“I don’t know what I’ve done, High Magus.”
“That’s true. But then a barely human grunt like you doesn’t know much of anything. Do you? Well don’t worry yourself too much. Actually, you’ve been quite useful to me.”
“I have?”
“Amazingly, yes. And as you know, I always reward the devout.”
“Yes, High Magus.”
“What can I do for you now, I wonder?” She began to circle the apprehensive acolyte, grinning boyishly. “You’re how old now? Twenty-five, isn’t it? So I ask myself what does a nice young boy your age always want. And the answer’s a much bigger cock, of course. That’s pretty standard. I can do that, you know. I can snip off that pitiful rat-sized cock you’ve got now, and replace it with something much better. A cock that’s as long as your forearm and as hard as steel. You would like me to do that, wouldn’t you?”
“Please, High Magus,” Kilian whimpered.
“Was that a ‘yes please,’ Kilian?”
“I . . . I just want to help you. However I can.”
She blew him a kiss, still prowling her circuit around him. “Good boy. I asked to see you because I’d like to know something. Do you believe in the teachings of the Light Bringer?”
Trick question, Kilian screamed silently. If I say no, she’ll do whatever she wants as punishment; if I say yes she’ll ask me to prove it through endurance. “All of it High Magus, every word. I’ve found my serpent beast.”
“An excellent answer, Kilian. Now tell me this: do you welcome the coming darkness?”
“Yes, High Magus.”
“Really? And how do you know it’s coming?”
Kilian risked a glance over his shoulder, trying to follow the High Magus as she circled round him. But she was directly behind him now, and the only thing he really noticed was the way the eyes of the acolytes in the life support containers were tracking her movements. “The possessed are here. He sent them, our Lord. They’re going to bring His Night to the whole world.”
“So everyone says. The whole arcology is talking about nothing else. Indeed the whole planet has little else to say. But how do you know? You, Kilian?”
Banneth stopped in front of him, lips curved in a sympathetic, expectant smile.
I’ll have to tell the truth, Kilian realized in horror. But I don’t know if that’s what she wants to hear. Fuck! Oh God’s Brother, what’ll she do to me if it’s wrong? What will she turn me into?
“Cat got your tongue?” Banneth asked coyly. The smile hardened slightly, becoming less playful. Her glance flicked to one of the life support canisters containing a puma. “Of course, I can give the cat your tongue, Kilian. But what would I fit in its place? What would be appropriate do you think? I have so much material I don’t really need any more. Some of it is long past its sell-by date. Ever felt flesh that’s started to decay, Kilian? Necromorphology is a somewhat acquired taste. You never know, though, you might get to like it in time.”
“I saw one!” Kilian shouted. “Oh fuck, I saw one. I’m sorry High Magus, I didn’t tell my sergeant acolyte, I . . .”
She kissed his ear lobe, shocking him into silence. “I understand,” she whispered. “Really I do. To understand the way people think, you must first understand the way they work. And I’ve made the workings of the human body my special area of study for a long time. Physiology begets psychology, you might say. Mightn’t you, Kilian?”
Kilian hated it when the High Magus talked all this weird big-word shit. He never knew how to answer. None of the acolytes did, not even the seniors.
“It—I saw him in the Vegreville dome coven’s chapel,” Kilian said. He knew for sure now that the High Magus wanted to hear about the possessed. Maybe this would get him off the hook.
Banneth stopped her pacing, standing directly in front of the woeful acolyte. There were no more smiles left on her androgynous face. “You didn’t tell your sergeant acolyte because you thought you’d wind up in deep shit. Because if the possessed are real, then the sect hierarchy that you’ve so devoutly been kissing ass to for the last six years will be replaced by them. By telling everyone what you’d seen you would in effect be spreading sedition; though I doubt you would be able to rationalize it quite like that. To you it was simple instinct. Your serpent beast looks after you, it puts you first. As indeed it should, in that respect you’ve been loyal to yourself and God’s Brother. Of course, you couldn’t resist telling a few people, could you? You should have known better, Kilian. You know I reward acolytes who betray their friends to me.”
“Yes, High Magus,” Kilian mumbled.
“Well I’m glad that’s settled then. Unfortunately the golden rule of the sect is that I am to be told everything. I and I alone decide what is important, and what is not.” Banneth walked over to one of the stainless steel tables, and tapped a finger on it. “Come over here, Kilian. Lie down for me.”
“Please, High Magus.”
“Now.”
If he’d thought running would have done him the slightest good, he would have run. Actually, he even had the wild thought that he could attack Banneth. The High Magus was physically weaker. But that idea was resolved in a second by a simple clash of wills. He was foolish enough to glance at her pink eyes.
“That’s a very bad thought,” Banneth said. “I don’t like that at all.”
Kilian walked over to the table, taking the smallest steps possible. In the faintly violet light thrown out by the life support containers, he could see the scuffed silvery surface was sprinkled with small black flecks of dried blood.
“Remove your clothes first,” Banneth told him. “They get in the way of what I want to do.”
The initiation ceremonies, the punishments, the degradations he’d undergone for the sect—none of them prepared him for this. Simple pain he could endure. It was soon over, making him all the meaner, stronger for it. Each time his serpent beast would come away slightly larger, more dominant. None of that helped him now. Each garment he took off was another portion of himself sacrificed to her.
