by Ian Watson
‘Our Navigator might be distressed if Fennix died,’ she said. ‘Besides, Fennix is becoming addicted to our hunt for truth.’
Jaq nodded sombrely. ‘So we rely upon addiction as a guarantee of loyalty.’
She almost smiled. Almost. ‘Addictions of one kind or another often guarantee fidelity.’
Did she imply an addiction, on her part, to Jaq? In this universe of deceit, maybe this was the closest that anyone could come to an avowal of affection or trust.
‘Anyway, Jaq, you might need Fennix urgently some time in future to send a telepathic message.’
A message to whom? To the vast schizoid multi-mind of the Emperor?
Jaq sighed. ‘This brings us to the matter of our faithful abhuman.’
Oh yes, the puzzle of Grimm, turning up like a good penny on Luxus Prime...
‘I hadn’t wanted to confront this matter prematurely. Not until I had the measure of Petrov, and could be confident he isn’t a stooge.’ Jaq gestured at a small lacquered cabinet inlaid with hex signs. ‘It was my intention to dose Grimm with Veritas and question him. Now I find that the remaining ampoules of the drug have vanished.’
Meh’lindi nodded. ‘Hexes would not deter Grimm.’
‘So Grimm must be compelled to confess the truth by some other means.’
Must they now torture Grimm? He, and Meh’lindi! Jaq’s collapsible excruciator had been lost on the Chaos world, but between them an inquisitor and an assassin could think of other methods.
‘Oh, why did he dispose of the Veritas? The absence of those ampoules incriminates him so! Did you study torture in your shrine, Meh’lindi?’
‘I’m acquainted with pain,’ she said simply.
‘Aye, pain; and how to overcome it. Grimm won’t know how, unless he was deeply tampered with during all the years which have gone by. In our Inquisition,’ he confided, ‘we study the history of torment. Really, the history of Mankind is the history of torment. Our Inquisition recommends the virtues of pain, even though speedy obliteration of heresy is generally our goal. The problem is that torment can elicit sheer fiction in the name of truth. A tormented victim will often invent anything he hopes will ease his physical agony. Torture frequently negates itself.’
‘He must be tormented,’ she said, ‘in his imagination. His own fantasy must torment him.’
‘Ah, you understand...’
‘My own imagination tortures me, Jaq. The spectre of the beast within me – soon to be cut out! I never forget how I was tormented by pleasure at the hands of Zephro Carnelian. That was an ordeal I was never trained to resist! Yet,’ and her voice sank to a whisper, ‘you helped exorcize me.’
Jaq shuddered. Did she imply that on that unprecedented occasion when she and he had made love, as the expression was, she had experienced, cleansingly, the opposite of ecstasy?
‘I don’t suppose,’ said he, ‘that Petrov could have slunk in here and disposed of the Veritas, for some reason that I don’t understand?’
Petrov would first have needed to know what Veritas was. He would have needed to know that Jaq kept truth in an ampoule – and to be scared of interrogation.
‘How about me myself?’ Meh’lindi asked him slyly.
Thus she reminded Jaq that no one could ever really know another person totally; and that doubt must always remain, festering amidst universal loneliness. Not even the Emperor had known His own self fully.
GRIMM WAS IN the engine room, mumbling some squattish ballad as he polished.
The barrel-vaulted chamber reeked of sacred oil and ionization and hot insulation, though not of incense. Electrocandles imparted a jaundiced glow to the fluted rune-painted turbines, capacitors and accumulators. Cables like the web of a titanic spider led to the cores of the great warp-vanes. Ornamented dials glimmered with icons. Since Tormentum Malorum was currently falling towards Darvash, the main engines barely hummed, on standby, though the gravity generator was droning.
Jaq sealed the adamantium bulkhead hatch behind them. No noise would reach the Navigator or the astropath. He seized the abhuman in a grip which hardly permitted Grimm to move, though his heels drummed the deck. ‘What’s the matter, what’s the matter-?’
From her sash Meh’lindi pulled some silk with which she blindfolded Grimm. Working around Jaq’s shifting grip, she peeled off Grimm’s flak jacket. Then she divested him of his coverall, and finally of grey calico drawers worn beneath.
Grimm was bare but for his red beard and the smaller beard fronting his loins.
