The Age of Scorpio (53 page)

Zabilla recognised most of the crowd. They were the top players from the arcology within the fields of genetics, biology and biophysics, as well as a number of art critics.

Shallow stairs led to a raised area in front of the stained-glass windows. On that platform stood the avatar, an automaton with an idealised body of brass complete with suitably intimidating phallus. Its face was a mask of beaten platinum and gold. The Absolute as a pre-Loss God. The sun made the polished metal gleam and sparkle to the point where it was difficult to look directly at the automaton. It was like a genuine religious experience, Zabilla thought. All her doubts of last night were forgotten. The avatars were direct representatives of the Absolute, and this one was here to judge the final part of the audition.

The avatar’s musical tones were still ringing around the hall from its opening address. There had been polite applause, then all eyes turned to Scoular, who was sweating heavily, and Zabilla. She tried to suppress her awe as the avatar turned its imperious gaze on them. She bowed slightly and held out a hand towards Scoular. It would, of course, appear like the gracious gesture of someone allowing their opponent to go first. It was not; it was calculated. She wanted the impact of going last. Scoular probably would have done the same thing, but he looked too sweaty, sick and nervous. When he realised what she’d done, he glared at her.

With as much of a flourish as he could manage, Scoular tore off the sheet covering the glass box. The glass box then disintegrated in front of their eyes, allowing a better look at its contents.

Lying in a nutrient bath were what looked like the torsos of a male and female human, though sex was difficult to tell because they were completely fused together. The semi-human chimerical organism almost rippled against itself in never-ending, distinctly sexual gyrations. Pleasure seemed to be written in a series of artistic blushes on its skin.

There was a degree of art to it, Zabilla had to admit, particularly the blushes and the suggestion of different genders, but at the end of the day it was little more than a pleasure generator. She wasn’t even annoyed that Scoular had upped its output by using heightened nerve endings gained from his espionage directed at her own research.

There was hushed conversation among the crowd. Zabilla felt her contempt for them. Nobody wanted to be the first to compliment or criticise; they wanted to see what others would do first. They lacked boldness, which was why they would never be truly great players.

She looked down as if politely trying to hide a smile. Dracup was less subtle. She gave them time to take in Scoular’s work. He was looking sicker by the moment, particularly as applause seemed less than forthcoming.

Finally, after she felt expectations had been raised enough, she nodded to Dracup, who without a flourish removed the sheet as Zabilla’s glass box began to disintegrate.

The most difficult thing had been to combine the scream with musical tones to make something beautiful out of agony.

Like Scoular’s design, it was little more than head and torso. There was to be nothing that was unnecessary. Like Scoular’s design, it utilised her heightened nerve-ending biotechnology. Other than skin and mouth it had no sensory organs, but those were the only two it needed. Its body existed only as a conduit for pain and music. A metal clamp fused with its spine held it up. In the nutrient bath opposite it was a tree. Purposefully designed to look like an arcology tree, its branches moved like tendrils. Its leaves were monomolecular razors that dug into the musically screaming torso’s flesh.

People stared at it. Genuinely moved by the beauty of the music of her creation’s screams, Zabilla allowed a tear to run down her cheek. Dracup, who had tears streaming down his, would later tell her that many in the audience were similarly moved.

The sound of metal clanging against metal over and over again caught everyone’s attention. Zabilla looked up to see the avatar, seemingly staring at her with the unmoving mask of its face, applauding with its large brass hands.

‘This is mere pornography!’ Scoular disgraced himself by shouting. His voice sounded weak and was barely heard as applause broke out around the hall. Scoular sank to his knees. Nobody noticed. Carinne went to him, trying to help him up, but even with the tiny AG motors that helped support his fat he was too heavy for her. ‘What’ve you done?’ he screamed at Zabilla.

She turned to look at him.
I introduced a very new, very subtle, very difficult to detect and trace, very deadly and particularly well-timed virus into your system when we shook hands earlier
, she didn’t tell him. She hoped the smile communicated it all. His public execution for little more than opposing her and having poor taste was part of the audition as far as she was concerned.