“In times gone by, they used to say the punishment should fit the crime,” Banneth said. Kilian removed his jeans, and she smiled thinly at his flabby legs. “An appropriate sentiment, I always thought. But now I believe it’s more fitting that the body part should fit the crime.”
“Yes,” Kilian said thickly. That, he needed no explanation for. He had spent hour after hour mucking out the pigs as part of his duty. All the acolytes had to do it. All of them detested the filthy squealing animals. It was an insidious reminder of what fate ultimately greeted Edmonton sect members, no matter you were being disciplined or rewarded.
Banneth’s herd were special; developed centuries ago when geneering was in its infancy. They were originally designed to provide organs for human transplants. A worthy project, to help people with worn out hearts or failed kidneys. Pig organs were the same size as human ones, and it was the first practical success of the geneticists to modify porcine cells so they didn’t trigger a rejection by their new host’s immune system. For a few brief years at the start of the Twenty-first Century the concept had flourished. Then medical science, genetics, and prosthetic technology had raced on ahead. Humanized pigs were abandoned and forgotten by everyone except medical historians and a few curious zoologists. Then Banneth had come across the obscure file in some long-outdated medical text.
She had identified and traced descendants of the original pigs, and began breeding them anew. Modern genetic improvements had been sequenced in, strengthening the bloodline. It was the raw primitiveness of the concept which appealed to her. The sect’s use of modern technology was so much at odds with its basic gospel. Pigs and old fashioned surgery were an ideal alternative.
When an acolyte needed boosting, it wasn’t AT muscle she implanted to enhance the original human ones. Like the rest of the porcine organs, the muscles wouldn’t cause rejection. Pig skin, too, was thicker, sturdier, than its human counterpart. Lately, she had begun to experiment with other animals. Grafted monkey feet turned an acolyte into an efficient acrobat, useful for gaining entry to upper-storey floors. Lighter leg bones allowed them to outrun police mechanoids. Given time and research subjects, she knew she could match any modification used by cosmoniks and the combat boosted mercenaries so prevalent out there among the Confederation worlds.
The surgical techniques could also be used to rectify behaviour. For example, an attempt to run away from the sect would be easily curtailed by replacing legs with trotters. In Kilian’s case, Banneth hadn’t finalized on an effective lesson. Though she did favour extending and re-routing his colon into the back of his throat, so that every time he wanted to shit, he’d have to do it through his mouth. The extra tubing would give him a very thick neck. A nice irony, that. It would match his thick head.
When he was naked, she made him lie face down on the table, then used the straps to secure him in place. Creative punishment would have to wait. Since he blurted confirmation about a possessed, only one thing had mattered to her. She smeared a big dollop of depilatory cream on the back of his neck, and squirted it off with a cold water hose. It left his skin clean and bare, ready to receive the nanonic implant package.
Kilian wasn’t permitted an anaesthetic or sedative. He groaned and whimpered continually as the personality debrief filaments pierced his brain; their brutal intrusion sparking cascades of aberrant nerve impulses that sent spasms rippling along his limbs. Banneth sat on one of the desk bench stools, sipping a chilled, hand-mixed martini as she supervised the procedure, occasionally datavising new instructions into the package. After nearly two hours, the first erratic impulses started to flood back along the invading filaments. Banneth brought her AI on-line to analyse and interpret the confusing deluge of impulses. Visualizations that were nothing more than randomized detonations of colour slowly calmed as the AI began to marshal Kilian’s synaptic discharges into ordered patterns. Once his thought patterns had been catalogued and correlated with his neural structure, his entire consciousness became controllable. The filaments could simply inject new impulses into the synaptic clefts they’d penetrated, superseding any natural thoughts he had.
Kilian was thinking about his family, such as it was. Mother and two younger half-brothers, living in a couple of dingy rooms in a downtown skyscraper over in the Edson dome. Years ago, now. Mother surviving on a Govcentral parent work-pay scheme; never there during the day. All he had was the constant noise, the shouted arguments, fights, music, footsteps, metroline traffic. At the time he’d wanted nothing more than to escape. A bad decision.
“Why?” Banneth asked.
Kilian flinched. He was sprawled on the sagging bed-settee by the window, looking fondly at all the familiar old objects that had occupied his brief childhood.
Now Banneth stood by the doorway, regarding him contemptuously. She was brighter than anything else in the room, more colourful.
“Why?” she repeated.
A spherical wave of pressure contracted through Kilian’s skull, squeezing his thoughts out through his mouth in an unstoppable stream. “Because I left this to join the sect. And I wish I hadn’t. I hate my life, I fucking hate it. And now I’m on your table and you’re gonna turn me into a dog, or chop my dick off and give it to someone else to fuck me with. Some kind of crap like that. And it’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve always done whatever the sect asked. You can’t do this to me. You can’t, please God. You’re not human. Everybody knows that. You’re a fucking weirdo freak cannibal.”
“Now there’s gratitude. But who gives a fuck about this pathetic little comfort regression you’re in. I want when you saw the possessed.”
The pressure wave found another part of Kilian’s mind to crush. He screamed out loud as memories erupted like fountains of acid behind his eyes. Home was coldly scorched out of existence, huge great sections of it peeling away like rotten flesh to reveal the Vegreville chapel’s temple. Kilian had been there three days back, sent by his sergeant acolyte to pick up some package. He didn’t know what was in it, just that: “Banneth wants it fast.”