Electric Church ac-1

by Jeff Somers

  I shrugged. We were sitting in the ruined building with three dead cops around us, having a chat. Marin said the hover wouldn’t bother us, and I saw no reason to not believe him. “I didn’t have a choice,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Bad idea. Anyway, he names you, and suddenly every System Cop in the world is looking for you-sure, you’re wanted for fifteen unsolved murders back in New York, Cates, but let’s be honest for a moment. Kill all the nobodies you want, and the SSF files your name for future reference. Bump a person of quality on the sidewalk and the SSF will spare no expense in bringing you to justice.”

  I scrubbed my grimy face with my bloody, torn-up hands. “Are you watching out for me, Marin?”

  He grinned, and then the grin shut off in a blink. “No. I came looking for you. It was pretty easy to find you by listening in on the SSF chatter.” He paused, his hands coming to a sudden stop. “You’ve got to move. Soon. Tonight, tomorrow.”

  “What’s going on?”

  He racked a shell into the chamber and stood up, gathering his kit. “Just move.” He looked around at the semicollapsed room. “Impressive, Mr. Cates. I have to admit I didn’t think you’d still be alive. See if you can manage to stay alive for a few more days.”

  With a brilliant, snapshot grin vaguely in my direction, he began walking for one of the sunlit doorways. I just stared at him.

  “Goddammit, what’s going on!?” I finally managed to shout.

  He didn’t turn back, and in a moment he’d escaped into the sunlight. The King Worm had come to personally shoot one of his own subjects and urge me into action. I slumped back against the wall and sat for a moment, speechless.

  To a tinny serenade of Mr. Kieth! Authorized visitors! Mr. Kieth! Authorized visitors! I limped into the Assembly Room. Moving past the hogtied and gagged Marilyn Harper as her red, angry eyes tracked me, I stopped in front of my team and looked from face to face, pausing on Canny Orel’s, who looked like he’d spent the afternoon shopping for grooming supplies. He grinned at me, and it was such a natural, human grin after Dick Marin’s insectlike mandibles that I almost felt affectionate toward him.

  “What’s your real name?” I asked. I didn’t really expect an answer. He just smiled.

  “We don’t go easy, do we?” he said.

  I nodded. “Like roaches. How’d our shopping go?”

  Canny nodded. “Mr. Materiel came through on all our items.”

  Milton and Tanner gestured over their shoulders at a large shape next to our hover, covered by a canvas sheet. “The Vid hover as requested,” Milton said sourly. “Was a bitch to get a hold of, by the way. And it’s hot-won’t stay stolen for long, if you ask me.”

  Beside her, her twin mimicked her grim nod perfectly.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said, looking at Ty. “We won’t need it long. Mr. Kieth?”

  He smiled. “Success, Mr. Cates. We’re in business.”

  I sighed. “All right. I’m going to get cleaned up. Don’t go anywhere. We’re moving tomorrow, so it’s time for a briefing.”

  There was a rustle of commotion at this. As I turned for the kitchen area, Orel’s manicured hand snaked out and slowed me.

  “Can I accompany you?”

  I shrugged. He fell in beside me and walked with his hands in his pockets, head bowed, studying the floor.

  “I am impressed, Mr. Cates, with the fact that you returned alive this evening. I distinctly recall at least two System Police breaking from the rest and pursuing you.”

  “Three,” I said, wincing every time I put weight on my left knee. I hesitated for a second. “Whoever you really are, were you really a member of the Dъnmharъ? Without answering either way about your actual identity.”

  “Without answering either way,” he said without looking at me, “yes, I was.”

  The Dъnmharъ; if the organization had still existed, I had no doubt that they would have been on Dick Marin’s short list. I was no starfucker, but there was a thrill to the thought that I was so close to something like that.

  This was just a preamble. In the kitchen, I peeled off my sweaty, ruined coat and shirt. I let some brown water run from the spigot and began splashing it everywhere, trying to scrub the grime off. The endless number of cuts and scrapes and abrasions stung, several reopening and oozing blood.

  “What’s on your mind, Mr. Orel?”

  I heard him pull himself up onto the large crate and imagined him sitting there, legs crossed, the perfect gentleman, complete with faux-English accent on top of his Philly brogue. I was acutely aware of having turned my back on someone who might have been trained by Cainnic Orel himself.

  For a moment, he sat there and said nothing.

  “I am a tired man, Mr. Cates,” he finally said. “I do not enjoy this life-I do not enjoy fighting for every breath, or living in a world without rules. Those are the choices we’re given-live under the boot of the System, or live in a world where every other man is trying to kill you. I would have it otherwise.” He looked up at me. “That is why I chose to deal with you, as a man, instead of simply eliminating you.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “It wouldn’t have been that easy.”

  He smiled, apparently amused. “No, I now believe it might not have been. You’re a man of honor, Mr. Cates. You live with rules. I respect that. I envy it, because I long ago realized how impractical such thoughts are. I wish I could live by your rules. But I am an old man, now, and I have seen more than you. Rules are only as good as the people who obey them. If no one else is playing by your rules, no matter how good they are, what are they worth?”

  I shook my head. “Just because we live in shit doesn’t mean we have to act like it.” I concentrated on scrubbing, a knot of anxiety forming in my stomach. “You’re leading up to something, old man. Just get on with it.”

  There were a few seconds of silence.

  “The Harper woman,” he said slowly. “What do you plan to do with her?”

  I shrugged, digging glass out of a deep cut on my elbow, the brown water in the stained and cracked sink turning purple. “I’m not planning to marry her, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  There was a long delay before he spoke. “She can’t walk out of here.”

  I kept scrubbing. “Fuck you.”

  “Cates, you know I’m right. She knows far too much-she’s seen the Monk, she knows Gatz is a psionic. She can’t live.”

  I saw no reason to tell him the SSF already knew about both. “Fuck that. I didn’t bring her here. You made that happen. Once this is over, it won’t matter anymore. We can hang on to her for that long.”

  “It won’t matter anymore?” He laughed. “Come now, Mr. Cates. That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  I shut the spigot off and turned to him, dripping pink water. “There’s a lot you don’t know. About me, about this job. About our patron.”

  He nodded. “Educate me, Mr. Cates. I will not have her out there, with my face, with my involvement in this. This is not some Tin Man, who, if it did send a scan of my face to Mother Church for OFR, would discover that my name is Terrance Nynes and that I’ve been dead for six years. This is not some piece of shit like yourself, this is someone with money, with a face on the Vids. With the power to cause me trouble. Understand? You people do not exist anyway. No one outside of this room and your debt-circle gives a shit whether you live or die. No one will avenge you. Her, she has people. She has money. She has social standing-the SSF would actually investigate. She cannot walk out of here alive.”

  We stared at each other for a moment. I heard the sound of water dripping, the distant murmur of everyone discussing their lot in life in the Assembly Room. His lined face was expressionless, his eyes flat. I stood half-naked in front of him with my hands balled into fists.

  “No, Dъnmharъ,” I said slowly, biting off each word. “We may be a lot of things, but we need to have rules. She hasn’t done either of us wrong.” I reached for my shirt and began drying off, leaving almost
as much dirt on me as I’d just washed off. “This fucking world, this System-it’s brought us all low. But you can plant your feet, Mr. Orel. At the last rung of the ladder you can refuse to take that last step.”

  We stared at each other for another moment, and then he smiled, a smooth ripple across his face. He laughed and slid off the crate, clapping me on a damp shoulder. “Ah, Mr. Cates-you forget. I remember the world before Unification better than you. I remember it well.” He started back toward the Assembly Room. “And it was not what you imagine it to have been.”

  “All right,” I said. “Shut the fuck up and listen.”

  I looked around at everyone. I hardly knew them, as people. As criminals, they were talented. Ty Kieth sat with his back against one of his black boxes, absorbing its radiation and looking peaceful, his round head starting to grow a light fuzz of stubble. Milton and Tanner sat back to back, supporting each other, grizzled and sinewy, the least feminine women I’d ever met. Canny Orel sat near Ty Kieth, arms crossed, looking comfortable and inscrutable. Kev Gatz sat on the floor, facing the Monk, his glasses in place and looking asleep-as usual. Brother West was in stasis.

  Marilyn Harper stared at me unblinkingly, pale and disheveled. It looked like the thick black tape we’d used on her mouth was going to be a bitch to get off. Milton and Tanner had bitched loudly that she should be sequestered, so she couldn’t hear anything that might be used against us. But I knew that if I hid her away somewhere we’d find her dead soon enough, with Orel walking around whistling, hands in pockets, looking innocent, and I knew that it didn’t matter what she might do after we did this. We would either all be dead, or we’d be rich and our records expunged by the King Worm. I was betting on the former, but it all equaled not worrying about Marilyn Harper.

  “We’re a go for tomorrow. Mr. Gatz and I have developed a plan for penetrating the Electric Church compound at Westminster Abbey. Once inside you all have support roles. I will locate the target and terminate him. The rest of you will handle security response and keep our escape route clear. Pay attention here. Being able to execute this plan will be the difference between collecting the money I promised you and getting killed.”

  I waited, but no one said anything. Trying not to think about the real possibility that I didn’t know what I was doing, I could hear the Droids humming this way and that, on whatever errands Kieth had programmed them for.

  I nodded and clicked a small remote control, and a three-dimensional building plan appeared in the air next to me, a crumbling facade wall shooting up from the ground, one tower and one broken stump, no other walls. Everything was underground, sinking deep below.

  “Westminster Abbey,” I said. “Whatever the fuck it was, it’s now the headquarters of the Electric Church. All local conversions take place here, and administration of the Church worldwide is centered here. Dennis Squalor, founder and high priest of the Church, resides here. Security is very tight. Long story short, only Monks and converts get through the front entrance. All the converts who go through that gate are already dead.”

  I let them chew on that for a second and then clicked the remote, and a small room inside the Abbey lit up.

  “The front entrance is officially the only way into the Abbey. But it isn’t the only way in. These building plans are black market info. No one is supposed to have them.” I pointed to the red square. “This is the Press Room, where the EC holds its press conferences. Squalor himself appears there once in a while to smile and answer a few softball questions inbetween quoting the fucking Mulqer Codex. The Monks get in to the press room, friends, so there must be a way into the complex proper from the Press Room. And intense scrutiny reveals that there is.”

  The whole place was quiet. They were all professionals, and they were soaking up the details. They all knew they’d need them later. I cleared my throat.

  “It won’t be quite that easy. If we just force our way in through the Press Room, they send in the cops-and not the Crushers, either, but the officers and the Stormers-and pin us down, and it’s just a fight. We’re not going to fight our way through the whole fucking complex; it goes down pretty deep underground. At least a dozen levels below ground, covering much more square footage than the aboveground component.

  “So,” I finished, “we’re going to employ a two-pronged attack. Kieth and I have established that only a Monk can get through the front entrance. You’ve all seen what Mr. Gatz can do when he puts his mind to it. All Monks are controlled by the EC through a behavioral modification chip-the chip that captures his independent thought and keeps the crazies at bay-and we’ve found we can’t replicate and replace the chip in time, and we may need some flexibility, so Mr. Gatz is going to Push Brother West, acting as a substitute for that chip. Brother West will be coherent and independent for a short while after that-longer than most because he will be a volunteer. Brother West will bring me in through the front entrance, quietly, as a convert.

  “Simultaneously, the rest of you will be in the Press Room, posing as Vid reporters. The Vids are always in there filming for the features they do on the Church, so it won’t seem out of place. We have all the equipment necessary. Mr. Kieth will make some modifications to the Vid equipment to make it more useful than mere props for us, and I’ve identified a weak spot in that room that should allow you to enter the complex proper.” I indicated a spot on the plans.

  Tanner squinted at me. “So if we can just get in through the Press Room, why bother slipping you in the side?”

