Future Indefinite

by Dave Duncan

  Hesitantly, Dommi took up the story again, telling how the crowd had built a funeral pyre right there in the plaza. His voice broke and the room fell silent. The candles burned brighter in the deepening darkness.

  Prof Rawlinson was eternally impervious to atmosphere. “And where did you find the rabbits?”

  “Some of our new Thargian supporters provided them,” Julian said. “They showered us with hospitality. Doggan and Tielan are still with them. You may expect a flood of pilgrims to arrive within days, Holiness.”

  Eleal nodded. Her eyes were brimming, but she recalled herself to her role. “We give thanks for this wonderful story.”

  Prof cleared his throat. “Three days ago?” he muttered in English. “It should be about time, shouldn’t it?”

  Alice gasped and looked at Julian.

  He peered around Tittrag. “Time for what?” he snapped. “What are you implying?”

  Rawlinson pursed his lips and blinked as if he had mislaid a pair of very powerful spectacles. “Come, come, Captain! We all know the model on whom Exeter based his actions. The saga is not yet complete.”

  Julian ought to be angry, but he was too numb to feel anything more than disgust. “If you’re expecting a resurrection, Rawlinson, then you will be disappointed. Exeter isn’t going to appear as Christ appeared to the Apostles, showing his stigmata. Exeter was smashed to pulp. We watched his body burn away to ashes. Don’t be obscene.” He leaned his head on his hands.

  “You are overlooking the logic of the confrontation, Captain.” Prof had assumed his lecturing mode. “Zath is dead, we agree. So Exeter killed him. So Exeter was the survivor and acquired all the mana. With that kind of power, it would be fairly simple to fake one’s death, I am sure.”

  The Valians were looking puzzled, all except Dommi, who understood English. “I am assuring you, Brother Prof, that the person we found was most assuredly the Tyika, and he was most assuredly dead. His face was not damaged. He had a birthmark on his leg, often which I have been observing when he was bathing.”

  “I remember it from school days,” Julian said. “And I noticed it too.”

  The infuriating drawl would not be hushed. “Mana could simulate that. It would be easy enough to alter the appearance of some other corpse—”

  “There were no other bodies.”

  Prof laughed. “Precisely! A most fortunate miracle? Or does it sound like the hand of our friend, taking charge of events when he had overcome the opposition and was free to exercise his powers as he wished?”

  Sudden fury blazed up in Julian. He slammed a fist down on the table with a crack that made everyone jump—his right fist, which the Liberator had given him. “No!” he roared. “It sounds like plain, damned, good luck! I tell you that Edward Exeter was not a shyster! He would never stoop to that sort of deception. However powerful he became, he would not have been immortal, so to stage a resurrection would have been the cheapest sort of trickery. He would not have done that! Don’t you see? Don’t any of you see? He knew he was leading his Warband to their deaths in Niolvale, and he did so because even then he knew that he would have to die himself!”

  Alice whispered, “Oh, no!”

  “Oh, yes! Those were the only terms on which he would ever have sacrificed his friends. He wouldn’t just send them over the top without him. He avenged his parents and all Zath’s other victims, but he knew the necessary price and paid it. Zath died and so did he!”

  Prof was shaken but not convinced. “Simultaneously? How is that possible? Where did the mana go?”

  Julian wanted to scream.

  “For heaven’s sake, man—Exeter didn’t have any mana! Haven’t you worked it out yet? We all wondered how he could ever convince the Pentatheon to support him, to give him enough mana to win the battle. We all knew that the stronger he became, the less likely that they would ever trust him.”

  Pinky’s eyes were open wide, for once. “And how did he persuade them to trust him?”

  “He didn’t!” Julian shouted, leaping up. He was horribly afraid he was about to start weeping as he had wept in Tharg, as he had wept when he was shell-shocked. Shell shock felt just like this. He yelled louder. “He summoned the Five here, to that courtyard. Alice and I saw them, right out there. But he didn’t ask for their help. He didn’t ask them to trust him. He trusted them! He didn’t beg mana from them. He gave them his! All of it. That was why the Thargians were able to arrest him and drag him off to a fake trial and beat him and take him to be executed. He had no mana left! Zath had never thought of that gambit. Nobody had. But Edward planned it right from the beginning, as the only solution to the problem. Remember the prophecy that the dead would rouse him? He saw the war in Flanders. If millions of ordinary men could lay down their lives to defeat an evil cause, then he would do no less, and he could avenge his parents and the friends who had died….”

