Engine City (34 page)

“Not easy at all,” said Esias. “They come in all sizes, down to the size of germs, and when they have to survive independently they can be very hard to deal with. You’d have to catch or kill every last one, and I don’t know if even burning the barn around us would do the trick. You’d have to, I don’t know—”

“Nuke the place,” said Gaius. “I know.”

He looked over at Terence and Scipion. “As we saw this morning, that seems to do the trick.”

“What’s all this in aid of?” said Scipion. “I mean, it’s very interesting, but where’s it getting us?”

“Ah,” said Gaius. “In a moment, gentlemen.”

He gestured to the de Tenebres. “Please, citizens. Haul yourselves down some bales to sit on, and heave a couple over for my friends here. This may take some time.”

It took some time. At the end of it, Gaius and the soldiers returned with the de Tenebres to the medical shed. He led them over to the blood transfusion technicians.

“We’ve checked them over,” he said. “Unfortunate misunderstanding earlier. There’s nothing wrong with their blood. In fact, you can put them down as universal donors.”

The technician looked at him suspiciously. “Are you certain of that?”

“Absolutely,” said Gaius. “We’ve tested them thoroughly. Take as much as they can spare out of each of them. There’s no time to waste. People are dying as we speak. In fact, I can take their donations directly to the hospital—and any others you have ready, of course.”

“That would be helpful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Gaius. “We’re going there anyway.”

He had thought the center of the nuclear blast was the most appalling place in the city, but the emergency field hospital was worse. It was a town of tents in a park, and it was full of people who had been pulled from the rubble or who had staggered in or been carried from the flash radius. The serious burns unit was the worst of all. Perhaps not quite. There was a closed ward beyond it, where great efforts had been made to maintain a sterile atmosphere, and to which there was no admittance. Gaius had a horrible suspicion that there was nothing much on offer there but palliative care and opiate euthanasia.

He and his two guardians were stopped by a teenage soldier at the positive-pressure plastic flap of the burns unit. Gaius showed him the chit from the transfusion service.

“Go ahead.”

Gaius had three liters of the de Tenebres’ blood in sterile plastic bags with valves at the top. The other two had larger quantities of other blood donations from the detainees. They walked over to the harried nurse at the admissions desk, averting their eyes from the scores of beds. The place smelled of disinfectant and of cooked meat. Gaius realized that transfusions would not do the job, would not begin to do the job. He felt sick and feverish, and a little light-headed. He smiled at the nurse and walked on past the desk and up the ward. He took out his knife and slit the bags one by one and squirted and sprayed blood over every patient he passed, aiming at what areas of exposed flesh were visible. He got all the way to the end of the ward before a man in a white coat rushed up.

“
What are you doing?
” he shouted.

“Excuse me,” said Gaius, and straight-armed the medic hard as he walked past him, faster now. There was a lot of screaming going on, not all of it from the patients.

“Soldier!” yelled the medic, staggering as he rebounded off the end of a bed. “Guard!”

The young soldier ducked through the flap.

“Stop that man!”

Gaius slashed the remaining bag and whirled it around as the soldier raised his rifle. Blood spattered everywhere, like in the ceremonies of a primitive cult. The bag was empty, and the room was still not bloody enough. He threw the bag against a wall.

“Careful, soldier,” said the medic. “He’s got a knife.”

Terence and Scipion had slipped out. Good. They would do their bit too, in other wards.

“Drop that knife! Sir.”

“Please don’t shoot,” said Gaius. “I’m about to drop the knife.”

And he did, but not before he’d managed to slash his left forearm. Down, not across, wasn’t that the way? The blood spurted with shocking speed and abundance. The knife clattered. Gaius clawed his arm, trying to keep the wound open as long as possible. There was a loud bang and something hit him very hard in the chest. The last thing he saw before the floor hit his face was a reddish mist.

