Well, they used to be islands. That’s the problem: evaporation’s gone so far as to join several of the islands to the mainland, so that anyone willing to hoof it across a few miles of salty toxic wasteland can help themselves to anything the Soviets left behind and the Kazakhs haven’t yet messed with. We know that entrepreneurial colonels assigned to the area have sold off some of the crud themselves but the real problem is with the professional scavengers. They come in with trucks and cranes and can strip an ex-Soviet facility down to the walls in short order, then haul the loot to willing buyers in any major settlement in one of the ex-Soviet republics, western China, Pakistan, Armenia, or a whole lot of places, many of them hard to monitor.
The crisis goes like this:
Day 1, 2230 hours: Our atmospheric monitors notice an increase in half a dozen carcinogens in the vicinity of the Aral Sea. It’s early in the morning the next day there. The sun is up, so scavengers can be at work.
Day 1, 2240 hours: We start monitoring Kazakh and Russian signal traffic. They don’t seem to be aware of it. The external response unit starts debating how much to tell them and in what ways. Day 1, 2255 hours: Our follow-up scan from a maneuverable satellite with better sensors identifies specific biological weapons and three compounds we’re not sure about, and it further establishes that the plumes originate from the western shore of the Aral Sea.
Day 2, 0020 hours: We still can’t get a good lead on the three unknown compounds, but we decide not to wait. We dispatch a field team of our own, with the equipment necessary for erecting both quarantine and sterilization zones. None of us really want to talk about it, but we’re all pretty sure that it will come down to sterilization. And much as I sneer at human fallibility, having to kill any significant number of them isn’t just a failure; it’s damnably depressing.
Day 2, 0115 hours: Inter-operations analysis coughs up an identification for one of the three compounds, and it’s nasty shit. There were early experiments with chemical warfare in the nineteenth century in Germany and Britain, with a handful of forward-thinking military officers sponsoring a handful of death-fascinated chemists in side wings of factories, remote cottages, and the like. This is one of those, a hybrid gunk four steps removed from aniline dyes that makes nerves fire repeatedly without opportunity to reset, so that the victim dies of spasms and exhaustion. Our records give no indication that anyone has made any of it since 1924, and we’re going to have to find out (later) how the Soviets stumbled onto it. For the moment, we warn the incoming field team about it. Their existing safe-suit procedures should cover it, but it’s one more thing to watch for out in the drift zone.
Day 2, 0150 hours: First report of a related death in Kazakh police records. They don’t seem aware of the leak itself, but the account of a drunk who dies of massive hemorrhaging and outbreaks of scaly skin around his joints is indicative of the presence of one of many creations from Nazi scientists the Soviets grabbed at the end of World War II.
Day 2, 0230 hours: The field team’s on the spot, and yes, it is a manmade breach at North Containment Facility #3 on the former island of Vozrozhdeniya. The perps are dead on the scene, which is satisfying in its way. It looks like... The team’s report pauses for a moment to confirm analysis, and then proceeds. It looks like the damn fools lost control of one of their trucks parked on a slight rise near the westernmost warehouse, and the truck just plain rolled down the hill, picking up enough speed to breach the wall and then catch on fire. If the perps weren’t already dead, the field team would delightedly push the limits of Union policy on torture.
Day 2, 0305 hours: The field team gets in their first appraisal just as more reports of deaths show up in the official records. Some folks in the district capital even wonder if there’s a weapons leak, but for some reason don’t link it to Vozrozhdeniya; they’re concerned about something off to the north that our map shows was thoroughly decontaminated in 1995. Good for them, since it means less chance of interference with our work.
Day 2, 0340 hours: The field team’s got the leaks all sealed, and sets off some clean hot charges all around to get the worst build-ups of toxic discharge in the vicinity. When they leave, they’ll set some explosives to make it look like a brushfire broke out and did some of the hazmat work for whoever shows up to do it.
Day 2, 0400 hours: At this point we’re breaking out the stimulants. It’s early afternoon in Kazakhstan and the death toll’s rising. This is where I get to do my thing. Unfortunately, because of this damnable cyber-blindness, I do it a lot more slowly and badly than I would otherwise. I should be in full cyber projection, cruising through the primitive computers in the region and fooling with data on the fly. Instead, I’m working with purely external tools, nothing more sophisticated than chord keyboards and my old macro package. With my usual rig, I could probe some of the environment around each computer and do basic hacks on teletypes and such. Not now. People are going to die because of whatever it was glaring at me from space.
Day 2, 0430 hours: The field team’s got a suggestion that gets immediately humped up the ladder. They want to fire the smaller of the two oil pipelines running beneath the main mass of the toxic plumes. Their back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that this’ll neutralize a lot of the most dangerous material and replace a biochem crisis with one that more conventional means can address. I’m in favor of it and attach a note to that effect, then get back to work. To my complete lack of surprise, here’s the evidence linking those dead perps to the local government: their boss was the cousin of the Vozrozhdeniya southern garrison and an in-law of some sort to the mayors of three nearby towns. About what I expected, but annoying just the same, and I send some of that data off to newspapers in Ankara, Moscow and New York.
