Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (8 page)

  
“What does?”

  
“Coming off the neurals.”

  
He regarded Malachi sideways.  “How would you know?”

  
“Oh I know a lot more than you think I do.” A grin twitched across Malachi’s
face and disappeared instantly.  He slowly removed his glasses and stared
directly and unblinkingly into the sun. “After a while,” he continued, “the
nightmares start to spill over and become reality.”  His voice became profound
and redolent.  “Before you know it, they start when you’re awake and end when
you go to sleep.  You get to a point where you don’t know whether you’re asleep
or awake anymore.  You start to spiral down a hole, a deep, dark hole.  And
when you get to the bottom of that hole, you find a choice:  The way of the
coward -- suicide....  The way of humility -- submission.  Or…” Malachi’s eyes
pierced through Saul’s temple, into the deepest confines of his thoughts. “The
way of pride...” he added darkly.  “Convince yourself that the whole damn
world’s insane – everyone except you, of course.”

  
When Malachi said the word “insane”, for a moment he heard Pope’s voice echoing
over his speech.  His fists clenched instinctively and a flutter of rage rose
in his chest and set his heart pounding, deepening his breaths.

  
Malachi seemed to note his rising passion with a contented smirk, and then
looked away again.  “That scar on your seal,” he said. “You did that to
yourself?”

  
“I do not remember.”

  
“They cleaned you…” Malachi hummed and his smirk widened into a grin.  He
looked away again.  “How long ago?”

  
“A year and…” he stopped and restated. “Three hundred and sixty-three days.”

  
“It feels surreal afterwards, doesn’t it? Like being born again.” 

  
His interest was roused anew.  “… You defected?”

  
“I must have.”

  
He looked away.  “And then you submitted.”

  
“So did you.”  Malachi’s head turned to him again and this time the rest of his
body followed.  “They never force us, you know.  They’re pretty clear about
that. They always give you the choice.  You have to submit every time, just
like the first time...”

  
“How do you know that for sure if you cannot remember?”

  
“You know,” Malachi answered.  “Deep down, everyone knows.”

  
Their gazes remained locked. 

  
“There’s one thing that confuses me about you, though,” Malachi digressed. “I
remember the moment I came to, after they wiped my slate clean.  Everything
before that point was a blur.  The Commission gave me my caste, my neurals, my
account with the martial banks, my new address.  They briefed me, handed me a
fresh contract and sent me on my way.  Never looked back.
Couldn’t
look
back.  I was all alone.  The Commission were the only people in the world I
could trust and I knew that if I didn’t, I would end up… well… like you.” He
stopped and turned.  “But, you didn’t...Why not?”

  
“As you said; certain things you just know,” he replied.  “Sometimes the mind
has reasons that reason itself is blind to.”

  
Malachi chuckled and turned away.  He shook his head and the chuckle escalated
into a hopeless, raspy laugh.

  
The airship descended from the clouds and the curved horizon over the war-torn
land appeared.  They had crossed over the boundary between East and West. 
Razed earth presaged their entry into the airspace over the Wall of Fire.  

  
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?”

  
“A pitiable one,” Saul replied, turning away

  
Malachi purred contemplatively.  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  
“The system depends on death to function.”

  
Malachi chuckled. 

  
“Well, based on that little piece of wisdom, I guess the whole natural order’s
fucked up.”

  
“There is nothing natural about the war economy,” he replied darkly.

  
“An Ares-caster…” Malachi shook his head and snorted.  “Ask yourself this: What
has peace ever done for the world?” he inquired rhetorically.  “War is
progress.  It’s always been that way and it always will be.  All the world
industries are bound to bloodshed.  Without us – without the martial economy –
the whole race comes to a grinding halt.”

  
“Do you believe that this world was written in nature too?”

