Eternal Life Inc.

by James Burkard

  “Wo-o, wo-o? What’s wo-o, wo-o?” Harry threw up his hands in mock despair. “Jesus, Doc, you’re incorrigible,” he said.

  “Incorrigible, but smart as a whip and charming to boot,” Doc added in a whispered aside to Diana.

  Harry shook his head in despair and turned to Diana. “You see what I have to put up with,” he said. “If I…”

  He had just time to think, “Oh shit, it’s happening again!”, as a black snout pushed out of Diana’s face. Her voice became a low, rumbling growl as she bared long, yellow fangs slathered with spittle. Her raven black hair became a gleaming black pelt as her whole body transformed into a huge black she-wolf.

  Harry shoved away from the table and pushed to his feet with his heart pounding and his breath a bellow’s roar in his ears. Fear, anger, and a wild, inhuman blood lust, fought inside him. He felt a low growl start in the back of his throat. His muscles bunched to spring. He looked down at his hands clawing the tabletop and saw instead the paws of a gray timber wolf, his arms shaggy with matted fur.

  The shock was like a splash of ice water. “My God, what’s happening to me?” His voice growled and he felt the timber wolf draw back at the sound of his voice, at this recognition of human identity. The sharp claws slid back into his fingertips. The pounding blood lust lifted like a red veil and his mind cleared. A last, deep growl gurgled into a soft moan of relief.

  “Easy, Harry,” Jericho said. “Just take it easy. Whatever it is, it’s not real.”

  Harry looked over at Diana. She was standing on the other side of the table, her face flushed, her hair disheveled, her breath coming in jagged gasps. A dark shadow lay across her face. He watched the shadow lift as she regained control. She heaved a deep, shaky sigh and ran her fingers through her hair.

  She looked over and gave Harry a tentative smile. “Sailor, you sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she said with a quaver in her voice that belied the quick bravado of her words. “Do you have this effect on all the girls you meet?”

  Harry admired her spirit. He realized this was her way of getting it all back together and played along. “Only if they’re beautiful, elegant, and intelligent,” he said.

  “Then I guess there’s something to be said for ugly, sloppy, and stupid.” She laughed and the tension eased.

  Jericho watched this by-play with a kind of bemused fascination. Harry hadn’t looked at another woman like that since his divorce and despite the numerous stories of his sexual escapades, he’d been living like a monk for the last six months. Now, he was actually flirting. Jericho grinned, and with the wrong woman. This could get interesting.

  Harry turned. “I sure hope you’ve got some answers, Doc,” he said and stopped when he saw Jericho’s grin. “Come on, Doc!” he cried with an angry no-nonsense edge to his voice. “This isn’t funny anymore. We just turned into wolves!”

  “No, you didn’t,” Jericho said.

  “We both saw it,” Diana said

  “I can assure you both, nobody turned into a wolf,” Jericho said. “You growled and spit at each other like animals but no one turned into one.”

  Diana took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She sat perfectly still, not breathing.

  Harry sent Jericho a questioning look. The old man shrugged.

  Finally, she gave a deep sigh and opened her eyes. “Jericho’s right,” she said. “We didn’t turn into wolves”.

  “Then what happened?” Harry asked, looking from one to the other. The question covered more than just wolves now. It looked like Diana had just trance-walked into her ka for a few seconds to check out what had happened. She shouldn’t be able to do that, he thought. I can’t even do that. The only person he knew who could was Samuel Kade, and he was a professional shaman trance-walker.

  “I’m not sure what happened,” Jericho said and looked meaningfully at Diana.

  She ignored the look and said, “There’s only one thing that Mr. Neuman and I have in common that might tie us to the wolves…”

  “Of course!” Doc said.

  “Of course what?” Harry asked.

  “Patience,” Jericho said and turned to Diana. “My dear, do you mind?”

  She hesitated a moment and then unbuttoned the sleeve of her blouse. When she rolled it up, Harry saw four, long, angry, red welts, slashing across her forearm.

