Beyond Redemption (3 page)

Had he known his plan would end in the tragic deaths of nine children, would he still have brought it to Konig?

Gods forgive me, but I think so.

“How did Ausfall die?” Konig asked, snapping Aufschlag from his thoughts.

“She chewed through her wrists. Bled out. Managed to write a fair amount on the walls before she lost consciousness.”

“In her own blood, I assume?”

“Of course.”

“Anything of consequence?”

“I did see one phrase repeated over and over. ‘We make poor gods.' I'm not sure what she meant. Perhaps that the Geborene are making inferior gods, or that she would be a poor god should she Ascend. I have Sister Wegwerfen looking into it.”

“Wegwerfen can't be trusted,” said Abandonment. “She might spread word of Ausfall's death.”

“We can't have that now, can we.” Konig pinioned Aufschlag with flat gray eyes. “Kill Wegwerfen when she is finished. Report her findings.”

“Of course.” Face carefully blank.

But Konig saw through his Chief Scientist's façade. “I know this is difficult.” He placed his hands on Aufschlag's slim shoulders, forcing eye contact. “This failure could spread seeds of doubt we can't afford.” His long fingers dug into the soft tissue. “Doubt is failure.”

Aufschlag's will crumpled beneath the gaze of his High Priest. He saw nothing but colorless gray eyes. The fingers felt like carrion worms working their way deep into his flesh. “But—” Sweat poured freely down his face. “Haven't we already failed? There is only one god left!”

“Of course not. Did you think I sought to create many gods? No.” He spoke with such conviction Aufschlag's doubts disappeared in the blazing heat of revelation. Konig smiled warmly at his Chief Scientist. “This is a happy day. A glorious day. We now know which of our experiments will Ascend.” He removed his hands from Aufschlag's shoulders and the scientist was more than a little surprised to see they were free of blood.

“I apologize for my moment of weakness, High Priest.” Aufschlag's heart filled with strengthened faith. “It's so obvious. Of course there could only be one god. Too close to the experiment, I suppose. I became blinded.”

“Not to worry, my friend.” Konig patted Aufschlag on the back as if they were the closest of comrades, which once, long ago, they had been. “Your task has always been the details. It falls to me to see the bigger picture, but we'd be lost without you. You are the heart of this project.” Konig turned to stare at his gathered Doppels. “I am nothing without my friends. So
alone. You are with me, right? Aufschlag? I can't do this without you.”

Aufschlag bowed low. Konig would never be alone as long as Aufschlag drew breath. He'd give everything in the service of this great man. Everything.

“I will never abandon you,” Aufschlag swore with utter sincerity.

The moment the heavy oak door closed behind Aufschlag, Abandonment chuckled. “He'll abandon you. They'll all abandon you.”

Konig smiled sadly at his Doppel. “Yes. But not yet. Notice how he didn't use the word ‘trust'? The day he tells me I can trust him is the day he dies.”

Trepidation coughed nervously. “But you always tell people they can trust
you
.”

“True.”

Abandonment gestured at the closed door. “You told him the plan was for only one to Ascend.”

“Yes.”

“But we wanted—”

“I wanted.”

“—you wanted as many to Ascend as possible. With only one child left, our . . . your plans are in grave danger. Should something happen to the child . . .” Abandonment left the thought unfinished.

“You lied to him,” accused Acceptance, no longer facing the corner. “I thought he was our friend.”

“All communication is manipulation,” said Konig. “All interaction, social or otherwise, is a means of getting what you want. It's the basis of society.” He paced the room, the hem of his crimson robes caressing the richly carpeted floor. “I need Aufschlag and he needs me. Underlying all friendship is a level of mutual
dependence. Need, and need fulfilled. Without me Aufschlag would be nothing, a small man with small dreams. Without Aufschlag I would be hard-pressed to create my god. We need each other. We use each other.” Konig grinned at Acceptance. This would bother the Doppel. “When he betrays me—and there can be no doubt he will—I will kill him.” Konig gave his Doppels a hooded look. “You can trust me on that.”

Acceptance laughed, a quiet chuckle. “And here I thought I was not only the embodiment of your need for acceptance, but also the sole manifestation of your sense of humor.”

“I wasn't joking,” said Konig.

Acceptance, looking disappointed, glanced to the floor. “Oh.”

KONIG SENT THE
three Doppels to another room to give himself space to think. They crowded his thoughts with their demands for attention and constant infighting and bickering. For a brief moment he thought they wouldn't leave, until Acceptance bowed his head and exited, with the others following in his footsteps. Not long ago he could cause them to fade out and vanish with a little directed will. Now he had trouble ordering them to another room. Someday he would not be able to banish them at all. They were his curse and a sure sign of his immense power. Unfortunately, as his power grew, so too did the strength of his Doppels. There would come a day when they no longer obeyed him. They would hound his every moment, muttering to him as he tried to sleep. His thoughts would be infested.

And then they would bring him down. His delusions would overthrow him, topple him from the throne of his mind, devour his intellect. There was no way to know how it would happen. Perhaps he would be dragged into a mirror and forever imprisoned. He might lose his grasp of self and be unable to differentiate between himself and his Doppels. The strongest would step
forward and take control. Konig would then become a whimpering Doppel of the new Konig.

