Bad Cow

by Andrew Hindle

  It laughed for another day. And then the laughs rose back up into shrieks, and it spent a third day screaming.

  Finally, on the fourth day, the eternal Second Disciple was ready to talk.

  DISCIPLE

  Moskin had been in and out of the chapel in those three days, resting and receiving what medical attention Bayn could offer in her reduced state. He’d been fortunate as well as resilient, and had suffered only superficial damage. He rested in one of the few remaining chambers aside from the chapel and the gastroclave-room, and generally tried to help his body recover at its own pace.

  He was asleep, typically enough, when Bayn’s voice intruded on him.

  “Our guest has stopped screaming,” she reported, “and seems to be coming to its senses.”

  Moskin was awake instantly, leaping out of his narrow bed and throwing his newly-fabricated clothes on. He ran to the chapel and into the presence of the pillar of fire. Blacknettle, of course, was already standing before the searing column, her face intent.

  Moskin, at a loss for words, stepped up alongside the Angel, and bowed his head.

  “Revered Firstmade?” he said in a hushed voice.

  For a moment, there was nothing but the soft whispering sound of flames rising and surging in the vessel. The curling streaks of blue, he now saw, were not fire – they were bands of frost.

  “You are a Field Elf,” a voice spoke from the column. After so many years with no voices but Bayn’s and his own, Moskin felt a sudden sharp urge to flee, to lash out, to cower from the intruder. He resisted the urge. The voice, for all its strangeness, was clearly being fed through Bayn’s communication system – the words were the accessible, modern New Pinian language that Moskin and Bayn had been communicating in from the start, without a trace of antiquity or tonal dissonance to it. “I am sorry – a Lowland Elf, of the Áea-folk. I am remembering things in strata, and some of them seem to go all the way down,” the fire laughed, a far less distressing sound than its piercing hysterics of two days previous.

  “I am, revered Firstmade,” Moskin said. “I am Moskin Stormburg, Áea of Barnalk Low. My greetings, my respects, my deepest regrets for snatching you from your rest in unreality.”

  “Unreality, yes,” the fire said. “We talk about it as Limbo. Interchangeable with the Ghåålus Who runs the place. And your apology is unnecessary,” it went on. “Indeed, my own apologies must by now outnumber the stars in the sky. You and your … associate … have done great work in sparing me yet one more, I think.”

  “The Angel Blacknettle, revered Firstmade,” Moskin supplied quickly, “and the vessel we stand in is–”

  “A Convoy Defence Flesh-Eater,” the fire said. “Late of the Destarion, I assume.”

  “Yes, revered Firstmade,” Bayn said, and Moskin had never heard such fervent adoration in the ship’s voice. It glowed, as well, on Blacknettle’s face.

  “An easy guess, since the Destarion is the only Category 9 remaining in Corporate space,” the fire said. “But perhaps you should explain what I have missed, and I will then tell my part.”

  Moskin and Bayn did their best to summarise the past not-quite-two millennia, from the point of view of the wider Pinian-worshipping community and their own tireless work in the gulf, the machinations of the Heavenly authorities and the convoluted explanations and theories surrounding the exile. The fire surged and swirled inside the pillar while they talked, but did not interrupt. When they were done – Moskin felt they could have talked for a month and still not done justice to what they were attempting to explain – the pillar stood in lightly-hissing silence for a few more moments.

  “I see,” it said eventually. “It is as I feared, then – and perhaps worse.”

  “Revered Firstmade–” Bayn started meekly.

  “Call me Dagab,” the fire said. “It is as good a name as any for this disgraced and many-faced incarnation – unintended indeed – and serves to remind us of the Elf whose ordeal brought us to this close. The other Elf, I should say,” it added.

  “Very well,” Moskin said, “Dagab,” he shivered. “You are the … Second Disciple?”

  Dagab chuckled. “I am.”

  Moskin dropped to one knee. “Then we are well met, Dagab.”