  
“Do you doubt it?  Take a good look.” Malachi waved a gesturing hand over the
view of the war-torn land.  “It’s the perfect system:  All day every day, ships
come and go from the martial cities to the war zones.  They only bring back the
survivors, refining the race, making the system better one death at a time,
keeping power in the hands of the strong.  I even hear the Council is drafting
laws to allow high-casters to start reproducing.  It’s all heading in the same
direction.  I hate to break it to you, but guys like you are just defects that
the system shakes off from time to time.”

 
Malachi’s dark eyes were bleak and austere and the voice which related the
philosophy of pitiless indifference was psychopathically passive.  The cold and
imminent touch of total oblivion did not seem to perturb him one iota.  Like
all martials, he was a walking corpse, an automaton, a bodily shell driven only
by the will to power, fearless, emotionless, boundless potential for cruelty… 
All these were the symptoms of the neurals. 

  
The bleak eyes turned to Saul again.

  
“Did you ever consider the possibility that you were born for this?”

  
Saul rested to consider, and answered the question with another question.

  
“Do you believe in freedom?” he asked.

  
Malachi nodded.  “When nature plays you a tune, you dance to her music or you
die.  That’s the only freedom any of us get.  If you haven’t figured that out
yet, you will ... sooner or later.”

  
Saul reached into a compartment of his utility belt and took a fresh cigarette
pack, tapped the bottom of the pack against his hand and pulled out a king-sized
smoke.

  
“May I?” inquired Malachi, before he could raise the cigarette to his lips.

  
He stopped and regarded Malachi with an askance frown.  Something wasn’t right,
but he couldn’t quite place what it was.  He gave the cigarette to Malachi. 

  
“Have you ever asked yourself why it all came to this?” Malachi digressed as he
cocked his head forward to light the cigarette.

  
“The Gaia Revolution, the PMCs, the Covenant…”

  
“I’m not talking about the history.” Malachi interrupted, inhaled deeply and
exhaled. “I mean, really; why?  The whole race has damn near everything it
needs in infinite supply and still we go on fighting.  This wasn’t how it was
supposed to go down.”

  
Saul took out another cigarette and put it in his lips, feigning indifference. 
“Even if you satisfy every human desire, the desire for power will always
remain.  That is the only reason there has ever been war.”

  
Malachi nodded slowly and assentingly.  “That’s right,” he said, taking another
deep draw of smoke. He exhaled and grinned.  “Blood is money.  Money is power. 
War
is power.  That’s why millions of people all over the world are
migrating to the war metropolises.  They’re all looking for a little piece of
that power.  And they’ll sell their lives to the martial world to get it.  Whether
you like to admit it or not, that’s what you did too.”

  
Saul’s fist clenched and the anger bubbled up again. He took the cigarette from
his mouth and discretely tossed it aside.

 
“You know it,” said Malachi.  “And you can’t handle it, can you…?  That’s why
you gave it all away.” 

  
His hand shot up and latched around Malachi’s collar, thrust him up against the
wall with a bang and the cigarette fell from his lips.  The adrenaline burst
from his chest into his limbs, filling him with murderous intent.  “You talked
to Pope…”

  
The delay in Malachi’s answer was confession enough.  The insidious sideways
smirk reappeared.  “That’s it … good,” he purred, sinisterly.  “Show us what
you’re really made of.”

   
His fist tightened with restraint, His breaths became constricted and feral. 
The moment he became conscious of it, the fingers trembled loose.  He quelled
his passion.  The rush of wrath seemed to have shocked him a lot more than it
did Malachi, who burst into laughter as soon as he let go: 

  
“Bra-vo,” he mocked.

  
“The Commission know…”

  
“No,” said Malachi, turning away. “I spoke with your neutralist long before you
told me anything about going rogue.  If you were going to lead
my
men
into a battlefield, I wanted to make sure you were fit for the job.  The Commission
debars defectors from the warzones for a reason.  Martials like you are a
threat…”

  
   At that moment, they were interrupted by approaching footsteps.  Both heads
turned toward the deck entrance, where a figure appeared, ambling with a slow
and cavalier gait.  The long barrel of a rail rifle rested over the tops of his
shoulder blades like a bat.

