’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter One ― Death Moon

 

¿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

 

 

 

 

The woman did not even need to break the glowbulb in front of her quarry’s door; it had been broken for her by one of the roving gangs. After straightening her clothes, she hesitated just long enough to take a deep breath and then tentatively knocked on the door.

Jackie checked the view plate to see who was knocking on the door to her cubic and once again cursed the building management for refusing to provide the legally required weapon sensors so she could see more than a dim outline. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Margaret Hsuan. If your name is Jackie Chen, I’ve come about your mother.”

“My mother’s dead. Go away.”

“I know your mother has passed away. I’m from the attorney’s office handling the probate on her will.”

“She’s been dead five years. Everything has been taken care of. Go away.”

“That’s what we thought...” The shape darted furtive glances to the left. There was some kind of noise coming from that direction. “Please, can we talk inside? You know the halls of these apartment buildings aren’t safe for solitary women.”

“I never let strangers into my cubic. Vid me tomorrow.”

“I can’t. There is a time issue. If I don’t get your signature and notarize it before midnight tonight the codicil is invalid and you lose the insurance money.”

The noise again, a bit louder this time, and the woman outside the door jumped a bit. Jackie was not certain, but it seemed as if the woman in the hallway flinched and that her eyes grew wide with fear. Did she see something or was Jackie projecting her own fears onto the woman?

“Never mind,” the woman’s voice broke as she clutched her bag even closer to herself. “I’ll just tell them you couldn’t be found.” Another glance to the side and she started edging in the other direction, toward the elevators. At least the management kept the glowbulbs working there.

“Wait.” There were several “snicks” as locks opened. The door opened several inches and suddenly a light flashed brightly in the face of the women in the hall. It showed a slightly chunky Asian woman with her straight black hair in a simple but neat pageboy. She wore an unadorned gray skirt suit like most of the office drones. The suit was worn but neat and clean, suggesting she was not well paid—probably a secretary as she claimed. She appeared to be in her early sixties, about ten years older than Jackie and slightly heavier. She was carrying a briefcase clutched to her bosom as if it was valuable, more valuable than the purse dangling from her shoulder.

Hearing another sound from the hall, louder and closer still, Jackie decided to risk letting her in. She opened the door and quickly pulled the woman into the cubic, almost closing the woman’s purse in the door as she slammed it behind her. Turning her back on the woman, Jackie slapped the locks back in place. When she turned back, the woman was holding a rather deadly looking neurolizer just inches from her neck.

“The one time I let someone I don’t know into my apartment and this happens,” she sighed fatalistically. “Take whatever you want. Just leave me be, please.”

“¡Silencio! I mean ‘Quiet.’ Hold your wrists together in front of you. NOW!”

Jackie fearfully complied, not even considering the incongruity of an Asian woman speaking Spanish. Without blinking, glancing away, or allowing the neurolizer to waver even the slightest bit the intruder slowly put the briefcase down on the kitchenette counter and reached in to take out a roll of duct tape. In moments, the frightened woman’s wrists were taped tightly together.

“Sit!”

Jackie sat.

“Hold your feet out and together.”

Tape quickly encircled Jackie’s feet.

“Sit!”

Jackie sat in the single chair and was quickly taped to it with multiple loops of duct tape. With this done, the intruder breathed a deep sigh. Still not looking away from her captive, the woman took two steps back from Jackie and sat on the cot at the other end of the cubic. Like everything else in the room, the bed was neatly made with pink sheets and a pink flowered coverlet.

“You may scream if you wish, but you know that no one in these tenements will care or come.” The woman carefully undid her fitted suit jacket and placed it on the counter by her briefcase. Propping the cubic door open she disappeared into the hallway for a brief moment. Before Jackie could even think about reacting, she was back, holding a small audio recorder. Sounds of a scuffle were abruptly cut off as the women turned the device off and placed it in her briefcase.

“Wh... What do you want from me?”

“Your blood; I vant your blood.” The woman said with a bad Transylvanian accent and put her fingers to the sides of her mouth as if they were fangs before grinning impishly at her captive. “Actually, I do want a small sample of your blood. I also need about three days of your life. If everything goes as planned, you can have your life back Monday evening.” The woman stepped out of her work shoes, undid the fastening on the side of her skirt and stepped out of it. Each item was neatly folded and placed by the jacket.

“I do...don’t understand. Why are you undressing? Are you some kind of ‘vert or something?” Jackie asked as she began to squirm and struggle with her bonds; fearful she was about to be raped or worse.

“Relax. As long as you cooperate, I’m not going to harm you beyond that blood sample I mentioned.” Jackie’s confused expression changed back to fear again. “And no, before you ask, I’m not here to harvest your organs or sell you to a cyborg supply house.”

The woman was now standing in nothing more than a bra and slip. She walked over and reached for Jackie who jerked away, almost knocking her chair to the floor.

“If you struggle, you are more likely to be injured. I don’t want to hurt you more than I have to, but it will happen if you do something foolish,” the woman calmly noted as she grabbed Jackie’s hair and tugged, using it to pull the slumping woman upright in the chair. The tug was painful and Jackie struggled to get free. When the grip on her hair suddenly disappeared, Jackie fell to the side while still in her chair, bumping her head against the closet wall. Dazed, she sat there rubbing at her neck and head with the side of her still taped hands while the woman sighed and moved back to the bed before Jackie could recover enough to struggle back upright in her seat. Regardless of her words, expecting mercy from this bizarre woman who had bound her was not going to be an option as far as Jackie could tell.

“What’s your favorite color?” Back in her chair, Jackie sullenly glared at the woman, refusing to answer her ridiculous questions.

“I said, ‘What’s your favorite color?’” The neurolizer moved to aim at her foot. “Don’t make me repeat myself. You won’t like it.”

“P...pink,” Jackie barely squeaked out the answer.

“Very good.” The neurolizer moved back to its waiting lap. “Now, what is your mother’s full name?”

“Leeann. Leeann Wong Chen.”

“Wrong. Try again.” The gun was again pointing at her foot.

“I should know my mother’s name, Jackie insisted indignantly, gathering enough courage to glare at her attacker. “It is Leeann Wong Chen. What do you want from me?”

“Your mother’s name was Leeann Wong Shuwei. When she married your father, George Lei Chen, she became Leeann Wong Chen. She died five years ago, two years after your father.”

“If you know already, why are you asking?” Jackie was crying now. She had fought while she thought she was just the victim of a random crazy, but this person knew her, had studied her. This was planned. Somehow, that made it seem even scarier, if that was possible.

Instead of answering, the woman stood and looked around the cubic. It was much like the hundreds of thousands of others built just under a century before. It was roughly eight feet by ten feet, actual size, but with much less floor space after accounting for the closet wall to the left and the kitchenette and refresher on the right. Personal effects were few, a full length mirror on the closet wall door, a couple of pink flowered dishes on the kitchenette counter, and two pictures on the wall above the bed bracketing the ubiquitous flat screen wall viewer. One showed a family with a man, a woman and two young children. The other showed a young woman in cap and gown.

“This is your family.” It was a statement, not a question. The woman pointed to the older woman in the picture. “Your mother?”

Jackie nodded.

“Your father?” The finger moved to the man.

Jackie nodded again.

“And your younger sister?”

Jackie nodded once again.

“When did they die?” The intruder’s voice was soft and gentle; it sounded like she actually cared.

“Thirty-one years ago. A week after I graduated from high school. The others died immediately, but Mother lingered on as an amnesic quadriplegic until just five years ago.”

“I’m truly sorry. Life hasn’t been a lot of fun for you, has it?”

“All the money from the settlement went to care for mother and that ran out fifteen years ago. Even now, five years after her death, half my salary goes to pay off her bills.”

“Oh, yeah. And you work for?” The woman ran a hand through her hair. It seemed longer somehow, almost as long as Jackie’s shoulder length black hair.

“Martin Luther Jackson.”

“The World Senator? I’m impressed.”

“Senator Jackson takes good care of his staff. You know he’ll make sure the police find you. Why don’t you let me go now and I won’t even tell him?” Jackie held out her hands hoping against hope that the woman would remove the tape and leave.

“I’m sorry but that’s not possible. What do you do for the Senator?”

“I’m his personal assistant,” Jackie said, sitting up proudly.

“No es verdad. No, you’re not. Try again.”

Jackie’s shoulders slumped.

“All right, I’m on the cleaning crew.” Jackie pounded her feet on the floor in frustration. “Let me go, please. Why are you doing this to me?”

“Who is your boss?” The woman waited until Jackie’s sobs settled into tears and sniffles with an occasional shudder and repeated the question. “Who is your immediate supervisor?”

“Claude Jackson.”

“Isn’t he the Senator’s Chief of Security?”

“Yes. He's also the Senator’s son.”

“And who do you work with?”

“I work alone.”

“And who do you work with?”

“Audrey Kozlowski.”

“And what is your nickname for Claude?”

“We call him ‘Pol Pot.’ You know, after the Cambodian mass murderer.” The woman looked confused so Jackie explained. “Like Genghis Khan, Stalin, Hitler, Diaz? There was a movie of the week about Pol Pot just two days ago.”

“Never mind; just tell me why you call him that?”

“Because he’s such a horrible man. Nothing is good enough for him. He’s rude, unreasonable, demanding and regularly threatens to kill us if we mess up.”

“That’s not what the public thinks about him. They think he’s a generous, lovable man; his father’s heir to the World Senate.”

“That’s what he’s like when there are strangers about. When we’re alone he’s a mean, evil brute of a man.”

The woman stood up and walked to the refresher. Just before entering, she turned toward Jackie and smiled. “This will take several days. If you’re hungry or would like to use the refresher please let me know.”

It was a rather perverse thought under the circumstances, but Jackie wondered if the woman was a bit thinner than she had originally thought.

“Good morning Jackie.” The guard beckoned her through the detector and she placed her purse on the counter and walked through.

“Anything I should know about in your purse?”

“No, but you’re going to check anyway aren’t you? Mr. Claude would be upset if you didn’t.” Jackie smiled conspiratorially as he frowned at their boss’ name. She waited patiently while he thoroughly examined her purse.

“Talcum powder?” the guard asked, holding up a small whisky-shaped flask.

“It’s for chafing.”

“Why not use the boss man’s powder? It’s cheaper.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that. Is Pol Pot making you test me again?”

“No. You know this is just the normal increase in security for when the Senator is going to be at home. He should be here for dinner tonight. Besides, Pol Pot would have probably just ordered me to kill you without bothering to test you?” The guard laughed and waved her on without bothering to run a sample of the power through the chemical testing unit. Grabbing her purse, Jackie went to her locker to change into her work clothes.

The day went uneventfully until lunchtime. Jackie and her cleaning partner, Audrey, spent their time polishing the brass and dusting downstairs. They ate lunch quickly in the pantry with their coworkers and then, palming the empty plastic bag that had held her sandwich, Jackie excused herself to go to the bathroom after first stopping off at her locker to grab the powder from her purse.

In the bathroom, Jackie turned the glowbulb on and locked the door. She produced the plastic bag she had palmed and laid it carefully on the toilet seat. Opening the can labeled talcum powder; she sprinkled a fine white powder into the plastic bag, filling it about half way.

Next, she went to the medicine cabinet and almost panicked when she failed to find any petroleum jelly. Frantically searching the bathroom, she finally found it behind some hand cream on a shelf above the toilet. Muttering to herself that she should have looked there first, she scooped an equal amount of jelly into the bag and sealed it shut.

Jackie again placed the bag on the toilet seat and washed her hands before carefully kneading the bag until the powder and the jelly, thoroughly mixing the two into a suspension. Dropping the bag into one of the large pockets of her maid’s uniform, she returned to the pantry just as Audrey was cleaning up from her lunch.

“Are you all right?”

“Sure, Audrey, just taking care of some personal needs. We better get back to work before Pol Pot starts looking for us.”

“That man is one royal pain isn’t he?” Audrey laughed as they headed upstairs to dust.

The third room was the Senator’s office. He used it for all his broadcasts and most of the adult population of Earth recognized the famous room with its ornately decorated mahogany desk, devoid of any personal effects except the huge leather-bound bible the Senator was so fond of referring to as he spoke to visitors. They also recognized the life size portrait of Aloysius Todd, father of the world nation, behind the desk. This was the room where, almost twenty years ago, the world had watched candidate Jackson pull a neurolizer from inside that same bible and kill the man who tried to assassinate him during a campaign speech. That incident, more than any other, had been attributed as the cause of the then political newcomer’s near landslide election to the World Senate.

Finishing their dusting, they moved on to the next room. Two rooms later complaining of cramps, Jackie excused herself to go to the bathroom, but instead returned to Senator Jackson’s office. Moving to the desk, she opened the bible and removed the neurolizer. Placing it in her pocket, she pulled out the plastic bag and gently placed it in the cutaway where the gun had rested. Closing the bible, she quickly returned to Audrey and her dusting. When Audrey was not looking, the neurolizer went into the garbage.

The remainder of the day went uneventfully. Claude Jackson must have been too busy with arrangements for his father’s return, as he never did show up to harangue them about their work. In fact, the only other person they saw was the same security officer who had searched Jackie when she arrived. It was a pleasant surprise for both when he came by to tell them both to go home an hour early in honor of the Senator’s return.

After making it back out through security, the two women made small talk as they walked to the transit tube station together. Jackie waved as Audrey’s tube train pulled out of the station and then turned, as if to go to her tube train, but instead continued past it and left the station; walking two blocks to a cheap motel.

Entering the room she had rented earlier, she immediately turned on the vid screen and set it to the news. Then, taking a travel bag from the closet and setting it on the dresser, she opened it and removed a fresh set of clothes. Undressing, she lay on the bed and concentrated as hard as she could. Within an hour, a tall, emaciated man, covered in sweat and panting from exertion, was lying on the bed instead of the housekeeper. About five minutes before the transformation was completed there was a news flash. Senator Jackson had died in an explosion in his office and his son, the Senator’s Chief of Security, was in critical condition at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. The Senator’s son was not expected to survive the night.

Dressing, the man closed the bag and headed back to the tube station. On the way, he stopped off to make an “eyes off” vid call to the police and leave them an anonymous message to check Jackie Chen’s apartment.

Smiling, the man continued on his way to the tube station, stopping one more time to drop an envelope with Jackie’s address in the post box. She would need that money. It would also serve as repayment for the use of her identity without permission. When he arrived at the station, his tube train was on time and he even found a seat. Another “problem” had been solved and there was yet another victim of the “Burlador,” the “Trickster.”

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Note: Although currently incomplete, this story will be finished as expeditiously as possible.

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Two ― By the Light of the Silvery Moons

 

¿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

 

 

And so I give our toast.
From that young man upstairs
who has the impudence to make me a great-uncle,
to Mother and Father on their Golden Wedding;
through four generations of us,
and to those who have gone and those who are to come.
To the family—that dear octopus
from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor,
in our innermost hearts, ever quite wish to.

—Dodie Smith
”Dear Octopus”

 

 

“Hey, Juanito,” Margarita paused her kneading just long enough to wipe the sweat off her brow and to call out to her husband, “Vamos. Finish your chores or you’ll be late for work.”

“Sí, Margarita, querida mia. I’m going,” he called back over the din of the children as they ate breakfast and played happily with each other. Margarita smiled as Juanito strode laughing out the door and returned to her kneading. She was baking bread for the meeting tonight. In a few more minutes, it would be time to chase the children out of the cramped kitchen and into the quarto grande, the living room, to start studying.

At the barn, Juanito grabbed his flamethrower and protective gear and headed out to the fields to burn back the native flora of Quicksilver. It was his morning chore to burn a twenty-meter plant-free zone, or PFZ, around the entire farm to keep away the native flora and protect the Earth plants transplanted with the colonists, and it gave him the creeps sometimes.

The plant life of Quicksilver was quite different from that of Earth; it grew at a phenomenal rate, from seedling to mature plant in as little as two days, and none of it was edible by human beings. In fact, the plants were outright toxic to humans, so Juanito was very careful to seal the openings of his environmental suit. In the early days, people had died from a single touch, but the hazard suits had pretty much put a stop to that, and the flame-throwers allowed them to destroy the plants without getting too close. The vines, or creepers, whatever they were, could sneak up on you if you didn’t stay on your toes, although you could barely see them move if you stared at them. Turn around for a bit, though, and they’d be a little bit closer every time you looked, edging closer, ever so slowly, but with a horrible singleness of malign purpose.

Actually, plant was not an altogether correct description. While they did have the local equivalent of chlorophyll and cellulose, the flora of Quicksilver also had a rudimentary nervous system and some powers of locomotion, albeit in slow motion, or the daily flaming would not have been sufficient. They also had a meaty bulbous organ, possibly a brain and definitely a sense organ, about the size of a baseball protruding upward above the single core stem. Unlike most of the plant species known on Earth, or any of the other eight colony planets, they also ate each other using their root cilia to battle each other to the death and then to absorb the remains of the losers. Looking down from above, their actions were often reminiscent of warring armies. There were variations in the size of the plants, the color of the sensory organ and the shape of the leaves, but otherwise all the flora of Quicksilver seemed remarkably similar.

Juanito’s friend, Dr. Dan Nevrith, was the senior botanist at the Research Center located about a mile down the road to town. He insisted that they were all variations of the same plant, completely overturning the early work of other, earlier, scientists, who had constructed an elaborate taxonomy based on superficial differences. As its ‘discoverer,’ he had named it Triffidus verus after some long-forgotten vid story. He hypothesized that somehow natural selection had created a single life form so perfectly suited to the environment of Quicksilver that it had overrun and eliminated all opponents, at least until mankind arrived. Dr. Nevrith was working on some sort of biological or chemical control, since burning was very expensive, but so far hadn’t come up with anything that worked for more than a few days.

About two thirds of the way through the burn, Juanito saw a Triffid with a magenta bulb that had made it to less than three feet from the crop. This was more than ten feet farther than any of the others had ever come. Juanito carefully picked up the plant in his gloved hands — careful to take the entire root and watching to either side and behind himself nervously because he was working so close to the low mass of plants — and lowered it into the bio-hazard sack he always carried. Dan was offering a reward of twenty-five E-creds — a full day’s wage — for each new variation of Quicksilver’s flora and a thousand E-creds for any new species native to Quicksilver.

Juanito didn’t really expect anything for the plant he had bagged; it had been quite a while since anyone had found a new variation, let alone a new species, but money was money and it didn’t hurt to try. Besides that, he was paid by the hour, so a visit to the “Doc” didn’t cost him anything, and meant at least a few containers of freight he didn’t have to load. Burning away the last of the previous night’s overgrowth, Juanito put away the flamethrower and jogged the short distance past the colony school to the Research Center. He was the crew-chief, and didn’t get his job, and raise in pay, by pushing the limits too far.

“¿Hey Juanito! cómo está?” Dan was out in the field in front of the center, suited up and working at something, so Juanito detoured off the main road onto the wide and carefully marked aisles between rows of the experimental field to show Dan his new find.

“Muy bien, excellent, my friend. See what I have for you? A new variety, I think.”

Dan’s examination was brief. “Yup, it’s definitely a new variation of Trffidus verus. This magenta variation is a rather striking coloration, don’t you think? But that, in and of itself, does not make it uncommon,” he paused to examine it further, “but this additional bulge below the sensory organ is truly exceptional. I’m going to have to dissect one as soon as I propagate a couple more.”

“So I get the twenty-five E-creds?”

“Absolutely, Juanito. Let’s go get that taken care of and then we can each get back to work.” Together, they headed off into the Research Center. Just as they crossed the threshold of the front doors, there was a brief quake. As a second-generation colonist on a planet with several small earthquakes each day, Juanito thought nothing of it, but Dan instinctively ducked back into the doorframe and stood there, wide-eyed in fear, until the tremor was over.

“Thirty years living on Earth with nothing but solid ground under my feet and now I’m on Quicksilver with earthquakes almost daily. I hate them! I may never acclimate.” His laugh seemed a bit forced as he stepped away from the doorframe and checked for damage. “Come on and I’ll get you the E-creds. You’ve earned it.” They began walking towards Dan’s lab.

“¿Dónde vivías de nino, Señor Doctor? I mean, where’d you live? On Earth I mean.”

“Metro East.”

“¿Discúlpeme? I mean ‘Excuse me?’ I don’t recognize that place. Is it near Téjas? Texas? My mother was from there.”

“Sorry. I forgot you were born here, Juanito. What are you? Third generation?”

“Second.”

“Earth geography doesn’t have as much meaning when it’s so far away, does it?”

Another nod. They reached the lab and Juanito waited patiently while Dan carefully placed the sample in a terrarium, sealed the top and seated himself at his desk with an atlas he pulled out of a pile of books on a nearby shelf lying open between them.

He pointed to a colorful page. “Metro East is a community of about half a billion on the east coast of the North American continent. It was formed about a hundred and forty years ago — shortly after the first colonists left — when the various cities, states and provinces were dissolved in favor of a more efficient mega-municipality like what had already happened on the west coast. I remember because I took my doctoral exams on the centennial of its creation.

“The center of the country, between the two major mountain ranges, was dedicated as a park. By law it has only a small number of permanent residents, mostly farmers, rangers, and people in the hospitality industry, less than ten million as I recall, so hardly anyone lives in Texas any more.”

“But Quicksilver has less than a hundred thousand souls.” Juanito was in awe. He had ignored the first numbers as meaningless, but the smaller number was still so large as to be difficult to imagine.

“Very true. Colonization is excruciatingly slow, but it is essential to the survival of the human race. Earth would never be able to support these colonies without the raw materials they send back to make up for what is lost transporting people and equipment to these distant colonies, and there are too many people for Earth to grow enough food to feed itself these days, even with the Antarctic greenhouses and robotic farming making things more efficient on Earth itself, and the Skinner Drive to speed up the colonial supply system.” Dan’s eyes glazed over as he stared at the book before him. His thoughts traveled the light years back from his adopted homeland to the planet of his birth, a difficult journey, because even with the Skinner Drive, his Earth was thirty-five years in the past. His childhood friends would be old by now, thinking about retirement, and by the time he got back, they’d all be dead.

Juanito nodded politely. His brother Miguel had a different explanation for the relationship between Earth and Quicksilver, not that Juanito cared about such things.

When Dan failed to continue speaking Juanito waited patiently for a while but eventually spoke, “I guess I better get to work.”

Dan was in his own world and did not even hear.

Juanito waited a few moments and when Dan failed to respond he turned to leave, dejected over not getting the twenty-five E-credits. Before he could reach the door, Dan seemed to refocus, blinked several times and saw Juanito leaving. “Wait. I almost forgot. Here’s your bounty and, if it turns out to be a new species, I’ll bring you the rest of the finder’s fee. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though. We’ve been looking for a long time and haven’t found one yet. These damned Triffs are so competitive that they seem to have wiped out every competing organism on the surface of the planet.”

Dan dug in a desk drawer and pulled out a small cashbox and took out some bills. Juanito gladly returned to take them. When he turned to leave the second time, it was with a smile and a friendly wave goodbye. Leaving the Research Center, he continued down the road the short distance to the spaceport and his main job as a freight jockey. In daylight, the perimeter robots were clever enough to keep the Triffs away from the fields.

With a brief flurry of activity, dinner was set out on the family’s kitchen table as the dog’s barking gave early notice of Juanito’s return home. “Conchita, get the salad. Pablo, bring the pitcher of water. Papa’s home and it’s time to eat.” Entering the house, he gave Margarita a quick hug and a peck on the cheek and placed a small bag on top of the refrigerator before taking a seat at the kitchen table with the rest of his family.

“Pablo, Conchita, tell Papa what you did today,” Margarita prompted their oldest child. At ten, he was just old enough to realize it was a compliment.

“Sí, Mama.” Pablo beamed with joy as he spoke. “Conchita and I helped Mama harvest the north field.”

“Sí, and I helped Mama make dinner,” six-year-old Conchita proudly added.

“And they each made it through today’s lessons without a single mistake.” Margarita laughed as she chimed in.

“Sí Papa.” Pablo almost jumped out of his seat in his excitement to answer first. “I finished my entire spelling module and tomorrow I get to start on eighth grade.”

“Bueno. Bueno, Pablo. ¿Y tú, Conchita?”

“I drew you a picture, papa. Can I show you, papa? Can I?” she asked looking first at her father and then at her mother for permission.

“Yes dear,” Juanito answered and Conchita jumped out of her seat, “but how about after dinner? It will get it all dirty if I try to look at it at the dinner table.”

Conchita pouted, but returned to her seat.

“How about you, Juanito?” Margarita asked. “How was your day?”

“Not bad. We’re going to need to extend the PFZ another five or ten feet. One of the Triffs almost made it to the corn. Oh, and I got us twenty-five E-credits. Dr. Dan says it may be a new Triff variation. It was by the north field PFZ where you were harvesting.”

“¡Madre de díos! The children could have been hurt. Were there any others? Are you sure none of those accursed Triffs made it to the field?

“No. No. Don’t worry. Only one Triff got close and I got it before it reached the field.”

There was another temblor and the children laughed as they simultaneously yelled out, “Felt it first. Felt it first.”

“No, you didn’t,” Pablo retorted. “I felt it first.”

“Papa,” Conchita whined. “Pablo says I didn’t feel it first, but I did.”

“No, she didn’t. I felt it first Papa. Tell her, Papa. Tell her who felt it first.”

“Children,” Margarita interrupted as she held up her hand for silence. “Papa and Mama are talking.”

“And I felt it first anyway,” Juanito said as he laughed and stuck out his tongue playfully at the two children before turning back to Margarita.

“So how was work today?”

“Not bad. Two full loads of processed durasteel and one container of computer chips.”

“Please tell me they’re the ones for the autoforge or the weather satellite?”

“Lo siento, mi amór, nothing like that. I did get an updated motherchip for our farm management controller, with all the latest improvements.” Juanito smiled as he pulled a chip case from his pocket and offered it to his wife.

“What’s that, Papa?”

“Something for the farm, Pablo.” Seeing the look of disappointment on his children’s faces, he smiled and pointed to a bag on top of the refrigerator. “Don’t worry, muchachos. I haven’t forgotten you. I have some rock candy sticks I picked up from the spaceport commissary in there.”

“Can we have some now? Can we? Por favór, Papa. Please?”

In response to Margarita’s frown, he shook his head no. “Finish eating first, muchachitos.”

“But we’re done, Papa.”

“I don’t think so,” Margarita chimed in and pointed. “There’s still quite a bit of food on your plates.”

“But we’re full, Mama.”

“Then you won’t have room for rock candy, will you? Finish eating, muchachitos.” With huge watery doe eyes, they both stared down at their plates. Pablo moved some food from one side of the plate to the other while Conchita tapped her fork against her lips without actually ingesting anything.

“Oh all right,” Margarita relented, but not until after a mock glare at Juanito, who just shrugged and smiled. The children jumped out of their chairs and ran for the candy.

“But first, clean up after yourselves,” Juanito reminded as he grabbed them both before they could reach the refrigerator and moved them back to their seats so that they could toss their food on the compost heap and put their dishes in the sink. “And that means washing your hands also.”

“Did you manage to get one for your brother Miguel too? We’ll be seeing him tonight and you know he’ll ask.”

“Huh?” Juanito turned back to Margarita as the children scampered off to wash. “Oh, the controller chips. Sí. There are ten in that pack, I got one for all the other plantations, plus two spares, but do we have to go? Can’t I just send one to him? His constant talk of independence bores me; he’s such a ‘gran patriota’.”

Margarita just nodded in agreement and smiled as she rose to clean off Juanito’s and her dishes. Then, she started working on the children’s, lying haphazardly in the sink.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Three ― New Moon

 

¿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

 

 

He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimneypiece:
He looked again, and found it was
His sister’s husband’s niece.

—Lewis Carroll ”Sylvie and Bruno”

 

 

It was nice to relax a bit. William “Bud” Williams, a fifty-two year-old businessman from the Redding urbopolis of Metro West, was stretched out on one of the king-sized beds in his room on the nineteenth floor of the Vegas Suites Hotel, Casino and Resort. He had just kicked his shoes off and stripped off his tie. His belt and zipper were undone, in deference to the huge steak dinner filling his belly, and he was debating whether to take a nap or amble downstairs to watch the floorshow. The vid wall was on and Bud was half listening to one of the all-news stations still rehashing the death of World Senator Jackson, almost a month after the bomb killed him. His eyes were closed, but his potbelly would have prohibited seeing anything but the periphery of the screen anyway, and he could still hear it.

“The death of World Senator Martin Luther Jackson, with his son and Chief of Staff, Claude Jackson, was followed by another letter from the mysterious terrorist group called ‘Burlador.’ This group has again demanded that the World Senate stop ‘plundering the resources of the colony planets,’ to use their words, although responsible planetary authorities have denied having anything to do with the attacks, or any desire for independence. At the insistence of political leaders worldwide, Jehru Sarwalgundi, Director of Operations for the World Peace Militia, has appointed Tom O’Hare to head the largest task force ever created for a non-military operation with the express mandate of capturing the person or persons responsible for these vicious terrorist attacks. With the death of Senator Jackson, this group has now claims responsibility for the horrific murders of three World Senators. Jehru Sarwalgundi, Director of Operations for the World Police Militia, has called upon all other police jurisdictions to assist the taskforce in any way they can. General Sarwalgundi also describes the capture of the Burlador as the Militia’s number one priority. Those Senators able to be reached for comment by this network were unanimous in their support for Mr. Sarwalgundi’s actions although Senator Ortíz added that he had been pushing for such an appointment by Mr. Sarwalgundi for almost six months. Here to tell us a bit about Mr. O’Hare is Jack Zorloft.”

“Thank you, Peter. The selection of Tom O’Hare had been rumored for about two months now and is particularly appropriate. He’s had a remarkable twenty-two year career in law enforcement starting as a beat cop in the Boston urbopolis of Metro East in North America. Five years later, he left Boston to accept the position of Chief Hostage Negotiator for Metro East only to resign two years later to obtain a second doctorate in law enforcement studies and then accept the G. Edgar Hoover Chair of the Department of Law Enforcement Studies at Washington University. Four years later, he was instrumental in the capture of Wallaby Love, the leader of the Australian-based terrorist group of the same name that had been threatening to destroy the British Isles with reclaimed nuclear waste if the World Senate did not reallocate more resources to the Southern Hemisphere. Just two years ago, he was appointed Chief of the ultra secret counter-intelligence wing of the World Senate’s World Peace Militia, Espiar. Mr. O’Hare has promised...”

The vid wall clicked off. Bud dressed and headed off for the floorshow. Before walking out the door, he checked the pulse of the original Bud Williams as he lay wheezing, unconscious, bloated belly up, on the other bed.

“Gentlemen,” the speaker could have been the archetypal Irish beat cop. Even his voice had a faint brogue suggesting someone who had spent time growing up on the Emerald Isle. “...and ladies.” He offered a genteel nod towards the two women amongst the twenty-four dark suited people sitting around the conference table. “I think I can summarize the status of our investigations to date by saying ‘we’re in deep trouble. We have not one viable lead on the person or persons responsible for the assassinations of four different World Senators in the last year. The only patterns discernable to date are that the preferred method of assassination is an explosive using sodium chlorate, commonly used by terrorists in the late Twentieth Century, and that the targets seem to be World Senators who oppose the emancipation of the Outer Colonies. Oh, and whoever is doing it seems to be getting better at it. The first explosion killed seven bystanders but the last two have been limited to the Senator and only one or two important aides.”

“It each case, someone has managed to make it past the best security the World Senate could provide, without being caught. The perpetrator never made a blip on the security of any one of the four Senators. It’s as if we’re dealing with a ghost.”

“But sir, we have suspects in custody for each assassination.”

“Who said that?

“Jack Webster.” A nondescript suited man about half way down the conference table raised his hand.

“Well yes, Mr. Webster, but I doubt anyone in this room really believes even one of them is actually an assassin. I suppose it is possible that some splinter group is claiming responsibility for the acts of others but the likelihood that solitary menial employees in the households of the various Senators would use the exact same type of explosive — with the exact same detonation mechanism — in isolation is unlikely, to say the least. Not one has sufficient motive or the knowledge of explosives to assassinate anyone and each claims he or she had been kidnapped and not present at the time the bombs must have been set, despite clear security and surveillance evidence to the contrary. By the way, that should be another piece for our profilers. Whoever is doing this doesn’t kill if he, she or they can help it. All the allegedly kidnapped employees were found, bound and gagged, after anonymous tips to the Peace Militia. Shortly thereafter, each received anonymous and apparently untraceable gifts of relatively large sums of money. The bottom line here is that if this is truly a random series of events involving similar forms of violence by employees without the financial, personal or political motivation for their acts we’re in deeper trouble than you do or I can imagine. I, for one, would much prefer to assume there is some other explanation.”

“Sir, there is the other obvious pattern.”

“Yes Jack. I assume you mean the political aspect.” Jack nodded and Tom O’Hare continued. “Jack is right. This Burlador group is claiming that they will assassinate any World Senator who acts to continue the colonization of the out planets. The Director is already advising each Senator of the risk of public statements on that topic.”

“Gentlemen, and ladies, assuming these assassinations are part of a planned series of terrorist acts as this ‘Burlador’ alleges, we know that it is unlikely that one person could plan and carry out something as elaborate as this. If there is a group, it must be able to be infiltrated. We all know that no secret is safe once more than one person is involved. That’s what I’d like you all to do. Take your squads, get out there and beat the bushes. Very well, gentlemen, unless someone has something else to add, dismissed.”

“Mr. Webster, would you please remain for a moment.”

“Yes, sir.” He leaned back on rear legs of his chair. From the knowing looks, it was clear that the others expected him to get a chewing out for his interruptions.

After everyone had gone and the door closed, Tom stood and walked over to where Jack was sitting. Slumping into the chair next to Jack, he just stared contemplatively at the younger man for several seconds while Jack reciprocated unabashed. “You’re pretty sure of yourself, Mr. Webster.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because the rest of them are desk jockeys, I’m the only one here, besides you, who has had any real beat experience.”

“So, what does that mean?”

“It means I’ve learned that logic is not always the motive for people’s actions and that just because it seems impossible doesn’t mean it is.”

“You’re talking about the claims by that last woman, Jackie Chen I think her name was, that someone came in and changed shape to become her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you don’t think it’s just superstitious mumbo jumbo?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Just a gut feeling, sir. Nothing I can pin it on, but it seems a bit too bizarre for an alibi, unless she’s a lot smarter than we think.”

“So you seriously think some creature changed shape, like a werewolf or something, to become her?”

“Yes, sir.”

O’Hare rose and started walking away and Jack figured he had just lost another plum assignment.

“Fine. Do it.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Take your squad and investigate that possibility.”

“Yes, SIR!.” Jack jumped up and headed for the door with a huge grin on his face.

“But don’t let anyone — and I mean anyone — from outside your squad hear about it. One hint that you’re running around on some tomfool theory like that and I’ll disavow you and your squad. You’ll all be back pounding a beat that same day.”

“I understand, sir. What would you like us to tell anyone who asks?”

“Tell them you’re on a special assignment investigating fringe groups. Now get out of here, and stop grinning like the wolf that ate grandma.”

“Yes sir.” At the door, he stopped for a moment. “By the way, sir, did you know that in Spanish the word “burlador” means trickster?”

“So?”

“In a surprising number of different and apparently unrelated mythologies there is a creature known as a trickster whom changes shape and seems to love causing disruptions to the status quo.”

The show was great, a revival of an animal act by two of the old masters, a team called Sigfried and Roy who specialized in seemingly dangerous stunts. The blending of genetically recreated tigers and lions with human actors was extremely well done. It was such a pleasure to just relax and have a good time. No commitments, no playacting, no planning and re-planning, and most importantly, no remembering. Life was good for a few hours.

After the show, the gaming tables beckoned. Uppers and downers were readily available to the big spenders like him, as were the pleasure girls. After losing a modest amount at Blackjack and Roulette and no less than four offers of a good time within just two hours, Bud returned to the hotel room with a slight but pleasant buzz. First, he called for an eight A.M. wake up and then checked the pulse of the man on the bed, which was still quite strong. Stripping off his clothes and laying down on the other bed, four hours later, there was a tall redhead with large breasts and a very pretty face curled up in a tight ball sleeping on the bed instead.

“Ring. Ring.”

“Hello?” Frog croaking might have sounded more melodious.

“Good morning, this is the front desk. You asked for a wakeup call at eight in the morning. There is complimentary coffee and breakfast pastries on a tray outside your door.”

“Yeah, thanks.” The telephone made it back onto the receiver after two tries and the willowy woman struggled to sit up at the edge of the bed.

A shower helped her wake up and the coffee finished the job.

Fully awake, she once again checked the pulse of the sleeping man on the other bed. Crawling onto his bed so she could look down on him, she pinched his arm hard enough to give him a bruise. He groaned and shifted a bit.

“Bud Williams, listen carefully. Do you hear me?”

A groan.

“You can speak, Bud. Tell me you hear me.”

“I hear you.” The still figure barely croaked out the words.

“Very good, Bud. Now listen carefully and repeat what I say.”

“Listen carefully and repeat what I say.”

“Oh great, even hypnotized he’s a barrel of laughs,” the woman muttered too quietly to be overheard. Louder she continued. “Never mind, Bud. Just listen to what I say, I’ll quiz you later.”

“Quiz me later.” The voice was a bit stronger, albeit still raspy.

“You and I had an absolutely fabulous night. We never even left the room except for the brief time when you went down and gambled a bit. We had sex and more sex, oh, and you were fantastic, such stamina, so gentle yet so forceful.” He said nothing, but his smile kept getting bigger and bigger.

“Your wife must be very proud of you. You were so pleased with me you paid me a thousand creds plus a two hundred cred tip.” The smile faded a bit at the mention of his wife and a bit more at the price quoted.

“Don’t worry. You think I’m more than worth it. You apologized that you didn’t have more that you could give me.” The smile hesitated a bit but then was back. “You’re going to remember this as the best sex you’ve ever had and then go home and practice with your wife until you are both enjoying sex as much as you did last night.” The smile was still there, but there was now a determined jut to his jaw.

“You don’t remember my name and from now on whenever you have the urge to cheat on your wife you’ll go home and have even better sex than last night. Do you remember everything that happened to you last night?”

“Yes.”

“Good. In about five minutes you’re going to wake up with a warm, happy, satisfied glow and go be the best salesman you can be.” With that, she slipped on her shoes and walked out of the room.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Four ― The Dark Side of the Moon

 

¿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 tricksters delight in trickery, and you fools hate the truth?

— Proverbs 1:22

 

 

It is the very error of the moon;
She comes more near the earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.

—William Shakespeare
King Lear

“Madre de dios, vamos already.” The two children dragged along behind their parents as Margarita urged them onward, down the dirt road leading toward the city. Ahead of them, Quicksilver’s twin moons, collectively called “The Lares,” loomed large in the darkening sky, almost perfectly aligned with each other tonight through some trick of cosmic timing. The smallest, Castor, was the nearest, almost at the Roche limit where it would be torn to pieces through tidal action — or at least would in a few million years, according to the astrophysicists — while the largest, Pollux, was much further away, far enough to be stable in a three-body system, but large enough to subtend almost the same visual angle, so it made a spooky sight, unsettling somehow, impossible, like one of those “Mystery Rooms” where tiny babies were larger than their parents. As the Lares orbited Quicksilver, it was difficult to avoid thinking that they were about to crash into each other whenever they approached conjunction.

“Do we have to go, mama?”

“Sí, muchachitos. Your cousins will be there. Don’t you want to be able to play with them?”

“Sí, mama; sí. Can we get some flan there, mama, por favor?” They were suddenly dancing about their parents as they pleaded.

“We’ll see, muchachitos.” Juanito struggled to keep a straight face. “Let’s see if we can get there first.”

As the children danced ahead with visions of treats before them, Juanito tried once more to avoid going himself. “Margarita mi amor, I’d like to stop off and check on that Triff I brought Dr. Nevrith. It’s just down the road and I’ll just be a moment.”

“Juanito, you’re as bad as the children. This is family. You’ve got to be there for Miguel.” We were almost to the schoolyard where the rally was being held and the children, seeing their cousins, ran on ahead.

“I know, but if that Triff turns out to be a new type it could mean a lot more money, money we could use.”

“Oh, all right. Help me get the children settled in and listen to your brother’s speech and then you can disappear.”

“Thank you, mi amor. I appreciate.”

“We are a colony. Quicksilver is a colony. Each and every one of you is a colonist.” Miguel stood on the makeshift stage shouting at the people milling about the open schoolyard talking, eating and relaxing. Few were listening, which deterred Miguel not at all. “And as a colonist what do you get? You get the right to send Earth your produce, your raw materials.” The crowd was not getting it.

“You,” he shouted, pointing to a man in the crowd. “Mannie Hernandez. You grow corn, right?”

The man Miguel had pointed to nodded and smiled at being recognized while wiping his hand over his mouth in a less than effective attempt to remove the melted butter. Even from the stage, it was possible to see the bits of corn stuck between his teeth.

“How much are you getting for your corn now, Mannie?” Miguel asked. “Eight E-creds a ton? No? How much? Six and a half E-creds? Do you know how much it sells for on Earth, that same corn you sold here for six and a half Es? Do you know, Mannie? No? Can you guess? Allow for the cost of transportation and distribution; then add a reasonable profit. No, add an exorbitant profit. Add an obscene profit. The biggest profit you can imagine. What is it? Tell us all, Mannie. How much?”

“One hundred E-creds?”

“How much?”

“One hundred fifteen E-creds?”

“Mannie, Mannie, think BIG.”

“One hundred fifty E-creds?”

“Mannie, you’re not even close. At the close of the market at the time of departure from Earth of the latest vessel to arrive yesterday — make that about three months ago — after conversion from World Credits back into our made up currency, corn was trading on the commodities markets of Earth at eight hundred and ninety six E-creds a ton.”

The crowd was much more attentive now, but there were still some holding back.

“And you,” he shouted and pointed again. “Chin Ye Kim. You’re a miner; tell the people what you send to Earth.”

The man designated, obviously embarrassed, mumbled something that no one could hear.

“Louder, Chin. No one heard you.”

He repeated himself, just barely audible even so, “Copper.”

“Did everyone hear him? He’s a copper miner and when I last checked your hourly salary compared to the current rate of extraction you get about fifteen E-creds per ton at the spaceport.”

“Now you all know what I’m going to ask next. How much do you think it’s selling for on Earth? How about it, Kim, do you want to take a guess?”

“Sure. Why not? How about two hundred and fifty E-creds?”

The crowd murmured.

“Tell him everybody. Is it too high, or too low?”

“Too low.”

“That’s right people, way too low. Try again, Kim.”

“Five hundred E-creds.”

The crowd was hushed. Miguel had them in the palm of his hand.

“Folks? Tell him.”

The crowd roared, “Too low.”

“That’s right, Kim. Give it one more try.”

“Nine hundred E-creds.”

The crowd oohed.

“Still too low. Folks, at the close of the market at the time of departure from Earth of the airship that arrived yesterday, copper was trading on the commodities markets of Earth at one thousand...” The crowd oohed again.

“One thousand five hundred and fifty four E-creds a ton.”

“He’s going to go on for hours, you know that, mi amor,” Juanito whispered to his wife. They were sitting on the close-cropped earth grass of the schoolyard surrounded by several hundred others. “If I leave now I’ll be back long before he’s done.”

“Sí, but he is your brother,” Margarita affectionately patted him on his knee, “and regardless, I know you’re dying to get out of here.”

“Es verdad. I love him, but I have no interest in his efforts to educate us about the evils of Earth’s government.”

Margarita sighed. If she tried to get him to stay any longer, he would be worse than the children with his complaints. It would spoil what Margarita thought of as a pleasant day off from the rigors of farming. That reminded her of the children and she glanced up. They had been at the swings but were currently out of sight. “Why don’t you go check on the children and then continue on to see how Dr. Nevrith is doing? Just be discrete. We’re too near the stage and I wouldn’t want Miguel to see you leave and feel we didn’t care.”

“An excellent idea, mi amor,” Juanito smiled and kissed his wife. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Juanito almost jumped up in his enthusiasm for the idea. With sign language telling Miguel he’d be right back, Juanito headed over towards the swings, leaving Margarita hoping Miguel had seen, let alone understood what her husband had meant. He saw Pablo and Conchita playing tag with a group by the slide. Knowing they were safe, Juanito felt free to continue on to the nearby research center and Dr. Nevrith. He was about to enter the building when the screaming started.

He was running before he knew what was happening. He had to get back to Margarita and the children. When the first shot sounded, he ran even faster.

“¡Margarita! ¡Margarita! ¿Donde esta? Where are you?” He frantically searched for his wife and children amongst the panicking crowd. People were running, mostly away from the makeshift stage. On the stage, some goon from the Colonial Peace Militia was yammering over the speaker system, telling everyone to go home. Other Peace Militia goons, weapons drawn, were striding in groups through the mass of people looking for someone or something while still others were using riot gear to push people away from the stage. Someone knocked him down in his haste to get away. In seconds, he was trampled by a dozen other fleeing colonists. Holding on to consciousness by a thread, Juanito staggered to his feet only to be knocked down again. This time he was not as lucky. His last thought was of how soft the grass felt.

“Good, you’re awake. I was getting worried.”

Juanito struggled to open his eyes. The right one was not quite working and it hurt when he tried to breathe.

“Don’t try to move. You’re in bad shape. I think you have a broken rib or two and one heck of a black eye. Given how long you’ve been asleep, I’m also betting on a concussion. And there has to be more, because some of the readings on the medscan are just plain strange.”

“Duh... ¿Donde estoy?”

“Do you know who I am?”

Squinting, Juanito tried to make sense of the blurred images before him. “Nu... Ne... Dr. Nevrith?”

“Very good. You’re right. It’s me, Dan, and you’re at the Research Center. I found you at the schoolyard along with dozens of others. The others were able to walk and quickly disappeared, but you were badly hurt so I brought you back here. I don’t think anyone noticed me in the confusion. Don’t try to move. I’ve got some clear broth or juice for you when you’re up to trying to eat something.” Dan placed a small tray on a pile of boxes next to the cot on which Juanito was lying.

“¿Donde estoy?”

Dan moved a box labeled autoclave next to the cot and sat down. “My Spanish is a bit rusty, but I’m pretty sure you asked where you were. You’re in the storage room off my lab. Turn your head a bit to the side and I’ll try to spoon-feed you some broth. It’s soy chicken flavored.”

“¿Donde están mi esposa y mis muchachos?”

“Please, use English, Juanito; you know my Spanish stinks. Did you ask about your wife and children?” Juanito nodded and then groaned from the pain. “I’m not sure. I didn’t see them, but I’ll check around as soon as I can.”

“Gracias...I mean thank you.”

“Now sleep. Your body needs to heal.”

Juanito did not bother to nod. He just closed his eyes. Seconds later, he was asleep.

“How are you feeling, Juanito? Your face looks much better, less puffy and bruised.” Dan sat beside the cot with more broth.

“Better. The pain is almost gone.” Juanito took the bowl from the hands of an astonished Dr. Nevrith.

“But it’s less than two standard days since I brought you here. Either the medscan is faulty or you should be barely able to move for another week or two.”

“Don’t know. I’m still a bit stiff, but that’s about it. Where is Margarita? Is my family alright?” Juanito asked as he rose up on his elbow plaintively seeking some positive news about his family.

“I’m sorry Juanito; I don’t have any easy way to tell you this. The Peace Militia has your wife. She’s charged with disorderly conduct, interference with a peace officer in the pursuit of his duty, incitement to riot, assaulting a peace officer, conspiracy to overthrow the government and several more that I don’t remember. They’ve got her at their headquarters by the spaceport.”

“I’ve got to go to her.” He struggled to get up but was prevented by Dan’s hand on his chest.

“Please. Wait. There’s more I need to tell you.”

Juanito reluctantly lay back.

“You’re a fugitive. You’re accused of conspiracy too. They have a sizable reward for your capture — dead or alive.”

Anger, frustration, fear and worry warred with each other for the convalescing man’s emotions. “Don’t stop now. Is there any other bad news? Let me guess; the children have been taken from us. They’ve confiscated our farm. Quicksilver is going to crash into Verne. Humans are mating with Triffs.” He finally ran down.

“I realize you’re upset, but I don’t think I deserved that. You need to hear what I have to tell you.”

The last traces of emotion washed out of him and Juanito slumped back onto the cot. The researcher could barely hear his whispered, “Disculpa me, amigo mio. Lo siento...”

“As I said, there’s more I need to tell you,” Dan repeated as he paused to gather his thoughts. “You were partially correct. Your son, his name is Pablo, isn’t it? He’s in the custody of the Peace Militia. I can’t find out any more about what’s going on, but he hasn’t been placed like they would usually do.” Juanito was so still the researcher stopped to check for respiration.

“They have him in quarantine at the spaceport along with your wife. A friend of mine, who works there, says they have him and your wife in separate rooms, each under constant watch. All he could find out was that they keep doing all sorts of tests on both of them.” The lids of Juanito’s closed eyes were moist. It was as if his whole world were crumbling about him.

“The final piece of news you need to hear is about your daughter. She was just coming back from the playground area looking for your wife when the Militia broke up the rally. She was in the middle of the crowd when people panicked and started running.” The researcher shuddered and took a ragged breath, fighting to maintain his composure as he forced himself to continue.

“Like you, she was knocked over and trampled. The Militia brought her to the hospital once they cleared the scene, but she was terribly injured. Her spine was broken and her head hit a rock or something hard. Juanito, old friend, I’m truly sorry. There’s no easy way to say this. She’s dead. My friend says she must have died instantly.”

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Five ― Hunter’s Moon

 

¿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

 

 

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand
more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success,
than to take the lead in the introduction
of a new order of things.

—Niccolo Machiavelli
The Prince

The conference room telephone slammed down and Tom O’Hare began to rant and rave. “Is the man insane? Does he have a death wish? Is he that afraid of losing his seat or does he think this is going to make him Chancellor of the Senate? What? What the bloody hell is he trying to do?”

It was like a storm pacing back and forth beside the conference table. Five minutes into his diatribe and he was still going strong. The assembled members of the Special Task Force were having no difficulty whatsoever recognizing the fact that he was extremely dissatisfied.

Finally, after not quite ten full minutes, the pacing stopped. O’Hare placed his hands palm down on the shiny surface of the team’s conference table, and took a deep breath. He seemed to shudder with the effort of regaining his composure. “My apologies, gentlemen. That outburst was uncalled for and unprofessional. We need to deal with this situation as quickly as possible. Despite repeated warnings of the danger — or possibly because of those warnings — World Senator Jamie Ortíz of Mexico has publicly denounced the Burlador and gone on record as supporting not just continued exploitation, but increased exploitation of the colony planets. Bad enough that he’s already a prime target as Vice-Chairman of the Committee on Extraterrestrial Affairs; but now he apparently wants to draw a second target on top of that one. Unfortunately, we are required to protect this opportunistic fool. Does anyone have any ideas to offer beyond the obvious one of increased security?”

The various members of the group, twenty strong, looked back and forth as each waited for someone else to speak. Finally, with a disgusted glare at the others, Jack Webster spoke up. “He’s given us an ideal stalking horse. Why not use him?” He shrugged in professional indifference to the fate of their client.

“Mr. Webster, do you think just once, you could do this in a manner that doesn’t shock the shoes off the rest of those stuffed shirts?” The meeting had adjourned and they were in Tom O’Hare’s office. The door was closed for good reason, because O’Hare felt the need to emote. “I’m getting just a bit tired of your apparent sophomoric need to be politically incorrect. When you know you’re more clever than everyone else in the room, the smart thing to do is occasionally feel the the warm glow of secret condescension, not blurt out smart-mouth quips remembered from your high-school years.”

“No problem. Reassign me.” He didn’t seem worried by the prospect.

“Right, and give up the only operative in the bunch with any real experience? Not a chance, but I will make you two promises. Keep a lid on the politically incorrect comments in public and with the other task force members and you can have a relatively free hand. Say what you want to me, but keep it ‘PC’ in front of anyone else. The other promise is that if you embarrass me again in front of my staff, you’ll be very, very sorry.”

“Yes, sir, Mister Boss-man. I’ll be good, master. I’ll be good. Uh, Mister Boss-man, sir? ‘Or else’ what?”

“Good.” Tom laughed. “I see you took that advice to heart as well as all the other advice your bosses have ever given you. Now get out of here.”

“What about Ortiíz?”

“What about the good Senator? I thought you were busy trying to find a werewolf?” O’Hare slid tiredly into his desk chair and started half-heartedly going through his mail.

“Very funny. You can throw that up in my face when and if someone can come up with a more politically correct explanation for how these assassinations are happening that also fits all the facts, as we currently know them. Bizarre as it is, a shapeshifter still comes closer to explaining how these murders are occurring than any other theory.” Jack dropped down in the chair opposite the desk and put his feet up on the Chief’s desk.

O’Hare shook his head in resignation. “Don’t get too comfortable. Your team is waiting for you.”

“So I’ll ask again. What about this Ortíz clown?”

O’Hare sighed. “What do you want to do?”

“I told you, use him as a stalking horse to get to this Burlador.”

“No. You know that’s not an option. We don’t paint targets on the people we’re supposed to protect.”

“Fine. Run around in circles, muddying the waters, and then watch him die.” The feet came down from the desk and Jack headed for the door.

“No. We’re not going to do that either.”

“Oh?” Jack stopped, hand on the door.

“Your team is going to take on a second assignment. You will continue the current assignment, but I want you to select a small cadre, my advice is no more than three or four, and have them challenge the security for the honorable World Senator. I’ll advise Captain Churco to expect you. He’s Ortíz’s Chief of Security.”

“You do mean test it to see if it’s shapeshifter-proof, right?”

He smirked. “You know what I mean. Now get out of here and let me wade through this damned pile of bureaucratic waste paper.”

He’d wondered who would be his next target, and it hadn’t even taken a full month before World Senator Ortíz publicly announced his support of continued colonial oppression. Oh, he had not called it that. If anything, listening to the words of the soon-to-be-dead man, it would have been easy to believe that the man was begrudgingly volunteering to help the poor benighted souls so desperately in need of the benefits of the generous, noble and enlightened rule of the World Senate.

Ortíz lived near the small town of San Felipe on the east coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The tube to Tijuana via the San Diego urbopolis was routine and boring. The slightly overweight, balding shoe salesman on vacation slept most of the one-hour ride. Of course, with the constant background hiss of air as the tube traveled and the almost hypnotic flash of the rapidly passing maintenance lights it was often hard not to fall asleep. He remembered reading somewhere that they had found it necessary to stagger the lighting in order to prevent epileptic seizures but thought that the erratic lighting actually contributed to his urge to sleep.

The problems started as he tried to enter the Baja California Historic Preservation District. The District started just ten miles below Ensenada and attempted to recreate a Mexico of the late Nineteenth Century and they were even stricter about it than the people who ran the Middle States Agripark. At least the Agripark allowed the use of transport tubes and modern equipment for farming and recreational use. Baja California prohibited the public use of any device developed after 1900. The start of the Historic District was like customs at the spaceport. No one was permitted through with any contraband and the Peace Officers were high tech about making sure the rule was honored.

“Anything to declare?” The voice was a dull drone that grated all the more for its lack of emotion.

“I don’t think so.”

“Have you read the visitor’s manual?”

“Most of it.”

“Please completely read the manual before attempting to enter the District.” The customs officer pointed to a waiting area where others were relaxing as they perused a small handbook and turned to the next person in line. “Next.”

“I’m sorry. I misspoke. Yes, I have read the manual.”

“Very well.” The uniformed officer turned back for a moment. “Please go to terminal nineteen. You will be tested on your knowledge of the manual and more fully examined for possible contraband. Next.”

Exasperated, he moved to the designated location. Dropping heavily onto one of the universally uncomfortable public terminal chairs, he placed his hand on the scanner plate.

“Thank you for using InfoSys, Mr. George Hartmann. Please answer the following questions regarding the level of cultural development within the Baja California Historic District. You must correctly answer at least nine out of ten questions to proceed. Question One, Transportation: Which of the following forms of transportation is not available in the historic District? (A) railroad, (B) dirigible, (C) airplane, (D) automobile, or (E) horseback.”

“B? What the hell is a dirigible?”

“A dirigible is a steerable, lighter than air vehicle with a rigid frame first constructed in 1900. Dirigible, ‘B,’ is incorrect. The correct answer is ‘C,’ airplane.

“Question Two: Communications: Which of the following forms of communication may not be used in the Historic District? (A) postal deliveries, (B) radio, (C) telegraph, (D) telephone, or (E) television?”

“Television? Don’t you mean vid screen?”

“’E,’ television, is correct. Television is the precursor to the interactive multimode vid screen currently available in most homes, but wasn’t commercially-available until the late 1920s, and wasn’t at all common until 1948.

“Question Three: Health: Which of the following health care products are not available in the Historic District? (A) anesthesia, (B) aspirin, (C) penicillin, (D) psychoanalysis, or (E) x-rays?”

“I have no idea. The only thing I recognize is the aspirin.”

“Aspirin, “B,” is incorrect. Aspirin was introduced commercially in 1899, but folk remedies incorporating the active ingredient of aspirin have been widely available since antiquity, having been first described by the Greek physician Hippocrates. To enter the Historic District you now need to answer eighteen out of twenty questions. Do you wish to continue?”

“Thank you, no.” The man rose and with shoulders slumped headed out into the bright sunshine and heat to find another way into the District. World Senator Jamie Ortíz’ appointment with death would have to wait a bit longer, and George Hartman, currently tied to the bed in his San Diego urbopolis apartment, could resume his daily life.

“The damned hacienda is like a military fortress. They have heat, motion and air quality detectors. There’s a full one-mile free fire zone with a state of the art antipersonnel defense system and retinal and palm print identification system. Both are state of the art. They even have ground tremor monitoring so we can’t tunnel in. What about a missile attack?” Webster asked the other two people sitting around the private booth strewn with maps and papers at the Salsa Saloon in the Mexican city of Mexicali.

“Well, they don’t have a force field, but they do have a direct connection to the airnet satellite traffic control system and durasteel under that adobe shell,’ noted José Hernandez, a Hispanic man with the constantly darting suspicious eyes of a policeman. “Additionally, it would be difficult to target inside the compound as the site has EIDS, an electronic imaging disruption system.”

“I guess rank has its privileges. No one else would be permitted to have the high tech materiel you just described in an historic preservation district. Okay, two can play at that game. What about an ultraviolet laser weapon attack with long distance night sighting from beyond the hacienda perimeter?”

“Two problems,” José explained. “First, it should be damned close to impossible to smuggle one into the Historic District, and second, the hacienda is walled and in the entire two weeks we’ve had them under surveillance no one shows himself or herself outside the walls, except a few staff members. Catch 22. Without a helicopter or hi-tech lift belt to get above the walls, you can’t acquire the target, and you can’t smuggle either into the district. When the World Senator travels, his route is always varied and there are always decoys. It would be nearly impossible to take out enough vehicles to ensure a kill.”

“So what we’re saying is that even a traditional small-scale military operation isn’t likely to succeed, much less a single assassin. Well, we expected that, given Captain Jorge Churco’s military background. Let’s give credit where credit is due. He’s done an excellent job as Ortíz’s Chief of Security and minimized the risk of any type of traditional assault. That means we need to use subterfuge. Do either of you have any ideas for guerilla tactics that might work?”

“Most of the components of a guerilla attack still apply, at least in terms of infiltration. The problem is how to obtain access. They have their own water supply, their own septic system and a very large pantry, if the absence of frequent deliveries is any indication. The hacienda is like Masada, just not on top of a mountain. It’s completely self-sufficient. The only obvious weak point is the dirigible landing pad and I would suspect they would have even more security procedures involving its use.”

“It’s not really a dirigible,” José responded. “It’s actually a fully-armed V-Lift, a vertical lift jet-propulsion air assault vehicle, designed to look like a dirigible. They fold back the balloon shell and fold out wings as soon as they’re out of the Historic District, and would presumably abandon the pretence of antique technology if attacked. I thought it might be a weak point too so I checked. They fly about a mile out over the Gulf where a crack air escort team joins them and then convert for the rest of the flight. They loop around the District to land at the World Security Base at Mexicali for further connections. All servicing occurs there at the base with Churco’s staff providing additional security even there.”

“The most obvious tactic would be a suicide attack,” the third person at the booth finally spoke. Sandra Dayton was a pert blonde-haired woman who wore her hair in a tight bun and had a habit of frequently brushing nonexistent hair off her face and behind her ear when concentrating on something. She was here because she was the first and only woman to graduate magna cum laude from the West Point Advanced Tactical Training program.

“True, that might get us in and accomplish the primary goal of an assassination, but it’s inconsistent with the secondary goal of matching the modus operandi of the Burlador. Somehow, we need to figure out how to replicate their methods, including the flawless escape and the bizarre alibi of the probable perpetrator. Any other ideas?”

“What’s the security like at here in Mexicali?”

“Tighter than normal. This district is not just the home base for the Senator but there is also a high-tech biological research site about a half mile outside of the high-security zone surrounding the hacienda. It’s disguised as a western-style dude ranch, of all things to find in Mexico, to preserve the appearance of the Historic District. An attack through the research site might be possible, as there are tunnels between the site and Ortíz’s hacienda, but it wouldn’t be easy to make it past several hundred armed peace officers on the base above it, and we don't know what tunnel security looks like, but it’s probably very good, since Churco apparently designed them using the old Japanese fortifications on Iwo Jima in the Pacific as a guide. We shouldn’t rule it out, but it’s probably a good idea to look at other options first.”

“Why would Ortíz use a fake dirigible if there are tunnels?” Jack wondered aloud.

“Good question, and one for which I could not get a good answer. My best bet is that the dirigible is more visible and thus a better way for Ortíz to show how macho he is. Regardless of my intel, I suspect he does use the tunnel, at least occasionally, to fit in with his decoy strategy. ‘Oh look! There goes the airship carrying our courageous World Senator!’ while he’s really on a golf cart scooting underground like a rat, headed for the dude ranch, and from there wherever.”

“Alright, let’s change our focus for a bit. What about the family?”

José waded through some of the papers spread out on top of the table. Finding the desired folder, he quickly perused it before responding. “There’s the Senator’s wife, Maria Ortíz-Berkowitz, and one child, Alanna Ortíz. ‘La Señora’ Ortíz only leaves the hacienda with her husband and ‘la hija,’ as the child is called by everyone in the compound, doesn’t leave at all. She has a live-in tutor and plays with the family’s two dogs, Russian Wolf Hounds. You want their names? No? Okay. To continue, no friends visiting until the Burlador threat is over except via vid. She’s a pretty normal teenager, which means she might be a weak link if someone has figured out how to overcome the anti-hypnotic software built into the vid units or if one of her friends can talk her into doing something stupid and she figures out how to pull off an escape.”

Jack mulled over the information for a moment and then seemed to make a decision. “The antihypnotic software is hard wired into each set and isolated from the transmitted signals. It should be safe and we can’t do much about unknown leaps in science, so let’s limit ourselves to things we know can be done or are being actively researched. As for an escape, given the rest of Churco’s security, I don’t think exploiting the kid has a chance in hell of working. Any other ideas?” Neither added anything so he continued with a sigh. “Okay. Looks like it’s going to be another long night. Let’s review what we know again. There’s got to be a weakness we can exploit.”

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Six ― Moon Madness

 

¿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

 

 

Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

—Dylan Thomas

“And Death Shall Have No Dominion”

The man joined the mass of humanity waiting at the service gate and marched into the spaceport surrounded by several hundred similarly dressed stevedores and maintenance people interspersed with small clusters of attendants, guards and medical staff. His skin tone was the light brown tan of the vast majority of people around him, but his long light brown hair, tied in a ponytail behind the back of his head and his generous paunch, set him off from the majority of the crowd where Hispanic features were most prevalent. The result was that someone, dressed like a worker and acting like a worker, entered the port, but that someone was clearly not Juanito Gonzales.

As he had hoped, the guards at the gate never even looked up from their magazines. Juanito knew from personal experience that they were even less likely to examine people on the way out of the complex. After all, their incomes depended upon the kickbacks they got for looking sharp and attentive while actually looking the other way. Of course, that was minus the tithe they were required to pay their supervisors.

Just before reaching the loading docks, the man, who clearly did not look Hispanic, cut away from the crowd and joined a smaller group heading for the Immigrant Processing Building. He was one of the few workers in this group dressed in coveralls, but from his few trips into the building to deliver and uncrate some of the larger objects to arrive at the spaceport, the man knew there were no guards at that entrance. Juanito guessed he would get at least that far without being stopped and quickly discovered he was correct.

Once he was inside the building, he quickly made his way to the bathroom and commandeered a stall. The hair came off revealing his normal, straight black hair. The wig, one of his wife Margarita’s prize possessions, went into the duffel bag.

Next, the worn coveralls came off, uncovering a slightly rumpled white lab coat borrowed from Dr. Nevrith’s lab. An ancient pair of wire rim glasses with a mild prescription and a fake handlebar mustache also came out of the bag before Juanito stuffed it behind the toilet. Finally, hearing no one else in the bathroom, Juanito stepped out of the stall and examined himself critically in the mirror above the sinks.

The reflected image was, beyond a shadow of doubt, him; not the stranger he hoped it would be. There was no way he could believe even complete strangers would fail to recognize him on sight. The mustache was worst of all. It reminded him of a droopy worm. With a sigh of disappointment, he ripped it off and tossed it into the wastebasket. About to head out in search of his wife, he suddenly stopped, returned to the stored bag, and grabbed a clipboard and then re-hid the duffel bag.

One last glance at his reflection and then Juanito adjusted the stolen nametag, straightened his shoulders and stalked out of the bathroom, trying to look busy. He walked quickly and muttered as he glanced at his clipboard and then at the door, window or ceiling tile he happened to be by. In fact, he had no idea where he was going and was praying for a miracle.

“Hey! You!”

Juanito turned and glared at the woman standing by a nondescript door and wearing a white lab coat similar to the one he was wearing. “Yeah? What do you want? I’m busy here.”

“I need you to watch a patient for me.”

“Por qué? I mean, why?”

“I need to use the Lady’s Room. Now will you please do me a favor and watch this patient for me. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

“Well. Okay, but make it fast. I’ve got to get this survey done.” Juanito hurried over to the door and glanced inside. It was an observation room with nothing but standard hospital life-support equipment, a desk and couple of chairs facing a picture window. Beside the window was the only door leading into the room under observation. He could not see what was in the other room from where he was. “What do I need to do?”

“Nothing. Just watch. I’ll be right back.” The woman was dancing impatiently.

“Go. I’ll watch.” Juanito pushed past her and stopped dead in his tracks. It was only good luck that the woman was already gone and so missed the look of shock and joy on his face.

“Margarita, mi amor.” The words escaped from his lips, he was so overwhelmed with joy. In the only bed in the room on the other side of the window, surrounded by machinery and wires, was his comatose wife.

In an instant, he was through the door leading into the room and bending over her. Weak pulse. Greenish tinge to her skin. Breathing shallow and ragged. Juanito debated whether it would be safe to remove her from her cocoon of wires.

“Thank you for coming, Señor.” The woman was smiling at him from the other side of the window...and the door was closing.

With a snarl, he lunged for the door, but it clicked shut before he could reach it. He tried the knob, but it was locked and slamming his body into it did nothing. The window was the next escape option and Juanito picked up the metal chair next to the bed and used it like a baseball bat. The window was unbreakable. Juanito was getting a bad feeling and the woman, merely standing there calmly watching, accentuated his fears.

Frantically, Juanito scanned the room for a window, another door; a...he didn’t know what. There was nothing.

“Dr. Nevrith, I am not asking your opinion of the ethics of the task I have set before you. I am asking you for an explanation of the details surrounding the death of that boy Pablo Gonzales.” Barbara Big Horse was a stone-cold bitch. It was not just gender, it was a way of life; and she was proud of it. Short and fat, with the straightest, dullest black hair, “Babs” or “Barbie,” as she was disparagingly called behind her back, would never win any beauty contests; especially not as “Miss Congeniality.” Knowing this from an early age, the decision to control that which she could was an easy one. As Chief of Planetary Security, she was easily the most feared person on Quicksilver.

“But he died of a blow to the head, didn’t he?”

“And he had some kind of indigenous part animal, part plant, pseudo-spirochaetes in his blood stream along with another hybrid mass growing in his brain, something native to this planet, we believe, since it’s certainly nothing from Earth. That’s not supposed to be possible, since the native plant life is uniformly toxic to every form of terrestrial life. You are the expert on the local plant life and I want a full report on my desk in less than forty-eight hours.” When he did not jump, she continued. “Or would you prefer to have your current research deemed non-essential?”

“You’re not on the Research Review Board.” While he spoke as if unconcerned, Dr. Nevrith was flustered. The Research Review Board of the World Senate had paid for his travel to Quicksilver. If his research authorization was rescinded he’d be out of a job, and would be required to leave Quicksilver immediately or find a job on the planet. He didn’t have the personal funds for a return trip — no one did, the only way home was at government expense — and the only person he knew not involved with research was Juan, who was missing and had a bounty on his head, just like the doctor’s Triffs.

“Of course I’m not,” she smiled coldly up at him. There were enough rumors describing how she had members of every Board tied around her little finger that Dr. Nevrith knew he had no choice.

“Very well. I’ll do what I can.” He hung his head in self-loathing for what he was about to do as he left to return to his lab.

“Oh,” the smile never wavered. “And you’ll bring whatever you need to the isolation ward of the Inpatient Processing Building and do your work there.”

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Seven ― Baying at the Moon

 

¿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

 

 

Woe unto them who calls evil good, and good evil.

St. James Bible, Isaiah, 20.

 

 

“Jorge, have the dogs taken out for a run, por favor,” Mrs. Ortíz requested as she boarded the V-Lift with her husband. “They especially enjoy the north field. They like to play in the colonia del ardilla terrestres.”

“Sí, Madam Ortíz. I’ll see to it.”

Jorge turned to his second in command as soon as the boarding gate slid shut and said, “Pablo, see to it as soon as our visitors leave — I want no disruptions while they’re here, but don’t forget and don’t let them bring any dead squirrels back here, it will scare ‘la señorita.’ I need to meet with those fools from Espiar. Can you believe they want to run tests of our security? They’ve been unable to capture the Burlador gang for over a year now, yet they fear we may be unable to protect World Senator Ortíz and his family right here in the Senator’s own home.”

“Welcome, to our hacienda, Señor Webster. Jorge tells me you wish to review our security procedures and offer additional security advice, if needed.” Maria Ortíz-Berkowitz had no accent whatsoever, probably a result of her childhood in Switzerland. She met O’Neil at the main entrance to the hacienda, flanked by Captain Churco and one of his men. Long wavy black hair flowed down to the middle of her back but her bright red lips caught the eye first. She was strikingly beautiful. She extended a hand in greeting and smiled warmly, but her brown eyes were calculating and she appeared to be looking down at the Espiar agent, despite being slightly shorter. If Webster’s boss had not personally requested permission for this inspection, Jack knew it would never have occurred.

“Thank you, Señora Ortíz. I’m certain Captain Churco has done an excellent job developing and maintaining the security here.” Jack nodded to the Security Chief. “Director O’Neil asked us to review the security in light of the growing threat from “the Burlador, and some of the new capabilities the gang has shown in past attacks.” We will be quick and discrete, I promise, and we can probably learn something from your security officer as well. I have to say that I’ve been very impressed by what I’ve heard about your operation here.” ‘There!’ he thought to himself, ‘is that “PC‘ enough for you, O’Hare?’

It seemed to work, for La Señora Ortíz condescended to smile, so briefly that it was difficult to notice the twitch of her lips. “Very well, Señor Webster, I’m needed elsewhere. As I see you already know Captain Churco, I’ll leave you to your work.”

While clearly not the warmest of greetings, the room grew quickly colder after she left.

Captain Churco said, with icy formality, “Your presence is completely unnecessary, Agent Webster, and in fact introduces instabilities into our environment which actually decrease our overall security. This hacienda has been designed to withstand any kind of assault up to a tactical-scale nuclear attack. Our staffing does not change except as people retire or die and our procedures are designed after those used at World Security Headquarters.” Churco was a short, stocky man, but it was all muscle. The man could probably lift a small vehicle if necessary, and right this minute he looked like he really wanted to stuff just such a vehicle right up Jack’s...

He sighed and assumed an apologetic face. “Captain, my guess is that your security is better than that at World Security Headquarters. Unfortunately, I can also say that the security was better than that of World Security Headquarters at the home of World Senator Jackson, and both he and his son are now deceased.”

“I am aware of how one of his staff was somehow replaced by a lookalike, Agent. We have planned for that. No staff member is ever off the grounds of this hacienda alone, even my security staff. In fact, we do full DNA checks before they leave and before they are allowed beyond security when they return.”

“Yes, I noticed the equipment as I was being checked in. I was pleased to note that you required a DNA sample from me and I’m quite certain that you compared it with the sample on file at Espiar headquarters. While World Senator Jackson was not so thorough, the staff member duplicated was a long-time staff member, well known, and quite convincing in her interactions with the other staff. Additionally, and this has not been available in the general security releases covering the incident, we checked afterwards and the DNA match to those traces of the intruder left behind at the scene was 99.999%. As you know, that’s as close to a perfect match as we can come at this time. In fact, if we didn’t have independent evidence of the staff member having been imprisoned in her own home at the time of the assault, she would now be in prison for having perpetrated both murders, since we can ‘prove’ beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was present at the scene of the crime, and that through computer-simulated reconstruction of her movements before the explosion, ‘she,’ and only she, or an impossible facsimile, could have committed the crime. Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for her, she can also prove that she was somewhere else at exactly the same time. Our local prosecutor saw the injustice of accusing her after her ordeal — and it was an ordeal — she’d had neither food nor water for several days by the time the local authorities bothered to respond to the anonymous tip, so she didn’t look at all like the facsimile who actually planted the bomb. Then too, charging her would have set an impossible precedent if the case were brought to trial, since the likely outcome would be to overturn every DNA-based conviction since the technology was invented, and thereafter render the tests utterly useless in any evidentiary proceeding for the foreseeable future. Captain Churco, these criminals have access to technology so far advanced that it looks to our experts like magic.”

He blinked, a little slow on the uptake, then blustered, “That just negates one small component of our overall security system. I still see no reason to worry.”

‘Empty-headed buffoon!’, he thought, then smoothly said, “You are quite correct, Sir. I too doubt that there is any reason to worry. Look, Captain, your reputation precedes you. I know you are obsessively thorough and I know you are loyal beyond question. So why don’t you let my people do their job? You might find that we discover one or two small things that will enhance your security even more. We might see something in your operation here that we can use, giving you full credit of course, to help make all the other World Senators safer. You’ll be happy. Our bosses will be happy. I’ll get to go home and leave you alone. How about it?”

It took a moment, but a smile slowly spread across Churco’s face. “I like you, Agent Webster. Let’s get this over with.”

“It’s been two weeks and there’s been nothing, Boss.” Jack was angry, frustrated, and feeling stupid, not necessarily in that order. “ Captain Churco is chomping at the bit for us to get out of his hair and I don’t blame him. His security procedures are tight. There is absolutely no way I can see for any unauthorized person to get in or out of this hacienda. In fact, I doubt that anything much larger than a fly could get past his security as it stands. Just this afternoon, I saw a damned butterfly set off an alarm when it flew into the shade of one of the tunnel entrances.”

Tom O’Neil listened to the audio on his vid screen while slowly working his way through the piles of paper in his in-box. When Jack Webster was done, he looked up.

“I’ve heard you whining for almost ten minutes now. Let me just say that the only evidence of Burlador-like activity in the past two weeks has been a routine screening of a salesman named Bud Williams, whose business took him into a secured area two days ago. He reported having hired a call girl and having a wonderful evening on his way through Vegas, but the brain screen picked up traces of memory erasure.”

“I assume it wasn’t one of the usual wipe and swipe scams.”

“That was exactly what we assumed at first. There were about five thousand creds missing from his account, but the casino insisted he had gambled them away.”

“Let me guess, several ‘reliable witnesses’ confirm that he was gambling.”

“Of course, but in this case, one was the Chief of Police and another was the head of a rather large religious charity.”

“In other words, really reliable as opposed to the usual scum. So, you think this could be the Burlador making a pit stop on the way to Ortíz’s hacienda.”

“Well, I’m still not certain I buy your theory about a creature that can change its shape to become other people, but I will point out that the Las Vegas Historical District is almost in a straight line between The Illinois urbopolis and the Mexicali Historical District, and there’s one other thing: Mr. Williams, who has something of a reputation as randy horn dog on the road, professes a new dedication to the sanctity of his marriage, and says that his ‘wonderful’ experience with the hotel hooker showed him how fantastic marriage could be, if only he worked at it more. As hookers go, she certainly had a piss-poor approach to customer loyalty.”

“So how do I tell Churco we’re staying, possibly indefinitely?”

“You don’t. You just spent the last ten minutes telling me how good the security is there. Is they anything you could do or would do differently?”

“No, not really. It’s just…”

“It’s just that you want to catch the Burlador and rub it in everyone’s face, including mine.”

“Absolutely. Can’t hide anything from you, Boss,” Webster’s usual smirk was back on his face.

“Can the wise ass comments and bring your team home. We’re just spinning our wheels down there; Ortíz is on his own.”

“Yes, Boss. Right away, Boss.”

“¿Pablo? ¿Está listo? It's that time again. Saquen a los perros a passear. Saquen a los dos.”

“Sí, Capitán.”

 

 

“Why do these damn dogs insist on heading for the ravines?” Pablo muttered to himself as he tried to keep the two huge Russian Wolfhounds in sight while fighting to control the off-road vehicle as it bounced from one gully to another. Pablo and Juan were just at the edge of the free fire zone and the flat plain dropped off into a maze of gullies big enough to hide an army. If it were not so far from the hacienda, more than a mile, and if the walls of the hacienda were not adobe-covered durasteel, he would have worried about snipers since it was an easy six to ten foot drop into some of the deeper arroyos.

Pablo’s curses were momentarily silenced by a yelp from one of the dogs; then the yelp turned into what sounded like an ongoing dogfight with snarling growls and barking interspersed with yelps of pain. “If those damned dogs have gotten into a fight with a coyote again, I’m going to see if I can have them neutered.” Continuing a steady stream of curses, he sped up; for once glad of the seatbelt and shoulder strap. Juan cursed too, but his were interspersed with pleas for Pablo to slow down.

Nearly ten minutes later, clearing an especially sharp corner, Pablo slammed on the brakes. Maximilian was lying on his side, panting heavily. Julietta was about ten feet away, sniffing at her mate but not approaching him. Pablo quickly grabbed his rifle and made sure a live cartridge was in the chamber. There was still a ten-cred bounty on coyotes and Pablo was never averse to a little extra money. Juan also had his rifle out, but he scrambled toward the top of the ravine to check for intruders while Pablo slowly approached the downed dog.

“No me veo sangre. Whatever’s wrong with Max, he’s not bleeding.”

“Good. No intruders that I can see. Let’s get him into the vehicle and get him back to the hacienda pronto.”

The dog limply let the two men move him into the vehicle. Juan called to Juliette to join them, but she refused, instead hanging back as if searching for something. Cursing, Pablo used one of the command words and she stopped what she was doing. She still would not get into the vehicle, even with the command word, instead running beside it as they headed back to the hacienda.

Webster and his team were just about to board the train out of Mexicali when they got the word. World Senator Jamie Ortíz was seriously wounded and on his was via air transport to the nearest hospital. One of his dogs had attacked him.

Grabbing what they could and hoping the rest would be set aside when it got to Nogales, the team jumped off the train as it jerked into motion. Half an hour later, they were back at the hacienda and hitting a brick wall.

“Captain, there is no time for turf wars. I want to interrogate everyone in the hacienda immediately. This is the closest we’ve ever come to the Burlador and I won’t let him escape again.”

“What are you talking about? This is no assassination. This was an attack by a sick dog. You want to interrogate anyone, interrogate the dog and leave me be. I need to lock this site down and get a handle on the security at the hospital. I sent my best man, but I want to get there and review the situation myself.

“All right, I will. Dayton, find a recorder and join me in the yard. I saw the dog caged up there on the way in.

When she got to the yard, Sandra stopped in her tracks. Her boss was seated in one of two wooden chairs that had been brought out from the dining room. He was about five feet from the caged wolfhound, just staring at it. Clearing her throat, to let Webster know she was there, she did nothing but stand there, watching. The man just continued to stare at the dog. She was just about to give up and ask him what the heck was going on when he turned to her.

“Good, you found a recorder. Turn it on and sit beside me. I want you to personally witness what I’m doing in addition to the recording.”

Still totally in the dark, Sandra complied, sitting in the remaining chair and setting up the recorder on its built-in stand by the side of her chair after turning it on.

“Hello,” Jack spoke to the dog. “We haven’t met before, but I’m Agent Jack Webster and you’re not what you seem, are you?”

The wolfhound seemed to tilt its head as if thinking. Then it carefully moved its head from side to side. Sandra was impressed. She had seen well-trained dogs before; one had even been able to growl out what sounded like several phrases, but never one that seemed to answer questions with an eloquent motion of the head.

“Good. I’m assuming that was a ‘no.’ If I was correct in that assumption, please nod your head up and down.

Once again, the dog moved his head; this time up and down.

“Okay, so now we have a method of communication. Nodding up and down will mean ‘yes’ and wagging side to side will mean ‘no.’”

The dog did nothing, but Sandra almost got the impression that the animal was getting impatient.

“So, let’s start with what we know. You are the Burlador.”

The dog wagged its head from side to side.

“Please. Isn’t it a bit late in the game to be lying?”

The dog’s head moved from side to side and it added a deep growl.

“You’re not the Burlador? Then, what are you, an alien from outer space?”

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Eight ― Gibbous Moon

 

¿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

 

 

There is some soul of goodness in things evil
Would men observingly distil it out.

 

—William Shakespeare
Henry V, act iv. sc. i.

 

 

It took more than an hour for someone to come and check on Margarita after the alarms on the life support machines started beeping furiously. By that time, Juan had stopped screaming and pounding on the glass. He had even stopped crying and wailing. By the time the door opened and two burly security personnel entered, both with guns drawn, Juan was sitting, huddled on the floor, hugging himself fiercely and staring out into space.

The medic who pushed into the room from behind the guards went first to Margarita. After a superficial check, not really even touching her green skin, he announced that she was dead. Still without touching her, he yanked the sensors off her body and told the guards to wheel her to the morgue. He did not even bother to check on Juan, instead bolting out of the room and to a sink where he began washing himself furiously.

The guards were equally unwilling to touch the green-skinned corpse, probably for fear of catching whatever had infected her. Instead, the one closest to Juan prodded him, none to gently, with his boot. “You! Get up! You’re going to wheel that bed to the morgue.”

It took more prompts, both verbal and with an increasingly more forceful boot, before Juan slowly rose. In a daze, he shambled over to the bed and began pushing it out the door with the guards jockeying about to make sure that they were able to keep as far away as possible from him or the body in the bed while still keeping them both in sight. The medic continued to wash himself, oblivious to the slow procession passing behind him.

As Juan staggered down the hall, barely managing to stay on his feet, and even less effectively pushing the bed, the guards yelled instructions. Sometimes it was encouragement, but most of the time it was curses; curses at him, his wife, their green skin and at those who had assigned them this snafu duty.

It seemed like hours, but finally, Juan pushed the bed through a set of double doors and was told to leave the bed and come back to the security room from whence he’d come. His response was to slowly sag, first until he was partially lying on the bed and then to the floor as he slowly slipped off the bed.

He lay there, unconscious, in a crumpled heap as the guards — at least the one willing to get close enough to do it — kicked him several times while they both yelled and cursed some more. Finally, the one who had been kicking him cursed and left saying he was going to get someone to move Juanito or get authorization to shoot him and put him out of his misery. The other guard cursed some more while edging further and further away from the lump on the floor. It was only a matter of minutes before he was on the other side of the double doors looking in. Even that level of supervision only lasted another minute.

About five minutes later, Juan shuddered and heaved in a tremendous gasp of air. Fighting off the lethargy that had caused him to collapse, he slowly opened his eyes. Looking about the room, he realized he was alone. A few more ragged breaths and he slowly dragged himself to his knees. Using the bed as a crutch, he struggled to his feet only to see his beloved Margarita again.

He could not help himself as he reached down and hugged her as mightily as he could while crying like a baby. It was only when there were no more tears to come that he slowly released her limp body and stood staring down at her, trying to remember every freckle and pore. Gently, he reached out and closed her eyes. The twinkle was gone. The life was gone. She was gone. His reason for living was gone. The Earthers, the rulers from that far-away place, they had killed her.

“Margarita… Margarita, mi amore. Ja que vol venjar-se. I promise you, my beloved. I will avenge you.

Slipping further into the morgue, Juan looked for a way out. Realizing he was highly recognizable, he searched for ways to disguise himself. Off to the right was a glassed in office with two desks and reporter units. Off to the right was a scrub room. Juan lurched that way.

At the back of the scrub room, past the sinks and chemical storage, was another door. Forcing himself by dint of will alone, Juan made it into the next room. It was a locker room with toilets on the right side and a multi-person shower opposite. The good news came in the form of lockers at the back of the room, but before he could get to them, he tripped over his own feet. Struggling to keep his balance, Juan fell to the left barely protecting his head as he fell against the side wall of the shower and slid to the ground with all but his feet inside the enclosure. Groaning, he tried to get up but could not; instead slipping back into unconsciousness.

“Find him, you morons.” Big Horse did not even look up from her vid screen to see if the two security guards ran from her office to do her bidding. The venom in her quietly spoken words was quite clear. They did not stick around for additional instructions.

Juan woke from fever dreams that left him shaking. Blinking several times, he was finally able to focus well enough to see where he was. Using the last of his energy, he reached up and flipped on the shower. Cool water flowed over his body as he slumped back down, again unconscious.

“Where the hell could he be? We’ve looked everywhere on base and we know he hasn’t left the base or there would be a record.”

“I don’t know? Babs will kill us if we don’t find him. Just keep looking.”

He was drowning, or at least it seemed like it. Juan rolled over and the spray of water began to hit the side of his head instead of into his partially open mouth. Spitting and coughing, he opened his eyes once again and repeated the process of figuring out where he was and why he was there. Feeling better for the first time in what seemed like ages, Juan slowly climbed to his feet; using the shower control to balance himself as he was still wobbly. Turning off the water to save precious resources, he strode, albeit a bit hesitantly, out of the shower and into the locker area where he began to check lockers. His clothes were soaking wet. Besides, he had been wearing those same clothes for at least a week.

There were some scrubs, but they were all covered with blood and other liquids. Juan was not sure he wanted to know what the other liquids were. The lockers were all locked, except one, but the clothes in there were clearly feminine, a multicolored skirt and blouse. Juan would have moved on, but there was a purse that might have E-creds. He was fairly certain that he would never get to use any of his without revealing his identity and that would result in his immediate arrest, if the actions to date of the security forces were any indication. No one had read him his rights, so he assumed that he didn’t have any.

Looking in the purse, he found an identity card. Maybe it would be someone he knew, someone he might be able to convince to help him. The card showed a holo of a pretty Anglo woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and a pretty, if tired-looking, face. The stats said she was tall, only an inch shorter than he was and with a trim figure if the weight listed was accurate. Too bad I’m not her, or at least a woman. Then, at least I might have a chance of posing as her, he thought.

Juan sighed and was about to put back the card when he began to feel strange, like he was getting sick again. Still holding the card, he rushed to the toilet and relieved himself. Feeling weak as he stood, he rested his arms on the sink and let his head hang as he took several deep, ragged breaths. Finally, feeling weak, but a bit better, he looked up — and saw her, the woman from the ID.

Before he could even take another breath to curse in shock, the bathroom door slammed open and one of the security guards stood in the entrance, staring at him.

“Um, oh. Sorry, we’re looking for an escaped prisoner,” the guard mumbled and backed away.

Juan sat back down on the toilet and held his head in his hands as he gaped at the woman in the mirror and tried to understand what had just happened.

Barbara Big Horse snapped out a question “Did you find the prisoner?”

“No, Chief. We’re still looking.”

“Don’t bother. There’s nowhere he can go except to the port. I’ll arrange for him to be stopped when he tries to enter it.”

“Should we get over to the port and watch for him?”

“No. That’s okay. You can go to the port, but that’s only necessary if you’re going to take advantage of the return ticket.” With that, Babs again turned her attention elsewhere as the two security guards stumbled unhappily out of her office and off to the nearest bar.

“We should have challenged her. We have the right to appeal.”

“Yeah, but if you’d read the contract you’d see that the only appeal on this planet is to her. Think it’s likely that she’ll overturn her own opinion?”

“No.”

“Well then, when we get back to Earth we can appeal to the Colonial Administration. Do you think they’ll overturn her decision and pay for us to come back here?”

“No, but we had to take out loans for the required return ticket. Our children will be paying them off long after we die. We have to do something!”

“Yup.”

“So why ain’t you more angry? You should be helping me figure out how to murder that smart-ass cabrona and get away with it. Hija de puta! Tortillera! Perra maldita!” Then he stopped, not expecting a reply, Either he’d ran out of insults or he’d recognized how futile he sounded. They both knew that he wasn’t about to commit murder, however justified it might be.

His comrade asked simply, “Have I ever told you about my uncle Lorenzo?”

“The one with the big farm at the far end of the valley?”

“Yup.”

He rolled his eyes and glared at him. “No. I’ve never heard of him. We’ve known each other for five years, and in all that time you’ve never said a word. Good God, man, You have an uncle?”

“Now, now. Sarcasm won’t help here. Anyway, I guess I’m going to become a farmer. That way I don’t have to use the return ticket, so I can cash it in and I’m not bankrupting my descendants.”

He thought about that for a while. It was a hard life, farming, but what life wasn’t? His sister back home was living in a squalid cubic, eight feet long by five feet wide, and depended on state rations to get by, even though she had what she called a good job. Those poor suckers with no jobs were renting what they called “Tube Quarters” on the public dime, exactly seven and one half hour’s rent on a glorified barrel in which you slept until the cleaning crew threw you out to let the next “resident” in. At least out here a man had room to stretch out and live pretty much like he wanted to, and you had your own damned bed, and you weren’ piled into a stack of two and a half-foot-wide toilet paper rolls like battery chickens. “Ya want a farm hand?”

“Come talk to Uncle Lorenzo. I’ll be working for him. Maybe he’ll want two hands instead of just one.”

“Dr. Nevrith?”

“Yes. May I help you, young lady?” She was neatly dressed in a skirt and blouse. Dan thought she looked familiar, perhaps one of the nurses from the medical building, but had no idea what she was doing here, of all places. She had more guts than most of the people he'd seen running by on the road, panicked by the rumors of the new plague, as far as he could tell, since no one stopped to chat, except this young girl, well, woman, but she seemed awfully young. There wasn't a single line or blemish on her face or arms, no frown lines, which was surprising, since most people here were on Quicksilver against their will, assigned here as hazard duty, for the sake of the profits. They had to keep the farmers healthy enough to do their jobs, so they had a hospital, and the hospital needed a staff.

“Sí. I mean, yes. Are we alone?

Dan looked up from his desk and glanced perfunctorily around the lab. Of course, it was empty. It was always empty, except when Juanito came by to visit.

“Yes, we’re alone. Again, may I help you?”

“It’s me. Juanito.”

“What?” Dan bellowed in shock. “Is this some kind of sick joke? Are you from Security, trying to check up on me? Well, I won’t stand for it. You tell that ‘bruja’ Big Horse that this is my lab and she has nothing to do with it. Now, GET OUT!”

“Por favor. Please. Dr. Nevrith. It really is me, Juanito. Something happened to me. Please. I need your help.”

“Yeah, right!” he snorted. “I said, ‘get out,’ and I mean get out. Don’t make me force the issue.”

“Please. I understand your doubt. I almost doubt myself, but it’s true. I AM Juanito. Something happened. First, I turned green and got very sick. That hija de perra, that Barbara Big Horse kept me and Margarita…” The woman broke down and started crying and whispering “mi amor” over and over. Finally, she was able to continue. “Now I look like this woman whose ID I found when I was escaping.”

Dan’s mouth gaped open and stayed that ways as her story unfolded. It was bizarre. It was impossible. However, it did match the few pieces of information he did know and Barbara Big Horse was not known for her subtlety. He had been getting nowhere with his research on the new breed of Triff anyway. Wait! There was one thing….

“If you’re really Juanito, what was the last conversation we had with each other?”

“I brought you a new Triff. You gave me 25 E-creds and promised me more if it was a new species.”

It was the right answer. Did Big Horse have the place bugged? Don’t go there. That way lies madness. “Okay, assuming that’s the right answer, which Triff did you bring me?”

The woman went immediately to the holding pen and pointed out the correct Triff from amongst the dozen or so waiting to be identified. Either this was somehow Juanito or Big Horse was much better than the petty tyrant he took her to be. Dan sighed mightily and came around from his desk to hug the woman he now believed to be Juanito, surprising himself, since he was not a demonstrative man, and she’d been infected with whatever it was just hours before, but she… he… she looked so forlorn, and they’d never treated the Quicksilver plant life as anything that could possibly be ‘contagious.’ If she were still infected, it was only a matter of time until they all were, so what the hell. He’d figure out how this happened later. “Juanito, I’m very sorry to say this… I have more bad news.”

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Nine ― Blood Moon

 

¿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

 

 

The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

—William Shakespeare
Hamlet, act ii. sc. ii.

 

 

“By the four arms of Vishnu, what do you mean, ‘you’re going to change your position and vote against the tariffs?’” World Senator Maneesh Bihar was livid as he stormed into Ortiz’s office. Knocking the chair impeding his path to Ortíz’s desk out of the way, the short, brown-skinned man could be seen foaming behind his bushy white beard. “We have an agreement, or don’t you want those food processing plants?”

Jamie Ortíz stood up behind his desk and smiled calmly at the angry man. Still ignoring him, he strolled past him to close the door and take a seat in a small conversational grouping by the windows of his office in the Hsiu Office Building. From the floor to ceiling windows, he could see the reflecting pond and the immaculately landscaped grounds of the World Senate compound. Beyond the pond was the World Senate Building with its glittering holographic dome, even larger than the one it was modeled after in Old Washington.

“Come, Maneesh. Sit by me. Look out at the quiet reflecting pond and calm yourself so that we may resolve this minor issue.”

Maneesh, still struggling to regain his composure, stalked over to the proffered seat and sat. “I say again, you cannot renege on this. Our countries, our people, are counting upon those resources and those tariffs. Why am I hearing that you have repudiated this arrangement?”

“I have come to the conclusion that it is not in the best interest of Mexico, India, Earth, Earth Two, Gruntovoy, Quicksilver…”

“No sermons, Ortíz. Black and white. Why? Did that mauling from your puppy rattle your brain?”

“Maneesh, please. I do not insult you. Why do you insult me? I am merely doing the math. We now need the resources of the colony planets more than they need us. Looking back into history, it is evident that the kind of harsh taxation and plundering we are doing will come back to haunt us. The supply lines are too long to sustain a serious effort to control the colonies, and a war would eventually result in starvation and riots here on Earth.”

“Bah! You sound like the Americans.”

“Yes, I had noticed that, old friend. Much as I hate to say it, I have begun to suspect that they might actually be correct, just this once. We have a saying here in old Mexico, ‘Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz,’ which means that among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace. The first President of Mexico, Licenciado Benito Juárez, said that. I can’t say that he was wrong.”

“What are you not telling me? This is too radical a change for one such as you. What about the many commitments we both have? Forget constituents for the moment. There are monetary issues here that cannot be ignored.”

“You mean the many companies making a killing for themselves…”

“…and for us. Do not forget your retirement planning.”

“I’ve decided not to worry about that, Maneesh, old friend. These things have a way of taking care of themselves.”

“Jamie, Jaime, Jaime,” Maneesh sighed as he stood. “You’ve been like a son to me, but I know I taught you better than that. Even with your defection, there are still enough votes to keep things running as they should. Do as you will, but remember that some of our backers are less forgiving than I am.”

“Perhaps, but they’ll soon listen to reason.” He placed a familiar hand at the back of his friend’s shoulder, saying, “Whenever I’m troubled, as you are now, I like to gaze out at the soft ripples on this quiet pond and let my troubles slip away for a moment. Just thinking of the immense quantity of water hidden just beneath the surface is so very soothing; how shallow it seems just to look at it, but it’s so deep, deeper than night, deeper than thought, deep enough to sink into, deep enough to slip away from the light and take sweet refuge in the cool darkness beneath the surface. It calms me, this water; whatever it is that roils beneath the surface just spreads out, so thinly atop the depths, just gentle ripples, gone in a second, and I can see that nothing matters, nothing at all, and that whatever obstacle I’d thought was insurmountable is gradually flattening by its own weight, and it spreads smoothly out upon the cool dark waters. Your own worries, my dear friend Maneesh, are as nothing, are slipping away into the cool darkness, even as we speak, aren’t they?”

Maneesh didn’t speak, staring at the water.

“You see, amigo? You’re coming around to my way of thinking ….”

Jack Webster was staring at the same wolfhound cum terrorist he’d been staring at for days now, angry and frustrated and intrigued, all at once. He’d had a Ouija board brought in, then a giant Ouija board, on the off chance that the dog’s vision didn’t allow him to focus clearly on the letters of the alphabet, sophisticated paraplegic communications devices that were guaranteed to require no special dexterity to operate, giant pads of thick paper — almost cardboard — and non-toxic markers specially-fitted with custom prosthetic adaptors meant to allow the dog to write, and one device that supposedly operated through scanning the brain. Nothing doing. The dog stared at them as if they were newspapers in Chinese, although he urinated on one pad with seeming indifference. There was no hint of sardonic amusement, or anything really, just the same happy agreement with spoken statements that were obviously true, and the same emphatic disdain for anything concerned with terrorism, organized groups, and even — he was desperate by then — a series of questions meant to evoke any hint of the dog’s true identity being the real Senator Ortíz, but somehow prevented from saying so.

Jack was actually glad about that. If the dog had answered “Yes,” he would have been faced with the prospect of accusing a World Senator of faking his own assault in order to replace himself with a werewolf, who would then — he could already imagine the headlines — turn over the world government to Dracula, Emperor of all the Vampires. As for his career, if he escaped incarceration as a dangerous lunatic, he’d doubtless be on his way to the colonies by now, with a one-way ticket. He’d picked up enough around the house to know that Señor and Señora Ortíz shared a bedroom, and it seemed impossible to imagine a duplicate exact enough to pose as a woman’s husband without being detected, if only by his mannerisms and lack of familiarity with the hacienda, the Senator’s daily business, and his customary interactions with his subordinates. As Sherlock Holmes used to say, this was a three-pipe problem, but Jack didn’t smoke.

As he was contemplating his probable future as a hardrock miner, his phone chimed with that special tone reserved for his boss, the Presidential Hotline tones from Our Man Flint, a spy action/adventure parody from the early days of video, a series of five closely-spaced triplets which ascended and then descended. He’d thought about using the five alien tones from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but thought that might be seen to be in poor taste, even for him, especially if these Burlador guys turned out to be space aliens, which seemed as likely as anything else right now. What was Holmes’ dictum? ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Fat chance! He answered, “yes, Mr. Boss-man, sir?”

“Getting anywhere with the dog, Jack?” O’Hare didn’t sound happy.

“Well, at the risk of sounding facetious, I think I’m well on my way to teaching him how to ‘sit,’ on command. The guy who takes him for his walks will be very pleased.”

“So it’s another dead end?”

“I’m still not sure, sir. It has all the earmarks of a Burlador hit, that is to say there’s very little connection with anything else they’ve ever done, but no ‘fingerprints,’ other than the series of completely anomalous events. The dog gets lost, has a savage fight with something, but there’s not a mark on him; is sick for unknown reasons, but nothing organic, according to the vet; savagely bites the Senator, but is gentle as a lamb with me and everyone else; displays a strange behavior, the ability to answer simple yes or no questions with apparent understanding, together with irritation when we ask what the dog thinks are stupid questions, but has no apparent ability to read or write; and finally doesn’t think that he’s a dog, but is quite positive that he’s not the Burlador, nor does he know anyone who is. Oh, and he feels no remorse whatsoever about biting his master, but wants to go outside again, very soon if possible, and doesn’t want to bite him any more. If he were a human, we’d probably diagnose hysterical fugue combined with amnesia. As it is, he’s a goddamned miracle. If the Senator ever needs a second income, he could do a nice little stage show in the Vegas Historical District.”

“So you think he really has nothing to do with the Burlador gang?”

