’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Thirteen ― Moon Quake

 

¿Hasta cuándo, oh simples, amarán la simpleza, Y los burladores se deleitarán en hacer burla, Y los necios aborrecerán el conocimiento?

— Proverbios 1:22

How long, O simpletons, will you love being simple-minded, and you tricksters delight in trickery, and you fools hate the truth?

— Proverbs 1:22

 

 

Flying from passion, fear, and anger,
burnt pure by the fires of knowledge,
trusting in me, taking refuge in me,
you come to my estate. ― Krishna to Arjuna

Bhagavad-Gita
The Song of God

 

 

Her eyes snapped open and she looked up to see the night sky opening above her. For a moment, she was confused, because the stars were strangely distorted, twisted slightly askew from where they should have been, then she saw a sliver of the moon, and it became clear; this was Earth; where the brains behind the hands that murdered her son were plotting new savagery, and she was filled with rage. She felt strong, powerful, electricity coursing through her veins like fire, and she sprang up from the ground with a shout, an avenging angel armed with a sword of flame.

Warily, she cast about, searching out her enemies, and found a nest of them to the north and east of where she’d lain, so flew into the thick of them as quick as thought and laid about her in her fury, searching out the crabbed hatred in their thoughts, the greed and evil at the putrid core of them, gripping them fast with claws of adamantine while her great wings thundered and beat the air, buffeting them with Heaven’s icy blast while her sword sliced and hacked at their hollow souls, so that they collapsed screaming, shriveling like slugs in salt as their evil pneuma dissipated into the clear æther that surrounded them, now cleansed and purified by their absence. The lingering stench of their decaying malice cloyed, but cleansed as well, and the shock and horror of her son’s death was fading now, replaced by sweet oblivion, as she sank slowly back into her own body, and the anger flew away, and she fell into stupor, surrounded by the healing soil, reaching out with fingers and tendrils of love, reaching out to love, yearning for love, and was made whole.

She settled back and reached for sleep, shrugging the warm dark earth like a blanket around herself, and curled back into slumber, into a sweet darkness neither troubled by dream nor roiled by restless thought.

 

 

Jack Webster was dreaming when the pounding started, and quickly became confused. The pounding sounded like the bouncing backbeat of New Orleans Jazz, and he was there, surrounded by the smell of Cajun filé gumbo, a side of boudin balls, and sweet jambalaya. There was a woman in his dream, and they were dancing, and the pounding beat mingled with the sound of excited voices, the movement and the dancing all around him, and the girl, and he was reaching toward her, and then he was awake and the pounding was at his door. ‘What the hell?’

He struggled to extricate himself from the sheets and blankets which had somehow wrapped themselves around him, trapping him, and he yelled, “Wait a minute for pity’s sake. I’m awake! Just give me time to …”

The door burst in with the brittle crack of cheap plastic and the room was filled with bodies in the dark. and they were grabbing at him, pulling him out of his sweaty bed … Jack struggled to free himself, kicking and punching … “What the fuck! Let go of me, you assholes! What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Someone shone a bright light into his eyes, blinding him more thoroughly than the darkness. “Are you Jack Webster?”

He tried to hold up his hand to shield his eyes against the glare but they wouldn’t let go. “You broke my goddamned door, you schmucks!” he said, stating the most salient fact he could come up with right then.

“Are you Jonathan Maurice Webster? AKA Jack Webster?”

“Who wants to know?” he snarled, still struggling.

“Your boss. Come along with us,” someone said, and they hauled his ass right out the door, and he was naked, except for the tattered scraps of his own bedsheet.

“Can’t I get dressed?” he protested, trying to cover his junk with at least part of the sheet.

“No,” someone else said. Jack was wide awake by then and furious. He vowed to remember the sound of that voice and feed the owner his own ass, feet first, just as soon as any one of them let go of him long enough for him to get his balance.

