Some of the other Freetown Camps hadn’t been as lucky as 12. Over a dozen of them had been ‘sanitised’, as BPIC put it. As had Hygeia. I don’t know why God hadn’t been able to stop Demiurge in a city that size – perhaps Rolleston had sent larger ships with more space for Demiurge – but more than two hundred thousand people had died in the subsequent plasma bombardment from BPIC and system patrol ships. Two hundred thousand. It was just a number. A number heated by liquid fire that will burn in space and then cool in vacuum. I didn’t see the ballet of all those bodies blown into the cold night. The figure was so abstract I struggled to feel the anger I should have.
While the Black Squadrons had earned themselves another enemy in BPIC, they had managed to cripple the logistical support of the mining operations in the Belt. In doing so they had of course denied those resources to Earth. What we couldn’t work out was why had all those people turned. Why had the Vucari gone over to Rolleston? The most obvious explanation was that they had been slaved. If so it was a new and more sophisticated form of slaving because they’d had no slave jacks in their plugs and they didn’t seem to suffer the drop-off in performance than comes with slaveware.
Once the ritual part of the tea ceremony was over and we could converse normally Mudge had suggested brainwashing. Then he’d explained the concept. It was basically a form of psychological coercion to do what you’re told. We called it basic training in the army. Pagan had suggested that it was never as total or as effective as it had seemed on the Vucari.
‘Possession?’ I asked as Nuiko ladled tea from an iron pot set in a hole in the ground. Even serving the tea seemed complex. Nuiko was small, slender, pale, and wearing a simple dark kimono. Her features were a composed expressionless mask. I found this faintly disconcerting. I also didn’t like that she never met my eyes, particularly as I was wearing my Sunday-best icon, which Morag had made for me. The one where I had my natural eyes, or what Morag thought they should look like.
‘And this from someone with no faith,’ Pagan scoffed. He was in his Druidical icon, except that he too wore a kimono like the rest of us. The kimonos were a piece of code gifted to us by Nuiko. It was code that had been thoroughly vetted by Morag and Pagan before it got anywhere near us.
‘It happens,’ Morag said. Presumably irritated at having to back me up. She too wore a kimono and I was relieved that she was wearing her Maiden of Flowers icon out of respect for our host rather than the Black Annis. I didn’t like the Black Annis icon and I didn’t want to meet it while Morag was still so angry at me. That said, I hadn’t forgotten that Morag could kill me in here. I was only slightly worried that the tea might contain a piece of biofeedback poison code. Still it tasted nice when we finally were allowed to taste it and had been quiet long enough for our conversation to be proper.
‘So I’ve heard,’ Pagan said, smiling patronisingly. ‘To anybody you’ve known?’
‘Well no,’ Morag said, suddenly unsure of herself.
‘It’s a myth,’ Mudge said. His icon looked like himself without augmentation. I think it was more of Morag’s work. He’d only been allowed into the tea room sanctum after he’d promised Pagan that he’d behave.
‘Like the spirits in the net?’ I asked, bowing slightly to Nuiko, like Pagan had taught us, as she poured me some more tea. Pagan started to answer. ‘I’ve seen an exorcism,’ I said, forestalling his reply.
‘Bullshit,’ Mudge said and then studiously ignored Pagan’s glare of disapproval.
‘In Fintry, Vicar did it.’
‘Very convincing theatre, I’ve no doubt,’ Pagan said. For someone who wanted us to behave in here he seemed to be desperate to get slapped.
‘Maybe, but the guy was a howling lunatic, and according to friends and kin he was acting differently and knew stuff he shouldn’t. Vicar plugged himself into the guy. There was lots of screaming for someone who was supposed to be trancing, some thrashing around, a biofeedback kicking that Vicar swears hadn’t been inflicted by him, and then the guy was better,’ I finished.
‘There could be any number of-’ Pagan started.
‘Is it just the idea of this Demiurge possessing people that scares you badly?’ Merle asked. His voice was a deep rich baritone. It was also cold and emotionless.
