He returned one minute later.
“Ma’am, their names are…”
“Mandella.” She pointed to the leather-bound book on the ground beside her. “The youngest is the son of Limaal Mandella.”
“Rael Jr., ma’am.”
“So.”
“The other two are . .
“Gallacelli. Sevriano and Batisto. I knew their faces were familiar. The last time I saw them they were two years old.”
“Ma’am.”
“I’d like to speak with the prisoners. Have them brought here. And give them back their clothes. Naked men are pathetic.”
When Sub-lieutenant Estramadura had left, Arnie Tenebrae stroked her fingers over her short, fur-fine hair; stroke stroke stroke, manic, compulsive stroking. Mandella. Gallacelli. Quinsana. Hidden behind the cover of the book, Alimantando. Was it divinely ordained that she could never-ever never get away from them? Did the whole town of Desolation Road sail around the world like a cloud of pursuit, seeking to drag her back into stagnation and stultification? What crime had she committed that the past must visit its punishment generation upon generation; was it so vile a thing to desire a name written in the sky? She toyed with the idea of having them quickly, quietly, anonymously killed. She dismissed it. It would be impossible to do so. This meeting was Cosmically Ordained. It had happened before, was happening now, would happen again. She studied them as they knelt across the fire from her; blinking and smarting in the smoky hut. So this was her grandnephew. She saw them peering through the smoke for her but she was invisible to them, backlit by strong sunlight streaming through the bamboo. Jean-Michel Gastineau opened his mouth to speak.
“Peace, venerable one. I know you too well. I know the name Mandella, and I know the name Gallacelli.”
“Who are you?” asked Rael Jr. He was bold. That was good.
“You know me. I’m the demon that eats up little babies, the bogeyman that scares children to bed, I’m evil incarnate, so it would seem. I an Arnie Tenebrae. I’m your great-aunt, Rael Jr.” And because it pleased her to do so, she told the tale of stolen babies, the tale that her phantom father had told her and that had brought her to this precise place and moment. The expressions of horror on her grand-nephew’s face pleased her greatly. “But why so horrified, Rael? From what I hear, you’re as great a criminal as I.”
“That’s not so. I’m fighting for justice for the oppressed against tyrannical regime of Bethlehem Ares Steel.”
“Easily said, but do me the favour of sparing me your zealous cant. I understand completely. I have been that way before you. You may go now.”
When Sub-lieutenant Estramadura returned after locking the prisoners in their cage, once more Arnie Tenebrae was washing her hands and staring at them with rapt fascination.
“Shall I have them shot, ma’am? It is common practice.”
“Common indeed. No. Return their packs to them, unmolested, and escort them to the north forest wall by New Hallsbeck. They are free to go. There are forces at work here greater than common practice.”
Sub-lieutenant Estramadura did not leave.
“Do it.” She visualised him stripped and spread-eagled between two trees and left for sun, rain and starvation. When he returned, she thought. He really was too stupid to be allowed to live. She watched the Jaguar patrol escort the exiles out of the valley into the woods. A Parliamentarian reconaissance aircraft droned over toward the Tethys Hills in the east. Camouflage squads scurried about in a frenzy of nets, bushes and tarpaulins.
—Pretty pretty airbirds, Quinsana. Call them down, call down fire from heaven, call down the world-cracking ROTECH space weapons, call heaven to fall on me, call the Panarch Himself to annihilate me, but I can go one better. I have the key to the Ultimate Weapon! The melodrama pleased her. She remembered Rael Mandella Jr.’s leather-bound books. She remembered the walls of Dr. Alimantando’s home, all covered in the arcana of chronodynamics. Had she but paid more heed to it then. She smiled a thin smile to herself.
—I can have mastery of time.
She called her general staff to her. They squatted in a semicircle on the dirt floor of her hut.
“Prepare all divisions and sections to move out.”
“But ma’am, the defences, the preparations for the final battle.”
She looked long and dangerous at Sub-major Jonathon Bi. He talked far too much. He needed to learn the value of silence.
“The final battle will just have to be fought somewhere else.”
56
Since Johnny Stalin replaced all his immediate staff with robots, the efficiency ratings had trebled. Such was the brilliance of his scheme that he spent many a long afternoon in his private massage studio under the fingers of Tai Manzanera; meditating upon the brilliance of his scheme. As robots never tired, never slept, never consumed or excreted, they never needed paying. The wages of their tireless labours went to support their fleshly originals desporting themselves on permanent vacation at the polar ski resorts, the island paradises of the Tysus Sea, or in the vice dungeons of Belladonna and Kershaw’s Rubber Alley. As long as the substitutions went undiscovered, the scheme would continue to be all things to all men.
“Brilliant,” Johnny Stalin told himself, gazing out of his 526th floor wall-window at the deformed landscapes around Kershaw. He remembered the dread that poisoned land had provoked in an eight-and-three-quarteryear-old boy arriving at the great cube. Now he loved the sludge pools and oil gushers. He had taken his many beloveds to promenade by Sepia Bay and whispered love’s sweet syllables through his respirator into the receptive ears. Profit, Empire, Industry. What was a dead lake, a few poisoned rivers, a few slagged hillsides? Priorities, that was what it was about. Priorities and Progress.
Knock on the door, “Enter,” bow, and Carter Housemann; rather, Carter Housemann’s robot double, was beside him.
“Postcards from China Mountain, St. Maud Station and New Brazil Jungleworld, the usual thanks and praises.” The last three replacees seemed content. And as long as the credit in their accounts continued to amass month by month they would continue to be content. “Also, the latest reports from the Desolation Road project.”
Johnny Stalin’s genial humour fled him.
“Tell me the worst.” He rolled onto his back for Tai Manzanera to pummel his stomach. Still firm, thank God. Can’t afford the least sign of weakness in upper management.
“Good news and bad news, sir. Production levels are back to normal and resistance to industrial-feudal principles has been largely eradicated. Still some black-marketeering hitting the Company commissaries and a lack of support among the citizenry of Desolation Road, but the Concordat Organization has been effectively dispersed in the wake of the destruction of its managerial echelons.”
“You can lay off the Company-speak with me. If that’s the good news, what’s the bad?” Transplant surgery kept the ulcers tolerable but three replacement stomachs and small intestines in as many years was more than the worth of the Desolation Road project.
“We have information that Rael Mandella Jr. plans to return to Desolation Road to avenge his grandfather’s death. Also, we know that he has been in contact with the Whole Earth Army Tactical Group in South Chryse.”
“Child of grace. There, on the thighs, love. That family. Bad about the old man though. I knew him well when I was a kid. Shouldn’t have done that.”
“There was a certain revanchist element at work under the lead of the security director. However, there is an expression about omelettes and eggs, sir. I also have information that Taasmin Mandella is organizing a protest march to coincide with your visit to the works next month. I have heard that children all over the world have been receiving visions from the Blessed Lady herself: there have been two cases reported here in Kershaw, both children stole rides on transport dirigibles.”