The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  She looked back to the RV, to the rear doors where the electric access ramp was. Of course, one person was still missing.

  "Not here," Jake answered. "Too long. Or maybe he's somewhere else, more important." He grinned, but it was sad. "You can probably guess where."

  She could.

  "I love you, Jake."

  He beamed. "I'll see you real soon, kiddo. Protect the line."

  She nodded, then the desert outside Denver dissolved, and she resolved in another place.

  She was standing on a road at night, with the lapping of the Pacific Ocean off to the left. Ahead to the right was the Chinese Theater, with a few makeshift streetlamps buzzing in front. Beside her hung the door to her old apartment, where she'd grown up.

  It was that night. She knew it from the way the sea smelled, from the static charge building in the air, rubbing on her skin with the sighing ocean breeze.

  Another motionless jump came and went, and she was inside, surveying her old pink bedroom. She'd never changed it, not since they'd given it to her; some kind of sad protest. Cerulean and Lara had scrubbed it of the previous owner's possessions, another little girl lost to the flood, though Anna had still found a fragment of her diary and a teddy squashed down the side of the bed.

  She stood there for a time, taking deep breaths that she didn't need to breathe, preparing herself for the moment she'd dreamed of for so long. She knew he was there at the door. She knew what he would say, and all the things she'd wanted to say for so long. Still, it was hard.

  She turned.

  Cerulean sat in his chair in the doorway, where she'd left him on the night she'd left New LA behind. His face seemed younger than she remembered, but then that had been three years ago, back when he'd always been the adult standing in her path, the image of authority preventing her moving on. In truth he was only thirty-three, young still and so full of promise.

  In his hands, in his lap, he held two silver necklaces, each with a half of a heart pendant. The pendants would combine when clicked together, and his gaze lay on them still, as if he'd been here ever since she'd left, waiting for her to come back. This had always been her greatest regret. She'd never seen him again after this, and then he'd died.

  "Daddy," she said, and her voice broke. She wasn't a little girl anymore, and comfort wasn't so simple as hurling herself into his lap, where his strong arms could encircle her and make everything all right. There were costs that even he couldn't help. Still, she dropped to her knees before him, putting her hands on the arms of his wheelchair. "It's me."

  He looked up but his eyes roved, as if they couldn't quite settle on her. "I didn't mean to be here," he said in a faint, mournful voice. "I'm sorry. I try not to come, Anna, but I get pulled back."

  Immediately she began to weep. The pain of it was right there, hot in her chest and flooding up. He looked so lost. To know that she had done this to him was too much to bear.

  "I'd take it back if I could," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

  His head roved more, like a blind man homing in on her position. "Little Anna," he said, then smiled faintly, as if struck by a pleasant memory. "You're a woman, now. I always hoped I'd make you proud. And I always understood. I knew you needed to see your father. I know what that means."

  She reached up and took his cheeks in her hands, guiding his eyes down to her. He gave a little jolt as their eyes finally met, as if he hadn't really believed she was there.

  "I am so proud of you," she said, "you died a hero, the greatest man I know. I've regretted nothing so much as this moment. I hope one day you could be proud of me too, like you used to be."

  Now he began to weep, quietly and with dignity, like a great silent man on an island sobbing for his lost love.

  "I always have been. I'm proud to bursting." He looked again at the two necklaces in his hands, as if they had their own gravity. "I didn't mean to come here. I know it hurts you, and I don't want to bring you pain. But still, I always come back."

  Anna looked at the necklaces. She remembered how she'd given hers back to him, the night she'd left. 'It's time to grow up, Robert,' she'd told him then. 'To stop pretending. I'm not your real daughter, and we should stop acting as if I am.'

  For so long she'd dreamed of taking that back. On long nights racing across the Atlantic to get home, she'd planned all the ways she could make it up to him. Then when she got back to New LA, he'd been gone. There'd been no chance for absolution.

  Now she looked at the necklaces with a new trickle of hope. Perhaps, in this place, it might be possible.

