Evil Ascending

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Sure, Da." The refrigerator door opened, and a silvery can appeared in Dorothy's hand. "Incoming, Da."

  Mickey looked up to watch his sister arc the can through the air toward her father. The can rotated nicely, making for an easy catch, but the man in the chair did nothing to grab it. It would have slammed into his stomach, but Rajani crossed the three steps to the chair and snagged it before it landed.

  The cold can sent a shiver up her spine. Rajani looked over at Dorothy. "Go clean your brother up. Get him ready for bed." She set the unopened can down in the man's right hand. "Your father and I are going to talk."

  "Dot, getcher dad a beer," he mumbled.

  Dorothy started to protest, but Rajani's eyes narrowed and let her know that nothing could be done to win a contest of wills at this point. Mickey looked from Dorothy to Rajani and back, then slowly released his father's leg and headed off down the narrow corridor beside the kitchen. Reluctantly, Dorothy followed him.

  Rajani moved and cut off the man's view of the television. His left thumb punched buttons on the remote control, but nothing changed. He blinked his eyes once, then twice in rapid succession. The slack muscles of his face tightened, giving some shape to his stubbly cheeks. His mouth closed, then his tongue licked dry lips. "Whaaaa?"

  "What am I?" Rajani drove an axe blade of sheer terror through the man's mind. She chopped through his stupor and saw what memories arose in response to the fright she projected into him. She raced past his fear of failing his children, the despair from the death of his girlfriend and the pain of losing his wife. What she wanted was deeper and more primal. She sliced down in until she blew by his adolescence and touched the memories he recorded when he was little older than Mickey. "That's right, I'm the Grimmand," she growled, co-opting the name of the bogeyman his mother used to frighten him with. "I've come to see what sort of man would sell his children before I rip him to pieces."

  She grabbed the beer can in her right hand and punched her golden nails through the front of it. Beer sprayed out over his face and torso, then she tossed the foaming can down into the pile beside his chair. "Greed, sloth, gluttony or the greatest sin—stupidity. Which was it?"

  The man stared at her wide-eyed with terror. "Not sold, not sold . . ."

  "Don't lie to me!" Rajani yanked free the memory of his handing Dorothy and Mickey over to his brother Andy.

  "Get a good price for her, and whatever you can get for him!" She made those words echo again and again inside his head. She used them to shatter his self-image and in her anger it took her a second or two to realize how easily it had collapsed. Within the shards of a heroic granite statue, she discovered a wailing infant and, as she watched, it regressed in age to the point where it could no longer survive.

  He's dying. He has no will to live. He's been killing himself by inches since they left. She projected herself into his mind and scooped him up into her arms. «No, you cannot die on me. Your daughter needs you. Your son needs you. You will live for them.»

  The infant looked up at her with an ancient weariness in its eyes. Its mouth opened, but its tiny lungs couldn't power out a scream. Its little fingers grasped at nothing, silently signing its inability to succeed at anything. «I am worthless. Let me go!»

  Rajani shook her head, and a golden lock curled through the premature baby's right palm. The fist closed on it, and the baby clutched at it with all its failing might. Rajani knew he wanted to pull on her hair and hurt her, but he could not. Still, she used that desire to slowly bring him back. «You cannot hurt me. You are less than either of your children, and they could not hurt me. Not yet, anyway. I am safe from them, and safe from you.»

  The child in her arms aged rapidly. He plumped quickly enough that she had to set him down. In the half-second it took her to do that, the child's legs had become strong enough to support his weight. He rapidly progressed from infant through toddler to his son's age. The child looked down at his body, then up at her. "What is the use? The world was hell when I grew up. It was worse when Dorothy was born and worse again when Mickey came. I have failed them. I failed their mother. They are better off without me."

  "No, they are not."

  "Others will care for them, do better for them."

