Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (18 page)

  
All the rawness of heart hardened away.  All feeling muted.  Even the pain of
the shattered hand dissolved into the narrow horizons of a sole, lethal scope. 
The edge of the blade was cold against his back as it drew and shook in his
grip.

 
 He lurked, step by slow step, looming over the little frame, lying on its
side. 

  
The blanket slipped off.  The serenity of her countenance scorned him.

  
Gently brushing the hair from over the slim neck, careful not to wake her, he
put his still and open hand over her eyes.  The eyes always flare open at the
verge, he thought, like a last attempt to torment the soul from the beyond. 
Not this time.  He felt the warm breath against the palm of his hand just
before he pressed down.  She was in a deep, deep sleep.  Never wake again.

  
The blade rose over his head, glinting in the light of the moon, and fell like
a lightning bolt.  He felt the head jerk and a short, sharp shriek just as the
tip of the blade tore through, broke through bone and as the blood sprayed from
the fissure and blotted the dream red…

   He
woke.

  
He shot up, erect, gasping for air, running his palms over his face in a waking
fit to wipe the blood away, then stopped, gawking at the fading visions.  

  
His face sustained the trembling gape for about a minute before he brought his
legs over the side of the bed and leaned forward, convulsing with terror.  The
sweat dripped off his forehead.

  
“… Saul.”

  
His head lurched.

  
A small moonlit silhouette stood at the open door, swathed in a mantle. 

  
The girl jolted backward with a start, then whimpered and retreated.

  
“S-sorry.  I heard noises…”

  
“No,” he pleaded with an outstretched hand.  “Don’t go.”

  
The hand remained extended, as though summoning her back to life, then slowly
lowered into and palmed his head.  She was alive. 
Alive… 
The word
repeated in his mind like a mantra, quelling him.  He hid his eyes from her.

  
“I can’t sleep,” she said

  
His head rose again and his eyes pierced her with their gaze

   “Come,”
he said, silently.  “Come here.”

  
The girl slowly wobbled toward him, dragging the long mantle on the floor
behind her.  As soon as she came within his reach, he reached out and pulled
her toward him. 

  
He held her in a shuddering embrace, and the whispers shuddered from him: “Forgive
me … forgive me,” he repeated over and over, and felt the lone tear sting, the
first he could remember.  He held her in his embrace as if his life depended on
hers.

  
“Saul, can I stay with you?”

  
“Yes,” he answered with a nod.  “Yes.”

  
His arms loosened from around her.

  
She climbed into the bed, crawled up and huddled up beside him. 

  
He put his arm over her and the little fingers grasped his hand and squeezed.  She
coughed three times. 

  
“Are you alright?”

  
“Yeah,” she sniffled.  “I’m fine.”

  
She shifted around in the little alcove between him and the mattress.

  
He waited until she fell asleep before he shut his eyes as well.  Fear of being
plunged into the same place from whence he had woken kept him awake long into
the night.  And right up until the moment sleep took him,  a single thought – a
single name – recurred: 

  
Vincent
...

  
Vincent...

  
It was, purportedly, a late spring evening in the martial capital of the UMC
First Region, and the transitional bloom over the timbered valleys and steep
hills far beyond the limits of Sodom was far more discernible from the upper-echelons
of the Milidome.  The maroon twilight of late sunset settled over the crescent
horizon. 

  
Day by day, the metropolis inched its way into the wild land, presaging the
expansion of martial order.  Doctor Pope spent much of his time between
engagements gazing out toward the city limits, conjecturing with concealed
fervour.  The sun now sunk deep beneath the skyline, and the view of the world
was sifted through his own spectral reflection in the glazed wall, and the
photochromic hue of the round-lensed pince-nez.  The office behind him was a
backdrop of white from wall to wall and the bleached light ignited the flame of
turquoise in the unblinking eyes.

  
An AI voice sounded:

  
“
Doctor
.” 

  
The neutralist lifted his gaze.

  
“Miss Robinson…”  

  
“
Visitor13 is at the door.
”

  
“Of course.”  The neuralist pushed the pince-nez back over his eyes.  “Show him
in, please.”

  
The office doors opened like a black hole.  When they closed again, the white
backdrop revealed a figure dressed in black. 

  
“Thank you for seeing me on short notice,” greeted Commissioner Eastman.

  
Pope turned.  There was the usual deliberate silence which preceded his words.

  
“The day’s been quiet,” he said. “They’re becoming progressively more so.”