  Dagab’s chuckle deepened into a laugh. “Well met, Moskin of the Áea. Although I seem to recall we have met once already,” Moskin blinked, and Dagab expounded. “Pudding Lane, London, in the Year of Our Lord 1666.”

  Moskin didn’t understand most of this, but of course Dagab could only be referring to one thing. “The fire.”

  “The Great Fire,” Dagab said with evident relish. “I, of course, had no recollection of the incident after that incarnation ended, although it remained an important event in the human culture that has grown back in the wake of the exile. No, you don’t need to be concerned, or apologetic – it is another black mark on my ledger, not yours. You attempted to awaken me, and I rolled over and went back to sleep.”

  “Did you see me?” Moskin asked.

  “Not precisely,” Dagab said. “I think I could best explain it by saying that your scrutiny triggered a fleeting and unusual emergence. I remembered the Áea-folk. I saw the unbroken lines of their species marching down through the aeons, finally culminating in a representative worthy of returning to the singular Pinian identity. Unfortunately, the emergence also activated an aspect of my power over which I had no control, and no time to learn. I perished almost immediately, as did the rather nice bakery I was loitering outside of, and quite a lot of the rest of London.”

  “Two Elves, one from Farrendohr and one from Barnalk Low,” Bayn marvelled. “Two breakthroughs. Quite remarkable.”

  “Amusing, certainly,” Dagab agreed. “And you may be interested to hear that the owner of the bakery was a man named Farynor. The Infinites have a sense of humour,” it gave another chuckle, then grew sombre. “When I last walked the Earth as a true Disciple of the Pinian Brotherhood, Moskin, I am afraid I would have been a grave disappointment to you. Perhaps that is where I should begin.

  “My last incarnation – the last you would know of – was named Doof. It wasn’t even a name, not really, but a sobriquet based on my hallucinogenic drug of choice. I, and my two Brothers, were truly pitiful beings. The Pinian Disciples were never exactly what you’d call dignified – and that was the way we liked it! – but that last incarnation had seen us fall into dissipation and debauchery that is shameful to look back on.

  “Perhaps you are aware, Moskin, that when the Áea-folk took their first real steps onto the Corporate stage, they were so embarrassed by what their patron Disciple had become, they searched back through history and associated themselves with one of my earlier, more magnificent incarnations?”

  “Brutan the Warrior,” Moskin said, feeling a slow burn of shame – either shared, or entirely his own, he wasn’t sure – creep up his face.

  “Yes,” Dagab laughed again. It seemed to enjoy laughing, and Moskin was pleased to witness confirmation of this part of the Pinian mythos, at least. “Brutan the Warrior. A glorious figure, to be sure. That body was built by my Brothers as a joke, did you know? Let’s put him into a giant musclebound goon in a loincloth, that’ll be funny. I took their joke and, I dare say, made rather a passable legend from it. Brutan was an admirable fellow and I don’t blame you for idolising me in that form.”

  “The Burning Knights of Brutan the Warrior endure to this day,” Moskin said, before honesty compelled him to add, “although they’re presumed lost somewhere in the exiled worlds.”

  “I don’t recall seeing them on Earth,” Dagab said thoughtfully. “I would definitely have noticed that, I think. But … as I was saying. It is important for you to understand that, when this began, I was an addled husk of a creature. I cannot say that what happened was punishment for our behaviour, or if even then there was some hint of this mysterious thing that is supposed to be hiding alongside us … no, I could not say, but in either case I don’t remember Limbo scolding
us specifically,” it chuckled in tones of fond reminiscence. “Limbo usually scolds us, before handing down punishments.

  “No, the first thing I remember was coming out of my haze and realising that civilisation was collapsing around me. This is not an unusual sensation when suffering withdrawal from the sorts of drugs I had been fond of, by the way … but it is unusual for civilisation to actually collapse.

  “The city, fair Rōma as we called it at the time, was … terribly reduced. Communications and transport were down, there was no power, all the primary conveniences were inactive. And God was missing. Our connection to God, and the priests’ connection to God – evaporated like mist. We still had our own power, of course, my Brothers and I, but we were greatly outnumbered by terrified and angry humans.

