Against Gravity (5 page)

Smeby shrugged. “Dissidents, enemies of the state – the kind of people who welcomed our worst enemies inside our borders with open arms.”

Draeger cocked his head to one side. “You approve, then?”

“That’s beside the point. What’s the purpose of all this, sir?”

“What if I told you that Wilber was right to think that he could find God through the
Archimedes
?”

Smeby was silent for several seconds as he sought an appropriate reply.

Instead, Draeger pre-empted him. “Let me fill in the rest of the details, then. There was a containment breach on board the
Archimedes
before it was even half completed.
Self-organizing molecular machinery invaded the substance of the station, and the
Archimedes
was subsequently abandoned, under World Court jurisdiction.” Draeger smiled, crookedly.
“Do you know precisely what went wrong?”

For some reason that he couldn’t quite fathom, Smeby’s throat had become very dry. “No, I don’t, sir.”

“Your beloved President wanted to find God. He interpreted my theories in such a way that he believed
I
could help him in that. The heart of the
Archimedes
consists of
self-learning, self-motivating artificial-intelligence routines embedded in nanite machinery designed to function in cooperative colonies. Hardwired to specific tasks such as decoding the structure
of space” – Draeger smiled more broadly – “or finding God.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Quite possibly, yes, but my definition of God is not quite the same as Wilber’s was. If there is a God, Mr Smeby, he’s not Jehovah or any other of an endless pantheon of crude
tribal deities that are still worshipped even today. God is . . . intelligence seeking to sustain itself. If that intelligence exists it would leave traces, in the structure of our universe itself.
The cooperative intelligences on board the
Archimedes
were designed to find those traces, the evidence.”

“And have they?”

“Oh no, Mr Smeby. They’ve done much, much more than that.”

21 April 2093
Venezuela

Kendrick woke again a little while before darkness fell, his mind still half-full of scattered dream-images, to feel a hand brush against his shoulder like the caress of a
ghost.

“
Jesus!
” he yelled, jumping up, suddenly wide awake. Dull red lines of text glowed faintly on his databand, a weather feed detailing the hurricane skirting St Lucia and moving
south-west, scattering fishing boats across the northern coast of South America and tearing through villages as it went.

Finding a secure landing spot before the winds really hit hadn’t been easy. Then came a lot of waiting, and a growing certainty that João wasn’t ever going to appear, that
they were on some kind of a wild-goose chase that just might get them killed if they weren’t careful.

“Sssh, it’s me, João.” He crouched at the entrance to the tent, favouring Kendrick with a wide grin.

Kendrick pulled himself upright and groaned, “Where’s Buddy? Have you spoken to him yet?”

“He’s outside.”

Kendrick stumbled out of the tent and blinked himself awake while fading sunlight skimmed the treetops around them. The skin of Buddy’s helicopter flickered with a constantly shifting
mirror image of the surrounding trees and bushes, providing it with an effective camouflage.

Kendrick heard the distant sound of monkeys shrieking in the jungle. Maybe it was more romantic this way, he thought; more like how a movie director would portray the life of an investigative
journalist – hiding out in the jungle, trying to avoid satellite detection while hunting down a remnant of the old US Army.

But that wasn’t how it felt, far from it. They were risking their lives, and if anything bad happened to them it was unlikely that anyone would ever know about it. They were within a
hundred miles or so of the Maze, and the very knowledge that it was so close left Kendrick with a permanent vague feeling of unease and dread.

This was as close to returning to the Maze as he ever wanted to get.

Buddy was leaning against the ’copter’s shrouded carapace, talking quietly with a boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, whom Kendrick realized must have come
with João. The boy’s English was heavily accented and occasionally fractured.

A thirteen-year-old with an automatic rifle and a bandanna, Kendrick noted. He wondered what this boy might have grown up to be in other circumstances, in some other place. An image of his own
young daughter rose unbidden in his mind. She’d have been just a little younger than—

No, don’t think about that.
He forced the mental image away. The boy here had to be one of Mayor Sobrino’s mercenary army, and it was debatable if they or Los Muertos were the
worse. Supposedly they protected the townships in this part of the country against Los Muertos’ incursions, but with the amount of drug trafficking that went on in the area it was more likely
a half-hearted cover for making themselves a lot of money.

