I do not.
“It’s very simple and very smart. If you want to know if something is fair, then turn it round. So if you know us as well
as you claim, and we were the ones with a thousand planets and providers and stuff, do you think we’d help you if we could?”
A healthy argument, presented with integrity. I know this is hard, but there are more issues involved than are apparent.
“Very clever,” Jay said. She folded her arms in a huff. “I know it’s possible to take possessors out of the bodies they’ve
stolen. I saw it done. So why don’t you at least help us to do that? Then we could work out what to do afterwards by ourselves.
That’s what you really want, isn’t it? For us to stand up for ourselves.”
The weapon your military is constructing requires no assistance from us.
“Not that. Father Horst exorcised Freya. He threw the possessing soul out of her.”
I am interested in your claim, Jay Hilton. Corpus is unaware of the incident. Could you tell me what the circumstances were?
Jay launched into a description of the events that had taken place that fateful day in a small homestead on Lalonde’s savannah.
Just retelling it made her realize how much had happened since, how much she’d seen and done. It also pushed her mother further
into the past, making her even more remote. She finished the story, and a tear trickled down her cheek.
Tracy’s arm immediately went round her shoulders. “Hush hush, poppet. The possessed can’t reach you here.”
“It’s not that,” Jay wailed. “I can’t remember what mummy looks like anymore. I’m trying, but I can’t.”
This at least I can remedy,
Fowin said. A provider globe appeared in the air beside Jay. It extruded a square of glossy paper. Jay took it cautiously.
A picture of her mother was printed on one side. Jay smiled, tears forgotten.
“That’s her passport flek image,” she said. “I remember when we went to the registry office together. How did you get this?”
It is stored in your Govcentral memory cores. We retain access.
“Thank you very much,” Jay said contritely. She looked at her mother again, warmed by the sight. “I thought you didn’t use
stuff like providers on this planet, that you’d gone back to nature or something?”
Quite the opposite,
Fowin said.
We have rejected everything but our technology. Permanent physical structures are unessential. We are free to pursue thought
alone.
“Humans are never going to evolve into anything like you,” Jay said sadly. “We’d just get too bored.”
I am glad. Your appetites are unique. Treasure them. Be yourselves.
“So will you help us expelling souls?”
I believe the circumstances that allowed Father Horst his exorcism will not be repeated on many occasions.
“How come?”
As you have demonstrated this day, human children have very strong beliefs. Freya was brought up to believe in her ethnic
Christian religion. When Father Horst began the ceremony of expulsion, she believed that it would work, that the soul possessing
her would be cast out. At that same time, the soul experienced doubt. It had endured a form of purgatory, implying the priests
of its era enjoyed some kind of fundamental truth when they discussed spiritual matters. Now it was confronted by a priest
who believed he had God’s aid to perform the exorcism. Three different, extremely strong beliefs were acting upon the soul,
exerting considerable pressure not only from outside, but within its own thoughts. The soul convinced itself of the validity
of the ceremony. Its own faith turned against it, and it withdrew as it believed it had to.
“Then Father Horst can’t do it for entire planets?”
No.
“Okay,” Jay said reluctantly. She was right out of arguments and hope.
Your evaluation?
Tracy asked respectfully.
I acknowledge that the breakthrough event on Lalonde was extraneous. Even so, that cannot justify total intervention.
I see.
However. Your race’s potential should be safeguarded. You may initiate a separate origin.
“Thank you,” Tracy said weakly.
______
“I don’t understand,” Jay complained when they returned to the chalet. “What are you so happy about? Corpus won’t intervene.”
Tracy sat in one of the deck chairs on the veranda, for once breaking her own rule and ordering a cup of tea from the provider.
“You worked an absolute miracle, poppet. Fowin’s evaluation immediately becomes Corpus policy. It’s going to allow us to start
a brand-new human colony if the Confederation falls apart.”
