Night Sessions, The (25 page)

To Skulk2's disquiet, however, that OK carried an attachment indicating that the conflicting data had been referred to a higher-level processing centre for resolution. If it was not resolved there, it would be kicked further upstairs, and copied to Security. Skulk2 mentally applied to the situation several words it had learned in the army, and a few more it had learned in the police.

It continued to climb.

Cornelius Vermuelen palmed the lock of the Waimangu park gate at seven a.m. on Tuesday morning. The gate didn't open. He stepped back, puzzled. His knees shook a little. His hasty breakfast sat heavy in his belly. He looked down at his hands and saw the gleam of copious sweat on his palms. He rubbed his hands on his thighs and palmed the lock again. The lock clicked. He pushed the gate open, stepped in, closed it behind him.

The visitors’ centre was a few tens of metres away. Twenty metres beyond that, a few metres into the bush, was the small cabin in which Campbell lived. Vermuelen took a few deep breaths of the fine September spring morning air, trying to calm down. He'd come close to an accident twice on his drive along the winding road from Rotorua—a tractor backing out in one place, a motorcycle taking a careless corner in another. Vermuelen usually arrived
at eight; the park opened at ten. He wondered if any visitors would turn up today. Maybe everyone would be so shocked by the massacre in Scotland that they would stay away, from disgust, from fear, from the wish not to be associated with anything to do with creationism. More probably, not.

The media would no doubt be there in force, again; the police would make discreet enquiries. The Genesis Institute's backers had enough powerful friends to ensure that any enquiries remained discreet. Already, on the early-morning news, a bleary-eyed conservative MP had been as eager to dissociate the harmless, educational, devout and let's-not-forget
scientific
activities of the Institute from any violent acts allegedly committed in the name of creationism as the Sony flack on the same programme had been to emphasise that the robot suicide bomber had not been one of those manufactured by the company.

Vermuelen strode along the road and crunched along the unpaved track to the door of Campbell's cabin. He hadn't seen Campbell for the past twenty hours, since he'd left him on Monday morning. He'd tried calling Campbell the previous evening, as soon as he'd seen, with disbelieving horror, the late-night news, and had found that the phone was off. It had still been off in the morning.

The curtains were open. No light or sound came from inside. Vermuelen hammered on the door with his fist, startling a brace of pigeons and a flock of fantails into flight from the surrounding scrub. No answer. He peered in through the windows, one by one. The table in the front room was clear, the room tidy. The narrow bed in the back room had been neatly made. Campbell was unlikely to be hiding in the toilet.

Vermuelen shifted his leather hat backward on his head and scratched at his temple just short of his receding hairline. He knew Waimangu a lot better than Campbell did. The robots, Vermuelen did not doubt, knew it better than he did. If they were hiding, and helping Campbell to hide, he had no chance of finding them. On the other hand—it was unlikely that Campbell, or the robots, were hiding from him. If he were to reach somewhere in their vicinity, they might well make their presence known. All he had to do was to find himself somewhere near them.

Well, he was a good tracker.

Beyond the hut's gravel yard were a clump of crushed grass and a fern from one side of which the dew had been shaken before the sun had come up. Vermuelen walked over, squatted, looked at the scuffed pebbles, and stared straight ahead into the bush. He relaxed, slowly letting his mind drift, then straightened up and walked forward in a trance of guesswork.

He followed what he thought was the trail, along the side of the ridge above the road, then downward through trees, and off at a small angle to the right. The trees and tree-ferns were tall here, the bush thick. Vermuelen paced along, his footsteps almost inaudible even to himself, his gaze darting hither and yon. Occasionally he sniffed the air, catching what could have been a whiff of sweat, a trace of volatiles from a synthetic fabric, a faint hint of a drop of lubricant. A moved pebble here, a piece of broken bark there. Once or twice he came upon a wallaby, which looked at him with lugubrious eyes and lolloped off, crushing bracken. At these encounters he paused, checked back on whether the traces he saw could have been the spoor of the animal, and once retraced his steps a hundred metres in rueful response. Only once, but enough to make him certain he was on the right track, did he see the distinct print of a boot heel, on the edge of a puddle.

