Prophet Margin (27 page)

"What I'm saying is, Macrojail snecks you up. And the more you fight it, the harder it gets. Solution is: religion.

"This is the part where you did me a favour. See, in the macrojail library, there's an extensive file on galactic religions. The dreamwardens encourage that sort of thing. They say it gives you a focus. Something to shape yourself around. You spend so much time inside out, it gets absorbed into your blood. If they ever let you out - if - chances are you're a saint." He shrugged. "It's a good system."

Without warning, he swatted the firebrand against the shivering man's chest with a sharp crack. The man groaned, smoke lifted, Grinn grinned and grinned, then returned to his story as if nothing had happened.

"In the library," he said, "they've got files on every crackpot deity, cult, coven and splinter-cell going. Heh - did you know, somewhere in the Frebula Nebula there's a bunch that worship a piece of string? They think water is God's holy piss and by drinking it you can divine the future. And, oh, hah, there's a world in the Venrixii cluster whose only relic of its great messiah is an ancient pair of underpants.

"In macrojail, they all seemed as stupid as each other. I ended up sticking a pin in the page. Thus, Boddihsm."

Grinn pushed the fire towards his captive's face, smoke clouding his mouth and nostrils. Before the heat seared his skin, the shivering man - grunting with effort - flopped his head to the other side.

"Good," Grinn nodded, like a parent congratulating a child. "Very good. Where was I? Ah... Boddihsm.

"It wasn't even a full entry. Barely more than a footnote. A little over a century-and-a-half ago, it said, a prophet appeared. He claimed he'd been visited by God, filled with divinity, given great news, blah, blah, blah. He said the universe had only just been created and we'd all sort of... sprung into existence, memories intact. He said God made him write it all down. He reckoned God wasn't at all happy about all this cause-and-effect guff and generally wasn't a fan of time at all. He said time was never supposed to start ticking and God was definitely going to do something about it.

"Well, naturally, I was intrigued. Who wouldn't be?" Grinn dipped his head, long lips curling. "Don't answer that. At any rate, I did my homework. I found that this 'Boddihsm', went tits up, first time round, when the prophet got caught trying to marry his pet Javacamel."

Grinn absently tapped the firebrand along the curve of the man's spine, like a drummer testing a new rhythm. The man gasped and arched his back, movements growing more pronounced with every moment.

"Boddihsm went the way of the robosaur," Grinn sighed, running pale fingers along the coarse shaft of the firebrand. "All that remained was some badly-written 'holy book', stuck in a quaint museum on a quaint shrineworld in a quaint corner of the galaxy. But sitting there in macrojail, wasting my time - thanks to you," the firebrand poked at the prone figure's ribs with a crackle, "I had something of an epiphany. A revelation, if you will.

"It came to me when I found a series of excerpts from The Book. You see, the great god Boddah, in his wisdom, wanted to warn his faithful flock when he was on the verge of, well, 'killing time'. It all gets rather complicated, but what's important is this:

"Boddah demanded an absolutely gigantic sacrifice to coincide with the end of time. It's this sort of distraction. There's a devil and, oh, it's all very mythic. And there in black and white, plain for me to see, was a complete rundown of the four signs that would herald it."

Grinn touched the firebrand to the man's feet, earning a yelp and the stink of singed rubber. He chuckled. "Four signs. So I thought, well. Why wait?"

He smiled. Enormously.

TWENTY-ONE

Halfway through the city, Roolán began to wonder how he'd ever find Johnny and Wulf. Everywhere he went, knots of people clustered around viewscreens, nodding and waving their arms.

Roolán, having led a sheltered existence, had never experienced religious lunacy. He therefore sauntered politely up to the crowd, unaware of the signs of frothing zealotry, and tugged on the robes of a woman near the back.

"Are you a new arrival?" she said, noting his lack of robes, voice thick with pomposity. "Leaving it a little late, aren't you?"

Roolán brandished his pad of paper, scribbling:

Just arrived. Still a bit lost. What's going on?

The woman glared. "You don't know what's going on?" she neighed. A few other faces in the crowd turned towards them. "Why are you here, then? And why can't you speak? Eh? It's not normal."