“This is Louie,” Buddy announced on his approach. He glanced back down at the boy. “Louie, this is my friend Kendrick. He’s the one who wants to find out about the Los
Muertos guy.”

Old man’s eyes gazed out at Kendrick from a child’s face. He flinched, despite himself, under that appraising gaze.

“You brought it?” the boy asked.

Kendrick looked back up at Buddy, and their stares met knowingly. This was something they’d talked about: what if the kid hadn’t come alone? What if he had compatriots hiding out in
the jungle somewhere, ready to jump them? Out of sight of Louie, Buddy shook his head from side to side, slowly and carefully.
Everything’s okay
. He emphasized his point by giving
Kendrick a discreet thumbs-up. Buddy would have already had his instruments scanning the surrounding hills in case Louie had brought unwanted company.

Kendrick studied João out of the corner of his eye. It was he who had made the initial contact with the boy-mercenary. Kendrick could not rid himself of the idea that João was
digging himself deep into something he might not be able to get out of. Buddy appeared to have faith in him, however.

Maybe that was good enough, and everything would be fine, but of course there were never guarantees.

“Sure, Louie. We’ve got it.”

Still gripping his rifle firmly, the boy nodded. “Show me first, then we talk.”

Kendrick climbed on board the helicopter. He emerged several seconds later carrying a suitcase. With his free hand, Louie made an imperious gesture towards the ground. Buddy glanced at Kendrick,
and shrugged. João looked on, from the edge of the clearing, his expression one of fascination.

Buddy put the case down and opened it. Tightly wrapped bundles of yen flapped in a sudden breeze that was warm and heavy against the approaching chill of the night. Louie put his rifle down and
leant over the case, leafing rapidly through the banknotes. Kendrick could just make out the boy’s voice as he talked under his breath while counting the money. When Louie looked up, his face
was filled with ugly greed.

“Okay, I’ll show you.”

A long time ago, Los Muertos – meaning “the dead” in Spanish – had been a part of the United States Army. Then the famines had come, and then the LA
Nuke, and things had really started to fall apart. A couple of divisions of soldiers judged to be absolutely loyal to Wilber had been posted at the Maze before things went to pieces in Washington.
When the end came for Wilber himself, some of those soldiers had started to head for home. But there were others who believed more deeply in Wilber’s messianic visions, who believed the
Endtime was upon them. Out here, lost in the jungle and leader-less, they had transformed themselves into Los Muertos. If Wilber remained their Arthur, then the old United States had been their
Camelot, now lost for ever.

“Just tell me you really know what the hell you’re doing,” Kendrick whispered to Buddy as they walked. João and Louie were a little ways ahead of them, dark shapes in
the night-time jungle. There was no way they could fly their ’copter any closer to where Louie was leading them: too much chance that either Los Muertos or one of Sobrino’s wandering
patrols of mercenaries would take them out with a ground-to-air missile, on a general principle of shoot first and worry later.

“I really know what the hell I’m doing,” Buddy replied, as Louie led them on a long and circuitous path through the jungle, back to the road that he and João had taken
to meet them.

“That’s reassuring.”

“No, listen to me, I set things up myself. I put out some feelers, I found you a story.”

“Buddy, it’s not about getting just
any
story. What I want is to find the people who
put
us in that place.” Kendrick didn’t need to say which place.

“Yeah, I know that. But if even a fraction of what I’ve been hearing is true, this is going to be worth it.”

They walked on, frequently passing through wide patches where the jungle had been burned away, presumably during firefights. Their nostrils were filled with the lingering, oil-tinged scent of
destruction.

“Exactly how dangerous is this?” Kendrick demanded. “What happens if we run into a Los Muertos patrol?”

“What happens is, we run. Besides, we’re only skirting their territory here. They don’t normally bother with small groups like us.” Buddy saw Kendrick’s alarm and
shrugged. “Look, sometimes people do get kidnapped for their ransom value, but that isn’t really their style. If they want supplies, they raid a town, or hijack a couple of trucks off
the highway. They’re mainly trying to take over the black-market operations south of Mexico. That’s why Sobrino uses kids like Louie, says they help him maintain his profit
margin.”

“Buddy, that kid gives me the creeps.”

“Me too, me too,” Buddy muttered. “What’re you looking at me like that for?”

“He’s just a kid. Don’t you care what happens to him?”

“He’s not a kid any more, Kendrick. Life is very hard around these parts. I told you that. Now c’mon.”

Buddy called after João and Louie, who waited while the other two caught up again. They were moving down a slope now, the black strip of the road visible just a few metres ahead.

João grinned at Kendrick, his teeth gleaming in the depths of the night. “Hey, João,” said Buddy, “tell Kendrick here what you know. About the
soldiers.”

João shrugged. “They glow in the dark.”

Kendrick frowned. “How?”

“Some of them, they eat the flesh of the old gods out in the jungle, and in return the gods fill ’em with light.”

“But not
literally
glowing, right?”

João nodded emphatically. “I heard this, they
glow
. Dance and yell about eating God, all kinds of crazy shit. For real.” He shook his head now. “Nobody lie to me.
Took this job ’cause wanted to see it myself, maybe.”

“You
are
shitting me,” said Kendrick to Buddy.

“I’ve heard this story so many times,” Buddy replied. “Has to be something in it.”

Kendrick kept his gaze fixed on Buddy. “So just exactly where is it, then, that this kid is taking us?”

“Two kilometres,” said Louie, his eyes bright and sharp. He gestured forwards along the road they had just reached. “Two more kilometres, and I’ll show you.”

“Two kilometres? And show us what?”

“Patience, Kendrick,” Buddy reassured him. “Let’s just go look and see.”

They made far better progress now that they had the road to walk on. Kendrick had imagined they would have to keep leaping back into the jungle if anyone drove by, but he’d underestimated
the vastness of the landscape through which he now wandered. They were alone there, absolutely alone. It was easy to imagine that this road could go on for ever, never varying, always perfectly
straight.

Within an hour of walking further, they arrived at the perimeter of another burned-out clearing. An irregular shape in the centre resolved itself into a tank pushed over on its side. At first
Kendrick thought it must have been destroyed during the recent months of fighting, but as they got closer his augmented vision picked up its shattered carapace in more detail. It was crumbling and
rusted enough to have been there for some time.

Kendrick became aware of a faint flickering to one side of the tank, perhaps a campfire. He stopped, gripped by a sudden fear that they had stumbled across an encampment of Los Muertos, but
Louie beckoned them all forward with a casual wave. Buddy stepped forward but, judging by the grim expression on his face, Kendrick wondered if he was finally having his own doubts about how much
they could trust this boy.

Kendrick watched as Buddy drew out his gun, the action casual, holding it close by his side as he stepped closer to the burned-out tank. He then kept his fist wrapped around it, concealing it
from Louie. As Kendrick came forward, the faint light they had seen resolved itself into a figure.

The man was dressed in the ragtag uniform of Los Muertos, and some instinct told Kendrick that the soldier was dying. Fine threads of something criss-crossed his skin and his flesh hung loosely
from his skeletal form. The threads glowed with an uncanny luminescence that sent a deep chill running down Kendrick’s spine.

It was impossible to gauge the soldier’s age: he might have been thirty, he might have been sixty. His lips moved in a constant soundless litany, and he showed no awareness of their
presence.

“What happened to him?” Kendrick breathed.

“Ate God, now he’s got God all inside him,” muttered Louie by way of explanation. “God is in those things you see on his skin.”

Kendrick caught Buddy’s eye, but Buddy just grinned back. Kendrick next glanced over at João, who just gaped with an appalled expression at the emaciated figure in front of them.
João, he saw, was unconsciously fingering a tiny cross hanging around his neck. Kendrick clearly saw his lips form the words “
Madre de Dios
”.

Kendrick looked back at the Los Muertos soldier. “Buddy, what the hell’s happening to him?”

“He’s a walking nanite factory, is what’s happening to him. Don’t get too close.”