  "But your children don't love others. They love you." Rajani aimed a solid stream of thoughts at the child. She poured into him her memories of the trip, including the things his children said about him. She forced their father to see himself through the eyes of his children and to know how much they loved and depended upon him. His bond with them was more than as someone who obtained food for them and maintained their shelter. He was the core of their reality, and Rajani drilled that point home over and over again.

  As the memories filled him, the child grew into a man. He fought against the transformation, staring at adult limbs as if they were unwanted growths. He scraped at the whiskers on his face and raked his fingers across his hairy chest. He slumped down to deny his height and hugged his arms around himself to make himself seem smaller. "No, I cannot take responsibility for them. I am not strong enough. It is too difficult."

  Rajani reached up and grabbed his upper arms. "You have the strength. No, you will not change the world, but your children can. They are strong, and they have done incredible things to return to you. You owe them. You know there is only one way to escape what haunts you, and that is to ensure that you and your wife are immortal by providing your children the foundation for their success."

  "Can I?"

  "By simply surviving, you will be that foundation." Rajani backed away from him. "With a little bit of effort on your part, they will excel beyond your wildest dreams."

  She withdrew herself from his mind and straightened up over his slumped form. He looked up at her, then his eyes closed. For a half-second she thought he might have slipped away again, but then a loud buzzing snore sounded from him, and Rajani smiled.

  "He always did sound like a chainsaw." Dorothy leaned against the apartment wall. "You're not from Phoenix, are you?"

  Rajani shook her head. "No, but I am heading there."

  Dorothy looked right through her. "Are you even human?"

  Rajani stiffened. "Human enough to know what it is to lose your parents." She looked down at Dorothy's father. "He'll be okay now, I think. He knows what he means to you and how important he is to you. He lost that somewhere, when your mother died and the pressure got too great. He's found it again."

  "Are you going to stay? We have room."

  Rajani smiled confidently in the face of Dorothy's fear and hopefulness. "Don't worry, Dorothy. You are more than strong enough to see to your brother and father. You don't need me here, neither does your father." She hugged her arms around herself. "I would very much like to stay, but what I have to do necessitates my making it to Phoenix. In fact, I should probably head out tonight."

  Dorothy crossed the room and hugged her tightly. "Thank you, Rajani."

  Rajani returned the hug, then broke it and blinked away tears. "Give Mickey my love."

  Dorothy nodded and sniffled. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

  Rajani winked at her and retreated from the apartment. She let the sound of the crane's loud engine pound into her and blank her mind as quickly as possible. She lengthened her stride to get away from there fast, but something tugged at her. She turned and took one look back.

  "Ouah-ah, ajni," Mickey yelled to her from the window. His broken smile lit his face and conjured a smile on her face.

  She waved at him. «Good-bye, Mickey. Be safe.»

  «You, too, Rajani. Good-bye!»

  She stared at him, then they shared a silent laugh and Rajani wandered happily off into the night.

  Coyote drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. He let it out slowly and forced himself to ignore the dull ache in his ribs from where a getsul had kicked him during the morning exercises. It hurts, but my counterstrike would have killed him had I not pulled it. He did not expect his attack to get through a
nd was preparing a counter to my parry. He thought too far ahead and paid.

  Coyote heard the whisper of Mong's bare feet on the stone floor of his room, but he did not open his eyes. Instead, he concentrated and drank in all the clues to the man's presence. He knew enough about Mong to know that the noise had been intentional, but Coyote wondered if the monk could control the ticklish chill of the air currents swirling around him, or the faint scent of dried sweat. He didn't think so, but he discovered he'd not have been surprised if the monk had that ability.

  "You fought well this morning, Kyi-can. You combine the grace of aikido with a very lethal form of karate."

  "Thank you, Lama Mong. Your acolytes are very skilled." Coyote forced his fists open and laid them palm-up in his lap. "Only their reticence to kill prevents them from defeating me." Coyote opened his eyes and felt pleased his head was turned to face Mong exactly.

  "Perhaps, Kyi-can, perhaps." The wizened monk's almond eyes narrowed. "They view the martial arts and weapons training as a means toward an end."