When they got downstairs, they stuffed him into a squad car, head first, and one of them put his hand on his head — to keep his head from banging into the door frame — with enough expertise to tell him that he was dealing with cops, even if they were assholes. They shut the door on him so he was locked in the cage. There was a plastic screen between the cage and the front seat, meant to keep arrestees from spitting on the officers, who rode up front. The back seat, on the other hand, stank of urine, vomit, feces, and blood, not necessarily in that order. By now, Jack’s fury had settled into a calculated and elaborate plan for revenge. He kept quiet, and bided his time. There was a lieutenant riding shotgun up front, so he figured that he was the guy in charge. Jack studied his ears, memorising the twelve points of identification, with estimated Iannarelli System metrics, just in case he had to go looking for the arrogant jerk.

After a short drive, they pulled up to the same office building O’Hare’s office was in, so he abandoned the idea of taking off when they opened the door of his cage. If O’Hare was involved, he’d let him have a rough edge of his tongue right before he quit, and then he’d string up this crew of clowns by their thumbs.

They weren’t gentle in hauling him out of the cage, aside from the obligatory hand on his head to “protect him.” After a short elevator ride, he found himself on the carpet in O’Hare’s office, looking at a very surprised Mr. Bossman.

Mr. Bossman said gently, “Where the fuck are his clothes, you stupid clowns?” He didn’t look happy at all.

“We weren’t told nothing about no clothes, just that we had to get him here on the double, so here he is. He resisted arrest, so you can charge him.”

O’Hare said calmly, “And what’s your name, sonny, and you might as well give me your badge number, for my report.”

“Manelli, Sir! Number S-367036, Sir!”

“Fine, fine,” observed O’Hare, carefully writing down the information. “Now take off your pants and shirt, Manelli.”

“Sir?” He looked surprised, which went a long way toward showing exactly how stupid he was.

Jack was starting to enjoy this.

“I said, take off your pants and shirt, and I want to see them off you and on him in about five seconds or I’ll ask one of the clowns behind you to shoot you, and if they want to collect their pensions, which is, at this very moment, in doubt, they’ll do it very promptly indeed.”

“But Sir!” He started pulling off his shirt, so he wasn’t a complete idiot.

‘Good,’ Jack thought. ‘When they’re really stupid, they’re not as much fun to torture, because they never figure out what’s coming next.’

“Now,” he addressed the other three, “while Mister Manelli is providing clothing for Captain Webster, which one of you clever fellows has his service weapon, shield, warrant card, and issue communicator?”

No one replied, but their eyes moved furtively from side to side, in the obvious but vain hope that someone else had thought to do this.

“No one?” His voice took on a tone which might have seemed sadly sympathetic, if the anger quite plain on his face hadn’t told you differently. “Oh, that’s just too too bad. I suggest that the three of you, or at least those few of you who may still be working tomorrow, proceed immediately to his address and find them for him. If they’re not there, I’ll presume that you forgot to lock the door behind you, as is mandated by department regulation 13-475 et seq., and that some dishonest citizen has taken them to sell on the black market, in which case you’ll all three be immediately assigned to the new Libra Colony as street sweepers, with loss of pension, rank, and benefits as of tonight, but you will, none-the-less, pay to replace them with the make and quality of his choosing if it takes you the rest of your miserable lives. I know for a fact that his service weapon was a custom ‘match-certified’ neurolizer which cost approximately twenty-five thousand credits, because I gave it to him. I believe the three of you, by pooling your salaries, just might be able to repay the loan you’ll require to replace the weapon in roughly ten to fifteen years — unless one of you just happens to have a very rich uncle who’s remembered you in his will, although of course you’ll have to murder him to get it.” He smiled. It was not a pleasant smile.

They started to move, the fear plain on their faces.

O’Hare held up a hand to stop them — which it did — and added, “If there was any damage done to Captain Webster’s apartment, and I somehow suspect there was, you three men will call for a licensed contractor to repair that damage using first-class materials, and replace anything of his that was broken or went astray out of your own pocket, because you weren’t authorised to break and enter, nor to give him the bum’s rush on the way out the door, so any official inquiry won’t be at all good for your careers. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Sir!” one of the three said, and the others nodded.

