Even if they suspected, believed the rumours of atrocities and massacres flittering from mouth to mouth through the nearby
countryside, they could do nothing. Boston was no longer alone in its dissent, it was simply the first. Edmund Rigby had planted
the germs of insurgency in every city across the planet’s islands, cabals of possessed who were already annexing the populace.
A captain in the Australian Marines, he had died from a landmine explosion in Vietnam in 1971; but he had studied military
tactics, had even been sent to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth for officer training. And this vast space empire of Confederated
planets, for all its awesome technology, was no different to the Earth upon which he had once walked. Vietcong insurgency
tactics from the past were just as applicable now, and he knew them by heart. Securing the entire planet had been his principal
objective since the vast merchant fleet had left Norfolk after midsummer.
Since he arrived he had been busy indeed. Toiling in the squalor and the horror and the blood which soiled the heart of every
human soul. Those living, and those dead…and the ones trapped between.
He closed his eyes as if to shut out the memories of recent weeks and what he had become. But there was no respite. The hotel
took on substance in his mind, walls and floors woven from shadows. People, us and them, glided through it, dopplered laughs
and screams ricocheting through the grand corridors and sumptuous rooms. And, always, there, on the other side of the shadows,
on the other side of everything: the beyond. Chittering souls clamouring for existence, silky insidious promises to be his
lover, his slave, his acolyte. Anything, anything at all to be brought back.
Edmund Rigby shuddered in revulsion. Please, God, when we hide Norfolk from this universe let it also be hidden from the beyond.
Let me have peace, and an end to all this.
Three of his lieutenants—selected from the more stable among the newly possessed—were dragging a captive along the corridor
outside to his room. He stiffened his shoulders, letting the power swell within, giving his new body grandeur and poise, as
well as a Napoleonic uniform, and turned to face the door.
They burst in, cheering and jeering, young turks from the worst of the backstreets, believing swagger and noise was an easy
substitute for authority. But he grinned welcomingly at them anyway.
Grant Kavanagh was flung on the floor, bleeding from cuts on his face and hands, smeared in dirt, his fine militia uniform
torn. Even so, he refused to be cowed. Edmund Rigby respected that, amongst the sadness. This one, with his conviction in
God and self, would be hard to break. The thought pained him. Why oh why can’t they just give in?
“Present for you, Edmund,” Iqabl Geertz said. He had assumed his ghoul appearance, skin almost grey, cheeks sunken, eyeballs
a uniform scarlet; thin frame dressed all in black. “One of the nobs. Got some fight in him. Thought he might be important.”
Don Padwick, in his lion-man state, growled suggestively. Grant Kavanagh twitched as the big yellow beast dropped onto all
fours and padded over to him, tail whisking about.
“We captured his troops,” Chen Tambiah informed Edmund quietly. “They were about the last militia roaming free. Inflicted
heavy casualties. Eight of us winged back to the beyond.” The dapper oriental, in ancient black and orange silks, cocked his
head grudgingly towards Grant Kavanagh. “He’s a good leader.”
“Is that so?” Edmund Rigby asked.
Iqabl Geertz licked his lips with a long yellowed tongue. “It doesn’t make any difference in the end. He’s ours now. To do
with as we like. And we know what we like.”
Grant Kavanagh looked up at him, one eye swollen shut. “When this is over, you mincing shit, and the rest of your friends
have been shot, I will take a great deal of pleasure in ripping every one of your deviant chromosomes from your body with
my own hands.”
“Now there’s a man’s man if ever I saw one,” Iqabl Geertz said, putting on an histrionically effeminate tone.
“Enough,” Edmund Rigby said. “You put up a good fight,” he told Grant, “now it’s over.”
“Like hell! If you think I’m going to let you Fascist scum take over the planet my ancestors sweated blood to build you don’t
know me.”
“Nor shall we ever,” Edmund Rigby said. “Not now.”
“That’s right, takes bloody four of you.” Grant Kavanagh grunted in shock as Don Padwick put a paw on his ribs, talons extended.
