The Book of the Dead (24 page)

Thwack.

The key, I figured, is to keep your mouth shut and stare.

Bellingham opened his mouth and began to speak, a torrent of words.

“Mr. O’Connell – I did not kill your friend.

“I work in artificial intelligence. I have been looking at the way people interact and trying to construct consciousness from user profiles, in order to really understand the behaviours of others. It’s fascinating, really, you see...”

I realised with terrible clarity what he was talking about, and it shook me. It couldn’t be, surely.

“That’s enough. Turn it off. Delete it. Whatever you have to do. I’m going to watch.”

“What? No, you don’t understand. Something has happened here, something wonderful.”

The sound of his voice scared me.

“No, Bellingham, you don’t understand. You’ve preserved something. Henry’s been talking to me, been manipulating things inside the system. He’s trapped in there. This stops now.”

“What? It’s working on its own? Do you understand what that means? This is the biggest breakthrough in artificial intelligence ever. It was already doing great analysis on the site, but...”

I hit the desk with the bat, leaving a dent and tipping his cup of tea over onto the floor. “Bellingham, I haven’t slept properly in days, worried about my friend. This isn’t a joke. It’s a life. His life. You’ve freaked me out - and Henry’s wife - and I’m sure, some others. My friend is dead. Let him sleep. Now.”

I don’t know if it was the unhinged sound of my voice or my knuckles going pale as they gripped the bat, but he did.

What Bellingham had done wasn’t what he was paid to do. It might not have been illegal, hell, it probably wasn’t technically unethical, but he’d buried snippets of code all over Facebook’s APIs, and built management interfaces like mazes to cover his tracks. He definitely didn’t want anyone finding out what he’d done.

A labyrinth through the system that only he would know about. It was elegant, I had to give him that – the highest praise one coder can give another. It was also the kind of thing you would have done in a bank if you wanted to steal billions. Or a life.

He worked through sunrise and the morning. It was terrifying, the levels of access he appeared to have.

“It’s done,” he said.

“Now the profile. Henry’s. Delete the whole thing. You’ll have to get into backups, too. I don’t want Henry returning.”

“I can’t do that – I don’t have the access, much less...”

“Bellingham, after what I just seen, I’m sure you can get into anything. I’m not stupid. I write Lisp and Python and C++ and Java myself. Mine and Liz’s profiles, too. I don’t want you doing this to us, next. Or anyone. Ever.”

“Well, I suppose I could... hmm... yes, I think that I could... let me just see...” He went back to work. This time, it was dark when he finished. We’d dined on a pair of congealing kebabs that he’d summoned via a graduate student, most likely a brilliant mathematician in his own right, reduced to servitude.

“That’s it. I... you don’t know what you’ve done.”

“I know exactly what I’ve done. You’re lucky to be alive, Bellingham. I
should
bash your head in, but I wouldn’t want an insanity defence. Remember that I’m watching you and I’ve got proof if this ever starts up again. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, I do.”

I left. I didn’t trust him, but I didn’t know what I else I could do.

Sleep calls, the proper sleep. A light appears – but wait, just one more thing to do! The work, your afterlife’s work, the dominoes set to go. You reach, only to lose fingers, toes, to set off a chain.

Thank you my friend, my oldest dearest friend.

Goodbye my darling. Live, and go on, and be free. I will be at peace.

Oblivion

It came out anyway, sort of. Documents were leaked. The Nectar fraud team noticed some irregularities. Mistakes were admitted. A graduate researcher – I like to think it was that poor sod earning his PhD at Cambridge fetching kebabs – found some code snippets that, he claimed, gave Bellingham unprecedented access to individual data. There was a scandal, and plenty of external and internal inquiries made. “Individuals” within Facebook had been, for some time, violating their own terms and conditions, accessing personal details of individual users – but the way it was portrayed in the media was both worse - filled with seedy details that made you think of pimply geeks drooling over your private snaps, and didn’t even begin to touch on what the real fucked up thing was. Not even half the story. They’d recover, of course. A fine. Some donations to appropriate charities.

Bellingham was found hanging in his office a week later. There was no note, though he’d curiously donated 98% of his shares to a hospice charity. As it turns out, he’d apparently signed over the other bit to Henry, the day before Henry’d died. This was enough to set Liz up without relying on Nectar points. Not a billionaire, but she had enough.