“No, Sir, I don’t think that at all. I think he’s a joke. I think the goddamned ‘Tricksters’ have just forced us to sit through an elaborate shaggy dog joke, with just about the lamest punch line I’ve ever heard.”

“So that’s it? The punch line?”

“No, Sir, The punch line was when I brought in a pure-bred wolfhound bitch, purchased with department funds by the way, to test his reaction when he smelled that she was in heat, and I have to say that he’s all dog, and virile as the day is long. When I asked him whether he liked it, he nodded yes with great enthusiasm, and wanted more, to hear him tell it. The bitch, if you’ll pardon the expression, is ‘expecting’ now, and the vet assures us that they’re all dogs as well, at least by ultrasound and genetic testing, so it’s me who got screwed.”

There was a long period of silence before O’Hare said anything, and then he just said, “Well, pack up and get back here. There haven’t been any more threats that we’ve heard of, but we think the Burladors have discovered a new tactic, because World Senators Ortíz and Bihar have just announced a phase-out schedule for the colonies, with gradual transition to full independence.”

“You’re shitting me!”

“I’m afraid not, Jack. It’s either the most elaborate and unlikely assassination plot I’ve ever encountered, because both Senators owe enough ‘favors’ to unsavory concessionaires in the colonies that their announcement is widely rumored to be political — and possibly literal — suicide, or I’ve just slipped into a time warp, because those two used to be the most rabid ‘Earth First’ partisans of them all.”

“Damn! That doesn’t make any sense! What about the Burladors? Have they made a victory announcement? A grateful acknowledgement that True Justice has Prevailed? Even a hearty raspberry for the hapless politicians who ‘saw the light’ only when their feet were in the fire?”

“Not a word. I think they may be biding their time to see which of our local criminal racketeers bump the good Senators off first, or maybe they’ve been ‘scared off’ by our many half-assed successes in stumbling across their work long after they’ve either absconded with the goods, or blown up their enemies.”

“This latest thing is something like the Williams guy you told me about, though, isn’t it? Former philanderer, possible shakedown target, suddenly saw the error of his ways and has returned to the path of virtue. Greedy Senators, rapacious leeches on the body politic, overcome with grief over their betrayal of the public trust, set out immediately to rectify every sin they committed in their days of unenlightened corruption, and have resolved to be the noble public servants they pretended to be.”

“That sums it up fairly well. Our ‘terrorist’ gang seems to have been infiltrated by missionaries, whose only weapons are fasting and prayer. Well, if you don’t count the dog.”

“Next,” Jack said bitterly, “it’ll be Abbot and Costello doing their ‘Who’s on First?’ skit, and we’ll all die laughing.” He disconnected without another word.

Without a word, Dan Nevrith, current, soon-to-be former, Senior Botanist for the Terran Research Center on Quicksilver, took Juanito by the hand and led him down the rows of experimental plantings, pointing to a low hill of particularly luxurious Quicksilver Triffids, surrounded by barbed concertina wire, and pointed. The Triffids were all roughly the same type that Juanito had discovered, how long ago? The stems had gotten shorter, though, although the magenta bulbs were larger, and there hadn’t been a hill here, before. The last time Juanito had seen this field, it was as flat as a durasteel panel fresh from the rolling mill. The leaves of the new Triffids were moving constantly here, the rustling of them almost like wind, although the air was still, with not the slightest hint of a breeze. It was more than a little eerie.

Juanito asked his friend, “¿Qué es eso, Señor? What’s this?”

“Dear friend, this is the unmarked grave of your wife, Margarita, and your two lovely children, little Pablo and Conchita. The security people buried them here, down deep in a hole they dug, and then piled up dirt around them, scraping the topsoil off the surrounding fields with bulldozers to pile on more, because they were terrified of the sickness. The new magenta Triffids grew up around them immediately, I watched them growing for an hour or so, and they reached this height within the hour, and then started to develop the buds you see. They seem to be mature now, because they’ve stopped getting bigger, but they’re multiplying quickly, and spreading, already well past the barbed wire in spots, and I suspect that they’ll overrun the experimental station by tomorrow morning, because all the other variants are either giving way before them or being devoured, so I’m probably out of a job. I’ve been afraid to touch them, even wearing a biohazard suit, because they can move quickly enough to catch hold of you. Even from a distance, though, I can tell that they’re clearly a different species, so I owe you another thousand E-Creds.”

“Both my children too?” Juanito had thought that his heart was broken, but this was the final blow. “If you’ll excuse me, estimable Señor, I want to visit the resting place of my wife and children, to say good-bye. Lo siento mucho, pero voy a buscarlos.” Quicker than thought, she twisted away from him and was running, running pellmell toward the hill, somehow running free of any hindrance, and the plants moved aside, so she never touched them that he saw, then closed behind her as she passed. When she reached the top of the low rise, in the center of the hill, she sank down on her knees. Before her, one of the ripe magenta buds — fruits? — of the new Triffids hung, just within reach, and she held out her hand and the fruit dropped into her palm.

“Juanito, No!” Dan said, horrified, but it was too late. She’d bit into it, and was chewing, light purplish juice streaming down her face, now mixing with her tears, and then she smiled.

“It’s delicious,” she said, and then she collapsed fainting to the ground, almost in slow motion, as the leaves parted, then covered her like a blanket.

Sick with dread, but too frightened to follow and help her, Dan didn’t know what to do besides watch, hoping against hope for some miracle that would let her stagger out from the midst of the poison, so he could try to save her. He had medicines in his first-aid kit, antihistamines and blood-coagulants, that sometimes helped. The Triffids were deadly even to the touch, and every part of them was toxic, he knew that. He stood helplessly as the leaves moved restlessly, and then he too sank down upon his knees, trying to think, still staring at the place where her body lay hidden. “I’m so stupid! I should have known,” he said aloud, “I should have taken better care of you. my friend,” but then the leaves over the grave parted again, and she rose smiling, like Aphrodite from the waves, and she was nude, demure blouse and skirt vanished into air, into thin air, as if they’d been a dream.

“Juanito! Are you alright?” he called, amazed that she was still alive.

She laughed. “Of course I am, silly! The Triffs won’t hurt us; they love us now.” She started walking towards him, down the little hill, as graceful as a dryad in her woods, completely at ease in her nudity as the leaves brushed aside, every one of which ought to have raised bloody welts on her alabaster skin.

The hairs raised on the back of his neck as she approached, because this was impossible, the Triffs were poisonous, oozing neurotoxins and hemolytics from every part. The merest touch on any exposed skin would send any human into instant anaphylactic shock, with a close race between asphyxia and internal bleeding as the proximate cause of death. Yet here she moved naked through the leaves, as innocent of shame as Eve in the Garden of Eden. She was holding one of those magenta bulbs in one outstretched hand as she approached; it looked almost like a pomegranate, and she was right, it smelled delicious. “Juanito, don’t…” he said, terrified and hopeful all at once. She was alive! She couldn’t be!

The rustling of the leaves stopped, and it was still, as if all of Quicksilver were listening, waiting for something wonderful.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Ten ― Honey Moon

 

¿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 tricksters delight in trickery, and you fools hate the truth?

— Proverbs 1:22

 

 

Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

—William Shakespeare
As You Like It, act ii. sc. i.

 

 

Senator Ortíz was very glad of Captain Churco and his security team, because there had already been three assassination attempts on him, but none inside the hacienda, at least not yet. As Maneesh had predicted, powerful people had objected violently to his timetable for independence in the colonies. The general populace was enthused, though, because he’d also announced the eventual opening of the frontier worlds to anyone who wanted to apply for emigration, and better wages/prices for goods prepared for export, so their lives on the frontiers would actually be better than most citizens here on Earth, rewarding the adventurous with the certainty of comfort, and the possibility, at least, of wealth. Since he’d decided to ‘ditch’ the robber barons and profiteers, leaving them in the lurch, there would be plenty of cash to fulfil his promises, lower imported food costs, and still leave enough for a tidy, but not exorbitant, profit.

In fact, both he and his friend Maneesh figured to set more money aside for themselves, not less, because they’d managed to shift all the costs to their crooked former associates, and had put a few in the penal colonies as a lesson to the rest.

He’d managed to sway quite a few Senators to his side of the argument as well by pointing out that, historically, revolutions against empires always succeeded eventually, and usually bankrupted the former empire in the process. He’d prepared a nice set of examples using the ancient British Empire, the old Soviet Union, and the original United States of America, showing how the costs of empire eventually outstripped the profits, demonstrating where they were in the inevitable progression, and finally explaining that the historical analysis showed that they were probably less than five years away from the tipping point where profit turned to loss and human lives began to be cut short, not all of these casualties members of the governed — as opposed to the governing — classes. Whatever the individual Senators had thought about abstract ideals like ‘human liberty,’ they all understood money, and they understood survival. The fact that he’d been so recently against any concessions to the left-wing side of the issue was a huge point in his favor as well, because it proved that his thinking hadn’t been swayed by sloppy notions of ‘innate human dignity,’ ‘moral justice,’ or any of the other wishy-washy sentimental blatherings of his former opponents. With all those rebellious colonists happy again, mankind was free to journey on toward their collective destiny, to create the airships needed to carry humanity to the stars and beyond, and eventually populate all the habitable planets throughout the Galaxy, and eventually outward to other Galaxies, so there were buckets of money to be made along the way.

He’d have to make sure that the scientists began research on better stardrives, and made a note to have somone look into the problem. The Skinner Drive they had was entirely too slow. Why, it would take thousands of years to encompass this one galaxy alone, which wasn’t nearly good enough. To ensure the success of this great enterprise, we’ll need to re-engineer our systems of production. Instead of shipping raw materials back to Earth to be fashioned into the great starships of the void they’d need, the building should take place right at the expanding frontier of human dominance, so as to start their voyages already headed in the right direction. Creating a level of population and technology on each frontier world sufficient to build the new starships should be their first priority, since centralized starship planning production was a vulnerability they couldn’t afford. A single errant asteroid could set back human civilization and human expansion into the galaxy for a thousand years or more. The current system was entirely too fragile, so it had to be fixed.

They’d let the colonies stagnate for far too long, sucking the blood out of them for purely personal profit, when they should have realized that their pioneers were — with the possible exception of the penal deportees, and he wasn’t entirely sure about them, because many were the kind of men and women who chafed against authority, exactly the sort of people one needed on la frontera. — the best of humanity, adventurous and bold and brave, the robust leading edge of the human race …. He’d have to see about arranging some sort of vid series, maybe three of them, aimed at different demographics, young men, women, and kids at least. He’d turn the task over to his public relations team, but all of them would celebrate the frontier, like the antique cowboy vids in the old USA, and the same themes with a Mexican accent down here, glorifying los caballeros, the horsemen, the rough riders, who faced dangers with almost superhuman courage, and always ‘got the girl’ in the final scene as they rode off together into the sunset. ‘Did they even have horses on the colony planets?’ He reminded himself to ask about it, and have someone rectify the situation if they didn’t. The vids, of course, could ignore reality, because the new waves of colonials would carry horses with them. A mounted man had dignity, a physical presence that couldn’t be ignored, although the new rancheros would be armed with the latest in human weaponry, of course, neurolizers and laser rifles at least. He’d have to ask Captain Churco what weapons he’d want in his backpack if he was cast away on a desert island, as long as they would ‘play well to a video audience.’. The starship industry was the key, though; maybe they should invent an alien menace, slimy octopoid invaders who threatened Earth itself, build up a frenzy of patriotism and sense of self-sacrifice to drive the young men and women out to the edges of known space, stalwart guardians of the people left behind. It shouldn’t be difficult, with modern video technology. Hell! Half the actors on the vids these days were VR simacula anyway, to save money on salaries and residuals.

He thumbed a button on his communicator. “Churco! Could you come in here for a moment? And bring …what’s-his-name, the PR guy, with you.”

“Sanderson, Sir?”

“That’s him. Make it as quick as possible, but don’t hurt him. I’ll be needing him to do some work for us, and I’ll need your advice as well.”

“Right away, Sir!”

World Senator Ortíz leaned back in his leather office chair with a satisfied smile. ‘At last! Things were getting done around here!’ Then he wished that his wife were in the room, instead of off at one of her charities. There might have been just barely time for a quickie! ‘Oh, well, there’s always tonight!’ He had an instant hard-on just thinking about her. ‘Damn! But that woman was hot!’ He wondered, and not for the first time, why he’d been wasting his time with cheap floozies in the past few years.

“Dammit all to Hell! Shit! Piss! Ass! Fuck!” O’Hare was furious at the world in general. He had a raft of unsolved assassination files stacked on the edge of his desk, and they were no closer to solving any of them. Every lead they’d uncovered, some of which had looked really promising, like Jack’s week-long vigil with the werewolf/dog, had just petered out like an old man pissing, dribbling in fits and starts past a prostate as big as a baseball.

Jack himself was sitting sprawled. legs akimbo, one leg slung over one arm of the chair as he leaned back with his hands clasped behind his head, wisely, for a change, saying nothing.

O’Hare glared at him. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“You’re doing fine, Mr. Bossman. I feel exactly the same way, but you’re so statesmanlike and eloquent, much better at expressing yourself in a dignified manner than I am. When I get really mad, I just punch somebody, or a wall if there’s nobody punch-worthy within arm’s length. Hurts like hell if the wall is brick …or concrete …or durasteel especially, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

“So, what the hell am I paying you for? Got any bright ideas?”

He grimaced. “You know how police work goes, boss. Most of the time you just round up the usual suspects and keep digging. Except in this case there are no ‘usual suspects’ because ….” He stopped dead, brows furrowed. “What a minute! The Burladors are supposed to be colonials, right, striking back in righteous indignation over their oppression and persecution in the colony worlds. But where did they come from? The nearest colony world is Quicksilver, twenty light years and thirty real years away in coldsleep, stacked like cordwood in an automated space-going freight truck, so they didn’t sit around the passenger lounge cooking up a plot to overthrow the government.” His gaze unfocused, he started playing with his communicator. Once they get out there, most people stay, even if they have the funds to return, because there's no one left to return to.” He did some more research on his communicator, frowned, then did some calculations.

He looked up at his boss, matter of fact and self-assured as he began, “Relativistic effects from two prolonged periods of sub-light travel means that any putative returnee will come back younger than even the longest-lived of their contemporaries, if any are left alive at all. Going off-planet is like stepping into a time machine and then stepping out sixty to a hundred and twenty years in the future, with no way back to where and when you came from, even if you turn right around when you get where you were going. There have been exactly three high-level officers come back from Quicksilver, and that’s it! No colonials, no disgruntled returnees. There couldn’t be, because we ship people out for free, but unless they’re some big muckymuck in government, they have to pay their own way back, and we charge them an arm and a leg, so they’d be plunged into poverty as soon as they returned, scraping by on government rations and ‘Tube Quarters,’ all alone. Earth Two and Gruntovoy are even further out, and we’ve had exactly one Colonial Governor come back from each, and even they only came back to retire after a long career, so that’s it! A grand total of five suspect terrorists, none of whom fit any profile I could imagine and ….” He diddled with his communicator again, then continued, “… One of whom is recently dead of old age, one is long retired, and in very poor health, and the other three doing quite well for themselves as retired government bureaucrats. In fact, they’d all three be excellent targets for the so-called Burlador, because they’re living the high life back here because of their successful oppression of the masses of suffering colonials.”

“So the whole colonial thing is just a smokescreen!” O’Hare’s gloom had vanished like the morning fog in the San Francisco urbopolis.

“Not quite. That’s been their only demand, even from the beginning, so it’s got to have something to do with the colony worlds, but ….”

O'Hare had the bit in his teeth now, and was running with it. “The Burladors want to get the economy moving! We’ve been in a holding pattern for years now, with corrupt politicians and their cronies skimming off most of the gross world product, and just enough going to the masses to keep them alive! By focusing on the colonies, which is the only place where there’s room for growth, they manage to conceal the fact that they want Earth itself to change in some way that benefits their economic interests! It’s a perfect setup! There must be millions of people who are relatively disadvantaged, but still have enough money to throw around for a chance at the jackpot.”

Jack held up his hands in a referee’s ‘time out’ sign. He wished he’d thought to bring a whistle. “Hold on, Bossman, You’re forgetting a few things: first, that we don’t have anything like the technology these guys used. How do we account for the shape-shifting, for example?”

He scoffed. “Easy as pie, it’s a trick, just like you said about the dog, which was just a dog, but we thought for a while it came from Planet X or something. We pretty much know that they can pull off some sort of ‘mind control’ thing. So they just hypnotized that girl who supposedly saw a man turn into her twin, and maybe they did the same to everyone who now swears that she — the ‘ringer — looked and acted just like the original housemaid.’”

“DNA?” Jack said laconically.

“A plant. While the girl was out cold, the impostor took some swabs, that’s all, maybe even pumped her for the information he — or probably a ‘she’ they kept off-stage to mystify the rubes — used to pull off the hoax. Who the hell pays attention to the cleaning crew anyway? Most people, the women in the housemaid’s uniforms could all have two heads with three eyes each and they wouldn’t care, as long as the beds were made.”

“The dog?”

His face fell a bit and his brows almost met in the middle of his forehead, his scowl was so intense. “I’m still having trouble there, but we know that it’s just a normal dog with some abnormal tricks; the vet’s DNA tests proved that.”

“Did it? I think it just proved that that dog is like a lot of other dogs, but what if a lot of dogs have been infected with something?, something that makes them vulnerable to that sort of manipulation? My problem wasn't that I disproved the connection, but that I couldn't prove anything that we could use to prove the opposite. I'm personally convinced that the dog was used to bite Senator Ortíz, but my problem is that I don't know how or why. It was a dog, you said, like other dogs, but it might be a little difficult to figure out what happened if you had a room full of ‘ringers,’ but only one was guilty.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm saying what if every — or almost every — dog was capable of doing what that dog did, but only one was … influenced to stretch his capabilities enough to allow him to follow a complex series of instructions, and then left to ‘face the music’ on his own.”

O'Hare was trying to follow Jack's reasoning, without success. “But if every dog could do that, why don't they do it?”

Jack answered with what sounded like a non sequitor. “How long have we been in space, seriously I mean? How long have we been sending airships out into deep space and returning?”

“I don’t know, a hundred years?”

“A hundred and seventeen years since the return of the first round trip from Quicksilver.” He held up his communicator, “and in that time we’ve completed one million, five hundred and thirty-five thousand, eight hundred and sixty-seven round trips, a little more than thirty returns a day, each one of which unloaded roughly one million metric tonnes of cargo.”

“But ….”

“We’ve assumed that no one could have ‘stowed away’ on those many hundreds of thousands of voyages, because we have to do it in cold sleep, but what if there were aliens for whom thirty or forty years siting around twiddling their thumbs was no bother? You know what they say about ‘assumptions?’ ”

“ ‘When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.’ Oscar Wilde said it first, I think, but it’s not as clever as most of his quips, a little stupid, in fact.”

“I wouldn’t know, but the general idea has been around forever in police investigations. You have to let the evidence speak for itself, not pick and chose your evidence based on some preconceived notion that ‘The butler did it,’ or ‘Cherchez la femme!’ I think we’ve fucked up badly, and we’ve let greed persuade us to ignore the downside of exposing the entire world to organisms and diseases native to entirely different worlds.”

O’Hare thought about this for a moment, then said, “And we’ve had a thousand years of experience with foreign plagues, even on Earth, to urge caution. The indigenous Americans were decimated by European diseases before the Europeans fired a shot, and at least some of the barriers that faced European conquerors of the rest of the world were disease: syphilis, malaria in many tropical regions, parasitic diseases like sleeping sickness, African trypanosomiasis, in equatorial Africa, and many more. But that’s crazy! What kind of disease acts like it’s intelligent?”

“Quite possibly, an alien disease. We’ve got diseases carried by worms; why not diseases, or vulnerabilities, carried by little green men? Typhoid Mary was as human as we are, but she wasn’t the sort of house guest you’d want to invite in for dinner. Syphilis is carried by humans, and makes people crazy unless you treat it.”

“And we know how to treat it because we’ve had loads of experience with it.” O’Hare nodded, paradoxically pleased with the way this was going.

Jack continued, “So maybe this ‘craziness’ has a non-human vector, but makes anyone infected susceptible to some sort of external influence. We ought to be able to test the idea by comparing our suspect DNA to historical examples, and see what’s changed, if anything.”

“Do it! The historical databases ought to be available online, so it should just be a matter of feeding our samples in for automatic comparison.”

“My thought, too, but I’ll need your authorization for the costs. All those archive sites charge through the nose.”

“Key it to my account, and I’ll authorize it now.”

They both concentrated on their communicators for a few minutes. Jack said, “Well, it’ll probably take an hour or two to run full comparisons. Want to go out for dinner? I’m getting a little hungry.”

“Sure. I’m feeling a little less hounded, now that we have a reasonable lead. I can at least report some semblance of progress, even if it doesn’t pan out.”

“Politics! I’m just a simple …”

O’Hare interrupted, “… ‘Beat cop.’ So you keep telling me.”

And they walked out the door. The lights turned themselves off, as soon as the controller detected that the room was empty.

She held the fruit to his lips, a smile upon her face, “Margarita told me it was good, my friend. You saw that I came to no harm. This world is changing to become a paradise, a new garden of Eden, with everything made perfect for our pleasure and delight.”

“Juanito, I can’t …”

“Ben, can’t you see what’s happening? The good Triffids are destroying the bad ones; look around you, you can see it happening. They’re changing the world right before your eyes. It’s a miracle, Ben, and you’re the only witness with the scientific training to observe and learn what it means. You can’t stand aside.”

“But it was poisonous just a few minutes ago! It can’t …”

“Can’t it? Do you, a scientist, rely on past prejudice, or are you willing to observe and incorporate new observations into a new theory? Ben, my friend, it was just a simple misunderstanding is all. Quicksilver thought you were an enemy, because it saw the bad people first, who came to slash and burn. You started this, because you treasured the Triffids, in your way, and preserved them. Now, it knows better. There are bad people here, as everywhere, but most people are good and kind. Do you think that I would wish you harm?”

“Well, no, but …”

“Smell it, Ben, you don’t have to taste it. Does it smell anything like the old Triffids?”

He already knew that it didn’t. The old Triffids had an acrid, poisonous smell that warned you not to touch, but these new ones smelled like ripe apples, with a hint of rose, sweet and bracing, like a cool Fall day in an apple orchard back on Earth. He’d been in one, once, on assignment, and he treasured the memory, the ripe fruit heavy on the trees, a natural bounty that few people ever saw these days, fresh fruit ready to harvest. It had been years since he’d had fresh fruit, since what came from Earth was freeze-dried bricks of fruit that had to be ‘reconstituted’ before it was edible, and ‘edible’ was a charitable description. His mouth began to water in anticipation …. “No!” he said aloud. He shook himself, but she put her hand behind his neck, and drew closer, the ripe fruit overwhelming his senses, her luscious body almost touching him, with just a few inches separating her bare breasts from his chest, overwhelming his caution, filling his mind with reckless need. He could smell her womanly scent as well, a deeper grace note underneath the sweeter fruit. He opened his mouth to say ‘No,’ but ….

“… it tasted like ambrosia, the precious food of the Gods that bestowed immortality even on mere mortals, and sustained the lives of the Gods and Goddesses on Mount Olympus. It was like every wonderful treat he remembered from his childhood, a fresh peach his mother had given him for his seventh birthday; it had cost his parents almost a week’s worth of his father’s salary, but they’d wanted to give him a small portion of the rich memories they’d had of the world they’d grown up in. There was something of real ice cream in it too, like chocolate ice cream made from real cream, rich and satisfying on the tongue, the sensuous creamy-sweet taste of it lingering on the palate, fading slowly to the slightly bitter aftertaste, spreading out perfectly as he swallowed.”

And then she was tearing at his clothes, and he was helping her, shredding his shirt like tissue paper, ripping his pants from waistband to ankles like a stripper’s trick tear-away outfit, even his heavy leather belt snapping like thread, and he picked her up in his strong arms and carried her to a bed of triffid leaves, as soft and welcoming as a downy bed of feathers as they fell down on it together, as they came together perfectly, almost in mid-air, with magnetic force, unerringly pulled toward alignment with neither fumbling nor the slightest awkwardness, already joined intimately, passionately, perfectly, locked in an slippery embrace of pure passion and desire, her hips thrown up to his powerful movements as if they’d practiced many times before, and she was ready for him, hungry, spread wide and squeezing him with the fierce power of her womanhood, milking him with all her strength and the full power of her thighs and legs as he strove mightily within her, and she clasped him in her arms, and pulled at him, encompassing his power with the fullness of her own deeper strength, and they moved together in perfect synchrony, both filled with passion and power and hunger, but this was the first time, the predestined first of many sexual encounters to come, the first joining of their souls, and it was perfect, and then they came together in a different way, shuddering in perfect release and pleasure, and then they began to move again, and they were both ready, and hungry for each other, like always, and it all happened again, and it was perfect, and then they slept, cuddled together beneath the Quicksilver sky, surrounded by love and sunlight.

 

 

Dan woke up first, opening his eyes to a wonderfully strange sight, a woman’s head beside his own. She was sleeping still, but she was lovely in repose, with long lashes and thick blonde hair, just shoulder length but visibly heavy, like women’s hair often was, more luxurious than any man’s. He kept very still, just drinking in the sight of her, her physical beauty, and his face suddenly felt hot, flushed with the memory of their recent sexual passion, something he hadn’t experienced since he’d left Earth. He was afraid that, if he moved, she’d wake and remember that she had somewhere else to be. He was fast approaching middle age, with a bit of a pot belly now from too much time spent behind a desk, and she was so very young, and so very beautiful.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at him and smiled. “Hi, Dan,” she said, and smiled again.

“Hi yourself. I don’t know what to call you, I ….”

“… feel a little funny calling a woman with whom you’ve just had great — make that fantastic sex — ‘Juanito.’ ” She grinned. “Okay, I get it. I guess ‘Jaunita’ isn’t in the cards either, too close … Hmmm. How about Luz? It was my mother’s name. It means ‘Light.’ It seems fitting, because you met me first, in this form at least, in the brilliant light of midday.”

He smiled. “Luz. Yes, that’s perfect. I’ll always remember the sunlight on your hair, just like this.”

She stretched forth her arms and pulled him close, then kissed him.

Dan replied with quiet formality, “Podrá¡ nublarse el sol eternamente;
Podrá¡ secarse en un instante el mar;
Podrá¡ romperse el eje de la tierra
Como un débil cristal.

 ¡Todo sucederá¡!
Podrá¡ la muerte
cubrirme con su fáºnebre crespá³n;
pero jamá¡s en má­ podrá¡ apagarse
la llama de tu amor”

She answered, fluently turning the poem back into English: “The Sun could become dark for all eternity;
The sea might dry up in an instant;
Even the axis of the Earth itself might break
Like a fragile crystal.

All these things could happen!
Even Death
might cover me with its mournful veil;
But it could never extinguish
The flame of your love that burns inside me.

“Oh, Dan, Dan, you dear sweet man, I quite agree, and thank you. That’s one of Margarita’s favorites. She loved to read Bécquer’s poems, but especially liked to hear me read them to her. I see the attraction now. I love the sound of your voice, so deep and resonant.” She laughed. “It almost rumbles when I feel the vibrations through the leaves of our improvised bower. It tingles. It makes me feel like a girl again.”

Dan smiled, tracing the womanly curve of her hip with his hand, so incredibly beautiful, so evocative of every tender instinct he possessed. At this moment, he felt like he could slay dragons, suffer any hardship, perform great feats of strength and courage, to protect this wonderful woman who had so freely given him her love. In his heart, he vowed to become a better man, to do his best to deserve her sweet love forever. “Of course she did, my sweet darling. She told me so, and wants us to be happy.”

She smiled up at him, joy suffusing her already lovely features with an inner brilliance. “We are blessed, my darling, mi amor.” She smiled again, but with a teasing difference. “Do you think you’re ready for another round? I want to celebrate.” She pulled his lips down to hers and kissed him hungrily, gripping him close to her with both arms and spreading herself for his entry. “Our love has quickened inside me, my true love, my lovely man. We’re going to have a child.”

He was rock hard in an instant, rising to the invitation like a young man of twenty, powerful and invincible and proud, already entering her as he said, just starting to breathe deeply with burgeoning desire and effort, “We’re going to get married, of course.”

She laughed, low and sultry, deep in her throat, sounding incredibly sexy, like Lauren Bacall in one of her better vids. “Oh, my dearest love, I thought you’d never ask!” as they moved together in a dance as old as life.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Eleven ― Moon Over Miami

 

¿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

 

 

The seven blunders of human society,
which are the source of all violence:
politics without principle;
pleasure without conscience;
wealth without work;
knowledge without character;
business without morality;
science without humanity;
worship without sacrifice.

—Mahatma Gandhi
Marriot (Spring 1998)

 

 

Barbara Big Horse and two of her security officers were walking down the road toward where I was working with some of the old-style Triffids, since I wanted to save as many genetic variations as I could before the new Triffs ate them to recycle their organic compounds. The two security guys were in uniform, and looked to be the same as the last time I’d seen them, but Barbara had changed, for the better I think, and she seemed happy, almost serenely so, an expression I’d never seen on her face before. Where she’d been short and more than a little dumpy before, with hair cut as short as she could make it and still look something like a woman, now she was tall and buxom, at least five-eleven, and wearing, of all things, a buckskin dress with elaborate beadwork, open slightly at the neck to display the swelling curve of her breasts to best advantage, but otherwise very modest, the hem of the skirt just brushing the tops of her moccasins. Her hair though, her jet-black hair was glorious, confined only by a beaded leather headband — upon which what looked like a single eagle feather was displayed upright — while her hair spilled straight and full down her back, past her waist, and then over her hips to the very tops of her thighs. She was beautiful. Not as lovely as my own life’s light, of course, but beautiful still. She paused when she saw me, and then came up to me almost timidly, another thing I’d never seen before.

“Doctor Nevrith? Is your wife at home? My men and I would like to talk with her.”

“I think she’s around here somewhere. If you wouldn’t mind waiting here in the shade for a bit, just let me look out back.” I ran around the edge of the Research Center building, still amazed that running like this didn’t faze me in the least. I wasn’t even puffing after a good hundred meter sprint, and there she was, bent over a basket where she was collecting fresh young triffid leaves for a salad. Her blonde hair was loose, the breeze catching wisps of it and streaming them out behind her, more beautiful every day. I couldn’t tell yet, of course, but I imagined her waist thickening slightly, and thought about how much had changed in both our lives.

I called to her, “Luz? Chief Big Horse is here.”

She smiled and said, “I’ll be right in. Why don’t you ask her if she’d like some cool juice to drink? It’s a warm day.”

“I’ll get right on it, Sweetheart. It’ll be good practice for pampering you.” I grinned and waved at her, then jogged back around to the front, where I asked them to sit in the shade of the new triffid trees while I brought them something to drink.

When I came out with the drinks — I’d decided on empty glasses with ice cubes, with a pitcher each of chilled water and freshly-squeezed triffid-fruit juice, which I carried in a little hostess-caddy and set down on the picnic table, then took one pitcher in each hand, ready to pour out — Luz was just coming around into the yard, and walked immediately over to the Chief and gave her one of those hugs that women do so naturally, with a complete lack of self-conscious awkwardness, pressing her cheek to the Chief’s cheek and wrapping her arms around her in a friendly embrace, bending toward her slightly rather than pressing her full body against her, which the Chief returned with more feeling, actually, than Luz had, parting from her, it seemed, with some reluctance. I could sympathise; I felt the same reluctance, sometimes, still astonished that she had chosen me.

Luz put her at ease, the ever-gracious hostess, saying, “Please, sit down, all of you, You’re very welcome here.”

They sat, but not comfortably, and Chief Big Horse said quickly, as if she’d been steeling her nerves for it, “Luz, we’ve come to apologize for our part in the death of your son.” She actually started to cry, and the tears were streaming down her cheeks as she choked out the rest of what she’d come to say, “There’s no excuse, of course, but we were frightened of the demonstration, and under orders to suppress it. I got carried away, in my customary anger back then, and my men were caught up in the general panic and confusion. I’m deeply ashamed of what we did, and am here to offer whatever we can do to … to help to reconcile … or … I don’t know … What could we possibly do to …?” She turned up her face to where my wife stood watching, and she was still weeping with no effort to conceal the pain she so obviously felt deeply. My own heart nearly broke to see her so humbled, who had been once so proud, despite her anger.

One of the men, Alberto … Alberto Gonzalez I think, started crying too, even less able to control himself than Barbara was, “I did it, Luz, and I’m so sorry! Please forgive me! I wish now that both my hands had been cut off before my cruel blows struck your son!” He collapsed back in his chair, his hands over his face, and his shoulders were shaking with grief and shame as he wept helplessly.

What Luz did then surprised even me, and well I know how good she is, and kind. She walked to where the man sat weeping and knelt before him, and held his hands in both of hers. “It was the anger, Alberto, and the violence, not you. Be at peace, dear friend. In your madness, you shot an arrow into the air, and it fell back down and hurt my son. I am reconciled to his death, so be at peace in your heart.” and she took his hands and kissed them. Then she turned and walked to where Barbara Big Horse sat with tears still trickling down her face, and knelt, and kissed her on both cheeks, and then her mouth, and said, “I know how much pain you’ve suffered, Barbara, and still suffer, as the ache of the blows your father dealt you in miserly exchange for the love and respect that he owed you settled into your bones and stunted your life, and that pain prevented you from blossoming into the beautiful woman you were meant to become. Be free of every hurt, my dear friend and sister, be free to love and give your heart to a worthy man, a loving companion who will see that your deepest soul is innocent of any evil, and that all you’ve done has only been a frantic attempt to escape the primal hurt that dogged you. Know that you are loved, Barbara, and that you will be loved, and that all will be for the good, and that you will come to good, and both you and your beloved-to-come will rejoice and be glad. You’ll have children of your own, two, I think, or three, and your beloved will cherish them, and you, and keep you safe.”

With that, Barbara’s face twisted up in grief and she broke down completely, then reached out desperately to my wife, sobbing, clinging to her as to a mother she’d never known, and was comforted at her breast, enfolded close in her loving embrace, sheltered at last from every harm.

I stood amazed, the two cool pitchers still in my hands, and the moisture on the glass slowly trickled down and then dripped, drop by drop, to the thirsty ground.

“I want to hit the ground running with this campaign, Sanderson. I’d like the first episodes of all three shows to premiere for Friday evening during prime time, an early slot for the family show, mid-late for the romance channel show, and late night for the action vid, say ten o’clock.” Senator Ortíz was dressed casually, in western jeans and a straw sombrero in the distinctive style of Sinaloa, his home state.

“I can do it, Sir, but it would be a big help if you could clear the way for me to access the realtime ansible link to Quicksilver, which is controlled by the local authorities. Their office is claiming that the expense for a high-def link will cut into their budget for routine comunications. For realism, I’d like to hire a camera crew to shoot the establishing shots on location, so we can composite the sets and actors into real situations. Enough people are familiar with Quicksilver from the news vids that this kind of realism will be dynamite for the ratings. I’ve already had scripts drawn up for the promos, extolling the ‘loveliest planet in the universe,’ so having simulated live action from ‘Paradise’ will be a huge draw for our target demographics, and I have a list of potential sponsors that the Global Football Test organization would kill for. The three series will each show a profit within six weeks, and I have performance bonds to that effect, based upon existing contractual commitments.”

“Leave it to me, Sanderson. Where the hell do they think their budget comes from in the first place? Will you need the ansible channel during any particular time periods?”

“If possible, I’d like around an hour every evening, local time of course, another around noon, and one early mornings, so we have a selection for lighting ambience. I’ve already got one scene written for the romance show featuring a moonlit dance under the twin moons, which is going to make every woman alive long for a hunky Mountie — do they have Mounties there? — for opening episode, which I’m calling ‘Quicksilver Memories.’ ”

“Not a problem, Sanderson, if you want Mounties, we’ll have Mounties. As it happens, that fits right in with another plan I have to start shipping horses to all the colonies, so by the time anyone from your target audience gets there, their dreams will all come true, more or less. I’ve already got a team working on coldsleep containers for Earth livestock, which no one had ever thought of, for some strange reason. They should be ready within a week or two, so you’ll have horses, and dogs at least, on their way to all three colony planets, probably cats as well. They play well to the female demographic, or so your expert tells me, and they’re commensal with us, because they handle vermin at essentially zero cost.”

“But we’ll have to drop in digital horses for the series.” He thought about that for half a second. “It’s not an issue, though. That will make it easier for the SPCA reps anyway, because all the animal action can be done under their direct supervision, and we’ve got dozens of predefined digital mannequins for both cats and dogs, so I’ll figure on incorporating them into the series. Good. That will add a good level of target-audience identification and North American family values to the interior sequences at least. I can think about a trusty dog companion for the men’s action-adventure plotlines as well. We’re good, I think. Do you have any other requirements?”

“I think that covers it. Good job, Sanderson, you’ve really picked up this ball and run with it.”

“Thank you, Sir. It’s always a pleasure working with you, because you always know exactly what you want and know what it takes to get it done.”

World Senator Ortíz looked him over thoughtfully. “I do, don’t I? You’re a shrewd man, Sanderson.” Then he picked up his communicator and punched in a number. “¿Lorca? ¡Oyez, Cabrón! Sanderson gets access to the ansible network as needed, for up to four hours of high-def traffic a day, scheduled per his request. This project is important, and if you try to nickel and dime him to death I’ll have your balls, understand?” He listened for a few seconds. “I’ll send a few megacredits your way to cover the costs, but one more whine out of you will be followed by your surprise inspection tour of the new colony just getting started out Libra way, where you can help to ensure the financial success of the new plantations. It’s only two hundred and twelve light years, so you can come to tea sometime, just as soon as you get back.” He listened for two seconds longer. “I thought you’d see it my way. Remember, one more peep out of you, or a heavy sigh from Sanderson about how you aren’t polishing his boots to a proper shine, and you’re on your way.” He disconnected. “¡Pinche hijo de puta!” he said to the walls.

O’Hare sat back in his chair with a big smile on his face. “We’re on the road again, Jack. Congratulations, that was a great hunch. I can’t tell you the number of times when a cop’s intuition — based on ‘street smarts’ like yours — beat a damned bunch of fancy-pants laboratory scientists six ways from Sunday!”

Jack wasn’t nearly as happy, and he wasn’t spawled in the side chair like usual. He was sitting straight, kind of hunched in on himself, and wary. “I’d feel better if I didn’t know that something very much like a spirochaete, the same sort of bug that causes syphilis, infected what looks like close to the entire world about a hundred years ago, more or less. Those ‘lab boys’ have finally looked past their assumptions and can start giving us some answers, if they ever figure it out. It gives me the creeps, though, knowing that there’s a parasite living inside the cells of my body, and there’s no way in hell to get it out.”

“Well, looking on the positive side, it doesn’t actually seem to do anything. It just sits there, making its way slowly to the central nervous system, where it seems to go dormant. The guys in the lab don’t seem terribly worried about it, anyway. They claim that there are hundreds of bacteria living inside us, or on the outside, that actually help us, like the bugs that help us to digest things, or the bacteria on our skin that actually help us to fight off infections, so it might not have anything to do with the Buladors. So far, it’s just a theory, and something of a long shot at that. It might be just some random mutation, and have nothing to do with the colonies.”

Jack gave him the finger and smirked, but in a friendly sort of way. “You don’t believe that any more than I do, Tom. It’s still spooky, though. It’s in the right place to be the ‘Burlador’ back door into our minds, which means that everyone is vulnerable. Who knows what sets it off, though; whether it’s some chemical trigger, some sort of interaction with another bacteria, or even if you could just touch someone and … Presto chango! You’re the goat! Do not pass Go! Do not collect three hundred credits. The damned bug is transmittable even through skin contact, so people can give it to each other just by shaking hands, much less kissing. It’s worse than the damned clap.”

“But it gives us the smoking gun, Jack, can’t you see? Somehow, this ‘trigger,’ or ‘back door,’ whatever it is, is activated, and the virus is right inside your brain, so all we have to do is find someone with the means to pull this trigger and we’ve got our killers!”

“Did you ever stop to think that, if we catch up with these guys, they could pull the trigger on us?”

“Of course I have, Jack m’lad. But the devil I care. From all accounts, this thing takes time to work, however it works, and the stories we’ve seen have the victims tied up, or otherwise incapacitated, while the real assassin twiddles with whatever it is, so you must be able to fight back somehow. That gives us some room to punch these boyos in the nose. If we’re out in the field, we go in pairs or more. If we have to stop the night, we share a room. That’s just basic good police procedure, Jack. We’re not dealing with Count Dracula, who can bend our will with the power of his Transylvanian mind, nor with black magic, where they call spirits from the vasty deep. There’s not even any indication that they’re the creators of this bug, or aliens themselves. If we can believe the DNA evidence, and it’s looking like we can, these so-called ‘Burladors’ are as human as we are, and that’s a huge load off my mind, in any case. They make mistakes. Their attempt on Senator Ortíz failed completely, and he was back on his feet that very afternoon. The next time they slip up, we’ll be there to catch them.” O’Hare was very pleased with himself.

Jack grunted. “If you say so, Mister Bossman.” Jack wasn't pleased at all. Pessimism was his default setting.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

 

In Memoriam: Julia Tuttle, 1849-1898

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Twelve ― White Moon

 

¿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

 

 

Thick draws the dark,
And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
Floats the white moon.

—Walter de la Mare
Winter

 

 

Luz Nevrith sat very still, her face in repose, as a woman from Chief Big Horses’ security team, pressed into service as a make-up artist for an Earth-based video production team, patiently waited for the studio crew on the other end of a high-def ansible link to approve of the make-up job she’d just finished. Luz was an “extra” in their first Quicksilver romance vid, although the principals were all doing their acting in front of a green screen back on Earth. They’d explained that her shots would be “dropped in,” on the studio shots … or was it theirs that would be “dropped in” on hers? No matter, the point was to show a romantic picture of life on Quicksilver. It was the first time Luz had ever seen a live picture from Earth, even though she was just looking at an effects stage somewhere north of the San Francisco urbopolis, so the whole process was fascinating.

“Excellent job, Flora!” The film’s director was speaking to them now, Sinclair, she thought he’d said. He was very handsome, a big man, she could tell, even sitting down in a folding chair as he was just then, with a rugged jaw and dark eyes and hair. His hair was slightly wavy, one lock drooping over one eye, just begging to be smoothed up above his broad forehead.

“Luz, could you run through the projected action on camera now?”

“Of course.” She was all business now. “Do you want any particular timing? Should I begin and end my lines on a particular mark?”

“If it’s not too much trouble, we’d like you to walk from under the shade of the large trees behind you, as gracefully as possible, over to that bush at the edge of the field, turn to face the camera, place your hand on one of the fruits as if to pick it, it doesn’t matter which one — do they come off the branches, or whatever they are, easily? — and then say your line. Does that sound doable?”

“Of course!”

“On my mark, then … Slate!”

She stood and vamped over to a position under the triffid trees — conscious of the cameras but not visibly aware of them — paused for a moment, glanced over her shoulder with one eyebrow arched inquisitively, focused on an invisible man just within reach in front of her, and then moved to a nearby triffid bush and spun around to face the camera squarely, letting the fruit drop into one hand, gracefully held out slightly behind her, not even looking back as she whirled. Her look was smoldering, impossibly alluring, and her sultry voice was as sweet and slow as honey when she spoke to her imaginary suitor, “Are you sure you wouldn’t want … just a taste, Richard? I’ve saved my best for you … only for you, my darling ….” Then she dropped her gaze slightly and turned away to show her profile, eyes downcast, but with her head held high and proud, and then she sighed deeply, allowing her bosom to heave just a little.

There was a long silence before the director said, “Cut! That was superb, Luz. Are you sure you’ve never been on the stage? You seem to be a pro at this.”

Luz smiled with an easy friendliness. “Not once, but I’ve seen vids before, and I know how people talk. Just tell me what you need, and I’m your girl.”

“You’re a natural, Luz. If it’s ok with you, I’d like to expand your lines and increase your onscreen time, since you can add a lot of live interaction with items on-planet — just as you did here — that will help to establish our physical presence on the scene. Plus, I can use you for live interviews and publicity, because one of the points of the show is to generate interest in the colonies, and if you’ll forgive me for saying so, our male demographic is bound to take an interest, and we might do an advertising tie-in for you as well. I think you’ll not only be the ex-girlfriend, but you’ll find yourself developing a real friendship with the female lead, the woman who … stole your lover from you. We already have the rôle written, and had originally planned for it to be played by an actress on this end, but this seems like a really lucky break, so I’ll send a copy of tomorrow’s script out there too. Memorize it by this time tomorrow. Of course, we’ll pay Equity rates for a larger rôle, so we’ll update your contract on this end and send an e-certified copy back for your certified signature. Do you have representation? If so, we can run it by your agency, and of course I’m obliged to advise you to retain an agent to handle your career on this end. It will make everything much simpler. Is that okay with you?”

“Of course, Mr. Sinclair. It will be no problem at all. Could you contact someone on my behalf?”

“Of course I will. I have a personal friend whose rates are very fair, and I promise you he’ll do a good job for you. I’ll send him your takes from today’s shoot so he can look them over. I’ll bet you long odds that he gets you a better deal than I’m offering right now.” He grinned to show that he wasn’t unhappy about the idea. “We have an eighteen episode deal with our sponsors, so you’re probably looking at fifty thousand credits an episode, since you’ll be a principal, but not a lead. I’m not exactly sure what that is in your e-credits, but my friend, Edward Schiff, of the Schiff and Klein Agency, will find out by tomorrow, I’m sure, and then hold my feet to the fire.” He grinned again, then glanced around the set from his end. “Flora? And whoever we have handling cameras and lights, if you all have time to handle the jobs you did today, the production company would like to hire you full time, although you’ll have to join your respective guilds and unions. Whoever we have handling details on the ground there will handle the paperwork and explain scale. Great job, all of you!”

“We’ll all be looking forward to hearing from your end, then,” Luz said, smiling. “I’ll keep my comm turned on. It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Sinclair.”

“Call me Ishmael.” He grinned again. “It’s not a joke. That’s really my first name, and I get a kick out of it now.”

“I understand. It must have been fun growing up with it.”

“It had its moments, but I got over them. I like it now, because hardly anyone ever forgets me.”

She laughed. “Somehow, I doubt that anyone would forget you, even if they’d named you ‘Wilbur.’ I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Ishmael. Or should I have my people call your people?”

“Until my friend Ed tells me not to, we can talk all we want. I run an informal set, and I treat my actors right. See you tomorrow, Luz, and say hi to Mr Luz.”

“I’ll do that, Ishmael. See you then.” She turned to where her husband stood watching from behind the cameras, lights, and production paraphernalia. “Hey, Dan, Ishmael says ‘Hi!’ ”

Dan grinned at her. “I heard. Should I be jealous?” He walked forward to stand near her, smiling. “You have hidden depths, my dear.”

“Darn! You’ve managed to discover our guilty secret, Dan. Ishmael and I are running away together, as soon as he arrives on the next airship from Earth, about thirty years from now. Of course, by that time, I’ll be an old lady with seven kids, not to mention a few grand-kids, so you have to admire his gumption, taking on a family like that at his age.”

“Well, you let me know when he arrives so I can help you pack. If he turns out to be really nice, though, I may take pity on him and take you back.” He gave a her a short kiss that turned into a long one.

“Hey, you two! Save it for the show!” Ishmael was still on screen, although he’d turned away for a bit. “It’s extremely kind of you to be such a gentleman about this, Dan. The least I can do is tell you that I don’t mind if you stay married until I arrive, noblesse oblige.”

“Very kind of you, I’m sure, and I accept your offer. Is that all right with you, dear?” He turned to Luz.

She pouted very prettily. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “now that I think of it, perhaps I’ll keep you both! I’ve often thought that women should have two husbands, an older man for his money, not to mention conversational skills, and a young one to go out on the town with and dance. This is going to turn out very nicely for me.”

Ishmael laughed and said, “I’ll brush up on my dancing skills, then. See you both tomorrow.”

 

 

“Hi honey, I’m home.” Luz walked into their small home. The climate was so mild, they spent most of their time outside anyway, especially now that she was spending so much time on camera, so they’d made no effort to change it except to move a desk in, over in a corner of the former sala, now turned part-time office. She was co-host on a sort of local travel/nature show now, Natural Quicksilver, in which she wandered around the area showing off the sights and providing eye candy, while Dan, her co-host for the show, provided the science stuff, explaining the local ecology and demonstrating how what was essentially one species could fulfil so many environmental niches. It was a sweet gig, because they were both being paid tons of money, by colony standards, to have Dan do pretty much the same job on-camera that the government was paying him to do off-camera, so he was busy, but enjoyed both jobs. He’d gotten rather fit, though, and looked a lot more athletic than he’d been in years. She still had her rôle on what had stayed Quicksilver Memories, since the first episode had been so popular that they’d simply kept the name of the first episode through the entire series so far, but she was showing now, so they’d written her pregnancy into the script, which generated a complex interaction between the leading man, the female lead on Earth, and Luz — called Sabrina for the show — in which jealousies and complications abounded. Their ‘numbers’ were very high, Ishmael had said, so her agent had negotiated a substantial raise in her per-episode payments, and her name appeared above the credits now.

“Hi sweetie! How was work?” Dan was at the desk catching up on his research and reports, since his days were rather busy, unless they were shooting night scenes, in which case everything had to be shifted around.

“It went well. I spent an hour or two making vids to be spliced into ‘personalised’ notes to my fans, explaining how busy we were out here in the Quicksilver colony, but how wonderfully-rewarding our lives were in paradise.”

“It’s the truth though, isn’t it?” He pushed himself back from the desk and rose to greet her, careful now of how he touched her, as if she were much more fragile than she felt.

She smiled and gave him a proper hug, knowing well how healthy and strong she was. “I suppose it is, all in all.” She grinned again and wriggled a bit against him. “Do you suppose it’s too early for a little nap?” She looked up at him and smiled, although there wasn’t that much difference in their heights.

“Is it safe? I mean ….” He leaned back a bit to glance down to her belly.

She looked at him in a way he’d find difficult to describe, but he was transfixed by it as she led him unprotesting from the room, trailing slightly behind her as she held his hand in hers. Over her shoulder she said, “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

 

 

She had quite a following now, so much so that they’d had to install a dedicated ansible link at the Research Center, because the show had expanded into several different series for different demographics, including now a children’s show that she hosted on her own, a men’s adventure storyline in which Dan, who had turned out to be a fairly decent actor, battled smugglers (and other villains) who were trying to run the (imaginary) blockade around the planet to exploit the locals by forcing them to slave away on drug plantations.

The freedom-loving locals always won eventually, of course, despite corrupt officials and an alien (again, a total fabrication supplied digitally by the studio) cartel who coveted the planets of the Terran Federation, a confabulated government — complete with its own Senators, electoral system, laws, and a “Space Patrol” — that ruled the United Worlds. It was all very complicated, because they tied in with their (imaginary) counterpart agencies on other planets, all of which had their own series, so they spent a lot of time coördinating the shows over more dedicated ansible links. They’d had to install another three hectares of solar arrays to handle the required power, and another storage tank under the Research Center.

It wasn’t hard, since Quicksilver supplied most of the raw materials to Earth in any case, so Senator Ortíz had the first stage of his long-term plan — the development of colonial industries other than extraction and materials production, right on schedule. Their biggest problem was a severe shortage of labor, despite several airships with large numbers of colonists — including more scientists, skilled technicians, engineers, and architects — already in the long thirty-year transport lanes from Earth to Quicksilver.

On the other hand, they had a lot of farmers with time on their hands, since the crops pretty much took care of themselves, so the former peones took up a lot of the slack as builders and students, learning whatever skills the small towns all across the planet needed as they grew. It was the best of times, period.

It was the worst of times, all their leads were stale, and Jack Webster was reduced to sifting through the files and evidence lockers again, and then again, looking for something, anything, that might generate a fresh line of inquiry, something they could follow to wherever the Burladors had managed to hide themselves.

On the other hand, they knew a lot about the “spirochaetes” now. They shared little, if anything, with Earth-based versions of the bacteria, except for the form, so they were calling it “pseudo-spirochaetes,” and it was a strange fish. The motile tail had turned out to be an organic superconductor which was revolutionizing every electronic industry on Earth, since all you needed to grow the stuff was a vat of almost any organic liquid — sewage mixed with water worked just fine — and out came mile after mile of ultra-fine superconducting fiber — once you’d snipped off the bacterial head, which contained all the useless DNA and the chemical “motor” that moved the bacterium around by “spinning” the tail — all set to be spun into what was, for the manufacturers, pure gold — room-temperature superconducting wire for new communicators, super-computers, power stations, talking self-powered alarm clocks, and everything else the science boys could dream up.

Far from searching for a cure, the damned thing was practically a protected species now, and research into ways to destroy it was forbidden by law, since the authorities were afraid that any organic “poison” or antagonist might escape into the wild and kill the goose that had laid the golden egg.

It still gave Jack the creeps, though, knowing that the blasted worms were wriggling around inside him, doing God knows what, despite the scientist’s blithe assertions about their innocuous nature.

He hurled the latest report to the wall, without any satisfaction, because it didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces in an explosion of sound and brilliant light. It just slid down the wall and lay there, not even flat, but nicely displayed as if the information inside was crying for his attention, which it wasn’t.

He kept coming back to the dog, though, and had gone back down to Senator Ortízes hacienda twice now, had had to admire the puppies, which he’d had to admit were very cute, had had to diplomatically decline to take one home, explaining both times that his apartment was very small, and then held one after the other in his lap while a vet took blood samples and cheek swabs from each. Two of them had peed in his lap the first time, only one the last, and he’d had to smile as if he’d thought they were cute. The Senator’s wife had laughed and laughed and laughed. It was the worst experience of his life.

It was beautiful here. She gazed out from her vantage point near old Jackson Hole, in the foothills of the Grand Tetons, looking up toward the range itself, but surrounded by the open meadows and woods of the wilderness preserve. She sat for a while in the warm sun, thinking about home, and feeling fine. There were villas and gated enclaves for the wealthy not fifty miles from here, but over the horizon from where she sat, although she could feel them lurking there, handy if she needed them — or their communications networks — but not today.

Today was a kind of vacation, a working holiday, and she intended to enjoy it to the best of her ability, so she took great pains to select the perfect spot … here, just here, where she could listen to the breeze, smell the trees and grasses, hear the little creek, rippling water in the near distance, feel the insects around her, going about their own busy lives.

This, this was perfect. She lay back upon the grassy knoll, looked up at the sky, then closed her eyes and sank slowly into the ground, her senses expanding ever outward, into infinity.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’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

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Fourteen ― Smuggler’s Moon

 

¿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

 

 

 … who ever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful and lovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon? It is unfortunate. But the wicked passions of men’s hearts alone seem strong enough to leave pictures that persist; the good are ever too lukewarm. …. And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint. ― John Silence

Secret Worship
Algernon H. Blackwood

 

 

Dan Nesquith, PhD, was looking at high-def recordings of the crime scene, although his camera crew was in the actual room, in case he wanted to take a closer look at those portions of the room not covered by the recordings. The first things he noticed, of course, were the classic signs of Triffid poisoning plainly visible on the first corpse, which they’d described as World Senator Joseph Chillings. The man was bright green and his face was covered in oozing boils, slightly larger than those he’d observed on Quicksilver, but he supposed that the natives had probably developed some tolerance over the years.

He turned to Tom O’Hare and Thor Andersen, who were watching the same threedee feed. “This is a classic case of protein hypersensitivity, as seen during our dreadful outbreak on Quicksilver, based only on the visible appearance of the body I see before me and the histology and autopsy reports you forwarded for my study earlier. I’m surprised, though, that the cluster of victims is so concentrated here in this one enclave. As far as I know, the genetic coding for this sort of vulnerability is distributed more or less at random in the general population, so perhaps you’re correct in assessing this as a conscious assault, rather than mere accident. Was the Senator somehow more closely tied to superconductor production, or to Quicksilver’s imports themselves, so that overexposure might figure in the ætiology of his reaction? I noticed in the recording that there were open files and threedee chips visible at the scene, many of which seemed to be labeled with Quicksilver-related names. Do you know what was contained in those files and recordings? Are they still available?”

Mr. Andersen answered. “At the time of his death, the Senator was evidently reviewing recordings of a police action in the main settlement there. I haven’t reviewed the vids myself, but I understand that several civilians were killed during the action.”

“How long ago were these recordings made?”

“Somewhere around seven months ago, I think. His staff removed them from the scene, claiming that they were classified, and I saw no reason to argue with them. I didn’t then, and neither do now believe that they had any relationship to the actual attack. Even assuming that the assault team had some relationship with Quicksilver, it would have been impossible for them to foresee the presence of these records, because his staff said that his request for them so long after the fact was extraordinary. Even if there’s some commonality there, it must have been mere coïncidence that those particular records were present during the attack.”

Dan nodded his agreement. “You’re right, of course. I don’t see any need to fiddle with these particular tapes, since it seems fairly clear that the Senator had close associations with Quicksilver, so may have, let’s say, regularly inspected incoming cargo airships, or toured the nanofiber production mills. Any of these might have been sufficient, if he were ‘sensitive’ to these proteins already. What seems more likely though, at least to me, is that he was specifically targeted by these criminals because of some imagined ‘oppression’ of the colonists, and perhaps the deliberate injection of a Quicksilver-specific substance was an imagined ‘fitting revenge’ against the authorities.” He glanced over at them again and asked, “Were the others also associated with Quicksilver?”

Tom O’Hare shrugged, indicating a lack of knowledge, but Andersen nodded, saying, “All of them. So if someone was targeting persons involved in management and decision-making about Quicksilver, they found most of the small group with direct responsibility.”

“Well, then. I think you’ve probably reached the limits of my knowledge, at least within the scope of what appears to be a very strange murder investigation. My wife, of course, and Chief Big Horse, might very well have something more salient to add when they get back from their inspection of whatever it is they went off to look for, but I can definitely identify the symptoms of the Quicksilver protein sensitivity, and hypothesize a possible mechanism of administration, but the autopsy report from a physician would probably provide a more definitive answer for legal purposes. I can’t believe any direct involvement with the colonists, though. It all seems too improbable. In the first place, private communications between our planets are scarcely possible, since every ansible communication is a ‘broadcast’ which can theoretically be received by any receiver, anywhere in the universe, if a listener takes the trouble to look for it in the general noise. It hardly seems an appropriate tool to coördinate a conspiracy, especially against authorities known to have an active ansible network. Smuggling secret notes on the freighters seems unlikely as well, although I doubt that it would be all that difficult, but the fact that sixty years or so would elapse between query and response seems impractical, to me. By the time the enquiry went out, ‘Will you join my criminal terrorist conspiracy?’ and the unlikely reply came back, ‘Yes, please. Tell me what to do,’ the conspirators would be nearing retirement age, and the actual tasks would have to be handed over to one’s heirs.” He laughed. “I can just imagine: ‘To my favorite nephew I leave my gold watch, and the task of killing important government officials who are probably all dead by now.’ ” He rolled his eyes in sarcastic dismissal of the notion. “If it were me, I’d pocket the watch and let the saboteur and assassin stuff slide.” He looked around the room again. “Well, I’m pretty much done, unless you have other things for me to do. I suppose we could tour the other rooms but I suspect that it would be a waste of time. From the reports I saw, and then the tour of this one crime scene, I reckon they’re all going to be much of a muchness. Up to you, though. Any place I can get a drink around here?”

Anderson started to say something, then both of the two other two men looked at each other with a complete lack of context or comprehension. “What?” Andersen asked.

Dan smiled and said, “It’s a joke, son. I’ve been told that my sense of humor is a bit weird, but my wife still likes me, so I’m a happy guy.” He grinned.

O’Hare objected. “But what about your theory about how they were poisoned? You said you could hypothesize, and then went off on fairytales about the difficulties of an off-planet conspiracy.”

Dan blinked owlishly. “Oh! That? Sorry, I did, didn’t I? It seemed so obvious that …. An ærosol liquid or fine dust, of course. The autopsy reports I saw didn’t reveal any hint of an injection site, and testing stomach contents is routine, and there was nothing there. Ergo, no one paid much attention to the lungs. I’m surprised about that, since lung œdema is a typical finding, but perhaps the attending pathologist was a little nervous about handling the body. And of course, I have the advantage of knowing something he evidently didn’t know, that this was probably the way it happened back on Quicksilver. It’s difficult to say, though, because the plant evolved a non-poisonous alternative state at about that time that quickly spread to most of the planet. As far as I know, my research facility is the last place on Quicksilver where you can still find specimens of the older strains.”

“What do you mean, ‘probably’?”

“Well, up until …say … half a year ago, or slightly more, the farmers routinely burned the Triffids in vast numbers to clear fields for Earth-style crops, and to keep them clear of what they regarded as weeds, and poisonous weeds to boot. Some days you could hardly breathe for what amounted to agricultural smog. So I suspected the ærosol vapors and products of coumbustion — well after the fact, of course. Hindsight is always perfect — gradually built up a sensitivity in susceptible persons, which eventually resulted in the outbreak of what looked like a contagious disease. Unfortunately, by the time I’d figured this out the triffs had given up — in an evolutionary sense — on poison and decided to ‘go along to get along’ in order to cope with human beings. I didn’t want to chance burning up all my heritage specimens to test my hypothesis, because there might still be very valuable organic compounds, like the superconducting flagellæ of the Triffid pseudo-spirochæte, buried somewhere in those antique genes.”

“Good, God, man! Do you mean to say those plants are intelligent?” Andersen was wide-eyed.

Dan seemed astonished by this naïve assumption. “Of course not, any more than peaches were ‘clever’ enough to evolve themselves into being a delicious fruit, so that human beings would plant them and take care of them. Even before discovery, evolution had been proceeding at a furious pace on Quicksilver for a very long time, and was highly efficient. On Earth, we may be able — if we’re lucky — to see glimpses of incipient evolution in a few decades, such as the antibiotic-resistant infections that sprang up eventually, in biological response to the improper — even frivolous — administration of so-called ‘prophylactic’ doses of valuable antibiotic drugs, thereby very efficiently breeding a drug-resistant biota before everyone realized what was happening and took steps to combat it. But on Quicksilver, you can literally see evolution happening right before your eyes. Minor variations of the Triffids would battle it out daily, and you could literally watch — and time with a stopwatch — competing groups of plants engaged in competition for the available resources struggling back and forth over a scrap of dirt until one group was annihilated, with the whole campaign taking place in the space of an hour or two. When we came along, we changed the balance of power to such an extent that formerly successful plants were at a disadvantage, because the very traits that had formerly been useful in their campaigns against others of their own kind — biological poisons that were terribly efficient herbicides — now marked them for special human efforts to destroy them. Pure random variation eventually evolved types of the plant that were less poisonous than the rest, and for Triffids a foot in the door is like an invitation to come on in and stay for supper. It all happened so fast that I wasn’t able to take specimens of every step along the way, but in the space of what seemed like a few days they’d gone from noxious pests to beneficial crops. Think of kudzu vines, but bearing tasty fruit, then vines with fruit and excellent long-staple fibers in the leaves just begging to be woven into cloth, and then add root rhizomes that rival carrots, potatoes, and every sort of vegetable in nutritional value, and with excellent storage qualities, and tastes to die for. We’ve developed a whole new cuisine on Quicksilver, and given up on Earth-based crops — except for export — almost entirely, and where there was an essential monoculture before, now we have variations that roughly correspond to many types of Earth vegetables and grains, including several varietal sub-species that fill the ‘environmental niche’ occupied by domestic animals on Earth, high in proteins and fats, and with a meaty, savory quality that rivals what I’m told by one recent colonist was Kobe beef on Earth. I’m sure someone in our local management has told someone here to stop shipping meat and fish products, because they no longer have any local value, except for our local equivalent of ‘foodies,’ who consume them out of nostalgia. Most of the stuff we receive along those lines is turned straight into fertilizer, and just dumped on the fields so the triffs can turn it into something better.”

“Are you sure you’re not quoting from a colony recruitment brochure?” O’Hare quipped.

“Sir? I’m a scientist!” he said indignantly. Then he smiled and added, “There’s an old story about a preacher at a ‘revival’ meeting who was trying to convince his audience to ‘come up and be saved,’ and he told them, ‘If you knew how good Heaven really was, you’d kill yourself to get there!’ ” After a long beat, he dropped the punch line, “Quicksilver’s something like that, only I’m not sure about the suicide thing. I think that may have been a bit of overselling.”

Barbara Big Horse was just a little too slow to prevent the attack entirely, but transformed instantly into wolf form and brought down the “angel” with her powerful jaws clamped firmly around her throat. Checking quickly on Jack, she saw that he was in fairly good shape, both on the subtle energetic dimension they were manifested in just now and the mundane level their physical presences seemed to inhabit by proxy — in their own case — and in reality, in Jack’s. To the eye, the two women were still sitting in meditation by telepresence, through the threedee screens, and Jack looked as though he’d fallen asleep, with the three camera operators sprawled out on the grassy slope around them, not paying any particular attention, because nothing had been happening for quite some while, and just now turning in glacial slow motion to where they’d heard Jack screaming. Evidently they’d missed the fact that he’d toppled over, because one had been staring out across the meadow towards the Teton range — almost frozen in real time, but just beginning to turn around — while the other two had evidently been talking among themselves, since nothing had been happening, so were just looking up. Where they were, Luz was already on her feet, and walking toward them.

“Are you all right, Barbara?”

“Just fine. I wish she hadn’t struck at Jack, though. I’m not feeling quite as charitable as I ought to be right now.” She growled at their “angel.”

“Jack will be fine, darling, and better than fine, you’ll see. She’s done you a favor, you know, by forging the one bond that can never be broken between you. He’s yours now, sweetheart, as you are his, and you’ll be together soon.” She leaned down and kissed her wolfish head.

There was a glint of humor in her dark eyes as she responded, “Promise?”

She smiled. “Have I ever lied?” There was an air of merry prankster in her expression, a madcap daredevil impetuosity.

“Well … not lately … that I know of, at least.” How a wolf managed to look ironically sceptical was a secret only Barbara knew.

“Then let’s get started …”

Luz knelt down beside the trapped angel — who was strangely passive, as if she too were a wolf, and had submitted, belly-up, to her captor — then gathered her into her arms as Barbara let loose of her, crooning to her in what was almost a tuneless lullaby, “¡Margarita, mi vida, recuérdame! Te amo, cariña hechicera. Eres linda, muy linda, cielita linda. Tu eres mi chunca!”

The “angel” seemed confused. She said, “¿Juanito?” but her voice was weak and uncertain.

“¡Claro que sí, tonta mia! Duerme, mi ángel de la guarda, mi alma. Sueña, sueña. Recupera, bella, mi reina, madre de mis hijos.” She kissed her eyelids, then her mouth, and then placed both hands on the “angel’s” forehead and concentrated, gathering energy from the shadow of Quicksilver around her there on Earth.

 

 

Later, how much later didn’t matter, because time ran strangely where they were, Luz picked up her angel and flew away with her, straight towards the mountains, her own new wings beating strongly, until she found an open meadow with a small stream running through it, near which she lay her burden down. “Sleep now, dear wife and lover, and arise again restored,” she said, and kissed her forehead very, very gently, with infinite tenderness, as a mother might her sleeping child, as she merged with the earth again, and slowly vanished. Then she sprang up again and wished herself back to where Jack was still unconscious while Barbara kept watch, once more in her natural form.

“Missed me?” Luz said.

“Not much,” Barbara said acerbically. “It’s about time you got back.”

“And a watched pot never boils. I was no time at all, and you know it. The camera crew is still in the process of turning to face us.”

“Well, I was worried anyway.”

“And well you should be. Now we have to account for everything, so look sharp.”

Luz studied the meadow carefully, noting plausible places of concealment, and the physical relationships of the real people present. It didn’t matter if their own screens and cameras were harmed, but she didn’t want to hurt anyone in the coming few seconds of real time. “Okay, I’ve got it. Don’t forget to act surprised.”

With no more warning, she released three distinct ‘explosions’ of pure energy, followed immediately by, “What was that? Jack? are you alright?”

Barbara cried out in faux alarm, “It’s an attack! Jack! Take cover if you can!” Neither of them could see by proxy through the cameras now, since all three camera operators had been thrown to the ground, but that was a minor inconvenience, since the ansible link still existed and she immediately called for help. “O’Hare! Andersen! We need help stat, and ambulance transport for four, I think. Make sure they have epinephrine available, because I think they used the same techniques that killed the victims whose murders we’re here investigating.”

Luz added, “Dan, you probably have the most experience, so could you have your operator ride along? Any or all of the four people present may need prophylaxis.”

Dan answered first, “Of course, sweetheart. I’d ask if you were all right except that the question would be silly.”

“It was a little startling is all, but I can’t actually see anything, so I assume that at least my own operator is a casualty, and I can’t hear any voices, so I assume they’re all unconscious. I can still turn up the gain high enough to hear four separate heartbeats, though, so everyone is still alive, but please hurry!”

“We’re on our way, sweetheart. They have a fix on your location through the communicators of Jack and the camera guys so we know exactly where you are.”

Andersen broke in. “We have medical staff on site, so we’re sending a physician along with the ambulance crews. They’ll be in good hands, and this may turn out to be a break in the case, because we have eyewitnesses who may have seen something this time.”

Barbara said, “I sure hope so! I heard three separate explosions, and saw one flash, but my high-def video went dark after the first blast, so I assume that either my camera is broken, or the lens is buried in the dirt. Could you send along another threedee crew and camera? I’d like to take a closer look at the scene, and I’ve become rather fond of Jack, so would hate to have anything happen to him that I couldn’t fix.”

Dan answered, “Not to worry, dear, The Senators and their staff have excellent rescue facilities available, and you’re only twenty miles away or so by air. I’d guess you’ll hear the helos any minute now.”

There was a pause, and then Barbara said, “You’re right. I can hear them now.”

Andersen said, “The replacement camera crew and camera will follow in a few minutes, Chief Big Horse, since our first priority has to be the safety and health of the victims. I’ll be along with the new camera crew, so I can take a look-see as well.”

“Thank you, Mr. Andersen. I believe I’ve identified the route used to gain entry to the compound, by the way, which either I or Captain Webster can show you, once Jack recovers.”

“You have no doubt of that?”

“None at all. Like Luz Nesquith, I can hear Captain Webster’s heart beating by amplifying the sounds around me, and can identify him in particular because of his location in relation to my camera pickup. My operator, at least, seems relatively unharmed, since both heartbeats seem both strong and steady, although Jack Webster’s heart seems to be devloping an arrhythmia, so I suspect incipient anaphylaxis, but we had ample experience with this during the incidents seven months ago. It may look alarming, but it’s readily handled with modern medical techniques and, as far as we know, one experience confers continuing immunity from similar reactions. Please tell the ambulance crew to treat him immediately for an anaphylactic reaction to an environmental allergen, including prompt administration of epinephrine, followed by endotracheal intubation and antihistamine therapy, such as diphenhydramine and/or corticosteroids. I’m not quite so sure of the others, since they’re further away and I can’t hear them as clearly as Luz evidently can, but can identify two faint heartbeats, so would have to concur with her assessment.”

“I’ll tell them,” he said.

Then, the first helo landed and everything became very busy, Dan’s operator was one of the first off the aircraft, and Dan took one look at the greenish tinge to Jack’s skin and shouted, “Epinephrine, stat!”

The ambulance attendants took one look at Jack’s skin and didn’t want to touch him, having never seen such a thing before, but Dan shouted again, “It’s not contagious, just an allergic reaction, but if you don’t intervene immediately to begin treatment for anaphylaxis you’re going to have real problems, now move!”

One of them opened a compartmented red EMT duffle and retrieved an epi-pen, then jabbed it into Jack’s thigh, not bothering to remove his trousers first, while another started taking his vitals, slapping a sensor patch on his chest while the first started oxygen therapy with endotracheal intubation, because Jack was wheezing very badly. By that time, the second had propped up Jack’s legs using a blanket roll from the stretcher, and a physician ran up from one of the other helos, who had landed about a two hundred feet from the scene. He quickly scanned the monitor, checking the readouts from the patch on Webster’s chest.

“Administer a diphenhydramine strip, please, then three cc’s prednisone iv. When that’s done, let’s transport.” With that, he left to look at the other victims, one of whom — Luzes camera operator — was already struggling to regain his feet, trying to protect his camera gear at the same time, shrugging off the assistance of the helo paramedics, who were trying to persuade him to sit down so they could affix a monitor patch and observe his general appearance and behavior while he wanted to capture the scene, his news instincts and adrenaline easily overriding any tendency to malinger.

Dan said, “I’d like to ride along with Captain Webster, please,” so his operator — after quickly panning the entire scene, climbed aboard the helo, which took off and headed back to the enclave about ten seconds later.“”

Shortly afterward, Thor Andersen arrived in yet another helo, closely followed off the aircraft by Tom O’Hare.

O’Hare looked around. “Hell of a mess, isn’t it?” The grass and shrubbery in the immediate vicinity was slightly scorched, outlining where the victims had been sitting or lying down, although none of those still present seemed to be burned, which meant that the total exposure to heat of the blast had been very brief, although one of the camera operator’s gear looked to be at least a partial loss, because the vid screen had shattered. He looked around, wanting Jack to be there, to tell him what had happened; then he remembered where Jack was and he swore bitterly, “Joseph, Mary, and all the saints be damned! Jack, m’boyo, where in bloody hell are you when I need you!?”

 

 

“As it turned out, Barbara showed O’Hare and Andersen where the entry into the enclave had been made — although of course she didn’t reveal quite everything about the true nature of the attack. Both the men had agreed that it seemed likely, although they’d checked in with Jack Webster first, who was currently confined to a hospital bed, because the house physician on call couldn’t figure out what had been wrong with him, and was reluctant to let loose of him until he’d figured out the puzzle. The greenish tinge to his skin was gone, of course, and there was nothing else to find, but it made a nice vacation, and Barbara had been spending all her free time at his bedside, which was less than she might have wished, because she had a full-time job on Quicksilver, as did Luz, since her series contracts didn’t sleep. She had a few episodes for all of her series ‘in the can’ for real emergencies, but they were ‘fillers’ — not directly part of the current plotline, just plausible interruptions that could be dropped in anywhere, so Luz was reluctant to use them. She preferred to keep the momentum going, because that kept the viewers coming back, and every viewer was a potential colonist, as soon as the new stardrive research panned out.

Speaking of which, she punched in the numbers for a seldom-used direct line. “Senator Ortíz? Luz Calderón here.”

“Luz, it’s good to hear from you. You’ve been doing a tremendous job for me; I receive a weekly report on your ratings, and your five shows generate more revenue than those featuring Earth Two and Libra combined. What can I do for you?”

“I have a small favor to ask, a friend of Captain Barbara Big Horse who would like to emigrate to Quicksilver when the new stardrive is available. He’d prefer to arrive while Barbara is still young.”

The Senator laughed. “He’s in luck, then. The first translight starliners are being constructed now, and should be ready for use within nine months. The scientists are projecting a realtime travel cost of thirty-four days. If he’s feeling lucky, he might even hitch a ride on the first test starship, which is now scheduled for a shakedown cruise next month. The quarters won’t be quite as nice as on the regular run, and he’ll have to share a ‘hot bunk’ with three other men in rotation, but they plan to push the limits of the drive in a very small and over-powered starship, which should arrive at Quicksilver orbit in seven days.”

“Could I ask for a ride, then, on his behalf?”

“Of course, Luz, with either option. In fact, now that I think of it, I’d like you to think about offering some sort of contest or lottery through your shows to be the first of the new colonists to arrive on Quicksilver with only a month or so of wide-awake travel time, so they can talk to their friends here on Earth during the journey, and report on conditions when they arrive. You could offer …let’s say ten … free trips for an entire family, husband, wife, and any children, together with some sort of allotment for getting started as homesteaders in moderate style.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, Sir, and could generate a huge increase in market share — and advertising revenue — if we tie the contest to intimate familiarity with the plot and characters of each show.”

He laughed again. “I like the way you think, Luz! Let’s make it an even thirty homestead opportunities, then, so you can make one announcement at the end of every show, starting a month before the first scheduled flight. If you’re right, the scheme will pay for itself the first month, and we may continue it as a regular feature, to keep up viewer ratings indefinitely.”

She smiled. “Should I have my agent contact your production company?”

This time, his laugh was uproarious. “Of course, Luz, of course! ‘No pondrás bozal al buey cuando trillare. — Thou shalt not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the corn.’ Tell him to nail us to the wall! You’re a woman after my own heart, dear. If we weren’t both married, I’d have to come courting. My lady wife rules the roost, though, so you’ll have to struggle along with that mad scientist of yours. Perhaps you could both come calling some day. It might make a nice spin on the main show. Say! I take it that there’s some romantic involvement with your Captain Barbara?”

“Yes, Sir. There is. They fell in love, I think, while Barbara was helping with a criminal case against the ‘terrorists’ who attacked the enclave in Wyoming.”

“Tch, tch. Shocking, simply shocking …. They never will be missed. Still and all, let’s put a good face on it. Could you weave their real-life love story into the plotline of your romance series? It’s the main revenue generator, because half the women in North America never miss an episode. That way, if he decides to risk the experimental trip — which won’t be at all dangerous, or so my technical people swear — you could play up the danger and perils risked by the hero in the name of true love, while Barbara pines away on Quicksilver. I see a number of shots of Barbara staring up toward the stars as her hero bravely battles cosmic rays, an unsafe experimental craft just barely held together with baling wire and bandages … I suppose we can’t have aliens …. Pity. I like Barbara’s work as a police officer in the series, though, so I know she could carry off the part, but do you think her novio, her suitor can?”

“I’ll have to talk to him, but I think he might. He’s very confident and sure of himself — that much I know for sure — and not afraid to bare his heart in front of a smallish audience, and that was in front of an array of threedee high-def cameras, so I don’t see any real obstacles. He’s a police captain, and a little rough around the edges, but the female demographic likes that sort of thing. Oh! and he’s a good-looking guy; nice jawline and a winsome, boyish smile. He’ll be perfect if he agrees.”

“Excellent! Please make it so.” He disconnected abruptly, as was his habit.

Luz shook her head, almost astonished at how easy it was, except that was the way the Senator worked; he didn’t putz around. “Barbara, you lucky girl. Not only does your boyfriend arrive in moderate style, he has a great job waiting for him even before he arrives.” She was already plotting to feature him in the action-adventure series, Quicksilver Nights, after his short run on Quicksilver Passion, and crossovers were very popular, since it maintained the illusion of a real community, for now a bit idealized.

‘Dang!’ she thought to herself. ‘I’ll have to order up at least a few posh houses for the show. If my audience is going to be walking around on “Hollywood Tours,” we’ll have to give them something to write home about.’ More work for the skilled craftspeople in the community, of course, so all to the good. Not everyone wants to be a farmer, and they already had complete digital visualizations of her supposed “home” on the show, so running off a set of blueprints and renderings for the crafts would be easy as pie.

“I don’t know what it is, but something stinks to high heaven about the attack on our people in Wyoming. That so-called investigation was conducted by a hand-picked crew of Ortíz and Bihar partisans, as I’m sure you noticed, and the phoney ‘attack’ on the investigators was just icing on a little birthday cake, a nice treat for the kiddies; but why was the same assault team who were skilled enough to wipe out every one of our group on site — without leaving a single trace behind — somehow such a crew of bunglers that they only managed one minor casualty the very next day? Did they all take stupid pills? Or is that Jack Webster roughneck the new secret identity of Superman?”

“No, Senator. You’re right. They obviously targeted our people alone, because no one from any other faction in the World Senate as much as broke a nail.”

“Then I want Jack Webster, and all his friends, dead. I’ll teach those bastards Ortíz and Bihar not to mess with us!”

“Yes, Senator. I’ll talk to our black team.”

“Don’t just talk to them, Yamaguchi. You’ll lead the team, and I expect results. Either Webster and his boss are dead within the week or you are. Am I making myself clear?”

He bowed low. “Yes, Tsukasa-san. To hear is to obey.” He backed out of the room without once either lifting his eyes from rigid contemplation of the floor or glancing behind him.

Only when the doors were slid shut between them did he allow any emotion to cross his face. Hisashi Yamaguchi was a worried man, very worried indeed.

 

 

Note: Most of the Spanish words and phrases used in this episode have ‘tooltip’ translations available, which can be accessed in most browsers by ‘hovering’ over the text with the mouse pointer, although the general sense of them is fairly clear. Try hovering over this paragraph with your mouse pointer to see it work, if it works at all.

 

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Fifteen ― Changing Moon

 

¿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

 

 

It was night and I could see a large and calm lake, reflecting the moon. Black mountains rose around it. I arrived from between two of these mountains, I looked at the lake and the moon, and that was it, nothing else happened. ― Georges Simenon

A Recurring Dream

 

 

Hisashi Yamaguchi reflected on the job he had to do as he stood staring at the door. Killing Jack Webster would be child’s play, of course, since he lived in a bad neighborhood, in a cheap cubicle apartment, which was equipped with a laughably thin plastic door whose only distinguishing feature was that it seemed newer than the other doors in this hall. He considered for only an instant, then quickly scanned the door with a sensor application loaded into his communicator, pulled out a thin length of durasteel and sprung the ludicrous excuse for a lock, then walked inside, closing the door behind him with a faint ‘snick’ as the spring lock engaged.

He glanced around the room, noting the lack of personal touches. Aside from a scraggly plant by the solitary window, which made scant use of the grey light that trickled in through the filthy plastic pane, there was almost nothing visible which gave any hint about the man’s personality or habits.

Through the window, the opposite wall of the narrow air shaft was barely discernible, and the faint outline of a similar window directly across from this one showed that it was perhaps five feet from one side of the shaft to the other, all of which data was filed away in Hisashi’s mental model of the potential target.

He touched nothing inside, simply noting the size and likely purpose of openings in the interior; the horizontal fixture which folded out to became the bed-shelf, the dingy Kitchen-Niche cubbyhole, a brand popular more than fifty years ago, and the various drawers and combined clothes and storage closet of a typical city dwelling. There were no interior toilet or bathing facilities, and he’d noted the communal showers and restrooms at the end of the hall, so there wasn’t even any place to hide, once his quarry had entered. Impassive, he listened for any sounds of movement in the hall, than slipped out from the room again, pulling the door shut behind him, professionally contemptuous of the illusion of privacy and protection it offered. Of course most modern doors were plastic, because real wood, or even thin extruded durasteel, was fantastically expensive, but this door was flimsy even by modern standards.

No, Jack Webster would be no trouble at all. The real problem was that Tom O’Hare, Jack Webster’s immediate supervisor, and likewise on his target list, was a virtual recluse who lived in a gated and well-guarded “security community,” and killing Webster would put him instantly on guard, making O’Hare’s assassination infinitely more difficult. Not impossible, of course, for a man of Hisashi’s unique talents, but tricky. ‘The most subtle trap is the one which is never seen until it’s too late,’ he thought to himself, then turned to retrace his steps down the hall and out toward the street, where his driver waited. He’d have to arrange some ruse — or even another fatal “incident” — to draw them both out into the open at once, as they had been in Wyoming, so as to net both birds in one net.

He paused in thought for a moment, just before he reached out to open the entry door, and then he smiled and nodded, and made his way into the street.

“So, Jacko, feeling fine and hearty after your little vacation in the great outdoors?” O’Hare leaned back in his office chair, hands clasped behind his head, and waited for an answer.

O’Hare was smiling, an expression Jack was a little leery of, after seeing how cheerfully he’d ripped Manelli’s life into tiny little shreds. At the time, he’d been angry at Manelli himself, but in retrospect he felt a little guilty. He’d have been happier taking the little prick out into the alley and settling their differences mano a mano, handed out a few bruises — maybe more than a few, considering that he’d had his crew gang up on him — and then they could have gone out for a beer. No hard feelings. Manelli, for all his failings as a man, was ‘on the job,’ and a brother cop in a tough job. Things got out of hand sometimes. Heads got busted. Everybody knew that. You had to ride it through, and for all he knew, O’Hare had set it up because he was furious about Jack turning off the damned communicator, had wanted to ‘teach him a lesson,’ and then repented of his little ‘overreaction’ when he saw the end product, an angry Jack who was quite prepared to shove Thomas O’Hare and his crappy little job right up his own ass. If so, he’d callously set Manelli up to take the fall, because Jack was useful and Manelli was not. But now Manelli was a corpsicle, one of a stack of frozen human bodies headed out toward the stars, Procyon in Canis Minoris, to be exact, to be revived in seventeen years or so. Earth Two was a miserable place — or so Jack had heard through the grapevine, despite the cheery name and the enticing ‘documentaries’ on the vids — a planet in an relatively unstable orbit around a binary system, and as cold as a witch’s tit, as the saying goes, but with incredible metal reserves that made it a treasure trove for an industrial civilization.

The worst of it, though, was his memory of the shock and grief the man had displayed when O’Hare had manipulated him into abandoning his wife. He hadn’t thought a thing about it then, had even gloated at his enemy’s downfall, but now … now that he’d met Barbara, he realized that — for all his faults — Manelli had loved his wife, and that O’Hare had manipulated the poor schmuck into deserting her without a word — simply because O’Hare was annoyed — and that Manelli had probably heard the same rumors about Earth Two that he had, and had wanted to spare her that misery at least. He’d liked O’Hare before that, had enjoyed working for the man, but now ….

“Jack?” There was a hard edge to his voice.

Jack jerked himself back to the here and now. “What? Oh, sorry, Sir. I’m still a little foggy — didn’t get much sleep after the ‘red-eye’ flight back from Wyoming.”

“Well, that doctor seemed to want to keep you around to poke at you some more, so it took me a while to spring you. I had to call in a few favors.” Now O’Hare looked smug.

For the first time, Jack realized that he knew next to nothing about the man, aside from his often-repeated boast of having been a ‘beat cop.’ ‘But a ‘beat cop’ wouldn’t have turned on a fellow officer so quickly,’ Jack thought, ‘wouldn’t have turned another cop’s wife into an actual widow — for all intents and purposes — without batting an eye.’ At the time, he’d thought O’Hare was doing Manelli a favor, making sure his wife was ‘taken care of,’ but now he thought about the woman herself, of how she must have felt when she’d opened the door to two grim-faced officers in full dress uniform, and Jack could almost feel the blood drain from her face when she’d realized …. He shook himself again. “Yeah, well, he liked poking needles in my ass, I think. He had enough tissue samples and blood drawn to build himself a ‘Mini-Me’ from what I left behind, if you’ll pardon the expression, considering where he took most of his samples from.”

“Don’t care that much for doctors myself. Always pokin’ and pryin’ where they shouldn’t be.” O’Hare seemed more theatrical than homespun just then, and Jack was quickly becoming cynical, less his boss and sometime apparent friend than just another suspect, from whom he could expect as many lies as might seem profitable at any given moment.

Jack said, “So, where are we in the investigation? Anything turn up while I was otherwise engaged?” and then leaned back to observe. Did he detect a little hesitation, a shiftiness that indicated a mental calculation that weighed outcomes and costs more carefully than mere truth.

“No announcement, no, which doesn’t fit the first attack, but does the presumed attempt on Ortíz, although he still denies that anything really happened. He says, and I quote, ‘The poor animal was hurt and suffering, so I can hardly blame him is he acted out his pain.’ Claims the dog is as good as new, fully recovered, and sincerely thanks us for getting him laid, which doubtless did wonders for his morale.”

Jack winced. If he lived a hundred years, he might eventually live that little episode down. He answered grimly, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and certainly convinced me that he was ‘just’ a dog, despite a miraculous increase in social intelligence, which no one has ever explained, no matter how happily everyone seems determined to cover the dog’s ass with sly winks and ‘No comprende, Señor’ shrugs.”

“Well, some days are like chicken salad, as me old dad often said, and some days are like chicken shite,” O’Hare performed his little ‘Old Sod’ pantomime. “So let’s move on. I’m fairly convinced that the terrorists are still going after Senators, and perhaps their aides, who openly oppose any liberalization of our colonial laws, so I’ve had a list prepared of likely targets who might bear watching, as well as another list of Senators who actually favor a more relaxed approach.”

“And this helps us, exactly how?” Jack asked with considerable cynicism. “Last I heard, we have neither budget nor staffing to handle any sort of full coverage.”

O’Hare nodded, unfazed, even smiling. “And we still don’t, but what we can do is contact each World Senator’s personal head of staff and tell them about our new ‘Rapid Response Team,’ — which has already seen action in Wyoming — and offer help with any future investigation, as well as suggestions on increased security, if the Honorable Senator believes this might be helpful.”

“And again, this helps us exactly how?” Jack raised one very sceptical eyebrow.

O’Hare blinked, unused to anything less than compliance, however smart-alecky that compliance might be. “Well, perhaps not at all, but it puts us in a better position to respond with effective force when we finally discover what the hell is really going on!” By the time he’d finished, he was pounding on the desk with one fist, and his jaw was jutting.

Jack said calmly, “What bothers me is that Senators Ortíz and Bihar were once on exactly the same side as Senator Joseph Chillings, who was actually killed in the latest attack. Now they’re not. This is starting to look like internal ‘maneuvering’ between warring gangs of Senators rather more than an external threat from the colonies. As Doctor Nesquith pointed out back in Wyoming, the notion of colonial ‘rebels’ carrying out any attack on Earth is ludicrous, because communications are tightly-controlled by the authorities. In fact, Senator Chillings was directly responsible for Quicksilver, which has turned out to be a lot more valuable than everyone thought it was when Chillings got handed what turned out to be a ticket to instant power and wealth.”

“So you’re saying that the assassinations were plotted by the Senators themselves, but against their private ‘enemies lists’?”

He nodded his assent. “Assuming that Chillings wasn’t plotting against himself, we have to ask ourselves who benefits. Go ahead; take a random guess about exactly who took home the ‘pot’ in this little game of poker.”

“Ortíz and Bihar?”

“Exactly.” He pursed his lips and placed his thumbs and fingertips carefully together. “They had a small piece of the original pie, which magically grew to become the whole megillah, and suddenly, Quelle suprise!” He mimed throwing up his hands in astonished surprise. “Their formerly fawning support for the harsh policies of Chillings and company, which netted their small piece of the pie as a gracious ‘reward for services rendered,’ is now transformed into ‘enlightened support’ for the colonials, and a genial paternalism that reminds me of ancient remakes of The Waltons.”

“But how do they benefit in the long term? The current system has generated tons of cash for the real stakeholders just the way it is. Why change it now?”

“That’s another piece of the puzzle, I think, and of course I can’t actually prove any of it. Guess what else Ortíz and Bihar have up their sleeves?”

“Enough with the rhetorical questions, Jack, cut to the god-be-damned chase!”

Jack was unperturbed. “They have a team of scientists working on a replacement for the Skinner Drive, but using Quicksilver-based technology to go translight. If it works — and it looks like it will, because the two of them have put together a consortium which is even now building a fleet of passenger starships with staterooms and dining facilities. — you’ll be able to go out to the colonies and back about as easily as the European colonial powers in the Eighteenth Century could get to the Americas and back, a month both ways, just time enough for a leisurely vacation and close enough that ‘Colonials’ are going to start being treated like citizens, and start taking a real interest in local politics. It’s also close enough that prospective colonists can go out and take a look, so it’s not a one-way ticket like it used to be.”

“I’ll be God-damned. The run-up to the damned American Revolution!”

“Exactly, and the Bolivarian revolution in South America, eventually Ghandi in India, and finally the African rebellions, and then Southeast Asia and the global fall from grace and civil unrest that eventually took down every European nation as a world power.”

“And Ortízes power base is in Central and South America.”

“And Bihar is equally influential in the Indian sub-continent. Last time around, Latin America and the peoples of the Indus played second fiddle to the English and their successors. This time around, it’s beginning to look like someone is reshuffling the deck for a new hand. So three guesses where Chillings got his Mojo.”

“North America?”

“Bingo. And guess where the next attacks will likely come from, and towards whom they’ll be directed ….”

“The ‘friends’ of the colonies?”

“More than likely.” He wondered for a moment which side O’Hare was on, assuming — as he did now — that it wasn’t necessarily that of the angels. “I think you should stand your little lists on their pointy little heads, because they present a threat assessment that now represents the enemies of civil society, and a so-called ‘safe list’ that closely conforms to those most in danger, because Chilling’s real pals are going to be very, very worried, and they’ve got a lot to lose.”

It occurred to Jack Webster that O’Hare’s ‘safe list’ might also be considered a deliberate ‘hand’s off’ list, which might as well clear the way for an assassin as ensure that ‘resources weren’t wasted.’ ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave, Thomas O’Hare, me foine Boyo, when first we practise to deceive.’

World Senator Anaïs Foucault called out to her seven-year-old daughter, “Zoé! Come look at the baby lamb!”

“Où est-il, maman?” Zoé cried out, running to see.

“English, darling, as a courtesy to our guests.” She smiled for the camera.

“I’m sorry, mother. It’s diff …difficult to remember sometimes, when I’m having fun.” She was apologetic, but not much. The baby animals were a lot of fun, after all.

The Senator was in the Washington DC Urbopolis visiting the Metro East Regional Zoo with her daughter, Zoé, as a publicity appearance after her successful meeting with World Senator Ortíz to discuss a French superconductor factory for the European market. Earlier in the day, they’d held a joint press conference to disclose the financial details of the arrangement, but this visit was meant to provide threedee coverage for the ‘family’ timeslots, and was carefully crafted to provide a seamless follow-on onto Luz Calderón’s Natural Quicksilver travel series. In fact, Ms. Calderón was slated for a guest appearance in the clip, in which she’d explain how different planets had different ecosystems, but there were beautiful living things everywhere, and lots of exciting things to see.”

One of the technicians motioned to her. “Senator Foucault! We’re live in five minutes. Ms. Calderón will be checking in within a few moments. You’ll see her on this monitor,” he gestured to a portable wall vid, about ten feet tall by thirty feet wide, “so just interact normally. We’d like her to lead in the clip, and then you can cut away for your prepared remarks.”

“Of course. You’ll give me a ten-second warning?”

“Yes, of course, Senator, and then a five-second count.”

She nodded her assent, and then called to her daughter, “Zoe, come say hello to Madame Luz! She’s calling all the way from Quicksilver!”

The monitor flickered and then cleared to a normal threedee view, but much larger than most people had in their homes. The background of the zoo itself was composited into the scene, so it would look as if they were chatting together in the same outdoor setting. Then Luz stepped into the scene. “Hello, World Senator Foucault, it’s such a pleasure to meet you in person. Is this your daughter Zoé? She didn’t wait to hear the answer, but knelt down immediately to talk directly to the young girl. “Salut, ça va, Zoé?”

“Trés bien, Madame Luz.”

Luz glanced up to see the Senator’s slight frown. “I see that we’re supposed to talk in English, dear Zoé, which isn’t quite as much fun, but it’s all part of the game we play here. Most of the people in our audience can’t speak French, for some strange reason, so we’ll pretend we can’t either. Is that all right?”

“Of course, Madame. We do it all the time, even at home.”

“We’ll do fine, then, Zoé. Are you having fun at the zoo?”

“Oh, yes, Madame Luz.” She smiled. She knew Madame Luz, from the children’s show, Mercure du matin, in its French version, primarily for the Canadian market, but also carried in France, Belgium, and parts of Africa and the Carribean, Quicksilver Morning in English.

“Good. We’ll try to make this fun for everyone.” She stood up smiling, and greeted the Senator. “Madame Senator, it’s so good of you to make time in your busy schedule to see us. We’ll be going live in a few moments, but I always like to chat a bit beforehand, to get to know one another a little before we have to start thinking about who else is watching and what we’re supposed to say.”

“I understand, Ms Calderón. I see we have something in common.” she gestured with an almost flirtatious downward glance toward her abdomen.

Luz dimpled. “In a little more than a month, the doctor says, and a girl, just like yours, so we have that in common too.”

“I didn’t know, seeing you in the vids, whether it was part of the show, or real.”

“Quite real, I assure you, and she lets me know that she wants out quite regularly.” She grinned. “She’s my first, so this is all quite an adventure for both of us.”

The two women smiled at each other in that instant camaraderie a shared experience can bring.

The technician interjected, “Ten seconds, please,” and started counting silently, holding up both hands and folding one finger at a time on his left hand until he reached the last, and then continued aloud with the fingers on his right hand, “Five, four, three ….” finishing on his fingers alone until he pointed his forefinger alone with a slightly more abrupt emphasis to mark the start of the take.

Luz said, “Good morning, everyone. We have a really exciting show planed today, because we have three very special guests, World Senator Anaïs Foucault and her daughter Zoé, as well as another special friend, a baby lamb that was just born here at the Metro East Regional Zoo.” She looked over at the Senator, who seemed to be seated right beside her, Senator, would you mind telling us what brings you here to the zoo?

“Not at all, Ms Calderón, would you mind if I call you Luz?”

“Not at all, Senator, I feel as if we were friends already.”

“And please call me Anaïs, Luz. As you well know, our two worlds are growing ever closer, and I’m here in the Washington DC Urbopolis to sign an agreement granting an old French firm, Groupe Industriel Olivia Dior, S.A., exclusive access to a portion of Quicksilver raw materials for the production of commercial quantities of room temperature superconductors for the EuroMarket, joining several other companies in serving their own regional markets.”

“Could you explain, Anaïs? I know some of our viewers won’t understand exactly why this is important.”

“Well, Luz, the special Quicksilver superconductors are making it possible to achieve tremendous savings in energy, for example, so our power companies can transmit power directly to homes and businesses with no transmission loss and much lower costs for the consumer. We also use these special wires to make very tiny electronic devices, so if your communicator was manufactured within the past year, it probably does five times as much work now, and has at least twice to five times the battery ‘talk time’ as last year’s models did.”

“I understand the new communicators are much better than the older models as well, Anaïs.”

“That’s right, Luz. The new devices are able to pack enough processing power into the same size that many now offer simultaneous translation services, voice-to-text note-taking, and voice-controlled browsing. A lot of people with big fingers are thanking their lucky stars.”

Luz laughed very prettily. “When perhaps they should be thanking Quicksilver, shouldn’t they?”

“I’d have to agree, Luz,” the Senator answered with a smile. “We haven’t even scratched the surface of what can be done with this technology.”

“And speaking of scratching, Anaïs, I’ll bet our viewers are just ‘itching’ to see what natural wonders we’ll be seeing today, but first, we like to see a small part of Earth’s natural wonders, the miracle of birth and motherhood, a subject I seem naturally to be drawn to lately.”

One of the zoo’s animal handlers had the lamb ready to be brought before the camera and Luz had just glanced at it when her eyes widened slightly and she continued without a moment’s hesitation, “But first, we have to cut away for an important bit of news.” She was counting on the fact that whoever had planned this wanted everything on camera and live. Her staff would handle the filler while she whispered, “Anaïs, Zoé, we’re going to play a very important and special game right now. I want you and your mother to play hide and seek behind my desk,” she gave Anaïs a very meaningful glance, “so drop to the floor right now!” Then she said, “Security! Get that animal off the stage now!” She glanced quickly around. There was a durasteel waste container near one end of the walk in front of the stage. “The waste bin!” she pointed. “Now!”

One of the Senator’s security detail had acted quickly enough to rush from the side and bowl the zoo handler and the baby lamb off the stage, but not quickly enough to reach the waste bin when the lamb exploded and both Anaïs and her daughter screamed. Luz quickly reached for power, but there wasn’t much in this controlled and largely sterile environment, so she simply tried to push the force and direction of the blast away from the stage and threedee crew and up into the air. She was only partially successful. She did, however, manage to see the single onlooker who wasn’t reacting normally, as if he’d expected the explosion, and used her own desktop controls to zoom in on his face; he looked Japanese, and his face was as hard as stone.

She used another of her controls to feed his picture to the security team. “This is your assassin! Try and capture him alive, if you can.”

Then she turned to Anaïs and Zoé. Both were safe behind the heavy interview desk, although splashed with blood — not their own — and frightened. “Anaïs, Zoé, don’t get up yet, because we’re still playing hide and seek and some bad men may be trying to find you, but you’re safely hidden now.” Zoé was crying. “Hush, mon petite.” She wished that she could fold them both into her arms, but her mother’s sheltering arms would have to do for Zoé. Anaïs was already whispering words of comfort, and petting her little girl to soothe her, but the girl was still frightened, and Luz was very angry. ‘How dare they target a little girl, her mother, and how especially vicious to use an innocent lamb as a murder weapon.’

