I keep my dreams in a paper bag
my lunch, an apple, a thermos
and dreams of wealth and satisfaction
shoved in, untidily, upon waking.
The bag nourishes me through the day
it's contents gone by nightfall.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Working title: none
The merchant led Parex into the shabby room.
Sir Borel sat on a stool, at a low table. His leather boots rested next to the bones of his meal, the drippings of which adorned the front of his course shirt. At his side was a remarkably clean 3-foot blade, sharpened to a brilliance that reflected the firelight like it was sunshine.
Parex wore rags and chains.
"Here is how it will work, slave. I am going to ask you questions, you are going to give me answers. Lie to me even once, and I will cut your throat and pay for your corpse. Answer me honestly with answers I do not like, and I will buy you and sell you tomorrow to the Tavisch monks as a laborer, where they will feed you, clothe you, and give you ample opportunity to escape. Work well for five years and they will even free you. Answer me with answers I like, and I will buy you, and free you tonight, and hire you at a better wage than you have ever earned. Understand? Lie and die. Tell me the truth, and you will survive, and your position will be better tomorrow than it is today."
"Yes, my lord."
"I am not your lord. Adress me as Sir."
"Yes, sir."
"Where are you from?"
"Qell, sir."
"Qell? How in the Inferno did you come here?"
Parex allowed himself a wry smile. He had little to lose, he did not believe he would live much longer, anyway. "Just lucky, sir" he replied, holding up his chained wrists.
The merchant bent his arm back to deliver a viscious slap to Parex. The small man ducked under the blow, slid easily behind the fat merchant and had his wrist chains around the merchant's neck.
"Shall I save you some coin, Sir?" He asked, smiling. THe merchant said nothing.
Borel laughed, from his gut, for a long moment. "Perhaps I should take this moment to negotiate a better price? Let him go. He has already been paid. Remove his chains, slaver."
"My story? Allright, Parax, to pass the time. Fate, fortune or God, call it what you like, made me the son of a duke, who owned a duchy through which flowed a river, down which could be floated logs, which would make perfect masts for the navy Duke Kreel was building. Kreel decided it would be cheaper to own the river and the logs than to buy them. Kreel's army first made me an orphan, then a refugee. Duke Charrod, most likely to spite Kreel, took me in, trained me and knighted me. I was given a village in the north, from which to collect taxes, build a manor, start a family and raise a militia. But Fate, fortune or god had placed another river in Charrod's Duchy, down which could be sent the logs that made perfect planks for the sides of the vessels that would build the ships of Kreel's navy. For the same reasons, Kreel again made me a refugee. But by then I was a knight, and that could not be removed. I was still a noble, of course, but my titular home was occupied by another's army, and unless I agreed to relinquish the title, Kreel would be forced to hunt me down and kill me. I formally relinquished title. Now I am a knight, with no master and no home."
"And now you seek vengeance on Kreel?"
Borel laughed. It was both rueful and derisive.
"As strange as it may sound, Parax, Kreel is the only hero in my story. Three times I was in his hands, and three times he released me. He could have, in all good concience, killed me each time, but he did not. First, after the fall of Rechmet, my home, he actually gave me ten days rations and two horses before he let me go. He told me then that he had never seen a boy who could fight like me, and he would sooner burn a cathedral than destroy the potential he saw in me. The second time, when his cavalry overran Charrod's duchy, instead of sending another three companies against me, or besieging me and leaving me and my people to starvation, he gave me these terms: The entire village would be employed as axemen and rivermen at wages the poor farmers had never before even dreamed of, they would be allowed to choose their own mayor, and would be left alone as long as his river was well kept. He did not even require my head, he required only my absence. I met with him the evening before I left, and he gave me a suit of chainmail and this sword, the finest i have ever seen, and asked me to work for him as a commander of footmen. Even tho I expected death, I told him I could not work for the man who had killed my father. He let me go, with the gifts. The third time, there was an uprising in Rechmet. They were refusing to pay taxes to Kreel's overlord, claiming that the rightful duke still lived. Me. Kreel hunted me down. I was in Tavees, more than 40 days from here, but his bounty hunters found me. Bound and gagged, in the back of a wagon, I was brought to him. Can you guess what happened?"
"You story has been very strange, sir. No, I cannot."
"He asked me to return to Rechmet and take up the entire duchy and rule it, pledged to him. He offered me back everything he had taken from me. He would make me wealthy, noble, and the premiere Duke in his growing Kingdom. But by then, I had discovered my love, my place in the world, so I declined. I formally set aside my title in his favor. In return, he gave me three hundred Golden Chances, a lance, a shield, and the promise to decrease the tax burden in Rechmet by a third for ten years. He kedpt his promises, too."
Parex was silent for a long time. Then, almost too quiet to be heard, he asked "And your father? Should you not avenge him?"
Borel smiled.
"I hated my father. He was a drunkard. He beat me every day. My step-mother raised me, and he had her beheaded. My younger brother Alor, whom I loved, was born strange. He could not speak. By his eighth birthday, he could ride, compose sonnets, play the pipes, and dance. But he could not speak my father's title. So my father had him beaten to death with sticks, and his body allowed to rot outside the gates of Rechmet until the bones showed, to show everybody what he thought of disrespect"
Borel's voice cracked, ever so slightly, with emotion.
"The day Rechmet fell was perhaps the happiest day of my life. They caught my father disguised as a baker carrying bread to the troops, and he was turned over by his own bodyguard, whom he had abandoned as the wall was breached. Kreel had him baked to death. No, Parex, my father requires no vengeance."
"Sir?"
"Yes?"
"You said you had found your love, your place in the world. What did you mean?"
"Look down, and tell me what you see?"
"The green grass and wagon ruts of the road, sir"
"In a way, Parex, it is mine. Everything within the reach of my blade is mine. I carry my castle, my title and my profession with me. My love is fighting and killing. My place in the world is this road, and every road connected to it, by land or sea, across mountain, river or bog."
"And your story, Parex?"
"Are you rdering me to tell you, sir? Or asking me?"
Borel looked at him, at the abrasions on his arms where his manacles had been.
"Asking"
"Sir, my story is very long, and very very stupid. It can be told in a single word: luck. Good and bad. Seen from different distances, a bit of each. I would rather not say more."
Sir Borel sat on a stool, at a low table. His leather boots rested next to the bones of his meal, the drippings of which adorned the front of his course shirt. At his side was a remarkably clean 3-foot blade, sharpened to a brilliance that reflected the firelight like it was sunshine.
Parex wore rags and chains.
"Here is how it will work, slave. I am going to ask you questions, you are going to give me answers. Lie to me even once, and I will cut your throat and pay for your corpse. Answer me honestly with answers I do not like, and I will buy you and sell you tomorrow to the Tavisch monks as a laborer, where they will feed you, clothe you, and give you ample opportunity to escape. Work well for five years and they will even free you. Answer me with answers I like, and I will buy you, and free you tonight, and hire you at a better wage than you have ever earned. Understand? Lie and die. Tell me the truth, and you will survive, and your position will be better tomorrow than it is today."
"Yes, my lord."
"I am not your lord. Adress me as Sir."
"Yes, sir."
"Where are you from?"
"Qell, sir."
"Qell? How in the Inferno did you come here?"
Parex allowed himself a wry smile. He had little to lose, he did not believe he would live much longer, anyway. "Just lucky, sir" he replied, holding up his chained wrists.
The merchant bent his arm back to deliver a viscious slap to Parex. The small man ducked under the blow, slid easily behind the fat merchant and had his wrist chains around the merchant's neck.
"Shall I save you some coin, Sir?" He asked, smiling. THe merchant said nothing.
Borel laughed, from his gut, for a long moment. "Perhaps I should take this moment to negotiate a better price? Let him go. He has already been paid. Remove his chains, slaver."
"My story? Allright, Parax, to pass the time. Fate, fortune or God, call it what you like, made me the son of a duke, who owned a duchy through which flowed a river, down which could be floated logs, which would make perfect masts for the navy Duke Kreel was building. Kreel decided it would be cheaper to own the river and the logs than to buy them. Kreel's army first made me an orphan, then a refugee. Duke Charrod, most likely to spite Kreel, took me in, trained me and knighted me. I was given a village in the north, from which to collect taxes, build a manor, start a family and raise a militia. But Fate, fortune or god had placed another river in Charrod's Duchy, down which could be sent the logs that made perfect planks for the sides of the vessels that would build the ships of Kreel's navy. For the same reasons, Kreel again made me a refugee. But by then I was a knight, and that could not be removed. I was still a noble, of course, but my titular home was occupied by another's army, and unless I agreed to relinquish the title, Kreel would be forced to hunt me down and kill me. I formally relinquished title. Now I am a knight, with no master and no home."
"And now you seek vengeance on Kreel?"
Borel laughed. It was both rueful and derisive.
