By the…
‘…Blu-bhhlue Ly-khans…’ she uttered, desperate to scream. Lexy coughed, a splatter of blood spraying onto the figure’s boot, lining it with blotches of red, as though sitting on an invisible dome.
‘LYCAN!’ She managed, screaming at last to the others. She reached painfully down for the targeting pad. The Mag-Spear weapon angled to her transparent enemy.
Fimble heard the call come from the other side of the toppled jeep where plumes of dust and smoke still swelled. He called for Lexy but there was no response.
‘LEXY!’ He shouted again, scrambling painfully to his feet, his dislocated shoulder causing his right arm to hang limp. Just then he heard the whining grind of the Mag-Spear velociter weapon charging up to make a shot. The whole jeep suddenly jolted and a snap of lightning flashed from where it lay, blowing out the smoke and unzipping the horizon with an ephemeral beam of fire. Fimble dropped on his knee as the explosive shot tore out through the Novus and not a second later a tiny mushroom of cloud burgeoned from the distant mountains where the Mag-Spear’s shell landed. He heard screaming. An ear piercing shrill that came from the jeep. Fimble sat on his backside in horror, throwing his dusty broken sunglasses away to ensure clarity. The jeep rocked back up onto its wheels and rolled away. Above it he saw Lexy levitating out of the vehicle, her spine arched backwards, as though she could not prevent her stomach from floating into the sky. She twitched painfully, screaming, reaching out to Fimble in tears. He watched as the blood flowed from her mouth, spilling down from her lips inverted, over her nose and eyes. Fimble cried out in horror, a startled wail of confusion and fear, as though he was seeing her possessed by some sand demon. She seemed to hover ten feet in the air and her stomach was coming apart, bulging, splitting as though something was breaking out. Lexy was sliding down an invisible beam, her intestines and blood coating a dark red fist above the exit wound. An arm, seemingly from nowhere, painted in blood, an arm finding entrance to this world through his friend’s abdomen. She slid a little further down, her eyes wide and pale, lifeless now, without pain. The reddened fist opened out into large mechanical fingers, spreading, stretching in the glory of blood. Then, segment by segment the optical plates began to deactivate and the Blue Lycan slipped into visibility. Its chrome poly-metalloid armour deadened out the sunlight into silver contours, an eight foot tall armoured machine with a fierce helmet and mouth grill. He discerned no eyes on the beast, but a semi-translucent skull from which he saw a faint pale face staring back. The armour was packing weapons and instruments of which he had never before seen.
The Blue Lycan threw down Lexy’s body and casually brushed off its palms. Fimble turned, began to crawl away. The tundra was vast and open, with nowhere to hide. But the compulsion to move was overpowering. He climbed to his feet, stumbled and rolled. Back up quickly again he froze on realising there were others, more like the one that killed Lexy.
This one was not as humanoid. The Blue Lycan seemed to drop from the sky, leaping from a rocky high land it bounded towards him on its fists like a silver back gorilla. And it stayed low, assertive, inhuman growls and slobbering breaths droning from behind its mouth grill. Whatever monster was housed within the helmet he dared not wish to know. Hoped never to see. Death would be a much kinder fate than unmasking such things.
‘No,’ Fimble uttered, turning back to the one with the blood soaked arm. ‘Please…please don’t…’
It stepped towards him, hulking stomps throwing up clouds of dust. The Blue Lycan reached down and arrested Fimble by the throat, heaved him choking to the sky, grappling with the bloody iron clad fingers.
‘Wait,’ a voice suddenly called.
The Blue Lycan stopped, head turning to another armoured giant soldier. This one was slimmer, more lean, his voice snakish.
‘Paladin Xon ordered that one must live, Ulysses,’ it reminded, walking towards them. ‘How can we remain infamous when dead men tell no tales?’