She called Senator Ortíz on his direct line. When he picked up she didn’t spare any words for social niceties. “Jamie, there’s been an assassination attempt on Anaïs Foucault and her daughter Zoé. They’re both unharmed, as far as I can tell, but I’m feeding you a picture of the assassin, because I imagine your security team may be better-equipped to handle the threat than Senator Foucault’s. One of her team is dead, through personal bravery and heroic efforts to protect his charges, and I’d like to offer any financial assistance his family may need in addition to what would normally be provided. They were guests on my show, a show for children, so I take this very personally.”

“Thank you for telling me, Luz. I recognize the man, a very powerful ‘enforcer’ for one of the Japanese criminal gangs, so I think that I’ll be able to put my finger on the man who pulled his strings, if not necessarily the man behind that man. I’ll pass this on to Jorge, who will know what to do. I take this very personally too, because Anaïs Foucault is my friend, and any man who targets women and children is beneath contempt.”

“Thank you, Senator. Right now, I have to get back to my show.”

“Best of luck to you, Luz.”

“And to you, Jaime. Have Jorge take especial pains for me, if he will.”

“I’m sure he’ll be pleased to do so, Luz. His own children watch your show.”

Next she called the Director of Quicksilver Morning, Ishmael Sinclair, and said, “Ishmael, can you take my feed? I’d like to make an announcement before we go back to fillers.”

“Of course, Luz. I knew that you be with us as soon as you possibly could be. You’re a trouper, girl.”

“Thanks, Ishmael. Can you count me in?”

“Not a problem, Luz, in five, four, three …”

“Hello, children, and parents too. I wanted to assure you that World Senator Anaïs Foucault and her daughter Zoé are perfectly safe and unharmed. Unfortunately, a very bad man tried to hurt them today, but some very brave men stopped him before he could do so. I know that many of you will be seeing this on regular news programs as well as here, and they may not be as concerned for what’s really important as we can be in our little corners of Quicksilver and the world, so we can go to sleep tonight knowing that all our friends are safe and sound, and that the man who tried to hurt them will be caught very quickly, so that he doesn’t try to hurt anyone else.”

“Because we’re very busy right now, cleaning up the mess the man made, and seeing to the safety of everyone who was visiting the zoo today, we’re going to be showing some pictures of fun times we had in the recent past, so we can remember that the world is filled with wonderful things and very kind people, even if — every once in a long, long while — we encounter someone who’s not so nice.”

“I’m going to let our announcer tell you what happens next, because I have to talk to Zoé and Senator Anaïs Foucault now, and see if they need anything else. So all of us here at Quicksilver morning wish you a fun rest of the afternoon, and sweet dreams, my very dear friends. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye bye!” She waved at the camera and smiled for the cross-fade, holding for a long beat, just in case someone missed a cue.

“We’re clear, Luz, and thank you.” Ishmael said.

“Thanks so much! Now cut me back to the stage, please.”

“Rightie-o, Luz. You’re live right now.”

Not much had happened, although some of her crew was on stage now and helping Zoé and Anaïs to clean up. Someone had brought tea. “Anaïs, Zoé, I wanted to let you both know that I’ve told everyone who was watching that you’re both safe, so they don’t worry, but I also wanted to offer you, Senator, the opportunity to make a public statement for immediate distribution to the regular news media. My cameras and studio crew are completely at your disposal.”

“Thank you, Luz, and I would like to make a statement as soon as possible.”

“Any time you’re ready, Anaïs. Do you need make-up or a change of clothing?”

She thought for a moment, and then said, “No. I’ll go on as I am. Will you feed directly?”

“Yes. It will be up on the wire directly for auction to the networks, but I’ll carry the traffic at no charge. Oh! I wanted to tell you that I notified Senator Ortíz directly, because I thought that he might be a target too.”

“I know, Luz. He’s already been in touch with me, concerned about my welfare, and that of Zoé. He’s having some of his own security staff come in to augment mine, just in case, so thank you very much again.” She hesitated slightly, then said, “Can you tell me what you saw that made you think we were in danger? It seems like a miracle that we weren’t harmed, and that there were so few casualties, since it was such a powerful bomb.”

“Of course, Anaïs. I saw a man at the back of the crowd, standing well back, which seemed strange, since everyone else was crowding close to see the show, and his affect was odd as well, neither hostile nor enthusiastic, but somehow blank, a trait I associate with sociopaths, and then I saw that the poor lamb was acting oddly, listless somehow, and I just had a presentiment of danger. I passed on a very high-def video feed of the man himself, enough to capture his body metrics and physiognomy, as well as his movements when he ran away, so I have every hope that he’ll be captured soon.”

“I understand, Luz. You’re une voyante, une sorcière.”

She smiled. “So they say. I do get feelings some times, and I do pay attention when I do.”

“For which I give thanks.”

“Just give a heads-up to the floor director and he’ll give you a count when you’re ready.”

“I’m ready now, Luz.”

The floor director stood by the camera as the red light went on to show that it was patched into the feed, or would be on the fade-in. “Ready, Senator?”

She nodded.

He raised one hand. “Then five, four, three, ….” and signalled the cue with a short jab of his forefinger.

The Senator began, her face grim and her jaw set. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As you can see, reports of my death have been slightly exaggerated.” She smiled very briefly and paused for reaction, then continued, “Early this afternoon, just a very few minutes ago, a prominent figure in an organised criminal gang tried to harm both my young daughter and myself with a cunning, but viciously cruel, explosive device, heedless of the danger to innocent bystanders, to women and children enjoying an outing in the center of a great nation, in a craven blow aimed at all our hearts.” She bowed her head slightly, as if to gather her thoughts, and then looked up again, square into the unblinking eye of the camera.

“We were saved because of the quick-thinking of our hostess, Luz Calderón, a brave citizen of another world, who noticed the murderous villain as he stepped forward to attack and took immediate and effective actions to safeguard all our lives, although one valued member of my staff — who leaves behind a wife and two young children — was killed while trying to secure the bomb in a place of safety, fulfilling his duty of care and concern for others. In the end, it was with his body, with his very life, that he smothered the greatest force of the explosion. Hundreds of people in the crowd, and I myself, owe this heroic man our lives, and we must never forget him. Edward Adams was his name, which means ‘happy guardian’ in the original Old English, and happy indeed is the Heavenly reward of those who lay down their lives for their friends. Edward was a loyal friend and guardian to all of us, even those of us who’d not had the good fortune to meet him, and proved his love with the last full measure of devotion.” Once again, she bowed her head, as if in prayer or sorrow, and then looked up again, but with her head lowered slightly, this time definitely in sorrow.

“To compound his crime, this … this sniveling coward murdered an unarmed zoo worker who had freely donated his time to help to entertain your children and mine, and yet his precious life, dedicated with such tender concern and love to others, was callously snuffed out in an instant, after burning so brightly as an example to us all.” She shook her head slowly from side to side, visibly moved by the loss of this young man, then faced forward again in determined and implacable anger.

“We know exactly who did this, and who they were working for, the cowardly crew who crave constant control over every aspect of our lives, who seek always to lead us away from freedom, from dignity, and from self-respect. They will not succeed! And we will bring them to justice! We demand freedom for all of Earth, and for all the worlds! These bright new worlds, filled with life, flung like a chain of precious jewels against the endless darkness of the barren void, are our children, our place of refuge and succor! Liberté! égalité! fraternité! Liberty, equality, and brotherhood, for one and all!”

Jack Webster was in O’Hare’s office again, but wasn’t feeling particularly intimidated. O’Hare was pacing back and forth, worried about something he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, share. ‘Oh, and it’s a foine mess ye’ve got yerself into, Tommie-boy, a foine mess indeed.’ He smiled to himself, a cynical clarity suffusing his entire history with O’Hare, who he’d once respected. But Anaïs Foucault’s name had been prominently placed right at the top of the list of Senators the department ‘didn’t have to worry about,’ and Jack no longer wondered if it was an accident. Now, he wondered who else was going to die before his boss and the men who owned him were through.

“Well?” O’Hare was glaring at him.

“Well, what, Mr. Bossman?”

“Aren’t you going to say ‘I told you so?’ ”

“Not me, Mr. Boss. It’s plenty obvious. It’s never been about ‘freedom for the colonies,’ it’s been about who rakes in the dough for most of the major players, although I have to admit that I’m fonder of Ortíz, and maybe Foucault, because Ortíz at least offered me a free puppy, and Foucault gives dynamite speech. I might take him up on that puppy, though since it looks like we might be shut down, so I’ll have some time on my hands to house train him. It could be fun. I’ve always wanted to retire in disgrace.”

“Dammit! You wise-ass little putz! We’ve got to do something!”

Jack looked at him in sarcastic confusion. “You’re kidding, right? Even with mystical oriental powers to cloud men’s minds, and a sorcerous cloak of invisibility we can’t fight duelling Senators. Wasn’t there an old rock-a-billy song about that? ‘You don’t piss into the wind; you don’t dribble beer on the Batman’s cape; and you don’t mess around with Senators.’ I think that’s how it went ….” He wrinkled his brow. “Not that I wouldn’t like the power to cloud men’s minds ….” he said reasonably. “Is Tibet still there? Or was it Shangri-La? One or the other. Maybe my new dog can find it for me ….”

“Get the fuck out of here, you little punk! I’ll call you when I need you.”

“You do that, Mr. Bossman, but I have one tiny question.”

“What!?”

“What happened to the blarney Irish brogue, me foine boyo?”

Jack barely got the door shut behind him when O’Hare’s bronze paperweight hit it with a heavy crunch as it splintered the real wood panel. “Tch, tch,” he observed to himself. “Missed me by a mile.” He hit the stairs, not the elevator, because he didn’t trust his old boss not to try a few more dirty tricks. “Ah, well. Tomorrow is another day.”

Jack Webster’s eyes opened wide, abruptly. It was the middle of the night, maybe three … four … in the morning, after closing time, because that always generated a little buzz and shuffling through the building, as people straggled home. He was suddenly wide awake, and something had invaded his consciousness, a niggling feeling, some sort of disturbance in the smooth flow of … energy? Whatever it was that he was feeling, it was evil. There was something rotten and mean near him, but not in the room, although he didn’t know quite how he knew it.

He reached for the little secret shelf he’d carved into the wall, craftily-concealed by a drooping concert poster from his youth, then his hand crept inside as his fingers first found his neurolizer, and then his slapjack, a little ‘equalizer’ designed to encourage an opponent in a rough and tumble fight to quickly become either unconscious or battered enough to surrender, but without leaving too many marks. The higher class of criminal these days sometimes invested in grounding armor that was proof against a hand-held neurolizer — unless one managed to jab them in the eye — but brute force was always effective.

As he quietly rolled out of bed, he mentally thanked Manelli, because before the late night ‘visit’ by Manelli and his thugs, the bed had squeaked loudly when he got up in the morning. Impelled by fear, inspired by O’Hare, Manelli’s wrecking crew had paid for a professional interior makeover, and his fold-out bed was now as solid and squeakless as the Rock of Gibraltar.

Now he was up and standing near the Kitchen-Niche, with not a chance of hiding, since he was a bit bigger than a coffee pot, but slightly behind the door at least, partially concealed if it opened, but not too close. If one hugged the corner, the bad guy could stick a shiv in your ribs before you knew what happened, or throw the door back against you, trapping one in the corner to await the bad guy’s leisurely attentions. Since there was no particular cover, he willed himself into watchful stillness, prepared to take any advantage offered, or to respond to any sudden assault.

He couldn’t really hear anything, since the presence he felt was more an absence of sound, a hole in the subtle texture of creaks and plastic sighs that characterized the normal ambience of the building.

Now he heard something springy unfold from some secret place and approach the lock of the door; he heard it slide in, then a faint ‘snick’ as the lock was slipped, and then silence again. He could hear the silence as the man — it was a man — outside the door listened for a response to that tiny sound. Jack made none, but waited.

Then the door crept open, and Jack could see a deeper shadow against the darkness, and the man drifted through the open door like smoke, his hands upraised in a curious posture … he held a goddamned sword!

The hairs on the back of Jack’s neck lifted of their own accord and he hoped it wasn’t audible, because the bad guy was still slipping silently toward Jack’s bed.

Suddenly, the man whipped his sword down to where Jack’s head would have been, if he’d stayed where he was, and Jack lunged out from where he stood and smacked the bridge of his nose with his slapstick as hard as he could, hearing the first sound, the man’s nose breaking, well before he heard his sword bury itself in his pillow. In a burst of speed, he waved the slapstick like a feather, and every time it touched the man something broke. It was as if the man were standing there, waiting for the next stroke of the club, until he smacked the man right on the frenum between his nose and his upper lip and the man dropped like a stone.

Quickly, he took up the man’s sword, holding it not so much with any idea of wielding it, but only to have control of it so it couldn’t be used against him. Then he grabbed his cuffs from the little table near his bed and had his arms trussed behind him and double locked in one smooth movement, just like they’d practiced it in classes, only better. Because he didn’t trust him, he used his second pair to catch first one ankle, then the other, threading one leg through his linked arms before snapping the last cuff shut.

He still wasn’t moving, so Jack turned on the light.

Damned if he wasn’t dressed up like a Halloween ninja, except Jack had some idea that this one was the real deal. Now, he was even more cautious — he’d seen the movies — and used his sword to lever the guy over, then just the tip of it to lift off his weird ninja mask.

Jack blinked. It was the guy who’d tried to blow up Senator Foucault and her girl, what’s-her-face, Zoi. He reached over him again, carefully, and picked up his communicator, then hit a hot key. He listened for a second, then said, “Dispatch, this is Jack Webster, badge number Q-704725, currently unassigned. I need a wagon and a squad at my home address, double quick if you don’t mind. The guy’s locked up tight right now, but I don’t trust him not to get out, since he seems to be one of those ninja guys, and you see them cut through steel bars with plastic playing cards all the time, at least in the threedees.”

He listened for a while, then said, “Assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer for a start, B&E, carrying a sword or knife with a blade longer than five inches, brandishing same in a threatening manner, attempted murder with same, possession of lock picks and burglary tools … I’m sure I can think of a few other tidbits for his sheet while I wait.”

He listened again. “Oh, yeah. He’s got a want on him. He looks a lot like the guy who tried to assassinate Senator Foucault just this afternoon … well, yesterday afternoon by now, and killed those guys with a bomb, so you can add that to the list as well, two counts of capital murder, attempted murder of a government employee, assault on a legislator … Jeez, it’s the middle of the night. Can I just hand the guy over and you guys just look up everything he’s done.”

He listened again and rolled his eyes. “Ok, I’ll wait here.”

Jack looked over at his brand new rock solid bed and noticed that the asshole had put a big gouge where his head would have been. He glared at him, felt like kicking him, but didn’t. “Schmuck!” He wasn’t going to get any more sleep tonight either.

 

 

Jack Webster steeled himself to knock on the door, and didn’t have enough time to compose himself before it was opened by a woman with what seemed to Jack to be a face frozen into anguish by grief and sudden loss. Belatedly, he realized that she wouldn’t have even been allowed the closure of seeing her husband’s body, of touching him for the last time, since he’d been simply ‘disappeared.’ He tried to swallow, his mouth gone dry. It took him two tries before he was able to say, “Mrs. Manelli?”

“Yes?”

“My name is Jack Webster. I’m a cop, and I knew your husband.”

Her eyes opened wide, and she somehow seemed to know what he was about to say. “You know Paulo?”

“I do, or did, and I know where he is ….” He wanted to say that he was Manelli’s friend, although of course he wasn’t, but the woman’s fragile vulnerability tempted him to say it anyway, because it was a tiny crumb of comfort he might have offered, if he’d managed to say it sooner. In the end, he said nothing more, ashamed of his former anger, and of his own part in this travesty, however unwitting.

“He’s alive?” She didn’t seem very surprised by that for some reason, despite the inflection of her pro forma question, but Jack had thought that she might not have been. Even separated from her by so many millions of miles, even though he’d never even held her hand, he felt Barbara’s warm presence in the Universe always, as real as if he’d just left her waiting in the patrol car outside.

He didn’t know exactly what to say, although he’d practiced saying it often enough on the way over. “Well, yes, unh, sort of …”

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Sixteen ― Black Moon

 

¿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

 

 

The nightingales are sobbing in
The orchards of our mothers,
And hearts that we broke long ago
Have long been breaking others;
Tears are round, the sea is deep:
Roll them overboard and sleep.
 ― W.H. Auden

The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare’s "The Tempest" (W.H. Auden: Critical Editions)
Princeton University Press (April 7, 2003)

 

 

The Colonial Emigration office was somewhat drab, despite several huge threedee recruitment vids on the walls, and several smaller monitors displaying continuous video promos of every human colony. She was talking to a Mr. Eggers, who amused her not least because he was completely bald, and had a charming stutter.

“Y-y-yes, Mrs. Mmmm-anelli, we offer a substantial signing bonus for female immigrant volunteers for Earth Two, and in answer to your question, the full transit time will be f-f-fully-credited towards your pension payments from your husband’s death benefits, per Uniform National Pensions and Benefits Code of 2581 Section 102, 41 U.F.C. Section 4342 (2614). The p-p-provisions of the code have been upheld on several occasions by the Supreme Court as promoting p-p-public p-p-policy, despite several creative challenges by pension trusts and other interested parties, and the court has declined to hear further challenges for almost twenty years now. With roughly seventeen y-y-years accumulated travel time, your signing and death benefits and the accumulated interest on those, with zero interim l-l-living expense, at the c-c-current exchange rate in Earth credits, you’ll have well over five hundred times a mmmm-oderate lifetime income for Earth Two in the bank, just waiting for you, plus approximately six times an average income every mmmm-onth from then on. In short, Mrs. Mmmm-anelli, by the time you arrive on Earth Two, you will be financially secure — although not extremely wealthy — for the duration of your natural life.”

“Thank you, Mr. Eggers. Do you know if there are public news feeds where one can post notices?”

“There are, of course, but a woman in your f-f-financial position upon arrival is unlikely ….”

She blushed, understanding exactly what he implied. “Not at all, Mr. Eggers. I think you misunderstand me. I have a … friend … who left for Earth Two recently, and I was wondering what my chances of finding him might be.”

“Mrs. Mmm-anelli, believe me, w-w-walk into any store or office on Earth Two and the entire m-m-male population will find an excuse to visit, sooner or later, just to pay their respects, and everyone will know your name and physical description within a few days, so you needn’t b-b-bother posting a notice; your friend w-w-will find you if he cares to look, and I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t. The immigration notices are lively topics of c-c-conversation, and female names attract considerable interest, so your ‘f-f-friend’ will quite likely be there waiting at the disembarkation gate. You have to understand, Mrs. Mmmm-anelli, that the very large mmmm-ajority of immigrants to Earth Two are men, so women are valued, even honored, in a mmmm-anner difficult to understand for anyone who grew up on Earth.”

She blinked. “But … will there be any danger of ….”

“Let me h-h-hasten to assure you there is not. In my position, one is required to r-r-read local news feeds, of course, and the last g-g-gentleman to offer a drunken affront to a lady such as yourself — or any woman, for that matter — was hanged from a h-h-handy rafter within ten minutes of his unmannerly action by an ad hoc c-c-committee of citizens who convened a jury, hired a judge, and had the man convicted and executed quite legally before the ink could dry on the order of death. The gentlemen of the jury, and the judge, posed for a formal photograph which was published on the local news feed, and publicly apologized for the ruffian’s presence in their neighborhood, assuring every reader that women were properly respected in their part of town, and hoped that no one would let the example of one bad apple taint the entire barrel, as it were.” He thought for a moment. “I believe the story ran … about two and a half years ago, but I’d be g-g-glad to find it in my files.”

She blinked again. “That won’t be necessary, I think. As I said, I know someone there, so I think I’ll be quite all right.”

“More than simply ‘all r-r-right,’ Mrs. Mmmm-anelli!” He chuckled at her naïvté. “On Earth Two, you’re the b-b-boss, and your … friend … from Earth will find himself with many more-or-less unobtrusive rivals for your attention, and with no r-r-recourse if you should ever tire of him, because your fortune and pension vests in you alone. I’ve talked to many w-w-women on Earth Two via ansible link, and they’ve told me that it g-g-gave them a whole new outlook on life. As a w-w-woman on Earth Two, there are no ‘bad’ parts of town, and you could stroll through the mmmm-eanest streets in the n-n-nude — not that I’d s-s-suggest doing any such thing, of course — walk up to any r-r-random man and punch him in the nose, without being subjected to a single unpleasant remark, much less receive any unwanted attentions. One of them explained it to me quite succinctly, ‘On Earth Two, when women talk, men shut up and listen.’ I’m told that it’s a refreshing change.”

She thought about that and smiled. “It sounds like I might actually like Earth Two, Mr. Eggers,” she said.

“I’m sure you shall.“ He grinned. ”While I c-c-can’t offer a mmmm-oney-back guarantee, I can honestly say that no w-w-woman has ever enquired about return p-p-passage.”

“Well, then, Mr. Eggers, where do I sign?”

They smiled at each other that time, and Alicia Manelli felt happier than she had in quite some time. Whatever happened when she got there, she was headed toward a new life, in a new world; a good life, sure to be filled with adventure and new experiences.

“Captain Webster?” The voice belonged to Fielding, one of the desk Sergeants, but evidently he also ran errands.

“Yes?” As an officer, Jack rated an office and a desk, but he was also on O’Hare’s shit list, so hardly anyone had the balls to talk to him, and he was still “Unassigned.”

“You have a visitor, Sir. In Interview Room Six.”

Jack blinked. Why not just show this mysterious visitor in? “Sure. I’ll be right there. Thanks, Sergeant Fielding.”

“It’s my pleasure, Sir!” He snapped off a salute, which was also strange. With his new status as a pariah, the courtesies of rank were being pointedly ignored by most of the denizens of this particular cop shop.

He returned the salute and followed Fielding right out the door, then turned up the hall toward the interview rooms, usually used for interrogations, but evidently now for ‘visitors.’ ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ he thought, then opened the door to see Captain Churco sitting comfortably, completely at ease, despite the uncomfortable durasteel chair he was sitting in, which was bolted to the floor and carefully designed to be both awkward and painful to sit in for any length of time. Jack had to admire his style, at very least. “Captain Churco, it’s so good to see you. What brings you to the DC Urbopolis?”

“Jack! And please call me Jorge. There’s no need for formalities between friends away from the public eye.”

“Well then, Jorge,” Jack smiled, “what brings you to the DC Urbopolis?”

“You, of course. I’m an admirer of your work, especially your thoughtful kindness to the Senator’s injured dog. He speaks of you often with gratitude.” He grinned, to let Jack know that it was a joke, and that he didn’t hold any grudge for what he’d seen as an imposition on his authority at the time.

“And I’m proud to have been named ‘godfather’ to the puppies,” he said wryly. “ ‘Compadre,’ I think they told me.”

“And a very great honor, Jack. The word also means ‘friend,’ as I think you know.”

“So they told me. What can I do for you, ‘compadre’?”

“You — and by ‘you,’ I mean the DC police department — have a man in custody, one Hisashi Yamaguchi, whom I’m given to understand you took down with a simple slapstick, a feat worthy of Hercules, considering Yamagushi’s reported prowess.”

“Yeah, well. It was dark, and he never really had a chance to get warmed up. But I turned him over to Central Booking. If you want to talk to him, I’m sure they’ll accommodate you.”

“But I’d like you to accompany me, compadre.” He grinned. “As the arresting officer, it should be your privilege to sit in on any interrogation, and your insights might be very valuable.”

“Insights? Don’t make me laugh. The first time I really saw him — aside from his mug on the threedee — was when I turned on the lights in my cubicle, and by that time he was unconscious. It’s not as if we spent the time chatting amicably while we waited for transport.”

“None-the-less, Senator Ortíz has requested your personal attention to this matter. I need hardly point out that his stamp of approval will do wonders for your career prospects in the department, while Thomas O’Hare’s star is on the wane, I fear.”

Jack noticed the omission of rank and smiled to himself. ‘Perhaps there is some justice in the world after all,’ he thought. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Okay, when do we leave?”

“How about now? Al hierro caliente batir de repente!”

“Which means?”

“I believe in English you would say, ‘Strike while the iron is hot,’ although of course the original Spanish is much more subtle and evocative. We’re all poets, you know, with passionate hearts quite filled with lyrical songs of great power and beauty. I do hope you sing well, Señor.” He smiled. “¿Vámonos?”

Jack knew that one well enough. “No time like the present.” He gestured around him indicating a certain carefree insouciance. “As you may have heard, I have nothing urgent to do otherwise.”

As they walked out the door, Churco slightly ahead, as befitted his status as Jack’s guest, Jack thought to himself, ‘Things are definitely looking up.’

 

 

Jack was astonished when he saw Yamaguchi through the one-way threedee, because the sad schmuck was black and blue everywhere he could see, still chained, but with a flex-chain waist belt simultaneously holding his arms down to his sides and his back to the durasteel interrogation chair, a bite-prevention plastic mask which covered his mouth, and separate chains locking his feet firmly to the floor. Evidently the guy’s reputation had been communicated to his jailers, and they were taking no chances. He wasn’t at all sorry about his injuries, because the guy had tried to chop off his head with a damned sword, after all, but was definitely surprised. A slapstick usually didn’t leave such a mess behind, but he looked like he’d been beaten by a professional ‘enforcer’ with a baseball bat. “Jeez! I didn’t think I’d hit him that hard. Did someone ‘soften him up’ for us on the sly?”

“Not as far as I know, and I’ve read your report. Perhaps the sight you described of an unsheathed sword lent a certain adrenalin-fueled enthusiasm to your efforts to subdue him.”

Jack shook his head. “I was scared shitless, but I wasn’t out of control. I did everything strictly by the book, and cuffed him as soon as he no longer posed a threat, in my opinion. He was pretty lively about resisting arrest, and I have to confess that I didn’t call upon him to surrender peacefully, but I was very busy at the time, since he appeared to be doing his level best to kill me.”

“I’m sure you did, and I congratulate you on your restraint. I myself would have been sorely tempted to ensure that an obviously professional assassin never got a second opportunity to do me harm. I have little respect for criminals who sneak around in their stocking feet to commit murder by stealth, and especially those who plant bombs to kill or maim any unfortunate individuals near their supposed targets. He should be put down like a mad dog, shot out of hand, I think, but perhaps I betray my peasant upbringing.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly know that he was a pro, at the time, since I didn’t pay all that much attention to the bulletin, having no duties assigned at the time, but I saw the guy’s eyes on the threedee, just after the bomb exploded, and agree with you, my friend. The world would be a better place with him not in it.”

“Alas, he’s bound to be in it for at least a little while, although I’m uneasy about his seeming ability to escape the strictest confinement. He managed to break one set of your cuffs, you know, during transportation to your cárcel de alta seguridad, which caused his guardians no end of trouble. I noticed that they were the top-quality Smith & Wesson hinged model, which is quite remarkable, since the manufacturer has advertised them as ‘unbreakable without power tools’ for many years. I’ve taken the liberty of having his file placed in your communicator queue, if you’d care to glance at it before we go in.”

Jack shrugged. “Actually, I prefer to do that while sitting in front of the prisoner, since that conveys a certain contempt, and demonstrates his proper place in the criminal justice scheme of things, which is as an insignificant interruption in my busy day, and I’m already ticked off, because I paid for those cuffs out of my own pocket. Department issue cuffs are cheap plastic crap, and the stingy bastards will want to issue me a set of those as ‘replacements.’ Assholes!”

Churco smiled. “I like the way you think, compadre, and I ascertained your department’s policies when I heard about his accomplishment. I’ve taken the additional liberty of replacing them with a matched set of two from my personal collection, in the antique titanium alloy no longer available, and slightly more robust, I think, than your new model cuffs. I have them here.” He reached behind him to unsnap two slim investigator cases with cuffs from his belt and casually handed them to Jack.

Jack arched one brow in friendly assessment as he took them in his hand. The cases themselves were molded black leather, luxurious accessories he’d never thought possible to afford. “Jorge, compadre, this is a very generous gift.”

Jorge smiled. “It’s nothing, compadre. I am very well-compensated in my position, and they’re necessarily well-used. Here in the old USA, you have a saying, I think, ‘Share the wealth?’ ” He paused for a moment before continuing, “and I have an ulterior motive. Senator Ortíz has secured your position here with his patronage, so as to ensure that no undue pressure exists which you might believe forced you to accept his offer. He was impressed with your creativity and ‘doggedness,’ if you’ll pardon the expression,” here he smiled briefly, a merry wrinkle in the corners of his eyes, “in pursuing the threat against him, and would like to offer you a position outside the department, and I hasten to assure you that you would be reporting directly to the Senator, and not to me.”

He didn’t have to think very long before saying, “And I’m very willing to hear what he has to say.” His tenure with O’Hare had been a brief interlude in what he’d seen as a dead-end position. His previous superiors had been leery of him, fearful that he might pose a threat to their own advancement. Until the Burladors came along, he’d resigned himself to just ‘marking time’ until he could retire. “Jorge, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” He smiled broadly. “You must allow me the pleasure of buying your lunch, after we’ve finished with yonder creep.”

“I’d be honored to accept your hospitality, Jack, and I agree. I’ve seen that movie. We live in interesting times.”

With one accord, as if they’d planned it, they rose to walk together into the other interrogation room.

World Senator Tamotsu Tsukasa was very angry, although his face was impassive. “Hisashi Yamaguchi has completely failed our family through his incompetance and must be disciplined. He is currently in the custody of the Metro-East police, so this will be a delicate task. Can any of you gentlemen offer a solution to this problem.”

His audience consisted of four men, and they were seated cross-legged around a traditional low table in a Tokyo izakaya which the Oyabun had reserved for the evening, a room with sliding rice-paper screens for walls, tatami mats on the floor, and the available menu displayed in pictures on the walls. There were no prices listed, since this particular tavern never served the general public, and it evidently catered to Yakuza gangsters, because the men talked freely, despite the waitresses in attendance by the door which led to the kitchen, and the (literally) paper-thin walls.

One of the men — after looking carefully around the table — said, “Yamaguchi-san has not escaped?”

Tsukasa said, “No, and he was taken into custody by an American policeman who was asleep in his bed when Hisashi entered stealthily to slay him with his ninjatō.”

There was a sharp intake of breaths all around the table. “Impossible!” said one; “Contemptible!” another, both at once.

Tsukasa nodded, and his face was grim. “ ‘Contemptible’ captures my feeling perfectly. He was charged to do a specific task, kill that policeman and his immediate superior, and failed utterly, although he did manage to kill two innocent bystanders while attempting to murder a World Senator and her child for no apparent reason — completely without authorization, and with so little care that he was caught on threedee in the very act, then made a theatrical escape to prove his complicity — thereby drawing unfavorable attention to myself as a direct consequence.”

“Oyabun! Respectfully, why was the policeman targeted?” one said, a Wakagashira named Naoto Takahashi from Kyoto.

“He and his superior were investigating the assassinations of World Senators, and I believe that they may be in the pay of our enemies, since they were closely associated with the death of Senator Chillings, our ally, and had spent considerable time with Senator Ortíz, a former ally turned traitor. I believe all these setbacks are connected, and Jack Webster is the only common link, and has been in direct contact with persons of interest on Quicksilver.”

Takahashi immediately volunteered, “Then they must both be eliminated, Oyabun! I have a few contacts in the area, and will investigate this problem.”

Tsukasa nodded and said, “Excellent! Takahashi-san. I applaud your initiative. See to it.”

Takahashi bowed. “Hai!”

The Oyabun stood up and left the room. The others followed, after a respectful pause, but the three aside from Takahashi avoided looking at him directly.

Their lunch was delicious. Jack had sprung for a real sit-down restaurant he'd heard of, with white linen tablecloths and napkins, a far cry from his usual pizza joints and udon noodle bowls. Jorge had chosen salmon, farmed of course, but still pricey. Jack had to have the same, with a three-quarter-liter bottle of white wine for the table. It was a guy thing.

“So, Jack,” Jorge said as they were leaving, “Do you have a little free time to stop by to see Senator Ortíz?”

“Sure, why not?” They caught a cab, lots easier than parking, and Jack had an official Metro-East discount card.

“While we're there, perhaps you wouldn't mind a quick med-scan. If you're thinking of accepting the Senator's offer, it would be one formality out of the way, and there's no co-pay.” He grinned.

“Sure, I'm easy.”

The Senator's office was an entire building, as in turned out, and they walked directly from the curb, where the taxi had dropped them off, to a second floor medical office, with a scattering of waiting patients, or so it appeared.

“This is all the Senator's?” Jack asked.

Jorge shook his head. “No, not at all. Medical coverage is fully paid for all employees, and it's simply convenient to have a clinic nearby, so people can drop in at their leisure, or in an emergency, without running all over town.”

Jack noticed that he simply waved at the receptionist and walked right in, so either he was expected, or people naturally deferred to him. He frowned slightly. Jack hated feeling like he'd been ‘set up.’

A doctor met them in the hall. “Señor Churcas! And you must be Señor Jack Webster! Come right along!” he walked them through an automatic door.

Set up then. Jack was getting irritated. “Jorge ….”

The doctor interrupted. “Just place your head against this scanner, and keep your eyes wide open.”

Jack saw a blinding flash. “Hey!”

The doctor's voice said from somewhere behind him, “Nothing to worry about, just a little retinal scan, and here's the last, a little drop of blood and tissue for testing.”

Jack felt a pinprick, and then it seemed to be over. “That was about the shortest medical exam I ever experienced. What happened to ‘Open wide and say “Ahhhh!”?’ ”

The doctor said blithely, “Oh, we don't do that any more. What sort of medical care have you been getting, anyway?”

“I have coverage through the police department,” he said, more than a little annoyed by now.

“Oh, them,” the doctor said dismissively. “Barbarians!” then looked at a readout. “Yep, he's ok,” he said, the words addressed to Jorge.

“Excellent!” Jorge turned to Jack and said, “Let's go! We're almost late.” He led him through a maze of halls, then down two flights of stairs and out into what looked like an empty gymnasium with hardwood floors. He led Jack out onto the floor and said, “Stand there, please, just for a moment, and everything will become clear.”

“Uh, okay, but what am I supposed to do?”

“Just stand there and look at me, and please keep your eyes open. This is all part of the exam.”

Jack watched carefully as Jorge walked down to the other end of the room, and then Jorge whipped out an old-fashioned automatic pistol and fired directly at his head!

Somehow, time seemed to slow down for Jack and he could actually see the bullet as it sped directly toward him. He managed to get his hand up to try and ward it off just before it hit him, and it struck the palm of his hand instead.

“Jesus! Jorge! What the fuck?!” he was rubbing his hand, which hurt like hell.

Jorge smiled. “Just proving a point, compadre, and I apologise for startling you. I assure you, dear friend, that you were never in any danger. Go ahead; take a look. You're not the man you used to be.”

Jack looked down at his hand, which he expected to be bloody and broken, but the pain was already fading, and his hand looked as good as new. “What the fuck?” Jack Webster, long-time police veteran, crime scene investigator deluxe, was completely confused.

Jorge smirked in wry good humor. “Feeling better now?”

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Seventeen ― The Rising of the Moon

 

¿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

 

 

“Oh! then tell me, Shawn O’Ferrall,
Tell me why you hurry so?”
“Hush ma bouchal, hush and listen”,
And his cheeks were all a-glow.

John Keegan Casey
The Rising of the Moon

 

 

As they walked into the room, Jack could see someone writing at an enormous desk. At one corner of the desk, incongruous in an office setting, was a large durasteel wrecking bar. The writer’s head was down, but he looked familiar, and then he looked up at them. It was World Senator Ortíz, as might be expected, considering that Jorge Churco, the Senator’s chief of security, was right behind him as Jack came to a stop in front of the desk. There were no ‘courtesy’ chairs.

“Captain Webster! How good of you to come. I take it that my good friend Captain Churco has made it plain that we’re dealing with something very strange indeed.”

“He did, but I can’t say as how I was pleased about how he went about it,” Jack said sourly.

“I apologize on his behalf, but I was the one who suggested this course of action, because intellectual reasoning is worthless in a phenomenon such as this. You have to experience it as an alchemical gestalt, not science, the essential transmutation of the human flesh and mind into something more.”

Jack was instantly leery, because he’d run into a lot of nut-cases over the years, with similar stories. “What do you mean, ‘alchemical’?”

“Nothing religious, I assure you, Captain, nor anything supernatural, but rather something completely natural that we don’t completely understand, and I need your help to solve it.”

Jack narrowed his brow. “Solve it?”

He made a little moue of resigned impatience. “Of course, Jack. Hasn’t Jorge explained that I want you to work for me. You’re a detective, and I need you to solve both a crime and a problem. The first is, of course, what you’ve been working on all along, the mystery of the ‘Burlador.’

He stood up from his chair, picked up the wrecking bar, and held it out for his inspection. It looked like a wrecking bar. Then the Senator took the bar in both hands and bent it in two as easily as if it were a paperclip. He dropped it on the floor beside him with a loud clangor, exactly what it should have sounded like.

“The second is the problem,” the Senator continued. “I’d like you to tell me exactly how is it that both you and I have vastly speeded reaction times, and a certain … enhancement of our physical capabilities that reminds one of the oldest Superman comic book stories. I have a partial explanation for you, but not the whole, which still escapes me.”

Now Jack was interested. Most nut-cases either had all the answers, or had no answers at all, merely a pressing desire to convert you to their way of thinking. “Start with the partial explanation.”

The Senator seemed slightly surprised, but then nodded. “I like that in you, Jack. You accept the evidence of your senses, even when your mind might tell you that what you’ve seen and heard is ‘impossible.’ To make a long story shorter, you had a blood test some time back in which you discovered that you had the pseudo-spirochaetes virus/bacteria, whatever it is really, living inside you, as does most of the human population on Earth that we’ve actually tested, am I right?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, I wasn’t too pleased, but the doctor said it was benign, and that I shouldn’t worry about it. I’m not too pleased that you somehow seem to have laid hands on my confidential medical records either.” He wasn’t surprised exactly. Senators did more-or-less what they wanted to do, but he was ticked off about it anyway.

“I apologize, Captain. The matter concerned me directly, both because I took a great deal of personal interest in the assassination of yet another Senator, along with many of his aides, but also because you were reported to have lost consciousness during some sort of explosive attack. Your doctor — or the doctor provided to you at least — was also quite concerned, and conducted extensive tests without finding anything wrong, which seemed odd to him, because an explosion powerful enough to cause unconsciousness should have caused at least some minor trauma to the brain.”

“That’s true enough,” Jack said with some hostility. “He kept me there in his ‘care’ — which might as well have been called ‘custody’ — for almost a week.”

“We know it well, Captain. The doctor prepared an extensive medical summary which was included in the case file, and the case file describing the attack on your investigatory party, and its sequelae, was provided to Captain Churco in the course of his official duties, which is how we first learned of your anomalous experience. I won’t pretend that I didn’t obtain your full medical record as well, because I did, but it actually didn’t give us much more to go on than the initial summary report. What it did have, however, was the results of blood and tissue analyses, which Captain Churco brought to my attention because they had remarkable similarities to my own, which I’m quite sure your quick mind has turned into certain knowledge of at least part of the contents of my own confidential medical file. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, after all.”

“So you stole the file?”

“In a word, Captain, yes, and with very good reason. You and I, Sir, are ‘freaks,’ and I have as little interest as you do in having this information brought to the attention of anyone at all outside this room, although there is one doctor, hopefully loyal to me, with exactly that knowledge, and the doctor who examined you might still be able to figure it out, if he managed to put two and two together, and if he still had the pertinent portions of his records. In fact, this particular portion of your medical record is far more private now than it was before, because an odd ‘accident’ occurred which happened to alter a few tiny portions of the doctor’s files, and every archival copy, to remove or alter any incriminating evidence which might later be used against you.”

“Wait a minute! That’s bullshit! You’re acting like I’m some sort of criminal!”

“Not at all, Captain, but you might be seen by some as a potential threat none-the-less, and would therefore fall within the purview of the old ‘homeland security’ laws, which were never repealed because, in more than three centuries, no one has ever dared to vote against ‘security.’

Jack was starting to realize …

The Senator continued, “Can you imagine what might happen if it became known that you were — and let’s use the alarming language that would likely appear in the gutter newsfeeds — infected with an alien virus which had taken over your body and altered it in such wise as to be no longer fully human?”

Jack didn’t have to think too long before he said, “Holy crap ….” His shoulders slumped as he thought about potential consequences.

“ ‘Holy crap’, indeed. In the best of all probable worlds, you’d be ‘quarantined’ until ‘higher authorities’ figured out what to do with you, which might well be never, authorities having a perfectly natural disinclination to do anything which might later be questioned by higher authorities. In the worst case, you’d be chopped into little tiny pieces ‘for study’ and the bulk of those pieces incinerated to prevent the spread of an alien epidemic. followed quickly by a national screening program to root out possible ‘Fifth Columnists’ which would eventually sweep me up along with you. What do the so-called ‘rights’ of what may, after all, be an alien invader matter in the context of the safety of the entire world. Even I would be unlikely to escape … consequences … should any hint of this become known, and thus I place myself in your power, almost as much as you are in mine.”

“How comforting,” Jack said dryly.

“Believe me, Captain, I mean it to be. As far as I know, we’re sui generis — on Earth, at least, and it would hardly do to alienate my only fellow. If nothing else, we can amuse ourselves by making little origami figures out of durasteel plate.”

“Okay, so we both have new hobby alternatives. What’s that got to do with my blood tests?”

Senator Ortíz smiled broadly. “Jack, you’re an absolute treasure. So few people in these degenerate times can follow a conversation through more than a dozen exchanges and still keep track of the thread. I blame the threedees, personally. People just sit and passive observe conversations without taking part in them.”

“Fifteen,” Jack observed. “Keeping track of interviews is my trade, as Heinrich Heine said about God. ‘Dieu me pardonnera. C’est son métier.’ ”

Ortíz laughed again, with much more merriment than before. “Jack, Jack, Jack,” he said, shaking his head in amusement. “ You are a treasure. Now that I’ve discovered you, what am I going to do with you?”

Jack shrugged. “Captain Churco here already likes me, and is something of a fortune teller, because he told me that my lifeline showed great things happening for me in the near future. Of course, that was before he shot me, not that I hold it against him, I can’t tell you how many friends I’ve shot along the way. These things happen in the very best of friendships.”

“They do indeed, Jack. They do indeed. Now, back to your question: You had blood drawn, and they told you that the pseudo-spirochaetes inside you most likely came from Quicksilver.”

Jack nodded again. He hated didactic exposition. “Yeah, please cut to the chase if you would.”

“Fair enough, although I had a wonderful lead-in all prepared.” He shrugged. “We’ve been importing food from Quicksilver for several hundred years, and we’ve been eating it. We’ve also been exporting it to other colonies, because Quicksilver is by far the most productive agriculturally, while most of the rest are primary sources or minerals and raw materials of various kinds, but their suns don’t produce the exact spectrum of light that Earth-based agriculture thrives upon, or have mineral deficits that make Earth agriculture less than optimal. In short, every colony has imported at least some Quicksilver agricultural products, and every human living, anywhere in what we like to call ‘known space’ harbors this organism in their body, as far as we can tell.”

“So? The doctors said it was benign, and caused no disease, and then trotted out a list of similar organisms that live inside or on us with no particular ill effects.”

“They may not have explained themselves clearly then, because many of the organisms are actually beneficial, like the bacteria on our skin that help us to fight off other, harmful organisms, or those in our gut that help us to digest the food we eat. And they certainly forgot to mention the mitochondria, the little cellular engines that supply the energy we need to be alive, which are almost certainly ancient bacteria, with their own DNA, that moved into our cells a very long time ago and made multi-cellular life possible.”

“Okay. I’ve heard about mitochondrial DNA, because we use it in the crime lab the same way we use regular DNA, to prove identity, but the mitochondrial DNA also lets us prove maternity, so when we collect evidence containing DNA, all we have to do is search the records until we find someone’s mother, or grandmother, or some female ancestor — as long as they have DNA on file — and then work forward again until we find a suspect or victim. Not everyone has a DNA sample on file, but almost everyone has a birth certificate.”

“Exactly. Well, under certain circumstances, the Quicksilver pseudo-spirochaete is able incorporate itself into our cell structure and nervous system as intimately as the mitochondria in every cell in our body. How much do you know about the Quicksilver psuedo-spirochaete?”

He hated people who abruptly changed the subject too. “It’s a superconductor. They use it to make fancy electronics.”

“It’s also a very strong nanofiber, so it not only allows us to make devices which are very efficient electrically, but are also very strong. Do you see where I’m going?”

It was the goddamned Socratic Method, that’s what it was, and he hated people who did that too. “So if this stuff got into our cells, it might make our physical structure hold together better.”

He nodded. “And augment the electrochemical connections in our nervous systems, which are fairly slow, with true electrical connections, which travel at the speed of light in a given medium. Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘a knee-jerk response’?”

He was doing it again. “Yeah, and the doctors test your reflexes by knocking your knees with a little rubber hammer.”

“What do you think the doctors would find if they knocked your knee with a little rubber hammer?”

He thought about that one, but not for very long. It wasn’t that the Socratic Method didn’t work, after all, but that it tended to edge past the line of legitimate pedagogy into smug condescension very quickly, and it was too damned slow. His brain worked a lot faster than most people could talk, much less pose cute little puzzles for him to figure out. “Okay. I get it, and just for the record, I find Socrates extremely annoying.”

Senator Ortíz laughed a lot like Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon, the good version, with Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet, not the endless remakes. “Well, well, well, I’ll cut to the chase then, as you so succinctly put it. You’ve been ‘speeded up,’ as have I, and we’re held together by stronger ‘glue,’ if you will, and and it has something to do with Quicksilver, but I haven’t a clue how it’s done, or why, and I want to know. It can’t be inherent in the pseudo-spirochaete itself, or everyone alive would have experienced the same effects. I suspect that Luz Calderón knows, but she’s given me to understand through subtle hints that she doesn’t want to discuss it on the ansible links, which I can understand, since the ansible is like an infinite party line where anyone can eavesdrop on our calls at any time, and the information can’t be encrypted, because it violates some obscure (at least to me) quantum mechanical rule.”

“Hold on, Senator. I’m not volunteering to spend the next sixty years in coldsleep to be your errand boy, and I can’t see how that’s going to help you, because you’re very likely to be dead by the time I get back, if you’ll pardon my saying so, along with my Mom, all my friends, and almost everything I like here on Earth.”

Senator Ortíz smiled with genial amiability and spread his hands wide, as if he were a conjurer and had just completed a fantastic feat of prestidigitation. “Now there, Jack, you’re in luck. Although this knowledge is not yet widely circulated, I have a large project in the works for a replacement stardrive capable of translight speeds. The drive has already been successfully demonstrated with robot vehicles and we’re in the process of constructing ten ‘spaceliners,’ as we’ve rather unimaginatively termed them, to take advantage of this drive and to make possible voyages between all colonies presently in existence with travel times as low as seven days to Gruntovoy — if for any strange reason you actually wanted to go there — and as high as three months to the Libra and Fourier colonies, approximately five hundred and twelve times the speed of light. Quicksilver, by regular transport, will be a little more than two weeks each way. They should be available for service in six months or so, could be a bit less, could be a bit more. Does that make the task sound more attractive? Let’s say, if one wanted to see someone special?” He smiled in genial approval, a benign San Antonio, casamentero divine.

It did. On his salary, he couldn’t even afford the ansible charges to call Barbara, and would have been a little afraid to do so even if he had all the money in the world. All they’d really shared was looks, and a few words while he was being poked and prodded back in Wyoming, and even those were translated through a threedee screen, so they were far more effectively separated from each other than if she’d been behind bars, even if these bars were invisible. There was a song that said, ‘If you want to know, if he loves you so, it’s in his kiss.’ Maybe when, or if, they met in person, she’d take one look and say, “I’m sorry, you … you looked so … different on the vid screen,” which depressed him. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Okay, I’m interested,” Jack admitted.

Now the Senator grinned like the host on a threedee quiz show. “You’re in luck again, Jack. Behind door number two is yet another option. We’re also constructing what we call a ‘scoutship’ designed primarily for exploration, but it will also serve as our initial manned test vehicle. It will be wildly overpowered in proportion to its size, but will be able to reach Quicksilver orbit from Earth orbit in a tad more than four days, one thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight times the speed of light, less than fifty-seven years to cross the entire diameter of our Galaxy in coldsleep.”

“I’m not particularly interested in crossing the Galaxy, just going to Quicksilver.”

“And back, Jack. I’ll turn the scoutship around and send it back with you aboard the next day if you can provide the answers I seek, but it doesn’t do me any good if you know what Luz knows and still can’t tell me, because you’d have to use an ansible terminal to do it.”

“Okay. You’ve got a deal. Three and a half round-trip tickets.”

The Senator was puzzled. “Three and a half?”

“I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy, Senator. If things turn out well between us, I’ll bring her home to meet my Mom, maybe a sibling or two, and Mom can come back with us for the ceremony.”

“Five, then.”

“Five?”

“I’m an old-fashioned man, too, Jack. If she’s to accompany you to Earth and back, it seems appropriate for her to have a female companion as her chaperone. Believe me, your mother will appreciate the gesture, even if you don’t see the need just now, and I believe Barbara will too. You might also consider the fact that your mother might be pleased if you had two ceremonies, one on Earth and another on Quicksilver, so that no one is slighted on either planet through not being invited to the wedding. It’s generally the custom for a bride to know her maid, or matron, of honor, so you’ll have to bring her along. You’ll have one spare ‘voucher’ then, or two, if Mom decides to stay, if any one — potentially two — of your siblings wants to emigrate from Earth to Quicksilver quickly, and I’ll personally guarantee transport gratis on the scheduled service for any of your siblings, their spouses and children, who wants the same. Distant cousins and hangers-on pay cash.”

Jack raised his eyebrows at that, and took the deal. Quicksilver was one of the most desirable of the colony planets, so most emigrants had to post a substantial bond. He was being offered the rough equivalent of ten year’s salary, a remarkably generous offer, and it would get his immediate family off Earth — and away from its endless squabbling over resources and corruption — and out to the edge of things, where things were changing. “Done! Senator, I’m your man.” He held out his hand to formalize their agreement with an old-fashioned handshake.

The Senator found it charming.

Group Captain Cyril Farquhar struggled toward consciousness with the throbbing hammer of the electronic ‘Call to Quarters’ klaxon pounding on his brain. ‘What the fuck?’ This was supposed to be easy duty, a hundred year Extended Reserve service — with full pay and benefits for his dependants — in his case his parents and one sister — with the entire duration of his ‘service’ spent in transit and orbiting picket duty as a corpsicle around one of the colony planets. He’d fully expected to wake up back on Earth, or on one of the colony planets if his parents had taken his advice and emigrated off Earth. He’d left conditional instructions about his demob port if that were so, but had never expected to see his parents alive again, and his sister only if she’d emigrated to wherever he demobbed. He yawned, trying to get air into lungs which hadn’t breathed for at least fifteen years subjective time or more. They’d told him that he would feel like crap for an hour or so, but they were being optimistic; he felt like … he couldn’t think of anything bad enough to describe how he felt right now.

In the meantime, the damned klaxon was still throbbing, adding a growing headache to his long list of complaints, and obviously designed to make the most of his hellish experience, like the joke about the people in Hell standing up to their necks in a lake of stinking shit, and then ordered to get back on their heads because their coffee-break was over. And still the noise went on, rattling right through his brain. He struggled to remember the steps of the self-extraction procedure, trying to feel the call-button strapped to his hand, which would supposedly open his drawer — unlike many of the air officers and marines under his command, he refused to call it a coffin — and turn off the goddamned noise.

He found it … ‘At last!’ and the sound died away without touching the ghostly fading echo of it still sounding in his brain, if not his ears, until it too died away.

The drawer slid open and the stale air of the narrow corridor flooded in, tainted with the smell of lubricating grease and oil meant to prevent corrosion over the long years. His muscles still stiff and protesting, he reached to his chest to press the quick-release device that would free him from the straps and webbing that had held his body away from the surfaces of the … drawer. He wriggled around to squirm his body out of his container, getting hung up several times on small projections as he tried to float free into the corridor without leaving important pieces of his anatomy behind.

Finally, he was free and suddenly desperate to find the Zero-Gee Urination Fixture (male) so he could relieve himself. He did not want to spend the next half hour collecting floating blobs of piss.

 

 

Back in control of himself and his bladder, dressed at last — he felt much more like a commissioned officer in uniform, since it’s difficult to assume a military bearing when nude — he pulled himself down the corridor, opening the control panels beside each container and pressing the bright red ‘REVIVE’ button inside. He heard hidden machinery start the process of evacuating the coldsleep serum from the men’s veins and arteries as NuBlood analogue replaced it. Eventually, the artificial blood would be replaced with natural platelets through normal biological processes, but the first men out, his officers, would be ready to be helped from their containers in an hour or so, depending on how much body mass needed to be warmed. It was a tedious business, since there were a hundred and twenty men under his command. Only when the last man was on his way toward consciousness did he make his way to the bridge and activate the ansible console, a lo-rez military model, but adequate for command and control. Eventually, a face appeared, an ordinary airman to judge by the insignia on his fatigue uniform, and it must have been a dog watch on Earth, since he had that slackness of bearing that often appears toward the end of the normal working day. “Group Captain Farquhar, commanding UEA-Ulysses, reporting in. Please notify the Commanding Officer of the start of our transition to readiness.”

Then, he began reading the airship’s log to figure out where and when they were, since he, and the entire crew, had been in coldsleep from before they began their journey to their duty station until just now. Command didn’t feel it necessary to tell anyone where they were headed because it might change along the way, depending on the tactical situation of the moment. Since they weren’t at war with anyone, their destinations were largely random, selected to provide the best statistical ‘coverage’ for theoretical dangers, and were changed as needed by tactical protocols never divulged to lowly Group Captains. As he read, he smiled. They were only twenty light years from Earth, and in the L-3 Lagrangian point directly opposite Quicksilver in its orbit around Delta Pavonis. Maybe when whatever this exercise was about was over, he could arrange a week or two of liberty for his men on-planet. They were still fifty years from their scheduled rotation back to Earth, and he knew the men would be reluctant to crawl back into their drawers so soon. He had to admit — to himself at least — that the idea of climbing back into that narrow box made his skin crawl just then. He hoped it was something simple; a returning probe gone astray, a vessel fallen out of drive, and needing repair before it could proceed. It happened from time to time, and one of the many tasks their airship was fitted for was salvage and repair. Since any passengers would be in coldsleep, there was rarely any particular hurry for rescue efforts, although the passengers might be startled to arrive twenty to a hundred years late.

He yawned again and decided to check in with Quicksilver while he waited for orders. Since they were on opposite sides of Quicksilver’s sun, neither radio nor tight-beam laser would work, so he used the ansible terminal, entering the parameters needed to select the local authorities from the vast amount of ‘noise’, both other ansible contacts and the quantum flux generated by black holes. “Group Captain Cyril Farquhar commanding UEA-Ulysses, stationed on picket duty in your vicinity, calling base commander.”

A woman’s voice answered. “Welcome to Quicksilver, Group Captain Farquhar, this is Barbara Big Horse, base commander, chief cook, and bottle washer.” She grinned. “We’re a relatively quiet backwater here, Group Captain, and fairly informal. If you don’t mind my asking, ‘Farquhar’ is a rather unusual name. You wouldn’t happen to be related to Judith Olivia Farquhar, would you?”

Group Captain Farquhar blinked, unmanly tears starting at the corners of his eyes. “Judi? Here? I’d never thought to see her in this life again.”

She smiled again, “This must be your lucky day, then, Group Captain. She lives in town, is married to a local resident, and has three children now.”

“How’s she been doing? The last time I saw her, she was quite young.”

“She’s doing well, and very well. She works as a local producer for our threedee series, Quicksilver Passion, which is number one in the ratings back on Earth. Would you like to talk to her? I know she’d be glad to see you.”

“She’s there?”

The woman laughed. “Oh, no, but she’ll be in the studio now, and they have more ansible bandwidth available than I do here. Let me transfer the parameters to your device.” She made motions below the view of the camera and a little amber light appeared on his console. Group Captain Farquhar stared at the light, almost afraid to touch the control to store the information lest it somehow be lost.

The woman smiled again and said, with that peculiar softness women have when they see men caught up in strong emotion, “I’ll sign off now so you can call your sister. I’m sure you have a lot to talk about.” The screen dissolved into utterly random ‘snow.’

His hand was just reaching toward the lighted control when the device switched automatically to the command and control parameters, his report was evidently being acknowledged. ‘Prick, ass, fart, shit,’ he cursed mentally, then came to attention as an Air Marshal appeared in Mess uniform. Evidently he’d interrupted something of importance. ‘Good!’

“Group Captain Farquhar, good of you to respond so quickly.”

“Sir!”

“I’m Air Marshal Vidkun Quisling, in command of 1 Group Air Combat, and we have a grave situation on Quicksilver. I’m entrusting you with the vital mission of resolving it to the satisfaction of Earth Authorities.”

“Sir?” His suspicions were instantly aroused. Air Marshals don’t ordinarily hie themselves out of full-dress dinners to give orders to lowly Group Commanders. Surreptitiously, he thumbed the ‘record’ control on his console.

The Air Marshal continued, “The Quicksilver colonists have revolted, and at last report had slaughtered those few armed forces stationed there and threatened to cut off further transfers of needed agricultural products and murder the commander of the civil forces, as well as remaining members of the government, unless we meet their outrageous demands. I hereby order you to proceed immediately to Quicksilver, destroy their stronghold in the central portion of the main town, and dispatch a contingent of Marines to capture, hold, and defend the planetary spaceport under martial law.”

‘This is crazy!’ he thought. “But, Sir!” he protested …

 … and was cut off. “This is a matter of world importance, Group Captain, and vital to the survival of Earth itself. Are you refusing a direct order?”

“No, Sir!” Now he was worried, and caught in a terrible trap. The penalty for mutiny was no longer death, but might as well be, since the prescribed term of imprisonment was an even thousand years in coldsleep.

“Then carry out your mission, Group Captain! You are to make no further contact with Command until that mission is accomplished, lest your ansible transmissions be intercepted and the mission be compromised.”

“Yes, Sir!” He saluted …

 … and the screen went blank, evidently shut down on relayed orders from Command, so he was cut off from the Universe outside. He stared bleakly at the dead screen, then smashed his fist onto the console. “Jesus H. Christ on a crooked crutch! What mole-headed fuckwit back at HQ dreamed this up?”

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Eighteen ― Traitor’s Moon

 

¿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

 

 

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we must contend.

 — Marcus Tullius Cicero (attributed)
Loosely based upon the Second Oration against Cataline

 

 

“Gentlemen, we have a situation, and I’d like to solicit your input.” Group Captain Cyril Farquhar stood in the crowded Wardroom with his senior officers, seven in all. “Firstly, our ansible terminal has been turned off by Command, so we can neither verify nor ask for confirmation of what I’m about to show you. In fact, it’s only because of my own paranoia that I can show this at all. Wing Commander Smythe, could you play the recording?”

Smythe stood. “Sir! By way of explanation, gentlemen, Group Captain Farquhar asked me to retrieve this data cube from the ansible console, and I found it necessary to disassemble the device to do so, because it had been disabled by an interior circuit I didn’t know existed which caused the transmission and reception circuits to fuse. The recording speaks for itself. According to Group Captain Farquhar, the speaker identified himself as Air Marshal Vidkun Quisling, in command of 1 Group Air Combat. I have no reason to doubt the Group Captain’s statement.” He pressed a control and the image of the Air Marshal appeared on the Wardroom threedee console and spoke, starting in mid-sentence.

“ … Quicksilver colonists have revolted, and at last report had slaughtered those few armed forces stationed there and threatened to cut off further transfers of needed agricultural products and murder the commander of the civil forces, as well as remaining members of the government, unless we meet their outrageous demands. I hereby order you to proceed immediately to Quicksilver, destroy their stronghold in the central portion of the main town, and dispatch a contingent of Marines to capture, hold, and defend the planetary spaceport under martial law.”

“But, Sir!” the Group Captain’s voice said.

“This is a matter of world importance, Group Captain, and vital to the survival of Earth itself. Are you refusing a direct order?”

“No, Sir!”

“Then carry out your mission, Group Captain! You are to make no further contact with Command until that mission is accomplished, lest your ansible transmissions be intercepted and the mission be compromised.”

“Yes, Sir!”

The screen went blank and there was a low buzz of conversation in the Wardroom ….

 … which Farquhar cut short as he took over. “I’m sure that many of you have noticed what I did; ordinarily, we would have been contacted by someone lower in the chain of command, and the mere fact that an Air Marshal subverted that chain is suspicious, which is why I recorded what I did. What the recording doesn’t show, however, and the supposed Air Marshal didn’t know, was that I had just a few moments before this exchange been in contact with the ansible whose parameters are registered as belonging to the Quicksilver Base Commander, and had a fairly lengthy conversation with her immediately before talking to the supposed Air Marshal. She gave no hint of knowing anything about this so-called ‘revolution,’ and in fact discussed mundane details of daily life on Quicksilver in a manner which leads me to believe that the situation as described by the man dressed in an Air Marshal’s uniform did not, and does not, exist. For all I know, that man could have rented that uniform at a costume shop.”

There was another buzz of words between the officers and then Flight Lieutenant Henley said, “Sir! Isn’t it customary to transmit a written copy of any orders, Sir?”

Farquhar smiled, but not pleasantly. “Yes, it is, Flight Lieutenant Henley. I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to appear as if I were leading anyone’s thoughts too strongly in any particular direction. It is ‘customary,’ and is indeed ordinarily a legal requirement under the Uniform Code of Military Justice in operations involving the use of deadly force, and a separate document detailing the exact rules of engagement for this particular action. Instead, all these details are left to my own imagination. The Air Force runs on paperwork, and I can’t requisition a replacement teacup for the Wardroom without submitting forms in quadruplicate, much less order a military assault on largely unarmed civilians, so it might appear as if the ‘Air Marshal’ was either unaware of proper military protocol or wanted to give himself ‘plausible deniability’ in case of any later enquiry, either one of which will put our collective asses in a sling.” He scowled.

Henley, obviously a brave lad, said, “But if I understand the situation, Sir, without properly signed and transmitted orders we’d be guilty of a war crime if we actually carried through an assault on a civilian population.”

Farquhar shook his head in sad disagreement. “Yes, and no, I’m afraid, and in fact we’re potentially damned if we either comply with the order or refuse it. The Air Marshal — if that’s what he is — could claim that the exigencies of the tactical situation required him to cease communication immediately, and that there was no time to prepare a written order, in which case we’re presumptively guilty of disobeying the lawful order of a superior officer if we disobey, unless we can prove otherwise, but the burden of demonstrating this would be ours. On the other hand, if we act as if the order were ‘legitimate’ and comply with it, he might might easily disavow giving any such order, in which case we might possibly be found guilty of war crimes as you describe, except that he doesn’t know about our recording — but we have also to assume that he might suspect that a recording might exist, in which case the recording could simply be made to vanish.”

“How so, Sir?”

“Right now, we’re mid-deployment. At the end of our mission — whatever it is — we’ll be expected to climb back into our coldsleep capsules like good little boys and go beddie-bye while our superiors — possibly the putative Air Marshal — take over the task of driving the airship around. Wouldn’t it be terrible if our airship ‘accidentally’ dived into a star?”

“Sir!” Henley looked a little green.

“Military discipline relies on explicit relationships of trust and authority between the ranks, and you see what happens, gentlemen, when trust breaks down. That’s what I meant when I said that our asses are in a sling. At some level, gentlemen, I believe we’ve been betrayed, and I don’t know whether this is a military conspiracy or a civilian one, but cold-blooded murder is contemplated upon a civilian population, so I have no reason to believe that the planners of this charade would hesitate to encompass our own destruction. Whoever did this has the capability of accessing our military ansible unit — the parameters of which are rarely shared outside the services — and possessed sufficient knowledge that they were able to manipulate a separate ansible airship control interface in such a way as to wake me.” Then, he furrowed in brow for a moment before holding up his hand to quell the comments already rising as an undertone.

“Oh, and I just thought, looking again at the recording, but there’s a further incongruity as well. I was told by this fellow to make no further contact until the mission is completed, but since the ansible itself has been disabled through physical damage, there’s no way to get in touch with anyone, much less report on the success or failure of the mission, This lends further credence to my tentative theory, that no one cares what happens after our attack on the colony, but that the man who issued those orders doesn’t want me to ask any one for clarification or written authorization.”

Henley asked, “Could this access to the command and control pathways have been done through simple ‘hacking’?”

Farquhar answered, “Theoretically, yes; practically, no. Ansibles work through exploitation of subtle quantum effects usually described as ‘spooky action at a distance.’ To put it simply, particles small enough to be affected by quantum effects can be manipulated in such a manner as to affect particles to which they’ve been intimately associated. Every particle in the Universe was once — at the moment of the ‘Big Bang’ of creation — associated with every other. The discovery of the ‘Ansible Effect’ meant that — provided we knew enough about a given set of particles, we could manipulate them in such wise as to cause other particles, anywhere in the Universe, to be instantaneously affected. There’s still a huge debate going on about whether this means that we’re intimately connected to the entire Universe or simply that everything is rigidly predestined, and that what we think of as ‘free will’ is mere hallucination.” Looking around the Wardroom, he saw quite a few uncomprehending stares.

“No matter,” he said. “I don’t really understand how it works either, but the ‘parameters’ we input into the devices essentially establish a quantum ‘connection’ between one device and another. The chances of discovering these parameters through chance are extremely small — although experiments using the combined processing power of many large scientific supercomputers operating in parallel have actually managed to accomplish it in several experiments — so we treat ansible communications as if they might be eavesdropped upon, even though it seems unlikely that anyone will actually accomplish this. We don’t know everything, though, and some clever child now growing up on Earth might eventually discover a method of discovering ansible ‘parameters’ so quickly as to be a trivial task, like scanning through radio frequencies looking for a signal, but with our present knowledge — as of approximately fifty years ago at least — it couldn’t be done easily, and the chances of doing it twice, with both the airship communications ansible and the airship control ansible, seem vanishingly small.”

“So what do we do, Sir?” It was Wing Leader Norman Bateson who spoke, but his uncertainty spoke for all of them.

“Gentlemen, what we’re talking about is potentially mutiny, and it doesn’t much matter whether the mutiny is on one side of the cusp of this thing or another. I can’t lawfully order you to mutiny against Earth Command, nor can I order you to comply with the orders I’ve just shown you, because I have serious doubts about their legitimacy, and yes, Henley, an unprovoked and murderous attack upon an innocent civilian population would be a war crime, if there were no clear indications of armed hostility, and if the so-called Air Marshal refuses to admit to giving that order, which I firmly believe to be his intention.” He paused for a moment, but no one seemed inclined to raise a question.

He continued, “I further believe that this entire situation has been designed to make us the ‘fall guys’ for someone with a political agenda. Our status as the dupes in this little plot carries with it considerable risk, I think, since we ourselves must be prevented from divulging any details of the plot, whether we carry out these ‘war crimes’ or not, since it seems clear to me that some criminal enterprise was planned, and our testimony might ensure the downfall of an unknown number of very powerful people whether or not we are manipulated into criminal activity of our own or not. As the old saying has it, ‘Dead men tell no tales.’ so to prevent the people behind these planned murders from being found out, it will be necessary to murder us all, and we ourselves are being used as dupes to taint the name and reputation of the Air Force itself in such wise that people will avoid using our names for their children for a hundred years or more, just as people still don’t name their baby boys ‘Benedict Arnold’ or ‘Guy Fawkes’.”

“There was a collective gasp, or groan, or whatever sound it was that each individual in the room was moved to utter. It was one thing to be threatened with death — that was a known hazard of a military career — but to be threatened with dishonor and disgrace, even by proxy, was especially daunting.

The Group Captain went on, grim-faced. “The military protocols for this sort of situation are quite clear, going all the way back to the ancient ‘Pirates’ of the Caribbean sea on the eastern edge of Central America. If we decide here to put this question to the enlisted ranks, our little band of brothers will be a democracy, with any delegation of authority or command subject to a secret ballot in which all of us have an equal voice. For the purposes of this meeting, and any further decisions along this line of action, I’m no longer your commander, but an ordinary airman trying desperately to save his own life, and those of his brothers-in-arms.” Group Captain Farquhar sat down at the Wardroom table for the first time.

 

 

They took the lander down to the spaceport, just Farquhar and Smythe, with sidearms holstered. They strolled up the road to where the administrative offices were located and went inside. There was no one at the reception desk so they walked a short way down the most inviting hall and found a door with a plastic placard affixed to it: Barbara Big Horse — Base Commander.

Farquhar knocked.

A woman’s voice inside called out, “It’s not locked, just come on in.”

They entered, Farquhar first, and stood side by side before her desk. “Captain Big Horse,” Farquhar said.

“Group Captain! You should have called ahead, and would have met you at the ’port.”

“Well, we experienced a few difficulties on our way here,” Farquhar said. “Perhaps this will explain.” He handed her the data cube.

She looked at it, slightly puzzled, and inserted it into a small threedee viewer on her desk. After watching it through, she blinked, than said, “I understand your problem. Of course, I surrender my forces completely, assuming your authority is lawful, but I wonder if you might be willing to have me transmit this vid through my own chain of command for clarification.” She started calling on her own ansible terminal, but said offhand, “If you wouldn’t mind, I think I have a neurolizer in that cabinet over there, so you can take possession of all the ‘arms’ I have right now. We did have more, but I worried about children getting hurt.” her face darkened into a scowl. “So we destroyed them all.”

Relief flooded through him, and he said, “That won’t be necessary. I was hoping you might do something like that, actually. We were getting along so well before, and I’d hate to blow anyone I like to smithereens. We were thinking of just refusing, but considered that might have serious consequences, until one of the enlisted men came up with the notion of invading, per orders, and asking permission to blow up the base with no loss of life, thus fulfilling the strict scope of our command without actually doing anything. He’s quite a creative fellow at skipping work as well, but I’m rather inclined to like him just now.”

“He does sound like a likeable sort of man, but hang on a sec …” The threedee showed a handsome Hispanic looking older man. He was smiling. “Senator Ortíz! It’s good to see you, but we have a little problem here, would you mind watching this feed?” She manipulated a control on her device and the ‘Air Marshal’ recording streamed in a little inset at the bottom of her screen.

The Senator’s jaw was set and he was glowering at no one in particular after he saw what had happened. “Thank you, Barbara, for bringing this to my attention.” Then he turned slightly to encompass the two of them. “And you are, Sirs?”

Farquhar introduced them both.

“Very good, Group Captain Farquhar and Wing Commander Smythe. If you’ll wait for just a few moments, I’ll have properly signed and countersigned documents in your hands countermanding these so-called orders very shortly.”

“Sir?” Farquhar spoke up. “I’m also worried about my officers and crew, Sir. Those responsible for this destroyed my ansible terminal through remote means, and I fear they may be plotting to murder any potential witnesses against them through harming the airship.”

“Then there’s no time to lose.” He turned to Barbara. “Barbara, could you scare up an ansible technician and get him up to his airship at once? Group Captain, we can cut any possible remote access to the airship control ansible in a very few minutes, which should restore full control of your airship to you, as well as provide new ansible terminals for any necessary communications. Barbara, please have him take a couple of spare terminals with him, and scramble the parameters so that no one will know how to find them without being told.”

“Done,” she said, and keyed in a code on her communicator. “Mike, could you get over to the spaceport double quick? Bring your ansible toolkit and a couple of scrambled spares. There’ll be a lander there and an Air Force officer either waiting for you or arriving soon.”

Than she turned to Smythe and said, “Could you hop down to the space port? Mike Robbins will be there very soon, since he lives and works just across the way. You can describe your problems and I guarantee that he’ll be able to fix them. I’ll be here with your Group Captain, so he can ensure that I don’t blow up anything.”

His face colored slightly, and he said, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but we were in a pickle.”

“I’m sure you were, but you’ll all be fine now. If you’d like, please assure your pilot that he can land if you’d like. We’re fully-equipped for heavy freighters, so we should be able to handle a little packet boat with no problem, and that way you could be sure that the men aboard will all be safe and they could walk around a bit and breathe fresh air for a change.” She grinned and added, “The ‘rebels’ are fully pacified by now, I think.”

He glanced over at Farquhar, who nodded. “Thank you, Ma’am!” he said and hurried out the door.

“Now, Group Captain, if you’ll excuse me, I have to use the ladies room, and you have my parole.”

“Of course, Ma’am. I don’t mean to cause any difficulties.”

“Think nothing of it. Oh! and while you’re waiting,” “ she pointed at her terminal. “This blue button here in the lower left corner,” she showed him which one of the small row of color-coded controls she meant, just happens to select a direct connection to your sister, in case you didn’t have enough time with her before.” She walked toward the door. “I’m an extra for most of the Quicksilver series off and on, in my spare time, so she won’t be surprised to receive a call from my terminal, I can’t say the same about seeing you again. She talks about you often, you know, but like you had thought she’d never see you again.” She smiled and waved as she blithely walked through her office door.

He walked over to her desk and sat down, studying the blue button for a long moment before he pressed it. The screen flashed, and then a woman’s face appeared, and she said, “Hi, Barb … ” before she looked at him in confusion and her brows furrowed slightly, trying to puzzle out who he was. She was getting on towards middle age now, but she looked … happy, and she was beautiful. He smiled and said, “Hi, Judi. Long time, no see.”

She looked at him with puzzled attention, then knowledge swept through her and she screamed, “Cy!? Oh my God. Cy! You’re here! Wait right there! I’ll be there in five minutes!” Her face scrunched up and she started crying, “Oh, Cy, you gave us all our lives, and now you’re here. You’re right here. Hang on for just a few minutes more.” And she closed the connection.

He was nonplussed for a moment, and then realized that the Judi he’d known as a child would never have talked on a vidscreen if there was any chance of meeting in person, and Barbara had said — he thought he remembered her saying that — that she lived in town, so she must be nearby. He walked to a window that looked out on the fields behind the building, and they looked lush and green in the fading sunlight of a yellow sun. It must be late afternoon, a strange, but oddly familiar sight. Before they’d left Earth orbit, they’d spent the best part of a year training for the space environment, so it had been a long time since he’d seen a sun though an atmosphere, a long time since he been somewhere you could just walk outside without a pressure suit. High in the sky, he could see the faint outline of a quarter moon, and it looked a lot larger than the Moon he remembered from Earth. They must have tides here like nobody’s business. Then he remembered reading that there were two moons, so the tidal patterns must be very complex.

Just then, he heard the door open behind him. Thinking that it must be Barbara, back from her errand, he wanted to ask where Judi would be coming from, so he could go to meet her on the way. He turned and said, “Barbara …”

 … But it was Judi, and she had three children beside her, a girl, perhaps fourteen or so, and two strapping young men, who both looked to be in their late teens, just a little younger than when he’d first enlisted. He felt a little pang then, because they reminded him of all he’d given up, a family of his own, a home even, when he’d chosen the Air Force Academy as a way out for all of them, his brother and Judi, his Mom and Dad. ‘While I’ve been frozen, drifting in space and time, my younger sister has gone far beyond me,’ he thought, ‘and is a woman now, while in some ways I’m still a boy; no wife, no children, no home more substantial than a tin can, lost among the stars.’ He felt suddenly bereft, because he had nothing, was nothing, except whatever his sister had built upon the ruins of his life, and the one thing he could be proud of was that his body had been placed between her life and the creeping desolation that was the dying Earth, and that his love for her was untarnished.

She smiled at him, and he felt as if his heart would shatter, torn in half by mingled pride and jealousy. She spoke, “Cy!” and rushed to embrace him, weeping now, “It’s so good to see you.”

“Judi, you’re all grown up now, so big, bigger than life, bigger than I am now.” He had to bend down, but he buried his face in her shoulder as salt tears burned all his sins away.

“Jack, so good of you to come!” World Senator Ortíz was in a very good mood.

Jack wondered why, because his moods rarely corresponded completely to the context of a current situation. It seemed sometimes as if he were living on two planes of existence, the ordinary world that most people saw around them, and a secret world outside the world that only he could see. “Nice to see you, Senator. You called?”

“I did, Jack. I have a job you might be interested in, since it involves Quicksilver and Barbara Big Horse specifically.”

“How so?” Jack was cautiously optimistic. Ortíz might, after all, be using this to eke the last bit of drama out of his ‘scoutship,’

He took a folder from his desk and handed it over. “Take a look at this,” he said.

Jack opened the file. It contained a few lowrez mugshots of some sort of military officer in a fancy uniform, a data cube, and an extensive investigation file. He looked up in puzzlement. “And I’m interested in this guy why, exactly?”

“Because this gentleman, who purports to be an Air Force officer, ordered an unprovoked attack on the Quicksilver spaceport and the administrative center where your Barbara Big Horse has her office.”

Jack’s jaw clenched and his face hardened into controlled fury. “Is he?” he bit the words as he spoke, since no throat was available.

“I have no idea. No one who looks like this is a member of any military service, but the man had some sort of access to confidential military information, because he — or those he worked for — was able to wake the officers and crew of an Air Force spaceship on picket duty using secret military access parameters, and later destroy their ansible terminal using a method that even the ship’s maintenance officer was unaware existed.”

“So he could either be a stooge or a VR construct used as a mask for an actual officer.”

“I’m inclined toward the latter hypothesis, Jack, because it’s more difficult — as I understand it — to pretend a familiarity with military customs and jargon than one might imagine. Captain Churco has talked with the officer who received these orders, and he remembered no specific false note in the impersonation — if that’s what it was — other than the fact that the man’s supposed rank, that of Air Marshal, the equivalent of an Army General, was overkill for the actions being ordered. The holos you see, and the vid feed, were supplied by the officer and available because he’d ‘smelled a rat’ early on and started recording the exchange.”

“And the ‘rat’ he smelled was?”

“The uniform was what they call ‘Mess Uniform.’ which is only worn for formal occasions, so it implies that one wouldn’t want to shoot the breeze with friendly chitchat, thereby incurring the wrath of someone with important ‘places to be,’ and so might intimidate anyone with any insecurities. Group Captain Farquhar seems made of sterner stuff — Jorge says that you’d like him — and immediately realized that it also implies that some flunky wandered into the formal occasion and demanded that a general officer come outside and perform the military equivalent of washing up the silverware before going back inside and proposing a toast to the King.”

“I like him already, Senator, because he evidently stood squarely in the way of villainy most foul which concerns me personally.”

The Senator nodded approvingly. “Exactly so, although I’m given to understand that he had a few anxious moments puzzling out how to do it without sabotaging his career.”

“What authority of law will I have?”

“Because the planned action would have been overt treason under Earth law, and any steps taken in furtherance of the plot, including planning, conspiracy, coöperation, or failure to report same treasonous per se, I’ve taken the liberty of bringing you off the inactive list with the title of Plenipotentiary Investigator for the World Senate, with an impressive warrant card and badge which will be the envy of all your former fellows on the Force. In this position, you are not only authorized to ‘look at a king’ — if we had any worth looking at — but spit in his eye. Try not to kill anyone, but only because the paperwork involved can be tedious and time-consuming. Other than that, you have both the high justice and the low as far as I’m concerned.”

“Sounds good enough, since I’m feeling slightly murderous. I can call on resources as needed?”

“There’s a charging account in the file. I doubt that you’ll overdraw it.”

Jack smiled unpleasantly. “That will be just fine. I already have a few ideas. This data cube is an exact duplicate of the cube on Quicksilver?”

“That it is. Have fun,” he said brusquely and turned immediately to some other task on his desk …

 … and Jack felt adequately dismissed.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Nineteen ― Ill Met by Moonlight

 

¿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

 

 

Our feelings we with difficulty smother
When constabulary duty’s to be done
Ah, take one consideration with another
A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

The Pirates of Penzance
― William Schwenk Gilbert &
   Sir Arthur Sullivan

 

 

Barbara Big Horse walked back into her office, where the Group Captain was sitting down on her office settee, his sister and niece on either side of him while Judith showed him pictures of her husband, the children growing up, and catching up on the fifty or so years of history that had passed him by, thirty of which Judith had skipped as well when she left Earth for Quicksilver. The boys were lounging in that disjointed way boys have, as big as men, but not yet grown into manly self-possession. They were obviously bored to tears by the pictures, but were simultaneously excited by the presence of their famous uncle, not only an Air Force officer, but a Group Captain, which they knew was some sort of posh. Barbara had a file folder in her hand. “Group Captain? I have your orders here.”

She handed them to him, and he took and read them over immediately, a relieved expression sweeping over his face about half-way through, and then a look of puzzlement. He looked up at her in silent question.

She smiled. “Ah! I see you’ve noticed. In view of the foiled attack on Quicksilver Base and Admin Center, I took the liberty of requesting your secondment to us on extended picket duty right here in Quicksilver orbit, to stand watch against any other surprises those who tried — and failed — to subvert you might try again, and of course I don’t know where any other strategic reserves might be hidden, so you should remain on call for the foreseeable future.”

“But … ”

“No ‘buts’, Group Captain.” She smiled more broadly now. “You’re my prisoner now.”

He thought about that for a while, and then saw her point. “Yes, Ma’am!” he said. “It seems only fair, Ma’am, and safest.”

“Oh, more than fair, I think, if you’ll continue reading through that file. Since you’ll be in command of planetary defenses, ordinarily you’d have to hold at least one-star rank as Air Officer Commanding, but I wanted to give you an extra star, in case our enemy tries the same trick again, so you’ve been promoted to Air Marshal, with attendant rises in pay and benefits retroactive to first taking up your picket post here around Delta Pavonis, which will give you a nice little pile of credits to pay for your own beer, as I imagine you’ll want your contributions to your siblings to continue as before. Since being an Air Marshal isn’t nearly as much fun without a senior officer to kick around, I’ve put through another promotion for your former Wing Commander, who is now Group Captain Smythe with similar rises, et cetera, and I’ll let you handle telling him. You’ll probably need to adjust your other officer ranks as well, possibly recruit some locals, but I’ll leave that to your own good judgement.”

“Yes, Ma’am. With great pleasure, Ma’am! But my siblings, Ma’am?” He stood carefully, extricating himself from his niece, who’d latched onto his arm with considerable determination, and snapped to full attention.

“At ease, Air Marshal.” She grinned. “You’re among friends here, and yes, your brother is still alive, although getting on in years. Your support has made him fairly comfortable on Earth, but I can’t let you talk to him right this moment,” she said, the tone of her voice growing more serious. “I did all this for a specific purpose, you’ll understand. As Base Commander, I’m also the theoretical Planetary Governor, but we’ve never bothered about it here, because we’ve been ‘simple farmers’ for quite a while. By taking up my official rank, I’m taking up some of the boring bureaucratic ‘baggage’ that goes with it as well, one of which is responsibility for and control of my planetary defences, so I needed to give you a promotion, no matter what I did. I made the appointment retroactive as far back as I could manage, to give you as much instant seniority within Air Marshal ranks as I could manage on the spur of the moment.”

“So they’ll have to supply a Marshal of the local Air Force if they try to go over my head, as it were … It’s certain that they won’t find many Air Marshals with twenty years in rank.”

She acknowledged his observation with a nod. “Exactly. And our current Marshal of the World Federation Air Force is working closely with Senator Ortíz, I believe, so we’ve managed to keep your new rank secret for now. You’ll also note that I included the entire roster of Air Force officers of star rank and above in the file, with high-def vids so you can see both their faces and their characteristic movements. I’d like you to study them to see if any of their movements remind you of the artificial construct that was used in their attempt to gull you. For the moment, however, I’m ordering you to refrain from contacting anyone off-planet. I’d like to draw them out, so instead of saying anything about your visit here, I want you to simply ’disappear’ as far as anyone out there knows.” She gestured vaguely toward the sky.

He thought about that for a few seconds. “So when the impostor pressed the button to destroy my ansible, in that instant I simply vanished, as far as he knew.” He thought some more. “Won’t he try to do something with the airship?”

“I certainly hope so, and I hope that it’s only the beginning of many similar mistakes, but he’ll have to wait until he hears something from Quicksilver before he knows what to do next, since he’ll have no idea how long it will take you to prepare the ‘assault’ he ordered. I’ve had the compromised ansibles replaced, but I had the old airship control ansible connected to a airship simulator instead of destroying it, so we can not only see what they attempt to do with your airship, but try to trace back their ansible to its operator.”

“But can’t he just use the control terminal to ‘look around’ and see what’s happening?”

“I think not. In the first place, your old airship control ansible thinks that it’s connected to a airship still in orbit around Delta Pavonis, and all its sensors will relay appropriate vid and data feeds if queried. But a airship’s control ansible is a very specialized unit, because it requires a airship’s ‘bridge’ to command a airship, whether that ‘bridge’ is located on the airship or elsewhere, because the control interfaces remain the same. So he probably … or must have, ‘borrowed’ an existing one, and there aren’t all that many of them lying about.”

“So we’re depending on him not wanting to be caught sneaking around?”

“Just so,” she said, smiling. “But what’s life without a little excitement to keep us on our toes?”

Jack Webster was whistling as he walked into his old office building. The place still looked the same, the same dirty plastic flooring, designed to ‘hide the dirt,’ but as transparent as a whore’s makeup. He was looking at it through new eyes, though. One of the same cops was on the front desk, just as if this were any ordinary day. “Hi, Sandoval. Macleod in?”

Sandoval was obviously startled to see him. “Yeah, but … ”

“Can it, Sandoval.” He flashed his new shield as he walked into an open elevator door. “I’m going up.”

As he turned to press a button, he had the satisfaction of watching Sandoval grab his communicator.

On the thirtieth floor, he got off. Just down the hall was Macleod’s department, Forensics, and he walked through the automatic double doors as if he belonged there. He said a breezy ‘hello’ to Deborah, the fierce guardian of his privacy who ‘manned’ the front desk, but she knew that Jack was usually welcome, so she sniffed and let him pass. He knocked on Macleod’s office door, which was open. The placard said: Douglas B Macleod, MD, PhD, ScD.

“And what do you want, flatfoot, wee Sassenach that ye are?” Macleod looked up to glance at him, and was evidently in a good mood, because he was mixing metaphors.

“Dougie …” he said. “You cut me to the quick, and here I just stopped by to cheer you up.” he seated himself comfortably in the best of Macleod’s two guest chairs.

“Oh, aye? And what makes you think you could cheer me up?”

“Well, for one,” he said reasonably, “I’ve brought you a puzzle.” He tossed the data cube lightly on the desk.

Macleod looked at it with distaste. “And what might this be? Fan mail from some flounder?”

“Sorry, what?”

“Never mind.” He picked it up and inserted it into his desktop viewer, watching only for a second before he ejected it with a grunt of disgust and tossed it back. “It’s a fake, of course, and not a very good one.”

“How can you tell?”

Macleod looked at him as if he’d just taken first place in the Moron of the Week contest, then inserted it back into the viewer. “Look at the highlights in the avatar’s eyes. The lights in that room aren’t in the same position as the ones shining on those eyes. Didn’t they include the directions in that mail-order detective kit you sent away for?”

“Golly! There were supposed to be directions? No wonder I had trouble with that stupid thing. I didn’t like it anyway, because the rubber suction cups on those darts never stuck to anything, so the crooks were always yelling ‘Ya missed me a mile!’ even when I hit them, which wasn’t fair at all. No wonder they took up lives of crime. So you know it’s an avatar?”

Macleod’s scathing look could have been bottled as paint remover. “Ask me something hard.”

Jack smiled and tried. “Okay. That recording was made on an ansible terminal, since destroyed. Can you tell me where the content was transmitted from?”

“From where,” he said.

“What?” Jack was confused. Dougie often had that effect on him.

“Dangling preposition. Nasty habit.” He made an expression of distaste, looking dour indeed.

“Sorry,” Jack said

“What’s my budget?”

“What do you want?” He smirked, and rattled off his charging account number.

He looked up, all smiles. “Och! You always were a good sort, Jack!” He reached into a lower drawer and pulled out a bottle of single malt scotch and two glasses. “Let’s have a wee dram.”

 

 

By the time Jack left the office, he was feeling a little light-headed. Doug’s ‘wee dram’ had turned into three or four good slugs after he’d taken a good look at Jack’s departmental charge number. Jack had made some attempt to protest, arguing that Doug was trying to cheat him, but Doug had assured him that he was doing no such thing, since, to find that room, and the ansible that has sent that message, he’d have to invent a new technology or two, and search every vidshot available online, which would take an enormous amount of processing time, all of which cost real credits, but the resulting database and tools would be worth their weight in gold once he had them in-house, so he had no need to fiddle the books in his favor. ‘Well, then,’ he’d argued, ‘you should do it gratis, as a favor to an old friend.’ But Macleod had argued back that no one but Jack, in all his noble generosity, would fund such research. In the end, Macleod had agreed to name his new database after Jack, and they’d both acknowledged that the ‘Webster Interiors Database’ had a fine professional ring to it — and the acronym, WID, was absolutely golden, since it had ‘ID’ in it, and no one had ever used that acronym in the context of police work that they could discover — idiots all — and so shook hands on it with the slow determination that men approaching inebriation often demonstrate.

It wasn’t until he’d pressed the button and was traveling down again that he realized the having his name on a departmental database was going to frost a lot of people for many years to come and he began to laugh.

He was still laughing when he walked out the door of the elevator and almost ran into his old boss, Tom O’Hare, who was waiting for him with a few cronies as backup. “Well, hello, Mr. Ex-Boss. What an odd coïncidence meeting you here. I thought you had those fancy digs uptown. Slumming? Or slummed upon?” He arched one brow, his head back slightly in fastidious distaste. He noticed too that the lobby was empty, including Sandoval, who was especially conspicuous by his absence at the ‘security’ desk. ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ he thought. ‘This might just be a clue. Oh, goodie!’ A faint smile crossed his lips as a happy serenity blossomed within him — somewhere around his root chakra, he thought — and the Kundalini power rose up through his spine. Now he knew why the ancient Britons fought naked, because he was instantly as hard as a rock and wished his pants were just a skosh looser.

Both thugs came towards him, one from either side, trying to get behind him, as one said, “You’ll have to come with us.”

“Really?” he inquired brightly, just brimming with compassion and humanitarian feeling. “Why is that?” he asked, and deftly evaded their efforts to corner him by strolling behind the security desk. Now they were disconcerted. They’d obviously been expecting an easy takedown. ‘The more fools they, then.’

“Because Commissioner O’Hare here wants to talk with you.”

“But I don’t want to talk with him,” he said reasonably. “ I tried it once, and it was less than satisfying. I might add, though, that ‘O’Hare here’ is way too alliterative. It makes him sound like a Fusion Céilidh band, which is beneath his dignity.” He leaned toward them and whispered, “Confidentially, I think he’d prefer ‘O’Hare the Magnificent.’ ”Deftly, he palmed his neurolizer, just as a precaution.

Not deftly enough, perhaps, because O’Hare shouted out, “Watch it, he’s armed! He has a gun!”

 … and things went all to Hell in a yellow handbasket.

The lobby, it seemed, wasn’t quite as empty as it had appeared to be, because half a dozen armed men with assault rifles stepped out from behind pillars and doorways and started taking aim. Moving very quickly, he launched himself off one edge of the security desk, slid feet-first under the legs of the closest thug, neurolizing both as he slid past them, and then he was into the lobby and twisting up just behind O’Hare — who was still shouting about a supposed gun — and grabbed him around the throat. Unfortunately for O’Hare, one of the riflemen didn’t adjust quickly enough to their changed positions and pulled the trigger of his carbine. O’Hare happened to be in the way and he slumped.

It took a little extra effort to hold him up as a bulwark against more hysteria as he pulled his new shield, flashed it, and said, “I’m on the job, boys, and I outrank you all, Badge number I-008714. Phone it in. We can all stand down now and maybe you can keep your pensions, because this lying sack of shit told you that I was armed in an effort to turn you guys into his personal murder squad, but all I’m carrying is a Department-standard neurolizer, utterly useless at long range, and completely ineffective against armored men such as yourself.” He held it up.

The squad were looking uncertain now, so he upped the ante. “While you’re thinking, the Commissioner here is bleeding out with one of your slugs in him. Just think how that’s going to look on your report.”

Now they looked worried, but nobody moved.

“Still debating? Boy, boys, boys …” He shook his head in ironic sorrow. “I’m disappointed in you. My name is Jonathan Webster, Plenipotentiary Investigator for the World Senate, and I order you to stand down. I have my communicator recording this incident to secure storage, and I want those carbines on the floor now! or some of you guys are going to be headed out to the colonies through no fault of your own except an unfortunate inability to quickly respond to changing situations, not to mention having a dead Commissioner to explain.”

They looked at each other, then laid down their weapons and stepped back.

“Excellent, now one of you bright boys call for an ambulance, or you’ll have more explaining to do than you’ll be happy about. The estimable Commissioner here will probably survive for a while, but his shelf life is limited without that little ride to a hospital.”

Jack patted him down and pulled out a nice set of handcuffs, which Jack frugally snapped around his prisoner’s wrists, grabbed his cuff-holder on general principles, because many cops kept an extra key in them, and then rifled his pockets, person, and clothing for more goodies. He wound up with quite a pile. Another set of cuffs, four extra cuff keys, one in a pocket cleverly inset into his belt, another in the heel of one shoe, two neurolizers, one of them a very slick miniature version that looked exactly like a fountain pen and also had a slim cuff key hidden inside. ‘My, my, my, Tom. You’re just loaded for bear, aren’t you?’ he thought.

“By the way, guys, Commissioner Thomas O’Hare here is under arrest under UFCC 17-4235 and 17-4239 et seq, conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder while lying in wait, and several other crimes I haven’t got time to reflect upon right now. I want you men to accompany him to the hospital and keep him in custody until he’s up to being transported for formal arraignment. He’s a tricky son-of-a-bitch, so I’d keep leg irons on him and a constant eyes-on watch. If you manage it, all will be forgiven, and it may even turn out that the Commissioner was wounded while trying to evade capture. It’s up to you.”

“Yes, Sir,” one said.

“Take your weapons, and keep them loaded. The Commissioner has powerful friends who may not be happy to see him in custody, so watch yourselves. Call for backup if you like, and I’ll authorize the overtime against my department.”

“Yes, Sir!” Two of them spoke at once, which was a very good sign.

“You know,” Jack said, “I’m starting to like you guys. Want a job?”

“Sir?” the first one said.

“How would you like to be seconded to me as bodyguards and muscle? I’ll give you a twenty percent raise, plus enhanced pension contribution, and I somehow doubt that O’Hare will want you back, considering as how he’s going to jail and how you accidentally shot him and all. Mind you, I personally don’t hold that against you, so what do you say?”

The first one, a Lieutenant by his patch, said, “Yes, Sir, I believe we’d all go for that. I believe I speak for all of us when I say we didn’t much care for the Commissioner, and we apologize for any earlier misunderstandings between us. We were told that you were a desperate criminal.”

“Think nothing of it, Lieutenant …” He scrutinized the man’s name patch, which was smaller, than his insignia, “ …Saunders. Cops respect authority, and if someone in authority tells you to do something, you do it. No hard feelings on my part, and I always enjoy a bit of a scuffle, just not guns so much. Remind me to buy you guys a beer sometime soon.” He stuck out his hand and, one by one, they shook on it.

 

 

The Washington Mall was beautiful in the warm November sun, wide open and still green despite the drought. The sweet smell of the hibiscus trees that lined the walkways were a poignant memory of his first visit here with his parents. He remembered being in the Museum of Natural History and seeing the holographic dinosaurs stalking down the corridors, laughing when their images merged with strolling visitors, and thinking that there had to be a planet of dinosaurs somewhere, and that he might see them. If there were such a place, no one had found it yet. The discovery of Gruntovoy came right around that time, a steamy place of warm swamps and and shallow oceans, would be the perfect place for them, he’d thought, because some of the early threedees looked like the pictures in one of his great-great grandfather’s dinosaur books, passed down from the days when there were still books, but the largest animal species on Gruntovoy turned out to be giant insects, things like dragonflies in the air, but with wingspans the length of a man’s arm, huge spiders on the land, and in the water there were things like big crabs and lobsters. There were no creatures there like reptiles at all.

It was then that he’d decided to become a policeman, in a twist of childish logic he could no longer understand, but he’d wanted to be a space explorer before, to seek out the thunder lizards of his dreams. ‘What do kids know anyway,’ he thought, and wondered where Macleod was. He’d called late last night and asked to meet by the Lincoln Reflecting Pool for some reason, which was odd, because he rarely left the laboratory, and he was late, which was typical.

So Jack wasn’t worried as he stood contemplating the refurbished Lincoln Memorial and its reflection in the small pool before it. It used to be bigger, he’d heard somewhere, until the Park Service decided that they needed more room for museums and buildings, and with all that water going practically to waste — even though it was salt water pumped from the Tidal Basin, so its reserve supply was exactly the same size as the Atlantic Ocean. — whittling it down in size was politically popular. He wasn’t worried, that is, until he saw Deborah, the woman from Dougie’s reception desk, walking down the path, looking furtively from side to side. She was better as a bodyguard than a spy. Subtlety was not her strong point.

He walked toward her. “Hi, Deborah.” He spoke softly as took her arm, smiling as if they were old friends, which they weren’t. “How’s Dougie?”

She wasn’t exactly happy to see him. “He’s kidnapped, is what. And it’s your fault.”

“Probably,” he agreed. No sense arguing, because she probably had it right. “But who took him?”

“Some sort of World Federation agents. They didn’t identify themselves, but they were wearing those black tactical outfits they like to prance around in and had black velcro patches covering their mandatory ID strips.” She turned to face him with her lips pressed tightly together, and shook her fist at him, although she had to look up. “You’d better get him back, Jack Webster, or I’ll punch you right in the nose. Just see if I won’t!”

Jack took the threat seriously. “I’ll get him back, Deborah. I promise. Did he ask you to give me anything?”

“He did, and serve you right if I didn’t, except it might help get him back quicker.” She gave him his original data cube, plus another, and a sheet of paper. The paper had an address: 1304 I St NW and a name: World Senator Irene Sarantapechaina (Sarantapechos), the Senator representing Greece and the Balkan States.

Things started making sense. Although never strictly aligned with the Chillings crowd, Greece and the Balkans had been opposed to any moves toward independence on the part of the colonies all along, because they were heavily-influenced by the Japanese Yakuza, who were aligned with Chillings and also had ‘interests’ in the sexual slavery and drug ‘industries’ that thrived throughout the Balkans region, selling into Europe, Turkey, and the entire Levant.

For a while, when Ortíz and Bihar had been playing politics with Quicksilver to gain influence — and eventual control of Quicksilver’s resources, things had been going their way, but now, things were going badly for them and Senator Sarantapechaina was the current Chair of the World Senate Committee on Defense, well-placed for mischief. “This helps a lot, Deborah, and I think I might just know where to lay my hands on your boss and my friend. You lie low for a bit and I’ll see what I can do.”

She sniffed and said, “See that you do, Jack Webster. You’re not so big that I can’t paddle your behind.”

Jack smiled. “Of course not, Deborah. I’d never think that, and I will get him back.”

She turned and walked away without another word.

He keyed his communicator and said, without preamble, “Sarantapechaina. I think we’re ready.”

The new data cube held a copy of Jack’s new database, plus a file containing the inferred parameters of the ansible that had originated the hoax, and the interior shot that matched the background behind the "Air Marshal," which was in Senator Sarantapechaina’s home over on I Street NW in among the new developments. He sent that bit over to Ortíz, although he imagined that Churco would be taking care of it, then called up Saunders, the head of his new security detail. “Saunders, Jack Webster here. How are things at the hospital?”

“Not bad. We had some black-ops types show up, but they turned tail when they saw how many rifles they were looking at.”

“How many, exactly?”

“Three dozen men. Six up, six down, and twelve on the floor. There were only six come calling.”

Jack thought about that for about half a second. “Good job, Saunders. Keep it up and you’ll go far. Did you recognize any of the black-ops guys?”

“Not by name, but I’ve seen one of them handling security over at the Russell Senate Office Building.”

“That’s where the World Senate Armed Services Committee meets, isn’t it?”

“That’s the one.”

“Excellent. Give yourself a raise. Ten percent, I think.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Keep thinking, Saunders. That’s why you’re making the big bucks. The better you think, the better I like you. Covering the floor above and below your charge was clever. A lot of guys would have had a man outside the door.”

“Well, Sir, O’Hare sent six guys, plus private muscle, to handle just you, so I figured we were playing in the big leagues.”

Jack laughed aloud. “Saunders, I like you more by the minute.”

“So, do I get another raise?” he said hopefully.