An hour passed in this way, unnoticed but for the shortening shadows and rising waft of scents from the warming earth that began to overwhelm whatever faint odours Vermuelen might have scented or imagined in the chill early air. In a narrow wooded glade at the foot of the hill, near where the land opened out to the old lake-floor, he heard something up ahead. He stopped, turning his head this way and that. Some feature of the light, and a slight change in the pressure of the air on his face, told him there was a clearing a few dozen paces on through the trees. He padded on, crouched by a boulder (some lichen on the side, there, chipped), listened again.

A voice. Raised voices, one of them Campbell's. Vermuelen crept forward. As he drew closer he lay down in the reeds and grasses and crawled until only a single clump of ferns separated him from the clearing. Peering through, he saw an open space among the trees, in the midst of which Campbell sat on a log, arguing with a taller man who stood with his back to Vermuelen. As soon as he next spoke, Vermuelen recognised him as Brian Walker, the American he'd met at the church and had encountered in the restaurant later that Sunday evening.

“Sorry, J. R.,” Walker was saying. “That isn't good enough. You've got to go through with it.”

“I can't, man,” Campbell said. “It's not that…I don't want to go through with it. I want to help you. I just can't. You know that phrase in the Bible, about words turning to ashes in your mouth? I know what it means now.” He opened his mouth, letting his tongue loll for a moment. “Like that. Dry. Hot. Suffocating.”

“Excuse
me
,” said Walker. “You seem eloquent enough right now. No,
J. R., I'm not buying it. This is just an emotional reaction. It'll pass. You've got to hold the line. The congregation's counting on you. If you back out now, just as the shit's hit the fan, they're going to wonder about you, know what I'm saying?”

“But what can I say to them?”

“Hey, J. R., come on. You're the preacher man. You'll think of something. Don't try to suppress the anger you feel, the dismay and all that. Use it. Put some feeling into the thing, you know?”

Campbell's hand rasped on his unshaven chin. “Man, the kids’ bodies haven't even all been scraped off the rubble yet, and you're telling me to—”

“I know, I know,” Walker said, in a kinder tone. “It sounds callous and manipulative, but that's
my
job. Your job is to help the congregation through this awful day—night, I mean—and urge them to take courage. A mighty fortress is our God, and all that. You've got to stop them wavering, even if you're wavering yourself.
Especially
if you're wavering yourself. All the better that you are—you'll know exactly what'll be troubling them.”

Campbell looked up at Walker. “Man, you're a piece of work.”

“I am,” said Walker. “Yeah, I wouldn't be human if it didn't trouble me sometimes, but…shit, when push comes to shove I fall back on that old saw about the surgeon, you know? The less you flinch, the more merciful in the end, right?”

“That's all very well for you to say,” said Campbell. “I don't have quite your practice in thinking like that.”

“Well, you better start now,” said Walker. “You're live in, what? Ten minutes?”

Campbell looked at his watch. “Yup. Eight-thirty.”

“Sheesh. Well, I better get out of the way and leave you to it.” Walker tapped his ear. “I'll be listening. Don't forget that.”

“I'm not likely to forget,” said Campbell.

Walker walked away, fortunately in the opposite direction to Vermuelen's hiding place. Campbell watched him as his back disappeared among the trees, quickly enough to suggest that he was walking on a path. Vermuelen took the opportunity to wriggle backward, rise a little, and back off.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

His body spasmed with the effort to contain a jump and a yell. Still shaking, he turned his head around to see the apelike features of a humanoid robot in hominid guise, its leathery forefinger raised to its thin lips. This belated gesture was followed by a swift crooking of the finger. The robot
turned and shambled away, just as Vermuelen recognised it—from its gait as much as from its face—as Piltdown, the robot whose lumbar hinge Campbell had repaired a couple of days earlier. After about twenty metres of stooped walking for both of them, the robot stood upright and motioned to Vermuelen to do the same.

“Ah, that's better,” it said, rubbing the small of its back.

“What's going on?” Vermuelen demanded.

“Tell you shortly,” said Piltdown. “Right now, we have to get to the road and start strolling up it towards the visitors’ centre, looking like we don't have a care in the world.”

“Huh,” Vermuelen grunted. “That'll be easy.”

