“Goddamn fake,” the younger man shouted with a rich Southern drawl. “I was never this.” Hands flicked insultingly over the front of the white costume, ruffling the fit. “You’re what they squeezed me into. You ain’t nothing but a sick disease the record companies cooked up to make money. I would never come back as you.”
The larger man pushed him away. “Who are you calling a fake, son? I am the King, the one and only.”
The shoving began in earnest; both of them trying to floor the other. Amber sunglasses went spinning. Organization gangsters moved in quickly to separate them, but not before the younger Elvis had unslung his guitar ready to brain the Vegas version.
Gus never saw the outcome. The crowd started cheering. A cavalcade had turned onto the autoway. Police motorcycles (Harley-Davidsons, according to Gus’s encyclopedia memory file) appeared first, ten of them with blue and red lights flashing. They were followed by a huge limousine which crawled along at little more than walking pace: a 1920s Cadillac sedan which looked absurdly massive, fat tyres bulging from the weight of its armour plated bodywork. Glass that was at least five centimetres thick shaded the interior aquarium-green. There was one man sitting in the back, waving happily at the crowd.
The city was going wild for him. Al grinned around his cigar and gave them a thumbs-up. Je-zus, but it was like the good old days, riding around in this very same bulletproof Cadillac with the pedestrians staring openmouthed as he went past. In Chicago they’d known it contained a prince of the city. And now in San Angeles they goddamn well knew it again.
The Cadillac drew to a halt outside City Hall. A smiling Dwight Salerno came down the steps to open the door.
“Good to see you back, Al. We missed you.”
Al kissed him on both cheeks, then turned to face the ecstatic crowd, clasping his hands together above his head like he was a prizefighter posing over a whipped opponent. They roared their approval. White fire cascaded and fizzed over the autoway as if Zeus were putting on a Fourth of July display.
“I love you guys!” Al bellowed at the faceless mass of chuckleheads. “Together ain’t no miserable Confederation fucker gonna stop us doing what we wanna do.”
They couldn’t hear the words, not even those in the front rank. But the content was clear enough. The laudation increased.
With one hand still waving frantically, Al turned around and bounded up the stairs into City Hall. Always leave them wanting more, Jez said.
The conference was held in the lobby, a vaulting four-storey cavern that took up over half of the ground floor. An avenue of huge palm trees, cloned from California originals, stretched from the doors to the vast reception desk. Today their solartubes were diminished to an off-white fluorescence, their bowls of loam drying out. Other signs of neglect and hurried tidying were in evidence: defunct valet mechanoids lined up along one wall, emergency exit doors missing, scraps of rubbish swept into piles behind stilled escalators.
The reception desk had been completely cleared, and a row of chairs placed behind it. Al sat in the centre, with two lieutenants on either side. His chair had been raised slightly. He watched the nervous reporters being brought in and marshalled on the floor in front of him. When they’d shushed down he rose to his feet.
“My name is Al Capone, and I suppose you’re all wondering why I asked you here,” he said, and chuckled. Their answering grins were few and far between. Tight asses. “Okay, I’ll lay it on the line for you; you’re here because I want the whole Confederation to know what’s been going down in these parts. Once they know and understand then that’s gonna save everyone a shitload of grief.” He took off his grey fedora and put it down carefully on the polished desk. “It’s an easy situation. My Organization is now in charge of the whole New California system. We’re keeping the planet and the asteroid settlements in order, no exceptions. Now we ain’t out to harm anyone, we just use our clout to keep things flowing along as best they’ll go, same as any other government.”
“Are you running the Edenist habitats, too?” a reporter asked. The rest flinched, waiting for Patricia Mangano’s retribution. It never came, though she looked far from happy.
“Smart of you, buddy,” Al acknowledged with a grudging smile. “No, I ain’t running the Edenist habitats. I could. But I ain’t. Know why? Because we’re about evenly matched, that’s why. We could do a lot of damage to each other if we ever came to fighting. Too much. I don’t want that. I don’t want people sent into the beyond on account of some penny-ante dispute over territory. I’ve been there myself, it’s worse than any fucking nightmare you can imagine; it shouldn’t happen to anyone.”
