by Gary Gibson
‘You’re . . . ?’
‘The police,’ said the Freeholder. ‘Welcome to Avilon. Now shut the hell up.’
He closed the door hard, and she heard him climb back up into the truck’s cabin. They were soon under way once more.
Well, that’s that, then. She’d clearly walked into a trap, and a carefully prepared one at that.
She let her head fall forward on to her knees, giving herself up to hopeless exhaustion. As a result, she barely noticed when the truck finally came to a halt, a few hours later.
She squinted painfully as the compartment door opened again, letting daylight flood back in. The Freeholder reached in and grabbed the collar of her jacket, dragging her out and depositing her in a heap on the yellow soil.
She looked around, seeing they had come to a halt in front of a vast sprawling building that looked as if it had been modelled on a fairytale castle. It sat at the centre of a few dozen acres of carefully tended lawns and coppiced trees. It was, even by the excessive standards of Avilon’s population of the ultra-wealthy, stunningly tasteless.
‘Get up,’ said the Freeholder, as the two bead-zombies came over to stand behind him.
‘How long have you been working for Sifra?’ she asked as calmly as she could, staring up at him. She was damned if she was going to let him see how frightened she really was.
‘He told me to bring you here,’ the Freeholder grunted. ‘He didn’t say whether you had to still be in one piece.’ He gestured towards a nearby gate. ‘So how about you shut the fuck up, and start—’
She jumped up and ran. One thing she knew about bead-zombies was that they weren’t very good at moving fast.
For the first few moments, she thought her legs might actually give way beneath her. She was still afflicted by numerous aches and cramps, and one ankle felt strangely numb. But she ignored all that, letting her frank terror of ever again setting eyes on Anil Sifra empower her muscles to carry her away as far and fast as humanly possible.
She sped back along the same narrow road on which the spider-truck crouched. Just a few kilometres away she could see the glistening towers of Cockaigne – Avilon’s primary settlement – rising up to pierce through the containment field more than a kilometre overhead.
The aching in her legs grew, her lungs burning in her chest like twin embers. She listened for the steady thump-thump of the spider-truck pursuing her, but heard nothing yet. Just when she began to think she might actually make it to freedom, she heard a yipping sound from somewhere to her right, and the noise of something running up behind her.
She risked a quick glance over her shoulder, and nearly stumbled in fright. Two mogs were closing in on her from either side: half-human, half-canine hybrids, bipedal like a human being but dumb, vicious and short-lived.
Not to mention wildly, incredibly illegal. Megan had once seen a mog rip a man’s throat out within seconds.
They were closing in on her fast, and she knew she could never outrun them. But the thought of those long snouts equipped with their rows of gleaming teeth spurred her to even greater effort.
Damn Sifra. Damn him to hell. And damn Bash for losing his mind.
She suddenly stumbled, falling to the ground with a yell, and stuck out both her arms in a desperate bid to protect herself. The sleek grey bodies of her pursuers darted all around her, jaws snapping at the bare flesh of her throat but never quite coming close enough. She saw, at close quarters, humanoid hands tapering into long, black claws. She screamed in panic again, convinced she was about to die in a particularly horrible and unpleasant fashion.
Just then, a sharp, high-pitched sound cut through the air. Suddenly, the creatures pulled away, crouching on the soil nearby and continuing to watch her with hungry intent. The worst thing about them, she decided, were the eyes – because they were the most human-looking part of all.
‘Do you know how easy it would be for me,’ said the Freeholder, as he stood over her once more, ‘to just let them rip you apart?’
‘Call them off,’ Megan managed to croak. ‘Please.’
He whistled twice, pointing at each mog in turn. The creatures stood up in response, their long, pointed ears twitching as they rose from their skulls. They both turned and ran back towards the luxurious estate.
‘Maybe this time,’ said the Freeholder, unslinging his rifle and aiming it at her, ‘you’ll be prepared to go where I tell you.’
