by Love, John
Tournaments, however, remained oversubscribed.
Anwar fast-forwarded to the replay of his own combat. He was addressing his six opponents. His voice sounded strange because of the effect on his face of the Idmask, a nanobot injection which altered the configuration and proportions of his features. The alteration lasted only two hours, enough to mask him during a Tournament, and was random and different each time.
“You must genuinely try to kill or injure me. If I think you haven’t,” he kept his face straight, partly out of a liking for deadpan remarks and partly an effect of the Idmask, “Rafiq will do something worse than I ever could. Sue you for material non performance of contract.”
A couple of them smiled briefly, then it began.
A lot was written, some of it pretentious, about martial arts being a mirror for life. Anwar’s fighting style, however, exactly mirrored his life. It was cautious, measured, contained. He liked counterattack. He liked to come out of safety, strike, and return to safety—a pattern which characterized all his missions, and all his relationships such as they were. His maxim was to do nothing risky or unexpected—at least, by Consultancy standards, though to ordinary opponents he was frightening, inhumanly fast, and strong. Like most of The Dead, when he fought he stayed silent.
Original martial arts moves were transformed by The Dead into moves that were impossible for anyone without enhancements. Over the years The Dead had given these moves new names, often ironic or obscure, sometimes obscene. Like The Penumbra for Shadowless Kick, The Circumnavigator for Roundhouse Kick, The Flying Fuck for Heart Kite. And others, for which no previous equivalent move existed: The Verb, The Compliment, The Gratuity, The Abseiling Pope.
Unusually, the six opponents Anwar had drawn were all armed: a katana, a quarterstaff (Anwar’s own favourite weapon), various knives, even a flail. He circled among them.
His first instinct was to analyse them, to assess what they were; and it was wrong. His first instinct should have been to attack and disable them, because whatever they were, he outmatched them.
To any observer, he was a blur while they moved normally. To himself, seen through his own ramped-up senses, he moved normally while they were stationary or wading through treacle, expressions of shock at what he could do forming like geological processes on their faces, exclamations at his speed and strength oozing out of their mouths in low bass notes. But he’d only been starting cautiously, waiting to assess and counterattack.
Use speed first, his enhancement maxims told him. With speed, everything else is possible. The other “S” categories— strength, stamina, even skill—are secondary. But he didn’t follow the maxims. His speed was actually quite good, approaching that of the highest-performing Consultants, but his instinct was always to step back and take stock; it was why his rating was merely average. Still, it was enough to leave his opponents aghast.
He dodged the katana and knife-blades and quarterstaff by hundredths of an inch, which his retinal headups could measure and display if he wanted while he was still in motion. He didn’t want; he’d assessed their weapons skills to his satisfaction. The other weapon, the flail, was hardly worth his attention: fearsome to look at and dangerous if it connected, but slow and clumsy and telegraphed.
His private nickname for such opponents was Meatslabs, and it was always like this when he fought them. He could see, hear, smell, touch, and taste their inadequacy. And their shock, when he decided to let the one with the flail land a blow.Theflailwasasix-footclusterofsegmentedblackmetal whips, glistening like a tangle of liquorice. He let it land without apparently noticing. A good tactic: it set them wondering what he must be made of, inside. But it wouldn’t have impressed Levin or the others.
He tried some cautious counterattacks. His hands and feet, fingertips and toes (he fought barefoot) flickered out at nerve clusters and pressure points. Not yet to touch, but to see how well they defended. Quietly, carefully, he was assembling a kinetic dossier on each of them.
But he still couldn’t take full advantage. Something went wrong. One of his opponents, the one with the quarterstaff, suffered a broken collarbone: Anwar had mistimed a fingertip touch to a nerve-centre, and had to turn it at the last moment into a shuto strike to avoid killing him. The other five were on Anwar immediately, fired up by what he had done, and he wasted seconds adjusting to the new dynamic—slowing down to assess it, rather than using it to his own advantage. Then his speed reasserted itself, and he did to them what he’d failed to do to their colleague with the quarterstaff: landed precise fingertip touches to nerve centres and pressure points, enough to disable and immobilise, but no more. He finished them in thirty-six seconds.
There were nineteen Consultants. Fourteen took part in this Tournament. The other five were on, or recovering from,active missions. Of the fourteen, only Anwar suffered the indignity of injuring rather than disabling an opponent. It was a notable Tournament. The previous record was twenty seconds, broken first by Miles Levin (nineteen seconds) and then by Chulo Asika (seventeen). Asika’s display even outshone Levin’s. Asika, in the real world, designed and built theatre sets.
Anwar’s time was tenth out of fourteen. Even without his mistake, it would probably have been no better than seventh. Levin came up to him afterwards and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m Miles ahead of you, Anwar,” he said, as usual.
Levin was full of such remarks. Anwar privately nicknamed them Levin’s Levities. He often thought of good rejoinders, but only when it was too late. At Fallingwater, for instance, he could have said, “Don’t look so preoccupied. You don’t have the attention span.” He thought, How can two people so dissimilar develop a friendship? He smiled, as he knew Levin would do every time he asked himself the same question. The question contained the answer.
