Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (21 page)

  
She stood up from her seat and he watched her led her by the fingers in a kind
of hypnosis.  There was a strange wisdom to the girl, something implacable
about her beyond their understanding, but the glimmers of which he could now
plainly perceive, as he watched her wiles operate like a subtle magic,
engrossing Celyn, ironing out the hard lines in her countenance, mellowing the
callousness of her voice to honey, and The Narcissus-at-the-pool eyes, as she
gazed upon the girl, made it seem as if she could waste away before her. 

  
For the succeeding hour or so, he kept to his seat at the kitchen table and
occupied himself with a book and a glass of blended malt, which he
intermittently topped up.  The text was old and in Russian.  A single line
caught his eye on the bottom of the middle page, one which he kept coming back
to over and over: “One can fall in love and still hate.”  He mouthed the line
to himself over and over, shooting glances over the book.  The darkness was
layered thick upon the night sky.  A UMC report muttered something about “
new
uprisings in the twilight of Russian Winter
.”

  
Russian Winter
… 

  
He recalled the phrase from a while ago and glanced over the pages to the big
screen, but his attention almost immediately shifted to Naomi, who was closely
imitating every stroke of Celyn’s pastel against the drawing paper, turning up
a bright smile whenever her mildest approval was forthcoming.  Not a word was
said between them.

  
After a while, he looked up at the wall.  The chronometer showed 2340.  He drank
the last dribble of whisky and stared once more at the ominous line at the
bottom of the page before he dog-eared the leaf, closed the book and stood up
from his seat. 

  
The big screen turned off.  Celyn stood up on the floor. 

  
“Just a little longer, please,” Naomi croaked with fatigue.

  
“You
should sleep now,” he said.  “You do not sound well.”

  
Naomi rubbed her tired eyes and yawned, coming to her feet, wobbly with
fatigue.  She looked up.

 
 “Thanks for staying with us.” she said.

  
Celyn smiled vaguely. 

  
Then, quite suddenly, as was her way, Naomi came toward her. 

  
As soon as the little arms wrapped around her, Celyn hardened up, then melted
away again when the embrace was released.  The smile instantly vanished from
her and there was a flash in the jade-colored eyes which did not escape his
attention.  It happened in the inkling of an eye.

  
“I will come soon,” he said, his eyes fixed sideways on Celyn.

  
Naomi made her way down the corridor.  He waited a few moments after he heard
the bedroom door open … then close.

  
“I suppose I should thank you too,” he said, turning to Celyn.

  
She was still and speechless and her chest was rising and falling.

  
“Are you… alright?”

  
“What…?” she voiced with a start. 

  
“Are you alright?” he asked a second time.

  
“Yes,” she nodded.  “Yeah, I’m fine.”  The moist film on her crown gleamed in
the light.  There was a tremble in her breath.

  
He approached her with caution.

  
“You know you can stay…”

  
“No,” she answered sharply.  “No.  I should go.”

  
She put her coat around her and made straightaway for the front door, taking
the empty haversack on her way out.

  
“Good night,”, he said.

  
But the door had already shut.

  
   Naomi was in a deep sleep, his arm draped over her and the small hands held
on to him.  He lay awake.  The gentle rise and fall of her breath usually moved
him to sleep, so that he never slept until she did and he always slept when she
did.  But it had been hours since she had fallen asleep and his mind was still
racing.

  
Vincent…
His lips moved to the name, but no sound issued.

  
Vincent…

  
The night sky was star-filled and the great, nocturnal orb was a sparkle
blazing white in the blanks of his eyes, sparking something deep within the
folds of thought. 

  
Vincent...

 
His
pupils dilated.

 
…Caine!

  
The thought sent a surge through him. 

  
“Vincent Caine,”  he contained the sudden flame whisper. 

  
At once, he slipped his arm loose from Naomi’s grip, careful not to wake her, rising
from the bed and pulling the cover back over her. 

  
He stepped out of the room and his pace quickened down the corridor. 

  
“Vincent … Vincent.” Obsessive mumbles.

  
The light came on over the shelf behind the glass-enclosed flame where the
books he’d accumulated were set in jagged stacks and rows.  He looked down the
spines of each book and ran his finger down the row until he found “UNITED
MARTIAL COVENANT: THE BIRTH OF NEW WORLD ORDER.”

  
The book slipped out of its row and the other books toppled into the space.  He
opened it and began feverishly flipping through the pages.  After page 50, he
started skimming through the text.

 
 
I know you are here…
 

  
Every so often, he would stop on a page, when flashes of familiar words caught
his eye, then he’d turn the leaf over again.  Finally, he stopped on page 213,
where the top of the page read:

“
Chapter 12: A World Divided
”

  
He ran two fingers over the front of the page as he read, mumbling:

 
 “…Internal division … early years … UMC…”

  
His finger stopped in the middle of a sentence.

  
“…Vincent Caine Incident.”

   That was it.  That was the name.

