War in Heaven (20 page)

He looked sane and well. He still had his beard but it was trimmed, as was his hair. The ugly integral military computer that normally stuck out of half his head was missing. He was still dressed as a priest. We were in a church but it wasn’t like the one on the corner of Commercial and High Street in Dundee. This one was open and airy. Sunlight streamed in through huge stained-glass windows. The sunlight illuminated the motes of dust that filled the atmosphere. The walls were undressed stone. It looked very old and felt peaceful.

Over the altar in place of a cross was a constantly changing fractal spiral pattern. All the stained-glass windows showed variations of the same scene. Some sort of mighty beast, a dragon I guessed, with many heads. There were crowns and horns in the images and the beast seemed to be causing the stars to fall. As I watched I realised the stained glass was animated. In the final panel there was a glowing woman. She had the face of Morag.

‘I found your demons,’ I said to him.

‘They found me.’

‘What did they get?’

‘Everything I knew of relevance, little about you and her, but everything about our attempt to make God.’

‘Where are we?’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say and Vicar was just looking at me.

‘A church near where I grew up in Lincolnshire. It used to be a Templar church.’

‘Who?’

‘Warrior monks.’

‘Like the Wait?’

‘I don’t know who that is.’

‘I mean, where are we?’

‘Oh, we’re in the sense machine. They automated my interrogation using a simple AI program. More like a computer game where you’re constantly the victim. Very crude. I made a sanctum.’

‘You hacked your way out of your own interrogation?’ I asked, impressed. Obviously you’re not supposed to be able to do that. I guessed the God conspirators really were among the best hackers in the world.

‘To a degree.’

‘Where are your guards?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps I was forgotten.’

‘Nothing gets forgotten any more. God’s always there to remind us.’

‘Did God work?’ Vicar asked.

‘Define “work”?’

‘Tell me everything.’

I glanced around the church. I don’t know why, habit really; after all, we were in part of a sense program. I wouldn’t see them coming. ‘I don’t think I’ve got much time.’

‘More than me.’

‘Can’t we get you out of here first?’

‘How and to where? Just tell me, Jakob. You owe me that much.’

He was right. Besides, I was looking at a beating and prison time. He’d been extensively tortured both in here and in the real world. The bastards seemed to have tortured him so much he’d gone sane.

‘What’s that?’ I asked, pointing at the image of Morag.

‘A crude allegory. Tell me.’

I told him. He listened carefully and rarely interrupted, though he quizzed me on everything I knew about Demiurge and again about what Morag had done in the Dog’s Teeth. I don’t know how long it took. I tried not to think too hard about it but I hadn’t been yanked out just yet.

‘It’s a shame that you released God with those parameters. I don’t think they were strict enough. God is clearly given to introspection, whereas certainty and infallibility would have been more useful.’

‘And you could program that?’

‘Given enough time with the people involved, I think so. You’ve come close to destroying everything we worked for with an ill-thought-out and hurried solution.’

‘Oh I’m sorry. We’ll do better the next time we’re being pursued by a powerful conspiracy.’

Vicar managed to ignore my sarcastic tone and just nod sagely as if he knew I would. ‘In many ways Demiurge will be the finer accomplishment, though it is a tool of control,’ he said.

‘Are you looking to change sides?’

‘Don’t be facetious.’

‘Look, we need to find a way to move you and get you some proper medical treatment. I’ve got some cash if we can find a—’

‘I’m dead, Jakob. I’m just a ghost haunting this machine.’

‘But that’s not—’

‘You need to focus.’ He handed me an old-looking creased paper leaflet.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s a hymn book.’

‘What do I need—’

‘For God’s sake, Jakob, it’s a symbolic transfer of data. It contains all I can remember about Operation Spiral.’

‘What—’

‘If you stop interrupting, I’ll tell you. Get this to Pagan.’ I started to ask why but Vicar just held up his hand. ‘Spiral worked. It was a successful operation.’

‘You hacked Their mind?’

‘Obviously. But we couldn’t understand or deal with it. We weren’t in an electronic space that human minds had designed. We were in a biological mind that once aware of us had no problems repulsing us. It did so in its own terms, with its own references and understanding, which were of course alien to us. Our minds were never going to be able to cope. Our own minds struggled to grasp what was happening to them, to protect us in any way they could, to find a frame of reference that we could understand.’

‘You saw hell?’ I said.

He didn’t say anything but stared straight at me. He looked like he was trying to control rage. Towards who I wasn’t sure. He seemed to calm down.

‘What I’ve since worked out was that in order for it to work, the interface system, which we never saw, had to be either Themtech or some human biotech copy of it. Presumably supplied by the Cabal, which would make sense as Rolleston was present in the build-up to Spiral.’

‘But why bother? They were developing Crom? Complete enslavement?’

‘But they didn’t have Gregor at that time. Crom was still quite crude and remained so if what you tell me was correct, but if they could sneak in then they could start to influence Them.’

‘More thoroughly control the war.’

‘And prolong it if they wished.’

‘Sneak in?’ I asked. I hated IT but an idea was trying to force its way into my head.

‘Now you begin to understand. The others used Ambassador to help provide the operating system and processing power that God would need.’

‘And Demiurge used the same principles because it utilised your conspiracy’s research.’

‘Yes, and had greater access to Themtech and therefore was more reliant on it.’

‘Are you saying we can use the information from Operation Spiral to sneak past it? Hack Demiurge? But the Cabal must control it or at least be aware of it. They’ll see us coming.’