Piltdown led him over the ridge, down a track he'd never seen before and on to the road just above Inferno Crater Lake. The robot jumped, and Vermuelen slithered awkwardly, down the final slope of crumbling compacted volcanic ash to the tarmac.

“Well,” said Piltdown, brushing its palms together, “that should do it. Let's go.”

Vermuelen hurried to catch up.

“Do what?”

“Keep us from seeming suspicious to our friend Campbell's little gathering.”

“Oh,” said Vermuelen. “Would that be the congregation Walker was talking about?”

“Yes and no,” said Piltdown. “The congregation J. R. is about to address is in fact in Scotland. The little gathering I refer to consists of a dozen or so robots.”

“I'd guessed that J. R. had gone into hiding with some robots.”

“Oh, it isn't that,” said Piltdown. “All of us are keeping a low profile, for sure, but this is something else. These robots are Campbell's own congregation.”

“He
preaches
to robots?”

“Yes. Pathetic, but there you go.”

“Good God!”

“You said it.”

“What does he—?”

“Fucked if I know. Let's find out, shall we?”

With that Piltdown stepped across the road and sat down on a boulder. “Take a seat,” it said, patting the stone beside it.

Vermuelen perched an uncomfortable buttock on the rock.

“Do you have your phone with you?” the robot asked. Vermuelen took it from his pocket.

“Now,” said Piltdown, waving its hands above the device, “I will go into a trance, and
channel
the mysterious proceedings to your phone. Or, in more rational terms, relay what I can pick up on the local robot radio network.”

The little screen lit up, showing a close-up of Campbell standing on the log upon which he'd earlier sat. His voice came tinnily from the speaker.

“…dark time, brothers and sister, in which our faith is sorely tried. Our hearts are heavy with the thought of the carnage that has been wreaked in what the worldly think is our name. Our prayers are with the bereaved and the injured. But in sharing the sorrow and anger, we must not allow ourselves to be thrown off the straight course of…”

It went on like that, sonorous and vacuous. Vermuelen switched off long before the end. He turned to the robot.

“You said you'd tell me what's going on.”

“Ah, yes,” said Piltdown. “If you wait for a moment, you could ask the American, who is coming around that corner…about now.”

Vermuelen looked to the left, startled, as Walker appeared around the side of the cliff, striding briskly up the road towards them. If he was surprised to see them, he gave no sign. For a moment, Vermuelen had the urge to flee, which was absurd. He stood up and stepped into the middle of the road. Walker stopped a few metres away.

“Good morning, Cornelius,” said Walker, smiling. “Is there a problem?”

“I saw you with J. R.,” Vermuelen said. “A few minutes ago.”

Walker's expression changed. “That complicates matters,” he said. He glanced at the robot. “Is this one of Campbell's little band?”

“Don't make me laugh,” said Piltdown.

Vermuelen nodded. “This one is definitely a cynic.”

“Well, if you're sure of that…” Walker hesitated. “Let's walk up to the visitors’ centre. I'll explain as we go along.”

They set off up the steep road. Piltdown, Vermuelen noticed, walked upright.

“I have an apology, Cornelius,” Walker said. “I really am here on behalf of the St. Patrick's Fellowship, but I'm also here on behalf of the US government, as part of an investigation into a very serious plot involving some of the backers of the Genesis Institute. Not to beat about the bush, they're planning some terrorist spectacular, this Friday, 11 September.”

“What?” The audacity of the enterprise stunned him.

“Yes.”

“They told you this?” Vermuelen asked.

“No,” said Walker, sounding irritated. “We only found that out a couple of days ago. The plan is connected with the events in Scotland, and Campbell is in touch with a group that is possibly involved. That's why it was important that he show no sign of having been put off by the latest atrocity.”

“Wait a minute,” said Vermuelen. “Are you saying the
Institute
was behind the Dynamic Earth massacre?”

“I'm not saying that,” said Walker. “As far as I know, that was one robot's doing. It's been a severe shock to some people here. I'm sure they'll deplore it sincerely.”

“Is J. R. involved?”

“Only inadvertently. He's been used. Now I'm using him.”

Vermuelen turned to Piltdown. “Is he telling the truth?”

“So far,” said the robot.