If there is, I can’t spot them. In any case, I doubt a sensor would work for a possessed.
Binoculars? Hell, it hardly matters.
He couldn’t see the trucks with his eyes yet, the tall grass hid them. And his mind couldn’t perceive their thoughts, they
were too far away. So just how had they found him?
There is a tube station at the end of the cove,
Rubra said.
They’ll never be able to catch you in that. I can take you to anywhere in the habitat.
Thanks. And you’ll be able to run a thousand volts through me as soon as I step inside a carriage. Or had you forgotten?
I don’t want you blown into the beyond. You know that. I’ve made my offer, and it stands. Come into the neural strata. Join
your mind with me. Together we will annihilate them. Valisk can be purged. We will take them to dimensions where simply existing
is an agony for them. Both of us will have revenge.
You’re crazy.
Make your mind up. I can hide you for a while while you decide. Is it to be me? Or is it to be Kiera?
Dariat was still receiving the image of the trucks from the sensitive cells. They were rocking madly over the uneven ground
as the drivers held them at their top speed.
I think I’ll take a while longer to make up my mind.
Dariat started jogging for the tube station. After a minute, the trucks swung around to intercept him. “Bloody hell.” Horgan’s
body was reasonably fit, but he was only fifteen years old. Dariat’s imagination bestowed him with athlete’s legs, bulky slabs
of muscle packed tight under oil-glossed skin. His speed picked up.
I wonder what that kind of overdrive does to your blood sugar levels? I mean, the power has to come from somewhere. Surely
you’re not converting the energistic overspill from the beyond directly into protein?
Save the science class till later.
He could see the station ahead of him, a squat circular polyp structure bordering the bluff, like some kind of storage tank
half-buried in the sand. The trucks were only a kilometre away. Bonney was standing up in the passenger seat of the lead vehicle,
aiming her Enfield at him over the windscreen. Motes of white fire punched into the sand around him. He ducked down for the
last fifty metres, using the bluff as cover as he scuttled for the station entrance.
Inside, two broad escalators spiralled around each other, their steps moving sedately. A garishly coloured tubular hologram
punctured the air up the centre of the shaft, adverts sliding along it. Dariat leapt onto the down escalator and sprinted
recklessly, hands barely touching the rail.
He made it to the bottom just as the trucks braked outside; Bonney charged towards the entrance. There was a carriage waiting
on the station, a shiny white aluminum bullet. Dariat stopped, panting heavily, staring at the open door.
Get in!
Rubra’s mental voice contained a strong intimation of alarm, which Dariat could hardly credit.
If you’re fucking me, I’ll come back. I’ll promise myself to Anstid for that one wish to be granted.
Imagine my terror. I’ve told you, I need you intact and cooperative. Now get in.
Dariat closed his eyes and took a step forwards, directly into the carriage. The door slid shut behind him, and there was
a faint vibration as it started accelerating along the track. He opened his eyes.
See?
Rubra taunted.
Not such a bogey man after all.
Dariat sat down and took some deep breaths to calm his racing heart. He used the sensitive cells to watch an apoplectic Bonney
Lewin jump down from the empty platform to fire her Enfield along the dark tunnel. She was screaming obscenities. The accompanying
hunters were standing well back. One of her boots was treading on the magnetic guide rail.
Fry her,
Dariat said.
Now!
Oh, no. This is much more fun. This way I get to find out if the dead can have heart attacks.
You are a complete bastard.
That’s right. And to prove it, I’m going to show you Anastasia’s secret now.The one thing she never showed you.
Dariat was instantly wary.
More lies.
Not this time. Don’t tell me you don’t want to find out. I know you, Dariat. Fully. I’ve always known. I know what she means
to you. I know how much she means to you. Your memory of her was strong enough to power a grudge over thirty years. That’s
almost inhuman, Dariat. I respect it enormously. But it leaves you wide open to me. Because you want to know, don’t you? There’s
something I’ve got, or heard, or saw, that you didn’t. A little segment of Anastasia Rigel you don’t have. You won’t be able
to live with that knowledge.
