The Beauty of Destruction (9 page)

Du Bois noticed Beth looking at the wall that separated them from the rest of London. The surrounding foliage was doing a good job of deadening the sound of the city’s death. When she turned back Gideon was staring intently at her. Du Bois could see her discomfort growing.

‘Didn’t work out so well for him, though,’ said Gideon.

‘Let me guess, all things aspire to chaos? That’s all you had to offer,’ du Bois snapped, angry with himself for getting enmeshed in this old argument.

‘Entropy,’ Gideon said quietly, still staring at Beth.

‘Your brother thought what you wanted him to think. At least until you killed him,’ du Bois spat.

‘You killed your own brother?’ Beth asked, though there was little in the way of recrimination in her voice.

‘A number of times. It was complicated.’

‘It was the wish fulfilment of an insecure child given to daydreaming. The problem was his access to the tech meant that he could effectively live out his fantasies,’ du Bois explained to Beth.

‘That’s not quite—’

‘He engaged in some rather unpleasant psychodramas with friends, acquaintances, people he saw as enemies, and most distastefully, his own family. If I’m being charitable, he got carried away.’

‘Except none of that is true,’ Gideon said, turning away from Beth to look at du Bois. ‘Is it?’

Du Bois had forgotten the unease he felt around this man. He couldn’t believe that with everything going on right now Gideon could still unnerve him.

Gideon turned back to Beth. ‘They have no idea what I am so they invented stories, added me to their personal mythology and imprisoned me with stolen technology.’ He raised his hands, gesturing around him.

‘There are worse places,’ Beth said quietly.

‘They might not fear change, but they wish to control it.’ Gideon faced du Bois again. ‘How’s that going?’

Beth was looking between the two of them. ‘So what happened?’ she finally asked.

‘They made me a cliché. I was an agent for change, and they turned me into a sixties throwback. I can’t conceptualise anything beyond this.’

Du Bois was laughing but there was little humour in it. ‘Oh yes, he wanted to be a physicist, a science hero, and a rock star. He wanted to have adventures but adventures have victims. He wanted to be an assassin, because assassins are cool, but that meant people had to die …’ He could feel Beth looking at him. He knew there was something in his voice, as if he wasn’t so sure now.

‘Bad people,’ Gideon said quietly.

‘In your opinion.’ Du Bois took a drag on his cigarette angrily.

‘You see, Beth—’ Gideon started.

Du Bois saw Beth narrow her eyes. Du Bois couldn’t explain how he knew her name either.

‘—Some of the people I killed weren’t very nice. They were just the sort of venal, corrupt, greedy arseholes that the Circle liked to recruit and I killed them properly. With a little needle.’ He turned back to du Bois. ‘They weren’t coming back from that, were they?’

‘Tell me, do you still believe all that bullshit you used to spout?’ du Bois demanded.

‘Well, everything since 1969 does seem to have been something of an anti-climax.’

Du Bois felt his patience slip away. ‘Here we go! Whining about your failed revolution! All the proponents of which either sold out, or died of what amounted to self indulgence!’ He nodded towards the sonic cane, which was now playing ‘Celebration of the Lizard’.

‘Are you missing feudalism?’ Gideon asked, smiling under the beard.

Beth couldn’t help but laugh.

Du Bois glanced at her irritably.‘At least we got things done,’ he said weakly.

‘Trapped in the same mindset for a thousand years? I’m not sure that good organisational skills are justification for tyranny.’

‘What you and your ilk fail to understand is that someone has to be in charge, or what happened with your revolution is the end result …’ He knew Beth was looking at him, eyebrows raised.

‘It wasn’t my—’

‘… nothing!’ du Bois snapped.

‘It’s a trap, isn’t it?’ Beth said quietly. Both men turned to look at her. ‘There’s a point in time, I don’t know, like when you become aware, or excited by the larger world, and then we go on to compare everything to that moment in history and never quite realise that nothing can live up to when we were all young and beautiful.’

Du Bois and Gideon were both staring at her. She was turning red with the attention. Du Bois wondered if she had ever truly believed that she was beautiful.

Gideon slumped back on his soiled sofa. ‘Why are you here? There’s an apocalypse going on, don’t you know?’

‘I need to get home, and then to America.’

‘So? Aren’t you the ultimate henchman of the ultimate conspiracy? You have more resources than I do. Besides, I only deal in retrotech, which I thought you would have known.’

