A Quantum Mythology (6 page)

Du Bois screamed with exertion as he rammed the blade with sheer strength through rib bones, cutting downwards in a C-shape to the stomach before blood made the hilt of the blade too slick to hold and he lost his grip on it. Silas dropped both of his blades. Du Bois kicked the killer in the chest, causing more of his innards to spill out, and Silas stumbled back and slipped on his own entrails.

The Knight stood over the killer. Silas stared up at him. He did not like pain – that was for others. It was nearly intolerable, but it was seeping out of him now. He felt real hatred for the man standing over him, but found he had nothing to say.

Du Bois ran the sabre through the killer’s heart and left it there. He might still have the ability to heal, but not with the blade in the wound.

He spared a moment to look down at the Hellaquin. He despised archers as a breed. Filthy creatures who spread disease by covering their arrowheads with their own excrement and killed good horse, all because they were too lazy to learn to fight properly, and too cowardly to confront their enemies face to face.

Du Bois stepped over the body and went to retrieve his pistols. He holstered one and started reloading the other. He had a special pistol ball for Silas. It was hollow and filled with the Knight’s blood, designed specifically to seek out and kill whatever dwelt in the blood of other immortals. He had mainly used its like to hunt down and kill agents of the Brass City.

‘Malcolm?’ The voice was quiet and incredibly deep. Du Bois glanced behind him. Two people were standing there. They had passed unnoticed through the blood wards he had left in the air.

‘Mr Brown,’ du Bois said to the taller of the two strange figures. His skin was as near black as du Bois had ever seen, yet Mr Brown did not have African features. He was a little under six and a half feet tall, dressed in understated, dark-coloured finery. He carried an elegant silver-tipped dark-wood cane. In his other hand was the always-present and ornately carved opium pipe. As du Bois watched, Mr Brown took a long draw from the pipe. As far as du Bois could see, Mr Brown derived little pleasure from the opium and it never noticeably affected him. His appearance was so singular that du Bois always wondered why he had such a hard time remembering what Mr Brown looked like.

Next to him was the Pennangalan, one of the infamous twin cannibal queens of the South Pacific who claimed to be heirs to something called the Khmer Empire. Du Bois looked around. He was surprised to see the Pennangalan without her sister. Perhaps rumours of her twin returning to the Pacific were true after all.

She wore a featureless mask of beaten silver that covered her entire face. Her long black hair was gathered in a ponytail, which in turn was secured in a loop that reminded du Bois of a hangman’s noose. She wore a loose shirt and trousers, and soft-soled hide boots. What little skin that remained on show was either intricately tattooed, tanned or weather-beaten. A curved, sabre-like
dao
hung from a scabbard on her belt. She also carried a pair of
dha-hmyaung
daggers and a brace of ornate flintlocks, their barrels carved into the shape of serpents’ maws. Du Bois had once heard tell that the sisters’ blood came from the mythical Naga themselves, and that Mr Brown had given them the choice of working for the Circle or being destroyed.

The Pennangalan pushed past du Bois and walked over to where Silas lay on the wooden boards of the winch platform.

‘Leave him,’ du Bois told her as he rammed the ball into the barrel of his pistol. The Pennangalan ignored du Bois and dragged the sabre out of Silas’s body. ‘And don’t touch my sword.’ Du Bois’ sabre clattered to the ground.

Life returned explosively to Silas and he dragged in a long, rasping breath. The Pennangalan used a foot to keep him down on the boards.

‘This man is a sickness. There is no requirement for his continued existence,’ du Bois said as he primed the pistol.

‘There is no requirement that you can see,’ Mr Brown said softly. ‘The Circle feels otherwise. He will be put in a place where he can do no harm.’

‘Why?’ du Bois asked.

Mr Brown spread his arms apologetically, indicating that he either did not know or could not tell him.

‘I’m afraid that’s not good enough.’ Du Bois felt rather than heard the Pennangalan shifting position behind him.

A rasping, wet laugh arose from Silas. ‘I’m going to enjoy killing you,’ he mocked. ‘You want there to be a reason. There isn’t. You want me to be different from you. I am. I admit that I kill for pleasure. You pretend to kill for power.’ Mr Brown was gesturing for Silas to be quiet. ‘You pretend to be righteous, but we know the truth, you and I, don’t we?’

It was too much for du Bois. He swung around, cocking the pistol as he turned. He was aware of the flare from a muzzle flash in the ceiling beams at the other end of the Manufactory. Then he heard the sound of the shot. The etched, saboted bullet hit him in the back right where his heart was. His clothing and skin were too slow to harden and the bullet went straight through him as the Pennangalan brought her
dao
down. The pistol and his hand fell to the wooden boards of the winch platform.

