Veteran (45 page)

‘We don’t need to stop it, we just need someone more benevolent to control it,’ Mudge said.

I looked over at him. Everyone was looking at him. I noticed Balor was smiling but Gregor, Pagan and Morag looked appalled.

‘What?’ Mudge demanded. ‘They are a hostile species and want to destroy humanity. We can’t wipe Them out so taking control of Them seems like a good idea to me - in terms of self-preservation, I mean.’

‘We started the war,’ I pointed out.

‘So? I mean don’t get me wrong. I wish we hadn’t but we did, and now we have to deal with the results of that. If that means in order to survive we have to win, then this strikes me as the nicest way to do it. Regardless of who started this mess, They are a hostile race that wipes out humans wherever They find them. You do remember that, don’t you?’ he asked me.

‘Don’t patronise me, Mudge.’

They’re a sentient race in their own right,’ Rannu said.

‘Agreed, and I’m very sorry about it all. It’s a sad fucking mess but if the choice is my species or Theirs then it’s mine, and if we have any responsibility in this at all then it’s to the human race,’ Mudge said.

‘I don’t,’ Gregor said. Everything went quiet. Gregor and Mudge were staring at each other. Mudge looked away first.

‘I guess we’re seeing your true colours,’ Mudge said quietly, not looking at Gregor.

‘I don’t either,’ Morag said. I turned my head sharply to stare at her. I think it was one of the most chilling things I’d ever heard.

Mudge pointed at her. ‘You are a silly little girl. You think this is all cool and interesting, and I’m sure it’s a big change from servicing the great and good in whatever Dundee shit hole you worked in—’

‘Mudge,’ I said warningly.

‘—but what you’re talking about is us being a Them fifth column. You see betraying your whole race as some fucked up post-pubescent game. They aren’t cute, and they certainly aren’t your fucking friends; what they are is dangerous and, and -’

‘Alien,’ Gregor finished for him. ‘And this one used to be your friend.’

To Morag’s credit she seemed to master her anger. When she spoke it was evenly but through gritted teeth. ‘You think this is a game for me? You think I’m not terrified to have this thing in my head? Do you think I like killing people?’ She glanced at me. What was that? I wondered. Then I remembered my Slaughter high. Shit. ‘But I feel this. I talk to it and I know,’ she said simply.

‘But surely you’ve been used before, darling?’ Mudge said nastily. His face became mock-sympathetic. ‘Never been told a lie, duped by someone you trusted? "Oh, but he seemed so nice and I thought I could trust him." And what happened next? He’s getting paid and you’re running a chain up against the toilet wall?’

‘That’s enough,’ Rannu said.

Mudge was on his feet. ‘No, it fucking isn’t enough. I mean don’t get me wrong. I can see the attraction here, but we keep on listening to this little girl because he worships her,’ he spat, stabbing his finger at an increasingly angry-looking Rannu. ‘And
he
wants to fuck her,’ he said pointing at me.

‘Mudge ...’ I started, but Rannu was on his feet.

‘Sit down,’ Balor snapped.

Rannu paused and then glanced at Morag. She shook her head. What the fuck? Rannu sat down, though he was still glaring at Mudge.

‘So,’ Mudge began, ‘who’s for the humans and who’s for the aliens?’

‘That’s fucking ridiculous, and you are bang out of line,’ I said angrily.

‘He’s right,’ Balor said. ‘He has put me in a position I never thought I’d be in.’

‘What’s that?’ Gibby asked.

‘Being for the humans.’

‘This is all hypothetical anyway; we don’t have access to Crom.’

‘Maybe not, but we need to know who’s for humanity and who’s against it. We may need to settle it here and now,’ Balor said. Even Mudge looked shocked. Rannu shifted, so did Gregor.

‘This can be settled with a conversation,’ I said. Where had the impending violence suddenly come from? ‘Right?’

‘Look, Crom aside, the fact is we’ve just heard Morag say she’s for Them and she wants to release what is effectively an alien virus into the net,’ Balor said.

‘How many times do we have to tell you we want peace?’ Gregor said.

‘See?
We?
He’s one of Them,’ Buck all but shouted.

‘He’s a lot nicer than the other ones we’ve met,’ I pointed out as sarcastically as I could manage.

‘I’m not sure I’m prepared to take that risk, and I’m not sure we can with humanity at stake,’ Mudge said. I shook my head.

‘The alternative is Demiurge,’ Pagan pointed out.

‘Which at least is controlled by humans,’ Mudge said.