‘We have to go to Bradford as well,’ Beth told him.

Du Bois wanted to object, but instead he looked down and said nothing. When he looked up Gideon was leaning forwards, staring at him.

‘Is this your new Grace?’ he asked, pointing at Beth.

Du Bois frowned. He felt Beth looking at him.‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Now Gideon frowned. ‘Are you out of favour, du Bois?’

‘Just out of contact,’ du Bois said evenly.

Gideon studied him. Then he leaned back in the chair. ‘You turned me into a seedy little dealer for S- and L-tech …’ he said.

‘We tolerated you, nothing more.’

‘Nevertheless, dealers get paid.’

Du Bois smiled. ‘I can give you what you want. It’s the apocalypse; aren’t you supposed to be the messiah? Perhaps this time they’ll actually nail you to a cross.’

Gideon started laughing. ‘Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve been trying to slip my thematic bonds since ‘77. I was free two hours ago. I know that the Circle have more important things to do than check up on me right now.’

Du Bois’s face fell.

‘Please,’ Beth said quietly.

Gideon pointed at her. ‘You … you remind me of someone. I just wish I could remember who.’ He looked around at the guests at his party. ‘This wasn’t what it used to be like. I don’t think I like these people.’

‘They’re still people,’ Beth told him.

This seemed to make up Gideon’s mind. He stood up and started pulling on clothes that looked a little too small for him but would have been stylish more than forty years ago. Though even forty years ago there would have still been too many ruffles, flares and high heels in the other man’s outfit for du Bois’s taste. Gideon slid an odd-looking pistol into a shoulder holster and then threw on a black velvet car coat.

Beth looked at du Bois and shrugged. Du Bois just shook his head.

Du Bois and Beth watched as Gideon strolled down Kensington High Street past urban phages with broken teeth. Outside an architect’s office a group of lost and broken well-dressed men with tears in their eyes attempted to trace the cracks in the pavement.

Gideon led them into Kensington Gardens. Du Bois was aware of children in romper suits, feather headdresses and war paint, carrying bows in the undergrowth. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to shoot any of them.

As Gideon headed towards a small copse of trees to the cacophonous sound of the park’s parakeets, du Bois noticed a trail of ash-like carbon coming from the other man. His beard and much of his hair were falling off, his fat was deflating. His clothes were changing, his car coat becoming a hip-length jacket from Lee Roach, shirt and trousers by Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row. A pair of Rochester ‘Albion’ Chelsea boots, by Jeffery West, completed the ensemble.

Du Bois was keeping an eye on the young children stalking them in the undergrowth as Beth and Gideon pulled scrim netting off a Westland Scout light helicopter. Gideon climbed in first and started the pre-flight checks.

The helicopter took them up over the park. The sun was just beginning to go down behind them. Only as they flew over the rooftops could they start to understand the full extent of the damage. The city was spotted with the burning craters of plane crashes on the Heathrow approach corridor. Entire streets had been demolished. Gideon had to fight to control the helicopter as banking Tornado jets flew over the city at near rooftop level. The roundels on the tails of the aircraft had been painted over with black flags. Something dropped from the planes and suddenly St Paul’s roof was silhouetted against a horizon of flame.

Du Bois was leaning out of the helicopter, one foot on the skid. This reminded him of Vietnam, Iraq, countless other unhappy places around the world. He remembered when Gideon had come close to engineering a US invasion of Britain as a protest against the Vietnam War. The airframe of the Westland Scout was shaking violently. Du Bois had been in enough helicopter crashes in war zones to start to worry. The matter of the helicopter was transforming, turning itself into a more modern aircraft, an
MH
-6J Little Bird.

Then they were coming down in the grounds of a nineteenth century brick-building complex. It looked like a large private house attached to a chapel, or a small church. High walls topped with electrified razor wire and heavy, metal gates protected the complex.

Next to where the Little Bird had landed was a Hawker Siddeley T4A. A two-seat trainer version of the Harrier Jump Jet
V/
STOL
aircraft. It had been given a bright, psychedelic paint job and was fully armed.

Gideon turned to look at du Bois and grinned.

‘Why would you do that to an aircraft?’ du Bois demanded.

‘I know, it seems so retro now, doesn’t it?’

‘It doesn’t have the range—’ du Bois started.

