The Holy Machine

57

I got a taxi to take me up to the north of the island. Again it seemed at the time like an almost random act, yet I knew exactly where I was going. The taxi took me high up the slopes of the great massif of Pantocrator that towers over the whole island. When the track got so rough that the driver wasn’t prepared to go any further, I paid him to wait for me and continued on foot up to the peak.

You could see the whole length of the island from up there, and across the straits far into the mainland. But I looked north. There in the distance I could see the little towers of Illyria City rising up between barren mountains and blue sea, with the silvery Beacon, like a pawn from a chess set, floating on the water, mysterious and playful – and as alien to everything around me as a starship from the Andromeda galaxy.

I couldn’t go back there. The police and O3 would have put everything together by now: the stolen syntec, the money withdrawn from the bank accounts, the Holist League membership… And the AHS would have marked me as a dangerous deserter.

But I wanted to look, and remind myself that it was real, and that up there people were still living out their ordinary lives: the VR arcades bleeping and humming along the esplanade, the subway trains hissing into Main Station, the headlines rolling by outside the News Building, the security robots watching the streets with their sad, blank eyes…

Only a few months had gone by after all.

I turned away from the City and looked around at the rest of the huge panorama stretched out beneath me: the sea, the sky, the human settlements scattered like handfuls of dice.

Somewhere up the coast there, just out of sight, was the little cove of Aghios Constantinos where I used to go with Ruth when I was a child, the place where we’d once found a tortoise.

I was looking out at all this, but I wasn’t a part of it. It seemed to me that I had lost all possibility of ever feeling part of it again.

I remember two Illyrian fighters came darting noiselessly overhead, Deltas, with the cold Eye of Illyria in their bellies glaring down at me accusingly, as fierce and as harsh as the eyes of Archbishop Christophilos glaring out on the impoverished towns and villages of the Peloponnese.

There is no soul, the jets seemed to say,

Only the measurable is real…

Then they jumped sideways and were streaking away in another direction over the mountains of the mainland.

When I got back to the town I went to the Post Office and tried to make a telephone call. I had it in my mind to speak to Marija, but when I got through to her number a strange male voice answered.

‘Marija Mejic? No, she moved out a month ago. No, sorry, I’ve no idea where she’s gone.’

With more reluctance I tried another number.

‘Hello,’ came a familiar voice, fragile, artificially bright. ‘This is Ruth Simling, Little Rose…’

I opened my mouth to speak, but found I had nothing at all to say.

I put down the receiver.