"As strange as it may sound, Parax, Kreel is the only hero in my story. Three times I was in his hands, and three times he released me. He could have, in all good concience, killed me each time, but he did not. First, after the fall of Rechmet, my home, he actually gave me ten days rations and two horses before he let me go. He told me then that he had never seen a boy who could fight like me, and he would sooner burn a cathedral than destroy the potential he saw in me. The second time, when his cavalry overran Charrod's duchy, instead of sending another three companies against me, or besieging me and leaving me and my people to starvation, he gave me these terms: The entire village would be employed as axemen and rivermen at wages the poor farmers had never before even dreamed of, they would be allowed to choose their own mayor, and would be left alone as long as his river was well kept. He did not even require my head, he required only my absence. I met with him the evening before I left, and he gave me a suit of chainmail and this sword, the finest i have ever seen, and asked me to work for him as a commander of footmen. Even tho I expected death, I told him I could not work for the man who had killed my father. He let me go, with the gifts. The third time, there was an uprising in Rechmet. They were refusing to pay taxes to Kreel's overlord, claiming that the rightful duke still lived. Me. Kreel hunted me down. I was in Tavees, more than 40 days from here, but his bounty hunters found me. Bound and gagged, in the back of a wagon, I was brought to him. Can you guess what happened?"
"You story has been very strange, sir. No, I cannot."
"He asked me to return to Rechmet and take up the entire duchy and rule it, pledged to him. He offered me back everything he had taken from me. He would make me wealthy, noble, and the premiere Duke in his growing Kingdom. But by then, I had discovered my love, my place in the world, so I declined. I formally set aside my title in his favor. In return, he gave me three hundred Golden Chances, a lance, a shield, and the promise to decrease the tax burden in Rechmet by a third for ten years. He kedpt his promises, too."
Parex was silent for a long time. Then, almost too quiet to be heard, he asked "And your father? Should you not avenge him?"
Borel smiled.
"I hated my father. He was a drunkard. He beat me every day. My step-mother raised me, and he had her beheaded. My younger brother Alor, whom I loved, was born strange. He could not speak. By his eighth birthday, he could ride, compose sonnets, play the pipes, and dance. But he could not speak my father's title. So my father had him beaten to death with sticks, and his body allowed to rot outside the gates of Rechmet until the bones showed, to show everybody what he thought of disrespect"
Borel's voice cracked, ever so slightly, with emotion.
"The day Rechmet fell was perhaps the happiest day of my life. They caught my father disguised as a baker carrying bread to the troops, and he was turned over by his own bodyguard, whom he had abandoned as the wall was breached. Kreel had him baked to death. No, Parex, my father requires no vengeance."
"Sir?"
"Yes?"
"You said you had found your love, your place in the world. What did you mean?"
"Look down, and tell me what you see?"
"The green grass and wagon ruts of the road, sir"
"In a way, Parex, it is mine. Everything within the reach of my blade is mine. I carry my castle, my title and my profession with me. My love is fighting and killing. My place in the world is this road, and every road connected to it, by land or sea, across mountain, river or bog."
"And your story, Parex?"
"Are you rdering me to tell you, sir? Or asking me?"
Borel looked at him, at the abrasions on his arms where his manacles had been.
"Asking"
"Sir, my story is very long, and very very stupid. It can be told in a single word: luck. Good and bad. Seen from different distances, a bit of each. I would rather not say more."
Working title: Father
The father woke, and sniffed the air. The windows of his room were open, as they almost always were, and the cool air of early morning flowed gently over him. The white light of Primus outshone the yellow light of distant Seconde, and fell on him, warming him. When his son had built this room for him, he had designed it such that most days of the year, the light of one or the other sun would shine directly on him at his waking hour.
As his mind cleared of sleep, he was happy, feeling the warm light on him. But as he smelled the morning air, a deep sorrow gripped him, and he remembered.
Today was the day he would go to meet his Creator.
And today was the day he would blaspheme in the most aggregious manner he could. If indeed he met his Creator, if indeed he left this world for the next, he would question the Creator's purpose, His plan. And he would express his anger and disgust with the life the Creator had given him. Today was the day he would reclassify all he had ever believed holy as evil. For him, today was the day his life ended, and he discovered wether it was all myth or not.
Because the cool morning air was without scent. His family was gone. Not one of them remained. He was alone, and everything he loved was dead, every member of his family was decaying under ten feet of soil they had labored a lifetime to make fertile. And it was all, every bit of it, the Creator's plan.
He rose, and dressed, and walked to the north-facing window, looking out over his home.
His first memories were there, underneath the massive waterfall that marked the northernmost point of the city. It was next to that waterfall that he had built his mate her first lasting home, of stone and wood and mud bricks. The city that would one day be there had been nothing but a large. flat meadow of greens, yellows and purples, flowers, moss-like bushes that thrived in the mist blown from the waterfall, and huge ferns, 50 feet high, whose stalks, when dried, made wonderful building material. And there they lived, under the two suns, for many seasons, raising children.
But what came before then? The Creator must have left them on that field, but he had no memory of it. He simply awoke, lying on his back under the two suns, and said to himself, "this is home". And then, looking at his mate, he said to himself "and she is why I live and breathe" and that very day he built her a shelter, of fern leaves and stalks. It was several days later that her first litter was born, and he had fourteen mouths to feed.
His children had all been born, all the native animals of the planet were born, lived and died, but the same rules did not seem to apply to him. He just WAS, and that had always been proof to him of the creator and his plans.
From his window he could see the spot where he had awoken. He had insisted that it be left bare, and that the second, permanant house he had built be maintained and left standing as a remembrance. The first enclosure hadn't lasted a week, but he still remembered it perfectly, and with a clarity that surprised him.
But they were all dead now, he thought. As his eyes tracked back from the waterfall to the base of the palace in which he stood, he saw the houses, the textile factories, the plastics plants, the parks and sculpted recreation areas, the roads, steel mills, fusion plants, and more houses, neighborhoods, roads. Dead, every one of them.
Dead.
More than anything else, he wanted to join them, lie down in the palace his children had built him, and pass gently from conciousness into oblivion. But the Creator waited, and he had buisness to discuss, and he wanted to discuss it on the Memorial, and nowhere else.
He descended the large stairs, opened the doors of his marvelous palace, and looked down the western road to the enormous flat white stone sheet that was the memorial to his wife.
He walked, resolutely, through a city built of his memories.
Why had he ever believed in a creator at all? He had no memory of ever seeing him, no evidence, except for Father's own existance...
And the dreams, he reminded himself. It had been long since he had had one, but walking through the city streets, he remembered.
**********************************************************************************
The first dream had been the metal. There were several hundred of them, 20 daughters and more than 200 sons, and his Mate had begun having fewer litters, and his own sons and daughters were beginning to take much longer to mature. The vegetation they had been eating was growing scarce, and they had begun to hunt the large, thick skinned, slow moving herbivores that shared their forage. They ate well, but his sons were dying, because the herbivores fought back. He had already lost seven to the hunts. Better weapons than fern-wood clubs with stone heads were needed. Better tools to hack the local foliage to carve out living space were needed, also.
The dream was vivid, more vivid than any other sort of thought or remembrance he had ever had. He had never dreamed before, and it startled him.
He dreamed of watching himself direct his sons to sun-cure the skins of several of the beasts, and form large wood paddles, and secure the skins to the paddles in such a way that when the paddles were seperated, it sucked in air from one direction, and when forced back together, would blow air in the other. He instructed them to make a crude leather-flap valve which would direct the air flow. He had them make two of them, so that they could be operated in tandem. He showed them how to make a mud-brick oven, and how to make charcoal, and which stones to find and crush and put in the oven, and how to make a rough mold, and how to pour the metal from stone pestles.
He had told them, and they had done the rest. It seemed to him that the youngest of his children, and his children's children, had understood the best. He had seen a fire in their eyes, an understanding that was not present in the older ones. It took them an amazingly short time, less than a hundred days, before they had rough, soft metal tools. In another hundred, with no further help from him, they had alloys, dramatically improved ovens, and things even he did not understand.
**********************************************************************************
Where had the dream come from, if not some higher power? As hard as he tried to explain it, this day, as he walked to his ending, he could not. Before the dream, he had not even understood that fire needed air to burn. He had not known what metal was, much less where to find it.
With an ever increasing supply of questions for his creator, he walked on.
There were no roads in the inner city he walked through, just wide, suspended footpaths made of polished deep purple fernwood of the giant variety. On each side were enormous, many-roomed houses made of polished stone and the dark green wood of the giant moss-trees, and the soft orange-brown curliqued tendrils of the thread-plants growing up all the exposed stone in beautiful patterns. One of his sons had discovered how to treat the stone so the thread-plants would grow only in certain patterns, and the owners of the houses had all designed their own thread-plant walls. Some spelled out words, the names of the children of the houses...
One son took longer than all the others before him to mature. He was odd, but very lovable, and they all coddled him. His littermates had grandchildren before he was mature.
He invented writing.
They had always had a spoken language, since Father had awoke. All the sons learned it from him. Mother never spoke, and until the 100th generation, none of the daughters did, they simply cared for all the inhabitants, loving them, healing them when they were sick. They gave purpose to the colony, and in their way, they communicated well. BUt when the Writer had invented written language, they learned it first, and taught it to the children.
The Writer took a wife, and she was only his, and mated with no other. This had never happened before, but because the Writer was so odd, and so clearly useful, and because Father judged they no longer needed, as a matter of survival, to breed as fast as possible, he allowed it.