“Why do you think you’ve been returned from the beyond, Al? Has God passed judgement on you?”
“You got me there, lady. I don’t know why any of this started. But I’ll tell you guys this much: I never saw no angels or no demons while I was stuck in the beyond, none of us did. All I know is we’re back. It ain’t no one’s fault, it just happened. And now we gotta make the best of what’s a pretty shitty deal, that’s what the Organization is for.”
“Excuse me, Mr Capone,” Gus said, encouraged by the response to earlier questions. “What’s the point of your Organization? You don’t need it. The possessed can do whatever they want.”
“Sorry, buddy, you’re way wrong there. Maybe we don’t need quite the same government as we had before, not all that tax, and regulations, and ideology, and shit. But you’ve got to have order, and that’s what I provide. I’m doing everyone a favour by taking charge like this. I’m protecting the possessed from attack by the Confederation Navy. I’m looking out for a whole load of non-possessed; because I’m telling you, without me you certainly wouldn’t be standing here in charge of your own body. See, I’m providing for all kinds of people, even though half of them don’t appreciate it right now. The possessed didn’t have jack shit worked out about where they were going until I came along. Now we’re all working together, making it happen. All because of me and the Organization. If I hadn’t stepped in and kept things going the cities would have busted down, we would have had a whole flood of lost boys heading for the countryside. Listen, I’ve seen the Depression firsthand, I know what it’s like for people who don’t have a job or something to do. And that’s what we were heading for here.”
“So what are your long-range goals, Al? What’s your Organization going to do next?”
“Smooth things out. No one is trying to deny things are still a little rough around the edges down here. We need to work on what kind of society we can build.”
“Is it true you’re planning to attack the Confederation?”
“That’s pure bullshit, buddy. Je-zus, I don’t know where you got that rumour from. No of course we’re not going to attack anyone. But we can defend ourselves pretty good if the Confederation Navy tries any funny stuff, we sure got the ships for that. Hell, I don’t want that to happen. We just want to be peaceable neighbours with everyone. I might even ask if we can join the Confederation.” At the murmur of surprise echoing through the lobby he grinned around happily. “Yeah. Why the hell not? Sure we can ask to join. Maybe some good will come out of it, some kind of compromise that’ll make everyone happy; a solution to all the souls that wanna come back. The Organization can pay Confederation longhairs to grow us all new bodies from scratch, something like that.”
“You mean you’d give up your body if a clone was available?”
Al frowned as Emmet leaned over to murmur in his ear, explaining what a clone was. “Sure,” he said. “Like I told you, we’re all the victims of circumstance.”
“You believe peaceful coexistence is possible?”
Al’s jocularity darkened. “You’d better fucking believe it, buddy. We’re back, and we’re here to stay. Grab that? What I’m trying to convince you guys is that we ain’t no end of the world threat, it’s not us who’s the riders of the Apocalypse. We’ve proved possessed and non-possessed can live together on this planet. Okay, so people out ther
e are alarmed right now, that’s only natural. But we’re frightened too, you can’t expect us to go back to the beyond. We’ve got to work together on this. I’m personally offering the Assembly President my hand in friendship. Now that’s an offer he can’t refuse.”
* * *
The glowing red clouds had begun to grow, small ruby speckles blossoming right across Norfolk. Louise, Fletcher, and Genevieve spent their first day in orbit watching the images received by the Far Realm’s external cameras. Kesteven island was by far the worst. A solid crimson aureole had gathered to mask the land, its shape a distended mockery of the coastline it was obscuring. Strands of ordinary white cloud malingered around its disciplined edges, only to be rebuffed by invisible winds if they drifted too close.
Fletcher assured the girls that in itself the red cloud was harmless. “A simple manifestation of will,” he proclaimed. “Nothing more.”
