Does Rafiq know about these people? was his closing thought as he crumpled to the ground. He has to. Rafiq knows everything.
4
Anwar settled back into his black and silver chair and pressed his wrist implant. Rafiq’s face reappeared on the inner surface of his retina.
“…our hosts, the New Anglicans. When an environment changes, omnivores, not specialists, adapt best. The New Anglicans are omnivores, feeding over a broad spectrum, from religious near-fundamentalists to secular near-atheists.
They’ve taken spectacular advantage of a changing political, spiritual, cultural, and economic environment.
“The New Anglican Church was founded in 2025 as a counterweight to fundamentalist Islam, although by the time it appeared the need for it was already disappearing; main-stream Islam had effectively disowned fundamentalism. The New Anglicans flourished, however, because of their omnivorous robustness: their creeds and teachings could sound like all things to all people.
“Also, they were exceptionally well-run, with gifted and charismatic leaders. And still are. The current leader and Archbishop (unlike the Old Anglicans, they have only one Archbishop) is Olivia del Sarto.”
There was some more about her, much of which he already knew from the news channels: her abilities and background, her organisational skills, her likely allies and enemies. And her spectacular success in her five years as Archbishop, causing upheavals in religious fundamentalism. Anwar, because of his own intense dislike of fundamentalism, knew this part particularly well.
Fundamentalists would never completely go away. The
Islamists were marginalised but still powerful, and (because marginalised) harder to trace. Fundamentalist Christian sects were well-entrenched political lobbies, with good networks. So were the fundamentalist single-issue movements, like those against abortion or birth control, or those in favour of
Creationism or faith-based education. Frighteningly, some of them were setting aside their historical differences to make common cause against what they perceived as a more serious threat from the New Anglicans—a scabrous courtship between extremists, like earlier courtships between Nazis and
Communists. Olivia del Sarto called it the Batoth’Daa: the Back to the Dark Ages Alliance. Like one of my private nick-names, Anwar thought approvingly. It put them on the back foot, always having to deny it.
“So,” Rafiq’s briefing continued, “Olivia del Sarto reinvented the New Anglicans as a centre of rationalism, confident and assertive because they didn’t have the baggage of older churches like the Catholics or Old Anglicans. They could choose which doctrines to discard, which to keep. They became more like a political movement crossed with a socially-aware business corporation.”
Anwar paused the briefing as a thought returned to him, one that wouldn’t go away. It was related to the Tournament.
He’d carried out thirteen missions for Rafiq in seven years, and had killed only once, and then almost by accident: a bodyguard with an unsuspected heart condition, sent into massive shock by Anwar’s blurring speed. Speed was the key.
Consultants had a 90 percent advantage in speed over most opponents. In the other three “S” categories their advantage was 30 to 60 percent, but speed was the key. It made everything else possible.
The details of their enhancement and training were overwhelming—musculature, bone structure, internal organs, neurological processes, sensory abilities, all transformed—but the outcome was simple. They were beyond black belt, or its equivalent, in all the main martial arts, armed or unarmed.
As a by-product, they were also beyond Olympic standard in most athletic and field disciplines.
And the thought which had made him pause: there are only eighteen others like me in the world, and nine or ten of them are better than me. It nagged him and picked at him and obsessed him. Even more so since the Tournament.
Ironically, the shuto strike which broke his opponent’s collarbone had been a good one, well-executed and with just the right weight. He remembered the feel of the collarbone shearing—not shattering, but shearing cleanly—under the edge of his hand. His hands and feet, and elbows and knees, and any other striking surfaces of his body, could— if he willed them to—become strengthened locally at the molecular level at the point of impact, acquiring the density of close-grain hardwood. Most of his abilities were powered by enhanced organic processes, not by metal or machinery or electronics.
So, a good shuto strike: if he’d got it wrong, it would have continued through his opponent’s body and out at the shoulder-blade. But it was the result of an earlier mistake. And it left him with a lousy Tournament time. Which in turn left him with a mission involving mere bodyguard duties.
Except that this time, there was something different.
He gestured, and another immersion hologram, one he’d programmed himself, replaced his living room: the reception at Fallingwater. The colours and textures always relaxed him, and he needed relaxing. There was something ominous about this mission…No, not now. Later.
5
When Levin woke the reception room was still there. So was the Fallingwater decor. It wasn’t a hologram, he decided. The textures and colours, the weave of the stone-white fabric covering the sofas, seemed too tangible. No quivering round the edges. A real replica. And—the architect part of him kicked in automatically—not of Frank Lloyd Wright’s original, but larger. Scaled up, like Rafiq’s house. And the eight who’d been waiting for him (eight, not nine; the other one had gone) were lounging among the groups of sofas like Rafiq’s staff had been lounging when he’d last been at the real Fallingwater. No, the real replica Fallingwater. So this wasn’t a hologram, but a genuine replica, of Rafiq’s original replica. His head hurt, not because of any violence done to him, but with the strain of following his own thoughts.
He remembered that Anwar liked this interior. He, Levin, didn’t particularly: he thought interiors should be one thing or the other, either grandiose or minimalist, and this was neither.
He was sitting in one of the impeccable Frank Lloyd Wright armchairs. He had no choice. His wrists and ankles were tied. Also his forearms. Also his thighs. Also his torso. And his neck. The fact of being restrained neither surprised nor disturbed him, but the fact that he’d been restrained with monofilament disturbed him very much. As did the fact that even if it hadn’t been monofilament—even if it had been something he could break or loosen, like industrial cable or steel hawsers—whoever had tied it had done so with an obvious knowledge of how he might try to break free. There were blocks and local strengthenings in all the right places.
This seemed an incongruous place for torture—a cellar, though rather obvious, was the usual preferred location—but the prospect of torture didn’t disturb him. He could shut out his pain receptors, even wind down to death if irreparably damaged.
One of the eight people lounging on the sofas turned to him.“We know you have in built defences against torture.You won’t need them. We have no plans to torture you.”
After which they continued conversing among themselves.
It wasn’t acting. They were genuinely behaving as if he wasn’t there. Two of them got up and walked past him, and he caught a snatch of their conversation.
“A hundred years from now, none of this will matter.” “No. A thousand maybe, but not a hundred.”