by Steve Alten
It doesn’t matter. My destiny … I can’t take a chance.
To hell with that stupid Mayan stuff, it’s our destiny to be together.
It’s not stupid. My father warned me—
To hell with your father, your father’s dead!
Don’t say that.
Think, Jacob. Necromancers like us can only speak with the dead.
You’re wrong.
Don’t leave me, Jacob! You’re all I have!
Look, I don’t wish to hurt you, but things are happening … there are more important things at stake.
What’s more important than love?
Lilith—
Answer me! What’s more important than love?
I’m sorry.
Jacob shudders as Lilith’s venomous energy lashes out at him.
You go to Hell, Jacob Gabriel! You go straight to Hell!
Lilith—
The sudden emptiness of the nexus closes in upon him.
Hell. Exactly where I’m headed.
Father, I need you!
I’m here, Jacob. Tell me what’s wrong?
I feel so lost. Manny’s still not Hunahpu, at least he’s not like me.
Give him time.
I don’t know. He wants a normal life.
In the end, Manny will fulfill his destiny.
He hates his calling, he just wants to live his life. He wants to be in love.
What did you tell him?
I told him love is a distraction, that it makes men weak. You don’t agree?
Jacob, love is the most powerful force in the universe. The love I feel for your mother has kept me from giving in. It was your love for me that reached out and saved me.
You’re far from saved. When Immanuel and I find you and rescue you, then you’ll be saved. Until then, I don’t have time for the nonsense of love. At least not now.
You found a girl, didn’t you? Someone special.
Yes.
And you love her?
Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about her.
I was the same way with your mother. At times, my love for her seemed to consume my every waking moment.
Exactly why I had to break it off. She was disfocusing me, interfering with my training.
Jacob—
Why prolong the hurt? In six years, I’m out of here, right? You of all people should understand why I did what I did. After all you’ve told me about the loop in space-time, about our failure during our first attempt—
Maybe I was wrong to allow this communication.
You’re preparing me for what lies ahead.
Or condemning you to it. If it was only my existence at stake, I would have given in long ago, I would never have allowed you to speak with me.
It’s okay.
It’s not okay! It infuriates me! Why must my family suffer so? Why must my sons and their mother have to go through this hell?
Dad, calm down … the Abomination might register your anger.
Let it, let God feel it, too! Do you hear me, God? I know you’re out there listening. What kind of God allows good people to suffer so? Why does evil often go unpunished? Where’s the justice in your universe?
Dad—
I hate you, God! Do you hear me? I hate you as much as I hate myself!
Jesus, Dad, you’re scaring me! Dad?
Dad?
I’m … I’m sorry, Jacob. I’m sorry for everything. If I had been stronger … if I’d been wiser, I would never have allowed the Guardian to manipulate and deceive me the way they did.
What? The Guardian deceived you? What did they do?! Father, tell me, I need to know.
I’m sorry … it’s so hard to focus through the rage. It blinds me … scatters my thoughts.
Then take it slow. Go back to your journey, to Bill Raby’s journey. That was his name, right? The space traveler who had escaped the coming holocaust.
Bill Raby … yes … yes, I had become Bill Raby.
And the transport. Tell me what happened after you crash-landed on Xibalba.
I remember now. I remember thinking I must’ve blacked out, because when I awoke, the cabin was pitch-dark and people were screaming.
Why were they screaming?
Our landing … the impact caused a flash fire. It must’ve been a bad one. A dozen colonists were dead, dozens more injured.
But you were okay?
No, I don’t think so. Something had happened, but not to Bill, to Michael Gabriel. All my thoughts, all of my memories as Michael were gone. From that point on, I was Bill Raby, marine geneticist, marooned on an alien world. It was as if Mick had never existed.
Okay, okay, so what happened then? Try to remember.
We were surrounded by darkness, still fumbling within the powerless cabin, when we heard scratching sounds outside the ship. Pressing my face to the viewport, I scanned the terrain, looking for the source.
The sun had set hours ago. Unable to see through the darkness, I located a pair of night-vision scanners and placed them over my eyes. The lenses cut through the night, turning everything olive green … revealing movement outside.