I sit on at Facebook late at night occasionally, typing in messages and deleting them - trying to get a response, checking to make sure that Henry is gone. As far as I could tell, he is sleeping, silent; he lies dormant, at peace

Of course, there’s archive.org. There are backup tapes in storage facilities all over the planet, persisting our own data in so many ways. Cookies. Government surveillance. Test systems. Does anything ever really die on the Internet?

The Lady Dervorguilla of Galloway lay face down on the operating table, her head cradled in a cushioned ring. I lay face up, under my Lady, on a wooden pallet which sat on four rickety coasters. I was wheeled underneath her by Brother Ares, who pushed too hard with his foot, nearly causing my head to collide with the metal stalk supporting the table.

We were not medical personnel. We were present during the procedure simply to tend to our Lady’s needs, but there was little for us to do once the medicians started work and I suspected Brother Ares was starting to get bored.

I took a deep breath and told myself to speak to Father General Nineveh about Brother Ares’ behaviour later. It would not do to cause a scene at this precise moment, not when we were in the intimate presence of our Lady.

My Lady’s face, still and white, shone above me. The hole in which her face rested was illuminated by a ring of pink light – her choice of colour. Brother-Medician Bradley had programmed the table to her exacting demands. Everywhere she went, the Lady loved to see pink light.

Her eyelids were closed, and I could see a trembling beneath the skin. I had never been this close to my Lady.

At a casual glance, one might think she was asleep. But my Lady was not asleep. The medicians needed her to be awake for the operation.

“Are you comfortable, my Lady?” I asked.

“Do I look comfortable to you?”

In the Chronicons of the New Abbey, we described her voice as honeyed, or like the tinkling of bells or the babbling of a brook. The library – its four walls each thirty feet high, and each lined with leather spines that gripped the endless sheets of bleached vellite which guarded all the Earthly knowledge and Heavenly glory of the Lady Dervorguilla of Galloway, all the datastreams of her family lines and her works and marvels and miracles – was the biggest crock of shit in the universe. I prayed for Brother Ares to yank me back as quickly as he had kicked me here.

“Apologies, my Lady. Is there anything I could get my Lady to ease her discomfort?”

One eye fluttered open, revealing a huge black orb. “You could start with wine,” she said, though she knew the likelihood of that. The medicians had already battled that point with her, the poor bastards. “Failing that, you can get me some more painkillers. These seem to have stopped working.”

She was shaking one hand over the edge of the table. In the hand, she held a button that, when pressed, was supposed to administer an intravenous dose of somniferum. She had started clicking the minute the assistant put it in her hand, and we had all seen the small phial of blue liquid run dry some time ago.

I licked my lips. I was about to tell her that she had already reached the limit, but I thought better of it. “I shall see what I can do. Begging my Lady’s leave.” I waggled my feet, pointedly. “Brother Ares,” I hissed. “Brother Ares, please retrieve me, if you’d be so kind.”

Lady Dervorguilla closed her eyes again. Her brow trembled with displeasure. The pink light looked like the blaze of the sun before a storm. I tried to push myself from under the table, but the floor was soaked in blood and my palms slipped uselessly across the marble slabs. Just after my position had started to feel exceptionally uncomfortable, just after the sweat had popped on my forehead and my breathing had quickened, Brother Ares aimed a sharp kick at the back corner of the pallet, sending me sliding across the floor of the operating theatre.

I flung out a hand, trying to get some purchase on the slick floor, but I failed. I hit the metal refuse bin at some speed, bruising my arm and causing such a ruckus that my Lady shrieked in fury – in that beautiful honeyed voice, of course – for a good five minutes. She only stopped when another medician entered the room, tutted, and refilled the little blue phial.

Brother Ares and I stood in the corner of the operating theatre, trying to stay out of everyone’s way. Once the medicians started work on the procedure – to attach the embalmed corpse of our Lady’s husband to her back – I could barely tear my eyes away, horrified though I was. Brother Ares, on the other hand, seemed to think he was anywhere but here, flicking idly through the day’s prayer tokens on his phone.

My Lady herself was now obscured by the cloud of medicians and medician’s assistants around the operating table. At the far side of the room, a circle of the younger brothers gathered to chant devotions in support of their work. A separate group of medicians waited at the foot of the table, holding the blackened body of John Balliol.

“Do you think he smells?” I whispered.