  
“That’s good,” said Eastman.

  
“Indeed…  Have a seat.”

  
Eastman came forward and set his black briefcase on the floor by the desk
before taking his seat and the neuralist sat across from him.  He took out a
black neural canister from the inner breast pocket of his suit and set it on
the desk. 

  
“A little more anxiety than usual,” he said.  “The intercourse is not quite
what it used to be either.  I think it may be time for an adjustment.”

  
Pope held the canister up and examined the label on the front.

  
“How long has it been since your last?” he asked.

  
“Exactly one kiloday and two hundred and forty to the day.”

  
“Awhile,” the neutralist nodded.  “We’ve made progress since then.  You’ll find
yourself pleasantly surprised.”

  
“I look forward to it.”  The contrived simper cracked across Eastman’s dead
visage.

  
“We’ll schedule an appointment for a full synaptic evaluation, along with a few
other tests.  Your prescription will be altered accordingly.  Four days from
today?”

  
“Good.”

  
“Good,” droned the neutralist.  “Miss Robinson, kindly take note.”

  
“
Yes, Doctor
.”

  
With those words, the appointment was finalised.   Eastman, however, remained
seated, and for a while the two men were the silent effigies of austerity. 

  
“There is… something else,” Pope surmised, after the long silence.

  
“Something I feel you ought to know, yes,” said Eastman.

  
“Concerning?”

  
“Strictly speaking, I am not supposed to say.  However, since the martial in
question is your patient as well as my client, I suppose we might say that one
vow of silence abrogates the other.”

  
In the solemn pause that followed, a
Mona Lisa
smile materialised on
Pope’s face.  The cobalt eyes glinted.

 
“Saul Vartanian…”

  
Eastman slowly nodded and the silence continued.

  
Pope’s arms glided off the top of his desk.  He took out two glasses and set them
on the table.  Out came a crystal bottle.  Two measures of ambrosia trickled
into each glass.  Pope waited for Eastman to lean forward and raise his glass
before he raised his own and drank. 

  
“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” asked Eastman

  
“The Nova Crimea incident,” the neuralist replied.  “He almost lost his life. 
Ashamed as I am to say it, there is a part of me that’s disappointed he did
not.  His case has begun to weigh on me – I’m sure you feel it too.”

  
“Yes.”

  
“He is a martial of the highest caste.  The longer his… condition… persists,
the worse it reflects on us.  And our predicament is not helped by the fact
that the man simply refuses to die.”

  
Eastman smiled and sipped his drink.  The Adam’s apple undulated under the
creaseless membrane of his skin.  “It’s been more than two hundred days since
Nova Crimea,” he said.  “You haven’t heard from him since?”

  
“He did send someone to pick up a prescription some time ago,” said Pope.  “He
had left a message.  But, other than that, I have not, no.”

  
Eastman finished off his drink and slowly set the glass on the table.

 
 “Who did he send for his prescription?” he inclined toward Pope as he asked
the question, causing a flicker of intrigue to surface in the ice-blue orbs.

  
“… Miss Robinson.”

  
“
Yes, Doctor?
”

  
“Please retrieve our most recent correspondence from subject Saul Vartanian,
Ares; First Tier.”

  
“
Certainly, Doctor.
”

  
There was a pause as the request was carried out. 

  
“Was there anyone else mentioned in the memo?” asked Pope.

  
Seconds later, the AI responded:

  
“
There was one other person, Doctor.
”

  
“The name?”

  
“
… Martial Celyn Knight.  Caste – Elite; Second Tier
.”

  
Eastman inclined his head and leaned back in his seat.

  
“I thought as much.”

  
“The name rings familiar.”

  
“She was the one who saved his life,” said Eastman, sipping the ambrosia from
his glass.

  
“Ah,” Pope whirred.  “I remember now.”

 
The enigmatic smile became more pronounced.  “Yes… of course.”  He took the
crystal bottle of ambrosia and topped off Eastman’s glass as soon as it touched
the table, then took a sip from his own.   “Cohabitation?”

  
Eastman shook his head.  “Not exactly,” he said.  “It is all very strange.”

  
“How so?”

  
“For one, he has not set foot outside his home since he returned from his last
assignment.”

  
Pope considered the point.

 
“Peculiar,” he said.  “Not extraordinary.”

