The Night's Dawn Trilogy (193 page)

It took seven minutes. And it wasn’t quite what Rubra was expecting.

A number of the observation routines on the eighty-fifth floor of the Kandi starscraper had been tampered with. The Kandi
was used mainly by the less wholesome of Valisk’s residents, which given the overall content of the population meant that
the starscraper was just about the last resort for the real lowlife. It was in the apartment of Anders Bospoort, vice lord
and semi-professional rapist, where the greatest anomaly was centred. One of the observation sub-routines had been altered
to include a memory segment. Instead of observing the apartment, and feeding the processed image directly into a general event
analysis routine it was simply substituting an old visualization of the rooms for the real-time picture.

Rubra solved the problem by wiping the old routine entirely and replacing it with a viable one. The apartment he was now looking
around was a shambles, furniture out of place and smothered by every kind of male and female clothing, plates of half-eaten
food discarded at random, empty bottles lying about. High-capacity Kulu Corporation processor blocks and dozens of technical
encyclopedia fleks were piled up on the tables—not exactly Bospoort’s usual bedtime material.

With the restoration of true sight and sound came an olfactory sense; a stiff price to pay: the feculent stink in the apartment
was dreadful. The reason for that was simple: Dariat’s obese corpse was lying slumped at the foot of the bed in the master
bedroom. There was no sign of foul play, no bruising, no stab wounds, no energy beam charring. Whatever the cause, it had
left an appallingly twisted grin scrawled across his chubby face. Rubra couldn’t help but think that Dariat had actually enjoyed
dying.

•  •  •

Dariat was inordinately happy with his new, captive body. He had quite forgotten what it was like to be skinny; to move fast,
to slither adroitly between the closing doors of a lift, to be able to wear proper clothes instead of a shabby toga. And youth,
of course, that was another advantage. A more
vital
physique, lean and strong. That Horgan was only fifteen years old was of no consequence, the energistic power made up for
everything. He chose the appearance of a twenty-one-year-old, a male in his physical prime, his dark skin smooth and glossy;
hair worn thick, long, and jet-black. His clothes were white, simple cotton pantaloons and shirt, thin enough to show off
the panther flex of muscles. Nothing as gross-out as Bospoort’s ridiculous macho frame which Ross Nash wore, but he’d certainly
drawn the eye of several girls.

In fact, possession with all its glories was almost enough to make him renege on his task. Almost, but not quite. His agenda
remained separate from the others’, for unlike them he wasn’t scared of death, of returning to the beyond. He believed in
the spirituality Anastasia had preached, now as never before. The beyond was only part of the mystery of dying; God’s creativity
was boundless, of course more continua existed, an after-afterlife.

He pondered this as he walked with his fellow possessors towards the Tacoul Tavern. The others were all desperately intent
on their mission, and so humourless.

The Tacoul Tavern was a perfect microcosm of life in Valisk. Its once stylish black and silver crystalline interior was a
form now abandoned even by designers of retro chic; its food came out of packages where once its cuisine was prepared by chefs
in a five-star kitchen; its waitresses were really too old for the short skirts they wore; and its clientele neither questioned
nor cared about its inexorable decline. Like most bars it tended to attract one type of customer; in this case it was the
starship crews.

There were a couple dozen people seated at the various rock mushroom tables when Dariat followed Kiera Salter inside. She
sauntered over to the bar and ordered a drink for herself. Two men offered to buy it for her. While the charade played out,
Dariat chose a table by the door and studied the big room. They’d done well; five of the drinkers had the telltale indigo
eyes of Rubra’s descendants, and all of them wore shipsuits with a silver star on the epaulet: blackhawk captains. Dariat
concentrated on the observation routines operating in the neural strata behind the tavern’s walls, floor, and ceiling. Abraham,
Matkin, and Graci, who also possessed affinity-capable bodies, were doing the same thing; all four of them were sending out
a multitude of subversive commands to isolate the room and everything which happened in it from Rubra’s principal personality.