Jack laughed. He had to give the guy credit for having balls enough to ask, anyway. “Not yet, Saunders, but we’ll see. Talk to you later.”

Next, he called Ortíz directly. “Jack here. I assume that you or Churco have seen that file. I think we should concentrate surveillance around the Russell building, her home, Senator Tamotsu Tsukasa, who has ties to the Yakuza, and have Churco check on any airship control ansibles any of them may have ready access to. Oh, and perhaps you could get a lawyer or two over to O’Hare’s hospital room. They sent a rifle team already, but my rifle straight flush beat their two pairs, so I expect a legal challenge soonish. How’re we doing otherwise?”

“We’re on schedule for the evening news.”

“Good deal.” Jack said. “Now we have to see the cards in play.”

As usual, the episode started with the Quicksilver Nights theme, a hard-driving bass guitar and drum set providing the backbeat as the lead guitar wailed into the opening credits, a montage of quick cuts of famous Quicksilver landmarks and clips of Dan Nasquith as Harry Cliffordson, Captain of the Quicksilver Border Patrol, and Luz Calderón as Penny Bright, his loyal assistant, combating smugglers, criminals trying to hide their evil deeds in Quicksilver's wilderness areas, and other dangers, then the ‘above the title’ credits for the stars, Luz Calderón and Dan Nasquith, then the logo, a jagged rendition of “Quicksilver Nights” in red and black against a really long shot from space, the planet Quicksilver itself, then the episode title, “The Valley of Shadows,” and the opening scene:

Harry and Penny are on stakeout in the darkness of a Quicksilver night, the two moons are almost in conjunction, low on the horizon, as they're keeping watch on some shady operators moving boxes out of a shadowy building and into a nondescript space lander, all without showing a light, and obviously a smuggling operation, the series stock-in-trade.

Penny gets on her communicator and says, “Captain, we're ready to move in.”

Cut to a shot of Barbara, in her character as Captain Jill Daniels, head of the local police force, with whom the Border Patrol maintains close ties. “Roger that, Penny. We'll be right behind you.”

Cut to a long shot of Harry, crouched over as he quietly moves into position, gun drawn, and holds his hand out behind him to signal caution, and then, just as a beefy man in business attire exits the building, obviously the boss, he shouts, “Border Patrol! You're under arrest!” while he beckons those behind him to advance.

Floodlights suddenly wash the screen with light and the armed men of the police force and Border Patrol agents combined advance as the smugglers are sparked into action. “Make for the lander, men! It's every man for himself!” someone yells and they start shooting and running, dropping the boxes heedlessly as they run for the safety of the lander and their hoped-for escape to their airship and on into space.

Cut to a closeup of Harry as he takes careful aim and, in a quick series of effects shots, puts a bullet into the airlock mechanism, effectively stranding the smugglers on the ground. He shouts, “Give it up! You'll never make it off-planet without a working airlock!” and some of the smugglers start throwing down their weapons and raising their hands in the air, defeated, while a few fight on, including the boss, who's trying to sneak off behind some machinery lying outside the building, a fairly typical intro to many episodes, because they liked to start with an exciting scene, then solve a larger crime requiring clever detective work, and then finish with a heart-warming scene of tender compassion or comic relief, one or the other.

Cut to the victorious forces of law and order rounding up the usual suspects, while Harry and Penny engage in their usual banter.

Penny: “You know, Harry, with your hand held out behind you like that, it looked like you were trying to do your famous ‘chicken’ imitation.”

Harry: [Superciliously] “You mean like, ‘Henny Penny?”

Penny: [Sourly] “Except in your case it would be Goosey Loosey!”

Harry: “Yeah, well …”

Just then, there was a tremendous explosion, and what looked like a standard World Federation UAE-Class Destroyer flew overhead, followed closely by another explosion as people started screaming.

Dan looked up — completely out of character — and said, “What the Hell?”

Luz screamed, “Run! Dan! Run!” and they both ran off camera, away from the action …

 … as the airship turned to make another pass over what was revealed in the light of the explosions to be a town being bombed to rubble. Unlike most threedee shows, the camera didn't move to follow the action, so the production values were terrible, although the terror of the population, some of whom were apparently blown to bits in front of the camera's unwavering view, was eerily realistic.

Then, the airship landed, and the assault ramp came down with a thundering crash, awkwardly off-center in the camera's view, and too distant for a dramatic effect, even as a battle-group of fifty armored Marines came pouring down the ramp and ran into the town, gunning down anyone still moving …

 …as the picture was replaced by a “We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.” still. It was just the end of the hour and a commercial started to roll.

The calls started almost immediately.

In another room, Senator Irene Sarantapechaina was talking via vid link to Senator Tamotsu Tsukasa, who was seated at a low table in what looked like a restaurant with several men. On a threedee screen behind them, a Japanese news reader was talking with the sound turned off — you could tell, because automated closed captioning in Japanese was scrolling as his mouth moved — while an inset showed snippets of the strange footage from Quicksilver Nights, edited down to capture the ‘good parts.’ “Well, gentlemen, I think this calls for champagne all round,” she said.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Twenty ― Moonlight Sonata

 

¿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

 

 

All warfare is based on deception.

Sun Tzu
The Art of War

 

 

The new Air Marshal of the Quicksilver Defense Forces, Cyril Farquhar, slept fitfully his first night on Quicksilver. The spaces around him were too large, the world outside the open window of his room too open, filled with tiny sounds, the rustle of leaves, the low sough of the breeze across the endless fields, all these things were unfamiliar, alien, despite their sentimental ‘homeliness.’ He was a child of the city. Except in threedees, he’d never seen a field, a farm, not even a tree that wasn’t surrounded by pavement and a cage to protect it from young men with too little to do and knives in their pockets.

His dreams were strange as well, disjointed, shifting wildly back and forth between different scenes, perspectives, inchoate actions, even appearances. He woke up several times, his heart pounding, and had to turn on the light, because in his dream, he’d looked at his hands, but they weren’t his hands at all, and only when he was awake and staring at them could he convince himself that his hands were the same as ever, that he was still himself.

Barbara Big Horses’ communicator sounded a low — and relatively unobtrusive — electronic tone. She thumbed it on.

“Governor Barbara? Cyril Farquhar here. Ashton has some rather interesting news from the airship. He’s picked up an incoming picket on a hyperbolic orbit from somewhere out in this system’s accretion disc. I think we have to assume that they’re on the same mission I managed to skip away from, but I don’t think they’ve seen us, because our atomic signature will be blanketed by the out-streaming stellar wind and of course our new ansible will be unknown to them, so they can’t ‘ping’ it to find out who else is here, if the ‘Air Marshal’ has even left them with a working ansible. I’ve had Ashton duck over to the inner moon for now — to preserve the advantage of surprise — but we’ll have to come up with some sort of new plan soonish.”

“Ah, well,” she said. “ Wasn’t it Generalfeldmarschall Helmuth von Moltke who said, ‘No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength’? I’d had some presentiment of danger regarding a ‘back-up plan’ on the part of the faux Air-Marshal, so I can’t say that it surprises me, exactly. What sort of timeframe are we talking about?”

He was silent for a moment, evidently working out the details. “At maximum thrust, early evening local time, about twelve hours from now.”

“Assuming we engage, how would you like him?” she asked.

Bemused by her self-assurance, he said, “On the ground, with his assault ramp down and his Marines well out. He won’t be able to abandon them then without severe repercussions, especially if his men are under fire ….” He thought for a long moment. “Which gives me an idea. How fast can your prop department whack together a mock-up picket boat? They can use a balloon or fabric model on an armature for most of it, because it won’t have to fool anyone close up, just enough to look plausible lying crashed on the ground.”

“Not long at all. We used a prop smuggler airship in an episode of Quicksilver Nights just a while back, so it shouldn’t take too much to rework it to make it look more like your own airship, especially if we smash it up a little. I’ll have it deployed right now. The shooting location was a little beyond the town, so it will probably look like it was attacked while trying to land and overshot the port.”

“Sounds good to me. How attached are you to the town?”

“They’re just buildings, they can be repaired or replaced. In warfare every strategy is a system of expedients. Every fortress represents an awkward weakness that has to be accommodated, and encourages your enemy to create ever more clever alternatives, so it’s best not to create them.”

“Then I have a new plan. I think you should have the civilian population evacuate out into the countryside — with anything they’d be loathe to leave behind — just in case, and set someone digging some slit trenches on the path from the spaceport into the town.”

“Skirmish lines?”

“Purely for harassment and delay. My plan involves the disabling or destruction of their airship, and I believe they’ll capitulate quickly in the face of overwhelming force with no possible retreat. With their own airship disabled, and the Ulysses above them, they’ll either surrender or die, and they’ll know it.”

Barbara said, “So the ‘crashed’ airship convinces them that you tried and failed to accomplish his objective, which encourages him to commit more troops to ensure a quick and decisive victory.”

“And also fools him into believing that there are no armed airships to oppose him, which will, I hope, make him careless, not to mention the ‘natural’ anger he will feel because of the supposed deaths of his fellow airmen.”

Barbara asked. “Doesn’t it bother you, Air Marshal?”

“No, Ma’am. Not really.” He shook his head. “By agreeing to attack a planetary settlement without independent verification, and presumably with the same shoddy excuses for orders that I was given, he’s committing an act of unprovoked aggression upon a civilian population in violation of the laws and customs of war. Don’t forget that I was contemplating mutiny before my crewman had the bright idea to ‘slough off’ a half-assed ‘invasion’ that was sure to fail, thereby saving both my self-respect and my command. I intend to make every effort to end the conflict quickly, so as to encourage the prompt surrender of his Marines, at least, and as many of his crew as might survive. My primary feeling in this is that the honor of the service is at stake, and sincerely hope that the villains who set this in motion will be brought to justice. To accomplish this, I have to defeat this new force in detail, since I don’t want to risk my own command unnecessarily. My only regret is that most of my own contingent of Marines is up on Castor and can’t help to defend the town or populace without giving away its position.”

“Don’t worry about that, Air Marshal. We can handle the ground action on our own,” Barbara said with surprising confidence, at least it surprised Cyril, since she’d told him that all their weapons had been destroyed when they’d first met.

“But you have no weapons! How …”

“That’s the easiest part of all, Air Marshal. When those Marines run down their assault ramp, they’ll be carrying weapons, won’t they?”

“Well, yes, of course, but …”

She interrupted him. “Well then, we’ll simply have to take them away, and then we’ll have all the weapons we’ll need.”

Group Captain Alexi Gogol, commanding UEA-Valentina Grizodubova, wasn’t happy about his assignment. In the first place, attacking a civilian settlement wasn’t what he’d signed up for, and in the second, he was suspicious of this Air Marshal Quisling, who’d somehow destroyed their ansible after ordering the attack. It hadn’t escaped him that the loss of the ansible meant the end of his mission, since he’d have no way of receiving new orders nor any method of transmitting intelligence back to Command, so he’d have no choice but to abandon his post and head back to Gruntovy. The discipline of military courtesy and obedience had set him on his inward orbit, but with grave misgivings.

As they plunged toward Quicksilver’s star, however, he saw something through the forward viewing screen which at least partially substantiated Quisling’s claim that the colony was in revolt, the wavering and highly-magnified image of what seemed to be another UEA-class picket boat lying wrecked some distance from the town. As they hurtled closer, however, clouds drifted over the town and space port, so he set his best image analyst to inspect the recordings of what he’d seen before the view was obscured. He didn’t see any sort of gun emplacement, but such things could be concealed.

He made his decision. Since he had at least some physical corroboration, he would attack the government compound Quisling had said was in rebel hands, but avoid any but collateral damage to civilian areas. It seemed almost inconceivable that the weaponry available to a local police force could bring down a airship of war, but perhaps something had been smuggled in to help with a revolt, a shoulder-fired missile, for example. He’d be forewarned in any case, and have electronic and other countermeasures ready-to-hand, so he wouldn’t worry about it. The other officer had no doubt been over-confident.

He gave the order for turnover, and the Valentina Grizodubova began its complex series of stardrive engagements to match the complex STF-tensor product corresponding to safe planetfall on the moving surface of Quicksilver deep in the gravity wells of Delta Pavonis and its own circling moons.

“What’s his ETA?” Dan asked.

Luz was sitting in meditation, but answered quickly enough. “He should be here about five minutes before airtime. Cyril has already been notified to have the Ulysses on standby. They’ll lift as soon as we give the word. At this distance, they’ll be here within twenty seconds.”

“Good, we’ll start setting up, then, and be ready to start on the mark.”

Almost as precisely as if it had been written into the shooting script, there was a tremendous explosion, and what looked like a standard World Federation UAE-Class Destroyer flew overhead, followed closely by another explosion as people started screaming on cue.

Dan looked up — completely out of character — and said, “What the Hell?”

Luz screamed, “Run! Dan! Run!” and they both ran off camera, away from the action and Luz signalled the FX crew to start processing the outgoing signal. The timing was delicate, because they were streaming, as it turned out, only a few seconds behind the real-time action, so the technical staff would need all their skills and quickness to create a seamless spectacle ….

Dan ran headlong toward the airship, which had landed, as expected, at the spaceport, opting for the safety of a durasteel-reïnforced concrete ‘pad’ over the uncertainty of choosing ground rocky enough to support the weight of the airship ….

 … while Luz followed closely on the heels of the Marines, reaching out for the power seething through the plants around her to supply ‘psychical’ snipers to draw the men’s fire while the effects crew overlaid the action with realistic ‘victims’ to conceal the fact that the men were firing at invisible foes ….

 … Until the show clock, silently counting down towards ‘curtain’ went to zero, the outro was replaced by a technical difficulties slide, and the direct feed from the cameras was to the network ansible was cut, at which point loud sirens located throughout the town sounded to let everyone know that the ‘take’ was over and Luz dropped the whole body of Marines — wherever they were marching — with a sudden psychic blow.

The airship was a more delicate problem, because the officer-in-charge and the remaining crew were well-insulated from Quicksilver’s electromagnetic field, so Dan very quickly ran in with a pair of sapping charges grabbed on the run from a waiting FX crewman stationed there long before the airship landed, slapped one on each of the two rear landing supports, then ran off while the effects crew set them off as soon as Dan had cleared the vicinity and the camera crews caught multiple angles of the event as the supports collapsed and the airship first toppled slightly, then fell over on its back with a resounding crunching crash. It was quite spectacular, and would certainly perform yeoman service in the Quicksilver Nights series.

At that point, Cyril called in the Ulysses and opened a ship-to-ship radio channel to the Valentina Grizodubova, then waited until someone answered. It took a while; he didn’t imagine they were having much fun right then. “Hello, UEA-Valentina Grizodubova,” he said. “This is Air Marshal Cyril Farquhar of Quicksilver Planetary Defense. I order you to surrender immediately or be destroyed. Your Marines have been decisively defeated, and even now the airship UEA-Ulysses is stationed overhead quite prepared to blow you to kingdom come if you don’t comply within five seconds, or if we detect any offensive movement or build-up toward stardrive activity.”

It took only two seconds before someone said, “This is Group Captain Alexi Gogol, commanding UEA-Valentina Grizodubova. I surrender my airship, Sir, and request immediate medical assistance for my crew, some of whom were severely injured when my airship capsized, and then myself. I seem to have broken my arm.”

“Of course, Group Captain. I accept your surrender in the name of the World Federation. Please prepare to be boarded.”

“My airship, my officers, my crew, and I am at your disposal, Sir.” He hesitated, then added, “Excuse me, Sir, but World Federation, Sir?”

“Of course,” he said, “Group Captain. What did you expect? If you haven’t quite figured it out yet, you’ve been duped into a treasonous attack upon a civilian population by some very clever conspirators, and you’re all under strict arrest pending the outcome of your courts-martial. It’s only through the diligent efforts of our security team that you’re not facing charges of capital murder in a time of peace.”

“Thank you, Sir. I should have paid better heed to my own misgivings.”

“I partly sympathize, Sir, since the conspirators tried the same trick with me, but we managed to escape the trap with neither loss of life nor damage to property. Hindsight is always perfect, of course, but you should have sent down a lander to investigate the situation in more detail. The deception would have been instantly clear had you bothered to gather your own intelligence.”

“As you say, Sir.” He sounded bitter, as might be expected. Few commands survived the loss of an airship.

“Cheer up, Group Captain. Provided you give your parole, you won’t be imprisoned pending trial, and even now our agents on Earth are gathering evidence to trace the conspiracy higher up the chain of command. As you know, the higher it goes, the more likely you are to be let off with a tick mark in your jacket.”

“Yes, Sir,” he replied. He didn’t sound exactly happy at all, but then it’s hard to be cheerful with a broken arm.

Jack Webster was in his tactical black assault team uniform, lurking at the top of a building opposite World Senator Irene Sarantapechaina’s home on I Street NW. Before him, was a recording ansible modified according to Dougie Macleod’s instructions and connected to the mains in the utility room below. Ansibles drew vast chunks of power in operation, so he’d had an electrician go over the set-up down below to ensure that he didn’t trip a breaker somewhere and lose his signal. His communicator vibrated. “Webster,” he said.

Churco replied, “It’s the blowoff, Jack.”

Jack switched on the ansible. “Tracing,” he said, and switched off.

He didn’t have long to wait. He’d guessed right about the location, at least. An ansible powered on across the street and was quickly answered by another, whose parameters he quickly captured and sent off to Churco with a wireless patch through his communicator.

In the meantime, he watched and listened.

Senator Sarantapechaina said, “Tsukasa-san,” as soon as the link was made.

“Yes, Irene. We have succeeded. Ortíz has been shown to be incompetent through your brilliant plan, and I’ll have a motion on the floor to replace him early tomorrow morning.”

“And I’ll second your motion, Senator, and modestly accept the chair when we convene the resulting investigation.” She smiled. “His new-found enthusiasm for shifting technology outward into the galaxy has severely limited profits here on Earth, and hurt us all.”

“Hai! Senator-san. He’s interfered with our shipment of drugs to the colonies as well, and by subsidising the transport of women to the mining colonies had badly affected our ventures there as well.”

The Senator clucked her tongue. “You really ought to try harder with ‘Sarantapechaina,’ Tsukasa-san. It’s discourteous to use my title so, as you know.”

He bowed low. “My deepest apologies, Senator. My clumsy tongue finds it difficult to manage Greek. Even your illustrious family name defeats me.”

She sniffed. “I want to meet with your associates within an hour or two to discuss my new share of their drug and sex operations in the West, then.”

“I’ll arrange it, Senator. Will our usual meeting place be adequate?”

“Of course. I just have a few things to handle here and I’ll be ready.” She switched off the ansible.

Jack was prepared with a conditional search warrant, however, and instantly executed it, since he’d just been witness to presumptive evidence of a criminal conspiracy. The chime came almost instantly, which authorized his electronic surveillance of the premises, so he tapped into the broadband lines leading into the building and started a ‘limpet’ worm to seek out local vid feeds on both ends of any connection and camp on them.

First, the Senator called Air Chief Marshal Frederick Hauptmann. “Hauptmann, We’ll need you to tidy up on your end, of course, but you’ll want to pack, in any case, to prepare for your move into your new offices as Marshal of the World Federation Air Force.”

“Thank you, World Senator Sarantapechaina, my agent at the spaceport informs me that both airships are back in space now, in different orbits around Delta Pavonis.”

“Do you have any explanation for the failure of the Ulysses?”

“None, Senator. Although the airship control interface detects no problem, perhaps something else interfered with his mission. There’s been no word at all of any contact between the Ulysses and Quicksilver authorities, so something must have gone wrong somewhere.”

“No matter. Delta Pavonis is still hot enough to allow many things to vanish into its chromosphere, so please arrange for their immediate disappearance.”

“Of course, Senator,” he said and disconnected.

Too late, of course, since Jack had his hook firmly set by then. He thumbed his communicator. “Got that, Churco?”

“I do, Jack. He’s calling the DC Metro spaceport now. We’ll have one of your friend Douglas Macleod’s tracing ansibles on him within a few minutes. Plenty of time, I think, since he’ll have to set the controls to simulate a UEA-Class Bridge before he can do anything. And all we have to catch is one set of commands to do him for both.”

“Good. I know we can’t move yet, but I have a particular hatred for people who contemplate mass murder through stealth and deception. I’d appreciate the opportunity to ride along when you take them.”

Churco laughed. “There’s a long line, Jack, but you’ll have a place well up toward the front, and we have loads of evil-doers so far. I’m sure there’ll be at least one for you alone to slap the cuffs on. Hasta luego, Compadre.” He switched off.

Jack immediately began scanning through the images available from vidcams inside the Senator’s building — and there were quite a few — until he found one which looked likely. There was a lone figure in a very small room laying down on a pallet on the floor. The only other items in the room were several plastic water bottles, all but one of which were empty. Taking a chance, he looked at both ends of the vid feed and poked around until he found a room which matched the monitor circuit, but it was empty, according to its own vid feed. He keyed the small room’s comm circuit. “Dougie?”

“It’s aboot time ye showed up, ye daft Sassenach.” He turned and saw that Doug was sporting a hell of a black eye, and various contusions besides. He was proud of his friend for putting up a fight, but at the same time angry that anyone had been cruel enough to target an old man over a little pile of dirty money.

“Sorry. I had to wait until someone said something incriminating, and you know how that goes.”

“I do. I’d appreciate a backup plan, though, as once these things start winding down, witnesses have a funny way of disappearing.”

“I have three police sharpshooters with me, armed with heavy-metal armor-piercing stardrive rounds, so we shouldn’t have much trouble handling any potential assassins until we bust in, which should be within an hour or two.”

“You have my position located on the building plans?”

Ooops! “Of course I do, Dougie. When have I ever let you down?” In the meantime, he’d called up the plans and relayed them to his sniper team, along with the location of the vid feed.

“Liar. I heard you fiddling with your communicator right then. Your voice changes when you do that.”

“Well, I meant that I was doing it. I just managed to track you down.”

“Hmmph! Ye’ve no career ahead of you as a spy, Jack. Stick to flatfooting is my advice.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Dougie. Cobblers, and sticking to, that is.”

He laughed. “Very shrewd, Jack! I might be wrong at that.”

“I had a good teacher, Dougie. Stay safe.” he replied, and rang off.

Senator Irene Sarantapechaina answered a vidcall from Senator Tamotsu Tsukasa. He was seated at a low table in an izakaya restaurant with four other men. On a threedee screen behind them, a Japanese news reader was talking with the sound turned off while an inset showed snippets of the strange footage from Quicksilver Nights, edited down to capture the ‘good parts.’ “Well, gentlemen, I think this calls for champagne all round,” she said and smiled. It was not a pretty smile.

The discussion lapsed into Japanese right after that so Jack called Churco on a second circuit and told him that he’d be ignoring most of it, other than to verify the recording he was keeping.

“Couldn’t you just let me know when we have enough to execute our warrants, Jorge?” he said plaintively. He wanted to bust a couple of heads, especially whoever it was that had roughed up Dougie, but he’d probably never get the chance.

“Jack,” he said, “you know it will be after they’ve finished the call, or their attorneys will be able to claim that their very next words were ‘April Fool!’ We’re stuck with it for the long haul. Right now they’re discussing the exact amounts our esteemed Senator Sarantapechaina will receive from the sexual exploitation of children, her cut of the sexual enslavement of women having been already settled. Evidently, children bring a better price, and she wants a larger percentage.”

“Jesus Christ! Can’t we apply to the union or something and make her turn in her Woman card? I still have these boyish fantasies of women being more innately pure than men, and then I run across women like this one.”

“Not too often, Jack. Just as most men are good, and try to live lives of kindness and compassion, even more women, I think, have the same inclination. The Senator from Greece has never had children, nor has indeed been married, which I think stunts every human from their full development, but especially women. Without the daily experience of profound love, the human soul withers and dies, Compadre. Remember that, my friend, and don’t give up your own hopes and dreams for a mere job.”

“Jorge, you’re a hopeless romantic.”

He laughed. “Señor, soy Mexicano, and every true Mexican man imagines himself a caballero, a knight of old, lacking only a sword to ride off and rescue fair maidens from giants and dragons. Don’t you want to do the same, if you listen to your heart of hearts?”

Just then, Jack saw something out of the corner of his eye, the monitor he’d set to keep an eye on the corridor outside Dougie’s prison cell now showed a man in a business suit walking towards the door. “Hang on, Jorge! We’ve got a situation.” He selected another circuit. Sniper team, look sharp! There’s a man walking toward the room Douglas Macleod’s being held in, and Macleod’s a cop, so watch out for him.

He kept watching the guy anyway, not trusting his friend’s life to strangers, and saw him reach inside his jacket and pull out a gun. He switched to the interior view and kept watch. “Be ready, guys. If he points that gun, he’s toast!”

The man walked in.

Dougie was standing in the corner, well away from the door and offering the skinniest target he could. “What brings you here, Sanderson?”

“Sorry, old man. Orders, ya know …” He raised his gun and …

 … his head disintegrated into a puff of blood and brains, a surprisingly horrible red dandelion, but only for an instant.

Doug was over to the door in a flash, surprisingly spry for an old man, pulled the body into the corner under the cameras had the worst view of, tossed the thin pallet over it, then quietly closed the door and said, “All clear. Unless someone heard the slug on the way in, they probably won’t miss him for a while, and this is in an isolated section of the house.”

“Won’t the slug have set off some sort of alarm?”

“Not unless it cut a wire,” Dougie said cheerfully. “Most glass sensors detect vibration or breakage, and those things move so fast that they don’t cause much of either. The slug will have vaporized the glass, and it will have happened so quickly that the glass won’t have had time to vibrate. The slug started to tumble though, which began to slow it down. That’s why it transferred so much energy to his brain.”

Jack said, “Oh, well then, that explains it.”

“Now, Jack,” he said. “I was right glad to see it happen — considering the alternative — and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. He’s the one who gave me this shiner.” He gestured toward his eye.

“Well,“ Jack said. ”I am sorry I won’t have the opportunity to hand him a couple of good whacks, though. I have to confess that I’d been looking forward to it a little.”

Jorge interrupted their little tête-à-tête by saying, “Senator Sarantapechaina has just hung up, although the men are still talking. We’re all set on your end, Jack, execute your warrant and get your friend the hell out of there!”

Jack gave the signal. He was too far up to do much about the actual entry, and there were too many doors and windows ….

He could see Senator Sarantapechaina on his vidscreen, and she wasn’t acting panicked at all, but was gathering up her things as if she had someplace to go, and suddenly Jack remembered Senator Ortíz and his tunnels. He had a vague recollection that the block of stately homes the Senator lived in had been created from an old public park, and public parks were famously handy for major sewer access hatches. He cursed and headed down to the street as quick as he could manage, sliding down the steel bannisters of the fire stairs and crashing through the fire exit in an explosion of sound as the alarm went off. Through some miracle of enhanced perception, he saw a sewer manhole cover in the middle of the street, ran over to it and somehow managed to pull it off, then dropped down the access ladder using his hands as brakes. He was just in time to see the Senator and two of her thugs turn the corner, walking towards him as calmly as if they were taking a walk in the park, which he supposed they were, in some déjà vu mystical sense. They obviously hadn’t seen him, and Jack was in his devilishly handsome black Rambo outfit, perfect for lurking on roofs and hiding in sewers. He drew his handgun, checked out from the police armory for just this occasion, and waited.

Senator Sarantapechaina was extremely angry. Some penny-ante cop was going to pay for this outrage. As a Senator, she was immune from arrest while the World Senate was in session, which it was, and that privilege extended to search and seizure. She did, however, think it might be best if she laid low for a while and let her lawyers argue the niceties of jurisprudence. “As soon as we get into the open, call my counsel,” she said to one of the men beside her, David, she thought it was.

“Yes, Senator,” he said. “I called for a car to wait for you at the exit near the tidal basin, since that has the best access.”

“Too bad we can’t have lights in here,” she said. “I suppose it might draw attention from up on top, though.”

Suddenly, a deep voice came out of the darkness in front of them. “Too late, my precious dearies. It already has.”

One of the thugs reached for his gun, unfortunately unaware that he was silhouetted against the light behind him, and received an old-fashioned slug right in the center of his chest for his pains, which obviously wasn’t very good for him, because he slumped to the floor like a sack of concrete.

“Naughty, naughty,” said the voice. I can see you all quite plainly, and I want you all to lie down on the floor in exactly the manner your chum so thoughtfully volunteered to demonstrate. You two are under arrest. I’m afraid your little friend is dead, so he’s not under arrest, the lucky stiff.

“Do you know who I am, you idiot? I’m World Senator Irene Sarantapechaina and ….”

“I know, I know, and monkeys fly out of your ass. Now get down on the floor. I’ve got thirty-two shots left, and all of them have your names on them, Senator Sarantapechaina, and what’s-yer-face, the muscle. What’s your name, ‘Muscle?’ If I feel like shooting you, I’d feel a profound sense of loss if I didn’t purchase a little plaque to install down here in the sewer where you both so richly deserve to die.”

“John Connor,” he said.

“And his name, by the way? Perhaps I can save a few credits on a two-for-one.”

“David Santini.”

“Oh, good,” he exclaimed happily. “Both short. That will save a bit, as I understand that one pays by the letter, so you understand, don’t you Johnny? You don’t mind if I call you Johnny, do you? Johnny? It seems more intimate and friendly. You do understand that it will cost less to shoot you than it did dear David, don’t you, Johnny?”

“Yes.”

“Then down on the floor, now! Both of you! Now!” His voice was harsh.

They both knelt, then laid flat on the sewer bottom.

He slid one pair of his good cuffs over. “Now, Johnny, you won’t mind picking up these handcuffs and cuffing your right hand to the right hand of the Senator there, will you, Johnny?”

“No.”

“Do it now, please, and squeeze hard on hers. So many women can slip out of cuffs if they aren’t properly tightened. I have a flashlight here, Johnny, and when I turn it on, if I detect any looseness at all, or they’re not properly placed, guess who gets shot while attempting to escape?”

“Me,” he said.

“You are a clever boy, Johnny! Are you ready for your test?”

He took the time to make sure that the cuff was properly placed, then answered, “Yes.”

The light went straight into his eyes first, blinding him even more thoroughly than before, then flicked down to the cuffs. “Good job, Johnny! Now we have another job.” He slid another set of cuffs along the floor to where they lay prone, John’s right hand — perforce — across her shoulder. “Here’s another set of cuffs, Johnny. I want you to cuff one cuff around one of her ankles, and then the other around your left wrist. Got that Johnny? Shake your head, ‘no,’ if you want to die right now and spare us all the fuss.

“I got it.” He proceeded to apply the cuffs as directed, which was more than a little awkward.

“Feels a little odd being so intimate with your boss, doesn’t it, Johnny? Feeling kinky?” He kept the light on now, because he didn’t want to miss any stealthy movements toward hidden cuff keys.

He said, “No.”

“Too bad, then. Where you’re going, that’s probably the closest you’re going to get to a woman for the next thousand years. So many things can happen in a thousand years, Johnny, did you ever think of that? There could be a power failure and the first thing you know you’d be a little pile of rotting goo instead of a corpsicle.”

The Senator said, “Let’s just get this little charade over with. You can’t legally arrest me, so as soon as I get to the police station they’ll let me go and that will be that, except you’ll be fired as quick as you can turn around.”

“I’m afraid, Senator, that you’re laboring under a case of bad legal advice. You’re not going to jail, but to a military stockade, and you’re both under arrest for high treason, illegal acts of war, sedition, espionage, crimes against humanity, murder and piracy under false colors, improper hazarding of vessel, misappropriation and destruction of military property, frauds against the World Federation, and many other crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You may be situationally immune from prosecution under civil law, but you really ought to have consulted the Judge Advocates General before embarking upon a life of crime in the military.”

“But I’m not in the military! You stupid moron!”

“Tch, tch, tch. Senator, Senator, Senator. Whatever will we do with you? I’ll have to read you your rights now, because that’s a separate crime, impersonating an officer, and here you went and admitted it. It was you, wasn’t it, Senator? I recognised the way you carry yourself when I saw you moving down the sewer towards me, just shadows without the distraction of clothes and faces, Air Marshal Vidkun Quisling.” He smiled. It was not a pretty smile.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Twenty-One ― Moon of Gold

 

¿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

 

 

There is only one true magic,
only one true power,
only one true redemption,
and only one true happiness ―
and that is only love.

 —Hermann Hesse

 

 

Barbara Big Horse set the prisoners from the Valentina Grizodubova who’d given their parole to rebuilding the offices and structures they’d destroyed, which kept them nicely busy. Those who declined were set to the same tasks under guard, which was irritating, but their right as prisoners, since soldiers were not and could not be required to assent to an offer of parole. Strictly speaking, the question was moot, since they weren’t actually prisoners of war, but rather stood accused of mere criminality, one of the common perils of military life, since one is compelled to obey only lawful orders, so the peril settles squarely upon the individual soldier if it turns out that an order wasn’t lawful, yet doubt as to the legality of an order offers little or no protection if later accused of failure to obey any order given by a superior officer. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t pretty much summed it up. In the end, the only real difference between the two groups was that the prisoners working on parole were given a modest stipend which they could use as they wished, and had complete freedom to walk around the town and talk to people, while those who preferred prisoner status had to rely upon their custodial officers for every necessity and comfort. It was Barbara’s opinion that the recalcitrants were idiots, since to demonstrate their ‘independence’ they made themselves more thoroughly dependent, the sublime illogic of which irritated her. She sometimes wondered — not seriously — whether daily whipping would encourage or discourage those who insisted upon imprisonment.

In the meantime, the skilled workers at the spaceport had righted the Valentina Grizodubova and were well on their way to putting it back together, since Barbara had commandeered it for her new Air Force pending an award of reparations from the Air Force, the World Federation, Senators Tamotsu Tsukasa and Irene Sarantapechaina, the Yakuza organization which had financed the attempted coup, the Chillings and Jackson estates, and anyone else their lawyers back on Earth could think of with some meaningful nexus to the many crimes perpetrated against the colonists. Although not a part of Senators Ortíz and Bihar’s long range plans, it dovetailed nicely with them, because it pulled credits, real credits, away from Earth and out onto the frontier, where it might reach further into the void.

‘Ah, well,’ she thought. ‘Dans ce meilleur des mondes possibles, tout est au mieux.’

‘If this is the best of all possible worlds,’ Jack thought, ‘it leaves a lot to be desired.’ Jack looked around his cubic with something very like disgust. After many years of service, about all he could really say about his life was that he had a window and that his cubic was a bit larger than many. The reconstructed fold-out sleeping shelf had been kind of nice, but then that would-be assassin guy, what’s his face, Hisashi Yamaguchi, who’d fancied himself a killer, had put a big gouge in it with his damned sword. Jack didn’t feel motivated to have it repaired, even though he could have turned in a chit for the cost, since it was arguably damaged in the line of duty. ‘Is this all there is?’ he thought.

Then he thought again, and called his favorite sister. “Clarice?” he said when she answered. “How’d you like to go live on Quicksilver?”

“Is this a joke?” she said warily, although Jack had never been much of a one for trying to gull people into anything, much less commit a joke in questionable taste.

“Nope,” he answered. “I’ve got five round-trip tickets — or ten one-way — on an experimental airship that can make the trip in four days.”

“So it’s not coldsleep, where everyone you know gets old or dies before you get there?”

“Nope. As I understand it, you could call back home as soon as you arrive and send pictures of yourself in front of all the local attractions with a ‘Wish You Were Here!’ banner in one hand and one of those trifruits they talk about on that soap opera you watch in the other.”

“It’s not a soap opera, Jack Webster! It’s serious drama!”

“Okay. Did I mention that I met the leading lady, by threedee connection, of course, not face-to-face?”

“Luz Calderón! You talked to Luz Calderón and didn’t tell me?! You rat! How could you?!”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had a few things on my mind lately, but I can assure you that she’s very nice in person, as it were. You know that psychic stuff she does sometimes on the shows, where she knows what people are thinking and all? It’s mostly true, as far as I can tell. I’ve seen her at work; I’d hate to play poker with her.”

“Oh my God!” she screamed so loudly and her voice went so far up into those stratospheric regions that only women and small children can reach that it hurt Jack’s ear. “You actually worked with her on a case?”

He switched his communicator over to his other ear, but held it a little further away. “Yeah, the Chillings murders out in Wyoming. I’m sure you saw the official stories about how the killers got in on the news feeds, but she was the one who figured everything out, all by remote link. It got really spooky at times.”

“Oh, my God, I can hardly believe it! Of course I want to go! Earth is getting to be a real dump these days. Can you introduce me to her?”

“I certainly hope so. I’m sweet on her best gal-pal.”

There was a long beat of stunned silence from Clarice before she said, “You’re kidding, right? Barbara Big Horse? She’s gorgeous!”

“Tell me about it.” For some reason, he started blinking as he stood there talking. “I don’t understand what she could possibly see in a man like me, but her friend Luz seems to think it’s all written in the stars or something. She said — and I can still hear her speaking as clearly as if she were in the room right now — ‘She belongs to you, you know, and you to her. You were destined for each other before the beginning of the world.’ Jesus, I can’t stop thinking about her! It’s like she’s already there inside my head!”

“Do you want to stop thinking about her, Jack?” she said quietly.

“No! But I’m afraid ….” And then he started to weep.

“Afraid, Jack?” She had that damned girly ‘I understand’ warm tone in her voice. “Or only so lonely that it hurts, and you think you might have a chance at happiness? I know you, Jack. You haven’t really been happy since Dad died.”

Jack was bewildered, almost angry. “Died?! He was murdered!”

She continued softly, inexorably, “We all die, Jack, sooner or later, so yes, he died, but he died exactly as he’d have wished to die, protecting his pregnant wife and two young children from a dangerous lunatic. I was there, Jack, and I remember. You were quite a bit younger, but do you remember what he said?”

Now he was angry. “He didn’t say anything! He just died!”

“That’s not true, Jack. He was bleeding out, dying for sure, but he managed to cuff the perp to a tree-fence and then he turned to us and said, ‘Thank God I saved you, saved you all. I ….’ and then he slumped to the ground and released his last breath before Mom or I could do anything to help him.”

“He said that? I don’t remember ….” He didn’t remember any of it, not the attack, not the tree, not the fact that his father had managed to capture the man who’d killed him, not even that he’d been there. All he remembered was a cop telling him that his Daddy was dead, and that he had to go sit in a car. It felt like he was trapped in one of these French art vids, where balloons float by in the sky and clowns in whiteface do somersaults across the room while a single masked ballerina twirls around and around en pointe. Everything was different.

“You were only five, Jack. and you were busy screaming and crying in fear. He saved you, Jack, saved all of us, and I know that what he was trying to say — before he ran out of time and breath — was that he loved us, but we knew that, had always known, and never forgot.”

“I didn’t know.” He sounded sullen, and knew it, but couldn’t help himself. All his life, he’d avoided thinking about his Dad, because it hurt too much to remember. Not that he remembered much, just a dim image of a big beefy man with a big grin on his face, sometimes the sound of his voice, but there were no words in his memories, just a big man hugging him, and a deep voice, and his open smile, something about how his eyes had crinkled with pleasure when he’d looked at him …. He blinked back tears again.

“I’m sorry, Jack. The subject of his death was always painful, and I know we all avoided talking about it, but we should have made sure that you did know. We both thought you did, Mom and I, because all you could talk about from that time forward was how you were going to be a policeman, just like Dad.”

“I do remember that,” he said. He’d been the only kid in kindergarten with a career plan. He’d worked at it, too. He wouldn’t read comics, or books, or play any games that didn’t involve detection, or crime, or something that his child’s mind could think of as being something that policemen did. Harriet the Spy, okay. Sherlock Holmes, you bet. If I Ran the Circus, not so much.

“Well, I’m sorry, Jack. I wish I’d known. I should have asked.”

“It’s okay, Short Stuff. I probably should have said something too. I knew you remembered more than I did, but I didn’t want to talk about it. I remember that much.” He grimaced, knowing that she couldn’t see him. “Anyway, could you talk to Mom about moving? And Amanda and her family? I want us all to leave Earth behind, and now I have the chance to make it happen and leave us all with enough to make a real start in our new lives. You can explain it better than I can.”

“I will, Jack, and don’t call me ‘Short Stuff’ or I’ll have to come out there and kill you. And wouldn’t you be embarrassed to arrive at the Pearly Gates with an unsolved crime on the blotter.”

“Not for long it wouldn’t be. Everyone who knows us would finger you for the beef first thing.”

“Yeah, but they haven’t grown up with a Junior Detective who bragged about how to commit the perfect crime all the time. I’ll bet I can remember a hundred schemes that only you could solve, so there.”

“You stuck out your tongue at me and crossed your eyes, didn’t you?” All of a sudden, he wished that she were in the room, so she could hug him, like she used to, when their Mom was feeling low.

“Yeah, I did. I’m sorry ….”

“Don’t be, Sis.” He laughed. “I’m feeling better now, but if you ever feel like murdering me for real, call first so I can give you some pointers on modern forensics. You can’t trust everything I bragged about as a kid. I’m lots more clever now.”

“I’ll do that, Jack. Take care of yourself. Oh, and Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Call her up and tell her that you love her. I know you haven’t, you big lug, and she needs to hear you say it as often as possible. These long-distance relationships take a lot of work.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Don’t lie to me, Jack, or I’ll come out there and paddle your behind.”

“Yeah, yeah. You and what army?”

“Mom, of course. Don’t make me call Mom.”

“Okay, I’ll do it ….”

“Don’t lie to me, Jack.”

“I will, I swear.”

“Do it now, Jack, or as soon as you can get to one of those ansible thingies they talk about on the shows.”

“Okay. I promise ….”

“Jack!”

“I said I would!”

“But you don’t really mean it, yet. I want you to call her and tell her how you feel, and then tell her she has to call me. I reckon they must have some way to do that, with all that science stuff they use on the shows. In fact, I know they do, because they were talking about some sort of contest they were planning on one of the last shows I saw, during the break.”

‘Oh, Jeeze!’ he thought. “Okay, I will.”

“I’m counting on it, Jack, by sometime this weekend at the latest. Now say bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye, Clarise. I’ve always counted on you too.”

“I know you have, Jack. I’ll never let you down.” She had that girly tone in her voice again. It almost made him feel like he was her little brother again. looking up at her as she held his hand, or when she bent down to pick him up when he was scared.

“Bye-bye,” he said again, and rang off.

Jack’s communicator chimed a little tune he recognized, La Malagueña, which he’d assigned to Senator Ortíz. He thumbed the screen to answer.

The Senator wasted no time, as usual. “So, Jack. Getting ready to go?”

“Go? I’ve been in depositions all week, and have more scheduled for next Monday, ad infinitum.”

“Doesn’t matter. I pushed through emergency legislation regarding depositions and testimony from off-planet, since we have a spate of suits and trials upcoming with multiple nexuses of action and involvement. Threedee testimony is perfectly fine, now, as long as there’s a competent civil authority available as witness. Governor Big Horse is ideal, or anyone she delegates, and the ship is ready for its first run. You can leave tomorrow.” He rang off.

“Crap!” he spoke aloud. He thought about throwing the communicator against the wall, but then he’d have to replace it, since it belonged to the department, and besides, he needed to contact Jorge, and then his sister. “Crap!!” He had to call Barbara first, since his sister just might kill him if he broke his word to her. He checked his communicator to find the local time. “Crap!!!” Now he really wanted to hurl it against the wall, and maybe stomp on it as well. It was three o’clock in the morning at Quicksilver spaceport.

Gritting his teeth, he scrolled to her number and accessed the link to route the call through the ansible at the department. It rang once and then she answered. “Oh. Hi, Jack. I was just thinking about you.”

“But ….”

“Don’t worry about the time, Jack. I’ve been busy too, and so much of my business involves the Federated Courts and Senate that I pretty much keep DC time. Clarice says, ‘Hi!’ by the way. Has our clever Senator told you about your trip yet? I’m just guessing, of course, but that seems the most likely reason to jolt you off your default ‘procrastination’ setting.”

“You talked to Clarice?”

“Of course I did. If women waited for men to get around to anything besides eating and sex, we’d all still be living in trees.”

“But ….”

“Anyway, you’d best arrange for someone on Jorge’s staff to sell your cubic and anything you don’t want to haul along. Most of that will have to come by the scheduled service starting up next month, or the next after that, so you’ll need to have it stored. Jorge’s staff can handle it. As I understand the scoutships, whichever one you’re on has a baggage allowance of exactly one small duffle bag, and maybe less on this trip since Senator Ortíz had two cabins fitted for a matched pair of mares in coldsleep, already pregnant, and their luggage consists of several dozen vials of scientifically-selected frozen sperm from different stallions, plus saddles and tack for each. He’s got a hair up his butt about horses for some reason, so Clarice and her current squeeze will be coming week after next. Your Mom, Amanda, and her family will follow along next month or so, since they decided they’d rather wait for more luxurious accommodations on the scheduled service than share bunks with a crew of smelly guys, as they delicately put it.”

“I ….”

“Whoops! I have a crucial call coming in from a DA on your end that I’ve got to take. Don’t be late; your flight leaves at eight. See you later, alligator!” And she rang off.

Sometimes Jack wondered why he ever bothered getting out of bed at all.

Jorge was slightly sympathetic, but not entirely. “It’s a man’s part,” he said with enormous confidence, “to behave as a caballero, a chevalier, a gentleman. Women arrange the details of life, while we men handle the important matters, the protection and care of the family, and most especially the provision of an environment in which one’s wife and children feel perfectly safe and free to blossom and thrive, so that the home is filled with joy and music. You can always tell,” he said, “when a man has failed in this noble duty, because his wife and children don’t smile, and instead of innocent laughter, and voices lifted in song, the house is filled with bickering and recrimination.”

“But isn’t,” Jack reasoned carefully, “marriage a two-way street.” They were in his cubic, because Jorge had volunteered to help him pack, and then he’d discovered the case of single-malt scotch that Jack had acquired through the displaced cupidity of his former boss, not one of which bottles had been tested for palatability, so Jack’s ability to place one thought logically after the other was slightly impaired, if truth be told. Tasting it had seemed reasonable at the time, since it didn’t make any sense to carry it along if it wasn’t worth the trouble, but the philosophical disputation which had resulted seemed unlikely to further the cause of packing in any particular way.

“Nonsense!” Jorge declaimed. “It’s more like a mountain with two roads. There are paths which are impassable for men, and other paths which cannot be traversed by women. Together, a man and a woman can scale the highest heights, where singly they would inevitably fail, but the man must never trespass on the paths which are a woman’s prerogative, just as a woman should respect those roads which fall naturally within a man’s scope and unique abilities. When a man interferes in a woman’s business, he belittles her in the eyes of her friends, and in her own eyes as well, just as a woman who meddles in those affairs which properly belong to her husband makes him feel small and unappreciated. Both,” Jorge eyed Jack in solemn judgement, “are fatal to the union of two souls.”

“But Barbara,” he explained, “ is the Chief of Police, the Mayor of the town — whatever it’s called — and the Governor of the planet. It doesn’t seem to me that there’s much scope left to play around in.”

“This only demonstrates the infinite depth of your ignorance,” he said, “Compadre. Do you propose to share pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing the babies with your bride? Do you imagine that you can take these responsibilities in turn, share and share alike?” He gestured broadly to the world around them, which was fairly small, since they were two big men in a cubic designed for one, so he almost knocked over the bottle, but rescued it at the last possible instant. “Pah! This can never be. If the well-trodden paths of manhood are hidden from you, you must forge ahead and make your own way.” He inspected Jack’s face with some care. “Do you sing?”

“What?”

“Do you sing?” He obviously considered this a question of self-evident importance and was astonished by Jack’s unfortunate lack of instant comprehension. “This is the masculine art most worthy of study; every man should be able to proclaim his feelings to the world in song! Come!” He carefully put the stopper back in the bottle. “I’ll have someone take care of all this.” He gestured around the cubic with haughty disdain.

And with that, Jack was led off into the night.

The spaceport on Quicksilver was quiet when the scoutship arrived, because it was a little after midnight, and the only one to greet them was Barbara Big Horse, who stood well back from the landing area.

Jack saw her the instant the hatch opened, and at first his heart leapt into his throat as he was almost overwhelmed by insecurity, but then — as he exited the hatch and breathed his first breath of Quicksilver air — all his doubts and fears were washed away and he was filled with the same rush of emotions he’d felt on that hill in the Wyoming wilderness.

Jack had persuaded Squadron Leader Jones, the airship’s chief pilot on the voyage, to let him out the lock first, because there was someone waiting to see him, so of course they all crowded around right on his heels as he walked across the pavement carrying his small duffle, all he’d brought with him from Earth.

Right on cue, the group of five traditional musicians Jorge had arranged to meet them stepped out from behind a building and walked to meet him. Jack stopped, bowed to Barbara, then raised his hand, and the band began to play, all of them facing Barbara as she stood watching in barely-suppresed anticipation and delight.

Jack joined them on the up-beat, singing in a clear tenor:

Han nacido en mi rancho dos arbolitos,
Dos arbolitos que parecen gemelos,
Y desde mi casita los veo solitos
Bajo el amparo santo y la luz del cielo.

Nunca están separados uno del otro
Porque así quiso Dios que los dos nacieran,
Y con sus mismas ramas se hacen caricias
Como si fueran novios que se quisieran.

Arbolito, arbolito, bajo tu sombra
Voy a esperar aquel día cansado muera,
Y cuando estoy solito mirando al cielo
Pido para que me mande una compañera.

Arbolito, arbolito, me siento solo
Quiero que me acompañes hasta que muera.

He paused while the band played on through the bridge, then joined in again right on the beat:

Cuando voy a mi siembra y a los maizales
Entre los surcos riego todo mi llanto
Solo tengo de amigos mis animales
A los que con tristeza siempre les canto.

Las vacas, los novillos, y los becerros
Saben que necesito que alguien me quiera.
Mi caballito pinto y hasta mi perro
Han cambiado y me miran de otra manera.

Arbolito, arbolito, bajo tu sombra,
Voy a esperar aquel día cansado muera,
Y cuando estoy solito mirando al cielo,
Pido para que me mande una compañera.

Arbolito, arbolito, me siento solo
Quiero que me acompañes hasta que muera.

Jack waited through the coda, smiling at Barbara, whose eyes were shining, and then waited through the whistles and cheers from the impromptu audience behind him as the musicians moved to one side, then said, “I don’t have an encore yet, but I figure on a lifetime to work on my repertoire.”

“You’re crazy, you know.”

“Of course. Who but a crazy man would stretch out his merely human arms to the distant stars and expect an answer to the question he’d been asking all his life?”

“And the question was?”

“The song asked it for me, ‘Quiero que me acompañes hasta que muera; I want you to be with me until I die.’ I’ve been lonely for a very long time. We were made for each other, we knew it as soon as we saw each other, even though it was ‘impossible,’ as far as I knew then. But Luz said so, and I believed her before she said it. I’ve loved you desperately from the instant I first saw you.”

She blushed, and she didn’t look like the sort of woman who blushed easily. “Is that all you brought?” She pointed to his duffle.

“That’s it. They have a very strict baggage allowance on these flights, and even at that I blew it. All I really have is a toothbrush and what I’m wearing.”

She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I blew my baggage allowance, but I think you’ll like it. Jorge helped me find it, but I picked it out. As soon as I saw it, I knew that it ought to be yours. We cleared it with Luz for size and all, so I hope it fits, because it’ll be awfully hard to return.” He stretched out the duffel, supporting it from the bottom, because it was fairly heavy.

Curious, she unfastened the closure and opened the case. Inside, there was a bundle carefully wrapped in brown deerskin, tied with rawhide and feathers. Now she had to see what was inside, and she untied the rawhide bindings and unrolled the deerskin covering. Inside was another roll of leather, but this was white and beaded in an intricate design. This too she untied and unrolled, carefully holding it off the ground as it was revealed to be a Lakota Sioux woman’s dress in fringed white deerskin, heavily beaded in turquoise, faux-cinnabar, and porcupine quills in a band above the bodice and down the upper part of each arm, with lighter beading at the neck and arm openings, and with scattered beaded stars which anchored small fringe bundles on the skirt and a sun star at the center of the bodice band, just at the top of the breastbone. In a separate leather wallet, there was a matching beaded hair ornament with three eagle feathers and a beaded deerskin pouch to match the dress, with its belt, which was ornamented with silver conchos.

“You picked this out?” she said in awe.

“I did. You’d be surprised what you can find in the DC urbopolis, if you know where to look, which of course I didn’t, but Jorge is a man of the world and knows where to find almost everything.”

“How did you know that my ancestry is Lakota?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “It’s news to me even now, but as I said, I knew that this dress belonged to you. I can’t explain how I knew, but there it is. Do you like it?”

She rolled her eyes toward the skies, laughing and weeping at the same time. “Of course I like it, you madman. I’ll guarantee you it’s the only one of its kind on Quicksilver.”

“I did think that deer might be hard to come by, so I can’t imagine that you’ll have any rivals who show up wearing the same dress. According to the lady in the shop, it’s historically accurate, except that those red beads, which ought to be cinnabar, were replaced with colored hand-blown glass — specially treated to have the same luster and general appearance as the real thing — because cinnabar is poisonous, as I’m sure you know, so it’s illegal to sell a garment with cinnabar ornamentation in our modern times. The wrappings are accurate as well, as the dress would have been packed for traveling.”

“Did this helpful shop lady tell you what it was?”

“Oh, yes. But by then it was too late, because I’d already picked it out. It’s a modern reproduction of the wedding regalia of an Oglala Lakota woman, the daughter of a Chief, as I recall, as photographed by one Edward Sherrif Curtis, evidently an ancient threedee cameraman in the early Nineteen Hundreds.”

“I know. I have a digital reproduction, and I’ve seen this dress before. That woman is an ancestor of mine, Mary Záptan Sunkawakan, my great-grandmother, many times removed.” Tears began to roll down her cheeks, but she was smiling.

Jack blinked, but somehow wasn’t surprised. “Well, then, that explains it. I thought I saw a family resemblance, so your grandmother’s dress has finally come home, through somewhat roundabout means. And there’s one other thing …”

“What’s that?” she asked, intriqued.

“Back on the ship, those two horses in coldsleep you told me about some days past? They actually belong to me now, along with many vials of frozen sperm — five words I’d never imagined having the occasion to say — since Senator Ortíz was kind enough to sell them to me — at considerably below cost, I think, but still quite a lot — along with an explanation.”

“Which was?”

“They’re my betrothal gift to you, if you’ll have them, and me. I have a little ring with me as well, for those occasions you might find it awkward to carry around a growing herd of horses. Did I tell you that both of them are pregnant?”

“No, not yet, but I think I knew.” She looked like she was about to laugh, and Jack couldn’t quite tell whether that was a good thing or not.

“I know that I’m supposed to drive them before you, so you can see them first, but I have pictures on my communicator, and tomorrow, as soon as the dockworkers show up with a crane, we can unwrap them. I realize that the current tradition is for me to go down on one knee, but Jorge explained to me that, as a warrior, I should follow a different custom.”

Barbara nodded her agreement, still weeping, but in obvious joy.

“Quite recently, I alone captured Senator Irene Sarantapechaina — of the ancient Sarantapechos family of Greece — along with one of her henchmen, and killed another as he drew a weapon to shoot me. The Senator had schemed with confederates to murder you, Luz Calderón, and many others, and I caught her as she was attempting to escape. I believe that counts as several coups, and establishes my bona fides as a warrior. I won’t bore you with further details, as this one example concerns you directly.”

“Also, in retrospect, I can see that I’ve experienced a traditional vision quest, have had divine help from a holy woman, in the form of Luz, I think, a Wiȟháša Wiŋyaŋ, and encountered my vision of the Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka in the remote hills of Wyoming, near running water, which took the form of a terrifying winged woman with a fiery sword, like a Gorgon or Medusa, but also something like an avenging angel, and she was burning but not consumed by the fire, as if she were the fire itself. She attacked me, pierced me through the heart with her sword, and then wrestled with me, but she gave me something too, a clarity and sense of purpose that I’d never had before, although I’m still struggling to understand it. I’m supposed to change my name, I think, but that seems presumptuous.”

She shrugged. “It’s not necessary. The custom originated before identification cards and income tax. Times change, but it’s a charming thought. Consider me charmed.” She smiled.

“Oh, and I’m supposed to learn to play the flute, I think, although I suppose any reasonably portable instrument would do.”

She grinned. “Now that you’re on Quicksilver, I think you’ll be surprised how easily it will come to you. You might try the guitar, or a keyboard instrument, though. They’re more in demand these days. Or take up all three if you like. For a nomadic people, the flute had the primary advantage of being very portable.”

Without further preamble, she said, “I accept,” and inclined her head to him, then reached out her hand to take his, their first actual contact.

“What …?”

She raised her voice so that it carried. “Before these witnesses, I accept your gifts as my bride price and dower. We’re married, Jack, according to the customs of my people, although,” she lowered her voice, “as Governor, I have to add that, in all honesty, there’s a form we have to fill out as well. It keeps the bureaucrats back on Earth happy, but we can take our time doing that, since I’m in charge of sending it.”

“Just like that? I’m sorry I couldn’t arrange a spectacular gun battle against an army of villains for the climactic moment when I declared my love — like they do on the threedees — but this is the best I could do on short notice.”

“Just like that,” She nodded happily, “and I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a better proposal, even on Quicksilver Memories, where we pay scriptwriters good money to come up with memorable scenes.” She grasped his hand more firmly, as if she planned never to let it go. “I can live without gun battles or melodrama. I’m not that sort of woman. If you feel up to it, we could arrange a guest appearance on Quicksilver Nights, where we can reënact all the fantasies you like and no one gets hurt. The audience would love that. We can have a more elaborate ceremony later, of course, when your family arrives, and a bridal shower for the sake of your mother and sisters, to introduce them to the community as well as serve as a female bonding ceremony, especially since we’ve never met in person, but this is the moment, relatively alone in a spaceport, with a ragtag gang of casual acquaintances to witness, that I’ll remember with pleasure. I only wish our fathers might have lived to see us together, and my mother, but life is as it must be, unplanned for the most part, which is part of the delight. The mariachi band was a complete surprise,” she grinned again, “and I love surprises.”

A man cleared his throat behind them, “Ma’am, Sir? There’s something else.” it was Squadron Leader Jones, the chief pilot. “Captain Jorge Churco asked me to give you this with his compliments.” He held out a large bottle of what must be tequila wrapped in a straw cloth imprinted with a name that Jack couldn’t read in the darkness, but had no doubt was famous. Jorge, he knew, didn’t do things by halves. “For your anniversary, Ma’am, Sir. He said it was traditional.”

Barbara reluctantly released her grip on Jack’s hand, took Jorge’s gift, and said, “Well, airmen, musicians, thank you all, and please consider yourselves our guests for the duration of your stay here. I probably have the entry code available for a nice little cantina, right down the street here, so won’t you please allow my husband and I to buy you men a drink? When they see the lights are on, I’m quite sure people will drift in so I can introduce you. Please tell whomever you left on watch to come along as well. There’s no need for caution here, and I formally relieve him and you of that duty while in port here. We only keep things locked where children might wander in and hurt themselves, and we do maintain a watch on the skies these days.”

And so, in general amicability, they all strolled through the darkened airport and then out onto the road to town.

The soldiers went away and their towns were torn down;
and in the Moon of Falling Leaves they made a treaty with
Maȟpíya Lúta (Red Cloud)
that said our country would be ours
as long as grass should grow and water flow.

 ― Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk)
Heyókȟa (Sacred Jester) and
Wičháša Wakȟáŋ (Holy Man)
of the Oglála Lakȟóta (Sioux)

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Twenty-Two ― Moon of My Delight

 

¿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

 

 

Ah Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits -- and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. Verse 73.

 

 

World Senator Jaime Ortíz was in an expansive mood as he stood looking out over the reflecting pond outside his office overlooking the World Senate compound in New Washington. The World Senate Building was within walking distance, although he often saved time by taking the underground tramway direct to the Senate antechambers through tunnels deep below the surface. The reflection of the Senate dome was mirrored in the pool, so it looked, he thought, vaguely similar to some of the vids he’d seen of the Quicksilver night sky, except that the dome and its mirrored image were constantly changing, as the holographic threedee displays which formed a seamless mosaic over its surface showed an endless series of live views of the many places inhabited by Man. There was the unmistakable skyline of Nueva Bolívar in the Antarctic Archipelago, and now Moskva, then Brasília, and then, fittingly, an image of Quicksilver itself, among the newest outposts of Mankind, quickly transitioning to yet another habitation of humanity, one after another. He turned to the Captain of his security forces — and personal friend — Jorge Chunco and said, “So, Jorge, has our wandering boy slipped the surly bonds of Earth and flown away?”

“Of course, Jaime. You know I rarely fail at any task I set myself. He was at the spaceport at least half an hour before your scoutship was scheduled to depart, and only a little the worse for wear and lack of sleep. I sold him your horses, on your behalf, because he needed a bride gift.”

The World Senator whooped with delight. “You rascal, playing matchmaker at your age.”

“Not matchmaker, exactly — their match was made in Heaven, I believe — but rather a facilitator, if you will, to set him on the proper path toward a lasting marriage with a proud woman like Barbara Big Horse. I couldn’t let him arrive empty-handed — other than the mere credits in his bank account — so listened to my own heart and soul to incline him to imagine what Barbara would feel flattered by, offering him the benefit of my own experience, as a father might do for his son. This is Jack’s first real relationship with a woman, and it’s important to put one’s best foot forward in these matters.”

“He can’t have been such a novice!” the Senator exclaimed. “He’s a man of fortitude and courage.”

“Not where women are concerned, Jaime. His own father died when he was quite young, so he had no masculine example of courtship and marriage to draw upon. He’s been very close to his sisters and his mother, but these have been the only significant women in his life.”

“Well, that seems just, then. I approve.” He nodded his benediction.

“As it turned out, he didn’t need much more than encouragement. Although I suggested that he arrive with a gift to place in her hands, what he chose to give was truly inspired, and spoke directly to his appreciation of her heritage, and her woman’s soul. He will do well, I’m sure, and he has a marvelous singing voice, which is always beneficial.”

“¡Ay, Jorge! ¡Que huevos, cabrón!” said the Senator admiringly.

“One does what one can,” Jorge said modestly. “I suggested an appropriate song, took him to a local cantina to hear it sung as it should be, then transferred an example sung by a professional signer to his communicator, plus an instrumental version for practice, and told him to practice on the way. I managed to find a local group of musicians to meet him at the spaceport as well. All in all, it was a good night’s work. I don’t doubt that the Honorable Governor may be wearing her skirts a little higher in the near future.” He grinned in a moderately suggestive manner, waggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

“He sang well, then?”

“Like an angel, as I said, dead on pitch, his timing is perfect, and his phrasing is filled with nuance and emotion. If he didn’t already have a job, he could make his living at it.” Jorge shrugged in an almost Gallic manner.

The Senator furrowed his brow. “It’s a puzzle, then, why he didn’t sing to begin with. Such talent usually springs from a natural source, and cannot be denied.”

“I suspect the trauma of his father’s death — murdered, as I understand it, before his very eyes — might have something to do with it. His father was a policeman, and Jack’s essential focus has been on replacing his father in the only way he could, by becoming the heroic cop he imagined his father was, and of course his father died defending his family against a street thug during the Food Riots twenty years back, so he has good reason to believe that, although I’m told he has no direct memory of it. Repressed memory syndrome, I imagine.”

Now the Senator’s face lost its good humor for a moment as unpleasant memories of his own past rose to the surface. “Perhaps. Some things are better left forgotten, I think. All of our experiences, both good and bad, make up the sum of who we are, but it’s not necessary, strictly speaking, to know exactly how one’s pancreas works in order to lead a good life.” The Senator considered the question briefly, and then dismissed the issue from his mind. “How are the prosecutions of the Sarantapechaina/Tsukasa cartel going?”

“With the usual delays, Patrón.” Jorge slipped smoothly from friend to employee. “Their lawyers are claiming entrapment, visitations from angels, unfortunate alignments of the stars, and whatever other quasi-legal excuses for vicious greed and animosity they can think of. The Senator Sarantapechaina may escape consequences, since her constituency is relatively complacent, but the fact that she ordered the attacks on Luz Calderón on might weigh heavily against her, even in Greece and the Balkans. She’s also managed to generate a vociferous set of urbopolitan enemies, from environmentalists — who are angered by her arrogant coóption of the public water purity and flood-control system as her private ‘back door,’ — to religious fundamentalists — who are equally offended by her posing as a man ‘in contravention of Divine Law’ — and both groups are loudly spreading it about that only the guilty make plans for their escape. Even courts martial pay some attention to politics, since all military funding depends upon political maneuvering.”

“Well, no matter.” the Senator said. “Either or both of the Senatorial players will eventually turn upon the other in mutual back-stabbing, so their political power is dead, even if they manage to squeak out of the legal charges. I’m done.” He turned to his keypad and started to work on something.

Captain Jorge Churco walked out of the room without another word, familiar with his friend’s mercurial moods, and with his limited tolerance of ‘distractions’ from whatever schemes he had next in hand.

To say that the Tsukasa Yakuza was in disarray would be gross understatement. The military arrest of their Oyabun, and the public attention drawn to the fact that the head of a criminal gang was the World Senator representing the Kingdom of Japan was profoundly embarrassing, despite having been an open secret — that no one talked about — for many years. Other ‘chivalrous organizations’ were already beginning to ‘muscle in’ on some of their most profitable enterprises, and subtle hints had been let slip that only the ritual seppuku of the Oyabun himself could restore the family honor.

The Oyabun and World Senator Tamotsu Tsukasa was not so inclined, which did little to increase his standing, either among his enemies or the members of his gang, since he had himself often imposed yubitsume, the ritual cutting off of portions of one’s own fingers, as punishment for infractions against the honor of the organization, despite his claim that his strict incarceration made it impossible to obtain the necessary tantō, a Samurai’s short sword or dirk, much less the kaishakunin — ‘second’ — required to perform the final — and merciful — beheading.

Only a week into his imprisonment, his underlings demonstrated the untruth of his claims by smuggling in the very implements and final executioner required and performing the service for him, despite his cowardly cries for help from the guards, who had all been called away on important business by separate messengers.

Unfortunately, through lack of practice, and hampered by the frantic struggles of the Senator himself, the kaishakunin untidily separated the Oyabun’s head completely from his body, which was widely seen as a bad omen, and so the ‘honorable’ Senator’s death did little to stop the gang’s rapid decline, despite having conveniently removed a source of great embarrassment to the Japanese Imperial family and the current Emperor.

Hisashi Yamaguchi, erstwhile assassin, current prisoner, was sitting quietly in his cell, untroubled by events outside the durasteel walls of his circumscribed world. His conscience was clear and untroubled by his actions, since it was only his failures that shamed him, and these troubled him greatly. Anaïs Foucault and her children were not an issue, since they had only been targets of opportunity, a necessary distraction intended to draw out both O’Hare and Webster, but his plan had failed for some entirely inexplicable reason. He’d been well back from the action when a threedee camera had somehow picked him out from a crowd of at least two thousand onlookers and in an instant he’d been catapulted from the unobtrusive anonymity he cultivated into the glaring spotlight of the news vids, where he’d seen his own face staring back at him in sufficient clarity that he’d known that attempting flight across borders to Japan would be useless.

The failed attempt to kill Jack Webster had been an attempt to quickly salvage some semblance of his mission objectives, but Webster must have been waiting for him, because he hadn’t been sleeping, as his instruments had indicated, but was calmly waiting by the side of the door, well prepared with some sort of powerful striking weapon, perhaps a short bō, and had possibly employed Kuji-kiri, some powerful combination of the legendary ‘nine characters’ and mudrās used to immobilize or slow an opponent, which implied that Webster was himself a Ninjutsu or other Budō Master greater than had been seen in a century or more.

That interested him. If he could escape, if he could find and defeat this so-called Jack Webster, it would salvage his reputation, perhaps even if he lost. It would be no shame to fall before a spiritual Master of such power, and even the attempt would demonstrate his courage and devotion to duty. He saw now that it was O’Hare who was the pawn, O’Hare who should have been his first target, since the Yamabushi Webster had obviously felt so secure in his own person that he had no need of bodyguards or access-controlled enclosures.

He stood, and faced toward his home in Japan, focusing on the family shrine there, bowed deeply two times, clapped his hands twice, and then prayed silently for guidance: ‘With all the respect from the depth of my heart I ask that the gods hear me, especially the spirits of the Sky and the Land. I pray in humility, and with great respect, for the spirits of Creation to take hold of the many evils which surround me, to take hold of my own failures and sins, and purify them all.’ Then, he bowed deeply twice again and returned to his former seat on the edge of his sleeping pallet, patiently waiting for something to change.

Ten days after their last meeting, Jorge Churco, Senator Ortíz, Maria Ortíz-Berkowitz, his wife, Celestina Churco de Alvarez, Jorge’s wife, Alanna Ortíz, the Senator’s daughter, and Adela Maria and Carmen Jacinta Churco, Jorge’s daughters, were sitting before a threedee wall in the Senator’s residence. When they were all comfortable, the Senator thumbed the control to start the show.

Evidently, either Barbara or the Mariachi band had brought along a camera crew, because they saw the scoutship land on what must be Quicksilver, because almost everyone in all the human worlds at least, had seen the Quicksilver Spaceport many, many, times, either in the original shows or the dubs in translation.

As they watched, Jack Webster exited the hatch and climbed down to the ground carrying a small duffle bag while, one after another, a dozen men followed close on his heels, grinning and nudging each other like freshman college students on holiday.

Not surprisingly, the production values were superb, and Jaime made a note to ask Barbara if she’d allow the production company to syndicate it. She already had a following of many fans around the world, and advertisers would clamor to sponsor a special featuring her wedding to the man who’d traveled across space to consummate their long-distance love affair.

Jack was, as Jorge had claimed, a natural vocalist, and all he needed was a charro outfit to match the rest of the mariachi band to fit right in. He made another note to dispatch a request for one to be fitted and sewn on Quicksilver. He was especially impressive on the huasteca sections, in which his falsetto voice sounded as rich and pure as most altos. ¡Carajo! They could make a fortune from the recording contracts alone, and with the tie-ins to the shows, he could become a franchise of his own.

The entire vid was only thirty minutes, from landing to the final shot of the wedding party sloping off toward town, so they might need a few more shots to establish the marriage, but Barbara had already mentioned that. He made another note to see what he could have done to expedite the passage of Jack’s immediate family to Quicksilver, and to secure screen tests for each before they left, so they could see whether it might be worthwhile to send a camera crew along to capture the voyage for publicity. Jack’s trip out could be faked, of course, since he was due to come back and report on his findings.

After the lights came up, his darling wife went out to the kitchen and brought in a tray of fruit.

“And now, children, honored guests, we have a special treat, the very first shipment of fresh fruit from Quicksilver, so you all can taste the exact same fruits Luz Calderōn talks about on her threedee shows.” She set the tray down on the table in front of the largest divan.

The children reached first, of course.

Alanna picked something that looked something like a purple peach and sliced off a segment. “¡Madre de Dios! It’s delicious. Mamacita! You have to try this! It’s like a combination of mango and passionfruit!” She sliced off another segment and handed it to Maria.

She took a bite, and said, “You’re right, Alanna. It’s wonderful. Offer pieces to our guests, dear. We have a large number of different kinds, and I’m afraid we won’t be able to sample everything if we take too much of one fruit in particular.”

The girls quickly took upon themselves the task of serving up mixed portions, handing each of their parents a dish of mixed fruit and then settling back in their seats with their own.

Jorge tried several pieces, one after the other, before he said, “The Goddesses and Gods on Mount Olympus would barter ambrosia for a taste of these, all different, all separately wonderful, and yet never cloying. They have just the right trace of tartness to offset the sweet, and yet the individual fruits have a unique and desirable flavor of their own. Jaime, I believe you could pay the entire cost of your running your spaceliners through devoting a bit of cargo space to these. Do you have any idea how well they keep?”

“I don’t,” he admitted. “I’ll have to ask Barbara or Luz. In the long run, it doesn’t matter, because I could always devote a scoutship or two to the trade. I have to admit that my first thought was that I could raise the cost of a ticket to Quicksilver as soon as these reach the fresh produce stores, but that was merely capitalist greed speaking. No, my ultimate intention is to push Mankind out into the Galaxy, and even beyond as new sciences make it possible. I need to run the liners at a profit, but not so much profit as to strangle innovation and emigration.”

His wife pursed her lips slightly and said, “Jaime, if you don’t stop talking about business during a social gathering I’m going to have to send you off to a finishing academy to teach you better manners!”

“I’m sorry, dear. You’re right, of course. I apologize to you all.”

Jorge added, “I apologize as well, Señora; it was entirely my fault, because I mentioned the business end of things to start with.”

“But you’re our guest, Jorge, and not within the reach of my sharp tongue.” She smiled to show her general good will.

“None-the-less, Señora, I know Jaime well, since we were boys together, running wild on the streets of Ciudad Juárez. His brain never stops working.”

She rolled her eyes toward Heaven. “No need to remind me, Jorge, and I admire that brain of his quite a bit; but it does drive me crazy at times.”

“Señora, you needn’t remind me.” He rolled his own eyes skyward. “Even as we were running for our lives as boys, being chased by street gangs with knives and guns, the Rurales, or the Federal Police, he’d be talking to me about his next plans for making money so we could eat, a different scheme for escaping our pursuers, or a new hiding place where we might safely spend the night. If it had been a dragon chasing us, flying through the air on bat wings and breathing fire, he would have been calculating how many yards of dragon leather it would take to buy us a bicycle.”

Jorge said, out of the blue, “Only thirty-five yards, at my projected value of dragon leather at the time, and it would have been two bikes, compadre, as you well know.”

Jorge smiled. “Yes, Jaime, I know it well.”

Jaime winked at him with just half of a smile. Then he settled back on the divan, put his arm around his daughter Alanna, and said to her, and to her young friends, “Alanna, Adelita, Carmen, dear friends all, it’s only in recent months that I’ve realized how obsessed I’ve been with worldly success, to the sometimes detriment of my family obligations. How would you all like to take a little trip to Quicksilver sometime soon? The end of the Senate session is coming up, and summer break will leave you girls with some free time. It’s been years since we’ve had a real holiday together, so what do you say? I’m pretty sure we can arrange meetings with Luz Calderón and Barbara Big Horse …. Perhaps you might make an appearance on her show.”

The screams and whoops of the girls were answer enough, and both Maria and Celestina looked fondly on their respective husbands. For all their faults, they were decent men, and every day becoming better fathers and husbands, despite their rough upbringing.

After some interval of days, a guard appeared to announce a visitor, his court-appointed lawyer.

Hisashi Yamaguchi wasn’t particularly interested in the process of law, but this was a change in the routine, so he said, “Yes, very good. I’ll be ready directly.” He put on his shoes very carefully, then walked over to the door and calmly stuck both hands through two openings beside the door so they could cuff each hand individually to an eyebolt welded to the wall before they opened the cell door to handle fitting him with manacles for transport. Then, seven corrections officers crowded into the cell to maintain physical control of his body during his chaining, since he’d managed to put several officers in the hospital when he’d first became conscious after Webster’s thorough pummeling of his body. Four held him physically, while two more — armed with neurolizers — held back to cover him from behind before the seventh carefully placed the chain-link belt around his waist and double-locked it, only then kneeling to cuff each ankle, one after the other, with one half of a pair of leg irons joined in the middle with two lengths of chain which were brought up before and behind him before locking them to the belt. Then, a separate chain was wrapped around his legs at the knee and locked, then locked again to the chains before and behind him. Only then did the two men waiting outside the cell before release his left hand, which was pulled back through the hole provided for it by the two officers on that side, re-cuffed, and then fastened to the belt before the other two officers repeated the process with the right hand. Then, yet another loop of chain was wound around his arms at the elbow, locked to the fore and aft chains, and only then was he pronounced ready to travel, trussed like a turkey for roasting, frog-marched shuffling sideways though the door by four of them, two on each elbow, while the other four went two by two ahead and behind him and the seventh brought up the rear.

They made a strange procession moving through the hall — which had been cleared of everyone else — out the main gate from the maximum security cells, and then into the interview room, where he was locked down to a steel chair before his lawyer was allowed to enter through a door opposite the one he’d been ushered through, evidently the door that led outside.

Hisashi Yamaguchi was calm, aware of his surroundings, and waiting.

The lawyer introduced herself as she was led through the door. “Mr. Hisashi Yamaguchi? My name is Karen Atwater, and I’ve been appointed by the court to handle your defense. All right, gentlemen, you can leave now, so my client and I can talk in private.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” one said, evidently in charge of the rest, because he said, “Detail, exit the interview cell.”

The men filed out the door they’d come in through, back toward Hisashi Yamaguchi’s section of the prison, and shut the door with a clang. He filed the information away, building a rough picture in his mind of what the layout of this floor must be like.

The interview went well, he thought, because the woman was nervous, and repeatedly ran her fingers through her hair, over her forearms, almost as if she were petting herself, seeking to calm herself through physical contact. She knew, of course, what he was accused of. He smiled at her, which made her even more nervous, but he made all the appropriate responses, so she started to believe him.

Yes, he’d been at the threedee show rally, but only as a spectator, and he had no idea how or why anyone could think that he’d had anything to do with the death of the man who’d been killed in the explosion. He’d been well back from the scene of the crime and was as astonished and horrified as everyone else.

He was very sorry that he’d broken into Jack Webster’s apartment, but had been robbed by someone on the street who looked very much like him, and had lost his head when he saw a man who looked like the man who’d accosted him, so followed him home in hopes of retrieving his holiday money through quietly looking through his apartment. No, he didn’t actually need the money — just look at his credit card limits, the amount in his checking account, and call up his stocks and commodities broker to check his net worth — it was the principle of the thing.

Yes, he had been in possession of locksmith tools and what turned out to be an illegal blade, but he was a registered locksmith back in Japan, and a member of a historic martial arts dojo where such things were commonplace. He had no idea that things were different in North America. And as for who had assaulted whom, one had only to look at this Jack Webster, the supposed victim, who had not a scratch on him as far as he could tell, whereas he himself had been beaten within an inch of his life, and all of this over a perfectly innocent mistake!

It was then he saw it, the change in circumstance. She was running her left hand through her hair again and dislodged a hairpin, which fell — from Hisashi’s highly-focused perspective — in slow motion toward the floor, and then bounced under the table. He followed its arc with his ears, since it was hidden beneath the table, quite near his feet, he thought. “Is there any possibility that I might write a note to my family?” he said. “They won’t let me have any writing implements in my cell, or paper. I’m afraid my mother will worry about me, when she doesn’t hear from me.”

She looked up at him, startled. Then she thought for a few seconds and said, “That seems reasonable, and certainly within your legal rights. I’ll notify the guards.”

As she walked behind him to ring the guards, he quickly used his feet to feel out the hairpin, then work it up the side of his foot and into his other shoe, trusting to his sense of touch to be certain the pin was all the way down the side of his shoe. The door opened and all seven guards filed back in, grabbed him in the usual drill but this time unchained one arm and fastened to the table instead. Only then did they make a final check and exit the room again. “Thank you, Miss Atwater,” he said. “I’ll need a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.”

She was startled again. “Pen? Paper? Can’t you simply input your message to my communicator?”

“I’m afraid not, Miss Atwater. My mother lives in the Hokkaidō Historic District and speaks an extremely rare language. No standard software application handles it that I’m aware of.”

She rolled her eyes and went to the other door, the one she’d entered through to begin with, pressed the button, talked to the guard who opened it, who closed the door and went off somewhere to find paper and pen — which Hisashi imagined just might take long enough — while she waited impatiently. In the interval, he slipped off his shoes, used his toes to extract the hairpin, and then lithely brought up his foot — with the hairpin still grasped between his toes — to his semi-free hand and manipulated the pin in the lock with movements of both his foot and hand until the lock opened. Once free, he used the same pin to systematically open the rest of his bonds with his free hand until his bonds were shed, then quietly crept up behind the woman and fell upon her with a quick movement of his hands at the back of her neck. She collapsed without a sound, so it was Hisashi who was waiting by the door when the unsuspecting guard brought in the requested pen and paper. From there, it was relatively straightforward to exit the building, leaving behind three unconscious people — one of whom had supplied a new set of inconspicuous clothes — and six corpses, one of them his court-appointed attorney, who had supplied his freedom.

Jack Webster woke up with a smile on his face, feeling better than he’d ever felt in his entire life. He looked over to the other side of the bed, and it was empty, but it neither surprised nor alarmed him. Barbara had work to do, he knew, and they’d taken to bed very late indeed. The sun was rising by the time they tumbled onto the mattress in a froth of clothes and bedclothes and pillows flying every which way, then finding safe refuge in each other’s arms. Now, for the first time, stretching his long limbs out across a strange but familiar bed in a strange but half-remembered room on an exotic but strangely homely world, he knew what Pippa had felt like in Robert Browning’s ironic little poem, ‘God’s in his heaven — All’s right with the world!’

Just then, his communicator chimed. It was Barbara.

“Hello? Barbara?”

“Hi, Sweetie. Ready to ‘rise,’ if you know what I mean?”

Jack blushed. “Unh …”

“Never mind, You have work to do, if you’ll recall, and it’s my sworn duty to help you do it.”

“Right, unh …. What is it I’m supposed to do, exactly?”

“Solve the mystery of the Burlador, of course. Didn’t Jaime Ortíz tell you?”

“Well, yes, but I thought I’d need to investigate the ….”

“Of course not, Jack! Any child could tell you if you asked.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“You’re on Quicksilver, Jack, and everything is different here. Well, it is on Earth too, and all the colonies, but it’s not nearly as apparent in those places, at least not yet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s a little difficult to explain, but have you surprised yourself by knowing something that you wouldn’t have known in the ordinary course of events?”

“Not that I can think of, why?”

“Do you speak French, Jack?”

“No. Should I?”

“So if I were to ask, let’s say, what Candide said to Pangloss in the last line of the novel, you’d answer …?”

Jack spoke without thinking, “Cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin,” but then couldn’t explain, even to himself, how he knew that, much understood it, and even less than that how he knew that he was right. It just came to him. “Do you mind explaining what just happened?”

She laughed in a perfectly charming way, or at least Jack was charmed. “You’ll have to get dressed and come down to my office, first. I’ve invited Luz and Dan Asquith here for ten o’clock, so you’ll have to hurry. I had someone leave some clean clothes in the front room, and they ought to fit perfectly.”

“But ….”

“It’s no good wheedling, Jack. You have an obligation, as do I, and if you get here before Luz and Dan do, I’ll make it worth your while.” Her voice dropped to a low and seductive feminine register that had him instantly hard.

And that galvanized him into action. “Be right there, he said,” and thumbed off.

Somehow, he knew where everything was and was washed, dressed, teeth brushed, hair combed neatly, and out the door in three minutes flat. He timed it.

Then he ran up the road toward the spaceport and admin building. It was just coming up on fifteen minutes to ten when he walked through the door. “Am I on time?”

Barbara grinned at him and walked out from behind her desk and simply launched herself into his arms ….

 … and he caught her from out of the air as effortlessly as he might have snatched a butterfly, but she was kissing him like a full-grown woman, suspended between heaven and earth in his arms. “Plenty of time, sailor. I betcha I can show you a really good time, in fact.” She reached down and grabbed his ass …

 … just in time for Luz and Dan to walk through the door as Luz said, “Well, I see you two know each other!”

Barbara didn’t miss a beat, and neither stopped fondling his ass nor nuzzling his neck, so her next words were slightly muffled. “And very well, too,” she said. “He said the magic words last night and presto-chango! we were married. So we spent last night getting to know each other much better.” Only then, did she look over toward her guests. “You’re early,” she said accusingly.

Jack didn’t know what to say, since he had his arms full of the Planetary Governor and his official boss, who seemed perfectly content to stay there, so he wisely said nothing, or so he thought.

Luz said, “What’s the matter, Jack? Cat got your tongue?”

“Uh, how do you do? I’d offer to shake hands, but I seem to have a previous engagement.” This wasn’t going at all the way he’d imagined, but he didn’t feel particularly awkward. ‘When in Rome …’ he thought, then ‘remembered’ that it was a quote from St. Ambrose, translated from Medieval Latin: Si fueris Rōmae, Rōmānō vīvitō mōre. ‘Whoa! This is seriously spooky!’

“I thought we were going to be invited to the wedding,” Luz said.

“You will be. We’ll have to do it again when his mother and sisters get here, and if I know Jaime, he’s already planning to rebroadcast the original footage and dramatic re-creations from now until the end of time. By the time he’s finished milking it for building and expanding the colonies, we’ll all be heartily sick of my marriage, and you’ll thank me for having spared you one.”

“You filmed it?” Luz asked.

“Of course I did.” Barbara said. “In the first place, I knew you’d kill me if I didn’t, and in the second I didn’t want to miss any of the details.”

Jack was puzzled. “Wait a minute. You filmed it? How did you know that I was going to ask you?”

“Jack,” she said with mild reproof. “ people don’t travel twenty light years to pick up a quart of milk, and it’s not exactly every day I see a mariachi band march through town on the very day your flight is scheduled to arrive. I went to the Police Academy, the same as you, and have been known to put two and two together on my better days. Not to mention the irreducible fact that Luz foretold our marriage in prophesy, and Luz is never wrong. When’s the last time you’ve seen a wedding without cameras? Heck, we didn’t even have to pose on the courthouse steps, which is lucky, because we have neither courthouse nor steps on Quicksilver.” She thought about this, then added, “No, there are a few maintenance stairs in the hangers and whatnot in the spaceport, but they hardly count, since they’re boringly utilitarian.” She turned to Luz, still in Jack’s arms, one of her arms around the back of his neck, and as completely at ease as if this were her normal mode of conducting meetings. “I think we should have the prop department whip up some excuse for stairs. They do make lovely backdrops, and we could get some great visuals for the shows.”

“You’re right, of course, Barbara. We should have some built into the posh houses, which means a second story for each, and probably put up some sort of ‘Governor’s Palace.’ as well. They used the Iolani Palace a lot in the old Hawaii Five-O series, to show off the exotic setting of the series, and of course the old Melina Mercouri vehicle Topkapi was built almost entirely around the setting of Topkapi Palace in the Istanbul urbopolis.”

“I’m not sure,” Barbara mused aloud, “that we should go for the Topkapi look, actually, but something like the Iolani Palace sounds nice, if slightly anachronistic. Would we get to live in it?”

“I don’t see why not,” Luz said, “and it will make a nice vid-op stop when Jaime gets his tours going, so we could write off the whole cost against one or another production company ….”

“Ladies?”

All eyes turned to Dan Asquith, who hadn’t said a word up until then. “This is all off-topic. We’re here to fulfil Senator Ortízes’ request, to brief Mr. Webster here on what we know, and what we suspect, about the ‘Burlador’ phenomenon. I don’t think either he or I signed up for an impromptu meeting of the Silver Light Production Company, as fascinating as I’m sure this is for all of us.”

“Ooops!” said Barbara.

“Same here,” said Luz. “I’m sorry, Jack, but threedees are our primary export and source of income, so we tend to be a little obsessive about new ideas to improve our ratings.”

“I’m not offended, Luz. Barbara here is my wife,” he gazed at her with fondness, “so her life is part of my life now, and I know I have a lot to learn. I’ve never been off-planet, and have no idea how colonies work, so this is all very enlightening, even if I don’t understand some of the infrastructure that all this revolves around.”

Barbara positively beamed a smile back at him. “Thank you, Jack.” Then she turned to the others and said, “I started to explain a little, but I think Dan is the best qualified to present the basic facts. Luz and I can jump in later, when we get to our own fields of knowledge, so take it away, Dan.”

Dan grinned. “Fair enough, since I was the one who brought up boring job requirements.” He focused on Dan, since he was the primary audience. “I don’t know how much you know about Triffids, so I’ll start at the beginning.” He brought up an image of the original Triffids on Barabara’s threedee wall.

Damned if he didn’t have a laser pointer in his pocket. Jack wondered idly if his university issued one with the degree.

“You’ll notice this bulging outgrowth here, beneath the flowering body. It was quickly identified by the first scientists to study the Quicksilver flora as a type of vegetable brain which helped to coördinate the movements of the tendrils and the flower, since Triffids can move at suprising speed and what seemed like conscious purpose. What they didn’t know was that these primitve Quicksilver plant ‘brains’ depended upon the superconductor nanofibers in the ‘tails’ of the pseudo-spirochætes which permeate every cell of a Triffid’s structure to transmit information to each other using unimolecular rectifier and inverter structures within their cells connected to longer fibers which acted like miniature antennae. Because the electric potential which can be developed by a plant is relatively small, they were able to achieve a very limited interplant communication by means of these super-conducting organic ‘radios’, but what they were transmitting was surprisingly detailed information about their own genetic structure, by means of which they were able to modify their own structures to match those of more successful Triffids. This astonishing innovation was enough to speed up evolution a thousand-fold, because the Triffids as a whole could ‘learn’ from the experience of other Triffids, and incorporate desirable traits by proxy, even at a distance.”

“All this was unknown until I was able to study the plants without the history of commercial hostility which had infested the thinking of those who came before me, who saw the Triffids only as particularly noxious and invasive ‘weeds,’ to be destroyed by the most expeditious means available.”

“At first, they used ordinary organic weedkillers, but the Triffids themselves used organic toxins to regulate and control their own growth, and were extremely quick to adapt to these new poisons, so every new poison quickly became useless, and once the plants learned how to produce them, became tools in a counter-arsenal of toxins designed to control what the Triffids saw as an infestation of human beings.”

“Wait a minute! Are you saying that the Triffids are intelligent?”

“Not exactly. To convey these complex concepts simply, I come very close to anthropomorphism, which is incorrect on many levels. Let me start over: The Triffids use these superconductive organic ‘radios’ to transmit genetic information to one another — much as we, in our own bodies, use organic chemicals, hormones, neurotransmitters, and the like — and are so intimately connected that they could, in some sense, be thought of as a single organism, so that one might more properly think of the ‘Triffids’ we think we see as portions of a single planetary Triffid, so that what we thought of as individual Triffids are really more like single cells within a single organism. A planetary intelligence, with no peers with whom it can communicate, is a psychological conundrum, since we humans are defined by boundaries and communication. We communicate to cross boundaries, and by our communication we define not only ourselves, but the spaces between ourselves, and we have an entire repertory of mental skills designed both to cross and maintain those boundaries, among which the first are language and the realization that there are others inhabiting the same world as ourselves. In the human sense, the global Triffid was no more capable of what we would think of as real thought than a rock.”

“But in another sense, looked at from a purely human perspective, Triffids were connected not only to their own bodies, but to one another at an intimate — but unseen and unsuspected — level that’s even now difficult to comprehend. What it amounted to, however, was that in some sense the Triffids were individual components of a very slow but pervasive planetary ‘brain,’ limited only by the extremely short range of their individual transmissions. Their vegetative ‘synapses’ couldn’t generate enough electrical potential to power transmissions with a range of much more than twenty or thirty meters, so passing information from Triffid to Triffid was a relatively slow process, and from — again — a purely human perspective, that brain was catatonic, completely incapable of responding to any other individual.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Let me see if I understand this; the Triffid was in what amounted to a vegetative coma, ‘brain dead,’ as it were, but was still alive and potentially conscious, but still stuck in limbo.”

“That’s an interesting way to put it, and brings to mind another human allegory. What do we call that … spark … that makes us unique and alive?”

“I don’t know … a soul?”

“That’s the word I was thinking of, a soul, the moral and emotional nature and sense of personal identity that makes one human. The Triffid had no soul, no spark of life that breathed ‘humanity’ into it. I’ve discovered fossil records in ancient shales that show what looks like the same Triffid in existence almost a hundred million years in the past, perhaps even further, since my writ doesn’t run to mounting extensive fossil-hunting expeditions, but it seems clear at least that this planetary organism was extremely stable over geologic time. We’ve been around for a million years, if we’re generous about what it is to be ‘human,’ but what looks like the same Triffid has been around essentially unchanged for at least a hundred times our entire history. It seems clear that Triffids weren’t going anywhere, and were at an evolutionary ‘dead end.’ ”

“Then, three things happened: First, people came along, whose brains create electrical potentials plants could only dream about. When combined with the pseudo-spirochætes which permeate the air on Quicksilver, some human brains became ‘infected’ with tiny pieces of the Triffid neurosystem, and eventually became at least potentially capable of interacting with the plants, and vice-versa. Second, because biological poisons had failed, Chillings and associates began a policy of burning Triffids, which released microparticulates, a sort of Triffid smog, into the atmosphere of Quicksilver, thereby vastly increasing the rates of infection in humans. Third, however, and most important, was the fact that the operation of ansibles requires massive amounts of power, which was heterodyned into the plants, and into those humans infected by the pseudo-spirochætes, eventually every human alive on the planet. But in the early days of the exploration of Quicksilver, the power wasn’t available to operate the network for more than a few minutes each day. Nothing happened, pretty much, since there wasn’t enough constant power available to keep the network powered up continuously.”

“And then along came Senator Chillings and his friends, who were so committed to micromanaging Quicksilver that they wanted to keep the ansible network in operation almost constantly, so provided the necessary power on both ends, on Quicksilver and on Earth, so now the plants, and sensitive people, were heterodyning on top of Chillings powerful spy network, and it was almost constantly available, so parasitic heterodyning became fashionable, in an evolutionary sense. And then Chillings and company decided to add high-def video to the mix, requiring still more power — and vastly-increased bandwidth — and suddenly we have massive communication opportunities. For the first time, it’s possible to create a Triffid which requires a high average level of ambient ansible traffic to survive, but also allows the plants infinitely higher levels of communication, so ansible-sensitivity became a survival trait, since genetic information could be transmitted much more quickly by the ansible-sensitive Triffids, thus allowing them to adapt more quickly, so the Triffids, being the opportunists that they are, adapted.”

“Now let’s step back a bit to see the larger picture. People, like much of Earth-based life, had developed in a completely different relationship to their environment. Where Triffids had completely dominated their entire ecosystems, people, and all Earth life, had developed many different strategies of coöperation among different species, from parisitism to symbiosis, from predator and prey to herder and protected flock. We can’t even exist without the help of ancient entrained bacteria, the mitochondria which power cell metabolism. We have an intricate relationship to bacteria in general, as every woman knows, and not only tolerate but require a healthy microfauna living on every body surface to maintain our health. We even have a special nerve, the vagus nerve, running from our digestive tract directly to the brain, where it lets us know if our bacterial flora are happy and content by making us feel good, and the opposite if the bacteria are unhappy.”

“So we were already primed to take advantage of the Triffids when they crossed our path, one more advantageous creature to incorporate into our repertoire, one way or another.”

“Since the Triffid micro-encapsulated ‘spores,’ — with their entrained pseudo-spirochætes — had been piggy-backing on “Earth” crops raised on Quicksilver from the beginning, so people both ingested them and tossed them out into the larger environment with the garbage, or into the sewer system, Earth itself was slowly being primed to receive the transmissions that Chillings and company used to spy on their colony, and the Triffid — still catatonic — used the spying to strengthen its unconscious ties to Earth, and sensitive individuals among the colonists did likewise, and I suspect gained some advantage by doing so — perhaps heightened intuition, a better feel for emotional situations, or an advantage in deftness and coördination — so Quicksilver, Earth, and every human colony developed a ‘field’ of nascent intelligence that extended throughout every soil and environment, but no one was alarmed, because it either didn’t do any harm that anyone could notice, or wasn’t noticed in the first place.”

“But then Chillings and his pals did a very stupid thing, they began to kill colonists in such numbers that they started burying them at random, instead of safely interring human bodies in carefully-maintained cemeteries kept free of Triffids by human effort, and one colonist in particular, Margarita, who had no reason to love Chillings or his friends, was buried beneath a pile of Triffids, whose roots and tendrils grew into her still-intact brain, and whose networked intelligence preserved some semblance of the human consciousness which comprised the real Margarita’s ‘standing wave,’ and so Margarita/Quicksilver was born, both on Quicksilver itself, and a crippled version of itself/herself on Earth, since Earth had, as yet, no actual Triffids as carriers of the standing wave which is an intelligent entity, but that pattern was constantly being restarted, echoed, and reinforced by Chillings’ ever-increasing two-way broadband ansible communications between Earth and Quicksilver.”

“Hold on, you lost me again. ‘Standing wave?’ ”

“Have you ever heard of a seiche?”

“No.”

“Have you ever held a seashell over your ear to ‘hear the ocean?’ ”

“Yes, I have. My grandmother had a seashell, and she showed me how it sounded. I thought it was some sort of sound inside my head though.”

“That’s a common misconception, but that ‘ocean’ sound is a seiche, a standing wave captured within any resonant cavity that’s powered from outside that cavity. If you ever experimented with a shell, or a teacup, or even your own cupped hand, you know that the pitch of the seiche can be altered by varying the acoustic resonance of the cavity by varying its depth, so as you move the shell closer to your hear, the inchoate pitch of the sound goes up, and as you move it away the pitch goes down. Because ambient noise is usually random, you have many multiples of many different pitches all being reïnforced at the same time, so it sounds like roaring. If you fed the sound with a pure tone, as happens when a bay, for example, is flooded by a tsunami — a series of regular waves — the seiche can build up until it becomes very destructive, increasing the amplitude of the base signal until it’s much larger than the wave which fed it.”

He nodded. “Okay, but what’s that got to do with consciousness and souls?”

“Human consciousness is a self-reïnforcing chemical standing wave, a seiche, if you will, caused by our interactions with the events of the outside world. The chemical signals of consciousness echo constantly in our brains, even when we’re sleeping, and if they stop, we die, just as a sound dies when it ceases to echo.”

Luz broke in. “Why don’t you let me finish this, Dan. This part of the story concerns me personally, and I loved Margarita more than anyone.”

“Of course, Luz.”

“Thank you, darling.”

“As Dan was saying, Jack, Chillings and his crowd started killing people, because a non-violent resistance had started to spring up on Quicksilver, because their drive for ever-increasing profits was tempting them to squeeze every dime that could be had out of the people working for them, so we were spiraling down into a cycle of endless poverty and deprivation. People resented it, and began calling for a fairer distribution of the wealth that Quicksilver produced. Frightened and indignant that their profits could be threatened by mere peasants, the Chillings crowd began using strong-arm tactics to suppress dissent, which quickly escalated into armed force against unarmed civilians, and people started dying, including both my children, Conchita and Pablo, one killed by brutal clubbing, the other by gunshot, and my brother Miguel.”

“Also, the ‘agricultural smog’ Dan mentioned was poisonous, which Dan didn’t mention, and some sensitive individuals developed symptoms of that poisoning, the very same protein hypersensitivity that you experienced in Wyoming, Jack, and made you very ill, even though your exposure was relatively minor. The people on Quicksilver were being exposed to hundreds of times more toxins than you experienced, and some died, including Margarita, my wife, and almost me. We were both imprisoned in a sick ward, but no actual treatment was given, since they thought that we had a contagious plague and were afraid of us, so they let my wife die with no real attempt at care, although they did hook her up to a respirator, but didn’t bother investigating to see if the problem was allergic reaction, so didn’t use the epinephrine and other measures which might have saved her life. I watched her die in my arms, and listened as her last breath left her body.”

“But you were married?” Jack asked. “Were you a lesbian? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but you seem very heterosexual now.”

“No, I wasn’t a lesbian at all,” she said smiling. “I was a man.”

Jack was highly sceptical of this claim. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, Luz, I find that very difficult to believe.”

She smiled. “It does seem unlikely, doesn’t it, but I assure you that it’s true. Dan can tell you too, because he was my best friend back when I was an almost illiterate campesino, a farm worker who struggled every day just to get by.”

Jack looked over at Dan, who nodded his assent, then said, “It’s true, Jack. I didn’t see the first change, but she convinced me that it happened by telling me things that no one else knew, and I saw the second change with my own eyes, so I know exactly what’s possible. When I first saw her as a woman, she was the near duplicate of one of the nurses at the hospital, but didn’t act anything like her, but then I saw her change into the beautiful woman you see now with my own eyes, in what can only be described as a miracle, and the miracle affected me as well, because I fell in love with her in that moment, something I very rarely do with my male friends, especially, but then I probably had help.” He smiled to show that he was making a joke, and then smiled again at Luz, a smile which fully communicated the depth of his love, at least.

“I still don’t understand,” said Jack. “Were you a transsexual? Did you want to be a woman? And I don’t understand about this so-called miracle. Miracles simply don’t happen.”

“Really?” Luz asked. “What would you call the Fury who attacked you in Wyoming? A child in a Halloween costume? Out trick or treating early?”

“You saw that too?” Jack was dumbfounded.

