The Naked God - Faith nd-6

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “I believe, Quinn. I always believe you.”

  “Yeah. You really do, don’t you.” He jumped lightly to the stone and marble floor, a wild grin visible before the blackness exuded by his robe eclipsed his flesh. His hood swung round to face the subdued congregation. Over five hundred of them had been mustered now, waiting obediently for the dark Messiah to tell them what he wanted from them. Their numbers were added to slowly, as further non-possessed captives were brought to the cathedral via underground service tunnels. The immediate vicinity around St Paul’s had been cleared of commercial and office buildings several centuries ago, extending its gardens and moating them with a pedestrian plaza. Quinn knew damn well that if too many people crossed all that open space to enter by any of the regular doors the satellites and dome sensors would see them. The pattern would be recorded, and the supercops would become curious at why none of them ever left. So the accumulation of his power base had to proceed slowly and cautiously.

  Those who were brought to him were taken down into the crypt and broken open for possession by a handful of committed followers loyal to His gospel. Quinn no longer cared whether those who struggled out from the beyond into the waiting bodies believed in the word of God’s Brother or not. As long as he was physically close by, they could be coerced.

  Studying the assembled possessed, Quinn thought he might have about a third of the numbers he actually wanted for the summoning ceremony. Just reaching the ghost realm took so much energistic strength. He would never be able to smash open the gates into hell by himself.

  “Where’s Billy-Joe?” he asked.

  Courtney gave a sullen shrug. “Downstairs again. He likes to watch.”

  “Go and fetch him for me. What I’ve seen makes it fucking important that we get more warm bodies in here for possession. I want him to get word out to the shitheads on the street, make sure they keep sending them. Nobody can afford to screw up today. This is His time now.”

  “Right.” Courtney started to walk towards the door at the base of the central dome which had stairs down to the crypt. She stopped and turned back. “Quinn, what happens after?”

  “After what?”

  “After the Light Bringer comes and, you know, we kill everyone that doesn’t do as we say.”

  “We’ll live in His Kingdom, under His light, and our serpent beasts will run free and wild for the rest of time. He will have saved us from enslavement inside the false lord’s prison city; that heaven the dumb-ass religions keep singing about.”

  “Oh. Okay, that sounds pretty cool.”

  Quinn watched her go, sensing the dull acceptance of her thoughts. Strange how her unquestioning compliance had begun to annoy him lately.

  He spent the rest of the morning supervising the groups he had out on the streets, directing them to new targets. It consisted mainly of intimidating the shit out of their representatives when they turned up at the cathedral. A couple of times he slipped into the ghost realm and travelled through the arcology himself. The original Lancini possessed tried to keep the newer ones in line, sticking to their orders, but nothing they could say about him and what would happen if they didn’t play ball was as effective as when he actually materialized without warning in the middle of them. Three times he had to make examples out of dissenters. He couldn’t visit every group, but word spread fast enough, even without the benefit of the net.

  When he returned to St Paul’s after midday, a couple of orgies had broken out on the nave floor: freshly arrived possessed, desperate for strong sensation. He didn’t stop them, the defilement of such a sacrosanct place was enjoyable; it was one of the reasons he’d chosen it for the summoning. But he did limit future numbers of participants. When the possessed got carried away, they were apt to give off their glitching effect over quite a distance, and there were still some power circuits operating around the cathedral. He couldn’t risk a giveaway impulse being tracked by an AI. Souls that’d possessed the bodies of police officers had reported how the net was exploited by Govcentral to hunt down possessed.

  Until he had enough people to perform the summoning, he was going to practice restraint.

  Quinn was watching the ghosts when Billy-Joe hurried up with a possessed called Frenkel. There were many tombs in St Paul’s, dating back well over a millennia, including those lost when the original cathedral building burnt down in the great fire of AD 1666. All the incumbents were supposedly men of distinction or nobility, the old nation’s finest. Or at least they might have been considered so while they were alive; Quinn thought they were just a total pain in the ass now. Oh, they had their pride, which came over in the form of resentment and hatred; but basically they were no better than all the other pathetic desolates inhabiting their insipid realm. The warriors who had fallen in defence of their king and country seemed to be in the majority of those who had lingered after death to haunt the land. They despised Quinn with a passion, knowing enough of his power to fear him. To start with they had done their best to disconcert his cohorts, especially Billy-Joe and Courtney, exerting themselves to their limit. Their chill presence made the walls bead with condensation; while the corner-of-the-eye visibility as they swooped around made the chancel’s rich gold-braided fabrics flutter with anaemic life. They keened as well, like dogs tormented by a full moon, spilling their morbid depression into the air for all to perceive.

  Twice Quinn had to shunt himself into the ghost realm to deal with them. His touch alone burnt them, sending them reeling away, weakened and cowed from the contact.

  Their antics had withered away, leaving them slinking round to view the gathering of possessed with mute disapproval, emitting a sullen rancour which percolated through the cathedral. Then they had began to stir, as if they themselves were the victims of an unnatural incursion. They gathered together under the central dome, twittering fearfully.

  The demons were growing louder.

