The General's Bride

by M F Sullivan

  “Like you said when we got here. But save what world?”

  “All of them,” said Valentinian.

  “Humans and martyrs,” she pressed. The men exchanged a reluctant glance.

  Through some spurious form of telepathy (or Valentinian’s puppy-dog eyes, which recalled Basil), the men decided Lazarus would be their spokesperson. “Do you remember, Dominia, when I explained to you Earth is a prison, and martyrs, its prisoners?”

  A most painful kind of beauty—something like what Miki Soto, Red Market prostitute and Dominia’s only real friend, would have called mono no aware—arose in Dominia’s throat at the memory of the sermon. “Yes,” she said. The old man approached her to rest a warm hand upon a shoulder she would have otherwise forgotten.

  “It does not always have to be like this. Martyrs are people, too. But they are not people meant for Earth.”

  “Acetia?” The planet from which her Father claimed to herald, and which would not develop life for millions, possibly billions, of years. In its present state, circling the distant star of Procyon A near sacred Sirius, it remained in noxious and primeval condition. Deadly. “I never believed in it before.”

  “It’s possible, in a sense. But only without your Father.” Valentinian glanced in silence at Lazarus, then turned away to light another foul cigarette while the mystic said, “Humans and martyrs can never live together, it’s true. But that doesn’t mean one or the other has to die. It just means martyrs have to change. They have to be willing to leave.”

  “Sort of like an intergalactic Australia,” suggested the exhaling magician, “before it was turned into a prison camp in half the state, and a nuclear waste and garbage dump in the other half. You know, way back when it was just a prison colony, after the Aboriginal people were horribly subjugated but before the place became prohibitively hot and most who could afford it skipped town.”

  “Hot Siberia, with superpowers.” The irritation in Lazarus’s mutter was not just for the human race but all sapient life. “Anyway, it’s true. What I’m suggesting for the martyr race is scary, but you have the irresponsible pleasure of not having to worry about it.”

  Her mind now open (possibly for the first time in her life) to the concept that her Father was an alien martyr from the future who had somehow copied Cicero’s features, Dominia asked, “Why is that?”

  “Because you are our military ego,” said the old man with a wry smile. “By the time the war is over, you’ll already be at home with Cassandra.”

  Whether or not he told the truth, Dominia had to give it to him: Lazarus knew how to get her marching again.

  III

  Attention Deficit

  The General had endured many a long march. Indeed, she’d led more than she’d endured! Though her Father’s army had always been technologically well equipped, there were those locations, those battles, those infiltrations that required substantial walk and some hastily constructed encampments. Mexico was still covered in her boot prints. But, for her thousand battles and thousand-plus marches, she had known in her life no march quite like this. Not one so long. The conventional secret to marching was placing focus on anything but what was happening and what would continue to happen—as if, in not acknowledging the road, one would suddenly find oneself at the destination.

  In this case, imagining was dangerous. Her coping mechanism for marches was gone, but she’d lost far more than that. Imagination was how she dealt with trauma, and, at times, how she dealt with killing—though she needed that coping mechanism less now than she had as a young woman learning the arts of hunting or war. And, in modern nights, her usual figure of distraction was a memory whose name she feared to think lest it feed the thing behind her. She dared not think of anything now. Not for a prolonged stretch, and nothing of her dead wife.

  So, as the gorge broadened with the march upon their untiring legs, she instead thought how the unflagging nature of her dream-legs was a torture of its own. With the black sun still in the yet-dark sky, time froze, and though there was now more to look upon than “nothing,” there was still not much. Perilous thoughts marched to the beat of her feet: her unanswered questions, her dread for the length of the trip, Cass—

  No. Back to her feet. Remember the ground and the pinging of pebbles. But what about her Father? How did these people know her Father? Many questions filtered through her head, the doctrine of martyrs clashing with what she’d heard from Miki of Red Market legends. The only way the General would gain clarity was by hoping somebody told the truth.