He had taught them well. It took the foursome barely a minute to corrupt the simple routines, turning the Tacoul Tavern into
a perceptual null zone. To complete the act, the muscle membrane door contracted quietly, its grey pumicelike surface becoming
an intractable barrier, sealing everyone inside.

Kiera Salter stood up, dismissing her would-be suitors with a contemptuous gesture. When one of them rose and started to say
something, she struck him casually, an openhanded slap across his temple. The blow sent him flailing backwards. He struck
the polyp floor hard, yelling with pain. She laughed and blew him a kiss as he dabbed at the blood seeping from his nose.
“No chance, lover boy.” The long leather purse in her hand morphed into a pump-action shotgun. She swung it around to point
towards the startled patrons, and blew one of the ceiling’s flickering light globes to pieces.

Everyone ducked as splinters of pearl-white composite rained down. Several people were attempting to datavise emergency calls
into the room’s net processor. Electronics were the first thing the possessed had disabled.

“Okay, people,” Kiera announced, with a grossly stressed American twang. “This is a stickup. Don’t nobody move, and shove
your valuables in this here sack.”

Dariat sighed in contempt. It seemed altogether inappropriate that a complete bitch like Kiera should possess the body of
such a physically sublime girl as Marie Skibbow. “There’s no need for all this,” he said. “We only came for the blackhawk
captains. Let’s just keep focused on that, shall we?”

“Maybe there’s no need,” she said, “but there’s certainly plenty of want.”

“You know what, Kiera, you really are a complete asshole.”

“That so?” She flung a bolt of white fire at him. Waitresses and customers alike shouted in alarm and dived for cover. Dariat
just managed to deflect the bolt, thumping it aside with a fist he imagined as a fat table tennis bat. The white fire bounced
about enthusiastically, careering off tables and chairs. But not before the strike gave him a vicious electric shock, jangling
all the nerves in his arm.

“Give the lectures a rest, Dariat,” Kiera said. “We do what we’re driven to do.”

“Nobody drove you to do that. It hurt.”

“Oh, get real, you warped slob. You’d enjoy yourself a lot more if you didn’t have that morals bug stuffed so far up your
arse.”

Klaus Schiller and Matkin sniggered at his discomfort.

“You’re screwing up everything with this childishness,” Dariat said. “If we are to acquire the blackhawks we cannot afford
your indiscipline. The Lord Tarrug is making you dance to his tune. Contain yourself, listen to your inner music.”

She shouldered the shotgun and levelled an annoyed finger at him. “One more word of that New Age bullshit, and I swear I’ll
take your head clean off. We brought you along so that you could deal with the habitat personality, that’s all. I’m the one
who lays down our goals. I have concrete bloody policies; policies which are going to help us come up trumps. Policies with
attitude. What the fuck have you got to offer us, slob? Chop away at the habitat’s floor for a century until we find this
Rubra’s brain, then stamp on it. Is that it? Is that your big, useful plan?”

“No,” he said with wooden calm. “I keep telling you, Rubra cannot be defeated by physical means. This policy you have for
taking over the habitat population isn’t going to work until we’ve dealt with him. I think we’re making a mistake with the
blackhawks; not even their physical power can help us beat him. And if we start taking them over, we risk drawing attention
to ourselves.”

“As Allah wills,” Matkin muttered.

“But don’t you see?” Dariat appealed to him. “If we concentrate on annihilating Rubra and possessing the neural strata, then
we can achieve anything. We’ll be like gods.”

“That is close to blasphemy, son,” Abraham Canaan said. “You should have a little more care in what you say.” “Shit. Look,
godlike, okay? The point is—”

“The
point
, Dariat,” Kiera said, aligning the shotgun on him for emphasis, “is that you are steaming for vengeance. Don’t try and plead
otherwise, because you are even insane enough to kill yourself in order to achieve it.
We
know what we are doing, we are multiplying our numbers to protect ourselves. If you don’t wish to do that, then perhaps you
need a little more time in the beyond to set your mind straight.”

Even as he gathered himself to argue, he realized he’d lost. He could see the blank expressions hardening around the other
possessed, while his mind simultaneously perceived their emotions chilling. Weak fools. They really didn’t care about anything
other than the now. They were animals. But animals whose help he would ultimately need.

