The Naked God - Flight nd-5

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Just that he’d catch up with you. Didn’t say nothing else.”

  Quinn’s robe changed, the fabric hardening around his limbs. “I shall enjoy that encounter.”

  “What are you going to do, Quinn?” Courtney asked.

  “Shut up.” He stalked over to the window and peered down through a gap in the heavy curtains. Cars and trucks flashed along the ramp five stories below, curving down to street level. Fewer vehicles than usual, and the crowds on the sidewalk were noticeably thinner. But then Edmonton had been in a mild panic for most of the day since the early morning commuters discovered the vac-trains were closed. Every Govcentral spokesperson in the arcology assured the reporters that there were no possessed loose. Nobody believed them. Things were falling apart across the domes. But not in the way Quinn intended.

  I don’t fucking believe this, he raged silently. Some kind of supercops know I’m here. I can’t bring about the fall of true Night without the vac-trains. And now heaven’s own bastard vigilante is gunning for me. God’s Brother, how could everything go so wrong ? Even Banneth is diminished.

  It was another of His tests. It must be. He is showing me the true path to Armageddon lies elsewhere. That as His messiah I must not rest, not even to gorge my own serpent beast. But who the fuck is Carter’s friend? If he knew Carter, then he must be someone from Lalonde, Aberdale itself. One of the men.

  Although that conclusion hardly reduced the field of suspects. All the men at that sewer of a village hated him. He forced himself to be calm, to remember the few words the bastard had spoken back on Jesup asteroid when he fucked up the sacrifice ceremony.

  “Remember this part?” Quinn’s own mimicked face had taunted. So whoever it was had witnessed the sect ceremony before, then. And was from Aberdale.

  The realization was so pleasurable it blessed Quinn’s face with the kind of smile usually bought by orgasm. He turned from the window. “Call everyone,” he told one of the nervous acolytes. “We’re going to tool up and march against Banneth. I want every one of my followers to accompany me.”

  “Shit, we’re going for her?” Courtney’s eyes were shining with greed.

  “Of course.”

  “You promised I could watch.”

  “You will.” It was the only way. The cops would only allow the vac-trains to run again if they thought they’d eliminated all the possessed in the arcology.

  Quinn would bring them together, and do to them what Carter McBride’s friend had done to the sabotage group. After that, time would become his most powerful weapon. Not even the supercops could keep the vac-trains closed for months when there were no further signs of possession.

  “But first, I have something else which needs taking care of.”

  Courtney did as she was told and switched on a processor block, establishing a link with Edmonton’s net. Quinn stood a couple of metres away, watching the little screen over her shoulder as the questor was launched into Govcentral’s main citizens directory. It took eight minutes before the requested file expanded into the block’s memory. He read down the information, and smiled victoriously. “Her!” he said, and thrust the block towards Courtney and Billy-Joe, showing them the picture he’d found. “I want her. You two go down to the vac-train station and wait. I don’t give a fuck how long you have to stay there for, but the first vac-train out of here, you take it and you get over to Frankfurt. Find her, and bring her to me. Understand? I want her alive.”

  A call from reception informed Louise that she had a delivery to accept. The house telephone was almost identical to the chunky black instruments back on Norfolk, except it had a bell rather than a shrill chime. Now she had neural nanonics, the whole thing seemed absurdly primitive. Presumably, for people who didn’t have them as their sole planetary communication system, they were endearingly quaint. Part of the Ritz’s old-world elegance.

  Louise looked around the lobby as soon as the lift doors opened, curious about what could have been sent to her. She was sure all the department stores had delivered. Andy Behoo was slouching against the reception desk under the suspicious gaze of the concierge. He jerked to attention when he saw Louise, his elbow nearly knocking over a vase of white freesia. She smiled politely. “Hello, Andy.”

  “Uh.” He stuck his hand out, holding a flek case. “The Hyperpeadia questor’s arrived. I thought I’d better bring it round myself to make sure you got it okay. I know it was important to you.”