  
“
Salut, amis
,” hailed Duguay with a sly leer.

  
Their reply was a long and tense silence.

  
The arrival of the Cajun instantly dissipated the conversation.  

  
Malachi cocked his head and put the glasses back over his eyes.  When his head
rose again, the bleak, dark eyes gazed through the opaque lenses.  

  
“Remember my conditions,” said Saul.

  
“You remember ours…”  There was an air of foreboding in Malachi’s reply.  He
took out a black neural canister, rolled two tablets into his hand and gulped
them down at once, followed by a light exhale of relief.  “Well, this was…
interesting,” he said with a flicker of a smile.  “I’ll see you in the field …
comrade
.”
He left, brushing past Saul’s shoulder, then marched slowly past Duguay without
so much as an acknowledging look and went out the exit. 

  
“
Problème
?” the Cajun asked, coming forward.

  
“No.”

  
“Hmm…
Bon
.” 

  
Saul remained on the edge of the deck, looking out over the shipside.  The
distance between them and the scorched earth had now closed considerably.  Far
ahead of the ship’s bow, the martial settlements of Tyumen emerged over the
horizon.  The bulbous turbines rotated at the ship’s sides shooting heavy blue
jets of supersonic air and the ship slowed beneath their feet.  The entourage
of Preyton aircraft keeled to its sides, broke off from port and starboard and
dispersed into the sky.  To the east, two more of the leviathan air carriers
descended from the clouds, southbound to the Eurasian Region of the Walls. 

  
An alert sounded across the airship, signalling the landing. 

  
When the signal stopped, the mestizo-Cajun swung his rifle around and banged
the butt against the floor.  He reached behind his back and took out a very
familiar-looking bottle of earth-brown fluid, unscrewed the top and raised the
bottle bottom-up, with the top shoved deep into his gullet.  Three gulps later,
he lowered the bottle, twisted his head and grimaced.

  
“Ech!” he burbled, eyeing the bottle disgustedly.  “
Pas mal
…” he leered,
then presented Saul with the drool-sodden scotch bottle. 

  
“… Keep it.”

  
Duguay curled his lips.  “
Bien
…”  He put away the bottle.  Then,
gesturing toward the exit, bid, “
Allez-allez.
”

  
The Cajun followed beside him, down the passage to the main fuselage, and spoke
(with unusual clarity) as he walked:  “De boss man tink too much,
ami
… 
He gotta quit dat.  Won’t do ‘im no good.  Aahh, but he don’t know no betta’.”

  
“So… what do
you
think?” he asked, after a long pause.

  
“
Chacun à son proper, ami
,” shrugged the Cajun.  “You a
couyon
–
ain’t no doubt about dat.  If I had what you had –
merde
– buy me out a
bordello an’ a warehouse full’a’ ambrosia – maybe summa dis stuff right here,
too.”  He took another swig from the scotch bottle. “Lemme tell you sometin’
ri’ now,
ami
: Ain’ not but one ting in dis world what matter.  Not but
one law.”

  
“And what is that?”

  
“
Balance!
Plaisir et douleur
. Dem fellas from the East Grid – dey
got a word for dat…”

  
“…Karma.”

  
“
Fameux!
” broke the Cajun, with a raspy cackle.  

  
Just as the other end of the passage was in sight.  There was another profound
motion from beneath and the loud rumble in the walls declined as the airship
prepared for landing. 

  
They emerged onto a walkway, at the head of a mass assemblage of soldiers,
waiting in their assigned squads before the gates at the ship stern.  T-minus
five hours to assault.

  
“Well, live or die, som’n’ tell me dis de last time I’ll be seein’ ya,
couyon
,”
Duguay raised his bottle one last time.  “
A vous
” he toasted and then
emptied the scotch into his gullet.  “Z
eerahb
…”  He belched, then threw
the bottle aside.   “
À bientôt,
commandant
.”  Then her went his
way to join his squad.