The Soul Consortium (21 page)

That’s my ten, and they persist in my mind for a reason, a reason which is only now becoming clear. The smell of death and Sunny’s picture, the original abbot’s rejection of technology and his subsequent action to shut down the genoplant. A theory is forming, one I sincerely hope is wrong, but I need to see the gardener to make sure.

Brother Tennison is where I expected to find him, kneeling down in the garden, tending to his crops. He sees me approaching from the monastery, nods courteously, and takes a moment to wipe a gloved hand across his forehead.

“Potatoes?” I ask him as I bend down to examine the leaves.

“Carrots.” He smiles at my ignorance.

“Ah. Good crop?”

He digs into the ground, pulls out one of the orange vegetables, and shakes the soil from it before handing it to me.

“This is good?” I ask, shaking my head.

“As good as always. We’ve never had a failed harvest in eight hundred years.”

“That’s quite an achievement … almost miraculous, wouldn’t you say? Especially considering the conditions on Castor’s World.”

The smile falls from Tennison’s face as he looks down and pats the soil around another carrot. “I’m an experienced gardener.”

“Really? Surely even the most experienced gardener has—”

“No. Not me.” He’s still looking down, patting the soil much harder now.

“Look.” I lean forward, try to offer my ultimatum in a reasonable tone. “Whatever it is you’re afraid of telling me, I probably know about it already. I’m just giving you the opportunity to come clean to me instead of the abbot.”

Tennison looks up, anxiety drawing lines around his eyes. “The abbot?”

“Yes.”

He bites his lip, pinches his brow, then nods—the signs of a man about to concede. “All right, but the abbot doesn’t need to know about this. If he’s told, he might—”

“I won’t tell him. I just need you to confirm my suspicion. There’s more to the success of this garden than its gardener.

Am I right?”

He sighs. “You’re right. These crops couldn’t possibly survive without carbonisers and hydro-accelerators. Abbot Deepseed, not the impostor, but the real abbot … he saw to it personally that all the machines used by the order were switched off—”

“But being a man with very little knowledge of technology he didn’t know how.”

Tennison looks downward as another monk shuffles past with an armful of vegetables. “That’s right,” he says, waiting for the monk to walk inside the monastery. “Deepseed thought that cutting the power lines to the under-soil generators would be enough to switch them off, but he didn’t realize the power lines were only a backup system. The technology uses geothermal energy to maintain power …”

“Go on.”

“I chose not to tell him. I knew if I told him, he would rebuke me for my lack of faith in Mother Pandora and order me to switch them off. I couldn’t allow that to happen so I said nothing.”

“I see.”

“It was the right thing to do,” Tennison insists.

“I don’t disagree, but I’m afraid the abbot’s technological ignorance may have done far more damage to the order than anyone could have guessed.”

“How?”

“Brother Makeswift told me that the abbot switched off the genoplant. If he didn’t do that correctly, then—”

“Great Mother!” Tennison rises from the dirt. “Could it still be operational?”

“Yes, but only partially. You’d better take me to it. I have a terrible feeling I know what we’re going to find.”

T
ennison and I run through the archway of the monastery only to collide with Brother Kayne in the lobby. “Come quickly,” he says, catching his breath and grasping my arms. “They … they’re dead.”

“Who?” asks Tennison.

“Brothers Veguelle and … and Makeswift. Horrible!”

“Where?”

“Sunny’s chamber. Follow me.”

Chasing Kayne, we run through the monastery watched by startled monks en route, and eventually arrive, gasping for air at the entrance to another massacre.

This time the blood is not confined to one area of the room, and the display of sheer brutality flaunted in Sunny’s bizarre gallery causes the three of us to stare openmouthed in disbelief. The two victims are lying in a lake of mingled blood and black paint.

Veguelle’s broken form is the most disturbing exhibit: the plump monk, no longer suffering from obesity, shows no sign of ever even having a stomach; only the torn entrails smeared with globs of jaundiced fat provide any remaining evidence. His face, battered into pulp on one side—possibly with the repeated use of the broken mallet on the floor—is frozen in its last moments of screaming, one eye spilling open like a split plum over his cheek. His right hand still twitches as the fingers attempt to grip a bloodstained hammer.

I have seen such savagery only once before. I was young, and the images haunted me for months, bringing nightmares and a recurrent nausea that almost stopped me eating. Now, however, I have learned the art of detachment—a way to examine the details and separate them from the emotional trauma. But this time my skills are tested to the maximum.

Brother Makeswift’s body is less desecrated than Veguelle’s but no less gruesome to look at. His body, though still in one piece, is arched across the remains of Veguelle’s lower half; the neck has been snapped back, leaving the head facing us in a freakish pose, and the branded Eye of Pandora stares at us from his forehead. Smashed canvases, spine-ripped books, and splintered tools litter the chamber. The stench of fresh slaughter is finally overpowering the underlying reek of death that has dogged me since my arrival.

“No,” Brother Tennison whispers as he sinks to his knees. A moan escapes him when he realizes his robes have soaked up some of the carnage from the tiles, and he shudders into a fit of weeping.

Brother Kayne already glimpsed the chamber before he ran to find help, but the full horror is only now bridging from his eyes to his mind as he blinks and swallows repeatedly. He’s either going to pass out or throw up; I know the signs.

I have to shake the men from their shock before the full effect takes hold. “Brother Tennison, please go to my chamber and find my backpack. You’ll see a DNA-coded firearm inside. Bring it back quickly. Understand me?”

The tear-wrecked man looks at me.

“Did you hear me? We need to act fast if we are to capture the murderer before he cleans himself up. And we need to be armed if this is anything to go by.” I suddenly regret pointing at Veguelle’s remains.

