Armageddon Blues

by Daniel Keys Moran

  Georges shook his head. Jalian said, "I will kill him before any of you can move." She edged the knife into Stan's throat with slightly greater force. Blood trickled down the knife blade. The redhead was standing very still. He seemed unafraid, watching Jalian the way a mongoose would watch a rattlesnake. Jalian was not even looking at him.

  Charlie didn't seem to be listening to Georges. Georges sighed in frustration, and muttered in French concerning a resemblance between the redhead and Rabelais' backside. He turned away from the counter, surveying the scene as though he had noticed it for the first time. "Oh, my," he said in tones of mild surprise. He looked at the two boys with knives. "You two are quite healthy boys, aren't you?"

  For a second nothing happened. Then the two holding the knives began to tremble. "Very healthy indeed," continued Georges cheerfully. "Why—"

  The two knife-holders collapsed. "Unfortunately," Georges noted, "your ability to withstand massive and immediate growth is limited." He turned slightly to face Stan. Jalian withdrew her knife and backed away.

  "Now you, Stan Mildwood, you have an excellent memory."

  The redhead blinked once. The cut on his neck had closed already; scar tissue was forming and fading. "I… I…" His eyes closed, and he slumped to his knees. "God," he gasped, "how funny." He clutched his stomach, and rolled to the dirty tile floor. His laughter grew louder and harder to control. "Oh, Jesus…"

  Georges wondered, briefly, what it was that the man was remembering. He decided that he really didn't want to know. Georges picked up his packages, and, neglecting to pay for them, began stuffing them into a bag.

  The two men left standing stirred slightly as though they might be thinking about doing something. Jalian glanced up from cleaning her knife in Stan Mildwood's shirt. "I wouldn't do that. He gets mad sometimes."

  The men reconsidered and retreated. Jalian and Georges were backing to the double doors…

  … and Jalian heard the music. It was music she recognized.

  She stood, frozen in place, for several heartbeats. Her mouth was dry and refused to work. Finally she forced out, "Georges. "

  "Hmm?"

  "The music."

  Georges listened a moment. "I don't hear anything." Jalian could not sustain English; she lapsed into silvereyes. The music was clear to her now, and through the music, a presence began to make itself felt… "The arreyaho, Georges. My Clan… we play it, when there is time, before entering battle to the death. It means that there will be no quarter asked, and none given." She moved back away from the door; without thinking the young men scattered away from her. Jalian stretched one hand out to Georges. "Georges, there are ken Selvren out there."

  Georges regarded her in silence. He said at last, "There can't be. If—" He saw the expression on her face and broke off. "So let's check." He strode through the double doors, and as the doors opened Jalian perceived clearly that there was no sound, that it was all as silent as death itself, and that the melody was only in her mind.

  Jalian d'Arsennette did not hesitate; she had never hesitated in her life. So it could not be hesitation that was keeping her pinned in place. There was another Silver-Eyes out there and she knew it and she knew why she had felt that somebody was following her all day, and why was she letting Georges go out the door?

  Far too late, she screamed, "Georges, no," and it echoed, /Georges, no./

  The flickering fluorescent lighting tube, which had been preparing to burn out for over a week, steadied into an even, unflickering glow.

  The attendant's acne was gone. Georges Mordreaux stepped outside. The sun set with a green flash.

  The knife twisted out of the darkness, and buried itself to the hilt in Georges' throat. He sank to the ground limply, quite without his customary grace.

  The window of the 7-Eleven shattered outward, and Jalian d'Arsennette y ken Selvren came through with the shower of glass. She held knives in both hands. She came rolling up to her feet, bits of glass in her hair and skin and clothing, standing over Georges' fallen body, knives upraised. "I call challenge!" she screamed in silverspeech. "I call battle to the death! Murderers, cowards!" She screamed the words again. "I call challenge!"

  Quietly, so quietly there was no sound audible even to Jalian, a figure stepped into the circle of light cast by the 7-Eleven. The figure was garbed in the white tunic and leggings of an Eider Hunter of ken Selvren.