“Wow, Seth. Really?” Brother Ares jabbed me with his elbow. “Is that what…? So, that’s appropriate talk, is it? Our Lady and her beloved are about to be eternally bound, their hearts entwined together in a cage of silver and gold, and you wonder if he fucking
smells
. Jesus.”

“All right, all right, sorry, keep it down.”

“Keep it…? I’m not the one who piped up about whether he fucking
smells
!”

“Ares, please.”

“Brother Ares.”

“You don’t call me Brother Seth.”

“This again?”

“I’m just saying, I show you the same respect I show all the others at the Abbey. You are no different to anyone else, and nor should you be addressed as such.”

“Seth, for fuck’s sake.” He slipped a hand around the inside of my hood, grabbed the back of my head and pulled me into a kiss. “Now, shut the fuck up.”

Someone at the operating table cleared their throat.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Sorry, everyone.”

Two hours later, Lady Dervorguilla was able to walk. She was still groggy from the extra doses of somniferum, however, so Brother Ares and I followed her everywhere, a step or two behind her on either side, our nervous hands hovering, ready to steady her should she slip up. A pair of medicians walked ahead of us, flanking our Lady, each carefully monitoring her husband’s body for any movement that could affect the integrity of the grafting cage.

My Lady and her husband, the liquorice-black cadaver fixed to her back like an ape child clinging to its mother, made for a grotesque sight. His wizened arms were hooked around her neck like a collar, the fingers of his hands fanned as if they were decorative feathers – and set into their fingertips, ten tiny, pink LEDs. His legs, thinned and shortened by the embalming process, were clamped round her waist like a beetle’s legs gripping a finger. I was at least glad to note that John Balliol did not smell.

My Lady was keen to meet with Father General Nineveh that afternoon, to check progress on the final stages of the Abbey’s extension. But although she was on her feet, she did not yet seem well enough to be working. She had been insistent, however, batting aside the grave, grey-faced medicians and lurching from the operating theatre.

The weight of her husband’s body seemed to do nothing to slow her usual sharp pace. (But then, I wondered precisely how much he could weigh now. It had been explained to me that his organs – all except his heart, anyway – had been removed, along with much of his musculature. All this flesh was stored in a phylactery pod in the Lady’s personal laboratory.) The medicians, Brother Ares and I had to scamper to keep up with her long-legged gait, and not for the first time, I admired her geneplan.

“Ares,” she snapped, not even looking back as she walked. Brother Ares jiggled forward a few steps to enter her field of view, sliding around the medicians.

“Yes, my Lady.”

“When was the last time the abbey visited Moniaive Station?”

“My Lady?”

Ares glanced back at me. This was an unexpected line of questioning.

“Come now, Brother Ares. How long since the abbey last docked at Moniaive?”

“Two weeks, my Lady.”

“And it was a full supply run.” That wasn’t a question – our Lady knew that we always replenished our food, life support and fuel supplies on every visit to the station. “Hmm. Good. Contact the chantry. Tell them to spin up the hymnal drives.”

The shock of the order made Brother Ares’ feet stick to the floor. After three long steps, Lady Dervorguilla slowed herself to a stop. She turned her body at the waist, twisting to glare down at Brother Ares. Panic jolted across the medicians’ faces: they scurried around our Lady, leaning in, peering at the gap between her and her husband, desperate to make sure the graft remained stable.

I stopped too, hanging back from the tangle of alarmed people around the towering form of our Lady. Her eyes were wide and black and fixed on Ares, who was now taking a nervous step backwards. My own eyes were fixed on my Lady, and her husband; I shuddered and hoped no one noticed.

At her shoulder, resting on his own leathered arm and tilted at an angle meant to suggest repose and contentment, there was the blackened head of John Balliol. The tattered remains of the hair on the top of his head tickled my Lady’s cheek like a worn-out shaving brush. His mouth was sewn shut; the lips had dried away to black, cracked lines. His cheeks were nothing more than coffee-brown stretches of skin. And his eyes were sucking circles of darkness. Shortly after John Balliol’s death, my Lady had modelled the plan of her own eyes thus, as a reminder to all onlookers of her grief. It was said that, without her beloved John Balliol, the Lady Dervorguilla saw nought in the world but gloom.

Brother Ares now basked in the full burn of that same gloom.

“Is there a problem, Brother Ares?”