  “You recognize them?” Jericho said.

  Harry nodded, too stunned to answer. They were the same scars he had seen in the mirror while dressing.

  “She’s got more scars across her shoulder,” Jericho said as Diana rolled down her sleeve and buttoned it.

  Harry looked at Diana. “How…Where?” he asked.

  Diana shook her head and turned away.

  “Later,” Jericho said. “First tell us how you got yours. What happened the other night?”

  Harry looked at Diana again. She refused to meet his eye. Instead, she stared out the window, her face a closed, impassive mask. He shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

  He told them what happened, choosing his words carefully. When he finished, he added, “They’re not wolves. They may look like them at first but that’s an illusion they hide behind. I caught a glimpse of what they really are just before the spin-generator caught my ka. I think the leader of the pack got caught in the event horizon of the spin-generator and it tore away the body, or whatever it is it was wearing, just before it clawed me.” Harry looked at Diana and Jericho. His eyes had a haunted, bruised look. “Believe me, they don’t look anything like wolves,” he said. “They don’t look like anything from this world.”

  “Because they’re not,” Jericho said.

  “But what are they? Where do they come from?”

  Jericho looked over at Diana who nodded imperceptibly. “They’re the advance scouts of an alien army,” he said. “They come from another dimension, or maybe an alternate universe. They started riding into our world on the backs of resurrecting kas…

  “So all the rumors are true about Eternal Life losing people,” Harry said.

  Jericho nodded. “But that’s only one of the doors they use now to enter our world and it’s not always a reliable one,” he said. “They’ve got a powerful ally in the Nevada Quarantine who opened the original door to them over twenty years ago, and we never even knew it,” Jericho added with surprising bitterness, as if for some reason he should have.

  Harry began putting it together in his mind. Nevada Quarantine meant Norma-genes. He thought of the Norma-gene that had materialized at the entrance to Chueh’s garden, and he remembered Chueh asking him what he knew about Rielly Logan. “This mysterious ally wouldn’t happen to be a Norma-gene by the name of Rielly Logan, would it?” he asked.

  Jericho winked at Diana. “The boy’s not as dumb as he looks!”

  Harry grinned. “You sure know how to bring out the best in people, Doc.”

  Jericho gave a self-deprecating shrug. “It’s a talent,” he said and asked, “How did you get it so fast?”

  Harry shrugged. “It’s a talent.” He laughed. Then he told him about meeting the same Norma-gene outside the Eternal Life Building and later at the garden entrance. Once again, he left out any mention of Susan. “Later Chueh asked me what I knew about Rielly Logan,” Harry concluded. “And I just put two and two together.”

  He was tempted to tell Doc about Susan and what Roger had done to her, but he’d promised her. Besides, he realized he would feel slightly shy and a little embarrassed talking about Susan in front of this other woman. Instead, he decided to talk to Jericho later. It was a decision he would live to regret.

  Jericho was perceptive enough to know that Harry wasn’t telling him everything and eyed him skeptically.

  Harry shot a quick glance at Diana and shook his head imperceptibly.

  Doc got the message and leaned back and steepled his fingers thoughtfully. “I wonder if they know we’re here,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Why would they care?” Harry asked.

  “It’s a
long story,” Jericho said and then changed the subject. “It sounds like they’re keeping an eye on you, Harry.”

  “Could be just a coincidence,” Harry suggested without much conviction.

  Doc pursed his lips and shook his head. “I don’t think so? Not right after the wolves made a run at you in your last resurrection and almost succeeded.”

  “They tried twice before, I think,” Harry said.

  “So-o-o,” Doc leaned forward, rested his chin on his fist, and looked at Harry. “You never told me,” he said.

  Harry shrugged. “I didn’t think it was important. I wasn’t even sure they were there the first time. The second time they were nothing but indistinct shadows. I outran them both times. Besides, we haven’t been doing a lot of comparing notes lately.”