  “Is it true”—she hurried to Lazarus’s side while he spared a glance her way—“my Father is an alien? Are you an alien, too?”

  “Do you believe everything you hear? Do we look like extraterrestrials?”

  “Neither does my Father.”

  “I wonder why,” Lazarus dryly asked of laughing Valentinian.

  The magician spread his hands. “We’re all aliens, in a way.”

  That night, when they would camp near the opposite end of that gorge and settle in for the night, the torches would once more appear, and the doppelgänger would be gone, and Dominia would find herself drawn down this nighttime path to the study. This occasion, the mobile room sat on the gorge’s opposite side. She would remark on the earlier, extraterrestrial conversation to her Father while refusing his wine politely as possible. In response to this refusal, he would say, “No offense taken, my dear: I understand your hesitance. Who knows what was said to you! But take a seat, at least.”

  Likely as bad as drinking his wine; but, her sitting made him comfortable to say, “You asked me of Lazarus, and Valentinian—yes, I knew them when I arrived on Earth. As to whether I stole the protein from Lazarus, as you say your Red Market friend suggests”—wry smile—“how could I have done that when I brought it from my world?”

  That day, Lazarus will have said, “Cicero and I were genetic engineers together in the earliest world I recall. Him, me, and his brother, Elijah.” The name of the Lamb, her ram-horned, gentler Family member, somehow alarmed Dominia to hear. “The same night I was martyred, the Hierophant swooped in to martyr the brothers with his inferior blood.”

  “I was originally involved, too,” was Valentinian’s addition, which had earned glances from both Lazarus and the General.

  “Yeah,” the mystic had allowed, “but I don’t remember it.”

  “Why not?”

  Dominia would ask this question twice; only the Hierophant, that night, would give her something resembling a straight answer.

  “Valentinian was never born into this crest of the universe because of a wish gone bad.”

  There was no maintaining a straight face. “A wish? Now you’re being childish.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t believe in wishes! I’ve fouled up somewhere in raising you, haven’t I?”

  “Valentinian has no body,” Lazarus explained before that moment, in those careful words, “because your Father trapped him.”

  “How?”

  “The same way he turned me into a dog.” The alleged saint, having tarried to grind a cigarette beneath his shoe, hastened to catch up. “By magic, basically.”

  Because of that, Dominia would later think to ask her Father, “Are you a magician in the way Valentinian is?”

  “Every man is a magician in this place. What Valentinian does is not so impressive.”

  “But, if he were back in reality, would he still be a magician? More than you are, I mean.”

  The Hierophant studied her, hands folded upon his knee, the specter of Cassandra leaning its head against the arm of his chair. It had been that way since Dominia’s arrival, plaintive eyes plastered upon the widow’s steeled expression with all the emptiness of a statue’s hollow gaze. “If every man is a magician in this place,” the Pontifex decided, “then every man is also a magician when on Earth. It is a question of his means in producing magic, and how powerful he is—that is, how much energy he uses to produce how drastic of a change. A drastic mirac
le—or wish, if you’d rather—is something that would normally require a complex, energy-costly series of transmogrifications, but which the magician elicits with a tap of the finger.” He lifted his glass to his lips. “Turning water into wine. Rudimentary business here.

  “‘Magic’ in reality is another word for ‘influence.’ One uses magic to influence events, whether personally, locally, or at an even larger scale; magic often consciously utilizes science, but science never seems capable of acknowledging its magical potential. The magical man is such because of his connection to this place, among other things. Our bodies here are like the dark star of Sirius B—the occult twin of its bright-shining brother, who keeps close watch on Acetia and its procyonid sun. Once the individual reaches a level of self-awareness high enough to detect that black star and utilize its secret light, anything is possible.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything at all.”

