Of Beginings and Endings

by Robert Adams

  The Count of Messina, after a protracted interdiction of his trade by sea and several long-drawn-out and very destructive cannonadings of his harbor defenses by the allied fleets, had raised his vassals and thrown out the Spanish-Moorish officials and garrison, then declared Messina open to the forces of Pope Sicola and His Holiness's supporters; he also had prayed help of a military nature to prevent the retaking of his city-port by the recently ousted enemy. He got it. Egon landed the bulk of his expeditionary force there, ferrying them over from Calabria, that duchy now held by King Giovanni of Naples, held now with the blessing of Pope Sicola.

  Prior to that landing, Egon had never before seen or visited the island so loved by his distant ancestor the Emperor Friedrich II Hohenstauffen, but after the protracted and bloody and hellishly costly campaign he eventually won there, he entertained no fond memories of the place. Indeed, he often afterwards stated that he would be happiest if he never again saw or heard of the place. He could be glad of only one thing: that the casualties, the very stiff price inflicted in the desperate battles of doomed men who fought with the savagery of cornered rats, had fallen upon his Italian allies and hired swords, rather than his own vassals. In the full year that had been required to stamp out the last remnants of the forces of the Spanish-Moorish Faction and their Sicilian abettors, the blood banner had been displayed more often than not, and the intakings had been many and exceedingly grim, especially so in the south and southwest of the island, those areas wherein the general population was ethnically of a mostly moorish cast.

  Of the mercenaries he had brought down from the north, some had fallen dead or wounded in Italy, far more had fallen in Sicily, and most of those who remained had, with his assent, been speedily hired on by various of his Italian allies, this in preparation for the soon-to-be-commenced battle royal for chunks of Sicily. Egon himself, recognizing a good market when he saw one, also got good prices for cannon, other firearms, pole-arms, siege trains, supplies of all sorts, armor, draught beasts, wheeled transport, horses and mules, and almost anything else of his dissolving forces that would bring him a profit.

  After the great public fetes, receptions, acclamations, and parades which marked his return to Rome, when he and his nobles all had been heaped with honors and blessings, thanked and praised to the very skies by everyone except the prisoners in the dungeons, sat in attendance at torturings, maimings, burnings, impalements, and more inventive or novel executions of more prominent officers of the defeated faction, then he saw his few remaining thousands mounted and began the march back north, moving as fast as he could without unnecessarily tiring marching men or horses and without giving needless offense to those along the way set upon expressing their gratitude of his aid against and final victories over the oppressors.

  As it developed, he and his force and trains did get through the passes ahead of the snows . . . but only barely. They progressed from higher mountains down to lower mountains, from lower mountains down to the foothills, they passed from out the fiercely republican cantons of the Switzers onto Empire lands, marching directly into a new war.

  The Elder met with two Younger Ones on a tiny pinpoint of rock set in the midst of the raging sea between Scotland and Ireland, a rocky islet that was visited only by seabirds and the occasional seal. Three of the silvery carriers, their lids open, reposed a few inches above the rocks, guano, and shards of old birdshell, their bulks and protective fields giving the men some measure of ease from the lashing winds and the spray, their soft, greenish glow affording the only light on the dark, stormy night.

  Addressing one of the Younger ones, the Elder said, "Now that you once more have a carrier and its gear, you should depart York and return to your station to await orders. Before you ask, I will say that I have journeyed to our place in the east and they have not yet been able to trace any of the three missing carriers; if they still are on this world, then they are either exceedingly well hidden and not in use or they are in some place so far out of the way that it has been thought needless to search it, ere this."

  The other Younger, he not being addressed, said diffidently, "Your pardon, Elder One, but perhaps some of these beings who were projected here by the primitive meddlers or some of the meddlers themselves stole away my carrier and the third one. If it was the meddlers, then they might well have taken the carriers back to their own world and time."

