Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (5 page)

   He emerged from the Vanguard main
entrance just under an hour after arriving.  The big GMDs in the plaza
broadcast a commercial for the latest in Landis Corp.’s wartech line as he made
his way across the bridge and back to the capsule terminals.

  
The capsule stopped on 3
^rd
Echelons, Nozick Prospect and down the
street and to the right was a long, narrow and obscure path linking Nozick
Prospect to Dragon Boulevard.

 
 Republic Alley was a known dreg street in Durkheim, and ran through the bottom
of a deep urban crevasse in the lower levels of the sky city.  The alley was
starved of sunlight by day and pitch black on moonless nights like these.  It reeked
of dried excrement and rotten everything, as did most dreg precincts.  In
martial metropolises, where dregs were accorded the same fundamental rights as
vermin, residing in the most unpleasant corners of the city was the best way to
avoid danger, especially at night. 

  
Halfway down the alley, over an arched doorway, a rusty, blazoned sign read “DUKE’S
MESS” in lashes of red spray-paint, and a clique of dregs lingered around the
middle of the alley as far away from the main streets of Durkheim as possible.  When
they caught sight of the familiar silhouette approaching, they greeted him with
reverent nods and the word “Martial.”  He lowered his head as he passed under
the rusted sign and into a tunnel, down a flight of stairs.

   A
large room was lit with flickering tubes of dim, pale neon and filled with long
aluminum tables and rickety metal benches which looked to have been bent out of
scrap.  A dozen pairs of tired eyes were upturned to the holoscreen in the upper
corner.  Others were asleep, sprawled out on benches and on the sheeted floor. 
Duke Maclean, a.k.a “Dreg Duke”, the old mess-keeper, used to let the dregs
stay in when he locked up his mess at night.  The stocky, thick-bearded,
box-skulled and heavily tattooed ex-patriot (which was the term for ex-government
soldiers) was behind his counter, getting his mess ready for the following day.
 

  
As soon as Saul entered, old Duke turned, put down a big pan full of thick
broth which he had been pouring into a mess tray.  He straightened up, tall and
barrel-chested, wiped his rough paws in a tattered cloth and took the cigar nub
from his teeth. 

  
“Guid mornin’,” greeted the burly innkeeper, rubbing his thick knuckles into
his sore eyes and poking his blackened tongue on the insides of his cheeks.  “Yer
early,” he said, his voice gruff and tired.

  
“Is it a bad time?”

 
 “… Nae bad time.”

  
“How are things?”

  
Old Duke puffed on his cigar.  “Cannae complain,” he moaned, with a
jagged-toothed smile and a raspy chuckle.  He stretched his neck back, rolled
his head from side to side and the thick vertebrae popped in realignment. 

  
“Do you have my package?”

  
“Aye…”

   Duke
nodded, then clasped his cigar in his teeth and limped away. 

  
The conversation seldom varied.

  
The heavy-set old mess-keeper hobbled into the backroom, where his consignments
of food and water from the civils were kept.  He came back a minute later
holding a parcel, untidily packaged in brown paper and bound with duct tape,
and laid the parcel on the counter. “All there,” he said, taking the cigar from
his teeth.  “Yer usual, plus that – eh – other thing ye asked fer.  Almost got
stopped at customs.”

  
“Did the Commission give you trouble?”

  
“Nae trouble.”

  
“Good,” said Saul, examining the parcel.  “About the money….”

  
“Giit teh fuck.”  Dreg Duke rolled up his sleeves and returned to the work for
which he derived no profit, no glory and certainly no assistance. 

  
He tucked the parcel in his coat and thanked him with more sincerity than
usual.  He would have preferred a more formal farewell with the only man in the
martial world he could remotely call a friend.

  
The cubicle door shut.  The chronometer read 2330.  He dropped the package on
the small counter top and stretched out his neck.  His joints throbbed and
ached under weeks of accumulated insomnia and malnourishment.

 
 There was a small sliding door over the cluttered counter, and the green light
over the door meant that the freight chute was loaded.  He pressed the button
near the light.  The door slid open and he took out the following days’
provisions: six small boxes of desiccated protein isolate and some
sawdust-textured, barely edible matter which took on the taste and consistency
of sludge whenever he mixed in the hot water.  The door slid shut and the light
went red. 