  He didn’t mean it as a reproach. When the old man placed him under Samuel Kade’s care, he’d also agreed to butt out and let the trance walker take over Harry’s training on the assumption that too many cooks spoiled the soup. The upshot was that even though Jericho was present during the last few months at Harry’s resurrections, he held no debriefings afterwards.

  “Did you tell Samuel about these things chasing you?” Jericho asked.

  Harry shook his head. “He wasn’t interested in my resurrections. He said that wasn’t why I was there.” He glanced over at Diana and wondered how much he should say and how much she already knew.

  Jericho saw his glance and waved it aside. “Kade was right,” he said resignedly. “That’s not why you were there.”

  Harry could hear the tone of self-reproach in Jericho’s voice and said, “No use spilling over cried milk.” He grinned. “Besides, I beat them and I’m here now.”

  “You not only beat them,” Jericho said. “You saw them for what they really are. I don’t think they liked that. I think after you got away this last time, they began to suspect that maybe you were something special.”

  “Special?”

  “Special meaning beyond you being the famous, ‘Harry Neumann’,” Doc said. “They’re looking for a prophecy. Maybe they’re beginning to think you’re it.”

  “What kind of prophecy?”

  “They call him the ‘King of the Dead’. You’ve died enough times to be called that, don’t you think? According to their seers, he’s the only one standing between them and the conquest of earth.”

  “Come on, Doc, you’re mistaking me for one of those blockbuster heroes I played. People are doing it all the time.”

  Jericho shook his head and smiled. “Maybe I am, but I don’t think they are,” he said. “In the beginning, they probably figured you for a pushover. They’d just capture your ka during a resurrection, ride it piggy-back into your body, and take possession. You’d be a valuable asset for them if you came through it intact, with your memories, behavior patterns, and whole personality gestalt under their control. To anyone outside you’d just be Harry Neuman, but inside they’d be pulling the strings and, the worst of it is, you could be conscious of what they were doing with you and couldn’t stop it, even if what they were doing made you sick with disgust.”

  “Oh shit!” Harry muttered and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the vision of Susan’s battered face. All of a sudden, what had been bothering him about Susan’s story made sense. Roger would never have hurt Susan. He was devoted to her and loved her deeply. It had taken Harry a long time to finally admit that to himself. Roger could never beat her up like that, not if he was in his right mind.

  “It’s not Roger doing this,” Susan said. “It’s something else inside Roger…something wearing Roger’s body. It’s not the man I married. It’s something dark and evil and violent. It’s not Roger.”

  No, it wasn’t Roger, Harry thought, and now he knew what it was. Roger had resurrected quite a few times. They must have gotten hold of his ka then. No wonder Susan was desperate to get as far away from him as possible.

  “Harry, are you alright?”

  Harry opened his eyes and looked up at Jericho. The look of concern on Jericho’s face bordered on fear. Harry put on one of his carefree, don’t-give-a-damn, Hollywood hero grins. “Don’t worry Doc, there’s only me in here,” he said and tapped his head. “No aliens allowed.”

  “What is it, Harry?” Jericho asked.

  Harry shook his head. “It’s nothing Doc really, just bad memories out of my checkered past.” There was no way he could tell him about Roger without telling him about Susan.

  He looked at Diana and upped the wattage on his grin. “Besides, you’ve probably read all about it in the gossip columns. They should be paying me royalties.”

  Harry saw a look of distaste flicker across her face. Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Smart lady, she wasn’t buying it and neither was Jericho. Harry decided to change the subject. “From all the rumors I’ve heard, it sounds like there was a good chance I wouldn’t have survived wolf possession intact.”

  Jericho nodded. “It’s not always their best door into this world. Every time they fail to take complete possession, one of their soldiers is left trapped inside unable to get control, with his personality and his host’s leaking into each other. It’s madness.”

  “So, how long have you known about all this?” Harry asked. “And how come you didn’t warn me?”

  “I didn’t warn you because I didn’t know about any of this until last night, when Diana and her sister came to my island compound and asked me for help.”

  Diana gave an almost imperceptible start and shot a quick glance at Jericho.

