Pagan and Morag were nodding as they listened. He was confirming everything we’d guessed about Demiurge’s capabilities. Except that somehow he’d managed to effect Demiurge. Still I was always suspicious of these little shards of hope. Particularly when deities were involved.
‘There was something else there,’ Tailgunner continued, ‘high above the Wave. They looked like angels.’
Morag tried to suppress the shudder of fear, but I could read her body language too well. I don’t think anyone else noticed.
‘The angels are chimerical hackers,’ Pagan said, glancing over at Morag.
‘They have attack programs derived from Demiurge. Very powerful.’ Morag just about managed to keep the fear out of her voice.
‘Where is all this shit coming from?’ Big Henry asked. ‘And why’s it so much more dangerous than our stuff.’
‘These Freedom Squadron wankers. When we attacked them they were like Them inside. They’re infiltrators, right? They’ve finally got sophisticated. Info warfare, that sort of thing,’ Dog Face growled.
The four of them were looking at us expectantly. Now it was our turn to look uncomfortable.
‘It’s kind of a long story,’ I said.
‘We could show them Mudge’s documentary,’ Pagan suggested.
It took us a while to tell them what had happened. The affable-through-narcotics Mudge plugged himself into a monitor and did indeed show them part of the documentary he’d made. I felt he spent too much time on the kicking I’d got at the hands of Rannu in New York. He claimed it was to see if they recognised him. They didn’t. Pagan and Mudge did most of the talking.
‘Bullshit!’ Dog Face spat. He had drool around his mouth.
‘It was all a lie. The Cabal started the war and kept it going,’ Pagan assured him.
We’d been through this several times. Explained the Cabal’s reasons and their mechanisms of control, how they pulled it off but the whanau hadn’t lived it like we had. In many ways the concept of a sixty-year war as a con job was just too big. They looked stricken, pale, almost nauseous. Most people could understand the idea of a defensive war and the hardships and sacrifices that would mean, particularly if you’d grown up practically on the front line like these guys had, but to find out the whole thing was a lie? It meant that all you’d suffered, everyone you’d lost — the whole thing — had been for the profit of a tiny minority of people. They had just been told that everything they knew, their reality for all their lives, was a lie. Denial was a reasonable reaction. The anger that would come later was also a reasonable reaction. I almost felt like we should apologise to them.
‘How do we know which story to believe?’ Mother asked.
She looked shaken but her voice was even and calm. That stumped me. The truth was self-evident to us. We’d lived it. But all we were giving them was another story.
‘Yeah, no offence, but you’re asking us to take a lot on faith,’ Tailgunner said.
‘You know there’s something wrong,’ Morag said.
He nodded.
‘Your own god warned you,’ Pagan added.
I said, ‘I’m afraid you’re just going to have to decide which you believe. Though you could ask yourselves what possible reason we’d have to jump into hell’s creation, tab and drive all the way here just to fuck with your heads. I don’t want to be here.’
‘And this Cronin, the guy on the viz, and this Rolleston guy, they’re to blame?’ Big Henry asked.
‘They used to work for the Cabal, now I guess they are the Cabal,’ I told them and then watched them war with what we’d told them some more.
‘Look, you seem on the level,’ Tailgunner started. ‘But what if you’ve been slaved? What if you really believe but you’ve been brainwashed by the taniwha?’
‘The what?’ I asked.
‘Them,’ Mother said. She was deep in thought and I could not read her expression at all. Her calmness was weird, almost unsettling.
‘Then again, why are we taking so much time to convince you?’ Pagan asked. ‘Bit solipsistic, isn’t it?’ Everyone just looked at him.
‘Try and remember you’re talking to a bunch of squaddies,’ I suggested.
‘There is only me,’ Mudge said as if it was a revelation.
‘We are all playthings of your imagination,’ Morag said to him with mock earnestness.
The levity wasn’t working. We’d fractured their world too badly.
‘Okay, so I’ve got a question,’ Mother said. We looked at her. ‘So what?’
‘I don’t understand,’ Pagan said. I didn’t either.
‘What difference does it make? The Cabal pulled our strings, made us fight for sixty years. Nothing we can do about it now.’
‘ Utu,’ Tailgunner said quietly.
Mother turned to him. ‘Really? How’s that going to work then? Look, I agree with you about our ancestors, our spirituality, but the fact is we’re not mythical heroes out of the past. We don’t have anything like the resources to fight, and doing it on principle is a shitty reason for us all to finally get killed.’
‘Because it’s the right thing to do.’ I was surprised that I said it. And after I said it I realised how hollow it sounded.
‘Well, I congratulate you on being able to afford such a keen moral compass. Again, I don’t want to die for a principle. Particularly as I don’t think it matters to us what war we’re fighting or who’s in command. It’s not going to change things for us and the end result is exactly the same,’ Mother said.
‘But we changed things,’ Morag said. There was almost desperation in her voice. ‘People can see what’s going on now. The Cabal can’t do those things any more.’
‘Really? Is anyone trying to subvert your god yet?’ Mother asked. She read the answer in Morag’s miserable expression. ‘Things getting better for the poor?’
‘These things take time,’ Pagan told her.
‘The powerful and wealthy are always going to fight for what’s theirs. You expose them and they find another, more subtle way to get what they want.’
‘So why fight them?’ Merle asked.
Mother flashed him a look of contempt.
‘Survival. I grew up in Moa City. For more than half my early life the place was under siege. Now I found out we did this to our-fucking-selves? And now we’re scrapping over the wreckage of humanity. Fuck that. This has got nothing to do with us. We’ll sit this one out.’
‘And starve to death,’ Merle pointed out.
‘And do what we have to,’ Mother continued. ‘Because when the smoke clears I’ll bet my left tit it won’t make the slightest bit of difference to any of my people.’
‘That’s what they want us to think and do. To give in, to forget about our personal responsibility…’ Mudge surprised me, but it was similar to what he’d said on Atlantis. Underneath the drugs and lust for adrenalin Mudge actually believed this stuff.
‘I guess it’s more comfortable on Earth?’ Mother asked rhetorically. ‘Because here idealism is pretty much a luxury. We have other priorities. Democracy’s been a joke for years. Why should I care which fucking faceless military dictatorship I live under? I’m still fighting and dying for some other fucker. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’
‘We were doing something,’ Morag said. Again she sounded desperate.
I could see where Mother was coming from to a degree, but I think we’d pulled her world down around her ears and now she was going to do the same with our accomplishments, if you could call them that.
‘Really? Get here on your own? Finance your own gear? Or were you sent? Who sent you? Because I’m willing to bet it was just a different flavour of government or military power broker, playing another version of an old game.’
‘What if it’s not dictatorship this time?’ Pagan asked. ‘What if it’s slavery?’