  Jalian's knives dropped slowly. Her arms sank of their own accord. The anger that she had inherited from generations of d'Arsennettes drained away. "Ralesh."

  Jalian's mother nodded. "I… Daughter, your hair is white… but you are not old."

  "It happened when I ran the Big. Road. I nearly died. How did you survive it?" Jalian took a step closer to Ralesh.

  "Almost did not." In the dim light; Jalian could see that her mother was worn, and tired, but she seemed no older than the day Jalian had last seen her. In her right hand, she held an object that resembled a hand grenade.

  A vague buzzing in his ears, cheep. Oddly, there was a cricket near Georges' right ear, which he could hear perfectly; cheep, cheep, cheep, damn it.

  Georges knew there was something he should be doing. What, he wondered, would Athos be doing right now? Oh, that's right, he thought a moment later; dying. Georges remembered the time he'd had his head cut off. It had been more pleasant than this. All that he had remembered was a moment of fear, and then waking up with the corporal looking at him as though he had returned from the dead. (Ho-ho.) But that bastard German soldier, inconsiderate though he'd been, at least he hadn't left his bayonet in Georges.

  Georges decided what to do.

  The cricket was getting on his nerves.

  "… would destroy our people. We would never have existed."

  Jalian felt sweat trickling down the sides of her neck. "Mother, that is… possible. There is a minimal energy level beneath which timelines do not split. Only in subcritical cases is a transformation wavefront generated. It…" Jalian broke off. Ralesh did not understand half the words she was using…

  … and Georges' hand was moving. Out of the corner of her left eye, she saw Georges' hand creeping up through the dirt toward his neck and the knife. She tried to let no expression show on her face.

  Wariness appeared in Ralesh's eyes. She understood little of what her daughter was saying, and not all of what she had been told to say to Jalian. The alien gods had told her to speak of oscillating cycles and decision vectors, and she had not said half of what ghess'Rith had told her to say when Jalian became still. "What are you doing, Daughter?" She keyed the object in her hand, released a restraining boll, in the way the alien gods had shown her. "You do not fool me, child, I taught you."

  Jalian circled to her right, flowing smoothly into a fighting crouch as she did so; desperately willing Ralesh to keep her eyes on Jalian. "Ralesh' it has been six and a half years since I walked the Big Road. I am in my prime, and you are an old woman, well past yours. I can kill you before YOU can throw that… thing."

  Ralesh nodded, slowly, her eyes locked to Jalian's. "True, Daughter. You can. Would you kill your mother? In the history of our Clan that has never happened, that a Silver-Eyes slayed another Silver-Eyes." She pivoted slowly, to follow Jalian's circling. "But then, there are many things you have done that no Silver-Eyes ever did before…"

  The hand was working the knife from the throat of Gorges Mordreaux. Jalian said nothing.

  "You betrayed your people, the Hunters, your mother."

  Ralesh looked grim. "Ties of blood; you did not choose them. Other Silver-Eyes have walked in wilderness when they could no longer abide the company of their kin.

  "But you," she said in tones of judgment, "you chose a friend, and you betrayed ghess'Rith as surely as if he were a person…"

  Jalian screamed the words; they tore at her throat. "He was going to leave me!"

  If I survive this experience, thought Georges furiously, I am going to kill that godforsaken cricket.

  A second
later, it occurred to Georges, there are probably more pleasant things to do in life than pulling a knife from one's throat.

  Strangely, at the moment he could not think of any. It was the hardest thing that Georges had ever done in his long life to remain silent.

  Jalian’s breath was coming quickly, and raggedly. "Mother…"

  Ralesh shook her head no. "We are dead women, you and I. Put your knives away, Jalian. "This"—she gestured with the object in her hand—"is death, but it is not a death I would wish on a Real Indian. It will throw you into an alternate timeline, far away on the…" She hesitated a second. "the Great Wheel of Existence. The entropy sign will be opposite your own." Ralesh paused, and said, "Your ratio of entry will be hundreds to one; this does not hold the energy for a…" She stumbled again over the v'chak words. "a true entry. You will not die for days."