Du Bois hit the wall and slid down it. He felt himself being turned over. Mr Brown was standing over him with an expression of sadness on his entirely forgettable face.

‘Why are you always so wilful, Malcolm?’ he asked. Behind him the Pennangalan was helping Silas off the winch platform.

Du Bois knew he would heal but it still felt like dying. Mr Brown bowed his head and closed his eyes as if he was praying, and then he turned and walked away. Du Bois cried out as he felt his knowledge of these events disappear as if they were being slowly stolen. Tears sprang from blue eyes.

Outside the Manufactory the American joined them. His long-barrelled rifle was slung across his back. The Pennangalan was helping Silas into a luxurious black coach with an interior of upholstered red leather. It was pulled by four powerful-looking black horses.

‘He’s right – that creature is scum,’ the American said.

‘I am going to hide him from the sight of all good people,’ Mr Brown said. ‘Even you.’

The American looked sceptical, but he climbed up onto the driver’s seat as Mr Brown entered the carriage and took another deep draw on his pipe. He didn’t see the look of fear on Silas’s face.

5

A Long Time After the Loss

The Monk strode through the passages of the immersion monastery. The door to the monastic cell gave her a moment’s trouble, but she had the
Lazerene
’s AI override the lockout codes on the contemplation immersion.

The handle of the thick, iron-reinforced door felt cold against her calloused palm as it turned, and she stepped into the cramped stone cell. It was windowless, the only furniture a crude cot on the floor against one of the walls. Brother Benedict was kneeling, his cassock stripped down to the waist. His body was covered with tattooed equations describing fifth-dimensional thought experiments. He looked like he was praying, but observing the equations on his skin change, the Monk knew that his solitary contemplation was an opportunity to use his neunonics software to work on a number of extra-dimensional physics problems.

‘No,’ Benedict said quietly. He had the accepted body sculpt of a physically fit base male seen all across Known Space, though part of his tonsure betrayed a receding hairline that he wasn’t vain enough to hide. The Monk knew that Benedict had had the same cold, dead eyes as his father until he’d had them redesigned.

‘I’m sorry, Benedict.’

‘You may have me backed up here but that’s twice now he’s killed me. I don’t enjoy the experience.’

‘If it’s any consolation, Scab has killed me once as well.’

‘It’s not.’

‘The first time was your own fault. You were hunting him.’

‘I designed my own psycho-surgical procedures after that. I changed my mind so I wasn’t like that any more. I was doing a lot of combat drugs back then.’

‘It was an unsanctioned mission.’

Benedict turned to the Monk. His blue eyes looked wrong. They were somehow too expressive for his face, as if he was trying to fake warmth that just wasn’t there.

‘I did my penance. It did not include being repeatedly killed by that psycho until he actually manages to get a virus past our security and permanently scrambles my backups.’ The Monk didn’t say anything. Benedict concentrated for a moment. ‘I’m not still in the Cathedral, am I?’

‘No. I’m sorry – we had your body loaded aboard the
Lazerene
.’

Benedict used his thumb and forefinger to massage the bridge of his nose.

‘We’ve lost your father—’

‘Don’t call him that.’ It was a growl. The Monk would never admit it to Benedict, but she could see noticeable similarities in their mannerisms, despite the son only ever having met his father twice.

‘This is important or we wouldn’t ask. You’re our expert. You studied him when you were tracking him down.’

‘And I would have removed that information from my head if Churchman had let me.’ He turned back to face the wall. ‘Do you know, when the Church “found” me, Churchman was going to have me destroyed? He thought I was some kind of hereditary “bad seed”. He was almost right.’ The Monk knew this but chose to remain quiet. ‘I have no connection to that man beyond being the result of him impregnating my mother and then meat-hacking her to make sure I went full term. If you were to download all the information I have on him, you would know as much.’

‘Churchman doesn’t believe it.’

‘I know, but his belief in an intuitive connection is bordering on the superstitious.’

‘When the Consortium caught him, they recorded his personality in their Psycho Banks.’ The Psycho Banks were used to record significantly aberrant personalities for profiling purposes.

Benedict came up on one knee as he looked at her again. The Monk actually tensed slightly before she remembered the pointlessness of attacking someone in this particular immersion. There was emotion on his face now. Horror.

‘You don’t know what you’re suggesting. You’re talking about putting the mind of a heretical, recreational killer inside me and letting him run free?’

‘You’ll be in control, and under strict supervision.’