“Why is that good? The possessed won’t spread to every colony, you said that yourself.”
“I know. But it’s knowledge, you see. Humans found out about souls before they were socially advanced enough to deal with
such a revelation. Now that knowledge is going to act like a mental contaminate among every culture. It’ll split humanity
into a thousand squabbling factions—that’s already started with Kulu and its idea for a core-Confederation of wealthy worlds.
Recovering from such a catastrophe will take generations, and even then the resolution will be influenced by what’s gone before.
What Corpus will do is begin a colony of, say, a million people from scratch. Observers will be authorized to purchase or
acquire ova and sperm stored in zero-tau from medical and biological institutes all across the Confederation. The new colony’s
start-up population will be gestated in exowombs and cared for by AIs during their childhood. That way, the information they’re
given can be carefully edited. We can start with a high-technology society equivalent to the Confederation’s level of scientific
knowledge and let it develop naturally.”
“Fowin can do all that?”
“Any Kiint can do that. Too many of them have conformist thought routines if you ask me. At least the Agarn Kiint make an
effort to push the envelope. Not that it’s helped them with the Sleeping God.”
“What’s that?” Jay asked eagerly.
Tracy gave her a solemn smile. “Something an old race left behind a very long time ago. It’s created quite a dilemma for this
civilization of so-called philosophy gurus. Not that there’s anything they can do to affect the situation. I think that’s
what upset them the most. They’ve been the undisputed masters of this section of the universe for so long, finding something
infinitely superior to themselves is rather shocking. Perhaps that’s why Fowin was so accommodating today.” She stopped as
Galic appeared at the foot of the veranda’s steps.
“You did it,” he said.
“Certainly did.” Tracy grinned back.
He came up and sat in the deckchair beside her. Before long, other retired observers had dropped by to discuss the new colony.
They had an enthusiasm Jay hadn’t seen in them before, making them younger. Not once that whole evening did they discuss the
past.
After dark, the party moved into Tracy’s lounge and started calling up star charts and planetary surveys. Arguments about
the merits of possible locations raged good-naturedly. Most wanted to see the colony in the same galaxy as the Confederation,
even if it had to be on the other side of the core.
Some time around midnight, Tracy realized Jay had fallen asleep on the settee. Galic picked her up and carried her into her
bedroom. She never woke as he covered her with a blanket and put Prince Dell on the pillow beside her. He tiptoed out and
closed the door before returning to the debate.
______
Louise had fled for half a mile down the Holloway Road. It was narrow at the top end, the pavements lined by tall brick buildings
with crumbling windowsills and gutters. Their ground floors were small shops and cafes whose drab and grimy fronts were firmly
shuttered. Her footsteps rattled off the stern walls, an auditory beacon signalling to everyone where she was.
Further down, the road began to widen out. The buildings along this section were better maintained, with clean bricks, glossy
paintwork, and more prosperous businesses. Narrow side roads branched off every hundred yards or so, consisting of attractive,
compact terrace houses converted into flats. Silver birches and cherry trees in their front gardens overhung the pavements,
to give them the semblance of a quiet rural town.
The slope began to flatten out, revealing at least a mile of straight deserted road ahead of her. The larger commercial premises
had taken over on either side, their hologram adverts swirling over the broad pavements, forming a skittering iridescent rainbow.
Traffic control informationals hung in the air above road lanes at the main junctions, flashing their colour sequences down
onto the empty carbon-concrete.
Louise slowed to a halt, panting heavily from the exertion. She couldn’t see anything move behind her, but it was so dark
behind her she’d hardly see any pursuers until they were almost on top of her. Travelling on under the illumination of the
holograms would be a mistake.
Tollington Way was fifty yards ahead of her, a side road leading into the backstreet maze that proliferated behind every major
London thoroughfare. Holding her sides against the ache of breathing, Louise jogged for a hundred yards down it, then stopped
and hunched down in the deep shadows of a doorway.