  “Something you should hear, Quinn,” Billy-Joe said. He froze at the look of displeasure Quinn gave him for interrupting. Even Billy-Joe could see the ghosts in the nave’s energistically charged environment, shivering flames of colour that skidded uncertainly over the tiled floor. “It’s important, I swear.”

  “Go on,” Quinn sighed.

  Frenkel was breathing hard, and trying hard not to peer into the black gulf that was Quinn’s hood. “I’m from the Hampstead group. We saw something we thought you should know about. I got here as fast as I could, rode a maintenance cab through the tube.”

  “Shit,” Quinn murmured. “Yeah yeah, very good. Get on with it.”

  “There was this bunch of people sneaking round the road tunnel interchange at Dartmouth Park. They’d driven a car there, which is weird, because we haven’t got round to crapping over the route and flow processors yet. Their car must have some kind of police override code, because the curfew restrictions are still in primary mode. They got up onto the street through an inspection accessway, then they started moving through the buildings. We figured they must be locals, they know the building layouts pretty good. No one can scope them from outside; our guys were having a hard time keeping up with them when I left. We didn’t take them out, because the thing is, there’s six of them; and two are really like the people you told us all to look out for.”

  “Which two?” Quinn asked sharply.

  “There’s the chick with long hair, and that humping great black dude. The others are just soldiers, real hard nuts. Except one, which is where things get strange. He’s possessed. And he’s not from our group, we’ve never seen him before.”

  “Is he controlling the others?”

  “No. They’re like a team.”

  “Where were they going? What direction?”

  “They were creeping along Junction Road when I left. Our guys are keeping tabs on them.”

  “Take me there.” Quinn snarled. He started to glide swiftly towards the door leading to the connecting subways. “Billy-Joe, bring your hardware.”

  Louise was thankful that
the two GSDI field agents accompanying them were equipped with communications blocks. They provided her neural nanonics a direct, secure satellite circuit to Charlie and GSDI’s civil databank, circumventing the patchy net coverage in this section of the arcology. The only other reliable link they had was Ivanov’s affinity bond. This way she got to see the route to Archway Tower which the B7 AI had mapped out for them.

  It had been scary coming up through the accessway from the underground road tunnel, especially the thirty seconds out in the open when she had to scurry to the cover of the first building. After that, she could see not only where they were but where they were going. It was surprising how reassuring that knowledge was.

  Most of the buildings had some kind of route through them, interconnecting doors—all locked—or basement service corridors. Those that didn’t, the GSDI agents were planning on simply cutting through walls with their fission blades. Even that wasn’t necessary; Fletcher conjured a door into existence each time. It didn’t seem to matter what the wall was, ancient brick or modern reinforced carbon-concrete, nor how thick it was. The trick made Brent Roi very uncomfortable, but it saved a lot of time. Fletcher could tell if there were people ahead of them, as well.

  They wormed their way from building to building, staying away from the front rooms overlooking the road whenever possible. Going through pub lounges, shop store rooms, offices, even kitchens and one-room flats. Those people they did intrude upon greeted them with astonishment and fear. Then when they found out the little party was official in nature, they just wanted to know what the hell was going on outside. And rescue. Everybody wanted out.

  That part was the worst, Louise found. The tension from being caught was survivable; tension was a state she was growing increasingly used to. But the pitiful pleas of the residents were relentless, their eyes accusing as they clutched small children to them.

  “Isn’t there another route?” she datavised Charlie after they left a woman and her three-year-old boy sobbing miserably. “It’s awful having to refuse these people.”

  Brent Roi waved her through a small triangular door into a narrow disused hallway. The only light was coming through a filthy smoked-glass window above a bricked-up door.

  “Sorry, Louise,” Charlie datavised back. “The AI says this way is the most likely to get you there undetected by the possessed. It didn’t take emotional stresses into account. Just try and tough it out. Not much further.”

  “Where’s Genevieve?”

  “They reached Skyhigh Kijabe seven minutes ago. I’ve chartered a blackhawk to take her to Tranquillity. She’ll be there within the hour.”

  Louise tapped Fletcher on the shoulder. “Genevieve’s safe. She’s about to depart for Tranquillity.”

  “I’m gladdened to hear that, my lady. Hope survives.”

  Ivanov reached the end of the hallway and held his hand up. “Outside road.”

  The two GSDI field agents moved forward to the metal door. One glanced at Fletcher.

  “No one is near,” he said.

  The agent pressed a small block to the damp wall beside the door. It fired a narrow electron beam through the plaster and brick, then extended a microfilament with a sensor on the end. The image it relayed showed them a narrow street, deserted except for a couple of cats. With the sensor switched to infrared, the agent focused it on each visible window along the street in turn, searching for hot silhouettes. The AI had been using the overhead dome sensors to scan their immediate area the whole way, but the angle was all wrong to examine windows.

  Their caution every time they had to cross a side street was adding considerably to the journey time.

  “Two possibles,” the agent reported, datavising the coordinates to his colleague. The door was opened and he ran fast across the street to the building directly opposite. Their entry point was a window covered by a security grille. Cutting the restraint bolts with a fission blade took fifteen seconds; the window catch was a mere two. The agent vanished inside with a neat roll. Brent Roi was next. Louise followed, sprinting hard across the street. According to her neural nanonics it was Vorley Road, the last open space they had to cross.