“You mean it’s just a wish?” Genevieve asked, intrigued. She had woken almost purged of her emotional turmoil; there were none of yesterday’s periods of manic exuberance or haunted silences. Although she was quieter than usual; which Louise thought was about right. She didn’t feel like talking much, either. Neither she nor Fletcher had mentioned the Tantu.
“Quite so, little one.”
“But why are they wishing it?”
“So that they can seek refuge below it from the emptiness of the universe. Even this planet’s sky, which has little night, is not a sight to cherish.”
Over thirty islands now had traces of redness in the air. Louise likened it to watching the outbreak of some terrible disease, a swelling cancer gnawing away at the flesh of her world.
Furay and Endron had come down into the lounge a few times, keeping them informed of the navy squadron’s actions, and the army’s progress. Neither of which amounted to much. The army had landed on two islands, Shropshire and Lindsey, hoping to retake their capitals. But reports from the forwards units were confused.
“Same problem as we had with Kesteven,” Furay confided when he brought them lunch. “We can’t support the lads on the ground because we don’t have any reliable targeting information. And that red cloud has got the admiral badly worried. None of the technical staff can explain it.”
By midafternoon, ship’s time, the army commanders had lost contact with half of their troops. The red cloud was visible over forty-eight islands, nine of which it covered completely. As Duke-day ended for Ramsey island slender wisps were located over a couple of villages. Teams of reserve soldiers were hurriedly flown in from Norwich. In both cases contact was lost within fifteen minutes of them entering the area.
Louise watched grimly as the coiling cloud thickened over each village. “I was right,” she said miserably. “There’s nothing anybody here can do. It’s only a matter of time now.”
* * *
Tolton made his way up the narrow creek, water from the narrow stream slopping over his glittery purple shoes. The top of the steep bank, a fringe of sandy grass, was several centimetres above his head. He couldn’t see out onto the parkland, and nobody could see him—thankfully. Far overhead, Valisk’s light tube gleamed. The intensity hurt Tolton’s eyes. He was a night person, used to the clubs, bars, and vestibules of the starscrapers, delivering his poet sermons to the ship crew burnouts, bluesensers, stimmed-out wasters, and mercenaries who sprawled throughout the lower floors of the starscrapers. They tolerated him, those lost entities, listening to (or laughing at) his carefully crafted words, donating their own stories to his wealth of experiences. He moved among the descriptions of shattered lives as vagrants moved through the filthy refuse of a darkened cul-de-sac, forever picking, trying to understand what they said, to bestow some grace to their wizened dreams with his prose, to explain them to themselves.
One day, he told them, I will incorporate it all into an MF album. The galaxy will know of your plight, and liberate you.
They didn’t believe him, but they accepted him as one of their own. It was a status which had saved him from many a bar fight. But now, in his hour of desperate need, they had failed him. However difficult it was to acknowledge, they had lost; the toughest bunch of bastards in the Confederation had been wiped out in less than thirty-six hours.
“Take the left hand channel at the next fork,” the processor block clipped to his belt told him.
“Yes,” he mumbled obediently.
And this was the greatest, most hurtful joke of all: him, the aspirant anarchist poet, pathetically grateful to Rubra, the super-capitalist dictator, for helping him.
Ten metres on two gurgling streams merged together. He turned left without hesitation, the foaming water splashing his knees. Fleeing from the starscraper, it was as though an insane montage of all the combat stories he’d ever been told had come scampering up out of his subconscious to torment him. Horror and laughter pursued him down every corridor, even the disused ones he thought only he walked. Only Rubra, a calm voice reeling off directions, had offered any hope.
Water made his black trousers heavy. He was cold, partly from the fright, partly cold turkey.
There had been no sign of pursuit for three hours now, though Rubra said they were still tracking him.
The narrow creek began to widen, its banks lowering. Tolton walked out into a tarn fifteen metres across with a crescent cliff cupping the rear half. Fat xenoc fish lumbered out of his way, apparently rolling along the bottom. There was no other exit, no feed stream.
“Now what?” he asked plaintively.