  
He picked the jasmine-scented sheets up off the floor and laid them in a pile
on the mattress, lit a cigarette before taking his knife and carefully cutting
across the tape on the folds of the wrapping.  Inside, there was a carton of
Lucky Strike cigarettes, an unlabeled bottle of earth-brown single malt, and a
most curious third item which one would be even more hard-pressed to find in
the martial world than scotch or cigarettes:  A book.  More unusually; a
paperback book.  The bold title on the front cover, provocatively read:

“UNITED MARTIAL COVENANT AND THE BIRTH OF
NEW WORLD ORDER”

  
Books were not outlawed from the martial world.  However, any piece of data
that entered Sodom did so digitally.  It was not known whether the Commission
filtered out any “undesirable” material from cyberspace, but it was almost
certain that they did.  Emails, phone calls, bank transactions – everything
went through the Martial Nexus.  Everyone was free, provided it was known
exactly what was done with that freedom, and it was likely that political
literature ranked high on the Commission’s blacklist.  That said, if there was
anyone in the martial world who could smuggle in illegal contraband, it was Dreg
Duke.

  
He stared at the book cover as he poured a glass of scotch and opened the fresh
carton.  He drank the scotch, toked the cigarette and turned over the front
cover, flipped through the table of contents, cases, laws and treaties,
stopping on the first page of the prologue, and then skimmed through the page
from a standing distance:

This book was
written with the scope that the lay person may understand how the foundations
of the new world were laid.  Part I examines the historico-political and
economic premises behind the formation of the United Martial Covenant of western
powers and its institutions.  Part II focuses on the foundations of the
internal divide between so-called “Martial Order” and “Civil Order” and the
relationship between these two worlds.  These central themes of UMC politics
shall be discussed in light of the later formation of the East Grid Pact, three
years subsequent to the establishment of the UMC…

He
stopped reading mid-paragraph, removed his coat and laid it over the counter. 
He then took the book and lowered himself into his bed.  The weariness sunk in
instantly.  He skimmed through the prologue, arriving at page 12:

Chapter I: The Rise of the Global Martial Economy

He
held the book up in front of him, with his thumb down the middle.  He read:

In the succeeding
five decades, after the turn of the millennium, the world bore witness to a
radical revolution in the global economy.  War became far more than the leading
world industry; war became the backbone of all world industries, such that
every major branch of the global economy – agriculture, energy,
pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, technology and so forth – became bound to world
conflict.  Professor Robert McGrath of the University of New York presaged this
total military dominance of world economics and was the first to coin the term
“Global Martial Economy”.
¹
 

   Even though
the premises underlying this shift have been subject to extensive academic
dispute, the creation of the “Mercenary Act”, the liberation of the martial
market and the Gaia Revolution are generally agreed upon as the fundamental
economic causes behind the rise of the GME.
²
 After renewable and
nuclear energy sources overtook fossil fuels in the mid-twenties,
³
the energy industry underwent an exponential decline with the resolution of the
world energy crisis.  This, coupled with the outbreak of the first skirmishes
between the United States of America and Russia, and, later, the Democratic
People’s Republic of North Korea and China, set the stage for the complete
global economic dominance of the martial industries. 

  
Warzone proliferation saw a sharp increase after the two major alliances: The
“North Atlantic Alliance” between the (then) Federation of Western Europe and
the United States of America, and the coterminous “Mongolian Line Alliance”
between the People’s Republic of China and the New Southern Republic of Russian
States.
⁴
  Within 10 years of the two major alliances, Brazil,
Mexico, Argentina, India, the UAE and South Africa, among several other,
smaller nations were all locked in conflict across a new Iron Curtain which cut
straight through the middle of the globe from the peak of Scandinavia down to
the tip of the African continent and around and across the Pacific, manifesting
the boundary line between East and West, known today as “The Walls of Fire”…

His
eyes began to droop. 

   Four zeroes on the chronometer marked
midnight when the alarm rung.

   Saul stepped under the light over the
mirror and regarded himself.  The tangled mess of facial hair was shaved down
to stubble, exposing the thin scars around the deep lines of his jaw.  The
blade slipped out and shimmered in the light.  He slipped the edge under the
line of gauze below the elbow and cut.  The bandages slipped off and the
signets gleamed blood-red.  He held his arm up before him with a glare, then passed
the blade from one hand to the other and cut the bandages off the other arm.

   Sodom was alive with light as the
capsule descended from Sixth Echelons.  The face of every tower and every
spire, from the streets below to the airborne traffic high above the skyline,
was a matrix of technicolor pixels.  When night fell, Ares slumbered and Dionysus
took the throne.  Sodom went from the pumping heart of the First Region War Machine
to a mass brothel, a fountain of ambrosia and a great scream of ecstasy audible
until the ends of the globe, and Dragon Boulevard was the adrenaline-saturated
pulsing jugular of the martial capital. 

   He nudged open the fire exit and came
into a long and dark alley.  An old dog, curled up behind piles of trash,
whimpered and limped away.  He raised his collar and pocketed his hands as he
approached the light at the end of the main street, his footsteps fading into
the occult blares from the Dragon. 

