Neutronium Alchemist - Consolidation

“What?”

“I’m go

Avram Harwood lowered his head. “Oh, Christ.” They were insane. Utterly demented. He began to wonder if he would see his family again.

“Let me lay it out for you here, Avvy. You don’t take over a society from the bottom like the Retros were trying to do. You know, little bit at a time until you’re in the majority. Know why that’s a crappy way to get on top? Because the goddamn self-righteous majority is go

“You got it, Al,” Emmet Mordden said. He was hunched over a couple of processor blocks at one end of the desk, monitoring the operation. “The first twelve floors are all ours now. And we’re busy converting everyone on thirteen to eighteen. I make that approximately six and a half thousand people possessed so far this morning.”

“See?” Al waved his cigar expansively. “It’s already begun, Avvy. Ain’t nothing you can do about it. By lunch I’m go

“It won’t work,” Avram Harwood whispered. “It can’t work.”

“Course it will, Avvy. The thing is . . . returned souls. They ain’t altogether marbles intacto. Capisce ? It’s not just an Organization I’m building. Shit. We can be honest in here, you and me. It’s a whole new government for New California. I need people who can help me run it. I need people who can run the factory machines. I need people who can keep the lights on and the water flowing, who’re go

“Never.”

“What? What was that, Avvy? I didn’t hear too good.”

“I said NEVER, you psychopathic freak.”

Very calmly, Al rose to his feet. “I ask. I go down on my fucking knees and ask you to help me. I ask you to be my friend. You, a wiseass I ain’t never even seen before. I open my goddamn heart to you. I’m bleeding across the floor for you here. And you say no? No. To me!” Three scars burned hot and bright on his cheek. Everyone else in the office had retreated into a daunted silence.

“Is that what you’re saying, Avvy? No?”

“You got it, shithead,” Avram Harwood shouted recklessly. Something wild was ru

“Wrong.” Al flicked his cigar onto the thick carpet. “You got it way wrong, buddy. The answer is yes. It is always yes when you talk to me. It is yes fucking please Mr Capone Sir. And I’m going to fucking well hear you say it.” A fist thumped on his chest for emphasis. “Today is the day you say yes to me.”

Mayor Avram Harwood took one look at the stained baseball bat which had materialized in Al Capone’s hands, and knew it was going to be bad.

•   •   •

Duke-dawn failed. There was no sign of the primary sun’s comforting white light brushing the short night before it as the bright disk rose above the wolds. Instead, a miscreant coral phosphorescence glided out over the horizon, staining the vegetation a lustreless claret.

For a harrowingly confused moment Louise thought that Duchess was returning, racing around the underside of the planet after it had set scant minutes ago to spring up ahead of the lumbering Romany caravan. But after a minute’s scrutiny she realized the effect was due to a high haze of reddish mist. It really was Duke which had risen.

“What is it?” Genevieve inquired querulously. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure.” Louise sca

“Well I don’t like it,” Genevieve a

“Do you know what’s doing that?” Carmitha asked Titreano.

“Not entirely, my lady,” he said, appearing troubled. “And yet, I sense there is a rightness to it. Do you not feel comforted by its presence?”

“No I bloody don’t,” Carmitha snapped. “It’s not natural, and you know it.”

“Yes, lady.”

His subdued acknowledgement did nothing to alleviate her nerves. Terror, uncertainty, lack of sleep, not having eaten since yesterday, remorse, it was all starting to add up.

The caravan trundled on for another half a mile under the brightening red light. Carmitha steered them along a well-worn track below a forest. Here, the land’s gentle undulations were gradually increasing to form deeper vales and rolling hills. Dried up streambeds crisscrossed the slopes, emptying into the deeper gullies which ran along the floor of each valley. There was more woodland than out on the open wolds, more cover from, and for, prying eyes. All they had to go on was Titreano’s strange sixth sense.

Nobody spoke, too tired or too fearful. Louise realized the birds were missing from the air. The characterless forest loomed up like a shaggy cliff face mere yards away, bleak and repellent.

“Here we are,” Carmitha said as they rounded a curve in the track. It had taken longer than she thought. Eight hours at least. Not good for poor old Olivier.

Ahead of them the slope dipped down to expose a broad valley with heavily forested sides. The alluvial floor was a chessboard of neat fields, all marked out by long dry-stone walls and geneered hawthorn hedges. A dozen streams bubbling out from the head of the valley fu