Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (2 page)

  
She stared drearily through the window, into the undefiled beauty of the autumn
day.  The clouds congregated over the sun.  Straight beams of white light
diverged from the crevices onto the rolling hills and the snow-tipped mountains
were in the distance.  A rain should come, she thought.

  
“So, what is it?”

  
“What’s what?” she asked, without breaking her stare.

  
“Come now,” said Shields.  “Greatest moment in world history, and you’re sat
there looking like you’re on your way to a damn funeral.”

 
 She could keep her thoughts hidden from most people, but there were few who
knew her better than her chief of security, being one of the few and fortunate
who had been spared by the great wave of global war, there were things he understood
about her that others could not, even her own family. 

  
“Well? he asked urging her heart to her voice.

  
She turned away from the window and faced him with downturned eyes. 

  
“Did you ever get that feeling,” she started, “when you’ve spent your life
working for something? You finally get to the end.  You start to think about
the journey.”

  
“Doubts about something that happened along the way?”

  
The President looked away again. 

  
“Something like that.” she replied.

  
Silence fell again.

  
“The martial world
will
fall, eventually,” Shields assured.  “When it
does, the phoenix of Eden will rise from the ashes.”

  
“It will be a long time before then,” she said.  “A lot of wars left to fight.”

  
“Maybe,” said Shields.  “But you have more than half a billion people behind
you.  You’re their hope.  Whatever price was paid to get us here – it was worth
it.  Don’t forget that.”

  
She regarded him fondly.

  
“I won’t.”

  
Every day for the last 11 months and 13 days, he woke with the terrible climax
of some nightmare.  The incubus never changed his plotline.  The screaming
always peaked just before waking.  And when the screams withered from his mind,
the throbbing pain in his head followed soon after. 

  
The morning sun beamed in through the windows in straight and illuminated lines
of airborne dirt, inching up to his face.  The lids stretched back over his
bloodshot eyes, lighting his vision violet.  It was the usual morning pattern,
with one none-too-uncommon exception. 

  
He lifted himself up by the elbows and, feeling the soft flesh rub against him,
looked over to his left.  The sleek bare back was turned on its side beside
him, thick braids of unfurled hair lay limp over the deep curve of her hip;
skin scarred, smooth and ebony.  Jasmine suffused the air.  He had no memory of
this jasmine woman, who she was or how she had found her way into his bed,
which was normal enough.  But that jasmine smell was familiar.  The memory of a
woman’s smell dies hardest of all. 

  
The jasmine woman’s head stirred.  She rolled over onto her back with a waking
moan and surveyed the squalid confines of the dreg den; kitchenette and
lavatory within feet of the depressed mattress on the floor, the old, broken
2-D screen at the back, old paperback books on a solitary countertop and foul
smells she could scarcely identify and the scuttle of vermin and the buzz of
insects through the stagnant vents. 

  
   He could see the slow shock of sobriety in the manner of her waking and rose
before she could glimpse his face, lifting himself out from the bed and walking
into the thin, horizontal beams of light toward the window.  The view of the
metropolis was hidden behind the big tube where the maglevs passed.  The sun
crept through the narrow spaces of the overpasses.  A maglev rocketed past, as
they did every 10 minutes or so, and the low rumble of the rails syphoned
through the tube.  When it passed, he heard the jasmine woman rise from the
bed. 

  
“Where am I?” came a dazed groan.

  
“Sixth Echelons.  Durkheim.”

  
“Never mix neurals and ambrosia.” She rubbed the palm of her hand against her
temple with a groan and looked around.  “…I slept here?”

  
He turned a pair of glaring eyes over his shoulder.  “One usually wakes where
one sleeps.”

  
“You’d be surprised.”  She looked up and observed the obscure figure in front
of her anew, eyes straining through the bright light of the newborn sun.  The
light cast shadows over his lean flesh and his arms were bound with gauze from
the elbow to the wrist.  

 
 He turned and she looked away the instant before their eyes met, rose and
began to get dressed with her back turned to him.  Seeing her -- bare-bodied
with the long braids cascading over her shoulders and breasts, down as far as
her hips --, flashes came to him through the residue of the nightmares and the
stupor that hung over him still.

  
“What is your name?” he asked.

  
The jasmine woman looked up and studied him.  Her eyes were globes of dark jade.

  
“Does it matter?”

  
“I would like to know.”

  
She looked askance.  “Why?”

  
Silence.  When he did not turn or answer, she smirked and looked away. 

  
Her apparel was unusual for a walker.  It was equally unusual that she was a
particularly beautiful walker.  That is by no means to say that walkers are not
particularly beautiful.  They would not have much to sell otherwise.  But the
walker business is very competitive, which begged the question as to why she
would have wasted a good night’s profit on the likes of a dreg, for there was
no possible way she could have assumed he was anything more than the lowest
dreg in the metropolis. 

  
He reached for his coat, took out a handful of oblong silver coins and counted
them:  78 Dimitars and 97 Ducats; all the wealth left to his name.  Midway
through count, he threw the money on the bed.  The jasmine woman looked down at
the coins and then back up at him.

  
“I do not remember how much we agreed on,” he said.  “You will probably
increase the price.  That should be enough.”

  
“You think I’m a walker?” she snickered.

  
The hair drew back from over her neck.  He noticed something gleaming under the
skin above her breast.  Blending into her dark flesh was the seal of the UMC.   

  
“You are a martial,” he said, with vague astonishment. 

  
“Second Tier Elite.”

  
He noted the signets marked in her flesh.  “Impressive,” he muttered
diffidently, as he opened a fresh pack of cigarettes.

  
“Wish I could say the same,” she replied, surveying the little cubicle. “Are
you a dreg?” she asked, quite point blank.

  
“Why?” he asked, lighting his cigarette.  “Ashamed already?”