  Jalian said, voice low, "You… assume I will not kill you before you use it."

  "It is only the force that I hold it with now that keeps it from acting. When it leaves my hand, it will do what it does."

  "What alternative?"

  Ralesh's voice cracked for the first time. "Hon… honorable death. Jalian, please." It was the voice of a mother in pain, without artifice, speaking to her only child. "Jalian, do not make me do this."

  Then Georges rolled over onto his back.

  This is the picture:

  In the dirt parking lot of a small, grimy 7-Eleven in northern California, in the year 1969, there are three humans. Unusual humans, perhaps—two have yet to be born, one has yet to die properly—but humans beyond a reasonable doubt, with hands and feet and that stuff in the right places.

  Two of the humans are standing, females with silver eyes. One has white hair because of age, the other, because of ages. The elder has in her right hand a small device that will, for lack of a better name, be called a hand-grenade thingy. The other female has knives in both hands, poised for underhand throws.

  The male is lying on his back. There is a gash that gapes slightly through the neck at two spots. The knife that gaped the spots is in the male's left hand.

  The picture is moving.

  Georges got to his feet. Eternity dripped by as he moved. Neither of the women so much as stirred; Ralesh was staring at him, Jalian was watching Ralesh.

  Ralesh said softly, "But you're dead."

  Georges heard the words clearly, recognized them as silverspeech. At that moment he had no idea what they meant. He took a step toward her, and Ralesh backed away over so slightly.

  Jalian threw. She knew with calm certainty that what she was doing was idiotic; the target was too small. Her knives cut through air to the hand that held the alien device.

  Until that moment Georges had never in his life seen anyone who moved as quickly as Jalian d'Arsennette. Eight hundred years of evolution in the deadliest environment humanity had ever known: without warning, stunned by a standing dead man, with no more than Jalian's hands moving in the corner of her vision to warn her, Ralesh d'Arsennette was a blur before the fact that she had moved at all had registered on Georges' retinas. She was twisting and backing away and falling and throwing and Georges was only just realizing that Jalian had even stirred.

  A lifetime's training taught Ralesh that a knife is thrown at one. She evaded into the paths of Jalian's knives. They caught her just above the navel and in the middle of her solar plexus. They sank deep.

  The object that she was throwing struck Georges Mordreaux in the chest. It began to glow with a soft, pearly light the instant it left Ralesh's hand.

  Georges found himself sitting on the ground, rather surprised to have the glowing hand-grenade thingy in his hands.

  He struggled to his feet. The glow started to get very, very, very bright.

  From quarter of a kilometer away, on the highway, an approaching motorist noticed a faint, pearly glow coming from the road up ahead of him. Georges tried to let go of the object and could not.

  He stood there, in the middle of the dirt parking lot, as though hypnotized, staring into the light that he held cupped in his hands.

  Over the seven closest timelines—three in one direction on the Great Wheel, four in the other—there existed a man named Georges Mordreaux, who had a talent.

  There were other timelines where a man named Georges Mordreaux had existed, but in those he had not had a talent, and he was long dead. Further away around the Great Wheel, he had never lived at all.

  On the other seven timelines, seven Georges Mordreaux dropped, in two cases literally, whatever they were doing at the moment, and got a faraway look on their collective face.

  Something Important Was Happening.

  DATELINE 1969 GREGORIAN: FACTOR OF EIGHT DIVERGENCE.

  Georges stared into the glowing white thing he held. In many ways, it seemed like a living creature. He felt it straining with all the might it held to shift him—elsewhere. He pushed back, and felt the talent flare into life within himself.