“There’s an inlet at the far end,” Rubra told him. “I’ve shut down the flow so you’ll be able to swim through. It’s only about five metres long, it bends, and there’s no light; but it leads to a cave where you’ll be safe.”
“A cave? I thought caves were worn into natural rock over centuries.”
“Actually, it’s a surge chamber. I just didn’t want to get technical on you, not with your artistic background.”
Tolton thought the voice sounded tetchy. “Thank you,” he said, and started to wade forwards towards the cliff. A couple more directions, and he dived under the surface. The inlet was easy to find, a nightmare-black hole barely a metre and a half wide. Knowing he would never be able to turn around or even back out, he forced himself to glide into the entrance, bubbles streaming behind him.
It couldn’t have been five metres long, more like twenty or thirty. The curves were sharp, one taking him down, the other up. He broke surface with a frantic gasping cry. The cave was a dome shape, twenty metres across, every surface was coated in a film of water, thin ripples were still running down the walls. He had emerged in the pool at the centre. When he looked up there was a large hole at the apex, droplets splattered on his upturned face. A high ring of electrophorescent cells cast a weak pink-white glow into every cranny.
He paddled over to the side of the pool and pushed himself out onto the slippery floor. A bout of shivering claimed his limbs; he wasn’t sure if it was from the cold water or the nagging feeling of claustrophobia. The surge chamber was horribly confined, and the fact that it was usually full of water didn’t help.
“I’ll have one of the housechimps bring you some dry clothes and food,” Rubra said.
“Thank you.”
“You should be safe here for a while.”
“I . . .” He looked around apprehensively. Everyone always said Rubra could see everything. “I don’t think I can stay very long. It’s a bit . . . closed in.”
“I know. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you moving, keep you ahead of them.”
“Can I join up with anyone else? I need to be around people.”
“There aren’t that many of you left free, I’m afraid. And meeting up with them isn’t a good idea, that would just make you easier to locate. I haven’t quite worked out how they track the non-possessed yet; I suspect they’ve got some kind of ESP ability. Hell, why not? They’ve got every other kind of magic.”
“How many of us are there?” he asked, suddenly pan
icky.
Rubra considered giving him the truth, but Tolton wasn’t the strongest of characters. “A couple of thousand,” he lied. There were three hundred and seventy-one people left free within the habitat, and assisting all of them simultaneously was pure hell.
Even as he was reassuring Tolton he perceived Bonney Lewin stalking Gilbert Van-Riytell. The tough little woman had taken to dressing in nineteenth-century African safari gear, a khaki uniform with two crossed bandoleer straps holding polished brass cartridges in black leather hoops. A shiny Enfield .303 rifle was slung over her shoulder.
Gilbert was Magellanic Itg’s old comptroller, and had never really stood a chance. Rubra had been trying to steer him along some service tunnels below a tube station, but Bonney and her co-hunters were boxing him in.
“There’s an inspection hatch three metres ahead,” Rubra datavised to Van-Riytell. “I want you to—”
Shadows lifted themselves off the service tunnel wall and grabbed the old man. Rubra hadn’t even noticed them. His perception routines had been expertly circumvented.
Once again, he purged and reformatted local sub-routines. By the time he regained some observation ability Van-Riytell’s legs and arms were being tied around a long pole, ready to be carried away like a prize trophy. He wasn’t even struggling anymore. Bonney was supervising the procedure happily.
One of her hunting team was standing back, watching aloofly; a tall young man in a simple white suit.
Rubra knew then. It had to be him.
Dariat!
The young man’s head jerked up. For an instant the illusion flickered. Long enough for Rubra. Under the outline of the handsome youth lurked Horgan. Horgan with a shocked expression wrenching his thin face. Incontrovertible proof.
I knew it would be you, Rubra said. In a way the knowledge came almost as a relief.
Much good it will do you, Dariat answered. Your awareness of anything is going to come to an end real soon now. And you won’t even make it to the freedom of the beyond, I won’t allow you that escape.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 161