   The wide avenue was a spinning
kaleidoscope of psychedelia which ran right through the middle of the lower
district to Durkheim Plaza, and the great, three-headed beast of the UMC soared
high on the Milidome facade in the distance.  Blue-geared SGs patrolled every
corner and the bedlam continued to build all the way up until up until the
Dragon’s Head, where the larger martial guilds garrisoned their private
nightspots.  These were peak hours for walkers too.  He passed by the Nymph on
the Bordello Strip: a high-rise ziggurat shrine to erotica, flashing scarlet
and crimson on the tip of the Dragon’s Tail.  The Nymph was one of the largest
bordellos on the strip, very popular among the lower casters.  You got what you
paid for and then some.  Saul snatched a glance through the crowds at the glass
walls as he passed.  The carmine light irradiated a display line of nude and
limber silhouettes twisting and bending for their potential trade. 

   One blonde-haired crimson-lipped
nymph caught his eye and smiled a counterfeit smile, causing him to bump into a
squad of SGs.  The Guards turned, guns cocked, and when their illumed visors
scanned over him, the signets under his coat sleeves flashed in their digital sights
and they dispersed at once.  SG squads patrolled every corner of the strip. 
Gang wars between rival guilds were not uncommon, and even less so on the
Dragon at peak times.  And since the only guns on the city streets were I.D-locked
and borne by Sodom’s finest, guild wars were kept in control for the most part,
along with any immediate possibility of mass uprisings. 

   About a quarter-mile down the
Dragon’s Tail, he spotted one of the smaller buildings on the Bordello Strip. 
A sign on the side of the tower showed the grimacing head of a crowned daemon
holding a royal sceptre in one hand and a flask of ambrosia in the other.  The
words “SIXTH CIRCLE” flashed red over the top of the daemon’s head. 

   He crossed the road.  Eight goliaths
constituted the guard detail at the front entrance and glares followed as he
passed and turned onto the next side street. 

   At the end of the alley, a flight of
stairs led up to a terrace and a back entrance, just as he had been told.  When
he ascended the stairs, he was received by a none-too-welcoming committee – three
heavy men, scarred, thickly tattooed and outfitted for the sole function of
backstreet brawling, with thick, vascular arms crossed over their
flack-jacketed chests and the insignia of black sickles curved around their
scarred orbitals – the mark of the Scythe Guild. 

   As soon as he climbed the last step,
their heads jerked around like wild beasts roused by sudden and unfamiliar
company, and one martial, baring the signets of a Third Tier Elite, uncrossed
his arms and stepped forward, closely followed by his two cronies.   “Just
where the fuck do you think
you’re
going, dreg?”

  
“I was told there would be someone waiting.”

  
The elite stepped forward and sized him up. 

  
“You’ve got some stones...”

  
“I am here to see Elijah Malachi.”

  
“Malachi…” the elite rumbled with a snigger.  “Malachi,” he repeated, turning
to his two comrades, who returned his laughter with interest. He rubbed his
palm from the top of his head down to his chin, wiping away the humour from his
disfigured expression. “You took your best shot,” he scowled.  “Now, get the
fuck out of…” 

  
His hand shot up when the elite’s made to grab him by the neck and his grip latched
round the thick wrist like a vice.

  
The elite froze, loose-jawed, eyes wide and reeled back with a look of fearful
awe at the blood-red signets that slipped out from under his sleeve. 

  
“I am here to see Elijah Malachi…” he repeated, sustaining a glower. 

  
His grip loosened from the thick wrist.  Before long, the elite turned to his
associates. 

  
“Call Celyn.”

  
They hesitated at first, exchanging grave and confused looks.  Then, one of the
burly martials turned and disappeared.  During the half-minute that passed, the
incredulous eyes did not defer, searching him from head to toe, stopping on the
scarred seal creeping out from the collar of his coat. 

  
In the next moment, a blaring wave of noises from inside the building flooded
through the open doors, and a very familiar voice stirred him to attention.  “What’s
going on?”  The martials stepped aside, and who should come through the doors
but the ebony-skinned, emerald-eyed jasmine woman. 

  
“This guy says he wants to see Malachi.” 

  
The jasmine woman stopped with an askew look as soon as their eyes met, then
drew slowly closer, her eyes narrowing the nearer she approached until he could
smell jasmine on her again, evoking a strange sensation not entirely like lust…
but not entirely unlike it either.  “Celyn…”    

  
“…You have got to be kidding me.”

  
“I didn’t believe him either,” said the elite, “but you can’t forge signets
like that.  He’s an Ares-caster.”

  
The jasmine woman looked down at his wrists, where the edges of the signets
were poking out of his sleeves.

  
“Should we get Malachi?”

  
“No,” the jasmine woman answered, her air suddenly foreboding.  “He’s our guy.” 
She started to walk back through the door, leaving silence behind her.   “Come
on,” she called as she walked away.  “Elijah’s waiting.” 