But Tennison proves he is made of stern enough stuff to cope. Inhaling loudly, he nods, steals one last glance at the bodies, then rushes from the chamber.

“Brother Kayne.”

He seems to be in a trance.

“Brother Kayne!” I shout, moving between him and the view of the butchery. “Look at me.”

He appears startled for a moment, then rights himself. “Yes … ah … yes.”

“Did you see who did this?”

“No … I heard … I heard Sunny and Brother Veguelle shouting. I called to them, and I was about to go and intervene. I was in the passage right outside, but Brother Makeswift came past. He told me to call the abbot, and then he went in. I … I hesitated and …”

“Yes?”

“I heard Veguelle accusing Sunny of the murders and Brother Makeswift trying to calm them, but all I could hear was fighting. The sounds were awful. I waited too long … I … I waited too long …”

“Please try to stay calm, take a deep breath. Did you see Sunny leave the chamber?”

“I heard someone leave.”

“You heard? Didn’t you see?”

“No, I was already turning back. I heard someone behind me scuffle out of the room, but he was already around the corner before I could see who it was. I … I suppose it must have been Sunny. It was only then that I went to look, to see if anyone needed help and … oh, Great Mother!” Kayne shakes his head, trembling. “I didn’t want to look any closer, and I didn’t want to go to the abbot, so I came looking for you.”

“So the abbot doesn’t know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“And you touched nothing in here?”

“No.”

I glance around the room, begin to see details in the aftermath that corroborate Kayne’s story, but he could be lying. Kayne could be the murderer, but for the moment, the facts seem clear: just as Kayne said, Veguelle challenged Sunny, even came armed with a hammer. They argued. Makeswift entered, but Veguelle’s accusation had already tipped Sunny into a violent episode, and the three of them fought. Veguelle and Makeswift were unprepared for the extent of Sunny’s rage, and he killed them. That much seems apparent to me, but there is evidence that someone else entered the room while Brother Kayne was trying to find me. The remains of a book, a glass of water, a box of painting equipment—all had been moved slightly, leaving sticky traces of smudged blood. Somebody was looking for something.

“Brother Soome,” Tennison calls, jogging toward us along the passage. “Your firearm. It isn’t there.”

“But I checked it this morning. It was—”

“I can assure you it isn’t,” he insists. “But I—”

“Taken.” Brother Kayne grips my arm. “A personal object. Taken.”

I stare at him for a moment, and before Kayne’s fear can infect me, I face Tennison. “Do you have anything we can use as a weapon? Anything at all?”

“Here.” He pulls a small black device from his robes. “I was about to tell you. I stopped at the utilities area. We keep an ignition pistol there for incineration purposes. Will that help?”

“It had better,” I say and take it from him. “We’re going to see Abbot Deepseed. Or whoever he really is.”

D
eepseed’s chamber is decorated in the same gothic flavor as the rest of the monastery—antique furnishings dark with wood-stained grain and rose-red trimmings, gold-studded chests and cabinets, and a stout desk fixed at its center. The abbot is not there when we arrive, but there is evidence he has been here recently.

A set of objects is piled neatly at one end of the desk, and a chill wriggles between my shoulder blades when I realize what they are and what they represent.

“You expected to find Sunny here? With the abbot?” asks Kayne.

“That was my first guess,” I tell him as I pick up the closest object—my firearm. There is no charge in the power cells, and the metal feels strangely cold. Even the colors seem duller than I remember, as if the gun has lost some undefined but integral part of itself.

Six large silver coins are also stacked on the desk.

“Those are Brother Makeswift’s,” Tennison says, sliding them into his hand. “He uses them … used them to demonstrate primary Codex predictions to students. But they’re … so cold.”

I place the gun back on the desk, knowing it to be useless and having no desire to keep it. “Makeswift told me he’d lost them. Then later he told me the murderer likes to take personal belongings from his victims. Do you recognize anything else here?”

“This belonged to Veguelle,” says Kayne, picking up a tiny book. It crumbles into flaky shreds as he tries to open it. “Why? What could the abbot have wanted with these things? What has he done to them? It’s as if they have been …”

Kayne cannot find the right words, and neither can I. Glancing at each of the stolen items, I shake my head. “We can worry about that later. Right now we have to concentrate on finding the abbot and Sunny.”

“You think they’re
both
behind the murders?” Tennison asks.

“I do. I think Veguelle was right about Sunny, but I think Sunny is being manipulated by Deepseed. In fact I feel sure of it, even though I still don’t have all the facts.”

“Great Mother!” Kayne looks at Tennison. “Could they really be capable of this?”

“The abbot has never been the same since his resurrection,” says Tennison, “and Sunny is unstable. But to think that either of them could be responsible for this is incomprehensible. Even if Deepseed is responsible, what can we do? This is the abbot we’re talking about.”

“We have to detain him,” I tell them, “then take the abbot off world to be dealt with by a criminal tribunal.”

Kayne shakes his head. “But—”

“Sorry but we don’t have time to discuss this now. We need to find them. Think. Where could they be? Are there any chambers that are out-of-bounds, a place where only the abbot is permitted to go?”

“Well, there’s the abandoned genoplant in the cellars, but—”

“The genoplant?” I shoot Tennison a meaningful look. “Tennison and I were just on our way there before you found us, Kayne. That’s where we need to go.”

“Should we alert any of the brothers?” Tennison asks.

“I’d prefer to confirm my suspicions first. Lock this door and let’s go.”

The three of us hurry through the monastery, avoiding alarmed questions from puzzled monks on our way, through musty passages seemingly unused for decades, until we arrive at the entrance to the cellars. The reek of death hits me in meaty waves as I stand there gazing into the gloomy passage, grimacing. I pause to pinch my nose and cough.

Kayne and Tennison are ready to descend the stone steps but stop to offer each other questioning glances.