  He took a deep breath and forced himself down on the bench again, shivering like the guv’nor when his malaria took him. “Zath must have been horribly puzzled when his mortal foe was delivered to him bound and helpless. He must have suspected a trap. And while he was engrossed in watching Exeter die, the Five took the chance that Exeter had given them, and the extra mana he had given them, and they killed Zath!”

  He stopped, choking. Alice put a hand on his arm.

  “You imply that they cooperated?” Pinky asked dubiously. “The Five?”

  “They had to! Edward had left them no choice, because the winners would share out Zath’s mana, so none of them could afford to be left out. They took the only opportunity they would ever get to deal with Zath. The opportunity Exeter gave them as a gift, no strings attached.”

  After a moment, Prof said doubtfully, “I suppose that is possible. But…You’d have thought one of them would have had the common decency to save the Liberator’s life.”

  “That bunch? Oh, no! They don’t know what gratitude is. And they certainly did not want Exeter running loose again. He could play their game better than any of them. He would have gathered more mana next year and then pulled them all into line, at the very least. They got rid of the two men they feared at one stroke. I bet they’re all celebrating like a bunch of drunken sailors.”

  But they would never again make the mistake of permitting human sacrifice. That was one good thing.

  “Julian is correct,” Alice whispered. “There was another prophecy, you see. A gypsy told him he must choose three times: honor or friendship, honor or duty, and finally honor or his life. He chose honor every time. He knew he must die.”

  This time the silence was longer. At last Pinky said, “I do believe we should speak in Joalian. Holiness, brothers, we were just discussing the evil sorcerers, and how much they may have come to the Liberator’s assistance. We conclude that they did not, of course.”

  “They are doubtless rejoicing in their wickedness,” Eleal agreed majestically. “But the good shall triumph, as the One wills.”

  “Yes, it will,” Julian said hoarsely. Tears ran cold on his cheeks; he felt nauseated, ashamed of his outburst, ashamed that he could not conceal his grief as the others could. “And they don’t know the power of an idea. What D’ward has left us is a church built on a true historical event, whereas the pagans’ beliefs are merely legend and deceit. We must build in his memory.” There would be persecutions and martyrdoms, and the church would feed and grow on them….

  “I believe—” Piol Poet said. From somewhere he produced a wad of papers and began to thumb through them. “I believe I have some…Ah! Yes, these were words the Master spoke regarding a church.” Holding a sheet dangerously close to the candle and his nose even closer, he read, “In Jurgvale on Thighday, the Master said:

  “‘Is not a church a living thing? It is conceived in union, when a father drops a seed in a ready womb. It comes forth in pain and blood, and they smile who hear its first cries. Is not a church like a child, for it grows and changes and makes errors and learns? Is not a church like a young person, z
ealous and vigorous to improve the world, but apt to blunder into violence? Is not a church like a mother, who should love her children but not smother them? Is not a church like a father who should defend and discipline his family without hurt to them or others? Is not a church like anyone of us, who may grow in wisdom and compassion or sink into lazy and meaningless old age? Wherefore judge faiths as you judge persons. If they are greedy for gold, spurn them. If they lie, deny them. If they threaten, defy them. If they slay or harm or persecute, seek other counsel, for a false guide is worse than ignorance. And if they repent, forgive them.’”

  Julian could recognize Exeter’s sentiments, but the actual words were Piol Poet’s. The evangelists were ornamenting already.

  Eleal was beaming at the old man. “Assuredly, that was his hope. He entrusted me to guide his followers here in Thargvale, and he instructed Ursula Teacher to found a temple in Joalvale.”

  “And he directed me to do so in Niolvale,” Domini said quietly. “I have been remiss, but I shall leave at dawn.”