-9-
Enaya Chahuán was growing weary. For the last seventy minutes she had been engaged in a heated debate with certain vociferous groups in Cerise Timbers who seemed to think they had a right to run their own government, a representative one. This had all come about due to somebody spray painting the word fascist onto Pierce Lewis’ property. Daryl Sanders stood idly by occasionally rolling his eyes at the claims and ridicule coming from the talking heads up on the vertical screens around the local Federation’s main hall.
‘My house was vandalised,’ he complained. ‘My dog had been drugged by the culprit. What kind of monster hurts an animal?’
‘Aren’t you trying to organise cock-fighting events, Pierce?’ Daryl’s voice sailed.
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘I want to eat roosters because I’m hungry as hell for a bit of meat and sustenance.’ Lewis turned his head back to Enaya. ‘Miss Chahuán…’ Pierce Lewis started.
‘Enaya.’ She corrected.
‘-how many years have you been serving as Coordinator now?’ he went on.
Enaya didn’t answer, her eyes remained locked, unperturbed by her opponent. Pierce scowled into the screen, a dark haired and tall individual. His face looked paunch from the angle at which he addressed them on the screen. His shoulders were broad and he had strong and piliferous forearms, tempered from the years of his youth when he was known for his wrestling and cage fights. Typically, he’d wear his casual apparel, a thick brown leather jacket and grey suited pants. For this occasion he wore a very smart looking shirt with nano-fabrics and digital animations usually worn by the business classes of the Atominii world. It seemed he was serious about the meeting, Enaya thought, and wanted to express it. Not bad, for a faded alcoholic local celebrity. And Enaya being all for diplomacy and consensus was happy to oblige the meeting, despite knowing it would involve listening to demands for his return to tenure. But what Pierce was suggesting just wasn’t what the majority of people in Cerise Timbers wanted.
‘I have served many years as coordinator on and off,’ Enaya explained.
‘-Nobody voted you in…’
‘-Nobody voted me out, Pierce. I volunteer my time here because I feel I have skills in group facilitation. Maybe if you put your name on the list…’
‘-You claim to be a democracy.’
‘We are a democracy.’ Said Daryl Sanders from the back.
‘Moreover, we’re a holacracy to be exact!’ Enaya joined. ‘But a functioning democracy nevertheless.’
‘Define it how you will. Still you don’t seem to understand,’ said one of the other heads, an equally embittered individual, a middle aged woman with curls in her dark hair that dangled to the right cheekbone. She carried herself off well as a local debutante, still aspiring to the image of upper-class ambitions in a society where class differences no longer existed.
‘There are members of this society that eat meat as a religious practice, and you know I’m not talking about the fish! Forget discussing fish! I want real meat!’
‘Then by all means find it,’ said Enaya. ‘We’re not against it. Our regulatory agencies for the ecological surroundings are saying that wild life has redoubling thanks to our collective progress in the surrounding reservations. Because we have cooperated in abstaining from eating meat the life in the surrounding forests and parts of the Novus is making a return! But please, be my guest Danuta. I’m sure Boris can craft you a bow and arrow. Perhaps you can convince one of the Mercenaries to come with you on your hunting trip and teach you how to shoot a defenceless animal for sport, and mount its head. But nobody will do it for you I imagine.’
To this, Danuta Philips scoffed. ‘Of course not. Nobody can do anything for anybody here. Seems we all have to be specialists in everything if we want something done.’
‘No, you have to be cooperative,’ said Enaya, ‘you have to stop pretending you are above others. You should be attending our workshops and training programs. You should be getting involved rather than self-indulged.’
‘And what’s mor
e!’ She said churlishly, ‘is that if we had a representative democracy and state government, we would be able to police these thugs who are spray painting our homes with words like fascist and racist and other bigoted statements. Whereas you are doing nothing to defend us.’
‘We’ll find out exactly who did this,’ Enaya promised. ‘East B’ One’s community is not a frivolous one. I don’t believe it is fair what they have done to your homes.’
‘Have you seen what they did to mine?’ Pierce shouted, ‘bastards! They went as far as painting Hitler there. Hitler, for Chrissake.’
Daryl caught his laughter in his mouth and coughed it off.