Gaius awoke from strange dreams that, unlike most dreams, didn’t fade from his mind. It hurt to breathe. His left arm throbbed dully. From the woolly feeling in his head he knew that he would be hurting a lot more if he weren’t soused in opiates. His eyes opened stickily to focus on Attulus. He found himself suddenly and acutely aware of the man, of his uniqueness and of the universality of the divine spark that blazed behind his eyes, the consciousness that—

“Ah, there you are,” said the Director, without enthusiasm.

“Where am I?”

“Illyrian military hospital,” said Attulus. “You have been unconscious for two days, from the infection and from your bullet wound.”

“Ah.” A military hospital. That would explain the green walls and the scratchy sheets. “How much trouble am I in?”

“You really have been very foolish,” said Attulus. “Because of your bizarre actions in the burns unit, seven of the patients there have died, in considerable pain. The fever of the infection raised their body temperature to the point where they went into hyperthermic shock. The other patients are making . . . remarkable progress. Similar outcomes are reported from the other major trauma units where Terence and Scipion made their own dramatic blood donations.” He sighed. “I suppose it’s my fault. I didn’t realize you would consider yourself responsible for the New Babylon blast.”

“If I hadn’t—” Gaius began miserably.

Attulus raised his hand. “Your action was a link in a chain of causes. Even if it had led to the attack, that still would not make you morally responsible. As it happens, it didn’t. There was no nuclear attack.”

“What?”

“It was a meteor strike. Volkov has said so, and we’ve confirmed it. The raised levels of radioactivity in the immediate area and in the fallout plume came from pulverized granite. All that your action triggered off was Volkov’s call for an uprising.”

“Oh, gods,” said Gaius. He felt immensely relieved, and at the same time guilty all over again.

“And don’t start a whole new round of beating yourself up over the patients who died,” said Attulus. “Those who wouldn’t have died anyway would have wished they had. Well, perhaps not, if the Spiders’ healing powers are as great as your friends claim. Still. You have other problems.”

“What—”

“Oh, what you might expect. I’m spending a lot of political capital holding back people who regard you as a menace to the human race.”

“To hell with the human race,” said Gaius. He tried to raise himself on his elbows, failed and settled for raising his head off the pillow. “What has happened to Lydia de Tenebre?”

“She is one of those who are recovering. She already was, as I’m sure you know.”

“I would like to see her.”

“You would not,” said Attulus. “Not for some time. I assure you of that.”

“Where was she?”

“In de Zama’s private clinic, somewhat to the west of the blast area. So was de Zama, who had decided, on the brink of death, to accept the Multiplier infection—which she already had heard rumors of, and which her agents were alert to evidence for. Evidence which, one way or another, you or your contact may have inadvertently provided.”

Gaius winced, remembering how quickly the agents had come for Lydia after her demonstration of the infection. Or had it been lithomancy that had done it, after all? It no longer mattered. Attulus was still talking.

“Madame President poses something of a problem, as I’m sure you can imagine.” Attulus smirked. “One solution that’s being floated is to affect not to recognize her. Not diplomatically—physically, we would literally not recognize her when she completes her recovery. The healthy and younger woman who then claims to be de Zama is obviously deluded or an impostor.”

Gaius laughed painfully. “It’s too late for that.”

Attulus fingered his beard. “You’re right, of course. Rumors are spreading faster than the infection. People are actively
demanding
the infection, for themselves or for people who are seriously injured. Particularly in New Babylon, there is a huge wish to believe that the Bright Star Cultures are not a threat. In a sense they are throwing off the defensive part of Volkov’s legacy, and embracing the part which he used to attract initial support—the quest for longevity and other benefits of biological engineering. One or two Traders who’ve escaped the dragnet have popped up with wild tales of what the Bright Star Cultures have achieved in symbiosis with the Multipliers—not just in biological matters, but in terms of wealth. I reserve judgment on that, but for the moment we have to accept that it is unstoppably becoming the popular view. Unfortunately it undermines the rationale for space defense, which we now need more urgently than ever.”

“Ah, yes,” said Gaius. “The meteor.”