“And tomorrow, one of you will contact Captain Webster and respectfully request an inventory of those items which ought to be present, and in good working order, and make very sure that these items, or brand new replacements, are immediately available, and if that inventory includes a full case of very expensive single-malt scotch, which I have no doubt it will, because I’m here ordering him to remember and list it, you’ll contact me personally, and I’ll tell you where to get it, and which distillery he prefers. Am I making myself very, very clear?”

“Yes, Sir! Thank you, Sir!” they said in chorus, “We’re very sorry, Sirs!” and quickly backed out the door with only a small tangle of limbs and quiet cursing as they all tried to fit through the door at once.

Jack might even have found it funny, if he hadn’t still been very, very angry.

After the door had closed behind them, O’Hare turned to Manelli and said, “As for you, you sadistic son-of-a-bitch, considering the fact that Captain Webster arrived here essentially naked, bleeding, and bruised, I believe I could make a nice case for sexual assault on an officer of the law, which carries a mandatory sentence of castration and immediate deportation to a penal enclave.”

Manelli blanched. “But, Sir! I …”

“Shut up! You’re done talking, and you’re less than twenty-four hours away from being done breathing the air of Earth. Just looking at this situation casually, and you don’t want me to make a full inquiry into what’s undoubtedly a long list of citizen complaints against you, you’re a disgrace to the proud uniform you so recently wore. You, Mister Manelli, will either volunteer immediately for transportation to Earth Two, and apply for a position as a street cleaner or sewer worker — I don’t much care which, but one or the other is right in the cards, since you won’t have a job history to refer to — in the penal enclave there, or we’ll do this the hard way and you’ll make the same trip minus your balls, and you won’t be able to go home at night and sleep in your own bed. Got it?”

“Yes, Sir!”

“I’ll be checking the lists for tomorrow’s lift-off, and you’d better be on it, now get out of my sight.”

“Yes, Sir! But my wife …”

“Manelli, do your former wife a huge favor and don’t tell her you’re leaving. Just walk out that door behind you and walk straight to the nearest Colonial Recruitment Office. Wait there until it opens in the morning. If that’s exactly the way it happens, I’ll arrange it so you’ll have officially ‘died in the line of duty’ and she’ll get your pension, and a proud memory, at least, which would be the decent thing to do on your part. Be a mensch! Manelli. Don’t drag her down with you. Don’t let your sick ‘kink’ for violence ruin her life.”

He swallowed visibly, stricken, and said, “I will, Sir. Thank you, Sir,” and ran out the door in his skivvies.

Jack said, admiringly, “Damn, O’Hare. You’re meaner than I am. I was just going to tear off his head and stuff it up his ass.”

O’Hare grimaced. “I’m very sorry, Jack, but Manelli in particular — and bad cops like him — is the reason resentment builds up in citizens until groups like the Burladors find themselves hiding among people who will discreetly ‘look the other way.’ I made it clear that you were an officer of the law, and that the situation was very grave, but it seems that the four of them were so excited to play at being policemen that they imagined themselves the heroes of a vid production. It’s so difficult to get good help these days.” He arched one brow and added, “Including you, Jack. Can you explain exactly why your department-issued communicator had been turned off, so you didn’t answer when I called, then called again, then called again, before I grew desperate and called in the Keystone Kops?”

He flushed, ill-at-ease in a uniform that didn’t quite fit, and a little bit guilty about the accusation. “Uh … I was …” He gave up. “I fucked up, Boss. I’ll be better in future. I take it, then, that there’s an emergency.”

“In spades, Jack, me fine boyo. The Burladors have struck again, this time in Wyoming, where ordinary citizens are not permitted without special permission, and in the middle of a god-be-damned restricted enclave with both electronic and human guards, with not a whisper of an alarm from neither of them.”

Jack was all business again. “Have they made an announcement?”

He scowled. “That’s the hell of it all! Not a peep, but it has all the hallmarks of one of their operations: impossible but tempting targets, improbable damage, and a totally clean getaway, all performed by invisible spirits, who are melted into air, thin air, like the stuff of dreams and nightmares. Plus, there are seven victims, all very high in government circles, including one Senator, and every last one of the sorry sons-of-bitches was intimately connected with the governance — and I think some might fairly say ‘oppression’ — of the Quicksilver colony.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said.