  Gently, but with clear admonishment, the Elder replied, "Younger One, seek you wisdom or you will remain a Younger One for much longer than you might wish. Those more elder than I have been conducting the search. Think you that they have not scanned the entire area of the meddlers? Of course they have . . . and found no identifiable vibrations of a carrier-brain. As for those poor persons their primitive, ill-designed equipment threw here from out their own milieus, it is my opinion that none of them are possessed of the mental and emotional sophistication to learn to use one of even these simple carriers properly; even the best of them, alas, are little more advanced than the native peoples here resident. The one you serve and observe, Younger One, the old man in York, now, he is of the milieu of the meddlers, and one such as he just might possess the requirements to understand and eventually to even master one of our simple carriers and its capabilities, but those earlier, more backward men and women, no. The thought is ridiculous."

  "No, I mean not to frighten or alarm you, but merely to bid extreme caution for an indeterminate time. The eastern elders are become of the impression that the carriers may have been seized for whatever occult purpose by the Others, because on two different sweeps, now, the sensors detected indications of one of Them, fleeting impressions both of them, but nonetheless unmistakable."

  "Why?" asked the other Younger, a bit plaintively. "Elder One, why can't They, why don't They, let us alone here? We are hurting this world and its people in no way; we have been very careful to introduce no single anachronism of our time and world into this one. We have sent out many of our own people round and about this world to observe and listen and be certain that nothing of us gets to any race or group of the natives. We are only taking minerals from out-of-the-way, unpopulated, almost uninhabitable places here and there, in deserts, mountains, and swamps. It would be so much easier for us if only They would go back to their own time and world and leave us alone here."

  "You, too, must learn wisdom, are you to ever advance, Younger One," was the Elder One's patient reply. "There is simply no fathoming of the minds or the motives of Them, for They are as far above us as we are above the meddlers, or even farther. We can only be assured that They have Their reasons and that we must abide and obey Them, for They could crush us with as little effort as this." He picked a bit of weathered eggshell from near his foot and powdered it between his horny, sinewy fingers.

  EPILOGUE

  Kogh Ademian was seated at the workbench in his basement shop patiently crimping, one after the other, the skeet shells he had just as patiently reloaded when his eldest son, Arsen, came through the door, closing it behind him. With a smile, the older man said, "Oh, hello, son. Be with you shortly." Then he finished the work, wiped his hands on a dingy towel, and swiveled around to face his visitor, by then seated on a battered footlocker.

  "Papa," asked Arsen, "how much did Ademian net last year?"

  Kogh frowned, scratched the shiny scalp under his thinning hair with a work-blackened fingernail, and replied, "Hell, son, I don't know those figures . . . not exactly, anyway. I'm just the fucking chairman of the board. But the comptroller would know. Want me to call Greenberg? It's late, sure, but . . ."

  Arsen shook his head and chuckled, "No, no, Papa, it's not that important, but then tell me this: How much did you, personally, knock down last year, huh?"

  The older man just shrugged. "For that I'd have to call my accountants, Arsen. I don't know, I've never had a need to know in years; I let Byrd, Bradley and Baum handle everything, that's what they get paid for, you know. But look, son, you need cash or anything, you just tell me how much an
d I guarantee you I can get it . . . here, tonight, even, if that's what it takes. It's more than just one fucking safe over at the complex, you know, and . . ."

  The younger man nodded. "We'll get back to that in a minute, Papa, but what I was getting at is this: With as much money as you have, not to mention the billions on billions of rounds of small-arms ammo in the various Ademian warehouses or the ammunition manufacturing plant Ademian owns in . . . where is it, Papa?"

  "It's four plants, Arsen," Kogh answered, "but only one in the States . . . and we don't own it, only part of it. What about it?"

  "What about it? This, Papa: Why the hell do you have to reload your old shotgun shells?" demanded Arsen. "Shitfire, you could shoot off brand-spanking-new factory loads until hell froze over or your barrel curled down and never notice it, so why waste your evening and weekend free time doing this shit, like some poor middle-class slob trying to save enough money to buy a new hunting hat?"

  Ademian Senior picked up a leather cigar case from where it lay on the workbench, fished a small knife from out a pocket, opened it, took a hand-rolled, illegal Cuban cigar from the case and began to lick down the wrappings and otherwise prepare it for the lighting while he spoke. "Why, Arsen? Because I want to, that's why. If that ain't a good enough fucking reason, Mr. Smartass, it's because doing things like this relaxes me, gets my mind off all the shit that's all the time going down every day at the complex."