“Of course I did. Did you think it had no objective reality?”

“But the cameras didn’t show anything. I just collapsed,” he said, but it sounded weak, because he didn’t believe it himself.

“That’s only because mere cameras don’t capture the entire spectrum of energies that were present. Shall I describe her face? Her fangs? The snakes she wore for hair? The fiery sword she carried and cut at you with? Her wings? Oh, she was very real, Jack, and nearly killed you, but she looked into your heart and weighed it in the very instant before she struck home. That’s why you’re alive today. Senator Chillings and his gang of thugs in business suits were found wanting, and died.”

“But why did you choose to be a woman if you didn’t have those feeling before? I’m still not understanding something.”

“It wasn’t exactly a choice, Jack, in either instance. Margarita chose for me. The first time was simply a reaction, I think, perhaps because she wasn’t fully comfortable with her powers, and she had just been buried, and the roots of the Triffids were still seeking out the formations of her brain and lingering thoughts, so she chose the first form she saw through my eyes that looked serviceable for what she had in mind. I was looking at the photo ID of the nurse Dan mentioned, with some vague idea of disguising myself so I could escape my prison ward, but knew it was impossible before she took over and changed the possibilities. The second was purely intentional. At the time, I was in mortal despair, surrounded by death, the utter destruction of everything I held dear, and I wanted to die, in order to be with my wife and with my children; I actually tried very hard to kill myself, and would have succeeded, except that the ‘poisonous’ Triffid fruit I ate had changed for the better, and then it changed me for the better, because Margarita had come into her power, and made all things new. Margarita gave me back my life, and made me a source of life, a woman, in order to repair my broken heart and make it into something whole, and to make me learn how to love again. Margarita is very good at her rôle in this new pantheon, and it worked just as she’d planned.”

Dan added a little science to the mix of ideas. “And don’t forget, Jack, that the Triffids had been using their limited communication skills to decode and broadcast their own genetic structure for millions of years. Building organic structures to order was old hat for them, especially when mediated through the lens of human perception and intelligence. With Margarita adding real humanity to the stew, there’s very little the gestalt of Margarita/Triffid couldn’t do if she puts her mind to it.”

“Margarita was, and is, a wonderful woman,” Luz said. “She has a very strong sense of justice, and she didn’t feel that it was fair that I should suffer after her death, so she released me from my marriage in the simplest possible manner.”

“Do you miss her still?” Dan asked, but not in a hurtful way.

“Oh, yes. Every day, my darling, but it doesn’t hurt any more, not really. I have a new life, and a new life growing inside me, and it’s partly Margarita, because she set all this in motion. I can look around me and see the world that Margarita made, the Triffids as she wanted them to be. In a way, she became the mother of us all, much bigger than simple Margarita, my wife, and someone much more important, more like a saint, or perhaps a Goddess. I’m not sure which. I’m not even sure that it matters. She clasped her hands around her belly, cradling her growing child. It’s a girl, you know. I’m going to name her Margarita, in honor of … not Margarita herself, or maybe partly, but mostly of her world, and the part our children will play in it.” She looked at her husband with the purest love in her eyes, then reached out to touch him with a lingering caress.

She continued, “Luz was born when Juanito wanted to die — a joint creation of Margarita, who loved Juanito, and Quicksilver itself, which wanted to live, and had shaped itself to survive over millions, perhaps billions, of years of perfect evolution — and Luz was the perfect vehicle, a consummate actress, businesswoman, and ‘threedee personality’ who people wanted to see, the evolutionary creation of the combined wills to survive of Margarita and Quicksilver, who changed my mind even more than she changed my body, who taught me the skills I’d need as a woman who could ignite the need for a growing network of ansible communications between Earth and Quicksilver, and every other planet. Margarita was much more clever than Juanito, and is much more clever than any of us are now, because she fully incorporates the knowledge and spirit — soul, if you will — of every human alive. She saw exactly what was needed, and simply created it ex nihilo.

“So Margarita is the Burlador?” Jack asked, still confused.

“Not at all, Jack, the Burlador is/was the spirit of Senator Chillings, and Senator Tamotsu Tsukasa, and Irene Sarantapechaina, and Senator Jackson and his son, all of whom were vile, hateful people, and whose collective hatred and greed created the crippled version of Margarita who was left behind on Earth when they broke off communications during the riots and deaths on Quicksilver — just as the new Margarita/Quicksilver was being born into new life — lest they be caught at ordering the massacre. One of the reasons I came to Wyoming was to find and heal her, and to bring her back into full communion with the complete Margarita avatar on Quicksilver, and I succeeded.”

“So, you’re saying that Senator Chillings and his friends created the Burlador? The same Burlador who destroyed them.”

“Funny, isn’t it?” Luz mused. “Sometimes people actually do get what they deserve.”

“But isn’t that spirit still there?”

“No, not really; no more than a human being is still the conjoined spermatozoon and ovum which started their growth into full life. The Burlador was no more than a very powerful, dangerous, and angry infant, trapped in the moment of its creation by the anger the evil Senators inspired in a mother who had seen her children murdered before her eyes, then thrown into prison where she died. Have you ever seen someone who’s experienced a real religious conversion?”

This seemed like a non-sequitor, but he answered anyway, “I guess so, but I’ve seen a lot more who say they have, often for the purpose of conning gullible people out of their life savings.”

“You’ll have to trust me on this Jack, but by conversion I mean something that changes your soul, not just your body. … A Goddess … if you can forgive the expression, but I think it's fairly accurate — who can change a quasi-literate male peasant into an urbane and talented heterosexual female in the twinkling of an eye, fully functional, and highly motivated, if you know what I mean, is close enough to a real conversion for me, and I offered the crippled — and ‘sinful — ‘Burlador’ spirit the same sort of spiritual rebirth as a vibrant force for good that had been so generously offered to me, with the help of her powerful avatar back on Quicksilver. If you’ll recall, we were using many ansible channels to carry our threedee signals both ways, and so were pumping a lot of power into the local environment. Margarita/Quicksilver was able to help her, with my help, into full consciousness and love.”

“She offered me a similar miracle as well, Jack,” Barbara added. “And I took it like a drowning man gasps for air. Margarita changed me for the better too, and I’m very grateful.”

“Don’t tell me you were a man as well!” Jack cried out. “I don’t believe it!”

“No, Jack, I was a woman all along, but not one you’d particularly like to know, I think. I was heartless, cruel, and unforgiving. I especially didn’t like men all that much, if you know what I mean. Margarita looked into my true heart, saw exactly what had made me so unhappy, and cured me with one of her miracles. She forgave me, even though my own fear and negligence had caused her death, and helped me to heal, so I’m very happy now, and a huge fan of Margarita. She gave me back my life, and my chance at happiness.” Her face worked itself into tears of gratitude and joy. “My life has meaning now, and it never had before.”

“But this is crazy! You’re talking about some sort of insane mind control, and it’s sick! That’s all it is, just sick!”

“Jack,” Dan said. “Do you believe that people can change? Do you believe that you can change?”

“Well, yes, but not where it counts! I’m sure of that at least!”

“What about people with mental diseases, like psychoses? Can they be helped by medicine?”

“I suppose so.” He saw where this was going, and he didn’t like it.

“Is the psychosis an essential part of them? Or is there a better part of them that the psychosis overwhelms?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded sullen, even to himself.

“Does Luz look unhappy to you?”

“No.” ‘Dammit! He was sounding like a child. And he had changed, he realized it now. That’s what Barbara had meant when she’d asked about Candide. There was something of Margarita inside him, but he didn’t feel different so much as better. In fact, when he thought about it, there were a lot of people inside him, his mother, his sisters, even the father he barely remembered. Weren’t they all a part of him. Hadn’t they all helped him? Even Barbara was inside him, a part of his soul whose presence he could feel, and she made him feel sanctified by her particular blessing. Wasn’t there room for one more?’

“Would she have been better off killing herself? Her children had been slaughtered, after all; her wife had been abandoned by the medical staff, left to die alone in agony, and then she did die, gasping for breath in her very arms, when she could have been saved with a simple injection, just like you were saved. What’s the point of living after that, Jack? If you’d been there, would you have strangled her, as a quick and merciful end to her suffering, or would you have tried to help her?”

“I would have tried to help her ….” ‘ …of course!’ he almost added.

“What about Barbara? Believe me, Jack, a more unhappy woman I’ve never known, and like many unhappy people, she took it out on the people around her. Do you think she’s happy now? Would you have preferred knowing the old Barbara, the sad Barbara, the angry Barbara who would have thrown you off a cliff as soon as look at you, if you’d annoyed her?”

“I don’t know. Yes. No. I can’t tell.” But he could. Whatever Barbara had done in a past life, it was over now. He knew that with certainty. The Barbara he loved was now. The past was irrelevant, because he could feel the goodness, the compassion, inside her.

“I despised the old Barbara, Jack, and I think you would have too. She was a lot like Senator Irene Sarantapechaina, always out for number one, and to hell with number two, number three, and anyone else. But I love her now, and she’s one of my dearest friends, but at the same time, she, or the she she was back then, ordered the attack on the protesters that killed Luzes’ children, her brother — and many others — and arranged the cruel quarantine that killed her wife. How do you suppose it’s possible that Luz and Barbara love each other now?”

Jack spoke reluctantly, but spoke. “Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts That I have shot mine arrow o’er the house And hurt my brother.”

“So spoke Hamlet, and so speak we all, sooner or later,” Barbara said. “I did all the bad things that Dan told you about and more, and wish like very hell like I could simply ‘take it back,’ as if I were a child and still believed in magic. But all I can do is love Luz twice as much as I hated her, be generous to her twice as much as I was jealous of her, and perhaps in a long lifetime love her enough, love the world enough, to make some small amends for all the harm I’ve done.”

“In her defense, Jack,” Dan said, “she was following the orders of Senator Chillings, and would have had to comply even if she’d hated it, but she didn’t hate doing it, because her father had been a hateful man, and raped her repeatedly when she was a little girl, until all the innocence and goodness was broken inside her, her very soul shattered into sharp shards and daggers, and she was so warped from the cruelty she’d suffered that she’d become someone who wanted to become cruelty itself. Kālo ʻsmi lokakṣayakṛt pravṛddho; lokān samāhartum iha pravṛttaḥ. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds, devouring Mankind.”

Jack understood the reference. ‘Krishna to Arjuna, in the Bhagavad Gītā, The Song of God, in the chapter called The Vision of the Universal Form. I’m represented by Arjuna, of course, the querent, but Krishna is time itself, which eventually destroys everything, no matter what we do, and we can’t escape our fate, But time is also the source of all creation, deep time, stretching back to the first creation we know of, in which only light spewed forth into darkness, and everything goes right back to that singular instant of time in long cycles of creation and destruction. We are all stardust, born of a series of catastrophes, formed of the wreckage of exploding stars that formed the very atoms of our bodies in the instant of their destruction. In the words of another song, everything is going to be all right.’ “All right,” he said. “All right,” he said, and all the salt tears slid down his face unheeded.

Hisashi Yamaguchi stood outside Jack Webster’s door, fully armed and prepared this time, but there was something wrong. Someone had decorated the familiar plastic door with yellow and white plastic flower decalcomanias like stylized daisies, which didn’t quite fit the image of the ascetic monk whose quarters he’d briefly seen before he was captured. Curious, he hid his weapons beneath his ceremonial black robe and knocked on the door. Someone, a woman, called out from within. “What d’ya want?”

“I’m a friend of Jack Webster and was wondering where he was,” he said.

“Fat chance,” the woman answered, approaching the door, but not too near. “If’n he was your friend, he would’a told ya, wouldn’t he?”

“Told me what?”

“That he’s off to the colonies somewhere. He’ll be a corpsicle by now, so ya’ll have to remember to look him up in thirty or a hundred years. If’n he owes ya money, good luck collectin’.” She laughed at him and walked back across the room.

He knocked again.

“Fuck off, jerk-face! I’ve called the police,” she said, “and they’re on their way, so shut the fuck up and scram, asshole! I’ve got better things to do.”

He left, his face impassive.

Mamoru Terakado, the Sensei who’d taught Hisashi Yamaguchi, had been dispatched by the Tsukasa Yakuza to track down his errant student and demand an accounting, but also to handle the execution of World Senator Ortíz, whose hand had been seen behind the arrests of Senators Tsukasa and Sarantapechaina, especially because he now appeared to be employing Jack Webster in a private capacity.

After studying the situation, he quickly found a weakness which he intended to exploit, the so-called fool-proof faux-dirigible in which the Senator and his family often began or ended their travels. The preparation time involved in getting the dirigible ready for lift-off allowed him to plan an interesting exploit, so he decided to do that first.

He developed a ‘sound footprint’ of the noises associated with the preparation of the disguised V-Lift and its folding shell for lift-off, and set it to spy on the Senator’s compound while he took his ease outside the Historic District, which hampered many types of assault. Westerners often forgot that Ninjutsu was an art of warfare, not limited to sneaking around in black outfits with throwing stars and flash powder. The goal was the covert destruction of an enemy, not theatrical tricks that played well on the threedee screen.

Soon enough, his preparations paid off; his monitor had detected the first signs of dirigible preparations.

Quickly, he left his rooms for the private San Diego Urbopolis airstrip, just down the road, where he had a sub-orbital runabout waiting, the pilot already waiting for clearance. From the private terminal entrance, he ran across the tarmac to the small airship and gave the signal for takeoff even before climbing into the stratospheric assault armor he’d had installed in the airship with its own dropchute.

Within ten minutes, he was circling at 40,000 feet, well above and to seaward of the compound and outside air traffic control zones. He was watching the ‘dirigible’ lift off its landing pad through his heads-up display and ready to ‘drop’ at the calculated moment. An automated sensor array fired the armored capsule from its dropchute and he settled in for the three-minute guided free-fall to earth already traveling at terminal velocity when he left the chute. Automated steering vanes, as small as a gnat’s wing, kept the capsule headed directly toward its intended target.

From there, the entry to the V-Lift was child’s play. He fired a small rocket into the folding ‘skin’ of the airship, which trailed a grappling hook and wire which pulled his capsule in even as it prevented the disguise from unfolding properly, hampering the aircraft’s maneuverability and slowing it down. Once the drop armor contacted the airship skin, he added electromagnetic power to his landing contacts and was fastened like a limpet to the shell. The escorting military fighters were powerless to intervene, of course, since firing on him would probably destroy the V-Lift he was fastened to. Within ten seconds, he was through the skin, had blasted through the main cargo door with a shaped charge, and was in the passenger compartment where he found, not the Senator, to his great disappointment, but three little girls, dressed in zoris, bathing costumes and loose coverups for a day at the beach.

‘Oh, well,’ he thought. ‘There’s more than one way to make yakitori.’ He pulled out his weapons, a military neurolizer and a wakizashi, to handle any intervention from the cockpit, and said, “Be still, children, and you won’t be hurt. Is your father aboard?” He might yet salvage the mission easily if he was, and if not his new hostages would give him ample leverage for a more direct assault.

One of them said, “You want to hurt my father, don’t you?” She had an angry scowl on her face.

“There’s no need for you to concern yourself with that. My business is private, and it’s with him alone.”

“No! I won’t let you hurt my father!” She unbuckled her seat belt and started toward him with childish fury.

He shook his head and tucked the neurolizer away to give himself a free hand to slap her into submission. If not, a kote gaeshi or similar movement would force her to comply. “Be quiet, girl! or ….”

To his intense — and painful — surprise, the girl slapped away his hand as if it were a rice straw, and followed this astonishing movement with a kick to his shin that actually broke the tibia, sending him to the cabin floor as his fibula collapsed behind it, both shattered by the force of her blow. She then kicked him in the temple, fracturing his skull at its weakest point, moving so quickly that he barely had time to be amazed by her martial prowess before he lost consciousness. His last sight was an ever-narrowing vignette of her smirking face, her childish jaw jutted out in anger, until the encroaching darkness claimed everything.

Hisashi Yamaguchi, disappointed by the disappearance of Jack Webster, decided to focus on his original target, Tom O’Hare, salvaging at least a portion of his appointed task from the general wreck.

Once he was back on track, his plans worked perfectly, of course. People who live behind walls, with a phalanx of guards on call, get careless. He was sitting quietly in one stall of the men’s room where O’Hare usually went to pee after his morning cup of coffee when one of his guards peeked in, then okayed it for his boss.

O’Hare had one hand occupied, the other casually on his hip, when Hisashi’s knotted strangling cord settled around his neck and he was dead before he hit the slightly grubby white tiles of the floor.

The guard peeked in again behind his back, but Hisashi wasn’t worried. He’d finished his primary task at last, despite a lengthy hiatus, so he could count this mission as a success. He didn’t even bother to turn around before the guard started firing his weapon, too late for O’Hare, of course, but Hisashi imagined it must make the silly bodyguard feel like he was doing something. ‘Amateur ….’ he thought contemptuously, and died.

The Quicksilver Wedding Special was the most advertised show of the year, with more newsvid coverage — as it turned out — than the Superbowl, and the rates for pre- and post-ceremony ‘announcements’ (with hard sells strictly prohibited) were steep even by Superbowl standards. It started with a simple statement from Luz Calderōn.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, you’ve been watching our shows for almost a year now, and we appreciate your interest, so we’d like to take you ‘backstage’ for a bit, to be with us as one of our regular character actors, Barbara Big Horse, who in real life is the Planetary Governor and Chief of Police … ” Here she paused for a humorous aside … “We’re a small community still, and we don’t have much need of either of her jobs on a full-time basis” — then she went back to her prepared invitation, “is married to her sweetheart from Earth, who set off alone across the stars in an experimental airship to be with her for eternity, the devilishly handsome and hunky Captain Jack Webster, Police Detective and Warrior Extraordinaire, with his family and hers as guests, along with most of our local community. You’re welcome to join us.”

With that, the camera pulled back and up into a long shot down onto what seemed to be an American Indian encampment. A male announcer said, in that hushed half-whisper usually reserved for golf tournaments, “As our regular viewers know, Barbara Big Horse is a full-blood Oglala Sioux of Pine Ridge, sometimes called the Oglala Lakota, originally from what used to be South Dakota. In honor of her heritage, the wedding is being held in an historically-accurate encampment of her people, and many tribal elders have been invited as witnesses. Standing beside her is Luz Calderōn, since they have adopted each other as sisters, and one of the only surviving members of her birth family, Inez Big Horse, her youngest sister, although she is now very old in comparison to her older sister because of coldsleep and time dilation effects. Barbara Big Horse is wearing an historically accurate recreation of the wedding regalia worn by Záptan Sunkawakan, her great-grandmother, fifteen times removed, which was given to her by her fiancé as a bride gift.”

The view cut to a close-up of Barbara, radiant in the brilliant Quicksilver sunlight, her black hair shining with rich highlights. Her dress was revealed to be a work of art as the camera pulled back slightly to a medium shot.

The male announcer spoke again. “As many of our viewers already know from the newsvid coverage, the Oglala Sioux have a matrilineal and partially matriarchal social structure, so suitors have to be approved by the female elders of the woman’s family as well as by the woman herself, and all marital property vests in the woman, as a protection for her children in case of death or abandonment by her husband. Their decision will be based in part upon the richness of his bride gifts, the ancient equivalent of a Dun and Bradstreet credit rating. Although male chiefs are traditional, many women have held this important post, and at least theoretically the eldest women of the tribe could formally withdraw their support for a male chief, and the man would have to resign his position. This ensured that decisions involving the survival of the tribe as a whole remained firmly in women’s hands.”

The view shifted to a long shot of a cloud of dust on the edge of a nearby hill and suddenly a lone figure on horseback rode over the hill, followed closely be a large herd of horses being driven by ten young men. The camera zoomed in for a close-up of the leader, who turned out to be Jack Webster, bare-chested, dressed in beaded buckskin trousers, and looking very fit.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe this is the bridegroom’s party just entering our view. They’re driving what appears to be a herd of a hundred and forty-four mares, although Jack Webster himself is riding a stallion. If this is Jack’s bride gift, in addition to the dress for his bride, it’s a princely gift indeed. Let’s see, at current values, that number of mares is worth an estimated one million eight thousand credits DDU Quicksilver Spaceport. ”

The horses were thundering down the shallow slope toward the encampment as a heaving wave of pinto ponies, almost a single mass, like a broad speckled caterpillar with five hundred and seventy-six legs and the camera shots alternated between three separate long shots which encompassed the entire herd from different angles and close-up and medium shots which captured individual horses or small groups jumping arroyos and navigating through narrow places on their downward path.

Through it all there were shots of Jack Webster and the Oglala Lakota riders riding like the wind, showing spectacular horsemanship as they rode down the hill keeping the herd under tight control. And then they were on the flat outside the encampment, where they gradually slowed the herd until they entered the loose confines of the camp at a walk, still keeping tight control of the horses until they stopped still, the horses shuffling slightly, excited by their headlong flight, but cooling down, and facing the women.

Jack rode forward and said loudly, “I offer these young and healthy mares of ancient lineage as the bride price of Barbara Big Horse, in addition to my previous gifts.”

Barbara stepped forward with her aged sister and said, “I accept these valuable horses in trust for my tribe, to be a matrimony for a new homeland on Quicksilver, purchased in fee simple from the Planetary Owner, comprising approximately ten thousand square kilometers and located on the plains beneath the western slope of the Olympus Mountains.”

Then the rituals began, with a series of shamans and tribal elders calling down blessings, wafting the smoke of burning leaves and herbs in the six directions, accompanied by a centrally located group of drummers beating a complex and ever-changing rhythm as first women, than several circles of women and men moving in opposite directions around the central area, sometimes chanting, sometimes silent, and then chanting in descant, the women chanting a separate song above the lower voices and song of the men, in an exotic pagentry of difference that hadn’t been seen, except in old vids, in hundreds of years.

At the end of the special, Luz Calderón came back on for the wrap-up and outro. “We of Quicksilver would like to thank you for your visit today, and let you know that on-demand streaming versions of the show will be available for a small charge on our web site. In addition, a special ‘home movie’ version of Jack Webster’s spontaneous proposal as he stepped off his airship is available now, which contains over an hour and a half of threedee vid and full-surround audio. Mariachi fans take note: This is the only vid containing the entire performance of Dos Arbolitos by Jack Webster with Los Charros de Mercurio as backup. A boxed set containing both threedees is also available on the site, which also includes a selection of very high-def still photos suitable for vid-walls and screensavers. These sets all include secondary audio channels containing Spanish and French equivalents of the entire soundtrack, with the principal actors re-voicing their performances in these languages for your enjoyment, assisted in some cases by voice-over talent for the secondary characters. We currently have editions which include German, Chinese, and Russian voice tracks as well, but these feature voice-over actors for all the parts.”

“On a personal note, I’m sure that some of you noticed how exciting cultural diversity can be, especially in a world which is becoming steadily more homogenized. On Quicksilver, we’re committed to seeing a thousand flowers bloom, as the Chinese saying goes, and to ensure this, we’re doing our part to ensure that the indigenous cultures of the Americas and the Eastern Pacific Islands have room to thrive. If you are an official of any recognized North or South American Federation tribe with treaty rights, including Native Hawaiians, Samoans, and Alaska Natives, would like to enquire about purchasing a Tribal Homeland on Quicksilver, with a minimum purchase of five thousand square kilometers, please contact any Federation Emigration Office with your bonafides and budget. Packages are available featuring seashore, savannah, island, and mountain meadow environments, all pre-planted with Quicksilver-specific food and grazing crops on surprisingly affordable terms, so your first years will be self-sufficient. Quicksilver also accepts individuals and families who wish to join specific communities, with certain skill classifications being offered special incentive packages for long-term immigration contracts.”

“Thanks again, dear friends, and good night, but please remember: There are many worlds to explore, and room enough to hold all our dreams safely, but the worlds of humanity have no room for hatred, corruption, or greed. In the end, it’s really quite simple. We must love one another or die.”

And then the credits rolled.

 

 

 

On Quicksilver, things quickly got back to normal, and all the standard line-up of shows were available on the threedee channels, although more episodes featured the Oglala Lakota Homeland and other Homelands, as they grew, which added the spice of variety to the mix. Jack Webster and Barbara Big Horse became so popular as guests that there was talk of spinning off their own series, tentatively called Crazy Horse Revisited in the pilot scripts, but the production company was still running focus groups before settling on the final title.

On Earth, though, things were changing. The most corrupt World Senators were facing recall, and their polling numbers weren’t good, since there were almost daily revelations of the latest scandals involving the still-entrenched, but weakening ‘Old Guard.’

And all over the Capital city, and all over the world, strange new plants were popping up, contaminating monoculture croplands, parks, forests, and even forcing themselves through plastic and durasteel pavements, growing so rapidly that a hint of green leaf had barely to appear in a tiny crack before it was a growing shoot, then a tree, and then ripe fruit was hanging from the limbs. They smelled wonderfully enticing. They were delicious.

High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds …and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of …wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space …
… put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

 

 

‘High Flight’ was the official poem of the ancient Canadian Forces Air Command and Royal Air Force, and was required to be committed to memory by all fourth class cadets (freshmen) at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in the old USA. It is still the official poem of the World Federation Air Force.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr. was an American pilot and poet who volunteered for combat duty in the Canadian Forces Air Command during the Second World War, before the United States of America had entered the war. He was killed over the village of Roxholm in Lincolnshire when the Spitfire he was flying collided in heavy cloud cover with an Airspeed Oxford trainer out of RAF Cranwell. He was nineteen years old.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

	’Neath Quicksilver’s Moon by Jaye Michael
Chapter Twenty-Three ― Demon Moon

 

¿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

 

 

Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field …

Bereshit (Genesis)
3:1

 

 

Horde Leader Skrztff’l strode alone from his personal assault craft without fear, as befitted a leader of his rank. Above him, a capital ship of the Fftztru’ul Empire lowered over the city, weapons ports unshielded, with Class VII beam projectors clearly visible, a silent threat to all within their line of sight.

A female of the barely-sentient animals living on the surface of the planet came toward him, saying something incomprehensible, but his translation device instantly explained, “Welcome!”

He looked at her curiously. She had a mane of light yellow hair trailing down her back, and ghastly pale skin, but otherwise her visible skin was bare, except for some kind of decorative crest above each white eye, the centers of which featured a ring of pale blue. She wore a loose flowing garment which didn’t seem to conceal a trace of armor or shielding, a nearly-incomprehensible oversight, and was obviously too flimsy and filmy — he could practically see through it — to conceal even a female’s personal dagger. He spoke into his translation device, which turned his eloquent words into their feeble twittering: ‘I am Horde Leader Skrztff’l of the mighty Fftztru’ul Empire. I am here to accept your unconditional surrender.’

“Of course you are,” the creature said, placing some sort of flat serving tray on legs in front of him, with a type of food displayed on the surface, obviously trying to ingratiate herself to him, having recognized a superior life form.

The Horde Leader nodded. These cringing creatures would make perfect slaves.

“Won’t you have a bit of fruit? You must be tired after your long journey, and I'd hate to send you away empty-handed. I’ll go and fetch some nice hot tea for you as well. You'll quite like it, I'm sure …” She went into a nearby structure and busied herself with something, but the Horde Leader wasn’t worried. These pathetic savages had no weapons at all, as far as their battle scanners could detect.

Horde Leader Skrztff’l looked at her offering suspiciously, ‘Was this cowardly creature trying to poison him?’ He pointed his environmental analyser at it; it was completely edible, and filled with all the nutrients a warrior needed. He smelled it cautiously. It smelled delicious! He reached for the plate and crammed a luscious handful of the fruit into his mouth, and it was fruit, almost as delicious as bramblefruit from back home. No, it was bramblefruit! It had been years since he’d tasted real bramblefruit. He swallowed.

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

All rights reserved.

 

DEDICATION:

To my loving wife, Betty. She completes me.

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Levanah

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter One Opening Salvo

 

 

All war is deception.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

Maybe it was the years of chemical warfare initiated by suburban homeowners, maybe it was an alien invasion or maybe Darwin was right and it was just the logical result of genetic drift. No one knows how it happened. I don’t care. I kill them. I’ve got a flamethrower on my back, a machete in my belt, and my name is Crete. I’m a Horticulturist, one of the front-line soldiers in the war against the weeds.

The nights are long on watch duty, also cold and lonely, filled with darkness and slithering, deadly vegetation constantly seeking a chink in the castle’s security. They tell me it used to be simple, a little weed killer in a spreader, a couple of squirts of spot weed killer, then lay back on your deck to enjoy your lawn. The old videos show people frolicking on neatly trimmed fields of green. They thought nothing of wearing the thinnest of coverings as they casually strolled, hand-in-hand, through parks, chewed on blades of grass and built their houses of vegetative materials. How strange and idyllic it must have been, back in the golden years of humanity. I almost wish….

 

 

“Crete!” Captain of the Guard Glass had rounded a corner on the castle battlements and caught me leaning against the steel plate wall. When I jerked in surprise, he continued, even angrier. “Daydreaming again! I’ve caught you, haven’t I?”

“Aye, Captain,” I hung my head in shame.

“What if the weeds had attacked? Your position would have been overrun. You would have died. Worse yet, your failure might have meant the end of this enclave.”

“I’m sorry, Captain. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No. You weren’t thinking.” Pulling a walkie-talkie from his belt, Captain Glass called for a replacement. Then his harsh glare softened. “I should never have allowed your mother, may she rest in peace, to let you read all those books. Now you think too much, just like she did.”

“I’m sorry, Father.”

“I know, Son.” The older man ruffled his son’s hair affectionately before allowing himself to resume a stiff, military bearing.

A moment later, another young man in the uniform of the Horticulturists rounded a corner and saluted.

“Assume Crete’s watch” he barked out his order with punctilious formality. “Crete, report to detention.”

 

 

The line of sullen men, ten in all, stood by the heavily fortified steel gates with drooping heads and shifting feet as they listened to the huge man with scars crisscrossing his face pacing before them.

“Listen up, meat,” Lieutenant Forge bellowed. “This is a dangerous job. The most dangerous job any of you will ever undertake. You’re going out into the ‘Wilds’ to gather food.

“For most of you, this is a punishment detail. That means most of you are screw-ups. Well, you can’t afford to screw up out there. If you do, you’ll die. Worse, others might die instead of you. If you don’t think you can work as a member of a team, step forward and you’ll be marched back to detention until you can be given alternative punishment.

“Excuse me, Sir,” a thin blonde boy, barely out of his teens piped up. Crete could guess what he was going to ask and was not disappointed. He would have considered asking himself if his father hadn’t already told him.

“Yes, soldier?”

“What’s the ‘alternative punishment,’ Sir?”

“Lashes…,” he said simply…

The group murmured.

“…and banishment,” he went on, matter-of-factly.“ Bottom line is, either way you’re leaving the compound. You can do it as part of a team, with at least some chance for survival, with the possibility of helping to contribute to the survival of your community, or you can do it on your own — and die.”

 

 

We wore the standard issue gardening uniform; assorted supplies in a survival pack, flamethrower and steel armor with a rebreather, a hundred and fifty pounds of the best protection our scientists could come up with, but it was miserably heavy and hot. Not an inch of bare skin existed, though, which was an absolute requirement. The glass visors were so darkly-tinted that they reflected like a mirror, to protect against being blinded by the actinic radiation from violent explosions. Only the number codes, stenciled in large print on our chests and backs, identified us in any meaningful way.

Lieutenant Forge was number one. I was number seven and the boy who had asked about alternative punishment, his name was Silica, was number eleven. The numbers were an indication of our ‘Wilds’ training and experience. Dad had taken me out once to burn away some especially aggressive creepers that kept blocking a sewer exhaust. That gave me more experience than four of our group and less than three. You might wonder why the numbers only went up to two digits. The answer was simple, no one had ever survived service amongst the Horticulturists for long enough to make larger numbers necessary.

Lieutenant Forge’s instructions were very simple. “Stay together, flamethrowers on and aimed away from anyone else, fry anything that moves or looks green, and I mean anything.”

The weeds in front of the sally port still smoldered and stunk from the napalm burn. Until recently, a burn would give us a chance to get well through the gate and set up before a full-force attack could be initiated. It was supposed to guarantee at least a hundred yards before the really bad weeds, but lately they had been shooting poisonous homing burrs into the area as soon as the fires died down. Some of the burrs were fast-growers and sprouted creepers right on the protective suit, but most seemed to be burrowers. If they found something metallic, they would burrow into any cracks or crevices until they found soft human flesh and then consume it. I had only seen that once. Even after flaming the man, trying to burn off the plant, he had continued screaming and jerking. It wasn’t pretty.

When the flames were almost out, the gate opened just wide enough to allow us to slip through one at a time. We formed into a rough double line, weapons drawn, scanning the ground and sky. It was a clear day with puffy blue clouds. Below us was scorched earth, not brown and vegetation free, but black and partially crystallized from repeated incineration. In the distance, but not distant enough, were the weeds; bright green and constantly moving. Everyone jumped as the gate slammed shut behind us. We were really on our own now.

 

 

“Deploy missile.” We were about fifty feet from the quivering slithering wall of green and almost a mile from the castle. So far, we had been lucky, as if we were in the eye of a storm. Not even a homing burr had attacked us yet, but we knew that would never last.

“Aye, Lieutenant.” Brick responded. He was a tall man, but thin, the only other man beside the Lieutenant to have more than two expeditions. He unstrapped a bazooka from his back and mounted it on his shoulder. With a quick check for authorization from Forge, he shouted, “Fire in the hole,” and fired first one and then a second missile into the foliage. The flame bloom was nearly blinding, even though we had turned away and were wearing our tinted protective gear, because they loaded those missiles with a lot of magnesium and HE, to make the resulting blast as hot as humanly possible.

I know it had to be my imagination, but I swear I heard a high-pitched scream of pain as the missiles ignited. We rushed through the opening, bypassing the larger fires and jumping over the rims of the craters formed by past foraging expeditions. I could hear the swishing sound as they came. As soon as the initial plume of flame had died, the homing burrs attacked and we were in a free-for-all fire-fight.

Four and Eleven were down immediately. Apparently, the burrs had learned a new trick. They’d somehow managed to coördinate their efforts well enough to target single humans.

At Forge’s instruction, Three and Five hosed down Four with flame while Nine and I did the same for Eight. We tried a couple of short bursts, hoping to burn them off before they could do any damage. It worked, but new burrs covered them almost as soon as we got the first batch burned off. The second time it was clear that we were going to roast Eight alive if this happened again. We could smell the beginnings of burnt flesh already.

I think it was Five who figured it out first, at least he was the one who shouted above the din for us to burn the burr on top of Eight’s head. We tried aiming for just that one burr, but it had a tougher exterior than the others and didn’t burn off. More burrs were already covering portions of his suit and it was unlikely that he could stand yet another full flaming.

Eleven must have known that too, because he violated protocol, yanking off his helmet and throwing it away. We stood there stunned, waiting for the burrs to swarm over him. But instead, they swarmed off towards the helmet.

“Snap out of it! We still got incoming burrs!” Forge screamed and we went back to dishing out mayhem.

About a hundred yards into the alley of flame, Forge called for two more missiles. They cleared another aisle and we moved forward. It took five sets of napalm missiles to make it through the kill ring. We camped for the night in the center of yet another missile blast crater. Guards were set at the perimeter of the encampment and lights were shielded to keep away any inquisitive plants. I don’t know about the others, but I was asleep instantly.

 

 

Eleven died during the night. No one saw it, but a creeper managed to make it into his suit. It sucked him dry, crushed his bones and left only a few drops of blood on the bottom of the suit.

Some of us wanted to blame the perimeter guards, but Forge wouldn’t let us. He gave a brief speech about duty and responsibility, told us this was why we needed to keep our helmets on, and got us marching again. We didn’t even bury him. We didn’t even say his name as we walked away, leaving what was left of him behind like yesterday’s garbage. As we marched, weapons drawn, trying to watch everywhere at once, I said my own personal goodbye to Silica, a man I’d barely known, but a good soldier nonetheless.

 

 

We were now in an open area. Forge called it a pasture and said it was safe — at least as safe as anyplace outside the walls. We thought it was spooky. It just wasn’t right. There were no walls, just waving green everywhere we looked — except for the circle of blackened, scorched earth around us.

“About a mile from here is a town,” Forge told us. “When we get there, we split up and check each building. We’re looking for canned goods or anything else that’s sealed. Check each item carefully. If the seal is broken, even the slightest, burn it. If it’s intact, we take it back. And remember, if it moves, burn it. Don’t think, don’t wait, burn it.” Then, as we watched aghast, he marched off into the waist high grass without burning it first.

We looked at each other, afraid to follow and unsure what to do. There was a light breeze and the grass whispered around Forge as he walked. He turned abruptly as he heard the click of nine flamethrowers being turned on at once.

“Flame off, ladies. If we flame these fields we’ll have an uncontrollable fire. It’ll burn down the town we’re trying to scavenge from.”

“But you said…”

“I know what I said. I said move anything that moves. If you see a creeper in the grass, flame it. If you see homing burrs, flame them. If you see a pseudoshark, flame it. Just don’t flame the wheat grass.” With that he turned and continued his march through the grass.

We shrugged, formed into a line and marched nervously after him. After getting elbowed by Five and Seven, Six called out to him, “Sir? What’s a pseudoshark, Sir?”

 

 

I was learning to hate marching. It wasn’t the walking; it was the boredom. It gave me time to think. I was wondering why there were no homing burrs, no creepers or any of the other forms of deadly vegetation that surrounded the castle. It was as if the weeds knew we were in the castle and was laying siege to it — to us. Did weeds think like that? Did weeds think?

I knew the official answer; Dad had told me enough times. Weeds responded reflexively to movement, to heat, to the existence of chemicals only present in human bodies, whatever, but they didn’t think. They had grown up around the castle because of our presence. Lethal weeds like those which surrounded the castle weren’t present in the open plains where our detail was walking now because there were no humans there, and they couldn’t spread into areas where there was no food supply. The pseudosharks came into sight before I could figure out why the official answer didn’t quite ring true.

We were interrupted by movements in the tall grass. Instantly, every flamethrower was aimed in that direction. I couldn’t make out what it was, but I remembered Forge’s instructions before we left, “Fry anything that moves!” and apparently so did everyone else. Only Forge’s bellowed “No!” prevented us from flaming them.

“What in the name of Harry Harrison are those?” someone called out, it was difficult to say who, because the radio links made almost everyone sound the same, scritchy and distorted. ‘They’ were gray balloon-like things with shiny silver ridges extending from end to end and they wandered around on the ground as if they were foraging. Mostly, you could only see them because the shiny silver ridges poked up above the wheat grass. Once you got closer, though, you could see that green vines trailed from them back to what looked like a twenty-foot tall dandelion, complete with a yellow flowering crown.

“Are they pseudosharks? They look gray and oval like the pictures,” someone else said.

“If they were pesudosharks we’d be flaming them, wouldn’t we?” Someone said angrily.

“Don’t take the Prophet Harrison’s name in vain!” another voice exclaimed piously.

“Don’t tell me what to do, you little snot!”

“Shut up!” That last was shouted by Forge. I recognized his voice, at least. “Nine, I don’t want to hear the Prophet’s name spoken in vain again. Six, yes, those are pesudosharks. All of you, you don’t flame pseudosharks, ever! They’re mostly napalm. Where do you guys think we get our reserves from?”

“So what do we do with them?” someone asked. However Forge did it, telling those voices apart from each other, I didn’t have the knack.

“Think of them as an especially deadly version of a mobile watermelon. They’re not completely root-bound, like most plants are. They can move around to the length of their vine, usually about fifty feet. We take out our nets and trap them. The only tricks are not to flame them and watch out for those fin-like leaves that grow out of their backs. They’re razor sharp, and can cut a man to pieces in a heartbeat.”

“If they have razor blades on their backs, how do we net them?”

A couple of the others murmured, “Good question.”

“You lay the nets on the ground and one of you acts as bait to entice the pseudoshark onto it. Then two others run around it and yank the net around it, making sure not to pull the net too high, so it can’t slice it with its fin. Pull it to the end of its tether, cut the tether, and then tie it off so it doesn’t ooze napalm, then wait for it to die. Usually takes about five minutes. Does everyone understand?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Good. Deploy in teams of three. I’ll stand watch. I want three dead sharks in ten minutes.”

It actually wasn’t as hard as it looked. The pseudosharks were dumb. It took about three tries to find that, if we moved slowly enough laying the net, they wouldn’t charge, so all the guy being the ‘bait’ had to do was to stand fairly near the net and then flap his arms around until it noticed and started stalking him.

I was elected to act as bait. Actually, I got told I was bait, but since I was the smallest of the three of us, it made sense. I just stood between the nearest pseudoshark and the net and waved my hands. I didn’t even need to make noise.

It was surprisingly quick, almost as fast as a homing burr. I bolted as fast as I could backpedal. It was going to be close, but I thought I could make it, until I tripped on the net.

Ten and Six grabbed the net and tried to pull me to safety, but it was a forgone conclusion now. I wasn’t going to make it. I was dead; I just hadn’t finished dying yet.

Forge was running toward us, screaming something. Ten was closest and he understood first. He stopped tugging at the net and stood still. Then, Six did the same.

I was quietly muttering Harrison’s Last Verse when the pseudoshark veered toward Forge. It was almost funny when I could think about what happened next. Just like a cartoon, it reached the end of its tether — about two feet from Forge — and bounced back. Then, it kept jumping at him, trying to reach Forge even though it was clear that it couldn’t. Dad once talked about a dog that his grandfather had that used to do the same thing. He had some videos of ‘the Good Times,’ before the plants went psycho, and I saw it once.

Forge just stood there laughing at it and waving until I was back on my feet. “Are you ready to try again?” he called out to me.

When I had swallowed my fear and nodded, he froze. Taking my cue from him, I began yelling and waving. It took a moment, but the pseudoshark noticed me and charged. This time it worked. After some quick net work by Ten and Six, we had caught ourselves a pseudoshark.

Looking about, the other teams had each caught one too. Strangely, all the other pseudosharks had disappeared.

As I ran to cut the connecting vine, Forge turned to check on the others — and then just disappeared. One moment he was standing less than twenty feet from me, the next he was gone, sucked down into the earth.

We ran to where he had been standing. When we got there, we found an eight-foot deep pit. At the bottom of the pit was a gaping maw with more rows of teeth than I could count. In the center of those gnashing teeth was Forge’s upper torso, bouncing around as more and more of it disappeared.

“What the hell is that?” I asked.

“Damned if I know. Don’t matter. We gotta get Forge out.”

“Are you crazy? Look at him. He’s already dead.”

“So what do we do?”

“We burn it, just like Forge told us to do,” Two said, running up to us. “We burn it.”

Nine flamethrowers began torching the thing that had burrowed underneath to take Forge. For ten seconds there was a constant sea of flame at the bottom of the pit. When Two ordered us to halt, the rows of teeth were still there, gnashing away at the charred bones that were all that was left of our troop leader.

“Harrison’s Word! How do we kill that thing?”

“I don’t know, but look. It’s going away.”

The teeth were covered over by a thick greenish membrane and then it was gone.

“What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know,” Two said with a worried look. “Call it a giant burrower for all I care, let’s just take the pseudosharks and get out of here before it comes back.”

We grabbed the shark carcasses and started a fast march away. That’s when another hole opened up immediately in front of us. It had instantly swallowed up Two, Three, Four, Five and Six. It would have taken me too, if Eight hadn’t pulled me back from the crumbling edge of the precipice.

The four of us who were left began flaming the giant burrower, but all it was doing was turning our dead fellows into cinders. It didn’t seem to be bothering the burrower at all.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t know. Ask Seven. He’s in charge now.”

“What?” I looked around, but he was right. I was the most experienced person left. Harrison’s Word, were we in trouble. I thought fast.

“Dad says… said… never to run from an enemy. It will just chase you down and kill you. Either way you’ll probably die, but if you stand and fight, at least you’ll die a hero.”

“Great. We’re already fighting — and losing. We need more.”

“More. More. That’s it! More.” I looked around frantically. There was still one shark left. We were in luck.

“Quick. Toss the pseudoshark into the pit.”

“What?”

“Toss it. Now! Do it!”

Ten grabbed the net and tugged it toward the edge. It was almost there when the edge crumbled. With a scream, he dropped to the waiting maw below. His scream cut off almost immediately.

Before I could say anything, Eight and Nine bolted, back toward the castle. They made it about fifty feet — I watched them — right into the center of the pseudoshark flock. They were dead before I could turn back to the giant burrower.

I was alone. Clearly, a plan was needed. First, I considered giving up the scavenging foray and returning to the castle. If I made it, I could at least advise the families of my platoon-mates that their sons died bravely.

Ending the mission didn’t bother me. We had left a cache of missiles just beyond the worst of the weeds so I’d have enough of them, but the image of firing missiles while flaming homing burrs and creepers, all with my hands full of pseudosheep, just did not go over well. I realized that I would never be able to fire missiles and flame weeds at the same time, even with my hands free. That meant that even if I was able to find food and raw material, I’d never be able to make it back to the castle.

If I couldn’t go back, I needed to do the impossible. I had to find a way to survive amongst the vegetation. This would be a good trick, when I couldn’t even afford to go to sleep without risking being sucked dry by a creeper like Eleven.

I had no idea what I would find there, but my only hope was to get to the village. With luck, maybe I could hide from the weeds there, at least until another scavenging party came by. But to get there, I had to make it past the giant burrower.

Dropping to the ground, I got my feet behind the shark and kicked at it until it fell into the pit. Scrambling to my feet, I quickly stuck the flamethrower over the edge and shot a quick burst before rolling away from the pit as fast as possible.

Before I could roll clear, I was tossed away by the huge blast. I couldn’t hear anything and the world seemed unwilling to stop shaking. Struggling to shake off the concussion, I crawled back to the edge of the pit, which was a lot bigger now.

At the bottom of the pit was the giant burrower, or rather parts of it. It was definitely dead and it was definitely a plant. It looked like the plants were still mutating, because this was something new.

Checking the fuel level on my flamethrower was depressing. I had less than an eighth of a tank. None of the flamers from my now deceased team members had survived either. If I was going to survive, I had to catch another pseudoshark to refuel my flamethrower, but the only way I knew how to do it required two additional people — people I didn’t have.

Standing just out of reach of a conveniently located fuel supply, I tried to decide what I could do. I was fairly certain what I had in mind wouldn’t work or we would have been told to do it that way in the first place, but I didn’t see too many other options. Using some of my dangerously dwindling supply I flamed the connecting vine on one of the pseudohsarks about half way between it and the huge, dandelion-like central plant.

My hope was that my burst of flame would neatly cut the vine in half at a point where there was not enough napalm to allow it to explode. If it worked, the pseudoshark, disconnected from its root system, would die and I’d have the napalm supply I needed. Instead, the flame ignited the vine, which burned like a fuse in both directions.

I debated running out to the edge of the vine and stomping out the flame before it reached the pseudoshark, but it was moving much too fast. My only alternative was to throw myself to the ground and pray the blast wouldn’t kill me.

The blast from the pseudoshark I had tried for rolled me back at least ten feet and left me with ringing ears and a dull headache. Then the second blast hit and I was knocked unconscious.

 

 

When I came to, the first thing I noted was the dirt and plant parts covering me. I screamed and struggled to my feet, brushing it off. That’s when I realized that I was deaf. I hadn’t heard myself scream and I couldn’t hear myself yelling as I confirmed that I could no longer hear.

I hoped my hearing would come back eventually, but I was more concerned about the devastation I had caused. Where the dandelion had been was a huge pit, maybe fifty feet in diameter and twenty feet deep. I could see a few roots wiggling and squirming at the bottom of the pit, trying to slide back into the ground. Where the pseudoshark I’d tried to capture had been was a smaller hole, probably about ten feet wide and four deep. Looking further I could see several smaller craters where other pseudosharks had blown up, but at the far side of the large crater there were two pseudosharks weakly flopping about on the ground.

I staggered around the various cavities in the ground to reach them and by the time I did, they were still. I tapped them a couple of times to see if they were still alive, but they were nothing more than inert bags of napalm now. Each had a trickle of napalm leaking from the end of its vine so I knotted them off and tossed them over my shoulder.

I had ammunition and I was still alive. Judging from the position of the sun, I had about two hours to find someplace safe before nightfall and if I didn’t get moving soon, I would probably be burrower food. There was only one choice. I headed off in the direction Forge had said there was a village, where I could see a strange sort of oblong mountain, almost like an upright domino, in the distance, with jagged foothills on either side.

 

 

Growing up, I had explored every nook and cranny of the castle and had thought it huge. The village was much bigger. It seemed to go on forever, filling the horizon even before I was near enough to see the end of the tall grass I had been walking through. More impressive was the way it went up — and up. Dad had always described villages as small and quaint, whatever that was. This was anything but small. I wondered if this was an especially big village, not that it mattered very much. The sun was going to be down in about two hours and this was the only place I’d found were I could get away from the weeds.

The first homes were set far apart with tall grass, trees and vines covering them. Many were partially demolished. As I moved closer to the village, the houses moved closer together and seemed to be in better shape. I passed several more dandelions, but steered well clear of them.

When the buildings started to change shape from pointed roofs to flat ones, after what seemed like many miles of walking, the grassy road changed to blacktop. The blacktop was buckled and overrun with weeds — small ones, not the killer weeds. Initially they were everywhere, but by the time I made it to the what must have been the center of the village they were few and far between and the buildings had changed shape into enormous towers of what looked like grey stone laid so carefully that I couldn’t actually see any joints. There was still the occasional killer-sized dandelion growing in the grassy areas Dad had told me they used to call ‘parks’ and, less frequently, I’d see large holes in the ground that I assumed were from some sort of giant burrowers, although the edges seemed curiously even and rectangular.

I selected the tallest building — which I eventually realized was the ‘mountain’ I’d seen from far off and now felt a little foolish about being so naiïve as to think that — I could find and climbed as high as I could before it was too dark to see, reasoning that I’d be well above the range that the plants could sense me, and would have a good lookout position where I could see all around me. Every few floors, I’d go to one of the huge windows and look out. The windows themselves were amazing — glass, or something like it, from ceiling to floor, an astonishing weakness that instantly identified them as dating from before the War — and I was hesitant to even approach them. The view through the glass kept getting more and more impressive the higher I got, and the building itself seemed warmer, and the light seemed brighter, so I finally approached close enough to one wall of glass that I could see all around that side of the building. I was trying to fight a sense of vertigo as I stood next to the edge of what looked like a cliff, kept from falling only by something I could barely see, but the outside world was truly wonderful. I could see other, but smaller, clusters of buildings in the distance. Looking far off to the west from my perch up in the sky, well above the smaller buildings around me, I could even trace back the path I had taken by the signs of recent burning and explosions, even at this distance. Almost over the horizon was a large expanse of green, but all I could see of the castle was the encroaching mound of plants laying siege to our… make that… my… former home. I realized I must be imagining it but, if I stared long enough, that distant green carpet seemed almost to seethe ominously, imperceptibly slithering, shifting, as it collectively jockeyed for the best positions from which to assault the walls and narrow gates that pierced the stone walls.

Suddenly feeling really tired after my long trek, and then the climb up what seemed like endless flights of stairs from the street, I went to lie down on the carpeted floor on the other side of the building, staring off to the east, away from home, but it was a long time before I finally succumbed to sleep.

 

 

The next few days were extremely busy. It was time to do what I could to assure my own survival, at least long enough to debrief another scavenging party regarding what had happened to mine.

After eating my next-to-last survival ration for breakfast and refilling my flamethrower, I began searching through this building and those nearby. I needed to decide where I would live and then make certain that I had what I needed to survive. Creature comforts would be nice, but more importantly, whatever site I chose needed to be near food, water and the other essentials of life.

I thought heat might be a problem, but the sun beating in through all the glass made the building downright hot during the afternoon and early evening and the concrete structure surrounding the glass seemed to hold the heat well into the morning. Maybe if it were the heart of winter, I’d have a problem, but that was at least four months off, more than enough time for the next scavenging team to arrive.

Food came from all the canned goods lining the aisles of what must have been one of the ‘supermarkets’ we had been sent to find. I’d almost passed it by, expecting something to mark it, the smell of rotten food, flies, I didn’t know what. Instead, it was just a storefront less than a block from where I was living. The name didn’t even say ‘supermarket’ and I had no idea what a ‘Klegelmeyer’s’ was, so I almost passed it by. In fact, I would have, if it weren’t for a movement I caught out of the corner of my eye. Just as I was passing the through the doorway — which displayed a large red sign with the letters ‘IGA’ on it in white — something skittered around a corner and disappeared inside the store.

Training took over immediately. Flamethrower drawn, I scuttled into the shadows and slowly crept up on the entrance to the store just like Father had drilled me to do. His words came to me, “Suffer not a weed to live.”

At the door I stopped to reconnoiter. Nothing was moving, but there were rows and rows of boxes and cans. It was like I’d died and gone to heaven. I actually forgot about the weed for a moment as I stared in wonder at more food than I had ever seen, but sanity instantly returned as something moved near the back of the store.

Carefully, I snuck from aisle to aisle, peering back into the dimly lit rear of the store, looking for the stem and root of whatever was in there. I could hear faint scurrying sounds, but nothing moved.

Whatever it was, I knew it wasn’t going to be a greenie. Chlorophyll would be useless in that dark environment. My best guess was a fungus, but none of them had turned traitor yet. In fact, they were currently the main source of food at the castle.

Having reached the end of the rows of shelving, I looked back. The front door seemed a long way away. If a weed attacked, I was unlikely to get out that way. With a deep sigh, I started down the row before me, figuring that one row was as good as another.

I passed box after box of cereals with flashy colors so bright they were visible even in the dusky light half way to the back of the store. At the end of the aisle, the light was so dim I could just make out gray shapes. A light was going to be a necessity or I would be blundering blindly into whatever had to be back there. Besides, I could always hope that whatever was back there would be blinded by the light.

It took only a moment to dig a flashlight out of my survival pack. To make certain it wasn’t me that was blinded, I turned and aimed my flashlight back down the row I had just come through, closed my eyes and turned it on. Then I slowly opened my eyes to let them adjust.

Flamethrower in one hand and flashlight in the other, I jumped out into the aisle that stretched from one end to the other of the back of the store. I expected some kind of weed, but what I saw was nothing but boxes and shelves. Nothing crawled towards me. Nothing flew towards me. The floor didn’t crumble beneath me. My first thought was, ‘Boy, what a letdown.’ Then my brain kicked in and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I carefully shone my light in every corner I could find. I knew I’d seen something, but where had it gone? If there was a weed less than a block from my new temporary home, I needed to know. It was a matter of self-preservation.

Clipping the flashlight to the flamethrower, I cautiously slipped from aisle to aisle, expecting a huge green tentacle to push past the cans and boxes at any minute, yanking me off my feet.

After the third aisle, I was trying to guess where the inevitable attack might come from, and how I might succumb — crushed by the boxes of corn flakes, beaten by the cans of beets, or it might even catch up to me by the ketchup. It’s amazing how fast boredom can set in — even when you’re facing eminent death.

Whatever had been stored in the odd containers at the back of the store was now rock-like and black, except for the multicolored mold that coated the walls of the white chests. They had glass tops that rolled from one side to the other, opening up the interior, which was filled with cylindrical tubs of some sort. The aroma wasn’t too pleasant, although it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Along another wall was a stainless steel free-standing closet, the the doors were like windows, with what used to be clear glass in metal frames. Inside, there were row after row of plastic containers of what looked like milk, but they looked and smelled like they’d all spoiled so long ago that only the faintest traces of something cheesy remained. I picked one up and dropped it through clumsiness, since my hands were encumbered by my heavy Horticultural gloves. The plastic split into a million dusty pieces, and the contents looked like cheese, but not any kind of cheese I recognized. Curious, I took off one glove, so I could investigate further.

I’d just knelt to taste it — it didn’t taste bad, despite the pungent smell — when I heard it, a faint scratching sound off to the right, followed immediately by a deep sinking feeling in my stomach. I had my flamethrower facing down as I knelt. It had the drop on me. Without moving anything but my eyes, I peered into the dim corner from which the sound had come.

It was small, whatever it was, just a blur of movement along the edge of the my vision. Quickly, I raised my flamethrower and aimed toward whatever it was….

It was a rat! It was alive! I could just barely remember the last time we’d had rats to eat, but it was gone, and I couldn’t risk burning piles of real food, food that the next group could carry back and store until the next successful foraging expedition, even for a roasted rat.

 

 

I slept that night on the bare vinyl of a room on the thirty-seventh floor facing west. It wasn’t as soft as the carpet in the room above, but the building was hot enough that the cooler flooring was welcome and I liked the view, I’d decided, now that it seemed slightly more likely that I might actually make it back home. It would make it easier to see the next team of Horticulturists when they came this way as well, so I could warn them about the few plants I’d seen in the village and tell them where the ‘supermarket’ was, and that there was more food available in that one store than even a dozen foraging parties could carry away. My own pack was full again, with beef! in blocky cans, round cans of peas, corn, potatoes, and even spinach, and seven glass bottles of some sort of fizzy water that they called ‘Evian.’

 

 

When I finally woke up, I had trouble opening my eyes and I felt like I’d just taken a beating. Every muscle ached, and I panicked until I managed to pry open my eye lids, which seemed to be almost glued shut with some kind of crusty film. It was well past noon, since the floor near the windows was already flooded with sunlight, and it was already getting back towards being almost uncomfortably warm.

I struggled to my feet and found my pack, opening another bottle of water so I could wash out my eyes. I used more water from the bottle to wash a foul taste from my mouth, spit it out on the floor, and then staggered to the window, anxious to see if another party of Horticulturists were already on their way. The view back our track seemed unchanged, however, which meant either that no one had set out yet, or that they’d encountered few, if any, hostile plants along the way. I wasn’t counting on that at all, considering the level of opposition we’d met during our own foray beyond the encircling wall of plants, so I figured that I was on my own for now.

I could have just sat here waiting, but my father had drilled a sense of duty into me that wouldn’t let me be idle for long, despite my occasional lapse into daydreaming, so I decided to do my best to guide any foraging party to where I knew that there was an enormous cache of food just waiting for them by laying out a trail, with notes along the way.

After painfully descending the stairs, I went back to the ‘Klegelmeyer’s’ to pack up as much food and water as I could carry, intending to carry at least a small cache of rations out far enough into the outskirts of the village to relieve any party that might be in trouble so far from home. I’d do this as many times as I could on all the likely approaches, and had already used some of the boxes from the store to make crude signs with the Horticulturalist symbol — two crossed machetes — on them to mark the spots.

The ‘Klegelmeyer’s’ had a ready supply of small-wheeled carts available, so I used some rope I’d found on something they called ‘Aisle 6’ to link together six of them in a sort of ‘follow-the-leader’ train and filled them up with food and water bottles. I brought several bottles of the cheese as well, since it smelled really good, now that I’d gotten used to the smell, although I had to be careful not to break the brittle plastic bottles.

Six carts was about all that I could handle, even on the smooth blacktop streets, since I was still stiff and sore from spending my night on the floor, but I imagined being welcomed as a hero, if I could somehow figure out how to haul my train of little carts all the way back to the castle. Maybe there were other stores with more practical carts somewhere along my path back to the outskirts of the village, since these would obviously never work once I reached the edge of the smooth blacktop roads.

It was slow going, and a hard grind, making my way back the way I’d come, because my arms and legs were getting more painful with every step and I was short of breath. The wheels of the little carts kept getting caught in cracks as the roads got worse, threatening to overturn them all, until I finally just sat down panting in the middle of the blacktop street, weary beyond really caring whether a plant found me and ate me or not.

It seemed like the sun was setting early, because it was getting dark….

 

 

When I woke up the sun was just rising, and I automatically turned to face it, feeling its welcome warmth on the skin of my face, since I seemed to have forgotten my helmet somewhere. I felt a lot better now, and I struggled up from where I’d sprawled beside my carts, seemingly unharmed. The rest must have helped quite a bit, because the carts seemed lighter now, and the soreness in my arms and legs had disappeared, so I trudged off down the road, until the road got so rough that I couldn’t really move the carts at all, even when I tried to take them one at a time. Those small wheels just seemed to sink into every crack and soft spot, so I looked at the houses around me, trying to find one still in good shape, with an intact roof, and no visibly dangerous plants around.

There was one just up the road with a covered porch, so I carried my stash of food to it one armload at a time until I’d emptied all six carts, then I stacked them all inside the door, which wasn’t locked, and the interior didn’t look like it had been disturbed by anyone, so I jammed one of my cardboard signs into the crack of the door and dusted off my hands, satisfied that I may have saved someone’s life. Any foraging party that made it this far would have enough food available to simply turn around and bring it back to the castle. I knew for a fact that I’d stacked up more food than I’d ever seen come through our gates before, so I felt quite pleased with myself as I began walking back toward the ‘Klegelmeyer’s’ for more food and water. I left the carts where they were, since there were lots of them in the store, and I thought that I might be able to find a better cart if I kept my eyes open on the way back, but I took the rope, reasoning that it might come in handy.

For some reason I was feeling quite cheery as I strode off down the road, and soon felt so energetic that I actually began to jog along, looking intently from side to side until I happened to see a sign several hundred yards down one of the side roads that said, ‘Sunset Nursery Supply.’ Looking closer, I noticed that there were a number of low carts in the yard behind the sign, surrounded by a fence that looked like it was made of thick string.

Curious, I ran down the side road toward the ‘Nursery Supply’ store, arriving just a few seconds later. The carts looked like they’d be perfect, low to the ground and fairly broad, so they wouldn’t tip over, and the wheels were fat. The only trouble was that they were behind the fence, which was taller than I was, what I’d thought was string was some sort of coarsely-woven metal, and there was some sort of metal box on the gate obviously intended to keep it shut. Frustrated, I gave it a shake, but it must have been rusty or something, because it simply fell apart when I tugged at it.

I opened the gate and walked inside. The carts were perfect, in fact. It was obvious that they’d been designed for something exactly like what I had in mind, because each of them had a longish handle with a ring on the end just about right to put your hand through to pull it, and they also had a hook on the back end that you could drop the ring of another cart into, making as long a string of carts as you had. I had six, even after looking all through the grounds, but that was lots better than what I’d had before, so I was soon trotting down the road with a train of low carts rattling along behind me, every one of them much larger than the little carts from the supermarket. I felt like I was on top of the world. The sun was shining, I was on my way to pick up enormous quantities of food for the people back at the castle, and I felt strangely energized, happier than I’d ever felt before.

When I got back to the Klegelmeyer, everything was just the same as I’d left it, so I immediately began loading up my new train of carts with food and bottled water, happy to be busy despite my solitude.

It seemed like I’d been working for just a few minutes when I realized that I’d stripped the food from half a row of shelves, the one called Aisle 3, which held mostly canned vegetables, and had made a good start on the bottled water as well. My new carts seemed sturdy enough that I’d piled the boxes rather high, so I used my rope, and more rope from Aisle 6, to tie them down firmly, pleased once more when I discovered that the new carts had special smaller hooks along the top rails that seemed designed to fasten ropes to, one near each corner and one in the middle of each side.

It wasn’t long before I was trotting down the road again, pleased by how easily my train rolled along, and how nicely they tracked one after the other, since the long handles actually steered the front set of wheels, so the carts had not the slightest tendency to drift off to one side or the other, as the first carts had, and I actually started running, so was back to my chosen storehouse almost before I knew it. In fact, it was a little difficult to stop, since the weight of the carts was pushing forward from behind me as I tried to slow down too quickly, and the steering action of the handles worked to my disadvantage when the carts behind pushed on the carts ahead, causing the handles, which had been so useful when moving along at speed, to turn into a serious liability, trying to turn the wheels to one side or the other, which almost made my whole train fold up like a piece of string. I had to act quickly, speeding up again, then slowing down more gradually, until I had the train back under control and had come to a safe stop.

By that time, I’d overshot the house by almost a cross road and a half, so I had to turn the train slowly in a wide loop to return back to my storehouse at a more sedate pace.

For the first time, I was glad that there was no one looking on, because I felt a little foolish. I should have foreseen the problem in the first place.

 

 

It took four days to move all the useful items from the Klegelmeyer to the house, by which time it was stuffed almost full of cans, bottles, and unopened boxes of the same from the storeroom at the back of the supermarket.

Oddly enough, I was working so hard that I didn’t feel all that hungry most of the time, but I was also getting so sweaty that I soon stopped wearing my protective gear entirely, except for the lower part of my suit, preferring to work without even a shirt, so that the breeze could help to dry my skin. I did eat quite a bit of the cheese, though, and drank a lot of water, and that seemed to be enough. I was eating better than I ever had back at the castle though, so maybe it was just the fact that food was so readily available that explained my relative lack of appetite. Back home, I remembered being hungry all the time, anxious for the next ration to be passed out, but here all I had to do was to stretch out my hand, so I didn’t worry about food at all. I remember my dad saying once, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ which had never made sense to me, until now, when I finally realized that the phrase must have referred to food.

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Two Flanking Maneuver

 

 

There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

It took me three days to find another supermarket, since I’d been looking for the familiar ‘Klegelmeyer’s’ sign. Even the red and white ‘IGA’ sign hadn’t done me any good, and I finally figured out that I had to look more carefully at the front windows, which usually had smaller signs on them that referred to food, although there were other subtle clues as well. The second store was ‘Nathan’s Market & Deli,’ whatever that last word meant. Maybe it was an abbreviation for ‘delicious.’ I didn’t much care, once I’d found it.

Since I’d pretty much stuffed my first storehouse full, I decided to do a little recon, seeking out alternative routes into the village with a view towards using the same ‘forward cache’ strategy to cover as many likely entry points as I could. Now that I had the trick of finding them, ‘supermarkets’ seemed to be almost ubiquitous. In many areas, there was one near almost every intersection of roads as soon as I got well away from my huge tower, which I’d made my base of operations, since I figured that most foraging parties from the castle would be drawn, as I’d been, straight toward it.

I spent a lot of time exploring — it must have been several weeks, but I couldn’t bring myself to care what day it was, since every day was pretty much the same here in the village, find a supermarket, find a safe storehouse for the food on a main road into village, then move the food into position — and eventually found the mother lode of all supermarkets right in the middle of a huge expanse of blacktop near the outskirts of the village. It wasn’t marked with any clear indication that it was a supermarket, not even the little clues that I’d discovered in the central village, so finding it was pure luck. There were lots of flat-roofed buildings just like it all around this part of the village, but it just drew me toward it for some reason, maybe because the huge expanse of blacktop marked it out as being somehow special, since most of the flat-topped buildings had much more modest areas of blacktop near them, and sometimes none at all. It was locked up tight, of course, but the judicious use of a little napalm took care of that, shattering the heavy glass of the doors, and I simply kicked away the metal bar at the bottom of the former door that was all the barrier that was left behind.

Inside, it was like forager heaven; what seemed like endless rows of floor-to-almost-ceiling shelving stacked high with boxes and boxes of canned and bottled foodstuffs. Even with my new train of heavy-duty carts, it would take years to empty out this place, although I’d have to figure out some method of lowering the food safely from the higher shelves, since I couldn’t safely climb down the shelving with a box filled with cans, and if I simply tied them to one of my ropes, I’d have the problem of climbing down to release the rope, and then ascending the stacks of shelving again.

Then I had another thought; there were hundreds of these flat-roofed buildings all around the outskirts of the village, some of them had to contain food, but more than that, maybe some of them contained things that might help us beyond mere day-to-day survival.

The only trouble with this idea was that I didn’t know what I was looking for. I was beginning to think that what I’d been taught about the plants wasn’t really true. They supposedly weren’t intelligent, but they seemed to have been clever enough to kill almost every member of a team of humans armed with the best technology we knew of. They were supposedly ‘drawn’ to humans based on their need for certain nutrients that human bodies contained, yet I’d seen plants here in the village, where there were very clearly no people at all, except for me. There weren’t very many plants, but they were here, and they hadn’t seemed particularly anxious to get those ‘special’ nutrients from me. In fact, as far as I could tell, they’d totally ignored me. The facts were that — judging from what I could actually see — the hostile plants were clustered around the castle, not the city, so maybe it was the people in the castle they were after, not just people in general.

In fact, the whole picture looked a little whacky. Just outside the ring of hostile plants, there were what looked like endless fields of wheatgrass. Call me crazy, but wasn’t bread made from wheat? Why were we sending young men off to die in an attempt to forage in a distant village when there was enough wheat to supply a hundred castles sitting just beyond our front gates?

With that thought in mind, I left most of my carts where they were and walked out onto the blacktop. Choosing a direction at random, I set off to explore the warehouses, equipped only with my flamethrower, a small prybar that I’d found in one of the supermarkets, and the bottom half of my protective armor, which I was wearing. One direction seemed as good as any other, so I headed north, pulling only one of my carts.

Most of the buildings were more or less anonymous, having at most a small sign on the door, like ‘SmithCo’ or ‘Roberts & Leland,’ although a few had the same sort of thing painted near the top of one or more walls, so they didn’t seem worth the trouble of breaking through the doors to find out what was inside.

Eventually, I found a building that said, ‘Hemmings Hardware Supply,’ which seemed a likely prospect, but the front door didn’t open, despite using a rock to pound off the front door handle, and then my prybar to wreck the mysterious innards of what must have been a pretty good lock, until I remembered a road sign that I’d seen lying on the ground several blocks away, where the roads were buckled up and it was difficult to maneuver even my sturdy new carts. It had looked heavy, since it still had a cylinder of some sort of rock attached to the bottom of the steel pipe the sign was mounted on, so I trotted down the road with my cart to where it was, levered it up onto the cart, and walked back backwards, towing the cart and the sign pole using both hands on the handle of my cart, because it was awfully heavy.

It was effective, though. I simply left it on the cart and took a run at the door, pushing the cart and the end of the pipe with the rock on it into the door. The first run bent the door. The second tore the locking mechanism from the frame, leaving the door open, and hadn’t affected my cart at all, so I was very pleased. Brute force beats brains almost every time.

I was even more pleased once I got inside, although it took quite a few days to make sense of what I’d found. I had several different sizes of pry bars, heavy hammers, some metal wedges, and a set of ropes and some things the ropes were woven through in a particular order that would — according to the picture on the package — let me raise and lower heavy objects easily, in short, a foraging kit designed for the obstacles I’d encountered thus far.

Walking back to my super-supermarket with my new load of tools, I was feeling pretty smug about the day’s accomplishments, already envisioning being able to lower the heavy bundles of boxes they had stored on the higher shelves without having to cut open the straps and plastic wrap and lower one box at a time, so I wasn’t really looking exactly where I was going when I realized that right in front of me was a medium-sized burrower, about as tall as I was, but greener, a lot bigger around, and with more creeping vines around it than I wanted to count just then, since I was frozen, trying not to move an eyelash, much less a finger. Not so long ago, I’d seen larger versions of this thing eat Lieutenant Forge, my squad leader, plus seven of my fellow Horticulturalists, so I wasn’t exactly optimistic about my chances of making it back in time for my triumphant salvage operation on the world’s largest cache of food.

‘Oh, crap!’ I thought. ‘Harrison’s Bloody Ass! At least I’ll die quickly.’ I’d cleverly left the upper part of my protective suit and my helmet back at the tower, and didn’t even have my flamethrower on me, since I’d left it back at the super-supermarket so as to make more room for goodies. In short, I didn’t have very many options left.

The burrower didn’t have eyes, so I couldn’t exactly know whether it was looking at me or not, although it was clear that it was aware of every movement, because every time I shifted position, even slightly, it would turn a bit, or the vines beneath it would move, rustling with a dry breathy sound like the wind through the wheat grass we’d walked through at the beginning of my adventure.

At last, the burrower reared up on its vines, fully displaying its gaping maw, filled with multiple rows of teeth, the exact same sort of teeth that I’d seen grinding up Lieutenant Forge, and he’d been wearing full armor at the time.

I did the only thing I could think of. I had a bottle of that pungent cheese in my wagon that I’d brought along in case I was delayed and got to feeling peckish, so I quickly picked it up and threw the whole bottle into the thing’s ‘mouth,’ thinking that it might distract the creature long enough that I could get away.

No such luck. My big chunk of cheese disappeared into its gullet as quickly as an extra ration of sugar might vanish into the mouth of a hungry child. It opened its mouth again, obviously wanting more.

At this point, I improvised, since I didn’t want to offer it my arm, so I said clearly, as if speaking to a child, “I’ve got lots more, but you’ll have to follow me. I’ll give you more cheese if you do.” I felt stupid, of course, talking to a mobile plant, but they say that drowning men will clutch at straws.

The beast said not a word, of course, but it seemed slightly more attentive and a tiny bit less menacing, so I took a chance and set off back toward the big super-supermarket, where I’d seen a larger row of the same sort of metal and glass cabinets I’d found cheese in at all the smaller markets. “Come on!” I said, feigning a bravado I didn’t really feel. “Don’t dawdle. I haven’t got all day!” and walked off as if I took green monsters for walks every day.

And off we went; modern man and ancient nightmare. For some reason, I remembered my mother telling me a story,

‘But while he was seeking with thimbles and care,
A Bandersnatch swiftly drew nigh
And grabbed at the Banker, who shrieked in despair,
For he knew it was useless to fly.’

That pretty much summed it up for me. My mid-size ‘burrower’ was a baby bandersnatch.

By the time we got back to the flat-top supermarket, the bandersnatch was getting restless, and it didn’t like going inside the building at all, but it cheered right up when I opened the glass-front cabinets at the back of the market and tossed it a few bottles of cheese. There was other stuff in there, but it just looked moldy, with a sort of fuzzy black and green color that didn’t look appetizing at all. The bandersnatch didn’t think so either. Say what you will, it had good taste. I just hoped that it wasn’t saving me for a snack later.

 

 

Over the next few days, the bandersnatch became my constant companion, an uncomfortable relationship — for me at least — since I wasn’t exactly sure how the bandersnatch would feel if I ever came up short in the cheese department. Luckily, every supermarket I’d found so far had a cabinet with at least some bottles of cheese, so it was simply a matter of remembering to keep a good supply on hand when we went out foraging. My beast seemed happy with one bottle in the morning and one in the late afternoon, so I always kept at least four on hand in the cart I took with me when I went out searching, which also carried my new breaking in and salvage kit. I decided to haul around the top half of my suit as well, and the helmet, just in case. My brush with death had spooked me a little, but not enough to persuade me to return to the ‘Burn it first! Then try missiles!’ philosophy of the Horticulturists, since I was beginning to be fairly certain that they’d brought at least some of their misfortunes on themselves. I didn’t actually wear the top half, of course. Despite the slight chill, wearing the whole outfit was stifling, and I felt lots better with it off. It chafed as well, and drove me crazy with itching the few times I’d tried it on after the first few days I’d spent without wearing it all the time. I reckon they’d had trouble finding one that fit properly, since I was on the small side for a Horticulturist, and had been putting on a little weight since I began eating regularly here in the village, despite my current schedule of fairly strenuous physical activity.

I still tried to get back to my tower regularly to sleep, because the warmth it held for quite a while after sunset was comforting, and because it allowed me to keep a general eye on the areas around the village. I’d also found a flat-top building with sections devoted to clothing and blankets by then, and finally added the bottom of my suit to all the stuff I hauled around, rather than wearing it, because it was a major inconvenience hooking myself up to the urination device, and I had to take it off to crap in any case.

It had been a little over a month since I arrived, although I found it difficult to pin down the days, since one day seemed a lot like another without the weekly rhythm of mandatory Chapel services to punctuate the week, when we studied the Word of Harry and heard general announcements from the Leadership of The Castle. In that month, perhaps a little more, my life had undergone a drastic change, from what had seemed like a justifiable terror in an extremely hostile world to a relatively peaceful existence in which at least some of my former nightmares had turned out to be — if not completely innocuous — much more manageable than they had appeared to be before.

My bandersnatch, for example, appeared to have a proprietary interest in my safety, which had surprised me when it had chased off another bandersnatch which had evidently approached too closely. If it had been a dog, one might have expected furious snarling, growls, and barking, but of course their agitated interaction was initiated, performed, and finished in eerie silence, except for the dry rustling of the leafy vines which formed their peculiar ‘legs,’ and the grinding of their prominently displayed teeth.

There had still been dogs in the castle when I was young, so the bandersnatch’s behavior was strangely familiar, but it was also unsettling. It was obvious to me by now that my bandersnatch possessed some level of intelligence — at least enough cleverness to recognize its ‘meal ticket’ — but it also had feelings of some sort, although I didn’t know whether those feelings were of affection, or jealousy, or something so completely alien that I wouldn’t recognize it.

 

 

“Hey! Gumball! Let’s go!” I talked to my bandersnatch a lot, since there was no one else around to talk to, and I didn’t want to be one of those crazy people who talk to themselves. In the castle, that was a quick way to ‘volunteer’ for a foraging team. Surprisingly enough, though, he paid attention when I talked to him, which gave me the illusion, at least, that he was part of a somewhat one-sided ‘conversation.’

It may have been my imagination, but ‘Gumball’ — I’d named him after a device I’d seen in one of the supermarkets, which had multicolored round balls of something inside a big glass globe with a sign on it that read, ‘Jumbo Gumball’ and then a smaller sign under it that said, ‘$2.00’ — was getting smarter. Lately, all I had to say was ‘Cheese, Gumball,’ and he’d rustle over to the cart and cleverly pick up the satchel that I was using to carry cheese bottles in, since they tended to be fragile. He’d carefully carry the satchel over to wherever I was at the time, so I’d make a great show of looking for the exact bottle I wanted to give him, and then toss it high up in the air so he could rear up and catch it on the fly. He seemed to enjoy the game and, frankly, so did I.

I was over on the eastern side of the village, and I’d been feeling a little out of sorts since early that morning. I was a long way from my tower, still looking for the elusive answers to questions I still didn’t know enough to ask. I’d found a lake inside a field of tall grass, although there were blacktop walkways, mostly cracked and broken, that wandered around through the grass and then circled the lake completely, which was equipped with a low wall and rusty iron benches, as if they’d had sentries on duty, ready to repel whatever it was that the lake had been home to.

I felt a little leery, walking next to it, but didn’t see anything to worry about, although the lake itself was very murky, and might have concealed almost anything.

Suddenly, an enormous sort of vine with long brownish-green leaves heaved itself out of the water, flopping from side to side as it wormed its way toward me and Gumball.

“Watch out, Gumball!” I shouted as I quickly turned to grab my flamethrower, but Gumball was already gnashing at the nearest leaves to good effect and, as if by magic, was soon joined by half a dozen of his fellows, who all seemed to delight in gobbling down huge chunks of leaves and stem.

By the time I got my flamethrower ready to fire, the tentacle vine had withdrawn into the cloudy water and Gumball and his former fellows were immediately aware of each other in a hostile manner. Not for the first time, I thought of dogs, except that rustling leaves were a poor substitute for growling.

“Play nice, guys!” I cried out. “Gumball! Cheese!”

Gumball shook himself, making a particularly angry-sounding rustle, then slithered off to fetch the satchel, suspiciously, I think.

His dark suspicions were confirmed when I tossed him a bottle, followed immediately by a bottle each for my rescuers, and then another bottle of cheese for Gumball, to demonstrate that he still had pride of place. “Gumball, honey,” I said soothingly, “these guys helped us a lot, so they really deserve a little treat, don’t they? And besides, it might be handy to have a few pals around if we ever get into trouble again, wouldn’t it?”

He grumbled, well, his rustling seemed like grumbling, but tolerated the other bandersnatches when they brought up the rear of our procession, since I had to find another supermarket. I’d brought what I’d imagined was at least a week’s supply of bottles for Gumball, and a few for me, but with seven maws to feed, they wouldn’t last that long.

It didn’t take long to find a supermarket, either, since I’d developed an ability to spot a likely candidate from several intersections away, so was able to walk directly to one, as likely as not, once I stood in the middle of a road and looked from one end to the other.

Sure enough, there seemed to be a supermarket about three roads down, so we all trotted off to stock up on cheese.

This one had been looted, unlike every supermarket I’d discovered so far. The shelves were stripped of everything edible, but for some reason they’d completely ignored the glass-front cabinets that usually contained the cheese bottles.

‘The more fools, they!’ I thought to myself. “Look here, Gumball! There’s forty or fifty bottles of cheese in here, for you and your little pals!” I refilled my satchel, and then found a few boxes that I could carefully stack my new cache of cheese in, so we could travel on without fear of running short.

Gumball didn’t deign to comment, of course, but he seemed quite mollified as we headed out the door and further east.

 

 

We hadn’t been walking long before I started noticing things, houses that had clearly been broken into with savage disregard for any future use to which they might have been put, and plants… everything green had been burnt to black, and a large group of craters told me that they’d even burned a dandelion!

I felt a sudden twinge of sympathy for Lieutenant Forge. He was definitely of the ‘burn it if it moves’ school of thought, but even he had limits. He would have been angry, I think, at the wanton destruction inside the village, although I no longer believed that it would burn down completely if part of it caught fire. Every one of these pillaged houses might have been put to better use, though, and the wanton destruction of plant life was pure folly, especially inside the confines of a city in which the plants, by and large, didn’t go out of their way to hurt anyone, and otherwise did whatever it was that plants did, grow, I presume, and some of the seemingly dangerous plants were quite useful, like the dandelions, without which the Horticulturists wouldn’t have any napalm with which to burn things. Who were these guys anyway, a troupe of traveling idiots? Napalm didn’t grow on trees! I had a good notion to give them all a good talking to!

Just then, however, I heard a squawk from my helmet, which was still in my cart with the other stuff, and then a voice, although I couldn’t make out the words. Suddenly, I realized the precarious position we were in; if any of those fire-happy clowns — now positively identified as Horticulturists — happened to see my green entourage, they’d probably burn me right along with Gumball and his pals on general principles.

Quickly, I turned my cart around, called Gumball, and then hightailed it back the way I’d come, at first followed by my seven friends, but Gumball and a few others managed to pull ahead, racing ahead of me back toward familiar territory, where I was intimately familiar with almost every street and building.

Too late! I heard a tinny shout through the headset in my helmet, and then the familiar sound of a rocket launcher some ways behind us. “Gumball! Scatter! Hide!” I screamed, and ran down a side road as quickly as I could, which was pretty fast by now, but not faster than a missile, despite their slow start.

With a flash of light, and then a wave of heat, followed immediately by a very loud explosion back at the intersection I’d just left, I was knocked off my feet and came up hopping mad. I grabbed my helmet and put it on, then keyed the talk circuit and screamed at the gang of clowns, “What in Harrison’s Holy Hell do you morons think you’re doing?! You could have killed me!”

There was at least a minute of garbled chatter before one of the sorry sons of bitches managed to focus long enough to say, “Who is this?”

“This is Lieutenant Forge, of The Castle Horticulturists, and who the Hell are you, young ladies?” One advantage of being a daydreamer is that I recognized an opportunity when it’d been handed to me. As lowly ‘Seven,’ sad remnant of a foraging party, I’d have no clout at all and would likely be impressed into service with the dopes, then sentenced to lashes at least for ‘dereliction of duty’ when we got back, because I was ‘out of uniform,’ and finally sent out through the local gate alone, if I made it back at all. I knew for a fact that Forge and all the rest of our expedition were ‘missing in action’ at most, since only I survived, and I hadn’t told anyone. The helmet radios were short range only, since any foragers who got into serious trouble were on their own. If they couldn’t extricate themselves, they were dead, as witness the great majority of our party.

After a few minutes more of stupid chatter while everyone tried to talk at once — proof positive that there was no officer in charge — what seemed like the same voice came back, sounding surer of himself by now, “I’m Six, of The Citadel Horticulturalists. What are you doing in The City, and what were those rolling plants? Where are you? Come out and show yourself!”

That I wasn’t about to do, since I wasn’t wearing my suit, as protocol required, and the stenciled number Seven would instantly betray me as someone he could push around, so I resorted to military intelligence, “Consider yourself on report, Six, and the lot of you stand down and gather in the middle of the street so I can take a look at you. Quite frankly, I don’t feel confident that I can rely upon your uncertain level of discipline to keep you from hysterically firing off another missile at me in your general confusion.” Two could play at that game, and I had missiles too. Careful to conceal two of the HE variety behind my back, one preloaded in my bazooka, I peered back around the corner. They were there, and gathered into a loose sort of squad, as I’d ordered, but held their weapons at the ready, at least three rocket launchers. “I said, Stand down! ladies. I’m not saying it again.”

Another peek told me that they had no intention of doing that, so I fired off one of my missiles over the houses to where they were, and then jumped out and fired the other straight at them, fairly confident of success in eliminating at least the nuisance that I saw, although I couldn’t be sure that there weren’t more of them lurking somewhere in hiding. I didn’t stop to see the result, but ran back down the road to my cart, grabbed the handle, and beat feet down the parallel road and back toward my familiar section of the village. On the way I keyed the transmitter again and said quite calmly, “I told you to stand down. Any comment?”

After a few moments, there’d still been no reply, so I risked going back to the road several intersections closer to the city and carefully looked back. I saw no one still standing, not that that meant much. Even dolts can take a hint when it’s been presented in words of one syllable or less.

I thought about going back to check for survivors, but then decided against it. The risks were too great when compared to the potential rewards. At best, I’d be able to salvage any missiles they had left, but I already had quite a few to spare. At worst, they’d be prepared to ambush me, which would of course be fatal.

I took off the helmet and threw it back in the cart, then called out as loudly as I could, “Gumball! Guys! Where are you?!”

After an anxious wait, Gumball came out from wherever he’d been lurking, and then two more of the hangers-on, then three, and finally I had my seven bandersnatches back again, which I considered a fair trade for two of my stash of missiles. ‘Harrison rewards the quick and the clever,’ I thought, an aphorism often dwelled upon in Chapel, ‘and punishes the slow and stupid with chastisements of hellfire!’ I gave them not a further thought, other than as a cautionary tale.

 

 

I hadn’t gone but about halfway back towards the center of the village when I realized that I’d been wounded in the explosion after all, because the crotch of my Levi’s was damp with blood. There wasn’t much, so I knew whatever it was hadn’t hit an artery, but it concerned me enough that I stepped up the pace, wanting to get back to my tower, where I’d left my first aid kit — one of my first acquisitions from Aisle 6 at Klegelmeyer’s, but one I hadn’t needed, or so I’d believed. In all my time spent foraging, I’d never so much as broke a fingernail, much less experienced a wound. ‘Oh, well, live and learn,’ I thought.

The trip back was uneventful, but I never did feel safe enough — knowing that foraging crews from other fortresses frequented my village — to drop my Levi’s and look. Being ‘caught with your pants down’ was another aphorism often featured in the sermons, and not with any hint of understanding, but rather harsh judgement and contempt, which was meant to teach us that iron discipline overrode even necessary bodily functions.

It was full dark, without even a moon to navigate by, by the time we reached the tower, but I was familiar with every obstacle in my neighborhood, so we went straight up the stairs, taking them two at a time in my case, and my bandersnatches doing whatever they did with their vines, but keeping up with no difficulty. We exited the staircase on the thirty-seventh floor, where Gumball and his pals felt most comfortable. They quite liked being inside now, at least in this particular building, because they could sun themselves to their heart’s content — if they actually had hearts — basking in the sunlight through the windows, and then simply moving to the other side of the building as the day wore on. I’d set out large tubs of water for them, once I’d realized that even slightly droopy leaves meant that they were getting dehydrated, so they had everything they needed, except for cheese, of course, which I doled out as rations, and the odd lake monster.

First things first, of course, so I drew fresh water from the firehose near the stairwell. It was fed from a large rain collection system and cistern on the roof, so I had what amounted to an endless supply of water close at hand, although I’d felt foolish when I discovered this, about two weeks after I’d moved in. I’d made countless trips to haul water from a stream about three roads over toward the west, because I liked having a supply on hand, but how was I to know? None of the other plumbing worked — I’d looked in the bathrooms and what was identified as a ‘Break Room’ on this very floor to be sure — so I’d never tried the fire hoses until I’d thought about using them to make lifting straps for the food and other items I stored in the tower, reasoning that with straps and a long length of rope, I could haul things up quicker than I could climb the stairs. One lives and learns, as my mother told me once. one lives and learns.

In any case, I had my wound to look to, now that I’d watered my bandersnatches and had a full bucket of water handy for washing up. It wasn’t at all painful, just uncomfortable, and the sticky blood on my new Levi’s was annoying as well.

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to discover that I’d been infected by the plants. I’d had plenty of exposure, what with lying unconscious after the dandelion and its pseudosharks had exploded, leaving me covered with plant parts and dirt, or even during our struggle with the lake monster. The suits were pretty good, as long as there was a buddy nearby to flame you if a plant managed to attach itself, but they weren’t perfect, and of course I hadn’t been wearing mine at all lately. Back in the castle, you were supposed to get washed with flame, and then disinfected with powerful poisons, before you took off your suit, but I hadn’t had that luxury. My condition wasn’t at all unknown, but babies who’d contracted it in the womb were discarded at birth, thrown over the walls for the plants to take care of, and their mothers with them.

In the meantime, I had to make another trip downstairs, so I could walk over to Klegelmeyer’s and visit Aisle 5, Feminine Hygiene — which I’d hitherto ignored — because I seemed to be menstruating, the perfect ending to a perfectly wretched day.

Gumball wanted to go, of course, although all of them were a little lethargic after dark, but a few bottles of cheese took care of that, so off we trotted, happy campers all. What the heck, misery loves company.

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Three Envelopment

 

 

Appear weak when you are strong,
and strong when you are weak.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

Aisle 5 was a foreign land, containing an array of products I’d never heard of, much less imagined ever having to use. I knew that my mother had menstruated, because my father would make crude jokes about it, and it was a regular topic of conversation amongst the Horticulturists, who were all of them men, of course, but I had no clue about exactly what it entailed, other than that women did it, and that it was something ‘dirty,’ or at least my father thought so.

Faced with the reality, it all seemed rather commonplace. I wound up opening packages, because the wrappers rarely showed what the contents actually looked like, and quite often featured flowers — which seemed ironic, given that my condition was evidently spread by the plants — but the interior leaflets were much more explicit, so I was quickly able to figure out the basics, even by flashlight, and decided that I needed to use tampons, since pads would never work, even pads with ‘wings.’

I quickly selected quite a few large packages, one in each size and style they had on offer, because I didn’t want to try them out in the middle of the supermarket, nor in the dark.

At the last minute, I swept up a selection of almost everything else in the aisle, just in case I’d forgotten something I might need eventually, since I was an amateur at this sort of thing, having never actually seen a woman unclothed, much less touched one, and had certainly never sat down with my mother for the talk.

When I got back upstairs, I took my stuff up to the women’s room on the floor above, since I knew they had a much nicer facility, including floor-to-ceiling mirror walls in one corner, opposite the windows on the eastern wall, which were translucent, so you couldn’t actually see through them, but they supplied abundant light during the daylight hours. For tonight, I simply arranged my stuff on the long counter opposite the stalls, where they had three sinks — inoperable, of course — but plenty of counter space and shelving the appeared to be designed to hold a supply of toiletries, which seemed a perfect place to keep things in a central location.

Before I left, I stripped off my clothes to take a close look at my body in the large mirrors.

It was a surprise; I knew that I’d been gaining weight, but hadn’t paid much attention to how I was gaining weight, which — now that I was paying attention — seemed preferentially-distributed around my hips and thighs, with minor increase on my chest. If all this had happened in a little bit more than a month, I’d have to re-think my clothing choices again, because it was obvious that I’d need one of those brassiere things, and probably clothes made to accommodate the peculiarities of women’s bodies, except for the obvious difference, of course.

Luckily, I’d already found a big flat-top building that had all sorts of clothes, so I could easily try on different sizes, but I probably couldn’t bring them here for the long run. Though cozy, my tower was way too visible and utterly indefensible, so I’d have to find a new home eventually.

My mind went first to those square burrower holes I’d seen when I’d first entered the village, since I doubted that anyone would dare to crawl down one who’d seen what the big burrowers could do. I’d have to see if my trick with the cheese could win me any friends on that front, but it seemed well worth a try, since I got on well with the smaller versions I was calling bandersnatches. Unlike the dandelions — who had seemed rather stupid — the one burrower I’d encountered was pretty darned clever, so I could easily imagine that he was Gumball grown up, but with a bad attitude undoubtedly aggravated by living in an environment in which people were perpetually trying to kill it. I could sympathize, since my own condition was an instant death sentence in any fortress controlled by the Horticulturists, so I felt no particular loyalty to them. Call me callous, but I can take a hint. Anyone who fires high explosive missiles at me isn’t destined to be my friend, and when that’s coupled with immutable laws which declare me an abomination to be instantly extirpated by any citizen who happens to see me, well, let’s just say I’m not terribly sentimental.

 

 

Very early the next day, while it was still dark and the bandersnatches were grumpy about being rousted from their usual nighttime torpor, I began my move. First I cheered up my friends with a ration of cheese each, and then I used my ropes and pulley things, together with my firehose straps, to lower my possessions to the bottom of the stairwell, then strung together all my carts to load as much as possible in one train. I left behind most of the food — other than the cheese of course, the key to bandersnatchish hearts and minds, and hopefully equally persuasive for burrowers — because food was easily replaceable. In fact, I’d spent the last month or so establishing caches of the stuff all around this half of the village, so all that really remained to do was to take down the signs that I’d provided for the benefit of those who were now my mortal enemies. I took the tools, my cache of weapons, and everything else that seemed immediately handy, then locked the door behind me, although it hadn’t been locked before.

There was a U-shaped desk in the main hall of the tower where someone had thoughtfully left a set of keys to the front doors in one of the drawers. I’d discovered this quite some time ago, but it was only a curiosity then; now it was part of my disguise. Most of the buildings I’d found had been locked, but this one had not, so I hoped to disguise my exact habits for at least a little while longer, in case the Horticulturists from the Citadel came looking for me.

Soon enough, I was running through the dark, followed by my train of carts and flanked by my leafy friends, who loved to race ahead and to the side of me, somehow able to anticipate even sudden changes in direction. Above us was a thin sliver of moon, just waxing, I think, although I wasn’t keeping careful track. Its light did little to chase the darkness, hardly more than did the stars twinkling in the clear night sky. To the east, where the most immediate dangers lurked, there was a faint looming increase of light near the horizon, yet not nearly enough to properly be dawn.

Soon, the house I’d used as my first storehouse appeared to my left, and I ran up upon the porch to snatch down my sign and ensure that it looked as uninhabited as its fellows. I took the sign with me, because — in my folly — I’d signed it with my name, at the time still proud of what I’d done for those who now planned to kill me for my pains. To be perfectly fair, though, they didn’t actually realize that this was their intention… yet. I knew better. I’d seen my father throw my screaming mother and her newborn baby from the wall, so I didn’t look for mercy there.

Then I ran off to the west, where I’d located my second storehouse, because it too was on a main road into the village, and so only slightly less likely to be discovered than the particular way I’d stumbled upon. I still didn’t know where the ‘town’ that Lieutenant Forge had described was, but imagined that there must be a road somewhere that connected it to my village.

Soon enough, I had another sign as prize, and had tidied up around the house to make it as nondescript as the first. The rest would have to wait, because it was getting on toward true dawn, and I wanted to visit my flat-topped building full of household items and clothes before it became light enough for anyone to notice us as we raced through the darkness. I had a plan.

 

 

In the back of the building, there was a large machine evidently used for the storage of trash, and it was there that I stored the top and bottom halves of my protective suit, retaining only the helmet, and that only for its radio, since it might be useful to be able to listen in upon the communications of my enemies. At the rate my body was changing, the suit itself seemed unlikely to be of any further use in the very near future, although I didn’t discount the possibility of highjacking a larger protective suit sometime, one with more room for my growing chest and butt, but this didn’t seem at all likely, since the Horticulturist Command didn’t allow women outside the walls, unless they’d thrown them over. Say what you will, though, the suits were a sovereign protection against any but the most concerted flamethrower attacks, although not much help at all against well-aimed HE missiles, as the late and very much unlamented Six and his crew from the Citadel had discovered to his cost.

That task accomplished, I returned to the interior of the store, where I studied the displays very carefully. They had plastic imitation people dressed up in some of the clothes, evidently so people could see roughly what they’d look like wearing them. I wanted to look as little like a Horticulturist as possible, in case any word of the faux ‘Lieutenant Forge’ had gotten back to the Citadel. Luckily, my new ‘developments’ had made this almost a foregone conclusion, so I decided to dress as much like the imitation women in the displays as possible, reasoning that this would certainly confuse any pursuers, since it sure confused me.

In the castle, men and women had rigidly separate rôles and manners of dress, and it was a matter of pride among the Horticulturists especially to ignore their comings and goings, since they were regarded either as mere servants to the military class, and so beneath notice, or as the exclusive property of one particular man, in which case it was dangerous to pay attention to her, because her husband might call you out or — if that man was an officer — simply order you to take your ‘turn’ at foraging.

Unfortunately, female clothing had changed since these particular clothes were made, so most of it was much more brightly colored and more delicate than was usually the case in the keep, and the skirts and dresses tended to be much shorter. On the other hand, they were much more practical as well, since I had no idea how wide my hips and thighs would wind up, and full skirts draped over almost anything. I wasn’t fully developed up top either, but evidently this was a problem I shared with many real women, since there were several sections devoted to ‘padded’ bras and to ‘bust enhancers,’ obviously designed to eke out less than stellar ‘assets’ with artifice.

It didn’t take too long to outfit myself with several outfits that would be at least marginally acceptable in the keeps and simultaneously disguised my shortcomings, but then I found the jewelry displays and instantly changed my plans.

One of the indications of status among the women was the amount and value of the jewelry they wore, and there were buckets of the stuff in the cabinets in one section of the store. I decided to pose as an officer’s wife — let’s say a Major — from somewhere out west. I could be vague about this, since no one expected women to be clever. In the castle, at least, they weren’t even allowed to go to school. The only problem was that almost all the nicest earrings were designed to hang in holes pierced in one’s earlobes.

Well, least said, soonest done, as my mother used to say. After searching behind the counter, I found a drawer astutely labeled ‘Piercing Supplies’ and promptly pierced my own ears, judging the placement by carefully studying my magnified reflection in a special mirror they had right on the counter. I wound up with three holes in a row down the length of each earlobe, which was the current fashion amongst the officer’s wives, since it allowed them to wear more jewelry without being ostentatious. It hurt just a bit, but I was a soldier, and fairly tough, despite my size, and as bloody-minded as the roughest soldier. Show me something to defy — even pain — and I’d thumb my nose at it and laugh for scorn.

The ‘operation’ done, with what they called a ‘piercing gun,’ and with ‘starter posts’ encumbering my ears, I simply cleaned out the entirety of the fine jewelry counter, from silver, to gold, to pearls and precious stones. My haul quite filled up a rather capacious purse, and joined the matching leather luggage on the first of my carts, which also held the HE missiles as well as my clothes and furs. Did I mention the fur department? Never mind. The incongruity of my dainty underthings, elegant clothing, and ready supply of high-tech weaponry amused me, none-the-less. It was getting on toward winter, and I sure as Harry’s Hell wasn’t planning to freeze my new ass off. I liked that mirror so much that — after only a second’s hesitation, because it was both large and delicate, I added it to my growing pile of ‘beauty products’ as well.

On the way out, I passed the cosmetics and perfume counters and cursed, “Holy Harry!” I’d completely forgotten, of course, being an amateur at all this, but one of the many clues that distinguished the wives of officers from the ordinary women of the keep was their habitual use of cosmetics and scents.

Sighing, I went behind the counter and started first on perfume, since that seemed easiest, finding several that smelled nice, I thought, and were also very expensive, so I added another purse filled with exotic bottles in fancy cardboard boxes to my load, then walked over to the cosmetics counter with something approaching trepidation. Clothes were one thing, everybody needs clothes, and these clothes were designed for bodies shaped like mine, but this was one more baby step beyond my former comfort zone.

Harry was smiling down from Heaven on me, obviously, because there laying right on the counter were a number of dusty pamphlets entitled, ‘Your Color Signature,’ which I promptly fell to reading.

