Expatria: The Box Set (26 page)
Read Expatria: The Box Set Online
Authors: Keith Brooke
He stopped himself. He was moving into the realms of emotion, he was letting the occasion weigh down upon his thoughts. This was not like him at all: Kasimir Sukui, man of science.
He pulled himself up, looked around. Mood did not ordinarily affect him in such a way. Uncomfortably he noted that the greyness of the landscape seemed to be reflected in the faces of the mourners. In their clothing. And then he noticed the presence of the Conventists, the greys and blacks of their robes and leggings lending themselves to his unusually pensive mood.
He had thought it was to be a conventional funeral run on Jesus-Buddhist lines. He corrected himself: he
knew
that it was to be so, he had heard the Prime give strict instructions to his equerry. That was bound to offend the Conventists and Sukui had expected them to stay away. But instead, they were present in large numbers—about a hundred of them, Sukui estimated.
He studied them as they proceeded stiffly towards the cemetery, distinguishing a few of the senior women known as Matres from the mass of what he assumed to be Daughters and Little Sisters. And their adopted kleiner, he reminded himself. He checked his notes on the organisation of the Convent, allowing himself some degree of distraction from the dampness of his clothes.
As the procession slowed to allow the carriages to negotiate the cemetery gates, Sukui slipped the notebook back into a fold of his robe. Perhaps the sectarian divisions were not as strict as he had first believed: the Convent would honour its dead, whatever the manner of their burial. One thing Sukui had learned was that the cults of Newest Delhi were fluid in their beliefs.
He put the matter aside as they filed into the Deadacre. Once the crowd had settled he made brief notes of his observations from the march, and then he tucked the notebook back into his robes and the pencil into his skull-cap, as the service began.
~
The funeral had barely started when it became apparent to Sukui that something was amiss. As if by some kind of divine intervention, the rains had ceased as Greta was lifted from the hearse and placed on her cedarwood pallet to one side of the open grave. The Prime had knelt and spoken a few disconsolate words, before turning away to the comfort of his mother and his two half-sisters. Mathias Hanrahan looked on impassively, not meeting anyone's eyes and looking as if he would rather be anywhere other than where he was. As always, the scents of the Expatrian soil were pungent after the rain. Sukui hoped they would not trigger one of his allergies.
A priest had stepped forward and waved his lotus-bearing crucifix in the air. 'Hear the voices,' he had cried. 'Let us hear the voices.' And so the ceremony had begun. A wailing momma had taken up the Cry of the Hellbound in her strident, carrying voice. A line of barely pubescent choristers had started to recite the sutras and psalms of their creed, kissing little Jesus-Buddha statuettes and waving their pom-poms in the air.
Surveying the grey landscape of the cemetery and its surroundings, Kasimir Sukui had noted that the Conventists were gathered near to the gate. Their numbers appeared to have increased since the procession. He made a quick count, feeling his unease multiplying as the figure passed two hundred.
Why should the Convent be present in such numbers?
But he knew now: there could be little alternative. He wondered what was happening in Newest Delhi, with the Prime and his chief advisers a safe distance away.
As the grey-clad grouping began to disperse, heading towards the funeral gathering, Sukui tapped his neighbour on the arm. 'I believe we are about to experience some kind of—'
But the man shook Sukui's hand from his arm, giving him an angry stare. 'Please listen,' said Sukui, but the man edged away. The Conventists were close now, and others had appeared around the periphery of the graveyard. The funeral had been encircled and Sukui appeared to be the only person to have realised.
He pushed his way through the crowd, ignoring the angry responses of the mourners. The wailing momma broke off her Cry as the disturbance grew and, sensing that he could not turn back now, Sukui called out, above the chanting choristers. 'Mathias! Prime Edward! I fear we—'
A man screamed and suddenly the crowd had realised that it was trapped. One or two tried to charge the advancing Conventist Guards, but they were easily repelled. The rest milled around, allowing themselves to be seized—as Sukui himself had been seized—and marshalled about, sorted by rank and nuisance value.
The chaos had soon been dispelled.
Watching, now, from the corner of the cemetery, Sukui acknowledged the precision of the operation. His doubts had been confirmed: there was more to the Convent than their hasty retreat after Greta's death had indicated. An engraved triune came to mind, one he had seen at the Conventist shrine. The words
past, present, future
. Greta was a part of the past—while everyone thought her death had set them back, the Convent had dismissed it already.
We can only head forwards
, the kleiner had told him. Now Sukui saw what he had meant.
As the captives were moved aside, three Matres approached the body of Greta, their departed Little Sister. One of them carefully removed the olive shroud and a Daughter hurried up to replace it with a white one. With this spread over the body, the Matres began to chant. 'In the name of the Mother, the Daughter, the Holy Spirit, bless this Little Sister of the Convent.' Over and over, each Matre following a different rhythm.
Sukui watched intently, trying to divine what he could from the strict formalities of the Conventist ritual. The thought occurred to him that perhaps this was the extent of the takeover: the sorority wanted to bury Greta in their own fashion. Perhaps they would retreat after the rite, their feelings expressed to the world and whatever god they followed. The ceremony finished with a hymn, sung by all of the Conventists, including the Guards.
'
Fountain of life, the greater part
.' Sukui spotted Mathias twitching aggressively at the sound of the singing. The Convent had been responsible for much of the grief in his life; Sukui wondered what must be passing through his impetuous young mind. '
Wet my brow, Sorority
.' Prime Edward was staring at his wife as six Little Sisters lowered her into the ground. His mother and half-sisters looked on impassively, as if impatient for the whole affair to be over. '
Springing up within the heart: Mary/Deus, Eternity
.' A grey stone crucifix was lowered into the grave and then the Sisters began to shovel the heap of soil back to where it had originated from.
It was then that Sukui heard the sound of horse's hooves.
A rider passed through the cemetery gates. Clad in grey, the messenger was a member of the Conventist Guard. Sukui watched his animated conversation with one of the Matres, resigned to the worst.
A short time later, the Matre came to stand before the group of prisoners. 'We must remain here for a time,' she said, talking to the group, but unable to keep her eyes from the Prime and his family. 'Things are unsettled in the home city. Tents will be arriving shortly.' An inadvertent groan rose from the crowd as the Matre turned away. Finally, Sukui decided that it would be appropriate to make some brief notes in his diary. It would help him think.
CHAPTER 2
Katya Tatin entered the cramped bunk-room and climbed on to a couch, secure within the
Third Testament
with her fellow actives all around. She always felt nervous at this point, impatient to continue, to be
there
. She drew the Metlink leads from the wall, located the interface at each temple. Inserted the plugs and began to drift.
~
Katya felt uncomfortable, back on a planetary surface. She had experienced less than two years since Prague—the other thirteen had been spent in cytosuspension—but now outdoors seemed so dangerous, so exposed. So alien.
She made herself remember that this was a new planet—it was only natural that she should feel vulnerable. She made herself look around, take in all the details. She slowed her heart-beat, lowered the pressure of the blood in her veins. Tried to adopt the self-command that was her standard mode.
'Control of the body is control of the mind.' She spoke the Maxim aloud like some kind of incantation, felt her pleasure centres tingling in instant response as calmness returned. She was in control again. She recalled her feelings, now past, part of her personal psychohistory, part of her spiritual gestalt. She had to keep reminding herself of this planet's alienness, she realised, because it was so like the wilderness regions she knew on Earth: weak blue sky drifted over with strands of cirrus; mountainous backfall with near to fifty per cent snow-caps; sparse, verdigris scrub in the distance, fading anonymously into the richer cultivated strips nearby; a light breeze, carrying little scent other than the fresh-earth smell of the powdery tilth that Katya stood upon; twelve celsius air-temperature, despite the near equatorial location of the landing site.
'You OK, Katya?' She didn't need to look to recognise the voice of Turkut Bar'hat. Tall, with wide-awake eyes, he was another active, always solicitous but never over-laden with sincerity.
Katya liked him nonetheless. 'Top order,' she said. She looked around at her party. Ten had disembarked from the shuttle, all actives, all Romans.
'So this is Expatria,' said one of them—Petra Odenz, she thought. The same old line. 'Come on, Romans,' she continued, hardening her tone. 'We're on our own, this time.' Petra set off across the field with a loping gait, treading finger-high brassicas into the dirt.
Katya looked back at the shuttle, as a single autonome squeezed out of the narrowing hatchway. She watched the small unit as it hummed down to within ten cee-ems of the ground and then turned a full three-sixty, taking in its surrounds in a single sweep. She wondered what Director Roux could see and smell through this mimeosentient surrogate, how it filtered what was superfluous from what the director should know. She turned and caught up. with her colleagues, but not before the autonome had fixed its artificial gaze on her and twitched as if to release her from its spell.
They entered the scrub and instantly Katya felt the planet closing in on her, cutting her off from the shuttle and the world that she knew. Suddenly Expatria felt genuinely alien—all sense of familiarity had vaporised, all empathy vanished.
They followed a rough track, parallel ruts indicating wheels, hoof-marks indicating draft-animals not motor vehicles. Such a level of culture was already apparent from the scale of the cultivated land around the shuttle.
As the
Third Testament
had entered the Expatrian planetary system, manoeuvring into a high orbit around the planet itself, there had been no response to its broadcasts. The low sweep survey satellites had detected no sizeable cities, no street-lighting, none of the localised particle signatures that would indicate a tokamak or any other kind of nuclear facility.
But there were wheel-tracks, ploughed fields. In some primitive fashion the first colony on Expatria had survived! The exploratory party continued along the path, Katya on survey whilst others dictated data into their carpals.
A bend in the track, open space ahead. Mud huts with grass roofs and split-log doors.
The village was deserted.
The Romans conferred. 'Bear witness,' said Petra, always ready with the appropriate Maxim.
'Watch your ass,' said Pieter Sugratski, more practical.
They advanced cautiously, past the first hut. 'Here,' said Katya, pointing to a clay bowl hung over a few meagre embers, its brown contents steaming and smelling of caramel.
They continued and Katya tried to focus by reciting the introductory codes in her mind. 'Peace is in our actions; cooperation is in our hearts. Peace...'
But she couldn't—Petra was leading them on too quickly, she was trying to attain too much in one visit. Katya looked around at the looming forms of the huts, back to the retreating scrub-forest, the cart-track lost to sight already. 'We're too exposed,' she said, moving closer to Turkut as he whispered encyclo into his carpal implant.
'Petra's keen,' he said, moving his crooked wrist from his mouth, holding his palms outwards in excuse. 'But her discipline is weak: she knows we are safe.' His darkened Med skin looked much better in sunlight, Katya noted. She looked away. She had always been keen on melanised skin.
Behind them, Director Roux's autonome floated discreetly, its presence a constant reminder that they were being studied, their responses monitored. Katya watched it for a brief moment, then looked back to the village and its dark buildings.
At the centre of the settlement there was a clearing and here they found a large, open-sided hut—a meeting-place or a market hall or a school-house. Closer, its floor was inlaid with small tiles, no,
teeth
: polished, brightly-stained teeth. Molars, canines, incisors, others that must be native, difficult to identify. 'Wow,' gasped Petra, looking up at the carved Jesus on its cross at one end of the building. It looked so realistic, wearing real clothes, plastered in the dark mud of the region, fresh blood still glistening around the punctures carved into its hands and its neck.
Petra mounted the first step, entered the building, tentatively placing her feet on the dental mosaic.
Behind them: a scream, high and piercing, slicing through the air, through Katya's nerves. Turning, she could see people everywhere, short people plastered in mud, swinging long daggers above their heads. Katya drew her snipe, its tendrils diving into the carpal interface on the inside of her left wrist as she raised it, sighted subliminally through its ranger and fired, picking off the four nearest natives before she even had time to think about what she was doing.
Peace is in our actions; cooperation is in our hearts
. But it was too late for that. Katya shot three more villagers, turned at a scream from Sugratski, looked back in time to fend off the lunging blade of a small woman. Falling together with the woman, Katya hit the ground first, the smell of native sweat in her lungs. The woman landed limply on Katya, shot by another of the actives.
Katya pushed the body away and struggled to her feet, aware of a deep wound across her right shoulder. She took a long breath and willed her bloodstream's microscopic nanomedical heterocytes to coagulate around the injury, sealing it, re-linking severed nerves and blood vessels, cutting off the wave of pain that had engulfed her as she stood. Katya edged towards a building and looked frantically around, ducking rocks thrown from the periphery by a crowd of jeering, animalistic children.
Her snipe had disappeared, she was unarmed.
She seized a dagger from the ground and turned on the nearest villager but it was too late, only three Romans remained on their feet and natives were still arriving on the scene. They should never have entered the village without support, they should have reconnoitred and returned, built themselves a strong foundation of knowledge. But Petra had led them on, determined to achieve something, seeking recognition at the expense of them all...
~
'To judge another is to condemn oneself...'
'But so we are all condemned,' answered Katya, an embarrassed smile on her face. Director Roux had accessed the simulation and now he hung before her as she unplugged the twin Metlink leads from her templar interfaces. The Maxim was a gentle chastisement—they had all been to blame: Petra had led but each of them had followed—but also a recognition that a lesson had been learnt. Katya's reply was a part of the Roman formula, a part of the Maxim.
Roux dipped his floater in acknowledgement before gently gliding away from the group of recovering actives. Katya felt a surge of pride. Director Roux had picked her out for social exchange, he had dipped his floater. She wondered what it might mean, whether it was fair of her to hope it meant anything at all. She looked at her fellow Romans, exchanging a few words, grinning meekly at what they had shared in the MetaPlex arena.
She shook her head, sighed. Even Roman
actives
could be particularly dull at times. On Earth the banding had not been so marked, but here on the
Third Testament
the social order had to be more rigidly defined, it had to be kept close to the formal structures. The ship was entering the Expatrian system—this was no time for the hierarchy to lose its definition.
'Order is a gift to make us strong,' she mumbled, as she collapsed onto a bunk and tried not to dwell on the humiliation of her experience in the simulation. As the bunk adjusted to her form, she wondered if Expatria would be anything like the sims—ultimately, after the physical parameters such as gravity and climate had been entered, the constructs were based only on guesswork and assumptions.
She stopped thinking, realising that she was still tired from the MetaPlex arena. With a brief prompt to her templar implants, she slotted down into plusRem sleep, let her brain sort its way through what had happened while the rest of her body let go.
~
A few minutes later she felt alert and refreshed. She spotted Turkut heading for the exit so she slid down from her bunk and followed.
Out in the avenue, he stopped and let her catch up. 'They smeared us, didn't they?' he said, widening his eyes even more for effect. Again, she wondered if they were natural or cosmetic.
'It's sim, Turk,' she said. 'Come on, let's run.' She broke into a fast jog—seven metres to the second, her templars told her—and then slowed for Turkut. 'Come on,' she said. 'You're losing lean.'
Evangelicals of various bands occupied the paveways on either side of the avenue so Katya veered out, onto the central stone strip. Here there was a real sense of space, three levels of balconies crowding in above them but nothing directly over their heads for nearly a hundred metres, and then only the sun-tube and the cladding of the inner rim of the
Third Testament
. The ship was a huge torus, connected to its central core by six tubular spokes. It carried the equipment, the supplies, it carried the hordes of specially-bred menials, it carried the six bands of directors, actives and evangelicals, it carried a vast computer-brain network—its very own MetaPlex, its very own element of the All. It was a huge undertaking; Katya felt privileged to be involved.
Amongst the sounds of preaching evangelicals, menials going about their tasks, general hubbub, the familiar beat of the company hymn drifted down from the balconies. The words were soothing in their familiarity.
'Are you looking forward to it?' said Turkut.
'Yes,' she said, meaning it. 'Yes I am.'
They came to a fork in the avenue and slowed to follow a narrower track that ran alongside a stream. The roof closed in above them, ochre moss hanging from the walls and ceiling.
'Petra thinks we'll be the first to go down,' said Turkut.
'Petra's not infallible,' said Katya, but it was true, the Romans were most likely to go in first, they were the all-rounders, adaptable to any situation. Katya preferred it that way, she wanted to see things first.
It was then that the time signal twinged in Katya's temples, stronger than usual, indicating a communal Maxing. With a nod, she followed Turkut back along the track, onto the avenue and up two shoots to their nearest mission house.
The corridor, one of six leading into the hall, was crowded. Thessalonians, Corinthians, Romans, Philippians and Ephesians were instantly apparent by their clothing and phenotypes. Completing the picture, a small choir of Philemonics stood by the archway, singing gospel boogie and causing a large proportion of the congestion.
Inside, the hall was even more densely packed, actives and evangelicals filtering out into their separate pews. Katya had lost Turkut in the chaos so she headed for the Roman pews alone. There would be other gatherings like this right around the ship; usually an active could Max alone, but such large-scale gatherings had become more frequent as the ship approached Expatria.
Eventually, silence spread around the hall and an avatar appeared before the crowd. Middling in height—barely six metres—hair dark above a muscular face and body, clothed in an old-style business suit with a small-knotted neck-tie and crisp white shirt, the augmented trifacsimile looked like a real person, a real giant. But it was so much more than that... Katya found herself joining the communal intake of breath at the appearance of Maxwell Riesling's avatar, the outward projection of the reconstructed psylogue of the Holy Corporation's parent-figure, its Father, its Prophet. His mind was stored as an intricate part of the ship's MetaPlex; his body was long dead, yet here he was, before them once again.
Aware that the figure was no more than a play of light and hue, Katya was as transfixed as any evangelical. An avatar would often appear at a communal Maxing, but usually it was Mother Tamsin, or Saint Stuardine; the founder himself was making a rare appearance.
Katya bowed her head as Riesling's trif spoke its first words. 'And so the Corporation achieves Progress.' His pause drew itself out, as if that was all he would say; he rarely spoke for long. Then:
'We are close to a new planet, or to recovering an old planet. We do not know.' His tones were nasal, his accent a soft old-states twang. 'But we are here, we carry the modern gospel. We must show these new barbarians what it is to
believe
, what it is to be an element of the organisation that has become the Lord on Earth, the Lord within His Universe! We carry the Flare of the Final Days, we are the Children of Light... we are the multiple voices of the All! I need say no more. Children, let us join Voices.'