Day 2, 0445 hours: I screw the pooch.
Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. I run into security way beyond anything I’d expect in a small town’s post office. Poking reveals a whole cluster of astoundingly sophisticated local networks, with an extremely idiosyncratic style. What we’ve got here is a spontaneous talent, one of those individuals who could develop into someone fit for our sort of work, or could become a real asset to one or another of our enemy factions. Furthermore, I can see that whoever it is, he’s improving very rapidly in his competence, judging from the activation dates. I get desperate, and I get stupid. I decide to slot in some of my customized identity analyzers. I don’t even think of them as cyberware....
And suddenly I pass out for a moment, and come to lying on the floor, my wheelchair tipped over. Someone’s pulled the implants out of their sockets in my chair, and I’m getting a blast of pure oxygen from a portable respirator. I look up at the floor manager and croak out, “Data type mismatch. ” To myself, I say, “I’ve got to get away from this for a while. "
* * *
MING XIAN
The spiritual weakness that mysterious force thrust upon me has an unexpected consequence. Most people go through their lives unaware of the yin and yang realms and encountering no direct manifestations of them. Some grow into a full awareness, and speak to the spirits and travel among the many lands in which they dwell. In between, there is a category of unfortunate souls who can just barely perceive the realms beyond the Wall, who are haunted by things they’re unable to comprehend or address. It is into that middling condition that I’ve fallen.
Wherever things live, there are yin reflections of their vulnerabilities and eventual deaths. A skilled reader of omens can perceive the future in them. The haunted cannot, but can see the impending end in the face of every living thing. So it is that I see old age in this man, crushing and fire in that one, disease in these children and cattle, and so on. I also sense that my ancestors and perhaps other ghosts are trying to contact me, but all I can receive are incomprehensible whispers, the tiniest fluttering breezes, a passing chill. They chase me in enclosed rooms and open thoroughfares alike, not doing me (or themselves) any good, and increasing my misery with each passing day.
A week of this has me on the brink of collapse.
I can’t focus on my work, and have arranged leave, with an excuse about exposure to one of the mountain diseases. There’s always something of the sort making the rounds, treatable but unpleasant, and it makes a convenient cover for any of us needing a little time off for reasons that would not look so good on official records. But that doesn’t help when it’s time to sleep, or to go out shopping, or anything else. Wherever I am, there the ghosts are. Where the Wall is particularly thin, there are also manifestations: water tainted by blood, the reek of grave mold, shadows where there should be bright light. It doesn’t seem that the ghosts hear me, or at least nothing I can say either as conversation or as ritual propitiation does any good. I stagger through the days and toss and turn during the nights.
On a whim, or so it seems, I decide to travel. I cash out one of the small savings accounts I’ve maintained with a local banker and buy a set of train passes. There will of course be checkpoints and examiners to deal with, but my official identification supplemented by readily available forged travel vouchers should suffice to get me past them. I worry briefly about dealing with the forger, a crooked little woman whose daughter and granddaughter I’ve helped at the office, but I decide that until such time as Heaven tells me I’m at liberty to die, I must live (so as to continue to serve), and this seems to be the price of continued life, or at least continued sanity. I shall make amends later, perhaps.
For a few hours, there is indeed blessed relief. The train labors up narrow valleys, through steep passes, and gradually down to the plains on the far side. It’s tremendously noisy, but it is (to my deafened soul) a purely physical noise. There’s nothing haunting in it. That night I sleep deeply, dreaming complex dreams in which that ghastly encounter with something using my ancestors interweaves itself with parables and historical accounts of demons corrupting the foolish. And when I wake, the whispering is back.
The second day on the train, I undertake a rather desperate exercise. I know how to do it in principle, but it’s not anything I ever expected to need or want to do. Now, though... Yes, I must further isolate myself from yin and yang, bind myself more closely to the material world, at least until I can find some better accommodation with my current unhappy state.
It begins with intoxication. No matter how much the rail authority may seek to ban it, there’s always cheap liquor to be had on long-distance trains; I’ve never bought from its vendors, but some of my clients have mentioned the routine in passing as we discussed other matters. So I make my approach with confidence, and in not very many minutes and for fewer yuan than I expected, I have more than enough of what claims to be vodka to render myself nearly unconscious. I have a final meal to fortify myself and set to work getting to that stage of intoxication.
Once there, I find it as difficult as I expected to perform the necessary meditation. In fact, at first I just fall asleep. It takes half a dozen tries to complete a single utterance of the mantra of the inward-turning soul, and half a dozen tries to complete the second. I stagger through the whole thing, with many false starts and stops. Still, bit by bit I do feel the haunting recede. It’s as though the sources are growing distant even as they remain at hand, the empty space between us and the bones beneath my skin thickening to absorb more of the unwanted sights and sounds. As the second day gives way to the second night and we lumber across the southern reaches of the Yellow River, I move further and further from my gifts.
By the time I disembark in Chongqing a week later, my spirit is not readily distinguishable from any of the many others around me.
* * *
ROBERT
Tareq’s last word reminds me of something, and I rummage through the bulging notebook in which I keep contacts and reference. Yes, here it is, a handbill for a bunch of Michigan death rockers in concert, including a solo act who just calls himself Anders. Every time I pick the sheet up, the “e” in his name wraps itself into the shape of an eye and winks at me. I take this as a sign. And this time, unlike my previous efforts to contact him, there’s no defensive spirit barrier to get through. He wraps himself in layers of protection and distance, and last time around I couldn’t call or write him at all. Every number would be wrong, every envelope lost or delivered to the wrong address. The Rubbish told me, “He speaks when he knows he must speak. ”
He’s got a website. It sucks, of course. Either he did it himself or one of his buddies did it, and it’s got the usual clutter of poorly formatted text and images, plus a constellation of pop-up banners courtesy of the sleazy Web hosting service he uses. On the page labeled “Contact Anders, ” there isn’t anything like a conventional phone number. There's a set of pictograms, which I gradually realize mark out a location in the spirit realms, a path of approach and guardians to recognize and deal with along the way. That would be great, if only I hadn’t encountered the red star. As it is, I’ll have to make more phone calls.
Somewhere in the hinterlands of Nebraska, there’s a century-old farm operated by a single middle-aged man. He looks now like the farmers around him, but up until a few years ago he was the number two man at the number three music publisher in Hollywood. He’s also quite a potent spirit-talker, not a full-blown shaman but someone with a knack that goes beyond the standard abilities of a medium, and also a fairly good alchemist. I was impressed, when he told me his story, to learn that he’d built up his art all on his own, his only guides the spirits who lurked under his bed and in his closet. Eventually he lost control of it, and that’s where I came in.
After a New Years’ Eve 2000 party that apparently included more than usually philosophical conversation, he went home and tried to conjure up the Nine Muses. This is an astoundingly bad idea. There aren’t exactly the muses people usually think of when they say “the Nine Muses, ” but there are awfully powerful spirits that do delight in inspiring creative acts and who’ve taken on some of the personality traits projected onto them by their seekers. The Mogul, as the Rubbish liked to call this guy, managed to retain enough control to send the muses back before they fully manifested, so he only had half his house destroyed, but his subconscious yeaming to get back to his own days in a band attracted swarms of semi-conscious destructive spirits who turned his life into something like outtakes from Poltergeist.
I got to know him a couple weeks later. He was camping out on the beach then, to avoid loosing the spirits to do any more damage to his home or office. His car and tent were wrecked and his clothes intermittently shredded. I’d come to try out the local surf, which I heard was good for my new passion of boogie board surfing, and here was this shambling catastrophe straddling the material and spirit worlds. What could I do but offer to help? I asked in ways that made it clear that I knew what I was talking about, and we began what turned into weeks of conversation. Together we did get his act cleaned up. When that was done, he decided that he was ready for a change of pace anyway, sold off his interests in the company, and headed out to Nebraska.
We’ve stayed in touch a bit since then, so it’s not a total surprise when I call. “Bob! ” he exclaims with real pleasure. “What can I do for you? Another loan? ”
“No, but thank you. No, I need contact info. ” “Fair enough. Who for? ” I hear him flipping open the Rolodex he keeps on his desk. His Palm Pilot has lots more addresses in it, but he always starts with the physical.
“A death rocker, name of Anders. ”
The Mogul gets serious then. “He’s another one of yours, isn’t he? ” He always thinks of me as some master shaman, and occasionally it’s embarrassing, but this time I let it pass.
“He is. ”
“So why don’t you just astrally project or whatever it is you call that thing? Heroquesting, that’s the one. ”
That's a good question, but I don’t think I want to go into it right now. “Something’s come up that makes it a good idea to contact him physically. Long story. ” “Okay. Tell it to me sometime. In the meantime... ” He riffles through
the Rolodex. Then there’s the beep of his Palm Pilot coming on. Beep, click, click. “Right, here you go. ” He reads off a cell phone number for me. “And when this is all done, come and tell me the story, yeah? ”
“Sure, ” I say, and mean it.
I look at Anders’ phone number for a while. No obvious numerology of interest in it, no cryptograms jumping out at me. I wish I could talk it over with the Rubbish, but I was good at puzzles before I ever met my totem and I have some confidence in my analysis. So finally I give it a call. It’s an answering machine. I leave my name and that of the Mogul, and say, “I’d like to talk with you about Ragnarok. ”
Then I wait.
He doesn’t call that day, or the next. On the third day, there’s a call that my caller ID system says originates in Norway. Puzzled, I answer. “Hello, Robert Blanclege here. ”
The guy on the other end is gruff and hoarse. “This is Anders. You wouldn’t have my number if at least one of my friends didn’t think you’d be worth talking to. So tell me, what do you want to talk about Ragnarok for? ”
World of Darkness - Time of Judgement - Mage Page 4