  
The two Scythe soldiers held the doors open and he followed, crossing into a
vortex of shrill howls and earth-quaking beats.  Beams of scarlet light tore
through the blackness from a wide floor below, lighting hundreds of silhouettes,
dancing, twisting and stumbling in an ambrosia-induced rapture.  Lucre
shimmered and rattled on pulpits with nude figures; sweat dripping, glimmering
on the naked flesh like blood drops.  He slowed his step, mesmerised with near
morbid fascination at the striking reminiscence of his nightmares.  It shocked
him to a halt, looking out from the gallery.  The screams became louder and
louder...

  
The shrill broke when a hand seized him by the arm. 

  
“You can ball after we take care of business!” the jasmine woman yelled over
the din.

  
She led the way across the upper floor with a quick stride.  The crowd parted
and cleared her path and as they passed, a few high-caste guilders followed
their trail with scowls – those that weren’t engaged with bevies of walkers and
copious quantities of ambrosia.  They came to a glass elevator at the back of
the floor.  The jasmine woman stepped in first, pressed the top floor button,
crossed her arms and looked forward.  The elevator doors shut and brought an
abrupt end to the tumult and they slowly began to rise. 

  
“Celyn…” he muttered, breaking the long silence.

  
“Knight.”

  
“Celyn Knight.”

  
“Martial Knight will do,” she amended.  “And you must be Vartanian.”

  
Silence fell again.

  
“Malachi said he had two associates.  I did not expect a…”

  
“Expect a what?” she jerked her head round with a glare.  Silence fell again.  “Let
me guess,” she snorted.  “All women are walkers and all men are martials.”

  
“Numbers do not lie.”

  
“Female martials have a higher caste average than males,” she answered, turning
to him with a hostile look.  “How’s that for a statistic, quicksilver?”  The
elevator stopped and the doors opened with a single chime and the jasmine woman
walked out the second the doors opened, leaving him behind. 

  
He detected a contrivance about her manner.  It seemed... forced.  Remembering
quite vividly the type of woman she was in her otherwise most intimate of
moments, he intuited that her... diffidence... had less to do with the fact
that she was a martial woman in a man’s world than it did with a secret intent
to terminate any trace of lasciviousness between them, which was reasonable
enough.  Martial policy on intercourse was very clear: at least 60 days between
repeat partners, and the Commission had ways of keeping track of intercourse
history the same as everything else. 

  
“What kind of Ares-caster walks around all alone looking like that?”

  
He regarded himself briefly.  “Are you not relieved?” he asked.

  
She snickered.  “Why – because I got laid by a high-caster?” she asked,
rhetorically.  “I’m not a walker.  The man behind the prick doesn’t matter to
me.”

  
“How noble of you.”

  
“By the way, do us both a favour.  About last night – don’t say anything to Eli.” 

  
“Why?”

  
“Do you really need a reason?  Keep business and pleasure separate.  Always a
good rule of thumb.”

  
The corridor narrowed into a glass-walled passage which passed right over the
Dragon.  Above, the sky was clear and star-spangled.  The passage terminated at
a door and the jasmine woman stepped aside.  “After you,” she said.

  
Warily, he pushed the door open and crossed the threshold.  

  
He came into a long room.  He approached the far end, where a small group of
martials were accompanied by twice the number of walkers, sprawled over large
satin-upholstered couches and surrounded by about two dozen empty bottles of
ambrosia.  A naked butane flame danced over the low table-top in the middle of
them and the light of the full moon shone from above through the glass
ceiling.  Toppled piles of dimitars and psychotropics were strewn over the
table-top and the white-carpeted floor. 

  
“At last...” a deep voice pronounced.  “I was starting to doubt whether you’d
show.”

   
At the head of the table, there sat the only man unaccompanied by a walker. 
The man had a coal complexion and was well-turned-out in every way, with a
fine-cut black suit, black shoes, an open white shirt and a platinum ring
around his middle finger.  His dark face rose from the shadow.  When the face
came into the light, a long, grisly scar cut from the top of the man’s scalp
down across his left eye. 

 
 “Vartanian.” Malachi grinned, wide and pearl-toothed, coming to his feet.  “We
meet at last.”

  
“Who the hell is this?” spoke an irate voice from among them.

  
Saul remained quiet, looking from one sneering martial to the other until his
arms slipped out of the coat sleeves.  When the light found the blood-red signets,
silence fell upon the room. 

  
“This,
comrades, is your new co-commander,” Malachi introduced.  “Say
hello to Martial Vartanian, First Tier Ares.  Now, if you all don’t mind,
gentlemen; I think it’s time you all took this party downstairs where it
belongs.”

  
The platoon-inebriated Scythe martials and walkers all rose and half-stumbled past
him and out of the room.  When the last of them had left, the doors closed.