She stopped short as a heavy horse-drawn wagon trundled into the square, a gang of young men crowded in the back, bawling ‘Blood of Angels’.
‘They came back,’ the girl said bleakly.
15
Archangel sends a node of sentience out beyond the forest border and snatches a bird in the air.
HELLO, BIRD.
He flies in bird a while, becoming bird, savouring the alien taste of bird mind. When he withdraws, bird falls, heart-stopped, out of the sky.
GOODBYE, BIRD.
Archangel isolates a tiny piece of his own rock-hard substance and puts into it all that he has learned of bird. He replicates bird. When he has finished, he pulls the tiny chunk of angel flesh out of himself and throws it into the air.
It flies. For a while it is bird and he is bird in it. Archangel-bird. Almost.
Archangel-bird flies and flies, and then the shadow falls. Archangel-bird stutters, stumbles out of the air and collapses in on itself, reverting into nano-quantum-slime that slaps down onto the earth.
Never mind. First steps. He is learning as he goes.
He returns to original bird. Dead bird. He sniffs and prods the corpse and slips back into it. Repairs it and makes it fly again.
HELLO, BIRD.
It is almost as good.
It is almost better.
But it is not enough. One bird. Or one man. It does not even begin to be enough.
Archangel needs EVERYTHING. If he is to escape this dark constricting suffocating world–if he is to regain his birthright across the uncountable stars and the spaces between the stars–he must have it ALL. Every mind on the planet must speak with HIS voice and speak always and only HIM.
The unfolding future of the planet, its coming history, must be HIS. He must understand it all in every intricate detail and inhabit it all and transform it all.
Remake it all.
No secret private thought. No life outside HIS life.
Archangel. Always and only and everywhere Archangel.
Total Archangel.
That will be the beginning.
16
Lom watched the horse-drawn wagon pull up outside a bookshop seventy yards away across the square. SVENNER CIRCULATING LIBRARY. TEXTS. PERIODICALS. A bed sheet hung from the side of the wagon, a slogan painted on it in blocky letters: STUDENTS OF MIRGOROD! MARCH AGAINST UN-VLAST THINKING!
The men climbed down. Lom counted nine. They were all in some kind of uniform: black trousers, heavy black workboots, vaguely naval waist-length pea coats of dark blue wool. Short haircuts. One was older than the others, red-faced, with iron-grey hair. He looked like he was giving the orders. The rest were young. None of them looked like students. A couple were carrying batons, swinging them loosely by their sides.
Three of them went into the bookshop. They came out dragging an old man between them and hauled him over to the wagon. Two held his arms while the third started in on his beard, hacking at it with scissors. The old man stood there, blank-eyed and confused, letting them do it. Waiting till it would be over. No one else was in sight. The stink of charred wood was sour in the air. There was a crash of broken glass and a ragged cheer went up. The others were scooping books out of the shop window. Some of them went inside and came out with their arms full. They dumped the books in a growing pile on the pavement. Somebody fetched a jerry can from the wagon and started splashing paraffin. The leader took the glasses from the shopkeeper’s nose and put them in his own pocket. Then he punched him in the face.
The old man crumpled to his knees, cupping his mouth in his hands.
Lom felt anger tightening in his stomach, and with it the edge of excitement came again: the hot exhilaration of violence that had come in the gendarme station, only this time it was stronger. This time it was justice, this time it was him, this time it was edged with fear.
‘Wait here,’ he said and set off across the square.
‘No,’ said Maroussia. ‘I’m coming.’
When they were twenty yards out the Boots saw them coming. Seven peeled off to meet them. Two hung back with the old man. Snow flurries gusted across the square. Lom tested his footing. The cobbles were slick with slush. Not so good. But he would manage.
The Boots should have spread out to meet him, come at him from the side, got in behind him: he’d have had no chance then. Seven against one. But they clumped together. They were a herd.
Stay calm. Analyze. Plan.
The leader was at the front, flanked by the two with straightsticks. The one on the left was a couple of inches over six feet tall, blond, with a wide neck and a thick bull-chest. The other was a couple of inches smaller. Lom’s height. Straggles of brown hair. An edge of smile on his thin ratty mouth. Of the other four, the second rank, two were big and broad and walked with a wide-legged shoulders-back swagger, and the other pair were skinny, with bad complexions and pink excited faces, hoping to see someone hurt but not likely to do much damage themselves. Lom waited for them. He felt Maroussia come up beside him. Her face was pale and tight.
There was a snigger from the Boots. When they were close enough that he didn’t need to raise his voice, Lom said, ‘Get back in the wagon. All of you. Get back in the truck and ride away.’
The leader stopped. The others gathered in behind him. He was smiling.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he said.
‘Concerned bystander,’ said Lom. ‘Leave the old man alone.’
‘Him?’ said red-faced grey-hair. ‘Fuck him.’
Lom met the man’s gaze with absolute confidence.
‘You should go now,’ he said. ‘While you still can.’
There was one tiny flicker of uncertainty in red-faced grey-hair’s eyes. But he was the leader and his men were watching him. If he backed down he’d lose them for ever.
‘There are nine of us,’ he said. ‘We’re going to take you apart. We’re going to fucking kill you. Then we’ll take the woman back with us for later. The boys will like that.’
A couple of faces behind him grinned.
‘Let’s do it, Figner,’ said one of the skinny ones. He had thin yellow hair. A narrow pink nose. A face like cheese. ‘Go on. Do him now. Cut off his fucking dick and stuff it in his mouth.’
‘Stick it in the whore’s mouth!’ said another.
The boys were starting to enjoy themselves. Warming to their work. This was better than shoving a half-blind old bookseller around. A gust of wind threw snow in Lom’s face.
‘I don’t see nine,’ he said. He stared into grey-hair’s eyes. ‘I see seven, and only four that might be any use. That’s not enough. You need to get in the wagon and drive away. You need to do that now.’
‘Bullshit.’
Rat-mouth stepped forward and took a swing at Lom with his stick.
It was a standard militia-issue baton. Twenty-four inches of black polished wood, thickening slightly from the cloth-wrapped handle to the rounded tip. A six-inch length of lead in the striking end. The lead weight was a mixed blessing. It multiplied the kinetic force of the blow, but it made the stick unwieldy. Once you started a swing you were committed.