Lesser Gods

by Duncan Long

  “Negative, commander,” one of my men said over the radio link. “We can’t see any more from the catwalk. Shall we seal off the hall?”

  “No,” I answered. “But re-activate the smart cameras at the exits. We might get lucky and ID more Loupé when they leave.”

  “Should we search the crowd for weapons?” the voice of one of my new men asked over the radio.

  I suppressed a smile at the thought of strip-searching the noblesse de robe gathered in the hall. “Not today,” I said. “I want to be employed tomorrow even if you don’t. Besides, the Loupé would have dropped their weapons by now. When the janitors sweep out the hall, I’m betting they’ll find four or five plastic daggers that were sneaked through the metal detectors. But that’s the only thing we’ll have to show how many more there were. For now everyone get back to positions.”

  I headed back down the aisle toward the stage. “Mike?”

  “Yes, commander.”

  “Get a clean-up crew down here to cart off the bodies. But have the crew wait until the lights are low and everyone’s attention is on the new generator.”

  “The crew’s already on their way, commander. I’ll tell them to be discreet.”

  I climbed back onto the stage and crossed to the emperor. The guards parted so I could reach the monarch. “Sorry I had to shove you aside, Excellency.”

  The old man smiled. “A fall is better than a blade through the ribs any day. The weapon was poisoned?”

  I nodded. “One pin prick and… au revoir. “

  “Suicide killer, from the look of it.”

  I nodded again. “I hope you weren’t injured, your majesty. Perhaps we should have a doctor —”

  “Nonsense,” the Emperor said. “I’m fine.” He leaned forward and whispered, “We owe you and your men a great debt of gratitude for what you did today, commander. I will speak with you later.” Then the ruler tapped his microphone on his lapel, turning it back on and spoke calmly as he shooed his praetorian guards to the side. “Mesdames et Messieurs. If I may have your attention, please.”

  The crowd on the floor quieted as Napoleon VI returned to the front of the stage. “Well,” the emperor said, gazing over the now silent throng in front of him. He paused for a moment, his eyes flashing in the spotlight that focused on him. “Now that the formalities are out of the way, we can continue.”

  The crowd burst into laughter, and then applauded wildly.

  The emperor held up his hand to quiet them. “We can’t let an ill-guided malcontent stop the opening of France’s new generation system, can we?”

  “No!” the crowd shouted.

  I smiled to myself. The Emperor still knows how to turn a major debacle into a political plus.

  Ralph Crocker

  I crashed through the brush behind Alice, cursing the heavy armor I wore. While the weight of the suit was no problem — my body in SupeR-Gs is always strong and healthy, nearly tireless — the armor seemed to pinch my crotch with each step. Worse, the plates clanked with each step and clanged whenever a branch brushed against a steel surface, betraying our progress to the Jabberwocky.

  Pushing a branch out of the way with a steel-encased paw, I continued down the path a few more steps, then decided that I should at least give Alice a chance to escape by no longer tagging along behind her. So when we came to a fork in the path, I took the route to the right after seeing her head toward the left. I jogged forward, continuing to make a loud din that I hoped the Jabberwocky would follow.

  After going a short distance, I plowed off the path into the thick vegetation. After traveling several yards, I hid behind a knurled oak tree, trying to restrain my panting less I give myself and the Dormouse, who still was riding in my helmet, away.

  I hoped that if I could remain quiet and hidden long enough, perhaps the Jabberwocky would trudge past us and lose our trail.

  I then discovered that staying quiet might not be an option, because my tiny companion had a mouth inversely proportional to his stature.

  “Beware the Jabberwock, my son,” the Dormouse cried, his voice echoing in my empty helmet where he now stood on hind paws, reciting the poem that seemed to have driven him insane.

  “Shhhh,” I hissed. “Do you want to get eaten?”

  The Dormouse’s beady eyes glowed in the dim light coming through the thick canopy of leaves above us. “But it’s such a wondrous poem,” he whispered.

  “No doubt,” I said. “But now’s not the time for a theatrical recital. Just go back to sleep or something. Can you do that?”

  He nodded his head and then curled up inside my helmet, pretending to sleep.

  I turned my attention from him toward the crashing that ominously approached. For a moment I wondered if Alice had continued on by herself down the other pathway. What if she had doubled back looking for us?

  Then I forgot all about her, because of the thrashing of a mammoth beast headed my way.

  With a shock I also realized I had no idea what a Jabberwocky looked like. But I knew that soon I would learn — the hard way. Whatever came down the path was obviously very, very large, and definitely tracking me. Trees shook and brush was torn asunder as the monster approached.

  Fourteen heart thumps later, a giant pine was swept aside and there was the Jabberwocky in all his terrible glory. The sunlight, raining down through the opening in the canopy of trees, glistened on the behemoth’s hide giving it the appearance of an obscene saint rather than the lizardy creature it was.

  Peering through a screen of bush, my eyes were drawn to its killer jaws lined with razor-sharp teeth that glinted in the light. I noted its forelegs, held in the air like hands, with claws the size of daggers. Two leathery wings sprang from its back to complete the nightmare, wings that must have been more for looks than flying, since it was doubtful that they could ever lift the tonnage they were connected to.

  I ducked back behind the tree as the Jabberwocky continued down the path toward us; in just a moment it was alongside our hiding place in the foliage.

  Where it stopped.

  And sniffed.

  I listened to its breath swishing in and out of massive lungs. The moist air it exhaled condensed in the cool of the glen, spawning clouds of steam that drifted toward my hiding place as if searching me out. Abruptly it quit breathing and I knew it was listening, waiting for some sign of where I was. I closed my eyes and held my breath.

  I don’t know whether it was our scent, or simply a lucky guess, but the creature stepped off the pathway precisely where we had, and headed toward us, twigs snapping like dry bones beneath its feet. Its huge lungs scooped up air again and within moments the steam from its nostrils streamed on either side of the tree I hid behind, drifting down to engulf me in a thick, foul-smelling fog.

  I stood paralyzed, hoping the monster would somehow fail to detect me. Then the creature leaned against the oak and the massive tree groaned against the weight, a large branch crashing to the ground beside me.

  Now would be a nice time for the jet to wear off, I thought, reaching down to the spot where I usually carried my pistol — and discovering nothing on my belt but a pouch of coins. Oh, well. A pistol wasn’t going to cut it with the behemoth anyway. Even an elephant gun would have been pressed to do the job.

  I tried to resolve myself to the truth it was about to kill me, and hope in the real world of my apartment, my heart and brain would hold on long enough for the medics to keep me from departing for that great SupeR-G game in the sky.

  I took a deep breath and started to step out to meet my fate when a faint voice shouted far in the distance, “White Knight? Dormouse?”

  It was Alice.

  “White Knight? Dormouse?”

  Had she lost her sanity? Most certainly. No one in her right mind would holler when the Jabberwocky was around. And then I realized that no one in their right mind would be in this SupeR-G in the first place. I’m crazy, therefore I am.

  “Hell-oooohhhhhhhhh,” Alice continued to call. “Wh
ere arrrrrrrrre you? White Knight? Dormouse? Is it safe to come out?”

  The creature behind the tree thrashed around, its tail smashing into the oak I was hidden behind, uprooting it and spinning the Dormouse and me to the side like bowling pins, slamming us into the brush with a bone-jarring crash of armor, flesh, and foliage.

  I lay dazed on my back wondering if the Jabberwocky had heard my armor clanking. But it ignored the noise of my fall, if it noticed it at all, instead concentrating on Alice’s voice which called again. “White Knight? Where are you?”

  Finally I sat up, collecting my helmet where the Dormouse still resided. “Alice must have lost her marbles,” I whispered, rising to my feet. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  “No, no,” the Dormouse replied, standing up in my helmet and shaking a paw at my nose. “You must help her. That’s the White Knight’s — that’s your job: To battle the Jabberwocky.”

