“Seems reasonable.”
“Wait,” Monica said. “You keep mentioning we have to make a decision. How do we do that?”
“What are you talking about?” Liol asked. “Once we’ve heard what’s on offer, we chose.”
“We do? Are we going to put it to a vote here in the ship, do we go back to the Confederation Assembly and ask them to decide? What? We need to be certain about this first.”
Liol looked round the cabin, trying to identify the mood. “No, we don’t go back,” he said. “This is what we came here for. The Jovian Consensus thought we were up to the job. So I say do it.”
“We’re deciding the future of our whole race,” she protested. “We can’t just leap into this. And . . .” she indicated Mzu. “Bloody hell, she’s hardly qualified to be passing judgement on the rest of us. That’s the way I see it. You were going to use the Alchemist against an entire planet.”
“Whereas the ESA is an organization of enviable morality,” Alkad snapped back. “How many people did you murder just tracking me down?”
“You people have got to be fucking kidding,” Liol said. “You can’t even decide how to decide? Listen to yourselves! This kind of personal stupidity is what dumps humans into the shit every time. We just discuss it and make a decision. That’s it. Finish.”
“No,” Samuel said. “The captain decides.”
“Me?” Joshua asked.
Monica stared at the Edenist in astonishment. “Him!”
“Yes, I agree,” the serjeant said. “Joshua decides.”
“He never doubted,” Samuel said. “Did you, Joshua? You’ve always known this would end in success.”
“I hoped it would, sure.”
“You doubted this flight,” Samuel told Monica. “You didn’t fully believe it would end in success. If you had, you would have been prepared to make the decision. Instead, you have doubts, that disqualifies you. Whoever does this must have conviction.”
“Like yours, for instance,” Monica said. “A subset of your famous rationality.”
“I too find myself unqualified for this. Although Edenists think as one, to make a decision of this magnitude I find myself wanting the reassurance of the Consensus. It would seem Edenism has a flaw after all.”
Joshua gazed round at his crew. “You’ve all been very quiet.”
“That’s because we trust you, Joshua,” Sarha said simply, and smiled. “You’re our captain.”
Strange, Joshua thought, when you got right down to the naked truth, people actually had faith in him. Who he was, what he’d achieved, meant something to them. It was quite humbling, really. “All right,” he said slowly. He datavised the singularity: “Is that acceptable to you?”
“I cannot take responsibility for your decisions, collective or otherwise. My only constraints are that I will not permit you to use my abilities as a weapon. Other than that, you have free access.”
“Okay. Show me what happened.”
The possessed in the nave had dropped to their knees, concentrating hard on producing the stream of energistic power which the dark Messiah demanded from them for his summoning. Up on the gallery facing them, Quinn’s robe evaporated into pure shadow and began to flow out from his body, filling the air around him like a black spectre. At the heart, his naked body gleamed silver. He accepted the offering from his followers, and directed it as he pleased. It spilled down across the floor below the cathedral’s dome, prying at the structure of reality, weakening it.
Powel Manani and Fletcher Christian looked down at their feet in consternation as the tiles around them sprouted a luminous purple haze. The soles of their shoes became enmeshed with the surface, making it hard to lift their feet up.
“I need to get near him,” Powel said.
Fletcher glanced up at the swarthy occultation looming above. “I wish to be as far from this dread place as possible. But I will not leave without her.”
Powel exerted his own energistic power to yank his feet clear of the tiles. Even then it took considerable effort to move them. He shuffled right up in front of Fletcher, the two of them almost touching. The bottom of his sweatshirt was lifted a couple of centimetres, revealing Louise’s anti-memory weapon shoved into the top of his waistband.
“Very well,” Fletcher said. “But it will be no easy endeavour. I hear the fallen angels approaching.”
The haze was thrumming, issuing a howl of lament and greed. Below that, the fabric of the universe was thinning in accordance with Quinn’s desire. They could both feel pressure being exerted from the other side, a desperate scrabbling.
“Not good,” Powel said. The tiles were becoming insubstantial. He pulled his feet out again; they’d sunk several centimetres below the surface.
“I will make a stand and distract him,” Fletcher said. “You may have time to reach the stairs.”
“I don’t think so. This stuff is getting worse than quicksand.”
The purple haze vanished. Fletcher and Powel looked round wildly. A drop of ectoplasm dribbled up in a crack between two tiles, making a soft blup. A patch of dense white frost solidified around it.
“Now what?” Powel grunted with apprehension.
More ectoplasm was bubbling up. Sluggish rivulets began to form as it ran together. The tiles left uncovered had all turned sparkling white from frost. Fletcher could feel cold air rushing off the sludgy fluid. His breath had become hoary.
“Welcome, my brothers,” Quinn’s voice boomed across the cathedral. “Welcome to the battlefield. Together we will bring down the Night of our Lord.”
The entire area of floor underneath the dome had become a pool of burping and foaming ectoplasm. Fletcher and Powel were hopping from foot to foot, frantically trying to banish the excruciating cold from their legs. They suddenly stood still, tensing as a V-shaped ripple moved across the pool. Waves of hot, lustful emotion were surging up from the dimensional rift in counter to the physical cold. A curving spike lifted up out of the floor, ectoplasm flowing along its length. It was over three metres high.
Fletcher watched it rise in horrified awe. Another one was emerging at the side of it, ectoplasm gurgling loudly as it lapped against the base.
“Lord Jesus protect your servants,” he whispered. He and Powel backed away from the twin spikes as a third one budded.
The ectoplasm was bubbling energetically now. Smaller tendrils were writhing up, erupting all over the pool like a fur of rapacious cilia. One started to curl round Powel’s leg. With a cry he managed to stumble away from it. The tip blossomed into a snapping five-talon claw. He pointed a finger at it and flung a slim blast of white fire. The claw shuddered, and large ripples of ectoplasm surged towards it.
“Stop!” Fletcher shouted hoarsely. The ectoplasm licking its way up his legs was doing far more than freezing his flesh, he realized. His mental strength was reducing, and with it his energistic power.
The claw’s talons had almost doubled in size under the impact of the white fire. Powel snatched his hand back, watching anxiously as the claw groped round blindly.
Quinn laughed in delight as he watched the desperate antics of his sacrificial victims. There were five of the huge spikes now; they started to lean over. He wondered if they were the tips of some creature’s fingers.
Moans of alarm were coming from the possessed down in the nave as they realized what they were witnessing. The first signs of panic were evident as the front rank pressed back from the edge of the ectoplasm pool.
“Hold fast!” Quinn thundered at them. The opening into darkness wasn’t yet complete, it fluctuated as those below hurled themselves against it. Quinn concentrated his mind on the area where reality was distorted to breaking point.
A huge bubble of noxious fumes burst from the centre of the ectoplasm, releasing an undulating spume of smaller ones. Powel and Fletcher ducked as a spray of ectoplasm splattered outwards. Tendrils of the stuff were wriggling against their legs now. Moving had become almost impossible, the agonising cold was squeezing in against their limbs and chests.