Benedict was on his feet and pacing now. ‘It’s all about will for him, will and control. If he has the will to do what the other guy won’t, he wins. Winning is only important in that he will have control, or, more importantly, that nobody has control over him. He has two ways to resolve problems. He will often take the most direct – and probably violent – route. He will court atrocity. He will tell himself he does this as a warning to others, but I think that’s the residual sickness no amount of psychosurgery could eat out of him. If he does not take that route, then he will try to come up with the most convoluted, unexpected plan. He will look to completely wrong-foot his opponents.’ There was desperation in his voice.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Monk told him, and meant it.

‘He’s not giving me any choice?’ Benedict asked, incredulously. The Monk just looked at him sympathetically. ‘It’ll be like a possession. Whatever you … he thinks, I’m not like him. I’m going to drown.’ Benedict was pleading now.

‘We’ll destroy you, utterly, and then clone you.’

‘He’s like a virus. He destroys everything he touches. You don’t want my help – you want a ritual sacrifice!’

‘So how are we committing suicide today?’ Vic asked as he walked into the medical area of the bizarre heretical cult’s asteroid habitat. Mindful of his audience, he was speaking in the pre-Loss language their captive understood.

‘I’m tired of your negative attitude,’ Scab said quietly. Vic could tell that the normally emotionless human was actually irritated, but he wasn’t sure it was with him.

‘You’ve got a death wish,’ Vic pointed out defensively.

‘Which I’m very positive about, and proactive in my pursuit thereof.’

‘I knew a lot of guys like you,’ Talia said from the smart-matter couch that had been designed to fit in with the general stone decor of the church. There was a tremor in her voice. She was trying to brazen through seeing a near-seven-feet-tall cybernetic insect, but the fear – bordering on terror – in her tone was difficult to disguise.

Vic had to admit the heretical sect that was sheltering them might have resources that looked rudimentary, but they’d regrown him just fine. Presumably Scab had arranged for the hard-tech augments. A lot of them had been salvaged from his last body, but there were new components, too, and even some upgrades. That was the problem with bounty killing – you always had to be upgrading, because if you didn’t, you could be sure the other guy would.

Vic studied the pale girl lying on the couch. He was fairly sure she was pretty by human standards. He even ran some image analysis to be certain. Studying her through the various visual spectrums he had access to, as well as passive scans from his antennae, she looked all wrong. She was just too natural. Even the farmed nats he’d encountered in the past tended to have some tweaked genetic component to help with longevity, or whatever purpose they’d been bred for. Scab was watching him.

‘She’s not what she appears,’ Scab said, seeming to read his thoughts. Scab moved to stand over her couch. The girl did her best not to cower away from him.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ the girl demanded. Scab ignored her and ’faced the results of the human female’s medical tests to the ’sect. Vic reviewed them quickly. His mandibles clattered together as he let off a complex mix of pheromones and wished he could do that whistling thing humans did when they were impressed by something. The girl was baseline human, clearly pre-Loss. Her body, however, was crawling with living Seeder bio-nano-tech.

Vic looked down at her. She was wearing a black lace dress with some kind of leather bodice and spike-heeled boots. He didn’t recognise the style, so she must have used the cult’s aging assembler to make it.

‘You seem nicer than him,’ she said warily.

‘He makes that very easy,’ Vic said.

‘For a big insect.’

Vic held out his lower-right hand. She shrank away from the powerful-looking three-digit mechanical appendage.

‘Hi. I’m Vic,’ he said as cheerfully as he could manage in the circumstances. Talia plucked up the courage to shake his hand.

‘So are you going to hurt me as well?’ she asked, swallowing hard.

Vic glanced at Scab. ‘What have you been telling her?’ he demanded.

‘That I can’t make any promises,’ Scab said, studying Talia. ‘It’s strange – say anything to her and she’ll look for the most negative possible outcome. She’s like you, in a way.’

‘I suspect you bring that out in people. I was pretty upbeat when I worked the T-Squads.’

‘T-Squads?’ Talia asked. Vic suspected it was as much because she was tired of people talking about her in front of her as because she actually wanted the information.

‘Thunder Squads, they were an elite army—’

‘They destroyed cities for their masters,’ Scab interrupted.

‘So you’re a killer, too?’

‘Most people are, we’re just better at it,’ Vic said, and then worried that he might have sounded a little absurd. She was just staring at him.

‘When are you planning to let me go?’ she asked.

‘Why would we do that?’ Scab asked absently.