‘Now whose side are you on?’ Gregor demanded.

‘You’d let Rolleston and these fucks get away with it?’ I demanded.

‘Not really liking the alternatives!’ Mudge shouted back.

‘Fine, so why don’t you kill me and Gregor and then see if you can find Rolleston to suck his cock. Afterwards you can tell me how much of a whore I was!’ Morag shouted at him.

‘Because he can’t,’ I heard Gregor growl softly. Presumably meaning that Mudge couldn’t kill him.

‘I can,’ Balor said menacingly.

‘This isn’t helping!’ Pagan shouted with sufficient authority that the rest of us went quiet. ‘Look, while you’re all either slavishly obeying our high priestess or damning those who do, let’s remember that God is not an alien virus; the program architecture is human, as is the majority of the programming. All it has is an operating system made from Ambassador. We have mapped and modelled the results of letting God into the net and, although given enough time I’d like to do more of that, I can tell you that it will not hand over humanity to Them. This is not Morag’s brainchild. God was created by a group of very human hackers, the majority of whom are vets.’ When he had finished we were still quiet, looking at him expectantly. ‘Look,’ he began again, more quietly. ‘I am completely for the human side but I have no reservations about releasing God into the net—’ he glanced over at Morag ‘—when it’s ready.’

‘Now,’ she insisted.

‘What exactly does it do?’ I asked, trying to avoid yet another argument.

‘Ah ...’ Pagan said.

‘You don’t know!’ Mudge said incredulously and then started laughing.

‘We haven’t decided yet,’ Pagan said. I think all of us were looking at him in askance. ‘Well what do we want God to do?’ he asked.

‘Typical hacker nerds,’ Mudge muttered. ‘Invent the system but can’t think of what to do with it.’

‘Are you just here to piss everyone off?’ Morag demanded.

‘No,’ Mudge snapped. ‘I’m trying to get some of you to think.’

‘So what would you have God do?’ Rannu asked. Mudge was silent.

‘Will your god obey us?’ Balor asked.

‘If we want it to,’ Pagan said.

‘What do you mean "if"?’ Mudge asked.

‘That’s a lot of power to wield,’ Pagan said.

‘So who else do we trust to wield it?’ Mudge demanded.

‘It could be autonomous,’ Pagan said.

‘So we give what is effectively an alien information form autonomy as well as omnipotence in the net?’ Mudge asked.

‘I am against that,’ Balor said simply and forcefully.

‘So back to my original question: who do you trust?’ Pagan asked.

‘Me,’ Mudge said.

‘Brilliant. We’ll just hand total control of the net to an alcoholic junkie with no social skills,’ Pagan suggested.

‘I have social skills and you could do worse.’

‘I wanna see Mudge’s social skills,’ Morag interjected, grinning.

‘It’s not Christmas,’ I told her, also smiling. Some of the tension was beginning to bleed off.

‘Few people are worthy of my social skills,’ Mudge grumbled. ‘So who’s in control? You?’ he asked Pagan.

Pagan shook his head, flailing his dreadlocks around. ‘No, I don’t trust myself, and I wouldn’t trust the circle that made it. I wouldn’t even trust Morag,’ he said. I glanced over at Morag, who didn’t even look slightly offended.

‘Why not?’ Gibby asked. ‘You seem all right, a bit cracked but a nice enough guy,’ he drawled.

‘He helped make God; he probably helped come up with the idea in the first place. Clearly he’s a fucking megalomaniac with a god complex,’ Mudge said.

Pagan glanced at him irritably. ‘I’m not sure that I completely agree with Mudge’s diagnosis but that amount of power would certainly provide temptations that I don’t think I could control,’ he said.

‘Like taking over the security lenses in the changing room for the Austin Firecrackers’ cheerleaders,’ Buck said. He was obviously thinking out loud. We all took a moment to look at him. He raised an eyebrow and nodded sagely.

‘Yes, that would be the extent of my ambitions if I had that degree of power,’ Pagan said.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Balor.

Morag, Pagan and I all said no at once.

‘I’m serious. I have experience of command, and humanity needs a strong leader,’ he said. I think he was serious.

‘Balor, that is not going to happen,’ Pagan said.

Balor turned to fix him with his uncovered eye. Pagan didn’t flinch. ‘Only the strong should lead,’ Balor said. ‘Do you see anyone stronger?’ I couldn’t help glancing at Gregor, who was just watching the exchange, his head cocked at an odd angle.

‘No,’ Morag said.