“Very, very likely, Jacko,” O’Hare said with an air of general gloom, “and me right along wi’ye.”

“Sweetheart?” His voice was gentle as he quietly laid a hand on her forehead to attract her sleeping attention. She opened her eyes.

“Is everything all right, Dan?”

“Yes and no, love, yes and no. I’ve made some tea, so why don’t you sit up and I’ll explain what I can.”

She was far along in her pregnancy, seven months now, and had gotten into the habit of afternoon naps, because her eyes started to close on their own around that time anyway. “I’m all right, love. I’m awake. You can start telling me as you pour.”

“There’s been another ‘terrorist’ attack on Earth, with seven dead, all seven names you’ll be familiar with, because they regularly appear on official notices from Earth.”

“The so-called ‘Buladores?’ ” she gave the word its proper Spanish pronunciation in four syllables.

“They think so, but there was no announcement. What they do have is a clue; all seven of them are very dead, but they all seven have green skin, swollen internal organs, and other classical symptoms of the ‘plague’ which struck here not so long ago. They’ve called and asked for information.”

“Oh, crap.”

“We don’t have much time, I think. I told them I’d have to look up the records, and just ‘winged it’ with assurances that we had a solitary incident — which is true enough — but had assumed some outside source, since it hasn’t recurred, which is also, as you know, absolutely true.”

“True, but it won’t save us if they start digging too deeply and panic. Call up Barbara. I assume they’ve contacted her already, so find out what they said. I suspect she told them roughly what you did, but best to be sure, and I — at least — don’t know what sort of reports the former manager sent in before he died in the confusion of those first few days. It ought to be fairly easy to disavow whatever it was he said, since there was a lot of confusion back then, but we ought to be coherent. If we can manage it, I think the safest line would be a terrorist attack on a loyal colony, but again, there’s no telling what was said, especially about my brother Miguel and his friends. Someone became alarmed enough to order the assault on the people in general that night, so we know that stupidity is rampant, as always, in the minds of people with guilty consciences. Since most of those are back on Earth, that’s where an attack would come from, and we’d have just thirty years to prepare.”

“Perhaps not even that. The freighters are automated. Other than the cost of idle equipment, there’s nothing to prevent the people back on Earth from parking a hell-burner or two in orbit around our sun, right where it’s handy if someone gets an itchy trigger-finger.”

She blinked. “How completely horrible! Do people really think like that? would they blow up a planet because they couldn’t sleep at night? How is it possible for people to plan to be reckless, incompetent, and stupid?”

He made a wry face. “I don’t really know; I’ve always been a peaceable man. I didn’t even like to play at cops and robbers as a child, but I’ve read a bit of history, and most wars have been started over the damnedest strings of stupid miscues and misunderstandings that you could possibly imagine. If you look back at the most colossal blunders human beings have ever stumbled into, the ones involving the loss of millions of lives, and the squandering of vast stores of vital resources, you’ll find that someone made the most exacting and detailed plans to do it, and then usually attributed everything that did go wrong because it had to go wrong all along to the mysterious and imponderable will of God.”

“Madre de dios,” she said with a sour twist to her face, as if she’d just bitten into an unripe triffid fruit. “Next time we start a religion, let’s have more Goddesses. At least most women show better sense!” She shifted. “Now help me up, you great oaf! It’s entirely your fault that I can barely get out of bed without grunting.”

 

 

About an hour later, they were lounging together on the hikie‘e when they heard a familiar step at the front door, which was ajar, of course, since there were no insects to bother one, and screen doors and screens were unheard of. Luz had seen a few in vids, of course, but they were as ‘foreign’ as Bhuddist stupa shrines or Mongolian yurts.

It was Barbara. “Knock, knock! Can I come in.”

Dan answered quickly, completely at ease. “Of course, Barbara. You’re practically family. Just walk on in and sit down.”

“Hi, Dan, Luz. I assume you’ve heard from Earth.” She sat down next to Luz and snuggled up a bit. “I’ve missed you, sweetie. You haven’t been around for a while.”

