Max Quick: The Bane of the Bondsman (Max Quick Series Book 3)

by Mark Jeffrey

  “So Ptolemy told you how to do it? How to cage information?”

  “No,” Logan said with a brief smile and shake of his head. “This also he did not impart to me, but he explained why he would not do so on this occasion: although he trusted me, he could not allow that knowledge to spread for a single reason: what if someone were to cage the information that described the caging of information? The technique and the tool would then be lost for all time. Ptolemy told me that many terrible things had been caged over centuries through use of it; the loss of the knowledge was intolerable.

  “The more people that know of a caged thing, the weaker the cage itself is. Since we are all One at the deepest level, such a cage is a construct that can ultimately be collapsed by too many minds sharing the secret that is sealed off. The strongest cage is the one where only one person knows the otherwise unknowable knowledge — as certainly the knowledge of the Bondsman’s true name must be.”

  “You keep talking about Ptolemy in the past tense,” Max observed.

  “Yes,” Logan said and hung his head. “Armand Ptolemy is dead. He died in the throne room of the Bondsman, in the City-State of the World Emperor, tortured and killed by the Bondsman personally. But not before he was able to get a message to me: he told me that the artifact I sought was to be found within the walls of the City-State.”

  “The Bondsman’s mask!” Max said, intuition sparking. “It’s got to be! He never —”

  “No,” Logan cut him off. “I thought much the same. It is not his mask, Ptolemy assured me of that.”

  “But how did Ptolemy know?”

  “Because he lived for a year inside the City-State, plumbing the secrets of the Bondsman, in an attempt to discover his identity and kill him.”

  Max gaped. A year? Inside the City-State of the World Emperor?

  “How did he stay alive? How was he never caught?”

  “As I have said, Ptolemy was a very clever man. He hid in the shadows, stealing scraps from the great kitchens. The City-State is enormous: there are many places to conceal yourself when one needs to sleep. He was discovered a few times, of course, but was always able to get away, being much more nimble and clever than his opponents.

  “And ever did he get closer to the Bondsman, observing him, watching him. He succeeded where I — and Marvin Sparkle and many others like us — failed, specifically because he was not practiced in the arts of the Dreamtime. The Bondsman did not detect Ptolemy’s presence: there was no power to sense.

  “The Bondsman believed that no one could penetrate his demesne without great power. In this, he was mostly correct. But Armand Ptolemy was not most people.

  “It was then that Armand Ptolemy discovered that even when the mask of the Bondsman was removed, the Emperor’s identity still could not be ascertained. Ptolemy snuck into a closet of the Bondsman’s very bedroom, and when at last the Bondsman lifted the golden mask from his face and set it aside, Ptolemy found that he simply was unable to perceive eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hair or anything. The visage of the foe of all humanity was simply a gray smudge across his sight.

  “Withdrawing, Ptolemy recalled an art he had learned long ago from the Vizier. He —”

  “Wait. Who was ‘the Vizier’?”

  “Ah. Yes. When Ptolemy was a very young man, this Vizier kidnapped him and pressed Ptolemy into his service as a slave. Together, they travelled for many many years, over harrowed hills and faraway lands, while the Vizier sought some unnamed goal. During this time, Ptolemy was beaten repeatedly by his master — for even then, Ptolemy was headstrong and sought escape at every turn. But the Vizier was too wily, too strong, too skilled at fighting — and too adept at sleeping lightly. But with each new clash, Ptolemy become a little stronger, mastered the art of fighting a little more, and lost a little more of his fear.

  “Thus, the Vizier was both an ancient foe and master of Ptolemy’s — one he eventually defeated — but in many ways, Ptolemy became the man he did because of this continual contest with the Vizier. But during the time of his enslavement, Ptolemy gleaned many things from this strange turbaned man. One was this art of caging information. And now, having seen the gray smudge that was the Bondsman’s face, Ptolemy wondered whether this could be the principle in operation here.