 
 He carried on reading but nothing of any immediate relevance followed.  Then,
his eyes narrowed over the small number ‘4’ right beside the reference.  He
flicked through to the end of the chapter and the found the number on the
endnotes.  The note at the foot of the page read:

4. 
02/03/53
– V
incent
Caine – Multiple Homicides – Assassination – Sen. John Clarke Jones…

All
that followed were a series of cross-references to books and cases he had never
heard of, and strings of letters he could not begin to decipher.

  
“Triple homicide … Senator John Clarke Jones…”

  
Nothing.
 

  
Could
his obsession have been so misguided?  All that because of a meaningless half-inch
of small print?  Then, the natural assumption followed:  It really had been a
dream – a conjuring trick of the subconscious.  The name must have somehow
transposed from memory and the rest was pure imagination.

 
 The more he read the name over and over, the more logical it all seemed.  And
yet the more logical it seemed, the more his intuition rejected it.  There was
something more … something he was missing…

  
The doorbell rang. 

  
He jerked round like a startled lion and he stood still until the echoes faded
through the hall, at which point he thought he must have imagined it.  He
looked across toward the kitchen, where he could just make out the numbers
“0345” on the chronometer.

  
About a minute later, the bell chimed again.

  
The book slowly closed.  The gleaming edge of a blade, lying on the shelf,
caught his eye.  He put down the book, taking one last look up the corridor to
the bedroom, where Naomi was lying asleep and safe. 

  
He turned off the lights and began his slow, soundless creep down the long
path, through the hall toward the front door.  It was unlikely a drunken
straggler would wander to the top floor of a residential tower on the edges of
the inner city.  His fist was firm around the blade grip… 

 
 When he stopped at the door, the bell rang again. 

  
The small display on the side of the door lit up at the touch of a button.  His
sinews unwound.  The blade slipped into his sleeve, hidden. 

  
The door opened. 

  
The city lights spilled in through the windows of the outer corridor lighting a
silhouette.  It was Celyn.

  
“… Why are you here?” he asked

  
There was a long and guarded silence.   His blood was still simmering. 

  
“I… don’t know,” said Celyn.  Her response was slow and trembling.  There was
disquiet written all over her: her hands caressed her sides, almost neurotically,
and her eyes darted in any direction except his.  “I’ve been … just … walking
around the city.”

  
“Since you left?”

  
Her nod was as a shiver.  There was silence. 

  
“What happened?” he asked, warily, his blood was still simmering, hand still on
the blade. 

  
“I don’t know,” she answered.  “I got … lost.”

  
He took a slow, hard look.  She did not appear as though she was high on
ambrosia or anything else.  Then a realisation steadily dawned on him through
the silence of the dark.  She was lost and she had come.  She had come to
him
. 

  
He stepped back and held open the door.  After a long delay, Celyn stepped over
the verge and the door noiselessly swung shut.

  
He filled a glass with scotch, and then took a seat across from her, with the
blue flame swaying beside them.  He drank and the warm fluid seared his
throat.  He looked up.

 
 Celyn sat rigidly, hands on her knees as though she were prepared to spring up
at any moment.  Her eyes were gaping and sullen, still anxiously flitting about
without direction.  The frail light shone sallow over her and the sweat broke
over her crown.  Her fingers trembled.

  
“Why have you come?” he asked a second time.

  
For a while, she did not seem able to speak or move.

  
She raised a lone hand and he followed the lone hand cautiously as it slipped
into her coat.  When her hand emerged, it wielded the ubiquitous black canister
and she set it down on the table between them.  

  
He looked from her to the canister and back twice before picking it up.  By the
weight, he could tell immediately that it was full and slowly tuned his eyed
back up at her again.

  
“I can’t
do it,” she broke with a barely audible murmur ,“I can’t…” and
then immediately, she went quiet again.  

  
She lowered her head and started to laugh a low, unsteady, possessed laugh that
half-sounded like sobbing.  When her head rose again, the bright centres of her
inflamed eyes whirled in the shallow film of suppressed tears.  She clenched
her teeth and her mien became suddenly indignant. 

  
He set the canister back on the table and the silence of his glower made it
clear that he would not ask her the same question again.  Why had she come?  If
there were even a reason, she appeared to have presently lost all sense of it. 
She was on the edge.  He could sense it.  The leap was all there was left.

  
“We’re martials,” she whispered.  “We kill.  We die.  We disappear.  That’s all
there is.”

  
“That is all you know.”

  
“That’s all we are.”

  
“And as long as you believe that, you will remain their slave.”

  
“We’re all born slaves.”

 
 “I am through being the pawn of the war corporations.”

  
“You don’t know.”

  
“Do not tell me what I know!”

  
His fist rattled the table and sent the glass toppling with a clink and a
smash.  The blood built up within him.  After a long silence, his voice settled
again: “Fear loves power,” he said.  “The PMCs profit off fear.  Fear is what
drives nations to war.  Fear is what created the martial world.”

 
  He paused.

 
 “Martials are the agents of fear,” he added, darkly.  “As long as the
Commission keep us believing that we are all flawed machines, the
real
machine will not stop growing.  The real machine is the war economy.  Unless
the parts defect, there will be no stopping it.”