“We’ve missed you too, Barbara. I’ve been awfully busy with my shows, and I’m usually exhausted from being a working brood mare by the end of the day. And we have heard about it, through Dan, since they asked him about his notes on our little ‘plague.’ We were just debating what to do.”

“Right now, I think nothing. The existing record speaks for itself, so they know we had a similar experience, but they also know that it was a one-time occurrence. Earth’s economy is already too dependent on Quicksilver nanofibers and superconductors, so they’re not going to do anything drastic, I think. I know that you, Dan, have already been hinting at new pharmacological discoveries, and your programs have built up an enormous ‘fan base’ for Quicksilver in general, Luz. Even if they’re scared, they won’t risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. They can’t even afford to cut back on deliveries, at least not until the Libra Colony becomes viable, and they have enough freighters in the ‘pipeline’ to sustain any serious loss of imports.”

“And it will take at least a hundred and twenty years for Libra to become any sort of competitor,” Dan said, “so I don’t see anything to worry about, even in the very long term.”

Barbara frowned slightly. “Uh, Dan, there is something. Quicksilver superconductors have really made it easy to do a lot of things that no one had ever thought practical, and I’ve heard a rumor that they’re working on a new translight drive that would cut travel time considerably. We could see a whole new class of starships arrive at our front door any day now, to hear my ‘source’ tell it.”

Luz agreed, and said, “I’ve heard about it too, although I didn’t know that they were so far along. It’s one of Senator Ortízes ‘hot buttons,’ just like my shows, and whatever the Senator — and his pal Maneesh Bihar — want, they get, sooner or later. I do know that he’s been throwing a lot of money at stardrive research, and he’s got a pile of money to throw around.” She paused for a while, then continued. “Barbara, I know I’ve told you this once before, but the man you’re destined to marry will be arriving soon, within two or three months, I think, and I don’t think that he’s a regular colonist, so he may arrive on one of these new starships.”

Dan immediately said, “So we have to address the problem directly, and as soon as possible.”

Barbara was a little flushed, embarrassed to discuss openly what she’d longed for since her change. She loved Dan and Luz, but their connection wasn’t as deep as she truly desired. She had to force herself to think in the present, when her whole being was projecting itself into the future. She gritted her teeth. She had a strategic view to offer, since she was privy to quite a bit of the intelligence, and she had to concentrate on Quicksilver, not her purely personal problems. She trusted Luz, but it was difficult to really believe in ‘things unseen.’ “This latest ‘sighting,’ narrows down the search arena considerably, since it’s a mountainous area with largely stoney soil, so it will be difficult for her to move around. Plus, because it’s a wealthy enclave, and Senators involved with the colonies lived there, the place has ansible bandwidth like nobody’s business. I vote for asking Margarita to come down from Heaven, or Nirvana, or wherever she hangs out these days, for a while.”

“I agree, Dan, and it’s my place to ask, since we were married for so many years, and we still love each other, although she’s moved far beyond me now.”

Dan reached over to hold her hand. “There’s no need to explain, dear heart, my light of life. She loves me too, and I love her. I’m not at all jealous of any love you share. Heck,” he grinned. “With two beautiful women in love with me, I’d have to turn in my ‘Man’ card if I objected.”

She nudged him in the ribs as they sat close together, still holding hands. “So you’re not jealous that I’ve done things with her that I’ll never manage to do with you?”

“Not at all, Sweetheart.” He grinned again. “Although I have to admit I’ve never tried swinging that way, but I like you just the way you are right now. Do let me know when you want to switch back, so I can prepare myself and think pure thoughts.”

“Well, it will be another three months, at least, but then I do have to breast feed for a while. Maybe we should switch off ….”

They all three laughed together.

“As I understand it,” Jack said. “You want to look around the entire area, as well as the victims, in real time as we talk, so we have a high-def link to our ansible terminal set up and linked to three cameras, one for each one of you, so you can all poke around within your individual areas of expertise. Of course you, Mrs. Nesquith, are very familiar with high-def work, but is everyone equally familiar?”

