The Naked God - Flight

Courtney rubbed her cheek along his dick, eyes closed in dreamy admiration. “I want to watch.”

“You can.” He beckoned. She was taken up against the wall, hands pi

Halfway through, when Qui

Billy-Joe did as he was told. Standing well out of the way. Keeping still, but with inflamed eyes following every aspect of Courtney’s contortions. Qui

“What do you want?” Qui

“It’s one of the possessed come to see you,” Billy-Joe said. “He’s one of the new ones. Come from the Lacombe sect. Says he’s got to see you. It’s like real urgent, he says.”

“Shit.” Qui

“It’s all right, Qui

“This better be fucking important,” Qui

“I was careful,” the possessed man said. His name was Duffy. He’d taken over the Lacombe coven’s magus. Unlike the magus, Qui

Qui

There were no suspicious minds anywhere near. If Duffy had been spotted and followed, then the police were keeping well back. Qui

“This magus, Vientus, I been squeezing him. He ain’t a magus, not a real one. Doesn’t believe in God’s Brother.”

“Big deal. None of those shits ever did, not really.”

Duffy played with his hands, wretchedly nervous. Nobody liked the idea of telling Qui

“All right,” Qui

“He’s some kind of secret police informer. Has been for years. Every night he makes a report to some kind of supervisor about what the coven’s been doing and what’s going down on the street.”

“That’s impossible,” Qui

“I don’t think the supervisor’s that kind of police, Qui

“Anything else?” Qui

“This supervisor must have had some influence with the cops. Quite a bit, I guess. There were times when Vientus got useful sect members released from custody. All he had to do was ask the supervisor for them, and the cops would let them go. Easy bail, or community work sentence, some shit like that.”

“Yeah,” Qui

“Er.” Duffy was sweating badly now. “And, er . . . the supervisor had told Vientus to look out for you.”

“Me? The supervisor used my name?”

“Yes. There was a visual file on you and everything. The supervisor said you were using the possessed to take over sect covens, and they thought you’d try to kill Ba

“Shit!” Qui

Half past two Edmonton local time, and the arcology was at its quietest. Solaris tubes suspended underneath the elevated roads between the uptown skyscrapers shone down on deserted streets. Hologram adverts swarmed up the frontage of the ground level shops, bright fantasy worlds and beautiful people shining enticingly. An army of municipal mechanoids crawled along the pavements in front of them, spraying their solvents on tacky patches and guzzling down fast food wrappers. The only pedestrians left to avoid were a few late night stimheads thrown out of clubs by the bouncers, and romantic youthful couples slowly strolling the long route home.

Qui

Qui

It all made a frightening amount of sense. He remembered the High Magus in New York; who obviously knew too much to risk being possessed. And back in Edmonton when he’d been a junior acolyte; the way everyone on a sect gig had to tell their sergeant acolyte all the crap that was going down on the street. It happened every single day. The sergeants would report to the senior acolytes, who in turn reported to Ba

“Perfect!” Qui

Arcologies were the social equivalents of nukes. Half a billion people crammed into a couple of hundred square kilometres; an impossibility of human nature. The only society which could conceivably hang together in those circumstances was a total-control dictatorship. Everything licensed and regulated with no tolerance of dissent or rebellion. Anarchy and libertarian freedoms didn’t work here, because arcologies were machines. They had to keep working smoothly, and the same way. Everything interlocked. If one unit fucked up, then every other unit would suffer. That couldn’t be allowed. Which was a paradox, because you couldn’t keep the jackboot stamping down forever. However benign a dictatorship, some generation down the line will rebel. So somebody, centuries ago, had worked out how to keep the lid screwed down tight. An old enough idea, never quite managed in practice. Until now. A government department that quietly and secretly takes control of society’s lowest strata. Criminals and radical insurgents actually working for the very people whose existence they threaten.