Scoular collapsed onto the wooden floor. His last living act was to meat-hack Carrine, activate the upmarket combat abilities that all good consorts had written into their neunonics and augmentations, and send her after Zabilla.

Which was what Dracup had been waiting for. He interposed himself between Zabilla and Carinne and moved forward to meet the other consort. Carinne’s face was a contorted mask of hate and anger. There had obviously been a powerful emotional element to the hack. Carinne suddenly crouched, her leg swinging out to sweep Dracup’s. Dracup flipped back. Carinne was already back up, advancing on him, drawing her own bone knife. Dracup landed on his hands and kicked up from the ground, surprising Carinne. The blow caught the other consort just under her sternum. There was an audible
crack
as Carinne was lifted off the ground by the force of the blow. She staggered as she landed but immediately started towards Zabilla again.

There were shocked gasps from the crowd as Dracup threw his bone knife. Carinne blocked the flying blade at the last moment with her own, sending Dracup’s blade skittering across the floor. Thinking him unarmed, she went to finish the job, but Dracup had used the minute distraction of the flying blade to close with Carinne. He grabbed the elbow and wrist of her blade arm and twisted the knife round. Before Carinne had a chance to resist, her own blade was stabbed up through her mouth and into her brain, where it released its deadly payload of neurotoxin. Carinne shook; blood frothed from her mouth, and she tumbled to the ground.

Dracup smoothed down his tunic and retrieved his blade.

Zabilla found it hard not to smile. She tried to control her face as she heard the sound of metal footsteps resonating off wood. She turned to look at the gleaming avatar.

‘Will you come with me, please?’

To call this vehicle a G-car was to do it a disservice
, Zabilla thought; it was like a luxurious flying fortress. The inverted cauldron shapes of AG motors ran up either side of the vehicle. The destination, however, took her by surprise.

They sank beneath the Black Leaves into the roots. She needed her augments to see into the outside, where darkness prevailed. She saw the huge machinery of the roots and was even able to make out a degree of movement as the root structure steadied the arcologies they supported.

As they got closer to the roots themselves, she started to make out the morlock servitors maintaining the machinery. They lived in squalor in tiny shanty towns made out of what they could scavenge from the waste of the world above the black-leaf canopy. She saw morlocks in cast-off finery clambering over mountains of once-fine furniture, ornamentation, artwork and other bits and pieces of assembler detritus from the world above. Rubbish that people had for one reason or another never got around to disassembling. Dracup was unable to conceal his distaste. Zabilla was less sure it was the morlocks’ own fault.

All through the journey the avatar had said nothing, and Zabilla, wanting to show poise and calm, had also remained silent.

They sank into the planet itself. Spiralling slowly around massive roots that dug into crust and then mantle. Finally they flew through a network of airlock-like heavily armoured doors that shut behind them one after another.

The luxury G-car landed in a huge open space. There were other more utilitarian and military vehicles present. The structure might have been the first construction that Zabilla had ever seen that was not made of wood. She had to search her neunonics to find references to nano-bonded reinforced concrete.

Still without saying anything, the avatar, now looking as ostentatious and out of place as Zabilla felt, led her through a heavily defended series of chambers to a very secure laboratory, which, unlike her own laboratory, seemed to be all substance and no style.

Lying on a metal table in the centre of the lab, surrounded by very visible sensors of every conceivable type and a ring of automated weapon systems, was a strange, roughly coffin-shaped cocoon structure made of a white substance that Zabilla did not recognise.

‘Congratulations. You have got the job,’ the avatar said.

‘Why are they here?’ It was unusual for Bress to hear nervousness in Ettin’s voice.’

At Crom Dhubh’s behest. They harvested the crystal,’ Bress said emotionlessly.

‘But then why does the dragon remain?’

‘It feeds from her while poisoning her like a parasite. It wants to ride her corruption when it comes. Besides, it is a little added security.’

‘These primitives are no threat to us.’

