War in Heaven (63 page)

‘You know fallen angels, nothing more.’

Then he smiled. He had found something.

‘What?’ I demanded. He ignored me. ‘Do you understand that we are at an evolutionary point for mankind? Your outdated folk beliefs are about to be superseded by something real.’

‘It is not real. It is a technological horror more in keeping with the inventions of Mary Shelley than with the creation of a god, but that is just my opinion and here is the problem when two people debate faith. You are not going to convince me that I am wrong because I have faith, and I am not going to convince you that you are wrong. In such a case, all we can do is strive to accept our differences and perhaps understand them.’ His calm demeanour grated on me as smugness.

‘I am not offering you faith; I am offering you proof. I am offering you the tangible and personnel connection to God that you, all you hackers, wish you had.’ It was like talking to a simple-minded savage.

‘I think for non-religious people it will always be impossible for you to understand that the connection you describe is a relationship we already have and already feel. It is as real and tangible to us as your net-bound technological creations are to you.’

‘Even though you know them to be a lie?’

‘Obviously I don’t know that. In fact I believe the opposite.’

‘Salem.’ I was becoming more and more exasperated. ‘Do you understand what I’m offering you? I am offering you the chance to be a new Muhammad here.’

‘I think you are offering me the chance to be the spokesperson for a lie.’ There was no hesitation there. His narrow-mindedness was total.

‘You understand that’s what you fucking are?!’ I was shouting at him now. I was so angry. His expression became more serious and considerably less benign.

‘There is only one god and Muhammad is his prophet.’

‘You walk among fallen people, infidels, you fucking hypocrite!’

‘Only God can give me understanding of my place in things. Only he can judge.’

‘He’s not fucking real!’ He flinched. ‘The closest you ever got was that fucking joke back on Earth.’

‘A misguided and blasphemously named program.’

‘The things you’ve seen aren’t what you think they are. Are you so fucking frightened that you reject out of hand anything that’s real in favour of this fantasy world?!’

‘All you are is us,’ he told me. ‘All you are is a prison, a complicated computer program with delusions of grandeur.’

I was on my feet now.

‘I think you’ll see what I am, medicine man!’ I screamed at him.

He looked at me with an expression of pity. What could be more inappropriate? He was less than bloodied shit before me.

‘Tell Morag I’m sorry!’ I continued screaming at him. No! Wait. I didn’t say that. Why would I say that? She was a vessel for my pleasures – another victim, nothing more.

Salem made a sobbing sound. No, it wasn’t him, it was me.

‘I will make your family watch your corpse being fucked!’

‘I have nothing to fear from you. Allah protects me.’

‘I will find everything you care about and destroy it! I will show you that your god is a lie! I will rape your children and their children in front of your eyes!’

I was battering myself against the circle, causing myself pain as energy coalesced around me where I hit the barrier program. Hating the feeling of impotence that had somehow replaced omnipotence in here. This barrier was not human programming.

‘All you have is fear. I am so sorry,’ Salem said.

I could hear it. Everything I said, everything I did, and it was me. I knew that. I could hear it but it sounded different and distorted like sound travelling through water
.

I felt like an exotic bird, some rich corp exec’s pet in a gilded cage. The cage was decorated with engraved knot-work and was so exquisite, ornate and beautiful it didn’t look real. It was still a prison. It hung here suspended in total, impenetrable darkness
.

It gave me time to consider what I’d done. The betrayal, Demiurge’s trickery and the murder I’d committed under its influence. The things I’d said to Mudge and Pagan. Morag
.

In some ways I would have welcomed being the monster. Or rather joining the rest of me to merge with the monster. Though the best thing would have been a bullet through my skull. I had nothing to offer now but more pain and lies. It felt like an age since I’d been able to offer anything else. I didn’t understand why my friends were prolonging this
.

I had fully underestimated just how angry Rolleston was with me. Exquisite wasn’t a word I used often but this was. Turn me into everything I hate. Use me as a weapon against those I love but keep enough of me conscious and imprisoned to appreciate what I was doing
.

Did I sound calm? Most of the time all I did was scream. I slept when he slept and dreamt of nothing, only to wake and scream again
.

But not now. Now I’m lying on the cold metal floor of my cage, curled in the foetal position, shaking and crying like a frightened child. I can hear myself raging at the holy man
.

I feel something gritty against my skin. Something blows against me in the warm wind. There should be no wind in this void. I open my eyes. The floor of my cage is dusted in fine grains of sand. More is blowing in through the bars. I sit up and watch this wind from nowhere play with the sand, make patterns with it on the floor
.

I am hollow. I have little strength left for any emotion other than hate and self-loathing. I have become the worst thing I could imagine. Fear seems redundant
.

There is still a prickling at the back of my mind, perhaps deep in the lizard brain as it rises from the sand. It is a desert ghost in robes, its head wrapped in a
shemagh
, obscuring its features, if it has any. The ghost is formed of the sand and is constantly reforming as the wind blows granules out into the void
.

‘What are you?’ I ask. My throat should be raw and bloody, but this isn’t the real world
.

‘I am an intelligent computer virus with limited verbal responses. I am sorry but this will hurt. A lot.’ I think the language is Arabic but somehow I understand it. I recognise the holy man’s voice
.

‘What will hurt?’

‘Kneel! That’s right. Kneel, you fuck!’ Muscles contort, my mouth enlarges, and anger, not control of my icon, makes me look bestial as I scream at this nothing prostrate before his fiction, facing east. ‘Face me! Face me, you fucking coward!’

He should be kneeling before me, that is right and proper, even if I am a caged god. He shouldn’t be kneeling before some fiction in the east.