  
“No,” she said.  “You were a means to an end.  Besides, I doubt we’ll be seeing
each other around anytime soon.”

  
There was nothing more certain.  Even if they did, it was likely they would not
recognise one another.  But that smell of jasmine was uncanny.  Probably their
paths had crossed once, he thought, before 11 months and 13 days ago.

  
Having dressed, the jasmine woman straightened up and spared one last
benevolent look, which he dismissed with a turned back.  She paused, then
patted around on her legs and felt around the insides of her coat until she took
out a small black canister.  The top of the canister opened when she pressed
down on the base and three tablets rolled out and into the palm of her hand. 
Her throat bulged as she swallowed, took a deep breath and tossed the canister
onto the bed beside him.  “You look as though you’re low,” she said.  “You can
still afford to keep a cubicle so maybe you’re scraping the bottom of the dreg
barrel.  The price of neurals is way up these days.  These’ll get you back on
your feet.”

  
He looked over his shoulder and eyed the cylinder with aversion.  The cigarette
smoke scorched his eyes. 

  
“Go ahead,” she insisted.  “I’ve got plenty.”

  
“No thank you,” he replied and looked away again.

  
“Are you mad because I’m not who you thought I was?  Don’t be a proud dreg.  Go
on.  Take them…  Might be your last hope.”

  
A mist of smoke blew from his lips into the thinning beam of light.  He raised
his eyes to the sun and kept silent.

 
 The jasmine woman shook her head and turned away. “You know; don’t look new
here,” she said.  “But, just in case you are, a little word of advice:  You
won’t last long if you don’t stick with the program.  So, if you’re not on one
yet, you ought to find yourself a neuralist, and quick.”  She made for the
door, and just before she left she added, “And stop asking walkers for their
names, or anyone else, if you can help it.  Don’t go looking for me, dreg… I’m
warning you.”

  
She lingered a while as though waiting for a response.  When none came, the
door slid open and then closed again.  He heard the echoes of her footsteps fade
in the barren corridor. 

  
There was a blue glow in the corner of his eye just as the last ray of sunlight
blinked away.  His cell was ringing.  O730 , according to the chronometer on
the bedside.

 
 
Right on schedule…

 
 He got up off his bed and picked the cell up off the counter.  The caller ID
flashed over the screen.  He laid the cell back on the counter, tapped the
display and blue light rippled out from his fingertip and a holographic pillar
of white shot out from the display. The photons swirled and the miniature
figure of a man appeared in the pillar of light. 

  
“Rise and shine, Martial.”

  
“Malachi.”

  
“Vartanian… you look like hell.”

  
“Then I will fit the job description.”

  
He took out a cigarette and sat.

  
“The contract closes today,” said Malachi.  “The meeting with the broker is in
less than 30 minutes.  Did I mention the meeting was at the Vanguard?”

  
“I remember…” He lit the cigarette.

  
“The most exclusive martial syndicate in the first region; you don’t even think
to get cleaned up?  You look like a damn dreg.”

  
“Elegance does not count for much in our trade.”

  
“Well, you sure as hell ain’t getting in the Sixth Circle looking like that.  SG
might just shoot you on sight.”

  
And that would be terrible for business…

  
“You’ve lost weight.  Think you can still carry your gear?”

  
“I can fight,” he assured.

  
“Well, wouldn’t be good for much in this world if you couldn’t, now would you?”
said Malachi.  ‘You remember the name of the broker?”

  
“Commissioner Donald Clarke Eastman…  Do not patronise me.” 

  
“You’ve been out a long damn time.  They’ll make you take an eval.”

  
“I know.”  A stream of smoke flowed from his nostrils.  

   “We had to pull a lot of strings to
get here.  Don’t fuck this one up before it starts.  And put that damn smoke
out.  Who smokes those anymore anyway?”

  
Saul Vartanian would have killed himself sooner or later, having long exceeded
the average life expectancy of martial defectors.  The question as to why he
did not loomed over his every thought.  A part of him resented the new glimmer
of hope that had come quite unexpectedly through the sudden and unexpected
acquaintance with Martial Elijah Malachi.  

 
The shutting door sent echoes through the barren corridor and he stood awhile
in a silent trance.  He pocketed his hands and felt for the blade.  You never
walked the streets without a blade… His nose twitched as he sniffed in a nauseating
brew of smoke, ethanol and bile.  The stench reached its peak down the corridor,
where he came upon a man lying on the floor with his back up against the
corner, still, eyes shut. 

  
He stopped and studied the vagrant; gaunt, unkempt, rotten, decayed, rancid and
bound up in a blanket that smelled of excrement.  The martial seal on the man’s
neck was faded under a bubble of scar tissue.

  
Dreg…
 

  
Warzone castoffs.  The life of the dreg was wretched and brief; usually
terminating in illness, suicide or slaughter in cold blood.  Not all dregs were
defectors, but all defectors quite inevitably wound up as dregs.  As he reached
into his coat pockets and leaned forward to lay the coins down by the dreg’s
side he noticed that his chest was not rising.  He pressed two fingers up to
the jugular and the dreg’s head lolled to one side. 

  
Dead
…

  
No stab wounds. 
Probably bit on cyanide.
  He tucked the coins into his
pockets and stood back up, turned and walked on as a matter of course.  Sodom
sanitation would find the body sooner or later and strip the corpse down for
parts for the living (eyes were especially valued).

      
A loud wind of juddering maglev rails, sirens and foot traffic blustered
through as he passed through the tunnel into Sixth Echelons, the heart of the
Dukheim District sky city.  Above and below, a hundred stories in each
direction, flyovers intersected through the heart of a great hollow pillar. 
Bridges cut from wall to wall, stocked with a current of martials making the 0900
deployment rush.