  The old man isn’t telling me everything, Harry thought. “According to Roger, you didn’t leave my side the whole time I was unconscious after I resurrected,” he said unable to keep a sudden edge of suspicion from his voice.

  Jericho nodded noncommittally.

  “You just said you didn’t know anything about this until Diana came to you at your house, last night,” Harry said. “So how could you be in two places at once?”

  Jericho leaned back and regarded Harry. “Do you trust me, Harry?” he asked.

  For the first time, he had to think about that. Jericho was his best friend. He had pulled him out of the gutter and given him his life back. “Of course I trust you,” he said, but realized that his trust was no longer unconditional.

  Jericho was perceptive enough to pick up on this and sighed resignedly. “You met Mae West, I gather?” he said at last.

  Harry nodded, wondering where this was going.

  “She was one of my earliest successes,” Jericho said. “She keeps surprising me, constantly upgrading her personality with every detail she can find on her original and then assimilating it into her core personality and extrapolating from there.” He smiled like a proud father.

  “She’s beautiful,” Harry said and reined in his impatience. Jericho sometimes had a roundabout way of getting to the point but he always got there eventually.

  “The next logical step, of course, was to make an eidolon of myself,” Jericho said. “It turns out he’s surpassed my wildest expectations. He’s the newest, most powerful, self-referral quantum AI, much like Mae and your Lady of the Road,” he added, referring to the AI in Harry’s car. “But unlike either of them, my eidolon has a living person to model his character on. He constantly monitors my every move and gesture, analyses my speech patterns and shifting moods, mimics every idiosyncratic character trait. He’s perfect, Harry. He even fooled Chueh, and he and I have known each other a long time.”

  “So it was your eidolon who took in Diana and her sister last night,” Harry said. “But why did she go there in the first place? She must have known I’d resurrected and you’d be here with me. Everyone in the Empire knows that; it’s become a tradition.”

  “Because she knew all about my eidolon,” Jericho said irritably and left it at that.

  Harry was tempted to push but decided Jericho wasn’t going to be pushed. The old man was stubborn, secretive, self-contained by nature, and seldom told all he knew. One of the p
illars their friendship built on was that Harry accepted this and trusted that Jericho had the best of intentions and would always tell him if there was something he needed to know. So why was he having a problem with it now?

  He glanced at Diana. She was studying him closely.

  He looked away. The problem with unconditional trust is that once you begin to question it, you can’t stop, he thought. “You founded Eternal Life,” he said. “You must have been one of the first to hear the rumors about people not coming back from resurrection or coming back insane. Didn’t you suspect anything?”

  “Of course, I heard the rumors,” Jericho said. “I even got letters from concerned relatives screaming about satanic possession and the curse of resurrection. But I thought they were just like all the other crank letters and rumors I’ve seen and heard through the years, maybe a bit more graphic and desperate but…”

  Jericho shrugged and spread his hands palms up. “What can I say? I ignored them. I told myself they were just part of the usual rebirth trauma and weren’t my concern. I was finished with Eternal Life. I’d moved on to other things. It was Roger’s show now. Oh, I made a few discreet inquiries when the rumors surfaced in the papers. I even confronted Roger…”

  Harry snorted sarcastically. “I bet that helped a lot.”

  “Not a lot,” Doc agreed.

  “I’ll bet,” Harry growled.

  Doc looked at him sharply. “Don’t go jumping to conclusions, son,” he said softly. “Things and people change. They’re not always what we think they are.”

  Harry looked Jericho in the eye and said, “Amen to that,” in a voice dripping sarcastic accusation.

  21

  Jake Lloyd’s Daughters

  There was a strained silence in the room. Diana studied a line of storm clouds forming over the Ryoangi Garden, and Jericho stared at the far wall, tapping his finger irritably on the table.

  Harry realized he’d let his unfounded suspicions push him over the line. Jericho was his best friend. He’d answered all his questions. If there was something between him and Diana and these wolves he didn’t want to talk about, that was his business. And that leaves the ball in my court, he thought.