  Getting in, she reminded herself. It was a long long way back to any vac-train station.

  This conglomeration of buildings was gathered around the base of the Archway skyscraper itself: a monolithic twenty-five storey tower that stood halfway up a sloping ridge of land that was topped by Highgate Hill. If it hadn’t been for the buildings along the street blocking the view, they would already be able to look out over the rooftops of the old city.

  Once they were inside, a service corridor took them straight to the tower’s lobby. A lift was already waiting for them, door open.

  “The tower’s net and power are still connected,” Charlie datavised. “The AI is hooked into every circuit in there. I can give you plenty of early warning if there are any glitches.”

  They all crammed into the lift, which rose smoothly to the upper utility level. It opened out onto a world of artificial lighting, thick metal pipes, black storage tanks, and big primitive air-conditioning machines. Ivanov led them along a metal walkway to a spiral stair. The door at the top let them out on the flat roof. A flock of scarlet parakeets took flight as they emerged, startlingly loud in the warm air.

  Louise glanced round cautiously. The first rank of tall, modern skyscrapers encircling the old city were only a mile or so away to the north, their glassy faces shimmering rose-gold in the last of the twilight sun. To the south, the embargoed city swept away down the slope towards the distant Thames, a dusky mass of rooftops and intersecting walls. Patches of twinkling silvery light clung to some of the larger roads where the power hadn’t yet been cut to the hologram adverts. Not a single window was illuminated, the residents preferring to stay in the dark, fearful of drawing attention to themselves.

  Louise heard Fletcher laughing. He was leaning on the crumbling concrete parapet that ran round the edge of the roof, looking out towards the south.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I laugh at my own humility, lady. I look at this city which is supposed to be the closest to home I will ever come, only to find that it is the strangest vista I have encountered since my return. The word ‘city’ no longer encompasses the meaning it had in my time. You have the power and artifice to build such a colossus, yet it is I who has been asked to perform this scant task of finding one man.”

  “He’s not a man. He’s a monster.”

  “Aye, Lady Louise.” The humour faded from his handsome face, and he faced the ancient city. “They’re here, but of course you knew that.”

  “Are there many?”

  “Fewer than I had supposed, but enough. I feel their presence everywhere.” He closed his eyes and leant out a little further, sniffing the air. His hands gripped the top of the parapet. “There is a gathering. I feel them. Their thoughts are quietened, deliberately so. They wait for something.”

  “Waiting?” Ivanov asked quickly. “How do you know?”

  “There is an aura of anticipation about them. And unease. They are troubled, yet unable to walk away from their predicament.”

  “It’s him! It has to be. No one else could make a whole bunch of possessed do as they’re told. Where are they?”

  Fletcher took one of his hands off the parapet, leaving behind a dark sweat-stain print. He pointed along the Holloway Road. “Over yonder. I am uncertain as to how many leagues. Though they remain inside the dome. On that I would wager my hat.”

  Ivanov moved over to stand behind Fletcher, squinting along the direction he was pointing. “You’re sure?”

  “I am, sir. There.”

  “Okay. I’ve got a fix. We just need to triangulate.”

  “A splendid notion.”

  “I’ll take you over to Crouch Hill. That ought to be far enough. Then once we get a rough idea where the bastard’s hiding out, we can work out a route to get you close.”

  “If I may suggest, I simply w
alk. No man would accost me in this guise, and fewer will suspect my intent.”

  “Walk off into the goddamn sunset,” Brent said. “No fucking way.”

  “We can talk about it,” Ivanov said. “Fletcher, you got any idea how many there are in this group?”

  “I would suggest several hundred. Possibly even a thousand.”

  “What the hell does he want with that many in one place?”

  “I can advance no rationale to elucidate Quinn Dexter’s behaviour. He is, sir, quite mad.”

  “All right.” Ivanov took a final look across the city, fixing the line Fletcher had indicated. “Let’s move out.”

  They had just got into the lift when the AI reported an electronics glitch close to the Archway Tower. It immediately datavised a search update to Charlie. The glitch was occurring beside the electricity substation which distributed power to the Archway Tower among other consumers. A security camera revealed two people approaching the substation along a dark corridor.

  Trouble,he warned ivanov.

  The substation door crumpled from a blast of white fire. Three more glitches appeared around the base of the Archway Tower. Sensors showed possessed moving purposefully through the subway, freight tunnel, and utilities passageway. The substation transformers exploded as a barrage of white fire pummelled into their casings.

  Ivanov saw the lights in the lift flicker as the Tower’s emergency power cells took over. They were just passing the nineteenth floor.

  Down in the basement, the possessed were smashing every communications conduit they could find, tearing the cables out of the wall. The AI watched the Tower’s net connections fail one after the other. Independent power cells kept the internal processors running, but it could now only access them through the communications blocks carried by the GSDI field agents, cutting down on the bandwidth available for surveillance and initiating possible counter-moves.