Dioneo met him halfway to the San Lorenzo parish. Niccoluccio hid his grimace, but Dioneo took no notice. Dioneo strode along with him, and took the opportunity to lecture Niccoluccio on politics.
“This city did not defend and support the papacy against the Ghibellines for so long to be ruled from Avignon as a reward. Our city is our own, not a… a French pope’s.”
Niccoluccio remarked, “The papacy doesn’t belong to any kingdom.”
Dioneo chuckled, bitter. “We made our choice to side with the papacy when the papacy was Roman. Whatever good men there were in the papacy have been choked by the stench of Avignon. Do you know how many whorehouses that city has? And how few monasteries and churches?”
Niccoluccio politely refrained from enumerating the brothels he and Dioneo had passed already on their walk today. He turned his attention elsewhere. At Sacro Cuore, he had always woken with the dawn. The sun was already halfway to its zenith, yet he still didn’t feel awake, and wasn’t sure he ever would.
Since he’d come back, every time he looked at Florence, he felt tired. The filth in the alleys and the runnels along the road made his skin itch. The smell of fresh-cooked meat from the marketplaces roiled his stomach. He hadn’t seen any plague dead today, but expected them at every intersection. If anything heralded the end of the world, it would be unburied bodies, not lights in the sky.
Passersby still gawked skyward. Eventually, they had to get on with the day, even if awed and subdued. By the time Niccoluccio and Dioneo reached the outskirts of the San Lorenzo parish, the markets were as bustling as the day before.
The skyline took shape as if from his memories. So much had changed about the city since he’d left, but not this neighborhood. He and Dioneo were only streets away from their father’s house. And there was Elisa Vergellesi’s home, with its multi-arched roof and trellised, ivy-spun windows. Further down the street, he would find the bakery that occupied the spot where the old grain market had been. He, Elisa, and Pietro had sneaked into the market at nights for their contests in love.
Elisa had been the daughter of a merchant who was often away, trading along the Grecian coast. She had been pretty, with pale skin and carefully braided brown hair. Pietro had had tanned skin, short blond hair, a handsome chin. Niccoluccio and Pietro had gotten it into their heads that they were play-fighting for her hand, and had kept up the illusion even after they’d grown old enough to realize what was actually happening.
Niccoluccio didn’t remember when he’d started to think that Pietro had been prettier. The first time he and Pietro had had each other had been in that grain market. Elisa had brought them there at night and declared that she needed to see them practice their arts of love before she would deign to let them touch her. When Niccoluccio and Pietro had sufficiently proven themselves, she would join them.
Niccoluccio felt light-headed, and had to close his eyes. The memories were heady and unwelcome, but he couldn’t push them away. He hadn’t turned to the monastic life to escape Florence. He’d turned to it to escape himself.
Niccoluccio’s memories of those nights kept him awake at night for years. He’d confessed his deeds. To his shock, his confessor had said that Niccoluccio had needed to scourge himself publicly, to bring Pietro and Elisa to the attention of the city authorities. Niccoluccio’s tutor had not been so severe, but had told him to seek monastic solitude. That was the only thing that could save him.
Niccoluccio shed most of himself in the monastery, but there would always be that rotten core at his heart. Monastic life had been helpful in other ways, but it couldn’t smother the flames of his youth or the sins of his body. He could no more divest himself of it than he could his bones.
It was a relief to reach the parish’s head church.
Dioneo showed him about. Niccoluccio would even have his own office, a shadowed space that reminded him of his cell in Sacro Cuore. Candles cast a respectful glow over it, and the mutterings of parishioners sounded like wind rustling trees.
Dioneo introduced the clergymen who would answer his questions. Then Dioneo announced he had an appointment he needed to keep. The clergyman disappeared as soon as Dioneo left. Niccoluccio was alone with the diocese’s account ledgers.