  “Anything” was such a staggering notion she dared not think on it, for the only thing she wanted was something(one) too easily corrupted. Something(one) she could not give herself, could not manifest from nothingness. Not that same Cassandra who killed herself, who she knew and loved. Not in the reality she knew. She had accepted that fact well enough for the doppelgänger to seem less an opportunity to move forward and more a bleak reminder of all the ways the General had gone wrong. But the tiniest sliver of her heart—the tiniest spark—wondered at the replica, abominable deception though it was. She longed in sporadic moments, fraught with shame, to lay her hand upon the softness of Cassandra’s cheek and feel it emulated, however false the emulation. In such fleeing moments of—yes, wishing—the creature’s eyes glittered, and Dominia spurned those hopes that fed its vapid existence.

  The Hierophant asked in a mild tone, “Did you inquire about their ability to resurrect Cassandra?”

  “Valentinian assures me you’re a liar, which my personal experience confirms.”

  “I never lie, certainly not in so crass a fashion. Neither one has the power to resurrect her.”

  “They know who does.”

  “You are on a fool’s errand. The men lead you astray from what your intuition warns: something is not right. You do not even know half the truth.”

  “Why don’t you enlighten me?”

  Across the room from her smirking Father, the fire spent shivering light upon a glossy floor that had appeared overday as a base for the study. These tiles, alternating shades of wood, were arranged in the pattern of a chessboard and did, in fairness, render the space visually warm. This did not negate the disturbing effect of such a drastic change being engendered with no effort. After the General had sufficient time to ponder this, her Father spoke up.

  “Any truth I say is bound to be dismissed by them as lie; therefore, I dare not share the way of things with you just yet, lest my honesty implant some sense of falsehood in your mind. But Cairo will see you leaving empty-handed, without your lover. All after is violence. They are keeping you upon a certain track and draining you of your free will.”

  There was that first time she’d met Lazarus, before the service, after Miki and the wounded (ex-)Hunter hacker, Kahlil, had dropped her off and left for Cairo. So long ago to her mind—or perhaps ‘nous’ was a better word in this place of no-mind, no-time, no-thing. “Lazarus said my free will gives me power.”

  “It gives him power, too, if he goads you into making choices in service to his cause, rather than yours.” His pale brows lifted toward slicked hair. “You deny your senses and lean on faith—hope!—when a solution is before you. You deny their ill intent when they’ve kept you here so long! Have they even told you how to leave?”

  That expertly aimed question startled the General. They had not; but she insisted, “No, because we’re going to Cairo.”

  “And going to Cairo is your choice?” At the purse of her lips, he smiled. “I have watched the footage from your DIOX-I, Dominia. I wish you had not taken it out.” She grimaced to relive, in brief, the horrible surgery wherein Cicero had installed it. Would she could take it out a second time! “While I still saw your comings and goings, however, I noticed the same thing you noticed upon waking aboard that train to Kabul. The same thing I notice now: your missing diamond. Your missing wife.”

  Dominia’s hand lay upon her breast with bitter longing for the absent stone. It had already been many terrestrial days since Miki shipped the compressed body of the General’s wife to Cairo on orders of her goddess, the Lady. At the unspoken title, jasmine and lavender flowed through the study as if on a breeze not felt. The Hierophant turned his nose toward the scent as his daughter said, “We need to go to Cairo for Cassandra, yes. Your point?”

  “You would need not do that at all, were it not for the actions of that prostitute who somehow befriended you. Indeed, were it not for Miki’s actions, you would have the components necessary for the alleged resurrection. If nothing else, you would have the ability to seriously consider my proposals. I know you won’t, as things stand now.”

  She hated when he told her what she was and wasn’t going to do, and knew he thrived on that hatred. There was never any telling if what he said was what he honestly felt or another hollow manipulation. She forced herself to remain silent.

  “You might yet leave that false diamond, all those unfulfillable promises, far behind. You are here with me—with me, and more precious a Cassandra than you might ever hope to know.” His hand lay against the doppelgänger’s shoulder, and it leaned toward Dominia, hands clasped between familiar, pale knees that peeked beneath its short violet dress and made the General think of how much higher up they went, those legs—of when they became thighs, and where those thighs terminated. As she returned struggling attention to her Father, he asked, “Have they described to you how space here represents space, time, and, to a certain extent, probability in the ‘real’ world?”