  “There were riots. Heaven, Hell, the rest of the urverse seemed to have vanished. The local Portal was gone – indeed any attempt to get off Earth failed catastrophically. I see now why this was so. The world, or most of its surface, had been converted into a planet, the other realms into more planets, the whole set in motion around a sun. Only now, as my lifetimes in exile fall into place in my memory, do I understand. But I have to tell this in order.

  “Yes, there were riots, and there was great fear. Not the least of that fear was felt by myself, and my Brothers, weaklings that we were. Separated from our true authority and support, dreading the reprisals and responsibility we would be forced to shoulder, and coming down from some truly prodigious psychedelic euphoria, we adopted human form. This is something we can do, and have found use for in bygone eras,” Dagab laughed again, somewhat humourlessly this time. “We failed to realise just how complete the exile was.”

  “You were unable to return to your Pinian guises,” Moskin guessed.

  “That’s right. Our Pinian forms are special compositions, not truly organic. Extremely specialised and uniquely designed articles of elementware. Once banished – once we had assumed human form – we required direct dispensation from God to reassume them. Normally, of course, this was spontaneous and unspoken – as simple a matter as changing clothes. But with the exile – with the veil you speak of in place – it was impossible. And so we became human.

  “We retained some power of our own, as I said. For the remainder of that human span, the corporeal duration of our human forms, we were able to use that power. We used it to hide, for the most part.”

  “To hide?” Moskin said, a little sickly.

  “Even now, I think I would hesitate to tell you this had I not already passed beyond reprisals,” Dagab admitted. “I am but a shade, leaving redemption to my next incarnation. Even so, I am ashamed to the very centre of my being. Yes, we hid. We fled, and we remained in hiding, only showing ourselves on a handful of occasions – and on those occasions, we studiously avoided the entreaties of thefew remaining Angels, and we crept back into the shadows as the world burned. In time, there were no Angels left – except for faithful Gabriel, I now see.

  “When our bodies failed, as you surmised, we soul-journeyed to new ones. This is an intricate thing, but I want you to understand that we did not possess, did not parasitise human newborns. We moved into the flesh just as it was sparking, not dislodging an existing soul as one does when committing possession, but becoming the soul of that new life-form.”

  “I am afraid the particulars of soul-journeying, possession and rebirth are beyond us,” Bayn said. “As such, your pleas for understanding…”

  “Misguided, yes,” Dagab agreed sorrowfully. “But for the official record I would like it stated – and perhaps my explanations find sympathetic ears, if not understanding ones.”

  “Yes,” Moskin said, because he felt a huge and awful obligation to do so.

  “That was our first incarnation, or half-incarnation, as human beings,” Dagab said. “Even though my memory has returned, I cannot see much of it. I was addled, as I say, and I was in deep hiding and even deeper fear and denial. The very world was torn from under us. The death toll was beyond imagination.

  “With my next incarnation, all memory of myself as a Pinian Disciple was gone. I remembered nothing more than that which a newborn human – and then a human child, and then a human adult – could remember. That life, nothing more. I could not access my power, for I had no idea it even existed.

  “And so I lived. Whether I did so alongside my Brothers, of course, I don’t know. They could have been my best friends, or my siblings, or a pair of beggars I walked past on the ravaged streets. I would not have known them. And when I died, I began anew. By instinct. By lack of any recourse. And so I lived again. And again.

  “The next part of the tale you know – in fact, you know more than I do. I assume that I lived for a time as a human being in a normal incarnation, and that I stumbled upon some happy combination of drugs or meditation that allowed me to soul-journey once more, regaining some small measure of my abilities. I assume that I did so, and that I found some way of soul-journeying through the veil, and that I was captured in the act by this wizard of Farrendohr you spoke of. I myself remember none of this, as that soul has been cauterised from the chain of my life. Perhaps he, like me, remembered all of his lives and follies before the end.