  With that the creature in my helmet pulled himself to his full six inches, standing ram-rod straight as he broke into verse once gain, this time making grand gestures to go with his oration from my helmet.

  “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

  “The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

  “Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

  “The frumious Bandersnatch!

  “He took his Vorpal sword in hand:

  “Long time the manxome foe he sought —”

  “This is all very nice,” I interrupted. “But I’m headed out of here so I can keep body with soul — something not likely to happen if I battle the Jabberwocky. “ I pushed my way back onto the path and headed in the direction opposite that taken by Alice and now the Jabberwocky.

  “You must understand,” the Dormouse protested. “Your job is to slay the Jabberwocky and to save Alice.”

  “Not in my job description, my friend,” I replied.

  “But —”

  “I’m here to… Hey, you’re not Huntington, are you?” I studied the small creature in front of me, trying to discern if it could possibly be the man whose photograph I’d seen in my apartment.

  After a few seconds, I gave up. Fur, whiskers, and a totally different body concealed the human characteristics of the being I held in my helmet. Besides which, I was pretty certain that if anyone here was Huntington, it would be the monster tracking us, not the tiny mouse that rode with me.

  “You’ve got to help her,” the creature insisted yet again. “It’s your job.”

  “Right.” I snickered grimly. “Like I’m going to win in a wrestling match with ten tons of claws and teeth.”

  “But the Vorpal sword can defeat the creature. It’s part of the game.”

  “My what?” I asked stopping in my tracks. This was a crazy SupeR-G after all. Perhaps I had some power I hadn’t realized. “So how could I defeat the Jabberwocky?”

  “Your Vorpal sword, there in the sheath at your side. It can defeat the beast.”

  I gazed down at my belt and saw there was a sword of some sort on my left side. I grasped the ruby encrusted hilt, almost afraid of what I might be armed with. I drew the blade that gave a metallic ring as it was unsheathed.

  The polished edge of the sword shimmered in the dim light, glistening as if it had a beam of sunlight trapped just beneath its surface. I tested its weight and balance. The blade hissed through the air, almost as if it were a living thing, with almost no effort on my part. If ever there was a magic blade, this is it.

  “You see!” the Dormouse cried, jumping from the helmet and standing on its hind legs in the lush moss underfoot.

  “It does seem… magical.”

  “The Vorpal sword can defeat the Jabberwocky. And that is your job. To defeat the monster and save Alice.”

  “You’ve seen this done before?”

  “Well… No. But I’ve heard —”

  “Does the phrase ‘fools live to fight another day’ mean anything to you?”

  The Dormouse started to protest. But before I could re-sheath the sword and race away from the field of battle, I heard Alice’s distant scream.

  I tried to ignore it. I tried to wrestle with my conscience and prevail.

  But this time I could not. There was something about her, about a damsel in distress — or perhaps it was simply the programming of the game.

  At any rate, I found myself turning toward her cries and hoped I would be more successful with the Jabberwocky than I had been in battling my heroic tendencies. I hurried down the path, feeling like a cow climbing the last ramp in a slaughterhouse.

  Chapter 9

  Jacque Thuriot de La Tribunat

  My Emperor had rewarded me with a week’s vacation at his lunar getaway. I’m paid well, but not well enough to ever go to the Moon — except through the generosity of the state. This was my fifth such vacation, and I never tired of it.

  I made the long, and thankfully uneventful, trip from Earth in just two hours and 25 minutes on a French-made hyperdrive shuttle. I begun my day in Paris; now I was bouncing along the lunar surface, my tired muscles feeling like they had new life in the low gravity.

  I squinted at the distant horizon. The gray mountains jutted upward at steep angles, their surfaces almost dazzling in the raw sunlight, contrasting sharply to the bleak, colorless black of space. For a moment I realized how alien the place was, something I almost took for granted. “Funny how quickly the abnormal becomes the norm,” I mused.

  “Pardon, Commander?” Durant asked, his voice crackling over the radio.

  “The Moon,” I replied. “Its landscape seems almost — commonplace.”

