Bad Cow

by Andrew Hindle

  The exile is an absolute shit-show right from the beginning. Civilisation collapses, at least as far as the big Roman and Asian empires are concerned. Some places do better than others but none of them get out of it smelling of roses. A lot of history is just wiped out and is only ever partially restored. All the technology is lost, the power grid goes down, and human connections to God are lost, meaning that there’s no more magic-priest-enforced civil obedience. The Angels go into comas when the sun comes up and the Pinians go into hiding for some mortifying reason. The one advanced piece of technology in the area, a nasty old warship called the Destarion, is left behind hibernating on Europa. One of the Demons tries to teleport out there, and gets killed for it.

  Within a couple of human lifespans, practically everything that had happened before the veil is forgotten, or becomes a sort of vague collection of myths.

  And then thousands of years go past.

  Humans recover some level of civilisation, some new Angels show up and the Archangel Gabriel manages to train them, enough to keep them from going into comas, anyway. The Pinians have hidden themselves so thoroughly as humans that they stay as humans, dying and being reborn into new human bodies with a grasp of their memories and powers that’s flimsy at best, nonexistent for the most part. Earth starts to go down the toilet in a serious way, despite the best efforts of the Imago and Vampires to keep the population under control and the Angels’ attempts to make humans behave better. It’s almost as if humans want to get in fights, and the fractured religions of the world, completely bereft of a unifying Pinian theme and a timely thunderbolt or two, just wind up making matters worse.

  Somewhere on the other side of the veil, an Elf comes up with a theory about communicating with the exiled world, contacting the Angels and getting the Pinians back on the case. It involves a lot of messing around with souls and pulling Disciples out of their reincarnation chains, and the less said about it the better because basically nobody on this side of the veil understands it at all, and yet we’re somehow expected to perform our side of the experiments.

  At the same time, the Elf and the other researchers on that side of the veil get in touch with the Destarion on this side of the veil, and the Destarion decides to use the Elf’s theory to kick the humans in the rear, bring the Pinians a bit closer to not-in-disguise anymore, and maybe make them sorry for their spineless inaction over the past twenty-two centuries as well. She uses the Pinians to fly around possessing the more murderous human leaders, make each one give a little apology speech, then put each one into a fatal coma. A massive power vacuum occurs, but things do actually improve a little because at last, the humans see some hint of a thunderbolt and maybe, just maybe, that stirs something down in their ancestral memory. Either that or they’re just worried that some extremist group has discovered the lost art of psychic head-popping.

  The Pinians are reborn into a set of human triplets, and although they still don’t remember anything much they’re closer than they’ve been in centuries. The Third Disciple even begins to figure out some of the stuff that’s meant to be going on, stuff the Pinians were supposed to be doing all along. In the meantime, humans create a plague that kills all the cows and for some reason all the Vampires too, bringing the planet to the brink of another ecological disaster it really doesn’t need. The Demons, who survived the Atonement basically without a scratch, launch a space probe and take pictures of the Destarion on Europa despite the fact that the Destarion would just as soon kill them as look at them, which is frankly a little embarrassing in contrast.

  The Archangel Gabriel finally confirms the identities of the three Pinians to a reasonable degree of certainty, tracks them down and pays them a visit to see what sort of condition they’re in. Hilarity ensues as he tries to explain this whole thing to them over the course of a series of visits to local pubs. Also he brings his adopted Imago daughter along, and she gets herself tased.

  The final score is five Angels, three semi-Pinians, two Demons, one Archangel, one mass-murdering sentient starship, an unspecified number of Imago Vampires, and eleven billion sweat-crazed humans, running out of everything.

  MERCY 1

  “Was that about right?” Ariel asked, and sipped her drink.

  Gabriel sat with an unreadable expression beneath his heavy brow-ridge. Ash was used to understanding the motivations and reactions of all but the craziest and most drug-addled people, but the Archangel was at once a mystery and a deceptively open book.

  “That’s pretty much exactly it,” he said eventually. “Nice job.”

