Gudsriki (28 page)

“It's very obvious.”

Vibeke finished scaling her fish and microwaved it, then took a bite. Nel watched.

“You barely register as the same woman,” said Nel. “You don't look or act like you do in her memories.”

Vibeke paused and stared at the hole she'd bitten in the fish.

“I guess a lot of me died too. I might be as different from the girl Violet loved as you are from her. Same body and brain by technicality. But whatever made us who we were got shattered. Irrecoverably.”

She took another bite of fish. Violet hated real fish, anything fish flavored. The thought of treating Violet the way she'd treated Nel make the fish turn over in her stomach. It ranked somewhere between the thought of kicking a kitten and beating the elderly.

“I really am sorry. For treating you like shit…. And stabbing you with a burning Tikari in the boob. Everything.”

“Do you want me to say I'm sorry for not being what you wanted?”

“No. You shouldn't be. You can't make a new person, then demand they be someone else. Demand they love you.”

“I could fake loving you easily enough if that would make you happy.”

“Why would you care about making me happy?”

“You're an insufferable bitch when you're sad, and you're always sad. Memories of you happy suggest you can be far more pleasant company.”

Vibeke laughed and coughed. She had been something better, far better than what she'd become. But she had no will to reclaim it. Not in that world. Her only will now was to kill Mishka. She began to expect it would be as unrewarding as killing Wulfgar. She wondered if there was anything of value left beyond the rare bit of good meat.

“This fish is actually pretty good,” said Vibeke. “Has a strange spice to it.”

“Mutant fish, new flavors?”

“There must be all sorts of new flavors now. Bad ones, good ones. Tastes we don't have names for.”

“And smells.”

“Thank God for pissweed,” Vibs coughed.

“You're to thank for pissweed.”

“And for you,” she reminded the ungrateful machine. “I'm your God. You should be praying to me.”

“I'll never pray to you.”

Vibeke laughed. “Heresy! She's a witch!”

The accusation struck Nel harder than she'd have expected. “I'm not a fucking witch.”

Vibeke looked down. The misery wafted from her like rot from an open grave.

Nel felt uncomfortable. Sick of it, the nuisance of seeing Vibeke sad. She wanted to say anything to change the subject.

“I scanned particulate matter emanating from the pissweed before we left. It's actually edible. Healthy for humans with numerous vital minerals, fatty acids, and other nutrients.”

“Do you have a sense of smell?”

“I have aerosol particulate scanners, that's how—”

“But can you smell? Experience it? Like it or hate it?”

“It's healthy, I suppose I like it.”

“It stinks to high heaven.”

“If you're interpreting the smell as a negative, it's illusory.”

“If you like that stuff, you're perverted.”

“You're allowing psychological matters to interfere with your senses. If you hadn't been told it smelled like urine, you wouldn't think it smelled like urine. You would find it smelled like other healthy monocots, only more powerfully.”

“I'm not that weak-minded. Pissweed by any other name would smell like piss. Whatever's wrong with me, it's not my sense of smell.”

“The fish you're eating tastes like parmesan cheese.”

Vibeke thought about it. Nel was right.

“So what?”

“That's butyric acid. Chemically speaking the fish you're eating tastes as much like parmesan cheese as it does like vomit. But it tastes pleasant to you.”

“What's your point?”

“You'd rather chug barf than eat your asparagus, but you're calling me perverse.”

Vibeke stared at her. “Why the fuck are you even talking?”

“You're responsible for creating pissweed and that weird fish, but you experience them both arbitrarily as good or bad.”

Vibeke took a bite of her fish. It tasted like vomit. “What's your point?”

“You created me too.”

Vibeke ate another bite of fish in defiance. Nel went on.

“God doesn't understand what she's created.”

“Real profound, Nel. You're right. I had no clue Niide gave you a philosophy algorithm. Now can it be shut off?”

Nel looked at her. She wanted to punch Vibeke in the face.

Vibeke stared back. Nel looked disgusted. She took another bite of pukefish. She spit it out, unable to think of it tasting like cheese.

“You made my fish taste like barf, you fucking bitch.”

She threw the remains overboard and turned away from Nel, staring at the water.

Nel smiled broadly. She had no idea what they'd just spoken about or what Vibeke thought sounded profound, but she felt rewarded and fulfilled.

Vibeke had a bad taste in her mouth for hours after, until she fell asleep.

Nel sat still running guard protocols, looking out at the surrounding sea, keeping watch.

“Watch for what?”

“Whatever comes.”

She could feel emotion behind the voice, the thought. It was sad, lonely.

“You act like a Valkyrie.”

“I have the memories of one.”

“But you're not.”

“No.”

“Do you want to be?”

“It's a moot point, Valhalla is over.”

“But if you could?”

“Who wouldn't?”

“Most people. We're not normal. We're something else.”

“So am I.”

“What are you?”

“I don't even know. Something unnatural. What makes you a Valkyrie?”

“The training, the mindset. The will. And you have to die.”

“I don't see myself dying anytime soon.”

“Neither did Violet.”

The old boat came upon ice too thick to break through off the Norge shore. Nel recovered her feet and they began walking again. They walked for a very long time.

 

 

T
HE
G
EKI
listened for any sign of population. The entire city seemed abandoned. They looked to one another and shrugged. They began walking. They remained silent for the first hour, but Varg finally asked,
“Who was it?”

“Who was who?”

“That you lost.”

“Not your business.”

“You're a great teacher, sir. But you're a piss-poor friend.”

They walked on in silence.

