from the Gazes Also.

  ‘Two seconds.’

  ‘There!’ Taylor barked, pointing at a fizz of bubbles bursting on the water between their boat and the sub.

  ‘One second.’

  ‘Jesus, I still don’t see jack shit,’ Mitch hissed in furious frustration.

  ‘Where are they, Coop? Time’s up,’ called Cody.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t goddamn know. I think they’re under the boat. The other one’s almost to the SM,and the big one’s approaching the stem, still about six feet down.’

  ‘This is givin’ me a fuckin’ heart attack,’ Mitch
spat. ‘What the fuck’s goin’ on?’

  ‘Jesus, look,’ Taylor said.

  A black shape began to emerge from the water behind the SM,on the far side from the boat. It was a cylindrical metallic object, with a rounded end like a torpedo. It rose into the air, at which point Mitch’s flashbeam picked out the rubber-clad arm that was lifting it on to the top of the sub.

  ‘Goddamn propulsion tube. That’s a fucking diver,’ Mitch growled. ‘Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doin’?’ he shouted.

  There was a dull clanging noise from behind. The three of them turned in time to see two more divers clamber over the rail on the other side of the deck.

  ‘What the . . .’

  Cody didn’t finish her sentence, silenced by the sight of the assault weapons, cocked and levelled, held steady in the dripping hands of the two faceless figures before her.

  Then one of them spoke. ‘This is your basic nobody-move-nobody-get-hurt deal, okay?’ he stated. ‘Just do as we say and this’ll all go smooth as silk.’

  His companion lowered his weapon and slung it around to his side by the strap, then unfastened first his own then the other diver’s air tanks. He walked to the aft rail and flashed a torch into the water three times, while the diver who had spoken remained statuesque, gun trained on the three crew, finger around the trigger-guard. The water below the stem of the Gazes Also began to erupt in a cauldron of foam and bubbles, from which a fourth diver emerged, gripping the handlebars of an open submersible vehicle, the bullet-shaped object that had shown up on the ‘scope. He cast a rope up to the diver at the aft rail, who tied the vessel securely to the Gazes. Then he retrieved something from the rear of the submersible and climbed aboard, throwing the object to his companion as he did so. Whatever it was, it appeared to be wrapped in plastic sheeting. The diver let it drop to the deck and nudged it to one side with his foot.