The Naked God Read online

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  Dariat could almost laugh at the impression of déjà vu which the exchange conjured up. He and Rubra had spent days of this same verbal fencing while he was possessing Horgan’s body. <>

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  Consequently, we must assume that mass-energy properties here have been altered, that is bound to affect atomic characteristics. But until we can run a full analysis on our quantum state, we cannot offer further speculation.>>

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  Ghosts can get tired. This unwelcome discovery made itself quite clear as Dariat trudged over the grassland towards the ring of starscraper lobbies in the middle of the habitat. But then if you have imaginary muscles, they are put under quite a strain carrying your imaginary body across long distances, especially when that body had Dariat’s bulk.

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  Valisk’s parkland was also becoming less attractive. Now he had hiked out of the valley, the vivid pink grass which cloaked the southern half of the cylinder was grading down to a musky-grey, an effect he equated to a city smog wrapping itself round the landscape. It couldn’t be blamed entirely on the diminished illumination; the slim core of plasma in the axial light tube was still a valiant neon blue. Instead it seemed to be part of the overall lack of vitality which was such an obvious feature of this realm. The xenoc plant appeared to be past its peak, as if its spore fringes had already ripened and now it was heading back into dormancy.

  None of the insects which usually chirped and flittered among the plains had roused themselves. A few times, he came across field mice and their xenoc analogues, who were sleeping fitfully. They’d just curled up where they were, not making any attempt to return to their nests or warrens.

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  Dariat trudged on. The spiral-springs of grass made the going hard, causing resistance as his legs passed through them. It was though he was walking along a stream bed where the water was coming half-way up his shins. As his complaints became crabbier, the personality guided him towards one of the narrow animal tracks.

  After half an hour of easier walking, and pondering his circumstances, he said: <>

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  Dariat felt the personality gathering the erratic images from clusters of sensitive cells speckling the external polyp shell, and formatting them into a coherent visualisation for him. The amount of concentration it took for the personality to fulfill what used to be a profoundly simple task surprised and worried him.

  There were no planets. No moons. No stars. No galaxies. Only a murky void.

  The eeriest impression he received from the expanded affinity bond was the way Valisk appeared to be in flight. Certainly he was aware of movement of some kind, though it was purely subliminal, impossible to define. The huge cylinder appeared to be gliding through a nebula. Not one recognizable from their universe. This was composed from extraordinarily subtle layers of ebony mist, shifting so slowly the
y were immensely difficult to distinguish. Had he been seeing it with his own eyes, he would have put it down to overstressed retinas. But there were discernible strands of the smoky substance out there; sparser than atmospheric cloud, denser than whorls of interstellar gas.

  Abruptly, a fracture of hoary light shimmered far behind the hub of Valisk’s southern endcap, a luminous serpent slithering around the insubstantial billows. Rough tatters of gritty vapour detonated into emerald and turquoise phosphorescence as it twirled past them. The phenomenon was gone inside a second.

  <> Dariat asked in astonishment.

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  According to the personality, Tolton was in the parkland outside the Gonchraov starscraper lobby. Dariat didn’t get there on the first attempt. He encountered the other ghosts before he arrived.

  The pink grassland gradually gave way to terrestrial grass and trees a couple of kilometres from the starscraper lobbies. It was a lush manicured jungle which boiled round the habitat’s midsection, with gravel tracks winding round the thicker clumps of trees and vines. Big stone slabs formed primitive bridges over the rambling brooks, their support boulders grasped by thick coils of flowering creepers. Petals were drooping sadly as Dariat walked over them. As he drew closer to the lobby, he started to encounter the first of the servitor animal corpses, most of them torn by burnt scars, the impact of white fire. Then he noticed the decaying remains of several of their human victims lying in the undergrowth.

  Dariat found the sight inordinately depressing. A nasty reminder of the relentless struggle which Rubra and Kiera had fought for dominance of the habitat. “And who won?” he asked morbidly.

  He cleared another of the Neolithic bridges. The trees were thinning out now, becoming more ornate and taller as jungle gave way to parkland.

  There were flashes of movement in front of him coupled with murmurs of conversation, which made him suddenly self-conscious. Was he going to have to jump up and down waving his arms and shouting to get the living to notice him?

  Just as he was psyching himself up for the dismaying inevitable, the little group caught sight of him. There were three men and two women.

  Their clothes should have clued him in. The eldest man was wearing a very long, foppish coat of yellow velvet with ruffled lace down the front; one of the women had forced her large fleshy frame into a black leather dominatrix uniform, complete with whip; her mousy middle-aged companion was in a baggy woolen overcoat, so deliberately dowdy it was a human stealth covering; of the remaining two men, one was barely out of his teens, a black youth with panther muscles shown off by a slim red waistcoat; while the other was in his thirties, covered by a baggy mechanics overall. They made a highly improbable combination, even for Valisk’s residents.

  Dariat stopped in surprise and with some gratification, raising a hand in moderate greeting. “Hello there. Glad you can see me. My name’s Dariat.”

