by Jeff Long
“Dear God,” she whispered. She covered her breasts, her sole defense against the scene. They were action heroes and DZ boys. Ten. Her brain counted. Her eyes saw.
The stakes ran up between their legs. Toes pointed, several men were stretching to reach the ground. All in all, there was little blood involved. Which meant they weren’t going to die anytime soon.
“In the end, if you will,” said Clemens, her guide, “one way or another, we all receive our tree. A place where we can contemplate our sins and look down and see our lives for the shit they were. The trick is to put it off for as long as possible.”
She could not believe it, him, the goblin king. “You’re part of this?”
“It’s a matter of living in my own skin. Or at least, the skin I’m left to live in.” He ran his fingers along his scars and tribal marks and branding welts.
“But they did that to you.” They: the monsters that Mama and Daddy had promised did not exist.
“You don’t understand, Rebecca. They didn’t destroy me. They created me. These men aren’t being punished, they’re being freed. The dharma bums and Christ types, they’ve got it all wrong. Suffering isn’t illusion. Hope is. You want reality?” He slapped one of the stakes. “Here’s reality. There are no lies up there. There is no hope. These men have found the maximum truth.”
It was a forest of pain. Men groaned…gingerly…that was the word.
She struggled to comprehend the full breadth of his betrayal. Backward and forward she went, tracing the hints that were suddenly so obvious, remembering the warnings that Hunter had given her, the alarm bells she had ignored. “All that time,” she said, “you were leading us into their trap?”
“My trap,” he corrected her. “I wrote it. This is my script.”
“What about the abduction?”
“After the plague, one of their elders had a vision, something about their god wanting human children. By the time I came along, the elder was dead, and I just kind of ran with the concept.”
The world was spinning too fast again. “You took our children?” She wanted to rage against him. You killed my child. You killed my husband. But the treachery sapped her. She could barely keep her head up.
“Better me than them, trust me,” he said. “Because they were going to sacrifice the whole bunch to some old mushroom of a god. That was their plan until I got involved. Grab the kids, herd them deeper, and serve them up for a bit of divine intervention. Sacrifices. Food for the gods. They even think one lives on this island. You wouldn’t believe some of their superstitions. These demons have demons. You saw what they did to the boys, turned them into prayer flags. The girls were in for worse.
“But then I put it to them. I asked them, why feed the old regime when you can be the new one? I got them thinking about the future again. Urban renewal on a grand scale. The rebirth of a subterranean nation. It will take time, of course. But this is the start of it. There’s a place here for us. For you, too, Rebecca.”
“But we’re your people.”
“I’m my people,” he said.
“The rest of the army is coming,” she said.
Clemens looked up at the row of dying men. “You’re all that’s left, Rebecca.”
“They’ll send people down to search for us.”
“Search for the searchers? Throw good after bad? Your army was it, darling, the last shot in the dark. You vanished into the abyss. Lost platoon? You’re the lost army. You just became a ghost story.”
“Someone will come.”
“Not here, they won’t. This place doesn’t exist. Our destination was the other city, the nun’s city, Hinnom, remember? No one has an inkling this place even exists. Once we collapse the tunnel at the fork in the river, we’re off the map forever.”
“They’ll come,” she murmured.
“This thing had a shelf life, Rebecca. People have already moved on. Besides, they want us down here, fighting the darkness until the end of time. That’s the story they want to read. That’s the audience you played to. We’re yesterday’s news. But a thousand years from now, we’ll be myth. That’s what this is all about. Leaving the pygmies and schmucks behind. Becoming gods.”
An image flickered of Sam’s perfect forehead in ruins. Rebecca couldn’t keep it away. Flies buzzed. Her hands flew apart. She batted at the bad thoughts.
“Are you leaving us again, Rebecca?” He stroked her head.
She trapped the awful image between her hands with a loud clap, and looked at him. “My daughter,” she informed him, “is playing with the other children.”
Sam was waiting for her once again. Mama, she called from the distance. The pyramid brightened to a big white mountain. Rebecca found herself surrounded by men on Popsicle sticks, coconuts painted with faces.
The goblin king came closer. “Never mind,” he told her. He draped a necklace over her head. “We will build a kingdom out of all the things we’ve lost but can’t forget.”
With a smile, Rebecca fingered the necklace. Its strands were fine as hair, and so gold they verged on blond. I will keep you forever, she thought to it.
“And fade to black,” Clemens said as he watched the beautiful wreck of a woman sink away.
ARTIFACTS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Senate Approves Flag Amendment
Feb. 11. Washington. In an emergency special session, the Senate approved a constitutional amendment to protect the American flag from desecration, making it the Twenty-ninth Amendment.
The new amendment reads, “The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.”
Asked why the flag amendment is necessary at this time, the Senate minority leader said that evil is stalking America. “The frequency of flag burning has nothing to do with the evil of flag burning,” said Senator Miles Jefferies (R) of North Carolina. “Laws in this nation are based on right and wrong, not on the frequency of occurrence. At this time, as we stand toe-to-toe with our enemies, our nation needs to affirm what is right.”
A flag amendment has passed the U.S. House of Representatives twelve times since 1995, and fallen just short of passing in the U.S. Senate. “The stars were aligned,” said Senator Jefferies. “At last Old Glory can fly without danger of sabotage from within.”
41
“News from the front,” the angel announced. “The battle is over.”
He sat on the sand with his legs folded, nude, hands on knees: a pearl white Buddha with bleached irises.
Today was Ali’s first day back on her feet. Her joints were swollen, and her bruises were garish, but she had finally managed to get up and wash herself. Her hair felt five pounds lighter. In place of her scarecrow rags of pants and shirt, she now wore a silk kimono stitched with golden thread. Borrowed from a Shogun princess. There was a smell to it, like old leather. She could guess. The angel had undressed one of his mummies for her.
“Are the children safe?” asked Ali.
“Most of them. But there were casualties.”
“Casualties?”
“There was a woman named Coltrane,” he said. Was.
“Rebecca,” said Ali.
“You knew her then?”
“Barely. We met, twice, briefly. The second time she saved my life from a mob.”
“Then you will find this tragic,” he said. “Her daughter was killed in front of her eyes just as they were about to reunite. It seems Rebecca caused the death herself. I’m still gathering the details.”
Ali recalled the photograph Rebecca had shown her, and the name, Samantha. But she was careful to say nothing. He was watching her reactions closely. This most civilized creature was a wild animal. At any moment he might turn on her.
“Is that a tear in your eye, Alexandra?”
Ali stifled her emotions. “What about Rebecca?”
“Poor Rebecca, her mind is broken,” said the angel. “I suspect the rest of her days will be the proverbial living hell.”
“She’s a strong woman,” Ali said. “She’ll recover.”
“I think you’re projecting,” he said. “You lost your child, now she has lost hers. You want her to get better because you want to get better.”
“The grief will fade,” Ali insisted. “It needs time, but she’ll heal.”
“Still projecting,” he said. “Tell me about your grief.”
“She’ll heal.”
“Did you?”
Why was he hounding her about this? “Yes.”
“Maggie is at peace?” he said. “She never speaks to you?”
“I buried her eight years ago,” Ali said.
“But she won’t stay buried, will she?”
“Why do you say that?”
“You haven’t heard her calling you?”
“I have my doubts about that.”
“You doubt your own daughter?”
“I doubt everything down here.”
In fact, she was beginning to accept what was surely the strangest of the deep’s strange phenomena. For the past few years now, science had been stumbling over the unnatural nature that existed belowground. Time got deformed. Evolution violated its own rules. Light existed in darkness. Objects and animals had been photographed floating in midair on wild magnetic pulses. Explanations were few and far between. All those paled next to what she was discovering here.
Ali regretted the word “soul.” Eventually a more clinical term might be applied, something to trim away the paranormal. “Free-floating memory” came to mind, or “detached ego,” or simply “voices.”
Whatever you wanted to call them, these little scraps of consciousness seemed to operate like radio signals bouncing between worlds. They spoke their names incessantly. They brought news in maddening fragments, and took the simplest of orders. They spent vast amounts of time lost and bewildered in the planet’s veins.
One thing ruled them, it seemed, the same thing that ruled Ali for the time being: this pale, deadly exile without a country. According to him, the souls were his to use. With them he whispered up his wars, religions, arts, and other mischief. In turn, they received a sense of purpose.
“Doubt is one thing,” he said. “But something has to be real. You need to anchor your world somewhere, if not down here, then up above.”
She waited. Even when he rambled, he was precise.
“You looked in your mirror one night,” he said. “This was shortly after Maggie’s funeral, I believe. You looked and she was in there. Her face was nestling inside your face. She was shy. It was her first appearance. She had stage fright, you can’t imagine. Instead of welcoming her, you screamed. A little while later you came back and covered the mirror with a towel. You don’t remember?”
Speechless, Ali stared at him.
“You gave me Maggie’s name,” he explained. “I found her. We talked.”
Ali reeled. My child?
“What if I told you I can raise the dead?”
“A trick,” she whispered. Raise the dead?
“It’s no trick,” he said. “Call it a matter of coordination.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“And why should you?” he said.
He bent slightly at the waist. He closed his eyes and lowered his right hand to the sand. Only his fingertips touched.
Mommy.
It came from behind her. Ali did not turn to see. The angel—the monster—was full of deceptions.
“Mommy.” This time it was not inside her head. Ali forced herself to look. She put one hand to her heart.
It was Maggie at two, stumble-walking across the sand. But it was a different sand, a different day, a day at the beach. The illusion was perfect in every detail, even the shadow cast by a piece of driftwood. Ali heard the rattle of seashells and beads woven into her daughter’s hair. Seagulls cried. The ocean snored. Ali dropped to her knees and opened her arms. Maggie rushed to her. Everything was right, the salt white along her part, the little fingers unconsciously kneading Ali’s arm, the ketchup stain on her shirt. Mommymommymommy. I wuv you.