  “So where does this leave us?” Ash asked. “What’s the job you needed us to perform, and how has that changed now that you know Roon is way more Pinian than you thought she was?”

  “I’ve given myself headaches for years trying to figure out what Mercy and Fury might do at any given time,” Gabriel said. “For all I know, our plans coincide perfectly and we should all be working together to bring the Destarion back online and restore power to Earth.”

  Roon began shaking her head forcefully.

  “Apparently not a great idea?” Ariel raised her eyebrows.

  “She’s got a point,” Gabriel agreed. “The Destarion is … volatile. I wouldn’t feel confident with you boarding her and giving orders until you were completely back in command of your own faculties, and even then I’d have my doubts unless God was with you. However, a little more focus down here on Earth, and you’ll be able to use the Godfang the way she used you, during the Atonement. You’ll be able to contact her and give orders with minimal risk – and she won’t need to come out of hibernation and get dangerous. You know, more dangerous than she already is.”

  “Alternatives?” Ash asked crisply.

  “Alternatives, alternatives,” Gabriel muttered, rising to his feet and stumping back and forth across the room, wings swishing. “Okay,” he said, “alternatives. Most likely, at this point, is that Mercy and Fury are gearing up to send humans to Europa, to wake up the Destarion.”

  “A manned voyage to Europa,” Ash said, exchanging a look with Roon and seeing the same skepticism on her sister’s face as she herself was feeling. “Is that even possible?”

  “It ought to be,” Gabriel said, when Roon tilted a doubtful hand back and forth. “It’d be rough, and the astronauts would be completely dependent on the Destarion providing life support and things for them at the far end because a return trip would be even rougher … but if there’s one thing Mercy has plenty of to just fling into space, it’s chumps.”

  “Chumps,” Ash said blankly.

  “It might actually work,” Gabriel shrugged, “sending humans up. I’m not sure. Not as well as if you did it, that’s for sure. The Godfang … historically does not play well with others, especially if those others don’t have a lot of authority. She might do what the humans want, if they manage to hide the fact that they’re working for Demons … but she will also occasionally do what the humans need, and that might involve killing a few hundred of them. Only the Disciples, and God, can really spank her.”

  “What if we can’t convince her we’re not working for Demons?” Ariel asked.

  “That’s another compelling damn reason not to work for them,” Gabriel said patiently.

  “And we’re not in spanking trim just yet,” Ash guessed.

  “Not even close. She’d eat you alive, and I’m barely even being metaphorical. By far the preferable solution for Mercy,” Gabriel went on, “and also the most likely alternative given what we know now, is that they kill the three of you, acquire your newborn next incarnations, and train you as astronauts. Twenty years from now, the Europa mission would have that much more planning behind it and a much greater chance of success with Pinians at the helm. Added to that, you’d be way closer to full manifestation, and you’d be under Demonic influence. And if he had a full human growth period to make that happen, he could make it so you didn’t even know you were under it. The Destarion can’t nail you for something you don’t know.�
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  “So the options are,” Ash summarised, and counted off on her fingers. “One: Stay here and learn what we can from you and your hidden Elf friend, get as close to full Pinian as we can and try to establish remote control of some sort over the Destarion. Two: Die, and you have a race with the Demons to see who finds our baby-selves first. Three: Find Mercy and Fury, kill them, and dismantle their entire behind-the-scenes operation.”

  Gabriel spluttered and almost tripped over his own wing.

  “Come on, Gabriel,” Ariel said, “we all know that was the job you wanted to hire us for in the first place. What else is going to take the resources of all three of us?”

  “Exactly,” Ash said. “If it was just a matter of finding out if Fagin is running a secret space programme and preparing to send humans to Europa, then organising a covert military strike against it, you wouldn’t have needed all three of us. In fact, you probably wouldn’t have even needed me.”

  “I can’t take out a Demon,” Gabriel muttered. “And I’m not convinced you’ll be able to either, but we can work around that. Besides,” he went on, “this Destarion sighting is relatively new information. Laetitia only just managed to confirm it. The main danger, yes, is that the enemy will manage to kill you on their terms and then find your new incarnation, and use you for their own ends. And I can’t even begin to guess those ends, because the Demons have never had the potential to subvert the Disciples of God before.”