I start to tell him what I will do to him and everything and everyone he cares about. People say that the details in these kinds of descriptions are just pornography, but I knew that they painted pictures in his head and he would see me exploring atrocity with everyone he loves. He thinks he’s praying now. We both know he’s hiding from me, too afraid to face me. Tone it down now. Whisper to him, more effective than the screaming.

I watch in horror as my left arm becomes mercury and leaks to the floor from the finger up to the shoulder. Then the fire comes. Then I really start to scream as agony surges through every particle of my being.

Fear, horror, disbelief. This cannot be happening to me. I am being diminished. This categorically cannot happen. Only I have the power here. Only me. I have to warn …

I am introduced to pain anew. I thought I’d been screaming. I hadn’t been screaming
.

It must be like being born. There is light and pain, or agony to be precise, except I want to hide from the light. Crawl back into the dark, let them forget about me as I am assaulted by the memories of everything I’ve said and done.

‘Jakob?’ It is a kindly voice full of genuine concern. That makes it worse. I do not deserve it.

I try to back into the corner of the sunlit room. Salem reaches for me. I flinch away from him.

‘You’re free. The ifreet is gone.’ Reassuring. He doesn’t realise it is still me, still all me.

The door to the room opens. Black Annis. Don’t name her as Morag. Pagan is with her. They look out of place in this environment. Morag – no, Black Annis – stands in the doorway like judgement.

They walk towards me. Black Annis glances over at Salem, who nods. There is a look of concern on the old man’s face. She reaches for me. I try to cower away but my back is already against the cold stone wall. Her long-fingered, black-clawed hand touches me like death. Black lightning plays across my chest. I scream again as biofeedback surges into my body in the real world. Enough biofeedback to make my plugs smoke, enough to fry synapses, enough to stop even an augmented and mostly mechanical heart.

It’s like sinking into dark water. The last thing I hear is Pagan screaming, ‘No!’ and diving towards Morag. Way too slow, Pagan. She waited. Waited until it was me. This is good. I deserve this.

Disappointment. I’m alive. I can still hear Rannu screaming. I can still feel the manacles around my wrists and ankles. I’m still lying on a soiled cot wondering when this will be over. The air still tastes like licking a battery, still smells of rotten eggs, and I know that when I open my eyes the sky will still be very far away.

Our escape now made sense. I didn’t want to think about it too much at the time, that’s how insidious hope can be. Where was all the security when we escaped from Moa City? Regardless of how good Rannu is, he couldn’t have hidden for that long in such a small area, not with the level of technology the Black Squadrons were using. They had let us go. We were under their control the entire time.

Mudge was sitting on the cot next to mine smoking a cigarette. He didn’t look happy.

‘Morning,’ I said.

He stood up, walked over to my cot and punched me hard enough in the nose to break it despite the subcutaneous armour.

‘Fuck!’ I shouted. ‘I was fucking possessed, you bastard!’ Mudge smiled.

‘Standard Operating Procedure for being called a faggot – not that it happens a lot these days. You’re lucky it was me and not Merle. Still, now we can be friends again.’

He reached down into his backpack and produced a bottle of vodka. I looked around. All his gear was in there. It looked like he’d been here a while. Watching over me. I didn’t deserve this, and what’s worse I didn’t really have the words to express my gratitude. He followed my eyes.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he told me. Days of this bullshit and he was waiting with the booze. I pushed myself up into a sitting position as he passed me the bottle and he sparked up a joint. The atmosphere made the booze taste like battery acid. It was the best thing I’d ever drank.

‘Not to be trusted?’ I asked, lifting the manacles.

‘We’ve got to be sure, man. What happened to you, Rannu, the Vucari and I guess the other special forces types they sent back is unprecedented. What we did is more so. You’re in a position to cause us a lot of hurt.’ Then he looked away. I guessed I’d already done that. ‘Not to mention the Maori contingent’s very big on reciprocity.’

‘Can’t say I blame them. Merle?’

‘Fucked off about his face, but he can get that fixed in the unlikely event we don’t all die. He may be pissed off about the prospect of an ugly-looking corpse, though secretly I think he digs the scar-face look. He saved you, man. When … you know …’ When Morag made a concerted and premeditated attempt to murder me. Oh yeah, I owed Merle.

‘I guess I’ve got some apologies to make.’ Except it couldn’t be done. I couldn’t escape from the things I’d said or done. It didn’t matter that I was under the influence. It was still my face and form that did it, and with the best will in the world human psychology doesn’t let the victim move away from that. I was quiet for a little while, thinking this through, enjoying the familiarity of alcohol and sweet smoke burning my throat. Hiding from my problems.

‘What happened to you guys?’ I asked. I couldn’t look at Mudge’s lenses when I did. I was pretty sure he knew what I was thinking. That he could see my guilt.

‘I don’t know how much you saw, but we got jumped by a couple of those Black Squadron wankers.’ He paused and looked up at me. ‘They’re hard. Augmented, like Rolleston, though not as dangerous.’

‘I saw some of that. How’d you get out?’

‘Merle. He took a battering when the Walker went up but he was still alive. It seems that they die just as well with a plasma shot to the head. I’m not joking, Jakob, the guy’s a one-man slaughterhouse.’ There was a degree of pride in his man behind Mudge’s words. He was right as well. Merle had been very useful. I was looking forward to thanking him.

‘Morag?’

Mudge laughed humourlessly. ‘How’d you think? The Grey Lady? Jesus Christ, Jakob, what were you thinking? If you wanted the ultimate adrenalin fuck you’d have been as well shagging a live-firing plasma cannon. Was she any good?’

Yes, actually, but I had no intention of telling Mudge that.

‘They killed Morag in front of my eyes. I watched her die. It was sense but I knew nothing. I spilled my guts.’