  As the General nodded, he went on. “If you continue to follow them, you will find yourself in Cairo when they generously share the means of awakening. You will have made a choice about the future of our relationship, the future of this world—and you will have sealed your fate, much to my regret.”

  The weight of significance borne by his look pressed down upon her chest. He continued. “But you are here with me. In my study. And I could tell you how to awaken this instant, if you like. Wake up at home, Dominia, and it shall be as if nothing ever happened. Your Family will be back; I’ll restore your governance of the United Front and help you bring your wife back to true life. I’ll help you exercise your valuable free will. Whatsoever you desire, I’ll see the world manifests it one way or another. Or perhaps you would rather continue on your own. Regardless, I would be happy to inform you of the means to leave this place. I hate to think of you stranded here, should something happen to them, or should you run afoul of one another.”

  “You expect me to trust you after all you’ve done to me?”

  “Can you trust them any more than you can trust me?” was what the Hiereophant asked as Valentinian knocked on the door to collect her the second time. Both inhabitants of the study paused while its owner invited him in, and the mage entered with an uneasy but satisfied look toward the still-crouched doppelgänger. His gaze soon shifted to the new floor with a snort.

  “Nice work.”

  “Do you like it?” asked the Hierophant in his gayest manner, terrifying, boyish mischief in his face. “I thought the place deserved some sprucing up, and Cassandra, sweet thing, reminded me of your love of chess.”

  “A deep love,” agreed the magician dryly, offering Dominia a hand. She accepted it without thinking, preoccupied by her efforts to avoid mental recollection of the conversation just had; at any rate, she suspected it didn’t matter whether she touched the magician. Between the boundaryless nature of the space and Valentinian’s magical talents, there was no means of hiding information. Not from him, at any rate. “Come on, Dominia. Time’s up.”

  As ever, her Father was gagging to
leave her with questions. He insisted on adding as she was tugged toward the doorway, “Valentinian would have you believe this world is more real than reality, and with good reason: he is, in reality, a dog.”

  Yes, in fact, he was. Basil, the border collie. It was difficult to look at Valentinian and see a border collie; but she had often looked at the border collie and seen Saint Valentinian. That incanine, inhuman determination in his eyes as he put a stop to the rocketing train. Those moments of wry mirth and silent validation: when he saved Miki from traitorous René Ichigawa, blinded spy of her Father; shooting poor Kahlil, who had never been so much a member of the terrorist society as a kid with an easily manipulated ideology (and/or penchant for ladies of the evening). Not unlike Dominia, only less successful, and with a technological emphasis rather than the General’s physical one. Indeed, it might have been said Dominia was more like the violent and sometimes base members of the infamous anti-martyr coalition than Kahlil: yet, he had been shot, and naturally reacted with more violence. Understandable—as it was understandable that she reacted with violence by cracking him over the skull. But it haunted her with guilt, that mindless crack. When would the violence end? It was all too bloody: from the moment humans were born in a screaming mess, it was a parade of violence, loss, betrayal, fear, death, Cassandra, Cassandra—anything but Cassandra.

  Dominia hurried herself over the threshold that second night, her Father’s words stuck in her like venomous darts. She and the magician spoke little until they reached Lazarus, who confirmed she had not touched the thing, and again said, “Then we still have a chance.” Off they set again, to a day the same as before less the gorge, and less a degree of trust.

  It was not their fault she mistrusted them. It was her Father’s fault, whether he had spoken the truth. No scrap of information could be garnered from him unless he meant for it to be used against someone else, or (best case) to his gentler benefit. Thus, she couldn’t give his words much credit. At the same time, there was marginal truth to all he’d said, and more he had yet to reveal.