The voidhawk’s affinity voice was a thunderclap roar howling through the minds of its crew. Ruben thought he would surely
be deafened. Serina sat with her mouth gaping wide, hands clamped over her ears, tears streaming down her face.
Oenone
, restrain yourself,
the consensus demanded.
But the voidhawk was beyond reason. It could feel its captain’s pain, her hopelessness as the white-hot metal seared into
her flesh with brutal intricate skill while in her heart she thought of nothing but their love. Lost in helpless rage its
distortion effect twisted and churned like a frenzied captured beast pummelling at its cage bars.
Gravity rammed Ruben down into his seat, then swung severely. His arms outside the webbing were sucked up towards the ceiling,
their weight quadrupling.
Oenone
was tumbling madly, its energy patterning cells sending out vast random surges of power.
Tula was yelling at the voidhawk to stop. Loose pieces of junk were hurtling round the bridge—cups and plastic meal trays,
a jacket, cutlery, several circuit wafers. Gravity was fluctuating worse than a roller-coaster ride. One moment they appeared
to be hanging upside-down, the next they were at right angles, and always weighing too much. A spinning circuit wafer sliced
past Edwin, nicking his cheek. Blood squirted out.
Ruben could just make out the calls of the other void-hawks in orbit above Atlantis, trying to calm their rampant cousin.
They all started to alter course for a rendezvous. Together their distortion fields could probably nullify
Oenone
’s supercharged flailings.
Then the most violent convulsion of all kicked the crew toroid. Ruben actually heard the walls give a warning creak. One of
the consoles buckled, big skinlike creases appearing in its composite sides as it concertinaed down towards the decking. Coolant
fluid and sparks burst out of the cracks. He must have blacked out for a second.
Gravity was at a forty-degree angle to the horizontal when he came to, and holding steady.
I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming,
Oenone
was braying.
Horrified, Ruben linked into the voidhawk’s sensor blisters. They were heading down towards Atlantis at two and a half gees.
Reaction to the berserker power thundering through the energy patterning cells made the muscles in his arms and legs bunch
like hot ropes.
Fast-moving specks were rising above the hazy blue-white horizon, skimming over the atomic fog of the ther-mosphere like flat
stones flung across a placid sea. The other voidhawks: their calls redoubled in urgency. But
Oenone
was immune to them, to the Atlantean consensus’ imperious orders. Rushing to help its beloved.
They’re too far away, Ruben realized in dismay, they won’t reach us in time.
The consensus relaxed its contact with Oxley, allowing him complete independence to pilot the floundering flyer, letting his
instinct and skill attempt to right the craft unencumbered. He shot order after order into the bitek processors, receiving
a stream of systems information in return. The coherent magnetic generators were failing, databuses were glitched, the fusion
generator was powering down, electron-matrix crystal power reserves were dropping. Whatever electronic warfare techniques
Pernik had, they were the best he had ever encountered, and they were trying to kill him.
He concentrated on the few control channels which remained operational, reducing the spin and flattening out the dive. The
faltering magnetic fields squeezed and pushed at glowing ion streams, countering the corkscrew trajectory. Black ocean and
lustrous island chased each other round the sensor images at a decreasing rate.
There was no panic. He treated it as though it was just another simulation run. An exercise in logic and competence set by
the CAB to try and trip him.
At the back of his mind he was aware of further pandemonium breaking out amid the consensus. A ghost image lying across the
flyer’s sensor input visualization showed him
Oenone
plummeting towards the planet.
With only a kilometre of altitude left the flyer lost its spin. The nose was dangerously low. He poured the final power reserves
into raising it, using the craft’s ellipsoid surface as a blunt wing, gaining a degree of lift in an attempt to glide-curve
away from the island. Distance was his only chance of salvation now. Streaks of reflected starlight blurred on the sable water
below, growing closer. There was no sign of the electronic warfare assault abating.
Pernik’s resplendent silhouette winked out. Silence detonated into the affinity consensus, absorbing the entire planet’s mental
voice.
Into the emptiness came a single devastating identity trait.
Your attention, please,
Laton said.
We don’t have much time.
Oenone
, resume your orbit now.
The flyer’s crashed systems abruptly sprang back into zealous life. And a shock-numbed Oxley was pressed deep into his seat
as it vaulted back into the sky.
Lewis Sinclair watched keenly as the torturer manipulated Syrinx’s mangled leg with a pair of ruddy glowing tongs and a mallet.
She wasn’t screaming so loudly now. The fight was going out of her. But not the spirit, he suspected. She was one tough lady.
He had seen the type before back in Messopia; cops mainly, the special forces mob, hard-eyed and dedicated. A pusher Lewis
worked for had captured one once, and it didn’t matter what was done to the man, they couldn’t get him to tell them anything.
Lewis didn’t think the possessed were going to gain control of the voidhawk through Syrinx. But he didn’t say anything, let
them sweat it. It wasn’t so much his problem, possessing the island gave him a measure of security a mere human body could
never offer. The range of physical sensations and experiences available to him was truly astonishing.
The sensitive cells woven through the polyp were fantastically receptive; people with their mundane eyes and ears and nose
were almost insensate by comparison. His consciousness roved at random through the huge structure, tasting and sampling. He
was getting the hang of splitting himself into multiples, supervising a dozen actions at once.
Syrinx groaned again as the souls from beyond sang into her mind with their strange icy promises. And Lewis saw a girl standing
at the back of the dungeon. The quake her presence sent through his psyche perceptibly rocked the entire island, as though
it had ridden over a tidal wave. It was her! The girl from Messopia, ThÉrÈse, the one he’d fought and died over.
ThÉrÈse was tall for thirteen, skinny, with breasts that had been pushed into maturity by a course of tailored growth hormones.
Long raven hair, brown eyes, and a pretty, juvenile face with just the right amount of cuteness; everybody’s girl next door.
She was wearing black leather shorts to show off her tight little arse, and her breasts were almost falling out of a scarlet
halter top. Her pose was indolent, chewing at her gum, one hand on her hip.
Where the hell did she come from?
Lewis asked.
What?
the possessed Eysk asked.
Her. ThÉrÈse. There, behind you.
Eysk turned round, then frowned angrily at the ceiling.
Very funny. Now fuck off. But—
ThÉrÈse gave a bored sigh and sauntered out of the dungeon.
Can’t you see her?
None of them answered him. He knew she was real, he could hear her
clicking
walk, feel the weight of her black stilettos on his polyp, olfactory cells picked up the sugary whiff of gum on her exhaled
breath. She walked away from the dungeon, down a long corridor. For some reason it was difficult to keep his perception focused
on her. She was only walking, but she seemed to be moving so fast. He barely noticed as the polyp of the corridor gave way
to concrete. The light became a harsh electric yellow coming from bulbs on the ceiling, each one cupped by a protective wire
cage. She hurried on ahead of him, feet sending out that regular
click click click
as her stilettos rapped the ground. His filthy jeans restricted his movements, clinging to his legs as he trailed after her.
The air was cooler here, he could see his breath emerging as white streamers.
ThÉrÈse slipped through a big set of grey-painted metal doors ahead. Lewis followed her into the empty subterranean warehouse
in Messopia five hundred and fifty years ago. He gagged. It was a square chamber, sixty metres to a side, twenty metres high,
rough poured concrete ribbed with steel beams coated in red-oxide paint. Striplights cast a feeble moon-white glow from on
high. As before, leaking sewage pipes dripped rank liquids onto the floor.
She stood in the middle of the floor, looking at him expectantly.
He glanced down, seeing his body for the first time. “Oh no,” he said in a desperate voice. “This isn’t happening.”
Loud, positive footsteps sounded from the far end of the warehouse. Lewis didn’t wait to see who was emerging from the gloom,
he spun round. There was no door any more, just a concrete wall. “Jesus Almighty. Fuck!”
“Hello, Lewis.”
His body was compelled to turn, leg muscles working like dead meat fired by a cattle prod. He bit hard on his trembling lip.
ThÉrÈse had gone. The person walking towards him was the body he had possessed on Lalonde.
“You’re dead,” Lewis whispered through a fear-knotted throat.
