The Age of Scorpio (12 page)

How decadent Christianity has become
, he thought as he headed up the stairs past the bacchanalian porticoes and pushed the door open. When it closed behind him he knew that it did not just lock, it sealed itself shut. The spite with which the tendrils of his blood-screen reaching out towards the building had been destroyed was amplified in the church itself. This building fundamentally did not like him. He wondered if the vicar, staff and any unfortunate visitors were already dead.

The .45 held in a two-handed grip, Du Bois advanced slowly, checking all around. The white of the Portland limestone seemed to jar with his presence here. Even if he had not understood the significance of the architecture he would have been able to see why people connected this with a pale reflection of heaven.

Above the pulpit he saw the hilt of a black dagger rammed into one of the supporting pillars. Du Bois recognised the weapon. He was surprised and more than a little worried that even now the Brass City would let Nightmare out. The dagger was said to be far beyond insane. He did not like the violence it had done to the church either.

‘Old friend?’ Even with his screen being eaten, there were few people who could hide from du Bois. He spun towards the voice. Hamad had emerged from the nave and was leaning heavily against one of the pillars. He held the curved white-bladed dagger in his right hand. Gentle Sleep was a much more reasonable piece of ancient insanity to be let out, du Bois thought.

Hamad looked awful. Haggard, haunted, fatigue written painfully across his face in a way that should have been impossible for someone augmented like he was. His suit was soiled and stank from his trip through the sewers. His headscarf was long gone and the slits of his extra eyes were plainly visible on his forehead.

‘Hamad,’ du Bois said carefully. He tried to forget about the magnitude of Hamad’s crime but could not. The hopelessness, the destruction of more than two millennia of planning all washed over him. He could not even muster anger; he just wanted to sit down. It had all been too long. ‘Clever coming here where we cannot track you.’

‘I just wanted to be closer to God.’

Du Bois smiled despite himself.

‘Even though you know there is no God?’

‘I think that there is. I just don’t think it is what we want it to be.’ Du Bois said nothing. ‘Are you going to shoot me or ask me why?’ Hamad said when the silence became too much. Du Bois swallowed. He had not had time to really think about it. ‘Last I heard you were tracking down looted Sumerian artefacts in Iraq.’

Du Bois just stared at the Syrian. ‘Why doesn’t really cover it, does it?’ he finally said.

‘All things have a time.’

‘Humanity would have survived,’ du Bois said, unable to master the anger in his voice. Hamad started shaking his head before du Bois had finished.

‘No, not humanity, a perversion. Is it so bad to stay with the rest of us?’

‘So spite then. You cannot go so nobody will? You couldn’t even leave one bridge, even the cloning information, so something of humanity could live?’

‘It wouldn’t be living; it would be slavery and hell. The powerful people who out of selfishness made decisions that messed things up down here would have gained even more, perhaps total control. We will not allow you to remake humanity in their . . . in your image.’

‘Decisions always go to the powerful – that’s just the way of things,’ du Bois told the Syrian. He saw the guilt dissolve on Hamad’s features and for the first time anger appear.

‘No! That is an excuse. That was not what the Circle was set up for. The best minds working for the same purpose, and when their time had come they could be uploaded, so you could take them with you, the real treasure of humanity, and do you know what your powerful men did? They erased half of those minds. People who had sacrificed everything for your grand plan destroyed, made nothing with a thought for what? For more storage space.’

Du Bois tried to make his features impassive but the accusation felt like a blow.

‘You’re lying,’ he said. Hamad stared at him incredulously.

‘At this late hour? Why would I?’

‘Then you have been told a lie.’

‘Is it more likely that you, the perfect servant, have been lied to or that I have been lied to?’

‘So what now?’

‘I will not be going with you.’ It was said as matter of fact, calmly.

‘The souls?’

‘They are all gone. Burned in the fire.’ Hamad was a good liar, but du Bois had a lot of help reading the tells of the bluff.

‘Give me the souls, Hamad,’ du Bois told him. Hamad’s face hardened. ‘No.’

‘What difference does it make? We’re all fucking dead.’ Hamad said nothing. ‘What? You think the Brass City can protect them? And who will be the lords of your little utopia?’ Hamad still didn’t answer. ‘Hypocrite!’ du Bois spat. ‘A virtual prison is still a prison.’