I’ll be able to ask her soon. Her soul is waiting for me in the beyond. When I’ve dealt with you, I’ll go to her, and we’ll
be together again.
Soon will be too late.
You’re unbelievable, you know that?
Good. I’ll take you there.
Whatever you like.
Dariat pushed his weariness behind the thought, showing just how unconcerned he was. Behind that, clutched away from the
bravado and outward confidence, his teenage self huddled in worry. That same self which so idolized her. Now there was the
chance, the remotest possibility that the image was flawed, less than honest. The doubt cut into him, weakening the core of
resolution which had supported him for so terribly long.
Anastasia would never keep anything from him. Would she? She loved him, she said so. The last thing she ever said, ever wrote.
Rubra guided the tube carriage to a starscraper lobby station and opened the door.
It’s waiting on the thirty-second floor.
Dariat glanced cautiously out onto the little station and the wide passage which led to the lobby itself. His mind could sense
the thoughts of the possessed camped outside the lobby. No one showed any interest in him. He hurried across the floor to
the bank of lifts in the centre, reaching them unnoticed.
The lift deposited him at the thirty-second-floor vestibule. A completely normal residential section; twenty-four mechanical
doors leading to apartments, and three muscle membranes for the stairwells. One of the mechanical doors slid open to show
a darkened living room.
Dariat could sense someone inside, a dozing mind, its thought currents placid. When he tried to use the observation sub-routines
for the bedroom he found he couldn’t, Rubra had wiped them.
Oh, no, my boy, you go right in there and face your fate like a man.
Dariat flinched. But. . . one unaware non-possessed. How bad could it be? He walked into the apartment, ordering the electrophorescent
cells to full intensity. Thankfully, they responded.
It was a woman who lay on the big bed, a duvet had worked downwards to reveal her shoulders. Her skin was very black, with
the minute crinkles which spelt out the onset of middle age and the start of weight problems for anyone without much geneering
in their ancestry. A tangle of finely braided jet-black hair was fanned out over the pillows, every strand tipped with a moondust-white
bead.
She groaned sleepily as the light came on, and turned over. Despite a face which cellulite was busy inflating, she had a petit
nose.
NO! For one moment horror claimed his senses. She was similar to Anastasia. Features, colour, even the age was almost right.
If a medical team had gone out to the tepee, they might have reanimated the body, a hospital might conceivably have used extensive
gene therapy to regenerate the dead brain cells. It could be done, for the President of Gov-central or Kulu’s heir apparent,
the effort would be made. But not a Starbridge girl regarded as vermin by the personality of the habitat in which she dwelt.
The cold shock subsided.
Whoever she was, as soon as she saw him, she screamed.
“It’s all right,” Dariat said. He couldn’t even hear his own voice above her distraught wails.
“Rubra! One of them’s here. Rubra, help me.”
“No,” Dariat said. “I’m not. Well. . .”
“Rubra! RUBRA.”
“Please,” Dariat implored.
That silenced her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’m running from them myself.”
“Uh huh?” Her gaze darted to the door.
“Really. Rubra brought me here, too.”
The duvet was readjusted. Slim bronze and silver bracelets tinkled as she moved.
Dariat’s chill returned. They were exactly the same kind of bracelets Anastasia wore. “Are you a Starbridge?”
She nodded, wide-eyed.
Wrong question,
Rubra said.
Ask her what her name is.
He hated himself. For giving in, for playing to Rubra’s rules. “Who are you?”
“Tatiana,” she gulped. “Tatiana Rigel.”
Rubra’s mocking, triumphant laughter shook his skull from the inside.
Got it now, boy? Meet Anastasia’s little sister.
• • •
Another day, another press conference. At least this new technology had progressed beyond flashbulbs; Al had always hated
them back in Chicago. More than once he had been photographed raising a hand to ward off the brilliant bursts of light; photos
which the papers always ran, because it looked as if he were trying to hide, confirming his guilt. He had held the press conference
in the Monterey Hilton’s big ballroom, sitting at a long table with his back to the window. The idea was that the reporters
would see the formation of victorious fleet ships which had just returned from Arnstadt, and were holding station five kilometres
off the asteroid. Leroy Octavius said it should make an impressive backdrop for the dramatic news announcement.