He led her back, past the parked spider-truck, and through the nearby gate, before guiding her inside an arched doorway. Megan found herself in a cool, dark interior with whitewashed walls and low-standing couches. Soft rugs and cushions lay scattered all around and, even though the building seemed otherwise deserted, a hidden projector filled the space with low-resolution holograms of intertwining naked forms. The air smelled of sweat, mingled with the burned-honey aroma of sans de sezi. They continued on down some steps into a starkly lit basement.
‘After you,’ he said, opening a heavy steel door and motioning her inside.
At first, Megan thought the room was empty.
The Freeholder had locked her in a basement room measuring maybe five metres by three, which was lit only by a single, faintly glowing panel in the ceiling. The walls were bare and undecorated, the illumination insufficient to reach even the corners fully. She saw a single narrow cot pushed into a narrow recess, the dark sheets balled up and rumpled, while a spigot, with a bucket placed beneath it, protruded from the wall facing the door.
Megan slumped against the nearby wall, letting her back slide down against bare concrete, till her head was resting on her knees. She risked accessing the local data-services again, but this time got nowhere. This room, she realized with a sinking feeling, was almost certainly shielded against her implants.
She closed her eyes, and saw again those two mogs yearning to rip her throat out. She reopened them quickly, clenching her fists tight until the fingernails dug into the soft flesh of her palms.
I have fucked this up so very, very badly.
Something moved on the other side of the room.
She froze, realizing with a start that what she had taken for a bundle of discarded sheets on the single cot was, in fact, a living body. Whoever it was, they seemed still asleep.
She got up and edged over to the cot, discerning the outline of knees pulled up close to the chest beneath the blankets. Reaching down with trepidation, she pulled the blankets gently to one side, before gazing down at the smooth, untroubled face of the man lying there.
She gaped in astonishment, hardly believing her own eyes. It was Bash – Imtiaz Bashir – the very man with whom she had once shared her deepest secrets and whom she had once abandoned to certain death.
He looked emaciated, half starved, and she lifted up one corner of his blanket to see that he was still fully dressed beneath it, although his clothes were filthy. He was in a terrible state, but she had never been so glad to see another living being in her whole life.
He showed absolutely no awareness of her, as his eyes stared past her into some unknowable place. His expression was calm and his lips slightly parted, as if just on the verge of saying something.
A terrible sadness came over her. Had he been suffering like this all these years, since Megan had last seen him? Was there still some part of him locked inside his head that knew where he was or what had happened to him?
From the look of him, that possibility seemed remote.
‘I told you I’d come back for you,’ she said softly, kneeling by the cot and stroking one hand across his forehead. He smelled terrible, and she guessed he hadn’t been bathed in quite some time. I’ll bet they keep those mogs in better condition.
Bash’s eyes were large and brown and quite as beautiful as she remembered them. When she had first met him, she had been struck by his size – two metres of muscular mass accompanied by the sweetest personality imaginable. Now, much of that muscle was gone, leaving him so emaciated that Megan found herself wondering when he had last
been fed.
His breathing faltered, and caught. His eyes seemed to focus on her for one brief moment.
Megan felt her own breath catch in her throat. He knows I’m here. He must do. He . . .
But then his eyes lost focus again, and once more he stared off into some unknowable vista.
She shakily exhaled, realizing it was foolish of her to have expected anything else. The Bash she knew was gone, and now all that was left was this sad, sorry shell of a man.
She stroked his scalp again, feeling for the ridges and crenellations beneath the skin that identified him as a fellow machine-head. Without him she could not reawaken the link that Tarrant had once forged between Bash and the alien entity known to some species as the Wanderer – but to others as the Marauder.
Megan rocked back on her heels, pressing her hands against her eyes. A long time ago, when she was much younger, she had convinced herself she was in love with Bash. When she told him so, he had laughed and informed her, not unkindly, that she wasn’t his type. When she asked what his type was, he had glanced across the bar they were sitting in, towards a cluster of male Alliance officers gathered around a nearby table.