‘It isn’t what it seems. That’s basically a shell for an L-tech aircraft. It has enough stealth capabilities to avoid casual detection, though it may struggle to hide from the capabilities of the Circle. But that’s okay, because you’re just out of touch at the moment, right?’

Something about the way that Gideon said it made the skin on the back of du Bois’s neck prickle. Beth had climbed out of the helicopter and was standing by the Harrier, looking at it with a mixture of awe and worry.

‘Have you seen Alexia?’ du Bois asked.

‘Now there’s a girl who knows how to change with the times.’ Gideon leaned in close to du Bois. ‘I like your sister, I mean
really
like her.’ Du Bois gritted his teeth but managed to control his temper. ‘I haven’t seen her,’ Gideon finally said.

‘Do you have a way to find her?’

‘Looking? But you know, the indolence.’

Du Bois just glared at him.

Gideon felt the downdraught ruffle his hair as the Harrier rose above the trees. He could hear the war beyond the walls. He was just about ready for the modern world. He wondered if he should get a new guitar.

6

A Long Time After the Loss

They watched Scab walk out of the conference room. The Monk had to admit there was a certain amount of defiance in his exit, however much she wished to put it down to sheer petulance. She glanced at Churchman. Despite the golden armour she knew him well enough to know he was disappointed. However ruthless he had to be, she knew the years had softened him, while the rest of Known Space had just got harder.

‘He’s insane,’ Talia said quietly.

‘So you slept with him, then?’ It was out of her mouth before she realised she’d said it. It was an ancient reflex. It was the repressed anger over the words they had exchanged the last time they’d met. Talia looked like she’d been slapped.

‘You haven’t changed!’ Then Talia was storming out of the room.

The Monk banged the back of her head against the transparent smart matter of the internal wall. Everyone was looking at her now. Even Churchman had turned in his chair. Elodie had stopped examining her nails and was grinning at her.

The Monk pushed herself off the wall and followed Talia. She felt someone grab her arm. She broke the grip and moved away, turning, instinctively ready to fight. Vic, the big insect, was standing over her.

‘Maybe I should go and speak to her?’ he suggested.

‘Really?’ the Monk blurted, more out of surprise than anything else. She shook her head. ‘Okay, fine.’ She turned and left the room anyway and ‘faced the Cathedral for Scab’s whereabouts.

It took a moment for the Monk to realise that the horrible rasping noise was Scab singing. She was just about able to make out the words.

‘Every time I plant a seed, He said kill it before it grow, He said kill them before they grow.’

He was walking around the upper corridors in the Cathedral’s roof. Where he walked the floor was turning transparent so he could look down at the clouds in the massive habitat. It had started to rain below. A light cruiser was rising up through the dark clouds. The Monk recognised the cruiser as the
St Andrew
.
She didn’t like the ship’s AI.

‘Oi, wanker!’ the Monk shouted.

Scab ignored her. He was wearing an ancient pair of audio crystals in his ears that would impair his hearing but there was no way he couldn’t be aware of her, particularly with the black sphere of his P-sat bobbing along on its AG motor after him.

She increased her pace and reached for his shoulder, grabbing him and yanking him around. It was, of course, what he had been waiting for. A rapid flurry of strike, counter strike and attempted locks. She thought she had the upper hand for a moment as her strong fingers closed around his neck and she lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the wall. Then she felt his fingernail push through her hardening, armoured skin. Her eyes met his: cold, dead.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ she demanded. But she knew the answer. He was just perfectly adapted to live in this age. He probably didn’t even understand the question.

‘You think you can kill with impunity and still be a good person?’ he asked. The Monk was asking herself why she had gone after Scab. From interrogating Benedict/Scab she knew there was no reasoning with him. He wasn’t going to listen to a lecture and resolve to be a better person. There was barely a person there. He was little more than a malignant psychopathology as platform for weapons. She would hate him if there were anything there to hate.

Is this foreplay?
She had no idea who had initiated it. They were kissing. She felt her
gi
tugged open as she fumbled with his flies with too much eagerness. She ‘faced the Cathedral asking it to divert people from the corridor, not that Scab would have cared.

‘It’s like fucking a corpse I made,’ he whispered romantically. Teeth bared, she hit him, hard. He swayed and almost fell over the vertiginous drop; she felt him enter her.

The Monk was leaning against the wall holding her head as Scab pulled his trousers up. She was remembering threatening Benedict/Scab.