  "Daddy," she said, moving her hands to his, "please, can I have it back?"

  He looked at her. Tears splashed in his lap.

  "Really?" he asked.

  She kissed his hands. She kissed his forehead. "Yes. Please, I want it back more than anything."

  For a long moment he didn't move. Then gingerly, carefully, as if afraid the precious necklace might slip away, he held it out. Anna tilted her head, sobbing now, and let him loop it over her neck. It fell to rest warm from his hands against her collarbone.

  Salty tears ran over her lips, and she gave a little delighted laugh. Already she felt better. The hole was healing inside. "I've missed you so much," she said.

  He smiled, eyes starry with tears. Now his necklace hung around his neck too, twinkling with some unseen light. "You were the best thing in my life. I'm proud to have known you, Anna. Savior of the line. Goodbye."

  She hugged him. For a second he was warm, he was real and right there, strong arms around her back, making her whole and giving her a home.

  Then he was gone. Anna was left sobbing into his wheelchair, clutching the half-heart pendant tight in her fist.

  * * *

  For a time after that, she drifted.

  There were other places to see, and other people to speak with. For a time she walked with Dr. Ozark in the desert at night, who'd once read her stories and dandled her on his knee. He'd always done the best voice for the Cheshire Cat; going from growly to silly in the flash of an eye. He tried it for her again now.

  "You see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

  She laughed, and they stood side-by-side before the RV he'd been in when the demon took him.

  "It hurt," Anna said.

  He patted her shoulder.

  "The pain's a memory, Anna. That's all."

  She sat with Chantelle on a rock in the desert, near where another demon had taken her, talking about boys. Chantelle had always had a thing for Jake, though of course she knew now that he was gay.

  "Have you seen him?" Anna asked.

  "In the distance," Chantelle answered. "It was more of a love from afar."

  Anna laughed. Chantelle had been like an older sister. "You can talk to him now."

  "I wouldn't know what to say."

  "Tell him you crushed on him like crazy. He was the best-looking guy in town."

  Chantelle laughed. "I'd die of embarrassment."

  "You're already dead."

  Chantelle sighed regretfully. "All the best-looking guys turn gay."

  Anna laughed.

  "Except yours. Ravi was quite a catch. I've seen him around."

  Anna smiled. "I'll see him soon."

  "See that you do, little sister."

  There were others after that. She had a beer with Feargal and talked drone tactics, and did knitting with Keeshom, talking about running pearl stitch and how best to resolve a dropped thread. For a time she walked with Crow, always a stern uncle in the distance when she'd been growing up, though he was too much of a wisp to say anything. The truth was there in his eyes, and she hoped her gratitude shone in hers. At one point she thought she saw Julio watching her from a distance.

  She didn't go to him. His crimes were his own. Perhaps, in time, he'd find a way to atone for what he'd done.

  It saddened her that her father wasn't there.
Along with every other floater on the line, he'd been banished from rising up even when his gray body had died. Where was he now, she wondered? Trapped in Mongolia still, perhaps, clinging to the stony body that had carried him through life? Or simply disappeared, rubbed out by the winds?

  She stood on the top floor of the Wells Fargo building in Denver, looking out through the Pac-Man's black eye, and felt the low hum of billions of threads trapped beneath Olan Harrison's shifted signal. Ever since the signal had gone out they'd been trapped in their bodies.

  She hadn't known any of them, really, the seven billion, but amongst them were her family. Not only her mother and father, but Amo's parents, and Lara's, and Cerulean's, and Jake's. She'd never met them, and with Olan Harrison standing astride the world, she never would. There'd never be peace with him remaining alive. The line would steadily drain, so Jake's and Ravi's and even Julio's final reflections would be erased, and they'd be forced back into flesh, where they could serve as tattered, maddened slaves forever.

  She couldn't allow that to happen.

  "Protect the line," Jake had said, and she smiled at the memory of a memory; his boyish feathered hair, his dancing eyes. She would. But first, there was one more person to see.

