Free Shamanspace by Steve Aylett Page B

At least there was little chance of her rage dying among the lies. Truthful and ousted, she saw structures in events, sat in crowds watching the armatures of human need and fantasy angle-poising between the people, linking them in a jagged scaffold, and later learnt that others couldn ’ t see this. Bloodshot canyons of wounds, ward screeches, remote money, a cell padded with snow, a white girl curled round a white soul.
    And the Prevail picked her out of the chorus. New fathers taught her to use a sigil gun and walk with street-sensitive claws. Something of herself was left, a miniscule mischief which rifled a secret and took it away. Sacred telemetry. And this rushed into me the instant before her head jumped apart like a balloon filled with water.
    The left side of my body was on fire and I was shaking with sobs, several layers of skin gone. She ’ d been achingly, corrosively beautiful under the make-up. People who ’ ve had a lot of good luck deny that luck exists — those who ’ ve had a lot of bad know it does.
     

2 THE SWEET HALFWAY
    Inconsistencies are shown to be limbs on the same creature
     
    The Internecine pulled me in immediately, my headshout summoning a unit before the Prevail swung by in response to the girl ’ s phonecall. I was ghostburnt, in mourning and voiding lumps of the cover personality.
    After a few days in my cell at the Keep, I went to see Lockhart in his study, a room tumoured with statuary and patched with a lot of detail. Chairs of red leather polished like cherry skin, floors of heart pine, fruit hugged in a bowl and a fire the colour of drugs. Here we sat and talked in the utter sadness and treasuring of golden mischief which came of knowing it was all for nothing. The Keepworks cloaking system rendered everything ironic instantly; and all the while we meant it.
    ‘ You know this bit of barefaced enlightenment could have smashed the neighbourhood? ’ Lockhart said, his face full of the vitality of old wisdom. Misery glows better with fibres of experience.
    ‘ I got sloppy, then lucked out — that ’ s all. ’ I was healthier. Matter felt right. ‘ Where ’ s Melody? ’
    ‘ Paris, sidebanding the Prevail motherhouse. She sends her congratulations. She was interested to hear the Prevail have located the heart of god and this assassin girl of theirs happened to know about it. So you ’ re to do the job. ’
    ‘ Looks that way, doesn ’ t it? Slingshot into the monster ’ s eye. Why shouldn ’ t it be me. A crack in the furnace may be fiercer than the mouth. ’
    ‘ Quite. But I ’ ve been wondering, if the Prevail have the location, why haven ’ t they carried out the hit? ’
    ‘ They ’ re limousine rebels. Riddles retreat, if they ’ re weak. This one keeps staring until they look away. ’
    ‘ We don ’ t. You don ’ t. You ’ re getting faster. If anything you ’ re overconfident. We bleed outside the history books, Alix. However tempting to scorn through victory and leave it wrapped in whispers. Don ’ t become so attached to your rep that you delay the final act forever. Allow for etheric wind-sheer — and that of cowardice. ’
    ‘ What the hell does that mean. ’
    Lockhart ’ s face congested with concern. ‘ People, unlike our target, can give way to pity. I believe the Prevail feel something like that. Individual versus society, or versus god. Either way it ’ s the resistance to absorption. Independence of spirit. Pause any country and you ’ ll spot subliminal torture in the frame. The sky of culture looks downward, obstructive and unambitious. The edgemen are a circus of parallel citizenry. So we sometimes forget the pain that drove us here in the first place. ’
    ‘ God, camouflaged by sheer familiarity, different to nothing, essence of agony. ’ This was re-examined rote, out of an old but good edgemen book called The Ultimate Midnight .
    ‘ The debate is: Destroy the universe entire? Or cut god out like a cancer? We in the