  “It
gets more peculiar,” said Eastman.  “I personally searched the Surveillance
Database, with the supervision of the Guard.  We traced Martial Knight’s
movements around the metropolis over the last sixty days.  Every tenth day,
without fail, she leaves her home on the north end of Durkheim, between 0800
and 0900.   She makes a pickup on Republic Alley off Nozick Prospect in
Durkheim Sky City, then proceeds to deliver whatever it is she’s carrying to
Vartanian’s home in Haven District.   She never remains there for more than a
few minutes.  As far as we can tell, she does not even enter the house.  The
delivery is never planned in advance.  The only relevant correspondence we
found on the Nexus was one rather indeterminate message sent from him to her
precisely one hundred and seventeen days ago.”

  
Pope looked to be absorbing every detail of the account, computing a
hypothesis.

  
Eastman continued: “She makes her pickup from a dreg mess run by a non-martial
ex-patriot by the name of Duke Maclean.”

  
“Dreg mess?” inquired Pope.

  
“Yes,” Eastman replied with a vague nod.  “They are food aid dispensaries,
unsanctioned by us.  They generally receive funding from the civil world.”

  
The advent of a sneer surfaced on Pope’s stony countenance.

  
“Altruism…” he muttered contemptuously.

  
“I also checked Maclean’s record with martial customs and came across a number
of highly unusual items consigned to him within the last one hundred days.”

  
“Such as?”

  
“Five fully clothed mannequins for children’s wear.”

  
There was a brief pause, after which Pope snickered.

  
“Perhaps Mister Maclean has some peculiar sexual interests…”

  
“Did you hear anything about Vartanian’s last assignment,” asked Eastman, “in
Dolinovka?”

  
“I understand it was quite a ruthless success.”

  
“It was … Did you hear anything else?”

  
Silence.

  
“What happened?” asked Pope.

  
The cobalt eyes narrowed ever so slightly. 

  
Moments later, Eastman leaned over the side of his chair and took out a black
file from his briefcase.  The insignia of the UMC was on the front.

  
“He brought something back with him.”

 
  He handed the file to Pope, who opened it and removed the bound contents.  The
front page of the document was marked in bold: “DEBRIEFING”, and below it were
all the other details of the assignment in Dolinovka, Kamchatka.

  
“Third page before the last,” Eastman instructed.

  
The neuralist skimmed through the early and middle pages of the file
nonetheless.  A number of minutes passed before he reached the third page from
the last, an annexed report from the infirmary in Fort Gen, Kamchatka.  His
reading became more meticulous as the eyes flitted from side to side, then up
and down the first page of the infirmary report, then the second.  After a
while, the pages dropped from Pope’s hands and the solemn visage rose.

  
“A child…”

  
Eastman slowly nodded again.

  
“He overdosed on neurals shortly after he brought her in.  He remembered
nothing of the mission.  It is not clear he remembers anything of the preceding
days either.”

  
“Overdose combined with post-traumatic denial,” Pope diagnosed rapidly.  “Common
among defectors.  What did they do with the child?”

  
“I don’t know.  I imagine it was transferred to the D.P camp in same area.”

  
“Curious…” Pope muttered, nodding.  “
Very
curious.”

  
“There’s more.”

  
Pope laid the debriefing document down and refilled the two glasses again.

  
“Go on.”

  
“We checked his web history on the Nexus,” Eastman continued.  “Vartanian has
accessed the network a number of times in the last one hundred and twenty-seven
days – every time with the same entry.  He was searching the martial database,”
There was a sombre dip in his voice.  “… He is looking for someone.”

  
Pope sipped his drink and hummed contemplatively.

 
“Who?”

  
Eastman did not answer, and, in the silence of his omission, the answer was
implied.  Just as Pope was about to raise the glass to his lips, he froze.  His
gaze became as bleak as fog and the glass slowly lowered again. 

  
“Vincent Caine,” he murmured in awe.

  
Eastman slowly nodded.  The two men remained staring at one another. 

  
A minute later, Pope rose from his chair and gave Eastman his back, setting his
sights out, over the astronomical vista beyond the glazed walls of his office. 
The dusk had since ripened to a thick blackness.

  
“Has this ever happened before?”

  
“No,” said Pope, the verve in his eyes renewed. 

  
“How could he know?”

  
“I don’t know.”  Pope crossed his arms at his back, took a deep breath and an
elusive grin surfaced with the exhale.  A moment later, he turned back.

  
“What do we do?” Eastman asked.

  
“As little as possible,” said Pope.