  He pushed back, and the glow grew brighter, much brighter, and ships out at sea noticed a bright spot along the coast. The nature of the thing was stunningly wasteful, deliberately entropic. It was designed to increase disorder, and efficiently designed to do so. Georges stared into the blinding light, feeling the heat flashing against his skin, using the talent to push his way into the inferno that was the source of the light. He pressed lightly, encouraging orderliness here, there, and judging the responses the device made. I disapprove of you, Georges informed the device silently. The device made no reply, burning itself into slag trying to shift this temporally massive object named Georges elsewhere.

  Reality began to flicker and blur. The air wavered around Georges, and he was there, and then not there, a calm figure in the midst of a incandescent fire that lit the sky of night like a dozen suns.

  This thing is very entropic, Georges thought at one eternity.

  Georges disapproved of entropy.

  Sparks began to swirl around him like a cyclone. The frees around them and the highway and the parking lot, Jalian and her mother and the 7-Eleven; all appeared and disappeared as though lit by a strobe light.

  At the height of the battle, when Georges knew he was losing, when reality had ceased to exist except for the struggle and the heat and the light, Georges reached out and touched himselves and power poured into him from seven Others.

  The battle

  … a blazing shaft of light blasted upward from where Georges stood. The incredible energy of the last second of battle had to go somewhere; as coherent laser light it washed across the surface of the moon, and pierced on into interstellar space…

  ended. Eight universes lost the barriers that separated them.

  They crashed.

  Inside the body of Georges Mordreaux.

  Georges stood there, in the black darkness of the partial moon, quite blind; his hands were opened to the bone by the melting metal.

  Sometime during the event, Ralesh had died.

  As Time Goes By

  You must remember this

  A kiss is just a kiss

  A sigh is just a sigh

  The fundamental things apply

  As time goes by

  And when two lovers woo

  They still say "I love you."

  On that you can rely

  No matter what the future brings

  As time goes by

  —"As Time Goes By" Casablanca

  DATELINE 1973 GREGORIAN: FEBRUARY.

  Standing at his sliding-glass patio door, Frank B. Danner watched the slate-gray winter waves crash against the Malibu beach. It was not cold by his standards; but this was California, and the beaches were deserted in the low-sixty weather, except for one lonely surfer, far out from shore, looking for a wave that Frank did not think was going to come. The water was choppy, but the waves were small.

  He watched the amateur surfer without amusement. In his left hand was a tumbler, amber with scotch and soda, held loosely with three fingers. His pinkie and ring finge
rs curled slightly under the glass. Condensation made his palm damp.

  He was still in his oldest, faded purple bathrobe. It was ten-thirty, and he'd done nothing all morning.

  Unless you counted drinking. He was on his fourth scotch and soda.

  In truth, standing at the window, with the dismal gray ocean rolling back and forth before him, he did not know what to do; did not know what he could do.

  He was the Undersecretary of Defense to President Robert F. Kennedy.

  He was a homosexual, and he was being blackmailed.

  The phone rang just before eleven o'clock.

  Frank let it ring four, five times. He snatched it out of its cradle, then took his time before speaking. It didn’t help. His voice shook. "Yes?"

  The voice was female with a faint accent. "Have you seen the pictures I sent you?"

  He reined in his temper. "I've seen them."

  The voice chuckled. "The boy is very pretty. If he was not a whore, he could do better than the likes of you." Frank slammed the phone back down.

  The handle cracked.

  There was a brief pause before the phone rang again. "Forgive me," said the voice on the other end. "I should not tease you."

  Frank held the cracked phone with one hand and his drink with the other. He spoke slowly and very distinctly. "What the hell do you want of me?"

  "The appropriations bill for the project known as Sunflower the solar-power satellite—you will advise President Kennedy favorably on this subject in your upcoming report."

  Frank Danner's voice cracked. "What?"

  "You will advise the President that Sunflower is a project worthy of his administration's support."

  "Jesus Christ," Frank screamed at her, "I was going to do that anyway!"

  "Oh? There was some question… we shall call this insurance. Submit your paper. I will be in touch with you."