Also, father felt he owed the writer a debt, and it was a feeling he had never felt before, for his wife, the mother of his children, could read and write. And she loved him deeply, as he did her, and now, she could tell him. She never wrote in the clear, literal words that he used when writing complex directions for his sons to follow, but in words of allegory and metaphor, comparing him to the strong wind that blows the huge ferns to make the pleasant sounds they fell asleep to at night. It took him a long time to understand her writing, but eventually he did, and she made him see everything differently.
All the writer's daughters spoke. Father's children seperated into two parts, and the older children spread through the countryside, and breeding more of the worker class, and the younger children desired to live in closer quarters and became intensely social.
THey began to reproduce very quickly.
The air was tasteless, dead. He did not remember a time when he could not smell the scent of his own family. As he crested the small hill, he passed into the next
As his mind cleared of sleep, he was happy, feeling the warm light on him. But as he smelled the morning air, a deep sorrow gripped him, and he remembered.
Today was the day he would go to meet his Creator.
And today was the day he would blaspheme in the most aggregious manner he could. If indeed he met his Creator, if indeed he left this world for the next, he would question the Creator's purpose, His plan. And he would express his anger and disgust with the life the Creator had given him. Today was the day he would reclassify all he had ever believed holy as evil. For him, today was the day his life ended, and he discovered wether it was all myth or not.
Because the cool morning air was without scent. His family was gone. Not one of them remained. He was alone, and everything he loved was dead, every member of his family was decaying under ten feet of soil they had labored a lifetime to make fertile. And it was all, every bit of it, the Creator's plan.
He rose, and dressed, and walked to the north-facing window, looking out over his home.
His first memories were there, underneath the massive waterfall that marked the northernmost point of the city. It was next to that waterfall that he had built his mate her first lasting home, of stone and wood and mud bricks. The city that would one day be there had been nothing but a large. flat meadow of greens, yellows and purples, flowers, moss-like bushes that thrived in the mist blown from the waterfall, and huge ferns, 50 feet high, whose stalks, when dried, made wonderful building material. And there they lived, under the two suns, for many seasons, raising children.
But what came before then? The Creator must have left them on that field, but he had no memory of it. He simply awoke, lying on his back under the two suns, and said to himself, "this is home". And then, looking at his mate, he said to himself "and she is why I live and breathe" and that very day he built her a shelter, of fern leaves and stalks. It was several days later that her first litter was born, and he had fourteen mouths to feed.
His children had all been born, all the native animals of the planet were born, lived and died, but the same rules did not seem to apply to him. He just WAS, and that had always been proof to him of the creator and his plans.
From his window he could see the spot where he had awoken. He had insisted that it be left bare, and that the second, permanant house he had built be maintained and left standing as a remembrance. The first enclosure hadn't lasted a week, but he still remembered it perfectly, and with a clarity that surprised him.
But they were all dead now, he thought. As his eyes tracked back from the waterfall to the base of the palace in which he stood, he saw the houses, the textile factories, the plastics plants, the parks and sculpted recreation areas, the roads, steel mills, fusion plants, and more houses, neighborhoods, roads. Dead, every one of them.
Dead.
More than anything else, he wanted to join them, lie down in the palace his children had built him, and pass gently from conciousness into oblivion. But the Creator waited, and he had buisness to discuss, and he wanted to discuss it on the Memorial, and nowhere else.
He descended the large stairs, opened the doors of his marvelous palace, and looked down the western road to the enormous flat white stone sheet that was the memorial to his wife.
He walked, resolutely, through a city built of his memories.
Why had he ever believed in a creator at all? He had no memory of ever seeing him, no evidence, except for Father's own existance...
And the dreams, he reminded himself. It had been long since he had had one, but walking through the city streets, he remembered.
**********************************************************************************
The first dream had been the metal. There were several hundred of them, 20 daughters and more than 200 sons, and his Mate had begun having fewer litters, and his own sons and daughters were beginning to take much longer to mature. The vegetation they had been eating was growing scarce, and they had begun to hunt the large, thick skinned, slow moving herbivores that shared their forage. They ate well, but his sons were dying, because the herbivores fought back. He had already lost seven to the hunts. Better weapons than fern-wood clubs with stone heads were needed. Better tools to hack the local foliage to carve out living space were needed, also.
The dream was vivid, more vivid than any other sort of thought or remembrance he had ever had. He had never dreamed before, and it startled him.
He dreamed of watching himself direct his sons to sun-cure the skins of several of the beasts, and form large wood paddles, and secure the skins to the paddles in such a way that when the paddles were seperated, it sucked in air from one direction, and when forced back together, would blow air in the other. He instructed them to make a crude leather-flap valve which would direct the air flow. He had them make two of them, so that they could be operated in tandem. He showed them how to make a mud-brick oven, and how to make charcoal, and which stones to find and crush and put in the oven, and how to make a rough mold, and how to pour the metal from stone pestles.
He had told them, and they had done the rest. It seemed to him that the youngest of his children, and his children's children, had understood the best. He had seen a fire in their eyes, an understanding that was not present in the older ones. It took them an amazingly short time, less than a hundred days, before they had rough, soft metal tools. In another hundred, with no further help from him, they had alloys, dramatically improved ovens, and things even he did not understand.
**********************************************************************************
Where had the dream come from, if not some higher power? As hard as he tried to explain it, this day, as he walked to his ending, he could not. Before the dream, he had not even understood that fire needed air to burn. He had not known what metal was, much less where to find it.
With an ever increasing supply of questions for his creator, he walked on.
There were no roads in the inner city he walked through, just wide, suspended footpaths made of polished deep purple fernwood of the giant variety. On each side were enormous, many-roomed houses made of polished stone and the dark green wood of the giant moss-trees, and the soft orange-brown curliqued tendrils of the thread-plants growing up all the exposed stone in beautiful patterns. One of his sons had discovered how to treat the stone so the thread-plants would grow only in certain patterns, and the owners of the houses had all designed their own thread-plant walls. Some spelled out words, the names of the children of the houses...
One son took longer than all the others before him to mature. He was odd, but very lovable, and they all coddled him. His littermates had grandchildren before he was mature.
He invented writing.
They had always had a spoken language, since Father had awoke. All the sons learned it from him. Mother never spoke, and until the 100th generation, none of the daughters did, they simply cared for all the inhabitants, loving them, healing them when they were sick. They gave purpose to the colony, and in their way, they communicated well. BUt when the Writer had invented written language, they learned it first, and taught it to the children.
The Writer took a wife, and she was only his, and mated with no other. This had never happened before, but because the Writer was so odd, and so clearly useful, and because Father judged they no longer needed, as a matter of survival, to breed as fast as possible, he allowed it.
Also, father felt he owed the writer a debt, and it was a feeling he had never felt before, for his wife, the mother of his children, could read and write. And she loved him deeply, as he did her, and now, she could tell him. She never wrote in the clear, literal words that he used when writing complex directions for his sons to follow, but in words of allegory and metaphor, comparing him to the strong wind that blows the huge ferns to make the pleasant sounds they fell asleep to at night. It took him a long time to understand her writing, but eventually he did, and she made him see everything differently.
All the writer's daughters spoke. Father's children seperated into two parts, and the older children spread through the countryside, and breeding more of the worker class, and the younger children desired to live in closer quarters and became intensely social.
THey began to reproduce very quickly.
The air was tasteless, dead. He did not remember a time when he could not smell the scent of his own family. As he crested the small hill, he passed into the next
Working Title: GAV
I opened my eyes and saw the sky. Big Dipper. Northern Hemisphere, Earth. I closed my eyes and slept again.
I opened my eyes and saw the sky, the Big Dipper had moved, and something was obstructing its handle. My sense of smell was working, it seemed, and I smelled the unmistakable smell of burning tire rubber. Was it the black smoke of a tire fire very close by that obstructed the handle of the dipper? Before I could answer the question, again I slept.
And again I woke to a sky with fewer stars, a lighter backdrop and the foul black oily smoke climbing to the cloudless dawn. A tire was on fire somewhere, and I needed to find out where.
But I couldn’t move.
And it was almost dawn, I had to get inside. Dawn was death.
My sense of sound seemed resurrected, and I was no longer in silence. I smelled gasoline and burning rubber. Ominously, I heard a dripping sound close by. Gasoline, fire and a dripping sound by my left ear were not combining to make me complacent. But I was more worried by the impending dawn.
I tried to move, and it was the wrong thing to do. Again I was in silence, the smells receded, the dawning sun went away, and I slipped into numbness, then darkness, then nowhere.
I spent an eternity wherever the diety sends people whose life status is undecided. The diety eventually decided I was still alive, and the sky, now purpling nicely to my left, reappeared.
Drip, drip, drip.
The sound of flames.
The slight feeling of the rush of air toward a bonfire.
Accompanied by terror.
Ok, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t see much, my eyes being pointed up and the platform thay were set in being uncomfortably immobile. I could smell, I could hear, I could see. I could not touch. And the sky was brightening percievably.
Basically, I was fucked.
To make matters worse, my senses of touch and kinesthetics came back at a sprint. I was lying on something cold, and something oily was dripping onto my forehead and running down my hair and onto the ground. At the very extremes of my peripheral vision stalks of grass protruded. At the absolute top of my field of vision, was a familiar yellow. A piece of my car. On the kinesthetic scene, my body was arranged strangely, with my left leg under me and bent from the hip at an impossible angle. Dislocated, perhaps broken. Two of my fingers on my left hand were incredibly painful and felt also dislocated.