Roolán pointed vaguely towards his throat. He'd found that this tended to explain things to those who didn't really give a shit.

"Ah," the woman nodded, remembering her original question with a birdlike blink, "So why are you here?"

Roolán scribbled:
Looking for someone.

Several of the crowd exchanged glances.

"Looking for someone?" the woman said, as if this were the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. "Here?"

"Only person you should be looking for here is the Boddah!" a bizarre alien warbled, sphincter-like mouth quivering. "Hail to the Boddah!"

An impromptu chorus of "Hail!"s flitted about, garnering yet more attention for Roolán.

Looking for the Boddah, yes!
he scrawled, starting to sweat.
Also looking for a friend.

"I see," the woman said. "Well, this hardly a good time to be seeking old chums, is it?"

Why?

"Why? Because the signs are upon us, you ridiculous little creature! The skies have become as unto blood!"

"Hail!"

"The swimmer-in-the-void has been cast down!"

"Hail!"

"And the Devil's warrior has been defeated!"

"Hail!"

Yes. Hail!
Roolán waved his sheet hopefully.

The woman went back to staring at him, suspicion clouding her face. "Surely you know all this?"

Of course. The signs. That's right.

The anus-mouthed alien poked him on one shoulder. "So what's the fourth sign then?"

What?

"The fourth sign! Come on, newcomer. Prove you're not a spy."

A spy? Who would I being spying for?

"Well, that's... I don't... that's not the point."

Someone at the back, unhelpfully, shouted, "Ogmishlen!"

The alien wobbled its (probably) head, frothing. "Yes! Yes, he could be a spy of the Reality Devil! Did not the prophet command us to be wary?"

"Yes, wary!" the crowd shrieked.

"Did not the prophet say He Whose Name Dwells in the Buttock of Iniquity would stop at nothing to prevent the end of time?"

"Yes, nothing!"

"Right, then," the woman nodded, jabbing Roolán bossily. "What's the fourth sign?"

Roolán noted with a sudden flush that several of the crowd were carrying big, serious-looking guns.

The fourth sign...
he wrote, trying to keep the shake out of his hand,
sounds like this.

The woman frowned. "Sounds like what?"

"This!" Roolán shouted.

When the bits of broken glass had stopped dropping from nearby windows, when the dust had started to settle, and when the last gibbering zealot had lapsed into unconsciousness, Roolán nicked a grey cassock and started to run.

The reason he was running was this: he'd just seen what the crowd had been watching on the screen, repeated over and over on a loop. Time and time again, with the same naff slow-motion blur, Johnny Alpha died and died and died and died.

People turned to watch him vaguely as he passed - just a grey blur streaking through the city. Roolán bit his tongue until he tasted blood, bottled up the howl bubbling in his lungs, and ran as hard as he could for the bulging temple in the city centre, where all the streets converged on a wide, empty courtyard. He recognised it from the vid footage. He recognised the scores of guns lying unattended around its perimeter. He recognised the strange statue at its centre, odd circuitry riddling its base.

He recognised the blood speckled on the floor around it.

He sprinted for the doorway at the end of the courtyard - the doorway that Johnny had been dragged unceremoniously through - and ran slap bang into a chubby man holding a rifle.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry, sonny?" he grinned, looking and sounding for all the world like the galaxy's most friendly individual.

Roolán punched him as hard as he could right in the face, snatched at the gun before the man had even hit the floor, and was gone into the shadows of the doorway.

Jay "Biggie" Bolster enjoyed an unexpected trip to slumberland.

Grinn stared deep into the flickering flame.

"When you put your mind to it," he said, "escaping from macrojail really isn't that hard. Convince yourself you love it, force yourself to believe that there's nowhere you'd rather be than right there, on the inside, and bang. The security slips. You're as good as free.

"First thing I did: I fetched the book. I sent out some feelers. I enlisted a little help and then I went into hiding. And I worked very, very hard."

He shuffled on his spot, flicking a glance towards his recumbent listener.

"The first omen was easy." He smiled. "The skies had to become 'as unto blood'. I arranged for a... distraction, during a concert. Something of a calamity, I understand.