I was a ‘Light Spring,’ I decided, or maybe a Cool Summer, since I had light blue eyes and a very fair complexion, so I simply dumped a lot of stuff in the recommended colors into another very expensive handbag, together with the pamphlet, a vast number of recommended brushes and special tools for enhancing one’s eyes, nails, and what-have-you, as well as a much more extensive hardbound book on beauty I found behind the counter. I’d never actually seen a book that wasn’t one volume or another of Harrison’s Holy Scriptures, so it was almost shocking to see an entire book devoted to just one aspect of women’s fashions. On a hunch, I ran back to the luggage department and found that there were, in fact, special cosmetics and jewelry cases, which I promptly added to my matching set of leather luggage. I decided then and there that my imaginary husband was a General, at least, since I knew that there wasn’t a single woman in the castle who had anything even remotely like my trousseau. The very idea of using leather to make luggage instead of soup was so incredibly extravagant that it would take a General Officer to pull it off, and I knew from talking with my Dad that the various keeps were extremely isolated from each other, so the names and ranks of officers more than a hundred miles away were matters of almost pure conjecture, or were based upon rumors passed down through so many widely varying accounts and channels that almost anything would be believed with sufficient evidence to back it up, and great wealth was the surest indication of very high status. My greatest danger, I thought, should I be ‘rescued’ from my bereft abandonment, would be from a conspiracy of my fellow wives to murder me for my jewelry and ‘modern’ fashions, so I wanted to make very sure that they were overawed from the start. With that thought in mind, I went back to the perfume and cosmetics counters and simply swept everything they had into a large selection of handbags and cases, and piled the lot into another of my carts with a view toward presenting them as gifts to those among the wives who treated me well. I had piles of jewelry, so I could easily afford to give some of it away as well. Popularity is always nice, and it’s nice to be nice.

Of course, I had no immediate intention of being ‘rescued’ at all, but it was my ultimate fall-back plan if it looked like I might be captured instead. For high-ranking women in the castle, there was no better defense than being offensive towards one’s social inferiors, and I’d noticed that particular groups of them had formed their own centers of power, even within a social system that officially denied that women could have any legitimate power at all.

 

 

It took me seven tries before I managed a decent manicure, and my nails were still a bit on the short side, but they were growing apace, somehow relating to the growth of my hair, which was ridiculously rapid. It was already down to my shoulders, and I bitterly regretted not stocking up on fancy shampoo and conditioner, because long hair, I’d discovered, was a major pain-in-the-ass, so I’d taken to wearing a shawl, just to have something to protect my hair against the wind and sun, lest it become hopelessly snarled and tangled. There was shampoo on offer in the fancy hotel in which I was living now, in tiny bottles, but it was cheap stuff, not up to the job at all.

My fantasy of giant ‘burrower tunnels’ had proven to be a major disappointment as well, because they were clearly made by humans, and had pairs of strange metal stairs on either side of yet another set of stairs leading down to two huge tunnels at the bottom of them. The only real difference between the stairs was that the center set had landings, and were made of that curiously smooth stone, except for what looked like brass edges on the outer portion of the tread. The outer sets were entirely made of metal, and were narrower, but had no landings at all. I theorized that they were provided for servants, so that they didn’t impinge upon the stately progress of their betters, but what it was that people did down there was a complete mystery, because there was nothing there worth seeing, and nowhere in particular to do anything.

I was seriously considering another foray back to my clothing store, where I’d actually seen the exact sort of conditioner and shampoo I really needed, and there were other things that I was reading about in my book that seemed like they’d be awfully nice to have as well. I’d never realized, for example, the critical rôle that exfoliation played in any serious beauty regimen, and that proper ‘moisturizing’ each and every night before going to sleep was absolutely necessary. The heart-healthy and skin-healthy habit of eating plenty of fresh vegetables, though, was sadly beyond my reach. I’d never even seen a fresh vegetable — unless you counted the wheatgrass in the fields, which one really couldn’t, because wheat was a ‘carbohydrate,’ decidedly inferior —and canned goods were somewhat deleterious to skin tone and optimal health and beauty, according to my beauty book. Drat!

 

 

I still kept up a regular schedule of patrols in the early morning, toward the east, before foragers would be likely to have crossed the distance from the citadel, trying to discover whether any more foragers had made it into this portion of our village, and had managed to retrieve all my signs in the south and west as well, over the course of one long week, as well as making certain that any remaining evidence of my activities was hidden, or at least obscured. I took the time to bury Six and his companions as well, although I couldn’t be certain that no one had escaped, but I doubted that anyone had survived, since their supply of missiles was simply lying in the road, so I thriftily took them. Better, I thought, to have them simply disappear without a trace than to show up bearing signs of combat, which would raise questions, of course, at some level I might not like to have notice me yet. It was very good practice in coping with skirts as well, although I wore a style just below the knee for burial duty, and my normal attire these days was what they called a ‘maxi,’ the closest they had in the way of what women in the castle wore on a day-to-day basis. I wasn’t bothered, since my skirts and dresses were clearly superior to anything I’d seen back there, and I’d been practicing my arched eyebrow look of sympathetic condescension to handle any adverse comment. I had the book to back me up, after all.

I was fairly convinced, on the other hand, that I’d missed the town Lieutenant Forge had told us of entirely, because I saw no signs at all of foraging in the neighborhoods toward the west.

C’est la vie, as my mother told me once upon a time. You pays your money and you takes your chance. I don’t know where she came up with all that stuff.

 

 

There came a day, of course, when I heard the faint sound of HE missiles exploding off to the east, first two in quick succession, and then another two, so I knew that another foraging party was coming to try their luck, just now breaking through their kill ring of hostile plants. No wonder they were hostile, considering the collective bad attitude of the denizens of these armed enclaves of human purity in a world that was much more flexible.

Well, we’d see what hospitality we could show them, here in the big village.

I’d been preparing for this day for a long time, and had laid my plans with care. I’d been carefully cultivating the plants, taking cuttings from the dandelions, and feeding my seven bandersnatches with enough food to let them reach their full potential. I had plenty of food to spare, so they were feeling pretty frisky as we walked out on the beaten path that previous scavenging expeditions had made, following the traces of previous foragers, as was usual amongst the inmates of the two keeps I’d seen, and I had no reason to think that any of them would be even slightly more creative, since their perpetual warlike hostility towards what they perceived as an encroaching enemy discouraged any but the most instinctive conservatism.

I called to my bandersnatches as we neared my small plot of dandelions. “Gumball! Guys! Go hide!” and they cheerfully trotted off, finding exactly the right position of concealment on their own before wriggling their way beneath the surface of the ground, each of them near a dandelion, with its associated entourage of reapers. Careful observation had taught me that the reapers, which the Horticulturists foolishly called ‘pseudosharks,’ were specialized to harvest the grass nearby for grain, which the dandelion used to nurture its own developing seeds. It was a tradeoff, as usual among the plants. The dandelion provided protection and nutrients for the grass by means of its deep taproot, and the grass sacrificed some of its seeds to help the dandelions propagate themselves, thus extending both their ranges, and guaranteeing long life for future generations. The bandersnatches, of course were the plant equivalents of gophers, which useful animals the Horticulturists had exterminated as ‘nuisances’ almost fifty years ago. The decisive Horticulturist ‘victory’ over the gophers was still being taught to the troops as an example of what progress might be made in their war against the weeds. They’d failed to note, of course, that gophers were excellent ærators of the soil, which plants needed, and also served to bring up valuable minerals and manure to the surface, where it was available for germinating seeds.

At some point in their history, the Horticulturists had obviously forgotten the very meaning of their name, which succinctly described their original rôle as caretakers and nurturers of plants, because plants were necessary for human survival and, in very fact, some plants were — or at least they used to be — entirely dependent on humans for their growth and propagation. Lately, of course, the plants had been adapting to both the loss of support and the active hostility of homo sap. Back in the olden days in the USA, there was an early horticulturist who said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately,” which I think presents the point rather well. We’re all of us social creatures, like almost every living thing, with sometimes hidden links and relationships that connect us to the entirety of life and everything living. We actually couldn’t even live without a healthy microbiome of bacteria, archaea, and fungi living inside and on our bodies, and in fact the cells of our bodies are outnumbered by bacterial cells by ten to one, although they make up a fairly small percentage of our weight, because their cells tend to be tiny in comparison to our own. In some ways, we were simply handy hosts for other creatures, to whom we offered valuable services, like walking around and gathering food, in return for which they helped us to digest them, as well as protecting us against other forms of microscopic life. Of particular interest to me were the various species of lactobacillus that helped to keep my new vagina healthy by producing hydrogen peroxide, a type of natural antiseptic that’s also very handy — in concentrated form — for removing bloodstains from clothing. Wheels within wheels, an unbounded and gossamer web of necessary relationships that permeated the real world, as opposed to the fantasy kingdom of the Horticulturists in which mankind — with an emphasis on man — ruled supreme and solitary as the one and only ‘crown of creation.’

How do I know this? You might well ask, but it was actually easy; I found a ‘library.’

You’d be surprised what you can find out in a decent library, and I’d found a great library. It filled a building almost as big as the entire castle, six floors of books, books, books, and more books in a basement level that must have been for storage, since the aisles were narrow and appeared little used. Of course, I figured out a lot of this stuff on my own as well, extrapolating from what I already knew when combined with new knowledge I’d gleaned from the library, and I’d just barely scratched the surface of the scope of what people used to know, but our current situation isn’t nearly as unique as you might think.

But back to business. My first task was to retake this part of the ‘city’ — that’s another thing I’d learned in the library; this is a city, not a village — for the ‘good guys,’ namely me and my new pals. I couldn’t allow a bunch of hooligans wearing ‘uniforms’ to terrorize our neighbors and the neighborhoods, no matter how free they’d been to do so in the past.

 

 

They were coming. I could hear them on the helmet radio, cursing at the disgusting notion of actually walking through green grass that brushed their legs as they passed. One of them kept up an undercurrent of muttered curses as he approached, “This really gives me the creeps!” he said, then “Watch it! Was that a burr?” only to finally be commanded by their officer to keep silent and alert as they approached their target.

It seemed to be a typical crew, so I assumed that they hadn’t been sent especially to seek me out. From my own limited experience — foragers didn’t tend to survive multiple missions, which was probably why the ‘volunteers’ were most often social misfits or soldiers caught in one infraction of the rules or another, so it was comforting to realize that these were ordinary sad sacks and goofballs — When they reached the outer edge of the tall wheatgrass, they fanned out in the approved skirmishing formation, too widely-spaced to be taken two or three at a time by a well-timed assault, yet close enough to support each other with flamethrowers if one of them became trapped in any one of a number of clever snares the plants had come up with lately.

As expected, they became wary when they saw my plot of dandelions, but greedy as well.

“Wow!” one said, “There’s a whole bunch of napalm, just waiting for us to take it.”

“Right!” said number One, obviously in charge and pointing as he spoke. “Six and Seven, deploy your net over here. Eight, you’re up for playing ‘bait.’ Nine and Ten, you do the same for that one, with Twelve as your decoy. Move!”

From my place of concealment inside a partially-ruined house, I could see the whole deployment, and I had to admire the efficiency with which they worked. My own former comrades had been much less organized. Despite that, I couldn’t help but sympathize with the guys who’d been assigned as ‘bait,’ since I knew well that the slightest misstep could result in death, once the dandelions had become aware of their hostile intentions.

The so-called ‘napalm’ the reapers used was actually concentrated hydrocarbons distilled by the dandelions to furnish the necessary ‘fuel’ for their activities, since mere hydraulics couldn’t manage the level of speed and dexterity that the reapers required. It was a different system than the muscular contractions usual in humans and other animals, but it was extremely effective, as anyone could see, since the reapers were easily capable of very rapid movement within the scope of their tethers — which one might think of as external arteries and veins — that connected them to their main bodies, the dandelions themselves, which performed the photosynthesis and sexual reproduction that held the whole system together. But the Horticulturist procedure in these situations was to take all the reapers, or ‘pseudosharks,’ as they called them, which of course led to the eventual death of the plant, since without the reapers to bring in seed, the dandelion couldn’t ferment and distill more hydrocarbons to replace them and so eventually starved.

Ever since human beings had essentially abandoned the world, shutting themselves away in the equivalent of military monasteries which functioned as cancers on the Earth and parasites on the past, the plants had been expanding their reach to take over rôles formerly performed by humans, specifically cultivation and pest control, and humans had been pests — at least as far as the vast majority of life on Earth was concerned — for a good number of years by now, especially to the plants, preferring to loot abandoned food cultivated and preserved by humans who’d still worked for a living.

‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these,’ as one of those books had said, obviously recognizing that the green plants, which transformed energy from the Sun into the very stuff of life, were the true foundation of creation, to whom we all of us owe our very lives.

Speaking of which, the two teams of Horticulturists, six young men in all, were in position, and it was about time these boys gave something back. ‘Now, Gumball!’ I thought.

With a pleasing level of coördination, gaping pits opened up beneath both teams and they were gone in a heartbeat, then the pits almost instantly closed up again, filled in from below to forestall any possible counterattack on my bandersnatches, although they were big boys now, and probably well able to take care of themselves, since I’d been telling them bedtime stories about Horticulturist tactics.

With commendable courage, One, and the two men remaining from his former command, retreated only slightly, then made a break for it, avoiding the dandelions completely and making an end run around the ruined houses, gaining the relative safety of the street, where I’d left one of my lovely carts piled high with food, and a few mementos from the last gang to penetrate the city.

I could almost hear the wheels grinding in One’s mind, as he calculated the risks of going forward with a greatly-reduced scavenging force — with the clear evidence of danger right before his eyes —versus their chances of getting back through the plant wall besieging The Citadel with a large cache of food. Luckily for his men, he chose the prudent course, took my cart, and turned tail and ran off with his figurative tail between his legs. But he took my poisoned apple as well, because the great majority of the food I’d left for him — or whomever had shown up in his stead — were very many bottles of that very flavorful ‘cheese.’

Not to worry, though, I had plenty, having discovered through the magic of the local business directory — a reference copy of which useful tool was in my library — a milk bottling plant, where there was a lifetime supply.

 

 

I whistled up Gumball and his pals, who were still hiding beneath the earth, “Gumball! You guys! Up and at’em! Let’s get moving!”

With a roiling of the splodgy dirt, the Bandersnatches rose up from deep underground, carrying the inert bodies of the six Horticulturists, hopefully unconscious merely, but one took one’s chances, burying people alive, even people in protective suits.

Quickly, I moved amongst them stripping off their helmets and suits as quickly as I could, which was pretty darned quick, and throwing them into a handy pile. Two were only winded and weak, three more were unconscious, but looked healthy enough, whilst one was cyanotic, so I gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as quickly as I could manage, then checked his pulse at his carotid artery. No joy. I gave him a couple of good thwacks with my fist, and started chest compressions instead, but took the time to force a little chewed up cheese between his lips to boot. It couldn’t hurt, and it would do him a world of good if he managed to get it down.

After a few minutes, the cyanosis began to clear up, and then he took a shuddering breath. ‘Oh, good,’ I thought. ‘I’d hate to lose one after going to all this trouble to complete my set.’

All solicitude, I brought a cooling drink from the other wagon I’d brought with me, commiserating with them about their difficulties with the bandersnatches. “I’m so sorry that you were frightened, but my pets tend to be rambunctious around strangers, and they have a proprietary interest in my dandelion garden, so of course when you tried to steal a reaper, they were annoyed.” I went on in that general vein.

“Reaper?” one of the more clever finally asked, bewildered.

“I believe that you may know them as ‘pseudosharks,’ but I assure you that they’re ‘reapers,’ and I should know, bcause they’re mine. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s not nice to steal from other people? especially when they’re looking?”

“But… But you can’t own one of those vicious monsters!”

I take it back. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer after all.

I curled my lip in exquisite contempt — I knew that it was both intimidating and enticing, because I’d practiced in my mirror — and said, “I can and do. If you persist in being dense, perhaps another visit to the root zone might convince you. Of course, since I’ve confiscated your little suits, you might wind up somewhat the worse for wear, but it’s entirely up to you.”

“But you can’t do that!” one of them yelled. “They’re our property!”

“I see you have a twisted sense of who owns what, my dear. They belonged to the Horticultural Corps, and you had them on loan, as it were. You may have thought that they belonged to you before you invaded my city and disturbed its perfectly innocent flora, but they’ve been confiscated to partially offset the fine.”

“Fine!? What fine!?” another expostulated, likewise somewhat dim.

I sighed, to let him know that he was being obtuse, and that it annoyed me. “The fine levied against criminals, of course, and wanton vandals, or do you deny that the burned out houses and plants in this area are the work either of you, or of your former comrades? Would you prefer that I simply kill you? As I said, I could arrange that very easily, and it would be wondrously beneficial for my garden.”

“I’d like to see you try! There are six of us, and only one of you!” said one beligerently. He made as if to attack me.

This was going a bit too far, though, so I leapt to meet him and threw him to the ground with a bit more force than strictly necessary, although I was only using one hand. “Listen to me, crêtin,” I said with considerable menace. “This is my city, and I make the rules. If you don’t like it, you can waltz yourself right back to your so-called ‘Citadel,’ where you’ll either promptly die in the attempt to reach it, or will manage to get in long enough for them to throw you back over the wall because you’ve been infected by intimate contact with the plants. You’ll notice that they didn’t bother trying to dig you up; I did, and if this was a mistake, I can easily rectify it.” I gestured in the general direction of my bandersnatches, “Look around you. All six of you together couldn’t even muss my hair if you’d like to fight me, although I’d be very angry if you made me chip a nail. How far do you think you’d get arm-wrestling with an angry bandersnatch?” Here I turned to address Gumball directly, “Sweetie, would you mind terribly showing these men your teeth?”

Gumball promptly rose up to his full height, almost forty feet by now, and smiled. Well, I knew that he was smiling, but I doubt my prisoners found it at all comforting, since the difference between a bandersnatch’s happy face and his angry face is rather subtle.

“That’s my good boy,” I cooed as I moved to stroke his vines the way I knew he liked me to. Gumball was still my very most favorite, and well he knew it. “I’ll let you know, however, if any of them turn out to be surplus to requirements.” I said this for their benefit, of course, not Gumball’s, since our rapport was far more visceral and instinctive than mere words.

“Well, ladies?” I said. “What’s it going to be? The easy way, or the hard way?”

“But what about our… the suits? We can’t walk around without some form of protection.”

“Of course you can’t, my dears. You’ll find that my lovely bandersnatches and I are the very best protection imaginable, whereas those filthy suits of yours are an open invitation to revenge in the form of a murderous assault. Believe me, you’re far safer walking around in your underwear with me than you would be in those silly suits. There’s a marvelous clothing store not far from here where we can get you outfitted in more practical clothing, since it’s a little chilly. We’ll get just the basics for now, I think, and we can always go back when we see how you’re shaping up.”

“What do you mean by ‘shaping up’ exactly?” the belligerent one said, a little more diffident now,

“Didn’t you listen? You’ve been ‘infected’ by the natural world, which has always been contagious, but that process has been accelerated of late, prompted — as I understand it — by a general acceleration of both plant and human evolution by strong ‘selection pressures,’ a concept you’re going to have to take on faith for now, until I introduce you to the library, but I’m sure that you’re all familiar with the nearly instant executions of infected individuals as soon as the symptoms of infection are discovered.”

There was a general shuffling of feet, as well as stricken expressions on the faces of the few who hadn’t figured it out by now. “Does that mean that…?”

“It does.” I cut him off. “Within the hour, you’ll begin to feel ‘out of sorts,’ and within a day you’ll be visibly ‘sorted,’ although the full transformation takes several months. About a month from now, you’ll experience your first menstruation, unless you manage to get yourself knocked up by then.” I let that sink in for a bit, then added, “I wouldn’t actually advise that, since your internal organs will still be developing, so it doesn’t seem like it would be entirely safe, although no pregnancy is without hazard. I’d recommend waiting for at least six months for everything to settle down to regularity, but then I’m naturally cautious.”

“But how could that happen?” one asked, another of the stupid ones.

“You could,” I said as patiently as I could manage, “have an ‘accident,’ as they say — either through careless masturbation or through nocturnal emission in your dreams — or any one of your future ‘sisters’ could do the job properly in a trice, so I recommend that you avoid sleeping flat on your back, if possible, stay out of other peopole's beds, and wash your hands quite often — which is always a good idea in any case — and you should try to resist the urge to ‘fool around.’ Both males and females have been designed by millions of years of evolution to enjoy sexual activities, to seek them out — especially during periods of maximum fertility — and to be easily persuaded to completely ignore the higher wisdom offered by their brains once their basic instincts are involved. You’ll have the best and the worst of both worlds, maximum libido, maximum pleasure, and maximum vulnerability to very long-term consequences.”

“Pardon me, Ma’am, but how do you know all this?” That was the clever one again. I was starting to like him.

“Because I’ve gone through the same infection,” I said, “and know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“But Ma’am,” he said, “you’re beautiful!”

“Thank you, soldier, but I’m fairly sure that you’ll turn out looking very pretty as well. I think it’s designed into the genetic package we’ve been given. Survival of the fittest, you know, and we’ve been designed to be very ‘fit’ indeed.”

“But…! You were a man!? I don’t believe it!”

I laughed. “Actually, I still am, in at least one minor detail, so take a good look, boys, because you’re looking at your future.”

“So what are we supposed to do then?”

I smiled impishly, another thing I’d practiced in my fancy mirror. “It’s simple, really. We’re going to conquer the world.”

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Four Fifth Column

 

 

The supreme art of war
is to subdue the enemy
without fighting.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

The secret was to remove all the magnesium and most of the HE, because we didn’t want either sterilizing fire or even too much heat, just dispersive force, to spread the spores as widely as possible, and to do as little damage as could possibly be managed.

We were all of us perfectly capable of doing these modifications on the fly, of course, since flamethrowers and shoulder-fired missiles were our standard-issue weapons, and we could field-strip and repair either weapon blindfolded. We had to be, because a score of fifty out of sixty possible points in the practical examinations covering those very tasks were a mandatory part of our basic training requirements for graduation, and twelve points of those sixty were awarded for blindfolded disassembly and reassembly of those two weapons.

Unfortunately, this physical dexterity didn’t uniformly translate into equal facility in performing ‘field maintenance’ on their mental attitudes for several of our new recruits, two of whom had fallen into a black humor over their reduced circumstances and imagined loss of social status, even though the only society for which that actually mattered would be suicidal to approach. To me, this seemed profoundly silly. You might as well worry about the weather conditions on the Moon, or try to calculate exactly how quickly you’d have to flap your arms to have a good chance of flying there to see.

“Look,” I said to the two sad sacks, “right now, you’re a danger to all of us. If you persist in your crazy ‘plans’ to go ‘back home,’ you’ll never make it through the gates without going through a contamination inspection, and even at this early stage, the symptoms of infection by the plants are obvious. They’ll kill you out of hand, but worse, you’ll draw their attention to the fact that there are ‘wild humans’ living out here, and their inevitable course of action post-discovery would be to mount an expeditionary force to seek out and destroy us all.”

“But they might be able to help us!” one of the pair said, Chert, he was, and not even the stupidest by half. “Our doctors might know of some sort of cure for this abomination!”

“Believe me,” I said, “the only ‘cure’ they’re going to offer is endless freedom from the dreary task of breathing, and the wonderful opportunity to fertilize the ring wall of death that surrounds every keep held by the Horticulturists with your broken body. Haven’t you ever seen what happens to anyone with visible signs of hermaphrodism? Has the Citadel become so dainty and fastidious that their public executions are performed in private?”

“But those people deserved to die, because they’d neglected their sworn duties, or had been harboring mutinous thoughts!” the idiot protested.

“Oh, really? Well, then you two must have done the same, then, didn’t you? Since you’re obviously infected, you simply must have been doing one or the other, and your presence in your party, with the high number you formerly wore, strongly suggests that you were caught out in some infraction or another, which rather proves your point, doesn’t it? Why don’t we just hand you both machetes so you can chop each other’s heads off for your separate traitorous derelictions of duty? I’m afraid you’ll have to be very careful about the timing, though, and promise not to flinch, since it would be very awkward to beg for help with your throat cut, and I’m not at all sure that a slow and painful death wouldn’t provide a good morale booster for those of us with any sense, so you couldn’t count on me for the coup de grâce.”

“Don’t be an ass, Chert,” the smart one added, almost equally scathing. He — or rather she — was calling herself Beryl now, having quickly seen the logic of my own sketchy prophylactic strategy, although neither of us were terribly optimistic about our ability to pull off any long-term interaction with our former friends and allies. Still, she’d turned out quite nicely, and had an innate fashion sense that I thought was rather better than my own, if truth be told. “We’re all in the same soup, and we’ll all drown separately if we don’t all swim together.”

“But…,” he said, obviously starting off on another silly complaint.

“ ‘But,’ nothing!” I screamed at him. “Shut up and soldier! You’re still under military discipline here, so no more whining and malingering.”

“But, you’re planning to infect the entire Citadel!” he whined.

“Indeed I am, and indeed we will, together with the Castle and as many other of the failing Horticulturist strongholds as possible,” I said implacably. “I fully understand that some people might be hurt, but The Citadel and The Castle are both on the verge of collapse even now, about to be toppled by the plants that besiege them, probably accompanied by enormous loss of life, either through direct assault or starvation, since foraging is rapidly becoming either completely or essentially impossible to sustain because the casualties inherent in forays through the ring walls will inevitably outstrip the ability of the community to replace them. It’s only a matter of time before the plants manage to cut off all access to the outside world through new weapons in their arsenal, the sticky burrs, their emerging ability to coördinate their actions, not to mention the giant burrowers, which will eventually be able to undermine and topple the walls. If that happens, everyone will die, including the children and the human race entirely, or at least our local variety.”

“But what can we do to defeat the plants on our own?” Chert said, still unwilling to see that the game had changed while he wasn’t looking.

“Everything…, and nothing,” I said. “ ‘We surrender…,’ would be a good start, since the plants have overwhelming strength and resources available and we’re ultimately entirely dependent upon them, since they take care of transforming the Sun’s energy into useful forms for us, so the entire enterprise of ‘trying to beat the plants’ was schizophrenic to begin with, something like plunging a knife into your own heart because its constant beating was keeping you awake at night.”

“Surrender?” Chert asked, frightened by the thought.

“Surely you’ve noticed,” Beryl said, “That the plants aren’t particularly hostile toward us any more, other than that creepy thing in the lake, but it seems anxious to eat anything that comes along, not us in particular.”

To say that I was pleased by Beryl’s words would be grossly understated. She went on, “The world here in the city isn’t perfectly safe, of course, but it’s not implacably vicious the way it is around our former homes. Don’t ask me how it happened, but the plants are sensitive to how we feel about them, and pretty much mind their own business as soon as they figure out that we mean them no harm.” I studied Chert with some care. “By ‘surrender’ I mean giving up our own hatred toward the plants and seeing them for what they are, fellow creatures and inhabitants of our world, and the only truly necessary part of it, as far as we’re concerned, because almost all the food we eat is, or was, derived from plants. Even the few meat products we find unspoilt in the supermarkets are herbivores, although I’ve never actually seen a pork, or a beef, but they must have been commonplace at one time, before the current war erupted. Just a few miles beyond the ring walls, the world still abounds with wheat and other grasses, whose seeds were once commonly used to make bread, and can still be used so, because humans and grasses were never at war in the old days. In fact, the opposite was true, because humans took care of most true grasses, and protected them from other creatures which sought to exploit the same œcological niches, so wheat and corn thrived at the expense of dandelions and burdocks.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chert said, bored already. “You’ve told us this fairytale before, about how the early horticulturists went crazy before, and went to war against every form of life that didn’t seem immediately useful. So what’s all that stuff got to do with us?”

I tried again, “You know how some soldiers are about their gear? always polishing it, fiddling with it, going way beyond reasonable and prudent maintenance and care into obsession? As if there were nothing in the world more important than how well their fatigue boots were polished, or how sharply-creased their dress trousers were? As if having their underwear ironed might make a difference as to whether or not their brains got eaten by a burdock burr? Or whether they were sliced into ribbons by a dandelion ‘pseudoshark?’ ”

“Yeah? So?”

“So, it’s a fairly common human reaction to high-stress environments, we develop obsessive ‘compulsions’ which give us the illusion of having control of our lives. At some point, for whatever reasons, humans became obsessive about dandelions, burdocks, and other ‘weeds,’ which put pressure on all of them either to change or die, and in the process seem to have become obsessive about us. They survived — we can see that — but I haven’t been able to find anything in the library that explains why or exactly how they were so successful, although there were a lot of people warning about this grave danger or that as we humans evidently released chemicals and something called ‘radioactivity’ into the environment, and at least some of them warned about the dangers of genetic mutations — damage to the fundamental structure of living things — so whatever it was, it went way beyond obsession and well into madness.”

Chert looked like he was going to say something stupid, but our conversation was interrupted by the distant thuds of three HE/Mag missiles going off in quick succession, which served to distract us all.

“Well,” I said, “it looks like Chert will have an opportunity to test his theory rather sooner than we expected.” I looked Chert in the eyes and said, “Well, Chert, how’s it going down? Do you want to walk out to greet your former companions with a friendly smile and a white flag? Or do you want to hang out here with us?”

He seemed startled by the stark and sudden opportunity to choose, and a look of panic flashed across his face as he thought about the actuality of confronting the prospect of disclosure rather than the fantasy of rescue. Perhaps his changes had already started to improve his thinking, because he said quite quickly, with no dithering at all, really, “I think your advice was best.” I’ll give him credit for the fact that he was able to keep most of his usual sullen resentment out of his voice.

I smiled to show that there were no hard feelings and said, “Good! We’d all of us miss you, you know. Every largish group needs a cautious voice to present the alternatives fairly.”

At that, he blushed and said, “I’m not sure it was an alternative as much as wishful thinking.”

“Well,” I answered. “It’s nice to have at least one optimist in every group as well. Too many realists makes for gloomy outings.” I gathered up my biggest duffle and said, “Speaking of which, it’s time to arrange our next encounter with the Horticulturists, and I’d prefer not to kill them. They can’t help being what they are, and some of them might have been pals of yours at one time, although I don’t doubt that they’d cheerfully kill you if they saw you and realized who you were right this very minute. I know that my own father handed my own mother over to the execution squad without a moment’s hesitation, and then stood calmly by as she was thrown down to her death from the top of the outer castle wall, but of course your own experience might differ. My own exposure to the military justice system was limited by my youth and then by my immediate dispatch on a doomed foraging expedition when I was just seventeen years of age. My father had arranged that as well, so if marriage and parental concern don’t count for much, I wouldn’t depend on casual friendship for anything special.”

 

 

We were all of us armed with crossbows and a good supply of quarrels, which seemed a good compromise between efficiency and lethality. Crossbows were intuitive enough for anyone clever enough to aim a flamethrower that they didn’t require special training, and unless the victim was extremely unlucky, we could probably save their life by feeding him a bit of cheese, which tended to accelerate all types of healing. I’d discovered this early on, although I hadn’t actually realized it until after I’d already begun to depend on it. I never said that I was the smartest guy in the room. If I’d been smarter, I’d never have been caught being idle on watch, and probably wouldn’t be out here at all, but I can’t say that I’m devastated about it, since I’d also figured out that being on the outside looking in was a lot safer than being on the inside looking out. In fact, as far as I could see, the wise guys who’d managed to sidle their way into all the cushy jobs in the castles were the saddest sacks of all, because they were all fighting each other for the privilege of being the last man standing when the plants overran the various fortresses around the world, which wouldn’t be long, I thought, considering exactly how dangerous they’d become even since I was a child. I remember cheering crowds standing by the gates as the courageous foraging parties marched out, but that didn’t happen any more, since very few of them came back, and the general officers had long since stopped taking turns.

 

 

We could almost feel them coming through the wheatgrass on the outskirts of our city, so we had plenty of time to deploy before they marched into view. I was visibly alone in the middle of the road when they finally appeared, and they stopped dead in their tracks, staring at me, before one of them, their Number One, walked forward.

“Who are you?” he asked, deep suspicion radiating from him, his face hostile, his tone arrogant, and his demeanor contemptuous, “and why aren’t you in a protective horticultural suit?”

“I’m not wearing one of those silly suits because I don’t need to. We’ve developed a vaccine which prevents hostile reactions from the plants, and you’re trespassing in our domain, so we’d appreciate it if you left, although we might be willing to trade for food, if you’ve brought trade goods of any sort, precious metals are always nice, although we’re also interested in shoulder-launched missiles.”

“We take what we need to survive!” he shouted angrily. “We certainly don’t bargain with women!”

“The more fools you are, then, because you’re at our mercy just now, and would do well to remember it.”

Now he was really ticked off. “Number Five! Burn her!”

One of them ran off to one side slightly, in a flanking position, the approved tactic for burning plants when taken by surprise.

It wasn’t a surprise to me, of course. ‘Gumball! This one’s almost edible!’ I thought, ‘and he’s got a lot of yummy volatile hydrocarbons on his back as well.’.

Quick as a flash, the ground dropped from beneath them both, then closed up again as quickly as Hades putting the snatch on Persephone, but neither of them were nearly as pretty. They were, however, just as gone.

The other guys were flummoxed, and had just started to bring their weapons up when I shouted, “Stand down! At ease!” in my very best Drill Sergeant voice.

Confused and appalled by the sudden disappearance of their officer, they did as they were told.

‘Gumball! Spit’em out!’ I thought. ‘You can eat the dandelion juice, since they stole it anyway.’

Up they came, both of them as naked as jaybirds, or so I imagined, since I’ve never actually seen a jaybird. Gumball was getting more clever by the day, so I let him know that I was very pleased, but told him to stay underground, just in case any one of our new prisoners got any bright ideas.

“Now,” I said, “Does anyone still imagine that bullying ‘the girl’ is a good idea? If so, the squad of sharpshooters behind you are quite ready to make it very difficult for you to sit down for many weeks to come, and that’s only if you manage to walk back home with your ass shot halfway to Harry’s Holy Hell.”

They’d just started to turn around when I shouted, “Eyes front!” then waited until they’d complied with my order. “Now I know you men find it a little strange to be taking orders from a woman, so I’m going to cut you a little slack. I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened to the last crew as well, and are understandably worried. You needn’t be. You’re all going home — if you don’t tick me off — and you’re going back with as much food as you can reasonably carry, so you’ll all be heroes. Not only that, but we’ll personally escort you through the defenses erected by the plants, so there shouldn’t be any further deaths.” I let that sink in for a bit, then asked, “Are there any questions?”

One of them worked up the nerve to ask, “Begging your pardon, Ma’am, but who are you? You talk like you’re part of the Horticulturist forces, but there are no women in the ranks.”

“You’re mistaken,” I said calmly. “On the West Coast, we’ve made several discoveries that have finally turned the tide in our long war against the plants, and I’m living proof. My husband is General Granite McKenzie, commanding the Vancouver Horticulturist Seventh Field Army, and I’m Lieutenant General Sapphire McKenzie of the Vancouver Women’s Horticultural Auxiliary Corps, the V-WHACKs, as we’re affectionately called back on the island.”

“V…Vancouver?! Isn’t that in Canada?!” my quasi-prisoner exclaimed.

I smiled. He didn’t look particularly reassured thereby. “Why, yes, it is, Soldier, but as you probably know we’ve had a joint command structure for almost two hundred years.” I smiled more pleasantly. “I don’t foresee any particular difficulties in accommodating the local idiosyncrasies of your small garrison.” I smiled again when I saw him blanch.

“But where’s your husband now!?” he said anxiously, as if any husband of mine could possibly control me.

“He’s gone ahead to liaise with New York Horticulturist Command, of course, and left me here to ‘hold the fort,’ as it were, in preparation for the full integration of the East Coast into our overall North American command structure.” I smiled again. There are few things more discomfiting to the military mind than the prospect of foisting change upon local structures from above. The fact that the superstructure of my Continental Army was completely fictional didn’t bother me at all, since I had access to many manual typewriters and had taught myself to use one using a book from the public library. It had been surprisingly easy to pick up the necessary techniques, and the addition of a plentiful supply of completely bogus forms that I’d run off at a local silk-screen shop gave me all the specious authority I needed. I was actually looking forward to my first meeting with the people from the Citadel so I smiled mysteriously for the benefit of all. ‘Life is filled with ironic reversals,’ I thought, ‘six months into my new life, I’ve gone from planning how to escape discovery to plotting the overthrow of the culture I was born into. How time flies when you’re having fun. It just goes to show that Carl von Clausewitz was right when he said that the best defense is a good offense, although he put it in somewhat more nuanced terms, since he tended more toward subtlety than bold declarations. Be flexible was more like his real approach to warfare. “Every attack becomes weaker as it progresses” was one of his real maxims, and never commit everything to one attack, but retain as much over as is necessary for an orderly retreat, but this commendable caution doesn’t lead quite so easily to pithy generalizations.’ The man was still staring at me, obviously mired in sexist presumptions, so I said, “Well? What are you waiting for? You’re dismissed!” Then I called out to Beryl, “Major Farquhar! Would you please collect the weapons of this sorry crew, and arrange a secure bivouac area for them until we can see them on their merry way tomorrow?”

“Our weapons, Ma’am?” another of them said.

“Did you not clearly hear me say, ‘Dismissed!’ Soldier?” I scowled at him in particular, but included them all in my general disapproval, especially the two naked guys. “Major Farquhar will sort you out, and not one of you can be trusted with weapons just yet, since you don’t know enough to distinguish our plant allies from our enemies. Your number One, however, should consider himself on report for ordering an unprovoked assault on a woman and a superior officer.”

He had the good sense to look frightened. Officers broken in rank did poorly in the general scheme of things, not that I had any real intention of carrying things that far unless provoked again.

Beryl strolled out into the road, dressed in a truly stunning ‘boho’ outfit from one of the upscale ‘department stores’ located near my former lodgings in the tall building, and chastized them, “I don’t know why I should bother with any of you, considering your sorry lack of discipline, but General McKenzie has evidently decided to treat you with compassion. I’m not quite as forgiving, though, so if any of you speak again before you’re spoken to, I’ll have a Sergeant stop by to give you a few stripes to think about. Am I making myself clear?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” they said in chorus, trying to look like soldiers.

“That’s better,” she said. “Now, if you’ll lay your weapons down on the road where you stand, you’ll find ample accommodations and food arranged for visitors over in that small dwelling.” She indicated an undamaged home just a hundred feet or so back in towards town, one of the ones I’d used to stash provisions in before I’d changed my plans, as it happened. “I’ll send a Sergeant by later to see if any of you have any needs beyond the obvious, but feel free to open and eat any of the provisions stacked in the rooms, with the usual caution not to waste anything that might help any of your citizens when you begin hauling it back for their use. There are beverages as well, but stay away from anything with alcohol in it, since we don’t want to have to rescue you from any trouble you might get into. We have a latrine arranged in the back yard, and ample bathroom tissues available, so please don’t go without. Remember to wash your hands. Any questions?”

“No, Ma’am! Thank you, Ma’am!” they said, a little more raggedly than they’d managed for me. I’d have to speak to Beryl about the proper attitude and deportment for officers. It’s all a matter of arrogance, that and the aura of menace one has to affect, of being ready to punish people without warning and without remorse. I’d had a good exemplar in my father, but most people weren’t quite that lucky.

 

 

The journey back to The Citadel was almost anticlimactic. The surrounding dandelions weren’t particularly clever, but they knew enough not to annoy the bandersnatches, and we made the men load their threatening ‘suits’ in with the rest of the booty from their expedition, so we waltzed right through and out onto the terrible plain of half-melted rock and ash which surrounded the castle. The sight depressed me, especially after having lived in freedom for many months. We stopped, and I handed over my forged authorization papers to one of the inmates, telling him to convey my apologies to his commander, but I had pressing business elsewhere. I wasn’t particularly worried about them, since we’d given them four of my wagons, each one of them piled high with food, as a consolation prize. One of our new gals had found a ‘warehouse’ — the proper name for those flat-topped buildings — with several dozen of them on hand, so I wasn’t worried about running out, and the four they had now could be used on their outward expeditions, for which we’d arranged to provide an escort, to keep them from getting up to any further mischief which might annoy the plants, and thereby set back my long-term plans a bit. The first infections would be setting in within a day or two, primarily amongst the officers and their dependents, unless I missed my guess, since they usually had first dibs on the choicest items retrieved from outside the castles, and my lovely cheese would qualify as choice, once all the ‘goodies’ had passed inspection.

 

 

Before leaving the copious vicus of the Citadel and its environs, we — Beryl and I alone — took a small detour upwind of its imposing walls, sending the others back with a cheerful wave of our hands, prompting me to make a mental note to salvage some lacy hankies from one of the better clothing stores back in the city. There was a gentle breeze from the west, which seemed fitting, somehow, and it was there in a clearing just behind the tallest dandelions and burdocks that we fired two missiles into the air, which made the plants nervous, of course, but they soon perceived that we meant no harm and settled back to their normal wary watchfulness.

Watching from the ground, we saw that our modifications to the propellent and the timer had been almost perfect, because the reduced charge set off a small explosion — more like a pop — just below the level of the highest plants, effectively shielding it from observation from within the citadel, but none-the-less reduced the cheese in the payload to minute particles of cheese dust, which puffed out like infinitesimal dandelion seeds before being caught by the wind and carried back toward the fortress, quickly dispersing into near invisibility.

“Well,” Beryl said, “That’s one down, in any case.” She began to pack up our gear and I helped. It wasn’t difficult, since the two missiles had been a large portion of the load.

“Probably, ” I finally answered her, our duffles packed up and already walking back toward the rough path home. “We’ll be back tomorrow, though, to ensure that the local command structure is fully aware of the ‘new orders’ regarding plant infections from ‘Central Command.’ I’d hate to seen any more innocents thrown from the wall we’ve just made more-or-less irrelevant. Many will find it difficult to cope with the transition from the old certitudes to the new reality, so I worry about the short-term consequences, even as I precipitate the inevitable onset of the future.” I grimaced as I thought about all that could possibly go wrong. “If you’re going to foment revolution, it helps a lot if you’re both cruel and callous to start with.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, staring off toward the open fields that surrounded the ring wall of beseiging plants, “the first thing that sharing a table in the enlisted mess taught me was that you eat what’s set before you, ’cause there won’t be anything better coming along later.”

I glanced at her with one eyebrow raised in wry apology, feeling chastized. “Sorry. I can assure you that the choices I had as the child of an officer were similarly circumscribed, although I admit to enjoying a slightly better menu. At the time, it didn’t seem particularly luxurious, but I suppose that I didn’t bother to wonder about what anyone else was eating either, so I’m not whining.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Even as an enlisted member of the Corps, I had a better choice of eats available than the civilians did, so I guess we’re both guilty of profiting from the inequities we were born or stumbled into.”

For some reason, her admission cheered me up again. “Well, if what we’re doing succeeds — and I think it will in the long run — we’ve started down a path of freedom and reconciliation for all of us, not just the officers or the Horticulturist Corps in general. Once the people can leave their prisons behind, there’s a whole continent out there where we’ll be able to grow our own damned food instead of stealing it from people long dead, and it will be much more difficult to keep people in bondage of any sort, because all of them will be able to walk out the gates they’ve been hiding behind and have a good chance of making some kind of living on their own.”

Beryl looked sceptical. “Do you really think they will? We’ve lived as scavengers for so long, the idea of actually working for a living might not be all that attractive to many of our people.”

“Maybe not, and there are ample provisions in store to sustain them for quite some time, but the most adventurous will, and most importantly the ‘rugged individualists’ who chafed under regimentation and restrictions, which is probably what most pioneers have been like over the years.” I shrugged. “It’s a way of sorting people with minimal impact, because the people sort themselves.”

“But what do you get out of this?” she asked.

‘Crap!’ “I don’t really know,” I confessed. “Mostly, I’ve just been improvising, trying to stay alive, and to make sure that I have some way of surviving tomorrow.”

“Your plans seem rather elaborate for ‘just surviving,’ aren’t they?”

I laughed and said, “Well, I’ve always been prone to over-thinking, plus — after I was infected — I seemed to be able to reason things out more clearly for some reason. It was like I could see, or maybe feel would be a better word, connections between things that had seemed completely unrelated before.”

Beryl nodded. “I’ve felt the same way. Before I began to change, I just figured that the story the Horticultural Corps told us was true, that the plants had ‘revolted’ for some reason, so it was our duty to ‘destroy the rebels,’ which seemed as likely an explanation as anything, but then, without the slightest transition that I noticed, the whole story just…fell apart, and then seemed utterly, almost laughably, false, and I suddenly understood exactly what you were saying about the Corps bringing the whole sorry mess we were in toppling down around their own ears. Harry’s Hell, if I’d been the dandelions, I’d have been ticked off too.”

“It’s not just the dandelions,” I said confidently. “One of the ‘perks’ of being an officer’s child was that my Dad would sometimes pass on rumors that usually circulated only amongst the officers. The burdocks weren’t any problem at all, for example, just ten or twenty years ago, but now that’s changed, as you know. Further south, there’s supposed to be a plant called a ‘kudzu’ that’s even worse than the dandelions. It’s still a bit too cold for them to survive and thrive in our winters, but down there, they can supposedly grow fast enough to topple a castle wall overnight, pulling it apart with what they call ‘vines,’ something like blackberry vines, I guess, but without the thorns.”

“You’re joking!” Beryl exclaimed.

“Not that I know of, although I’ve never actually seen them. The local command believed it, though, and I see no particular reason not to believe it.” I thought for a minute, trying to remember what I’d heard. “They use mostly poison down there, because the kudzu has a big heart or something deep underground, so if you burn them, they’re already sprouting up again almost before your back is turned on them.”

“Whoa! Like zombies! Salad of the living dead!” she said, almost delighted.

I looked at her closely. “The crazy thing is that the damned things are edible, almost like a potato, or so they say, but they have to douse them with so much poison before they’re dead enough to stop strangling people that they’re too toxic to eat by the time they’re passive enough to cook. How in the world did you know that?”

“I already told you, Sapphire dear. Have you forgotten already? I’m understanding things differently than I ever could have done before. I’m even starting to feel how you communicate somehow with your bandersnatches. It… tickles… somehow inside my head, and every once in a while — not very often so far — I can even see, or think that I see, what they’re seeing, although I can’t even guess how they do it, because they don’t seem to have any eyes.”

The hair on the back of my neck rose up. “I feel it too, more often, I think, than you do, but then I’ve been changed longer than you have too. I wondered if I was imagining what I thought I was envisioning about the bandersnatches, though, because I’ve always had a pretty active imagination.”

“Not me,” she said cheerfully. “I was pretty much down-to-earth and boring.”

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear you say that….” Then I stopped speaking when I realized what that might have sounded like. “Not that you’re boring, of course, but that someone else was experiencing the same strange sensations that I was. I’ve been a little worried about the possibility that I might be crazy, because I didn’t dare say what I was experiencing. At first I thought that they could hear me, just Gumball at first, although I couldn’t figure out what the bandersnatches used for ears, but then I realized that they could figure out what I wanted them to do even when I didn’t actually say anything. I finally realized that they could hear me even when I didn’t actually speak, which means that I can ‘talk’ to the bandersnatches, for example — or I think I can — and they ‘listen’ to me, even when they’re underground.”

“I had that impression, right from the start, but wasn’t quite sure whether you were the nutcase or I was.” She grinned at me.

I grinned back, to show her that there were no hard feelings. “Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad….”

She looked at me suspiciously. “Why do I have the impression that you’re making fun of me?”

“Oh, but I’m not at all,” I said quickly. “It’s a quote from a book I found in the library. I liked it because it featured talking plants, but it was realistic, since some of the plants weren’t friendly at all. On the other hand, it was hopeful, because everything turned out all right in the end.”

“They had books about intelligent plants?”

“Quite a few, actually, and some of them were quite frightening, like The Day of the Triffids, which seemed quite similar to our situation here, except that armed gangs of male thugs crept around trying to enslave one group of survivors or another, which seemed silly, since the plants were the real danger. Half the damned book was spent either quarrelling or escaping from any of several crazed groups of human beings, with very little attention being paid to their common enemy, the poisonous triffids.”

“But isn’t that almost exactly what we have here?” Beryl asked me. “We don’t have armed gangs walking around, sure — it’s too dangerous — but what in Harry’s Holy Hell are the officer corps and the city leaders other than an organized gang looking out mostly for themselves? When’s the last time you heard anyone talk about actually fighting the plants, or trying to win this endless war? We live like rats, sneaking around on the edges of the world inhabited by plants, daring only to sneak out to snatch bits of food, which we proudly bring back to the nest while the biggest rats take all the best stuff. You don’t see them volunteering for many of the dangerous assignments, do you?”

I blinked in surprise. I’d thought about that myself; aside from the Looies — who just barely qualified as officers — just a tad more elevated in status than the Sergeants, who often had considerably more real power, none of the officers walked out through the sally ports these days, and of course the civilian Castle officials never had, at least not that I knew of.

“You’re right, of course. They’re in exactly the positions that the ‘gang leaders’ in the story sought for themselves. In fact, the book addressed the problem of scavenging as a way of life, since it’s unsustainable in the long run. Eventually, we have to grow our own food or we’ll all starve.”

“Duuh! Just now figuring that out? Most everybody knows that, but nobody can figure out how to manage it in the face of the dangerous plants, and our ‘leaders’ are too timid to try. They’ve all got cushy jobs, and people to wait on them hand and foot, so why should they rock the boat?” She paused, looking me up and down and then said, “That’s why we like you, you know, and follow your lead, for the most part, because you actually lead instead of just ordering people around like most of the officers back home. When the scavenger crew from the Citadel arrived, you didn’t tell someone else to confront them, but told us all to hide while you put your own ass right on the front line.”

“Well, it didn’t seem right to ask you all to face up to what might be a fight between you and your former pals. It wouldn’t have been right.”

“Since when do officers worry about what’s ‘fair,’ much less ‘right?’ ” she asked wryly, not expecting any answer. “Not only do you never ask us to do anything you wouldn’t do, you explain what’s happening, and what you’re thinking, before you commit us to anything.” She stuck her tongue in her cheek for a moment. “In fact, as armies go, our small band of sisters is a hell of a democracy.”

I blushed.

 

 

The City looked odd from this direction. Where my ‘square mountain’ had stood out against the skyline approaching it from the west in the morning, with that vast expanse of glass still in shadow, approaching it from the Citadel meant that the glare of the sun on glass made it obvious that it had been made by human hands, and it was partially concealed behind quite a few lesser buildings most of which had their own windowy glare, so the entire settlement instantly resolved into unambiguous human artifice, not nature, which made me feel a little foolish, in retrospect.

We’d been jogging along for quite some time, trying to catch up with the rest of our party, when we heard the first of a closely-spaced series of unmistakeable HE explosions, which could mean only one thing, Horticulturists, probably from the Castle.

“Harry’s Stainless Steel Balls!” I shouted, already lengthening my stride. “Let’s go!” I hoped to hell my crew had sense enough to stay out of harm’s way until we got there.

As we ran, I did a mental inventory; all we had in the way of weapons was one rocket launcher with no rockets — ‘Note to self: Never use all your ammunition!’ — and the knowledge of where we’d stashed a cache of missiles. The rest of our crew had the crossbows and plenty of bolts, but if those idiots from the Castle were using napalm and rockets, they’d be hopelessly outmatched until Beryl and I got there.

In desperation, I cast ahead for any trace of Gumball and his pals, but I couldn’t sense their presence at all, and then I almost wept for grief and rage when I thought that they might have been killed by the Castle creeps.

I didn’t weep, though; I ran faster.

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

 

 

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Five Frontal Assault

 

 

If you know both yourself and your enemy,
you can win a hundred battles without jeopardy.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

As we reached the edge of the tall grass I motioned Beryl off to the right side while I took the left, knowing that she was well aware of our need to assess the situation from as much concealment as we could arrange.

I crawled through the grass to as close as I could find without revealing myself, but could see no one on the road leading back into town, other than the remains of what must have been a bandersnatch on the sidewalk, about three blocks down, surrounded by the debris and scorch marks typical of HE/goop explosions. You can always tell, because the magnesium in the goop mixture leaves behind a white residue that covers everything, and the explosive, of course, blows stuff up. If that bandersnatch was Gumball, somebody was going to be in a world of hurt.

I crept back toward better cover and made my way over toward Beryl. She had binoculars, which I admired, probably left over from her former HC kit. I’d seen some in one or another of the department stores, but hadn’t been thinking of reconnaissance at the time. I waited patiently until she’d wriggled her way back to cover before speaking to her. “I saw nothing untoward,” I said quietly, “but clear signs of some sort of engagement. One of those missiles went off in the middle of the road we left from and killed a bandersnatch.”

“Same here,” she said, “except I didn’t see that. If they follow normal procedures, they’ll hightail it back home as quick as they can.”

“That’s my guess as well,” I replied, “in which case we ought to try and intercept them on their way out of town, since they might have taken some of our people prisoners.”

“Flanking?” she said.

“I think so. I’ll take the right hand, since I explored it thoroughly when I first arrived, and left a cache of missiles. I’ll take the launcher as well, since I think I can travel with it quicker than you can yet.”

“Will do,” she said, and headed back the way I’d already checked out.

I had a bit of time to spare, waiting for her to get into position, so I tried to focus on feeling where Gumball was, and everyone, which I hadn’t tried before. I wished that I’d thought to bring a tarot deck along, because I found the cards useful in meditation, since I could pick and choose those that felt most appropriate to my purpose, and then try out different relationships between the pieces of whatever puzzled me. Trump eight, Strength seemed most appropriate, the complement to trump one, the Magician. Both cards represent spiritual power and relationships, but the Magician implies ‘power over,’ while Strength is more like ‘power with,’ which is how I felt about Gumball and his friends. Then I rifled through a mental collection of the cards, but my attention was quickly caught by the five of swords, which shows a reversal or usurpation of power, possibly associated with deceit or unethical conduct, which seemed almost perfectly congruent with the present situation. ‘Well, treason is what you make of it, isn’t it?’ I thought. ‘When the system is corrupt, and oppresses those it rules over, we have a duty to rebel in pursuit of greater liberty for all. The close proximity of water, though, implies that the solution lies in the unconscious.’ I reached deeper and felt a stirring. ‘The Queen of Cups! I’m on the shore of an ocean, contemplating the depths, symbolized by the covered chalice I hold in my hands as well as by the deeper waters before me.’ I tried studiously to ignore the fact that it also represented nurturance and motherhood in all its many ramifications. Time enough to think about that later, since I was bound to act now. ‘Times and tides…, ebb and flood…. Go with the flow,’ I thought.

Then I heard a click from Beryl, and became the wave.

I was across the gap between the tall grass and the nearest house in two and one half seconds. I know, because I counted, and I could see Beryl out of the corner of one eye, not much behind. I was aware of her even as she disappeared around the corner of the house and we started running toward the other edge of town, listening carefully for any signs of their party, whatever it consisted of. I stopped for an instant to pick up a crossbow, a quiver of bolts, and a small satchel of missiles I’d stashed some time ago, part of the remainder of my salvaged horde, plus some of those I’d ‘liberated’ from the Citadel crew who’d been ambushed and transformed, one of whom was now the lovely Beryl and almost as dangerous as I was. I hoped that the other members of our little gang were being cagey, as we’d practiced, but was still worried about Chert, who was still working on choosing a less revealing name. ‘Well, they say that the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully,’ I thought, so I sincerely hoped that Chert had been inspired by mortal fear to dissembling creativity.

We hadn’t been running for more than five minutes before we heard women’s voices cursing — bless their clever hearts — still invisible, but no more than a block or two ahead.

I put on a bit more speed, trusting Beryl to do the same, and managed to set myself on a side street in time to see Beryl run past on the next street over, stop, and then come down the street toward me. We couldn’t actually risk using the missiles, at least not until we’d sussed out their relative positions, but we could certainly focus their attention.

At a nod, we both poked our heads around the corner long enough to get off one quick shot each with our crossbows, and then we both took off back the way we’d come, so as not to be there when they came to investigate. I was pretty sure that their effective force would have been diminished, since I knew that I’d got my target in his kneecap and he was hors de combat. I suspected that Beryl had managed the same general effect, but it didn’t matter in the long run.

As we ran back down the side streets, I pondered my next move. Seeing a metal staircase affixed to a building, I came to a sudden decision and leapt up to catch the railing at edge of the bottom of the stairs, which ended well above street level. Swinging over, I went up three flights — making as little noise as possible, but not too careful, because I knew that the suits made hearing anything other than the radio a bit dicey — and lifted the window there, breaking the lock in the process. I looked down at Beryl and shrugged, leaving the next decision to her, since I was soon to be out of touch.

She waved a half-salute and ran back the way we’d come, trusting me to get their attention while she got herself into position.

I climbed in, finding myself in what appeared to be a residence, since there was a bed, a dresser, and some sort of video display. I wasn’t all that interested, though, and quickly opened a door on the other side of the room, finding myself in a hall. I chose a direction at random, seeing that there was a turn at either end of the long hall, ran down and around the corner, finding myself in another hall lined with identical doors, all of which had numbers on them. I chose 405, kicked through the door when I found that it was locked, then found myself in another room looking almost the same as the other, except there was a different picture on the wall.

I wasn’t interested in anything other than the window looking out on the street, so I ran over to it and looked cautiously down toward the street. This side didn’t have a stairway, which suited me perfectly, since I had a clear view of six Horticulturists in suits looking around, two on the ground, with our women behind them, who were in turn guarded by two guys in suits with flamethrowers pointed at my friends.

That ticked me off, so I unlocked the window, opened it quitely, and shot the two guards with two quick bolts through the back of their kneecaps. They wouldn’t be walking away from this, no matter how the fight went overall.

They must have made some sort of noise on the radio, because their number one turned around, saw me, and raised his own rocket launcher.

I made a quick decision and shot him through the throat with another bolt, since I didn’t want him burning down my city, and figured that losing the boss, plus the two invalids, might make the rest of them easier to intimidate.

It didn’t work the first time, since another guy raised his flamethrower, but I shot him too — not quite as fatally — through his right shoulder, and noticed that Beryl had hit him from behind with another bolt through his knee, so he dropped as well.

In the meantime, our girls had handily grabbed the rocket launchers from the backs of their former guards, so by the time the rest had finished turning back to see what was happening, they found the situation somewhat changed.

Four of their party of ten were on the ground, and obviously in no position to get up, although three of those were still visibly alive. The six still walking were faced with a small gang of credible opponents — their former prisoners — right in front of them, two of them armed with the most powerful weapon in the HC inventory, and one looking down on them from very good cover, also armed, with another armed assassin somewhere behind them. Wisely, they decided that discretion was the better part of valor and ostentatiously dropped their various weapons, including two rocket launchers, then raised their hands.

Keeping the crossbow aimed directly at one of them, held now with one hand, I gestured toward my own head, tapping it, then pointed at the six of them.

They were fairly quick to understand, removing their helmets and dropping them on the ground, so I called down to them, “I accept your surrender. Step away from your weapons and lie face down on the road; someone will be with you shortly.” Then I called down the street, a little louder, “Beryl, if you have a bit of the good stuff handy, try dosing up the dead or dying guy and we’ll see what happens. It may not be too late to save him. I’ll stay up here to pick off anyone with a mind to break their parole. Do you guys understand?”

They nodded, looking a little pale. Not that I blamed them; one minute they’re sitting on top of the world, with a new source of food, possibly important prisoners, and the prospect of a triumphant return; then the next, ignominious defeat at the hands of a couple of women, painful injuries to some, and horrendous blows to each and every one of their masculine egos to put the final flourish on their utter and abject failure. The poor dears. I almost felt sorry for them.

“Then sit tight while my companions see to your wounded and dying. I’ll wait here, just in case….”

 

 

It didn’t take that long, but I got a little bored perched up in a window, so when they were all nicely bound I took a bit of rope from my duffle, lowered my stuff to the ground — not wishing to test the deceleration limits of the HE missiles — and swung my legs over the ledge. I quickly manoeuvred until I was hanging from the ledge by one hand, then dropped heavily down to the street. The soles of my feet hurt a little, since I was wearing plain walking shoes rather than combat boots, but I was otherwise raring to go.

I picked up my stuff and walked over to where Beryl was working on their leader, who now had his helmet off so I could see his face.

I pressed my tongue against my lower teeth as I struggled to control myself with truly mixed emotions. It was my father, the man who’d raised me; the man who’d betrayed my mother to his superiors and then stood calmly by when she was thrown to her death; the man who’d sent me out into the world to die; and here we were, our rôles in life reversed. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

 

 

Beryl was giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and I was very glad that it was her and not me, so I watched until he coughed up blood and started breathing on his own; she’d evidently spat some cheese into his mouth — a sovereign remedy for most things that ailed one — and then kept him alive long enough for the stuff to begin its work of healing.

She looked up at me and responded to my curt gesture, backing away from him.

“Well, Captain, ill-met by moonlight, I see.”

He looked up at me, incomprehension flooding his face.

“I imagine that you must be finding it difficult to speak just now, so I’ll keep my questions simple. Did my officers fail to identify themselves to you? Nod your head if so, otherwise, consider yourself under arrest for mutinous assault on a superior officer, disobeying a legitimate order from a superior, treason, and whatever else I can think of between now and your formal court martial.”

He blanched, obviously frightened, but didn’t dissemble, for which I had to give him credit; he might have been a cruel and heartless taskmaster, a callous martinet, and an all-around first-class jerk, but at least he was honest.

“You engaged” I said, “in a firefight with my immediate command, and in the process murdered at least one of our liaisons with the plant kingdom; were any others of them harmed?”

He shook his head and one of the others spoke up, “Begging your pardon, Ma’am, but the rest of those monsters ran away somehow. we chased them, but when we turned a corner they were gone.”

I felt an immediate sense of relief, but schooled my features to dispassion. “Who fired the missile which burned him alive?”

“I did,” he answered, “begging your pardon, Ma’am, but ‘him?’ ”

“Him,” I said, “and all of them very helpful, until you came along.” I included his companions with a dismissive gesture.

“I don’t understand, Ma’am,” he said.

“No, I suppose you don’t.”

 

 

I had two of the women escort our prisoners off to the same holding area I’d had set up for the foraging party I’d sent back to the Citadel, since we already had a latrine dug. Before they left, I let them know that they were on their honor to refrain from trying to escape, since they were being held by their own forces, not an enemy, and had neither the duty nor the right to return to their own outpost. Another benefit of being an officer’s child was that I wasn’t completely hopeless as a barracks lawyer. I’d been drilled on military history, customs, and deportment since I was very young, so it was ‘in my bones,’ so to speak.

My father was still unable to speak, so he wasn’t in any position to argue. I wasn’t worried about them in any case, since two women would be more than enough to handle them, now that the men had been disarmed.

As soon as they’d marched off, I talked with Beryl about the Castle. “They must have exploited everything worth taking in the town they were using as a larder for them to have chanced setting off into the unknown,” I theorized, “so they’ll be back.”

In which case, shouldn’t we pay them a visit with a couple of our modified missiles?

“I’d like to avoid that until we’ve had a chance to put some of our transformative cheese into their food supply. The ærosol is too chancy, since it will hit the people who work outside — that is, the lowest on the totem pole — before it affects the ‘upper classes,’ so I’m afraid of setting off mass murders amongst the general populace before the transformations hit the officers and makes the maintenance of ‘purity’ moot.”

Beryl thought about this for a minute and then said, “Let’s go find Gumball and his remaining friends. All we need is a plausible ‘delivery’ of the food to the area outside the gates, and if we’re ‘killed’ before we make the actual gate, someone will be sure to haul in our leavings.”

I stared at her in awe. “What are you these days, a mere Major? Remind me to bump you up to Colonel, at least, or perhaps a Brigadier. In fact, take your pick; the pay’s the same, either way.” I grinned for both of us, since our notional ‘army’ paid no salary at all.

“Oh, Brigadier, of course,” she said cheerfully. “Brigadier Beryl has a pleasing sound, while Colonel Beryl sounds like a tongue-twister gone bad. Young children would challenge each other to say it three times fast and then laugh when it got mixed up with ‘cannibal,’ or something equally silly.” Then she looked at me sideways and said, “On the other hand, ‘Cannibal’ Farquhar sounds bloodthirsty as hell, and might enhance my fearsome image.”

“Let’s do both, then,” I said laughing. “As a Brigadier, you’ll obviously have been a Colonel at some time in the past, and that’ll give us the opportunity to spin fantastic tales of adventure and derring-do for you. Colonel ‘Cannibal’ Farquhar and the Curse of the Swamp Thing, or maybe ‘Cannibal’ Farquhar in the Caves of Despair…. We’ll make a fortune off the serial publication rights alone!”

“Why do I have to be the heroine in all of them? What about ‘Star’ Sapphire and the Deadly Encounter? In fact, I think we should have a whole line of titles aimed at different tastes. So far, we’re ignoring the romance marketplace entirely! We could have my stories be adventure stuff, and then have yours be breathless kisses and mushy whispers in the dark! We’ll split the main genre markets between us and clean up big time! I can see it now; ‘Star’ Sapphire Meets Her Match, followed by Star’s Rendezvous, and then Fifty Shades of Blue, to match your eyes. We could even come out with a clothing line as well, with a ‘hook’ like that.”

We both laughed at that, as children do, letting go of the oppressive fear that had dogged us during our own pursuit of our friends and allowing pure joy to reënter our lives and suffuse our spirits.

“But before we can retire in luxury on the proceeds of our book and clothing sales, we have to find our other friends,” I said. “I can still feel their terror, although they feel safe where they are, deep underground. Let’s go a little uptown, where there’s a shop I know of.”

Beryl looked puzzled, but was willing enough to follow my lead as we jogged off toward an eclectic little bodega where they had all sorts of spiritual supplies on offer, from candles to herbs, and from books to tarot cards to altar supplies.

It was relatively nondescript, a tiny little store well off the major boulevards, but it stood out from the rest because of a notable lack of ostentation, the only real clue to its nature being an odd symbol woven into a circular window pieced together with individual shards of stained glass above the narrow entry door. After quite a bit of searching through the library, I’d discovered that it represented the eye of the Egyptian God Thoth, a Moon deity who was associated with wisdom, justice, the sciences, and writing, a heavy burden for one God to carry.

Beryl was intrigued as we walked through the door into the dark interior, although it was too dark to see much at all. “What is this place, anyway?”

“It’s called ‘The Witches’ Familiar,’ but it sold all sorts of stuff, from what they called ‘yoga mats,’ to various herbs, to ‘occult supplies,’ one of which we’re looking for right now.” I rummaged around behind one particular counter, the general layout of which I remembered from exploring it before my flashlight gave up the ghost. “Here they are!” I said. “Let’s take a couple of them outside.”

We walked out to the sidewalk again, into the sunlight.

“Here we have a deck of tarot cards,” I explained, holding one of the Rider-Waite decks out to her. “It’s a meditative tool that represents a compilation and juxtaposition of many different Western mystical traditions. I have another back at my hotel room, but these particular decks are commonplace, and it’s the one I know the most about, so it’s the one I use.”

Beryl took it, but looked puzzled, which made sense, since I’d never told her about them before. In fact, I’d only discovered their existence through the library, when I’d been searching for some sort of explanation for what I was experiencing with the Bandersnatches, but especially Gumball. The whole notion of being aware of things one couldn’t see with one’s eyes or feel with one’s hands was so completely contrary to the Horticulturist worldview that I’d kept it a close secret, even from my resurrected companions, but after our recent talk, I wanted to share my thoughts about the cards, so I began, “They were invented, I think, as gambling tokens, almost like dice or dominoes, but much more complicated, and since gamblers tend to be a superstitious lot, they quickly became associated with fortunetelling and ‘luck,’ then ‘fate,’ and then other imponderable qualities and things. They’ve been around in one form or another for more than fifteen thousand years since their beginnings in ancient China, but soon became so popular and standardized that one could find them all around the world. At some point — sources disagree on this — they began to be used as memory aids, possibly springing from the use of the same technology to produce what were called ‘devotional cards,’ pictures of various Gods, Goddesses, Saints, and so on, all of whom had very clear associations with any of a wide range of ideas, and one can, in fact, find packs of ‘divination’ cards with depictions of Gods and Goddesses — even Saints and Saintesses — in this very shop.”

“Surely you don’t believe in fortune-telling! That’s…!”

I looked at her owlishly, ducking my head a little to partially hide my smile. “Not at all, although I believe you were going to say something like ‘silly women’s superstition….’ I believe in solving problems as quickly and decisively as I can. The cards are a stylized method of examining and thinking about a lot of possible outcomes very quickly and picking the one that seems most likely. Think of them as a primitive ‘data processing computer,’ like we had before the War, but with a completely manual interface powered partly by the psychic powers of the user’s mind, something like an abacus, only far more versatile.” I paused to stare at her. “If one has ‘extra-sensory’ powers — and it’s very clear that at least the two of us have experienced something way outside the realm of ordinary experience and perception — why not make use of a tool which has been refined for just that purpose over a thousand years or more?”

She started to open her mouth, then closed it.

“Exactly so,” I said smugly. “Now watch and listen.” I quickly opened my new package and rifled through it, looking for the three cards I’d examined mentally before I ran after our captured sisters. “You can look at the same cards from your own deck, if you’d like, but please don’t touch mine. I understand from at least some of the books I’ve read that it’s a bad idea to allow other people to touch your cards, although I suspect that at least some of the problem is psychological, like having someone grab your toothbrush by mistake in the washroom. Even if they don’t stick it into their mouth, it makes you feel a little icky when you put it back in your own mouth.” I shook my head, remembering more than a few times experiencing exactly that scenario back in the Barracks, and a few interactions that were far more disquieting. Anyway, here’s the first card I thought of, Strength, which shows a woman embracing a lion, a type of large carnivore we don’t have around these parts any more. The interesting thing about the card is that the lion seems to be smiling at her, and there’s a mathematical sign above her head that represents infinity, an utter lack of boundaries. That sign is seen on only one other card, The Magician, whose posture represents the first principle of alchemy, ‘As above, so below!’ and demonstrates the interconnectedness of all things. The woman in the Strength card represents the same principle, and wears the flowers that the magician points to as a girdle on her own body, showing that she herself is fruitful, that she and the animal share the same essential nature, and that both she and the lion embrace each other in a loving and mutually-supportive relationship.

“Like you and Gumball!” she cried out, struck by sudden enlightenment.

“Indeed,” I said. “Exactly like Gumball and I. If we were to create a modern tarot, a woman and a bandersnatch embracing might evoke the same feelings and ideas that this card is meant to carry, in part that when a woman is centered in her own power, she is capable of almost anything and has nothing to fear, but the symbolism doesn’t end there. The Strength card also represents the Hebrew letter ‘tet,’ the ‘serpent,’ which refers — indirectly — to the Shakti power that lies at the base of our wombs, the Goddess power of giving birth and creating new life, the so-called ‘Kundalini’ power that has the potential to open us up to the entire Universe in a spirit of love and generosity.”

“Shakti?” she asked, succinctly. “Kundalini?”

“Those are the ancient Sanskrit terms, but the mere names don’t really matter, because the whole point of naming them is to allow yourself to think about them and learn to evoke and control them, just as we’re trying to learn how to fully utilize our connection to the bandersnatches.” I reached out to lightly touch her hand with one finger. “When I touch you, for example, don’t you feel something there that wasn’t there when you were just a man, something both more powerful and more intimate? If I touched you in exactly the same way with a stick, wouldn’t you be instantly able to tell the difference in perception? It’s the same way that we can touch the bandersnatches, but we can feel the life inside them somehow, where we couldn’t have done so in quite the same way before.”

“Okay,” she nodded, but still unsure. “But what do these cards have to do with any of this?”

“In every religion or philosophy, there are visible symbols that somehow concentrate the essence of particular beliefs — or facts — within that system. So a Roman Catholic might feel a certain power associated with a rosary, or a crucifix, beyond the mere materials used to make it. These things become infused with a higher, or at least more particular, meaning than the physical object might seem to imply. In Sanskrit, these sorts of visual representations are called ‘yantras,’ which means exactly an ‘instrument’ or ‘machine,’ and are purported to offer both a shorthand method of focusing the attention and of bringing about certain spiritual experiences.”

“So your ‘Strength’ card both depicts a feminine method of relating to the larger universe and a method of creating an awareness of that relationship inside yourself!”

“Exactly!” I said. “The infinity sign above the woman’s head symbolizes that power, I think, and shows that she’s particularly aware of it when she’s touching another living thing, but the ancient philosophers had identified the source and ultimate center of that power as arising from the base of the spine, essentially the womb, and as essentially feminine, the force of creation itself and the agent of every movement or change.”

“And we’re looking to mobilize that power to help us find our friends!”

“Just so. While it may be ‘chance’ that led me to select that card, it was also luck, because it was exactly what I needed. Whether or not it’s some sort of weird prophecy or magic, it’s what I want, so I can use it as a tool to help me in my quest.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “So what comes next?”

My next card was the Five of Swords,” I pulled it out to show it to her. “Notice the subtle imagery, which shows a windswept landscape of threatening clouds on the shore of an ocean, with one individual looking at two others — one of whom seems distracted, whilst the other appears to be grief-stricken — while behind their backs he’s taken possession of all the swords. Taking that image as a clue to further thought, I instantly realized that we’d been betrayed or defeated in some sudden manner, and that we needed to act quickly or we’d lose everything. The ‘storm’ was upon us, and we needed to recover the initiative.”

“Which we did!” she said.

“We recovered. If you think of us as being represented by the two figures on the shore, we turned around and saw the theft of our metaphorical ‘swords,’ and so were able to recover the initiative by instantly responding in a coöperative manner. You’ll notice that in the image, the two figures are preoccupied with their own problems, so if we’d been looking for guidance, it would have been there, but it’s not a prescription, just a graphic depiction of a problem common to similar situations, more of an emergency checklist than a ready-made solution.”

“Okay,” she said. “I can see that, but did you draw another card? What did it say?”

I laughed. “It didn’t say anything; it’s just a piece of cardboard, after all is said and done, but it contained a powerful suggestion.” I held out the card I’d picked. “It was the Queen of Cups, which depicts a woman at the peak of her power. She’s sitting on her throne at the very edge of the great ocean which stretches out beneath her feet. In fact, she already has one foot in the water, and her robes may, or may not, be wet, which instantly reminded me of the story of King Cnut of Denmark and England, who is said to have demonstrated the limits of merely human power by setting his throne at the edge of the sea, where it was quickly inundated by the incoming tide. Since she’s already wet, it shows that she’s no Goddess, standing aside from Earthly limitations, but an ordinary woman with great responsibilities. She’s holding a cup in her hand, but it’s covered, which suggests that the gift she carries is hidden, certainly from others, and perhaps even from herself, because it’s guarded by winged figures like the Cherubim which guarded the Arc of the Covenant in the Bible. Exactly what that means is a mystery, although it may be that she herself carries the Holy of Holies within her very being, but it’s a conundrum, as invisible to our everyday perceptions as the depths of the sea are hidden from our sight.” I paused, then added, “All-in-all, it seemed like a very good omen.”

Beryl thought about that for a long moment, then said, “So the ‘answer’ is inside us, but it’s also out in the world.”

“Something like that,” I said, smiling. “Ain’t nothin’ easy. Let’s go find Gumball and his friends. I’m sure they’d like to see us.”

“But how do we do that? I can feel them hiding, just as you say, but I can’t tell where they might be!”

She was a little agitated, as might be expected, since I was in the same boat, but hoped that together we might work it out. ‘Two heads, they say, are better than one…,’ I thought.

“In the Sepher Yetzirah — an ancient book of spiritual philosophy — the Hebrew Letters, and thus the Tarot Trumps, since they’re psychically equivalent, are assigned three-dimensional directions.” I quickly picked out The Hermit, The Chariot, The Moon, and The Devil and fanned them out. “These four cards represent the cardinal directions, but beneath the surface of the Earth.” I indicated each in order, “North, East, South, West.”

She looked at them, puzzled.

“If I’m right,” I explained, “these will help us to focus our unconscious awareness of their location into tangible knowledge. Just think of our friends, then think of the directions shown by the cards, now choose one.” I presented them again, “North, East, South, West. The Hermit, The Chariot, The Moon, or The Devil.”

After hesitating, she reached out and pointed toward The Moon card. “This one?” she said, more than slightly unsure of her selection.

“Can you explain your choice?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “It just looked… right for them, somehow.”

I smiled. “It’s the same one I would have chosen,” I said, “and I’ve been thinking about these things longer than you have, so it seems clear to me that we share more than a simple ‘infection.’ First, of course, is that the card looks right to me as well, but also it’s the right direction for other reasons. We’re visual creatures, and pictures can… resonate… with our intuition more easily than words sometimes. That’s why churches and other holy places more often than not have symbols on or in them, prominently displayed, instead of a bunch of written words. There’s an old saying, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words,’ so that deck of seventy-eight cards you’re holding is worth at least seventy-eight thousand words. Not a full-length novel, but at least a novella, maybe more, because the information in it is very densely packed, with many layers of meaning piled on top of each other.”

“What did you mean by ‘the right direction’ exactly?” she asked.

“Well, quite a few things, actually, which is the advantage of thinking in pictures. First, the two parties of foragers we know of came from the east and from the west, so it seems likely — after our mutual insight — that the bandersnatches might have been worried about those directions. Second, and perhaps most important, the bandersnatches are somewhere between plants and animals. They obviously have leaves, so photosynthesis is going on, but they move around and have teeth, so they obviously eat things as well, and are ‘animals’ at least in the sense that they’re filled with intelligence and volition.. If you were a plant, which direction might you lean, considering that we’re in the northern hemisphere?”

“South? Toward the Sun?” she said hesitantly.

I positively beamed. “Too right!” I said, then added, “but the card itself is right, too! The ‘Moon’ in the card is a very curious affair, half Moon, but half Sun, and it seems to be raining some type of energy on the ground, and certainly the bandersnatches live comfortably both in and out of sunlight. Further, the dogs, or jackals, whatever they are, seem frightened, so they could easily stand in for our bandersnatches.”

“But isn’t that just chance?”

“Of course it is, but part of intuition is being open to suggestion. Almost any card might have led us in the same direction if we thought about it long enough. It’s like the ‘babble effect’ one hears sometimes in a crowd of people. Everything is jumbled, but then you’ll hear something that’s suddenly coherent and realize that it’s pertinent in some way you hadn’t even thought of. The only thing that’s changed for us, for those who’ve gone through the complete transformation, is that we’re sometimes hearing other voices from other rooms.”

“It’s really real, then?” she asked.

“It is,” I said, wrapping her hand in mine. “Shall we be on our way? With two of us paying close attention, we should be able to find and rescue our frightened friends very soon.”

She smiled. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Hey, Babe!” I grinned. “We’re all we’ve got right now, the first true citizens of a brave new world.”

We started walking south, toward the Sun.

 

 

Gumball and company were lurking to the south of us, and were very glad to see us, although they had to be coaxed out from under the foundations of a very large bank. It took the both of us looking around in all directions — I was convinced that our perceptions worked both ways, and that the bandersnatches were as aware of us as we were of them —and talking to them to convince them that we were completely alone before they finally roiled up out of the pavement like green bubbles out of a pot of very thick soup. As it turned out, it wasn’t all that hard to find them, once we were walking in the right direction, because they’d made a hell of a mess out of the street and sidewalk when they’d finally ducked underground to hide.

They were like children sometimes, as naïve as toddlers, who are convinced that they become invisible when they cover their own eyes. I couldn’t help but smile.

Of course, they were a lot bigger than the average toddler, so it’s a good thing that they were generally quite cheerful, because I’d hate to see one in the midst of a childish tantrum.

On our way back, the five remaining bandersnatches — including my precious Gumball! — were so happy that they caromed around the street like a bunch of hooligans, so I had to have strong words with them before they broke too many plate glass windows. Whatever it was that the stores and offices contained, it wouldn’t be much improved if the rain got in, so I wanted to keep our new city as nice as possible.

To distract them, I tried to hold an image of the warehouse we’d discovered with the garden supplies and convince them to go look for it, so they could do something useful with their enthusiasm.

Well, they all thought that was a great idea and were off like a shot, rolling down the road like giant tumbleweeds.

“You know,” Beryl observed as we walked along behind them, “it’s curious that your round friends are so friendly toward humans. Since we stopped trying to kill them, the dandelions sort of ignore us, but these creatures seem awfully anxious to please, for some reason. Is it your charming personality?” She smiled to let me know that it was a joke, because I tended toward intensity sometimes.

“Nah,” I assured her. “Gumball and his friends — or at least their distant ancestors — have been living close to human beings for many thousands of years. The ancient inhabitants of the Americas actually cultivated them for their nutritious seeds, so they’ve been bred to thrive in close association with people.”

“Really? They don’t look anything like the plants we see on the sides of canned food, or at least none that I can remember.”

“I saw one once, a close relative anyway, but it was on a bottled alcoholic drink called a ‘mint julep,’ all of which were confiscated by one of the top officers. Anyway, the mints are typically aromatic plants used for flavoring, mostly, but these had particularly nutritious seeds, and not much scent at all. I looked them up in the library, but they’re called ‘Salvia hispanica,’ — one of a large number of examples of a subtype of the mints called ‘sages’ — that the ancient native peoples called chian, which meant ‘oily,’ referring to the oil that the Nahuatl people extracted from the seeds. I don’t know exactly when they started moving around, but I did find one reference to people keeping them as pets even hundreds of years ago, so it must have happened a long time before the present day.”

Beryl looked at me and shrugged. She was obviously unimpressed with origin stories. I could partly sympathize, since the present was hard enough to handle on its own without worrying about exactly how it got that way.

‘Oh, well,’ I thought. ‘You can’t win’em all.’ “Anyway,” I said, “that’s enough theory for now. Let’s get going on the new prisoners, then work on neutralizing the Castle, now that we’ve recovered some of the key players on our team.”

 

 

“I’m not looking forward to this,” I said, as we walked back toward the eastern suburbs.

“What? Facing down your father?”

‘Harry’s Name! How does she do that?’ “Yeah, but mostly going back to dealing with what looks like a perpetual revolution against every hive of Horticulturists on this continent, and then probably the world. I hadn’t gone quite so far in my thinking to imagine that all this —” I gestured to include the known universe “— would be my life’s work.”

She smiled at me and said, “Well, it beats knitting, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Beryl…,” I mused aloud, “…that old rocking chair is starting to sound pretty good to me now, just sitting by the fire and knitting sweaters by the yard….”

She looked elaborately puzzled. “I don’t think they measure sweaters by the yard, dear. Perhaps you’re thinking of scarves.”

“They will my sweaters,” I said with misplaced confidence, seeing as how I didn’t actually know how to knit. ‘How hard could it be?’ I thought. ‘Surely there’ll be a book on knitting in the library….’ “Remind me to learn how to knit,” I said. “Now that I think about it, I used to see women knitting all the time, back at the Castle, so it might be an excellent enhancement of our cover story.”

Gumball and company chose that moment to find us, so of course we had to make a detour to share their moment of triumph. It wasn’t far out of our way, since the garden supply warehouse was on the eastern side of town, and we really ought to have a few spares on hand, since they were so handy when we wanted to move large quantities around, and we were bound to leave at least one more of them behind when we delivered food to the Castle, which we had to do in any case, and very soon, since we already knew that they were desperate. Sending a Captain out to lead a foraging expedition was simply unheard of. That’s what Looies were for.

 

 

My father was on suicide watch by the time we left, later that same day. I had to give him credit for that, because he’d seen himself as threat to others as soon as he’d noticed the changes, and had instantly tried to escape, running straight toward the dandelions in hopes that they’d kill him before he infected his men. Unfortunately for his plan, by then the changes had gone far enough — they were amazingly quick after any sort of major injury, almost as if the dying body recognized the benefit and embraced the changes — that the dandelions no longer perceived him as a threat, and so did no such thing. Coral — Chert had finally chosen a name — had told me that he was actually chasing the reapers around trying to throw himself on their razor-sharp fins when she caught him. Go figure. Not that I’d forgiven him for my mother’s death, of course, but still….

 

 

It was a sunny day, not too hot, with a hint of breeze to keep us comfortable as we walked toward the Castle, following the traces of a path my father and his squad had trodden through the grass on their way out. I finally got to see the famous ‘town,’ the one I’d missed completely, but it wasn’t much. It looked a lot like the suburbs of the city, but had a water tower and a tiny main street with a few shops and a restaurant spaced out along exactly three blocks and that was it, except that it was actually called ‘Main Street.’ I guess they’d had to convince themselves. Everything moveable had been ‘salvaged,’ of course, including the copper wire and plumbing in the walls, even under the floor, so it didn’t look anything like the sort of place you’d actually want to live in. I vowed then and there not to ever allow that sort of vandalism in our city.

Beryl was obviously thinking something along those same lines, because she suddenly said, “You know, from the viewpoint of human civilization as a whole, the ‘salvage’ expeditions look a lot more like pests.”

“Yeah,” I said. “This was obviously a lovely little community once. I don’t suppose that the former residents would appreciate what’s been done to it.” A lot of the destruction seemed wanton; every window had been broken, for example, or at least every one I’d seen so far, and quite a few of the houses and shops had been blown to smithereens and burned by what must have been HE missiles.

Beryl sighed. “It’s so much more obvious here than it was back in the city…, I suppose because the swath of destruction encompasses the whole town instead of just one neighborhood. It’s embarrassing to think that I was a part of it.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “if we’d either of us really excelled at the military mindset, I don’t suppose that we would have been sent out on punishment details to teach us a lesson, so it’s kind of fitting, don’t you think, that those who chafed most against the whole Horticulturist enterprise are those who aim to bring it down entirely.”

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

 

 

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Six Psychological Warfare

 

 

The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

“Harry’s Holy Balls!” I cursed, as an HE missile flew at us quicker than I could think, the warhead at first barely visible as a black dot in the center of a ring of fire as it arced down from the top of the Castle wall and then expanding as it closed on our position. ‘Gumball! Now!’ I screamed mentally, or as near to it as I could, and then we were instantly weightless and falling as the ground collapsed beneath us and everything went dark. I couldn’t move and there was an oppressive stench of methane — or something organic and rank — that nearly had me gagging. Our expedition to my former home wasn’t going quite as smoothly as I might have wished.

Naturally, that’s when the rolling started and my queasy feeling turned to outright nausea as I was tumbled around the interior of what felt like a very big sack full of leaves and dirt. My eyes had closed, of course, at the first hint of grit, but it was still getting up my nose, in my ears, and I could just imagine the state of my hair by now. I couldn’t even move my hands and arms enough to try to cover them. “This is definitely not one of my favorite moments,” I somehow managed to think whilst my head — and all the rest of me — was quite literally in a whirl.

My lungs were almost bursting when Gumball finally spit me out onto the grassy prairie and I instantly clapped my hands to my face and eyes, trying to brush away the dirt from my mouth and eyes as quickly as possible so I could breathe and see — in exactly that order — without either choking or harming my eyes.

“Harry’s Words! Sapphire,” Beryl said. “What happened to you? I thought you were supposed to stay hidden.”

It took me a few moments to get myself back into working order, but then I said, “Sorry, so did I, but I forgot the first rule of Horticulturist strategy; Whenever you see something odd, blow things up. When you were swallowed up in the earth, they fired off a bunch of HE missiles at random, I think, one of which happened to be aimed directly at me!” I looked up at her and noticed that she looked awful, dirty and disheveled despite her protective suit, and only then figured out that I must look a lot worse. I looked down at my clothes as I struggled to my feet and saw that they were torn almost to shreds as well as filthy and winced. I’d really liked those slacks, and the blouse had been a perfect complement to them before my journey through the center of the earth. I grimaced slightly. ‘Scrapes and bruises are one thing, and a little dirt I could have taken in stride, but those trigger-happy fools have simply destroyed one of my cutest outfits! Hanging’s too good for them,’ I decided. “I think, however, that I can safely say that I know exactly how you felt the first time this happened to you.” I did my best to smile, although it felt a lot like I still had dirt in my teeth.

She looked at me for what seemed like a long time before she said, calmly enough, “Considering as how we had no idea what was happening, and thought that we were about to die, I doubt it.”

“Well, that’s a point,” I admitted, “but seeing an explosive missile streaking directly towards one’s head must be similarly disconcerting, and I had several moments of sheer terror when I almost fell into the maw of one of Gumball’s larger cousins at the beginning of my adventures, long before I found Gumball and his friends.” Then I reached out and took her hand. “Look, let’s not fight about this. It was just a joke, because I was frightened by my sudden and unexpected danger, and had to say something, which turned out to be stupid, as usual. You were incredibly brave to volunteer to jump in with both feet, as it were, knowing exactly how frightening it would be.”

She looked at me with a suspicious frown, but slightly mollified. “It was, wasn’t it?” she said sourly, “but at least I didn’t get dirt in my nose. You, on the other hand, look a perfect sight.” Then she smirked, and I knew I was forgiven.

“And me without any speck of makeup handy within fifteen miles…,” I lamented, putting on a bit of a show. “Harry’s bouncing balls! I don’t even have a mirror.”

“Oh! You poor dear! I don’t imagine you remembered to pack a change of clothes either, tch, tch, tch,” she clicked with just the tip of her tongue. “On any journey, a woman should at least plan ahead for unexpected changes in plans. It says so right in your Book.”

“Well,” I said, slightly irritated by her lack of sympathy, “I didn’t expect to find myself eaten by Gumball, along with half a ton of dirt, and then spit out like baby barf, so next time I’ll try to remember to bring along the proper outfit.” I paused, pouting, but then admitted, “It does seem that there were a few thin spots in my fabric of deceit, but we’ll clean all that up in the rewrite.”

“Rewrite?” she asked.

I answered blithely, “As Helmuth von Moltke once said, ‘No plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy.’ He also said, ‘Strategy is a system of expedients,’ so military campaigns have obviously been operating with the same general flexibility for more than six hundred years. It’s all in the recovery, as they say, but we did very well with your brilliant idea of enticing them with a faux ‘heroic return’ marred by last-minute tragedy, since they took the bait. I regret the damage to my outfit a bit, because it’s difficult for me to find slacks that fit my hips, but there are plenty more to choose from, back in the city.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s all in growing up at the tender mercies of a hidebound officer who had a stick so far up his ass that he killed his own wife when she failed to ‘measure up’ to his high standards, and then did his very best to do the same exactly thing to his son, except he threw him out the door instead of over the wall. You’ve obviously been brainwashed by the notion that officers matter. Their troops have no such illusions, as a general rule, since the ‘temporary setbacks’ of the officers usually turn into ‘permanently dead’ for their troops. Last I looked, it’s hard to recover from dying.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll notice that he did his best to kill himself as well, so neither one of us can fault him on consistency, even if he does have a stick up his ass.” I looked at her slyly…

…and we both laughed.

 

 

I made Beryl take the point position on our march back home, not because there was any danger, but because she kept sniggering at the sight of my bare butt, since my formerly-cute outfit was now shreds and tatters, and the seat of my pants had mysteriously vanished entirely. It was embarrassing as well as drafty, and her jovial attitude about my predicament didn’t help at all. When she started singing Sweet Betsy from Pike, though, she really got my goat.

“If I never hear the words ‘and she showed her bare arse to the whole wagon train’ again,” I’d finally complained, “I’d be just as pleased. It’s just one verse, not part of the chorus, and I’ve never gotten ‘tight’ in my life.”

‘Still and all,’ I’d thought, ‘if this little episode were the only blemish on an otherwise perfect day, we could use a lot more just like it.’

We’d fired off a couple of our modified missiles just before sunset, when the smoke and fire from the rocket exhaust been well-hidden in the glare of the setting Sun, and then endured a fairly uncomfortable overnight bivouac, but had been at least slightly cheered by our confidence that the Castle would soon go the way of the Citadel, so at very least the potential enemies in our immediate vicinity were growing less numerous. Today, Pennsylvania, tomorrow the world.

I’d sweetened the trap with a little more honey as well — in addition to our ‘abandoned’ food supply — with a nicely-typed set of ‘orders’ from our ‘North American Command’ which detailed the broad outlines of our plans to relieve the local outposts and supply food to all the surviving inhabitants of the Northeastern Autonomous Region with the ultimate strategic goal of reïncorporating the region into the North American Command and restoring both local and regional civilian control.

‘That ought to have lit a fire under the hierarchy, at least,’ I thought, ‘ since they’ll foresee their cushy little racket coming crashing to a halt and be anxious to clean up their collective acts lest they be caught out in court-martial offences. It might make life a little more tolerable for the ordinary citizens until some sort of democracy is restored.’

 

 

We were making good time headed back toward the city when I felt some sort of weird disturbance to the south, which was strange, because I’d never felt anything like it before. It was a sort of creepy feeling, a restless itch at the back of my mind, like when you’ve forgotten something but can’t remember what you’ve forgotten, or like a premonition, but more urgent. As usual for me recently, I rifled through my memory of the cards and instantly fixated on two. I called to Beryl, “Hey, Sweetie! I think we should change our plans.”

She stopped and turned around, looking at me as if she thought that I’d finally lost my last marble. “Plans? What plans? Pretty much everything we’ve done so far has been spontaneous reactions to external events; brilliantly executed, no doubt, but decidedly off-the-cuff.”

I was taken aback, but only slightly. “Well, here comes another off-the-cuff improvisation, then, because I just felt a strange disturbance away down south of us, and the first cards that came to mind were Death, the Thirteenth Trump, and the Seven of Wands, both of which suggest some sort of challenge and eventual change.”

“Disturbance?” she asked.

“A sort of hostile feeling, like in the ring walls of plants around the castles, but more intense.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No,” I confessed, “but I suspect, given the general level of animus and the timing, that there’s at least one castle to the south, and that the inhabitants, like the prisoners in the Citadel, are getting hungry and have launched a more desperate foraging party than usual. If so, they’re going to follow the main roads, as soon as they find them, and wind up in our city.”

“And your plan is?” she said sceptically.

I blinked. “Plan? I thought we should go see what was going on, so we can be prepared, of course.”

“And then?” Her brow was arched. “If we’re caught, looking like two desperate ragamuffins, do you suppose that you’re well-prepared to pull off your haughty imitation of a Canadian officer’s ‘wife?’ If we have to run away, don’t you think that your ‘southern exposure’ is going to strike anyone as just a little odd? ‘Oh, yes,’ you’ll blithely say, ‘the bare-assed look is all the rage in Vancouver these days….’ Let’s get real, honeybear. We both have a duty to warn our sisters first, and then make careful plans that take the safety of our little community into account before you go haring off like Prince Valiant with his Singing Sword to save the day.”

I was startled by her vehemence, but she did have a point. Before I managed to destroy whatever credibility I had, I said, “You’re absolutely right. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Thank you for pointing it out. First, we have to go back and warn our friends, and I can only plead my lack of experience with mysterious psychic premonitions to account for my foolish desire to go see if it was real before I made a compete fool of myself.”

“No worries about that,” she said ambiguously. “Just the sight of that huge ass of yours will grab their attention something wonderful.”

“Just for that,” I said, “you can look at it all you want while you try to catch me!” I took off running, back towards the city and our friends. Gumball was very pleased, since he thought it was great fun to roll along at speed instead of poking along, even at a swift walking pace, and I was fairly confident that I could outpace Beryl, since I’d had the advantage of several months of changes on her, not all of which had been wasted on developing my admittedly ample ass. I had at least a hundred feet of lead on her before she managed to get moving, both of us running flat out, but she never did manage to catch me.

She was ticked off about it too, and managed to catch me a good swat on my bum, even though I tried to avoid it. Obviously, she was catching up with me on some levels. I’d have to watch my step with all the new women fairly soon, since I could no longer count on mere strength and speed.

 

 

However little I trusted my own niggling nudge of awareness, the others were alarmed enough to begin making plans for guerrilla actions against an advancing force of unknown size and composition, so I went to talk to our prisoners of war.

They were a disheartened bunch, all of them experiencing changes that they recognized as precursors to the end stages of infection, though none were nearly as depressed as my father. He always had been inclined to take things seriously, which I supposed was a good thing in an officer, all in all.

“Well, Captain Glass,” I said to him when I saw him, still handcuffed to a beam in his sleeping quarters, “have you taken sufficient advantage of your time of quiet contemplation to accommodate yourself to your new reality?”

“I have not,” he answered sullenly. “Whoever you are, you’re not who you claim to be, and you have no right to keep me prisoner.”

I laughed. “I have every right, Captain, force majeure, if nothing else, not to mention the fact that you’re no longer fit for duty according to the terms of your former service in the The Castle branch of the Horticulturist forces. You might as well admit the fact that you have no remaining right to lead your former command, as you yourself tacitly conceded when you tried to kill yourself.” I looked him up and down. He already had fairly prominent breasts developing beneath his military-issue masculine tunic, and would soon require a brassiere. “So, Captain, are you reconciled to your changes, or are you going to be a pill about it for the foreseeable future?” I looked him steadily in the eye and added, “If you are, perhaps we’ll have to arrange a more permanent accommodation. I dislike having to dedicate any soldiers in my unit to guard duty, and I’m well aware of the Horticultural Corps prohibition of either provisional release on parole or the equivalent using the procès verbal. I’m sure you’re well aware of the only alternatives likely to be effective, so would you prefer to be hung, or shot?”

He began to bluster, bless his black heart.

“You can’t do that! I’m an officer…!”

“…Who’s just refused the direct order of a superior in time of war,” I continued with no bluster at all. “You’ve failed to comprehend both my patience and your position in the grand scheme of things. To put it bluntly, I’m getting tired of your pathetic posturing and mutinous attitude, and have put up with it only through a desire to see exactly how much trouble it’s going to be to bring our wayward outposts to heel under a reïnvigorated Central Command structure.” I frowned, for his benefit, and then added, “I’m beginning to think it might be simpler just to reduce these rebellious outposts of iniquitous luxury and corruption to rubble and rebuild our forces using local recruits with more of a sense of morality and patriotic duty.”

That finally fazed him. He blinked and said, “You’d kill everyone?”

“Of course not,” I said brusquely. “Civilians, and any soldiers who surrendered immediately would be spared, of course, pending their reënlistment in our ranks, but I can’t leave nests of malcontents and traitors in my rear as we advance toward the northeast, and eventually sweep down the coastline towards whatever remains of the Tidewater Regions of the Southern coasts and eventually Florida. Unfortunately, since my husband carried off the bulk of our forces with him into New York, I don’t have sufficient strength to permanently billet a portion of my detachment to handle guard duty, so any renegades would have to be dealt with summarily.” The scope and mission of my imaginary army had grown along with its paperwork, so I had a large portfolio of communiques and orders ready-to-hand to back up my specious plans. Although the initial impetus behind it was an improvisation, I’d actually elaborated the idea based on a book that I’d remembered reading in my father’s own small collection of military history books, although I’d refreshed my memory in our local public library. It was about the British Double-Cross System of double agents during World War II, which had been so successful that the Germans actually stopped sending spies across the Channel, lest they draw attention to the faux-spies being run from MI5. I have no idea why it was in there, since there had never been any question of espionage on the part of the plants, nor any point in having it, as far as I could tell, but I’d modelled my own operation after Operation Fortitude, which had created an entire Allied Army out of thin air and the trappings of bureaucracy. Although the props had been very thin indeed, the flurries of intercepted cables and ‘accidental’ newspaper accounts, combined with judicious ‘information’ about a top secret operation, convinced the Germans that a massive troop movement was planned in one area while the real preparations were being made for another. They’d been caught ‘flat-footed,’ as it were, although the fact that the Russians were whipping their asses badly on the Eastern Front at the time had doubtless contributed to their general confusion.

“So, Captain, what’s it going to be?” I asked. “Rededication to your bounden duty or a general court martial? Take your pick.”

I could see the conflict in his eyes when he said, “I’d like to hear more, if I might be permitted to enquire.”

“Ask away, but don’t take any more time than you have to.”

“I’ve noticed that you seem to have plants actually working with you, almost as if they were intelligent. Is that true?”

“That was two questions, but they amount to the same thing. Yes, the plants are ‘intelligent,’ in that they have purpose and volition, but many of them aren’t very clever at all. You wouldn’t go far wrong if you think of them as ranging from the intelligence we see in the old ‘cows’ we read of in the history books  — that is, not very smart at all, or at least primarily acting through instinctive behaviors — to that of dogs, who tend to be distinct individuals with ‘personalities,’ if you will, and the ability to form cohesive plans to obtain desired goals, even if those goals are fairly simple.”

“But that goes against…!” he almost shouted….

How well I remembered that ponderous absolutism. I cut him off. “Please don’t waste my time. You — and those who advised you — were mistaken. In the North-West, we’ve come to terms with the fact that we made serious mistakes in our early dealings with the plants, and have now made peace with them, although not in any formal sense, with top-hatted dignitaries signing documents. As far as we know, not one of the many plants we’ve discovered has any inclination to wear any sort of clothing, much less fancy hats and formal dress. What they do have is the ability to be useful — if inherently tacit — partners in the task of accommodating ourselves to a peaceful life on Earth, so we encourage the diversity of plants around us, and are very reluctant to declare any of them as being ‘surplus to requirements.’ That was the primary mistake the early Horticulturists fell into, of mistaking short-term benefits for long-term sustainability.”