‘How? Everyone’s dead, mad or in my case both, and I was in their custody. Their systems are locked down by Demiurge, and even if they have an agent here who is aware that we have met, this is a sealed system and I have worked very long and hard to cultivate the persona of a notorious lunatic.’ I was only starting to realise how clever Vicar was. ‘Though I’m not denying Pagan and Morag … if she is who … if she is the savant you seem to claim, she will need to do a lot of work on it.’

This was beginning to sound like a chance, a very small one but a chance nonetheless. I hated the way that hope seemed to wriggle into my psyche like an intestinal parasite and get me to do stupid things.

‘Won’t the NSA or GCHQ already have all this info and make it available to Pagan and Morag in the US?’

‘Yes and no. Much of it is classified and Pagan and Morag are known anarchists after all. Also I have been theorising about this ever since I managed to make my sanctum, and I had been working on it before I was caught.’

‘You wanted your own way round God?’

‘Every single one of us would have been doing the same thing while trying to ensure that nobody else could.’

‘But when God—’

‘GCHQ and the NSA keep all the most sensitive stuff on isolated systems.’

‘If we turn this over then it means people can hack God. It means it’s all over. God just becomes a voice on the net. Nothing more than a depressed search engine.’

Vicar actually smiled at this.

‘That was inevitable. They are already trying to circumvent him, destroy him, subvert him. Yes?’ I nodded. ‘For some reason the demands of technology and commerce long ago superseded human concerns. We always try and kill our gods in the end.’

‘So it was for nothing. It’ll just go back to the way it is. That prick Sharcroft is already trying to make it happen.’

‘Nothing? Christ’s life was short.’

‘Look, don’t start giving me this religious bollocks.’

‘He changed everything. If nothing else, then God has at least shown everyone what is happening. The rest is up to us, it always has been. God was just a tool, as are arguably all gods. And it’s not religious bollocks; the whole thing was a secular revelation. Obviously I was just drawing a parallel.’ He was sounding less like Vicar, the frothing religious lunatic I’d known, and more like a university teacher in some old viz.

The church burst into flames.

‘Are we being attacked?’ I asked, alarmed.

‘It’s a virus.’

‘From outside? An attack?’ Vicar went and stood in the flames. They engulfed him but he wasn’t burning like human flesh would.

‘Break the fifth seal, Jakob.’

Despite myself I was backing away from the flames. I could feel the heat from them, virtual or not.

‘They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the Earth and avenge our blood?” Break the fifth seal, Jakob, because Rolleston will surely break the sixth.’

I was retreating from the flames. So Vicar had finally reverted to type. Except he wasn’t roaring and screaming, eyes rolling; he seemed calm and sane though he was burning like paper.

‘Have you had a religious experience, Jakob? A visitation, an epiphany.’

‘It was bollocks, a hallucination, like all of you.’ Even I wasn’t sure I believed that.

‘I know where Satan has his throne, Jakob. It makes the Atlantis facility look like some back-alley harvester operation.’

‘Where?’ I demanded.

‘Lalande 2, the Citadel.’ Then he started to laugh. ‘We have made a covenant, you and I. I need you to seal it!’

‘How?’ I was shouting now, as the roar of the flames was so loud. The church was burning like paper. Vicar told me how.

I was sitting on the floor next to Vicar’s bed. I couldn’t look at him and do this. The stench of the place really hit me this time – old blood, fear, sweat, shit, piss – it was an abomination.

If I was going to do this then I had to do it now before I lost the nerve. I stood up and walked away from the bed. My shoulder laser unfolded itself and pushed its way through the shoulder flap of my coat. The targeting window appeared in my IVD. I thought it would be easier using the shoulder laser, not pulling the trigger myself. I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see my friend reduced to so much bloody steam, scorched flesh and bone. The problem with the targeting screen is it doesn’t matter if your eyes are closed or not. The bang of the superheated air particles was obscene, as was the flash of red light in the dark warehouse.

I hadn’t wanted to kill any more, and now I had. A friend of mine. Vicar was like everyone else, just another one of Rolleston’s victims.

As I headed for the door my flash compensators kicked in as high-powered lights stabbed in through the dirty windows and the slightly ajar door. I’d been aware of company since I’d come out of the sense trance. They weren’t quiet. I couldn’t be bothered to wait for them to come in and get me and couldn’t think of a way out. I decided to get it over and done with.

Outside was very bright. There were lots of flashing lights, sirens and shouting people with guns. It reminded me of docking at High Nyota Mlima, the tethered space station at the top of the Kenyan Spoke, after the mutiny on the
Santa Maria
.

As I followed the shouted instructions and walked forward, hands held high, a couple of things bothered me. Where were Vicar’s guards? I sank to my knees as ordered, the advancing C-SWAT team covering me all the time. I felt notorious. That lasted until I was kicked down onto my face and my hands secured. And how could Vicar have known about what I saw in the Dog’s Teeth? I was trying to forget what I’d seen myself.

Then of course the inevitable kicking began.

I’d taken worse beatings but it was pretty extensive. When they got tired of bruising fists and feet on subcutaneous armour they started to use sticks. My internal systems make me resistant to shock but they can be overloaded, like the Wait did in Crawling Town. They had a go at overloading my systems. Pretty much my only ray of light was when a few of them managed to electrocute each other. My biggest complaint was the poor quality of the threats. They had a limited repertoire mainly based around anal rape.

I tried not to rise to any of it. Regiment training was to try and remain as passive as possible. I pretty much had to use all my self-control to not take the piss. I suppose I should’ve been angry with them, but if somebody had done to a Wild Boy what I had done to those four police just outside Pitlochry we would have made sure they wound up dead.