The sound of flame was gone, for which I muttered a small thanks to whatever wind, water or lack of fuel put it out. I was willing to bet that the stuff dripping onto my forehead was the gasoline I had been smelling, and I did not really enjoy the thought of immolation, altho that might have been preferable to the fate I would suffer if the sun rose and I was still here, wherever here was.
Finally I managed to move my neck.
My car was upside-down, smashed horribly, like somebody had spent a while smashing it with a baseball bat the size of the jolly green giant.
But I could reach the trunk without moving much, and if I had had the bad sense to leave it unlocked, I could get what was in it.
There were three holes in the trunk, all entry holes. Two neat 44 or 45 calibre, and one shotgun slug, ragged, irregular, and big enough to stop an elephant.
I was in some sort of marshy area, covered with mud and sawgrass and the background oder of decay.
Thanks god for droughts, or I would have been under three feet of muck. I craned left, and saw the smoking remnants of one of my tires, next to a thoroughly immolated red mustang with a burned corpse still holding the wheel. The road was just beyond it.
I reached up, and grabbed the handle of the trunk, and it opened immediately, which was good, because if it had given me the usual shit my old cars usually dish out, I would never have made it. The heavy waterproofed green canvas tarp fell out.
I will not describe what the next ten minutes felt like, I flatly refuse to relive it even for the benefit of a good story. I got the tarp out, rolled myself and the tarp another forty feet from the road, (covering it with mud in the process) wrapped myself in it, pointed the open edge away from the road, left it open so I would not suffocate, and hoped like hell that the muddied tarp looked like a rock or another natural feature of the endless bog, and passed out again.
The road ran east-west, and my tarp was pointed north, and it was near midwinter here. No direct sunlight was there to wake me. I would not die of exposure. I checked myself as thoroughly as I could, and I satisfied myself that I would not bleed to death. My leg was out of joint at the hip, but only mildly, it would heal if treated. But that would have to wait for another day. There was pain just about everywhere, but none of it seemed life threatening. All the bases I could think of were covered, I could relax.
I have no idea how long I slept. Long enough to get hungry, thirsty, and in great need to empty my bladder.
When I woke, they were there, looking over the vehicles. They had two GAV’s, a Helicopter, two ground cruisers, a veritable cop convention. The GAV’s worried me. The GAV’s had to be federal, the local cops wouldn’t have them.
Ant that meant that they knew who I was, and THAT meant I was in really deep shit. They hadn’t spotted me, and I didn’t know why.
Did I say thank god for droughts? Let me rephrase: thank god for water. I was buried in the mud perhaps seven inches, and murky water circulated between the layers of the tarp. I could barely see around the edge, and I dared not move. The water was covering my infrared signature. The GAV’s couldn’t see me, the chopper was a local and probably didn’t carry IR spotting gear anyway, and the ground cruisers didn’t have dogs. It looked like if I stayed where I was, I would soon be o.k. When the GAV’s left, I could move.
I tried to stay awake, but couldn’t. The pain was overwhelming me, and the exhaustion was overcoming me too. I slept.
The beeping of the tow trucks woke me the next time. It was dark again, and the chopper was gone. The ground cruisers were still there, but the GAV’s were out of sight. Which didn’t mean anything, as they couldn’t be seen or heard if their pilots so chose.
Time was running out, and soon I would die of thirst, pain, annoyance and cops.
I had to assume the GAVs were gone and risk moving, or I had no good choices at all. The GAV’s were probably still there, but if I stayed hidden I was a dead man, and passively, which I wasn’t too keen on.
I stared into the night sky for a time, hoping to see the stars fade and return in a straight line, that would tell me if the GAVs were circling overhead. I saw nothing like that. I crawled into the mud from the protection of my tarp, and surveyed the scene. Two tow trucks were hauling the wreckage onto the road, to a circle of waiting cops. The doors to my vehicle were mangled, but closed, the front window was broken (which was obviously how I had gotten out) but the glass had not been moved away and was still jagged. They had not yet searched the car. I had thought they must have done that while I was out of it, rolled in the muddy tarp.
That was bad. Very bad. Depending on how bright the cops were, and what equipment they were carrying, and wether or not they would search the vehicles before hauling them off, this was going to be a very busy area in a few minutes. My freedom depended, in large measure, depended on how long it took them to realize that my duffel bag contained around 36 ounces of refined plutonium in 10 separate lead-lined containers, stuffed in graphite-empregnated sacks. Half of me hoped they were idiots and wouldn’t recognize it, but that would entail a far greater risk, that they would empty out all the sacks, open all the containers and gather all the contents together in one pile. They would, of course, all die. I did not know enough about the stuff at all to know wether that much, gathered together, would go poof. Bright light, big radioactive glass parking lot. That would, of course, kill me, too, which definitely wasn’t part of the plan.
They couldn’t be THAT stupid. But, regardless, I had to get out of there.
I had some use of my leg, and the pain was outrageous and I could barely keep from screaming, but I managed to crawl in a large circle around the commotion of the trucks and the cops and the wreckage, to the road.
I was twelve miles from the nearest place I could reasonably expect to find any help at all. I had no idea what time it was. The only possible means of transport was a cop car, and since I would much rather be a driver than a restrained passenger, I was going to have to steal one.
I thought about it for longer than I should have, sitting by the side of the road, looking at the cop cars. I hated making decisions that could turn out to be irrevocable, but I had no good choices.
These were not city cops, they were country cops. Some of the vehicles were still running. There were five on my side of the tow trucks, and there were maybe 7 on the other side. They were all empty except the Shift Commander’s ATV, and he was doing paperwork. It wasn’t even challenging to get into one, close the door gently, turn off the heaqdlights and back away. They were not going to make it hard on me at all, and they wouldn’t even notice until they cleared the road to make way for the tow trucks to cart the wreckage off.
I turned on the cop netwave and listened to the traffic as I fled toward Dade.
Dade, and the Underground. Dade, and the Spaceport. Dade and Death.
I clocked them. It took them 11 miles to notice that their car was missing, and another 3 seconds to get a GAV dispatched. But the GAV would be lots of trouble, Central Operational Patrol sent a GAV with a Raven in it.
So the only question now was could I get to Dade, and the protection of my own Raven (Ravens NEVER fought each other), or into a crowd big enough that a Raven would be useless, before the Raven in the GAV got to me. GAVs could go perhaps three hundred miles an hour in an atmosphere, so it could be to me in a matter of minutes, but probably wouldn’t. they took a while to get going.
Dade was one mile away.
Into the teeth of the dragon. The most unsafe place on earth, and also the safest. It just depended on who I ran into first.
My hip really hurt.
I reached Dade, and the house I needed to get to, about twenty seconds before they announced the plutonium find over the Netwave.
By the time things got hot on the Dade Road, I was trying to figure out how to explain to my friends how I had lost the most valuable cargo I had ever been entrusted with. But my Raven was there, and I was safe. They had some good painkillers too, and one of my friends was a physical doctor.
I abandoned the cop car two blocks away and limped in.
Xenocyborg, a combination of alien biology and alien technology, was the proper designation for Ravens. The biological portion resembled a four-foot tall barrel with three arms placed equidistant around it. These appendages served as both arms and legs. At the end of these limbs were 13 protrusions, 6 jointed support fingers and 7 prehensile manipulating tentacles that resembled small elephant trunks. On one end of the barrel was a head with a mouth and two stalked, shiny black orbs referred to as “eyes” even tho they “saw” magnetic fields, and at the other end was a giant, dish-shaped retractible ear. One tentacle of each hand had a very small eye at the end that did work in visible light, but could only see clearly at very short distances. These hand-eyes could, through two variable-shaped lenses each, magnify to 100 times.
The cyborg part was a small metallic dome-shaped protuberance between the arms. We knew it was artificial, but no Raven had ever explained it to human scientists.
The Ravens were toolmakers, spacefarers and telepaths, of a sort. The jet black orbs called eyes actually saw complex magnetic fields, or rather, that is what Raven scientists have told us. In such detail that they can “read minds” by interpreting the brain’s magnetic fields. Sometimes at a significant distance. And somehow, with either biology or technology that they will neither explain nor demonstrate in controlled conditions, they can induce magnetic fields in the minds of others, to communicate. Human scientists say it is not possible, that they must be using a technology they have never even hinted at. To most people, it was just magic.
I have “spoken” with seven Ravens, and I think that might be a human record. I have also been on the Raven’s homeworld, circling a star called ‘Ravenna’ by it’s human discoverer. We call them Ravens from that name.
The feel of contact with each Raven was distinctive and unforgettable. However they communicate, be it magic, magnetic fields, or any other proposed method, it is going on brain to brain, that much is clear from the experience.
I felt Sevrilla’s thoughts on me as soon as I ditched the car. Her range was in the neighborhood of a mile, perhaps a mile and a half, but she was here undercover (As far undercover as a Raven can get, as every other Raven on earth knew exactly where she was all the time) and had reduced her range to remain undetected by any sensative humans.
Her thoughts descended on me like a warm blanket on a cold night, and the pain, all of the pain, went away.