  “And you, Kaptaan?” the high priestess inquired.

  Julian shook his head. How shameful his repeated lack of faith seemed now! He had never truly trusted Exeter—he who had known him since boyhood. Oh, how he wished now that he could call back those angry words he had spoken after the death of the Warband at Shuujooby! “I am no shield-bearer, Holiness. In fact, I have never even been formally baptized into the Church. I ask now for that honor, although I do not feel worthy of it.”

  She gave him her best reverend-mother smile. “Indeed your request will be granted! Is there one among us you would especially ask to perform this sacrament?”

  Julian looked hopefully at Dommi.

  Dommi beamed wider than ever. “I shall be most honored, Brother Kaptaan!”

  Eleal nodded approvingly. “In his last words to me, the Master said that he hoped you would go into Randorvale and found a church, Kaptaan, because he thought you would be a very great apostle. We have one shield with no bearer. He said that if the previous bearer did not return to claim it, then it was to be yours. It is the most cherished shield of all, for it belonged to the holy Prat’han, first among the Warband.”

  For a moment Julian just stared at her. Then he babbled, “I should like nothing better than to take the Church of the Liberator into Randorvale. I shall be honored.” Yes, he would take on Eltiana and her gang and stuff Edward Exeter down their throats. And one day he would burn her filthy brothel temple and dance on the ashes. If it took him a thousand years.

  “Previous bearer?” growled Pinky. “You mean Dosh Betrayer, of course? Was that his shield? I just hope he had the grace to hang himself, like the original Judas.”

  Unfair! It was possible, of course, that Dosh had taken silver from the Thargians to betray Exeter, but Julian was fairly certain that he had only been following orders. In order to deceive Zath, Exeter had been forced to deceive everyone else as well. It would be better not to say anything to damage the burgeoning legend. The calumny would not matter unless Dosh himself showed up, and he must know that he would be torn to pieces if he did. Better to have poor Dosh remembered as a traitor than to admit that the Liberator had set up his own martyrdom. Julian decided he must tell no one about that, not even Alice.

  Nor even Euphemia. But on his way to Randorvale, he would stop in at Olympus and assure her that he had meant all the promises he had made in his letter. And he would hold her to hers. No one had suggested that the Liberator’s clergy were required to be celibate.

  63

  When the usual waves of nausea and despair had faded and her muscles stopped trying to knot her up like a string bag, Alice gingerly raised her head to survey the clearing. It was very small, tightly encircled by dense trees and shrubbery. There was blue sky above her and dew below. The fresh air on her skin was a little too fresh for comfort, but this was an April morning in England. She could probably have guessed that from the smells alone. By the time she had struggled to her knees, she had spied violets, primroses, and cowslips. The branches were dipped in the first green fuzz of spring, and a cuckoo hooted its demented refrain not far off.

  Muttering, “Too true!” she staggered to her feet.

  The hut was so small and overgrown that she might have overlooked it had she not been told of its existence. The key, they had said, was in the squirrel hole in the third tree to the left. The Service had never outgrown a juvenile obsession with cloaks and daggers.

  Half an hour later, she was trudging north in clothes that were at least a generation out of date, but the buttoned boots fitted tolerably well and she had several gold sovereigns in the pocket of her coat. A lorry driver gave her a lift into Southampton and was much too polite to inquire why a lady should be tramping the New Forest dressed for a masquerade ball. Such things had never happened before the war.

  She took the train to Waterloo and crossed London by bus, breaking her journey to visit Thomas Cook and Son and inquire about passage to East Africa. At Liverpool Street, she caught the 4:15 for Norwich with seconds to spare. The travel information would wait; she divided her time between a selection of newspapers and just staring out the window. England had not changed in two months, not as much as she had. Spanish flu was raging again, although in a less deadly form. It had almost killed the American president.

  On another world, it had killed Zath.

  By evening, she was sitting in a rattling, wheezing taxicab, bound for her cottage. The driver himself belonged in a museum. He looked too old to know much about trains, let alone motorcars, and when he tried to make conversation, his lack of teeth combined with his scrambled Norfolk accent to defeat her completely. Worse than Thargian. She gathered only that this was the first sunshine in weeks, and it had been the worst April since Noah.