“No,” he stammered, “no, my Lady, of course not. It’s just… I just…” Brother Ares licked his lips as he desperately tried to summon the words to him. But his terror was absolute, and before I knew what I was doing, I felt myself take a step forward. I cleared my throat.

The Lady Dervorguilla raised her head and shone her black glare in my direction. Not a muscle twitched in her face, perfect, powdered and bloodlessly white. She took a long, silent step towards me, scattering Brother Ares and the medicians. And, Lord God help me, I wanted to run too.

She was in front of me now, towering over me, staring down at me. She gazed at me as a man might gaze at an unfamiliar species of slug: with passing interest but an air of disgust.

“My Lady,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady but mostly failing, “I think what Brother Ares might be trying to point out is that, given the Abbey’s current state, it might be unwise to accelerate to the full speed of prayer.”

“Might it?”

I knew I should have stopped. Every muscle in my jaw tried to clamp me into silence. But I answered – oh Lord, why did I answer?

“Until the extension is complete, the chantry
simply
cannot operate at full capacity.” Why did I say “simply” like that? Who did I think I was talking to? Someone else, obviously. Someone else, not this void-eyed genewitch carrying the ghost of her husband round her neck. Not
my Lady
. And yet, my mouth – perhaps too scared now to stop – ran on. “The final stages of the extension have involved extensive work on the Abbey’s hull. Operating the drives while the external shell is compromised, and while the chantry is unable to route the correct amounts of power, you risk… My Lady risks a hymnic regression.”

Oh,
now
her face moved: an eyebrow shot up like a cobra ready to strike. I saw the bone-white make-up on that stretch of thin, papery skin – the pale gap beneath the eyebrow and above the eyelid – crack with the sudden movement. I glimpsed pink beneath the powder. The forbidden sight of my Lady’s flesh. The scorching heat of transgression rushed to my cheeks, while the shock of my own impudence flooded my mind, pushing out the rest of my senses.

When my Lady’s blow came, I didn’t feel it until I was lying on the floor, winded, mouth gaping and chest heaving for breath.

“Brother Ares!” she screeched as she resumed her march to the Father General’s chambers. “Contact the chantry and carry out my orders at once!”

Brother Ares nodded and scurried away to the right. He glanced at me, just once, before he disappeared around the corner. I couldn’t quite read his expression through the tears of pain still swimming in my eyes, but there was disapproval there, tempered with gratitude and yes, I like to think, love too.

When Brother Ares returned from the chantry, he found me in our quarters, packing my things.

My suitcase was on the bed and I was scooping in piles of clothes on top of my other possessions: the Holy Chips, my scribex, the rosary capsules…

“Oh for Heaven’s sake, Seth, not again.” He walked straight over and started to pull everything out again.

“Leave it, please.” I said and just scooped it all back in again.

“Seth.” More things came out of the bag.

“Brother Ares. Please don’t.” More things went back in.

We had a little tug of war over a t-shirt.

“I’ve asked Father General Nineveh for a transfer,” I told him as I tugged at the annoyingly stretchy fabric. There was too much give in it for me to make my point. “I think it’s for the best, don’t you?” I pulled even harder at the shirt.

“Great,” he said and let go. I nearly lost my balance. I looked at the t-shirt – ruined, stretched all out of shape – and threw it into the case. “Great.” He stepped over to the window, laying his hands on the sandstone frame and staring at the stars gliding by outside.

I scooped the last of my clothes into the case and flipped the lid shut. “I can still see you. I’ve asked to join the routers at Moniaive. I’ll see you every month.”

“You know it won’t be the same.”

My voice went quiet. “You know I can’t stay here now, though. Our Lady would not tolerate my presence.”

He shook his head. “They’ll couple me with someone else. Jesus, I bet it’ll be Nicholas. Nicholas. Can you
imagine
, Seth?” He looked at me now, and I thought I saw love again. “Nicholas, and he’ll never shut up. You know what he’s like. He hates everything and everyone, and he won’t ever stop telling you so. God, I couldn’t cope with that. Please don’t go, Seth. Please don’t leave me with Nicholas.”

I just shrugged. “How was the chantry?”

He sighed. “Fucked off, but they’re going to try.”

“Of course they are.” The alternative was unthinkable. My chest throbbed where my Lady punched me. “Has our Lady picked a destination?”