“ ! “ her surprise and distress at my condition blew over me like a strong wind. Once the blast of emotion had receeded, the cold, analytical Sevrilla checked me for life threatening injuries, and realized (or chose to let me know that she realized) that I was empty-handed. She sensed my agitation at having failed, and calmed it, forgiving me. She removed my shame. It was almost a violation of our agreement, but I let it pass. I was in very bad shape, and though she had shut the pain off, she could not heal me. Ringer was there, and he would see to my physical condition.
She prodded at my memory, and I relived the crash, the mud, the tarp, and the drive back. As I remembered the events, she let me feel what she herself was feeling.
She felt my memories as a blast of fear and pain, with very little data. No raven I had ever spoken to before had done that, they simply extracted the information and ignored everything else. Sevrilla took the information in it’s emotional context.
When I remembered seeing the red mustang with the burned corpse still at the wheel, she focussed her attention on it, and the memory became clearer, somehow sharper, as if I were looking at a picture and could zoom in on pieces of it. I felt her feel my horror and revulsion, and I felt her feel pity towards the person who was probably responsible for my current condition and the failure of my mission, and when she did, I did too. In the communal state that is Raven “language”, I also felt her judgement of me harden a little as she understood my lack of compassion.
“He’s dead, I’m alive. I just hope he was’nt an innocent bystander”
Her “voice” was a high, soft voice that had, many years ago, belonged to my sister. Sevrilla had appropriated it from my memory, for those rare occasions when specific information had to be relayed. It was a cross between hearing and remembering, the words seeming to come from deep in the mind, floating slowly up.
“He was not. His name was Henry Sharp. He had a wife, three children and a dog. He drank too much and occasionally became violent, and rented his services to those who need violence committed. He was almost certainly there to kill you.”
“Good” I answered in my mind, and I felt her laugh a little. “As you say, you are alive, and he is not. Well done, Ambassador. He is a very expensive violence-doer, and must be good at it. Walk slowly, or you will injure yourself. I have sent Dr. Ringer to you”
And her touch left me, as sudenly as it had come to me. The pain did not, as I expected, rush back. She had turned it off to enable communication, and had neglected, or decided against, turning it back on. I would have to talk to her about our agreement.
No time had past, or at least not enough for me to have made even one step. The empty cop car was only a few steps behind me, but already, courtesy of Sevrilla, the trauma of the events had receeded. When I saw Ringer and three of his nurses sprinting towards me, and a small hoarde of Jacks, maybe 30 of them, spread out and looking menacing and defensive, I started to feel safe. I collapsed just as Ringer got to me.
It did not occur to me, until much later, to wonder how she had known who was in the red Mustang.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
working title: mother / amoeba
She drifted, and dreamed Cold Dreams, the vague, nebulous, random thoughts and reliving of memories of a mind a mere three degrees warmer than death.
Deep in her mind, the part of her that sensed sunlight on her skin sighed in pleasure, and the motion of the exhale set her spinning gently, exposing all of her skin, over time, to the warm light of the distant sun.
She spun, she drifted, she basked.
When the sun had warmed her sufficiently, she began slowly to wake, and the Cold Dreams gave way to Warm Dreams, a strange and sometimes disturbing commingling of Cold Dreams and real sensation from her surroundings. The solar wind played in waves against her skin, gradually increasing the sensations, slowly pushing on her to wake fully.
She warmed still further, and woke.
"Mother?" she inquired, and heard no reply.
This had never before happened to her. For a brief moment, she was afraid, and began to prepare to flee. She started to warm herself internally, and warmed first those organs she would need to leave this place. She opened her close-seeing eye, and looked around her. She saw nothing dangerous. Her far-seeing eye needed more warmth to function, and she was not yet fully awake, and she felt very sluggish. But she saw no immediate threat, and gave more of her energy to warming the organs she would need to explore, rather than marshalling the energy to run. She wondered what she should do.
She warmed enough to open her far-seeing eye, and she did so, looking first at the distant sun whose proximity had awoken her. She measured it, and, since she was in motion relative to it, in a very short time she had calculated it's distance. With it's distance and measurements of it's pull on her body, she knew it's mass.
Slowly she unfolded her second far-seeing eye and extended it’s polymer stalk until it was seventy of her lengths away from the first, and operated them both in tandem, effectively multiplying her eye’s reach. She began discovering her new home, seeking to map the curvature of space-time caused by the presence of heavy bodies. She looked for food. While she looked, she sought answers. Since she had none, she dreamed.
How had she come into existence? It seemed a good place to start. She relived her earliest memories, seeking in them new perspectives on her birth.
It was not a moment, but a series of events. There was no eureka point, where she thought to herself “I live!”.
She had started existence as one of Mother’s magnification eyes. The system in which she had begun life was a complex place of seven gas giant planets, and countless thousands of satellites, varying from so large as to be inescapably heavy, down to the size under which Mother considered everything to be dust. Mother sought to know everything, of course, and sent eyes to wherever she suspected there was anything new to be seen.
Mother was a dissociated entity, occupying no specific single location. Her many parts conversed and communicated with little fingers of coherent light. There were two phases to learning anything, mother had discovered. First, information must be gathered. And next, that information must be remembered and integrated, thought about, mingled with other data. The part of mother that did the thinking was very large, but the parts that did the seeing, hearing and tasting, as well as the parts that gathered and digested food, built new parts, were of whatever size they needed to be. She sent eyes and ears and sensory organs to see specific things, do specific things, while the bulk of her mind stayed in one place, protected and safe. It was tremendously efficient. It never occurred to her to simply move herself to where the new data was, it would have cost her terribly.
One some occasions, she had no choice but to dispatch a small piece of her mind to accompany a sensory organ, simply because it would be out of contact with her while having to make decisions. These occasions were rare, because there were very few places that the fingers of light could not reach her, or bounce off something or a large series of things, to get to her, but there were a few.
Sometimes, even more rarely still, the pieces of her mind that she dispatched into what she thought of as dark places, became large and complex in the course of seeing what mother sent it to see. On those occasions, she made a pragmatic choice. If that part of herself had changed significantly, and the change had brought benefits to mother, it was allowed to remain autonomous. Mother understood the value of a different perspective. But Mother would allow no competition for food, so those autonomous parts were sent to places that mother could not retrieve food from, if there was any. Mother looked at the stars.
Dreamer
"Yo, Cap!" a leutennant called across six cubicles to the tall form of captain Arthur Raikan, jr. Captain Raikan was an immense physical presence, standing 6' 7" tall, weighing 250 pounds of solid, rippling muscle. Altho he looked somewhat older, he was in fact 22 years old. A very young captain, in semi-peacetime. He was not in full uniform, just a green T-shirt and olive drab baggy combat pants. Nobody in the office was in uniform any more than he was.
"What?" Captain Raikan looked around
"Got a hot name on the wire"
"Well?" He asked, waiting for details.
The Leutennant looked at him, then at the office on the left wall of the office. It had a small, blank red card in the slot that would normally hold a name. Raikan nodded and they both moved toward the door.
The room was small, and had no windows. THe door they entered through was extremely thick, with four layers of something on each side of the steel of the door itself. THe room looked like something out of an insane asylum, it's walls were padded in a black plastic that seemed to have a dull grey coating over it, cracked in places, and in other places repaired with shiny metal tape. As Raikan walked in and closed the door, his eardurms popped and he heard a slight hiss of air. Above the door, a digital readout read 02 - 06:00.
"Who is the hot name?"
The leutennant stammered, looking like he didnt want to reply.
"Come on, Blake, what's going on?"
"It isn't really a hot name, Cap, I just wanted to get you in here to see this"
The Leutennant handed Raikan a piece of paper.
IntCent Only: Eyes Only: No Replication: No Distribution: Scramble Delta: Hand Deliver: Project: Argentine Crew
Case Officer: Col Amb. Watson
RE: Argentine Crew Subject #2 sex partner Civ Fem Catherine Allennath found pregnant with healthy male fetus ten weeks of age. Amniocentesis performed today confirms genetic match Catherine Allenath and Project Argentine Crew Subject #2, now age 22. Action: Review immediately, Priority Alpha.
"What the fuck?" Raikan said, letting the hand holding the paper fall to his side as tho it were a burden of enormous weight.
"Congratulations, man. I didn't know Cathy was pregnant. So, why does IntCent call you Project Argentine Crew Subject #2? Or did I just tell you that your girlfriend is screwing around?"
"No, I knew. We were keeping it under wraps until we could figure out how to tell her parents. I don't know what the fuck the Argentine Crew noise is about. Looks like somebody is keeping tabs on me."
"Specifically, Colonel Ambrose Watson. You know, Ramrod Watson?"
"Crap. Look, Blake, follow all normal procedures, right? But memorize anything else that comes up on your shift and get it to me as soon as you can. I am going to talk to Redman."
Davida Riakan answered the door, and stared at the small knot of uniformed men. "Yes?" She asked, issuing the question with a terse smile, the smile of a strong, annoyed woman pretending to be curteous and feminine.
"Are you Mrs. Raikan?" Asked the man who had knocked, the man in the front of the knot. From his uniform and haircut, she knew him to be a captain in the Marine Corps. He was expressionless, and seeing that, she began to fear.
"Oh my god." She breathed, and her face went pale, and she staggered slightly. "Is it my little Arthur?" she asked in a plaintive voice.