  "Besides, factory loads just don't shoot the same as the ones I do myself, don't pattern right a whole lot of the fucking time, even the custom jobs I used to get done for me. If you want something like thishere done right, do it your fucking self. Your grandpapa used to say that same thing about blacksmithing work, too, Arsen, but not"—he grinned a little sheepishly—"necessarily in those exact words."

  After a brief, visual check to be certain that no gunpowder or primer containers lay open or uncovered, Kogh took the thick cigar gently between his lips, ignited a wooden kitchen match with a thumbnail, waited until it ceased to flare, then entered into the long, painstaking ceremony of evenly lighting the smoke. After he had dropped the butt of the match into a water-filled butt can and had taken a long, luxurious puff on the mild, very odorous cigar, he nodded. "Now, what can I do for you, Arsen? Or did you just come to smart off and ride my ass, huh? Listen, your Uncle Boghos and Aunt Mariya do mor'n enough of that fucking shit already. Listen, was it up to them two health freaks, I wouldn't be smoking nothing or drinking anything 'cept mineral water and carrot juice and living on raw veg'tables and broiled fish and chicken breasts with no skin and not even any fucking salt, f'r crap's sake. They want me to start up double-timing like a fucking boot ever' morning, like Boghos does, that and lifting weights like those muscle-bound faggots you can see at the fucking Y."

  "You know what a good cook your Aunt Mariya used to be, son? Well, she ain't no more, hell no! Those two, they live on fucking cow-chow, mostly, anymore, and they've both gone and got skinnier even than the pictures you used to see of the poor fuckers the Krauts and the Nips had in their prison camps in World War Two. My sister, she use to be a damn good-looking woman, but she looks like one them scarecrow Noo Yawk models now, anymore—no tits a man can see easy and hipbones you could hang your fucking hat on sticking out both sides of her. If old Boghos is still shagging her, I don't know how come he ain't flat ruptured himself on all those bones, boy!"

  He luxuriated in another long puff, then grinned evilly. "And with all his fucking fitness shit and all, Kogh Ademian is sitting here tonight enjoying himself after a good dinner, smoking a damn fine cigar, and the smart-ass fucking Dr. Boghos Panoshian is laying in a bed in Henrico Doctors' Hospital with a concussion, a face that looks like he took on a pro boxer or three, one arm in a cast, and strapped-up ribs. Heheheheh!"

  Knowing his father's rare but dangerous rages of old, and well, Arsen began, "Papa . . . ? Look, you know Uncle Boghos and Aunt Mariya mean well, want the best for you, and . . . look, I know they get to you sometimes, they used to get to me, too, and to their own kids, too. But . . . but, Papa . . . you didn't beat up on Uncle Boghos . . . ? Did you?"

  This time, Kogh Ademian really laughed, laughed until tears were pouring down his cheeks, laughed until he was forced to lean back against the workbench for support, laughed until he had dropped his loved cigar unheeded and was holding his aching sides with both of his hands, gasping for air.

  At length, when he once more could breath normally, when he had wiped the tears and perspiration from his face (at the same time, streaking it with black dirt from the towel), when he had picked up the cigar and puffed it back to life, he told his son the story, now and then unable to repress a chuckle.

  "That fucking know-it-all, my esteemed brother-in-law, Dr. Boghos Panoshian, who really looks anymore like a real starvin' Armenian, for all that he's worth almost as much as Fort Knox is and the damn AMA has given him a fucking lifetime license to steal and mint money, that fucker that can't stand to think somebody somewhere might be eating good, drinking good, and smoking a good smoke, he took to double-timing—'jogging,' he calls it. Okay, fine, he wants to run his skinny ass off when he ain't seeing how much pig iron he can lift up or in his fucking Olympic-size swimming pool that's heated or batting a tennis ball around on his private courts with my sister, no fucking body should ought to object. Right? Right. He owns enough land out there to run himself to death on, if that's what he wants to do. But that ain't what the fruitcake wants to do, Arsen. Hell, no, it ain't."

