Inquisitor, p.13
Inquisitor, page 13
“Hear me, Inquisitor ordinary,” he said. “Obey me. I am of the Malleus.”
Obispal grinned. “I know full well. What else could you be, snooping on my activities?”
Jaq pressed his advantage, however slim. “It's as well that I was, otherwise you'd be dead now, torn apart by Stealers, wouldn't you be?”
Several masked figures stirred. One asked, “Is this true?” Even Carnelian registered surprise.
“It's accurate enough,” allowed Obispal, “though by that stage my death wouldn't have made a whit of difference to the outcome. I was merely somewhat incautious at one point. One risk's one's life for the Emperor always, blessed be his name.” The man's tone was dismissive, and Jaq had to allow him more credit for flexibility than he would have supposed.
“Still,” hissed another mask, “it would have been a shame to lose so bold a partner in this enterprise of ours; and of His Supremacy's. Recruiting suitable candidates is a delicate business. Which brings us to yourself, Jaq Draco—”
Further around the horseshoe, a voice which struck Jaq as familiar asked him:
“Draco, what is the greatest need in this galaxy?”
Jaq immediately replied, “The need for control.”
“So let me tell you about our Emperor's hopes for the fullest possible form of control...” The owner of that voice pulled off his mask.
Jaq felt stunned anew. For the man looking at him through one natural eye and a lens in the socket of his other eye, the silver-haired man with a scar bisecting his cheek—to which he had sewn rubies so that the long-healed wound seemed still to gleam with blood—was none other than Baal Firenze.
“Proctor!” Jaq sketched a minor adoration of respect. “You sent me to Stalinvast—”
“And you have been more quick-witted than even I expected.” Firenze nodded towards Jaq's companions. “Let's have some total privacy, Zephro.”
Carnelian produced null-sense hoods and proceeded to fit these over Grimm's head, and Moma Parsheen's. Dartingly as a lizard's tongue he kissed Meh'Lindi on the side of the brow before plunging her too into silence and blindness.
“As you know, Draco,” resumed the proctor, “there is an outer order of the Inquisition, and there is an inner order. And then there is the Ordo Malleus with its Hidden Masters. Within the ranks of those Hidden Masters exists a secret, innermost conclave founded in recent decades by the Emperor himself, answerable to no-one else, and now here in session. This most secret group is the Imperial Order of the Hydra. Its main tool is, of course, the hydra. Its long-term purpose is none other than the total control of all human minds throughout the galaxy.”
And Proctor Firenze proceeded to explain the plan that motivated this cabal of Hidden Masters gathered there in the hulk...
Was it an hour later? Jaq still reeled at the grandeur and abomination of the enterprise...
Some twenty of the cabalists had removed their masks by now, as if in earnest of good faith. Jaq knew none by sight—unless they had been surgically altered—nevertheless he could perceive that they were true-human, no marks of Chaos blemishing their features. He would know those faces again.
Eight others retained their incognitos. Cloaked in crimson, those were the High Masters of the Hydra. Jaq detected psychic strength of the utmost degree, yet no taint of daemonic pollution. This was undoubtedly human business.
Obispal was a member of this very special Ordo. So too had Jaq now sworn to become. He had repeated his oaths dully like a sleeptalker. One of those Oaths bound him never to return to Earth, never to revisit the headquarters of the Inquisition, nor the even more elusive bastion of the Ordo Malleus.
In return Jaq had received a new electro-tattoo, imprinted on to his right cheek by Carnelian. The design was of a squirming octopus clinging round a living human head. All of those present who had shed their masks activated their own identical tattoos then willed the image to vanish again.
So it transpired that the elusive Zephro Carnelian was a misted roving agent for the Ordo Hydra. Not an enemy at all—but an ally in the greatest, most righteous, yet perhaps also the vilest of plans.
Jaq now had custody of portions of the hydra packed in an adamantium stasis-trunk fitted with coded lock. When in future he removed coils of tentacle to seed the guts of the worlds he visited, so—he was assured—the entity would replenish itself, stasis notwithstanding, since the Chaos that underlay the universe connected the hydra together subtly, no matter how scattered its parts.