  "As do I."

  "They pursue self-discovery and awareness instead of death. The discipline and exercise fuses body and soul and spirit into a single union that becomes the core of each student's being." Mong's hands described a globe that he compressed into a tight, small ball. "This knowledge of self is vital because, in its compressed form, it is stripped of labels and tags and only comprises that which one truly is."

  The monastery's visitor frowned. "I am not certain I follow this."

  Mong smiled benevolently. "The average man—and I assure you that you are not average—would respond to being asked, 'Who are you?' in a very predictable way. He would say his name, then note that he had a degree in history from, say, the University of Vermont, or that he had won an industry award for something he did, or that he was on the board of this corporation or that, and so on. It is much akin to describing the nature of an automobile by noting the color of its paint and the brand of its tires. It speaks to the trappings of its nature, but not the truth of its nature itself."

  Coyote nodded. The sum and total of his knowledge about himself came down to facts contained in two very slim files. The first said he was Tycho Caine, an assassin trained in a highly secret place in Japan. He liked fast cars, gambling and was one of the best assassins in the world. Everything else beyond that was a fraud created by himself, his former master or the previous Coyote. The second file, the one that detailed his life as Michael Loring, he knew to be less than a month old and put together through cooperation between Nero Loring and Jytte Ravel.

  Both identities would check fully within the technological world. Caine and Loring had superior credit ratings and a string of transcripts that made him seem a genius who blew through schools like bullets through crêpe paper. Because the information concerning those identities had been encrypted and duplicated, infused into magnetic tape strips and matched with laser disks and barcodes, he existed and was real. Because of that data, and who it said he was supposed to be, people he had never met would claim to be his classmates and others would confess to having known him for a long time.

  Still, despite that real-world legitimacy, his core had been shaped quite differently. As Mong spoke, Coyote realized he did not have much in the way of the tags and labels associated with him. Those who trained me stripped that away and prevented its accretion so I would not have to work past it later. I was being groomed for what I will be taught here.

  What he could tell about himself did make him proud. As the physical training with the acolytes had shown, he had a union of self and body that made him a most deadly opponent. He knew, from the adventure that culminated in frustrating Fiddleback, that his training had made him quick of mind and capable of acting ruthlessly when the situation demanded it. Even so, by his reluctance to engage in wholesale slaughter, a slaughter of which he was very capable, he knew that he had some internal brake on the darker side of his being.

  "Sunyata is the name we give to the discipline of studying nonbeing or the void. This is necessary because the little tags and labels serve as hooks and anchors to keep us in our reality. As we define ourselves in association with things in this world, we bind ourselves to this world. While Mi-ma-yin introduced me as the khenpo of Kanggenpo, I think of myself only as Mong. Like a hot-air balloon wishing to fly up from the ground, anchor lines must be cut and ballast must be cast off."

  Coyote nodded. "As I have little baggage in this regard, I hope this will be possible. I know better than to hope it will be simple."

  "Discovery is simple, but mastery is torture itself." Mong folded his arms across his chest. "Mi-ma-yin learned quickly but, like you, his anchors were few. His mastery likewise came quickly, but that was because he had a need that drove him. Have you such a need?"

  The images of Fiddleback and the empty skull of an innocent girl fused in his brain. "Yes."

  "Excellent. Then we shall begin simply." The hint of a smile tugged at the corners of Mong's mouth. "Here is an old Zen koan that should help you: What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

  As the monk left the room, Coyote's eyes closed. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Instantly, his mind flashed to the sound made when he slapped a hand against a thigh or when fingers slapped down against his palm. Those sound like claps, but the first is not a hand acting alone, and the second is not really a clap. Those are wrong.

  His mind raced as he approached the question in a logical manner. It is possible for a single hand to clap? The question suggests it is, and that a sound results. Is a hand arcing through the air toward a phantom partner in a clap really clapping? He sifted and searched through a dozen different ways he could clap with one hand, but rejected them all. Either they involved hitting something else to create a sound, or he felt they were not truly claps.