Kiera had won again, just as she had when she insisted on him proving his loyalty through self-sacrifice. The possessed looked
to her for leadership, not him.

“All right,” Dariat said. “Have it your way.” For now.

“Thank you,” Kiera said with heavy irony. She grinned, and sauntered over to the first blackhawk captain.

During the altercation, the patrons of the Tacoul Tavern had been as quiet as people invariably become when total strangers
are discussing your fate two metres in front of you. Now the discussion was over. Fate decided.

The waitresses squealed, huddling together at the bar. Seven of the starship personnel made a break for the closed muscle-membrane
door. Five actually launched themselves at the possessed, wielding whatever came to hand: fission blades (which malfunctioned),
broken bottles, nervejam sticks (also useless), and bare fists.

White fire flared in retaliation: globes aimed at knees and ankles, disabling and maiming; whip tendrils which coiled around
legs like scalding manacles.

With their victims thrashing about on the floor, and the stink of burnt flesh in the air, the possessed closed in.

Rocio Condra had been trapped in the beyond for five centuries when the time of miracles came. An existence of madness, which
he could only liken to the last moment of smothering being drawn out and out and out… And always in total darkness, silence,
numbness. His life had replayed itself a million times, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

Then came the miracles, sensations leaking in from the universe outside. Cracks in the nothingness of the beyond which would
open and shut in fractions of a second, akin to storm clouds of soot parting to let through the delicious golden sunlight
of dawn. And every time, a single lost soul would fly into the blinding, deafening deluge of reality, out into freedom and
beauty. Along with all the others left behind, Rocio would howl his frustration into the void. Then they would redouble their
pleas and prayers and pledges to the obdurate, indifferent living, offering them salvation and ennoblement if they would just
help.

Perhaps such promises actually worked. More and more of the cracks were appearing, so many that they had become a torment
in their own right. To know there was a route out, and yet always denied.

Except now.
This time..
. This time the glory arose all around Rocio Condra so loud and bright it nearly overwhelmed him. Furled with the torrent
was someone crying for help, for the agony to stop.

“I’ll help,” Rocio lied perilously. “I’ll stop it happening.”

Pain flooded into him as the frantic thoughts clung to his false words. It was far, far more than the usual meshing of souls
in search of bitter sustenance. He could feel himself gaining weight and strength as their thoughts entwined. And the pain
surged towards ecstasy. Rocio could actually feel legs and arms jerking as agonizing heat played over skin, a throat which
had been stung raw from screaming. It was all quite delicious, the kind of high a masochist would relish.

The man’s thoughts were becoming weaker, smaller, as Rocio pushed and wriggled himself deeper into the brain’s neural pathways.
As he did so, more of the old human experiences made their eminently welcome return, the air rushing into his lungs, thud
of a heart. And all the while his new host was diminishing. The way Rocio pushed him down, confining his soul, was almost
instinctive, and becoming easier by the second.

He could hear the other lost souls of the beyond shrieking their outrage that he was the one to gain salvation. The bitter
threats, the accusations of unworthiness.

Then there was just his host’s feeble protests, and a second oddly distant voice begging to know what was happening to its
beloved. He squeezed the host’s soul away, expanding his own mind to fill the entire brain.

“That’s enough,” a woman’s voice said. “We need you for something more important.”

“Leave me!” he coughed. “I’m almost in, almost—” His strength was growing, the captive body starting to respond. Tear-drowned
eyes revealed the wavery outline of three figures bending over him. Figures which must surely be angels. A gloriously pretty
girl clad only in a resplendent white corona.

“No,” she said. “Get into the blackhawk. Now.”

There must have been some terrible mistake. Didn’t they understand? This was the miracle. The redemption. “I’m in,” Rocio
told them. “Look, see? I’m in now. I’ve done it.” He made one of his new hands rise, seeing blisters like big translucent
fungi hanging from every finger.

“Then get out.”

The hand disintegrated. Blood splattered across his face, obliterating his sight. He wanted to scream, but his vocal cords
were too coarsened to obey.