He read for hours. To his dismay, he discovered that Dioneo’s tirade against the papacy had some reason. The diocese had become significantly poorer over the past few years thanks to clerical taxes. The taxes had been collected in the name of crusade, but there had been no crusades in years.
The San Lorenzo parish and the Diocese of Florence had gone heavily into debt. Now the pestilence would prevent the diocese from raising the money to pay it off, let alone the new taxes.
Niccoluccio found one of the clergymen. The wisp-haired old man couldn’t quite meet his eyes. It took Niccoluccio a moment to realize that he was in awe. Niccoluccio hesitated a moment, and then told him to collect a count of the preachers employed by San Lorenzo and record their salaries. The old man nodded and scurried off.
Niccoluccio watched him go. If only he knew how unworthy Niccoluccio actually was. What would Habidah think of him, the real him?
He returned to his office. The noise from the parish hall grew louder as he read. When he stepped back out, the church had become full of parishioners, many of them looking toward his opening door. The closest stepped back with a respectful hush.
Dioneo had obviously not hesitated to share Niccoluccio’s story.
The nearest reached out to touch his sleeve. Niccoluccio drew back. People followed to the door, but, fortunately, didn’t chase him outside.
He kept his head down as he walked. At Sacro Cuore, he’d dared to believe he was beyond anger. His brother probably thought he was doing Niccoluccio a favor.
He flexed the muscles in the back of his throat, almost spoke to Habidah again. But she had her own problems. He didn’t need to run to her like she was his mother. Habidah was human, not someone to whom he could pray.
That he’d nearly started to meant that there was something deeply broken in him.
His chest still burned when he looked at Elisa’s home. Maybe, he thought, there always had been something broken. Sacro Cuore hadn’t changed a thing that mattered.
20
Habidah charged out of Meloku’s manor. She didn’t look at the stunned doorman, didn’t speak. Above, Meloku’s infrared shadow leaned over her window, almost in reverence.
Habidah scanned the sky as deeply as her augmented senses allowed, and shunted feeds from her team’s satellites into her visual cortex. The planarship could be whatever color it wanted. Right now it was deep-sea black. Aside from the stars it occluded, it left no trace. Even still, its shadow would excite astronomers around this world.
Habidah could only just make it out in other spectra. Ways and Means’ aft platforms glowed hotly in infrared, ebbing engine heat. The planarship drifted lazily across the sky in high semi-synchronous orbit. It was a dark mass of dozen-kilometer-long platforms studded with missiles, spaceplanes, detachable factories, and sensors. Nine of these segments were arranged in a three-by-three block. A tenth sat at the front. That one housed the amalgamate’s mind. Nothing human was allowed there.
Joao had already alerted the rest of the team. They were all already listening. She asked Joao, “Did you tell the university what’s happened?”
“I’ve included everything we know in our last report.”
“Heard back?”
“Not yet, but we only just sent it–”
“Open the communications gateway. Tell the university Ways and Means is here and one of our anthropologists is a spy. Demand an answer. Hell – send our reports to every academic institution you can think of. Journalists. As many people in the Unity as are willing to listen.”
Habidah chewed her lip as she waited. Then Joao said, “No answer.”
“Contact anyone in any news agency. Anyone who will answer.”
“Hold on. I’m getting an… it’s an automated answer. Our messages
back to the Unity have been ‘temporarily blocked due to a security emergency.’”
Habidah slammed the heel of her hand into the bricks of Meloku’s manor. Slim chance their last messages had gotten through, either. This was just the first time the amalgamates had admitted it.
Silence stifled what was left of the night. No one knew what to say any more than she did. She said, “Keep trying. Send an additional request to evacuate us. Whatever’s going on here, I’m sure I don’t want to be a part of it.”
“Requests for four individual evacuations, sent,” Joao said.
“Five,” Habidah said, without thinking.
Feliks said, “I doubt you’re going to get Meloku to come with.”