‘It’s another world,’ Hamad said with the voice of a true believer. Du Bois knew this was not going to be solved with words.

‘Give me the souls or I swear I will tear them out of your head,’ he said evenly though he could not help but glance over at Nightmare sticking out of the limestone pillar. It was a matter hack, an ugly one at that. The ancient weapon was whispering its madness to the church. Or rather to the semi-conductor quantum dots that acted like programmable atoms in the smart matter that the limestone was impregnated with.

‘The things that I have done this day, do you really think a threat will work?’ Hamad asked, sounding genuinely aggrieved.

Du Bois barely had time to register what it looked like as it burst from the matter of the pillar. Part gargoyle, part image of a malign desert spirit, part disjointed, strangely angled alien other, and all madness. Nightmare’s hilt stuck out of its head.

Hamad spun behind the pillar. Du Bois might have risked a shot but he couldn’t afford to waste a round. He swung round, bringing the gun to bear on the smart-matter monstrosity. He had misjudged its speed. He was too slow.

Nano-fibre-reinforced armour and flesh hardened but not nearly quickly enough. The impact alone felt like it had fractured, if not splintered, ribs. Limestone claws tore open a huge gash in his chest and sent him flying through the air.

Du Bois landed twenty feet away, the air forced out of him, spine hardening to survive the fall. His impact destroyed a pew and sent him sliding into more. The limestone gargoyle galloped towards him on all fours, running through pews, vestigial wings flapping on its back.

Du Bois sat up, shut down the nerve endings that were trying to disable him and forced his body to work. He brought the .45 to bear and got off one shot. The gargoyle slapped the gun out of his hands, breaking them both. Du Bois rolled to one side just in time to avoid a punch that pulverised the floor beneath where he had been.

He rolled to his feet, realising he was going in the opposite direction from his pistol. His body was healing but slowly, his own systems having to fight the little nano-scale surprises that were inhibiting his own nanites every time the gargoyle hit him. He ran from it, trying to gain time. However, the gargoyle was not limited by human physiology. It barrelled into him with all the building’s hatred for him.

Du Bois hit the wall and left a red smear on the white limestone as he slid down it.

As his systems were knitting the wounds caused by the impact back together, the gargoyle pounced, landing on du Bois’s prostrate face-down body. It could have finished him then, but the ghost of hate that lived in it wanted him to suffer. It flipped him over.

Du Bois’s features were repairing themselves. It looked like his face was being inflated. The tanto he had in his hand was forged from folded steel during the Sengoku period in Japan. Crafted by a master swordsmith, it was just about as fine a knife as you could find in the world. It would be of no use against the gargoyle. Du Bois used it to mutilate his rapidly healing left hand. As the gargoyle reached for him, he smeared his blood over its limestone flesh.
If you want to win you have to sacrifice
, he managed to think. He sent the signal to his blood.

The gargoyle’s misshapen jaws opened wide in a soundless howl as it picked him up. The tanto fell from numb fingers as du Bois was bashed against the wall. Only just managing to stay conscious, he grabbed the small punch dagger disguised as a belt buckle. He rammed that into the gargoyle’s stone flesh. The blade disintegrated into its constituent nanites, flooding the gargoyle’s animated limestone. Acting with his own blood and the first bullet he had fired, they replicated like a matter virus. The gargoyle started to crumble, but its free hand swung back to tear open du Bois’s skull. Somehow he managed to reach up and tear Nightmare out of the thing’s head.

As soon as he touched the hilt of the weapon he heard its whispering as the ancient and corrupt AI nearly overwhelmed his neuralware. He dropped the evil old curved dagger as the gargoyle turned black and continued crumbling, dropping him in turn.

A moment’s respite was just enough time for more healing. The white blade opened up his cheek. Immediately addled and blurry, he threw himself to the side, scrabbling for his tanto. He found the blade as his internal systems fought off the tiny ancient machines that offered sleep and a gentle, peaceful end.

On his feet, he managed to dodge more of Hamad’s slashes. If the Nizari had had both blades he would be dead by now. He could not afford to get cut again. The nanites made by the assemblers in the hilt of the ancient weapons carried a lethal neural toxin. Anything more than a mild gash from either knife would overwhelm du Bois’ own internal defences.