“Alright, so the plants are supposedly on ‘our side,’ but are you? What are your intentions regarding the inhabitants of The Castle, and The Citadel I’ve heard of. Are we to be absorbed into some of North American Co-Prosperity Sphere? Will we have to pay tribute to our masters in Vancouver?”

“Not that I know of, although, to be perfectly fair, I’m only involved in the military end of things. I assume that you’ll pay taxes eventually, but we haven’t worked out any mechanism of civilian governance that can offer any services worth paying taxes to subsidize. I know we’d like to get the trains running again all across North America, but it will be a huge undertaking in time and effort to put the tracks back in order. I’m quite sure that it will take years, especially across the Rockies, although river crossings whose bridges have collapsed are also a vexing problem. Our most immediate concern, though, is to establish control of our borders, because we’ve heard rumors of a Brazilian-Argentinian Empire in South America that’s rapidly advancing through Mesoamerica and into Northern Mexico, as well as a resurgent Russian Empire, which of course could threaten us from the north, as well as flanking us from both the east and west.” These dangers had all been spun from cobwebs and morning dew, of course, but my own experience can’t have been unique in the wide world, so something like it was almost bound to have happened somewhere, and South America and Europe were very big places, with plenty of room for almost anything. Somewhere, somehow, there were real dangers to match my inventions, and from my own experiences in The Castle, plus my readings in world history, it’s horrifically simple for human societies to slide from enlightened democracies and patrons of all the civilized arts to totalitarianism and near barbarism.

“Are you serious?” He seemed stunned to hear that any major civilizations had either survived or were staging a comeback.

“I’d never joke about anything as serious as the security of what remains of the North American Alliance. In fact, I’ve just received word of a largish party of unknown armed men advancing from the South. While I can hope that they’re honest citizens come to lend a hand in our current state of disarray, I fear the worst and am preparing for it. Hence, my current urgency.”

My father, bless his military soul, at once snapped to attention and saluted, his doubts and suspicions subsumed in current need. “I’m at your service, Ma’am!”

I blinked. “I must say that I’m surprised, Captain, to see you change your mind so quickly.”

“Ma’am! I’m honor-bound to protect the inhabitants of The Castle, Ma’am, no matter what they think of my current state of infection. Whatever your ultimate intentions, I’m convinced that you have the immediate goal of protecting the people whom I would die to serve, Ma’am, so I have no choice.”

‘Damn that man to Harry’s Holy Hell!’ I thought to myself, struggling to maintain an impassive countenance. ‘Just when I get a good sneer on towards my father, he goes and pulls a heroic stunt like this that might have brought tears to my eyes, were I not trying so hard to dissemble.’ “Your courage does you credit, Captain. Would you like to volunteer to assist in scouting out this new threat? As you can see, we’re short-handed, and especially lacking in those with experience in the field. Your overall familiarity with the area might be of real help.”

“You’d permit me that much freedom?”

“You look like a man of your word, Captain, and I pride myself on being a shrewd judge of character; I accept your word without reservation. We’ll leave in the morning. Dismissed.”

He snapped to and saluted. “Yes, Ma’am!”

I saluted in reply, saying, “Tell Brigadier Farquhar that you’ll need full field kit, Captain, and I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.”

 

 

We met up with our intruders on a bluff above a river. That is to say, we were on a bluff above what I knew to be the Savage River as it ran through the Appalachian foothills down towards the Potomac and eventually its bay, toward the westernmost strip of what used to be Maryland, but what the locals called it I didn’t know. They were below us, doing their best to follow the river north. Our horizons were diminished from what they were before the endless war against the natural world, the vast expanses of the USA before it disintegrated were almost unimaginable now, because all we could see was the local landscape, wherever we happened to be huddled within high walls. Growing up, I’d never known that the City we’d so recently inhabited was there, much less had a name, despite being within a day’s march to the north-east, and even the nearest town we used for a larder had no real name, because there was only one, as far as we knew, ‘The Town.’ Our real horizon had ended at the ringwall of plants that had hemmed us in, and few looked beyond that grim frontier for anything but the slim pickings of our former civilization.

“Is that them?” Beryl asked.

“I’d guess so, and from the looks of them they’re bandits.” Indeed, they had pack animals, horses, I think, although I’d never actually seen one, and were lugging along what looked like several town’s worth of loot, including people in chains, either prisoners or slaves I guessed, since they were badly dressed for the weather, which was chilly, since it was getting on towards Fall weather, whilst their captors were warmly jacketed with a type of closely-fitting cap which could be folded down to cover their ears. There were fifty-seven bearing arms, mostly rifles, so clearly they meant to kill people, not plants. This looked complicated. Assuming that the captives were innocents, how were we to extricate the villains from the flock of them, or vice versa? Our best weapons were the HE missiles, but they were crude at best in separating our obvious hostiles from the civilians they had close.

Beryl said wryly, “Notice anything about the captives?”

Taking a closer look, I suddenly saw. “Most of them are women.”

“Exactly. I think I’m going to enjoy this.” She grinned a particularly feral grin.

I looked back toward the captives. “I think I will too.”

 

 

Our first problem was the rifles, although we did have crossbows, which had the advantage of silence, so the first order of business was to get our hands on at least a few of them. I had the beginnings of a plan already and started squirming back from the edge of the bluff. “Up the river a bit, where the gorge narrows, might be a good spot to ‘borrow’ a few of those rifles.” It not only narrowed, but the roar of the rapids there was loud enough to cover even any stray gunshots, so it made a perfect ambuscade.

“Good plan, ” she said, also backing off the edge. “Their point men will be vulnerable while the captives are fairly safe toward the rear, even if things get a little wild as they turn the bend.”

“Exactly. If we work it right, we should be able to take out a dozen or more before the rear knows what’s happening. If we work it right, they’ll begin to retreat, whereupon we can throw a few rocks on any groups of warriors who present themselves, and so take out a dozen more.”

 

 

The roiling torrent before us was almost deafening as we lay concealed behind a group of large boulders beneath the cliff. To the left, there was nothing but more boulders and more river. To the right, the river swept around the edge of the cliff, with only a few handspans of good footing, so we thought the men would be dismounted, since there was every chance that a few of their mounts might bolt in the noise and the confusion, especially once the ruckus started. “Hsst,” I alerted my small party as I saw the first man back around the edge of the cliff, the reins of his horse in hand. Per plan, we waited, hunkered low, but what followed wasn’t what I’d expected. It looked like the entire retinue of captives followed right behind the one scout, which meant that the main body of hostiles was still behind them.

“Change of plan,” I whispered to Beryl. “We’ll wait to see the first group of hostiles around the edge of the cliff, and then take out the point man as well as the first new hostiles to turn the corner.”

“On the point guy,” she whispered back, and wriggled back a bit to get into a better position.

I let four mounted men through and then let fly four arrows as quick as I could manage, which was pretty quick, because the last man had just begun to fall with an arrow through his eye when the first hit the ground. Of course, I’d had four crossbows ready, so it was just a matter of picking them up and pulling the trigger. In the meantime, Beryl had done the same to the point man and had returned to cover the narrow path beside me. I waved my hand as a signal to the two I’d left stationed on the top of the cliff, so I assumed that they’d let loose the deadfalls we’d arranged to cover the back trail. “Is the point guy in a position where we can safely lay hands on his weapon?” I asked Beryl as I quickly reloaded my four bows.

“Not really. He fell into the river and was swept away, taking his rifle with him, worse luck. The damned fool had it strapped across his back. His mount is safe, and has saddlebags, so there may be some ammunition left, but your four look like the best bets for rifles. They at least had their weapons ready, undoubtedly in contemplation of killing any prisoners who tried to run. Arrogant bastards, I reckon. The guy on point wasn’t worried at all.”

I hadn’t seen any faces poked around the corner yet, so I assumed that the main body of troops were busy either ducking for cover or trying to climb the cliff to get at the ambushers above them, who were ably led by my father, now calling herself Opal, whom I suspected had a similar notion, despite the change in plan. “Cover me,” I said. “I’m going for the rifles.” I took two of my crossbows with me, just in case. ‘No guts, no glory,’ I resolved.

I had my weapon ready as I closed on the dead men, whose mounts were milling around restlessly, probably frightened by the smell of blood. As I approached the river, though, I saw the nose of a beautiful reddish-brown horse out of the corner of my eye, just now becoming visible on the trail as it skirted the base of the cliff. With a sigh, I raised the first of my crossbows and waited the split second before a human head became visible, then loosed another quarrel. I noted with some pride that I’d pierced his eye, just as before, snatched up the four rifles from where they lay, then took up the reins of the horses, whom I’d known only as ‘props’ in stories, and led them back toward the boulders.

None too soon, as it turned out, because another rider appeared at that very moment, this time bent low in his saddle to interpose the body of the horse between himself and any danger, the prick. “Coward!” I cursed at him, though I don’t imagine that he heard it, because my second bolt had him through the eye before he responded, and the river itself made hearing anything other than the sound of water crashing over rocks nearly impossible. Beryl got the next to pop his head around, but not before he’d got off a few shots with his rifle, all unaimed, because he’d learned from the fate of his comrade not to peek before firing. She got him in the kneecap, though, straight through to his hamstring, so he instantly toppled off his mount, pulling the quarrel from where it had lodged in his saddle while I took care of his head from behind.

After that, there was a bit of a lull, of which I took advantage by rescuing the remaining horse. I signalled to the two women at the top of the cliff to begin a strategic retreat back into the woods and downstream while I walked toward the captives, who looked very unsure of themselves, but they were still restrained by chains and other bindings, so were at a real disadvantage if they’d tried to escape. “Greetings, and peace to you,” I said. “Do you wish to be released from bondage? We are free women here, and have no patience with villains and slavers, as you may have noticed.”

One of them, a big burly sort of woman who bore the marks of many beatings, as well as what seemed to be a vicious brand burned deeply into the flesh of her upper arm, said, “We would, but there are many more Reivers behind you.”

“Not quite so many more,” I said, “since my companions on the cliffs above us have buried at least some fraction of them with a landslide of rocks and boulders that will at least have inconvenienced them. I plan to kill them all, if that’s any comfort to you, but would appreciate your help if you’ve a mind to seek revenge on those who’ve wronged you.”

The burly woman said, “Yes!” and held out her wrists, which were tied with some sort of brown rope that I assumed was leather, which I’d heard of, and had actually seen as leather belts in the shops back in the City.

I cut them with my machete, the prototypical weapon of the Horticulturists which I still carried, because I’d drilled with it for years and was familiar with its heft and handling. I looked down at her ankles, which were fastened together with a length of iron chain that were attached to two iron bands that had been riveted each ankle. Seething with fury, I knelt and tore the chain asunder with my bare hands, plucking out the rivets from the bands by levering them apart with my thumbs, until her legs were free, if still cruelly inflamed and scarred by the chafing of her bonds. “I have an ointment,” I told her, which will completely cure these physical wounds, but it has side effects which include the plant infection, if you’re familiar with it.

Her eyes were wide, torn between astonishment and fear at my display of angry strength. “I am,” she said, “but after my experiences among the ‘humans,’ I’m not terribly worried about it. In our old fortress, we used to kill those who’d been infected, but we’ve all be exposed to the wilderness for so long that we’d never be accepted back in our former home, even if it still existed.” Her eyes brimmed over with tears, suddenly confronting the loss of almost everyone she’d known and loved.

My heart went out to her as I said, “What’s your name, Sister? You’re among friends here, and as safe as we can make it.” I motioned to Beryl to free the rest of the captives as expeditiously as possible, which she commenced doing without a word. It almost scared me sometimes, how much we thought alike.

“Chalcedony Price,” she said. My husband was a Captain in the Horticultural Service, but he was killed in the first assault by the Reivers.

“Chalcedony,” I said, “I’m Sapphire McKenzie, the leader of our little expeditionary force. My friend here is Beryl Farquhar, my second-in-command, and you’re as safe as we can make it now, and will be safer still, and very soon.”

“How can you be sure of that?” she asked, reasonably enough.

“Because these so-called ‘Reivers’ are an undisciplined mob, but we are soldiers. They don’t know it yet, but their position is hopeless, and will not escape the justice they deserve.”

“What do you mean by ‘hopeless?’ They’re men, they outnumber you, and I see only five women here.”

I smiled. “But such women, and there are a total of six more women in two parties on the cliffs above us who have issue-HE missiles, plus the advantage of gravity. As soon as they made the craven decision to drive their captives before them, they were doomed, since our primary worry had been how to extricate you from their custody without exposing you to lethal fire.”

“You’re Horticulturists? But how?” She was wide-eyed, since she would have known only men enrolled in the East Coast Horticultural Service.

“Not every region of North America is as sexist and hidebound as your local forces seem to be down here. We’re from Vancouver, on the other side of the continent, and things are somewhat different there.” I smiled to let her know that they were better, even though my new and improved Horticultural Service had only as much reality as the Land of Oz. Perhaps I should have named myself Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. ‘Nah!’ I thought. ‘Pink is so not my color!’

She seemed to be at a loss for words, so I gently prompted her, “What happened here?”

“The Reivers happened, is what happened. They tricked us into opening our gates to give them the shelter that they’d begged of us, and then slaughtered almost all the men before looting our former home and taking those of us they didn’t manage to murder with them as slaves and whores for their use.” She spat upon the ground in her rage.

“Then they’re dead men, Sister. The laws of hospitality and military order are clear on this. I presume that they’re deserters from some fortress to the south of us, and so used their familiarity with Horticulturist protocols and language to gull you.”

“They did. They had two of them dressed up in foraging suits who claimed to have been overcome and driven away from their home fortress by an incursion of plants, but of course it was a lie. Their first act was to set off a bomb which destroyed the main gate, and then they immediately took over the armory, which of course was right next to the inner bailey and undefended, since we’d never imagined a human enemy in addition to the plants. The main body of them rode in from cover immediately, and proceeded to kill most of the men and loot our homes and fortress of anything that looked valuable to them — especially weapons and ammunition — and then burned the rest.”

“Are there any amongst you familiar with rifles?”

“I am,” she said proudly, “and these two men here behind me, although they were enslaved for their skills in gardening uniform repair. They needed to keep their decoy suits in good enough shape to be believable when they came knocking at the gates of their victims, but had no particular skills of their own besides trickery and lying.”

“Then take these rifles and any others you find, and look through their packs for ammunition. If we’re going to kill them all — as we must, I think — we’ll need all hands.”

“You trust us without sureties, or even questions?” she asked, eyes wide.

“Why not? Your plight is obvious; your feeling toward your former captors equally plain, so I’m fairly sure you’re on the side of righteousness, and if not, I’d best know it quickly.” I paused for effect. “And besides, we have no time to lose. Be ready when they come along the cliff, and I’ll be back.” With that, I ran down to the rushing river and walked in, picking my way along the bottom until I found a clear path downstream, then I let the current take me.

 

 

It took all of my considerable strength to keep from tumbling in the cataract or being hurled upon the rocks, but as I swept past the raiders — Reivers, she’d called them — I could see that they were still in disarray. There can’t have been more than forty of them left, although I hoped that those vanished were buried under the rocks and dirt I could see piled up against the cliff where there’d once been a path and not climbing the cliff to try and flank us. The way looked impassable for horses, which limited their options. If they wanted to move forward, they’d have to abandon their mounts, which cavalry is always reluctant to do, but they’d be equally vulnerable if they tried to go back, because my ambush party was hopefully making its way along the cliff-tops to prepare another ambuscade if they tried to retreat. They were, even if they didn’t realize it yet, in a cul de sac of our choosing, not theirs. ‘No matter, though,’ I reasoned. ‘Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof. The corollary, of course, is to avoid over-thinking when you’re already committed.’ I made my way toward shore as quickly as I could once I was well past their ragged group of horses and men. There was a wide meadow here, and the hint of a forest nestled up against the bluff, which had been perfect for my purpose. I appeared to struggle up the rocky margin, then ran for the woods as if in panic, making a great show of fear to draw their unkind attentions.

They’d seen me by now, of course, and four of them were riding toward me, whether to kill or capture me I knew not, although of course I didn’t care. “Gumball!” I screamed. “Rise and shine! Time for breakfast!”

They were almost on me, riding hard, and I held up a smallish ‘lady’s’ dagger in a pathetic show of defiance as they thundered toward me. I could see the sneers and anger on their faces as they came, and one had raised a rifle when Gumball and three of his pals erupted from the ground beneath the hooves of their horses, instantly toppling three of the riders from their saddles, with the other only escaping by a superb bit of horsemanship that I had to admire, even as I threw my lady’s dagger to catch him square in the middle of his back. It might have been small, but it was long enough to sever his spinal cord when thrown with sufficient force and accuracy. He’d have been better off if he hadn’t turned his back on me. Then I brought out my machete from beneath my skirt and began to walk down the beach behind my round friends. Of the three who’d fallen there was no trace, of course, and I picked up the single rifle that had escaped the general wreck, now fallen where it had left its owner’s nerveless hands.

One of the remaining horses was obviously in trouble with a broken leg, whinneying and thrashing about in panic, which I was sorry about, but these things happen in war. I used my machete to give him the mercy stroke, cleaving his brain before he had much time to suffer.

I glanced up the rocky margin to see what the self-styled ‘Reivers’ were up to, but they’d all abandoned their mounts and most were trying to clamber over the landslide to escape the green death rolling toward them, while a few tried shooting Gumball and his leafy pals, which wasn’t a good idea, because it irritated them, so our pet ‘burrowers’ all picked up speed. Our cavalry crew, it seemed, had never seen what a ‘blitzkrieg’ Panzer attack can do to unarmored troops, nor did they have the stomach to be real soldiers, and so had fallen almost instantly into disarray.

‘So much for the art of war in these troubled times,’ I thought, as I laid myself down into a prone shooter’s stance with the rifle they’d kindly furnished me, focusing on picking off the raiders as they scrambled over the rocks. Some jumped into the river, presumably to drown, since this was a very rough stretch of the Savage River, which had been well-named. On the other hand, they’d abandoned their weapons by then, which was all to the good. The more rifles we wound up with, the better. I did my best in the meanwhile to ensure that there weren’t many left to press forward toward Beryl’s position, but had to stop at thirty, since I’d run out of bullets. I had to trust that she’d organized the captured rifles into some sort of welcome for the remaining Reivers, who’d be at a disadvantage going upstream, because there wasn’t room for more than two abreast at any point along the river path before them, so Beryl on her own could probably have handled them even with the crossbows. Adding rifles to our armamentarium made the final result inevitable. She had the advantage of good cover, plus backup, even if the former captives were no help at all, while the raiders would be completely exposed as they came out from behind the cliff with no ability to bring any combined or flanking force to bear, a textbook example of defeating the enemy in detail.

 

 

The next day wasn’t at all pleasant. Seven of the self-styled ‘Reivers’ had thrown down their arms and were found cowering on the rocks between Beryl’s position and mine, where Gumball and company couldn’t get at them, and so were taken prisoner, which meant that we had to deal with them. I wasn’t looking forward to it, since there could be only one outcome. We had no prisons, nor prison for that matter, and I had no intention of marching around with a group of men in chains, a twisted parody of the captivity they’d enforced upon others. Still, there was plenty of precedent for drumhead court-martials in time of war, and I was perfectly willing — if not exactly eager — to take this unwanted responsibility upon my own conscience.

We made a small production of it, although we didn’t have a drum, and Beryl took notes so as to maintain the formalities of our actions.

I began the proceedings, saying, “This court-martial is convened on Julian Day 26 Lakh 4,733, in the region of the Savage River in the State of Maryland under the authority of the Combined North American Horticultural Forces. You men are charged with desertion in a time of war, cowardice, insubordination, waging war on civilian populations, and with treasonous assault and murder upon senior officers, your fellow troops, and civilians, as well as with forcible rape under color of authority and sundry other offenses. The penalty for these crimes is death. Do you plead guilty, or not guilty?”

Some of them blustered, whilst others merely said that they’d been forced to participate, which was duly noted by Beryl in her capacity of recorder.

“Chalcedony Price, can you identify these men as the perpetrators of the crimes with which they’ve been charged?”

“I do, Ma’am, each and several, to my certain knowledge.”

“Are there any other witnesses?” I asked.

There were, of course, the entirety of the group of former captives, who each testified that these were, in fact, the men involved in the crimes mentioned, that they’d appeared under false identities and had taken the fortress by treachery, that they’d seen no evidence of coercion on the part of the raiders, and so on. I’ll spare you the tawdry, and sometimes horrifying, details, but I allowed each of their victims ample time to make their individual stories known and set into the permanent record.

My father was on the panel, of course — ironically as the junior officer — but our decision was unanimous. In the long tradition of the Horticultural Service, the sentence would have been death by hanging, but we had neither a handy gallows nor the will to donate a valuable rope to the cause, so we simply stood them on the edge of the river and shot them, letting the river take their bodies away from our sight. Perhaps the rushing water would wash away their many sins.

 

 

“Have you heard of any other bands of Reivers, Chalcedony?” I asked the next day, as we headed back to her former home. There may have been survivors, although she didn’t have much hope, and I avoided pointing out that if there had been any foragers out, they might have survived. In any case, they all deserved to see their dead buried properly instead of lying exposed to the elements. We were all mounted now, although I wasn’t exactly comfortable on horseback. It was certainly a novel perspective, riding with one’s head so much further from the ground. I could see the attraction, though.

“From what I overheard among the men,” she said, “there was at least one other band that they knew of, although they weren’t allies in any sense, or so I understood, since they mentioned several skirmishes between their separate groups, squabbling over spoils. They were from farther south, I think, because they called them ‘Mosby’s Raiders’ when they didn’t call them ‘bushwhackers’ or vulgar names.”

I nodded. That made sense from what I’d learned in the library, as well as my father’s military library. The old South had never had an easy relationship with civil authorities, especially Federal civil authorities, which the Horticultural Service was — at least in theory — although the service had been splintered into more-or-less separate fiefdoms in recent years. “Where there are two, there are bound to be imitators out for easy pickings and a life of relative luxury, so I think we have to regard it as a potential insurrection at least, if not a fait accompli.”

“I’d never heard any rumor of such bands before they appeared at our gates, or we might have been more careful.”

“They’ve probably overrun the Virginia fortresses, then, or most of them. Do you know how far your radios worked? Were you in communication with any other fortresses?”

“We were in sporadic communication with most of the Chesapeake Bay fortresses, depending upon the time of year and day, and with a few fortresses in the northern Tidewater region of Virginia, but that was the extent of our knowledge. There were few direct contacts between our scattered forces, though, as the potential risks were seen as exceeding any possible reward.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. I understand from Beryl and Opal that their separate fortresses had no contact with each other, despite being only a few day’s walk from each other. Both were located in valleys which limited the range of their radios, so your own situation is understandable. I gather that the original long-distance communication between the scattered units of the Service were originally carried over wirelines, so when these were abandoned or destroyed, both fortresses were completely isolated.”

“It was much the same here,” Chalcedony said. “We still had the original wireline equipment in the control room, despite continuing pressure by our repair crews to salvage the system for the parts. My guess is that there were links along the system that depended upon external power.”

‘Dang! This woman was awfully clever.’ “I’d never thought of that,” I admitted.

“Well, I had the advantage of being married to…. Never mind,” she said, her face wracked with sudden anguish, “that’s over now.”

I reached out to touch her hand. “I’m so sorry. I wish we’d come south sooner.”

“So… do I,” she managed to choke out, before bursting into tears.

 

 

As it turned out, there had been a foraging party out, so we found them wandering through the ruins, still stunned after several days, their homes destroyed and their loved ones either dead or missing, listlessly digging through the general wreck without hope. Unfortunately, there had been only two happy reunions when we encountered them, and even those were tempered by the general misery of all involved. I had Gumball and his friends convince the local plants that the resident humans were no longer hostile, so that was one problem off their plate, but I had no idea whether they could survive on their own, so like every bureaucrat, I called a meeting.

“Citizens, soldiers, you’ve come to a critical point in your lives. As you now know, all the returnees have been infected with the so-called ‘plant infection,’ although I can now inform you that it isn’t carried by the plants at all, but by a very specialized fungus, almost like a mushroom, that was, I believe, developed by human scientists to help our species survive in these troubled times.” This was pure ‘spin,’ since I had no such knowledge, but the notion made the whole thing easier to swallow for most people, including me, so why not feel good about what seemed to be inevitable? Half of human history seems to have been created by ‘spinmeisters,’ Manifest Destiny, Lebensraum, the Chosen People, the British Empire, why not mushrooms?

There was a buzz of protest before Chalcedony overawed them. “Quiet! This fungus — mushroom — whatever it is — healed me of terrible scars and deep infections from where I’d been whipped, branded, and chained! It brought back more than one of us from desperate sickness that might easily have been fatal, and most importantly, the plants no longer have any quarrel with us, so we can walk around in the open air without protective suits and flamethrowers. If human scientists did these things, don’t we at least need to listen to this woman, who evidently knows more than we do, and is a prime exemplar of what this so-called ‘disease’ can do on our behalf. I personally saw this woman break the chains that bound me with her bare hands, so can testify to her strength, and I can feel myself becoming stronger day by day, so I know it’s not a fluke, that these benefits are available to all of us, and will help us to defeat the Reivers wherever we encounter them, and we will encounter them, because this woman and her companions are intent upon wiping them off the face of the Earth. I’ve already seen a dozen women utterly defeat the armed men who did this with nothing more than their bare hands — plus an arrow or two, and maybe a few knives — and I intend to help them! The men who murdered and raped your loved ones are dead! Stone dead at their hands, and you can read the transcript of their court martial for yourself, which contains our sworn testimony concerning their crimes. We know who our real enemies are, the enemies of every civilized human being, and those are the lawless human murderers and thieves who now menace us on every quarter. We know that there is at least one similar gang to the south of us, the self-styled ‘Mosby’s Raiders,’ and there are almost certainly more of them, so we all have to stand together now or face extinction.”

‘Dang!’ I thought, ‘she’s awfully good at this! Maybe I can give her this part of my job and concentrate on soldiering.’ Glancing over to Beryl, I saw that the same thought had obviously occurred to her.

One of the men who’d returned from foraging asked, “But what about the plant’s long war against us? Doesn’t that count?”

“It was never the plant’s war; the very concept is ludicrous. It was our war against the plants, and even that was a conflict instigated by greedy humans, who’d filled the environment with so many poisons and chemicals that the plants finally fought back. We’ve been fighting for several hundred years on behalf of a relatively few avaricious human beings who collectively robbed us of our friendly Earth, that plants and animals that fed us in perfect safety for many thousands of years, and even the plants and animals that depended on us for their continued existence, with no more regard for the rest of us than the vicious Reivers had for our lives and property.”

Beryl looked at me and grinned. “I like this woman,” she whispered. “Let’s keep her.”

I nodded my agreement and whispered back, “Let’s do.”

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

 

 

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Seven Envelopment

 

 

To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

Beryl was singing softly a cappella,

Carry me back to old Virginny.
There’s where the cotton and corn and taters grow.
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the spring-time….

She had a surprisingly sweet voice, and was able to hit her notes perfectly, even when being carried along on horseback at a gentle trot, but still….

“Oh, for crying out loud, Beryl! You’ve never been to Virginia before.”

“So? Here we are south of the Mason-Dixon Line, embarking on a glorious military expedition to put down a rebellion, so what better tribute to the long heritage of a grateful nation?”

“Well,” I said sourly, “in the first place, you might try a song that wasn’t popular with the slavers and didn’t glorify the institution of slavery.”

“Really?” she said?

“Really,” I answered. “Listen carefully to the lyrics sometime. You’d be better off with The Battle Cry of Freedom, which was popular with the Union side, which was basically ours, back in the ancient days.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it. How’s it go?”

I sang the first verse,

Yes, we’ll rally round the flag, boys,
We’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom,
We will rally from the hillside,
We’ll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.

“Say, that’s not bad,” she said, “and how very appropriate.”

“It is. The chorus is rather nice as well,

The Union forever,
Hurrah! boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitors,
Up with the stars;
While we rally round the flag, boys,
Rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of Freedom.

I didn’t do too badly either.

“It does seem more rousing,” she said, “and we’re certainly tracking traitors. Okay, you’ve convinced me. Now who has the harmonica?”

I laughed. “Dang! I must have packed it with the piano!”

Beryl grinned at me and said, “I know, you left them both in your other purse.”

“Well, I must have, along with a comfortable bed, hot and cold running water, and an indoor toilet.”

“Harry’s Word, Sapphire, I do wish you’d remember that purse just once. You seem to keep all the good stuff in it.”

“Yeah, well, it clashed with my outfit. I do like to look put together, even on campaign.”

“True,” she said with just a trace of sarcasm, “When you’re riding off into mortal danger, it helps if you have the consolation of knowing that you’ll make a beautiful corpse.”

“Not exactly,” I said archly. “The Book says that looking your best is the foundation of confidence for a woman, and that both physical and inward beauty are positive forces for change in the world. People listen to beautiful people, and both of us were just made to be listened to.”

She rolled her eyes, obviously unconvinced. “So you’re saying that feminism is dead, long live sexism?”

I glowered at her, in a nice way, of course. “Of course not! In the first place, ‘sexism’ is somewhat beside the point when we’re all converging on a single sex, if that’s what you want to call it….” I trailed off, caught up in a… notion. “Maybe a blended sex would be a better way to describe it, since we have no idea, really, if these forms are stable. What happens, for example, if one of us gets pregnant? For that matter, what happens during menopause, if any? In normal women’s lives, these things imply both physical and physiological changes, but do our remaining male parts somehow smooth those over?”

“They haven’t done squat for menstruation,” Beryl said, “I can tell you that. If anything, it’s got to be worse, because I never once heard my sister complain that her balls hurt when she was ‘hormonal.’”

“Well, there’s that,” I conceded.

“Tell you what, I’ll knock you up, then you knock me up, and we can compare notes.”

I was shocked, but then embarrassed. “What?!” I exclaimed eloquently, blushing.

“Well, you brought it, up,” she said. “There’s an old saying, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, keep well away from the fire,’ and it certainly applies here. You’re all about sex appeal, and nothing about sex, all about the tease, and nothing about delivery.”

That shut me up, shut me up good and proper. I urged my mount forward, away from my accuser, feeling trapped for some reason, although this journey south had been my idea.

 

 

The next few days were difficult, because Beryl deliberately stayed away from me, which is difficult to do in a group of only a few dozen women, so of course everyone noticed and avoided saying anything, fearful of being asked to choose sides, I suppose. I know I would have been, so I guess I couldn’t blame them, but I tracked her down anyway.

“Major-Jeneral Farquhar, I’d like a word in private,” I said and turned my mount toward the nearest hills, which rolled down the long length of the river valley we were following south. From time to time, we’d seen evidence of the Reivers, in two cases a small huddle of slaughtered women’s bodies which made me wish for the power to resurrect the men we’d executed so I could kill them again, but with more attention to detail.

She followed, and we rode along in silence for ten to twenty minutes before she said, “What do you want, Sapphire?”

I reined in my mount and wheeled to face her, so she stayed her own mount, still facing me. “I want our friendship back,” I said, “to start, and I want your love as well, but if you’ll stop to think a bit you’ll see — I think — that we can’t actually do that right here and right now.”

“Why the Hell not?” she said, really pissed off. “We’re both adults.”

“We’re also officers in an army of our own invention, and you’re familiar enough with the regulations of the real Horticultural Services to know that any outward show of intimacy would be ‘prejudicial to good order and discipline,’ so we’re trapped in our legend, until we can rest from this campaign.” I cursed violently, “Harry’s Bouncing Blue Balls, Beryl! I’m supposed to be married, so an ‘affair’ between us would be a court-martial offence!” I was shouting by now, furious with myself as well as her, since I was trapped in a net I’d woven for both of us. Suddenly, I stopped and hung my head in shame over my stupid outburst. “I apologize, Beryl. My own lies have turned around and bit me on the ass, and now I’ve offended you, for which I’m desperately sorry.”

She glared at me for an entire second before she smirked and said, “Funny you should mention ‘blue balls,’ Sapphire, since I’m not at all sure the condition applies to either of us these days, and since your ‘husband’ has all the reality of the Easter Bunny, I can’t quite work myself up to worrying about him catching us at anything untoward. Mind you, from a lay viewpoint — the marriage laws not falling within my former military speciality — I strongly suspect that your ‘marriage-of-convenience’ could be easily annulled on grounds on non-consummation, without even touching upon the complete and utter non-existence of the lucky bridegroom.” Then she pondered the situation for a few seconds. “There may be a problem, however, with serving the poor fellow with notice of your divorce or annulment proceedings, since he seems to have skipped off without leaving a forwarding address, the unfeeling cad.”

“Yeah, he has been a bit of a disappointment in the sack, now that I think of it, which has nothing to do with balls of any kind, blue, green, or otherwise,” I said as my pretty mare moved restlessly beneath me. “I wasn’t actually thinking of that, in any case. It was just something forceful to say, although I’m sorry it wasn’t very ladylike.”

Beryl laughed out loud, but it didn’t bother me, because that was my old Beryl. “Sweetie, you’re the most naturally ‘ladylike’ former guy I know. It’s okay to get ticked off from time to time.”

“Yeah, well, I’m feeling a bit of rage coming on right this minute. Three of Swords; just over that ridge.” I indicated the direction with a quick shift of my eyes. Beryl was familiar enough with the deck by now that I sometimes used it as a sort of shorthand when I felt any disturbance in our vicinity. She, on the other hand, usually said what she felt straightforwardly. Different approaches to the same increased awareness, I suspect, but had no theories that could explain it. Since coming south, though, we’d both been more sensitive, without any external cause that I could think of. Oddly enough, though, the other infected women in our group weren’t similarly affected by external events. It was either a mystery or we two were ‘special’ in some way.

“You’re right,” she said, immediately wary, but just as careful not to show any outward sign as I had been.

“We’re a bit exposed, I think, one disadvantage of running off in a snit on one’s own, for which I apologize.”

“Never mind, dear, all is forgiven. There’s nothing like contact with the enemy to make one’s priorities instantly obvious.” She smiled at me, which made me feel much better, despite the physical danger I sensed coming towards us.

“Do you want to take them? I think it’s just three or four of them, but I could of course be wrong.”

She rolled her eyes. “You? Wrong? Bite your tongue,” she said. “I can feel them too just now. They’re calculating exactly how fine it would be to teach us exactly how to show a proper respect toward our ‘betters,’ preferably on our backs, although one of our admirers would like to fuck us in the ass, which goes to prove that he’s not naturally gallant.” Beryl could be startlingly precise in her intuitions, a feat that I myself could never manage.

I reasoned it through. “A scouting party, I think, low on the totem pole, so anxious to have a little bit of ‘fun’ before the bosses take their turn.”

Beryl smiled a particularly sinister smile. “I’d love to give them a turn or two, Sapphire dear, so do please remind me to bring along a proper spit.”

“I think we’re well-prepared with skewers of one sort or another,” I said, “so why don’t we mosey on in that direction pretending to be easy targets?” I had a rifle with me, concealed by a spare saddle blanket, and a crossbow with two dozen quarrels, one of which was ready to launch, so didn’t feel particularly vulnerable. Despite our recent acquisition of firearms, I still preferred the crossbows, because they didn’t advertise their deployment to everyone within a mile or so. Just in case, I gave Gumball a little mental whistle, cautioning him to keep himself out of sight and underground. It never hurts to have a well-hidden reserve force ready to hand, as a part of the overall strategic battle plan, since the appearance of weakness where there is strength can serve to draw out a poorly-prepared force. The best form of defense is attack, as von Clausewitz once famously observed.

 

 

Of course, as von Clausewitz also observed, “War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.” My own mistake was not killing our gruesome trio instantly. Instead, I’d thought to interrogate them and so distracted myself long enough for their main body to surround us. So here we were, hiding in a pile of rocks with a gang of hostile idiots shooting at us. Oddly enough, though, I felt fairly cheerful, and our rocks held many clumps of white and purple sweet alyssum which filled the air around us with a marvelous perfume, like warm sweet honey mixed with amber. Other than the random gunshots, it was a lovely day. “When you speak of this in future years, dear Beryl, and you will, please remember to be kind,” I said.

“Honey,” she said, “if we survive, I plan to spend every spare moment kicking your ass, so I won’t have time to carp about minor details.”

“Oh, goodie,” I said smiling. “That’s one load off my mind at least; luckily, my ass is very well-padded.” I took a quick reflective glance out from our position to where the new Reivers were lurking, what looked like thirty or more, and all taking potshots at us from time to time, mostly to harrass us, one supposes, since they had little chance of hitting anything, to judge by how badly their shots were aimed, if one could even dignify them with the word. Of course their first few were rather more accurate, but a few well-placed headshots had discouraged them from taking better care, and I had a mirror or two available as primitive periscopes so we could easily keep track of them without exposing ourselves to hostile fire. I’d actually seen one aiming for my mirror, but had quickly disabused him of the notion rather permanaently. This had the unfortunate side effect of making them all duck for cover as soon as the first hint of it appeared, which made my covert reconnaissance somewhat less effective. To my mild embarrassment, I hadn’t brought them along for that purpose at all, but I do like to ensure that my hair is nicely arranged.

“How’re Gumball and the boys getting along?” Beryl asked offhandedly.

“Having a little trouble sneaking up,” I said, “because quite a bit of the soil around here is thin stuff over shattered bedrock, so they’re worming their way in by degrees. On a brighter note, the hostiles behind us are lurking behind logs over a nice thick loam soil beneath which two of our rotund friends lie hidden, so they’re toast any time we want them to be.”

“Oh, that is cheery news,” she said.

“And with all the racket they’re making, I suspect that Opal and the rest of our friends will be by to check on us soon.”

“Harry’s Brass Ass!” she swore. “You know that means we’ll have to get ourselves out of this on our own before they arrive, don’t you? I’d never live it down if ‘the Cannibal’ had to be rescued by a bunch of raw recruits, will I? Fuck’em all to Harry’s Green Hell! We’re going to have to kill’em all now.”

I sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” I admitted, thinking. “Let’s start off with a bit of razzle-dazzle and then a hook right to catch them from the side.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said and got all set to move.

‘Gumball!’ I suggested, ‘Would you please arrange to have your friends eat the men behind us and toss a few trees around?’ I liked to be as polite as possible under fire; it was part of my mystique. I immediately heard a lot of noise behind us, the eerie groan of deep roots being torn asunder and then the sudden wind of tall pines toppling, their branches sending out a rush of air in all directions as the rugged trunks that had lifted them toward the light now carried them quickly down into the darkness of the forest floor. “Now!” I said unnecessarily as the two of us ran back to engage the besiegers to our rear, quickly slaughtering them in their confusion and fear before they’d fully grasped that the banshees were in their very midst with long and bloody knives. Pausing only to gather up their weapons, we ran to the right, still cloaked by the remaining forest shade and the cloud of dust that had been blown into the air by the falling trees, until we saw the heads of their comrades, still looking toward the forest and the commotion there, all unaware that they were missing all the fun. Sadly, they’d never have any more fun at all as we both fired our bolts into the back of two separate heads, then took care of another four with well-thrown knives. They died without a sound and we rushed uphill, toward their horses, which we’d heard but hadn’t seen behind a thicket of shrubby trees up the slope to the side of the rocks where the main body of the Reivers still lay hidden, evidently excited by the noise, since they were firing toward our former position, which made a perfect cover for us as we burst in upon two sentries, who’d been stationed to keep care of the horses. They weren’t doing a very good job of it, and soon they weren’t capable of doing anything, as both had broken necks.

At this point, we paused to take a quick look at their luggage, which happened to include half a dozen HE missiles and launchers. With a smirk, Beryl appropriated two sets of them as I picked up both the rifles the sentries didn’t need any more. She clucked her tongue, almost exactly like a horse champing — which I thought was awfully clever of her — and I shot one of our besiegers through the back of his head just as she fired one of the HE missiles toward the main body of them, quickly firing the other toward another clump of them behind another pile of rocks.

After having been extremely annoyed by them for several hours, the twin explosions were very satisfying, and the fact that the remaining Reivers succumbed to an anxious urge to exit the vicinity of the scattered clumps and rivers of burning thermite was even better, since we both used the opportunity to pick them off one by one with their own rifles as they tried to scurry away.

That left one group that we knew of, behind the rocks flanking us upriver, and they had evidently come to some sort of decision, since the first we actually saw of them was a rag that could have been white — at one time — frantically waving above their clump of rocks as one of them called out, “We surrender! We surrender! Don’t kill us! Don’t kill us, please!”

“Too late for most of you,” I called out. “What makes you special?”

“We’ve got gold! Lots of it!”

“But if we kill you, we’ll have all that with no effort at all,” I said reasonably, my voice raised just enough to carry. “Not that we care all that much for gold, although it does make charming jewelry. It’s a pain in the ass dragging too much of it around, though. What else have you got to offer?”

There was a distinct pause before the same guy answered. “I know where all the other Reiver camps are within two or three hundred miles.” They’d evidently heard of who we were and what we were up to. ‘Alas, there’s no honor amongst thieves,’ I thought. “So?” I said. “We’ll run into them soon enough, and then they’ll be dead too. We don’t take slaves, and have little use for prisoners. You’ll have to do a lot better than that.”

“I know most of the passwords,” the same fellow said. “I can get you inside their defenses, and possibly save the lives of their slaves. I know that you’re rescuing slaves, so that’s got to be worth something to you.”

He sounded smug, which irritated me. “Don’t get too cocky, asshole,” I said. “Our reputation precedes us, as you yourself demonstrate, and almost anyone we catch will be eager to make the same offer without any of the trouble of hauling you around. If you’d really been paying attention, you would have released your prisoners voluntarily and either hightailed it out of the region in hopes of escaping our justice or thrown yourselves on our mercy, what little of it there is for slavers. You’ve rather squandered that opportunity by doing your best to kill us, and your recent change of heart does you little credit, since the only immediate alternative is death, and may still be, which sharply limits my conviction of your sincerity. Our main party is coming up behind you, and some of them are former slaves. I’m beginning to believe that it might have a salutary effect on morale if we simply gave you to them to do with as they will, in which case your heartfelt pleas might tend more toward an easy death than mere continued life.” ‘Holy Harry! When did I turn into such a cold-hearted bitch?’ I thought, and then remembered, ‘Oh, that’s right. When I’d first seen the terrible scars the Reivers had left on Chalcedony’s abused body; when I’d eventually heard how they killed her husband and infant son right before her eyes, laughing all the while.’ “Throw out your weapons,” I finally said. “I’ll decide what to do with you directly.”

They tossed their rifles over the the tops of the rocks behind which they were still cowering, so I said, “Now stand up and show yourselves, with the understanding that if we discover that any one of you remains in hiding, we’ll kill the lot of you immediately for violating the decidedly one-sided terms of your unconditional surrender.” I heard Beryl start to giggle, only half-muffled. ‘Okay, so I was doing a little theatrical performance. Results in battle quite often depended upon showmanship as much as force-of-arms. Of course, Beryl’s audible glee enhanced her own reputation as a cold-blooded killer as well, so it was all to the good.’

And it turned out to have been well-played, in fact, because the talkative one shouted out to some hidden comrade in a different set of rocks as he himself stood up with his hands well in the air and no weapons on his person that I could see. “Virgil, get your sorry ass out here with the rest of us!”

Pretty damned quick I had a ragged lot of half a dozen men in front of me, hands in the air, and I walked over toward them with my machete in hand whilst Beryl covered me from the rocks. One of the men had a whip coiled on his belt. I suppose that he was Virgil, since he was the one who’d been hiding apart from the rest, but the sight of that whip was good enough for me. I flicked out my blade and had his head off his body in the time between two heartbeats. “Just so you know,” I said dispassionately to the rest of them as the corpse fell to the ground in two parts, “beating or maltreating prisoners is a court-martial offense, and your pal here was just found guilty and adjudicated on the strength of the bloodstains on that whip of his. Any of the rest of you carry whips? If so, please step forward and take your turn.” I said this with scornful menace, but in truth I was getting sick and tired of killing people. Unfortunately, murder seemed to be my stock-in-trade, and I had a necessary rôle to play.

No one really moved or said a word, although the talky guy kept moving his eyes to look first at the body, then the head, which had rolled off a few feet to the side, with a sort of horrid fascination. ‘Good,’ I thought. ‘Keep’em on their toes.’

“Gumball!” I yelled, purely for their benefit. “Breakfast!”

Gumball rolled up from behind them, so I said, “You men might want to step out of the way quite smartly, unless you want to be fertilizer as well.” The look on their faces as Gumball trundled by was quite gratifying; how pride goeth before a fall. One lost control of his bowels, which was distasteful, but we can’t all be true warriors. I suppose that’s why these crêtins relied on treachery and reserved their proudest efforts for abusing and/or slaughtering innocent women and children. On general principle, I pierced one of them through the eye with a foxy dagger. He hadn’t looked quite frightened enough, and his eyes had been darting around as if looking for a chance to escape, not to mention the fact that he’d been the one who’d speculated about how nice it would be to fuck us up the ass and I’d felt the taint of his former thoughts even in the midst of his fear. “He had a shifty-eyed look,” I explained, “and didn’t look at all contrite.” The rest immediately did their best to look very humble indeed.

Talky guy turned rather pale and lost his lunch as Gumball rolled over Virgil and the shifty-eyed guy, although it actually wasn’t at all gory, since both bodies and one head had simply disappeared when Gumball rolled on by. Gumball had thoughtfully left my dagger behind, as shiny and polished as a riverine pebble after rain. ‘Thank you, Gumball,’ I intimated. He almost purred, or at least that’s what the rustling of his leaves and vines reminded me of. ‘How on Earth did I ever get so lucky?’

 

 

The first thing I did, of course, was feed our new prisoners a bit of cheese, so I didn’t have to worry too much about them trying to escape. Whatever other horrific sins might be attributed to the Reivers, they were first and foremost the very bottom of the barrel when it came to misogynist thugs and rapists amongst whom no woman other than a self-loathing masochist with a morbid wish for degradation and death would consider finding refuge in a million years, so we made sure that they knew that they were beginning a journey from which there was no escape, other than an eventual demise, of course. That sobered them up a bit, and in their eyes was cruel punishment, whatever their opinions might be a year from now. I didn’t particularly care, and let them know that they wouldn’t get a second chance to escape in any case, if they had any belated misgivings about their bargain, because I’d set the burrowers on their trail, and intimated that they could smell out a particular person from a hundred miles away with no trouble at all, which may have been a slight exaggeration, but they, of course, had no way of knowing that.

In the end, I set the talky guy to drawing maps off by himself, with his former comrades assigned as secondary sources in two separate groups, so they each of them furnished a ‘quality control’ group for the other. The talky guy — he’d turned out to be named Beauregard, however unlikely and inappropriate the name seemed for a black-hearted villain and pirate — seemed to have the best innate sense of proportion and distance, and was turning out quite creditable maps and descriptions of the Reiver camps he was aware of. I named him ‘Becky,’ after Tom Sawyer’s inamorata, although we were a very long way from the Mississippi River. I named them all after ancient characters from the old stories, so their distinctive names reminded us of their origins, and so set them apart from the rest of us, despite their rapidly-improving looks. We even had a Mehitabel, so I told her that it means ‘God Rejoices,’ although the character I’d really had in mind was the promiscuous feline girlfriend of a cockroach. Rebbeca, of course, is another Hebrew name, and means either ‘captivating’ or ‘earth,’ depending on which portion of the human language tree it really came from originally, and may have been the name of an ancient Assyrian Goddess. Eventually, I told Becky the whole story, or several stories, actually, although this entailed a bit more story-telling than I particularly cared to do. I was feeling generous, though, because the transformed Becky was trying very hard to be as good as possible, either frightened by my carefully-cultivated legend or perhaps a natural inclination. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, though, because she was far more diligent than any of the rest, and seemed at times to be genuinely remorseful to have ever associated herself with the Reivers.

Eventually, their crimes might be forgotten, but not soon, perhaps not even by this generation, and the tradeoff seemed worthwhile, since someone was bound to get hurt eventually if we rode into many encampments without knowing anything about their fighting strength and defenses. We were heading into territory of which we knew almost nothing other than what was on the antique maps I’d carried with us from the library back in the City — most of it hundreds of years out of date — and what these former Reivers were telling us. Mountains hadn’t moved, or at least not much, but I knew that the coastlines had changed by quite a bit, dense forests had grown where cities and farmland once prevailed, streams and rivers had changed their courses, and most of the cities had been abandoned, as far as I knew from the few remaining records of the initial stages of the war between the Horticulturists and the rest of the natural world.

 

 

The forest was beautiful here, but strange. The area around The Castle — and the City I’d finally discovered — was mostly flat, or flattish, comprised of deposits left behind by ancient oceans, then scraped flat by glaciation. It was primarily prairie as well, grasslands with hidden copses of willows and other water-loving trees nestled into creek-beds and river valleys. Here, in the bottomlands of a river valley surrounded by worn mountains, there were huge oaks, walnuts, yellow-poplars, tulip trees, sycamores, and other hardwoods, with a scattering of pines. From my perspective, it was more than a little spooky, and it didn’t help that we were following a trail mapped out by Becky toward a putative Reiver hideaway. Becky, about twenty feet ahead of me, stopped dead and wriggled a hand held carefully behind her back. I readied my crossbow, one of three I carried, although I also had a rifle.

Suddenly, a man’s harsh voice broke the forest silence, “What the fuck are you doing out here, girlie?”

Becky started, obviously truly frightened despite her knowledge of the area and her expectation that we were about to encounter a sentry. “Oh!” she cried, and made as if to run away from the sentry, slanting back slightly to the side of our position, carefully avoiding the temptation to look at us.

‘Good girl,’ I thought, prepared for any hostile action. ‘Now let’s see what the mean guy has to say for himself.’

Right on schedule, he burst out from a thicket conveniently placed right where his voice had come from. “Get back here, slave!” he shouted as he ran toward us after Becky, which pretty much sealed his fate. I put a bolt through his head and he dropped like a stone, looking, I hoped, as if he’d tripped over something and fallen, perhaps hitting his head. Beryl, of course, kept running, dodging off from one tree to another in order to keep as much of her covered as she could, the better to pantomime a woman fleeing for her life.

Evidently, she was doing a good job, because another sentry took off from the same thicket, only this one was carrying a rifle and shouted, “Stop! or I’ll shoot!” before he spared a glance toward his comrade. “Robert?! Are you hurt?” he said as he ran up, a touching display of concern which moved me not at all, because he joined ‘Robert’ in death a second later, still ten or twenty feet short of where he might have noticed that the back of ‘Robert’s’ head had developed an unsightly growth.

Then we waited. Becky had told us that they usually posted two sentries per location, so that they could take turns for any needed breaks or naps, so I was fairly confident that there was no one left behind, but it didn’t hurt to be a little cautious. To amuse myself, I took a quick pick from my mental deck, ‘Judgement’, and upright, an auspicious omen, considering…. I moved carefully to my left — away from where Becky lay half-hidden, and thus a distraction — and crept up on the thicket as stealthily as possible.

The stench was incredible, especially after our long journey through the fragrant woodlands. ‘Robert’ and his accomplice hadn’t had the most fastidious of personal grooming habits, and it became quickly obvious that they hadn’t even bothered to move to another thicket before attending to their bowel movements. ‘Better off dead,’ I thought, shaking my head in disgust before following Robert’s path out of their former outpost, waving my hands in the air as insurance against nervous recruits. “All clear,” I announced, then added, “You did well, Becky,” as she walked back toward the thicket, followed by another thirty members of our band of sisters.

“The next sentries are up on that ridge, or were the last time my former band of Reivers passed by on a trading expedition. Last I knew, they couldn’t even see this outpost, because their primary task was to catch any slaves who might try to escape, so their attention was directed away from the world outside. They depended on hearing the sound of a gunshot from one of their outlying sentries to give them ample warning, because they took their positions as the natural masters of all they surveyed for granted, and so couldn’t imagine anyone more dangerous and deadly than they were.”

“The more fools they are, then, ” Beryl said quietly. “Let’s just go call on them, why don’t we?”

“Let’s do!” I said brightly. “I’ve been just itching for a little diversion.”

 

 

We left the horses behind when we climbed the back of the ridge, because we were already experienced enough with them to know that horses talked to each other when they smelled — or saw, or heard — other horses, which would be an unfortunate beginning for a surprise attack. They were hobbled in a wooded clearing with two of of the new volunteers to guard them from any harm. We hadn’t seen any predators yet, but Becky had assured us that ‘panthers,’ evidently a type of very large cat, sometimes prowled these woods, but were wary of humans, because the Reivers hunted them for their skins. It was odd to think of animal predators, odd to think of large animals at all, because they’d pretty much disappeared up in our little corner of North America, other than the feral jackal-dogs which still ran free in the City, but it was comforting as well to think that the beginnings — or remnants — of a balanced environment still lingered in parts of North America. There were more pines up here, but still a scattering of the same hardwoods we’d seen at lower elevations as well, so the forest was more vertical up here in the mountains, but not completely unfamiliar.

At the crest, I halted our party whilst I and Beryl went ahead to reconnoiter. They hadn’t even cleared the vegetation from above their ‘guard post,’ so it was easy to obtain a good view of it, as well as the second ‘guard post’ on the opposite side of their valley. “What do you think, Beryl? Crossbows to take out the three below us and then a few HE missiles to discourage the other guards?”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” she said, matching actions to her words and polishing off the three guards with three quick shots from her three bows. “I’ll arrange the rest of us and let you have the honors for the three over there.” With that, she wriggled her way back down to where our main party rested.

In the meanwhile, I studied the situation. They had a small fortification protecting the entrance to the valley, but it was only a stockade, so wasn’t set up to deter an armed assault from behind their lines. They were really beneath contempt, since their worldview seemed to encompass only themselves, potential victims, slaves in chains, and other Reivers, of whom they might be wary, but were accustomed to see as fellow ‘masters’ who shared a common commerce in human beings and habits of treachery, murder, and theft, if not friendship. The notion that there might be ‘top predators’ who might prove dangerous to them had obviously never crossed their venal minds. ‘Ah, well, to work withal,’ I thought as I heard Beryl sidle back up to my side. I had three launchers ready, so used two on the other guard post and then immediately used my rifle to take out the four guards manning the stockade, then started on any Reivers I saw walking around. Beside me, Beryl started doing the same. The HE explosions had eliminated any possible element of surprise, so there was no point in wasting time, nor any requirement for stealth, since the missile trails pointed straight back to our position, on almost unassailable high ground, and we were perfectly situated to command the entire encampment, since the stupid slavers had deliberately designed this emplacement to completely control the killing ground below, forestalling any possible rebellion by their slaves, of course, but setting themselves up as patsies at the same time. One could almost pity them.

Pretty soon, there was no one moving around except the bewildered about-to-be-former ‘slaves’ and a few of the Reivers who’d gone to ground behind whatever shelter they could find. One had the audacity to gather up a bunch of ‘slaves’ to act as ‘human shields’ — a separate violation of The Laws of War — but a well-placed crossbow bolt from Beryl soon discouraged that tactic. Then another held up a stick with an improvised ‘white flag,’ which of course revealed his position, so down went another. “There’ll be no consideration given,” I called down, “and no negotiations, so you might as well disabuse yourselves of the notion that we’ll talk to you, or that any of you will walk away scot-free. If you surrender unconditionally, and indicate your capitulation by immediately walking out into the open with your hands in the air and then lie face-down flat upon the ground, you’ll be taken into custody to await trial, but only if there are no more cowardly attempts to hide behind your captives. Anyone attempting to escape will be killed immediately.”

One of them walked out, almost immediately, and said loudly,before lying down, if that was ever his plan, “I’d like to speak to the man in charge.” He seemed far too arrogant — probably one of the leaders — so I killed him.

“Is there any part of ‘lying face-down’ that any of the rest of you don’t understand?” I said loudly, but calmly. “You’ll notice, I’m sure, that the man who didn’t understand my words is now lying flat, none-the-less.” I paused for effect. “ANd now, you will walk out into the open and lie down right this very minute, as I’ve already suggested, or you will die, quite possibly in terrible pain.” Actually, I thought this unlikely, since we usually managed to hit their brains, which seemed a fairly pleasant — or at least very quick — way to die, if die one must, although of course we’d had no reports from the ‘other side’ of the experience to verify the fact, but in the intimidation business it rarely hurts to point out the negative side of failure to obey a lawful order. Despite my contempt for the so-called ‘Reivers,’ I had no particular desire to be cruel.

Beside me, Beryl noticed that one of the men now straggling out had evidently forgotten to leave his weapon behind, and in fact was attempting to conceal it. Her rifle barked just once, and he was just as horizontal as the first one, albeit for a different reason. She looked at me and shrugged.

“Perhaps,” I said, “Some of you haven’t managed to figure out what ‘unconditional surrender’ means. This is not the occasion to discuss the terms of your cessation of hostilities, and you are not soldiers covered under the conventions of the laws of war. You’re criminals, and are being taken into custody by the lawful authority of the Horticulturist Services of North America, not dispatched to an interment camp until some soi-disant ‘war’ of your own imagining is over. It’s time to lay down your arms, come out into the open, and lay down with your hands outstretched, or die. I personally don’t much care either way, so it’s entirely up to you, but you will be horizontal within a very few moments, one way or the other. You have the good example of quite a few of your erstwhile comrades to lead the way, as it were, but of course they won’t be adding their voices, now forever stilled, to the conversation.”

After a few moments, the remaining Reivers began to trickle out from hiding, most of them lying down immediately, obviously nervous, but one sauntered out with a show of bravado, sneering, his thumbs hooked in his belt as if he were on parade. He had the bad luck to have a whip on his belt, so of course I shot him too. “To reiterate,” I said irritably, “when I say ‘Hands in the air’ it means exactly what it sounds like, and specifically doesn’t mean ‘exposed to the air,’ or ‘out of your pockets.’ You will either keep your hands well up above your heads or you will be assumed to harbor hostile intentions and/or a concealed weapon with very predictable consequences. When lying down, you will keep your hands outstretched above your heads until you are searched and told to stand.” I rolled my eyes over towards Beryl, ‘Morons!’ I mouthed.

She nodded. “Crêtins, rather,” she said aloud. “I’m fairly sure that it’s a genetic defect.”

“Is every man jack of you either dead or lying down in plain view?” I called out loudly once again, reasonably enough, I thought, considering my mood.

There was a fairly extended silence until one of them had the nerve to turn his head and answer, “Far as I kin tell, but I’m not sure where every livin’ soul of ’em might get to. Y’all took us by surprise.”

“Are you their leader?”

“No, Ma’am, I sure ain’t. He was one of them you done shot.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Be so good, then, as to persuade any listeners who aren’t visible and lying down that it’s in their best interest to surrender, or we’ll set the dogs to track them, and I can guarantee that they won’t like that.” I mentally apologized to Gumball and his friends, but thought that simplicity was better than trying to persuade them of the existence of ‘monsters’ who might seem as if they were sprung from out of nightmares. Speaking of which, I said silently, ‘Gumball! Would you mind knocking down the structure at the end of the valley?’

“You might hear a loud noise in a moment or two,” I said, “but please don’t be too terribly alarmed. Our ‘dogs’ are rather more rambunctious than any dogs you’re likely to have seen before.”

It wasn’t but a few moments before Gumball and two of his pals came knocking at the gate, which instantly collapsed as they passed under and through it, leaving most of it in shreds and tatters.

“Lie still!” I shouted as several made as if to gather themselves up to flee in terror, and shot a couple of rounds into the dirt near them to encourage compliance. “They won’t harm you unless I tell them to, and they can outpace a horse at full gallop, so you wouldn’t have even the whisper of a chance to escape, not to mention that we have a dozen sharpshooters available to shoot you down like dogs if you turn tail and run. You’re all of you at our mercy, not your own devices. Please don’t forget it, as faux-heroics will avail you nothing but a rather messy death.”

They quieted down, but were clearly very nervous.

“Now you,”I said to the man who’d answered me at first, “stand up with your hands in the air as much as possible; I won’t shoot you if you have to put a hand on the ground to help you stand, but keep any such movement brief and broad to allay the suspicions of your captors.”

He did, with commendable grace; the life of a horseman encourages lower-body strength.

“Now call out, as loudly as you can, to any survivors who might remain at large. Tell them to instantly come out of hiding with their hands in the air and ‘come on down,’ as the saying goes here in this Great State of Virginia.”

He was prompt, I can give him that. “Jackson? Travis? Any of you boys alive up there? If you is, you just take a look-see at what she’s fixin’ to set on your trail. You’all’d just as well come on down an’ face the music.”

“Barkley? I’m all that’s left. Jackson’s daid, ’n Thadeus too, burnt up they is like yer goddamned pinecones.”

“Can’t be hepped. You come on down heah, and keep your fool hands up. This here woman’d jest as soon shoot’ya as look at ya.”

He was right about that last remark. I’d heard enough stories of what life had been like as a slave to last me a very long lifetime, and now I was going to hear more; I wasn’t looking forward to it. “You’ll be humanely treated, I give you my word, but you will to tried and sentenced for your crimes, whatever they turn out to be, so if you have anything to say in your defense, start thinking about it now.”

“Yessum,” he mumbled.

 

 

The rest of the unit arrived through the ruins of the stockade shortly after Gumball and company rolled through, so Beryl and I began following the trail down toward the Reiver’s prison pen.

We were about half way down when there was a sudden rifle shot from behind us and time seemed to stand still as I whipped around and caught the bastard with two quick shots through the head, the last as he fell dead from the first. I wheeled back and saw that Beryl was down, and dropped to my knees beside her, my mind already calculating the nature of her injury, a shot through the left femoral artery which was pumping blood at an alarming rate. I reached into my belt pouch and pulled out a chunk of our magic ‘cheese’ and slapped most of it on the wound itself, but took a mouthful, chewed it up, and spit it into her mouth, after which I tore off most of my blouse to make a tourniquet to slow the bleeding long enough for the cheese to begin its healing work, or so I hoped, but it wasn’t working terribly well. “Harry’s Holy Hell, Beryl! If you die on me I’ll haunt you! I swear I will!”

Her eyelids fluttered open as she said, “Don’t you have that backwards, dearest? If I die, I’ll be haunting you, not the other way around.”

“Nitpicking will do you no good,” I said, tears trickling down my face. “When I aim to do a thing, I do it, as you well know, so you’d just better survive or you’ll be sorry.”

Beryl laughed, which I considered a very good sign. “It’ll take more than a cowardly shot from behind to kill me,” she boasted. “I trust that your current leisurely posture means that the dirty little coward is dead.”

“It does,” I admitted, “twice over, although I’d be sorely tempted to bring him back to life so I could kill him again, if it were possible.”

“That’s okay, as long as he’s dead. Damn!” she said, glancing down, “I quite liked that outfit on you; made you look quite fetching I thought.”

“What? this old rag?” I said modestly.

“Well, I liked it.”

“I do too, especially since most of it is busily keeping most of the blood inside your body, where it belongs.”

She laughed again, an even better sign. “Well, there is that,” she said. “Remind me to find you another cute outfit when I feel more like traipsing around through the shops. My treat.”

“Yeah, yeah, big spender,” I said.

“All the currency we really own is time, my dear, and it’s precious beyond measure.”

“You must be feeling better,” I said, “if you have enough energy for philosophy.”

“I’m always philosophical,” she said. “You should always be prepared with a few piquant bons mots in times of danger. It builds character.”

“Like weightlifting,” I said.

“Exactly! Use it or lose it,” she said, then she closed her eyes.

 

 

I carried her down the hill, weeping. When I reached the bottom, I gently laid her down and called two of our volunteers over to take care of her. Then I picked up my rifle and addressed the prisoners. “Unfortunately, after your surrender, one of your number treacherously ambushed us from behind, killing one of my officers, thus violating the terms we’d agreed upon. Sorry,” I said, raised my rifle, and then shot them all as fast as I could pull the trigger, which was very fast indeed.

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

 

 

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Eight False Flag

 

 

Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

Killing didn’t help me. I looked at the bodies, grotesquely impotent in death, and it didn’t touch my grief at all. I felt… empty, but not sorry at all about them. Whatever they might have become, they had been evil in life, and it was their collective wickedness that had culminated in Beryl’s death. The man I’d killed up on the mountain was a plug-compatible equivalent to all of them, and if he hadn’t been there it would have been one of them. The only guilt I felt was that I was still alive and Beryl was dead. I went through an explosion of scenarios in my head, obsessively trying to figure out what I’d done wrong, what I could have done — if only I’d been looking behind us… if only I’d walked ahead… behind… on the other side of her… anything…! — that would have left Beryl alive and laughing again, because it was my fault, all my fault, my arrogance, my stupidity, but Beryl had paid the price.

From somewhere, I felt someone tugging at me and I spun on them, furious. “What in Harry’s Holy Hell is your problem?!” I snarled. It was Becky, one of them and I almost reached out my hands to choke the life out of her for daring to intrude… before I stopped myself. I closed my eyes. Then I opened them and said, “I’m sorry. What was it that you needed?”

“Ma’am,” she said, “I’m sorry to intrude, but we need your help, I think, with some of the victims; they’re in a bad way, some of them, and you’re the best healer that we have.”

I snorted. “Just my luck! I’m the best killer as well. How typical of the world’s biggest fuck-up!” Then I relented and said, “Very well, show them to me. I’m sorry that I snapped at you.”

“It’s fine, Ma’am. We all of us know how much she meant to you. I don’t blame you at all… for anything.”

“Thank you, Rebecca. I appreciate your concern, but let’s take care of the living right now; they need my help much more than I need my grief.”

“Thank you, Ma’am. They’re over here, in the slave pens. They’re afraid to come out, and of course many of them are so terribly injured or ill that they can’t come out. We were able to break most of the chains they’d been hobbled with, but a few were either too much for us or so deeply embedded in their swollen flesh that were we afraid to do anything, because we might harm them in trying to do good.” The anguish on her face was quite plain, so I was convinced that Becky, at least, had been able to fully reëngage with her own humanity.

She led the way to the most dismal and putrid area I’d ever seen. The stench alone might kill someone, and I immediately saw that many of the former slaves were gravely ill. Most had septic open wounds from vicious whippings and heavy blows, not to ignore the branding and scarification which seemed deliberately intended to make them seem little more than cattle, their humanity stripped away by madmen with no slightest trace of pity or compassion — several looked indeed as if their extremities were gangrenous, with bottle flies and maggots visibly feasting on their decaying flesh — “Quick!” I said, “Fetch my medical pack!”

“I have it ready, Ma’am. I knew you’d want it.”

“Bless you, Becky,” I said, and started taking out sealed bottles of our magic cheese. I handed two to Becky and told her, “Chew up a small mouthful and then spit some of the liquified mixture into the wounds of the most desperately ill, then get the rest of it into their mouths somehow, assisting them if necessary so it can help them to heal more quickly. The enzymes in your own saliva will help to start the process of breaking it down into substances which can penetrate the lining of the stomach and intestine, so don’t be afraid to chew it thoroughly. If they’re unconscious, massage their throats to help them get it down. As long as the quantity is small, it won’t hurt at all if a little goes down the ‘wrong pipe,’ but try not to let them choke.”

Becky started crying for some reason. “Thank you, Ma’am. I won’t let you down,” was all she said as she hurried off toward one of the most severely injured.

I chose another, but not without marvelling at how much Becky had changed since I’d first met her, transformed for the better, I think, perhaps even healed in her troubled soul. I knelt down by a woman who was conscious, but terribly weak, and gently laid my hands near a festering wound caused by a branding which had burned her left arm almost to the bone, from what I could see. I was vaguely consoled by the knowledge that the sadistic monster who had done this to her was surely dead. “Rest easy, sister,” I said to her. “You’re free of those evil men forever now, because we killed them each and every one.” Then I gave her a bit of cheese to swallow and smeared a healing paste of cheese and my saliva mixed on each of her deepest wounds and scars. “This medicine will help heal your wounds,” I told her, “but it actually tastes rather nice to boot, and it will eventually heal all your scars as well, so you’ll be beautiful again, with no visible blemishes left to remind of this horrible experience. If you’re hungry, just this little will be fairly filling, but we’ll have more food and drink prepared soon, so don’t worry about the selection for now.”

She nodded her assent, but seemed too weak to speak, so I moved on quickly to the next woman.

The next hour or more was pretty much endless repetition of the same general interactions, with the only real distinction being how badly our patients had been maimed by those wicked, wicked, men, and those few whose bonds were so deeply embedded in their flesh that I had to cut them to remove their shackles, plus a few with clear signs of life-threatening gangrene, with a sweetish, almost liquid, pus oozing from layers of their deepest tissues. Those I worried about the most, since I knew that in traditional medicine, amputation might have been required, something I didn’t know how to do, and worried that even if I did, my ‘magic’ cheese might fail to regrow a missing limb. Eventually, any lingering sense of guilt over killing the prisoners simply evaporated. I’d become so familiar with the end result of their remorseless brutality that I could feel, or at least intuit, the cruel intention behind each visible lesion, could vividly imagine the covert savagery that had caused the visible wounds. Some people deserve to die, and when I told their captives that not one of the men who’d so cruelly tormented them could ever hurt them again, the first hints of hopeful looks on their faces — where once had dwelt despair — were both justification and reward enough.

 

 

By the time I left the slave pen, and had made all the arrangements necessary to see to the comfort of the former prisoners, it was very late in the afternoon, getting on toward evening, and the valley floor was already in shadows. The sky had that peculiar translucency that only appears near dusk, or just after dawn, when one feels as if there are stars out there, somewhere, that one is looking up and out into deep space, and the stars are somehow present in one’s consciousness but invisible to the eye. I was lost. I turned to one of the new recruits — I couldn’t remember her name — and asked, “Where’s Beryl?”

“Beryl?” she said, mystified.

“Brigadier General Farquhar,” I explained.

She blinked, still puzzled. “You mean the woman who was killed?”

I closed my eyes for a moment, struggling to maintain my composure. “Yes, that’s her,” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I saw them taking her over toward that stockade.” She pointed toward a sort of inner keep, a partially-fortified shelter within the area enclosed by the valley walls and the stockade fence across the entrance to the Reiver’s stronghold.

Whatever they’d planned to use it for, it had played no part in our assault upon them, because they’d been caught flat-footed, for the most part, and were overwhelmed within a matter of moments. I walked toward it, then inside where there was only a bare dirt floor, apparently raked clean, but it was empty.

Puzzled, I walked back out and saw another new recruit scurrying by with an armload of bedding, presumably to make our rescuees more comfortable for the oncoming night. “Soldier, where are the bodies of the Reivers?” I thought perhaps she’d been taken wherever they’d been lain, which would be an understandable mistake.

She paused and said, pointing with one temporarily-free hand, “They were over there near the stockade wall, but two of those giant green things appeared out of the earth and gobbled them up.” She was clearly frightened of them, which was understandable.

“Bandersnatches, they’re called ‘bandersnatches,’ and they’re harmless, unless I tell them otherwise. Was there a woman with the other bodies?”

“No, Ma’am, I don’t think so, or not that I noticed. They were all men as far as I could see, and dressed in that ragged style they affect. Could I go now, Ma’am? They need these things for the sick women….”

I was taken aback. Since when did my personal issues take precedence over the comfort and care of persons in my charge? “Of course,” I said immediately. “Go on then, our guests need you more than I do.”

She nodded and ran off toward what was evidently the field hospital. “Yes, Ma’am, and thank you!” she called over her shoulder as she hurried toward a jumbled array of prostrate patients and a few attendants, amongst whom I saw Becky, which pleased me. My ragtag ‘army’ was starting to take on the cohesiveness and discipline of a real armed service, and was beginning to pulse with an inner life of its own.

With a guilty flush of chagrin, I managed to bring myself back to my present task, which was to find Beryl’s body so I could give her a proper burial, if nothing else. She must be somewhere..

 

 

It was quite dark, but not as dark as my mood. Oddly enough, the evening was actually very beautiful — even I could appreciate that, foul temper and all. the stars had appeared one by one, and then by scores, between one blink and the next, as they do on the best of nights, and the translucent sky was now a darkly purple haze ablaze with lights that seemed almost close enough that one could reach out and touch them, but Beryl’s body had disappeared, just as her life had ebbed after losing so much blood. It was as though the earth itself had opened up and swallowed her, and I had lost her twice. I was bereft, frantic, distracted, because I couldn’t see her, touch her, to say my final goodbyes.

I could only speculate that in the confusion of so many bodies — both the dead Reivers and those of their captives who’d died in the slave pens before we took over the camp — Beryl had been mistaken for just one of the other bodies, which meant that the bandersnatches had probably… disposed of her, but everyone I’d talked to either didn’t remember her at all or remembered her being set aside from the others, but even those reports differed in significant detail from one story to the next, with one mentioning her being placed next to the keep, another on the ground near the creek which flowed down the center of the valley, and yet another placed her at the head of the valley, near the trail which led to the heights of the second outpost — the one we’d destroyed with HE missiles — so I despaired of ever discovering the truth. I’d tried working with my imaginary Tarot deck, but there were no answers to be found there either, which was spooky. Each time I drew even a curtailed spread, the readings were muddy and confused, as if I weren’t connecting to reality somehow.

I’d tried summoning the bandersnatches as well, but they didn’t know what I was on about. Not all of them were quite as bright as Gumball — himself strangely gone missing —, and usually folowed his lead, but they were as independent as any wild thing might be, at least when they wanted to be, or when they weren’t thinking about being a part of the gang of them, which was almost any time that Gumball wasn’t around, so they were no use at all. I’d been trying to contact Gumball too, of course, but he seemed to have wandered off somewhere and wasn’t responding, which was also odd, and very unsettling.

In the end, I went off to the corral where we had the horses penned and singled out my own sturdy mare for grooming. I wielded the currycomb to good effect, as her mane had gotten tangled during our journey, and the touch of her warm hide was comforting, reconnecting me to the world of the living all around me. After combing out the tangles, I used a coarse length of cloth to rub her down, which she enjoyed almost as much as I did. When I’d lived back in The Castle, if anyone had ever told me that I’d be doing this someday, caring for an animal ten times or more larger than I was, I’d have told them they were crazy, yet here I was surrounded by horses, so familiar with them that I recognized individuals and knew most of their names. ‘Familiar…’ these animals did seem almost like family to me, a wider notion of intimate relationships and mutual dependency than I’d ever thought possible. They carried me around, but in return I made sure that they had water and good things to eat, but most importantly, I think, I protected them all from any danger posed by the local predators. ‘Animals…’ ‘anima…’ the soul, or those who possess one. ‘Spirit…’ the same word, referring ultimately to breath, respiration, breathing. I was fairly confident that Gumball had a soul, if anything did, because he had emotions, albeit fairly simple ones. I didn’t see him ever penning a treatise on philosophy, but then I didn’t know anyone at all who might, including me. Of us all, of every one I knew, Beryl…, but now she wasn’t.

On a whim, I left off mucking with my mare — her name is ‘Buttercup,’ by the way — and I went to where my bags were stored and rummaged around until I found my physical Tarot deck. I shuffled them several times, and was astonished by the pure sensation of the physical deck in my hands, a luxury I’d completely abandoned on our campaign, because my mental gymnastics seemed more convenient, then laid out a simple Celtic Cross spread.

The first card represented my present situation, of course, but it was surprising, one of the Major Arcana, The High Priestess, who represents women’s holy mysteries, as well as feminine strength and power. She wears the Crown of the Goddess Isis, which represents the Moon and the Divine Mother, both flux and constancy, and the river of life flows from beneath her robes, touched — or controlled — by the Crescent Moon. In her hands, she holds the Scroll of the Law, the Torah, and she sits between the Pillars of the Temple, Boaz and Jachin, balanced between severity and mercy. Within the Temple, there are clustered pomegranates, symbols of burgeoning life and fecundity, but also of the boundary between life and death, because Persephone, the Kore — the Maiden at the heart of the Eleusinian Mysteries, seated in the Holy of Holies — ate pomegranate seeds to seal Her authority as the Queen of Life and Death, and so She alone has the power to pass freely between the chthonic halls of the underworld and the sunlit meadows and fields of the living Earth, Her footstool.

It was humbling, especially after my performance earlier that day, during which I’d sent several dozen men down to Hell, their own personal la Belle Dame sans Merci.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried — ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’

I drew the second card, that which troubles me.

It was The Tower, of course, another Major Arcanum representing the catastrophic overthrow of complacency and false pride, failure, but also true enlightenment. The Heavenly fire which destroys the tower is heavily pregnant with the one of the matres lectionis, the mothers of literacy, the smallest letter in the Hebrew alefbet, the Yod, echoing the many seeds of the pomegranates on the first card in a circular cycle of destruction and rebirth.

Taken together, they neatly summed up my present situation. This whole strange trip had been my idea; my own meddling in a scheme of things that had existed in my own part of the world for at least a hundred years that I knew of. On the other hand, I’d been been kicked off my butt by intimations of terrible change wafting up from the South, which I now saw as the malign aspect of the Reivers, the catalyst which would have led to the destruction of my comfortable notion of the world in any case. Indeed, my own society held the seeds of its own death in its own heart; the contempt toward all things feminine — and women in general — that was endemic in the fortress culture, which glorified men and relegated almost all women to their primary service as breeders of more men to replace those lost to the plants. In its own way, it was a type of enslavement, except our slaves came pre-branded, unmistakably second-class citizens, their ‘manhood’ cut away.

Hesitating, my hand trembling, I drew the third card, the base. It was The Moon, yet another of the Major Arcana, reversed; deception, great loss through criminal activity, yet underlain by emanations from the divine power, the Yods again, heavenly fire kindling the mind, impelling it to embark on its journey between another set of pillars toward the mountains of enlightenment. In another symbolism, they represent the Kundalini power which alone makes every change possible, the coiled scorpion or serpent of Scorpio, the Zodiacal sign which rules the passions, sex, control, death and loneliness, betrayal. Had I betrayed Beryl? I had; I knew it now. I’d allowed my ego to dictate my actions when I should have listened to my heart. Looking at the physical card, the hair at the back of my neck rose as I saw a sudden resemblance of the wolf and the dog depicted at the entrance to the trail toward the distant mountains as Gumball and his friends, half-wild, half-pet, guardians of the soul during its progress towards eventual apotheosis. They too look toward the light, toward the heavenly fire of consciousness, and are at the beginning their own journey.

Turning back toward the deck, I drew the fourth card and placed it deosil, the Five of Cups, another card of loss and disappointment, but in the recent past. One of its many layers of meaning was the death of a marriage, certainly apropos, but also overseen by the Moon, the essence of constant change. Every loss is an opportunity for positive change, if you allow it, or so they say, although I didn’t see what that eucatastrophe might possibly be. Perhaps, like the shrouded figure depicted on the card, I’d turned my back on it, ignoring the bridge and road that led toward better prospects, but perhaps the imagined safety of the keep on the other side of the river was a enticing way-station on the road to the Mountains of Madness, where unknown terrors await, or perhaps those mountains behind it were only the gateway to the afterlife, if any.

Irritated, impatient with myself, with all I’d done that had led me to this place and time and situation, I dealt the fifth card, another Major Arcanum, Death, reversed and at the zenith, the potential outcome, grief, despair, the utter loss of hope. I shut my eyes. ‘What did I expect?’ I thought. ‘Why flay myself with endless rehearsals of what I already know?’ I dealt the sixth card none-the-less, the future, the great unknown, the rest of the adventure. It was Strength upright, the single card whose image had burned itself into my brain when first I’d discovered it when I took my first Tarot deck from the dark interior of that shop. I’d spread the deck, just to look at it, and that card had somehow floated out of the deck and displayed itself on the ground before my feet, as if it marked my path for me. A woman clothed in white is embracing a male lion, whether comforting it or controlling it is left to the querent. Above her head floats the lemniscus of John Wallis, the everpresent ribbon of eternity that threads through our lives and allows us to see and touch it, if we dare. She is the High Priestess displaced from her throne, stripped of the solemn robes of her temporal authority, laid bare in the wilderness and in her shift, with only her spiritual power to guide and protect her. She is girdled with roses, the strength of her deepest desires, and crowned with leaves and flowers, the emblems of life eternal. Looking carefully at the lion, I saw that it was Gumball as well, his steadfast playfulness evident in his posture and ardent gaze. Without caritas, without a constant heart and love, strength means nothing; it’s by our works that we are known for what we are. Facta non verba. Acta feminum probant. Taking all in all, it was a hopeful sign.

I studied the spiral core of the spread for quite some time, balancing what I knew with what I hoped to know, and then I turned to the Straight Path, the road ahead of me. I drew the seventh card, the beginning of the journey. It was the Queen of Wands, Beryl, in a word, the beginning and end of all my journeys, but this Beryl was filled with life, surrounded by lions, symbols of her noble nature, as if I needed to be reminded; even dying, her life’s blood leaking from her body, despite all my efforts to stanch the flow, she’d laughed and joked with me, easing my transition between life with her and life without her. Like the King of Pentacles and the King of Cups, alone amongst the Sovereigns, she carries two symbols of her worldly and spiritual authority, in her right hand the rod of chastisement, a simple wooden staff, but even that rough stave is suffused with life, because it blooms. In her left hand, nearest her heart, she carries the sunflower of love and life, itself echoed in the tapestry above her head. She reminded me too of my own mother, before my father had betrayed her to death. Even when they’d thrown her from the wall, she was noble and forbearing, declining either to curse or beg for mercy, as so many did, proud and valiant to the last, even as she was roughly manhandled and pushed over the edge of the wall, then fell silently from my sight. Although the memory of her courage made me weep afresh, despite the healing passage of time, I was also very proud of her. I do wish I’d known her better, but of course as Crete, I hadn’t had much contact with her, since I’d been sleeping and eating in the Barracks since I’d turned twelve, and even before had rarely seen her, except at mealtimes, and once when she’d nursed my back to health after I’d fallen ill with influenza; I must have been around eight, or so. All I really remember is being miserable.

My father hadn’t been sympathetic towards my grief at all. He’d claimed that being sick was a sign of moral weakness, and that I should be glad that she was no longer in a position to spread her pernicious notions of sympathy and compassion within our ranks. After she’d been murdered, years after, in fact, he’d said that it had been her own fault, because she was too soft, as evidenced by the fact that she’d wept when another woman, her friend, had been hurled from the wall after her own infection was discovered. I don’t know who he’d thought that he was fooling, since she’d died because he’d reported her infection to the authorities, not through some mysterious confluence of the adverse stars and moral weakness.

As beginnings go, it wasn’t terribly auspicious, but I couldn’t think of any way to deal with it just now, so I forged ahead. The eighth card was the Knight of Wands, reversed, representing conflict and discord in the outside world, with an unhealthy dose of paranoia. His robes are yellow with black salamanders emblazoned on the fabric, symbols of his fiery nature, since true salamanders are creatures of the fire. To accentuate his alignment with the Classical ‘element’ of fire, his crest is fiery red, and streamers of firey cloth form a sort of scarf or favor fastened at the gorget of his armor. I didn’t know what to make of it; before Beryl’s death, I would have instantly fastened on the Knight of Wands having some reference to Beryl, because her nature, both fiery and generous, was very much like his. Our current punitive expedition against the Reivers, of course, would explain the conflict, so perhaps I was reading too much into a single card.

I resolved to finish the reading before engaging in too much speculation, so dealt out the ninth card, the position of my hopes and fears. It was the Ten of Cups, abundance, perfect love, and peace — bitter irony. Who knew the cards had a sense of humor?

I wasted no more time thinking, but rather tore off the last card and laid it flat, the Queen of Cups, who sits by the sea of the preconscious mind — indeed, she dips her right foot into the brine and the hem of her robe is wet with it — contemplating the Chalice of Immortality, Cerridwen’s Cauldron, the Fount of Rebirth, in which is held all human knowledge and experience, just a drop of which potent quintessence is sufficient to impart the ability to talk to birds and men in their own languages, to discourse with poets and philosophers, and to change one’s shape to fit one’s mood, the Living Waters that Juan Ponce de León sought in Florida and failed to find. Like almost everything else worth looking for, the object of his quest lay within his own heart and mind, but it didn’t do me any good at all. I thought I’d held my real question firmly in mind, but the reading had hared off in what seemed like a hundred different directions, and then wandered into the swamps and gotten bogged, so I was no closer to an answer than before.

I cursed bitterly, “Harry’s fucking balls!” and stomped off through the camp and out to the ruined gateway of what used to be the stockade at the entrance to the valley. At least it was before Gumball’s fellow chia pets had torn it down and left a jumbled pile of splintered wood behind that was once a high palisade of thick pine logs buried in the rocky ground. The ground wasn’t doing too well either. I could see what used to be a trench cut into the solid rock now shattered into miscellaneous rubble. I suppose it had been the foundation for the posts, since if it had merely been anchored in soil, the Bandersnatches could have simply tipped it over like they had the trees at the beginning of this so very decisive engagement.

I looked down the valley for a bit. It was surprisingly beautiful, and even more strange that I was still capable of seeing that beauty. Then I felt ashamed and deeply shamed, I wept outsde the camp. I wept for my loss, for my stupidity, for Beryl and the loss of all her hopes and dreams, now forever unrealized, and then I wept…, for what I didn’t know. After some interminable period, I stopped weeping. ‘Life goes on,’ I thought, ‘or so I suppose.’ I turned back toward the camp. There were still things that needed doing, women so recently freed from slavery and degradation that their problems dwarfed mine by comparison, despite the physical healing now barely started, thanks to the Gift of the Fungi, as I sometimes called it. I couldn’t let my own problems impact too badly on the others, so I resolved to place their needs uppermost in my mind.

 

 

There was plenty to do, and plenty of needs to be met. My first order of business was to explain how they were being healed by the good agency of the natural world that they’d been taught to fear, and showed them how strong they’d be when that healing was complete by taking one of the slaver’s heavy chains and breaking with a quick snap of my hands. “The men who hurt you are dead,” I told them, “largely by my hands alone, but you’ll need not fear any man in future, because the natural world now works within and through you to help defend you against any further assault or interference.” I’d seen the freshly-butchered shank-bone of a pig on my wanderings through the camp, which was shabbily-maintained, so I’d gone to fetch it from the sort of unsanitary open midden where I’d seen it before I’d started my little talk. I said, “You’ve all seen the women in our troop, right? Did you think it odd that we had no men?”

One of them said, rather sourly, I thought, “Not really. All the men we’d ever seen since they’d killed our husbands and sons either didn’t care or actively encouraged their ‘transactions,’ so we expected no help from anyone, but then we’d never thought of women as warriors, so if anyone was going to avenge the murders of our families, our friends, our children and friends, it would have had to be women, not that we’d looked for any such help.”

“I apologize then, for our tardy arrival,” I said. “Since our communications failed, we’d had no word from other fortresses, so assumed they were in the same straits that we were, trying desperately to hold fast against the encroaching plants, but then we made a discovery, quite by accident, of the fungal transmutation you’ve all of you benefitted from, as have we all. As a byproduct of that transformation, we discovered that the plants no longer thought of those us who were transformed as their enemies, and so left us in peace, or at least made no overtly hostile actions against us, so we’ve had the liberty to regroup and think about our scattered comrades. This small punitive expedition was part of a somewhat less ambitious exploration of a continent which was merely unfamiliar to us at the time, ‘scouting out the land,’ if you will, until we met with the first party of these slavers, these so-called ‘Reivers,’ and determined that they were our enemies.”

“And just how did you determine that?” she said suspiciously.

“Quite simply,” I said. “They were driving women in chains, so it was perfectly obvious to us that the only real difference between those women and us was that we were free and they were bound. At the time, we were were armed only with the typical weapons of the Horticulturist Services of North America, HE missiles, flamethrowers, machetes, and — our own innovation — crossbows. We saw that they had rifles, so we determined to take them away from the slavers and free the women.”

“Just like that?” she asked, still sceptical, perhaps even incredulous.

“Just like that,” I told her. “Of course it helped that we were smarter, quicker, and stronger than they were, but we defeated them mainly with our natural cunning, not brute force of arms. In fact, we were badly ‘out-gunned’ by their force, and less numerous besides, so of course they had no real chance against us.” I grinned at her, but for the benefit of them all.

“What happened to them?”

“We held a military trial of all those left alive — which wasn’t many — and whose captives were able to testify against them. We assumed that they were deserters from the Horticulturist Service, since they carried standard issue weapons, for the most part, and had portions of official uniforms amongst their belongings, so they were found guilty of heinous crimes against civilians under color of authority and immediately executed, since we had no facilities for imprisoning any of them. The ones whom we determined were not personally culpable, but merely caught up in the general lawlessness as a matter of survival, we transformed, reasoning that their own self-interest would switch their allegiance, since the Reivers would be far more likely to try to fashion stronger chains than to admit any sort of women into their ranks, and would in fact be more inclined to try to kill them outright, because they’d be an existential threat to the outlaw hierarchy.”

“What do you mean by ‘threat’?”

I picked up my shank bone in one hand and snapped it in twain by way of demonstration, then said, “I mean that in any society in which ‘might makes right,’ our new breed of women would quickly rise to the top, so those men who weren’t complete fools would realize that if anyone was going to be enslaved, it would be them, rather sooner than later. Even rape takes on a different character when one is as likely to walk away pregnant from any forced sexual assault as would be the theoretical victim, so I doubt that there are many women who entertain fantasies of being rapists to begin with.” I thought about that for only a moment before I added, “Actually, now that I think about it, and reflecting upon my own monthly cycles, I suspect that any theoretical woman rapist would be more likely to walk away from the encounter pregnant than her female victim, if ever the impulse arose, since our level of sexual desire tends roughly to correspond to our level of fertility. Although we’re all of us theoretical hermaphrodites, our ‘male’ parts are just barely worthy of the name, much more like an enlarged clitoris than a penis, so any woman attempting to ‘get off’ without the enthusiastic coöperation of her partner is probably more likely to impregnate herself than her putative ‘victim,’ with all the accompanying risks of birth defect or miscarriage associated with a complete lack of genetic diversity.”

“Will we be able to do that trick you did with the bone? Will we be able to snap chains with out bare hands, as you and your companions did when you freed us?”

“You will. For now, I’m quite a bit stronger, but only because my changes have had time to develop over a longer period.” I smiled for all of them and added, “You may also be interested to know that the fungal infusion of genetic material seems to enhance the very best genetic qualities you possess, so not only will your scars and other injuries fade to nothing, but you’ll grow more beautiful with every passing day. I myself was rather plain before my exposure, but my looks are now considerably improved from what I was before.”

My interrogator wasn’t satisfied, though. “You said that you’re faster; how much faster?” she asked me pointedly.

“Quite a bit,” I said, “but I’ve never actually measured my speed or reaction time.”

With that, she suddenly threw a stone straight at my head. I hadn’t noticed her clutching it, and she’d obviously had it ready, but I snatched it from midair. “There’s no call for violence!” I said, more than a little pissed off.

“What?” she said, as if people threw things at each other every day. “You said you were quicker than any of the Reivers, and I just wanted to see how fast you really were.” She pursed her lips. “You’re pretty fast. This scar,” she pointed at her arm, where a rapidly-healing ‘T’ was branded on her arm, “was given me by the leader of this band of Reivers when I managed to hit him with a very sharp stone. It stands for ‘Troublemaker,’ but he had a scar almost as big on his ugly face.”

I thought I vaguely remembered him as the first guy, the arrogant one, the one who’d sneeringly wanted to ‘speak to the man in charge,’ despite being held at gunpoint by the two women who’d gotten the drop on him from their own damned guard post. “You’ll be pleased to know then, that he’s undoubtedly dead. I killed him, I seem to recall, because he wasn’t following my very specific orders to surrender, took a condescending tone with me, and sounded like a jerk who’d be tiresome to have around. I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable at the time.”

She laughed. “That sounds like him alright.”

“You’ll notice as well that there are no self-styled ‘Reivers’ left alive within this valley, so if he was present when my companion and I attacked, he’s definitely dead.”

“So you aren’t planning to take over from where they left off?”

“Haven’t I said so? Why on Earth would we go to all the trouble to strike off your chains and eliminate every sign of bondage if we had any inclination to perpetuate this corrupt and inhumane travesty of the law in any way? Both the Canadian and United States Constitutions outlaw slavery in any form, in Canada since 1833, although the USA took a bit longer, until 1865. The notion that the scattered outlaws and brigands who prey upon the trust and sometimes weakness of our citizens can alter the laws of our two nations by mere force of arms is laughable, and they are even now feeling the heavy weight of law, as supported by the armed services of our two lands and now prosecuted with renewed vigor. All those here present who imagined that they were above the law have now paid the ultimate price for their treasonous and cowardly assaults on our outposts and fortresses, and for their ensuing murders and cruel mistreatment of innocent civilians, right here, in this place. We intend to do the same to every nest of these vipers we encounter, and to diligently seek out the last refuges of those who seek to hide.”

“Big talk!” she scoffed at me.

“Talk? Do you hear any debate from the felons who formerly controlled this compound? Perhaps you’re in contact with their ghosts through your crystal ball? Thus far we’ve wiped out at least three largish bands of these violent criminals with just two dozen women. Once we really get started with more local recruits and with better knowledge of the terrain and potential hideouts, I don’t doubt that the rest of the region will be all that difficult. Would you like to put something other than your mouth on the line? I’m quite sure you could make a real difference that way, and with the sturdy courage you’ve shown with a simple rock, just think how much fun it would be to have a rifle in your hands with a group of other women beside you, dangerous Furies and Harpies all, raining Hellfire and damnation on all enemies of our two great nations, but especially those vicious cowards who dared to target women and children.”

She was taken aback for a moment, I could tell, but the fact that I was quite willing to put a deadly weapon in her hands obviously demonstrated a level of sincerity that no mere words could possibly convey. I could see her mind working, but not for too long. “I would,” she said. “Where do I sign up?”

“Right here, and right now,” I answered, then I smiled. “It’s only a formality, you understand. Your word is good enough for me, and if you become pregnant, all you have to do is ask to be released from your service, since our primary responsibility is to reclaim this tortured land of ours for all the citizens thereof. ‘They also serve…,’ and all that stuff. We’re also changing the overall position of women in our new nation, since soon enough — eventually — we’ll all of us be responsible for the next generations.”

Then I turned to all the rescued women and former slaves and said, “I don’t know what your own situations are, whether you have loved ones who may be looking for your return, and we are not a ‘press gang’ who have any inclination to ‘shanghai’ you for our own purposes. If you want to go home — if you have homes left to go to — you’re perfectly free to do so. If you want to join us on our campaign, you’re free to do that as well. We take freedom seriously, and we intend to restore civil freedom for all of us, not just one more-or-less monolithic group of men with arbitrary power over the rest of us. While a ‘State of Emergency’ might have justified that for a few years, the emergency seems to have lasted for hundreds of years, and the problems got worse, not better, under the dubious leadership of a bunch of men who supposedly knew the ‘proper methods’ of dealing with all possible threats.”

Unlooked for, I felt the pain of Beryl’s death grip my heart like an iron fist. It was then, just then, when Beryl would have chimed in with a few well-chosen words and slammed the point home in a way I wouldn’t have thought of in a millions years.

‘Get a grip, girl! These women are depending on you!’ I set my jaw and ploughed on, “In fact, when you think of it, that overly hierarchical structure, where every substantive decision was made by the oldest man not quite senile enough to be ‘eased out’ of his position of authority, undoubtedly contributed to the strategic and tactical weaknesses that the bandits — the self-styled ‘Reivers’ — exploited with fatal consequences for many of your loved ones and friends.”

“What do you mean by that?” one woman shouted out, her voice gone shrill with anger.

“I mean that the late and unlamented ‘Reivers’ who once controlled this camp had a hierarchy quite similar in overall concept to that of the fortresses; an opaque command structure answerable to no one; absolute authority over life and death decisions with no recourse or appeal possible; and a general contempt for women, who were always second-class citizens or worse in the fortresses, with some few of them relegated to the status of unpaid ‘whores’ at the beck and call of the troops, and most cast in the rôle of servants.”

“Our men weren’t anything like those monsters!” another woman shouted.

“Of course they weren’t,” I soothed their feelings, “but the system itself was vulnerable to exploitation, because it concentrated too much power in the hands of too few men, which made it easy for a few very bad men imagine setting up a similar system with themselves at the top of the heap.” I paused to let that percolate through their heads, then continued, “so the Reivers — who seem primarily to be deserters from the Horticultural Services, and so were very familiar with the military protocols and jargon — just eliminated their requirement to do anything at all for the people they once protected, and adjusted their sights from looting abandoned cities and towns — as do most of our ‘foraging parties’ — to pillaging fortresses already relatively well-supplied with the fruits of other people’s labor and effort, with the added benefit of enslaving their pick of the most beautiful women and raping them at will.”

“But we had husbands, sons….”

“I’m sure you did,” I said. “and I’m sure they loved you well, but enlisted men weren’t free to marry at all, were they? Barracks life isn’t exactly conducive to a happy home-life, but ‘everyone had to make sacrifices for the common good,’ didn’t they? The men who weren’t lucky enough, or smart enough, to be officers, and the women who weren’t smart enough, or lucky enough, to attract the attentions of an officer, had to make do with sordid encounters in quiet corridors and rooms, with the ‘gift’ of a bit of extra food held out from the general pool at the end of a foraging mission as their reward.”

“But…,” the first hothead started to say, the one who’d chucked a rock at my head…

I made a wry face for their benefit. “Let’s face it. Women as a whole were always second-class citizens in the prevailing culture of the fortresses, as were ordinary troops, for the most part, so at some point some trooper — possibly many such troopers over the years — got the bright idea of staging a mutiny, and it worked. He and his cohorts didn’t have the advantage of a fortress after turning tail and running, but the local plants weren’t nearly as hostile as they were out on the plains, so they made do without, but were ideally suited up to pretend to have been unwillingly separated from their own homes, and begged assistance from those who might pity them, and thus got first pick of everything for their murders, rapes, and treason.”

“So the treason spread….” Our hothead made the connection inside her brain. You could see it filtering through layers of self-justification and denial.

“So it spread indeed,” I said. “Civilizations are usually brought down by their own armies, if you look at the long haul. They hold most of the power, unless they willingly cede it to the overall population through tradition and pride, but when things start falling apart, they’re usually the only ones left with the training and discipline to start over from scratch.”

 

 

Pearl, that was the tough broad’s name, the one with the rock and ready sneer, kept her word. Once she realized that I was serious, that I wasn’t just a ‘Reiver’ in a skirt, she threw herself into organizing our further adventures with a right good will. “Ma’am? We’ve got the women who are going with us ready to go,” she said, saluting rather smartly, for a raw recruit. Many of the women had decided to stay, once they figured out that they had a very good chance of being able to defend the valley on their own.

“Excellent! Pearl. You’ve done very well.” I’d asked two of our bandersnatches if they’d like to stay behind — well, as coherently as one could manage with non-verbal communication — and had explained their care and feeding, which was pretty simple as long as they had access to water and organic matter of any sort as fertilizer.

It wasn’t much of a problem, because there were already three young bandersnatches running around who were about the size of Gumball when I’d first met him. Evidently, the addition of a large number of corpses to the local soil was very good for encouraging the growth of burrowers, so the women left behind already had the beginnings of their own heavy cavalry if they ran into any trouble, and I’d had Becky explain how any roving bands of Reivers would approach them, thinking that they were still in trade, and I’d left behind almost all the ammunition and weapons, except for a bit to lug along for our new recruits. The Reivers had been mad for guns and weapons though, so there was a huge stockpile in two hidden bunkers to pick and choose from, and they’d already picked out one big woman who could manage enough of a reasonably ‘masculine’ voice to lure them in. Good luck to her. Even as a man, I’d been a tenor, and was now definitely singing the soprano rôles.

Thinking of Gumball, though, made me miss him, since he’d disappeared just around the time that Beryl’s body had gone missing. ‘Gumball!’ I gave him a mental shout, but wasn’t really hopeful, since he hadn’t been answering for almost a week by now.

‘Gumball!’ I ‘shouted’ again, ‘We’re about to leave! Come on, Sweetie!’

No joy. But then, after a long interval, I felt a faint stirring somewhere. ‘Gumball!’ I called again. ‘Are you coming with us?’

Then, there was a rumbling, a deep growl of movement from deep underground, and the earth began to roil in the clearing. Several of the women, already mounted, had to spur their horses to stay clear of the trembling earth, and many were frightened, including me. Whatever it was, there was more of it than merely Gumball, as huge as he was. I backed up my own mount. “Gumball? Is that you?” I shouted aloud, as an instantaneous gulf opened in the clearing and a huge burrower, bigger than I’d ever seen, rose from the depths, rising into the air until it towered above our heads. “Gumball?” I queried the apparition. It turned toward my voice and I knew instantly that it was Gumball, but grown beyond anything I’d thought possible. He must have been eighty or ninety feet tall, the size of an average office building back in the city downtown.