The gateway had closed. Ways and Means was all but invisible now. It had wanted to announce its arrival, though. Whatever plans the amalgamates had for this plane, she was sure its people wouldn’t want to be any more a part of them than she did.
She had a responsibility to help as many as she could, even if she could count them on one hand.
“Five,” she repeated.
Joao paused before answering. “All right. Requests sent. We got the same answer back.”
“Keep sending them.”
Habidah stared at Meloku’s manor. There were no shadows behind the illuminated curtains, no more infrared blurs close to the windows. Habidah walked in the opposite direction. The cobbles left her step unsteady.
There had to be a way to puzzle out what was happening. This world had no exceptional natural resources, no civilizations that should have gotten the amalgamates’ attention. Only a continent devastated by plague and war.
Maybe that had something to do with it. The amalgamates refused to cure their plague. Certainly now that Ways and Means was here, they had the resources to eradicate that plague any time it pleased.
She sat hard by a garden wall and folded her knees. A crawling sensation started at her neck and spread down her back. The amalgamates wanted these people dead. Or dying.
It was suddenly too obvious. Weak, wounded civilizations were easy to lead. Terrorists and tyrants on billions of planes could attest to that.
And Meloku had placed herself at the administrative center of a continent-spanning religion.
“They’re taking control of this continent,” Habidah said, both aloud and to her team.
Demiorganics didn’t convey tone very well, but they hardly needed help to capture Kacienta’s skepticism: “Why would they ever want anything as small as this world?”
Feliks said, “It’s not that far out of bounds. They’ve taken over other planes before. Incorporated them into the Unity.”
“Advanced planes,” Kacienta said. “Planes that had something to offer, some resource or technology.”
Joao said, “The only thing that makes this world different from trillions of others is the people. And, some atypical religious beliefs aside, the people aren’t that remarkable. You can find low-technology civilizations all over the multiverse.”
Feliks said, “They’re not remarkable. Just vulnerable.”
Habidah added, “And easily manipulated.”
“Manipulated to do what?” Kacienta asked. “What could they possibly do that the amalgamates couldn’t themselves?”
A long silence followed. Finally, Feliks ventured, “Work with people. The amalgamates don’t have the resources to take care of everybody themselves. That’s why they have agents. That’s why they said they sent us to begin with – to help them understand this world.”
Joao said, “Right.” Even his transmission had a nervous tremor to it. “The amalgamates usually hire out to take care of low priority tasks, like dealing with people. They have agents.”
“Or stooges like us,” Habidah said.
Joao asked, “So what would the amalgamates need the people of this world for?”
Habidah shook her head ruefully. She cast her gaze upward. Ways and Means was halfway behind a cloud, but she could see through that. There was no sign of further engine activity, and only modest thermal leakage. She could only think of one job large enough that the amalgamates would need a population like this plane’s.
She said, “To work for settlers.”
Feliks supplanted, “Colonists.”
Now even Kacienta seemed shaken. “What do you mean, ‘work for’?”
Habidah pulled herself to her feet, though she wasn’t sure where she was going. A hot, heavy pressure built in her chest. “Slave for. Indigenous servants.”
Feliks said, “A servile class.” Silence followed, as even he couldn’t seem to be able to follow the thought to its conclusion. “Maybe they’re even going to be taught to be willing.”
Habidah said, “Meloku put herself right at a center of power, started making an impression on its leaders. She told me she’d forecasted Ways and Means’ appearance. She set herself up as a prophetess. A good position to tell the locals of a race of saviors coming. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ways and Means was sending agents to every court on the plane.”
Meloku said, “A well-reasoned theory.”
Habidah glanced sharply to the manor. She had accepted, a long time ago, that the amalgamates could listen in to everything. This felt different. Meloku wasn’t an amalgamate. She was just an intruder.
“Go fuck yourself,” Joao advised.