Hamad came at him with the blade, his fist, open-hand attacks and a series of short kicks, each strike calculated to be the most efficient, to cause the most damage. A fighting system perfected across centuries.

Du Bois moved sinuously, swaying, his hands and feet moving to be where they were least expected, blocking punches with raised legs, checking Hamad’s blade with a hand to the wrist, slashing his leg open with the tanto when the Syrian tried to kick him, all the while the seductive urge to sleep becoming fainter as the alien nanites were hunted down and destroyed by his own defences.

Hamad was by far the better knife fighter, but mental fatigue had taken its toll. Du Bois never stopped moving, swaying, making debilitating finger strikes to his opponent’s eyes, groin, nerve clusters using rapid whipping movements, all the while looking for an opportunity with the blade.

He found one. The incredibly sharp folded-steel blade sliced across Hamad’s throat, opening it. Blood surged out. Hamad staggered away holding his neck. Du Bois backed off.

‘You fight like one of them!’ Hamad hissed when his throat had knitted itself back together enough for him to speak.

I should do
, du Bois thought.
One of them taught me
.

Hamad saw what du Bois was slowly moving towards and charged. Du Bois threw himself back, grabbing the .45 from the floor. Blossoms of red appeared on Hamad’s soiled suit as impact after impact slowed his charge. He staggered to a halt over du Bois. The bullets’ nanite payloads were overwhelming Hamad’s own systems. Du Bois was breathing hard. The slide on the .45 was back, the magazine empty. Smoke drifted from the barrel. It seemed quiet and still in the destroyed church.

‘Would you do the right thing?’ Hamad asked and then collapsed.

Du Bois crawled over to Hamad’s body. He looked peaceful.

‘Sorry, brother.’ Du Bois drove the tanto into Hamad’s head, prised off a piece of skull, cut open his own thumb and pressed it against the brain. Du Bois downloaded yottabytes of information just before ephemeral electronic Ifreet destroyed it.

Then he sat back and looked at his friend’s cooling corpse. He could hear them if he concentrated. All the souls. He did not concentrate. He did not want to hear their voices.

Southsea seemed still, as if abandoned. It was a grey day. All the colour had been bleached out of the city as Beth made her way through terraced street after terraced street.

It wasn’t until she turned onto Pretoria Road that she saw signs of life. About halfway down, it had been sealed off. The middle part of the street was encased in an opaque tent-like structure with some kind of airlock leading into it. Police vehicles and officers prevented people from getting close. There were other official-looking vehicles behind the police cordon and Beth saw people wearing NBC suits going in and out of the airlock.

Beth could not see a connection between this strange sight and her sister but somehow couldn’t shake the feeling that Talia was involved. She headed down the street, head down, arms in the pocket of her leather jacket, trying to avoid drawing attention to herself. She did not have to go far before she realised that the address Billy had given her had to be in the tented area.

‘Hey, what’s going on there?’ she asked a slow-moving cyclist being trailed by a scruffy mongrel dog. The guy braked the bike and shrugged.

‘Don’t know. At a guess it’s some kind of terrorist thing. Maybe a germ bomb or one of those dirty bombs. Makes you think though. Be lucky if we don’t all end up with cancer or a head growing out of our neck or something.’

He wittered on for a bit as she stared down the street at the tented area. Eventually he said goodbye and headed off. Beth was wondering what to do. The thought of her sister as a terrorist actually made her laugh.

‘God is a prude.’ The voice was all but a croak. Beth had to replay the words in her head until they made sense, or not as it turned out. Very little of what the bag lady actually looked like could be made out through the layers of clothes, the dirt and the tangled mess of hair. She was crouched beside a nearby garden wall. She could have been anything from thirty to ninety for all Beth knew, and she stank. Beth’s initial reaction was to move away. What stopped her was the night she had just spent on the cold concrete.

‘He can’t stand nudity. Hawkings said that.’ The bag lady pushed herself up on the long stick she was leaning on. Even with the stick she was still hunched over.

‘Are you talking to me?’ Beth asked. She genuinely wasn’t sure. The answering dry chuckle sounded like twigs being snapped. The chuckle turned into a cough and the bag lady spat up something red or black that Beth did not want to think too much about.