So where were the rumours that Anchee had vanished? Or had her father locked down even conspiracy theories harder than ice? That might be possible: he owned large chunks of CySat eeAsia and a whole provider network in Western China.

Maybe it was stupid to expect to find news of Anchee’s escape from school.

“Orange juice.” Brother Michael tossed the words out, as if to an angel at his shoulder, knowing it would be heard. One of the handmaidens would find the oranges, pulp them in the way he liked them pulped and then come creeping into the vestry to bring him a juice bladder and his straw. That was what the handmaidens were there for. Well, one of the things. With luck it would be Sarah. He liked the way she kept her pale eyes carefully lowered when she was around him. Or Anne maybe, little Annie Van Hoek, heir to the bioSemtex manufacturing arcology in Montana. She’d been a catch. No trustees, direct control of her own shares: without Annie Van Hoek and her explosives The Arc could never have been built.

It was strange, all those little rich girls with empty heads and aching voids where their souls should have been. So desperate a hunger for love and truth, so little need for the funds and platinum cards that saw them through the choppy waters of early adolescence.

All waiting, just for him. It was magnificent, but then God’s will always was. Once, years back, Brother Michael had gone though torment trying to distinguish between divine intent and his own wishes. In fact, there had even been a time before that when his thirst for God had been a sham. A hollow vessel, all sound and fury signifying nothing. But then, in the overheated, stinking cell of a 4×6 lockdown at Rikers, he’d met the Padre, 200lb of oiled muscle and iron will.

No one touched the Padre. Not the Latino gangs, not the Chink data runners hooked into Rikers out of mah-jong dives on Chatham Square, not even the banged-up Viet street soldiers with their fussy haircuts and dragon tattoos. Even the sodding Aryan brotherhood didn’t trouble the Padre. The only one to try had ended up with a shank rammed where God doesn’t go. His own shank, all of it: crudely ground blade and handle fashioned from molten toothbrushes.

Locked down in a cell with the Padre, Michael Howell had two options: convert or get stamped. Brother Michael converted, taking the cheap paper Bible from the Padre’s fat fingers. He read it, like he was told to, page by aching page.

There was nothing else it was good for. The pages were printed paper, nothing fancy like those nanite Korans that wrote the sacred words on each opening page. And the paper was polymer-coated, impregnated with nauseant. So there was no point ripping out the pages, even if he’d had any skag to roll in them, which he hadn’t. No skag and no blow: the Padre had taxed his last little ball of resin the moment the screws pushed Michael through the door.

Besides, the Padre would have felt bad if Michael had defaced the word of God, no matter how cheaply printed. So Michael read the book, and as long as he was reading it the Padre let him be. He read it straight through, finger limping along the sentences, tongue stumbling over the odd names, the weird-shit families, the blinding strangeness of a world with no automobiles or CySatTV. Stumbling over the oddness of God’s sense of humour.

And then Michael read it again, more slowly, following the twists in the plot, egging on the good guys. The guy writing it didn’t do a good description of the weapons at the fall of Jericho, but Michael knew just what he was talking about. The warders had trashed Block 3 using a borrowed NVPD sonic gun, taking out the Islams. Half the ragheads in Rikers still had their eardrums blown.

The third time Michael picked up the book and started over on Genesis, the Padre took the holy book out of Michael’s hands and made him kneel on the lockdown floor, right down there on the sticky tiles. When he stood up, Michael was a fully fledged member of the Brotherhood of God’s Word in the Desert, licensed to perform marriage in five different states, eligible for zero tax rating (not that he’d ever paid tax, except city tax when he couldn’t avoid it).

He was authorized to take handmaidens, too, young girls for whom suitable husbands could not be found. “Suitable” meant devout, and devout was in short supply unless you included the Latinos with all their gold and fancy titles.

No, back then the Brotherhood was a simple religion, a poor religion. The Padre didn’t like the incense and statues of the United Papacy, but he liked the Church of Christ Geneticist even less. The Messiah wasn’t to be rushed into being by overpaid scientists: He’d come again when He was ready, in His own sweet time.

As for science itself, Michael found it was hard to argue with the Padre’s belief that if God had wanted the world different then He’d have built it different.

But sometimes — of course — you had to compromise. Building big in space was next to impossible if you left nanetics out of the equation.

O’Neills and ring colonies needed to be grown, though no one had yet built a ring colony quite like this one. Dyson spheres would need growing too, when anyone hacked the maths, though Brother Michael wasn’t too sure how he felt about throwing up a shell right around some sun to trap its light. That seemed like arrogance — for humanity to change the face of heaven, even if it was only to darken the light of one star.

Five and a half years now separated Brother Michael from Rikers Island. Sixty-six sweat-filled months in which he laboured to release the vision he’d seen the night D Block burnt to the ground. In the midst of a riot, while blood sluiced down half-gutters let into the white-tiled corridors and flames licked spray-gunned polymer off the walls, Brother Michael stood on the melting roof and dreamed his dream.

Life was corrupted. The howls of the Aryan Nation, the shrieks of screws as they were tipped over the edge and died on the net below: they all said the same. (The net was designed to catch anyone thrown into the stairwell, but the Padre had wired the net to an industrial generator to produce not so much an electric chair as a vast electric bed.)

The Earth was due to be cleansed. And he, Brother Michael, was to build the new arc. No simple flood would be enough this time, it would have to be fire, Brother Michael was certain of it. Nothing else would have the cleansing power. But he would be gone before the conflagration started.

For a prison designed to withstand riot, siege and flame, Rikers Island burnt beautifully, flames licking round Brother Michael like a wall of fire. And when the NYPD lifted him off the burning roof, his eyes were turned not to his rescuers, brave though they were, but to the smoky heavens.

It wasn’t Brother Michael’s intention that his howl of prophecy should be caught by a circling CySat Sikorsky ‘copter, or that CySatC3N bounced that grab of him naked and howling to every one of their US syndicated newsfeeds. By the time a NY Correctional Department official went Webside to stress that Brother Michael was insane, it was already too late. Thirty-two per cent of the US thought he was inspired directly by God.

Money poured in. In Seattle a fifth-generation silicon heiress donated her entire fortune. A bible-belt farmer with 200 draught-blasted acres donated his entire lottery win. Like it or not, The Arc was already a reality in most people’s minds.

“Orange,” demanded Brother Michael crossly: he wasn’t used to having to ask twice. In fact, it upset him more than was rational. But then, rationality was over-used and anyway was merely an adjunct of agnosticism. Pushing himself out of his chair, Brother Michael strode once round the small vestry and ended up at a simple wool-covered sofa, wrapping a belt over his lap to keep him in place. This would have to do...