Five and a half years now separated Brother Michael from Rikers Island. Sixty-six sweat-filled months in which he laboured to release the vision he’d seen the night D Block burnt to the ground. In the midst of a riot, while blood sluiced down half-gutters let into the white-tiled corridors and flames licked spray-gunned polymer off the walls, Brother Michael stood on the melting roof and dreamed his dream.
Life was corrupted. The howls of the Aryan Nation, the shrieks of screws as they were tipped over the edge and died on the net below: they all said the same. (The net was designed to catch anyone thrown into the stairwell, but the Padre had wired the net to an industrial generator to produce not so much an electric chair as a vast electric bed.)
The Earth was due to be cleansed. And he, Brother Michael, was to build the new arc. No simple flood would be enough this time, it would have to be fire, Brother Michael was certain of it. Nothing else would have the cleansing power. But he would be gone before the conflagration started.
For a prison designed to withstand riot, siege and flame, Rikers Island burnt beautifully, flames licking round Brother Michael like a wall of fire. And when the NYPD lifted him off the burning roof, his eyes were turned not to his rescuers, brave though they were, but to the smoky heavens.
It wasn’t Brother Michael’s intention that his howl of prophecy should be caught by a circling CySat Sikorsky ‘copter, or that CySatC3N bounced that grab of him naked and howling to every one of their US syndicated newsfeeds. By the time a NY Correctional Department official went Webside to stress that Brother Michael was insane, it was already too late. Thirty-two per cent of the US thought he was inspired directly by God.
Money poured in. In Seattle a fifth-generation silicon heiress donated her entire fortune. A bible-belt farmer with 200 draught-blasted acres donated his entire lottery win. Like it or not, The Arc was already a reality in most people’s minds.
“Orange,” demanded Brother Michael crossly: he wasn’t used to having to ask twice. In fact, it upset him more than was rational. But then, rationality was over-used and anyway was merely an adjunct of agnosticism. Pushing himself out of his chair, Brother Michael strode once round the small vestry and ended up at a simple wool-covered sofa, wrapping a belt over his lap to keep him in place. This would have to do...
A door clanged and he saw flickering strip lights stutter shadows on the white vestry walls. A wiring fault in the light outside, he’d have it seen to in the morning. It was Rachel, that much was obvious from the hesitant steps through the gloom towards him. Five months on The Arc and the stupid girl still couldn’t get the hang of ReeGravs.
Sweet Jesus... Brother Michael clicked his fingers and all the lights came up but the olive-skinned girl didn’t increase her speed. She was too afraid of tripping. Long black hair framed Rachel’s face, reaching almost to her thin waist. Only the lumbering hips spoilt the promise of her waist and full breasts: something she’d always known, mainly because her father had never let her forget. In her hands she held a shimmering flask of silver fabric filled with pulped orange. At the bottom was a strip of velcro and from its top protruded a simple straw.
“I’ve brought fresh juice...” She watched Brother Michael bite back some unkind remark and instantly felt sick. If he’d shouted at her, that would have been good. If he’d raised his hand to her, that would have been better. She was used to that. It was his strained patience that Rachel couldn’t stand.
“Come here,” Brother Michael patted the space beside him.
“I have tasks...” Rachel tried to make her voice sound firm, but she never managed it like the other girls did; her words just came out sounding sullen and petulant.
“Here.” Brother Michael patted the seat again, waiting for her to obey. His brown eyes stared at her, peering deep into Rachel’s soul until the woman reddened and glanced hurriedly away.
“How are you?” Brother Michael asked.
“Fine.
“Really?” The man nodded towards the arm of the woollen sofa, watching while Rachel pushed the flask into the cloth, velcro locking the flask safely into place. “Are you sure? You seem uneasy.”
Uneasy! Rachel’s mouth set into a thin line.
“We need to pray,” announced Brother Michael firmly, reaching out for her hand.
“Your juice...”
“God comes first,” said Brother Michael, looking serious. “You know that.” And then, deciding his reply wasn’t sufficient, he smiled his most winning smile, the one that had brought Rachel Cargassi to him in the first place. “Besides,” he said, “what’s my thirst, compared to your happiness, compared to the health of your soul?”
There was no answer. There wasn’t meant to be.
Rachel looked at her tormentor, at the silver dusting of age that touched his temples, at the deep egg-speckled eyes. The man was handsome, as silver-tongued as the devil and as overpowering as incense. Power oozed out of him the way that sour ghosts of fear oozed from everybody else on The Arc.
Even the skin of his instantly recognizable face was an elegant contradiction, soft but weather-beaten at the same time. Most people still had some cosmetic treatment, usually in the early teens when such things started to matter. Rachel knew all about that. Her hips were beyond rebuilding, a deep genetic flaw put there by her father’s refusal to let her mother get the embryo tested.
As for her face, she’d tried five different clinics before she was happy. Four Bupex and finally one black clinic in Budapest that stripped off her old face and then reformatted it using fresh tissue. Rachel didn’t know where her new face had come from: she didn’t want to know. She just knew she liked it and had no intention of giving it back.
Brother Michael clicked his fingers again and the lights in the vestry dipped back into gloom. One elegantly manicured finger brushed over a datapad set into the arm of his sofa and the nearby window exploded into an array of pale blue as Sister Rachel looked out at the curve of the distant Earth. Space would be clear as ice and black beyond imagining once they had left the planets behind. That Brother Michael had promised her.
“Kneel,” Brother Michael demanded and Rachel knelt: not on both knees as she had been taught as a child but with one knee raised the way people prayed in zero gravity, so that a boot could remain flush with the floor, its sole locked to the deck.
Almost casually, Brother Michael gripped Rachel’s narrow shoulders and repositioned her so that she knelt directly in front of him. His knees shut around her raised leg and his hands reached for her head.
Brother Michael’s study was a zero-gravity habitat, but that wasn’t why Rachel adopted that posture. It was the Brotherhood’s trade mark, literally. Lawyers had tied it down on all seven continents, not to mention on Planetside, but then, everything was franchised or trademarked up there. Rachel should have known: through proxies she’d owned three of Luna’s more valuable ad agencies before she’d bequeathed them to Brother Michael.
Prayer with Brother Michael was silent. Or rather, the congregation stayed silent while Brother Michael spoke: sometimes to them and sometimes to God, but mostly to himself.
Hands now rested on the sides of Rachel’s head, fingers lightly caressing her long hair. When she’d arrived at The Arc, Rachel had wanted to crop her hair short but it hadn’t been allowed. As Brother Michael had pointed out, her raven-black hair was the one really beautiful thing about her.