Her soaking leggings were chafing her thighs, the T-shirt was disgustingly cold and clammy, and her feet felt as though they
were shrivelling up. She was shuddering all over now from the cold. High above, small green lights flashed on the dome’s geodesic
structure.
“Now what?” she gasped up at it. Charlie would be watching her through the sensors, seeing her infrared image constricted
into a small ball. She datavised a general net access request. There was no response.
Escape and hide, Charlie had told her. Easy to say. But where? No one was going to open their door to a stranger on this night.
She’d probably be shot just for knocking and asking.
A cat yowled and jumped off a nearby wall to run along the street. Louise was rolling to the ground and bringing the anti-memory
weapon smoothly to bear before the noise had even registered properly. The cat, a furry tabby, loped past, giving her a disdainful
look.
She let out a brief sob as her muscles went limp. The weapons control program was still in primary mode. She took it off line
as she climbed painfully to her feet, swatting dirt from her knees and the front of her waistcoat.
The cat was still visible, silhouetted against the hologram haze curtaining the end of Tollington Way, its tail swishing about
arrogantly. It was obvious she was still too close to Holloway Road; her pursuers would come down it, searching every side
road. Fletcher said they could sense people without even having to see them.
Louise accessed the map of central London she’d stored in a neural nanonics memory cell, and began to walk away from the light.
The anti-memory weapon was slipped back into her waistcoat pocket. She couldn’t work out which was the better way of avoiding
search parties; staying in one place (assuming she could find a disused room or warehouse) or constantly moving round. The
odds were uncomputable, principally because she didn’t know what she was facing. An organized systematic hunt, or a couple
of possessed ambling round in a disinterested fashion.
Studying the map was almost meaningless, it didn’t relate to anything. Without any goal, any destination, one street was the
same as any other. Its only use was in preventing her from crossing any of the main roads.
Maybe I should just find somewhere to hide. That’s what Charlie suggested.
On an impulse she called up the Ritz’s address. The map had to switch magnification factors the hotel was so far away from
her.
That was out, then. Pity, no one would think to hunt for her there.
“Andy,” she whispered in shock. The one person she knew in London. And who would never turn her away.
She retrieved his eddress and ran it through the London directory she’d loaded along with all the other junk data recommended
as essential personal survival tools for the arcology. Some people didn’t include their physical address with their net code.
But Andy had. He lived in Islington, somewhere on Halton Road. A tiny blue star burned on the map.
Two miles away.
“Sweet Jesus, please let him be there.”
______
They chained Fletcher to the altar with manacles that had an electric current running through them, nullifying his energistic
power. They ripped his clothes off, and cut obscene runes into his flesh. They shaved him. They burned a pile of Bibles and
prayer books at his feet, and used the ash to smear a pentagon around his body. They hung an inverted cross above his skull,
dangling by a rope that was fraying and rotting.
Ghosts slithered past, offering their desolate expressions in sympathy.
“Sorry,” was their only whisper. “So sorry.” Past heroes, humbled and degraded by their emasculation. The possessed spat at
them, jeering them out of the way.
St Paul’s was illuminated with the mealy light from smoking iron braziers and racks of candles, leaving the vaulting ceiling
invisible. Its new incense was the smell of sweaty bodies and fried burgerbap onions. Prayers had been supplanted by rock
music coming from a ghetto blaster, with the sounds of copulation heard between tracks. With his head forced back awkwardly
against the stone, Fletcher could see several young possessed scrambling monkey-fashion over the stained glass windows, painting
them over with sticky black fluid. A dark shape moved into his limited field of view.
Quinn bent over him. “Nice to see you again.”
“Enjoy your taunts while you can, you inhuman monster. You will issue them no longer once this day is through.”
“You’re good. I admire that. You got off Norfolk in time, which wasn’t easy. And you got down to Earth, which is fucking impossible.
Very good. What did you do? Make a deal with the supercops?”