  “So it’s live and train ourselves to be more focussed Pinians somehow,” Ash said, “or the violent option.”

  “Keeping in mind there’s a ticking clock on this,” Gabriel said. “Earth is unlikely to remain habitable for much more than another hundred years, and that’s just a question of resources. If more superviruses and ecological sinkholes start swallowing up the biomass humans depend on, it could all be over in far less time. If you three die in the next ten years or so, there might be a chance for your next incarnation to grow to … well, whatever age you need to be to remember yourselves and achieve something. For all I know, you might be able to do that as toddlers. It might vary depending on how much you achieve in this life. It’s not like there’s precedent for this.”

  “You said we might even be able to reincarnate directly into full Pinian bodies,” Ariel said. “Something about coming into complete focus and stepping forth in blazing full-fledged elemental something-or-other.”

  “Yes,” Gabriel said, “that’s also possible. I don’t know. Look, there’s something else we should be concerned with.”

  “Something else?” Aunt Agñasta said a little plaintively.

  “The Mercy 1 Europa fly-by was … well, it was practically incidental,” Gabriel said. “Mercy already knew the Godfang was out there. I guess he’s established from these pictures that she’s at least somewhat accessible from a human landing party perspective, they won’t need to take mining equipment with them … but that’s not really the point of the Mercy 1 probe.”

  “So what’s he really after?”

  “He’s looking for the edge,” Gabriel said. “Mercy’s trying to find the veil.”

  “Can he do that?” Ariel asked.

  “No idea,” Gabriel said heavily, returning to his armchair and dropping into it with a rustle. He’d seemed worn out at the Bad Cow, Ash reflected, the night before – and he’d complained about how run-down he was getting. But tonight, he seemed even wearier. Maybe a nice private chapel with a spa bath and sauna would do wonders for the old boy, she thought. “This is my first world-exiling bubble forged by the Infinites,” he went on. “But up until fairly recently, there was no way to go out there and look. All the options were taken away from us by that pesky total collapse of infrastructure thing.”

  “But the veil is a real physical barrier, with a location?” Ariel insisted. “It really does exist, like a … a cloth with holes poked in it?”

  “For all I know, it’s a great big geodesic sphere made out of bacon straws,” Gabriel said. “I don’t think it’s a solid thing, but we don’t know, that’s the point. Whatever it is, it’s generally agreed to surround the solar system, but where ‘the solar system’ technically ends is open to debate. There’s an awful lot of nothing out there.”

  “It sort of makes sense,” Ash said, although she could hardly believe she was saying it. “The bodies, the planets we see in our immediate space are solid physical things. We’ve gone to a few of them, sent machines buzzing around them and bringing back rocks and stuff for the past quarter of a millennium.”

  “Right,” Gabriel said. “Now, when you get further out, like the Voyager missions of the olden days, it all gets a bit more sketchy. The old probes ran out of power in the Twenties – and I’m talking about the Twenty Twenties – and later missions just found a whole lot more nothing, which is exactly what everyone expected to find. Some interstellar field data once they passed the heliopause boundary and the solar wind dropped off … all that stuff, you’d have to ask Laetitia more about it.”

  “Laetitia’s a star-gazer, is she?” Ariel asked, looking surprised. Ash regretted missing the showdown between her sister and the ‘Imago’.

  “Where did you think she got those pictures from?” Gabriel shot back. “A couple of hundred years on this clammy rock can make a star-gazer out of anyone.”

  “For some of us it takes considerably less than two hundred years,” Aunt Agñasta remarked.