  “Only because you’ve spent some time away from Earth. It warps your esthetic tastes.”

  I chuckled. “Perhaps so, my friend. Peut-être.” I glanced toward my space-suited companion whose grinning face was barely visible inside the silvered glass helmet. When I’d first visited the moon, it had been to escape the pressures of my job for a few days — and to get away from my now-divorced wife. But now I found myself coming back again and again, even though the emperor would have sent me to any spot on Earth, or perhaps even to Mars if I’d asked for such locales. The Moon had a pull I couldn’t understand. L’amour de la lune.

  The Emperor maintained a less-than-modest apartment near the Voltaire Lunar observatory, allowing me to catch less expensive flights aboard government supply ships, a perk of my job and rank.

  “Just three hours from now,” Durant said, breaking into my train of thought, “and I’ll have made my return trip to Terra firma. I’ll be breathing air that smells like damp earth and grass instead of urine and sweat.”

  I laughed as I hopped over a boulder that blocked my path, waiting to speak until I regained my footing on the powdery surface. “Yeah, but I bet you’ll miss the joys of pseudo-meat and greenhouse fruit.”

  “Pseudo-meat and greenhouse fruit?” Durant laughed. “Ouais, c’est ça.” We bounced along for a time and then he spoke. “Seriously, wouldn’t you rather be back on Earth. Tahiti maybe? I hear the natives still parade around topless. That would have to be better than this wasteland where every space-suited woman looks like a two-hundred pound gorilla, wouldn’t it?”

  I thought it over a moment and made no reply.

  Ralph Crocker

  Bravery and stupidity are the nearly identical points forming the horns of a dilemma upon which many a man has been impaled. But, for once in my life, I looked very brave, even felt very brave, as I dashed toward the cry of Alice’s voice.

  So, a heavy dose of stupidity propelling me toward my fate, with shimmering Vorpal sword in hand, I hurtled down the winding trail in pursuit of the Jabberwocky. It took thirty seconds of armor clanking to reach a ledge overlooking a wooded clearing where, on the grassy meadow below, Alice stood, cornered by the beast. Behind her was a second cliff overlooking the ocean, waves crashing far below her. The Jabberwocky blocked any avenue of escape she might have had, standing on its hind legs with its ridged back toward me, its tail flicking back and forth li
ke a cat, as it waited to pounce on a mouse. The creature swayed back and forth, playing with its victim, laughing as Alice emptied her revolver harmlessly into the its rough hide.

  I suppose that would have been the end of Alice, had I not noisily clinked and clanked down the winding path, raising a din like a fork churned a garbage disposal. By the time I reached the clearing, the beast had turned its attention to the mass of plate and bolts chugging toward it. As it whirled about to face me, its massive tail swept through the air, narrowly missing Alice who stepped back, placing herself dangerously close to the edge of the abyss, as she dodged the scaled appendage.

  Sunlight glinted off the Jabberwocky’s right eye; its other eye missing, a dark, empty socket where once an orb had been. I realized then that the monster must be Huntington.

  “So we meet again,” the creature snarled, confirming my suspicion. “You may wish you hadn’t been so quick to follow me into this SupeR-G.”

  “I would be the first to admit I am having second thoughts. Maybe you could return me to Vietnam.”

  The creature laughed a horrid, bubbling, rumbling gargle of a chuckle before speaking. “I hope you’ve brushed up on your swordsmanship — the last White Knight I fought wasn’t much of a challenge — though he proved a tasty morsel. You look a little stringy.”

  I said nothing, trying to decide if there was enough room between us to permit a hasty retreat back into the brush before he caught me. By my calculations there was not; I’d be a White Knight sandwich before I could make my escape. So I decided to at least go down with my pride intact, sword in hand, fighting.

  The Jabberwocky circled me cautiously, making me hopeful that perhaps the sword I held really was a potent weapon. Without warning he sprang forward, the ground shaking underfoot as he crashed nearly on top of me, raking my side with his claws as I dodged, ineffectively slashing the air with my sword.