‘Oh, my ancestors!’
Meh’lindi’s fingertips roved in a dire parody of the art of the courtesan.
THE SHEER EXPECTATION... The imagination: a person’s worst enemy...
She touched Grimm gently on a nub of nerves. How he shrieked. How he babbled. He confessed that he had poured the Veritas into the fuel expansion basin, from which it had trickled to mix with the octanes.
‘A little truth goes a long way, eh?’ Jaq murmured into Grimm’s ear.
At no stage did Meh’lindi actually hurt Grimm with her fingertips or teeth or tongue. Yet his fantasy excruciated him. Writhing, the abhuman screeched, and begged.
‘I’M TELLING YOU, Jaq boss, Carnelian contacted me, no not on Luxus, before that, and he’s really an Illuminatus!’ Whatever in all the worlds was an ‘‘Illuminatus”?
‘Carnelian was a psyker who was possessed,’ gabbled Grimm, ‘but he managed to throw off his possession through his own willpower and with the help of some eldar Harlequins—’
Ha!
‘—as well as by the grace of the Numen!’ The Numen? What was that?
Grimm shrieked: ‘The shining path! It’s a force of goodness and strength that will congeal one day into a power.’ Another daemonic god!
‘No, it’ll be a radiant Power, boss, I swear, but it’s only a foetal thing now, trying to grow, so Carnelian says, and it’s the opposite of what’ll happen if Homo Sap goes crash, and the opposite of what went wrong for the eldar, I think, though I’m not too sure, but Slaanesh is what went wrong with the eldar ‘cos they were too snooty and sensual and got themselves addicted to all sorts of lusts—’
Grimm groaned with a great pang. ‘Doesn’t surprise me about those snobs! Their Harlequins keep an eye on outbursts of Slaanesh ‘cos Slaanesh will consume them all if it can, I think they’re terrified of that happening, says Carnelian, so they sometimes use people they’ve bought or persuaded to spy on cults, like I was doing on Luxus, only not spying for the snobs themselves, I’m a squat after all and proud of it, but for Carnelian ‘cos he convinced me, and ‘cos you might have shown up again somewhere in the vicinity, and Carnelian was leading you, leading you, ‘cos rogue Illuminati are in control of this hydra caper, and inquisitors are mixed up in it, like we know, and they gotta be disrupted—’
Rogue Illuminati? How Grimm babbled. Was he about to commit suicide by asphyxiation? Would he hyperventilate himself to death?
‘Yeah, you see the Illuminati are immune to powers of the warp, so they can manipulate warp energy safely, that’s how they brought the hydra into existence, I mean that’s how the rogue Illuminati did it, hoping to mind-fuse everyone in the galaxy some day and even tame Chaos and enslave it, but they’re wrong about that ‘cos then the Numen will never be born and the shining path will never shine, and what’ll happen’ll be the awakening of the fifth great Chaos god out of humanity’s torment, that’s what terrifies the eldar, says Carnelian, ‘cos they know what it was like last time, when Slaanesh awoke, but this’ll be worse, this’ll be the end, there won’t just be the Eye of Terror bleeding corruption into the galaxy but the whole galaxy will become Chaos from end to end, and what other Illuminati like Carnelian are striving for is for the Numen to be born instead. How’s that to come about, you may be asking, why it’s by finding and protecting all the Emperor’s Sons what he conceived long ago long before his carcass got stuck inside the golden throne—’
‘Beware of blasphemy, abhuman!’
‘Take care!’
‘—and neither does his carcass know anything about them ‘cos they’re psychic blanks, which is how they’ve been able to hide out for so long—’
Captain Eternal... The wandering inquisitor... Folk-tales about certain mysterious figures who had appeared and reappeared throughout many millennia! Sheer folk-tales! Was this any verification of what Grimm was burbling?
Jaq reeled, dragging the squat a pace or so with him. He swayed, and Meh’lindi’s fingernail did indeed scrape Grimm in a sensitive part so that the little man howled appallingly.
Illuminati... Emperor’s Sons... Jaq had never heard of such persons. Did even the Ordo Malleus hold secret records about these personages, locked under a seal of heresy? How Jaq doubted it!