Why do I have some sick attraction
to this psycho?
She was disgusted with herself. Scab stood for pretty much everything she hated about this age.
It
must be some residual holdover from Game,
she told herself. They had lived on Game as lovers, albeit with different personalities.

She looked up to find Scab watching her. She couldn’t read his expression. He nodded once and started walking back the way they had both come. Below them the
St Andrew
was still hovering. She could make out the statuary, the blister-like weapon batteries and the lines of its energy dissipation matrix on its thickly armoured hull. Scab reached the end of the corridor and nodded to someone just out of sight before turning the corner and disappearing from sight.

The Monk was trying to clean herself up, her
gi
in disarray, when Elodie stepped around the corner. The feline glared at the human. The Monk closed her eyes and let out a groan. Her day wasn’t going well at all. When she opened her eyes Elodie was much closer to her.

‘Seduction by being his murder victim? Think if you let him kill you often enough he’ll start to like you?’ Elodie enquired. ‘Pretty sick, not to mention servile and pathetic.’

‘Okay look …’ the Monk started. ‘I unreservedly apologise for fucking your boyfriend—’

‘He’s not my boyfriend!’ Elodie spat.

‘Fine, whatever,’ the Monk said. ‘Let’s assume it was a momentary lapse in judgement – to the point of insanity – on my part. I’ll apologise again and then we can all forget about it. Perhaps to the point of editing our memories after I’ve bleached myself down.’

‘He’s in love with her,’ Elodie muttered. She did not sound entirely rational. It was at odds with the calculating professional that the Monk had come to expect. ‘He thinks I don’t know.’ She didn’t even seem to be talking to the Monk now.

‘What are you talk—’ the Monk started. Elodie’s padded hands were on either side of her face now. The feline’s mouth pressed against hers. The Monk’s lips parted before she had a chance to think. Elodie’s tongue probed her mouth for a deeper kiss. The Monk pushed the feline away so hard that soft-machine augmented muscles threw Elodie across the corridor and into the other wall. The feline bounced and landed crouched on all fours, hissing. The Monk’s hands dropped to her knives, though she intended just to switch on her coherent energy field if Elodie attacked her.

‘What the fuck?’ the Monk demanded when she managed to become verbal again.

Elodie straightened up. The Monk was astonished when she saw tears in the feline’s eyes as Elodie moved towards her.

‘Please don’t make me hurt you,’ the Monk said.

‘You’ve hurt me enough!’ Elodie yowled. It was practically a caterwaul. Then the feline spat at the Monk. The Monk tried to shift out of the way but Elodie was too close. Then she ran away.

The Monk watched her go as she wiped spit off her face. She had her neunonics run an internal diagnostic to make sure there was nothing unusual in the saliva.

‘Are you okay?’ Churchman asked over a ‘face link. The Monk groaned internally.

‘Does everyone know?’ the Monk snapped over the ‘face link. She almost asked him if he had enjoyed the show but she knew who she was really angry with. She was trying to think of a quicker, more destructive way she could have complicated her life. She was struggling to come up with anything.

‘Well, the Cathedral, myself and Miss Negrinotti.’

‘Ideally I’d like to keep it that way.’

‘Mr Scab is leaving,’ Churchman told her.
Good
, she thought. ‘I have agreed to provide him with upgrades for his ship and a lot of black credit.’

‘I hope he’s taking that fucking cat with him!’

‘Beth, we’ve discussed speciesism before. You know the guidelines,’ Churchman gently scolded. ‘Are you going to speak to Talia?’ Churchman ’faced.

You mean apologise?
‘Unless you need me I’m going to go and visit with friends,’ she ‘faced back.
Bravely.

‘I understand that we are often attracted to people who aren’t good for us,’ Churchman started. ‘But …’

The Monk pushed herself off the wall, waving her arms about over her head as she started to make her way towards her rooms. ‘I’m really not in the mood for a paternal discussion right now!’ she shouted out loud, ‘facing it at the same time.

Elodie was waiting outside Talia’s room as Talia and Vic approached.

Talia looked up at Elodie suspiciously. Vic was all but hovering over the human protectively.

‘Girl time,’ Elodie told the ’sect. His puppy-like adoration for the human girl was contemptible but she was impressed he had stood up to Scab, even if it was with the de facto backing of the Church. He wasn’t nearly as frightened of her as he was of his partner/captor.

‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ Talia said. Elodie knew the jealous girlfriend act wouldn’t work with the younger sister. Talia had a better idea of what Elodie was like.

‘Look, I’m not going to pretend that I like you. In fact, if I was more aware of your existence I’d probably spend a moment or two feeling disgust for the way you explore the most extraordinary levels of weakness and victimhood, but who has the time?’

‘As always, lovely speaking to you,’ Talia said, and started to move past the feline.

Elodie took hold of her arm.

‘Get your fucking hands off me!’ Talia snapped, and tried to shake Elodie’s hand off. Vic moved to intervene.

‘I don’t like you but there are some things … Look, I have siblings as well, and what your sister has done ain’t right.’ Elodie didn’t like the way that Vic was looking at her.

‘What do you mean?’ Talia asked.

‘I’m home!’ Beth called as she entered the flat. The same peeling wallpaper, the same posters, worn furniture, empty wine and cider bottles and the smell of the last meal greeted her. She knew she had effectively trapped herself in the past. She always felt faintly ridiculous at the way she looked in the immersion. The way she used to look. The boots, combat trousers, band T-shirt and the painted leather jacket that she wore like armour. Beth had never realised what a pain having hair was until she’d shaved it all off.

She walked into the lounge. Maude looked up at her, smiling. She was sitting on the floor surrounded by books, though the television was on and her laptop was open on a social media site.

Uday was sitting on the sofa with a mug of tea, watching the television. He looked up at her, eyebrow raised.

‘Rough day at the funfair?’ he asked.

‘You’ve no idea,’ Beth said. ‘You look hard at work.’ He stuck his tongue out at her.

‘Chavs still giving you trouble?’ Maude asked. Beth couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

‘Oh, don’t fuss, Maude, she’s a big girl. She can look after herself.’

Maude pulled a face at Uday and then got up to make Beth a cup of tea anyway. Beth plumped down into one of the two sofas in the flat and just let banter and gossip wash over her.

They weren’t Maude and Uday. They were simpler in so many different ways. Of course they had been corrupted. The Seeders had driven them insane and then the spores from the thing in the Solent had infected their flesh. When she had come to the Cathedral they had done their best to reassemble their personalities and then create an immersion environment for them to grow and live their lives in. Good lives, pleasant lives, lives she felt they had deserved, doubtless like billions of others had. At least, she told herself that was what she had done. Sometimes she wondered. She hoped and prayed this wasn’t for her benefit, her entertainment, a place of refuge for days like this.

She had expanded the time parameters of the environment. Thousands of years had been mere months in the immersion. It contracted and expanded when she was going to visit so it complemented their narrative. The AI ran a parallel story for Beth and seamlessly integrated it with her neunonics when she put herself into the immersion but that was it, the rest she left to them and the AI.

Maude handed her a tea. The immersion never got the taste right. At least she didn’t think it did, she was several clones and many soft-machine augments away from her original self. God knows what she had for taste buds now. Still, sometimes it felt like millennia since she’d last had a good cup of tea.

The pocket of her leather jacket started to vibrate. Beth frowned.

‘It still gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that you decided to join us in the twenty-first century and buy a phone. I know it must have frightened you and all, what with all the demons in the tiny box,’ Uday said.

Beth gave him the finger and answered the phone.

‘I think we probably need you down here,’ Churchman said, although he sounded like Ted, who had run the Clarence Pier amusements in Southsea. He had been a large, fat, cheerful man and he had stood up for her when she had needed him to.

‘Bollocks!’ Beth said and hung up.

‘Some big dipper-related emergency?’ Uday enquired.

‘I thought we were going to watch
Strictly
!’ Maude said, pouting.

‘I’m going to tell all the other emo kids you watch
Strictly
,’ Uday threatened.

‘I told you, I’m a goth!’

‘I’m going to tell all the other retro-emo kids that you watch
Strictly
.’

‘Sorry, kids, I’ve got to go,’ Beth said, getting up and leaving the lounge to the sounds of protests and bickering. She closed the door of the flat behind her and dropped out of the immersion.

The Monk’s place was at the apex of the roof. She had the smart matter make it look like it had a low-beamed wooden ceiling, stone walls and a polished, bare-boards floor; a kind of open plan, rustic attic. She was lying on her very large and comfortable bed.