  "He owns as many or more cars as I do, but the crazy fucker, he took to running the six miles to and from his West End office, ever day. Come rain or mud, come shit or blood, here was that fucking lunatic asshole in a vest shirt and swimming trunks and basketball shoes, suntanned as dark as a high-yeller nigger, running on River Road and Gary Street Road and College Road and Patterson Avenue."

  "During rush hours, Papa? As narrow as the roads are?" asked Arsen, unbelieving. "Is he suicidal?"

  Kogh shook his head slowly. "You know, when I found out what he was doing, I asked him that, too. He come back at me with thishere pure Grade-A shit about how he paid taxes and road fees, too, so the roads was as much his as anybody's, and since pedestrians have the right-of-way in Virginia, the cars would all just have to slow down until they could pass him and maybe some of them would fin'ly take to leaving their cars at home and running with him. Arsen, he use to be a all right guy, years ago, but he's a looney tune, anymore; anymore, he hates cars as much as he hates red meat and booze and tobacco and anybody else having a good time 'cept by his rules, his nutty rules. Honest, Arsen, I think my sister is married to a real, lockupable crazy man."

  "He's wrote long letters to Washington and the governor and the fucking newspaper saying that cars and trucks and airplanes and any kind of guns should ought to be made illegal for anybody to own or use 'cept of the army and the police and ambulances, maybe. He thinks ever'body else should oughta be made to go ever'where by running or riding bicycles. He thinks the gover'ment should oughta be throwing people in jail for selling red meat or liquor or tobacco, just like they do for selling dope, f'r crissakes! You ever hear shit like that laid down before?"

  "Whew!" commented Arsen, feelingly. "He really is off his nut, Papa. But what happened to him to put him in the hospital and all? A car hit him?"

  Kogh guffawed again. "Better'n that, son, better'n that. Okay, here he was running along right at the edge of the blacktop on River Road outside of Richmond city limits, where it curves all the time and it's all them little hills and all. The road is two-lane and narrow as hell, to boot, and the poor, fucking drivers is all blowing their horns at him and cussing him, prob'ly, and taking godawful chances to get past him so they can get to work on time."

  "Then, somewhere away back down the road behind of him, comes the sound of a sireen, getting closer ever second. Okay, now he's a fucking doctor, so he might've thought it might be a meat wagon, right, and got off of the road and up on the shoulder there, so t
he cars could get out of the way faster, or at least pull far enough over to make a lane in the middle of the road. Oh, no, not Boghos. He allowed later he had built up his 'pace' and didn't want to stop, and, besides, the shoulder was muddy. He just kept right on double-timing, happy as a hog rolling in shit, breathing the way his kind of crazies breathe when they're getting their rocks off that way, with the cars passing him by the skin of their teeth."

  "Then along comes thishere dump truck with a load of shale, with a Goochland County Rescue Squad meat wagon right on his tail. He says he blowed his horn, nearly blowed the guts out of the fucker at Boghos, but for all he could see it done Boghos might've been doped up or deaf. So just then the driver seen a opening in the cars coming the other way and he pulled to the left and floorboarded it. But the leading edge of the bed fetched Boghos in the shoulder and knocked him ass-over-biscuit into the ditch, and along right there, the ditch was concrete-lined and the slabs weren't even account of the winters and he landed mostly on his face and chest."

  "Of course, the meat wagon stopped and loaded him in, too, and took the both of them on to the fucking hospital. I'm just hoping and praying that now they got him in a place can a whole lot of doctors look at him and talk to him and listen to him, they'll some of them find out how nutty he is and put him someplace and get him and his crazy shit the fuck out of my hair while I still got any hair left, is all."

  Arsen sighed. "Don't count on it, Papa, and don't try holding your breath till they lock Uncle Boghos up, either. Medical folks don't do any kind of a decent job policing their own ranks, you know—that's why there're so damn many shitty, half-ass, inept or alcoholic or dope-addict doctors still crippling or killing their trusting patients. Besides, I heard the new thing is to just let nuts out of institutions, anyway, turn them all loose to be as nutty as they want to be with nobody to control them or take care of them. Don't ask me why, and don't ask the psychiatrists why, either—the reasons they all give make you wonder why they aren't locked up themselves."