‘—that’s even though your blessed Inquisition hunts the Sons down, ‘cos you inquisitors think the Emperor’s Sons are just sinister mutants, so do the Sons themselves, but the Illuminati are seeking them out too and enlightening them, so that the Sons can join a special order of knights. The Illuminati call the wised-up Sons sensei, and these sensei are all becoming part of a long watch of knights who’ll intervene when the Emperor finally succumbs and Chaos tries to flood in, then I think they’ll take over from the Emperor because they all have His gene-runes in them, even though the Sons themselves are sterile, so you see there are all these offshoots of your Emperor scattered around the galaxy, that ain’t all, ‘cos when your Emperor fought the Chaos armies of Horus all those thousands of years ago before He was crippled in victory and put in His golden throne the only way He could win was to renounce all His soft tender feelings and purge these out into the psychoflux, into the warp, I mean, and these lost parts of Him are what’s trying to come together as the Numen, to bring us the shining path, that’s what the sensei knights will summon into being for salvation when the Emperor finally flakes it—’
Sensei knights! Jaq felt stunned. Before becoming part of the Ordo Malleus had he himself ever hunted down and extinguished one of those unacknowledged Sons of Him-on-Earth?
There had never even been a hint that such persons existed.
‘—the Emperor mustn’t ever leant about his Sons, the sensei knights, even if He could believe it when they’re all a blank to Him, ‘cos then He might relax His overwatch premature-like, and the sensei mightn’t be ready enough, you see, so the Numen might be aborted in the flood of Chaos—’
llluminati... Sensei knights... Was this a case of let the lie be so amazing that no one can doubt it?
‘—the rogue llluminati are impatient even though their own hydra scheme, is bound to take centuries, ‘cos you scheme, llluminati can be pretty fanatical after what they suffered at the hands of Chaos, getting possessed then managing to break free, and what scares other llluminati like Zephro Carnelian is the hydra cabal succeeding disastrously and all too soon before the long watch is ready to take over, that’s why the good llluminati are trying to sabotage the hydra plot and stir trouble, specially as secret inquisitors are involved in the plot, which is why Carnelian led you that dance—’
‘Enough!’ Jaq bellowed.
Supposing that these llluminati existed, and were capable of fanaticism on a cosmic scale, why then should one believe in “good” llluminati? In llluminati of purity who were presiding over a long watch which would benevolently render Him-on-Earth superfluous? This might be an even more devious plot than that of the hydra cabal! Supposing that these unprecedented llluminati existed...
In the absence of any Veritas, verification was impossible. Had Grimm spilled the truth-drug into the fuel so that when he was finally forced to babble there could be no check upon his claims? No check other than by finding Zephro Carnelian again. What the little man now believed wasn’t necessarily the truth at all.
‘When did you last meet Carnelian?’
Why, Grimm had already said. It was because of the eldar interest in Slaaneshi infestation of Luxus.
‘How did the eldar learn about Luxus Prime?’
‘Zephro said some of the eldar can see the future—’
Oh, so the Harlequin Man was “Zephro” now, an intimate of Grimm’s! Grimm had been willing to assist a human agent of the eldar even though with squattish disdain he viewed the aliens themselves as snobs.
‘How did you communicate with Carnelian?’
There would be a human courier now and then...
‘Did you know what the eldar are planning at Stalinvast?’ (Aye, at Jaq’s Stalinvast! The world he allowed to be destroyed.) ‘No no no, boss, honest—’
Let Jaq follow his nose, and if he became sufficiently illuminated, then he might be worthy of another taunting, perplexing encounter...
If Grimm had told Carnelian all about Jaq, then Veritas could have been mentioned. Jaq could almost hear the Harlequin Man’s mocking voice: ‘Oh, do get rid of any that’s left, there’s a good fellow, Grimm. Do bemuse our seeker for truth so that his wits will be really sharpened!’
Had Grimm ever told Carnelian about Meh’lindi impersonating an eldar? Adopting an alien guise sufficiently well to fool humans, at any rate... Futile to ask Grimm even under this devious species of torture!
‘It’s enough...’
Jaq released his hold on Grimm. He pulled the blindfold loose.
Grimm sagged, and almost fell. With his clumpy yet nimble hands he protected aspects of his nakedness at last. Then he peeped up and down himself, amazed to find that he was intact.