Edmund Rigby rested his hand on Grant’s head. There was so much resilience and anger in the man. It enervated him, sending
the pretentious uniform shimmering back into his ordinary marine fatigues. The souls of the beyond were clamouring as he began
to gather his power, flocking to the beacon of his strength.
“Don’t fight me,” he said, more in hope than in expectation.
Grant snarled. “Screw you!”
Edmund Rigby heard the vile rapturous imploring chorus of the souls beginning. Weariness engulfed him, there had been so much
of this since he had returned. So much pain and torment, so wilfully inflicted. At first he had laughed, and enjoyed the fear.
Now, he simply wished it over.
He hesitated, and the captive soul stirred in the prison he had forged for it within his own mind.
“There are ways,” the other soul said, and showed, obedient as always to his captor. “Ways to make Grant Kavanagh submit quickly,
ways no flesh can withstand for long.”
And the desire was there, oozing up out of the prison, corrupt and nauseous.
“But it’s a part of all of us,” the other soul whispered quickly. “We all share the shame of having the serpent beast in our
secret heart of hearts. How else could you have accomplished what you have the way you have if you did not let it free?”
Trembling, Edmund Rigby let the desire rise, let it supersede the loathing and revulsion that was his own. Then it was easy.
Easy to make Grant hurt. Easy to commit the profanities which quietened his lieutenants. Easy to feed the desire. And go on
feeding.
It was good, because it was freedom. Complete and utter freedom. Desire ruled as it should, unrestrained. It nurtured the
psyche, these heinous abominations Grant Kavanagh was forced to endure. They were sublime.
Iqabl Geertz and Chen Tambiah were yelling at him to stop. But they were nothing, less than dirt.
The souls were in retreat, fearing what was leaking from him into the beyond.
“Weak, they are all weaker than us. Together we surpass them all.”
Was that his own voice?
And still the savagery went on. It was impossible to stop. The other soul had gone too far, it had to be seen through now.
To the terrible end.
Edmund Rigby rebelled in horror.
“But you did it yourself,” said the captive soul.
“No. It was you.”
“I only showed you how. You wanted it. The desire was yours, the yearning.”
“Never! Not for this.”
“Yes. You gave way to yourself for the first time. The serpent beast is in all of us. Embrace it and be at peace with yourself.
Know yourself.”
“I am not that. I am not!”
“But you are. Look. Look!”
“No.” Edmund Rigby shrank from what he had done. Fleeing, hurtling, away, as though speed alone was proof of his innocence.
Locking out the world and what he had been a party to, down in that empty vault waiting at the centre of his mind. Where it
was quiet, and dark, and tasteless. Sanctuary without form. It hardened around him.
“And there you will stay; a part of me for ever.”
Quinn Dexter opened his eyes. Before him the three possessed, their exotic appearances bleached off to reveal young men with
ashen faces, backed away in consternation; their confidence in their supremacy jarringly fractured. Grant Kavanagh’s decimated
body quivered amid the blood and piss curdling on the carpet as the soul it now hosted tried valiantly to repair the colossal
tissue damage. Deep inside himself he heard Edmund Rigby’s soul whimpering quietly.
Quinn smiled beatifically at his rapt audience. “I have returned,” he said softly, and raised his hands in invocation. “Out
of the half-night;
strengthened
by the darkness as only a true believer could be. I saw the weakness in my possessor, his fright of his serpent beast. He
is in me now, weeping and pleading as he denies form to his true nature. As it should be. God’s Brother showed me the way,
showed me the night holds no dread for those who love their real selves as He commands us to do. But so few obey. Do you obey?”
They tried then, Iqabl Geertz, Don Padwick, and Chen Tambiah, combining their energistic strength in a desperate attempt to
blast the deranged usurper out of his body and into the beyond. Quinn laughed uproariously, steadfast at the calm centre of
a fantastic lightning storm which filled the room. Dazzling whips of raw electricity slashed at the walls and floor and ceiling
like the razor claws of a maddened gryphon. None of them could touch him, he was held inviolate in a cocoon of luminous violet
silk mist.
The lightning stopped roaring, ebbing in spits and crackles to disappear behind charred furniture and back into the bodies
of the would-be thunder gods. Smoke hazed the blackened room, small flames licking greedily at the cushions and tattered curtains.