At first she had been crushed, but she soon understood that what she had mistaken for romantic love was instead something deeper and more lasting. It was a bond like that between brother and sister, or father and daughter: a bond that had first formed on the day of her sudden and unexpected rescue.
In a very real sense, she owed him her life.
It was easy for her to imagine what he might say now, were he capable of saying anything at all. She could picture his easy sardonic smile, hear the warm full tones of his voice.
‘Remember the first time we met?’ she whispered.
His unspoken reply echoed in her ears. Sure I do, Megan. It was on Redstone. I remember it as if it were yesterday.
‘I was so scared that night.’ She remembered how she had fled through crowded city streets, desperate to escape a terrible fate.
The first time I saw you, she remembered him once saying, you looked so cold I wanted to wrap you up like a baby.
‘You were the only one I could trust. The only one I could tell the truth to.’
Your secret was always safe with me, honey. You know that.
His eyes still stared past her, betraying no hint of awareness. Megan smiled to herself, then felt her own eyes grow moist.
‘You took me under your wing and I hid there for years,’ she murmured.
And then she had stayed with him, following him all the way back to Kjæregrønnested and the Three Star Alliance; and then she had met Gregor Tarrant, and been forced to watch as he sentenced Bash to a fate worse than death – before tearing Megan’s life apart forever.
TWO
Gabrielle
On the first morning of the Grand Pilgrimage, Speaker-Elect Gabrielle woke up with stomach cramps that made her wince. She waited for the worst of the pain to pass, then opened her eyes to see a look of concern on the face of the old woman standing by the foot of her bed.
‘Madame Gabrielle?’ enquired Mater Cassanas. ‘Are you all right?’
Gabrielle stared across an ocean of linen at Cassanas’s inquisitive expression, then looked away, bunching her fists tightly beneath the heavy restricting sheets as the pain returned, then faded just as quickly once more. She stared past the gold and silver statuary adorning the bedchamber, past its high ceiling decorated with scenes from the Book of Uchida, and out through the tall windows reaching from floor to ceiling. There, she could see the canals winding through the heart of Port Gabriel, whose pale blue waters were dotted here and there with the white sails of yachts and with automated sea transports.
Most of her attention, however, was taken by the barges crowding the riverside docks. They were huge flat-bodied vessels sprouting innumerable pennants and flags, all decorated with the red and gold seal of the Sacerdotal Demarchy of Uchida.
She had tried, as she had done every morning now for more than two years, to access the public parts of the Tabernacle information service. And, as ever, she failed.
‘I’m quite all right, Mater Cassanas,’ said Gabrielle finally, before sitting up carefully. Her machine-head implants were feeding her a constant drip of background data about her surroundings: the composition of the sheets between which she lay, or the trace elements in the air she breathed, even the current locations of orbital factories and Accord peacekeeper platforms above the surface of Redstone. She could track them, if and when she chose to, even follow them as they passed from one horizon to the next, and beyond.
But there was so much more information closer to hand to which her access was heavily restricted. It was for her own safety, they claimed, because too many public-data links could be subverted by the Demarchy’s enemies and used to launch covert viral attacks against her. Even so, it was enormously frustrating to be gifted with so very powerful a tool and yet be prevented from making use of more than a tiny fraction of its capabilities.
What made it worse was the knowledge that machine-heads had, for a very long time, been regularly employed as the pilots of interstellar craft throughout the Accord and beyond. Their implants allowed them to interface directly with such craft, and the idea of being a starship pilot had never failed to fill Gabrielle with wonder. Yet it had always been an impossible yearning.
Cassanas looked doubtful despite Gabrielle’s reassurances, pursing the lips of her long horse-like face. But Gabrielle glared at the old woman until she finally bowed in acquiescence, a flush of red colouring her withered cheeks.
‘Of course, Madame Gabrielle,’ Cassanas muttered, peering back at her with unmistakable hostility from below the yellow-and-black cap that identified her as an attendant.