Barbara answered for them all, as the Quicksilver Security representative at the meeting. “We are, Mr. Webster. We’re a small town, really, so we’ve all had ample time on camera as ‘extras’ in Luzes various shows. I played the ‘Police Chief’ on Quicksilver Nights, the action show, which wasn’t much of a stretch, I have to admit …”

They all chuckled dutifully on their end, Jack Webster, his supervisor, Tom O’Hare, and Thor Andersen, the enclave security head. “So where would you like to start?”

Dan answered, “I’d like to start with the first casualty in time, and work forward, concentrating on the forensic evidence, since the biological data falls within my purview. While we’re at that, which I think officer Andersen and I can handle, My wife and Chief Big Horse will roam around, trying to glean some impressions of the general terrain, and possible approach and entry points for the terrorist teams, if any.”

“Do I understand that you have some doubts, Sir?” O’Hare asked.

“Not at all, Sir. You know your own evidence chain far better that I do. My own speciality is Botany, not forensic science, so I bow to your own expertise. I’m just pointing out that the mini-epidemic we experienced on Quicksilver — which bears some superficial similarity to this incident — seems to have been at least partially an allergic reaction in a few sensitive individuals, caused by exposure to certain organic compounds common in the Quicksilver environment. We worried about deliberate sabotage at the time ourselves, because there had been several small episodes of civil unrest, public meetings, petitions, and the like, which culminated in one limited attack on the general population by the former security chief, who himself died of a histamine intolerance reaction during the ‘epidemic.’ I myself can think of several ways in which susceptible individuals could be targeted by such compounds, but knowing who might be susceptible would seem problematic unless genetic samples were obtained in advance. Before ‘talking out of my hat,’ though, I’d like to look at the bodies themselves, and whatever forensic evidence was collected. Having the high-def link will allow me to look at microscopic specimens, for example, as well as the physical crime scenes. It just makes the whole process interactive enough that my intuition, and that of my colleagues, can have free rein. We’ve had high-def links on Quicksilver for so long, because of our local video industry, that it’s hard for us to imagine what life was like before.”

“That sounds reasonable to me,” Jack Webster admitted. “My own methods tend more toward intuition than dry scientific data collection in slow motion.”

Dan smiled. “Then you’ll love working with Chief Big Horse and my wife, because that’s their specialty. I’d recommend that you head off with them while I take on your supervisor and the local security man. I promise you that they’ll lead you a merry chase!”

With that, Dan’s cameraman walked off down the corridor with O’Hare and Andersen leaving the two women — one of them heavily pregnant, an obvious fact that Jack tried studiously to ignore. These were modern times, but still! — with Jack, or at least their camera operators were with Jack, who had a strange sense of déjà vu, or dissociation, because the camera operators almost seemed to disappear, while his attention stayed fixed on the threedee high-def screens which carried their images, and the operators, both dressed in black, seemed almost to disappear. Their images interacted with him, paid attention to him, talked to him, while the operators kept their eyes on their viewfinders, and whatever other controls they used, and paid him no attention at all, as far as he could tell. They were like the guys dressed in black in those … whatchamacallums, those Japanese plays with the screechy music … anyway, dead boring as far as he was concerned, but there was a Japanese guy in the Department who thought they were great art. The guys in the play were supposed to be invisible, which was crap, because they were walking around as plain as day, but he kind of realized what the Japanese guy was talking about when he saw the hi-tech equivalent.

They were chattering to each other, pointing out possible access points, and then Luz kneeled and carefully inspected some grasses, Jack couldn’t guess what for, and then they moved on. He was just beginning to feel like a ‘third wheel’ when Chief Big Horse turned to him and asked, “Do you have the impression, Mr. Webster, as I do, that the attack came from this direction?”

The question startled him. How would he know? But then he looked at the approach to the enclave from this direction, mentally reconstructed the sequence of the attacks … ‘She was right! ‘God damn!’ He could visualize the killers’ progress though the compound, entering over that wall, tick, tick, tick. To the left, the right, the right again, and so on.’ The hairs rose on the back of his neck. ‘That Nesquith guy was right; Barbara Big Horse was an intuitive genius, a goddamned Hercule Poirot.’ “I think you’re right, Chief Big Horse. It feels somehow right to me, at least when you say it. It all seems spooky, though. Looking at you, it looks like you’re standing right next to me, and the pane of glass between us almost disappears. Then I think that you’re actually standing twenty light years away, and it makes my head explode.” He mimed hitting himself on the side of the head, as if shaking water out of his ears, or rearranging the position of his brain.