Except the starships weren’t quite in the right coordinate, so they were only just visible when rotation did bring them into
view; the reporters had to look around the side of the table to see them. And everybody knew the Organization had conquered
Arnstadt and Kursk, it wasn’t new even though this made it sort of official.
Drama and impact, that was the sole purpose. So Al sat at the long table with its inappropriate vases of flowers; Luigi Balsmao
on one side, and a couple of other ship captains on the other. He told the reporters how easy it had been to break open Arnstadt’s
SD network, the eagerness of the population to accept the Organization as a government after a “minimum number” of key administrative
people had been possessed. How the star system’s economy was turning around.
“Did you use antimatter, Al?” Gus Remar asked. A weary veteran of these affairs now, he reckoned he knew what liberties he
could take. Capone did have a weird sense of honour operating; nobody got blasted for trying to work an angle, only outright
opposition earned his disapprobation.
“That’s a dumb kinda question, pal,” Al replied, keeping the scowl from his face. “What do you want to ask that for? We got
plenty of interesting dope on how the Organization is curing all sorts of medical problems which the non-possessed bring to
our lieutenants. You people, you always look for the bad side. It’s like a goddamn obsession with you.”
“Antimatter is the biggest horror the Confederation knows, Al. People are bound to be interested in the rumours. Some of the
ships’ crews say they fired antimatter powered combat wasps. And the industrial stations here are producing antimatter confinement
systems. Have you got a production station, Al?”
Leroy Octavius, who was standing behind Al, leaned forwards and whispered something in his ear. Some of the humour returned
to Al’s stony face. “I can neither confirm nor deny the Organization has access to invincible weapons.”
It didn’t stop them from asking again and again. He lost the press conference then. There wasn’t any chance to read out the
dope Leroy had prepared on the medical bonus, and how they’d prevented the kind of food shortages on Arnstadt which were being
reported as affecting other possessed worlds.
Asked at the end if he was planning another invasion, Al just growled: “Wait and see,” then walked out.
“Don’t worry about it, we’ll embargo the whole conference,” Leroy said as they took a lift down to the bottom of the hotel.
“They ought to show some goddamn respect,” Al grunted. “If it wasn’t for me they’d be possessed and screaming inside their
own heads. Those bastards never fucking change.”
“You want us to lean on them a little?” Bernhard Allsop asked.
“No. That would be stupid. The only reason the Confederation news companies take our reports is because they’re from non-possessed.”
Al hated it when Bernhard tried to be tough and demonstrate his loyalty. I should have him wasted, he’s becoming a complete
pain in the ass.
But wasting people wasn’t so easy these days. They’d come back in another body, and carry a grudge the size of Mount Washington.
Goddamn
the problems kept hitting on him.
• • •
The lift doors opened on the hotel’s basement, a windowless level given over to environmental machinery, large pumps, and
condensation-smeared tanks. A boxing ring had been set up at the centre, surrounded by the usual training paraphernalia of
exercise bikes, histeps, weights, and punch bags: Malone’s gym.
Whenever he wanted to loosen up, Al came down here. He’d always enjoyed sports back in Chicago; going to the game was an
event
in those days. One he missed. If he could bring back the Organization, and the music, and the dancing from that time, he
reasoned, then why not the sports, too?
Avram Harwood had run a check on professions listed in the Organization’s files, and found Malone, who claimed to have worked
as a boxing trainer in New York during the 1970s.
Al marched into the gym area trailed by five of his senior lieutenants, Avram Harwood, and a few other hangers-on like Bernhard.
It was noisy in the basement anyway, with the pumps thrumming away, and in the gym with music playing and men pounding away
at leather punch bags you had to shout to be heard. This was the way it should be: the smell of leather and sweat, grunts
as sparring blows hit home, Malone yelling out at his star pupils.