  The concierge was watching with considerable interest. He didn’t get to see such naked adoration very often. Louise gestured towards the other end of the vaulting chamber. “Thank you,” she said when Andy pressed the flek into her hand. “That’s very kind.”

  “Part of the service.” He smiled broadly, crooked teeth on show.

  Louise was rather stuck for what to say after that. “How are you?”

  “You know. The usual. Overworked underpaid.”

  “Well you do a very good job at the shop. I’m grateful for the way you looked after me.”

  “Ah.” Andy’s world was suddenly very short on oxygen. But she’d come down by herself. That must mean her fiancй hadn’t arrived yet. “Um, Louise.”

  “Yes?”

  Her soft smile was wired directly into his brain’s pleasure centre, shorting out his coordination. He knew he was making a right old balls up of this. “I was wondering. If you haven’t got anything planned, that is. I mean, I’ll understand if you have and all that. But I thought, you know, you haven’t been in London long and had a chance to see much of it. So if you like, I could take you out to dinner. This evening. Please.”

  “Oh. That’s really sweet of you. Where?”

  She hadn’t said no. Andy stared, his smile numbed into place. The most beautiful, classy, sexy girl in existence hadn’t said no when he asked her for a date. “Huh?”

  “Where do you want to go for dinner?”

  “Um, I thought the Lake Isle. It’s not far, over in Covent Garden.” He’d asked Liscard for a two week advance on his pay, just in case Louise said yes; Liscard granted it on a four per cent interest rate. That way he could actually afford the Lake Isle. Probably. It had cost a lot more than he’d expected to reserve the table; and that deposit was non-refundable. But the other sellrats all said it was the right kind of place to take a girl like Louise.

  “That sounds nice,” Louise said. “What time?”

  “Seven o’clock. If that’s okay?”

  “That’s fine.” She gave him a light kiss on his cheek. “I’ll be here.”

  Andy walked back with her to the waiting lift. There had been something about a dress code in the datavise when he reserved the table. He now had two and a quarter hours to find a dinner jacket. A clean one, that fitted. It didn’t matter. A man who’d got himself a date with Louise Kavanagh could do anything. Louise pressed the button for her floor. “You don’t mind if I bring Genevieve, do you? I really can’t leave her here by herself, I’m afraid.”

  “Uh.” From nirvana to hell in half a second. “No. That’ll be lovely.”

  “I don’t want to spend an evening with him ,” Genevieve whinnied. “He’s all peculiar. And he fancies you. It’s creepy.”

  “Of course he fancies me,” Louise said with a grin. “He wouldn’t have asked me out otherwise.”

  “You don’t fancy him, do you?” a thoroughly shocked Genevieve asked. “That would just be too hideous, Louise.”

  Louise opened the wardrobe and started to rifle through the dresses they’d managed to acquire on their shopping trips. “No, I don’t fancy him. And he’s not peculiar. He’s quite harmless.”

  “I don’t understand. If you don’t fancy him, why did you say yes? We can go out by ourselves. Please, Louise. London isn’t nearly as dangerous as Daddy thinks it is. I like it here. There’s so much to do. We could go to one of the West End shows. They sell tickets at reception. I checked.”

  Louise sighed and sat down on the bed. She patted the mattress, and Gen made a show of bei
ng reluctant to sit beside her. “If you really, really don’t want to go out with Andy for the evening, I’ll cancel.”

  “You’re not going to kiss him or anything, are you?”

  “No!” Louise laughed. “Devil child. What a dreadful thing to say.”

  “Then why ?”

  Louise stroked the dark hair from Gen’s face, letting the flexitives ripple it over her ears. “Because,” she said softly. “I’ve never been asked out to dinner with a boy before. Not to a fancy restaurant where I can dress to kill. I don’t suppose it’ll ever happen again. Not even Joshua asked me out. Not that he could, of course. Not when we were at Cricklade.”

  “Is he the baby’s father?”

  “Yes. Joshua’s the father.”

  Gen brightened. “That means he’s going to be my brother-in-law.”

  “Yes. I suppose it does.”

  “I like Joshua. It’ll be stupendous having him living at Cricklade. He’s such jolly fun.”