She smiled. “Now you know how Luz Nesquith’s viewers can fall in love with her, even though the planet she lives and works on is far beyond every horizon here on Earth, but somehow just around the next corner in their dreams.”

“She calls herself Luz Calderón in her credits though, doesn’t she?”

“Of course! That’s no secret. It’s her maiden name. When’s the last time you heard of a female lead with a last name like ‘Nesquith?’ It sounds a bit like something you’d say when someone sneezed! It’s okay for Dan, of course; he’s a scientist, and a guy, but ‘Luz Calderón’ sounds exotic and alluring, don’t you think? A sultry Latin beauty with mysterious blue eyes and blonde hair. The production company focus groups went wild over her.”

“They must have gone a little wild over you as well. I don’t have time to watch many of the Quicksilver vid programs, but I’ve seen you several times, and each time you seem to play a different character.”

She dimpled. “Well, that’s one of the hazards of being an extra. I can’t take continuing rôles, because at the end of the day, and the beginning, I have a job to do. If I can clear my schedule for a day or two, I’m able take a minor rôle to help out, especially if it’s one of my typecast ‘cop’ characters. But if I became a regular character, I’d have to give up my day job, and I love my job, don’t you?”

He was taken aback. Did she mean, ‘Did he love her day job? or did he love his own job?’ “Uh, yeah, I guess so …no, I do, I do. It sounds like you’re a lot like me. I’ve liked all your appearances, at least the few I’ve seen. You’ve got ‘top cop’ nailed, as far as I’m concerned.”

“See what I mean about typecasting?” She took on another character, the plucky ingénue, “When, oh when,” she sighed, “will they give me a romantic sidekick gig?”

He laughed. “Well, it sounds like you’re perfect for the rôle, as far as I’m concerned anyway.”

She stared at him with a certain …anticipation? “Why, Mr. Webster, Jack, are you flirting with me?”

He felt his mouth go dry, and his tongue was suddenly thick in his mouth. “Uh …” He started to say something, then stopped, then started again, “Uh, yes, I suppose I am. I’m so sorry, it was thoughtless of me, because I’m here, and you … you’re thirty years in my future.”

Her eyes softened. “That’s not forever, Jack. I like you too, and there’s several things we could do. If you feel like going for broke, you could book a flight to Quicksilver. They’re free, you know, and I could book myself a long coldsleep vacation.”

His heart started to pound. “I … I’d …like to think about that,” he said, and meant it.

“And if that seems too chancy, Senator Ortíz has a team working on translight stardrives, and a little bird told me that they may only be a month or two away.”

“But do you …?”

“Jack, I’ve felt drawn to you since the moment I saw you. Can’t you tell? You’re the great detective, aren’t you? Everybody says so …”

“Well, uh, I wasn’t paying much attention,” ‘Jeez! His mouth was moving all by itself, but he couldn’t help himself. Here goes nothing!’ “ … because, uh, because I’ve been crazy about you since I first saw you ….” He shook his head. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have said that! It was completely unprofessional. Weren’t we supposed to be doing something here? Where’s Luz? I mean Ms. Calderón … I mean Mrs. Nesquith!”

“Confusing, isn’t it? She’s right behind you. It looks like she’s meditating. She does that sometimes.” She smiled just for him, for his eyes alone.

Jack felt about two feet small, and then ten feet high. He wanted to throw his arms around her. He wanted to saddle up and ride off into the sunset with her, but he had to make do with just looking at her. It wasn’t nearly enough. With a terrible sense of loss and longing, he turned to do his job, until …. ‘Until what? She was a jillion miles away! What a putz he was!’

Luz, or her camera operator, was sitting on the grass. She looked up at him and said, “She belongs to you, you know, and you to her. You were destined for each other before the beginning of the world.”

Now that was spooky. He felt …something right between his shoulder blades, as if she’d just touched the center of his nervous system with her hand. “How do you know that?”

