I feel like I should be doing a commercial for durable tapes and recorders by midnight or so. Speak. Record. Reverse. Play back. Analyze. Repeat. Again, and again, and again. It’s well into the new morning before I manage to get two sentences in a row understood and spoken reversed to Marilyn’s satisfaction. Finally she says, “That’s a pretty good start. Get some rest, and we’ll pick up there in the morning. Say, you will help with the feed, right? ”
* * *
WILLIAM
Within ten minutes of getting off the plane in Tuzla, I’ve run into an old friend. Figures.
Now, Sarajevo isn’t what you’d want to call much of a tourist destination. There’s still a lot of damage from the various rounds of war, and the Bosnians are just too damn poor to afford much reconstruction themselves and too damn screwed by the European Union (and, to a lesser degree, by the US) to have any outside help except for the ongoing military presence necessary to keep more war from happening. I was there for the ’84 Olympics, helping arrange bugs and surveillance, and it was so beautiful then that I’ve tried to avoid it ever since. No point in messing up some very happy memories. Still, a fair amount of traffic does go through there each year: there is some business to be done in Bosnia, and there’s the military, scientists, all kinds of people.
Tuzla is a different story. It’s north of Sarajevo, closer to the Serbian border and places where there’s still a lot of active conflict, and it’s in the midst of a region with an even more thoroughly ruined economy. I’ve noticed over the years that virtually every city looks beautiful when you fly into it, no matter how crappy it may be once you get to the ground. Flying into Tuzla, on the other hand, is like flying down to the Moon or maybe lo, barren and brightly colored primarily with toxic wastes and industrial ruins. The question to ponder here isn’t so much “Where does all that beauty go when you’re standing on the sidewalk? ” but “How the hell does anyone live in this kind of a place? ”
So we land, one of a whole three private planes spread across six runways at the moment, and the steward helps me get my wheelchair out of the plane and down to the terminal, and I’m looking around, when someone standing close behind me booms out, “Bill, you son of a bitch! There aren’t any sheep worth molesting left in this goddamn country, man! You want Scotland, not Bosnia! ”
I turn around to see Terry Vineces, whom I last saw on the night I blew up my lab and left the Virtual Adepts forever. Terry was my touchstone during those months of growing alienation, but where I realized the advantages of joining with the folks the VAs had tried to leave behind, Terry said that he was going to make his own way in the world. As a point of personal honor (which seldom concerns me, but variety’s the spice of life), I never made an effort to find out what happened to him; I always figured that he’d have ended up dead in some back alley or dumped in some handy river long ago. The war of paradigms isn’t kind to the would-be brave independents. I did not expect to find him here and now. “Terry? What the hell are you doing here? ” “Stalking you, of course! ” He waves a hand at the airport lounge, such as it is: enclosed on two sides, with half a dozen heavily stained tables and a waitress who looks like she’s in the early stages of fossilization. “C’mon, man, let’s get a drink. ”
Soon we’re both sipping what purports to be vodka, and certainly is alcohol plus something for flavor. I’m not sure how drunk I could get on it, but if I needed to sterilize any wounds, it’d be just the thing. “Okay, Terry. So what have you been doing... ” “What have I been doing since you headed off to join the outfit you’re so sure are the winners? That’s pretty simple. I drifted for a while, staying out of the way of everyone while I put together some new identities. Once I had those in place, I arranged for pretty good evidence of my old identity’s death, with enough back-story to point anyone who pulled the top layer off down some other wrong directions. Then I drifted some more, until I started making some new contacts here and there. There’s always someone drifting out of the war, y’know, and from time to time one of them would have some useful information. One of these guys told me that you were with Ragnarok, and I figured there was a pretty good chance you’d end up here what with all the hematovore weirdness of late. I was down in Greece, so I wandered up and waited for you. ”
I stare at my old friend for a while. “Terry, that’s pure bullshit, and you know it. You don’t just happen to get information about what the project’s up to, and you don’t just happen to hang around in hopes that I’ll show up. ” I rest my left hand on the wheelchair armrest, not too far from the button that fires the three-shot pistol built into the frame. “Want to try again? ”