  She went to the marina.

  Ravi was where she'd expected him, sitting in the yacht where she'd left him, berthed in the catamaran. This was the first time they'd made love; when neither knew what could possibly follow. He looked so young, his face shiny and red, his hair slicked too tight to his scalp with gel. His eyes though weren't those of a child, but of her partner.

  "We don't need to talk," he said. "You'll be back soon."

  She stepped up to him, slipping her arms around his back and beneath his shirt, so her fingers traced shivers across his skin. It hadn't felt like this down below. Only on the line. There was so much to say, but he was right, it didn't need to be said in words.

  "I'll be back," she promised, then pressed her lips hungrily to his. They guided each other down to the bed.

  22. LAZARUS

  She left him sleeping, and jumped outward and up; up through the thinning air and the clouds, up through the atmosphere to an impossible vantage perch amongst the graceful arcing rings of Olan Harrison's satellites. Of course there was no oxygen there, and the cold should have frozen her in seconds, but she didn't need to breathe now, and temperature didn't matter. None of this was really real; she'd figured that out a long time ago. It was a representation only. Still, it mattered.

  For a time she swayed on the solar wind, feeling the beams of light from the distant shadow sun caress her cheeks, watching the sprinkled dust of stars and wondering how the line might connect to them too. Were there dead aliens out there, sorting through the events of their lives? It was beautiful, really. What it meant, what it allowed. The line was truly a glory.

  She looked back over the curve of the Earth, coated in a darkness that represented so much life unlived, so many places unseen. Only the spark of her memories provided any light, spread around the globe as a trail of tiny pinpoints, each one flickering softly like a tiny muted television, ceaselessly repeating.

  By the light of their trail she picked out the outline of continents and oceans, illuminated most where her memories were strongest. New LA was a bonfire, as was the trail back to Minneapolis. Her line across the Pacific shimmered, as did the route to Mongolia, to Istanbul, and then around the world to American Samoa in a chain of twinkling fairy light jumps.

  This was her domain.

  And it was rotten.

  Only here could she really see it. High above the fray, sucked out of the clamoring memories strung on the line, she could see it for what it truly was. Olan Harrison's touch bathed the whole dark planet in corruption. The edges of it here were clear; where it began and ended, where his work on the Multicameral Array had extended its reach.

  It wasn't right.

  The line was supposed to be beautiful. It still held beauty, in the places he'd yet been unable to fully ravage its secrets, but the rot was clear. With his shifted signal and his T4 virus, he had permanently stamped a boot down across the whole of the world. Anna could see the victims; the billions of people cut off from the line and trapped in their bodies; turned white, broken down, left with only the simplest of genetic directives controlling their motions.

  Seven billion people, each still a tiny, barely perceptible television, playing a lifetime's worth of knowledge. They were down there yet, clustered in heaps around Mongolia and China, scattered thinly everywhere else like a sparkling veil.

  He'd done this. Now she was going to begin the unraveling.

  She spun the Earth, and focused. The path was clear. The only place where she'd crossed with Rachel Heron was somewhere above Kazakhstan. The television there shone brightly, because that was where she'd died.

  She went back; down through the rush of air and clouds and gravity, back to a dark and snowy hillside layered with dead lepers and angels, still glowing weakly with residual trails of the line. The sky glowered darkly, promising rain.

  There she found Rachel.

  She stood in her black combat suit in the midst of the dead, as if she hadn't moved since their fight. Her gaze was focused on a television situated incongruously on a low bank of snow before her. Anna circled around. The screen showed a powerful, white-eyed man Anna recognized as Olan Harrison, standing beside a body lying on a metal operating table. Wires hung down from the ceiling and rose up from the floor in thick, veiny bunches. The walls were coated with conical silver plates, each like a speaker projecting slightly inward. The body was a female, pale, and clearly not alive.