Attulus nodded. “Precisely. More where that came from, as they say.” He twined a ringlet of hair around a finger. “And, ah, this may come as a shock. Volkov and the Mingulayans—with the cooperation of some officers in the Ducal Marines, I’m astonished to tell you—have already taken some preemptive action in that respect.”

“They’ve stopped another meteor attack?”

“No,” said Attulus uncomfortably. “They have destroyed a god.”

Gaius fell back to the pillow and stared at the ceiling for a while. The knowledge that he, like every educated person, had in the back of his mind suddenly became vivid and visual. He could see, he could imagine, the ring of asteroids and outside it and the farthest planets, the light-year-wide sphere of cometary bodies around the sun. An unknown but large proportion of them, he knew, harbored the strange slow life of the extremophile nanobacteria, and the innumerable fast minds that that life sustained. Trillions of intelligent beings, megayears of civilization, lay within each one, and over all the sum of the minds of each a wider consciousness, a god. To strike at and destroy such a thing, even in self-defense, was blasphemous in its disproportionality, appalling in its hubris. To exterminate all life on a planet to avert a sting—even a fatal sting—from one of that planet’s insects would be only the faintest analogy to the shocking scale of the offense.

His hands were clutching the sheets, regardless of the pain in his arm. He wanted to pull the sheets over his head.

“Gods above,” he said. “Do the people know this?”

“Not yet,” said Attulus.

“Good.” Gaius was beginning to calm down, and beginning to think through the ramifications. “There’s a serious danger of the returned Volkov—in our hands or otherwise—becoming a popular hero. From our point of view, he was the tyrant, and the Regime since his departure is an improvement. From the point of view of a lot of people in New Babylon, he’s a much more ambiguous figure, to say the least. The camarilla and the bureaucracy are hated much more than his memory. The fact that Volkov can still raise a small army of insurgents while many people suspect his supporters in Space Defense of having struck at the heart—or the head—of New Babylon just shows how dangerous things are. The one thing that could shock people out of their deluded fascination with the Engineer is if we can nail the charge of theicide to his forehead.” He lay back and thought some more. “The same applies, of course, to the Mingulayans and the Multipliers—also implicated, and also potential contenders for popular influence.”

Attulus frowned. “Very astute, Gonatus. But I thought you were sympathetic to the Multipliers—given your propensity for spreading their infection about!”

“You misunderstand,” said Gaius. “The Bright Star Cultures are founded on mutual adaptation between the Multipliers and the Mingulayans. There is no reason why there should not be a new culture, based on Multipliers adapting to us.” He smiled. “The way the Multipliers reproduce, after all, is to
divide.
”

“As I said, I’ll reserve judgment on that. The question is, what do we do now?”

Gaius wasn’t sure whether the Director really was asking him for advice, or brainstorming for ideas to which he would apply his own judgment. He decided not to flatter himself too much.

“What I would suggest,” he said, trying to sit up again and succeeding in propping himself on his right elbow this time, “is that we return Julia de Zama to power as soon as she is fit to be seen in public. New Babylon is unlikely to accept Illyrian occupation for long, memory and gratitude being what they are. She is unpopular, but she is likely to be more popular than us, and an element of stability. And who knows, if she has visibly become rejuvenated she should make a very different impression than when she was a living corpse on a drip. Meanwhile, we make quite clear to her that she is in power on our sufferance, and get as many concessions as possible with regard to internal reforms, trade, and peace. We talk individually to the members of the Bright Star Culture expedition—not all of whom, I am sure, will have gone along with the theicide, and even fewer of whom will be willing to stand by it in the cold light of day. We isolate Volkov and his Mingulayan accomplices, and then we make the evidence of what they have done public. The resulting howl of execration should demoralize the Volkovists, including those in the Space Defense apparatus.”

“Hmm,” said Attulus, rising from his bedside seat. “This has been a very useful conversation, old chap. You have, as they say, given me something to lay before the Duke. There is one problem. If we expose Volkov and his accomplices as theicides, we shall have no choice but to shoot them.”

“Is that a problem?”

Attulus chuckled darkly and went out.