One of the Sons stands on top of a nearby building, right in our line of sight but out of the area covered by the recs. He points a rifle so large it needs a tripod at my sister. The shot will leave nothing of her, an absence I can barely imagine.
I realise with terrible cold clarity that I cannot let Ursula die.
“Do you approve, Ursula?” Hobb repeats, smiling.
“Say yes,” I whisper.
“Yes,” she says without thinking.
Hobb’s eyes flare in delight. 88 Rabian stares at Ursula, then at me and then at the wood piled around his feet.
“Please,” he says, “Ursula, please! I didn’t hurt you-!”
Hobb points something at the wood and it begins to smoke, a rare phenomenon in Diamond City. The herbal smell is strange and evocative. Barely comprehensible impressions of the Old World swirl among it; the sensuous freedom, the richness, a vast and terrible destruction…
88 Rabian coughs and then coughs again as the smoke thickens. He tries to turn and look up at Hobb but the restraints prevent him.
“Hobb, this is wrong,” 88 Rabian says, “you know this is wrong.”
To my surprise, Hobb looks stricken as if wrestling with some frightful decision.
“My friend,” he says, “the means of your unfortunate creation are not your fault. But you are an abomination and must be dealt with.”
The burning wood begins to snap as a red and yellow glow lights the dark recesses of the pyre.
“I am not an abomination,” 88 Rabian says, “I am human, just like you.”
“You are not human,” Hobb says, “and you are not like me.”
Flames writhe up through the wood.
“Where is the humanity in this?” 88 Rabian says, his voice close to cracking as his eyes stream from smoke or terror or both.
“Where indeed?” Hobb says softly. “I am not an evil man. None of us here is. We seek to avoid violence in service to our God. But our plight requires swift and drastic resolution before we are all doomed.”
“Doomed to what?” 88 Rabian shouts. “Being different and living together?”
“We seek more than mere existence,” Hobb says. “We seek purity and thus sublimation. It is the only bearable destiny in this realm.”
The flames creep closer to 88 Rabian.
“No!” he screams. “NO!”
“There are times when to do great good one must do dreadful things,” Hobb says. “Then, when the great good is achieved the dreadful things are transformed and made precious. They are revealed as sacrifices. The sacrifices then protect the great good in the same way as these diamond walls protect us.”
Fire rushes through the wood and it seems inconceivable that a human being is in close proximity to such a force. 88 Rabian goes to speak again but he is out of time. The flames begin to burn him; he screams and the sound rises with hysteria.
The Son keeps his gun aimed at Ursula as the other Sons begin to chant again. I make myself watch the pyre as punishment. How did any of this happen?
88 Rabian’s clothes catch fire and burn off with astonishing speed. His eyes bulge grotesquely and his whole body goes red as it tries in vain to dump the terrible heat. I wish I could somehow suck the agony off him and take it myself but all I can do is hope he dies quickly.
88 Rabian’s skin crackles and spits as the flames move up him. His beautiful dark hair becomes a set of weird bright flames, like a moving crown. He thrashes in the restraints, his expression one of such horror it is barely human. Soon it actually isn’t human, just a blackened mask whose melted eyes form thick tears that sizzle to nothing.
As he burns the smell reaches me. Fatty and acrid, it disgusts even more for not being that unpleasant. Thankfully, the flames roar up to cover 88 Rabian’s final moments in a searing yellow bulb too bright to look at.
The Sons’ chant rises with the flames, massive and unrelenting. Behind the roar of the fire the screaming stops and is replaced with a faint liquid pop. Ursula moans beside me. This time no one tells her to shut up.
Around us, the people on the floor shudder in their nightmare. Hobb stands above the pyre with his head bowed and eyes closed, seemingly immune to the rising heat. I can’t blink as the flames begin to die and I see there is nothing left of 88 Rabian at all.
16
The Centrian cruiser stinks of burned flesh. Everything does; I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of the smell. Ursula stares at the empty seat opposite her and retches sporadically but nothing comes up.
I feel doomed and repulsive; I can’t bear to think about myself. The two images scorched into me are that poor burning man and the gun, almost an entity in itself, pointed at my sister’s head.
I expected our troops to wreak suitable revenge on the Sons but by the time the first Centrian cruiser arrived Hobb and his followers had gone. I can’t understand why only six guards and three cruisers came to get us. The other two were medical ships for the original guests, many of whom are now insane.
The same condition cackles at the perimeters of my own mind, like cold fire. Worryingly, there is a strong temptation to cross over and acquiesce in it.
The cruiser drops but touches down gently and I focus on what’s outside for the first time in the journey. The cruiser has landed in a large room, roughly pyramidal in shape. There is a circular entrance halfway up one wall through which I vaguely remember us flying.
A blizzard of adverts tells me we’re in MidZone although there are no other vehicles or assemblies in sight. A single building nearby is a rectangular break in the otherwise empty floor and despite the ads that flicker around our cruiser the place is deserted.
One of the guards turns to Ursula and me.
“Get out,” he says.
“What?” I say. “Why?”
“You are no longer employed by Centria,” the guard says. “You are both exes.”
The cruiser door opens. Ursula looks at it dully and then looks at me. I don’t think she heard.
I go to check my ifarm but it’s gone. Instead, I just have a good old standard Accumulated Experience Realm Account the same as everyone else in Diamond City. I remember the mission files and look for them. Like my kilos and personal messages, they have defaulted to my Aerac. Relief is a warm point, quickly extinguished.
“Ursula,” I say.
“Now,” the guard says.
The other guards look at us. Ursula shakes her head and her expression doesn’t change. I reach for my sister but everything seems slow, perhaps to allow time for things to return to normal. Instead three guards grab Ursula and throw her out of the door.
My disbelief is such that she seems to float in the air for a while, as if even gravity is astonished. Ursula lands clumsily and falls over. I jump out after her and the cruiser lifts off away from us. I barely register the movement as I try and haul Ursula to her feet.
Tears drip off her face as she looks at the ads. None of them feature her; even Vingo is now promoted by another girl, whose hair is light brown.
“Oh…” Ursula says.
Her gaze takes in the ugly building nearby and the walls that slope over us.
“No,” she says, “no…”
Fortunately, we are still alone as far as I can see although I don’t know how long that will last.
“Come on,” I say. “Get up.”
She gets her legs under herself and pushes but leans on me, which is quite a weight. I don’t care. I put my arm around her.
“How much money have you got?” I ask her.
She finally focuses.
“My ifarm is gone,” she whispers.
“I know, mine too. Use your Aerac instead. Now how much?”
“Uh… 960,341 kilos,” she says.
“That’s good, that’s a lot.”
“It was less, but my room, all my stuff…”
Ursula was more attached to her home than I ever was to mine. Everything in Centria we bought via the ifarm, from our furniture to Ursula’s ‘art’, wi
ll have been automatically absorbed and the kilos transferred to our Aeracs. It’s as if we were dead, or had never even been there.
“We need to get out of sight before someone sees us,” I say.
Ursula shakes herself.
“Where are we?” she asks.
My Aerac tells me we were travelling away from Centria, not towards it. We are now on the border between MidZone and the Outer Spheres, which explains the lack of company. It makes sense; Centria can get us right out of the way before we mess anything else up.
“Nowhere good,” I say. “Someone would have seen us land. Let’s move.”
I pull her arm and she follows me to an exit from the pyramidal chamber. I activate the n-gun and slowly lead Ursula along a corridor. We stop at the end and look out into another large, empty chamber, this one cylindrical.
“Gif us somewhere to get inside, quickly,” I say.
Ursula blinks and frowns. After a moment a square diamond building grows next to a wall nearby. The building is unadorned and looks like part of the structure behind it, which should avoid attracting attention.
We walk in and the door grows up behind us. Ursula darkens the walls until the lighting is low and gifs a large bed in the middle of the room. She stumbles over and gets in to lie on her side stiffly, as if she is injured. I stare at her, trying to remember what I’m supposed to do.
I realise there’s nothing. My career is over and so is Ursula’s. Our family is shattered and our lives tainted with horror, part of which we caused. The pressure of life in Centria has been relieved but I don’t feel free. Instead I feel hopeless, an absence that is paradoxically like a huge weight.
All I can do is follow Ursula to the bed and get in beside her. She’s got her back to me so I put my arm around her and she holds my hand. We stay like that for a while. Eventually, Ursula lets go and I raise my head to look across her cheek at one closed eye. She has passed out. I hold her tighter, helpless and terrified.
17
MURDERING WHORE
Delete
I’M GOING TO BEAT YOUR-
Delete
GOOD JOB, BLANKS ARE FILTH-
The day we got here I reset my Aerac to deflect calls and messages. From time to time I check to see if things have calmed down. They haven’t. More messages trickle in, which look like the same kind of thing.
The unanswered call to Dad is still open and Mum’s monitor shows her condition is unchanged. Since there isn’t anyone else I want to hear from I delete every message in my Aerac and set it to reject all communication.
I lie back on the bed and stare at the cubic interior of our new home, which would fit into New Runcton with depressing ease. Beside me, Ursula is unconscious with her face towards the wall. The warmth and movement of her sleeping body are the only constants now.
We haven’t spoken much in the last three days. One or other of us will wake, press her naked foot to the floor and let the Basis dispense dreamless oblivion. Sleep hasn’t made what we saw any more bearable though, or our involvement in it any less revolting.
Dad’s files must have something on Hobb for Mum to have warned me about the Sons of the Crystal Mind. I scan the mission files in my Aerac for Hobb’s name and discover a document about him by Mum:
RESEARCH NOTE
There is very limited information about Thom3 Hobb in-Aer, probably the result of a full personal info clean. [Note: check for traces to indicate who is responsible – not Hobb, it is unlikely to have occurred to him].
Information sources that were discovered include: personal and medical files from Communal Health In Limited Dependents (C.H.I.L.D.) formerly $$$labour, formerly The Rascal Club 6, formerly The Rascal Club 5, formerly The Rascal Club 4 (etc.) and related organisations.
EARLY LIFE
Hobb grew up on a kid farm, which is essentially an orphanage/workhouse. Kid farms are always being sold and resold, hence numerous name and organisational changes. Sometimes owners are kind and well meaning, other times not. Children are therefore educated depending on what is in vogue at the time and what the latest owners plan to do with their new workers.
The prevailing culture on a kid farm is one of constant change, bullying and boredom. From accounts by Hobb’s kid farm contemporaries, it is clear that the regular regime changes were regarded as both unnecessary and infuriating. This continuous flux could explain Hobb’s need for an absolute, uncomplicated belief system.
Hobb’s life was difficult but he was never a ‘sub’. The impression gained from my research is that he thought he was meant for better things. However, he didn’t seem to know what these ‘better things’ were or how to get them. He appears to have expected it to happen just because he was quite smart, without being exceptional. In his mid-twenties, something happened to change all of that.
PREJUDICE AGAINST BLANKS
The first Blanks were grown in the floor as adults, which was seen as preferable to wasting years growing and educating children. However, the mysteries of human psychology are such that people need to go through childhood before they can become properly functioning adults. They also need the physical experience of growing. Although later generations of Blanks were allowed to develop naturally, the first Blanks were not.
Another misconception was that Blanks could be clones but even the Basis cannot replicate identical human beings. It can simply create an environment for human embryos to grow, do the job of the placenta and ensure the judicious release of nutrients. The first Blanks suffered from part-replacement of this process with the use of stimulants, strength hormones, hypno-learnings etc.
As a result a race of very strong, hyper-educated psychopaths was created. They wreaked havoc across a large section of Diamond City before most were exterminated at the climax of a very expensive war. [Note: some of the original Blanks are still around. Wisely, they keep to themselves now.]
One of the casualties of this conflict was Hobb’s kid farm, where Hobb still lived and worked having married one of the other kids as often happens with institutionalised people. He was not particularly happy, but he wasn’t poor or desperate either.
His feelings about the Blanks destroying the kid farm and killing his wife are ambiguous. Anecdotal evidence indicates he had fantasised about what he could achieve without her. In a single stroke he not only had that freedom, which inevitably offered fewer opportunities than he expected, but also a cause. Inspired, he sublimated his confusion and guilt about his wife and projected it onto a perfect enemy.
THE SONS OF THE CRYSTAL MIND
The Sons of the Crystal Mind were originally the remnants of Hobb’s kid farm. However, over time the women were subjugated as ‘breeders’. The cause of this prejudice is probably Hobb’s resentment towards being an orphan, or abandoned. Details of his parents are not known but the fact his movement is called the ‘Sons’ suggests Hobb is claiming some kind of birth heritage.
Renaming the Basis the ‘Crystal Mind’ makes it an abstract, unemotional deity that thinks but does not ‘do’. This description is in fact the opposite of the Basis, which is a nanotechnological tool linked to a financial communications system. Such distortion implies Hobb sees the Crystal Mind as an idealised parent figure. That his deity is harsh and demands sacrifice to achieve ‘purity’ is a reflection of Hobb himself.
So Hobb doesn’t know who he is. I can relate enough for a plan to assemble itself with little conscious input.
I will spread a rumour in-Aer that Hobb himself is really a Blank, the worst of the original psychopaths. The notion is so outrageous it’s actually likely. I will also suggest that the Sons of the Crystal Mind are not a cult at all but dedicated instead to extortion.
I start to put the story together and then hesitate. Ursula and I have served our purpose to the Sons of the Crystal Mind; they will leave us alone now. If Hobb finds out it’s me behind a lie about him…
I remember the extraordinary vix link with Dad on his last mission. I remember too how Mum dealt with the attackers:
with a diamond spike, with acid. Filled with dark inspiration I set to work on Thom3 Hobb.
The Aerac is much less cluttered than the ifarm and I realise the latter’s complexity was another distraction, a means to keep Centria occupied. I sense Ellery’s influence behind it and use my experience of working with her as I plant key concepts of the Hobb rumour in-Aer. There are plenty of opportunities; the Sons are a source of near universal revulsion and people quickly pick up on the story.
Mum’s document is still open and there is a final paragraph:
It is not certain whether the Sons of the Crystal Mind would continue to exist without Hobb. However, the Sons have an income far in excess of the usual contributions from supporters, which suggests well-hidden links to big companies. There may be connections with Centria and definitely with VIA Holdings. Evidence indicates the latter may even use the Sons of the Crystal Mind as a proxy army to enable the spread of commercial influence.
I sit up at that last sentence. The meet and greet was Balatar Descarreaux’s idea. What if the Sons’ attack was too?
“Ursula,” I say. “Wake up.”
Ursula opens her eyes and looks at me. The grief in her face magnifies my despair.
“Do you dream?” she says, her voice hoarse with disuse.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s all horrible. Did Bal-?”
“I dream we fought them,” Ursula says.
Her sleepy voice has an edge. I wonder if she actually dreams that or if she just wants to.
“We tried,” I say.
“I dream we saved him.”
“We couldn’t.”
“They weren’t really going to shoot me were they?”
“I think they would have shot you and burned him anyway.”
“Are you sure?”
“No Ursula I’m not sure; I’ll never be sure and neither will you. I’m sorry.”
Sons of the Crystal Mind (Diamond Roads Book 1) Page 12