  "Lazarus," Rachel Heron said. She turned, and Anna saw the fear in her red-rimmed eyes. It haunted her. She realized that Rachel had not yet left this place. She hadn't taken her chance to go see her friends and family, because none of them were here.

  The realization hit hard. Nobody Rachel loved had died since the fall, and all of those who had died before it were banished in their floater bodies. To her the line was an empty, forbidding place, leaving the world in full darkness, lit only by memories in this place, where her path crossed with Anna's.

  Except for one light, far away to the east, where James While had died.

  "Have you seen him?" Anna asked. "Since you came up?"

  Rachel looked away, hollow and afraid. "I can't face him. I failed."

  There was a certain truth to that. She'd killed James While to save him, but he wouldn't last long on the line. Anna could see it all now, the future falling around them like drifting flakes of snow. His death had been calm, so Olan Harrison would only be able to suck him down later, but down he would come, along with all the others. His punishment would last forever.

  It was terrifying for Rachel Heron. She was too ashamed.

  "You should see him," Anna said. "It'll be your last chance."

  Rachel shuddered, then stiffened and her fear came out as anger, burning from her dark eyes. "What do you know? You haven't seen Olan. You don't know what he'll do. Our punishment won't ever end. How can I face James like that?"

  Anna took her hand. She could feel the pull of the Lazarus effect on the line already, a dozen thin strings tugging on Rachel Heron like a growing magnetism. Ravi might call it a tractor beam, but the analogies didn't matter. With this tool Olan Harrison would drain the line dry.

  "How did you make this show the present?" Anna asked, nodding at the television. "All mine show memories, but this is happening now, right?"

  "Lazarus," Rachel Heron answered, too exhausted not to answer. "It's a bridge from here to there. That's my new body." She pointed.

  "Looks good," Anna said, trying for levity. "Younger. Hot."

  "It doesn't have a tongue," Rachel replied coldly. "He's figured out how to breed clones without them. The muscle just isn't there."

  Anna frowned. "That's dark."

  Rachel laughed, and there was defeat in it. "Are you here to gloat? We've lost, little girl. This is th
e end. I can see what he's going to do to your Last Mayor. I see what the future's going to be. He's beaten us all."

  "He hasn't beaten me."

  Rachel snorted. "Your 'cure'? Whatever Joran Helkegarde cooked up in his bloody lab, I don't think it's going to matter now. Your body's gone. It can't carry over into a new body."

  "I think it will," said Anna.

  "Then you're an idiot. Do you know that his wife, the 'Last Barista', she's nearly there? Olan's going to rip him to bits in front of her. He's going to break them all, and he'll have me and James there too, to watch. That'll be the future for us, our pain serving his vanity. I'll want to die, but I won't be able to. There'll be no mercy."

  "He's never had mercy," Anna said. "I could've told you that fourteen years ago. How did you not know?"

  Rachel Heron laughed. "You were barely born. What would you know?"

  Anna took a sharp step forward and grabbed Rachel by the scruff of her suit. "You think I wouldn't have known? Look in my eyes, woman, and tell me that I wouldn't." An awkward, tense moment followed. "Do you even know who I am, do you know what I've done? I'm the one who broke Maine and tamed Bordeaux, who forced peace upon Gap and Istanbul. I've survived helicopter assault and a leper eruption, I've led the dead into battle and fought Amo to a standstill and jumped around the world in a single bound. I did all that, and then I died by your side, not because I was too stupid to see what your Olan Harrison truly was, but because I knew." She let go. "I've seen all of this, Rachel. I went to battle with you because it's what I wanted; to fall into his trap. I'm here with you now not because I'm afraid, but because this is where I have to be. Understand that. This is not the retreat, woman. This is the attack. Olan Harrison is going to die today."

  Rachel Heron drew back. Her eyes flickered with fear, with hope, with fear. "No. What? How's that possible?"

  Anna laughed. "You still don't see me? You think Joran's work failed, so you've blinded yourself. He did more than just genetic alteration. He cemented me in the line. I've got an extra life, sister. Ravi would love that. 1UP."