Meh’lindi stooped over him, so predatory.
‘Huh,’ she said delicately into his ruddy face. That tiny explosion of breath almost blew him over. Grimm grabbed for his drawers and his coverall. His teeth chattered. ‘It’s all in a g-g-good cause, boss—’
‘A good cause? Good?'
'The shining path, boss—’
Jaq sighed deeply. ‘Oh, you naive little man. The only cause is His-on-Earth’s. The cause of the ever-dying God-Emperor.’ Could Jaq truly believe that, either? In his incredulity was his belief. In his scepticism was his faith.
In the light of the electrocandles Grimm was florid all over. The smell of hot insulation seemed to be that of his own inflamed nerves and muscles and sweat. Grimm might have been reprieved from a roasting alive.
However, it was his recent tormentress whose flesh must soon be torn open. If fortune favoured her.
EIGHT
Assassin
FLECHETTES ZIPPED PAST the crouching trio.
Fleshettes might be a better name for these tiny darts. Their flanges spinning too fast to see, they would mince any flesh they met. The gang which had ambushed Jaq and Meh’lindi and Grimm was at least twenty strong. They had pinned the trio in a crater by the base of a vast gritty column. All of the gang were using handbows. They had to reload their handbows after each shot. However, the ambushers were firing turn by turn from behind mined walls, observing some sort of discipline.
A flechette had impacted in the back of Grimm’s flak jacket, and had torn through the reinforcing metal fibres. Momentum and spin had been lost, but the dart’s point pricked Grimm’s back irritatingly. He fumbled over his shoulder for the shaft. Lucky shot, or duff part of the jacket. Damnably the dart seemed lodged. His groping fingers couldn’t gain enough purchase. At least by now he could be sure that the dart hadn’t been doped with a paralytic poison.
With his other hand Grimm loosed shots from a boltgun inaccurately in the direction of those ruined walls: RAAARK-popSWOOSH.
The boltgun, a twin to Jaq’s, and plated in shimmery titanium embedded with silver runes, was named on the trigger guard: Emperor’s Peace. It belched explosive bolts.
This gun and Emperor’s Mercy – ancient, precious weapons, both of them must have been lovingly crafted long ago by some devout artisan of the Adeptus Mechanicus as part of a set celebrating the attributes of Him-on-Earth.
Before handing t
he weapon over to trustworthy Grimm from out of the armoury cell in Tormentum, Jaq had harangued the blunt-spoken squat lest he not treat the gun with appropriate respect.
A flechette had torn open Jaq’s glove of saurian-skin. Blood dripped. He was firing Mercy left-handed, though economically. He wouldn’t waste bolts on walls even if the explosions did blast out shrapnel and splinters. RAAARK-pop-SWOOSH. A flechette whined past his ear like an angry hornet.
Meh’lindi had caught a dart in her right arm. For several reasons she wasn’t wearing synthetic skin. If she was spotted by the wrong eyes, syn-skin might be misinterpreted. It might seem that an assassin of the Callidus shrine was seeking Tarik Ziz with deadly intent. Another reason was that her exposed flesh was destined to be cut – if she was fortunate.
She wore a long grey cloak over her assassin’s cling-tight tunic, and seemed to be some pilgrim.
The girth of the pillar by which they lurked was such that it could almost have swallowed Tormentum Malorum entire. Grainy in texture, and gloomy in the diffused light, the pillar soared upward two kilometres to a vault. There, mirrors were slung, reflecting distant daylight from optic tubes which originated outside the enormous building.
Other such columns marched into the distance. Many of these were hidden, except towards their summits, by the linked tiers of habitations braced around them. The vast shell within which the city heaped itself was a gargantuan cavern. Dilute illumination was leprous. Had light been brighter, the pillars might have shone golden. They were composed of sand – sand which had been bonded by some alien energy field of unknown nature. Thus had the cavernous structure sustained itself for ten thousand years. For a million years? No one knew.
The human city was named Overawe. All its people were parasitical, of necessity, within this unnatural cavern. Ordinary habitations in the open upon Darvash could be destroyed by sand tornadoes. The tech-knowledge and litanies for rearing independent hive-cities into the clouds did not exist upon Darvash. Consequently the hives of humanity sheltered within abandoned alien colossi.
