by L. K. Rigel
A bird cried out, and the lights of the compound fell on a white heron flying over the trees and up the mountain.
She had to get outside. Go for a walk. See the ocean. One last time, she pulled on her flight pants. First thing tomorrow, she was going to find some clean clothes and never wear these things again.
Too bad her compad didn't work down here.
Despite the lack of an electronic navigator, she easily found the shore. The moon was full and bright. The beach was a long, wide stretch with a gentle slope of foothills to the west and short waves breaking on the sand of the eastern bay. On a large rock not far from shore, she could just make out another heron.
Corcovado must indeed be blessed by the gods. The fresh water from the artesian wells was delicious and abundant, and she was still amazed by how sweet the air smelled.
And she could see the stars! Corcovado could be a true haven.
If only Jake were here to share it. He was the real hero in this, though he'd never accept the label. He’d known there was something terribly wrong back at the airport. He didn't have to rescue her from the terminal when the DOGs attacked. He could have kept out of harm's way until everything calmed down.
She wouldn't let Jake's memory die. She couldn't crawl back into an apartment somewhere, threaten to become a ghost. So many had sacrificed their lives, if unwillingly -- Jake, Rani, Tyler.
She would honor them by helping to build Corcovado. Design a hydroponics system. Keep Geraldo away from the girls.
A comet streaked across the sky and another immediately after. A meteor shower. But as she watched, it dawned on her that this was no meteor shower. It was debris falling into de-orbit. Something hit the atmosphere every few seconds. Space junk everywhere.
Or the Space Junque. Before Jake was killed, he hadn't yet set a course. The ship was drifting with no established orbit. She searched the stars -- and spotted something moving, something not on fire.
The hydroponics annex. It would have to be something that large to see with the bare eye. Cripes, she wished she hadn't seen it. Now she would always be aware of it circling the planet, reminding her of everything that had been lost up there.
Wait a minute. The shades! She pulled the ISS shades out of her flight pants and switched them to night vision. They immediately locked on a large chunk of hull debris. Not on fire, so it must be in orbit. She widened the frame.
It wasn't a chunk of debris, and it wasn't in orbit. It was the Space Junque, intact, but heading for the earth. It was going to fall somewhere close, out in the bay.
At around five thousand feet -- according to the shades -- the cargo bay opened and the orbit runner buzzed out of the hold like a wasp. It hovered in the air as the Space Junque plunged into the sea.
The sound of wrenching and snapping metal lasted less than a minute, like the last groans of a dying beast. The poor Space Junque seemed to give out a death gasp as oxygen escaped from inside, and then the sea swallowed the beast whole. A tear slid past the shades and down Char's cheek.
R.I.P. Space Junque.
The runner swooped down and took a pass along the shoreline then zoomed up into the sky. With the shades, Char could see Jake at the runner's controls, a wild grin on his face as he took the craft upward again and into a loop. He finally set down about a hundred feet from her.
The bubble canopy popped open and Jake climbed out. He walked along the water's edge, and she watched him fall to his knees and kiss the wet sand as a wave receded. It was a telling gesture, and it eased Char's mind a little. His Junque was gone, but he kissed the ground instead of cursing it.
He sat back on his heels and brushed his hair off his face. Then he saw her.
Char ripped the shades from her face and ran to him, stopping only a few feet away. It might not be Jake. But somehow she didn't think an Empani would pull a loop de loop or drop to his knees to kiss the cold wet sand at the break of dawn.
"Jake." She smiled her welcome, and he reached up and put his hands on her waist with that sly twinkle in his eyes.
"I'm going to have to break my promise, Meadowlark. I won't be able to show you the captain's quarters."
"That's all right." She leaned over and kissed his forehead. "You'll still get your dessert."
"No, Char." He pulled her onto his lap and wrapped his arms around her. Another wave washed around them. "I want a lot more than dessert from you."
The pounding of the surf matched her heartbeat, and the space junk meteors overhead were more spectacular than fireworks.