  Gabriel conceded the point with a nod. “My point is, at that distance it’s all just signals that come whispering back to us,” he said. “The probes aren’t likely to actually reach anywhere in the next forty thousand years or so. And like I said, most of them run down once they get out far enough. The latest generation of vessels are a bit more purposeful, but even they have their limits. There’s evidence of planets way out on the edge of the system, there’s evidence of nearby systems, of the entire Milky Way galaxy being out there, but most of it comes through telescopes or is beamed back from machines out there, most of them using telescopes. It’s all conclusions drawn from gravity and densities and electromagnetic readings. And that’s where it really gets weird.”

  “Oh, it was weird the whole time,” Ariel was clearly unable to prevent herself from commenting.

  “The veil, you see, is like nothing we can really understand,” Gabriel said. “In grossly unscientific terms, like we were saying, I’ve always visualised it as the proverbial sackcloth draped over the world, with pinpricks in it for stars. But it’s not really that. It can’t be. Humans would have torn it up centuries ago.”

  “So … an invisible boundary,” Ash said.

  “Probably,” Gabriel said. “Or visible, but disguised so we can’t even see it. We think we’re seeing through it, seeing things that the solar system inside the veil makes us expect to see outside…” he chuckled. “I guess that amounts to the same thing.”

  “Sackcloth covering the solar system,” Jarvis said softly. “If I wasn’t hearing it from the Archangel Gabriel, I might think it was preposterous.”

  “Oh, it’s preposterous,” Gabriel assured him. “It’s an invisible field twelve billion kilometres across – that’s if it’s located somewhere in the Kuiper belt, which is a conservative guess. And that’s before we even start thinking about the fact that it’s only that big on this side – the space it occupies between Heaven and the Rooftop…”

  Amidst this new swell of nonsense Ash became aware that Roon was shaking her head again, in perplexity this time.

  “What is it?” Ariel asked, no doubt having noticed the same look on their sister’s face. “I mean, if you can narrow it down.”

  Roon just shook her head again, slid the notebook across in front of her on the coffee table, leaned over and scribbled something on the next blank page. Frowning, she slid it across to Ariel. She’d drawn a rough diagram of the solar system, with annotations.

  EARTH = 1 AST. UNIT = 150 MILL. KM

  JUPITER / EUROPA = 5 AUS

  KUIPER = 30 – 50 A
US

  HELIO = ~100 AUS??

  “Too difficult to pantomime it?” Gabriel asked wryly.

  “If I’m reading this right, we probably have some time,” Ariel said, pushing the book across the table. “If Mercy 1 just took pictures of the Destarion, it’s only about a tenth of the way to the veil. Only a twentieth of the way if the veil’s out around the helio-wossname.”

  “Mercy 1 didn’t launch too long ago,” Gabriel replied, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. No, it’s not getting to the veil any time soon, and that’s assuming the veil is where and even what we think it is. Chances are that as soon as the probe gets there it’s just going to fail anyway – no, what it’s mainly doing is getting out into the quiet, where it can take readings. Those are what Mercy has been tweaking all these years. He may not have the outside contact that we have – that we know of – but he’s been refining theories too.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “Okay, think about what the veil probably is,” Gabriel tried again. Ash felt a pang of sympathy for the ancient creature – never had a person seemed so far out of his depth. “A field surrounding the solar system, with the entire rest of the observable universe drawn on the inside of it, some way or another,” he ran his hands around a large invisible globe. “Not just images of stars and planets and galaxies and things, but all the radiation and radio signals and cosmic rays and gravity data and all the rest. A huge and complex tapestry draped over this tiny exiled solar system, designed for one thing only – to keep humans from poking at the edges and trying to escape and asking too many questions.

  “And it’s worked. More or less. One or two machines might have gotten to the edge, but humans can’t go faster than light with the available technology so they’re dependent on these machines that are drifting slowly off into interstellar space. Sending back signals, if we’re lucky and they don’t run out of power, assuring us that they’re out there, that they’re seeing what we expected to see. It would be as easy to fool those instruments as it would be to generate a field that looks like endless stellar vacuum when you look at it through a telescope from here. I mean, not easy at all, in other words – but for someone who could make a field like the veil in the first place, it wouldn’t be that much more challenging to trick a bunch of solar-powered cameras.