  In his meditation, he swerved off onto another course of thought. What is the nature of this exercise? It is the annihilation of self and the compression of self to free me of all the things holding me in this reality. Perhaps the Western paradigm of logical and scientific thinking is merely a construct of this world. There were things I saw in other dimensions that seemed to defy the very physical laws we use to define our world, so perhaps that is holding me back.

  With that realization, he began to think consciously in illogical and abstract ways. As he came up with answers to the question like the 'color of entropy' or the 'death of death,' he found himself thinking in terms he had not before. Wading through oceans of non sequiturs, he knew he was approaching the goal that would be the answer to that question, but he discovered other problems. The first was that his construction of non sequiturs was thought—not natural or felt. He was, in short, being logical in his illogic.

  He also discovered that logic was a part of his core being. As he knew that logic would help him discover the true nature of any of the other dimensions he would visit, he knew it could not be what hampered him. Even if I discover that there is no rhyme or reason to a place, it will be my logical mind that will help me make that discovery. This is not a hindrance, but a survival trait.

  Moreover, it struck him that the answer to that question would have to be broader than the focus of his inquiry so far. He had been concentrating on mechanisms for creating the sound so he could follow what the sound would be. In reality, he had been asked what that sound was.

  I know of no method by which a hand can clap by itself or produce a sound. It is impossible for a hand to clap by itself. It follows then that there is no sound that can be made by a single hand clapping. So, the sound of one hand clapping is nothing!

  The concept of nothing detonated in his brain with the force of a 10-megaton bomb. The sea of non sequiturs dried up, leaving desiccated phrases in the mental mud that its head then fused into stone. Pressure built and pushed his consciousness outside, letting his world fragment and fray until it projected his mental eye out of his skull and sent it jetting up through the ceiling of the room.

  As his sense of
self flew above him, the whole monastery became like glass to him. He could see distorted shapes and shadows through the thick bricks. Only the dark heart of the temple itself remained opaque to his sight, and that disturbed him. That is the Gonkhang which is where the Yidam is supposed to dwell. I cannot see there, but what I feel . . .

  Utterly hostile sensations pulsed out from the black rectangle representing the underground chapel. They stung him like fragments from a grenade, and his attempt to evade them almost shocked him back into his body. Coyote focused his mind on nothingness and the pain lessened.

  Coyote willed himself forward and down toward the blackness, then realized that in doing so he projected his own sensations out and into that block. He saw a reddish sphere push out and around himself, then merge with the darkness. As it did so, the sensations he had been feeling immediately vanished and the rectangle cleared to show an empty place cast in ghostly twilight tones.

  The sudden and sharp shifting from dangerous and alien to harmless confused Coyote. In that instant, he snapped his eyes open. He found himself, sweat-soaked and chest heaving, still kneeling in his chamber. The thin sliver of daylight that normally slashed through his doorway had vanished. The sweat on his flesh conducted the night's chill straight through him, yet his shiver came from more than the cold.

  Night. I've meditated for the better part of the day. His stomach rumbled loudly. Or days.

  He rose to his feet and pulled on a black, sleeveless T-shirt. In bare feet, he padded down the stone hallway. He let the darkness embrace him and, as he passed before each darkened doorway of a monk's cell, he sensed the sleeping man within. Beyond them, like the omnipresent crash of waves on the beach, he felt the power radiating out from the monks at each gate. Yet, despite all he was sensing, the heart of the temple seemed a great void to him and that, he knew, was as unnatural as he once would have supposed feeling anything at all was.

  Letting his right hand brush against the corridor's wall, he stalked through the ancient buildings and toward the temple. He assumed he could gain access to the Gonkhang through the Dukhang. Even though he had told Mong he would respect the Gonkhang's sanctity, the urgency he felt to unravel the mystery there overrode his need to keep his promise. He had survived in battling Fiddleback by leaving nothing to chance, and a void in the center of the lamasery would not do.