"You know, it never ceases to amaze me. The businessmen, the celebrities. They all came running when Boddihsm slipped into vogue, and out there - staring up at the sky - a little miracle happened. You see, it's easier for them to believe that the sky has gone red because of some... metaphysical portend, than because I switched on an atmospheric lighting effect that my goons stole from the galaxy's greatest opera singer. It's like everyone has a hole in their common sense which says, 'Hey - a divine being! What a good idea!'"

Grinn shrugged. The man on the floor dribbled and tried to sit upright.

"The second omen was a little more complex. A great 'star beast', the book said. A creature of light and death. 'The swimmer-in-the-void'. Well, money always talks louder than words. I found a scientist with a mutual interest, lubricated his brain with some creative narcotics, all but drowned him in money, and waited for the results."

"K-koss... zov," the shivering man gurgled, breathing laboured.

Grinn looked delighted. "That's it. Koszov. Well done." Then he cracked the man around the head with the firebrand, dropping him once more to the floor, sparks spitting in his hair.

"What he created for us defied all expectations. We would have been happy with some lumpy fish with three eyes but no, Koszov created a... demon. The Book said that only the prophet - ha, that's me - could destroy it. As luck had it, our friend Scheider can disappear at will: twinkly lightshow and all. The crowd loved it."

"H-how d-do you c-control it?" the voice was frail, flecked with spittle and blood.

Grinn leered. "Good question. An old associate of mine, as it happens, gave us the solution to that. Chap called Durant. Algernon Durant."

"S-standing A-algie?"

"Bingo. He'd got himself into a company called Tookertec when I contacted him. They make control collars for domestic animals: courier monkeys, Dilûu mantas, that sort of thing. It turns out they've refined their technology. A small implant into Scheider's brain whilst he was still young, a touch of aversion therapy, just to let him know what would happen if he disobeyed. One simply needs the voice controls and hey presto - instant remote control demon. Or whatever else you fancy."

"M-meaning?"

"Meaning that Tookertec were nothing if not ambitious. The implants work on people too." His eyes burned in the reflection firelight, grin spreading wider still. "I can't tell you how satisfying it is, controlling another human, light years away. It's like puppetry with the longest strings in the galaxy! And, hah, when you've finished with them, when they've done their bit," Grinn mimed pressing a control, "kaboom!" He threw back his head, maw ratcheting with each gale of laughter.

"Of course," he said, "forcing one's subordinates into cranial implantation is one thing, but getting my congregation to volunteer was a problem. The solution was perfect! We made them believe that disposing of their memories before they died would bring them closer to god. Dozens of implants and every one voluntary. My own little army of meat puppets. It was quite a scam. Koszov and his big snecking fish was just the beginning.

"A-and y-you got K-koszov out the... the way quick as you could?"

"Yes, yes. You've been doing your homework, haven't you? I sent him off to the one place I could be sure he wouldn't come back from: a meteor on the verge of going rogue. That's the fourth omen, incidentally. Just before time comes crashing down, a 'mountain of fire' is supposed to fall from the sky." He glanced at a timepiece on his wrist. "The flock should be hearing the good news just about now, in fact. Three hours until splashtime. Exciting, isn't it?"

For a moment the pair were silent. The man on the floor pushed himself upright again, every movement a struggle. "W-why? Wh-what duh... do you..."

"What do I get out of it all? Why, that's the most beautiful part. You remember me telling you about the sacrifice? Each and every member of this big, stupid, rich cult, is wearing a transmitter on his or her wrist. The instant - and I mean instant - that those things stop broadcasting a heartbeat to the central AI, their wearers are automatically agreeing to transfer every single asset, every stock, every share, every digitised credit into a single, outrageously vast bank account. It's not like they'll be needing it any more.

"That's the sacrifice. It's all about divesting themselves of material wealth: an act of devotion so enormous that it'll blind the - ha, don't laugh - the 'Reality Devil' to the great God's true plan. They don't need to know whose name is on the receiving account, do they?"

He smiled.

"Money, Mr Alpha. It's all about money."

TWENTY-TWO

Abrocabe Zindatsel couldn't remember ever being as happy as he was at that moment.