‘Funny eh?’ Pierce growled, pointing. ‘This is exactly my point. You’re all a bunch of degraded anarchists. No discipline at all.’
‘Pierce try to understand,’ said Enaya. ‘Representative democracy won’t work here.’
‘It used to work!’
‘That was a dictatorship,’ said Enaya darkly. ‘Call it what you want but your father did not run a democracy of any nuance. What you are asking for is a return to absurd twenty first century politics. We transgressed that Pierce. People died fighting against it. Nobody wants it. It would have to be enforced.’
‘Don’t you understand William Blake’s metaphor?’ Daryl sanders started up, ‘the strongest poison ever known came from Caesar’s laurel crown.’
The screens went silent and Enaya smiled and flashed Daryl a look that told him he wasn’t helping.
‘What?’ he whispered. ‘I’ve been reading some of what the revivalist poets are researching in Minerva Meadows.’
‘Well you see his point,’ Enaya explained. ‘Such systems of authority aren’t accepted here. Have you ever bothered to read our constitution? We use agile sociocratic approaches here. We follow rules, not rulers.’
‘So what do you propose?’ said an older Indian man on the screen, with dark grey hair and a well-trimmed beard. He was a scholar and went by the name of Niraj. ‘Do you propose we hire a private military from the Atominii to protect our homes?’
‘That would be an egregious threat,’ said Enaya, ‘one our community and the rest of Cerise Timbers would take very seriously.’
Daryl stepped forward, deciding on how to resolve Niraj’s proposition.
‘And then what are we to do?’ Niraj said sharply, his eyes beset with a stringent focus and sincerity. ‘Are we able to hire the Cerise Timbers defence militia? No. We are not, because they defend us all equally and leave our internal problems to politics. Except there is no politics here. You have seen to that.’
‘There will be an investigation-’ Enaya started. ‘We don’t play games here, politics exists and it’s real, not an entertainment show.’
‘-and if I catch someone on my property spray painting my walls am I allowed to brake their nose? Can I beat them with a stick? Or will the community evict me to another region, or worse, out of Cerise Timbers all together for simply defending my space?’
‘You speak about cooperation, why can’t you cooperate with the Atominii?’ Pierce grilled. ‘Or even the hardlanders for that matter?’
‘I think you know why,’ Daryl said stepping between Enaya and the screens. He pointed to the scars on his scalp, the criss-crossed section of his head where his hair would never grow, a lattice of skin networking small metallic contacts that freckled somewhere under in hair, contact nodes for the neurophase. ‘Because in the Atominii the thinking is done for you. In the Atominii they’ve got your mind in their hands, an inevitable but unforeseen aspect of cybernation in a Totalitarian paradigm. Our philosophy is balance, transparency and individual respect.’
‘So where’s our respect?’ Pierce snapped.
‘Respect is mutual, Mr Lewis,’ Enaya reminded, arms folded now as she leaned on one of the tables. ‘If it can’t be shown it won’t be returned.’
‘And you mean to show us no further respect?’ said Danuta.
‘You have done nothing to contribute to this place,’ Enaya challenged, moving to stand beside Daryl. ‘And nothing to earn people’s respect. All you seem to ever want is servants to do your bidding. You’re so dependent on others in fact that you have no ability to connect and learn what our communities are doing.’
‘Utter rubbish!’ Pierce bloviated, ‘I am practically running the youth fighting clubs. I’m actively involved in getting these kids fit and strong and ready for competitions. If it wasn’t for me the reputation of this city’s fighters would be unheard of and we’d have no external contributions here. You ought to be grateful, I invite people from everywhere, I’m the one who believes in pluralism, clearly more than you!’
‘Yes, and inviting competitors from Moscowai’s Atominii,’ said Daryl. ‘Which we feel is a security threat. Don’t you wonder why the Atominii nations are not equally as hospitable to host our teams in their arenas?’
‘This has been a waste of time,’ said Niraj, sitting back, his face darkened as he leaned from the light of the screen. ‘I told you this would be. Even if they find the scoundrels that marred the Lewis property I doubt anything will be done.’