  “Oh yeah. He’s fun all right.” She closed her eyes, remembering the way his hands had caressed. Warm and skilful. It had been so long since she’d seen him. But he did promise . . . “So, what do I tell Andy Behoo, then? Do we go, or do we stay here all night?”

  “Can I wear my party dress, too?” Gen asked.

  The scene playing out above the B7 sensenviron conference room table was the one involving the failed sabotage attempt against Edmonton’s water station. It wasn’t a particularly good image, the station’s perimeter sensors were hardly commercial-quality; but the two humanoid figures shouting at each other had enough colour and resolution to sketch in their individual features. Billy-Joe was being suspended several centimetres off the floor of the alley by the large possessed man. Their noses were almost touching. Then Billy-Joe was slapped hard, more words were exchanged. The two of them ran off down the squalid alley.

  “We think we know who Carter McBride is,” Western Europe told the other supervisors as the recording ended. “The AI found several references. He was the child of a colonist family on the same starship that took Quinn Dexter to Lalonde. According to the Lalonde Development Company files I accessed, the McBrides were also in the same village that Dexter was assigned to for his work-time.”

  “A friend of Carter McBride,” Southern Africa mused. “You mean this new possessed was on Lalonde?”

  “Yes,” Western Europe said. “And the whole Quallheim Counties trouble was originally thought to be an Ivet rebellion over the killing of some boy. The obvious conclusion is that it was Carter. That implies the possessed who blew the sabotage group in Edmonton has to be someone killed on Lalonde at around the same time.”

  “So you’re saying that this possessed person is out for revenge against Quinn Dexter?”

  “Exactly,” North America said. “We have a new ally.”

  “Bullshit,” South Pacific said sharply. “Just because the possessed have internal disputes, that doesn’t make one faction friendly towards us. Suppose this new possessed does manage to eliminate Dexter? Do you really think he’ll just conveniently vanish for us afterwards? I certainly don’t. In any case, we’re not exactly communicating with him, are we? You lost him and this waster boy. What kind of amateurism is that?”

  “I’d like to see you do better in that goddamn labyrinth,” North America snapped.

  “Given the speed at which this new development broke, I think the situation was handled as adroitly as possible,” Western Europe said. “However, it does introduce some new factors which I believe warrant our consideration.”

  “Such as?” North Pacific asked suspiciously.

  “I believe it will force Dexter to abandon all his activities for a while. Unfortunately, this wretched little oik Billy-Joe couldn’t be intercepted, so we must assume he returned to Dexter and passed on the message he was given. As a consequence, Dexter will know he has a possessed stalking him; and that after the sabotage mission was exposed, the authorities have confirmed there are possessed in Edmonton. If we’re right about his reasons for being here—to wreck as much of the planet as possible—he’ll have no choice but to ignore Banneth and either abandon or betray the remaining possessed in the arcology. Then he’ll lay low until political pressure forces the North American senate to reopen the vac-train lines. Face it, we can’t keep them shut for months unless there is a visible threat to rattle the public with. Time is on his side. We’re already compromising ourselves with the actions we’ve taken to date.”

  “Not a chance,” South Pacific blurted. She pointed a hostile finger at Western Europe. “Very smooth. But I can see what you’re angling for, and I say no. No way.”

  “Angling for what?” Central America asked.

  “He wants us to open Edmonton’s vac-train routes.”

  “Count me out,” Asian Pacific said quickly.

  “Absolutely not,” East Asia agreed. “We’ve got Dexter bottled up in one place. Keep him there. You’ll just have to improve your surveillance techniques and track him down.”

  “He’s goddamn invisible!” North America stormed. “You saw what happened in Grand Central Station. There aren’t any techniques to improve that can catch up with that kind of ability.”

  “If we don’t re-open the vac-train routes, then we’ll be condemning Edmonton and everyone in it to possession,” Western Europe said. “And very probably removal from this universe. Remember what happened to Ketton on Mortonridge. That’s what they’ll do to it. They can’t survive here.”