She wanted to tear his clothes off, but the tide was coming in and they were getting covered with sand. For the moment, she settled for a long, slow kiss. They moved to the rock where she'd been sitting.
"What happened?" They both spoke at the same time.
Char thought of the Empani and said, "Mine's more complicated. You go first."
"I was in the cargo hold and the loading ramp's warning light came on. I figured I was a dead man, but I was standing right by the little runner ship so I got inside and sealed the canopy. When the door opened, I was swept out of the hold. I figured out how to link to the Junque and open the cargo hold and get back inside."
He kissed her again. "I thought I'd lost my mind. There were no breaches. It was like all of you had just vanished. Using my amazing powers of deduction, I figured Asherah had somehow transported everyone to Corcovado, which is what you said she wanted."
"You didn't."
"No, I didn't." He laughed. "I scanned ground communications and picked up Geraldo saying he had you and the girls in the compound."
"Very clever."
"How is Rani?"
Char's heart compressed. "Jake, I'm so sorry. Rani died."
He was quiet, and tears filled his eyes. "I took too long. I should never have stored the medicine in the cargo bay."
"No, Jake. Antibiotics wouldn't have helped. The DOG used a disruptor, and it hit her intestines. Nothing could have saved her."
For now, Jake had to grieve in the old way. Char would tell him tomorrow about Rani's soul.
They watched the light show in the sky until the tiniest hint of first light rimmed the horizon. A new day was coming. A new world. The rosy crescent fattened and yellowed into white, and the light danced like fire on the bay.
When the sun rose, the day was glorious.
The End
-o0o-
Space Junque
(Apocalypto 1)
Spiderwork
by LK Rigel
The End of the World
Eight years ago
At night everybody went out to watch the world fall down.
Last night the beach had been crowded with people from the compound at Corcovado. It was the best place to see the dazzling light show. Char sent Jake ahead with the blanket to get a spot for them on the sand while she went back for the jug of coffee she'd forgotten.
She ran into Durga and the other girls crossing the courtyard with their chaperone, the old woman they called the matriarch. They had been living in a boarding school outside Mexico City when the goddess Asherah commanded ten-year-old Durga to flee. Over three hundred people lived at the school, and only the matriarch and these girls had believed Durga.
Everyone else had thought the little girl was insane when she said a goddess had told her to go. Even when her hair turned blood red for no apparent reason. Even when the black widow spider tattoo appeared on her shoulder.
No one believed in gods, not really. The religios used sacred texts to justify their lust for power and control while they conveniently ignored the parts about love and forgiveness and caring for their fellow human beings. Hypocrites. Just like the enviros who spouted crap about defending the earth while they set off dirty bombs near power plants and hydro dams.
Char believed. She didn't want to believe, but she'd seen the goddess with her own eyes. She'd received her own divine commands. Her hair had been turned blood red too.
Durga's group had made it off planet to V
acation Station. Jake rescued them when he showed up in his shuttle, the Space Junque, to pick up his sister Rani.
"Wait," Durga called out. With her bangs cut straight just above her dark eyebrows, she looked like a child version of a red-haired Cleopatra. Her left shoulder was uncovered. Char had the impression Durga wanted people to see the black widow spider tattoo.
"My sister," she said to Char. "We're going up to the statue. Come with us." The statue was on Mount Corcovado, where they'd been teleported from the Space Junque by Asherah's command. Where Rani had died.
"We're going to watch the show," little Maribel said.
The show. No one could bring themselves to say what it really was: The debris of satellites and ships destroyed, damaged, or crippled by the environmentalist terrorist group, the Defenders of Gaia. Only days ago, a hundred thousand people had been living in orbit. Likely some still lived there -- were dying there -- while vast amounts of space junk de-orbited and burned up in the atmosphere.
There was no way to bring them back to earth, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. The whole world was coming to an end.
"Thanks, but I'm meeting Jake on the beach."
"Exgusting." Maribel wrinkled her nose. She was only eight years old and Durga's opposite -- blonde and blue-eyed, fragile, sweet, shy.
Char patted her on the head. "Someday you won't think so." To Durga, she said, "I'll see you tomorrow." They were going to bury Rani up there in the morning.
It was a good thing Jake had gone ahead because the beach was already crowded with people from the compound. Char lay down on the blanket and tucked herself under Jake's arm. The sun dipped behind Mount Corcovado, and the streaks of light in the sky grew brighter. The night air was cold near the water, but it was fresh and clean, sweet to breathe.
"I never knew the world could be so beautiful." Since before she was born, the air had been too polluted to see stars very well. A clear view of the dazzling universe had been one of the attractions of Vacation Station, the orbiting resort of choice for the world's elite.
Jake kissed her forehead. "Before the Junque crashed, I went around a few times. There were explosions everywhere, on every continent, except for Garrick and Corcovado. It was like some mystical force shielded both places. But that's what a miracle is, right? Something impossible. Your Asherah must have spared these two places from destruction like she chose you and Durga."
"I don't know, Jake. What kind of god spares Garrick?"
"Ooh!" The crowd on the beach applauded as a larger meteor streaked across the heavens. Was it so easy to block from their minds what made that pretty light? It could be the cabin of a shuttle falling back into the atmosphere with people still inside.
"According to the old scriptures I studied in school," Jake said, "most of the gods don't make sense. It's part of the mystery."
"Well, I'm glad Asherah dumped us here instead of in Garrick. If the world is going to end, I don't mind spending my last days here."
Corcovado was pristine, like something from a historical holofilm. You could drink right from a spring. For the first time in her life, Char loved being in the world, just physically being alive. Breathing clean air. Feeling a breeze on her face. Tasting fresh water. Civilization had collapsed. The human race had finally destroyed itself. Perversely, she was happier than ever.
Multiple meteors streaked overhead at the same time. "Tell me again about Rani," Jake said. "What you saw."
Rani's soul. What else could it be?
"When you were lost outside the Space Junque, Asherah appeared with those beings she calls Empanii. There was one for each of us, and they had taken shapes of people each of us loved. The matriarch's son, Maribel's mother, my sister Sky. And you were there for Rani. The manifestations were so true. The sound of Sky's voice and the way she hugged me. She was wearing the mirror twin to my necklace."
"Empanii," Jake said. "Empathy. Empathic beings. They read your mind to find the form they take."
"The form and everything that goes with it. Mine knew exactly what I wanted to hear."
The glorious blazes continued above, unrelenting, and unchanging in frequency. The wind from the surf cooled, and the people around them began to collect their things and return to the compound.
"Rani recognized you -- the Empani you. She said your name. Sky put her arms around me, and then we were all on Corcovado, on the mountain. Sky -- my Empani -- was gone. Only the Jake Empani remained."
Another group of people walked by on their way back to the compound. One of the men smiled at Char. She recognized him, a cook in the courtyard bistro. He lunged toward her and grabbed her hair.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Jake pulled the guy away.
"I just wanted to touch Asherah's hair," the guy said. "I wanted to know."
Cripes.
"Get out of here before I turn you in to Geraldo," Jake said. "You could be banished from Corcovado for that."
The guy's face went white.
"It's all right," Char said. "He didn't know."
"I didn't know." The guy nodded eagerly.
"Go and sin no more."
Cripes. The guy turned even paler and ran away. "I was just joking."
"I know you were." Jake seemed amused by the whole thing. "But then, I know you aren't a god. You were saying, about Rani. The Jake Empani was still there, but the other ones were gone."
"I think that's when Rani died. Something came out of her, a shimmering version of her that rose into the air like vapor. My first thought was that it was her soul. I still believe it was of Rani. Rani's consciousness in some form. And I believe she was at peace."
They stayed on the beach until everyone else had gone, and they made love until the sun came up. They just had time to get back, take a shower, and hike up to The Redeemer, the gigantic sandstone statue, its head bent forward and its arms stretched wide as if accepting them all into some promised nirvana.
Durga and the girls were already there, along with the matriarch.
"My sister." Durga ran to hug Char.
As Char put her arms around the little tyrant, she saw Maribel at the edge of the group holding a woman’s hand. Char recognized the woman from the last time they were on the Space Junque. It was an Empani. "Oh, cripes!" The Empani was leading Maribel to the mountain's sheer drop-off.
Durga sprang toward them and grabbed the Empani. As its eyes met Durga's, it turned into a white heron. It beat its wings against Durga’s head and twisted out of her grasp.
"Well," Jake said as the Empani flew away. "That doesn't explain anything."
They buried Rani's body in the ground about fifty yards from the statue base. It seemed odd how they clung to routine in the face of catastrophe. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, bury the dead.
"Rani was my sister. We had the same father." Jake was the first to speak. His words came slow through his pain. "And she was my best friend."
The last funeral Char had attended was for Brandon who'd been killed by one of the DOGs' bombs. There had been no priest then, just as there was none for Rani today. Was that a mistake? Knowing there were gods didn't answer anything. Was there a heaven? Hell?
"Don't you always say this is hell?"
Asherah appeared beside Durga. Her curly blood-red hair was piled on top of her head, and two tiny foo dogs sat on her shoulders holding two pieces of gauzy cloth over her body. Char felt sick to her stomach. Everything went black.
"There is a Great Chain of Being." Durga's voice spoke through Char's mouth.
"All things are linked through the chain in the order of distance from the All, the Ultimate Reality."
Durga's voice mixed with Char's voice, still coming out of Char's mouth, the words flowing independent of Char's will.
"The All experiences the material plane through the human soul. If the soul disappears, everything disappears."
Asherah's voice entered the blend with the two human voices. Char's body shook with so much violence she thought her neck would snap.
>
"I am the god Asherah. I am that I am. I am eternal. The human race will not end. Samael made you, but I will save you."
"Char." The wet grass felt cool and welcome against Char's face. She didn't want to move. "Char!" Jake lifted her up off the ground. It took a moment to focus, to really see him.
She could still feel Asherah's will permeating her every cell. The goddess wanted to save the human race. Not because she liked humans, but to ensure her own continued existence. Too many souls had already been wiped out by the DOGs.
"Did you see?" she asked Jake. "Did you see her?"
"You and Durga went into a trance. You were staring like zombies while Asherah's words came out of your mouths at the same time."
"I don't remember all of it. What does she want?"
"She wants us to light candles," Jake said. "Beeswax."
"Now see, that's where we'll need a miracle." Char's field was hydroponics. Bees had gone extinct fifty years ago.
"And no prayers. She said to give our prayers to Samael."
"I think she has a love/hate relationship with Samael."
"That can't be good," Jake said, "when the gods don't get along."
The matriarch was on the ground with Durga's head in her lap. The little tyrant was comatose.
Fire and Revelation
The end didn't come. They weren't all going to die. The gods were truly back, and at least one of them wasn't going to let the human race go. After three days, Durga came out of her coma, weak but otherwise fine.
Jake, on the other hand, was not fine. He withdrew into a kind of cocoon, mourning Rani. Char couldn't convince him he wasn't responsible. A month later, he was still going over the events surrounding her death.
"If only I'd put the antibiotics in the infirmary instead of the storage hold." They were having lunch in the courtyard outside the admin building.
"Antibiotics can't cure the effects of a disruptor blast. You didn't kill Rani. The DOG who shot her did."
Char bit into a huge red strawberry. She had to give Geraldo his due. The shibdab weasel ran Corcovado like clockwork, even down to providing fresh fruits and vegetables daily for everyone in the compound. "Speak of the weasel," she said under her breath. At that very moment, Geraldo was coming toward them across the courtyard.