The Captain jumped up the three steps and steadied her. "No mam. I am Captain Gerrold. We have come on orders from General Edgecomb. To deliver this"
She sighed a relieved breath, and then looked confused.
The Captain handed her a sealed envelope.
He then stood and looked. "We are to wait for your instructions, Mam."
She opened the letter and read. The color returned to her face, but the pensive, worried look remained. She looked up. "I'll get my coat. You are to take me to the base to see the General"
"Yes, Mam." the Captain said, relieved. He had orders to take her to the base, and was warned that she might not want to come. He was prepared to arrest her, but he was glad that he did not need to. Her husband had been a friend. Arthur Raikan had been one of his teachers. Arthur Raikan Jr had been one of his friends before he had been assigned to the hush-hush world of intelligence.
While he waited, Mark Gerrold, Captain, USMC, thought about how glad he was not to be delivering one of those ever more frequent "This message is to inform you that your (father/mother/sister/brother/son/daughter) has bought a 3 by 6 by 6 farm in a foreign land you can't find on a map more than six months old."
She was ready to go in such a short time the Captain wondered if the news she recieved wasnt at least as important as the news he was glad he wasnt delivering. He ushered her into the armored Humvee, posted a man in the 60 calibre turret, and got in. In front of him went another armored Humvee, a sleek black civilian jeep, and a police cruiser. Behind him came a second cruiser.
She hadn't even noticed.
The phone woke Sarah Raikan from a comfortable, light sleep in the arms of her lover. She muttered "shit" as she turned over, away from the warm encircling arms into the coldness of lonely air, and lifted the reciever.
"What?" she spat, annoyed.
"Sarah Raikan?" asked a cold, flat, expressionless voice. It's consonants hissed slightly, a bizarre distortion giving the impression, quite antique, that the call was being made from a great distance.
"Who is this?" She asked.
"I am calling to deliver a message to Sarah Raikan from a man called "arrow". Are you Sarah Raikan?"
She sat upright, hard. The bed shook from the motion, and the other occupant stirred, but did not wake.
"Yes" she answered, her voice now sharp with worry and surprise.
"I am to verify this by asking the following question. 'If the message is from "Arrow", who is it for?'"
"Song" she answered, the alarm in her voice, and it's volume, rising to a level sufficient to rouse the other occupant, a curvy woman with long black hair, in her early thirties. She looked groggily at Sarah, looked away, then looked back in rapt attention, as tho she had never seen the expression her partner was wearing. She began to speak, but Sarah put her finger to her lips, silencing her.
"The message is as follows: I need a song and dance at Weisthmuller's Pub on 23rd and Garden, as soon as possible, and bring your birthday present. If you encounter any people dressed like I would be if on duty, evade them at all costs. If you cannot get there, make sure I get my Dance.". I am instructed to ask if you understand this message?"
"I do" she said, quietly.
"Go fast" the voice with the hissing consonants said, and she immediately recognised it. It was a synthesized voice, a computer program. It hung up.
She bolted out of bed, rushing to her closet.
"Baby?" Asked her partner, "What's wrong?"
"I don't know yet. Go to my beureau and get the gun out of the second drawer on the left."
"Gun?" She said, as if unfamiliar with the word or even the concept. "You have a gun? Look, should I call the -"
"Megan, I dont have time to explain it, Okay, baby? Get dressed as fast as you can. We have to get OUT of here. Can you go to -"
"Wherever you are going, Sarah." Megan said, her voice resolute. From the chair next to the bed, she picked up her pants and pulled them over her very fit body, and looked around the room for her socks. Then she got the gun from the beaurau, and checked it with the efficiency of a professional. Then, from the wall rack next to the fron door, she pulled a shoulder holster srtap around her shoulders, and checked her own hardware. Sharah was pulling her black sweater over her pale skin, and tying her hair back with a leather thong.
"We have to go get my sister"
"Your?"
"Sister. She lives only a few blocks away. Meg, she is my twin sister, so don't be surprised if you can't tell us apart." Sarah smiled.
"Um." Meg started,speaking very slowly, as if unsure what the next word was to be "Am I a good friend, or.."
"It would be safer if you were just a bodyguard. Maybe a private -" Sarah stopped, and looked into her partner's eyes. For a moment she looked questioningly, then took a deep breath and let it out, relaxing as she did so. "I 'm not answering the right question, am I? I am not ashamed of anything, Meg. Unless you tell me not to,I am introducing you as my girlfriend."
The older woman grinned, dimpling.
"It might get you shot at, though." Sarah said, dead seriousness in her voice, and tension returning to her body.
"What the hell is going on?"
"I'll tell you when I know. Okay, look out the window. You are looking for army guys, cops, official looking vehicles."
Megan strode to the window and threw the drape back. "It looks clear to me" and then "Army guys? What the hell are you into?" Sarah shrugged.
She crossed to the door and took car keys gently out of Sarah's hand. "We will take my car" she said, smiling. THey left, quickly.
Once out the door of her apartment building, Sarah immediately flattened against the wall, and Meg walked out onto the sidewalk. Less than one hundred yards away, three soldiers were hustling a replica of her lover into an armored Humvee. Not even bothering not to stare, she walked to her car, a small black honda, parked in front of the building. She got in and started it up, got out and opened the passenger door, then got back in. As she stared at the odd sight of definitely armed and armored military vehicles, they finished loading Sarah's twin, and began to move toward her.
"Now!" she shouted, and Sarah sprinted to the passenger door, and was in and still closing it when Megan took off, in a hurry.
Yellow light flooded the room in which the boy mixed his chemicals. He wore darkened safety goggles.
A chime sounded.
The boy reached over to the wall of the room, which was tiny, almost a closet, and pressed a button. "Go away"
He fiddled with the settings on a magnetic stirrer, and closed a fume hood over his reaction vessels. Again, the chime sounded. This time he ignored it.
Banging came from behind him. he reached over, and again pushed the intercom button. "If you fuck this up by letting who-knows-what frequency light in here I will personally cut your -"
"You have an emergency phone call from the Base." a voice said, angrily.
"Take a message. Unless the world is going to SERIOUSLY come to an end, I will be done with this reaction in" he looked at his watch "about 11 minutes."
"He says I have to tell you the message if I have to shout, or break the door down."
"Listening" the boy said, button pressed.
"Message is: Arrow to Eyes. It has happened and I need you to explain it to me."
"Fine, thanks. Now go away."
"He says he wants an answer"
"Tell him Yes, I know where and when."
The boy began cleaning his area meticulously, cleaning glasswear, sorting and ordering the odds and ends of a laboratory. After eleven minutes, he turned out the yellow light, and turned on a white flourescent light, looked about himself, picked up a leather case containing his computer, exchanged his safety goggles for glasses, turned, and burst quickly through the door.
He stopped immediately, as he was surrounded by five armed soldiers in camoflage. He looked at them, standing out in greens and browns against the light pink color of the dormatory walls. "Subtle" he said, as he elbowed away from them toward his room, as tho they were simply none of his concern. He was very thin, and slid fairly easily through the large personal space occupied by men with guns.
"Are you Edgar Raikan?"
He turned and said simply "Yes?"
"You are to accompany us to the Base as per General Edgecomb's orders"
"Are you trying to tell me I am under arrest?" the boy asked, smiling slightly.
"No, but we have your mother's instructions that-"
Edgar chuckled. "Hardly sufficient for a military kidnapping out of a college dormatory in broad daylight. Are we at war? Has a state of emergency been declared? Habeas Corpus been revoked, modified? Hmm? Are any of you lawyers? Oh, come on, ONE of you at least must be an MP?" He said, slowly walking back toward the group of soldiers.
One of them stepped towards him, his hand out in front, palm out, as if saying 'slow down, now'.
The soldier came closer to him, and Edgar's smile widened considerably. Just as the soldier smiled and grabbed Edgar's collar, edgar's hand slapped at the dormitory wall. Another soldier saw what he was doing, a fraction of a second too late. His hand hit the fire alarm, and in a laughing voice, just as the near-deafening siren started to wail, screamed Fire! Fire!" as he pushed himself suddenly backward and down, out of the grip of the soldier. Almost immediately, a hoard of students came rushing forward. Almost, the surprised soldier thought to himself as his prey disappeared in a pack of panicking humanity, as if they had just been waiting for the word. Edgar was gone, and the soldiers with guns, their personal space cut down to nothing in a crowd of terrified young adults, were bodily moved towards the exit.
In the blackness, near total, a cellphone sang it's abrasive song.
"Hello?" a husky, deep female voice answered.
"Hey. It's Arthur. Where are you?"
"Lost. Why?"
"I need you to come to-"
"What part of the concept 'lost' has you baffled, Arthur? I thought they tought you stuff in the army..." Her voice betrayed a slight slur of grogginess or intoxication.
"This is important."
"So is my mental health, and talking to you people does nothing but depress the hell out of me"
"Sorry." Arthur said, and waited.
After a few moments of silence, the breathy voice said "Okay, what is it?"
"The army is searching for you" Arthur said, his voice flat.
"What?" Captain Raikan looked around
"Got a hot name on the wire"
"Well?" He asked, waiting for details.
The Leutennant looked at him, then at the office on the left wall of the office. It had a small, blank red card in the slot that would normally hold a name. Raikan nodded and they both moved toward the door.