There were billions of them—huge beetles—a foot and a half in length, maybe twenty to forty pounds, God only knows what the gravity was like on this desolate world. They were scurrying up through the volcanic fissures by the hundreds of thousands, their grotesque black shell-encased bodies marked by occasional flashes of luminescence that set off the night like tiny strobe lights. My first thought after I swallowed back the bile of terror was communication … that the lights were a form of alien language, sort of like the fireflies back on Earth, only far more intelligent. But as they piled upon one another, rising up the viewport glass to test its thickness with their tripod-shaped horns and sickle claws, I knew these beings were more like the horrible hordes of army ants that devastate Africa, the ones that operate as a single collective, stripping away the flesh and bones and vegetation of everything that stands in their path.
We watched, helpless and frightened, as they scampered over the moss-covered terrain in ebony waves. They covered the ship, and for several terrifying hours, all of us feared they might eat through the steel plates.
After a tense night, the first rays of dawn sent them fleeing back to their underground dwellings.
When it became apparent that the swarm would not venture into the daylight, our shuttle leaders organized an exploratory team. Several men approached and asked me to join them outside.
Forty minutes later, a dozen of us, all dressed in space suits, stepped out from the shuttle’s airlock to join leaders and scientists from the other eleven vessels. Armed with measuring devices, we probed the land and air.
The more we learned, the more fearful we became.
The planet’s atmosphere contained high levels of carbon dioxide, along with smaller amounts of carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia. Like Mars, the scarlet sky was devoid of an ozone layer, but unlike the Red Planet back in our end of the galaxy, there was no shelter on this desolate world other than our broken vessels, and no raw materials to access to gain a foothold.
After three hours, our teams returned to our respective vessels, the reality of our situation too overwhelming to bear. We were marooned on a world lacking fresh water, vegetation, and breathable air. There was no ozone layer to protect us from the alien sun’s ultraviolet rays, and in five months, our ship’s supplies would run out … assuming the nocturnal scavengers did not devour us first.
Two million years ago, our ancestors had managed to survive their own harsh beginnings in the jungles of East Africa. The first humans had migrated into new lands and faced life-threatening challenges. They had sought shelter in caves, and crafted tools to hunt with. They had learned how to harness fire and to farm, and had built thriving civilizations. Ever the explorer, man had eventually constructed great vessels, crossing dangerous oceans in order to satisfy both his need to improve his lot in life and his inquisitiveness.
And now, in a sense, so had we.
The hopelessness.
The fear.
The constant bickering.
Twelve Earth ships had crash-landed in a toxic environment. Twelve ships possessing a limited supply of air, food, and water.
Twelve ships. Six hundred-plus opinions.
Long before we had launched from Earth, Mars Colony and its ten thousand chosen inhabitants had been preorganized into five districts. We had appointed representatives and even a newly elected president. The multiple party system had been tabled for the moment, but democracy would rule the Red Planet just as it had shaped America, with a new Constitution and a Bill of Rights.
None of that had any bearing on our present dilemma. We were castaways, forever separated from the collective. In space, the crew had called the shots, but now the ships were dead, and anarchy ruled the day.
If we had been a colony of ants, we’d have been working side by side before that second dawn. If we had been a beehive, there would have been no question of authority.
But we were modern man, cursed with ego, full of self. So before we could begin searching for food and fresh water, before we could start designing shelters, before we could see to our most basic needs … first, we had to decide who was in charge.
Imagine twelve cramped space vehicles filled with hundreds of emotionally crazed passengers and a limited number of atmospheric suits. It took three hours of negotiations on the ship-to-ship communicators just to determine where the first council meeting would be held and who would attend.
Atmospheric scientists wanted to be heard. So did the geologists, horticulturists, medical staff, engineers, architects … in fact, everyone wanted to voice an opinion. It was an endless gaggle of babble, compounded by the hopelessness of our situation.
Finally, one man rose above the fray to bring order to the chaos … the only man who could.
Devlin Mabus.
Mabus? Father, was he related to Peter Mabus, the billionaire?
He was his grandson. Devlin’s company, MTI, had financed a third of the Mars Colony. His team had selected more than half of the survivors on our space vehicles. He had already been appointed to the president’s new cabinet as vice president and was easily the highest-ranking Mars official present among us.
More important, Devlin had boarded his private shuttle with two dozen heavily armed bodyguards, all loyal to the influential billionaire and his poisonous mother.
Devlin decided each ship would elect three representatives to serve as liaisons to communicate with the newly formed Council, over which he would preside. This hierarchy worked well enough … until the day one representative openly voiced his disagreement, causing a rift among the leadership. Devlin took it all in stride, then had the dissenter relocated to his own ship so that the two could ‘come to a political resolution on behalf of the colony.’
The dissenter’s opinions changed. Two days later, he went for a ‘stroll.’