  “That outcome is certainly acceptable to me,” North Pacific said. “We’ve discussed this through before. Better to lose one arcology if that means saving the rest.”

  “But we don’t have to,” Western Europe insisted. “Dexter becomes visible to us when he’s moving. That’s when he’s vulnerable.”

  “He’s not visible,” South Pacific said. “We know he’s moved simply by the destruction he leaves behind. I mean, shit, blowing up the Eiffel Tower! Face it, we can’t catch him.”

  “We have to make the attempt. It’s the reason we exist, the only reason. If we cannot protect Earth from a single possessed when we have the opportunity, especially because of political cowardice, then we have failed.”

  “I’m not buying into any of this noblesse oblige crap, I never did. That might be your heritage, but it certainly isn’t mine. We formed B7 out of sheer bloody minded self interest. And you were a big part of that, don’t forget. We exist to protect our own interests. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that means protecting Earth and looking out for its citizens. Well bravo us. I don’t begrudge them that expenditure. But this is not one of those benevolent times. This time we safeguard ourselves against possession, and especially against Quinn bloody Dexter. I’m sorry about the inhabitants, but Edmonton falls to this Night of his. Probably Paris and the others as well. Tough. We’ll be safe, though.”

  “I was wrong,” Western Europe said coldly. “It’s not political cowardice. You’re frightened of him.”

  “That’s beneath contempt,” South Pacific sneered. “I’m not going to open the vac-trains simply because you insult me.”

  “I know that. I was just insulting you anyway. You deserve it.”

  “Big deal. Don’t tell me you’re not making preparations to desert the sinking ship.”

  “All of us are, as we all know. It would be foolish not to. But for me it’s a last resort. To be perfectly honest, starting afresh on some new world holds little appeal. I suspect the same applies to the rest of you.”

  The representations around the table remained silent.

  “Exactly,” Western Europe said. “We have to defeat Dexter on the ground. Our ground.”

  “By letting Edmonton fall, we are defeating him,” Central America said. “He’ll vanish from the whole planet along with the arcology.”

  “He won’t. He’s too smart to fall into that trap, and his agenda is different to the ordinary possessed. The vac-trains will be opened again no matter how determined you all
are. It’s only a matter of time. I say we should lure him out into a target ground of our own choosing.”

  “He’s already exterminated four of Banneth’s acolytes in her own headquarters,” Military Intelligence said. “We know he keeps going back there, yet we still haven’t managed to kill the little bastard. I don’t see how taking him to another arcology helps.”

  “We can’t change Banneth’s environment now, that would be too blatant. Dexter would be warned off. But we can take her to a more suitable location for a strike.”

  “You just said he’ll sacrifice his vendetta against Banneth to achieve his greater objective,” Asian Pacific said. “Do try to present a consistent argument, please.”

  “I can get him out of Edmonton,” Western Europe insisted. “The Kavanagh girls appearing at this stage will be an irresistible enigma to him. He’ll have to follow them to find out what’s happening. And they will be manoeuvred wherever I choose.”

  “Well you needn’t try choosing my territory,” South Pacific said.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. This requires efficiency and total cooperation. Qualities apparently beyond your ability to provide.”

  “Lead him into your territory then.”

  “I intend to.”

  “Then what are you whining about?”

  “I don’t want any interference. This requires finesse. If I initiate this operation, you stay out of it. No surprise Presidential decrees wrecking my preparations. No media novas. We all know what we’re capable of if we want to screw each other over. We’ve been at it long enough in our other arenas, but this is not the time for those sort of games.”

  South Pacific looked from Western Europe to North America. “You two do whatever you like. But you do it between yourselves. Your territories are now embargoed, along with Bombay and Johannesburg. Would you like to put a counter motion to the vote?”

  “No,” Western Europe said. “I have what I want.”

  In the end Andy had to go back to Liscard and ask for a further advance. Four week’s pay at seven and a half per cent interest! He deliberately didn’t put a calculator program in primary mode, didn’t want to know how long he was going to be shackled to Jude’s Eworld to finance one date. But he could hardly ask Louise to pay for Genevieve. That would be cheap.