Expatria: The Box Set (43 page)

CHAPTER 19

It was what they called a 'gang house'. The unsteady old attendant, who had been there earlier, had told Katya that the building's main function was as a location for a holy rite of passage: adolescents would dress as cow-girls and young Lord Krishnas and in this building's many rooms they would learn to make merriment and love like the Krishna of old.

Now the building had been vacated and instead it was alive with the holy staff. The attendant had stumbled away into one of the city's dark alleyways, clutching his clay bottle of spirit, hawking loudly and then spitting at the walls on either side.

Katya stood at the top of the steps, looking out into the street. The gang house was in the Arro-Mackie quarter, a residential area beloved of traders and mid-ranking diplomats, a quiet sector of Newest Delhi with streets lined by plane trees and linen stalls. The sun was low and orange; she had grown used to its unnatural hue remarkably swiftly. She had never expected to feel so familiar with this alien planet.

There was a certain justice in the Holy Corporation's acquisition of this gang house: the Death Krishnas were the one major grouping that was still opposing the spread of GenGen. News from Glendower indicated that even the MacFadyen clan had welcomed their Thessalonian evangelicals, a marked change from the Black-Handers' initial response to the arrival of GenGen.

The menials were working behind her with hammers and chisels. Their work would have been far simpler with power tools but energy supply was still a problem on Expatria. Menials were constructed for toil, in any case.

The stone frontage of the gang house had been inscribed with all kinds of carvings and symbols. A stylised figure of a man playing a flute was on the wall by Katya's head. Above him was a sun symbol, a swastika with an eye at its centre. All about were pentagrams and cobwebs and hearts, banks of flowers carved in layer upon layer until it appeared that the wall consisted entirely of stone daisies, stone cyclamens, stone roses. It must have taken the crafters thousands of hours of labour.

It almost seemed a pity that the menials were going over the carvings, smoothing them off, chipping away at the figures until they were only visible as shadowed outlines on the great stone blocks.

It was necessary. It was a statement of corporate might, of     corporate majesty too. This building was to become a mission house, a place where Romans could find shelter and food and appropriate company. In time the symbols of the Holy Cee would undoubtedly appear; for now it was sufficient to remove the shadow of Krishna, to crush his icons into dust. It was a statement as clear as any words could be.

The Death Krishnas would understand and then they would capitulate. They would have little choice.

Six minutes earlier, Katya had been inside the building, up on a second floor balcony with Mika and Lincoln and a few of the Roman evangelicals. They had Maxed together. She could still feel it thrumming in the tissues of her brain-stem.

She had come out of the Max and the first thing that had struck her was the wide sweep of city, spreading out before her. They were near to the market-place and its sounds and scents assaulted her immediately. Suddenly she felt that they could do it, that a thousand years would be time enough to prepare a culture of belief. That they would be ready for the Final Calling. She smiled. She had even penetrated some of Sukui's defences the previous night; the old adviser's conversion would be a prize indeed.

Now she was alone. She had to think things through. She was still under the director's instruction:
Know thine enemy
. She was constructing the picture, the webs of influence, she was slotting it all together. She almost had it in her grasp: the key, the correct way for the Corporation to slot into the existing structure, a way to avoid all the petty conflicts that were now building up.

A Roman evangelical was running up Bellarbor Street towards the gang house. The
mission house
, she corrected herself. She raised her hand, in case he should have any trouble spotting her amongst the labouring menials.

He came straight towards her and stopped at the foot of the steps. Instantly, his breathing was stable; his control was worthy of an active. His pheno was of a physical type, one that always made her feel uneasy.

'Yes?' she snapped, checking her pulse and her irritability. She shouldn't let phenotype get to her so easily. She smiled and nodded.

'RoKatya,' said the evangelical. 'I've just come from the Penang Way. There was a disturbance in the shrine there, the Sisters' Gallery. Conventists are all over, panicking and screaming. We found one of them dead. I think you should come. Someone should be in charge.'

~

The Sisters' Gallery was a low building, narrow gothic windows implying height where there was none. Around it were clusters of small trees, birches, stunted pines, wych-firs, grass and wild flowers around their bases. It was as if the rest of Newest Delhi was holding back, not daring to impose on the space of the Convent.

Katya stopped before the building, noted with satisfaction how her own body recovered from the sprint faster than the evangelical who had accompanied her. The building's dark grey stone looked out of place in this leafy square. The sun shone feebly down, picking out the dew on the grass and the trees.

A terrible moaning sound was coming from the Sisters' Gallery; many voices, at least twenty, groaned in unison, ascending the scale and then sliding back down again. Katya let her snipe feel its way into the interface on her wrist.

She pulled the cloak around her shoulders. Despite the sunshine she felt cold now; all benefits of the Max had gone.

She ran up the stairs, clamping down hard on her physicals, forcing composure to ooze out of every pore. She paused at the top. Wide wooden doors stood open and the noise had become almost overpowering.

She stepped inside, passing under carved triangles that tumbled over the doorway. She acknowledged the two Philippian evangelicals standing guard. They looked calm and so she allowed her own guard to relax.

She passed through a long, whitewashed antechamber and emerged in a large hall, like the inside of one of the old European churches that had survived as hotels or boarding houses.

Everything was under control. A cluster of Daughters were penned into one corner of the hall by a line of Philippians and Romans. It was the Daughters who were making the noise, led in their wails by three Little Sisters, distinguishable by their more formal gowns and the crucifixes around their necks and the Mary/Deus graffiti scrawled onto their hoods.

Four more guards were holding a woman against a wall, pinning her arms out and holding her head back so that she looked like the nearby carving of the virgin on the cross.

It was the Matre, Maye Cyclades. She wasn't struggling, but by the appearance of her captors it was clear that she had fought viciously at first. A signal flitted up between Katya's templars: Director Roux was on his way, due in nine minutes.

The body was lying on a pew near to where Cyclades was being held.

Katya approached it, saw who it was, masked her shock with active ease. She lifted the shoulder of Natalia Olfarssen so that she could see the woman's face. She looked surprised, as well she might. She was dressed much as Katya had always known her to dress: the cut of her clothes indicated their quality, but their fabric was simple, plain, never the whites or greys of her Sisters. Now her clothes were soaked in blood from a wound in the side of her neck.

Only the day before, Katya had filed her report on Natalia Olfarssen, starting from her suspicions, broadening to include rumour, witnesses, confessions. There was little doubt that Natalia was the Convent's Matre Dee.

And now she was dead.

The Convent would collapse, now. There could be little doubt of that. No Matre Dee, the most senior surviving Matre held for murder.

It was very smooth, very professional.

The Right Consumers had broken up into squabbling factions once their leaders had been taken by rival hit squads; it just shows the primitive nature of their beliefs, the newscasts had said. The Corporations had remained aloof, despite the allegations that were surfacing.

Katya stopped herself. She let the body fall back onto the pew.

Natalia had been killed with a single thrust of a long knife, sharpened on one side, rounded on the other. Maye Cyclades clearly had that kind of strength in her stocky body; she had the repressed aggression of a killer in the set of the muscles around her eyes, too.

The knife lay on the floor nearby. It had been cast away, leaving a trail of blood to mark its passage.

Katya nodded at the senior evangelical. He had handled the situation well, without the guidance of an active.

There was a new noise from the hall's entrance, raised voices, arguments. The moaning built up into a stomach-churning intensity. Maye Cyclades began to struggle again.

Katya turned to greet the new arrivals, the Prime and his captain, Lars Anderson. An equerry had followed them into the hall, and then a quartet of belligerent-looking members of the Primal Guard.

At a brief hand signal from Katya, Anderson and the Prime were cut off from their companions by a group of five evangelicals armed with snipes and bully-sticks. Katya stepped back into the aisle to prevent the two of them from rushing up to the body.

'I wish to express corporate condolences,' she said. 'We will carry out a forensic assay when the team arrives. Please do not go beyond where you stand.'

She bowed her head and wondered how they would respond.

'If I—' The Prime was understandably fraught, but he was stopped by Anderson's restraining hand on his arm. Edward's eyes were flitting continuously from Katya to his dead mother and across to the struggling Maye Cyclades. He shook his head, shrugged Anderson's hand from his arm. He sat in one of the pews and fixed his stare on Cyclades. 'You took my wife,' he said to her. She stopped struggling and stared back, no emotion showing on her face. 'You, your Convent. Now my mother... Where does it stop?'

The mantle of the primacy had slipped for a moment, his weakness pushing back its shawl.

Maye Cyclades was still staring. 'You believe them so easily,' she hissed. 'They tell you pretty stories and you lap it up like they want.' She shook her head. 'This was not the Convent's affair, I did not kill your mother. Look into this man's eyes—' she was gesturing at the senior evangelical '—ask him if he knows who killed Natalia. Go on. Ask him where his friend is, too, the Roman. Go on.
Ask
.' She slumped back against her captors; she waited; she stared at Edward.

The Prime looked at the evangelical and his gaze was met in full. The evangelical shrugged, shook his head slightly. Edward looked at Katya and waited.

She slowed her heart, cut blood pressure by fifty over twenty. She tried not to think of Prague, of the rumours of Roman death squads.
The wages of sin are death
, the divisional Maxim leapt out at her.
Where there is no corporate law there is no transgression
—a phrase from
The Third Testament
, attributed to the Venerable Adam, a holy figure predating even Maxwell Riesling.

'I must assure you,' she said, locking her eyes on those of the Prime. Sincerity was in her genes, it was in her pheno, it was written down in company policy. 'The Holy Corporation of GenGen has no need of this kind of action. Murder is not a corporate tactic.' She wished she could tell that to Jacob Koruna, treasurer of Prague Right Consumers. Or to Tycho Collovcek, the rebel preacher of the Church of Open Mouths and Hearts. Or Milos Us, or Gustáv Ziegler, or any of the others.

Suddenly, she needed to Max. She needed it badly, it was her needle in the vein.

'It is true,' said a voice over the rising wail of the Sisters and Daughters. Katya looked back to the entrance and saw Director Roux humming into the hall on his white plastic autonome. 'We have no need of such tactics. Romans: take her away, secure her somewhere.

'Our condolences are most sincere, Prime Edward.' Roux dipped his floater as he came to a halt before Edward, Katya and Anderson. 'Please, if there is anything we can do to assist you during this troubled time, we would be most willing to oblige. Now, if you would vacate this building our team will conduct its tests. Thank you.' He backed away, leaving faint burn marks on the wooden panelling of the floor. Edward and Anderson responded as if under a spell and Katya followed them all outside.

~

Katya stood by the autonome's side, a few hundred metres from the Sisters' Gallery. Edward and Captain Anderson were walking slowly away towards their carriage and the waiting Primal Guards. She looked around at the dispersing Conventists, the lush green of the grass and the trees. The sun was much higher now. Expatria was spinning too fast for her; the sun should still be low.

She looked at the director and suddenly she realised one of the things that had been bothering her. Roux's flesh looked paler and waxier than usual, there were more tubes and cables attached to his body, the autonome was more bulky than was normal. She stared at him.

Director Roux was actually there, before her. In the flesh. He had come down from orbit to supervise in person.

'Your assessment of Edward Olfarssen-Hanrahan is accurate,' said the director. 'I have entered the MetaPlex and analysed his pheno, his behavioural parameters, so forth. It is a wonder that he has held his place for so long, with so many factions seeking to topple him.'

He was paraphrasing one of Katya's more recent reports. 'No longer the Convent,' she said.

'No,' said Roux. 'The Convent will fall. The projections concur.' He squinted at her face, the sun in his eyes.

'What about the Prime?'

'He will fall, too, unless he is propped up.' His tone was gentle, taunting. 'There is a role to be filled: the Convent has left a hierarchical vacancy. The Holy Corporation could integrate that gap into the overall strategy or we could wait for Edward to fail and so create a more tempting vacancy. The people will turn to us for stability and spiritual leadership, we can report positively to Earth and can call forth the holy fleet. What do you think, RoKatya Tatin? You look unhappy.'