Zephyr III

by Warren Hately

  She shakes her head. Olga takes her hand from the other end of the sofa and they sigh.

  “Yet you did it,” I say.

  “I was young. Your father was hung. What can I say? Besides. It gave me a son.”

  The hand-holding between the two women intensifies. This isn’t a fresh issue and the grief rolls off Titania in waves strong enough to drown any nearby empaths. I sigh and take a swig from a glass I discover is empty.

  “Everyone who didn’t clear out of there, they were – what’s the term these days – overwritten? Reality isn’t conscious. It’s a binary affair. Alive or dead, one, not two, it couldn’t stand to replicate, Joe. It just copied people over like old VHS tapes,” Titania tells me, earnestness written in every fiber of her being.

  “It means the me who carried over was from the other world, a world like this, where The Twelve were already tyrants. All memory of that was gone, of course, though I wonder, from what you tell me and all I’ve found out from others over the years . . . We’ve had people watching, you know, as the years rolled by, and even as our numbers thinned – we commandeered a Thalassian intra-space cruiser at one stage, got our hands on all that sweet ideational tech – and so I was able to keep half an eye on you, your mom, myself. That poor girl.

  “Titanium Girl. I think part of her knew, you know?” Titania sighs again.

  Olga slips panther-like from the end of the couch, boots off, and pads away to the room they share above the cantina.

  “I think that’s what maybe drove her so crazy. Or something microscopic, some difference between her life and mine that meant where I coped – some would even say I’ve thrived in the chaos since ’77 – instead she snapped. Seeing your kid killed, though, that’s got to hurt. That little boy dying, well, I know how it feels because he was my boy too, Joe.”

  The tears well up now and there comes the flow. She’s a big lady. Statuesque. Strong. Beautiful. When she cries, her whole body sobs and her lungs get a real workout. A fey smile crosses my face just a second before the words sink in and I open my mouth and I’m damned if I know what’s meant to come out.

  “How. . . ?”

  “Jesus, Joe. I’m so sorry.”

  She dabs at her eyes like she’s blotting mascara, but it’s been years since she wore any.

  *

  “WHEN WE WERE leaving, it killed me,” Titania says. “We thought it was safer. There were only so many we could get through the Morris-Thorne wormhole. Your mom, Catchfire, she was in New York at the time with the kids –”

  “She said you guys ran away from the Island together.”

  “We did. Why do you think I wasn’t too pleased to hear you’d brought him along?”

  She shakes her impressive tresses and pats her face down and sits again.

  “Georgie was looking after you and Patrick while I was in London with Strummer and the others. We were already working to counteract what your dad was doing on Krakatoa.”

  “Who’s this Strummer guy?”

  “A Brit super. He was king of the punk movement, but thanks to the Editors I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that. Oh, Joe – his name was Joe too, you know – to think of all the music you’ve missed out on.”

  “Punk? Nasty name. Doesn’t sound like I’ve missed all that much.”

  Now Titania pulls a motherly face of disapproval and I have to suck my cheeks in to keep from a frustrated sort of visual angst I know my face is more than capable of displaying. Not a pretty sight.

  “Joseph. . . .”

  “You . . . left him?”

  “Where we were going, it wasn’t safe.”

  Titania takes a moment, a deep breath of air to restore her poise. Renewed waves of heightened charisma wash over me, just tingling at the edge of what you might call a perfume.

  “Strummer was messing around with Papa Africa and MC Massive, the whole white boy, Rasta-fusion thing they had going there. In the middle of all this was this cat called Mister Maker. He had the portable wormhole generator. Without it, we would’ve all been screwed. Hell, without it, we never would’ve known about the Doomsday Man’s shenanigans at all.

  “We left because we expected to be coming back,” Titania explains. “We thought if we just jumped the splice, we could nip back on the other side and take the battle to him. He wanted to undercut his buddies in The Twelve. They’d all seen too far into Pandora’s Box with the secrets he’d helped show them. The ruse with the subspace creepy-crawlies was just Lennon trying to hit the reset switch. To roll it all back to Year One. He was trying to retcon his own fucking continuity, if you’ll pardon my language.”

  “I’ve heard worse.”

  Jane smirks and goes calm again and then her stare goes deeper and I feel her eyes boring into my forehead.

  “He’s in there?”

  “Yeah. He is.”

  “He’s hearing all this?”

  “Yeah. I suppose he is, unless he’s, you know, sleeping or something.”

  “Is he talking to you now?”

  “No,” I say to her. “He goes quiet, a lot. I think he’s . . . respecting boundaries.”

  “Did he tell you about the shadow war?”

  “This is your lot, versus him?”

  She nods and I shake my head.

  “No. He said he never had the chance to make the jump with the 101ers. He abandoned his body instead. Went into me.”

  “Lying again, John?”

  Clearly her comment isn’t directed at me. Feels strange, though, when she’s talking right to my face.

  “What do you say, pops?”

  Zephyr 10.6 “My Benighted Portrait”

  I GUESS IF everyone else is going to start talking to me like I’m not there, I may as well get in on the act. For whatever reason though, Lennon’s not answering.

  I can’t shake the fact he surrendered control back to me without even being asked. As bizarre as my very latest newfound situation goes, it hasn’t felt as weird as it probably should. I’ve taken that as some kind of signal from the universe about the path I’m on. You’d think a long record of bad choices made trying to judge the whims of the cosmos would rid me of such monumentally ill-thought behavior, but I’m living proof in natural selection leaving a backdoor open sometimes.

  It is getting late and Titania gently snoozes on the sofa. I get up, knock over a couple of glasses, and move to the open wall. It’s peaceful in the rebel settlement now the rain has stopped, the stars twinkling through the combat netting with less industrial smog to cloud the way. The smell of the rain is like a promise of cleanliness I can’t imagine for myself. I can’t help wishing something would come and scour my thoughts and leave something in their place even resembling common sense. There’s just no getting this story straight, it seems.

  I think about Julian’s corpse, torn to pieces by the robot’s attack. Catchfire’s crisped remains on an FBI autopsy slab. Red Monolith’s headless corpse on the bridge, gushing blood frozen to slush.

  I shake my head and turn to see the man himself staring at me from the other side of the lane.

  “Are you serious about what you said before?”

  Monolith has the helmet under his arm, jaw-length surfer-boy hair scraping at his cleft chin, gentle stubble, a single piercing in one ear he was worried people thought might mean he was only into guys.

  “Afraid so. But that wasn’t you, so no matter.”

  “I thought that too, you know, at the time. I haven’t stopped thinkin’ about it since though, you know? It’s hard to think there’s a copy of you, dead, and here you are, me, walkin’ ‘round alive. Bizarre.”

  “Yeah well, philosophy never was your strong point.”

  Monolith takes this on the chin like I knew he would.

  “Maybe so. Were we close?”

  “Like brothers, my friend.”

  He stares at me a moment, appraising my benighted portrait before he slips the helmet into place. Without another word he turns down the lane and starts off.<
br />
  “Hey, Red,” I call to him and he stops and swivels at the waist, nearly seven feet of him crammed into that crash test dummy of a costume.

  “Yeah?”

  “Leave the yellow panels, OK?”

  The faceplate stares my way a few seconds more and then there’s a curt nod of his head and he moves on.

  *

  BACK IN THE cantina, Titania eyes me from the foot of the stairs, only the structurally necessary parts of her costume still in place.

  “Are you coming?”

  “That would be too much to hope, wouldn’t it?”

  She somehow manages a simple farm girl smile. White teeth. Bones almost luminous through her skin.

  “Someone has to show you how glad we are you stumbled our way, Joe, and you’re all grown up now.”

  I nod and join her, taking her hand and nervous about the prospect despite my inflated sense of prowess. Her behemoth girlfriend is another matter, but in the open space above the tavern bar there’s nothing but strewn clothing and a single mattress, an old wooden orange crate, a paraffin lamp, and Olga sitting up all sexy and disheveled and shit, and I give a gentle groan as she smiles, impious and imposing as her lover leads me in.

