Expatria: The Box Set (47 page)
Read Expatria: The Box Set Online
Authors: Keith Brooke
Evangelicals were scattered amongst the crowd, in their twos and fours. Romans, Ephesians, Corinthians, Thessalonians, Philippians. Four Philemonics were singing gospel boogie over at the foot of West Wall, two of them local recruits, she noted.
Katya's blood pressure and pulse began to move up the scale but she let them go, riding on the atmosphere of excitement. Something good was happening, she could feel the buzz in her Glory Chip, always a sign of corporate progress. She clenched her fists and broke into a run. She had to find out what it was.
Along the wide walkway on top of the wall there was more activity. Evangelicals running, some actives now, mixed in amongst the crowd.
She spotted two familiar faces. Cora and Sugratski, leaning over the wall and looking out at the harbour below. 'Hoy,' she called, coming to a stop beside the two Romans. 'What is it?'
They turned and nodded. 'We were looking out for you, RoKatya,' said Sugratski. 'There's big trouble in the city. Director Roux said you would be back about now.'
'What's been happening?'
'It's the Krishnas and the pageanteers,' said Cora. 'They're fighting amongst themselves and everybody's taking it out on the Holy Cee. We're trying to keep some kind of order, but it's not easy. The Prime's just holed up in the Manse along with almost all the Primal Guard; the city militia are trying to help us, but half of them are cultists anyway, so they're no good.'
'Why are they fighting?'
'One of the Kardinals was killed by a pageanteer. Kardinal Chantille was stabbed by Pom-Pom MacGrew in full sight of a group of Roman evangelicals. Two of our people were hurt in the chaos.'
'And MacGrew?'
'Dead,' said Sugratski. 'In the mêlée.'
Katya reached out to steady herself against the wall. Roux had mentioned alternatives if she was unable to bring Mathias Hanrahan back to Newest Delhi. She thought of Prague, of how the Right Consumerist factions had turned against each other after a spate of assassinations, how the Corporations had moved in to sweep up the debris. 'Control of the body,' she muttered.
Control of the body
.
Which of us is being tricked?
She heard the words in Mathias Hanrahan's voice, saw his head floating before her, clear as any templar hallucination. 'Come on, Romans,' she said. 'We have to get back to the mission house. I have to know what's really been happening.'
~
They weren't fighting. That was the crazy thing about the situation. Newest Delhi had come alive over a period of a few hours, just as Prague had once come alive. On the edge, ready to explode. In Prague, after the Right Consumer leaders had been assassinated, their followers had fought in an attempt to rekindle the Consumption Wars.
This was different. Matre Dee Natalia Olfarssen, Kardinal Mauritia Olio de Savior, Kardinal Toto Chantille, Grand Master Tobias Macari, Kensei 'Ash-Handed' MacFadyen, Charity Larinda Casales. The list of assassinated leaders grew the further Katya had investigated. Black-Handers had tried to provoke riots, the predicted response, but the other groups had reacted in a different manner, these other groups were truly alien. The Conventists and the Masons had withdrawn into their shells but the Pageant and the Death Krishnas had come out onto the streets
en masse
. The evangelicals had been armed, they had been ready; they had stood alongside Prime Edward's guards and militia, a clear sign that he had been convinced that he should embrace the Holy Cee.
The Expatrians had flooded into the Playa Cruzo, Joplin Square, anywhere there was space; the mass of colour had been overpowering, the swirling currents within the crowd enough to induce giddiness even in an active.
Now the massed people sat peaceably, their hands raised above their heads, their noise subsiding. One thing was clear: they were not about to start fighting.
A control room had been established on the first floor of the El Faiyum mission house. Romans and Thessalonians sat at work-bases, muttering commands into bone-mikes, studying coverage of the various disturbances on an array of screens.
A templar signal told Katya that a workbase would be available for her in under a minute. She was to receive an overview of the situation, she was to analyse, interpret, present options for retaining control and imposing Corporate Order on this barbarian rabble.
She checked her blood pressure, her heart rate, the tensions in her body. Restored them to more acceptable levels. Steadied her breathing.
An evangelical rose from his seat and Katya's signal told her that the workbase was now available. She stared at the seat, at the array of screens before it, the tendrils twitching in anticipation of entering her carpal and templar interfaces.
She didn't move.