But he couldn’t distance himself from the mistake. He’d been replaying it obsessively for days. It mortified him.
3
The door opened, apparently automatically, into a large reception room. Levin walked in, immediately killing his shock and smiling a greeting at those inside.
His shock was caused by the room: a replica of the reception at Fallingwater. They know what I am. He parked the thought, and concentrated on the eight men waiting in the reception. They hadn’t surprised him at all.
Their suits were immaculate, almost as expensive as his. He could tell, by the drape of the jackets and trousers, where guns and knives and other weapons were variously stowed in shoulder and ankle holsters, forearm and wrist implants. He could tell by details of stance and mannerism where they had served: SAS, Green Berets, Spetsnaz, and so on. At least three of them looked vaguely like Marek. Not their build, just their faces.
Eight. Normally this would not have been outside his competence—any one of The Dead would be certain of taking six such people, and almost certain of taking eight. But they had an ease about them. They knew, as well as he did, that he could defeat them. But their ease suggested they had something else.
Among his enhancements was a sensitivity to changes in ambient air pressure, replicating that of seabirds and spiders.
It worked, but it didn’t help him.
He felt a shift in the air behind him, and realised that the eight were a diversion for the ninth man, who shot him quickly with a tranquiliser gun, then disappeared. He caught a glimpse of him: stocky, dark-haired. About mid-forties? Running to fat? No, he was seeing Mareks everywhere, and it didn’t matter because something else was happening which was impossible: the tranquiliser was actually working. It was a new compound, and slid easily past his molecular defences, which were designed to be infallible. He felt it taking hold of his motor functions. His molecular defences gathered and regrouped, then collapsed utterly.
Does Rafiq know about these people? was his closing thought as he crumpled to the ground. He has to. Rafiq knows everything.
4
Anwar settled back into his black and silver chair and pressed his wrist implant. Rafiq’s face reappeared on the inner
surface of his retina.
“…our hosts, the New Anglicans. When an environment changes, omnivores, not specialists, adapt best. The New Anglicans are omnivores, feeding over a broad spectrum, from religious near-fundamentalists to secular near-atheists.
They’ve taken spectacular advantage of a changing political, spiritual, cultural, and economic environment.
“The New Anglican Church was founded in 2025 as a counterweight to fundamentalist Islam, although by the time it appeared the need for it was already disappearing; main-stream Islam had effectively disowned fundamentalism. The New Anglicans flourished, however, because of their omnivorous robustness: their creeds and teachings could sound like all things to all people.
“Also, they were exceptionally well-run, with gifted and charismatic leaders. And still are. The current leader and Archbishop (unlike the Old Anglicans, they have only one Archbishop) is Olivia del Sarto.”
There was some more about her, much of which he already knew from the news channels: her abilities and background, her organisational skills, her likely allies and enemies. And her spectacular success in her five years as Archbishop, causing upheavals in religious fundamentalism. Anwar, because of his own intense dislike of fundamentalism, knew this part particularly well.
Fundamentalists would never completely go away. The
Islamists were marginalised but still powerful, and (because marginalised) harder to trace. Fundamentalist Christian sects were well-entrenched political lobbies, with good networks. So were the fundamentalist single-issue movements, like those against abortion or birth control, or those in favour of
Creationism or faith-based education. Frighteningly, some of them were setting aside their historical differences to make common cause against what they perceived as a more serious threat from the New Anglicans—a scabrous courtship between extremists, like earlier courtships between Nazis and
Communists. Olivia del Sarto called it the Batoth’Daa: the Back to the Dark Ages Alliance. Like one of my private nick-names, Anwar thought approvingly. It put them on the back foot, always having to deny it.
“So,” Rafiq’s briefing continued, “Olivia del Sarto reinvented the New Anglicans as a centre of rationalism, confident and assertive because they didn’t have the baggage of older churches like the Catholics or Old Anglicans. They could choose which doctrines to discard, which to keep. They became more like a political movement crossed with a socially-aware business corporation.”
Anwar paused the briefing as a thought returned to him, one that wouldn’t go away. It was related to the Tournament.
He’d carried out thirteen missions for Rafiq in seven years, and had killed only once, and then almost by accident: a bodyguard with an unsuspected heart condition, sent into massive shock by Anwar’s blurring speed. Speed was the key.
Consultants had a 90 percent advantage in speed over most opponents. In the other three “S” categories their advantage was 30 to 60 percent, but speed was the key. It made everything else possible.
The details of their enhancement and training were overwhelming—musculature, bone structure, internal organs, neurological processes, sensory abilities, all transformed—but the outcome was simple. They were beyond black belt, or its equivalent, in all the main martial arts, armed or unarmed.
As a by-product, they were also beyond Olympic standard in most athletic and field disciplines.
And the thought which had made him pause: there are only eighteen others like me in the world, and nine or ten of them are better than me. It nagged him and picked at him and obsessed him. Even more so since the Tournament.