Laton merely smiled his superior smile. “Of all the people resident in this universe today, Lewis, you should know there is
no such thing as death.” “I’m in charge here,” Lewis yelled. “I am Pernik.” He tried to fling the white fire, to conjure up
energistic devastation, to flay the zombie to its stinking corrupt bones and beyond.
Laton halted five metres away. “You were Pernik. I told you once that we would meet again as equals. I lied. You cannot even
begin to conceive the processes involved in your manifestation within this universe. You are a Neanderthal out of time, Lewis.
You believed brute force was the key to conquest. Yet you failed to even think about the source of your energistic power.
I know, I’ve been analysing your tiresomely sluggish thoughts ever since you possessed my body.”
“What have you done to me?”
“Done? Why, Lewis, I have made you a part of me. Possession of the possessor. It is possible given the right circumstances.
In this case I simply corrupted Pernik’s neural stratum with my biological weapon. The neuron cells and nerve paths only conduct
my thought impulses now. You can kill the cells, but you can’t subvert them. It’s a question of coding, you see. I know the
codes, you don’t. And please don’t ask me for them, Lewis, it’s nothing as simple as a number. You now operate only as a subsidiary
part of me, you only think because I allow you to. That is how I summoned you here.”
“I think because I am! I have been me for centuries, you bastard.”
“And were you to go back there to the beyond, you would be you again. Free and independent. Do you want to go, Lewis? That
is your escape from my bondage. In this universe you require a physical, living biological matrix in which to function. You
may depart now if you wish.”
A weight pulled at Lewis’s belt. When he looked down he saw it was the powerblade knife hanging in its sheath. “No.” He shook
his head feebly, quailing at the prospect. “No, I won’t. That’s what you want. Without me Pernik would be free again. I’m
going to stop that, I’m going to beat you.” “Don’t flatter yourself, Lewis. I will never allow you to resume your barbaric
act of sodomy. You think of yourself as strong, as purposeful. You are entirely incorrect. You and the other returners have
a nebulous plan to re-establish yourselves permanently in this physical universe. You do so because of your own quite pathetic
psychological weaknesses.”
Lewis snarled at his tall tormentor. “So fucking smart, aren’t you. Let’s see what you’re like after a hundred fucking years
of nothing; no food, no breathing, no touch, just fucking nothing. You’ll be begging to join us, shithead.”
“Really?” Laton’s smile no longer contained even a vestige of humour. “Think what you are, Lewis. Think what all the returners
are. Then ask yourself, where is the rest of the human race? The hundreds of billions who have died since the day our ancestors
first struck two flints together, from the time we watched the glaciers retreating as we battled with mammoths.”
“They’re with me, billions of them. They’re waiting for their chance. And when they get into this universe they’re gonna come
gunning for you, shithead.”
“But they’re not with you in the beyond, Lewis, there are nothing like enough souls to account for everyone. You cannot lie
to me, you are part of me. I know. They’re not there. Ask yourself who and why, Lewis.”
“Fuck you.” Lewis drew the knife from its scabbard. He thumbed the switch in a smooth motion and the silver blade emitted
a dangerous buzz.
“Lewis, kindly behave yourself; this is my perceptual reality, after all.”
Lewis watched the solid blade curve round towards his fingers. He dropped the knife with a yell. It vanished before it reached
the floor, making as little fuss as a snowflake landing on water. “What do you want with me?” He raised his clenched fists,
knowing that it was all futile. He wanted to pound his knuckles into the concrete.
Laton took another few paces towards him. And Lewis came to realize just how imposing the big Edenist was. It was all he could
do not to back away.
“I want to make amends,” Laton said. “At least part way. I doubt I will ever be fully forgiven in this universe, not for my
crime. And it was a crime, I admit that now. You see, from you I have learnt how wrong I was before. Immortality is a notion
we all grasp at because we can sense that there is continuity beyond death. It is an imperfect realization due to the weakness
of the fusion between this continuum and the state of emptiness which follows. So much of our misunderstanding of life is
rooted in this, so many wasted opportunities, so much religious claptrap born. I was wholly wrong to try and achieve a physical
life extension, when corporeal life is but the start of existence. I was no better than a monkey trying to grasp a hologram
banana.”