There were so many ways for a Geisteskranken to go. He'd heard of the Somatoparaphrenic, their limbs rebelling and claiming control over their minds. The fate of the Cotardist frightened him the most. The thought of his flesh putrefying, his internal organs rotting or fading away, was a nightmare.

Konig sat at his desk, a massive and ornate oaken monstrosity. He'd found it hidden in one of the church's deepest basements and claimed it for his own. It was, he believed, some kind of cherrywood, the red so dark as to approach black. Chaotic scatterings of paper littered the desk's surface. All the business of the Geborene came through him. He was the center of everything. Selbsthass wouldn't be what it was without his constant attention.

Gods, it's quiet in here
. The Doppels' bickering was distracting, but they were also useful. Though in talking to them he did little more than talk to himself, there was something about thinking out loud that worked for him. They might be little more than aspects of his personality, but they were focused aspects, condensed fragments of his psyche. Each Doppel offered something different, and though they sought to overthrow him, they needed him as much as he needed them. Need bound them together.

Someday they will need me less than I need them
. The needs of others were the fulcrum upon which his Gefahrgeist powers tilted the world.
Need is weakness
.

The room's silence bore down upon him like a weight on his shoulders. He missed the voices of others. Spending too much time alone left him feeling drained and weak. Doubt would set in. Soon he would venture from his office, surround himself with his priests, and bask in their attention.

He picked up a random piece of paper and glanced at it; reports
from the Geborene church in Gottlos, a filthy runt of a city-state to the south of Selbsthass. King Dieb Schmutzig, a Gefahrgeist of minimal power, demanded the foreign church pay exorbitant taxes. Annoying, but hardly important. Gottlos would be Konig's soon enough. For now he'd pay the self-important little prick.

Konig snarled and slammed the top of the desk, anger flashing through him like a storm raging out of nowhere. He crushed the report in a shaking fist.

“Schmutzig is less than nothing,” growled Konig, struggling to focus on the work he must do. “Safe only because he isn't worth crushing.”

“Safe because you have bigger problems to deal with,” whispered Trepidation from behind.

Konig's shoulders fell. “I told you to leave.”

“You're worried.”

“I can handle this.”

“There is only one god left. If he fails, it's too late to start again. Your delusions grow in strength. Time is running out.”

“Aufschlag will not fail me,” said Konig.

Abandonment, standing next to his fellow Doppel, leaned forward. “Everyone abandons you. The scientist will fail.”

“No,” said Konig forcefully. “This child is the one.”

Trepidation laughed. “Who are you trying to convince?”

Sister Wegwerfen stood before Aufschlag Hoher, who sat at his immaculate desk. Though the Geborene Chief Scientist certainly cut no imposing figure, fat and round, with his bad teeth and greasy fringe of hair, the young priestess knew better.

Science, she had learned, was a terrifying and bloody pursuit. She'd assisted in enough of Aufschlag's experiments to have developed more than a little respect for the man's tenacious drive to learn, although Aufschlag's willingness to go to any length
to find answers bordered on mad. She had watched him torture entire families just to see if he could make Geisteskranken, or to determine if delusion was something people were born with. She would have sworn Aufschlag was Geisteskranken except not once had he manifested a single delusion or shown signs of being anything less than coldly, dangerously sane.

No, sane wasn't correct. He might not be delusional, but he wasn't necessarily fully human either.

He stared at her with beady eyes, his forehead glistening. His fingers drummed nervously on the desk, a staccato without rhythm. He glanced away, grimaced, and returned his attention to her. What did he have to be nervous about? His agitation worried her.
Have I done something wrong?

“Report,” he said.

“I have examined Ausfall's room,” she said.

“And?”

“Blood is not the best medium for leaving legible messages.” Aufschlag's look said in no uncertain terms that he was not in the mood for humor. “Sorry.”

He waved it away. “Summarize.”

“Right.” Wegwerfen thought about the insane ramblings she'd spent hours trying to decipher and the ragged mess of the young girl's wrists where she'd chewed them open. “Ausfall wrote, ‘We make poor gods' many times. I believe she was saying Ascended humans made a poor substitute for real gods.”

“Our god will be real.”

“Of course. I only meant that—”

“Continue.”

Wegwerfen bit her lower lip, collecting her thoughts. “Ausfall also wrote of the incredible pressure of knowing she would Ascend to godhood. She said the expectations of an entire people were a weight on her soul. She said she feared death and . . .” Wegwerfen hesitated.

“And?” asked Aufschlag.

“She wrote of coercion and control and how she couldn't be a true god of the people unless she Ascended at her own hand. She wrote of puppets and the Afterdeath.”

The Chief Scientist's eyes bored into Wegwerfen. “Where did such ideas come from?”

“Ausfall was a clever girl, much smarter than the others. She could have figured this out on her own.”

“And yet even though she took her own life, she didn't Ascend,” Aufschlag said sadly, shaking his head in disappointment.

“But don't the people believe she'll be their god?”

“No. The people believe we will
make
their god. They know nothing of the individuals. She will not be that god—Konig will ensure that.”

“There is only one left.”