The old woman’s eyes dipped briefly towards Gabrielle’s belly, swaddled beneath constricting sheets. In that moment Gabrielle felt suddenly, overwhelmingly certain that the old woman knew precisely what she was trying to hide.
But she also knew that Cassanas would say and do nothing, out of fear for her own son’s life.
Even so, Gabrielle felt her heartbeat grow faster, her hands again forming into fists beneath the heavy linen, where Mater Cassanas could not see them.
She then thought of Karl – proud, strong Karl Petrova. Despite all their talk, she had never really believed a day might finally come when all their dreams of escaping could be realized.
‘You’re scheduled to have breakfast with your advisers, before departing for Dios,’ declared Cassanas, clearly struggling to maintain her professional composure. She motioned with her eyes towards the door leading into an antechamber. ‘Therefore I think perhaps we should get started immediately.’
‘Of course,’ said Gabrielle, aware of the slight quaver in her voice as she replied.
She waited, as taught from childhood, until Cassanas had peeled off the sheets, before swinging her bare feet out and onto the cold marble floor. She then followed the old woman into the antechamber, where her robes of office had been laid out on a chaise-longue, ready for the morning ahead.
Cassanas picked up several items, draping them over one arm in preparation for dressing her charge. As Gabrielle watched her, she thought back on the endless mundanity of all the days of her life up until now, each day barely distinguishable from the last. She could almost taste the sights and sounds and smells that lay in all their rich and infinite variety beyond the choking confines of the palace.
‘I want to dress myself this morning,’ Gabrielle said on a sudden impulse.
The old woman looked at her, perplexed. ‘It’s against protocol to—’
‘Nonetheless,’ said Gabrielle, her jaw tight, ‘I insist.’
The old woman’s face flushed with anger. ‘You won’t be able to hide it forever, you know,’ she spat, her eyes dropping again towards Gabrielle’s belly. ‘Thijs and the rest will find out about your little secret soon enough. You’ll ruin the whole Pilgrimage, and the Ascension too—’
�
��I think,’ said Gabrielle, ‘you should be careful what you say. Or should I inform Karl of how you’ve just spoken to me?’
Cassanas’s nostrils flared, and she looked ready to make a retort, but instead swallowed deeply before replacing the robes on the chaise-longue with exaggerated carefulness. Gabrielle had the sense the old woman was barely resisting the urge to throw the clothes in her face.
‘All I want,’ continued Gabrielle, ‘is to have a few minutes alone.’ She forced a smile. ‘It’s a big day, after all, and you know it’s hard enough, as things are, for me to get a little time to myself.’
Cassanas’s mouth fluttered like an angry moth. ‘Thijs and the rest will be arriving soon. If they discover I’ve left you on your own for as much as a moment . . .’
‘Edith –’ Gabrielle used the old woman’s first name as she stepped closer to her – ‘just a few minutes, no more. You know you’ll hear them coming long before they reach my chambers.’
Cassanas nodded and left the room without another word, her face still taut with anger.
Gabrielle felt her shoulders sag with relief as, closing her eyes, she subsided onto the chaise-longue. She could hear Cassanas busying herself on the other side of the door, straightening the bedclothes or perhaps putting things away.
Gabrielle then stood up and stripped off her nightdress, taking the opportunity to study herself naked in one of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that surrounded her. Placing her hands on her belly, she began gently probing her soft flesh.
Was it obvious yet? she wondered. Perhaps just the tiniest curve to her belly was evident – a sign of the scandalous new life growing within her.
Oh, Karl. She wondered how he’d react once he knew . . . but when would be the right time to tell him? Would it change their plans, or even give him a reason to abandon her?
No, she told herself adamantly. Stop being ridiculous. It was foolish to think any such thing.
She then dressed herself in the robes that identified her as the Speaker-Elect for the Sacerdotal Demarchy. She checked herself again in the mirror, turning this way and that, knowing she had to play the part for as long as necessary. And yet nothing could have made her happier than the idea of tearing these ridiculous robes off and burning them.