Balor turned his fearsome head to look at her. ‘Why is that, little girl?’ he asked dangerously. I was really beginning to worry about Balor’s attitude towards all this.

‘I notice I’m just a whore or a little girl whenever the menfolk don’t want to listen to what I have to say, but isn’t the whole point of this to not have people like you in charge? Haven’t we had enough of warriors being in command?’

‘Arguably the problem is we haven’t had enough warriors in command,’ I said.

Morag looked confused.

‘Because if we had warr— soldiers in command then they would be less likely to send people off to die needlessly because they would know what it was like,’ Pagan explained. ‘Though historically it hasn’t always quite worked that way.’ He turned to Balor. ‘The problem is, you’re a good leader, but you would always negotiate from a position of strength and your opinions on people living and dying are a little ... unorthodox.’ Though to give Balor credit, at least he wasn’t casual about it.

‘Yeah, but he has a point,’ Mudge said. ‘Humanity needs strong leadership. I mean who here doesn’t believe in an interventionist god?’ I put my hand up. Nobody else did but Buck and Gibby at least looked confused. I was surprised I was the only one.

‘Lot of believers in the room,’ I muttered.

‘Isn’t this where God went wrong?’ Mudge asked. ‘He told us we had to have faith but didn’t help us on the ground in the fight for survival where it would’ve mattered. We can do something about it: we can use the net to take over other systems like the orbitals, put us or God in control and show people the way ...’ he said, petering out towards the end. Presumably he must’ve known how he was sounding.

‘And the way is?’ Pagan asked.

‘Get rid of the Cabal, start delivering food and resources and medical care to the people who need it, stop tyranny, that kind of thing,’ he said, though I don’t think he was even convincing himself.

‘I don’t think you’ve thought this through,’ Pagan said.

‘Well, I wasn’t expecting to have to set the parameters for a new god when I got up this afternoon,’ Mudge snapped back.

‘Surely we would become the new tyrants?’ Gibby surprised me by pointing out.

Mudge considered this. ‘Maybe so, but I’d rather have a benevolent fascist than a greedy one in control. We can’t leave this down to people, we can’t just show them the way. That’s been tried by religions throughout history and people fucked it up and we ended up with the FHC.’

‘We’re only making God, not creating a new religion,’ Pagan said, smiling.

‘Really? Didn’t you want to be high priest? Isn’t that why you’re so jealous of the high priestess over there?’ Mudge asked. I saw Pagan’s face darken. Morag was glancing between the two of them.

‘Besides, if people fuck it up then isn’t that an argument for making it autonomous,’ Gregor said.

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Mudge said.

‘Yes, I’d like to get out of this smelly cargo hull and get on with ruling the world, if that’s all right with you,’ Gregor replied sarcastically. If he was anything like the old Gregor then he must be pretty pissed off because he rarely used sarcasm.

‘It’s an argument for a strong leader,’ Balor said.

‘We should protect, not control,’ Rannu said, meeting Balor’s eye and holding it. After several moments of warrior bullshit Balor finally nodded. Mudge shook his head.

‘Whatever. That doesn’t change the fact that if you want something done you have to do it yourself. Not set some vague guidelines and hope that everyone interprets it right. I’m sorry, kids, but humanism and being nice isn’t going to save the day. You want to stop the war, then control the weapons and be prepared to use them because his lot,’ he said, nodding towards Gregor, ‘might not be so quick to down tools as we’ve been led to believe.’

‘Yeah, if we think like you then we’ll want to take control of you first,’ Gregor spat.

‘I’m not convinced that’s not what you’re trying to do at the moment,’ Mudge retorted.

‘We’ve told you that’s not what’s happening,’ Morag said.

‘As far as we know, you’ve been co-opted by one of them. You’ve said you’re on their side. How are we supposed to believe what you say?’ Mudge asked.

‘And me? Am I co-opted?’ Pagan asked.

Mudge considered this. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘you’re just a deluded old man.’ For just a second I saw the stricken look on Pagan’s face, then he was back to looking angry.

‘I’m sick of being controlled,’ I said.

‘Which is great, but what are the options?’ Mudge asked. ‘Obviously humans trying to sort it out themselves doesn’t work.’

‘How is that obvious?’ I asked. ‘It’s having people like the Cabal in control that doesn’t work - well for us and apparently the majority of people. They would probably consider themselves strong leaders. I know Rolleston would.’

‘So we have to be more benevolent than those arseholes, look out for everyone, not just ourselves,’ Mudge said.