  The shops were all shut, but she could eat sardines tonight and face the real world tomorrow. London had seemed even more of a madhouse than she remembered it. Not London. And not Norfolk. If she shut herself up in her hermitage with her memories, she would be talking to the gulls inside a week. No, it must be Africa. What she would do there she could not imagine, but she’d find something. She would look when she arrived.

  One thing she would not look for was romance. Three men in less than three years! She was Lucretia Borgia. She was Typhoid Mary. One heart can only break so often before it forgets how to heal. She would let no more men enter her life, not ever again.

  Methuselah stopped at the end of her muddy little drive, perhaps not trusting his chariot to extricate itself if he went in. She overtipped him, and he sprayed her as he gushed his thanks, touching his cap. His rattletrap ground its gears and roared away, one wheel wobbling precariously.

  She trudged up the driveway, unburdened by luggage but still feeling the aftereffects of her cramps. Miss Pimm had promised no intruders—and there were the tire marks from Miss Pimm’s motorcar, still showing in the mud outside the door. The garden…oh, dear, the garden! Tomorrow the garden. Home was where your heart was? Not in her case, because she had left her heart in Thargvale. But the little place was a welcome sight. After all those weeks of sleeping in tents, it would feel like the Ritz. It did seem quite homely, with the smoke drifting from the chimney….

  A broken heart could still leap into its owner’s throat. Alice did not need to be an Embu or Meru tracker to know that those tread marks were recent, or that an untended fire did not burn for two months.

  Three empty paint tins lay by the doorstep. There was a muddy footprint on the step itself. Panic! No, steady…Think this out…. There’s nowhere to run to anyway. Concentrate! Miss Pimm herself? Getting it ready for its owner’s return? Nobody except Miss Pimm knew of this place, but even Miss Pimm could not have known she was coming, not today, not to have a fire ready. It was a man’s footprint.

  Faint strains of music…That was why he hadn’t heard the taxi. He was playing one of her records, Galli-Curci singing “Un bel di vedremo.” Even as she listened, the soprano dwindled to a mournful
baritone and then soared triumphantly again as he wound up the gramophone.

  Paralyzed, Alice could only stare at the door. D’Arcy, the horrible mistake and the prison camp fantasy? Or Terry? But Terry’s ship had gone down in the Channel, not off some desert island. Edward? Julian and Domini had vouched for the body and watched it burn….

  Magic? Mana? He had given all his mana away to the Five. Prof Rawlinson had said: It should be easy enough to alter the appearance of some other corpse….

  He had said: You’d have thought that one of them would have had the common decency…

  Alice threw open the door.

  FUTURE INDEFINITE: POSTSCRIPT TO THE 2009 EDITION

  © 2009, Dave Duncan

  Wow! That was a snappy ending.

  As I said in my preface to Past Imperative, I recently read over this series prior to its reissue by E-Reads and Lightning Source. Of course I know the story in detail—an author almost knows a book by heart when it finally goes to press. It held no real surprises for me, but after a dozen years, I could see it with new eyes. And yes, that ending took my breath away, even though I knew it was coming.

  I refer to the final page, of course. The climax of the story and the death of Zath go well. The rule of fictional conflict is that the little good guy must outsmart the big, bad bully. The converse does not work. The story of Goliath and David (where the stone bounces off the helmet of brass and the uppity brat gets that iron-headed spear through his bowels) would not have raised a cheer even back home in Gath, let alone made it into the Bible. So Zath, and I hope the reader, get hoodwinked by Exeter, just as Sauron is hoodwinked by Frodo.

  But ending when Alice opens the door, does seem incomplete, and I even got letters asking me who was in there. To which I answered, “Exeter; who else could it be?” Who else would be finishing her painting for her?

  Why didn’t I spell that out at the time and describe the final clinch? Mainly because both Alice and Edward are very undemonstrative people, and they deserve privacy for that passionate, tearful reunion. However I wrote it, the scene would have been obtrusive, with both of them acting out of character. In a movie it would have been shown without dialogue, just soaring violins.