The room was small, and had no windows. THe door they entered through was extremely thick, with four layers of something on each side of the steel of the door itself. THe room looked like something out of an insane asylum, it's walls were padded in a black plastic that seemed to have a dull grey coating over it, cracked in places, and in other places repaired with shiny metal tape. As Raikan walked in and closed the door, his eardurms popped and he heard a slight hiss of air. Above the door, a digital readout read 02 - 06:00.
"Who is the hot name?"
The leutennant stammered, looking like he didnt want to reply.
"Come on, Blake, what's going on?"
"It isn't really a hot name, Cap, I just wanted to get you in here to see this"
The Leutennant handed Raikan a piece of paper.
IntCent Only: Eyes Only: No Replication: No Distribution: Scramble Delta: Hand Deliver: Project: Argentine Crew
Case Officer: Col Amb. Watson
RE: Argentine Crew Subject #2 sex partner Civ Fem Catherine Allennath found pregnant with healthy male fetus ten weeks of age. Amniocentesis performed today confirms genetic match Catherine Allenath and Project Argentine Crew Subject #2, now age 22. Action: Review immediately, Priority Alpha.
"What the fuck?" Raikan said, letting the hand holding the paper fall to his side as tho it were a burden of enormous weight.
"Congratulations, man. I didn't know Cathy was pregnant. So, why does IntCent call you Project Argentine Crew Subject #2? Or did I just tell you that your girlfriend is screwing around?"
"No, I knew. We were keeping it under wraps until we could figure out how to tell her parents. I don't know what the fuck the Argentine Crew noise is about. Looks like somebody is keeping tabs on me."
"Specifically, Colonel Ambrose Watson. You know, Ramrod Watson?"
"Crap. Look, Blake, follow all normal procedures, right? But memorize anything else that comes up on your shift and get it to me as soon as you can. I am going to talk to Redman."
Davida Riakan answered the door, and stared at the small knot of uniformed men. "Yes?" She asked, issuing the question with a terse smile, the smile of a strong, annoyed woman pretending to be curteous and feminine.
"Are you Mrs. Raikan?" Asked the man who had knocked, the man in the front of the knot. From his uniform and haircut, she knew him to be a captain in the Marine Corps. He was expressionless, and seeing that, she began to fear.
"Oh my god." She breathed, and her face went pale, and she staggered slightly. "Is it my little Arthur?" she asked in a plaintive voice.
The Captain jumped up the three steps and steadied her. "No mam. I am Captain Gerrold. We have come on orders from General Edgecomb. To deliver this"
She sighed a relieved breath, and then looked confused.
The Captain handed her a sealed envelope.
He then stood and looked. "We are to wait for your instructions, Mam."
She opened the letter and read. The color returned to her face, but the pensive, worried look remained. She looked up. "I'll get my coat. You are to take me to the base to see the General"
"Yes, Mam." the Captain said, relieved. He had orders to take her to the base, and was warned that she might not want to come. He was prepared to arrest her, but he was glad that he did not need to. Her husband had been a friend. Arthur Raikan had been one of his teachers. Arthur Raikan Jr had been one of his friends before he had been assigned to the hush-hush world of intelligence.
While he waited, Mark Gerrold, Captain, USMC, thought about how glad he was not to be delivering one of those ever more frequent "This message is to inform you that your (father/mother/sister/brother/son/daughter) has bought a 3 by 6 by 6 farm in a foreign land you can't find on a map more than six months old."
She was ready to go in such a short time the Captain wondered if the news she recieved wasnt at least as important as the news he was glad he wasnt delivering. He ushered her into the armored Humvee, posted a man in the 60 calibre turret, and got in. In front of him went another armored Humvee, a sleek black civilian jeep, and a police cruiser. Behind him came a second cruiser.
She hadn't even noticed.
The phone woke Sarah Raikan from a comfortable, light sleep in the arms of her lover. She muttered "shit" as she turned over, away from the warm encircling arms into the coldness of lonely air, and lifted the reciever.
"What?" she spat, annoyed.
"Sarah Raikan?" asked a cold, flat, expressionless voice. It's consonants hissed slightly, a bizarre distortion giving the impression, quite antique, that the call was being made from a great distance.
"Who is this?" She asked.
"I am calling to deliver a message to Sarah Raikan from a man called "arrow". Are you Sarah Raikan?"
She sat upright, hard. The bed shook from the motion, and the other occupant stirred, but did not wake.
"Yes" she answered, her voice now sharp with worry and surprise.
"I am to verify this by asking the following question. 'If the message is from "Arrow", who is it for?'"
"Song" she answered, the alarm in her voice, and it's volume, rising to a level sufficient to rouse the other occupant, a curvy woman with long black hair, in her early thirties. She looked groggily at Sarah, looked away, then looked back in rapt attention, as tho she had never seen the expression her partner was wearing. She began to speak, but Sarah put her finger to her lips, silencing her.
"The message is as follows: I need a song and dance at Weisthmuller's Pub on 23rd and Garden, as soon as possible, and bring your birthday present. If you encounter any people dressed like I would be if on duty, evade them at all costs. If you cannot get there, make sure I get my Dance.". I am instructed to ask if you understand this message?"
"I do" she said, quietly.
"Go fast" the voice with the hissing consonants said, and she immediately recognised it. It was a synthesized voice, a computer program. It hung up.
She bolted out of bed, rushing to her closet.
"Baby?" Asked her partner, "What's wrong?"
"I don't know yet. Go to my beureau and get the gun out of the second drawer on the left."
"Gun?" She said, as if unfamiliar with the word or even the concept. "You have a gun? Look, should I call the -"
"Megan, I dont have time to explain it, Okay, baby? Get dressed as fast as you can. We have to get OUT of here. Can you go to -"
"Wherever you are going, Sarah." Megan said, her voice resolute. From the chair next to the bed, she picked up her pants and pulled them over her very fit body, and looked around the room for her socks. Then she got the gun from the beaurau, and checked it with the efficiency of a professional. Then, from the wall rack next to the fron door, she pulled a shoulder holster srtap around her shoulders, and checked her own hardware. Sharah was pulling her black sweater over her pale skin, and tying her hair back with a leather thong.
"We have to go get my sister"
"Your?"
"Sister. She lives only a few blocks away. Meg, she is my twin sister, so don't be surprised if you can't tell us apart." Sarah smiled.
"Um." Meg started,speaking very slowly, as if unsure what the next word was to be "Am I a good friend, or.."
"It would be safer if you were just a bodyguard. Maybe a private -" Sarah stopped, and looked into her partner's eyes. For a moment she looked questioningly, then took a deep breath and let it out, relaxing as she did so. "I 'm not answering the right question, am I? I am not ashamed of anything, Meg. Unless you tell me not to,I am introducing you as my girlfriend."
The older woman grinned, dimpling.
"It might get you shot at, though." Sarah said, dead seriousness in her voice, and tension returning to her body.
"What the hell is going on?"
"I'll tell you when I know. Okay, look out the window. You are looking for army guys, cops, official looking vehicles."
Megan strode to the window and threw the drape back. "It looks clear to me" and then "Army guys? What the hell are you into?" Sarah shrugged.
She crossed to the door and took car keys gently out of Sarah's hand. "We will take my car" she said, smiling. THey left, quickly.
Once out the door of her apartment building, Sarah immediately flattened against the wall, and Meg walked out onto the sidewalk. Less than one hundred yards away, three soldiers were hustling a replica of her lover into an armored Humvee. Not even bothering not to stare, she walked to her car, a small black honda, parked in front of the building. She got in and started it up, got out and opened the passenger door, then got back in. As she stared at the odd sight of definitely armed and armored military vehicles, they finished loading Sarah's twin, and began to move toward her.
"Now!" she shouted, and Sarah sprinted to the passenger door, and was in and still closing it when Megan took off, in a hurry.
Yellow light flooded the room in which the boy mixed his chemicals. He wore darkened safety goggles.
A chime sounded.
The boy reached over to the wall of the room, which was tiny, almost a closet, and pressed a button. "Go away"
He fiddled with the settings on a magnetic stirrer, and closed a fume hood over his reaction vessels. Again, the chime sounded. This time he ignored it.
Banging came from behind him. he reached over, and again pushed the intercom button. "If you fuck this up by letting who-knows-what frequency light in here I will personally cut your -"
"You have an emergency phone call from the Base." a voice said, angrily.
"Take a message. Unless the world is going to SERIOUSLY come to an end, I will be done with this reaction in" he looked at his watch "about 11 minutes."
"He says I have to tell you the message if I have to shout, or break the door down."
"Listening" the boy said, button pressed.
"Message is: Arrow to Eyes. It has happened and I need you to explain it to me."
"Fine, thanks. Now go away."
"He says he wants an answer"
"Tell him Yes, I know where and when."
The boy began cleaning his area meticulously, cleaning glasswear, sorting and ordering the odds and ends of a laboratory. After eleven minutes, he turned out the yellow light, and turned on a white flourescent light, looked about himself, picked up a leather case containing his computer, exchanged his safety goggles for glasses, turned, and burst quickly through the door.
He stopped immediately, as he was surrounded by five armed soldiers in camoflage. He looked at them, standing out in greens and browns against the light pink color of the dormatory walls. "Subtle" he said, as he elbowed away from them toward his room, as tho they were simply none of his concern. He was very thin, and slid fairly easily through the large personal space occupied by men with guns.