  “We have one shot at this. If we rely entirely on infiltration and I am discovered, that’s it-I can’t possibly fight off every Monk in the place, not to mention whatever automated defenses they have. So we’re not even going to bother with stealth. Your role will be as diversion. Cause a ruckus. Draw their attention. While their response is concentrated on you, I will be sneaking in-unobserved, I hope. I will complete the job, from the other end-with me coming in with the converts, and you making noise, they won’t think to look for anything else. You make noise, and when you get the word or can’t hold out any longer, you extract yourselves.”

  No one seemed pleased with this.

  They absorbed this. Kieth studied the Monk serenely. Gatz was staring at me from behind his dark glasses, and it made me nervous. Milton and Tanner huddled close, whispering. Canny Orel continued to just smile softly at me, and as I looked he raised both hands and mimed applause.

  Marilyn Harper just stared at me, nostrils flaring, somehow expressing rage without moving more than her nose.

  “Wait a fucking second,” Milton suddenly shouted, turning back to me. “You’re going in with the Tin Man as a convert?”

  I nodded.

  “Aren’t all the converts dead?”

  I nodded again. “Yes.”

  XXVII

  HURRY UP NOW, IT’S TIME

  00001

  It was bright and dry outside for the first time since I’d arrived in London, a beautiful day of light and breezes. I hadn’t slept the night before, as much from nerves as the million stinging cuts I’d inflicted on myself while crawling through the ruins of old London. It wouldn’t have been wise to go outside, since I was temporarily the most famous criminal in the System, so I just rattled around the huge abandoned factory all night, alternately trying to sleep and cleaning my gun, getting to know its action and heft. When morning came, cheerful and clear, I didn’t feel tired at all. My entire existence had changed in a span of days, and it was all coming down to one evening.

  I’d known for a while now that I’d somehow exceeded my allotted time, lived too long. I was part of a dead generation, people born before Unification. Nothing made sense to us, even if we couldn’t quite remember the Earth before. It was genetic memory, or something subconscious. Unification hadn’t been our choice, and a lot of us struggled against it. We knew everything was wrong.

  Kids, they didn’t know. They’d been brought up in this bullshit, and they thought it was natural, normal. And they’d taken over t
he world, because most of the people my age were dead.

  There was no coffee, and precious little food aside from the Nutrition Tabs Milton and Tanner had stolen from poor fuckers coming off the Dole Line. They kept you going, but in the first light of morning there was no physical joy in swallowing a tablet. I chewed mine thoughtfully, trying to make it contemplative. It didn’t work. I wandered into the Assembly Room with an extra tab and a cup of dirty water.

  I paused in front of Brother West, who just stood there staring. I wondered what he thought while just standing there in stasis, if he tried suicide by mental command, or just chewed over his lot. His steady, digital voice still rang in my ears: Kill me… it is all I wish. Gatz sat in front of the Monk, slump-shouldered, staring up steadily. I hadn’t said a word to Kev. I didn’t know what to say.

  After a moment I turned to Marilyn Harper. She looked bleary and wrinkled, her hands and bare feet white and cold from her bonds. I knelt in front of her and set the cup on the floor. For a moment I just studied her, her watery eyes staring back at me defiantly. Then I leaned forward, took hold of an edge of the black tape, and tore it off in one sudden motion, slapping my free hand over her raw lips immediately to cut off the scream.

  “No talking,” I said as she convulsed, trying to pull away from my hand. “Harper? Ms. Harper, look at me. Look at me.”

  She calmed and stared at me, nostrils flaring. I wagged a finger in front of her. “No talking, okay? You say a word, I’ll make sure you don’t get to speak again for a very, very long time. We understand each other?”

  She nodded slightly. I pulled my hand from her face. An angry red square remained where the tape had been. She breathed heavily through her nose, staring at me in a combination of anger and terror. I held up the Nutrition Tab. “Breakfast. You’re probably starving. It isn’t poison, it isn’t drugs. You don’t want it, just shake your head. But I doubt anyone else is going to bring you anything.”