She shrugged. “I just do. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. The attacker stopped for the night, just before the attack, in a small meadow about twenty miles south of her, and a bit more toward the mountains. It’s beside a little brook. Shall we go see?”

He blinked, and nodded. Someone whistled up a car and they were on their way.

She was right, there was a little stream, and he could see where someone had camped, right out in the open. The grass was all matted down, and had a different texture and color, so they must have been there for a while. “Now what?” he asked, mystified a little by the … otherworldliness of these two women. He couldn’t see how they could possibly know these things just by looking at them on a fancy video screen.

Luz sat and meditated again, and Jack kept his mouth shut, despite feeling a little like he was a yokel who’d never seen a toothbrush, much less a microscope or a high-def vid screen. Barbara … ‘Since when was he on a first-name basis with these two women?’ It felt almost like he’d known them both forever, but it was Barbara who’d captured his heart, and it was all on faith. He’d believed her when she’d told him about the new spacedrive, but he also knew that it didn’t matter, that if he told her he was coming, she’d go into coldsleep and wait for him, forever if need be, just as he would take her at her word, and step into the unknown of a long trip into nowhere, because he knew that she’d be there waiting for him, just as she was now. He felt tears at the corners of his eyes … ‘Tears! In Jack Webster’s eyes! Goddamn it! He was crazy! All this was nuts!’ He felt like he’d drifted into some kind a fourth dimension, a crazy women’s world where intangible things became more real than physical reality, where two women could sit on a planet circling a star he couldn’t even see, and be able to touch him across the years and millions and millions of miles. It violated every known law of physics; it couldn’t even be possible, just as his instant feeling of connection with Barbara was insane, but it was true, none-the-less, and he was fucked.

Luz looked up at him and smiled. “I’ve figured it out,” she said. “Come here and sit for a bit, and Barbara, you too.”

He looked at them both, tried to see the camera operators, but they seemed almost like ghosts in comparison with the two women in front of him, who had a vibrant reality that he could see. He felt something like Jacob at the edge of the stream when he met the angel, because that’s what these two women looked like if he really looked at them, filled with fire and depth, even though he knew that they were imaginary flat images on a vid screen, turned into threedee pictures by a technical ‘trick,’ and everything was …. He gave up thinking. They sat down, and he sat next to them, feeling the grass and pebbles on his butt and thighs, feeling totally weird, and then Luz said, “Just let your mind go blank, and be open to the experience of the world around you. Feel that breeze?” He did, but how did she feel it? Then he turned it all around; maybe she was somehow living in the real world and he was just discovering it, like a child crawling out of his crib, frightened of letting go of the railing that had penned him in, clinging to the bars of his cage. He sat, letting his buttocks feel the earth, and he tried to feel everything around him with all his heart and soul.

It was working. Not so long ago, like yesterday, he’d thought that all this “New Age” ‘touchy-feely’ stuff was just a scam, a three-card-monte sleight-of-hand hustle to fleece the rubes, but he could feel it, he could feel the woman Luz had described to him, and knew that she’d rested here, could feel her grief and rage. The men who’d died had all been murderers-by-proxy, had been the very authors of the events leading up to the deaths of first one son, then her daughter, and finally to her own. He thought about this, since it was an essential paradox which offended his sense of justice and scientific accuracy. But it was true. She’d died in agony, her body buried, slowly merging into the dust of the Earth, but it was also true that her thought patterns had been somehow captured, rescued from the general wreck of her shattered body, and reborn as something else entirely.

Suddenly, the hair rose on the back of his neck and he knew that she was here! He could feel her presence, and she was angry, she was coming for him, the unwitting servant of wicked masters, but a servant still, and a part of the fell machinery that had killed her, had murdered her son, and he was guilty! He saw her, and she was flying down from the sky on wings of fire with a fiery sword in her hands! She flew at him, swinging that terrible sword through the air; he could hear the sound of it cleaving the very molecules asunder, and he screamed, screamed like a goddamned girl.

Copyright © 1993, 2010, 2011 by Jeffrey M. Mahr

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah