Evensong (32 page)

This was how The Dead could step outside the world and perceive it as nobody else could: by ramping up their senses, for surveillance or combat. Sights and sounds and smells crowded Anwar. Each one was separate and distinct, and each one was already matched, in his memory, to a name and a face and a profile and an identity. More information than he wanted or needed. He powered down his senses, and saw and heard and smelt what everyone else did. The cool pleasant citrus air returned to his nostrils and the individual conversations sank into the background murmur.

It was now only a few minutes before 10:00, and the Signing Room was full. Delegates crowded into the main part, standing. Occasionally, spotting a photo opportunity, Zaitsev would smile or wave at someone, glancing to camera as he did so.

The media were at the back of the room, the other end from the panelled theatre set. Quite close, Anwar remembered, to where he’d put his bucket during his stay there. Cameras, mikes, lights were all angled towards the top table and the illusion of rectangular panelling behind it.

At one minute to 10:00 the top table party nodded to each other, and the room fell silent. Zaitsev took a deep breath and, exactly as 10:00 came around, smiled and began.

“Welcome,” he said. “It’s an unexpected path that has brought us here. A few days ago the path we’d chosen seemed impassable. Then we took another, and we’ve arrived at a place none of us would have thought possible.”

Humility, not triumphalism. A mere messenger, carrying something of greater import than his mere self. But Anwar noted the careful modulation of the voice, and the slight contrivance of the near-rhyming of Impassable and Possible.Still a good actor.

He continued, “You all know what happened yesterday: the new direction we took, and the Statement of Intent to confirm that new direction and our unanimous commitment to it. If you’ll permit me” (
who’s going to forbid you?
Anwar thought) “I’ll read out the summit’s official communiqué.”

He cleared his throat; looked around the room portentously; and began.

“The following communiqué on the United Nations summit on Water Rights was issued today,October 20,2060.

“The United Nations summit on Water Rights was convened by the Secretary-General and was held at the Conference Centre, New West Pier, Brighton from October 15 to October 19, 2060. Delegates unanimously agreed that the previously published Agenda should be set aside, and the following Statement of Intent was adopted by all those present:

“Brighton, October 20, 2060. We the undersigned—”

An explosion of dust and fragments, a tearing and rending of structural members, and the wall burst open. Not the wood-panel theatre-set wall whose construction Anwar had witnessed, but the original pearlescent white wall at the other end of the room.

Arden at last knew what she was looking for. But she hadn’t found it yet, and there wasn’t
time.
It was buried somewhere in Anwar’s questioning of Carne: not the transcript, that was just words on a screen, but the recording of his verbal report. It was probably some chance remark, maybe even an aside, which had slipped past her unnoticed. Anwar’s memory enabled him to reproduce not only the words, but the way Carne had spoken them.

She’d been playing it back for nearly two hours, since he last called her. Nothing. She played it back again, and there it was.

Carne’s voice was copied exactly by Anwar: not just every word, but the inflection of every word. It was almost mimicry.
That’s
what she should have listened for. Not the words, but one word. And how Carne had said it.

“They annihilated Levin. Then Rafiq sent Asika, and they annihilated him too.”
They annihilated Levin
(strong emphasis on the second syllable)
then they annihilated Asika
(no emphasis). As if it meant something different, something less than they’d done to Levin. Consistent with “there wasn’t enough left of Levin...”

Annihilate: Destroy completely. Reduce to nonexistence. Nullify or render void. Eradicate, erase, exterminate; extinguish, kill, obliterate.

“...what our employers did to Asika. And what they did to Levin, which was worse. And Levin’s
face,
when he realised he couldn’t defend himself. There wasn’t enough left of him to make into an exhibit, like the one they’d made of Asika.”

The one they’d made in that villa in Opatija.

What was done to Asika was merely physical. What was done to Levin was spiritual. Deeper, more absolute.

“Fuck.”
She occasionally swore mildly, but she’d never spoken
that
word before. It felt strange, forming her lips over the
f
and her palate and tongue over the
ck
.

At last she’d found it. Hiding in plain sight, and she hadn’t seen; or in plain hearing, and she hadn’t heard. She’d only found it when she’d lied to Anwar to avoid telling him about Rafiq and herself, and now there was no
time.

She flicked open her wristcom.

Anwar moved to the centre of the suddenly-emptying Signing Room, to stand between
her
and what had burst out of the far wall.

It was Levin. Except it wasn’t, anymore.

Levin would have greeted him with
Muslim Filth.
Levin would have had some clever one-liners to which Anwar would have thought up rejoinders too late. Levin wouldn’t have had a face like an unmoving theatrical mask, or eyes like dead, brilliant jewels.

Ridiculously, his wristcom buzzed. He cancelled it.

Levin wore a shirt and trousers of silver-grey, and thin gloves of the same material. Maybe woven monofilament. Or maybe a similar composition to Rafiq’s VSTOLs, which always seemed quietly indestructible.

They both ramped up their senses, and went to full combat mode. This time Anwar ignored the microscopic weave of fabrics or the particle-level building-blocks of colours or the body odours beneath perfumes, and funnelled everything towards Levin.

A kind of relativity: time and thought moved normally for them, but for everyone around them they were a flicker.

The Patel contractors hadn’t only built the fake woodpanelled wall, they’d built a replica of the original pearlescent wall. A perfect, seamless replica. At the other end of the room. Levin was already there when Anwar ordered the old panelling ripped out.
Already there, in the wall three feet away, when I was crapping in my bucket.

Broadcasters, camera crews and delegates were crowded at the far end. When Levin burst out he didn’t just scatter them, he killed them. He was so fast that nobody got in a shot, except Gaetano. He hit Levin once in the throat, normally a killing shot, but Levin didn’t notice.

With his senses ramped up for combat, Anwar saw all this in what for him was normal time. Relativity: everyone else in the room, except Levin, was wallowing in treacle-time. Screaming in deep bass notes. Thinking at geological speed. Or dead.

Two of Zaitsev’s guards were moving in strange animated slow motion to cover him. The other three, moving with equal strangeness, went to face Levin in the centre of the room but he killed them without breaking step as he hurtled— flickered—towards Olivia at the top table. Everyone assumed the target was Zaitsev, who was now pushed under the table and covered by his two remaining guards. Olivia was standing behind the table, her mouth open in an O that seemed too big for her face.

Anwar moved—slowly in his time, a blur in theirs—to the centre of the room to stand between them.

He faced Levin, and saw what they’d done to him.

He knew it instinctively, not in detail. They’d taken his identity, and left him as a
thing
. He’d always been bigger, younger, stronger, faster, more skilful, than Anwar. Now he was more so, and a monster. A killing machine. Maybe what had once powered his mind was now redirected into his body.
Details later. No time.

Remembering Gaetano’s throat shot, he aimed his best Verb at Levin’s throat. Levin didn’t notice, and broke Anwar’s collarbone. In full combat mode Anwar’s resetting processes worked faster, but would still be too slow. He hit Levin with two more Verbs, and Levin broke three of Anwar’s ribs and re-broke his collarbone. Then his left upper arm.

Simple maths: a few seconds, and he’d be strewn like Chulo Asika over the floor of that villa in Croatia. Levin could break 90 percent of his major bones before 10 percent of them could reset. Anwar kept hitting at the throat. Nothing else was exposed, or vulnerable. No time for elegant moves from his training, he’d be killed.

“They an
nih
ilated Levin,” Anwar’s memory helpfully replayed,“then Rafiq sent Asika, and they annihilated him too.”

Yes, Asika. I’m being broken up like Chulo.
Levin wasn’t going to kill him with one blow, though he could probably have done so, but to annihilate him piece by piece.

“Jewish scum,” he whispered, hoping ridiculously that Levin might remember and hesitate, but there was no reply. Levin couldn’t speak anymore. Or, Anwar guessed, even form thoughts that might become speech. Everything was gone. A container was all that remained.

Normal time for him and Levin, heightened time for everyone else, which meant they blurred and flickered. Anwar kept landing Verbs, and Levin kept not noticing, and Anwar kept getting parts of himself broken, and broken again before they’d had time to reset. He blanked out the physical pain, that was easy, but he couldn’t blank out the spiritual shock.

“...And Levin’s
face,
” his memory replayed, “when he realised he couldn’t defend himself. There wasn’t enough left of him to...”

Spiritual. Worse than physical obliteration, it was spiritual. They’d taken everything he was. His identity. His soul. And remade him as a thing. It would burn out and die soon through operating at such a heightened level, but that didn’t matter. Olivia would die sooner. And they could always steal another Consultant and make another thing. They seemed to be good at it.

Another Verb. He was good at Verbs. Open hand to the throat, fingers locally hardened, perfectly executed. It didn’t work. Wasn’t noticed. More Verbs, and more, and each one brought damage to him without him doing any of his own. His right forearm was broken, and his left upper arm was still resetting, too slowly. He ignored both, and willed them to keep functioning, because for the first time in his life, he had someone to fight for.

It didn’t matter what he felt for her, or didn’t feel, or whether any feelings were real or could have a future. Just to be fighting to
protect
someone, not to abduct someone or sabotage something, felt strange. And this time he was fighting a real opponent, one that out classed him, and he was fighting not to disable but to kill. That felt strange too.
She
did it all the time, faced real danger and bared her teeth at it, but he’d never had to.

He looked back at her, but she was focused on Levin, and there was the strangest expression on her face. Almost of recognition, or understanding. She hadn’t moved from the table. Levin was now closer to her, and the only reason he hadn’t already reached her was that he’d paused to destroy Anwar piece by piece.

More Verbs. He had nothing else to try. Nothing else was vulnerable. Levin didn’t seem to notice. But all those Verbs, more than he’d landed in his previous missions put together, and Gaetano’s throat shot, had to have some effect sometime.

Then Levin executed a classically elegant move, the only one either of them had done. It was a mighty swivelling roundhouse kick—a Circumnavigator, Consultants rather preciously renamed it—which didn’t only break bones, but did something worse. It hit under Anwar’s heart and ruptured his major cardiac muscles. He went flying through the doors of the Signing Room and out onto the mezzanine. He could feel the start of cardiogenic shock, and again the sound of water rushing in his ears which he’d once read—
where
did I read
that?
—was the sound you heard when you started to die.

Somehow he managed to get up. He stood shakily on the mezzanine, looking back through the pale wood double doors into the room where Levin was moving—slowly for him, a blur to everyone else—for Olivia.

Gaetano and others were getting off shots. Levin didn’t notice. Whoever made him probably didn’t care about gunshots: they’d made Levin into a thing that had only one job to do and could then expire. When you had trillions, you could afford to make things and throw them away.

“Shoot for the neck! Shoot for the throat!” Anwar shouted, but he was shouting out of heightened time to people still floundering in treacle time, and they didn’t hear. Relativity, not of light, but sound. Most of them missed, anyway. Levin was too fast.

Olivia still stood at the table. Levin could have turned to her and finished her, but instead came out on to the mezzanine to finish Anwar. She was his prime target, but he had time and advantage, and to finish his secondary target would take only moments. Even at heightened time.

Anwar willed his heart not to go into shock, not yet, because he’d decided to gamble. Whoever did this to Levin probably knew about Anwar by now, about his mediocre ratings and cautiousness. But that was then. Brighton had changed him.
And I have someone to fight for.

He was standing on the mezzanine, his back to the balcony, when Levin came for him.

Anwar gambled: a
tomoe nage
. If he mistimed he’d die, but he was dying anyway.

Levin hurtled towards him. Anwar took Levin’s neck in his hands, placed a foot in his stomach—so much of what he was using was broken and hadn’t reset properly—and rolled backwards. Not a classically-executed stomach throw, but not mistimed either, with Anwar holding onto Levin’s neck as Levin flew over him. Over the edge of the mezzanine, smashing the balcony railing.

Anwar landed on his back with his hands still locked around Levin’s neck. He didn’t let go. Levin hung over the edge of the mezzanine, dangling by the neck from Anwar’s outstretched arms, with bits of smashed balcony crashing to the auditorium below. He kept trying to break Anwar’s forearms, or break Anwar’s hands and fingers, but they were already broken and Anwar wouldn’t let go. He felt the neck
snap
—there was a rightness about it, like when you were hammering a post into the ground and there was a moment when it settled—and he still wouldn’t let go. He felt Levin’s legs and arms and body dancing, like someone on the end of a noose.