"Are you Edgar Raikan?"
He turned and said simply "Yes?"
"You are to accompany us to the Base as per General Edgecomb's orders"
"Are you trying to tell me I am under arrest?" the boy asked, smiling slightly.
"No, but we have your mother's instructions that-"
Edgar chuckled. "Hardly sufficient for a military kidnapping out of a college dormatory in broad daylight. Are we at war? Has a state of emergency been declared? Habeas Corpus been revoked, modified? Hmm? Are any of you lawyers? Oh, come on, ONE of you at least must be an MP?" He said, slowly walking back toward the group of soldiers.
One of them stepped towards him, his hand out in front, palm out, as if saying 'slow down, now'.
The soldier came closer to him, and Edgar's smile widened considerably. Just as the soldier smiled and grabbed Edgar's collar, edgar's hand slapped at the dormitory wall. Another soldier saw what he was doing, a fraction of a second too late. His hand hit the fire alarm, and in a laughing voice, just as the near-deafening siren started to wail, screamed Fire! Fire!" as he pushed himself suddenly backward and down, out of the grip of the soldier. Almost immediately, a hoard of students came rushing forward. Almost, the surprised soldier thought to himself as his prey disappeared in a pack of panicking humanity, as if they had just been waiting for the word. Edgar was gone, and the soldiers with guns, their personal space cut down to nothing in a crowd of terrified young adults, were bodily moved towards the exit.
In the blackness, near total, a cellphone sang it's abrasive song.
"Hello?" a husky, deep female voice answered.
"Hey. It's Arthur. Where are you?"
"Lost. Why?"
"I need you to come to-"
"What part of the concept 'lost' has you baffled, Arthur? I thought they tought you stuff in the army..." Her voice betrayed a slight slur of grogginess or intoxication.
"This is important."
"So is my mental health, and talking to you people does nothing but depress the hell out of me"
"Sorry." Arthur said, and waited.
After a few moments of silence, the breathy voice said "Okay, what is it?"
"The army is searching for you" Arthur said, his voice flat.
S.N.A.D.
Corntender Central 14167 upgraded itself. A new Cornlace virus had been detected, and 14167, judging itself to have sufficient resources available to it, created the microscopic analytic units and began distributing them among the individual corntenders, weeders, feeders and matrix engineers.that would be most likely to encounter the cornlace virus. Within hours, data was flowing from the detectors. There was no cure for the new cornlace, so Central began to make a small number of cutters, and burners, to eradicate any cornlace that was found.
At that exact moment, the last 350 micrograms of the easily available deuterium were extracted from the arctic ocean, and a signal was sent to the Europa barges, which began to thrust toward Earth's moon, as the focus of terrestrial deuterium extraction turned to the indian ocean, which would be exhausted some 45 years after the Europa barges arrived on the Earth's moon, and sufficient reserves were available that even if none of the first wave of barges arrived, no significant disruption of energy would occur. It was the first such radical transformation of energy supply for more than 250 years, and it passed almost unnoticed.
It was the year 2931, and the moment of the transition, the population of Earth was 1,261,111,391. The lunar population was 315,212. The population in Earth orbit was 6,334. The population in orbit around all other bodies the solar system was 236,791, the population in free transition was 291, and the number of people who might be alive but could not be verified was 1134, all classified as Suspected Dead. They included two men who might have been climbing mountains in the Rockies, two who had crashed on the surface of mars but might possibly have lived, and more than 400 operators of spacecraft that may or may not still be alive.
At the turn of the 21st century, there had been about 6 billion people on the Earth, and a varying population of between zero and three living in orbit. At the turn of the 22nd century, there were less than 2 billion, and the population had been slowly declining ever since.
The reasons for the population fluctuations and trends were straightforward, sequential and, with the benefit of hindsight, unavoidable. They were Sudden Necrotizing Alviolitic Disease (SNAD), Deuterium fusion and wealth.
SNAD was sudden, severe and devestating, deuterium fusion was gradual, and wealth was the unavoidable result of the previous two.
SNAD was a mutation of a common respiratory bacteria, usually benign. The mutation probably occurred five or six years before SNAD was recognised for what it was. The bacteria lived in the lungs, making small colonies that were nourished by the secretions of the lungs. It's survivability was a product of it's mediocrity. It did not reproduce aggressively, and it caused no noticable symptoms except a slight lung irritation resulting in a chronic, mild cough. The mutation was simple. When lack of nourishment became severe, the bacteria secreted a toxin which killed the tissue on which they were living. That tissue began to decompose, and SNAD fed on the products of the decomposition.
A person infected with SNAD could live for years with a mild cough or no symptoms at all. And then they could aquire a chest cold, or even simply become very dehydrated, and within a few minutes of the bacteria beginning to react to the change in it's environment, they would experience wracking coughs, bronchitis or pnumonia-like symptoms, leading to complete respiratory failure within an hour, coughing up blood, gasping for breath, and finally suffocating as the lungs became unable to absorb oxygen. It was an incredibly fast, painful killer.
The first wave of SNAD hit and devastated India and Pakistan, killing over sixteen million people in less than 10 months.IN the places very hard hit within those two countries, medical delivery systems broke down, and then social structures, and finally governmental functions. epidemics of cholera and diseases associated with vast numbers of unburied dead. Diahrea struck, caused dehydration, and fresh waves of SNAD were touched off. In five years, the dead in India, Pakistan, the middle east and the Stans reached 40 million. Seven years after, it hit Asia beginning in southern China. In asia, it was much worse. After the first decade of living with SNAD, the death toll was more than a billion.
There was a cure, even when it first began. Pennecillin, amoxicillin, almost any good antibiotic, and many were used in India and Pakistan, but never soon enough, and never thoroughly enough. Fear caused indiscriminate use, and indiscriminate use caused resistance, and by the time it hit china, none of the standard antibiotics would work.
At that exact moment, the last 350 micrograms of the easily available deuterium were extracted from the arctic ocean, and a signal was sent to the Europa barges, which began to thrust toward Earth's moon, as the focus of terrestrial deuterium extraction turned to the indian ocean, which would be exhausted some 45 years after the Europa barges arrived on the Earth's moon, and sufficient reserves were available that even if none of the first wave of barges arrived, no significant disruption of energy would occur. It was the first such radical transformation of energy supply for more than 250 years, and it passed almost unnoticed.
It was the year 2931, and the moment of the transition, the population of Earth was 1,261,111,391. The lunar population was 315,212. The population in Earth orbit was 6,334. The population in orbit around all other bodies the solar system was 236,791, the population in free transition was 291, and the number of people who might be alive but could not be verified was 1134, all classified as Suspected Dead. They included two men who might have been climbing mountains in the Rockies, two who had crashed on the surface of mars but might possibly have lived, and more than 400 operators of spacecraft that may or may not still be alive.
At the turn of the 21st century, there had been about 6 billion people on the Earth, and a varying population of between zero and three living in orbit. At the turn of the 22nd century, there were less than 2 billion, and the population had been slowly declining ever since.
The reasons for the population fluctuations and trends were straightforward, sequential and, with the benefit of hindsight, unavoidable. They were Sudden Necrotizing Alviolitic Disease (SNAD), Deuterium fusion and wealth.
SNAD was sudden, severe and devestating, deuterium fusion was gradual, and wealth was the unavoidable result of the previous two.
SNAD was a mutation of a common respiratory bacteria, usually benign. The mutation probably occurred five or six years before SNAD was recognised for what it was. The bacteria lived in the lungs, making small colonies that were nourished by the secretions of the lungs. It's survivability was a product of it's mediocrity. It did not reproduce aggressively, and it caused no noticable symptoms except a slight lung irritation resulting in a chronic, mild cough. The mutation was simple. When lack of nourishment became severe, the bacteria secreted a toxin which killed the tissue on which they were living. That tissue began to decompose, and SNAD fed on the products of the decomposition.
A person infected with SNAD could live for years with a mild cough or no symptoms at all. And then they could aquire a chest cold, or even simply become very dehydrated, and within a few minutes of the bacteria beginning to react to the change in it's environment, they would experience wracking coughs, bronchitis or pnumonia-like symptoms, leading to complete respiratory failure within an hour, coughing up blood, gasping for breath, and finally suffocating as the lungs became unable to absorb oxygen. It was an incredibly fast, painful killer.
The first wave of SNAD hit and devastated India and Pakistan, killing over sixteen million people in less than 10 months.IN the places very hard hit within those two countries, medical delivery systems broke down, and then social structures, and finally governmental functions. epidemics of cholera and diseases associated with vast numbers of unburied dead. Diahrea struck, caused dehydration, and fresh waves of SNAD were touched off. In five years, the dead in India, Pakistan, the middle east and the Stans reached 40 million. Seven years after, it hit Asia beginning in southern China. In asia, it was much worse. After the first decade of living with SNAD, the death toll was more than a billion.
There was a cure, even when it first began. Pennecillin, amoxicillin, almost any good antibiotic, and many were used in India and Pakistan, but never soon enough, and never thoroughly enough. Fear caused indiscriminate use, and indiscriminate use caused resistance, and by the time it hit china, none of the standard antibiotics would work.
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