Everything was exactly as she remembered.
“No,” said Ali.
Immediately her arms were empty. The illusion collapsed. The surf sound and yellow sun fell to pieces.
“Mommy,” she heard again. Ali turned left. Maggie was a year older, waving to her from the steps of a library surrounded by trees. The cave gloom brightened and took on the scent of trees. Maggie was pale. This was the day they’d discovered Grandfather Twilight. A week later the blood work would come in positive.
“Come on, Mommy,” Maggie said, holding the door. That’s all Ali had to do, follow her child through a door. They could be together forever.
“No,” said Ali.
The library vanished.
It came again from another direction. “Mommy.”
Ali got to her feet. Her bones hurt. Her heart hurt. “Stop,” she said.
The angel opened his eyes. He lifted his fingers from the sand. The light dimmed. The tree scent vanished. Embers sketched the gloom.
“Are you sure?” he said.
She looked around. It had taken her a lifetime to reach these badlands. For reasons she could not explain, of all those who had come before her, the mystics with their riddles and the warriors with their strong arms and the grief stricken with their pleas, she alone stood in this spot today, ready for this task. If it were easy, someone would long ago have done what she had come to do.
“Why have you shown me this?” she said.
He rested his hands on his knees again. Not a vein disturbed his dolphin-smooth skin. He never sweated. Also he had no navel.
“So long as you stay with me,” he said, “she will be here for you.”
“And if I leave?”
“I would send her deeper.”
“Where is that?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“What is down there?”
“I don’t know.”
There was just one way that he could not know. “They never come back?”
“Never,” he said.
ARTIFACTS
PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF
February 13
China Sub Commander Is Son of PLA Chief
The commander of the Chinese submarine that grounded in California is the illegitimate son of General Wang Yi Chap, the most senior officer in the People’s Liberation Army.
This highly sensitive state secret came from Premier Deng Jiaming. It was hand-delivered by the Russian ambassador, representing Chinese interests until the PRC resumes diplomatic ties with the U.S. The Russian ambassador was further authorized to state that if the general’s son and crew can be quickly delivered into the PM’s personal custody, as a unilateral gesture and without conditions, then “the birds will joyously fly home.” This refers to the U.S. aircrew in their custody.
It should be noted that Premier Jiaming is locked in a power struggle with his military, and particularly with General Wang, an old-school Maoist. Jiaming is relatively young, in good health, and a centrist with Western tastes. The release—into Jiaming’s care—of the submarine commander and his crew would allow China to save face and at the same time strengthen Jiaming’s hand. It will demonstrate that by working with the U.S., China benefits.
China experts with the Department of State and the CIA agree that this is an extraordinary chance to influence Chinese policy making, and paves the way for a resumption of talks aimed at settling territorial disputes in the Pacific Subterrain.
42
The very incarnation of a fiend—warty skin, broken horns, goat eyed—sat quietly scratching his name onto a pillar at the gate to N’iu, or Taurus, the city of the ox. A prophet had told them of a dream in which a lion entered the city. But the invaders had all been killed, praise be to God. There was no lion.
His clan, or all that remained of it, slept nearby. The great battle at the citadel of light had gored them. Most of his companions were dead. No one was not wounded.
They sprawled among the rocks and vestiges of the invaders’ camp.
The wind was beginning to stir.
He patiently worked his name into the stone. Behind him, the wounded kept turning to get comfortable. Joints of meat stood propped against the looted packs. Scalps and hides draped the boulders, drying.
The name was not really his name, nor could he pronounce it. Very simply he had taken a fancy to its written shape in his youth, and ever since went about cutting it into the stone wherever his travels took him. Memory is everything. He wanted to be remembered, even if it was for someone else’s name.
He was nearly finished when the prophet’s lion fell upon the city.
Cervical one, the topmost vertebra, is called the atlas because it carries the world upon its shoulders. With a twist of his hands, Ike rearranged the hadal’s world. The graffiti artist dropped in a silent heap. If Ike saw his own initials—IC—scratched into the pillar, they did not register. Long ago he had left himself behind.
Ike went among the sleeping shapes. Side by side, three twitched with dreams. One was snoring very softly. To save a bullet and not ruin a pelt, trappers stomp on the animal’s rib cage. Barefoot, Ike crushed the three dreamers. It was like walking on bags of twigs.
The rest awoke and saw their dead comrades and the tall assassin. They recognized his armor from legend. Made of green jade plates, it was the armor of Older-Than-Old. They saw his empty hands, and the storm in his eyes, and knew that here was a creature divinely touched. Here was that dread thing, a berserker.
One fled through the city. The rest rushed Ike in a pulse. He went into them with his empty hands. He exploited every opening. There is always an opening.
The real Achilles heel is the neck, target rich, full of nerves and arteries and other mortal goodies. Ike plundered it.
The eyes are a prime target. The optic nerve is especially sensitive, even in people without eyes.
There is a way to combine a groin strike with a castrating grab. One stuns, the other bleeds your opponent out.
Their racks of horns made convenient handles.