I wasn’t sure I liked this guy. All he’d done since we’d come on board was eat the high-calorie combat rations we’d brought with us and exercise. Mudge had asked him how he’d managed to retain any degree of fitness while locked in the hole. Isometrics, Merle had told him. He did not have much time to get combat-ready after his imprisonment. Whatever we could say about him, he certainly seemed driven.
I wasn’t sure if Cat and him had sorted out their differences but I had come across them having a private conversation jacked into each other. Merle, like Cat, was wearing an off-the-shelf icon. The kimonos hung shapelessly off both of them.
‘No, I don’t like the idea, do you?’ Pagan asked, somewhat testily.
‘I don’t like any of this-’ Merle began.
‘Prefer to be in your hole?’ Mudge asked.
‘But I think we need to face up to what that means in terms of security,’ he said, glancing over at Nuiko. It was her house. We were in FTL; there was no one for her or God, who was in the Tetsuo Chou ’s systems, to tell out here. I’d agreed with Pagan’s call on that. Also it wasn’t as if she knew what we were going to be doing on the ground because we didn’t know ourselves. ‘It means that if any of us are taken we’re completely compromised and quickly.’
‘So we don’t get taken alive?’ Mudge said. He was smiling. I think going out in flash of glory was beginning to appeal to him.
‘You ready to kill any of us who gets captured?’ Merle asked.
‘Okay, you’ve proved how hard core you are. Let’s change the subject,’ I said, even though I knew he had a point.
‘Problem won’t go away,’ Merle said.
‘He’s right,’ Cat agreed. Though, like Morag agreeing with me, I think this cost her some.
‘I am prepared to kill any of us who gets captured,’ I said, ‘because I’ve seen the alternative. The people we killed used to be friends of mine.’ Except I knew I could never pull the trigger on Morag. I reflected that she had no such qualms, which was good. I didn’t want to find myself chewing down on a pile of corpses wearing someone else’s face. It didn’t seem dignified or hygienic.
‘How’d you get out of that hole anyway?’ Mudge asked. He was taking a lot of interest in our latest addition.
‘When the warewolf opened up the oubliette I just ran between its legs,’ Merle answered.
‘Simple as that?’ I asked.
‘Every second I’d been in that hole was preparation for that moment,’ he answered.
The problem was that we hadn’t had the chance to hang around and find out what was going on with the Vucari, why they’d done what they’d done. We’d had God relay the information of what we’d seen back to Earth, but that was the best we could do. Then we’d left on the Tetsuo Chou as quickly as we could, though if this was the opening move in the attack on Earth then for all we knew we could be passing Lalande’s colonial fleet in the night at FTL.
Merle was right, I had to admit. Everyone talks eventually, and eventually would become quickly if they used sense interrogation techniques because they could distend time. Even then we still had time. If Demiurge or whatever could actually possess then we had no time. If someone was taken that meant total compromise. That meant nobody went home, we just ran. So we needed to make sure that nobody got captured. That meant a suicide solution, which included a kill switch for a firestorm program in our internal electronic memories. More importantly it meant that we needed to be prepared to kill each other if we saw someone going down and we had the opportunity. Fighting Them was hard but less complicated. I missed Their simplicity.
Security-wise things had relaxed a little because we were self-contained. We would be keeping God out of planning as much as possible, but even he would have nobody to tell as he would not try and communicate with any Demiurge-infected system. Nuiko we would tell what she needed to know for her part of the job. Beyond that we would keep her in the dark as well. As much for her own good as ours. Talking to Pagan, though, I got the feeling that she would fly the Tetsuo Chou into the heart of a sun before she would allow herself to be compromised by the Black Squadrons.
My problem with Nuiko was that she was new and I didn’t understand her. Merle I didn’t trust but I had a frame of reference for him. Despite his behaviour he wasn’t a million miles removed from us. But Nuiko’s reserve
