They didn’t pose any threat, Reza decided. He waited until the horse was twenty metres away, then switched off his chameleon circuit. The horse took a few more paces before the man noticed him with a start. He reined in the lethargic animal and leaned over its neck to peer at Reza in bewilderment.
“What manner of . . . You’re not a possessed, you don’t have their emptiness.” His fingers clicked. “Of course! Combat boosted, that’s what you are. You came down from the starships yesterday.” He smiled and whooped, then swung a leg over the horse and slithered to the ground. “Come on, Russ, down you come, boy. They’re here, the navy marines are here. I said they’d come, didn’t I? I told you, never give up faith.” The boy virtually fell off the horse into his arms.
Reza went over to help. The man was none too steady on his feet, either, and one of his hands was heavily bandaged.
“Bless you, my son.” Horst Elwes embraced the surprised mercenary with tears of gratitude and supreme relief shining in his eyes. “God bless you. These weeks have been the sorest trial my Lord has ever devised for this weak mortal servant. But now you are here after all this time spent alone in the Devil’s own wilderness. Now we are saved.”
Chapter 11
Boston had fallen to the possessed, not that the rapidly disintegrating convocation of Norfolk’s martial authorities would admit it.
Edmund Rigby looked out of the hotel window, across the provincial city’s steep slate rooftops. Fires were still burning in the outlying districts where the militia troops had tried to force their way in. The Devonshire market square had been struck by a navy starship’s maser last Duchess-night. Its granite cobbles had transmuted to a glowing lava pool in less than a second. Even now, with its surface congealing and dimming, the heat was enough to barbecue food. Nobody had been in the square at the time; it was intended as a demonstration only. A show of naval might: you there, ant folk crawling on the filthy ground far below, we angels above have the very power of life and death over all of you. As one, the possessed had laughed at the circling starships, rendered impotent by their lack of targets. Yes, they had the physical power to destroy, but the fingers on the trigger were snared in the perpetual dilemma of the great and the good. Hostages had always struck a paralysing blow into the heart of governments. The starships wanted to pour sterilizing fire down from the sky, the officers yearning to burn the loathsome low-life crop of anarchists and revolutionaries from the pastoral idyll planet, but the city hadn’t been cleaned of decent people, the women and children and frail, kindly grandparents. As far as the planetary authorities and navy officers knew this was just an uprising, a political revolt, they believed the meek were still mingled with the wolves. The lofty orbiting angels had been castrated.
Even if they suspected, believed the rumours of atrocities and massacres flittering from mouth to mouth through the nearby countryside, they could do nothing. Boston was no longer alone in its dissent, it was simply the first. Edmund Rigby had planted the germs of insurgency in every city across the planet’s islands, cabals of possessed who were already annexing the populace. A captain in the Australian Marines, he had died from a landmine explosion in Vietnam in 1971; but he had studied military tactics, had even been sent to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth for officer training. And this vast space empire of Confederated planets, for all its awesome technology, was no different to the Earth upon which he had once walked. Vietcong insurgency tactics from the past were just as applicable now, and he knew them by heart. Securing the entire planet had been his principal objective since the vast merchant fleet had left Norfolk after midsummer.
Since he arrived he had been busy indeed. Toiling in the squalor and the horror and the blood which soiled the heart of every human soul. Those living, and those dead . . . and the ones trapped between.
He closed his eyes as if to shut out the memories of recent weeks and what he had become. But there was no respite. The hotel took on substance in his mind, walls and floors woven from shadows. People, us and them, glided through it, dopplered laughs and screams ricocheting through the grand corridors and sumptuous rooms. And, always, there, on the other side of the shadows, on the other side of everything: the beyond. Chittering souls clamouring for existence, silky insidious promises to be his lover, his slave, his acolyte. Anything, anything at all to be brought back.
Edmund Rigby shuddered in revulsion. Please, God, when we hide Norfolk from this universe let it also be hidden from the beyond. Let me have peace, and an end to all this.
Three of his lieutenants—selected from the more stable among the newly possessed—were dragging a captive along the corridor outside to his room. He stiffened his shoulders, letting the power swell within, giving his new body grandeur and poise, as well as a Napoleonic uniform, and turned to face the door.
They burst in, cheering and jeering, young turks from the worst of the backstreets, believing swagger and noise was an easy substitute for authority. But he grinned welcomingly at them anyway.
Grant Kavanagh was flung on the floor, bleeding from cuts on his face and hands, smeared in dirt, his fine militia uniform torn. Even so, he refused to be cowed. Edmund Rigby respected that, amongst the sadness. This one, with his conviction in God and self, would be hard to break. The thought pained him. Why oh why can’t they just give in?
“Present for you, Edmund,” Iqabl Geertz said. He had assumed his ghoul appearance, skin almost grey, cheeks sunken, eyeballs a uniform scarlet; thin frame dressed all in black. “One of the nobs. Got some fight in him. Thought he might be important.”
Don Padwick, in his lion-man state, growled suggestively. Grant Kavanagh twitched as the big yellow beast dropped onto all fours and padded over to him, tail whisking about.
“We captured his troops,” Chen Tambiah informed Edmund quietly. “They were about the last militia roaming free. Inflicted heavy casualties. Eight of us winged back to the beyond.” The dapper oriental, in ancient black and orange silks, cocked his head grudgingly towards Grant Kavanagh. “He’s a good leader.”
“Is that so?” Edmund Rigby asked.
Iqabl Geertz licked his lips with a long yellowed tongue. “It doesn’t make any difference in the end. He’s ours now. To do with as we like. And we know what we like.”
Grant Kavanagh looked up at him, one eye swollen shut. “When this is over, you mincing shit, and the rest of your friends have been shot, I will take a great deal of pleasure in ripping every one of your deviant chromosomes from your body with my own hands.”
“Now there’s a man’s man if ever I saw one,” Iqabl Geertz said, putting on an histrionically effeminate tone.
“Enough,” Edmund Rigby said. “You put up a good fight,” he told Grant, “now it’s over.”
“Like hell! If you think I’m going to let you Fascist scum take over the planet my ancestors sweated blood to build you don’t know me.”
“Nor shall we ever,” Edmund Rigby said. “Not now.”
“That’s right, takes bloody four of you.” Grant Kavanagh grunted in shock as Don Padwick put a paw on his ribs, talons extended.
Edmund Rigby rested his hand on Grant’s head. There was so much resilience and anger in the man. It enervated him, sending the pretentious uniform shimmering back into his ordinary marine fatigues. The souls of the beyond were clamouring as he began to gather his power, flocking to the beacon of his strength.
“Don’t fight me,” he said, more in hope than in expectation.
Grant snarled. “Screw you!”
Edmund Rigby heard the vile rapturous imploring chorus of the souls beginning. Weariness engulfed him, there had been so much of this since he had returned. So much pain and torment, so wilfully inflicted. At first he had laughed, and enjoyed the fear. Now, he simply wished it over.