The signal repeated itself, and the departing evangelical looked at her strangely. She felt moisture on her cheeks, a constriction of the muscles of her neck. She found it difficult to swallow. Her body had become unbearably heavy and then she remembered—so clearly, not a detail escaping her eidetic grasp—checking the monitor dart attached to the chest of her dead brother and suddenly it was all too much so she turned and ran from the control room, not understanding what was happening to her, not knowing where she was going, wanting only to be able to forget.
CHAPTER 23
'I am afraid it is not up to your usual standard of transportation, Sukui-san,' Egon Petrovsky had said, the previous evening. 'But it is all that is available.'
Now, Kasimir Sukui looked around himself in the thin afternoon light. The boat was a merchant's ketch, eight metres by three. It was owned by a dealer in linens whose daughters used it to trade along a twenty kilometre stretch of coast to either side of Newest Delhi. It was not a boat for the open seas.
Sukui had always distrusted the sea. In his time as Prime Salvo's principal adviser—he hated to think of that period in the past tense, particularly as he was now returning—he had travelled extensively, but always in a sizeable vessel, a frigate or one of the large primal barges. He had always set his high-backed chair in the centre of the boat, ignoring the sounds and sights of the sea and trying not to believe that he was succumbing to such a crude, animal fear. It was not the depth, or even the fear of drowning, that affected him so strongly. It was the chaotic motion of the water, the way waves rose and fell in patterns that were so close to being understood but which he knew he would never quite grasp. The rhythms of the waves competed, ceaselessly, with one another; surfaces and boundary layers contorted, chasing each other into infinitely varying eddies and vortices, a topologist's dream, a topologist's nightmare. At one level, the motion of the water looked so straightforward, yet it remained one of the great mysteries to Kasimir Sukui. His lack of understanding undermined all he had ever stood for. It made him scared.
Now, Sukui sat on a bench in the middle of the boat, rising and falling to that terrible non-pattern of the sea. He looked all around—at the rigging and sails above his head, at Petrovsky and the jaundiced youth who served as their crew, at the water on either side—and he felt truly uncomfortable.
They had set out the previous evening from the docks of Newest Delhi, drifting on the falling tide, raising their sails when the boat was safely out into Liffey Bay. They had followed the coastline southwards, and then eastwards into the ten kilometre channel that separated the island of Clermont from the disputed coastal territories that marked the border between Hanrahan and Andricci jurisdictions.
Now Petrovsky said they were near to Alabama City and Sukui accepted his words, although previously he had felt that he might have trouble ever believing Petrovsky again. Sukui had always attributed his own rise through the ranks of the Primal service to an ability to judge the people around him. Although a scientific adviser, he knew better than to credit himself with more than average talent in the scientific respect, but he had always known who to trust, who to impress, who would have influence with the right people. With complete objectivity he regarded himself as the finest diplomat in Alabama City, if not on all Expatria.
Yet Petrovsky had surprised him like this.
Egon Petrovsky, forever a junior, although in years he was close to par with Sukui himself. Long ago he had assumed the role of the veteran assistant, the secretary to committees; he had been destined never to rise through the ranks. He had come to Newest Delhi as secretary to the panel of Alabaman observers, despatched as a result of the Treaty of Accord. For years, Petrovsky had been a part of the diplomatic scenery, and yet here he was in charge of Sukui's means of transport... here he was: a
Mason
. Sukui had asked him numerous questions during the night. How long had he been under the tie? Were there other Masons in important positions in Prime Salvo's service? Why? But Petrovsky had simply smiled and bowed his head, refusing to reply.
Sukui sighed. The coastline was suddenly reaching around them as the land stretched out into the Southern Naze, fourteen kilometres to the south of Alabama City. Sukui leaned to one side, gripping his bench tightly. His distrust of the sea was one animal instinct he might never unite with his rational mind. A man could not achieve everything...
He could see the city of his birth, now, a few square blocks against the eastern skyline. As they approached, the buildings attained a degree of definition; it was a sight so familiar from Sukui's previous returns to Alabama City.
'Xavier! The colours. Quickly, boy, quickly. They say Mags' trigger finger has an itch to it. Come on.'
'Egon,' said Sukui, raising his hand to attract Petrovsky's attention. 'What is it?'
'We have to fly the right colours,' said Petrovsky. 'Flags from the rigging. The Prime has set Mags Sender in charge of teams all along the harbour wall. They have cannons with napalm shells—they claim a range of a kilo and a half. Anyone who doesn't have the right colours will get blown out of the water.'
'But why?'
'Sukui-san, you've been out of touch for too long. The Prime is concerned about the GenGen takeover. They've been trying to infiltrate the streets of Alabama City but most of them are in jail now. He says he wants to talk to them officially, but on his own terms. He's built up the city's defences. He's ready for a fight if that's what they want.' Petrovsky shrugged. 'Everybody thinks the Prime is paranoid, but he is our Prime, he has our loyalty.'
'Above your mother lodge?'
'Above Saint Hiram himself,' said Petrovsky, shaking one hand reflexively by his side.
Xavier was climbing precariously about in the rigging between the boat's twin masts. Every so often the boat swayed dangerously to one side or the other. Sukui clung to his seat, watching the boy's movements with morbid fascination.
Eventually the flags were securely tied and Xavier descended with a satisfied smile on his face.
'That's it,' said Petrovsky. 'We can sail safely into harbour now. Are you OK, Sukui-san?'
Sukui was staring at the harbour of Alabama City. He could make out more of the details now, he even thought that he could determine the figures of people scurrying about at the tops of little towers that had been constructed during his absence.
'I believe—' There was a flash of light on the harbour wall and then the sound of an explosion cut across Sukui's sentence.
It was followed closely by a shell, burning, whistling, splashing down with a terrific blast of steam and flames and acrid, black smoke.
'What the—?' Petrovsky had gone white. He stared at the rising steam, glanced at Sukui and then at Xavier, as the boy leapt clear of the boat to disappear under the foaming waves.
'I believe,' said Sukui, 'that the rational course of action would be to follow young Xavier's example.' He stood. He took one wavering step. And then he threw himself clear of the boat.
The water was hard and cold. It hit him like a plank of wood. It took the breath from his lungs, made his vision go black, made his stomach churn painfully as he went down into the darkness, unsure of all direction, all sense of his own motion deserting him.
He surfaced once, the boat now a burning, sinking blur of colours and confusion. He heard a voice nearby, a choking cry. Petrovsky.
Then he sank again, unable to drag air back into his lungs in his brief reacquaintance with the atmosphere. As he struggled, close to the edge of consciousness, he had time to revise his earlier analysis: it was no longer the chaotic motion of the sea that he feared most. The drowning aspect had suddenly risen in his perception.
Then the darkness took him and it all seemed irrelevant, in a truly rational world, it all seemed...
CHAPTER 24
They shut her in the
Third Testament
's core. Stopp closed her eyes and for a long time all she could think of was that awful sensation of realisation: watching Ark Red begin to rotate. She felt like a part of her had recently died. Eventually she made herself calm down and sleep tugged irregularly at her perception, destroying all sense of the passing of time.
She was jammed into the deepest corner of the locker when the door finally slid down. She peered out into the face of a menial. 'Why do you let them push you about so much?' said Stopp. 'Can't you defend yourselves?' She didn't even know if it would understand her. Its features were inhuman enough for her to believe anything.
The menial poked its tongue at her and then reached in and pulled her out into the locker room.
'They're poor dumb creatures. They do what they are told. Their genes wouldn't let them do anything else.' An active was waiting in the room, arms folded across her chest, wearing the check vest of a Thessalonian.
'ThePatrische wants to see you,' continued the active. 'Then I don't know. I don't know what you've done but the Holy Cee is fair—all are equal in the final judgement.' She turned and headed for the exit. 'Make sure she can't get free,' she said to a group of four menials. 'Follow me.'
Stopp let the menials lead her out. They were only a few centimetres taller than Stopp but their bodies appeared to have been cast out of the purest slabs of brawn. She could see muscles rippling on their bald heads, she could see them layered one on another down their thick necks, across their round shoulders, down under their simple body-suits.
She thought that maybe she would have been something like a menial if she had grown up under gravity and worked at it.
They followed the Thessalonian back along the corridor and into the docking bay, once again. 'Don't you ever think of escape?' Stopp whispered to the nearest menial. She guessed it was the one who had opened her locker. She guessed it was a woman but she couldn't be sure, they were all so alike.
The menial glanced at her but said nothing.
'Do you ever push them back?' whispered Stopp.
The docking bay was busier than when Stopp had been brought to the
Third Testament
from Ark Red. The Holy Staff seemed to fill its wide space with complete chaos, but as Stopp watched them she saw the pattern to it all, the way the menials seemed instinctively to know where to go and how to thread their way through the rabble, how they dodged their superiors and re-set their courses without hesitation.
The sound was incredible—menials sticking doggedly to their own songs and chants, regardless of their neighbours' songs and chants, Philemonics singing psalms with a complex, arrhythmic beat, actives shouting commands, evangelicals talking and laughing, autonomes whining. Stopp's ears were thrumming with the din.
Suddenly Stopp realised why she felt so strange about this place. She had heard this chaos of sound before, she had seen this place in a dream.
There was a disturbance at one of the docking modules. An evangelical was shouting commands at a group of about twenty menials but the little people did not appear to be listening.
Stopp's group slowed to watch.
'You must empty the crates from the shuttle!' The evangelical was screaming, all control having gone. His voice sounded hoarse, his tone unsure. The menials just stared at him. 'You must do it now! Go on!'
One of the menials started to sing the company hymn, slowing the tempo, strangling the words in a fashion so familiar to Stopp from the work parties in Ark Red. One by one the others joined in.
And then Stopp noticed that her own group of menials was humming quietly, accompanying the rebels. She looked at the one she had spoken to, but there was nothing to read in the menial's expression, so she started to hum along herself.
The chorus came to an end just as a Roman active approached the frantic evangelical supervisor; instantly the menials gathered their drifting crates and formed an orderly line heading for one of the corridors.
'Come on,' snapped the Thessalonian active, realising that her menials and captive were lingering.
There was another active in a loose body-suit by one of the most distant docking modules. He was drifting near to the hatchway, surveying the docking bay. Stopp recognised his gingery hair and darkened skin instantly. She had heard him arguing with Director Roux. He was Roux's favourite, the adviser destined, eventually, for a directorship and then for an eternity in the MetaPlex. His name was Patrische Kingston.
He nodded to Stopp's active and then gestured to where the evangelical was still having trouble maintaining control over his group of menials. 'TheClaudine,' he said. 'There's too much of that going on. There must be a flaw in the breeding, that's all it can be. If it continues we'll have to pick out the deviants and eject them into the vacuum.' He smiled, and turned his narrow gaze on the nearest menials. 'Do you hear that? The next one to question corporate authority will be voided. It is the only way to protect those of you who are not genetically deviant.'
The menials around Stopp were looking in any direction other than straight at Kingston.
Stopp stared at him until finally he met her gaze. She forced her hands to remain still by her sides, swallowed, tried to stop her skin from burning under the intensity of his look. 'As a representative of the Expatrian peoples,' she said, frightened by her own intensity, 'I must commend you on your fairness.' She spat at a nearby wall, to emphasise the sarcasm of her statement. Why had she said something like that? Suddenly she felt very, very small. And she wanted to shrink even smaller.
Patrische stared at her in surprise. Then he laughed, a short, sharp bark, like one of the dogs in Ark Blue. 'The midget,' he said. 'The spy. Bring her, TheClaudine. We're going by shuttle to Theta, we'll talk to her there.' Theta was the GenGen name for Honshu Island. At least there would be no gravity to crush Stopp—the Island was a cluster of habitats, linked by tubes and chutes, there was no way that it could be spun up to induce centrifugal gravity.
ThePatrische had turned towards the hatchway, but now he stopped. Over at the far side some menials were playing up again, letting their crates drift dangerously, ignoring the frantic pleas of their supervisor, the same evangelical as before.
'You heard me!' shouted ThePatrische. 'Find the ring-leaders. Void them.
Now
.'
He pulled himself through the hatchway and gestured for the menials and Stopp to follow him.
They entered the passage, followed by TheClaudine, and the door clanked shut behind them. TheClaudine looked around and shrugged, following the menials along the short passageway.
'Why is the door closed?' demanded Patrische. He was angry now. Actives usually had so much self-discipline, yet ThePatrische Kingston was letting his frustration spill over. 'Why is the door closed?' he repeated, turning to the others.
TheClaudine slipped to the front and passed her wrist in front of a discreet scanner by the doorway. 'No problem,' she said. 'Just keeping the air fresh in the shuttle.' She grinned but Patrische did not respond.
The door began to hiss open and Stopp felt a hand tapping at her arm. It was the menial she had tried to speak to earlier. 'Hold on, sis,' she said, her face suddenly woken out of the standard menial design. Stopp looked at the little woman, looked suddenly towards the door, to TheClaudine, to ThePatrische, to the gap that was opening up between them and the little people.
'What—?' Patrische pulled himself away from the door, the door that was opening onto the void, stars pricking brightly out of utter darkness.
He turned and two of the menials threw themselves at him, one at his chest, the other at his legs. He tried to cry out, but it was too late.
They hit him and the three of them crashed into the door, helping it to open, tumbling out into the darkness.
The other active stared disbelievingly at what she had just witnessed. She didn't notice the little man drifting up behind her until he pushed her firmly in the back. Each time she turned, somersaulting away into the void, Stopp could see the look of surprise on her face.
Stopp stared at the two remaining menials. She felt more scared than she had ever been before.
The nearest one, the one who had spoken, smiled and nodded, gesturing towards Stopp, pointing at the open doorway. The other was in trouble, trying in vain to fill his lungs with air.
The first menial scrambled out towards the exit and Stopp followed.
The exterior of the core was smooth plastic, retaining some warmth from regular passes through sunlight. The surface was liberally provided with rails and grips, presumably put there for maintenance workers.
The menial was already thirty metres away, waiting by an open hatch, gesturing frantically. Stopp looked at the struggling menial behind her, wondered why his companion had abandoned him. She grabbed the man's hand and pulled him along after her.
She reached the hatch as her vision was beginning to go cloudy, to darken at the edges. She pulled the menial in after her, saw the hatch swinging instantly shut, felt the delicious brush of air moving over her skin. She was OK. She was alive. She was free.
The first menial was looking at her strangely. 'Why'd you bring Abbi?' she said. The menial's accent was stronger than any Stopp had encountered. It was hard work to translate.
She didn't understand the question. 'He would have died,' she said. 'Isn't that a good enough reason?'
'Menials die. Big'uns don't help us. They don't.'
'I'm no bigger than you are,' said Stopp. 'We stick together, right?'
The menial smiled uncertainly. 'Right,' she said. 'Stick right.'
'They got you out! Jay-Bee, they got the right person. Shit, you're lucky, Stopp: they don't always understand me—I expected them to save me a crate or something.'
The voice was different, its accent Expatrian, its diction beautifully clear. Stopp looked around but there were only menials.
'Hey, don't you remember me?' One of the menials had spread his arms wide. He was wearing menial clothing but he was thinner than the others and there was stubble growing back over his scalp. She looked at him closely. '
Samizdat?
'
'Sure,' said Samizdat Buschois. 'Who else?'
She had gone trifax with Samizdat at the Deadacre. He had been exploring the empty lander. 'You never left the lander,' said Stopp, thinking out loud. 'You stayed on board. Do they know you're here? What are you
doing?
'
'They came back onto the lander while I was poking about,' said the boy. 'I couldn't get out. When I finally snuck off I found myself on the
Third Testament
. I thought I might stick around for a time, make myself some friends. You should talk to the menials, Stopp, they're really good when they accept you, hey, Abbi?' He prodded the recovering menial, eliciting a pained smile.
'Please, sis,' said the first menial. 'Are you all as 'lectric as Samiz?' The look in her eyes was comical.
'Samizdat is a special case,' said Stopp. 'Let me assure you of that.' She turned back to the boy. 'What about Patrische Kingston and the active? Did that have to happen?' Her mood was changing so quickly, switching from the joy of release to horror at what had happened, what they had done to save her.
'Two birds with one sling-shot,' said Samizdat. 'Patrische Kingston had it in for the little people. They would have finished him soon enough anyway. There would have been an accident like that one.' He didn't seem like a child at all any more. He had seen too much.
'They seem really scared by the menials,' said Stopp, studying Samizdat closely. 'They're scared that they have some kind of illness, a "rebelitis".'
Samizdat was alive again, his face lit up, his body twitching with youthful zest. 'Rebelitis? Phah!' he snorted. 'All they needed was some encouragement. They just needed a few ideas. They didn't know what it was like to actually say no.' He laughed. 'Rebelitis? Haha! All they needed was a little teaching!' He laughed and the menials watched him doing so. Then Abbi made a few choking sounds and the others copied him. By the time Samizdat had calmed down, the menials had laughing as good as anybody.