He continues to smile as he sips his drink. “You always were a clever little guy, Bill. What do you think I’m up to, then? ”
“You want a fucking PowerPoint presentation?" “Nah, nah, save the graphics for later. Just give me your guesses. ”
“Okay, ” I say. “I’d have to think a little bit more about how I’d want to rank the probabilities here, but this should cover the top few: You didn’t leave the Adepts, or they took you back, and you’re working on a hit team, solo or with partners I haven’t spotted yet. Or you’ve joined one of the other traditions, and ditto. Or you joined some other part of the Union and are here to test my loyalty. Or you’re not really Terry, just a very good job of cosmetics or robotics or something else, sounding me out and then set to kill me. Those are the big ones, I think, with sub-branches for whether you are or are not aware of the truth. ”
Now he laughs, that familiar bray. “Not bad, buddy, but you’re still stuck in the same old payoff matrix. ”
“Oh, God, ” I sigh. “You’re going to tell me you found some secret enlightenment that set you free from it all. Who’s your guru? ”
He puts the drink down and waves away the waitress when she looks like she might come around to refill it. (Surprisingly good service, actually. Customers must be a bit of a rarity for her. ) “Nobody at all. And that’s just the point. ”
“I’ll thank you not to go poaching on my territory, thanks. Nihilism is my pet cause. You go find yourself some other. ”
“Aw, fuck, Bill, you’re not a nihilist, you’re a goddamn disillusioned romantic. You’re bitter precisely because you keep expecting or at least hoping that the world will turn out more like New York on a good day and less like—” He waves at the rubble beyond the runways. “You always talk big, but your thoughts are too damn small. ”
That pisses me off, and I start to say something. Then I think better of it. “Like I’d trust your psychology any day. But go on, tell me the rest. ”
“You left the hippies to go join the Man, but you never got over your conviction that there is some authority that you need to be serving. Now you call it a cosmology or a worldview or a methodology rather than a guru, but it’s the same old shit. I did something better. I got out of the guru market altogether, and started working for myself in a cosmological sense. ”
If this turns out to be as stupid as I think, I’m going to be very angry with my old friend for wasting his mind so much. “Tell me you haven’t gone into chaos magic. Please. ”
“Nothing so formal. They’ve got their own problems, anyway: they’re just putting their hope for cosmic masters off into the future. They haven’t gotten over hoping for someone to tell them what to do, even if it’s themselves down the road a ways. Same old trap. ”
That surprises me, at least a bit. “All right, I’ll have to give you credit for a pretty thoroughgoing nihilism. So what have you been doing, you liberated guy? ”
He thumps the table. “A table. ”
“No shit, Sherlock. ”
“You hear the thump, and you think of the tissues that made up the tree, the chemical composition of the finish, the atomic structure of it all, the acoustics, all that. ” He sees me nod. “Our old buddies among the Adepts would be inclined to describe it in terms of their theories about information units and relationship matrices. Others would talk about
spirits, or the four or five elements, or whatever. ” He looks at me seriously for the first time. “The mistake all of you are making is that you’re ascribing an identity to it all. The table is what you perceive; everything is explanation. And I choose another explanation. ”
His hand shimmers. The table does, too. I can’t quite focus on it, as though it were moving around rapidly. It slides through colors and textures as fast as I can assimilate them and then some. He lifts his hand, and the effect stops. “Still a table. I just stopped caring about its details, and since nothing else defines it but the perception, and since you didn’t know how to impose your perception back on it, it wandered through possibilities. If I were alone, I could have made it go away altogether. I could even with others around, but it’s a bit more work. "
I look up at him, back at the table, up at him again. “Terry, I think I may have to kill you. ”
“You might, buddy. But maybe you want to hold off just a bit. After all, I’m here to make you an offer. ”
* * *
MING XIAN
The storms howl with fresh vigor through the underworld, and eventually I give up trying to maintain a corporeal form altogether. I flow through canyons and crevasses as a particularly dense mist, solidifying only when I need to cling to something during a particularly intense gust. It’s hard to judge the passage of time in all of these, and I soon cease to worry about it very much. If I manage to stay heading more or less west and make some kind of progress, I’ll be doing pretty well.
I’m aware of following a route that I never could have before. The yang awareness I now carry illuminates weaknesses within yin, like a spotlight I can shine into dark comers. It lets me see both opportunities and hazards that I’d have missed otherwise. Without it, I’d have been forced to retreat to the material world, or have been caught by one of the shades prowling in search of spiritual food.
I still wish I knew a great deal more about why I have this new awareness. During some of my occasional rests, I reflect on tales I’d heard among the Uygur about a strange “red eye" in the night sky, visible to those with a particular kind of sensitivity. The sense of doom they said they felt from it certainly matches what I felt when that red light cast me back into the world and cut me off from my ancestors. Recovering my own soul’s strengths by a reunion with my place of awakening makes enough sense, but I have the uncomfortable sense of having been chosen for an unknown destiny by an unknown power, something behind and beyond that magician who appeared to me the once. And above all, I dislike ignorance. But right now I can’t identify any very promising route to answers apart from the one I’m already taking, to see if I can consult again with my ancestors.
After a long while of this ghostly passage, I decide to return to the world and see if I can make my way by some more mundane means. I rise close to the world’s skin, to listen to what people nearest to death say, and gradually establish that I’m somewhere in Shaanxi province. Xinjiang is still very far ahead, but Beijing is now well behind me, and there shouldn’t be any great risk of pursuit. And I have an advantage here: two of my good friends and former colleagues work here, one in the city of Yanan itself, one in the hinterlands not far away. If I can make contact with one or another of them, I can secure transportation that would be very difficult to trace back to me. So I think, at least.
Northern Shaanxi has awesomely rugged terrain. It looks, to my perhaps academically inclined eye, like a vast array of props and paintings. These nearly vertical gorges and heavily terraced hillsides above barely tamed river rapids have been the stuff of paintings for the better part of two thousand years, and they are very familiar to anyone who’s studied Chinese art at all. They’re also no fun to walk on, and I cross back and forth between the world and the yin realms, making my way down from an undeveloped crest to one of the roads that runs along the river to Yanan.
As I walk, I think about what I’ll tell my friends and what I want them to do for me. “Hello, Lisung, I’m on the run from hungry ghosts and the police, and I’d like your help in escaping to some other jurisdiction. ” Not quite. “Hello, Dou, I realize it’s been a while since I wrote, but would you be willing to give me a truck and not report it missing for a couple of weeks? ” No. It’s not that they would automatically refuse to help me, but they would need a reason that fits their view of the world. They know that I’ve had dealing with gangs and outcasts, so I could build on that. “Hello, Dou, I’ve run afoul of Colonel Tan’s pet smugglers, and they set me up on false charges. I can get clear of it if I can meet with the colonel’s adjunct, but I have to show up on his doorstep before he’ll listen to me. Can you lose a truck or car in the paperwork for a week? ” That sounds more plausible, and it’s even partly true.
In midsummer, fires in the Shaanxi hills are no surprise at all, so I don’t pay much heed to the fact of smoke ahead of me. The local firefighters are very good at their work, and they’ll keep the roads clear even while battling quite intense blazes. It would be good for me to find a vehicle to ride in if the fire’s anywhere too close to the road, but otherwise I have very little to be concerned with. (It took a long time for me to develop this kind of poise, and Dou helped. She was my partner in fire training in Xinjiang, and did so much to show me as well as tell me what’s safe near a modem forest fire. )
Then I do turn the last comer before the valley where the fire is, and I see clearly what’s going on. Down the next slope from me is the Yangjialing Revolutionary Site. This is where Mao ran the Communist Party in the forties, leading the antifascist war that cowardly Chiang Kai-shek wouldn’t, and simultaneously directing a massive program of land reform and modernization behind the front lines. The various public halls and some of the private spaces became a sprawling museum after the government relocated to Beijing, and it’s all still a popular tourist attraction. Even lapsed or hesitant Communists like me often find something inspiring here, in this place where a handful of dedicated men and women really did change the fate of our nation using little more than their own determination. It’s a reminder of what one can accomplish, at least, and the memorabilia brings to mind the society that they displaced, with its petty injustices and greater crimes against human dignity.
At least that’s what was down the slope. Now it’s all on fire. Right in the middle of it there must be some particularly hot blaze, since the smoke and flames all rush inward to rise up in a deceptively narrow column. I shield my eyes and widen the inner pupils to the flow of yin, and can make out many bodies along with a few still-struggling but obviously doomed souls. The firefighters of many nearby districts do their best, and it amounts to no more than containment. The fire itself is, I soon realize, far from purely natural. It’s shot through with veins of potent yang, which had to have been pulled into the world by someone’s tedious labor, and possibly held in place by charms of some sort. This is a sorcerers arson. I don’t need to examine every body to know that my friend is one of them, nor to suspect that it bums only because she was my friend.
I walk carefully alongside the highway but don’t bother taking the turnoff toward the historical site. There’s nothing there for me now. I must get to Yanan, I think. In the very moment that that thought crosses my mind, I turn another comer, and can see farther down the valley. There is smoke rising from Yanan or its environs, too. This is too much. I drop through the world and into the yin realms again. Some other road will have to get me where I need to go.
* * *
ROBERT IT SEEMS LIKE FOREVER THAT I’VE BEEN WORKING WITH MARILYN ON DEALING SAFELY WITH “MY” TIME-REVERSED SPIRITS, THOUGH IT’S JUST BEEN A FEW DAYS. SHE KEEPS PUTTING ME THROUGH MY PACES, REFINING MY COMPREHENSION OF REVERSED SPEECH AND MY ABILITY TO FORM REVERSED SENTENCES ON DEMAND. THE REVERSED MOVEMENTS ARE JUST AS HARD, SINCE THERE ARE SO MANY TABOOS OF POSITION AND MOVEMENT AMONG THE SPIRITS AND I WANT TO AVOID GIVING ANY UNINTENTIONAL OFFENSE TO THE VERY ONES I WANT TO SPEAK WITH. SHE CONCEDES THAT I’M DOING "PRETTY WELL, ” WHICH IS HIGH PRAISE FROM HER.<
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After a week of this, she puts me to the test, calling up her own totem (a very conventional falcon, and how I envy her), and explaining the situation to him. He’s apparently heard a bit about the strangeness himself and decides to provide me with a field test. He comes to me in my dreams that night, looping backward and forward through time at varying rates, and forces me to explain long and detailed matters to him. The dream ends with a classroom scene in which he issues me my report card, showing that I maintained almost perfect coherence even through his shifts in direction. When I wake, both he and Marilyn profess themselves pleased.
Marilyn and I both know it’s time for me to go. “I hate to leave so soon, ” I say. “I keep meaning to come for a longer visit, but... ” I peter out.
“I know, ” she says with one of her amused little snorts. “You and me, we’ve each got our little tribe to tend to, and it’s a full-time job. You’ll come and see me, or I’ll come up there for a spell, when duty requires and fate allows, same as always. ” She gives me a hug before I stow the last of my bags. “You take care, Bob. The world isn’t so rich in seers and doers that it can afford to lose even one of them. ” And with that I’m on the road again, from Mount Pleasant to Charleston and then from there by air back to New York. No point in taking up any more time now that I’m at least a little trained for what I need to do.
World of Darkness - Time of Judgement - Mage Page 10