‘Some of these primitives have the blood of the gods in them.’

Ettin stared at Bress for a moment, trying to fathom him. ‘Watered down,’ the two-headed creature said, turning away.

‘Not all.’

‘Your woman. The one you spared.’

‘She is not my woman, but she is coming south with two others.’

‘As I said, primitives.’

‘They are from the Eggshell.’

Ettin turned to Bress again. ‘That is a myth.’

Bress could not be bothered to respond. If it was a myth then where had the warrior and the swollen-headed demon come from? He looked at what they had grown. It towered high above the ships and the wading giants. He tried to ignore the smell, the screams. They were allowed to scream now as they were feeding her. He thought of the dragon burrowing into her flesh like a venomous tick and he tried to ignore the feeling that he had just betrayed his entire species.

Dead men writhed on the ground before the fire. They looked like worms, grubs, their movements a mockery of dance. The dead men averted their eyes and cowered as a figure formed in the fire. Formed of flickering black flame, the figure was warped, twisted and difficult to see, as if parts of its shape made no sense. The horses whickered, whinnied and stamped nervously where they had been tethered. It was not the sight and smells of the corpse-studded ground that made them nervous.

Those prostrate on the ground felt the power of this mere shadow of their charnel god. The Dark Man in the flames, Crom Dhubh, the man the witch folk fire-danced with, was just a more powerful messenger of oblivion than they themselves.

‘Carrion warriors, continue to drive the weak before you, take your fill of their flesh and drive the rest to the sacrifice.’

Cadwr was nervous, but the young warrior knew he had led his small part of the warband well. They had ranged along the south-western banks of the river of the Grey Father. They killed those they caught, let the rest flee to be herded to the south by the larger bands led by Ysgawyn. They burned the land and slaughtered the cattle. There would be famine when winter came. Only the dead gods would feast, as would their servants, those who ate the flesh of heroes blessed by the gods themselves.

‘What would you have us do?’

The warped, living black flame turned to look at the young warrior covered in lime and blood.

‘When you meet Ysgawyn, go to the Crown. Slay this Rin; he is old and weak like the blood of the god within him. Bring the rest of his people to my servant, the tall man. I will send beasts from the Otherworld to aid you.’

Britha stood in the darkness just beyond the light of the fire and the circle of lime- and gore-crusted warriors. She knew that simply by being still they would not see her for looking. It was movement that gave away the hidden.

The figure in the fire was making her sick. She could feel it in the air somehow. She felt the violation of the natural order of things, a connection between the living fire and wherever this dark figure actually stood. The Cirig knew that you never looked too hard into a fire as you risked attracting the attention of callous gods who lived in burning places.

As sick as it made her, she felt its call.
Was this shadow Bress’s master?
she wondered. The figure spoke to the same parts of her that the dreams of Bress did. The dreams were more frequent and intense now. But perhaps it was just the thought of battle that was making her wet.

They were in the northern lands of the Atrebates, the tribe whose king they sought. What the black curraghs had left, the Corpse People had despoiled. Tangwen said that the Corpse People had been one of the many tribes that made up the Durotriges, a confederation of peoples from the far west. They had been expelled from the confederation for their dark practices. They lived on the plain where many of the other tribes placed their dead in barrows or left them for the crows to carry to the Otherworld. The plain bordered Annwn, the land of the dead, and the Corpse People were thought to have strayed too close to that border.

They had been travelling for ten days now. The last Britha had seen of the People of the Snake had been the little girl holding one of Fachtna’s arm torcs. The
Will of Dagon
had carried them west up the river until Hanno had finally refused to take them further despite there being plenty of loot for the Carthaginians from deserted and destroyed villages. Tangwen had led them on foot from there. The young hunter and warrior had taken them deeper into the ruined landscape. They had gone west first, skirting areas that had been raided, trying to avoid bands of warriors from further north seeking to protect their lands. Then they headed south. Britha did not trust the land here – its flatness seemed unnatural – but she had to admit that before its despoliation it must have been very rich.