“I have no further questions,” Jaq finally told the conclave.
“Unhood those useful iotas, then,” Firenze instructed Camelian.
Meh'Lindi, Grimm, Moma Parsheen: iotas, mere jots, tiny ciphers in the vastness of the Imperium and in the huge insidious scheme of the cabalists. Jaq, for his part, wondered whether he too was merely an iota, or had genuinely been promoted to become a moulder of destiny.
Even with rejuvenations it seemed highly unlikely that any of those present could possibly live long enough to experience—to enjoy seemed totally the wrong word—the fruits of the hydra enterprise. Unless those eight masked High Masters were sufficiently confident in their associates to try to journey to the next galaxy and back—in some incredible megaship—to take advantage of time-compression. Or to place themselves in stasis for centuries on end? Unless they dared to absent themselves from the slow unfolding of the plan—would not their keen minds continue to be needed?
Therefore the scheme must indeed be altruistic and unselfish, without personal benefit to those who were currently involved. This must indeed be a scheme for salvation in the long term: salvation through utter enslavement...
Carnelian unhooded Jaq's companions, re-admitting noise and light to their senses.
Held motionless in zero gravity by the robots with no input of information whatever, the three had been undergoing sensory deprivation for the past hour. Grimm dribbled like a happy baby. Meh'Lindi wore a mildly blissful smile which vanished as she came alert again. Moma Parsheen cried out as she sensed environment flooding back, the way that sensation needles through a frozen limb. For the first time in her life, perhaps, the Astropath had been psychically blind as well as visually so; utterly isolated.
“It's great that you arrived here, Jaq,” enthused Zephro Carnelian as he folded away the hoods. “Without wishing to expose myself to obloquy, as you exposed friend Harq before we all became colleagues—”
Obispal guffawed, though there was a sour note to his humour.
“-would you mind confirming exactly how you distinguished yourself by finding us? Purely for the record?”
Surely the Harlequin man must have guessed?
“For the record,” said Jaq, “it was an Astropath trace. A homer in your mind.”
“Ah, ah, of course. Inserted when?”
“Don't worry, it'll decay within a few days.”
“When exactly?”
Didn't the man know? Hadn't Jaq virtually been led here by Carnelian?
“Why, it was when you transmitted your goading holo into Voronov-Vaux's sanctum, through the spy-flies you stole from me.”
“Ah! The biter, bit. The spy, spied on. That would be just after you decided not to declare exterminatus after all... I guess your exterminatus decision was really what clinched my respect for your ability to think on a grand scale, Jaq. Be damned if we didn't hope you would simply call in the Marines and spread our hydra around some more! Yet no, you think in ultimates. And that is excellent. We need ultimate thinking in the Ordo Hydra, Jaq. So: no harm done and no hard feelings.”
“Except perhaps on the part of the whole population of Stalinvast,” Jaq commented acidly.
Carnelian froze. “You didn't send the exterminatus message, Jaq. As soon as the hydra began withdrawing, you changed your mind.”
Jaq nodded towards the Astropath. “She still sent it. Of her own accord.”
For a few brief moments Carnelian's face might have been that of a Polymorphine shape-shifter viewed at fast-forward speed passing through absurdly accelerated transformations. For a few instants only, until he laughed.
Carnelian rounded on Moma Parsheen, laughing. Laughing, he plucked a laspistol from his belt and shot her through one of her blind eyes, boiling her brain.
Chapter Eleven
“Oh no, we can't tolerate an Astropath who puts homers into people's heads. Not when you consider the calibre of people who are collected here. Oh, nil and nunquam and nullity. In a word, no.”
Thus had Carnelian swiftly explained his shooting of the old woman...
Reunited with their space armour and weapons, Jaq and Meh'Lindi and Grimm were escorted through the eerie maze of the hulk by the savage robots. Grimm towed the Navigator's weightless empty suit along behind him, and Jaq manoeuvred the adamantium trunk. At the hold where all the alien skulls floated, the robots left the trio.
Out to Tormentum Malorum they jetted, only to be greeted with scepticism by the Navigator ensconced inside.