Quinn wished for justice.
Their bodies fell, cells performing the refined perversions he dreamed of, turning against themselves. He watched impassively
as the terrorized, humiliated souls fled from the glistening deformities he had created, back to the beyond crying in dire
warning. Then the second souls, the ones held captive, abandoned the macerated flesh.
Grant Kavanagh’s body groaned at Quinn’s feet, the possessing soul looking up at him in numb trepidation. The worst of the
lacerations and fractures had healed, leaving a crisscross scar pattern of delicate pink skin.
“What is your name?” Quinn asked.
“Luca Comar.”
“Did you see what I performed on them, Luca?”
“Yes. Oh God, yes.” He bowed his head, bile rising in his throat.
“They were weak, you see. Unworthy fuck-ups. They had no real faith in themselves. Not like me.” Quinn took a deep breath,
calming his euphoric thoughts. His marine fatigues billowed out into a flowing priest’s robe, fabric turning midnight black.
“Do you have faith in yourself, Luca?”
“Yes. I do. I have faith. Really I do.”
“Would you like me to tell you of the serpent beast? Would you like me to show you your own heart and set you free?”
“Yes. Please. Please show me.”
“Good. I think that is my role now the portents walk abroad. Now the dead are risen to fight the last battle against the living
and the time of the Light Bringer draws near. I have been blessed, Luca, truly blessed with His strength. My belief in Him
brought me back, me alone out of all the millions who are possessed. I am the one God’s Brother has chosen as His messiah.”
When the tributary river finally spilled into the Juliffe it was a hundred and thirty metres wide. Villages had claimed both
banks, buildings gleaming inside their safe enclave bubbles of white light. By now Chas Paske was used to the striking fantasy
images of halcyon hamlets dozing their life away. He had passed eight or nine of them during his slow progress down the river.
All of them the same. All of them unreal.
Warned by the twin coronae ahead he had sculled his little boat back into the middle of the river, fighting the thick gunge
of melding snowlilies every centimetre of the way. Now he was in a narrow channel of vermilion light which fell between the
two pools of native radiance, crouched down as best he could manage.
His body was in a poor way. The nanonic medical packages had been exhausted by the demand of decontaminating his blood some
time ago; now it was all they could do to stop the blood vessels they had knitted with from haemorrhaging again. His neural
nanonics still maintained their analgesic blocks, delivering him from pain. But that didn’t seem to be enough any more. A
cold lethargy was creeping into him through his damaged leg, syphoning his remaining strength away. Any movement was a complicated
business now, and muscles responded with geriatric infirmity. Several times in the last few hours he had been stricken by
spasms which vibrated his arms and torso. His neural nanonics seemed incapable of preventing or halting them. So he lay on
the bottom of the boat gazing up at the throbbing red cloud waiting for the ignominious spastic twitches to run their course.
At these times he thought he could see himself, a tiny shrivelled black figure, spreadeagled on the bottom of a rowing dinghy
(like the one he thought he had been stealing), being borne along a sticky white river that stretched out to a terrible length.
There was nothing around the river, no banks or trees, it just wound through a red sky all by itself, a silk ribbon waving
in the breeze, while far, far ahead a speck of starlight twinkled with elusive, enticing coyness. Skittering voices on the
brink of audibility circled round him. He was sure they talked about him even though he could never quite make out whole words.
The tone was there all right, dismissive and scornful.
Not quite a dream.
He remembered, as he sailed on gently, his past missions, past colleagues, old battles, victories and routs. Half the time
never knowing who he was really fighting for or what he was fighting against. For the right side or the wrong side? And how
was he supposed to know which was which anyway? Him, a mercenary, a whore of violence and destruction and death. He fought
for the ones with the most money, for companies and plutocrats, and sometimes maybe even governments. There was no right and
wrong in his life. In that respect he had it easy, none of the big decisions.
So the river carried him on, that white band flowing through the red sky, ever onwards. The voyage was his life. He could
see where he had come from, and he could see where he was going. Destination and departure were no different. And there was
no way to get off. Except to jump, to drown in the vast guileful sky.