‘We did go to rather a lot of trouble to get you,’ Vic told her, thinking it would make her feel better, but he saw her tear-up. ‘Where would you go, anyway? Without a debit rating you’d never get very far, and there are a lot of other bad people looking for you out there.’

‘Who?’ she asked through the tears.

‘Well, the Ch—’ Vic started, but Scab held a hand up for quiet.

Talia looked between the two of them. ‘Those are the people you want to sell me to?’ she demanded.

Vic didn’t say anything. Some of the psychosurgery that had redesigned his insectile mind to be more like the humans he admired so much had left him with a feeling that he’d eventually identified as guilt. Most of the people he traded, or killed, were involved in the same world he was. Innocents were hard to find. Maybe some of the more sheltered Consortium children, but he doubted it – he’d met them on jobs and they seemed just as grasping and spiteful as everyone else. Talia, on the other hand, appeared to be as close as he was likely to find to an innocent. He found himself wanting to protect her.

‘I don’t want to be sold,’ she told them.

‘Who does?’ Scab asked.

‘It happens to us all in one way or another,’ Vic told her. ‘Look, you’re a valuable—’

‘Asset?’ she asked.

‘You’ll be well looked after wherever you end up.’

‘Or you’ll be vivisected,’ Scab pointed out.

Vic glanced at the human. ‘How does that help?’ the ’sect asked.

‘Help what? She’s a commodity, nothing more.’

Vic could tell that his human partner was starting to get exasperated again. The insect decided not to push it.

‘I want to be free,’ she told them. Insect and human just stared at her.

‘You can’t afford it,’ Vic said, surprising himself with the sadness he felt.

‘Your choice is you can be awake and aware, or we can drug you until we’re ready to dispose of you,’ Scab told her.

Vic watched her face crumple as more liquid leaked out of the corners of her eyes.

Scab looked confused. ‘She does this a lot,’ he told the insect.

Vic was busy looking up the meaning of certain human emotional states. After his internal liquid hardware had done some cross-referencing, he said, ‘Are you surprised, the way you speak to her?’ he demanded.

Scab turned to stare at the insect. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

Vic searched through the available data again. ‘Cause and effect?’ he suggested.

‘But I don’t care if she cries, beyond the irritating noise, which I can filter out when I need to.’

‘You’re such a fucking bastard!’ Talia screamed at Scab.

Scab gave an exasperated sigh and walked out of the medical area.

‘Wait!’ Talia cried. ‘I’m sorry. You mentioned drugs?’

‘I meant sedating you,’ Scab said without looking at her.

‘I think some drugs might help, y’know? I’ll be calmer.’

Scab glanced at her. Vic was pretty sure Scab was at the end of what little patience he had. He reached into the breast pocket of his tatty brown pinstripe suit and pulled out a beaten-up metal case.

‘Do you know what to do with this?’ he asked. Talia looked at him, unsure. He walked over to the medical couch and opened the small case, which contained his works.

‘Surely we could just have the medical suite—’ Vic started.

‘Shut up,’ Scab told him quietly.

Talia stared at the works. Scab was watching her reaction. Vic saw Talia swallow hard. He wasn’t sure but he suspected that the stainless-steel syringe and the packet of brown powder were a bit more hard core than she’d expected.

‘Well?’ Scab asked.

‘What if it messes up, y’know, whatever it is that’s in her?’ Vic asked.

‘It won’t,’ Scab said quietly, still watching Talia.

Talia nodded nervously and picked up the works. Scab reached into his other breast pocket and took out his cigarette case. To Vic’s mind, the cigarettes were Scab’s other pointless retro vice. The human killer took one out and lit it.

‘Could I have one, please?’ Talia asked. He gave her a cigarette, and even lit it for her. She smiled up at him through her tears. Something about the smile made Vic angry. Scab left the medical area. Vic watched Talia as she gingerly examined Scab’s works, then followed his partner out.

‘Hey!’ Vic said. He watched Scab tense and pause in the vaulted corridor before turning around slowly. Vic stopped dead as he realised he might be pushing his luck. ‘You don’t have to be so nasty about everything.’ He suddenly felt foolish. Scab took a step towards the large insect. Vic resisted the urge to take a step back.

‘Did you see me being nasty in there?’ Scab asked.

Vic gave this some thought. ‘No,’ he finally admitted. ‘What’s getting to you? If she annoys you that much, why not just keep her sedated, lock her in an immersion, make her think she’s back wherever she came from?’

You had to know Scab pretty well to see it – emotions made little impact on his facial expressions – but Vic didn’t like the unease the question had caused his partner.

‘I’m looking for something.’ Scab finally answered.