Meloku ignored him. “I want to assure you all that it’s not as bad as you’ve made it sound. If the amalgamates intended to harm anyone on this plane, they would have already. What’s happening here will be as good for them as it is for us.” The amalgamates must have told her more in the past few minutes, or Habidah had guessed wrong and she’d known more than she’d said. “We have refugees all over the Unity. Some planes are still trying quarantines, evacuations. Their evacuees can’t return home. They need a new one.”
Habidah said, “A new home with people already living on it.”
Meloku said, “Again. If all the amalgamates wanted to do was conquer, they wouldn’t need to infiltrate its systems of power. All of the armies on this world couldn’t stand up to a single orbital defense drone.”
Feliks said, “Easier to convert than to conquer. More productive, even.”
“Exactly,” Meloku said, missing Feliks’ bite. “There are millions – billions – of people in the Unity who need new planes. Easier to bring them to a place with people to build their homes, staff their industries, be their neighbors. The amalgamates can do a lot, but they can’t make a world feel like home. By the time the evacuees arrive, we’re going to make sure the natives are ready to accept them.”
“‘Feel like home,’” Habidah repeated, trying to count how many horrors Meloku had elided. The natives would never be the equals of the settlers. “No, no, no. If that was all, you wouldn’t need us. You’d come here with only loyal agents. You wouldn’t need to trick anthropologists.” It clicked all in one moment. “Unless the amalgamates are stretched thin. They’re doing this on hundreds or thousands of planes, and don’t have enough agents to scout them. So they have to use dupes like us to fill the gaps.”
Kacienta said, numbly, “We helped you get a foothold into the plane, to understand the locals. That’s all we were ever here for.”
“Your reports have been sent back. They’re being read on plague-stricken planes even now. Nobody lied about that.”
“With references to your project censored,” Joao said. Meloku didn’t answer, which was as good as a confirmation. “That’s another thing I don’t understand. Why the security? Why block our calls? What does it even matter if the rest of the Unity knows about this?”
Once again, Meloku said nothing. Habidah doubted she knew the answer.
Feliks said, “The amalgamates have never been afraid of anyone in the Unity finding out that they’ve occupied other planes. It’s not as though ordinary people have ever had the ability to stop them. They’ve never been afraid of ordinary people before.”
Habidah said, “Then they must be afrai
d of something else.”
Before Habidah could finish her thought, Meloku said, “This conversation is over.”
“Then get off–” Habidah hadn’t gotten more than two words in before she realized the call had ended. Her sense of the others’ presence, always present in the back of her mind, had gone.
She tried to reestablish contact, without success. There was nothing wrong. Her satellite was still above the horizon. She had a solid connection to the field base’s NAI, and even saw each of her team members’ vitals when she checked. She just couldn’t speak with them.
She reached the shuttle and ascended the boarding ramp, but Meloku had been right. She couldn’t leave Avignon, not without revealing the shuttle in daylight. She was stuck here until nightfall.
After that – she didn’t know. The fire in her veins cooled. She doubted she’d be able to talk to the others until she got them face-to-face. Only Feliks had been at the field base. The others were scattered over Italy, France, and the Germanic states. If Meloku were to take control of the shuttle, she might not ever see her team again. But Habidah doubted Meloku would go that far. Meloku had cut them off out of spite rather than any real need.
She wasn’t afraid of Habidah or any of the others. They couldn’t threaten the amalgamates.
Feliks had been on to something, though. The amalgamates were afraid.
Habidah slumped into an acceleration couch. She watched the branches of the nearest trees sway against the shuttle’s cameras. All her life, she’d thought many things about the amalgamates, but never imagined that they could be scared. They were too powerful, too above her. Eternal.
The shuttle would only return her home. Its NAI refused to take her to search for Kacienta and Joao.
By the time it settled outside the field base that night, she’d come no closer to answers. She trudged out into the farmhouse. The lights lining the ramp down flicked on as she stepped through. If anything, it made the base seem more desolate. The viewwalls were off. The lights followed her from corridor to corridor.
Quietus Page 20