The ‘stroll’ was a walk outside the shuttle without an environmental suit.
The ‘stroll’ was suicide.
This Devlin sounds an awful lot like his grandfather.
I have no doubt he was even worse, having met his mother, a woman who could manipulate a small nation with her beauty, and crush them in her evil embrace. She was as alluring and as deadly as a Venus flytrap, and she was Devlin’s best friend and only confidant. The two of them made quite the pair, and yet, as much as I feared them, our colony survived on the virtue of their combined strength.
With each passing day, our situation grew more hopeless. Exploration teams would leave every dawn in search of food and water, but could never venture too far, forced to return before the giant beetles made their nightly appearance.
Traps were set to capture a few specimens. We learned the insects were blind, existing on microbes found within the volcanic rock and moss.
Unfortunately, the alien insects were not edible.
As hope faded, the suicide walks increased. Sometimes it was an individual, sometimes an entire family. Depression spread like the plague. A limited supply of environmental suits kept most civilians confined to their ships, increasing our feelings of isolation.
Still, our colony was blessed with some of the best minds our species had to offer. Using spare parts, engineers were able to upgrade an unmanned aerovehicle one of the children had brought on board. Each morning our drone scout would venture forth like Noah’s dove, searching for salvation.
And then, on the afternoon of our forty-third day on the planet, we found it …
17
The light fades, and with it all my fear
The atmosphere’s electric, I can feel her near,
Her breath on my skin, her touch on my soul,
The spell has been cast, she has total control
The succubus, she comes to me,
Visits in the night;
Wringing the love out of me,
Our joined souls ignite
—ODE TO THE SUCCUBUS MAX RAEL,
HISTORY OF GUNS
NOVEMBER 2, 2027: BELLE GLADE, FLORIDA
Quenton Morehead is alone with Lilith in his one-room church, the two of them repainting the pews. For the last two days he has kept clear of the girl, her sudden confidence and exhibitionism shocking the minister while turning him on.
A new approach was needed, one that played up to his granddaughter’s newfound persona.
‘Lilith, have we spoken before about the Succubus?’
‘Succubus? No, you never mentioned it.’ Feeling his eyes upon her, she allows her breasts to jiggle beneath the skintight top as she vigorously strokes the paintbrush.
Quenton fights the urge to drag her onto the dais and rape her. ‘The Bible tells us that the Succubus was a female demon who visited men, seducing them while they slept.’
‘And why should I be interested in this Succubus?’
‘For one thing, her name was Lilith, and she was very powerful.’
Lilith stops painting. Don Rafelo had never spoken of this. ‘Tell me about her.’
‘Lilith was Adam’s first wife, created out of the earth long before Eve came ’round. The Bible says the Succubus was a tantalizing beauty, like yourself, who refused to submit herself sexually to Adam.’
‘You’re not equating yourself with Adam?’
‘The point is, God created Lilith to pleasure Adam, but she resisted her calling. She left the garden and eventually became pregnant. It was Lilith’s daughters who mated with Cain and Abel.’
‘Good for her.’
‘The Succubus was powerful.’
Lilith looks up. ‘How so?’
‘She’d approach her victims under the cloak of night as a wind demon, using sex to control their will. The Succubus could control even the strongest of men. It is said that any man who fell for the Succubus never awakened from her spell.’
Lilith allows one of the overall straps to slide off her shoulder.
Quenton moves closer, taking the bait.
The teen’s cocoa skin crawls with his approach. ‘I can smell the stench of your lust, Quenton. Try something again, and I’ll hurt you even worse.’
‘You owe me. I could have sent you away long ago, but I didn’t.’
‘I wish you had. Maybe I wouldn’t curse my own existence.’
‘Just as I curse the day my wife and I took your mother into our home.’ He inches nearer. ‘See, I know who you are. You can’t fool me any longer.’
‘And who am I?’
‘Lucifer’s mistress—the Succubus-Lilith, reincarnate.’
‘Does that make you afraid, Quenton, or excited?’
‘Hush your mouth, heathen.’
‘I’m the heathen?’ She turns to face him. ‘How dare you—you, who spent so
much time violating my innocence.’
‘What I did, I did to exorcise the Devil.’
‘And who is the Devil to threaten a man of God, a man of virtue? Why should you fear this fallen angel, Reverend Hypocrite? Ah, maybe it’s not fear, but jealousy that drives your hatred, after all, Lucifer is the angel of pleasure.’
Quenton stares at the girl, his body quivering.