  It’s like being sandwiched between two erotic forces of nature, deliciously Stygian, like a mythological mind-fuck come to life. They move over and across me, smooth panels of naked skin, succulent curves, tawny and fluid in the roseate lamp light. They remove everything but my mask and when I try to take the lead, Olga grins, gives me that roguish wink of hers, and presses a super-strong hand into my chest that pins me to the bed hard enough to make the floorboards squeak.

  “Easy, tiger.”

  She is first on top and Titania circles languidly, touching and stroking and kissing and adding moisture where needed until I am groaning with my toes straining and my head back and at the brink of surrender when these delightful ladies switch places and I find the world goes dark as my face is engulfed within the cavern of Olga’s flesh.

  You like that, huh? You should try it from where I am.

  I cum twice. If the roles were reversed, you’d accuse two men of exploitation, molestation, taking advantage as they set aside my sighed protests and have their way with me. Instead, it’s just incredibly hot as Olga does as she pleases, my mouth full of Jane’s cunt, dismissing complaints that I can’t cum again as Olga licks her oversized finger and slides it into my ass. We ride the waves of pleasure like three gay bikers on the one machine.

  Dawn is still plenty of time away when I move gently onto my side and let go a deep breath I feel like I’ve been holding since the day I was born and Jane gently chuckles and I feel fingers, I don’t know whose, trace over the back of my ribs, simultaneously a kiss on my ass and I grin as well, borderline in wanting to dip back into the magic I know is like lightning and unlikely to strike again in my lifetime.

  Titania slides onto my arm and Olga nestles up behind her, wrinkling her gently freckled nose and sinking her teeth into her lover’s nape.

  “Tired?” Titania asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Sleep, then. In the morning we can talk. Make plans. Strategy.”

  “Boring shit,” Olga says.

  “Yeah,” Titania says. “Might save your life some day. You never know. Maybe even your world.”

  And so we ease off to sleep, peaceful as stork-delivered newborns enthroned within our nest of teeth.

  Zephyr 10.7 “Traceback”

  TITANIA IMPLIED THE heroes fleeing our world from the Editors’ splice found they weren’t able to come back. They were cut adrift somehow, all ties to their prime parallel severed when it technically ceased to exist. They were left to scour the infinity of the multiverse for a version of their world as close to their own as possible, a veritable search for a needle in a thousand million haystacks. I guess I shouldn’t blame her for not coming home for her little boy and me.

  For all I know, she’s a madwoman and her whole story’s hogwash anyway. Not that it felt that way. But then, I don’t have much of a record for being a good judge in such things.

  It occurs to me I hope Cusp isn’t waiting by the phone. Or my daughter, for that matter. As much as I miss them all, it’s Elisabeth my thoughts return to again and again, cringing with the memory of yet another betrayal.

  Daylight filters through the hacienda and I crack my eyes open just in time to see Titania and Olga disengage from a mellow clinch. The blonde bombshell sees me peeking and winks.

  “Time to rise and shine, hey, sweetheart?”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  I ease over the edge of the mattress like mounting a motorcycle in reverse. Sitting on the edge, it reminds me of my early days kidding everyone I was a student while staying up to all hours, busting hoods and partying the night away at Gringo’s, the Waystation and Komplex Bar. Every morning waking to the afternoon, mouth like an ashtray, phone numbers on my skin, fingers thick with the smell of pussy.

  Nothing here but nostalgia of a different kind.

  The kind that can kill you.

  “You’ve been quiet, pops.”

  I’d rather you didn’t call me that, Joey-boy.

  “I could say the same thing. Were you asleep through that tutorial last night or were you just – how do they say – playing possum?”

  I was at a low ebb in my cycle. Defeating that madman took it out of me, lad. But I heard what the crazy cow had to say.

  “Crazy cow, is it?”

  You might be biased. Trust me, it’s a long story. Ever think about all the terrible stories the birds you banged would say about you, back in your early days, Joe?

  “Not many of them were hardbodies like Titanium Girl. I can’t think what any of them saw in you.”

  Well, the same they see in you I dare say, Joe.

  “Don’t give me that shit, pops.”

  Easy, Joe. We’ll have a sit-down later and sort through all the half-truths and delusions. Right now, you’ve got to get moving. There’s more on the way.

  “What?”

  The lady Nocturne was right. Yon’ Twelve or Eleven or whoever, they’ve spent the night fine-tuning their psychic arsenal and they’ll ping us any minute if we don’t light out of here. You’ve got a chance to spare these people if you get going now, son.

  “Shit.”

  I speak aloud for the first time and heads turn, people in the canteen below looking up from breakfasts and conversations now dead in the water. I only nod and smile and snap off my gaze before Titania can engage me, clambering into my uniform and dropping from the balcony at the front of the building and down the alley even though I can hear her calling my name.

  How the fuck am I going to get home now?

  *

  THE GUILT AND confusion about leaving them is like a thunderstorm inside my head as I power through the French afternoon headed for the remains of Paris. I have to see if what they say is true, but hopefully without dying of radiation poisoning. My father’s terse counsel punctuates my thoughts as the slipstream vector buffets around me.

  “You said we would talk,” I think more than say to him.

  We can. Ask me what you want, Joe.

  I am still trying to strain the shitty clutter from my mind when the ak-ak gun opens up and just like that, I have to dive and weave as big caliber shells thump at the air around me. At this height I can see the traceback to the ground and I plunge lower, leaving the wispy cloud cover behind to see the landscape deepen in clarity, resolving into the post-apocalyptic outbuildings and parking lot of a small French municipality, vehicles overturned and blackened, many arranged in something like a barricade.

  The anti-aircraft gun is parked on the back of a pick-up and three men tend it. Normal humans, I guess. Although the temptation is to erase them from existence, considering the geo-political situation I am wise to their mistake almost at once.

  Going fast, I land heavily beside the vehicle. Hard enough to crack the pavement. The weapon is all but usele
ss at such a range and the three-man crew wearing a peculiar mix of fatigues and casual gear stagger back, astonished themselves.

  “Hey. I’m not the enemy,” I say to them.

  My pronouncement triggers a rapid-fire exchange and translation. The lead figure, a man with a mild paunch and gabardine eyes, waves nicotine-stained fingers at me.

  “You, flying man? If you fly, you the enemy, non?”

  “I don’t think so,” I reply. “Yesterday, I killed Fortress. Il est mort. Comprends?”

  The Frenchman’s jaw works like a chainless bike pedal. I leave them to it, walking away from the scene and eyeballing the hidden encampment. There’s none of the glamour of masks here. No costumes. No powers. Just men and grubby-looking women with small arms and pathetic caches of RPG grenades and other ordnance.

  The pick-up crew and their vehicle vanish behind me in a white-hot flash.

  I’m still reeling from this when the allegedly deceased Fortress lands in a crouch amid the blasted metal of the utility, sweeping away one of the charred corpses with his oversized mitt. Milky light leaks from his eyes and he turns the high beams on me and I throw myself aside just as the ethereal blaze cuts across the encampment.

  One of the tent structures detonates with its hidden payload and the half-dozen people crouched within are toast. I’m still registering this when I get to my feet and desperately scramble for the air, only to have the fist of God cross my jaw, throwing me back down to earth.

  Pain and panic blur my eyes as I lever up. A size twelve boot pushes into my chest and I look through the laces to see a Mongol-looking figure in a fur cap and vest grinning down at me with a wispy Genghis Khan mustache.

  “Not so fast, tovarich.”

  And a voice to one side says, “Take him.”

  A wall of sleep crashes across my cerebellum and I’m gone.

  Zephyr 10.8 “Sparrow With A Broken Wing”

  THERE’S NO TIME to abandon control to the Preacher Man and hope his world-class mental powers can save me this time. One second I’m on my back in the parking lot outside the ruined French Mousquetaires. The next, there is a static blackness. And then I awake hanging in a Jesus Christ pose, exhausted, drained, looking up into myopic lights with my arms trailing behind me.