“Come on, open up,” said Grimm. “You've locked the airlock.”
“Aha,” came Googol's response over the radio, “but you may say you are those same three people inside those suits...”
“What's this,” asked Jaq, “a fit of warp-psychosis? It's ms who untied you back in the Emerald Suite. Remember?”
“Aha, but if you are my enemies you'll know about that. Because you would have tied me up.”
“If you don't open up, Vitali,” said Meh'Lindi, “lovely lady of death will steal away your breath and mock your bones and squeeze your heart and all the rest of it.”
Could a radio wave blush? “Ah, right, yes,” came Vitali's voice; and the airlock cycled.
Now that they were safely back aboard, minus an Astropath but plus one locked stasis-trunk, the Harlequin man's excuse for shooting Moma Parsheen failed to satisfy Jaq.
“Was it your impression,” he asked Meh'Lindi, “that Carnelian was performing a lightning calculation as to whether we might stand any chance of still saving Stalinvast if we jumped back into normal space?”
“Huh, fat chance of saving the planet now,” interrupted Grimm. “He shot our message service. Was that his idea?”
“It's my impression,” said Meh'Lindi slowly, “he may have decided there was no hope whatever for Stalinvast. That we'd be too late.” Her tone said that she still loathed the Harlequin man, yet she felt compelled to be accurate.
Jaq agreed. “I think the news filled him, just for a moment, with grief and rage. I think he cared about the murder of a world.”
“Makes sense,” said the Squat, “if he was hoping to use Stalinvast as a playground for his bally hydra.”
“No, it was a deeper caring than that. He visited... justice... true justice upon Moma Parsheen. For a moment he was a billion people seeking some slight recompense for the waste of their lives.”
So therefore the Ordo Hydra genuinely was a caring organization. Ruthless and totalitarian, of necessity, yet also in the long run cherishing the human race, although it must needs manacle the minds of men; absolutely, as never before.
Alas for this interpretation, Baal Firenze had reacted with apparent amusement to the revelation that Stalinvast had indeed been flushed down the sink of history. With Stalinvast gone, any remaining evidence of the kindling of the hydra had been obliterated; and Jaq would need to think up an almighty lie to exonerate the command he gave, should official query ever reach him. Which it mightn't... for twenty years, or more. (In a galaxy of a million worlds...!) Jaq would be well advised to steer well clear of Earth till the end of his days and serve the Ordo Hydra loyally. Should he do so—as he had sworn—why, his proctor would of course rubber-stamp the eradication of Stalinvast...
“What went on while we were hooded, boss?” the Squat asked. “And what's in that trunk?”
“What is in the trunk is utterly secret,” Jaq said sternly.
“Just thought it might be something tasty to eat. Pickled Grox tongues, for instance. A going-away gift.”
“Maybe it's a bigger, crueller rack, little fellow!” Jaq snapped.
“Sorry, Inquisitor. I'm the right size for me already.”
“Then stay that way.”
“Where do we transport it to?” asked Googol.
“Don't concern yourself about it at all, Vitali. I shall lock it away. Erase all memory of it. Where to next? Obviously some world in need of scrutiny...”
As Jaq lay in his sleep-cell at quarter-light with the trunk sealed in the nearby oubliette, he recalled all that he had learned at the conclave.
That cabal had created the hydra after long research in covert theological laboratories located on the frozen fringe of some barren solar system unclaimed by either the Imperium or by aliens.
Guided by the Emperor's own harsh wisdom and foresight, they had experimented on the very stuff of Chaos and upon slaves permanently immobilized in nutrient vats, and upon prisoners.
The result was a multiform entity against which normal weapons were useless.
However, the hydra's material manifestation was only the tip of the iceberg. When mature, each hydra—all part of the same hydra—would sporulate psychically, infesting human minds planet-wide, while all body traces would melt away. The hydra's psychic spores would remain dormant in human brains for untold generations, passed from parent to child.