‘A slap on the wrist, perhaps.’ Danuta agreed.
‘They’re soft,’ said Niraj, ‘they don’t believe in punishment.’
‘No they do not.’ Pierce agreed.
‘Correct,’ said Enaya sharply. ‘We do not. Our society has been developed upon years of concrete research, Lewis. Solid empirical evidence which suggests that in more fair and equal societies like Cerise Timbers, crime levels decline, substance abuse declines, neurophase solitude and hardland-agoraphobia vanish. Racism and intolerance decline while social inclusion increases along with development of health, education and ecological care, all more important than something as metaphysical as prof-hits.’
‘Then explain to me why we have problems?’
‘Everybody has problems!’ Daryl shouted. ‘This isn’t a utopia, evolution takes work. But we’re getting as damn close as we can to the orientation of one because here we dare to dream.’
Niraj’s screen went dark as the man walked away and severed the connection. Pierce was still brimming while Danuta was patiently listening, her face plain and stony.
‘Without romanticising,’ Enaya said, laying her hand on Daryl’s shoulder. ‘We are trying to attain a level of living comfort here suitable for all. And it means we all have to pull together Pierce. Now think. Is there anybody you may have angered recently? Do you have any enemies?’
Pierce and Danuta both sniggered.
‘What do you think?’ he said, gesticulating on the pronoun you.
‘I think on several occasions we’ve had complaints about your son Hattle causing problems. He’s been quite violent.’
Pierce was well aware of Hattle’s recalcitrant behaviour. He’d brought Hattle up under a house of discipline and respect the kind he didn’t receive from the rest of society. Sometimes it had to be enforced, and he only imagined Hattle would also discipline others to hold the same respect to him, especially when they refused to recognise him.
‘Maybe Hattle upset somebody?’ Enaya asked.
‘The only people I can think of that would dare infuriate me like this,’ he started, ‘is that neuro-jacked wire head from the hardlands, Edge Fenris, or the gene-freak kid we’ve got running amok.’
‘I particularly have distaste for Edge Fenris,’ Danuta felt it prudent to include, curling the long stand of hair behind her ear. ‘The man’s a boorish and indecent example of your world.’
‘We have new comers from the Atominii and hardlands arriving in Cerise Timbers all the time.’ Enaya stated, attempting to excuse Edge Fenris as being merely a new-comer, unfamiliar with the social structure.
‘Immigrants,’ Danuta hissed bitterly.
‘People escaping poverty and war.’ Enaya continued, disregarding her chides, ‘People like Edge Fenris and others who risk travelling all the way here on word of a legend, willing to believe that such a place is possible despite the
ir misery and misfortunes. If I am to determine if this is an internal matter with somebody you know and have angered, or if this is the work of an Atominii refugee still adapting to our ways, then I need to know who you suspect and why. It could save a lot of time, much of which is being exhausted.’
‘And what will you do about it?’ Asked Pierce.
‘The person will be expected to clean it up.’ Said Enaya.
‘In a surveillance state this would never happen to someone like me.’ Pierce insisted.
‘Word gets around fast,’ said Daryl, vexed by their moot back and forth. ‘We’ll find who did it.’
‘See that you do,’ Pierce ordered, glad to be delivering a tone of authority.
-10-
‘See to it that you do,’ Daryl had mimicked Pierce resentfully as he and Enaya crossed through the gardens towards the SkyLark air zone. ‘Guy’s got a real ego problem.’
‘Much of his older property once extended to the entirety of this city,’ Enaya reminded, ‘I think he’s a little bitter that property today is a shared ideal and not an exclusive parameter.’
‘You think he wants to own this place again?’
‘I’m sure of it,’ she explained as they followed the garden paths and walkways leading between various crops. She smiled and nodded to familiar faces who were working the fields. Daryl moved aside as some kids scurried past holding a small remote plane.
‘You could be right,’ Daryl nodded, ‘suppose he’s furious to be losing his legacy and inheritance.’
Chaos Cipher Page 11