  “For myself, I now remember only the final ragged days of a life as Dagab, an insane Elf trapped agonisingly in the body of a human. A human who had to endure the brutal torture reserved in those times for people thought to be mad, or possessed by agents of the Darkings. The Devil, for such they took to calling the Adversary. They got it recklessly jumbled up with the administrators of Hell, and all manner of things were forgotten – things get confusing fast when they move at the speed of humanity – but the upshot was that they really did consider my poor suffering flesh to be possessed. And they weren’t necessarily wrong about that. They just went about addressing the issue in a … non-optimal way.

  “So. I lived. I was Dagab in truth, for a short and awful time. I died. I was born into my next life. And so I continued. Unaware of who I was, unaware that people were studying the strange case of Dagab the Elf, unaware that Blacknettle and this fine Flesh-Eater – and in time you, Moskin – were searching for me … I continued.”

  “And you remember all of these human lifetimes?” Moskin asked. “In spite of the fact that you’re … like the incarnation that was replaced with Dagab the Elf, you’re … cauterised?”

  “Yes,” Dagab said, sounding unconcerned. “I remember. My next incarnation, beyond the veil, may know nothing of Barry Dell. Of course, my next incarnation will know nothing of anything beyond its next human life – but should I ever return to my full self…”

  “Barry Dell – that was the name of the human you were, at this time?” Bayn asked.

  “That was me,” Dagab said. “Unassuming fellow, was Barry Dell.”

  “But when we release you–” Bayn started.

  “You will not,” Dagab said, its voice turning grim.

  Moskin and Blacknettle exchanged a thunderstruck glance.

  “What?” Bayn blurted, sounding as blank as Moskin felt and Blacknettle looked.

  “Yes – if you release me, I will enter Limbo and rejoin the chain, restored in a way my unfortunate soul-journeying incarnation never was,” Dagab said. “The restored Second Disciple will – hopefully! – remember all of the lives spent on Earth, and there Barry Dell will be. But for now, I am between worlds. I am nothing. I am the whole, I remember everything, but I am mind only. And you will not release me.”

  “Why not?” Moskin asked.

  Dagab paused, the soft whisper of its fire the only sound for a moment.

  “At the moment,” it eventually continued in a careful tone of explanation, “I am not truly the Second Disciple anymore. I am just an echo. My new incarnation is already growing. And it – I – will know nothing of this conversation. I will be the next human child in the chain. My full memory will only come back to me when I am fully restored as a Pinian Disciple, or when I am a loose soul such as the one you see he
re. And if things continue as they have been, the former is never going to happen.

  “There is nothing I can do from here, and less than nothing I can do from the grey of Limbo.”

  “We can’t keep you here,” Bayn said, “and when we release you, nature will take its course. You will be returned to unreality and your chain of incarnations, whether we want it to happen or not. We can’t play games with Firstmade souls.”

  Moskin was looking thoughtfully into the flames. The questions and theories that had been spinning for centuries in his mind were flying apart, reforming, fired in the kiln of the Second Disciple’s burning essence.

  “What do you propose, Dagab?” he asked. “You have an alternative in mind.”

  “There’s no place for me in the Brotherhood now,” Dagab said. “This we know. I have gone on without me. The Second Disciple continues, and when our memories line back up I will be a part of them – or at least Barry will be. I’m not sure about these past few days. I suspect they will be folded over entirely.”

  “But I cannot hold you here,” Bayn repeated. “I lack the power. Soon, you will go to unreality. And I cannot process your soul into ghost form, as useful as that might be…”

  “Your interception of this shade will achieve nothing if we do not find some way of relating what we have learned back to Gabriel. Or back to me,” Dagab added in amusement. “And that means…” it paused, waiting.

  “That means we must send you back,” Moskin said.

  “Yes,” Dagab said. “Not to Limbo, but to Earth.”

  “How, exactly?” Moskin asked.

  “There is a way,” Bayn admitted, “although I do not know how it will work through the veil. And I’ve never done it personally – I’ve only been an observer to the process.”

  “Yes,” Dagab said. “It must be attempted.”

  “What are you both talking about?” Moskin pleaded.