“Our aim,” Baal Firenze had explained, “is to seed the hydra on innumerable human worlds. On the majority. On all. We hope each hydra might escape detection during the period while it grows to maturity—or only be detected by riff-raff, whom no-one in power will heed. A vain hope, obviously! Yet let it be detected, let it! Nihil obstat, as we say. Eradication programmes by planetary governors or by ordinary Inquisitors will seem to succeed yet will simply enlarge the span and final influence of the hydra. Even Malleus men who aren't privy to our secret will only scatter the hydra in their zeal, and then subsequently lack all proof or comprehension of what occurred.”
“Zeal short of exterminatus” Jaq had reminded the proctor.
“Agreed. If nothing remains alive on a world, why then, nothing can be controlled. I warrant there will be few such instances of exterminatus. A minuscule percentage.”
Control was the watchword. The hydra would obey the thoughts of its makers. Ultimately the spores of the entity would pervade all of humanity, to which it vectored by design. Eventually the High Masters of the Ordo Hydra would activate those psychic spores. These would sprout: tiny hydras in the heads of trillions of people, all linked subtly through the medium of the warp.
Whereupon those High Masters—the self-proclaimed servants of the Emperor—could control the entire human species galaxy-wide, almost instantaneously.
Jaq had already witnessed, and Meh'Lindi had experienced, how the hydra could be used to invade the pleasure centres of the brain... The pain centres likewise.
“In chosen instances,” Firenze had revealed, “the total human population of the galaxy will be compelled to function as one mighty mind. Its combined psychic power will be vast enough to scour away all alien life forms and to purge the warp of malign entities. If our Emperor's Astronomicon is a lighthouse shining through the warp, this new linked mind will be a flamethrower...”
A small cabal would control all the minds of men and women for ever more. Able to twist them, direct them, fill them with ecstasy, or torment them. But mainly: to focus them collectively, whithersoever the cabal chose.
“This,” the proctor had concluded, “will be the Emperor's legacy and greatest achievement. No doubt you know he is failing—just as the Imperium is failing, slowly and haphazardly, but failing nonetheless. His Supremacy will leave behind him a cosmic creature which a group of utterly dedicated masters can operate.
“Farewell, then, to daemons when we tap all human psychic potential simultaneously. Farewell to the Powers of the warp.
“Farewell to vicious Genestealers and to sly Eldar and to quarrelsome pillaging Orks. Farewell to the ancient inscrutable Slann and the hordes of Tyranids like locusts.
“But most of all, farewell to all the excesses of Chaos—flayed and tamed by the human multi-mind at last!”
A grand and dire vision indeed. And Jaq would spread the hydra far and wide. As he lay musing in his sleep-cell, doubts assailed him.
If he tried to return to Earth in defiance of his oath he strongly suspected that he might never be allowed to reach the homeworld... Surely he would be watched for several years, to ensure his fidelity.
Yet, what guarantee did he have that the Emperor was actually the begetter of the hydra project? A project so covert that most Hidden Masters of the Ordo Malleus itself remained ignorant of it! How could the God-Emperor have sanctioned such a plan, if the human race were ever to achieve the destiny he had dreamed of for it? One of eventual freedom and fulfilment? Would the hydra eventually wither away spontaneously? Or had the Emperor... despaired of his dream?
In which case, the core of everything was rotten.
The Emperor, popularly supposed to be immortal, only endured by virtue of adamantine, anguished courage and with power. The seemingly potent forces of his Imperium were stretched thin as strands of spider-silk in a giant galactic web which was mostly vacant space. Strands of a cobweb are surprisingly strong but they can snap. When too many snap, the whole web collapses into a sticky mess.
Might the object of ultimate attack by the controlled mass-brain of humanity be the Emperor himself? The sick spider at the heart of the web? Thus leaving the descendants of the cabal in charge of the Imperium?
How could Jaq know for sure?
Those gruesome robots which had restrained the trio—and the Astropath—reminded Jaq so strongly of images he had viewed of traitor legionnaires, the polluted renegades spawned by the would-be Emperor-slayers of long ago who now lurked in a certain terrible, twisted zone of the galaxy...
His door slid aside.
Meh'Lindi slipped silently into his cell and shut the door. Outlined in the dim light, she was such a menacingly poised silhouette that Jaq's hand closed on the needle-gun under his pillow.