  They stared at him, already unhappy expressions displaced by belligerent suspicion.

  “You the one Bonney had everyone chasing?” the black guy asked.

  Dariat grinned modestly. “That’s me.”

  “Motherfucker. You did this to us!” he screamed. “I had a body. I had my life back. You fucked that. You fucked me. You ruined everything. Everything! You brought us here, you and that shit living in the walls.”

  Comprehension dawned for Dariat. He could see the faint outlines of branches through the man. “You’re a ghost,” he exclaimed.

  “All of us are,” the dominatrix said. “Thanks to you.”

  “Oh shit,” he whispered in consternation.

  <> the personality asked. The affinity band was awash with interest.

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  The dominatrix took a step towards him; her whip flicked out, cracking loudly. She grinned viciously. “I haven’t had a chance to use this properly for a long time, dearie. That’s a shame, because I know how to use it real bad.”

  “Gonna get you plenty of chance to catch up now,” the black guy purred to her.

  Dariat stood his ground shakily. “You can’t blame me for this. I’m one of you.”

  “Yeah,” said the mechanic. “And this time you can’t get away.” He drew a heavy spanner from his leg pocket.

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  “Can we hurt him?” the mousy woman asked.

  “Let’s find out,” the dominatrix replied.

  “Wait!” Dariat implored. “We need to work together to get the habitat out of this place. Don’t you understand? It’s collapsing around us, everything’s breaking down. We’ll be trapped here.”

  The black guy bared his teeth wide. “We needed you to work with us to beat the habitat back in the real universe.”

  Dariat flinched. He turned and ran. They gave chase immediately. That they’d catch him was never in doubt. He was appallingly overweight, and he’d just finished a nine kilometre hike. The whip slashed against the back of his left calf. He wailed, not just from the sharp sting, but from the fact it could sting.

  They whooped and cheered behind him, delighted by the knowledge they could inflict injury, pain. Dariat staggered over the end of the bridge, and took a few unsteady steps towards the thicker part of jungle. The whip struck him again, flaying his shoulder and cheek, accompanied by the dominatrix’s gleeful laugh. Then the lean black guy caught up with him, and jumped high, kicking him in the small of the back.

  Dariat went flying, landing flat on his stomach, arms and legs spread wide. Not a single blade of grass even bent as he struck the ground; his bloated body seemed to be lying on a median height of stalks, while longer stems poked straight through him.

  The beating began. Feet kicked savagely into his flanks, his legs, neck.

  The whip whistled down again and again, landing on his spine each time.

  Then the mechanic stood on his shoulders, and brought the spanner down on his skull. The battering became rhythmic, horrifyingly relentless. Dariat cried out at every terrifying impact. There was pain, in abundance there was pain, but no blood, nor damage, nor bruising or broken bones. The blaze of hurt had its orig
in in a concussion of hatred and fury. Each blow reinforcing, emphasising how much they wanted him ruined.

  His cries grew fainter, though they were just as insistent, and tainted with increasing anguish. The spanner, and the whip, and the boots, and the fists began to sink into him, puncturing his intangible boundary. He was sinking deeper into the grass, the hammering propelling his belly into the soil. Coldness swept into him, a wave racing on ahead of the solid surface with which he was merging. His shape was lacking definition now, its outline becoming less substantial. Even his thoughts began to lose their intensity.

  Nothing could stop them. Nothing he said. Nothing he begged. Nothing he could pay. None of his prayers. Nothing. He had to endure it all. Not knowing what the outcome would be; terrifyingly, not knowing what it could be.

  They let him be, eventually. After how much time not one of them knew. As much as it took to satisfy their hunger for vengeance. To dull the enjoyment of sadism. To experiment with the novel methods of brutality available to ghosts. There wasn’t much of his presence left when they finished. A gauzy patch of pearl luminescence loitering amid the grass, the back of his toga barely bobbing above the surface of the soil. Limbs and head were buried.

  Laughing, they walked away.

  Amid the coldness, darkness, and apathy, a few strands of thought clung together. A weak filigree of suffering and woe. Everything he was. Very little, really.

  Tolton had a brief knowledge of scenes like this. Secondhand knowledge, old and stale, memories of tales told to him by the denizens of the lowest floors of the starscrapers. Tales of covert combat operations, of squads that had been hit by superior firepower, waiting to be evac-ed out of the front line. Their bloody, battered casualties wound up in places like this, a field hospital triage. It was the latest development in the saga of the habitat population’s misfortunes. Lately, studying the parkland had become a form of instant archaeology. Evolving stages of residence were laid out in concentric circles, plain to see.

  In the beginning was the starscraper lobby, a pleasing rotunda of stone and glass, blending into the superbly maintained parkland. Then with the arrival of possession, the lobby had been smashed up during one of the innumerable firefights between Kiera’s followers and Rubra, and a shanty town had sprung up in a ring around it. Tiny Tudor cottages had stood next to Arabian tents, which were pitched alongside shiny Winnebagoes; the richness of imagination on display was splendid. That was before Valisk departed the universe.