He smiled. Then he opened the dark and toothy maw that was his mouth, an opening large enough to house our entire troop of horses and women, if not exactly comfortably, and somehow a shape rolled out across the bed of nails that were his many rows of teeth, rolled out and gently rolled, once, twice, shrouded in many leaves. It had a vaguely human form, about six feet in length, and I moved immediately to dismount and investigate. I wasn’t at all frightened, although many of the women around me were, never having seen exactly how big bandersnatches could become, although I remembered them well from my first encounter with them, when just one of them had eaten almost our entire foraging party in one gulp.

I touched the leaves, which were a loose blanket covering what must be a human figure, although they were so entwined and braided that it took me a good long time to untangle them enough to get a good look at what they concealed. It was Beryl, and she was warm, evidently sleeping though, because she didn’t stir. “Beryl? Is it really you?” I asked, or perhaps it was a prayer.

“Who’s Beryl?” the figure asked, her eyes fluttering until they opened. Then she looked at me and smiled and said, “I was dreaming of you.”

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

 

 

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Nine Shock Tactics

 

 

Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

I was confused, angry, frustrated, anguished, all at once. Beryl was alive, except that she wasn’t really, or at least didn’t seem to be. She didn’t even remember her own name, but somehow remembered me as a dream, but not even a dream, because she didn’t know what the dream meant. Neither did I.

In some ways, it was harder being around this woman who looked exactly like Beryl — but wasn’t the same woman that she’d been — than it had been knowing that she was dead, because the new Beryl was poking holes in my own memories of who she’d been, with this new Beryl melting slowly into my memories of old Beryl and the other way round as well. I couldn’t tell exactly where the new one started, or where the old one left off, and the blurry boundary between them was foggy at best, and getting foggier. We’d had a history, good and bad, and all that history had been erased by her ‘pseudo-death’ as cleanly as if it had been hacked off by an axe.

Some days I even doubted that she was Beryl, but then I’d look at her hands and could trace the familiar lines and folds of them even with my eyes closed. As far as I could tell, she still had the same fingerprints, or at least I seemed to remember the general pattern of loops and swirls on every fingertip, and the irises of her eyes held exactly the same rete — I was very sure about that at least — because I could have drawn them in her sleep.

“What does it mean, to ‘remember’ someone?” the woman who looked like Beryl asked me. “What does it mean to ‘forget?’ I think that I remember you; I know I dreamed about you, but I don’t actually know what it all means. Doesn’t the fact that I dreamed about you mean that I remember you? Exactly how is dreaming different from remembering?”

She had me there. Her questions often made my head hurt just thinking about them. In that, she was almost just as irritating as the old Beryl. “I don’t exactly know the answer to that, Beryl.” She insisted that she was Beryl, and always had been, as soon as I’d told her what her name was, yet another of her irritating habits. “I think that there is a difference, but I’m either not sure exactly what that is, or don’t know exactly how to explain it.”

“There’s no use being cross,” she said smugly. “Just admitting that you don’t actually know speaks volumes.”

I rolled my eyes, a gesture that she obviously understood, but refused to acknowledge other than with an almost invisible fleeting smirk. Sometimes I fantasized that this was all an elaborate hoax that she’d cooked up in combination with Gumball, except I don’t think that Gumball had a dishonest bone in his body… or any bones at all, actually, now that I thought about it. We’d already been here for a week beyond my original schedule, and everyone but me seemed quite content with things as they were for now. The women had organized hunting parties to bring in wild game for drying into jerky and many baskets of pine nuts and acorns, preparing stores for the coming winter in addition to the fresh green things they found here and there, so everyone was happy and productive, as far as I could see, although I chafed a bit to hunt down more of the Reivers before they managed to hurt anyone else.

 

 

Today we had a breakthrough. We were arguing about something; I don’t even remember what it was, except that I thought it was a good idea and she thought otherwise.

When I asked her why she was so adamant, she said, “I don’t know; it’s just a feeling. Why don’t you ask those damned tarot cards of yours?”

I stared at her, incredulous. “What did you say?” I hadn’t touched my deck for weeks, not since that time I’d been looking for a clue about where her body was. All her stuff was gone, as far as I knew, vanished when her body went missing, possibly tossed out, or perhaps scavenged when no one claimed it, so it seemed unlikely that she still had the deck I’d given her. There’d been quite a bit of confusion at the time, and none of the same sense of urgency that having former actual prisoners in hand entailed, with physical wounds and psychic traumas to take care of, so anything was possible, but even still, she’d seemed to remember so little….

“I said, ‘Why don’t you do a reading, then?’ You always had such luck with those before.”

I narrowed my eyebrows at her, a familiar feeling these days, when I was talking to the new Beryl, because she drove me crazy. “In the first place, that’s not what you said, but close enough, and how do you know that in the first place. Was it part of your ‘dream?’ or was it something else?”

She looked at me suspiciously. “What do you mean by ‘something else?’ What else is there but dreaming?”

That set me back a bit, but then I’d never been all that familiar with empirical solipsism, which is kind of what it sounded like. On the other hand, it certainly seemed like a fairly logical perspective for someone with Beryl’s recent history. While I was familiar with her past, Beryl was not, having somehow sprung to life, as it were, fully-formed, from the wreckage of her former body. What for me was a vivid memory of an ongoing and continuous reality was for her a mere ‘traveller’s tale,’ a fantastic account of something impossibly exotic and probably untrue. “You’re absolutely right, Beryl. You’re in a unique position, ascended from the Deeps alive, fully-formed, like Aphrodite on the half-shell, with no infancy, no childhood, nor youth to weigh you down with neither memories nor expectations. That’s why I was surprised to hear you talk about my past.”

“I knew you in this ‘past’ you talk about?” she said warily.

“You did,” I said. “We’d spent quite a bit of time with each other before you died.” I fished out my own deck of tarot cards and picked one at random, showing it to her at the same time I looked at it, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

It was The Star, Demeter pouring out blessings upon the Land, the Eleusinian Mystery again, since Demeter, called Isis in anient Egypt, and her daughter, the Kore, Persephone — who was swallowed up in the earth and rose again triumphant — were at the very heart of it.

The tree behind her is the Tree of Knowledge, since the ibis, sacred to Thoth, the God of Knowledge, rests in its highest branches, and thus recalls the three stages through which the initiate must pass, τελετή (teletÄ“) Purification; μύησις (myesis), the Closing of the Eyes to focus on the world within, releasing the Kundalini force to rise through the spine and promptly expand into universal enlightenment; and finally ἐποπτεία (epopteia), The Beholding, opening one’s inner eye to the more profound and external reality of the inward spiritual experience, manifesting that reality in one’s daily life, and becoming a part of the Mystery of Eleusis, a celebrant rather than a spectator. Many are said to have shouted for joy upon reaching this crescendo of awareness, or wept tears of infinite compassion for all those yet denied the sacred knowledge.

“So, that’s you, Sapphire,” she said, delighted, “the Star, balanced between the waking world and the Great Sea of the Unconscious.” She smiled at me. “I told you we were dreaming.”

She was probably right. As far as I could tell, we were smack dab in the middle of the ancient Attic month of Βοηδρομιών, Boedromion, harvest time, when the green fields were being reaped and the grains winnowed, the very season in which Persephone descended to the Underworld to rule over the dead until she rose again in Spring, anciently Μουνιχιών, Mounichion, when Ἄρτεμις — Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron, ‘Artemis of the Wilderness, Mistress of Animals, Great Huntress of the Stars, and somewhat pardoxically  — for an ever-Virgin Goddess — as Εἰλείθυια, Ilithyia, the special protector of women in childbirth — was celebrated. Then again, Artemis was always especially concerned with any woman in peril from any man, and there’s almost always a man involved somewhere at the start of every pregnancy, if not necessarily afterwards.

“Maybe,” I said. “You’ll notice that her foot doesn’t sink into the water, so she remains aloof from the world she cares for. Perhaps that’s my problem; existential alienation and despair.”

She looked at me again, more shrewdly, “Perhaps,” she said. “You never did immerse yourself too comfortably in daily life, but how profoundly can one actually despair when one has such remorseless purpose as you’ve had, trying the save the entire world from the consequence of sin?”

“More dream-awareness?” I asked.

“That’s all there is,” she said.

 

 

After that conversation I tried to maintain a certain level of calm for the next few days. It seemed clear that there was something of the old Beryl somewhere deep inside the new Beryl, but it hurt me that she was simultaneously so familiar and so much a stranger, both at once, sometimes within the same sentence, switching back and forth between the two states from one moment to the next, in a bewildering confusion of love and loss, at least on my part. Beryl seemed somehow to be above any petty concerns like past or future, and just floated along in her own private cloud, almost always either smiling and gracious or ethereally dispassionate, like some kind of Quanyin Goddess of the American South.

Then, something happened to disturb my uneasy equilibrium. It started with a whistle.

We’d stationed a couple of the newly-freed captives up in the old outpost at the entrance to the valley, and I immediately looked up to see them waving a red flag, the signal we’d agreed upon to indicate strangers moving up the creek that flowed out of the valley. Quickly, I dispatched a runner to fetch the big woman we planned to use as our ‘beard,’ a passably masculine voice to lull any passing Reivers into a false sense of security.

She showed up with Becky, which was a good thing, since she was the only available ‘expert’ on this particular Reiver hideout. “Hi, Sapphire,” she said, “What’s up?” Did I mention that we were a little informal, here on the trail?

“We’ve probably got some Reivers coming up the trail,” I said, “and it wouldn’t hurt to send out a couple of our better scouts to see if any of them are trying to bypass the sentry post.”

“Okay,” Becky said. “I’ll stay here with Chrys to handle the gate.”

We’d partially rebuilt the stockade, with the help of Gumball and his wrecking gang, but we weren’t figuring on staying here for the long term, so we hadn’t put a lot of effort into it. “I’m going to mosey downstream a little,” I said, “to flank them if I can.”

“I’ll go with you,” Beryl said. “I’d like to see these Reivers of yours.”

That took me a little aback. “Unh… there’ll probably be fighting….” Somehow, I didn’t think of the new Beryl as a warrior lately, since she seemed more like a saint, or something. “Are you sure you’re ready for that?”

“Of course,” she said. “What could possibly go wrong?”

 

 

We found a hiding place beside the stream, on the other side from the trail, behind an enormous toppled oak tree which provided cover against anything smaller than an HE missile, which the Reivers tended not to use, since they preferred to keep potential slaves alive, and usually chose their shots with rifles. “Here they come,” I whispered, barely breathing. It was only a short while before a typical Reiver column came up the trail, keeping a wary eye on their flanks, or so they thought, with a small mounted vanguard followed by the bulk of the slaves on foot to act as cover for the main body of troops, all of whom were on horseback and carrying rifles at the ready. Whether they’d heard rumors of our expedition, I didn’t know, but they seemed more cautious than the first gang we’d encountered.

Just then, one of the gang behind the slaves decided to whip one of those who were having trouble keeping up. Beryl turned to me quite calmly and said, “You might want to look out for my back while I take care of the asshole and his pals.” With that, she made a perfectly astounding leap across the stream, somehow landing in on the rear of the horse said asshole was riding, whereupon she simply twisted his head off, grabbed his gun and whip, then turned around on the horse in an astonishing display of equestrianism and shot each and every one of the leaders as fast as she could pull the trigger, which sounded like fully-automatic, except that these rifles didn’t have that option. It was incredible to watch, and she didn’t even seem to be exerting herself that much, but she was at least ten times as fast and strong as I was, and I was very fast and very strong. I did manage to kill a few of the outliers, but Beryl handled almost all of the main body of them in roughly three seconds, so quickly that those without a gun already aimed and ready to fire, which was most of them, never had time to fire a single shot, either in anger or desperation.

I called to her when she turned back to wink at me, “If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One….
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds,” I was in awe.

“Oooh! A literary quote! How lovely! There’s a sniper working his way up behind you, so you might want to take care of him; you have the better shot, about six-thirty-five.”

I whirled around and saw him, mostly-concealed by shrubbery, and shot him dead. “Thanks so much, dearest friend.”

“It was my pleasure, sweet lady, and that’s the lot of them, I think. Shall we tend to their captives?”

“We should, I do believe. Pardon me if it takes me a few seconds longer to cross the stream than you managed.”

“The real question is, are you crossing the stream, or does the stream cross under you? I personally find it’s quicker to assume the latter. You really ought to try it sometime.” Then she slid off the horse she’d commandeered so spectacularly and walked up to the captives, quickly stripping off their chains and tending to their hurts with a kiss, something I’d never seen her do before but it seemed to work, since those who’d been in pain suddenly began to smile, and then to talk, and then jabber all at once as they realized that they’d been delivered from bondage, just shy of the very moment their captors had chosen to barter them for supplies and fancy goods.

“Ladies, and you few children,” I addressed them formally as I walked up the bank of the stream toward them, lugging along our packs. “Welcome back to civilization. I have food and drink here, if any of you are hungry, and you’re free now, completely free, although I don’t know whether your former homes survive. Your captors and tormenters are dead, at least, and will never trouble you again, so I hope that you can be content with that, as much rough justice as we can presently arrange.”

One of them, a beautiful young woman whose left eye had been gouged out and seared with a hot iron, from the look of it, came forward and said, caught between sneering and despair, “And what are we to do whose children have been raped and murdered? What are those of us pregnant by the men who killed our husbands and sons supposed to feel, now that we’ve been ‘rescued?’ What about those many who’ve been mutilated? Are there any magic tricks in those bags of yours to heal the pain we hold inside?”

“No, not really,” I said without quibbling, “but I can offer in partial mitigation the fact that your physical wounds will be completely healed, including your eye, my dear sister, and any other physical wound or scar will be erased completely. Further, any baby borne by any one of you will be so transformed as to make the question of paternity rather beside the point, since little or nothing of your rapist’s genetic heritage will remain behind to trouble you. I, for example, look nothing like my father, although I’m told that there was once a strong family resemblance. I do, however, look quite a bit like my mother, but my mother perfected in me, since I can recognize who I used to be in who I am now. The same mutagenic process which is healing your wounds right before your eyes evidently works primarily with material from the X chromosome — or so it seems — and will selectively pluck out the very best bits of them to ‘reshuffle the genetic deck,’ as it were, to create a new genotype for you, far more ‘fit,’ in a genetic sense, to carry on your personal heritage. The same process will occur in any fœtus you’re presently carrying, and will result in the very ‘best’ possible result from all the material available, causing ultimately the sort of notably superior bodies that Beryl and I inhabit, and you’ve seen what we can do.”

Although I didn’t have access to scanning electron microscopes and the materials needed for genetic studies, I did have access to my Tarot deck and whatever psychic abilities I now possessed, so I knew that what I told them was more-or-less true, although I couldn’t actually demonstrate its accuracy in any ‘scientific’ way.

Beryl immediately added, “Actually, since you’ve been healed by me, a little more ‘selection’ is going on inside you. Quite recently, I died, and was rebuilt from scratch using the very best and most current natural ‘technology’ borrowed from the fantastically adaptive plants which were our former common enemies, and your healing bodies will incorporate these adaptations as well, so you’re quite likely to outstrip the current abilities of my friend Sapphire here, although she’ll be catching up eventually. You’ve been brought forth from out of bondage with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great visions, and with signs and wonders.” She smiled benignly, very much like a saint, or perhaps a Goddess. “As for babies, please think of me as your co-mother, since your babies will be partly you and partly me, which isn’t entirely a bad thing.”

This astonishing speech was the longest stretch of words I’d heard from Beryl’s mouth since her… change, although she was never all that ‘chatty,’ unlike me. “Unh…. Umm…, what she said…,” I said eloquently. “She’s far more knowledgeable than I am.”

She turned to me and arched one perfect brow. “I’m very pleased to hear you admit it,” she said. “Although you’re perfectly charming, you do tend to ramble on at times.” I think she smiled then, but I almost missed it; it was very quick.

“What do you mean by transformations?” that same woman said angrily. “What have you done to us?”

“Personally, nothing,” I said calmly. “In general, though, the world has caught up with humanity and decided to end the conflict between the plants and ourselves in the most œconomical manner, which has turned out to be changing us, since the world is a very big place, and we human beings are just a small part of it. The physical healing and surcease from physical pain you’ve been given by us will accelerate your process of adaption to the larger world, but that adaptation was and is inevitable, because the spores of transformation are in the very air you breathe, so the only way to avoid it is to stop breathing entirely, if you’re actually worried about stopping it.”

Many of them hadn’t stopped muttering while I was speaking, and even now were giving me dirty looks, building up to a nasty crescendo inspired by the one-eyed malcontent. I felt like shooting her.

“Be at peace!” Beryl intoned serenely. “Even within the walls of your so-called ‘castles,’ the air in every room carried these spores, and it was that which caused the so-called ‘plant infections’ that carried the death penalty within the paranoid ranks of the Horticultural Services and the citizens they supposedly protected. If you want to complain about us — your saviors and benefactors — being high-handed, think about the millions murdered over the years to protect ‘racial purity’ and preserve Humanity über alles. In simple words, don’t be silly.”

‘Harry’s Balls! I wish I knew how she does that!’ From her first word — which had been uttered quietly, without fuss — silence had prevailed, as if a switch had been flicked that lit up a big sign that said, ‘Be Calm!’ “In some ways,” I added, “the Reivers are us, writ more crudely, perhaps, but the cruelty was always there. My own mother was murdered by my own father when she showed signs of ‘infection,’ and to general applause. They actually held a little ceremony in which the Base Commander awarded him a small decoration for immediately reporting her to the ‘proper authorities’ and seeing personally to her immediate execution. He wore it on his dress uniform for formal occasions. Does anyone here think that what he did was right? You’re all infected now; should we hand you a pistol so you can all take turns blowing each other’s brains out?”

I let a few seconds go by before suggesting helpfully, “If there are any of you who’d prefer not to be either healed or free, if you head far enough south, there are still Reivers there who I’m sure would be glad to oblige you until we catch up to them. With luck, you’ll infect quite a few of them before they discover your own infection and kill you, but since you appear to prefer slavery and death to living, you might think of it as a time-limited term of public service.” I looked around the group of them. “Any takers? We have quite a few horses to spare, so you could ride down to captivity in style.”

Beryl looked at me and subtly rolled her eyes, but didn’t say a word.

Neither did the malcontents.

“Still sullen?” I asked them, “or are you beginning to see the wisdom of not looking gift horses in the mouth? I think it’s fair to say that — although we’ve rescued a lot of women from the Reivers in our expedition — you’re the first who didn’t seem all that happy about it. In fact….” I took out my tarot deck and shuffled them, but before I could draw a single card, Beryl held up her hand.

“Ladies, I perceive that you have a hidden agenda. Are you going to confess your many sins or must we do this the hard way?”

One-eye had a panicked look on her face before she broke and ran. “Run! All of you!”

It didn’t do them any good, of course. Their changes hadn’t progressed far enough to make any real difference at all, so we had them captured and trussed up within a very few minutes, even counting the time spent finding enough rope to hold them without hurting them. We let them stew a bit before I talked to them, with Beryl standing by to listen to what their thoughts were saying on their behalf.

“Are you comfortable?” I asked politely. “You needn’t panic at all,” I added, since some of them were doing exactly that. “I assume your former captors have hostages and that they’ve threatened to kill them unless you betrayed us into their hands, am I right?”

They said nothing, of course, but Beryl gave me the nod. “We can do this in any of several ways, but it would be far more comfortable for all of us if you simply ‘spilled the beans,’ because then we could let you go and you could take care of such intimate things as urinating without someone going along to wipe your fanny, and eating without someone having to feed you with a spoon. Believe me when I say that no one really wants to do that, but we can’t have you running around loose and plotting to betray us to your former masters, none of whom — at least locally — are in any position to either listen to secrets or act upon any information you may wish to tell them. Soon enough, the men who are holding your loved ones as surety for your behaviour will be dead, and your loved ones will be safe, but all this could happen much more quickly and easily if you simply let us know exactly what sort of pressure you’ve been subjected to, and where these men are waiting. They will have let you know this, of course, even though it’s probably a backup plan, since I’m guessing that their primary plan was to have you somehow hinder us long enough for them to kill us through treachery and deceit, as was their usual practice when murdering the armed men of a fortress before they looted it and raped or killed the women and children. So let me guess, they’ve hidden themselves somewhere to the south…” I saw Beryl cast her eyes toward the north for just a fraction of a second… “…the north…” I thought about the way we’d come… “…lurking behind those rocky outcrops near the woods where we defeated the other Reivers.” Beryl gave me a nod and took off running toward the camp, presumably to gather up a few volunteers from among the more seasoned veterans.

“Now, ladies,” I said, “you have a choice. We’re sending off a small raiding party to defeat the men holding hostages — a capital offence, by the way — so if any of you wish to help, now’s your chance, since your assistance might well help us to save the lives of more hostages. Rest assured that all these men will die. We rarely offer quarter to slavers in general, but show no mercy at all to those contemptible cowards who hide behind women and children in an effort to preserve their worthless lives. No man who preys upon either women or children can ever be trusted, so we eliminate the problem of recidivism through decisive action, and of course we don’t actually need them at all, nor do we care for them as either pets or decorations, so we see no particular downside to simply snuffing them out whenever we encounter them. Mind you, I’ll think no ill of you if they’ve managed to terrorize you into doing nothing at all, but the lives you might help save will be those of the hostages, not the slavers at all. Their lives are forfeit by default, and so too any who prey upon women or murder children.”

Beryl, who was passing by with a small team of volunteers on horseback, used that moment to level her rifle at the one-eyed woman and shot her dead. “That might simplify things,” she said. “She’s been working with them for some years, serving as a decoy to worm her way into fortresses, and of course recruiting the women for this particular ploy though intimidation and threats.” Then she sang, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” Then she smiled benignly, as saintly as ever as she rode on by.

I blinked. I hadn’t been expecting that, from Beryl, no less, Miss Floats-Above-It-All. I cleared my throat and said, “Does that change anyone’s mind about coöperating?”

Evidently it did, because there was a sudden babble of voices, plaintive exculpations, hysterical apologies, pointing fingers, and patent horror on many faces.

Eventually, I got the story straightened out. As far as their individual stories went, they all made sense, and I took the precaution of doing a quick reading on every one. They were actually slaves, brutalized into submission by their ‘owners,’ amongst whom One-Eye was numbered, and one of the worst, to hear the women tell it. According to the word amongst the slaves, she was a former slave herself, but had managed to kill the leader of the group who’d captured her after ingratiating herself into his bed on a regular basis. One night, she’d plunged a table knife into his brain, commandeered his weapons, and through a combination of guile, stealth, and finally a sudden assault, had managed to kill every male in the group. Instead of freeing her fellow captives, though, she’d simply taken them as her own and had used them, along with the wealth already collected by the band of Reivers she’d just snuffed out, to negotiate her way into a sort of partnership with another band. The leader of that band had evidently been quick to grasp the potential of a decoy that no one would ever suspect of duplicity, and especially not one as clever as Tourmaline — that’s what her name had been antemortem — had turned out to be.

Once I was satisfied that I was leaving no hidden serpents behind in our nest of rescued women, I chose someone likely to take charge whilst I was gone, then picked up a selection of weapons and followed after Beryl and her raiding party, unwilling to risk her death again, if I could possibly help it. Besides, I was their commanding officer, wasn’t I?

 

 

It felt good to be on my own again, the way I’d started my adventures, or almost so. The rugged Virginia back country was beautiful in a way that the area around the Castle never was, greener, with trees and rocks that both of them reached impressive heights, where low hills breaking the soothing monotony of the midwestern plains had been the exception to a general rule. Whilst walking through the high grass had been merely hot and dusty, especially in the standard-issue suit, riding on horseback through the dappled sunshine filtered by the forest canopy overhead, accompanied by the sound of rushing water over the rocks and rocky ledges of the stream was an exercise in pure pleasure. If I hadn’t been pursuing a war party, with unknown observers possible, if not likely, I might have broken into song. So I simply listened to the sounds around me, concentrated on being aware of the world at large, and rode on as quickly as I could without lathering my mount, a handsome large roan gelding with a sure foot and an easy gait.

I’d been aware of Beryl’s presence ahead of me, and even felt when she became more cautious, so the sudden fusillade of gunshots didn’t take me by surprise. None-the-less, I clicked my tongue and gave him a little kick of my heels, so he broke into a trot and I turned him slightly upslope from the faint path by the stream, intending to gain some altitude above the firefight going on ahead, just in case. He fought the bit at first, unhappy to leave the path — horses love to go where other horses have been before — but I shushed him with another nudge of my heels and urged him on and up. “Get on, boy!” I said quietly, and he put his mind to the path I’d urged him on. He trusted me more than he didn’t, so was content to follow my inclinations, since he was well-aware that I was sure protection against his natural enemies and always had a treat or two in my pocket, a greedy fellow, but refreshingly honest about it. It would be a cold day in Harry’s most miserable Hell before I let him down.

About ten minutes later, the shooting slowed, then stopped, but I didn’t let down my guard, moseying up the back of a low ridge that lay between me and the site of the conflict, although all was silent now. I couldn’t hear talking either, so I dismounted, took my rifle and two crossbows, with a quiver of bolts, and took a more-or-less direct path up the ridge until I could peer over the top and down toward where Beryl and her small squadron were still present, if strangely silent. Looking down the slope, I could see the problem. Evidently the main band of Reivers had kept a largish group of slaves in reserve, and the men were hiding behind their portable human shields. ‘Tch, tch,’ I thought to myself. ‘These men are obviously unfamiliar with the Laws of War, which expressly forbid any such cowardice.’ Well, as an enfilade of one, I wasn’t half bad, so I began by shooting the two who seemed to be the most authoritative with crossbow bolts through the back of their heads, reasonably unobserved, since the main body of the Reivers had their attention concentrated forward, toward Beryl’s small party, whilst those two men were holding back from the front line, as best befitted craven curs. Smiling at my good luck, I quietly reloaded, got my rifle up and ready, and then shot another quarrel into the air one-handed, so Beryl could see it. Then I started shooting Reivers, being reasonably careful to hit my targets who, when they realized that they were under attack from behind, whirled around, many of them necessarily rising from where they’d been crouched behind their captives. This was a mistake, of course, since Beryl’s cohort took care of a good half of them quite nicely, whilst I took out the rest. It was over very quickly after that, since the only real difficulty lay in managing to avoid hitting the captives, who’d wisely decided to throw themselves on the ground and cower, several with hands over their heads, faces pressed into the dirt in terror. “Hey, Sweetie!” I called down the hill, when all seemed quiet. “Is that a gun I see in your hand? Or are you just glad to see me?”

She shouted up to me, “It’s not a gun, as well you know; it’s a rifle, and a surprisingly good one. I take it the Reivers are rapidly receding into history?”

“They are, already beyond this horizon in fact, and rapidly fading from memory, although I can’t exactly say who amongst us were the more successful in our recent revisionism.”

“I think it was a group effort, in every way,” she said as she walked up the hill towards me. She looked particularly lovely. “We held their attention long enough for you to flank them, then you returned the favor for just long enough for us to extract them from behind their hostages, hopefully without any uneccessary loss of life.”

“Other than their own, I don’t think so, although I can’t fully vouch for their behavior before I arrived,” I said, as she approached.

She raised one brow, by now very near. “Their own lives hardly count, since they were forfeit from the start.”

“They might not have realized it, though.”

She shrugged. “There are very few limits to ignorance. Some people will believe the most astonishing blather.”

“True. What I actually meant, though, was that they might well have killed one or more of their hostages during the lead-up to this police action on our part, possibly to enforce the unwilling compliance of non-combatant civilians in their craven attempt to shelter behind the women we’ve just rescued, hopefully without any further loss of innocent life. Certainly, the woman in charge of the attempt to gull us in ‘false flag’ espionage and treachery was murderous in the extreme, so it seems fairly unlikely that her associates were any less brutal.”

“Birds of a feather, one supposes.”

“Indeed. Vultures one and all, but nothing pertaining to Isis, I think, although Set rather comes to mind.”

She smiled an enigmatic smile, de rigeur for all the very best angels these days.

“Might I have a private word?” I blushed as I said it.

“Of course,” she said. “Shall we explore the area looking for… stragglers?”

I didn’t answer but led the way up and over the ridge to where I’d left my mount. He seemed awfully glad to see me, probably discomfited by the sounds of the skirmish. At last, I turned to her and said, “I’ve been an idiot, Beryl. I don’t know how much you remember of our lives before your… resurrection, but I made up an imaginary husband to give myself a reflected status if I met any regular Horticulturist soldiers, but I’ve finally realized that the notion makes no sense, since any ‘husband’ of mine would rather quickly be transformed into a ‘wife,’ of sorts.”

She smiled. “Well, ‘tangled webs’ do rather come to mind.”

Her easy agreement both did and didn’t surprise me. On the one hand, she seemed to be uncannily familiar with a fairly common idiom, although perhaps the ability to speak English at all was the greater miracle, since she was both fluent and witty, which implied a depth of understanding that seemed unlikely, given what I’d thought might be the consequences of traumatic amnesia. In short and long, she was as pretty a puzzle as could be. “How much do you remember of our lives before you… changed?”

She laughed. “Resurrected, you mean?”

“Yes, that,” I confessed.

“Nothing, and everything, all at once,” she said mysteriously.

“I… What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that almost everything anyone ever whispered to the wind is mine, including the first cry of every newborn child, the dying breaths of ancients, soft oaths, heartfelt curses, and screams both of ecstasy and pain. What would you expect of Persephone, the terrifying Goddess of the Underworld, the ever-virgin Kore who promises everything but always fails to deliver, simultaneously the barren Bride of Death and the lusty Mistress of the fertile fields? What’s the point of paradox if you can’t have fun with it?”

I noticed that her eyes looked somehow green through some peculiar trick of the light, although they’d always been dark before. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“You will.”

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

 

 

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Ten Close Engagement

 

 

The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

 

It was an uphill slog to the next Reiver hideout in the lower reaches of the Appalachians. We were struggling up a rocky valley with poor footing for the horses, a narrow field of scree and boulders so hazardous that we decided to dismount and lead them rather than ride. The rushing stream made conversation difficult without shouting, so we were a mostly silent crew as we climbed up into the higher foothills. One had almost to admire their stamina, or desperation, to seek out such a difficult sanctuary, but then perhaps word had gone before us, so this isolated fastness may have seemed to them like their best chance of escaping our justice. The more fools they.

Beryl, at the head of our narrow column, called a halt by holding up her hand, then reached over toward the sorrel mare that she was leading, calmly took a rocket launcher from her saddle, and fired two HE/Magnesium missiles over the low parapet from which the stream tumbled. “Ambush,” she turned and mouthed in my direction, by way of explanation.

I arched one brow towards her, and laid my hands on a similar set of weapons readily-available and slung from the saddle of my own mount. None too soon, as it turned out, since I saw the first head pop up above the stone and fired two more missiles in quick succession, at least one of which set the peeking head on fire, hopefully including any fellow Reivers lurking nearby. We were in a tight spot if they gathered enough men together to rain down murderous levels of lead, so I quickly took up two more rockets, just in case. Explosives were the only weapon we had which could reliably shoot around corners, and even that took a steady hand and a sure eye for an imputed trajectory.

In the interim, Beryl had taken off running up the slope toward the gap, a rocket launcher in one hand and two rifles in the other. She was over the top quicker than one could say ‘Harry’s Brass Balls!’ which I know because I said it, cursing like a Sergeant as I ran upslope — considerably more awkwardly — after her. Her disappearance was followed promptly by an HE/Mag flare of light and explosion and then an almost instantaneous fusillade of rifle fire. It sounded like she’d emptied her magazine, but then there was another HE/Mag flash and bang, and then another riff of improvised rifle fire, this time slightly slower and more sporadic as she evidently chose her shots from amongst whatever targets were on offer.

I finally reached the top of the valley and poked my head over the rocky ledge to see very many male bodies lying still on the ground, some in charred gobbets and bits, with Beryl taking her ease on a low-lying boulder beside the path.

Other than the bodies strewn about, the scene would have been idyllic, a mountain meadow profuse with wildflowers of many hues and sizes, including a broad swath of yellow jonquils, as bright and cheery as the bloody corpses were depressing.

Beryl took it all in stride, saying, offhandedly, as if she were remarking on the weather, “It’s a beautiful spot, isn’t it? It looks like these fellows were the guards before the gate, so there must be quite a few more somewhere not too far away. They’ll probably know we’re here by now.”

I allowed as how that were probably true with a shrug and wry moue. “Well, in the larger sense, I suspect almost all of them know by now, at least as far as Georgia, possibly even South Carolina. If they had any sense at all, they’d go into another line of business before we catch up to them.”

She smiled. “But it’s the ultimate male fantasy, money for nothing, and your ‘chicks’ are free. The psychic price of forcing people into slavery has always been indolence on the one hand, and the habit of cruelty on the other. Once that wicked paradigm has been established as ‘normal,’ it’s very difficult to eradicate the habit.”

“True,” I admitted. “Shall we wait for the others? Or shall we take care of their ‘hidden valley’ on our own?”

“They’ll be at least five minutes getting over the top behind us, burdened with the luggage as they are, so why don’t we just busy ourselves with seeing what the lay of the land and disposition of our targets might be while we wait?”

I grunted in response, and so we took off across that bloody beautiful meadow as rapidly as possible, although I was pretty sure from the feel of things that we weren’t under any sort of immediate observation. Beryl probably had a better idea, but she wouldn’t have cared. She tended toward impulsive action, or perhaps ‘inexorable’ would be a better word, like gravity — which never sleeps — or entropy, which does.

 

 

Neither of us being utter fools, we crossed the meadow very quickly indeed, then ducked into the woods rather than following the trodden path. Even I could feel the presence of lurkers, but their attention seemed focused elsewhere, and was definitely not directed toward us, although one might have imagined that we’d be very high on their list of worries.

It didn’t take long to discover the reason for at least one negligent watchman, because we found him off in the woods digging frantically in the dirt. We watched from cover until his pit was big enough, whereupon he knelt down and began to scrabble with his hands. At that point, I figured that he was getting ready to do a bunk, probably with valuables purloined from his fellow thieves, so I put one of my knives through his brain. I knew that Beryl would approve, and I… I was resigned to do my duty.

We spent the next few moments flitting through the trees as silently as smoke, discovering one by one the half-dozen self-styled ‘Reivers’, formerly on guard duty, to be in sorry states, either running away or cowering in thickets, conditions they soon found only temporary, since none lived long enough to repent.

Beryl, of course, was serene, meting out death with no more thought than breathing — or so it seemed — then greeting our comrades warmly when they straggled across the meadow and found us sitting comfortably on a likely patch of duff and litter beneath a loblolly pine, legs crossed in a sort of lotus position, arms akimbo, smiling as the women sought us out and there we were. I was a little uneasy, even then, but not so it showed where the troops might see.

The men in the camp were little better organized than had been their naughty lookouts, and we both stood aside and let the women of our troupe of merry pranksters have their fun, joined toward the end by the former slaves themselves, who turned upon their former masters with ferocious savagery once the battle — such as it was — had turned against the Reivers, attacking them with clubs of firewood, weapons dropped from enervated hands, and rocks scrabbled from the ground, even with their ankles still hobbled by short lengths of chain, or with their wrists still bound together in pairs to make it difficult to rebel or flee on their own initiative. I found it particularly poignant to see the exultation on their faces as their first blows struck home, the wild movements of their arms as they took their own first opportunity to revenge themselves upon their captors, the murderers of their loved ones, the destroyers of their homes and friends. If some were more than slightly vicious, who could blame them? Not me, in any case, and I supposed that it must have been a therapeutic catharsis for many, a formal reclaiming of their personal integrity and power. Idly, I wondered if the medical psychiatric profession — a specialty not much in demand of late, but not completely unknown — would ever consider it a recommended clinical treatment, and in that very instant I saw the cruel logic behind Beryl’s policies, which tended toward a merciful and primary concern for the victims of these preening thugs, but offering very short shrift for the perpetrators of these systematic outrages on human dignity, civil society, and the social contract. I began to think of her actions as something more like gardening, selecting the choicest fruits for nurturing, pruning down the unruly shoots, sculpting the future of the human race as surely as we ourselves had brought into being the very types of wheat and corn and animals which now shared the Earth with us.

Once the last men were dead, or slightly before, I set out through the camp freeing the women from their bonds, whatever they were, and ministering to their scars and wounds, kissing away their hurts and starting them on the road to healing. Then I gathered up a quantity of the victuals the Reivers had reserved for themselves and began preparing a communal meal for all of us, soon helped by other women, rescuers and former captives both, as we all struggled toward familiar amity.

It turned out to be delicious, a first communion shared in the free and open air, a paschal meal of celebration and gratitude during which we most of us counted blessings as well as losses.

 

 

Beryl sort of took over after that, in a completely bloodless coup, since she’d more or less officially become our Field Commander and General of the Army, though I was still her nominal superior, at least in rank. I’d been seconded, though, to a Headquarters Staff that existed entirely on paper, in yet another improvisation. I could hardly take much — if any — umbrage, since my original ‘organization’ and rank had been an almost complete fabrication based on guesswork, a little research, and an awareness of the limits of the tenuous communication networks still functioning within the Horticultural Corps proper. Beryl maintained that fiction — at least in part — but made no attempt at all to explain the reversal of our rôles. Such was the force of her personality that no one questioned her de facto authority at all.

I wasn’t all that bothered. I’d had a surfeit of military life already, especially command, and the new Beryl had the ruthlessness required for a protracted war against the Reivers, the Barbary Pirates of our era. She was tireless, and the new ‘infection’ she’d carried back with her from the Underworld quickly spread through our ranks, surprisingly infecting the horses as well, which made for an assault force that Óðin himself would have been proud to number amongst his Valkyries, mounted on coursers that could almost fly, and which had lent figurative wings to our conquest of Virginia, first the entire Piedmont and western slopes of the Appalachian mountains — where the Reivers had their strongholds and had done their most extensive looting  — and then down through the Tidewater region, where the fortresses of the Horticultural Corps still held sway, in some cases arrriving just in time to prevent another treacherous assault by bands of Reivers who still thought that their murderous conniving was a strategy that led somewhere other than death, a belief we were at pains to refute with a practical demonstration.

Hampton Roads was one focus of her effort, or what remained of it after being submerged by a combination of the rising sea and the subsiding land surrounding Cheaspeake Bay, which was still slowly slipping into the crater left behind by the impact of a two-mile wide bolide around thirty-five million years ago, toward the end of the Eocene. The large habor, and its surrounding drydocks and shipbuilding facilities, were a key part of her overall strategy, since they still had a small shipbuilding infrastructure there, and her ultimate goal was to conquer the world, which would require some sort of Navy.

The individual fortresses in the area had all capitulated and submitted themselves to her overall command, not least because the more connected of them had been aware of — and almost powerless to stop — the encroaching Reivers, who’d grown so powerful in the Piedmont that their expeditions had become large enough to actually besiege the individual fortresses and starve the residents out, despite the armed resistance of the resident Horticulturists. We’d been specialized so far in our war against the plants that we’d lost almost all knowledge of human warfare, a trade which Beryl had proudly resurrected as the prime mission of the New Horticultural Services.

The North American Command — my spur-of-the-moment self-serving invention — was well on its way to becoming a reality, and I still had my salvaged typewriter and a large supply of silkscreened forms. I was quite the busy beaver, coördinating the many fortresses that now housed the first citizens of our burgeoning new nation. Luckily, my enhancements had made me the fastest and most accurate touch typist the world had even seen, as far as I knew, although I could hardly wait for us to reïnvent or rediscover computers and laser printers, which I’d seen only in old catalogs, although it stood to reason that there must be at least some stored in forgotten warehouses and not already salvaged for parts to maintain our failing radio networks. It’s funny how quickly things go to Hell without a robust civilian infrastructure, so I was doing my best to build one for North America — to start with. Beryl had broader ambitions.

Using the American Occupation of Japan as a model, because the Americans had faced a similar problem — an entrenched military culture whose elite members had had a lot of trouble seeing beyond the ends of their collective noses, and so hadn’t realized that their plans for domination of the Pacific had been doomed from the start. The USA had nearly twice the population of pre-war Japan and at least a hundred times the natural resources available, so despite some early successes the Japanese fell steadily behind, and were already losing the war even before they had two atomic bombs dropped on them, demonstrating the futility of further resistance rather dramatically in American eyes, although it failed to impress the Japanese leaders all that much at the time.

The American accomplishments during the war were especially noteworthy, though, considering their involvement in two essentially separate wars at the time, one against the European Axis powers on the Western Front, one against Japan in the Pacific, and fulfilling the rôle of principal arms supplier to most of the Allied powers, including the Russians on the Eastern Front, who bore the brunt of the actual fighting against Germany, and had so frightened the Japanese Empire with their ferocity during their invasion of Manchuria that the atomic bombs made a good excuse to surrender to the Americans in order to forestall a planned Russian invasion of the Japanese Home Islands and probable execution of the Emperor and his entire family, since the Russians had prior experience with royal dynasties and had developed a sovereign remedy for them.

One thing, however, I quibbled with: “Beryl, why do you never allow the Reivers to surrender any more? We had good luck with Becky and most of the rest, didn’t we?”

“It’s not worth the trouble,” she brusquely replied.

“But Becky….”

“Becky turned out alright, I agree,” she cut me off, “but Thomas Jefferson, himself a slaveholder, recommended ‘extirpation’ of slaveholders — in the nicest possible way, of course — because the ‘boisterous passions’ and indolence engendered in the slave-holding classes rendered them unfit for living in a free society. He said, in fact, ‘Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?’ Becky had the great advantage not only of filling a relatively peripheral rôle in the particular band we largely exterminated, but also of being immediately recruited into the only life that she was truly fit for, military service, but without the discipline and raison d’être inculcated into the hearts and souls of soldiers, that it is their privilege and honor to place their bodies between their loved ones and the desolation of war. We keep Becky — and the other ‘recruits’ — in hand well enough, but too many of them would tax our own resources and make the corps as a whole unstable. Lincoln recognised, as did Jefferson, that the tradition of slavery had infected the American South — and because Lincoln’s plans for reconstruction were never really implemented  — having been coöpted by the corrupt Johnson administration — the real Reconstruction, the salvaging of hearts and minds, was never implemented, the taint of slavery persisted, and everywhere that that pernicious culture migrated — for hundreds of years after slavery was supposedly eliminated — it corrupted politics and morals. In the South, especially, clever analogues of slavery were quickly invented to provide the ‘free ride’ that a slave-holding society thought was their specious ‘right,’ blighting the lives of countless millions for many generations. It’s very clear in retrospect that the worst villains of the then-‘Master Race’ should have been hanged immediately, their fate serving as a reminder to future generations that there are some ‘sins’ that can never be forgiven.”

“But….”

“But what?” she cut me off again. “Surely you’ve noticed that the ‘new’ slavery was ‘reïnvented’ right where it began in what became the United States of America, Virginia, an ‘innovation’ made by one Anthony Johnson, himself a freed slave, ironically enough, thus demonstrating that the lure of ‘easy living’ at the expense of others is a powerful motivator, once one has been coarsened by experience and then seen the ‘benefits’ possible when one is on the other end of the whip. In that greedy disregard for his fellow human beings he was similar to the late and unlamented Tourmaline, who actively worked to perpetuate the same sort of brutal criminal enterprise which had subjugated her to begin with.”

I shut up then, but couldn’t help but feel that Beryl had been changed by her own experience of being treacherously murdered from behind in more ways than just the one. Of course, I had too, when I finally admitted it to myself. When she’d been killed, I’d promptly slaughtered each and every one of the Reivers who’d already surrendered — not exactly my finest hour — but where I’d been impelled by rage, Beryl seemed to have made her own decisions in a spirit of thoughtful insight into human nature.

Sometimes, when I looked at her, she seemed to me the same old Beryl, the woman who’d become my dearest friend during our adventures, but then she’d turn, and in a certain light, or with a certain glance, her eyes glinted with an eerie spark of emerald fire, and I’d percieve the supernatural underpinnings of her corporeal existence with some sort of second sight, and then she seemed as alien and frightening as a rattlesnake. ‘Or perhaps a dragon,’ I thought. ‘Vipers are far less lethal.’

 

 

Many of the women couldn’t ride, so we stayed in the Reiver camp for more than a week while the former hostages healed and practiced the skills needed for life on campaign whilst their necessary changes progressed as well. It was a happy time for most of them, although many still grieved the loss of loved ones to the Reivers, but the fact that the perpetrators of these many outrages were dead — in some cases by their own hands — and witnessed at least by most, brought some measure of closure to the majority of the captives, and Beryl had a unique ability to inspire a sense of dedication and — it must be admitted — rage in our civilian army. The fact that they’d all experienced firsthand the savage brutality of the slavers may have made the former slaves predisposed to wipe the perpetrators off the face of the Earth, but Beryl focused that inchoate desire for revenge into a weapon of laser-like precision, whilst the changes wrought by the new ‘infection’ she’d brought back from the Underworld whetted that weapon into implausible sharpness. The transformation of the former slaves was brought home to me very graphically during our last days in the Reiver camp, when I saw some of the new women taking up the chains which had formerly bound them and shredding them with their bare hands, their faces grimly exultant as the iron and steel links either snapped with a sudden metallic ping or stretched creaking into a thin constriction like wire and parted. Some few of them had already learned to be careful not to cut their hands as the metal deformed, since shards created as the links of their former chains failed sometimes flew out with considerable speed. One of them — she’d named herself Alecto, so I suspect that she’d been numbered amongst the officer’s wives — hadn’t broken her own chains, which were of the finer sort, made from tempered steel, but had instead fashioned for them a handle of straight-grain hickory, turning the symbols of her former captivity into a multi-strand flail of chain with which, she said, she intended to drive the Reivers straight to Hell. Esprit de Corps? We had that in plenty.

Beryl approved, of course, and soon she and Alecto were almost inseparable, which made me faintly jealous, although I really had no reason to be by then, since I often hung back from the final assaults, as I said, grown weary of dealing death. But both Alecto and Beryl exulted in it, often overwhelming the Reivers in close combat, and the sight of Alecto swinging her bloody flail like a scythe, disarming and decapitating Reivers in wholesale lots, paired with Beryl, who performed similar feats with her bare hands more quickly, sometimes, but not always, aided by a long knife, quite often terrorised the Reivers into panic, so they were cut down from behind as they fled in terror, unable to outrun either of the pair, even when the Reivers were on horseback and these two on foot, a revolution of the wheel of fortune indeed, from what they’d seen as Fortune’s cap to trodden beneath her feet, reduced to their component parts like so many bloody broken dolls. Once, just once, since few of the Reivers managed any coherent actions after seeing them at their work, I saw a Reiver shoot himself through the roof of his mouth with his own rifle as they approached, making a fine mess of his brains, having evidently concluded that any further resistance was futile, so had decided to spare himself the trouble of being butchered by women who were obviously unprepared to offer any sort of mercy.

I asked Beryl about this, after it had become obvious that it was a tactic, “Why this emphasis on bare-handed slaughter? Wouldn’t it be safer to kill them from a distance, perhaps from cover, with rifles and crossbow bolts, as we did before?”

She smiled. “It’s all meant to hasten their fear and panic, of course, coöpting the mystique of the Maenads of Bacchus, the women who tore men to pieces with their bare hands, and even their teeth, when they dared to spy on them or attempted to interfere with their sacred rites. Then too, it calls to mind the Furies, the Erinyes, coëval with Aphrodite, whose divine mission it was to punish those who’d foresworn their sacred oaths by tearing them to pieces in very painful ways, although one supposes that this may have been at least partially a metaphor objectifying the torments of a guilty conscience. They were relatively minor deities, as Goddesses go, but even the greatest of the Gods feared their power if any false oath brought them under their authority and so led to their merciful attention.”

“Merciful?”

“Amongst their many other names,” she said patiently, “the Greeks called them the Eumenides, ‘the kindly ones,’ in reference to the closure they brought to those who most desperately needed forgiveness for their sins.”

“So dying is an act of contrition, then?” I could be dense at times, as you may have gathered by now, after listening so patiently to my long story.

“Of course it is,” she answered, “by long tradition. One speaks, after all, of ‘paying one’s debt to society’ when subjected to capital punishment, the lex talionis, ‘a life for a life,’ thus balancing the scale of Justice by apportioning the tally weights.”

A sudden vision overwhelmed me then, of Persephone in royal regalia as the Queen of the Underworld, the woman whose whim decided who would drink of the River Lethe and go down to oblivion, and who would be crowned with eternal life and bliss, another avatar of the High Priestess, who also sits in judgement. And if She was Beryl, who was I, the Fool? I suppose I must have been all along, since it was either foolishness or fate that brought me to where I was today. I asked her, “What then, is to be my fate?”

She reached out to me, smiling, and embraced me warmly, lingering with her cheek next to mine, the sound and feeling of her breath in my ear transporting me to a place I’d never been before, held safe within the circle of her arms. She whispered, for my ear alone, “You are to be the mother of our many children, of course, creating life in the wilderness, fulfilling your true destiny, dark Tiamat of the vasty Deeps who first made order out of Chaos, who first spread burgeoning life upon the land, green Gaia, golden Demeter, deathless Zoë, eternal Chava, the Mother of All Living.”

As proposals go, it wasn’t half bad, but…, “By ‘our many children’,” I asked suspiciously, “do you mean yours and mine, or is this some sort of general benevolence on your part, the sort of vague blessings which rain in equal measure upon the wicked and the just?”

“Sapphire, my very dear,” she whispered in my ear, her breath warm upon my hear and neck, her words inside my head, “Lapis Lazuli of my heart of hearts, You cut me to the quick,” she intimated in faux horror. “When, I ask you, have I ever stopped loving you?”

I pouted. “Well, when you were dead, it seemed like you’d abandoned me….”

“Ahhh, but I had no personal choice in the matter, and then I dreamed, didn’t I? And in my dreams, I dreamed of you.”

“Wellaway, you silver-tongued witch, you, that’s certainly what you said, when you came back, but I was devastated for quite some time thereafter, and even when you returned, you’d changed in ways that seemed incomprehensible to me. ” I paused, remembering my sorrow. “But then, I don’t imagine there’s many girls ever had a lover come back from the dead to woo her, so one has to make allowances… one supposes.”

“Only one that I know of, and I would certainly be the one to know then, wouldn’t I just? I’m sorry that I hurt you, although I do have to plead exigency, since I somehow failed to plan for having that silly bastard shoot me.”

I smiled, and perhaps she felt my smile, since her cheek was pressed to mine. “I suppose you would know better than I, since I’ve never personally had the great pleasure of encountering any ressurrected Goddesses other than you, although of course one does hear tales.”

“Rumors and innuendo only, as I’m sure you’ll admit, and certainly not lately, since I believe that I’m the sine quā causā nōn of this generation.”

“I do know that I’d be lost without you, so you’ll get no argument from me.” By this time, she was kissing my neck and ears, and I was neither in nary position nor mood to argue in any case, since my whole body was saying yes!

 

 

I rode with the troops into North Carolina, relocating our minimalist ‘Headquarters’ because we were still having trouble with long-range communications, since the Horticulturist issue radios were pretty much limited to line-of-sight and we were surrounded by mountains and hills of every descrption. Beryl had three companies of counter-insurgency shock-troopers by then, all of them recruited directly from amongst the former slaves. Not one of them felt the slightest misgiving over Beryl’s General Order One, ‘No Reiver will survive the battle.’ I could see their point, although it still rankled sometimes. Maybe my father had been right about me; I was just a sentimental fool. “Get on, girl!” I said to that same large roan gelding that had carried me to Beryl’s relief almost a year and a half ago, by now transformed into a sort-of mare and heavily pregnant, as I was now myself, so I sympathized with her weary sighs from time to time. We’d both be giving birth come Spring, and I at least could hardly wait.

“So…” Beryl drawled, “Howevuh did you like Nahfuk?”

“I swear you do that just to irritate me!” I snapped at her. “Just because we’re in North Carolina, you don’t have to talk like a Southern Belle!”

“Moi?” she said in mock innocence. “I just prefer to cultivate an authentic air of Southern hospitality to be a comfort to those already condemned. There’s no sense in being needlessly cruel through sounding anything like a damnyankee before I put a bullet through their brains. This way, they have the comfort of being ministered to by an outstanding exemplar of modest Southern Womanhood, the epitome of an intellectual integrity, moral deportment, and domestic refinement of which all America might feel justly proud.”

“By ‘ministered to’ one presumes that you mean ‘slaughtered’,” I said darkly.

“Well, yes,” she admitted, “yet a comforting angel am I, none-the-less. Their own actions condemned them, and our immediate mission is conquest, not proselytizing.”

I had to give her credit there; many of her most recent new recruits might have preferred to shoot their former masters in the gut and then let them linger on for days in agony, but she’d ordered that the coup de grace be given immediately when the Reivers weren’t killed outright, which wasn’t often, since the newly-transformed tended almost instantly to be as quick and accurate as the rest of us. “Okay,” I agreed with her on that at least. “It’s true that you’ve strongly discouraged cruelty, especially amongst those whose experience was particularly dreadful.”

She nodded. “It never pays to press an opponent to despair, since that breeds desperation, which makes life needlessly difficult for all of us.”

“Desperation‽” I asked, astounded, “What on Earth do you call killing them, then‽”

“Relief,” she said. “Surcease from pain? Death is many things, and an honorable death can be an escape from one’s own conscience, especially when that death atones in some small measure for one’s sins. We all of us have a personal responsibility to heal the world around us, and sometimes that healing best takes place when our absence is guaranteed.”

Well, that seemed like a fairly reasonable précis to me, actually, now that I thought about it, and I’d already seen Reivers who’d killed themselves when we’d caught up with them, sometimes — not often — before a single shot was fired. And it wasn’t as if we were hauling around an entire civil society with us, with judges, juries, defence attorneys, prisons, and the like. What in Harry’s Hell were we supposed to do with villains of the nasty sort these so-called Reivers seemed either to attract or become? Have them cross their hearts and promise to be good until we came back to pick them up for trial? The ‘drumhead’ court martial was invented for situations just like this, and if our proceedings were somewhat less formal, we also had the advantage of being able to pluck information straight out of their brains, if necessary. Even if each and every one of them weren’t particularly guilty of their collective crimes, the ‘felony murder’ rule in American jurisprudence dates back through England to the time before William the Conqueror, so the penalties leviable for the felonious acts involved in their concerted efforts to murder, enslave, rape, and loot legally and morally adhere to every participant in any of their actions. It wasn’t as if enslaving women, and some few men, was a secret known only to a few, nor was it possible to maintain that the civilian populations of the fortresses they’d breached and looted had some sort of secret death wish. “True,” I admitted. “One is known by the company one keeps, when all is said and done. So being only a small part of an entire band of pirates is no mitigation at all, unless one can make a credible case for having been impressed.”

“That particular case,” she said, arching one perfect brow at me, “would be difficult to prove, considering that we’re surrounded by endless wilderness in which almost anyone might easily slip away and hide. Shanghaiing unwilling participants is difficult when one doesn’t immediately set out to sea.”

“Sweetheart,” I whined, uncharacteristically disinclined to bandy words, “I don’t want to argue any more. You’re right; I’m wrong, and I’m tired and cranky and I have to pee. Are we coming to a place where we can stop riding for a bit?” The forest floor around us looked uninviting, because there was neither ready access to water for the horses nor forage, other than a scrubby underbrush that didn’t look at all good for their digestion. What I didn’t say, of course, was that the heat and the motion of that damned horse between my legs was also making me so damned horny I could scream.

Beryl was instantly attentive. “Of course, my sweet darling. Gumball tells me that there’s a open grassy clearing near a quiet ‘crik,’ as they say locally, not quite three hundred yards ahead of us. Will that do?”

“Of course it will, my dear. I’m not unreasonable,” which of course was completely untrue, but I liked to maintain a fiction of self-flattering equanimity, when in fact I was becoming increasingly broody and cranky — not necessarily in that order — but it was bad enough feeling fat and ugly and incredibly aroused all at once without adding unattractive personality traits. I still had some pride at least, and I did my best to live up to my own self-image of who I wanted to be, even if I fell somewhat short of perfect conformance to my inward ideal from time to time. Whatever benefits the fungus had given us all in terms of strength and stamina, they didn’t extend to maintaining a sunny disposition twenty-four hours a day. Unlike my former self, a very young man whom I barely remembered as being indolent at best, and groggy in the mornings, even after ample sleep, I could wake up instantly ready to fight or flee, but that didn’t guarantee that I’d be cheerful about it at all.

Beryl rolled her eyes, a tacit refutation of my bald exaggeration which I studiously ignored. I really was quite weary, and really had to pee, not to mention those… other things.

With a cluck of her tongue, Beryl picked up the pace of her mount, which of course instantly transmitted the impulse toward speed to the rest of our troop, and two of our outriders rode instantly forward at a full gallop along the line of our march to search out the path ahead whilst we followed after.

Beryl, as usual — or it might have been Gumball — since it wasn’t but a few longish moments before we came upon the clearing and stream that she’d mentioned. It was beautiful, dappled sunlight through the trees marking the eastern bounds of the open meadow, a stream running off-center along the sunny side to the west, and lush green grass and wildflowers spreading a carpet of lovely green. The woods around us here were relatively open, with very little underbrush to to obscure the forest floor, so I surmised that they were climax species, adapted to survive periodic fires to clear the understory. Although it was clearly natural, it was so lovely that it might have had a crew of gardeners working two shifts a day to prune it to perfection.

“Ooh!” I exclaimed in awe, “Let’s live here!” I told you I was feeling broody.

Beryl smiled and answered me, “Soon, Sweetheart, or soonish, at least. I’ve got a little matter of world conquest to get well underway before that happens, but it shouldn’t take too much longer. We’re already self-sustaining, and leaving new and improved Horticulturist outposts behind us to handle mopping up and prevention operations. As soon as we restore long-distance communications, we can profitably handle strategic planning from a headquarters complex, perhaps from that Fortress outside Charlotte, or maybe Raleigh—Durham. I would like to wind up in Hampton Roads eventually, but it’s not really critical to our success.”

I hadn’t liked the Hampton Roads area at all, although actually seeing the Atlantic Ocean was amazing. It had been hot and muggy all the time we’d campaigned there, though, and I didn’t fancy having to carry around a damned fan around all day, and fancied the prospect of actually living there even less. “I don’t like Virginia Beach,” I said, “It was thirty-six degrees or hotter the whole time we spent there, and my clothes were sticking to my body well into the night. It’s the most miserable place in the world, as far as I’m concerned. If we can’t live here, maybe we could head west to California. I understand it’s wonderful out there, at least from what I read in the library back home.” Then I had a thought, “And it would be a window looking toward the Far East and Russia, and you know that we’ll have to guard against them eventually, especially if our own physical and mental enhancements spread more rapidly than our political hegemony does.”

From the look on Beryl’s face, that notion hadn’t occurred to her, so I was particularly pleased to have brought it up. She might be better at many things than I was, but my brain was always working, and I’d spent a lot more time doing research in the library than she ever had. That’s one advantage of being a habitual daydreamer, more inclined to contemplation than action, and having a natural skill with words and crafting clever stories that had, in a sense, created the rôle that Beryl now fulfilled. Beryl had exactly the combination of charisma and physical prowess to make her a perfect leader, but even leaders depended upon advisors from time to time to let them know where their followers ought to go. Indeed, it was my opinion that most of the historic failures of ‘leadership’ had originated in quondam ‘leaders’ who’d got too big for their britches and had led their followers — the hapless citizens who’d mistakenly depended upon their wisdom — into utter folly through the strength of their magnetic personalities. From my own admittedly informal study of history, it sometimes seemed that the great mass of people were barely more thoughtful or prudent than lemmings.

Beryl, in the meantime, had helped me down without comment other than a smile and a kiss as she set me safely on the ground. Then she walked with me toward a handy copse of trees with a small thicket of berry bushes that shielded most of it from public view. From somewhere,, she magically conjured a bucket of clean water and a handful of soft towelling, then wandered off a bit to give me some privacy. I do love that woman!

 

 

I was feeling very chipper as we strolled back into the open meadow, having been relieved of several of my most pressing needs. We were hand-in-hand, having abandoned any pretence of being anything other than lovers. In a company of ‘women’ who were mostly widows, but including at least some number of former husbands and sons, we didn’t stand out at all as exceptions to a general rule, since many of us had formed new alliances based upon proximity and personal need. Dealing death on an almost-daily basis makes one particularly cognisant of the fragility of life, and of the virtues of seeking love from ‘across the crowded room,’ even if one’s ‘true love’ is absent, whether temporarily or forever. Life is for the living, and loving is an integral part of life. Soldiers in general are pragmatists, accommodating themselves to the situations they find themselves in whether of their own choosing or not. It comes with the territory, since very few of us actually prefer an occupation which involves being shot at from time to time. “Have you given any thought to a name?” I asked, referring to the not-so-distant future.

“I haven’t,” she said. “It’s my own belief that, since you’re doing almost all the work, it’s entirely your personal decision. I trust your judgement completely, assuming, of course, that ‘Edna’ and ‘Hortense’ are quite off the table.” Here she laughed, as did I. I wasn’t quite a fool. Traditional names in the Horticultural enclaves followed a rather simple pattern for both boy babies and girl babies, being primarily the names of common minerals for boys, and gemstones for girls. My own former name, ‘Crete,’ was a little odd, but was a more-or-less uncommon nickname for the very uncommon name, ‘Concrete,’ which was stretching the notion of a ‘mineral’ by quite a bit, even if typical of my father’s rough-hewn and completely prosaic former nature, as stolid and brittle as a mixture of sand, random gravel, and Portland cement could possibly be.

“I’ve been thinking of breaking the traditional mold and naming our child ‘Iris,’ after the flower, although I know that it’s a departure from tradition. It’s time, I think, to begin incorporating the living world into our new traditions, as opposed to perpetually celebrating dead things or pseudo-life. Of course it sounds a bit like ‘Isis’ as well, in subtle homage to her divine origins, and Iris herself is unambiguously a Goddess in her own right, the divine Messenger and Justicar of the Gods, although not nearly as well-known as the flower which bears her name.”

Beryl smiled. “I love the way your devious mind works, you know, always thinking and scheming on many levels, all at once.”

“Well, I like to plan ahead,” I said, modestly enough. “The future rarely takes care of itself, I’ve found.”

“I suppose it doesn’t hurt that Iris was the sovereign leader of the Erinyes either,” she said, “and personifies mercy as well as justice.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I replied smiling. “We ourselves are Furies, cleansing humanity of a lasting stain upon our honor on many levels, but hopefully tempered somewhat by as much a spirit of mercy as mere vengeance. The ‘Reivers’ were, in some ways, the Horticulturists writ more crudely and with a more destructive brush, since the Fortresses were for generations plundering the land which was once our common heritage — and within which we’d all once lived, rather than simply raiding our immediate surroundings for loot — of all its stored wealth and sustenance with no regard for ownership or rights. The Reivers extended their rapacity to include human beings as well as human artifacts, but this was a difference at least partly in degree, not entirely in kind. We saw that in the manner in which at least some of the Horticulturist ‘foraging parties’ back home engaged in wanton destruction of the homes and businesses they looted for food. One imagines that if, through some miracle, the original inhabitants were still living, at least some of those self-styled ‘foragers’ wouldn’t have let mere ‘ownership’ stand in their way. Horticulturist leadership paid very little attention to means, and success was measured only by how much valuable stuff was returned to the fortress, whether it were food, drink, or luxury goods. Pirates all were we.”

Beryl smiled. “You do have a way of cutting to the heart of things, Sweetheart.”

I smiled back at her, then traced the delicate line of her jaw with my fingertips. “It’s these damned hormones,” I said, “they color everything I think and feel lately. I don’t know exactly whether it’s a new level of reality, or whether it’s always been there, just waiting for me to notice. Mostly, I tend toward the latter belief, and have proof of it in you.”

“In me?” She knit her brows together slightly, looking wryly amused. “Pourquoi?”

I winked back at her. “They call the wind ‘Mariah,’ of course. All things truly powerful are feminine at the deepest level of reality, chaotic and destructive at times, but also orderly and nurturing, sometimes both at once, both cruel and kind, tempestuous at worst, but as gentle as a zephyr when approached in all due reverence. My Tarot cards were the first clue, but then you came along with a deeper connection to that psychic underpinning of the world from the start, but it was your descent into the underworld and eventual resurrection that finally demonstrated the truth that the cards had only hinted at, the existence of a ‘soul’ — for lack of a better word — that transcends life and death.”

She looked at me wide-eyed for a good long beat, and then she laughed out loud, full rich laughter that sprang straight from the belly, loud and strong and true, and I laughed with her, then laughing we walked back through the happy camp.

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved

 

 

Dandelion War Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Eleven Marching Through Georgia

 

 

In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.

 — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (c. 512 BCE)

 

I could almost smell the Atlantic, somewhere ahead of us, although it may have been my imagination. We’d already seen and heard seagulls carving noisy arcs in the skies above us, and the whole character of the land and vegetation had changed. The soft-slopes of the ancient mountains lay behind us, and even the rolling hills we’d ridden through as we descended to the endless flat lowland before us were now fond memories. For the first time since entering the uplands we’d seen fortresses, mostly abandoned and ruined now after suffering from the Reiver’s treacherous assaults, with what remained of a surrounding ringwall of besieging plants, hostile hedges already softening at the borders, since there were no people left behind to prune them, and the plants themselves were quickly readapting to the lack of human predators by reverting to type, the dandelions already shrunken sightly as they slowly merged back into the grasslands which were their natural habitat, the burdocks going to less lethal seed.

“Oddly enough,” Beryl said as we rode along, “the giant carnivorous plants have turned out to have been as dependent on human enemies as we had always been on plants. There’s a certain delicious irony there.”

“There is,” I replied judiciously, “if one ignores the death and suffering our mutual warfare entailed.”

“Well, we humans have always found death and suffering well enough on our own, don’t you think? Throughout our history, we’ve rarely managed to let all that much time pass before we find an ‘enemy’ or two to shake our fists at.”

We rode along in silence for a few moments after Beryl finished speaking. “True enough,” I finally admitted. “The Reivers seem to have sprang up like human ‘parasites’ in areas more-or-less unsuitable for agriculture and too sparsely settled to support either fortresses or their predatory plants. I reckon the pine and hardwood forests mature too slowly to change too much in less than geologic time. The dandelions and burdocks had their greatest success where the forests and native plants had been felled or uprooted to make way for monoculture farmlands.”

Beryl winked at me then and said, “Well then, we’re working in the right direction with our merry band of angels, don’t you think?”

I laughed, for more than half of us were pregnant by then. “Of course it is! After living in the grim fortresses — where it was forbidden to embark on pregnancy without permission from the ‘Chatelain’ — and then suffering under the slavers, the resurgent human spirit quite naturally reasserts itself in increased desire and fecundity.”

“By which you mean to say…?” she prompted me.

I found it difficult to repress my inclination to laugh, but managed to keep a straight face as I answered with some attempt at dignity, “After a bad scare — once they’re feeling safe — most women do have a tendency toward increased libido.”

She rolled her eyes. “ ‘Increased libido,’ Harry’s Holy Hell! Sometimes, after an engagement, I get so horny I could fuck for seven straight days without stopping.”

“Okay… that too…,” I confessed, trying to remain at least a little demure, despite having experienced the violence of Beryl’s passions, which I had to admit made me hot from time to time. “Evidently, your experiences in the Underworld had you hobnobbing with a little of the ‘rough trade’ one expects to find down there.”

“Oh, Honey!” she confided, “It’s not for nothing that Hades is depicted in ancient art as driving a tethrippon, the four-horse chariot of the Gods. Just imagine those four powerful black stallions surging ahead as one, plunging and bucking, throwing back their heads in triumph, teeth gnashing, fierce, wild, and completely irresistible! He… or She… — it doesn’t much matter — can be… a little overwhelming, from the first onrush of darkness to the final climax that presages oblivion…. Hades’ other name, of course, is Dionysus, epiphany personified, the burning bush that is not consumed,” here she arched one knowing brow, “the towering pillar of undying fire, the sudden lightning that strikes one to the core, the God (or Goddess) of divine ecstasy.”

I blushed. Then I squirmed a little on my saddle. I may seem dense at times, but I do know my way around a metaphor.

Beryl grinned at me. “Time to take a little break?” she said.

It was.

 

 

Did I tell you that we’d gotten the radio network up through most of the coastal plains by then? At least though Virginia and North Carolina. It was my doing, mostly, because I’d found the original field repair manuals for the issue Horticulturist radios in my library, back in the City, and had carried what looked like the handiest of them along. The radios themselves had been hard to find back home, but they were still fairly plentiful on the Atlantic Coast, especially in the Hampton Roads area, because there was a huge military depot there that was still under Horticulturist control. It must have been several miles wide at least, sprawled over an enormous area set well back from the coast, a ‘military reservation,’ they called it. Heck, they had ‘tanks’ there, huge behemoths made of steel and layered ceramic and Kevlar armor with weird ribbons of flat-linked chain that they evidently used instead of wheels. Unfortunately, they were fresh out of fuel to make them run, until I’d suggested that they start cultivating the giant sunflowers for the sake of their reapers full of volatile hydrocarbons. I wasn’t sure exactly what mixture of napalm juice and oil would make them work, but there ought to be some way to test, since they weren’t likely to run out of ‘tanks’ for a hundred years, given the rows and rows of huge warehouses they had them stored in, but they waiting for a miracle, I reckon, like any hoarder.

Anyway, in the field guide for the helmet-mounted radios, it described a ‘field expedient’ for hilly terrain which consisted of a dipole antenna which could be mounted on a stick and then hoisted up into the air by any means possible. The manual showed antennas mounted on trees, or even pulled up into the air on ‘kites,’ easily-constructed ærodynamic tethered parafoils which lifted themselves into the air in almost any sort of breeze, so lifts of a hundred feet or more were easy to arrange, albeit somewhat at the mercy of the weather. The signal tended to fade in and out as the ‘kite’ rearranged itself in relation to the wind, but with patience — and a little luck — a fairly reliable communication schedule could be maintained with fortresses as much as fifty miles away or more, depending on the terrain. On average, though, with an antenna two hundred feet in the air, a radio could reach out fifty miles to a soldier on the ground in flat terrain. If both antennas could be elevated, that distance would double, of course, but the vagaries of two wind-borne antennas made communications at least twice as frustrating, but we very quickly realized that antennas carried up to the tops of mountains, or even hills, could make a huge difference in the overall quality of our radio network. I’d gathered from my reading that at one time there had been specialized radios known as ‘repeaters’ whose sole purpose had been to relay communications over hills or long distances, but of course those had fallen into disrepair — or had even been junked for parts — when the fortresses drew in upon themselves and stopped paying any attention to what was going on in the outside world.

The long and the short of it was that we had plenty of warning before we met up with a column of our soldiers riding down from the Virginia Horticultural base we’d established near Hampton Roads. We decided to meet somewhere in the vicinity of Savannah, since it was large enough to be difficult to miss, and we thought at the time that there was still an active fortress there, although we’d had no word from them for quite some time, according to the local authorities up north, more than thirty years. We kept the exact location rather vague, however, because we hadn’t changed the frequencies of the radios, in part because we didn’t have the manufacturing capability to recreate and tune new circuitry, but also because we wanted to be able to talk to any survivors of real Horticultural outposts we might encounter. This left us open to covert eavesdropping, of course, but it wan’t a huge handicap, first because few among the Reivers had the knowledge or the training to maintain the radios in working order, much less any ability to repair them, but also because we had a psychic side-channel which seemed fairly safe from any but the transformed, and the transformed, of course, were women, when push came to shove. Thus far we’d run across only the one exception to the general rule amongst the slavers, that women were mere ‘property’ in their eyes, to be taken, used, and then discarded at will, which meant that transformation — rather difficult to notice in a woman born — meant an almost-instant rebellion and slaughter of their quondam ‘masters’ wherever and whenever the new pandemic took hold, which was happening more and more as the number of us wandering through the eastern half of North America grew larger and we began to take up all the available space and military power.

Whatever might be said for the efficacy of our spore-laden missiles, mosquitos, especially in the lowlands, were a very efficient means of transmitting the infection, especially in the slave quarters, where the women were crowded in together to make it simpler to control them. In women, the process of transformation ran to completion in at most half the time it did in men, often much more rapidly, so by the time any changes amongst the Reivers themselves took place by means of which they might have been able to put up some sort of defense, most were already mostly dead or dying at the hands of their erstwhile victims, saving us all a bit of trouble.

“What do you think?” I asked Beryl. “Should we take Savannah from the northern coast? Or should we come in over the inland swamps?”

“I think from inland,” she said. “As I recall your maps, there were several broad estuaries protecting the city from the north, and they’re bound to be larger and more impassable by now, so the speed of our assault would be diminished, and it might even be necessary to backtrack and go around if we encountered unexpected difficulties. Sherman made his famous march from the highlands more-or-less straight to the sea, and I doubt that the general idea is unsound, even after half a millennium or more. He was a master strategist, and knew how to exploit every feature of the terrain in a time when armies were lumbering things, and battles were either won and lost by the number of wagons in the supply train.”

“How do you know about Sherman?” I asked her. “Wasn’t he a bit before our time?” As far as I knew, Beryl hadn’t spent all that much time in the library, and I knew that her family had been strictly enlisted-class, unlikely to have the access to any military library that I’d had as my father’s child, at least before I’d been forced to move to the barracks. If I’d been a better soldier, I suppose I would have had a ‘fast-track’ to officer training, but of course that hadn’t worked out all that well for me.

“I met him,” she said. “He’s quite the raconteur.”

“You met him‽” I exclaimed. She hadn’t been at all forthcoming about her adventures underground, other than a mysterious hint or two, but the idea that she’d been chatting up famous people I actually knew about had never occurred to me.

“Well, yes,” she said. “It would be a little awkward being the Queen of the Damned without holding audience from time to time, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t understand” I said. “How exactly did you get to be the Queen?”

“Hades chose me, of course,” she said wide-eyed, little Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth. “How does one usually manage such things?”

“But how does ‘Hades’ choose people?”

“Through capture, of course, although some few people choose themselves, poor fools.”

“Wait a minute! You’re talking about different things, aren’t you? Isn’t being dead the same for everyone?”

She blinked owlishly at me. “Of course not, how could it be? The honored dead have vastly superior status, and every possibility of rebirth, whilst those who die performing acts of ignominy or cowardice are condemned to an afterlife of eternal shame and degradation. In the ordinary course of things, one has no second chances after having badly handled the first.”

“None at all?”

“Of course not! Why should there be? In my own case, I died heroically,” she said with a slight moue, “if somewhat beyond my intention, but with a brave smile, a joke, and a kind word upon my lips, so many people remembered me with fondness and pride, especially you, so of course that kept my memory alive and green, and the added fact that Gumball and his many pals loved me, in their way, and had access to the entire sensorium of the wide green world, propelled me to a position of authority and power in the Underworld.” Here she paused and added brightly, a little sly, “It’s good to be the Queen.”

“So Gumball had a hand in it? if you’ll pardon the clumsy words, since he has no hands at all.”

“Oh, yes!” she said. “In fact, he was the agent of my almost immediate deliverance, although I don’t know exactly how he did it, but I suppose that he’d eaten enough people by then that he knew exactly how they’re put together, especially since he had my former body as a model.” She paused then, thinking. “I wonder if he ate me, not that I’d mind, of course, since everything turned out well, and I wasn’t really using my old body for anything in particular at the time.”

“You have a new body?” I asked, foolishly, since I’d seen both how little and how much she’d changed. She was still recognizably Beryl, but her beauty had been enhanced in subtle ways, coming closer to ’perfection,’ if you will, or maybe beauty wasn’t even the proper word… she was more herself, perfected, the ideal embodiment of the true Beryl, the form she’d had before the world was born.

“Yes,” she said, as if surprised that I might think otherwise. “Despite your best efforts, I bled out, and the cells of the brain start dying immediately, I think. It’s not too many minutes before all that’s left of a living brain is useless mush.” She grinned. “Dead bodies have a very short shelf life. One can’t keep them around for long before one notices.”

She was right there. We’d seen enough casualties by now, in various states of disrepair, that there was no doubt at all when intelligence left a dead stare behind. “Yeah,” I said. “It ws a stupid question.”

Then she laughed again — in fact, now that I thought of it, she was laughing a lot more these days — “Didn’t anyone ever tell you, ‘There are no stupid questions, only thoughtless answers’?”

I let out a heavy sigh, as annoyed as any teenager, and complained, “You’re neither my mother nor my ‘spiritual advisor,’ and there are loads of stupid questions in life, and plenty of people anxious to provide stupid answers. Just look around us!”

She made a show of looking, then said, “I see a world in which humans are living well within the ‘carrying capacity ’ of the land, which one supposes is a good thing.”

“True,” I admitted grudgingly, “but it certainly wasn’t intentional, and could hardly be said to represent an ‘answer’ of any sort. All it really proves is that every œcology is self-correcting to some degree, and that no sin goes unpunished in the long run, although I do admit leaning a bit more toward the retributive side these days than toward reconciliation.”

“That’s as it should be,” she said. “Soldiers generally represent the punitive power of the State, and neither its general comity nor hospitality.”

“But are we the State? Aside from my ‘spin,’ we haven’t seen any central authority at all.”

“True, but the Horticulturist Oath includes the words, ‘I… do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.’ You’ll notice that it makes no mention whatsoever of any particular representative of that solemn covenant, so it’s fairly clear that we have an obligation to the existential State, and not to any particular incarnation of it. The Reivers were in flagrant violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, not to mention the Nineteenth and the universal laws against murder, extortion, and rape. In the absence of any extant State authority, we must presume that Federal authority takes precedence.”

“Spoken like a lawyer,” I replied with a smirk.

“It ought to,” she said, “I’ve got all the lawyers.”

I had to laugh, since she had all of everyone, eventually.

 

 

The reconnaissance on Savannah didn’t go all that well, although it wasn’t nearly as bad as it might have been, at least in retrospect.

“What in Harry’s Hell is that!” I said to Beryl. We were on the very edge of a clearing surrounding the supposed site of the closest Fortress we knew of, but it was an immense mound of greenery with no rock or concrete visible at all, as un-Horticultist an artifact as one might possibly imagine, so we were instantly suspicious. There were what appeared to be people coming and going as we watched, slipping into the mound or out of it as if it were made of fog, but it clearly wasn’t fog, and they clearly weren’t any sort of people we’d ever seen before, because they had shiny green skin and no hair at all, not even eyebrows, which I don’t think was any sort of East Coast fashion statement. “Got any ideas?” I asked her. She had that look of intense concentration she gets when she’s communing with her spirits, or shades, whatever you want to call them.

Finally she said, “I think it’s kudzu, or so the only botanist I could find offhand believes. He’s fascinated by it, though, and would appreciate the opportunity to observe in person.”

I stared at her, dumbfounded. “You can do that‽”

She winked at me flirtatiously and said, “I can do almost anything. ‘Si cʾest possible, cʾest fait; impossible? cela se fera.’ If it’s possible, consider it done; the impossible takes a bit longer. Exactly how long would you like?”

I pouted. “In that case, I’m afraid we’ll have to retire from our observation post; I’d hate to be interrupted, after all.”

“Well, in that case, presto!” she said, and we were gone.

 

 

As it turned out, it took just as long to grow a botanist as it had Beryl, so it was some few days before we returned to the strange green mound, but we hadn’t been idle, or not exactly.

 

 

“Did you notice,” Beryl asked me as we lay concealed in ambush, accompanied by our new botanist, who was still looking around herself in wonder and amazement, “that these green ‘people’ seem singularly incurious?”

I had noticed, actually, and had done a spread on them, but the results had been inconclusive, centering — ominously enough — around the nine of swords, meaning deception, grief, death, and disappointment, amongst other things, but also featuring the eight of swords, bondage, also ominous, but with no coherent trend that I could see. “They did seem odd,” I answered. “We’ve only had a glimpse or two, but they were and are very strange indeed, I thought. They were all jostling around, striding from place to place — busy with whatever it was that they were doing, I suppose — but not one of them ever bothered to talk to anyone, not that I noticed, nor even looked at each other, as people usually do. They just went about whatever they were doing as if they were all of them parts of some sort of strange green machine.”

“I’ve noticed much the same thing,” she said, “albeit in less emotionally evocative detail, but I couldn’t touch their minds at all, which was and is much more than merely odd, since I should have been able to read almost anyone and anything living from that distance, especially when I could see them right in front of me.”

“I couldn’t either, but then I wasn’t actually trying all that hard. They gave me the creeps, which may have been a subconscious reaction to the selfsame vacancy of aspect I mentioned, but might just as well have been because they were green! for Harry’s sake. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to make friends, but I know for a fact that no one of my acquaintance is green!” Then I thought for a moment and added, “Except for Gumball, of course, and his many friends, but they seem so fluffy and cheerful that it’s difficult to think of them as merely plants. What I meant to say was that green people are somewhat disquieting, especially green people who act like robots.”

I was a little ticked off at Beryl, though, because it seemed sometimes that she felt somehow superior to those amongst us who didn’t happen to be Goddesses of Hell, or wherever the hell she was lurking during her absence from my life. Her belated revelation that she’d evidently been fucking this ‘Hades’ guy didn’t really sit well either, now that I’d had time to actually think about it, although — in perfect fairness — I could hardly complain, since my own imaginary ‘husband’ had been coming between us for a good long time before her untimely death and unexpected resurrection. My putative ‘marriage’ to a high-ranking officer had seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect it hadn’t made any difference at all. In fact, when considered carefully in the light of our universal changes, the more perceptive amongst us must surely have realized that a ‘husband’ probably wasn’t in the cards for any of us, since any theoretical husband would quickly become yet another wife, given any intimate contact at all.

Luckily for me, most people never really think things through, and so my recent lapse from a necessary ‘fidelity’ to a non-existent man — not to mention my very obvious pregnancy — could just as easily be explained as succumbing to human weakness under stress as irrefutable ‘evidence’ of the underhanded chicanery and double-dealing that it actually represented that might bring my little house of cards come tumbling down. In terms of my pregnancy, I didn’t stand out at all from the crowd of women around me, the majority of whom were pregnant, though not all.

Maybe I should just kill my rotten bastard of an inconvenient husband with my trusty typewriter. I even had a small supply of the proper forms available. Then again, in fiction — and probably in real life — it’s almost always obsessive attention to detail that makes eventual discovery more likely, so maybe best leave well enough alone. Plenty of people have died over the years — especially on campaign — and no one thinks a thing about it if they didn’t manage to leave records behind them. In fact, the lack of correspondence from the lazy sod, now that more reliable communications were spreading our scope and outreach toward New York, might be the best evidence of all, since that would be the one bit of documentation I wouldn’t have to fake.

My own foraging party had vanished without a trace, if one doesn’t count me, and of course one can’t, so the likelihood of a somewhat larger party going missing wasn’t all that odd. My own survival had everything to do with my accidental ‘discovery’ of the magic ‘cheese,’ which had been the transformative source of everything that had happened to every one of us, like ambrósias, like néktar, the divine exhalations of Gaia Herself, Great Mother of us all, which carry us inexorably toward æternal life and undying bliss. I’d been blessed with a purely secular transubstantiation, the mundane equivalent of Beryl’s later transmogrification into Goddess incarnate. ‘Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiæ,’ as one might say. We’re smack dab in the middle of a great Revival. Who knew?

“Look! I didn’t ask for any of this, so cut me a little slack, why don’t you?” Beryl was obviously irritated.

One of the big advantages of having a girlfriend who could quite literally read minds, was that one could have a knock-down, drag-out argument without ever saying a word in anger, at least theoretically. I merely rolled my eyes in her general direction and said, somewhat petulantly, I admit, “Oh, yeah? At least my boyfriend was only a figment of my fevered imagination!” Okay, so stunning repartee wasn’t one of my strong points.

She smirked at me and said, “Is there any part of ‘capture’ that you fail to understand? You may recall that I wasn’t given all that much choice in the matter, and the dead are notoriously ‘unevolved.’ Gods especially tend to lag behind the times, because omnipotence tends to discourage any sort of thoughtful approach to problem-solving, much less relationships of mutual respect and loving concern. In fact, Hades was an asshole, but I was stuck with the reality of a social milieu with a prehistoric attitude toward interpersonal relationships in which ‘brides’ were imperfectly distinguished from rape victims.”

That shut me up right properly. We’d both seen plenty of examples in the women we’d rescued from bondage, at least some of whom had become… fond of their particular ‘protectors,’ or at least grateful for their small kindnesses, and had managed to save them from the general slaughter. And I couldn’t claim all that much superiority as the child of Horticulturists either. Just as ancient slaves in this country had been forced to take the surnames of their masters, so my mother had taken my father’s name through long ‘custom,’ and in the end he’d exercised his ‘right’ as pater familias to end her very life when she was found wanting, even though through no particular fault of her own. I wasn’t ignorant; I’d actually read the Bible, which still contained the proper religious ritual whereby a woman raped and abducted from amongst one’s enemies could be transformed into a ‘proper’ wife; which still enjoined slaves to obey their masters; and which urged wives to submit themselves to their husbands, a cosmic hierarchy with some sort of God as the ultimate despot whose authority descended down through servants and slaves of varying degrees, to wives, to lesser women of even lower status, even to children, whom one was advised to beat regularly to train them in the habits of masochistic submission and obedience. “It was like that, then?” I asked, ambiguously.

“Yes… and no,” she answered with equal obscurity. “Time ran oddly there — as it does sometimes in dreams — so I’m not quite sure whether I ‘belonged’ to Hades for an hour, or for a thousand years. It wasn’t all bad by any means, but neither was it uniformly good, because at no point was I truly free, at least until the end, when I escaped and came back to you.” She glanced at me with a peculiar awkward grace.

Something in her look affected me with an odd feeling of lassitude, a sensation of warmth and lightness in the pit of my stomach, or perhaps somewhat lower down, and I found it strangely difficult to catch my breath. From somewhere antique words came to me and I sang, sotto voce, as quietly as the beating wings of a moth in the moonlight,

“Oh, hard is the fortune of all womankind.
We’re always controlled, we’re always confined.
Confined by our parents until we are wives,
Then slaves to our husbands for the rest of our lives.”

“Yeah, well,” she said. “One is still held fast in bondage, whether one’s restraints are forged from cold iron or plaited from silk as soft as a zephyr’s breath.”

Never having actually been married, despite the deceptive status I’d affected, and certainly never ‘married’ through rapture to a God, I had nothing to say.

She grinned at me. “It rankles, doesn’t it? Having someone know anything you can’t fathom?”

“Everything’s a metaphor.” I smiled at her. “Even knowing isn’t much help when push comes to shove. I’ve noticed that every time I stub my toe it hurts as badly as it did the first time, and it’s still an unpleasant surprise.”

“Which means?” she asked.

“Which means,” I said, “I’m curious, but not curious enough to invite a similar experience. There are some things which I’d prefer to remain ignorant of, all in all, and of course your experiences have nothing to do with us at all. It was another life, just as my own life before meeting you, our lives together before you died, my lonely life after your murder, and then my new life when you miraculously returned from death, were each one unique and separate from each other, connected only by the fragile threads of memory. So we pass from day to day, each day becoming a new memory for the next, until at last we run out of days entirely, which I fondly hope will be a good long time from now, and hope too that each future day we have will be spent together, in one way or another. More than that, I have no right to say, because we’re both of us soldiers, and both our lives are pledged to something greater than whatever it is we’re privileged to share.”

“You old softie, you,” Beryl cooed into my ear. “You do love me after all, my strange adventures notwithstanding.”

“Of course I do, you randy harridan. Next time you chance to die, let’s see if you can take me with you and we’ll just see how well Hades stands up to the two of us together! I reckon we can make the so-called Monarch of Hell squeal like a little girl, if we put our minds to it.”

She laughed out loud, almost instantly clapping her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound before she drew the attention of the green automatons. At last she managed to say, calmly enough, “Next time we try spying, do let’s try to stop ourselves from making jokes, however tempting.”

“Bosh,” I said quietly. “What’s mortal danger worth but the occasion for a little levity from time to time. Once we start taking danger too seriously, we’re almost bound to fail.” I reached over Beryl’s shoulder to draw the attention of our botanical expert, newly dubbed ‘Lynette.’ “Hey, Sweetie, what can you tell us about our green pals here?” I said quietly.

“The runners and vines along the ground here, even those surmounting the large structure, are definitely some form of Pueraria lobata, kudzu, in layman’s terms,” Lynette said, “and I’d guess that these creatures have some sort of commensal or symbiotic relationship to them, but I’ll need a specimen to say for sure, if we can take one quietly.”

“They do tend to stick together,” Beryl observed.

“Almost like ants,” I said. “Let’s do try not to stir them up too much.”

“Good plan!” Beryl said and promptly fired an HE missile toward their leafy castle, which instantly erupted into furious action as the thermite explosion and fire expanded into a general conflagration and the denizens began running, not away, but toward the flames, toward and even into the burning castle. Most of their activity seemed directed toward putting out the flames, as green people flung themselves upon the burning foliage and vines, beating at them with their hands until they themselves caught fire. Others dove into the heart of the fire and started handing out what looked like eggs.

Our botanist could hardly contain herself with glee as she observed their behavior, completely selfless, their entire activity focused on what must be their home, their collective futurity. I, at least, was horrified. “Why did you do that?” I said tightly.

Beryl looked as cool as a cucumber as she said, “First, whoever they are, they’ve either killed or assimilated all the inhabitants of one of our outposts, which is an act of war any way you look at it, but most important is that they’re not human, and they’re very dangerous.”

“How do you know that they killed everyone? Maybe the fortress was already empty and they just moved in?”

“What happened to the refugees? We know from our detached Virginia troop that they’ve encountered untouched and fully human fortresses just over the State line, but there are no rumors of Reivers in the area to account for an empty fortress so far from their usual camps in the uplands and mountains. In fact, we haven’t actually seen any Reivers since we reached the coastal plains.”

“But how do you know that they’re not human? We’ve been changed, and maybe this is just another type of change.”

“No, it isn’t. Just look at them; they have no sense of self-preservation, and it’s not simple courage. They simply don’t care that they’re being burnt up, because their essential ‘self,’ is either missing or so diffuse that these… creatures we see running around the fire are no more significant than our fingernails, which we trim without a thought.” She looked around suddenly. “In fact, here comes one of those things right now. Look sharp!” One of the green people came crashing through the underbrush behind up, eyes focused on the fire when Beryl took out her machete and sliced off its head as neatly as could be. Horribly, the thing didn’t even appear to notice its sudden lack of a head, and kept on running until Beryl brought it down by slicing off its legs with the same dispassionate efficiency. Unfortunately, even that wasn’t enough, because the thing kept dragging itself along with its arms, so they too joined the dismembered parts upon the ground as Beryl picked up the head, sliced in in two with another slash of her machete, and handed it to Lynette. “Quick, tell us as much as you can, because eventually whatever motivates these things will notice us, in which case we’ll have to run like Harry’s Green Hell.”

Lynette took charge of our specimen with commendable alacrity and started dissecting it at speed. “First,” she said, “The creatures are vampiric.” she used a small scalpel to lift one of its teeth, longer than the rest, which was hinged something like a rattlesnake’s fangs, but with some specialized apparatus backing up a siphon fully a quarter inch in interior diameter which descended right down its neck with no hint of tongue or gullet.

“I see no hint of fine vision capability in these eyes,” she added. “I’m guessing that they distinguish light from dark and that’s all, possibly gradations of light, but there seems to no differentiation between the few large light sensors that take up all the interior space of the pseudo-eye. There’s no focusing mechanism, for example, so any distinctions must be made either through touch or some coördinating transmission of information between individual motile cells like this one. It’s really quite fascinating, what looks like a completely new life form, completely unrelated to any existing animal.”

“Speaking of coördination,” Beryl warned us, “Something in that stinking pile has noticed us.” The fire seemed to have been smothered — at least in part — by the bodies of the creatures, and many of those left seemed to have shifted their focus onto us. As she said it, the mass of green creatures began to advance toward us in freakish silence.

I noticed rustling in the woods to either side of us and shouted, “Grab what you can and run like Harry’s Green Hell! They’re all around us!”

Beryl had the presence of mind to fire another two HE missiles straight at the leafy castle, which promptly caught fire again, causing at least half of the advancing green minions to turn around and march back toward the castle, or at least it seemed that they had, but we weren’t paying all that much attention, because the green beasties from the forest were reaching out to grab us by then, the lipless gashes that were their mouths gaped wide, their fangs extended, and one of them had caught hold of my left leg! It was enormously strong, so strong I couldn’t break free, but I was dragging the thing behind me as it squirmed about trying to sink its fangs into my lower leg or ankle. Almost at the last minute, I finally managed to pull my machete from my belt and lopped off the thing’s arm, which finally let me surge ahead of my pursuers. At that point, I took the time to turn and fire off one of my own missiles toward the nest of these evil things. Belatedly, I realized that Beryl had been right, and gasped out, almost breathless, “Well, Beryl, I apologize sincerely for doubting your initial assessment. Whatever these sleekit beasties are, they’re an existential threat to humanity.” Then I turned to Lynette, who was struggling to carry the other half of the thing’s head in one hand whilst wielding her machete to good effect on our pursuers. “Run along with me so we can guard the head between us as we fend off our pursuers long enough to be on our merry way.”

Beryl, of course, had been improvising as she ran and had managed to cobble together a sort of bangalore torpedo which she dropped behind us as we ran, and then detonated by pulling sharply on a wire she’d fixed to the detonator. I could feel the flash of heat before the force of the explosion sent us tumbling, but she’d managed to time it well enough that we weren’t hurt, and almost all of our flock of green monsters were flopping around like fish thrown on the ground by a stream, their connection with whatever had been controlling them somehow disrupted. Their confusion lasted long enough for us to reach our horses, at which time we rode away as fast as we could spur our mounts. “That was simply loads of fun, Beryl, but let’s try hard to be better prepared for our next encounter.”

“Oh, we are, Sweetheart. I’ve snagged us another head, so we have one and a half heads to muck around with. I’ve got mine in a rucksack, and would advise you to do the same, since I don’t know how their communication scheme works exactly, and would hate to give them any clues that we can avoid.”

That sounded like a good idea, so I dumped everything out of my own rucksack as we rode and stuffed the remaining half head into the now-empty sack after grabbing it from Lynette. “Got it!” I called out to Beryl, “but if you’ll look off to your right you’ll see a small gang of them ahead of us.” I punctuated my warning with an HE missile which wiped out most of the hostiles, but worried that the thing’s long-range communications seemed better than I’d thought possible. We were already halfway back to our camp and the things were still intent on catching us, so they were able to relay the alarm at least two miles away from our initial encounter with their hive, or nest, or whatever it was. They reminded me of insects, somehow, more than plants, so either word seemed appropriate.

“I can see that we’re going to need a different set of weapons to deal with these things,” Beryl yelled back to me. “Some sort of pole weapon, I think, like a halberd, or a glaive-guisarmes, would be useful for pruning off their heads and arms, since they don’t seem to have all that much fine coördination, at least when they’re out of sight from their main mound of vegetation.”

I added, “If we’re right about them having to ‘sum up’ the viewpoints of many of the creatures to get any sort of vision beyond vague distinctions between light and dark, it might also be useful to modify some of our missiles to produce lots more smoke, to screen the sites of active battle from easy purview.” The conversation was quickly becoming tiresome, being conducted at the top of our lungs whilst riding at a hard gallop. In fact, if it weren’t for the creatures closing on our right, I’d be prepared to skip the commentary in favor of more riding.

I drew my machete, none-the-less, but wished that I’d had a heavy cavalry saber instead, or perhaps a Moorish scimitar. “If we get out of this,” I yelled, “remind me to reïnvent horse armor and proper cavalry edged weapons! Our machetes are way too dinky to reliably protect our mounts, much less ourselves!”

Beryl spurred her own gelding — by now in short supply, as ‘mares’ were replacing them with great regularity, now that the infection had spread to our herd — to greater speed, catching up to the two of us on mares quite easily, despite our best efforts, and forged ahead slightly, now armed with an issue flame thrower, with a single tank of our precious napalm mixture, which was in short supply due to the lack of the giant sunflowers in this region of the South. “Here’s hoping!” she called out with a grin as she passed us. “I’d hate to be forced to reconcile with my quondam husband! I’m afraid we didn’t part on the very best of terms!” This last was tossed over her shoulder as she forged ahead, already using the flamethrower judiciously to sprinkle fire through the packed mass of green monsters, where it quickly spread among the plants, who didn’t seem to care, moving toward us with eerie of purpose, their pale green fingers outstretched to snatch at us, even as they burned and their limbs withered into brittle charcoal, which flaked away to dust.

Beryl’s flamethrower sputtered out as the tank emptied, and she tossed it away as so much excess baggage, instead taking up a ten-foot length of steel chain she’d liberated from the last group of Reivers we’d encountered and using it as a flail, whipping it around her head so fast it actually whistled as it spun a shiny wheel of death and dismemberment that sliced through the crowding beasties like a hot knife through butter, but they kept on coming in a creepy silent wave of pure hostility, their hands outstretched before them, their mouths gaped open and their fangs extended. Even when Beryl altered the length of chain slightly and started snapping off their fangs with dexterous adjustments of her spinning wheel of steel, they behaved as if nothing had happened, until she managed to snap off a few heads, but even then the bodies just collapsed and their own companions would impale the headless corpses with their fangs and rapidly extract whatever liquid was in them until only a dry husk remained. It was more then merely creepy, it was a nightmare sprung to life in the plain light of day; these… things were evil. They needed to die, because they were inimical to all of life.

I was enveloped in cold fury when I saw my impetuous lover battling a horde of monstrous vampires; and I placed one hand upon my belly as a talisman, my womb even now filled with a life for which I was responsible, and rode forward toward our common foe. “Beryl! Take cover!” I screamed and raised my own rocket launcher, releasing a single HE missile, my last, toward the rear of the swarm of green things, where it burst and scattered burning thermite through their surging amorphous mass. I felt a fierce pride when I saw the bulk of them alight; I was almost always dead on the mark when I aimed to hit anything, even difficult shots like this one had been, with a very small margin of error, and much at stake.

I wasted little time before taking apart the now-useless launcher with my bare hands, since the business end of it was a long steel forging riveted to a metal tube. By popping off the tube, I was left with a somewhat dull, but still serviceable, sword. I rode forward and took my proper place beside Beryl, who was even now springing up from where she lay under the heap of headless bodies she’d dragged over herself as cover for the burst of pyrotechnic chemical fire I’d precipitated. “Taking a little rest, Sweetheart?” I asked mildly.

“Sapphire, dear, I was trying to take a nap, just to refresh myself from our tiring journey, when someone set off a hell of an explosion right over my head. My ears are still ringing, for Harry’s sake!”

“Well, Dearest, if you hadn’t brought all your little play-date pals out to carouse you wouldn’t be nearly so tired and wouldn’t have needed that nap quite so badly. You really must learn a little moderation in your choice of friends.”

“I admit,” she said, twirling her steel whip with deadly skill, “that I failed to envision quite this level of boisterous enthusiasm.”

“They have been very naughty,” I said, wielding my improvised blade to fairly good effect, although I did wish for a better edge. “I really don’t feel that we should consort with these fellows on a regular basis, Beryl, at least until we can organize a proper playgroup.” Using my vorpal sword to nip off heads was the best strategy, I’d decided. The damned things took the loss of mere limbs in stride, as it were, but the loss of a head was slightly beyond their powers of durability, and it slowed down their companions to boot, when they stopped to feed upon their fallen comrades, a net gain of no small proportion, but it took a mighty blow to sever the neck completely and at once, so it was a bit tiring, since there seemed to be no shortage of replacement heads that needed trimming for every one that toppled to the ground. “There’s nothing for it, I think, but to bring them back to camp. Taking proper care of them is going to require more hands than I can spare right now.” I was still lopping heads to fairly good effect, but the wear and tear on my improvised sword was taking a heavy toll on its efficiency. Never exactly sharp, it was becoming less so by the moment.

“Agreed,” Beryl said reluctantly, although her metal whip was holding up quite well, “but we really ought to send word ahead. Do you suppose Lynette could manage that on her own?”

“I don’t think I’ll need to, actually,” Lynette said from right behind us. “They seem to have found us of their own initiative.”

I risked a glance over my shoulder without pausing in my general infliction of mayhem. “Oh, poo!” I said, just a bit discouraged. Our troop had indeed arrived, but right behind them were rank upon rank of marching green monsters, what looked like thousands of them.

 

 

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012-2013 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved