The Armageddon Blues

by The Armageddon Blues (new ed) (mobi)

  The track she left and the time she lost were important. The other Hunters, if they caught her before she reached the Big Road, would certainly kill her.

  The machine she was stealing, that she would destroy, had cost the Clan two years of labor.

  Two tendays earlier, the alien gods had announced their intention to leave Earth. The Ship (which was, in fact, only a small part of a larger, kilometers-long Ship that never left orbit) would lift silently into space, loaded with monopoles, radioactives, and biomass that could be genegineered to match the Corvichi amino acid requirements. With their machinery adapted to the physics of this timeline, the great Ship would activate its sub-wavicle stardrive, and, for the next few thousand cycled running cycles, would explore the timeline into which they had come, battered and limping.

  In time, when they had seen enough of this new timeline, they would shift again, and move further around the Great Wheel of Existence. They had lived so for longer than any Corvichi remembered; they had not even the legends of a planet-bound existence. Perhaps the Shipmind might have told them of their past, had they cared to ask.

  In over 800,000 running cycles, no Corvichi had bothered. Where they had come from was not important; they lived for the journey that would come.

  Once again that time was near.

  Jalian found ghess'Rith waiting for her, curled into a dim purplish mass of flesh, huddled sadly into his feather-nest. It was dark; the blue glowfloats were lying inactive in a rounder.

  She stood at the edge of the feathernest; she did not enter.

  /ghess'Rith./

  /Jalian/

  /you are leaving./

  /true/ Ghess'Rith stirred. /word came from the Shipmind half a day past. it was confirmed by the captains/

  /why? you told me not for another running cycle at least./

  Ghess'Rith said uneasily, /our probes have met with the crosstime ships of a person empire/

  "Tchai," whispered Jalian aloud. /you have been acting so strangely..../

  /far away,/ said ghess'Rith, /far across the Great Wheel of Existence. they are persons like yourself, the salch khri, but their science is close to our own. they are warlike and they outnumber us greatly.... we do not wish to fight/

  Jalian assimilated the information slowly. Conquerors, then, like the Real Indians, with technology like the alien gods. /and you will leave us to this?/

  /we have no choice. the Shipmind recommended; the captains chose/

  Jalian's hands curved slightly at her sides, without her awareness. "Cowards," she said with true surprise. "You are cowards." /have you no pride? you flee before persons./

  /pride?/ Ghess'Rith seemed surprised. /no. we are not warriors/ He paused. /Jalian, you could come with us. you are better trained in outtime technology than many of the crew/

  Jalian did not need to think. /no./

  Ghess'Rith persisted. /Jalian, you will not be happy with only other Silver-Eyes to talk to. kisirien, Jalian, there are no other Silver-Eyes you can mindtalk to/

  Jalian stood straight. She was shivering slightly with a reaction she could not name. /don't do this to me, ghess'Rith./

  /Jalian, there are wonders off this small destroyed planet. Within your own hunting grounds there is a planet with brilliantly colored rings. one of your planets has a giant red spot, caused in part by the dance of vast sentient leviathans celebrating the joy of existence. there are ... Jalian, do you remember how you used to feel about what you called the Big Road?/

  Jalian was silent for a long while. She looked straight at ghess'Rith. "Yes, ghess'Rith, I remember."

  /Jalian, the rest of spacetime holds wonders that dwarf even what a six-year old child once felt for the Big Road./

  Jalian said, "I am not a child, ghess'Rith."

  /i did not understand that, Jalian/

  /perhaps you were not meant to./

  /Jalian?/

  "Oh, I remember the Big Road, ghess'Rith. I do."

  Jalian stepped onto the concrete of the Big Road. Even now, at the age of nineteen, she had traversed its length only three times. At its end, rising into the hills that ringed the north edge of the valley, there began the ruins of another Big Road, and from that spot, in the far distance, one could see a vast and faint pattern of roads and ruined cities.

  The first three times down that arrow-straight road, the land of gods and demons had not been at its other end.

  Jalian did not find four to be a particularly lucky number for her, either way.

  Jalian knelt on the gray-black road, and slowly lifted the Doorway off her back. She set it down with a slight thud, then slumped next to it, to give her aching muscles a respite. She counted a small cycle, then another, before rising.

  She assembled the Doorway carefully. She was well aware of the time it was taking her. Sweat began to soak again into her brown-green tunic, there to evaporate at once into the ossifyingly dry and hot air.

  After several minutes, the Doorway's control panel was set up and hooked to the Doorway itself. Using a tool that resembled a small awl, she began setting controls. The work went slowly, as the awl-like tool was a poor substitute for the minor tentacles of the alien gods. Finally it was finished, and Jalian straightened, wiping sweaty palms on her tunic, ignoring the sharp pain in the small of her back.

  The control panel acknowledged the search pattern Jalian had set up. From the frame of the Doorway, Jalian detached a brace of insect-sized probes. She pressed the activator, held the brace for a six-count, and released the probe-hold button. The probes dropped off the brace, buzzing slightly, and arrayed themselves before the Doorway. They hung in mid-air, their buzz becoming almost imperceptibly louder.

  The Doorway flickered.

  For the barest instant, a swirling gray maelstrom appeared between the poles of the Doorway. Lines and spheres writhed

  It was gone.

  Jalian prepared to wait. Until one of the probes reached an alternate timeline that caused the bright red danger indicator to flash, she could do nothing. The danger indicator, installed because many of the Silver-Eyes could not hear the ultrasonic warning signal, remained stubbornly dark.

  Jalian glanced back, to the hills. She saw nothing, butshe reached out with her mind, to find the pursuit, and there; guided by her mind's eye, she could now visually make out the faint rising of dust that her followers, careless in their haste, were leaving.

  She turned away from the sight. They did not understand what she was doing, or why. She could explain until the empire of which ghess'Rith spoke conquered them all, and still they would not understand.

  She did not admit even to herself that she did not understand her own actions fully. She knew only that it felt right.

  Ghess'Rith would have told her she was committing suicide; but there was a memory, skipping stones across the lake as a child. If she threw the stone straight at the water, it splashed and sank. If she skipped it over the still surface of the lake, it would travel six or ten body-lengths before sinking.

  She could almost do the math to describe what she was going to attempt.

  Almost.

  Jalian could not help herself; she was turning to watch her pursuit when the danger indicator flashed. The control panel began whooping wildly at the very limits of Jalian's hearing, as the Doorway penetrated the timeline with the skewed entropy orientation. An entry portal flickered into existence within the poles of the Doorway; through the huge metal gateway, it presented a view of the Big Road.

  It was different from the Big Road upon which Jalian stood. The left side of the road was Jalian's right; and the right side was her left. The colors were wildly different, like the negative images that ghess'Rith sometimes produced with his image recreations. While she watched, a bird sailed gracefully backward across Jalian's field of vision.

  It was a one to one entry ratio, what the alien gods called a true entry. It was not what Jalian needed. To go where she desired to go, and to survive the experience, she needed the highest entry ratio that the
Doorway was capable of establishing.

  The necessary equations tumbled through the back of her mind. She could not have explained what she was doing to another Silver-Eyes; she could hardly have done so to one of the alien gods. She needed to balance the Doorway's power supply against the necessary high entry ratio against the time it would take her to make her journey.

  She set the Doorway for an entry ratio of fourteen million to one.

  An arrow struck her in the back of her shoulder. Its force was already spent by the time it reached her; it did not even break her skin.

  Through the Doorway, the Big Road blurred. Day and night became a single indistinguishable flash of light. The plants lived and died too quickly for her to see. The forest itself was a dark, shifting blur. Only the mountains and the Big Road itself remained constant.

  Another arrow struck the ground near her. Without looking back, Jalian took the call-back remote from the control panel. With the call-back remote clutched in her hand, Jalian d'Arsennette stepped through the Doorway.

  Arrows whistled through the Doorway after her, but she was already months away.

  Dateline Retrograde: 724 A.T.F. to 1962 Gregorian inclusive.

  Needles thrust themselves into every exposed patch of skin on her body. Fire washed over her. She screamed, and the fire washed down into her lungs. She dropped to the concrete of the Big Road, with the pain all that she could think of. The fire crept in through her ears, and melted in through the surface of her skin until it touched her bones.

  She lay writhing on the ground, unable to control herself. The pain was insane, impossible. The worst pain she had ever experienced before was as nothing to this....

  The Real Indian rode out of the sunshine. Jalian was thirteen and she threw the spear she'd taken from the hands of the dead boy at her side. The spear bounced off the leather breastplate, and arrows came from nowhere and struck her thigh and shoulder. She did not remember falling, did not remember the knife leaving her hand, burying itself in the Real Indian's eye.

  They had all assumed she was dead. She was one of the last of the Silver-Eyes to be approached by the Healers. The arrows had been fired at point blank range, and she was a small girl; it saved her life. The barbed arrowheads went completely through her, without embedding themselves in her flesh.

  She was delirious for more than a tenday. From the depths of her delirium, she remembered a voice, her mother's; and six years later, lying on the Big Road, in an insane timeline where the sun and moon were only continuous circlets of light overhead, the words returned.

  "Live, Jalian. This is all that I teach you, all that I have ever taught you. You must wish to live...."

  Jalian d'Arsennette rose to her knees. Like a cripple she struggled to her feet. It was not necessary that she move; she would exit this timeline when the Doorway's power was exhausted.

  She did not have to move.

  The Big Road stretched away in front of her. Jalian oriented on the familiar sight, and slowly, falteringly, began the long run that would take her to its end.

  Dateline Base Divergence: 1962 Gregorian.

  Late in the month of November, Johnny Harris went driving for the last time.

  He was double-dating, because his girl's parents wouldn't let her go out alone with him. In his heart Johnny didn't blame them. Ellen Jamieson was stunning; her hair was the same color as Brigitte Bardot's. When she was standing, with her hair unbound, it fell straight to her butt. Her eyes were honest to God the bluest damn things he'd ever seen, and to top it all off she was smart; she could talk about sports or politics as reasonably as any guy Johnny knew. She knew more about movie-making than anybody else Johnny had ever met, and that included his best friend Darryl.

  He picked up Darryl and his date before heading over to Ellen's. If he showed up alone, Ellen's parents wouldn't let her leave the house. It was dark, and raining, by the time he reached Darryl's house. The rain wasn't serious, just a nuisance.

  Darryl and his most recent steady, a completely nothing chick named Katie, were standing on the porch when Johnny pulled up in his older brother's Chevette. (He wasn't actually supposed to be driving it, but what the hell; Craig was in the Army, and didn't have leave coming for months yet.) Darryl and Katie ran through the light drizzle to the car. Johnny had forgotten to unlock the doors on the passenger's side until Darryl pounded on the window. He leaned over and popped the locks. Darryl slid into the front seat, and slammed the door shut. Without being told, Katie got in the back seat.

  Darryl ran fingers through his damp hair. He looked pissed; the cigarette he'd been smoking on the porch had gone out. He looked a lot like James Dean, and knew it, and dressed and wore his hair to emphasize the fact. The resemblance ended when he opened his mouth. "Hey, dude, you trying to drown us out there?"

  Johnny shrugged, pulling away from the curb. "Sorry, man. Hi, Katie." With his free hand he aimed a thumb to the back seat. "Brews in back. Grab me one."

  Darryl leaned over the seat backs, rummaging in a bag on the floor. He pulled out two bottles of Coors, reasonably cold, opened them with the bottle opener in the ashtray, and handed one to Johnny. He drank from his, and then glanced into the back seat. "Hey, Katie. You want a beer?"

  Katie leaned forward, arms resting on the seat-top that separated them. "No, but I'll drink some of yours."

  "Shit," grumbled Darryl, "I knew you were gonna say that." He passed the beer back to her over his left shoulder. "Hey, Johnny, where we going?"

  "To pick up Ellen," said Johnny instantly.

  "Where after that?"

  "Umm ..." Johnny leaned forward and flicked on his wipers. "Covina," he said finally.

  "Uh-huh." Darryl took his beer back from Katie. "I knew you were going to say that," he announced. "Look, I thought we agreed we weren't going to that damn revival theater any more. What's playing this time, ‘I Was a Teenage Rutabaga?'"

  Johnny laughed in spite of himself. "No. It's ‘Frankenstein' and ‘The Bride of Frankenstein.'"

  Darryl stared at him. "'The Bride of Frankenstein'?" He looked at Katie for support, then changed his mind and decided to go it alone. "Are we for real here?"

  Johnny sighed. "Look, I'll owe you one, okay?" He cornered onto the block where Ellen lived.

  Darryl sat back in his seat. "Damn straight you owe me one. More than one, actually."

  Johnny pulled over next to the curb, and put the car into park. He left the engine running. "Right, whatever. Back seat, dude." He got out of the car, slamming the door, and ran up to the front porch.

  "'Back seat, dude.' There is no appreciation here," Darryl said to nobody in particular. He didn't bother to get out. Instead he crawled over the seat-top into the back of the car.

  Johnny was back quickly, with Ellen. He opened the door for her, closed it behind her, and ran around to the driver's side. Inside the car, he put the car into drive and headed for the 71 north.

  The conversation inside was tense at first--Darryl didn't much like Ellen, and Ellen found Darryl amusing--but they all relaxed by the time Darryl was on his third beer, and Johnny was finishing his second. The rain was increasing, but Johnny wasn't worried; he'd driven in the rain before without difficulty. He wasn't worrying about his drinking either. It was only his third beer, after all, and he'd just begun it. He'd eaten dinner less than two hours before, and he was hardly buzzed, you know?

  They were heading into the deserted industrial stretch of road on the outskirts of Pomona, that led toward Covina. Johnny was pleasantly relaxed. Ellen was leaning against him, a warm and comfortable weight. From the back seat, he could vaguely hear Darryl speaking quietly, and Katie giggling. He had a momentary impression of an indistinct brightness coming from up ahead.

  Rainbows blasted over them.

  Johnny touched the brakes, and the car fishtailed wildly. He let go of the brakes, but the rainbows were intensifying, red and orange and yellow and green ...

  He couldn't see. In panic he stomped on the brakes, and the l
ights were so pretty, you know, blue and purple and it was dark for a long second and suddenly it was red again, red and orange and yellow.... The Chevette skidded, hit the guard rail at the side of the road, and flipped. It tumbled end over end. One of the headlights was smashed in the tumble, and the windshield shattered inward. The car flipped one last time, and came to rest, upside down in the middle of the street. The horn was blaring crazily and the single headlight was rocking up and down with the movement of the car.

  The rainbows ceased.

  In the comparatively dim beam from the one rocking headlight, standing in the rain, Jalian d'Arsennette held herself fully upright. Her clothing was dissolving in the rain. Her skin was the color that Ellen Jamieson might have experienced after a very bad sunburn.

  Her hair was ice-white.

  She tried to take a step forward. She did not remember falling. It was logical that she must have fallen; the pavement struck her hard.

  Ellen Jamieson found herself lying halfway through the windshield, with the water pouring down on her. The shards of the windshield were cutting up into her abdomen. She hardly felt it, hardly felt anything. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the person lying on the freeway, sprawled over the divider line. There was a severed hand a few feet away from her.

  After a while had passed, Ellen did not know how long, the form on the road stirred. It rolled over onto its back. Ellen noted exposed breasts with clinical detachment; it was a woman. After another long pause, the form moved again. With agonizing slowness, it rose to its knees, and then to its feet. The world faded.

  When Ellen became aware again, legs that looked burned were standing in front of her eyes. She could not see above the knees. She felt hands grasping her, and moving her--

  She screamed at the top of her lungs and passed out.

  She never awoke again.

  Jalian moved in a daze. The dying girl before her was dressed in a fashion that Jalian had never imagined the like of. The thing Jalian had pulled her out of resembled a karz more than a little. It had a single glowing light on its left side.

  The remote call-back was beeping in her hand. She unclenched the hand that held it, vaguely aware that it hurt her to do so. She dropped it on top of the strange woman.