  “I will not go into all the stories that Ptolemy told me of his time inside the City-State of the World Emperor. But he did determine that the Bondsman indeed had caged the knowledge of his true name through Writing it on an artifact of some sort in the heat of exertion of extreme power. And he ascertained the location of the artifact itself, though he was personally unable to obtain it. But before the Bondsman killed him, Ptolemy was able to tell me how to get it myself.”

  “So why haven’t you?”

  Logan smiled briefly and adjusted his wrap-around sunglasses. “Because I don’t have the right kind of power to destroy it. Or enough of it.”

  Max stared at him for a second and then understood. “And that’s where I come in.”

  “Yes,” Logan said simply.

  Max thought for a moment and then said, “A Vizier is an Egyptian man of high rank. Kind of a Prime Minister.”

  “Yes,” Logan agreed.

  “And this Ptolemy … well, he went to Oxford sometime before 1912. So he’s English, right? Or American?”

  “American, yes. He was born in America, raised in Africa.”

  “It’s just that … well, Ptolemy is an Egyptian name,” Max said. I know. I was there. I remember. “What I’m trying to say is: I don’t think Ptolemy is his real last name. I think this Vizier person gave it to him.”

  Logan smiled. “Or he took it from the Vizier. Well-spotted. But that is a tale for another time. I have something else to show you. Something that might restore your faith in me somewhat,” Logan said. He shuffled back into the depths of the mobile home somewhere. He returned with a box; he opened it and showed Max several items.

  The first were vinyl record albums. Jethro Tull, Living in the Past. The Beatles, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.

  Next came a book: The Man In The High Tower, by Philip K. Dick.

  Max looked up in amazement. “But these items … they’re from …?”

  “The real timeline,” Logan confirmed. “Where we are both from.”

  “How —? These things weren’t erased from time?”

  “Neither were you and I. You are familiar with reel to reel tape recordings or cassettes?” Max nodded; his restored memories recalled these vividly. “When you record over something that was recorded before, some part of the original recording still remains. You can sometimes barely hear it, but it’s there. Time is the same. This new Bondsman timeline is recorded over ours … and likewise, some of ours remains.

  “Now. You must drink this. You need to sleep some more. Let me worry about our friends.” Before Max could protest, Logan continued, “You can do nothing until you heal. I have been ‘on the case’ as you say, I have not been idle I assure you.”

  And with that, he poured a viscous, oily drink down Max’s mouth as he opened it to speak, and Max was out before a syllable formed on his lips.

  SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT, three people suddenly appeared on the freeway near Logan’s trailer.

  They had never seen a freeway before. And from their point of view, it was the freeway that had simply appeared. They stared at the strange black, snaking ribbon with the dotted yellow line up it’s middle. To their astonishment, it stretched from horizon to horizon.

  One moment Dora, Clara and Loric Appleton had been driving their covered wagon west on a featureless, craggy red desert landscape. It had been midday. In the blink of an eye, it was night. The stars were hazy, not nearly as sharp as they were used to. And they all perceived the world as somehow now compressed, less full of color.

  It frightened them all deep to their core. Was this a miracle? A curse?

  They were Mormon. Nothing in their Book has prepared them for this.

  Quickly, they gui
ded their horses off the strange ribbon and back on to the scrabbled plain. At least that terrain was familiar.

  As they speculated on whether this was a test of their faith or a trick of the Devil, a man approached from out of the darkness. Loric quickly got his rifle and bid Clara and Dora — his wife and child of twelve respectively — to get back in the wagon and get down low as they could.

  The man walked closer, arms held up, fingers spread wide: he wasn’t armed.

  “I am here to help!” the man called out.

  “Who are you?”

  “An Indian,” the man replied. “But you have nothing to fear from me.”

  “An … Indian?” Loric repeated, a quaver of fear in his voice.

  “Yes. As I said, I am here to help. You were somewhere else a moment ago. Now, you are here, and afraid, yes? I can help.”

  Loric hesitated. Then said: “Approach. Slowly!” But then, with a backward glance at the wagon, he reconsidered: “Wait. I will come to you. Keep your hands in the air.”

  When Loric was within ten strides, he stopped.

  “My name is Logan White-Cloud,” the man said. “I can offer you food and water. And an explanation of sorts as to what’s happened to you.”

  “Alright then. What has happened to us? Where are we?”

  “You were — tell me first, what year is it?”

  “1882,” the man replied, baffled.

  Logan inhaled sharply. This was bad: the 1912 barrier had already begun to crumble. Dear God! Already?

  “It now 1977,” Logan replied. “You have stepped from 1882 into 1977.”

  Loric looked at him oddly. “I don’t understand.”

  “You are no longer in your time, although you are in the same place. Behold the evidence of your own eyes. You are a stranger in strange land, I offer you aid. I can show you more evidence if you accompany me. And I bid you to: you are not safe here. The world of 1977 is filled with dangers unknown and unimaginable in 1882. I can keep you shield you from many of them.”

  Loric looked doubtful.

  “Of course you are free to go. I merely offer my aid. Come if you will — or not — as it pleases you.”

  Logan turned and began shambling away into the shriek-black desert night.

  “Wait!” Loric called. “We will come.”

  WHEN MAX WOKE sometime later, he was surprised to see a covered wagon next to the White Cadillac.

  Three people in what looked like Amish garb milled around nearby, talking and laughing with Logan White-Cloud as he fixed them steaks on a fire. Max could smell the tasty, searing smoke from his bed.

  Max tested his midsection: there was pain, but he was okay. His bandage had been removed, and he saw his bare torso for the first time: three hard, white rubbery scars where the bullets had pierced him. They had healed over just fine. And he noticed that his breathing was not labored at all: his lungs and ribs also were healed.

  When he shambled outside, Logan called to him at once to join them.

  “Ah, I knew you would rise today,” Logan said. “The smoke and the mud speed healing greatly.”

  “Mud?”

  “Yes. Mud and twigs and leaves. And olive oil and apple cider vinegar. That’s what I gave you to drink.”

  Max repressed a gag. “You should have just given me turpentine. That would have tasted better.”

  “You see? It works! In fraction of the time, you are walking. Now meet our friends.” Logan explained to Max what had happened to Loric, Dora and Clara. He explained how he had started up the White Cloud — his Cadillac — and taken them for a ride in it, much to their great astonishment. They’d even finally believed his story about walking through from 1882 to 1977 — “After all, we know the Lord can work miracles … and that’s what this is, why shouldn’t we believe it?” Dora said.

  “But I have no power to return you,” Logan explained. “You are trapped here.”

  “And so we are,” Clara said. “But if we are trapped with the bounty of your meats and sundries, then I am all for it!”

  “Yes!” Dora chimed in. “We haven’t eaten this well in months!”

  “The Lord did this,” Loric said sternly, eyes flitting to his covered wagon, filled with sudden tears. “He sent us to you, Logan. We were sorely low on supplies. We may not have made it otherwise.” Max got the feeling that Dora and Clara hadn’t know this before — Loric had not told them of their peril. But now that they were safe and well-fed, it didn’t much worry them. And one glance at Loric’s gaunt form and loose clothes told him that Loric had been starving — Max knew intimately what starvation looked like.

  “They were brought here by the onset of a post-time world,” Logan said later to Max, at a distance from the three. “Timelessness is seeping in. This is going to start happening all over now — people walking into our world from different times … and people from our time suddenly disappearing into the past, the future.”

  “Accidental travelers,” Max mused. “How is the Bondsman doing this?”

  Logan winced. “He is not. This time-blur is a recent development.” Again, with the pause. Spit it out, Max breathed. “It coincides with your arrival in this world.”

  Uh oh. Max’s hair was on end.

  Logan resumed: “Your mind has been freed of its cryptomnesia, as you Star People call it. Your memories are unblocked, they are open to you … but even so, your mind is a jumble of several thousand years: a cacophony, a din you can still barely make sense of. Am I right?” Max nodded. “You must comprehend that you exert … an influence on this world. This world reflects you, now that you are here. And your mind is, at present, a mixture of past and present. The times bleed into one another. And so likewise, now do the epochs of this world, since world is an emanation of mind.

  “Not yours alone, of course. But yours is a powerful mind — so powerful, in fact, that it shouts down nearly every mind around you. You are what an old friend of mine called an Imaginal. And your power is tearing at the fabric of reality, re-ordering the material world to reflect your inner world. Even subconsciously. For this did the Archons breed you into existence. For countless generations, with their tricks and bargains, the Archons bred Niburians towards the endpoint of you.”

  Great. Just great.

  Something else he was responsible for.

  “But why? What does the Bondsman get out of this?”

  “It is a way for him to break through the 1912 barrier.”

  Suddenly, staring at the three walk-ins, Max understood. “Oh. Oh right. They’re from 1882,” Max said numbly. Already the barrier had been breached.

  Logan only nodded. “History itself will eventually become completely elastic. As people and things are shuffled around faster and faster, new histories will constantly arise. The world will be blur of confusion. Even the release of death will be denied humanity, since there is no cause and effect … torture can be prolonged infinitely. Thus, the purity, width and depth of fear and suffering and hate produced for the Archons can be ever ratcheted up with ever more delicious horrors and atrocities.”

  “Stop it,” Max said, vividly recalling the baroque and hellish meal laid out by the Archons when they had appeared to him once via a Whispering Stone. “I can’t take any more.”

  He turned away for a moment, then spun on Logan. “Okay. What do I do?” Max said, eyes wet with edges of madness now. “How do I stop it?”

  Logan sighed. “Mental discipline. You must learn to control your —“

  “No. That’ll take too long,” Max snapped. “It takes people years to achieve even a small amount of mental control. I’ve seen it. Sometimes decades. I’ve visited with men who live on air and sunshine up the Andes and in the Himalayas … it takes too long.”

  “Then we must find this artifact of the Bondsman’s and destroy it,” Logan said simply. “Other than your control, that is the only option. And then we must bring down the Bondsman. This tearing of time is also partly a product of the Bondsman’s influence on this world.
Those Machines he has everywhere, the Dream … they’re all part of the same toxic stew that’s influencing your mind. If those are removed, your fugue state won’t rip at the core of reality with vicious lash that it does now.”

  “That I can do,” Max said. “And that’s a lot more realistic of an option.”

  “But for tonight, Max … forget your troubles,” Logan said with a cracked smile. “Heal. Take comfort in new friends. Roast over the open flame under the fiery stars above! For tomorrow may bring with it woe, yes, but that is a task for tomorrow. Take joy in the now that is tonight and thereby increase joy in all the world — which is the true foe and bane of the Bondsman!”

  THE NIGHT WORE on and the fire grew dimmer until it was just a slag of wood-lava, orange embers and sparks in the dark. The Mormons had gone to bed. Just Max and Logan sat by the fire now, both with thick blankets over their shoulders to spare them from the cold night desert air.

  In the distance, a single light approached on the long strip of road.

  Logan’s long-sighted Dreamtime mind-vision spotted it first but he said nothing until Max also spotted his with his mere mortal organic eyes. They watched it approach for a long time after that, as the road stretched for long and long away and the horizon was very far in this place. Both thought that perhaps it would turn off on some other road long before it reached their location. There had been a few of those lights earlier in the night already, and Logan had remarked that there was a service road down a ways from where his RV was parked, and usually anyone coming near him would turn down it on their way to some other destination.

  But this light divided and became two headlights, and kept coming.

  “You’d better go inside,” Logan remarked. “Your face is known.”

  Max nodded grimly and went inside the camper, watching from the window near the bed where he had been resting up these past several days.