Evensong

He felt a shift in the air behind him, and realised that the eight were a diversion for the ninth man, who shot him quickly with a tranquiliser gun, then disappeared. He caught a glimpse of him: stocky, dark-haired. About mid-forties? Running to fat? No, he was seeing Mareks everywhere, and it didn’t matter because something else was happening which was impossible: the tranquiliser was actually working. It was a new compound, and slid easily past his molecular defences, which were designed to be infallible. He felt it taking hold of his motor functions. His molecular defences gathered and regrouped, then collapsed utterly.

Does Rafiq know about these people? was his closing thought as he crumpled to the ground. He has to. Rafiq knows everything.

4

Anwar settled back into his black and silver chair and pressed his wrist implant. Rafiq’s face reappeared on the inner surface of his retina.

“…our hosts, the New Anglicans. When an environment changes, omnivores, not specialists, adapt best. The New Anglicans are omnivores, feeding over a broad spectrum, from religious near-fundamentalists to secular near-atheists.

They’ve taken spectacular advantage of a changing political, spiritual, cultural, and economic environment.

“The New Anglican Church was founded in 2025 as a counterweight to fundamentalist Islam, although by the time it appeared the need for it was already disappearing; main-stream Islam had effectively disowned fundamentalism. The New Anglicans flourished, however, because of their omnivorous robustness: their creeds and teachings could sound like all things to all people.

“Also, they were exceptionally well-run, with gifted and charismatic leaders. And still are. The current leader and Archbishop (unlike the Old Anglicans, they have only one Archbishop) is Olivia del Sarto.”

There was some more about her, much of which he already knew from the news channels: her abilities and background, her organisational skills, her likely allies and enemies. And her spectacular success in her five years as Archbishop, causing upheavals in religious fundamentalism. Anwar, because of his own intense dislike of fundamentalism, knew this part particularly well.

Fundamentalists would never completely go away. The

Islamists were marginalised but still powerful, and (because marginalised) harder to trace. Fundamentalist Christian sects were well-entrenched political lobbies, with good networks. So were the fundamentalist single-issue movements, like those against abortion or birth control, or those in favour of

Creationism or faith-based education. Frighteningly, some of them were setting aside their historical differences to make common cause against what they perceived as a more serious threat from the New Anglicans—a scabrous courtship between extremists, like earlier courtships between Nazis and

Communists. Olivia del Sarto called it the Batoth’Daa: the Back to the Dark Ages Alliance. Like one of my private nick-names, Anwar thought approvingly. It put them on the back foot, always having to deny it.

“So,” Rafiq’s briefing continued, “Olivia del Sarto reinvented the New Anglicans as a centre of rationalism, confident and assertive because they didn’t have the baggage of older churches like the Catholics or Old Anglicans. They could choose which doctrines to discard, which to keep. They became more like a political movement crossed with a socially-aware business corporation.”

Anwar paused the briefing as a thought returned to him, one that wouldn’t go away. It was related to the Tournament.

He’d carried out thirteen missions for Rafiq in seven years, and had killed only once, and then almost by accident: a bodyguard with an unsuspected heart condition, sent into massive shock by Anwar’s blurring speed. Speed was the key.

Consultants had a 90 percent advantage in speed over most opponents. In the other three “S” categories their advantage was 30 to 60 percent, but speed was the key. It made everything else possible.

The details of their enhancement and training were overwhelming—musculature, bone structure, internal organs, neurological processes, sensory abilities, all transformed—but the outcome was simple. They were beyond black belt, or its equivalent, in all the main martial arts, armed or unarmed.

As a by-product, they were also beyond Olympic standard in most athletic and field disciplines.

And the thought which had made him pause: there are only eighteen others like me in the world, and nine or ten of them are better than me. It nagged him and picked at him and obsessed him. Even more so since the Tournament.