Ironically, the shuto strike which broke his opponent’s collarbone had been a good one, well-executed and with just the right weight. He remembered the feel of the collarbone shearing—not shattering, but shearing cleanly—under the edge of his hand. His hands and feet, and elbows and knees, and any other striking surfaces of his body, could— if he willed them to—become strengthened locally at the molecular level at the point of impact, acquiring the density of close-grain hardwood. Most of his abilities were powered by enhanced organic processes, not by metal or machinery or electronics.
So, a good shuto strike: if he’d got it wrong, it would have continued through his opponent’s body and out at the shoulder-blade. But it was the result of an earlier mistake. And it left him with a lousy Tournament time. Which in turn left him with a mission involving mere bodyguard duties.
Except that this time, there was something different.
He gestured, and another immersion hologram, one he’d programmed himself, replaced his living room: the reception at Fallingwater. The colours and textures always relaxed him, and he needed relaxing. There was something ominous about this mission…No, not now. Later.
5
When Levin woke the reception room was still there. So was the Fallingwater decor. It wasn’t a hologram, he decided. The textures and colours, the weave of the stone-white fabric covering the sofas, seemed too tangible. No quivering round the edges. A real replica. And—the architect part of him kicked in automatically—not of Frank Lloyd Wright’s original, but larger. Scaled up, like Rafiq’s house. And the eight who’d been waiting for him (eight, not nine; the other one had gone) were lounging among the groups of sofas like Rafiq’s staff had been lounging when he’d last been at the real Fallingwater. No, the real replica Fallingwater. So this wasn’t a hologram, but a genuine replica, of Rafiq’s original replica. His head hurt, not because of any violence done to him, but with the strain of following his own thoughts.
He remembered that Anwar liked this interior. He, Levin, didn’t particularly: he thought interiors should be one thing or the other, either grandiose or minimalist, and this was neither.
He was sitting in one of the impeccable Frank Lloyd Wright armchairs. He had no choice. His wrists and ankles were tied. Also his forearms. Also his thighs. Also his torso. And his neck. The fact of being restrained neither surprised nor disturbed him, but the fact that he’d been restrained with monofilament disturbed him very much. As did the fact that even if it hadn’t been monofilament—even if it had been something he could break or loosen, like industrial cable or steel hawsers—whoever had tied it had done so with an obvious knowledge of how he might try to break free. There were blocks and local strengthenings in all the right places.
This seemed an incongruous place for torture—a cellar, though rather obvious, was the usual preferred location—but the prospect of torture didn’t disturb him. He could shut out his pain receptors, even wind down to death if irreparably damaged.
One of the eight people lounging on the sofas turned to him.“We know you have in built defences against torture.You won’t need them. We have no plans to torture you.”
After which they continued conversing among themselves.
It wasn’t acting. They were genuinely behaving as if he wasn’t there. Two of them got up and walked past him, and he caught a snatch of their conversation.
“A hundred years from now, none of this will matter.” “No. A thousand maybe, but not a hundred.”
The ease of their manner, as before. Talking to each other as if he wasn’t there. These people can’t be involved with someone like Marek. The conversation of the two sitting closest to him gradually resolved itself above the murmur of the other conversations, none of which seemed to have anything to do with him.
“My talk at the Johnsonian Society. Are you still coming?” “Yes, I’m looking forward to it. What title did you finally decide?”
“‘Mask: The Nature Of Individual Identity In Postmodern Literature.’”
“Hmm.”
“Yes, I know. Pretentious. It needs something to liven it up, maybe a witty opening. Something like ‘What happened to the I in Identity?’”
“Hmm…How about this? A man invents time travel. He goes forward to a minute after his death, so he can have sex with his own corpse.”
“Why only a minute?”
“So he’d still
be warm. You could leave that bit out if you want, but the rest of it addresses your theme about the self-referential nature of Identity.”
“Self-referential, yes. And the time-travel motif gives it a dimension of circularity.”
“Literally a dimension.”
One of the others detached himself from a group of two or three and strolled over to Levin.
“Sorry to cause you this discomfort, but we’ll release you when our colleagues get here. If you’d like anything to eat or drink, we’ll have to feed it to you. I know that’s a bit undignified…you may prefer to wait until our colleagues get here.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” Levin said.
“You’re right, I don’t. But our colleagues do. You’ll soon be meeting them.”
He’d never been in a situation like this before, never in fifteen missions. They’d done it so easily. When I get out of here, he told himself—it didn’t occur to him to say if rather than when—I can track at least two of them from their references to the Johnsonian Society. Anwar would be incandescent at this. Mere Special Forces, casually strolling into Doctor Johnson’s sacred territory of literary criticism?
But their ease. If he’d been free of the monofilaments, he could defeat them all. Not kill, just defeat. The Dead very rarely killed; with their abilities, they didn’t have to. But he wasn’t free of the monofilaments. And the tranquiliser, and the way they knew how to fasten the restraints. Who are these people? Does Rafiq know about them? He has to, Rafiq knows everything. In which case…No. Don’t go there.
6
Anwar pressed his wrist implant and Rafiq returned to the inside of his retina.
“The Church’s founders come straight out of urban mythology. The Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Atlanticists, and others who won’t identify themselves.