“If you want to talk dead people, tell me about yours. About Violet.”

Varg thought.

“She was a beast. Pretty, tall, pure evil in the best way.”

Varg pictured her as he said “pretty.” He remembered his initial attraction to her and thought of his hypersexual past. It seemed a thousand years away. He hadn't even thought of sex in months.

“Evil?”

“
She was cold, inhuman. Snapped at people who didn't get to the point. Snapped at people who did. She was 90 percent hot temper and maybe a tenth of a percent understanding.”
He looked at the elder.
“You'd get along well.”

“Enough.”

“Now you?”

“Don't count on it.”

They kept walking. In time they came to a large cathedral. Without the link label they couldn't tell what it had been renovated into.

“Worth a shot?”

“Anything is until we find someone.”

They walked into the building. They heard a scream from the edge of their fear perimeter. They headed for it and found a priest with a young boy. The priest screamed, howled.

“Do you know of Alexandra Suvorova?”

He screamed more.

“Where is the seat of your ministry?”

He hyperventilated.

“Can you just tell us where—”

He passed out. The Geki looked to each other. Then to the boy. He was frozen in fear. The elder was about to go when Varg tried asking him.

“Have you heard of Alexandra Suvorova?”

“I—I have, I have,” he whimpered. The elder turned back.

“Where is she?”

“T-the voivod left, I think. I—I don't know where, but she came to see Nikita once she—”

“Where is Nikita?”

“In, in the comatorium on Khrustal'ova Street!”

They turned to leave. The kid spoke.

“Are—are you the witnesses?”

They turned back.

“Witnesses?”

“Witnesses with dominion over fire?”

Varg looked at the elder.
“That we've got. Why?”

“Burn the priest,” said the child.

“Why?”
asked Varg, but the elder motioned for him to stop.

“You don't want to ask that,”
he said. He lifted his hand and destroyed the priest, careful not to harm the kid. They left and hunted for the comatorium.

They found it abandoned. No screams. Only bodies in their chambers. Once hooked into the nets, once taken care of by automated systems, both the nets and systems had died, and nearly all the patients with them. But their cloaks could detect someone, someone alive just out of their range.

They headed up the steps to the third floor. The farnesene pulse began to effect the individuals. The Geki began speaking.

“Where is Nikita?”

“Here! I'm here!” he called.

They headed for the voice and found a room of chambers. Most of the patients were dead. One was not. Surrounded by caretakers, one crushed pancake of a man was still alive.

“Nikita?”

“Yes!” called the mess.

“Where is Voivod Suvorova?”

“Angels! Do you not know?”

“We're no angels.”

“Demons!”

“Men! Where is the voivod?”

“You know not what you seek,” he laughed, the curdled laugh of a man all but immune to the fear by merit of his insanity. “I knew the voivod in the presence of her brother. I saw his fall at the hands of the devil's army, the army she fought.

“She came to me from their ravine, where the devil lies bound. The devil—from him she righteously took her powers! She abandoned him in his pit where he shall stay for a millennium. And she came to me, to me!

“It was I who introduced her to the northern crusaders. My ministry on the K2 Crag revealed them to me when they were underground under the rule of the antichrist. But the war! The apocalypse! It is upon us, and Christ's armies are marching for Megiddo! She was a saint among them, for she possesses arms of the past that live on despite the magnetic waves and the radiation.

“She walked up to their church and demonstrated her dominion. She encountered Rafio Denzelle, their leader. He believed women were not to be given heed,
Pervoye poslaniye Timofeyu
. So she burned him alive. The first of many.

“It was she who militarized them, they who were pacifist slime! Her foresight saved them when Ulver came. Ulver, the whore of Babylon, built upon seven hills. And then—”

“We just need to know where—”

“She is the true servant of God! You are but forgeries, but she—she has dominion. She will prophecy for 1,260 days! And the world shall see her death and then, then! Then the—”

“Where the fuck is Mishka?”

“Tromsø. The great arctic cathedral! She reigns from there still! She—”

The Geki jumped to Tromsø.

“We should get white cloaks, play the angels.”

“And ensure they believe?”

“We seem to do that already. We might as well be good guys to them.”

“We cause horrific fear.”

“So do angels, according to my parents.”

“Fine, Varg, we'll buy some
white
satellite jump cloaks with six hundred mini-ocular nodes at Walmart when we get home. Until then, let's do this shit.”

 

 

T
HEY
'
D
WALKED
for ages. Weeks running on nutrient tabs and snow water, and the occasional frozen animal or tripwire of kelp. They said little at first. But both felt the oppressive boredom. In time they began to mutter inane scraps of communication, and after a while, by the time they were approaching Kvitøya, they couldn't help but try to converse.

“When she died I had to move in with him, my stepdad.” Vibeke coughed from the cold air. “Was sad enough, but… I had this collection, a big collection of big inflatable rubber bouncy balls. So my room could be like a ball pit. But I couldn't take 'em with me. He wasn't gonna make three extra trips. They took up so much space in the pogo. So he told me to deflate 'em all, throw 'em away. I got a knife and poked each one, burst 'em and let 'em flatten. I'd lived with those things for years. Somehow it hurt as much as losing Mom. Worse in the weirdest way. It was like drowning puppies, it—”

“You've drowned puppies?”

“No, I haven't drowned puppies. It's an expression.”

“Right, a common expression. Violet heard it lots of times. Want to go to the opera? No it's like drowning puppies. How was your day at school? Like drowning puppies. Everyone said it.”