by Janis Ian
I am being drawn out into stronger currents, I realize. It is seductive. A part of me longs to let go—a part of Charles, that is. Aibek, naturally, watches calmly and rationally from within, the ghost in the machine. Aibek the Mainpulator, even as he feels the currents swell, will keep an eye on the shore.
But who would ever have dreamed the madnesses of the ancients to be so intricate, so sweet?
~~~~~
Joan is all she promises. The armorers fit her in shiny steel, a skin of clean, hard metal. Her battle-standard of white silk bears upon it the image of Jesus sitting in final judgment of the believers and the unbelieving.
This is her powerful, tempting call, that brings the peasants flocking to her as a living saint, and turns the canniest, most profane old soldiers into grudging converts: Only believe, and all is possible. Her bright sword marks off the slender division between the saved and the damned. I wonder, Aibek wonders, how she can have such terrible, beautiful faith in its cutting edge. My world, the world of Manipulators, is the world of increment, of adjustment, of two-steps-forward and nearly-two-steps-back. But here stands the Maid, sword in hand, and makes one bold stroke—flash! Stand here and be blessed! Cross to the other side, you are lost.
As she waits with the troops mustered to relieve Orleans, her back spear-straight while the veteran captains like de Loré and de Cúlant gossip and laugh nearby, her gaze lifts from the men at arms to me, and from me to the overarching skies. Her meaning and determination are unmistakable ... but as I watch the small, clever milkmaid's face, eyes ecstatic and cheeks brushed with the ruddiness of excitement, I cannot help but reflect on the contrast it makes with her bright, masculine armor. She is much like me, I realize—just another ghost in a different machine.
This unexpected linkage warms me, but it saddens me, too. She is only a child. She can be hurt, she can bleed. I suddenly think of Suvinha, of the intense need she sometimes brought to our lovemaking, her passionate clinging that was not stilled by climax,—a riddle I never solved. As I watch the maid I am suddenly aroused. It shames me. I wave my arms and the trumpets blare. The column moves away toward Orleans.
~~~~~
Helpless in a way I do not like, far more excited than I should be, I attend eagerly to news from the battlefields. At night I lie in my curtained bed and wonder what has been done to me. I curse Tempix and worry, alternately. Could Suvinha, unbalanced in some way by her own emotional nature, truly have constructed this imaginary spectacle, this ... passion play ... just to trouble me, to pay me back for imagined wrongs? Is she, in fact, with her privileged position at Tempix, now the leading actress in some incomprehensible drama of revenge? But if so, why has she chosen an avatar of such grace and simple kindness?
And what if these events are just as objectively real as they seem? That is another sort of disturbing thought. Have I become too entangled? Am I risking the very genuine future of these people by allowing my attachment to Joan to grow in this way, trusting the fate of whole armies to a milkmaid? Am I overstepping the boundaries in a way no Manipulator should ever allow himself, even in this strange land of unreason?
Even more frightening, is this all some dream—a hallucination I have forced on myself?
Aibek is in a kind of despair, and every morning La Tremoille finds Charles pale and unrested.
~~~~~
They have lifted the siege! Orleans is relieved and the Loire is now barred to the Burgundians. There is no other source to be credited for the reversal of my fortunes but the inspiration of the Maid, Joan of Arc. There was at first fearful news that she had taken a wound, a crossbow bolt at her neck, but it is only a minor tear in the flesh. In fact, she had predicted just such an injury, and her calm foreknowledge is noted by all. How can she not be sent from God?
And one of the English called her a whore! My Joan, who hates sin and chases the camp-followers away—what grace she must wield, to lead soldiers to whom she has denied the company of whores!—called angrily to the Englishman that he would die unshriven for insulting God and France. Indeed, within the hour the fellow tumbled into the water before the battlements and drowned unconfessed.
I am ecstatic! Still, a small part of me feels a disturbing affinity with the Englishman. I sense the currents growing ever more dangerous, and fear what may lie waiting downstream.
~~~~~
Jargeau, Meung, Beaugency: one by one, the English-held cities of the Loire fall before the Maid of Orleans. The army of Charles has become the army of Joan—but how can I resist, any more than the now-believing soldiers and the joyful peasants who line the route of God's militant daughter? I travel with them too now, carried helpless but not unwilling toward Rheims and my promised coronation. Joan comes to me often, straight to my side as though we were one flesh. What does she care for my short legs, my corvine beak? She does not see Charles, pigeon-footed would-be king. Clothed in the immaculate armor of her love, she sees in me God's child, her brother in the Lord's work. I am a chaste husband to her passion, as was Joseph to the astonishing enterprise of his own virgin wife.
God’s love, she calls it. Love. It is a miraculous, all-changing thing, there is no question. I long to abandon myself to it, but I cannot imagine what would be left of me if I did. It is hard to separate myself from weaky, needy Charles at these moments, and Suvinha, strangely, has in my mind almost entirely merged with Joan.
One night in the city of Troyes, which has seen our might and thrown open its gates to us, I dream of Suvinha. She stands before me naked, glorious in her skin, and she is both herself and the Maid. Her beauty is frightening. In her hands she holds Joan's sword. In truth this is your sword, the dream-Suvinha tells me, and her eyes see a joke I do not understand. Do not fear that I hold it, are her next words. It will be given back to you when you prove you deserve it! She laughs.
In the morning, as we ride out of Troyes on the road to Rheims, a crowd of white butterflies dances about Joan's pennant.
~~~~~
Victorious, my power restored, I stand before the altar in the cathedral at Rheims. I am consecrated. I am crowned. The noise of the crowd is around me like a rush of water as I look at Joan, armored, her pennant in her hand. Her eyes are full of tears but her smile is strangely secretive.
I feel a twinge of discomfort. She alone, of all my noble captains, has been allowed to bear her standard into this holy place.
It has borne the burden, she points out, surely it is right that it should have the honor. I must, reluctantly, agree, but I am suddenly troubled that I have given so much to her. How can a Manipulator invest such importance in one person, any person? Is it not precisely such seductions I have spent my entire life learning to resist? Drugged by this strange world and time, am I being even more foolish than I feared?
Later, when the fierce celebration is ending, she approaches me. Where I had hoped to find her face softened by the day's events, instead there is a firm edge of determination. What can the woman want?
Paris, is the answer. Paris, and the English driven from France, Burgundy reconciled to my rule. I have received my boon from God, she claims, so I must allow her to finish her mission. Even after all she has shown me, done for me, I still do not trust in the force that sent her, she says. "You must renounce fear," she tells me. "You must embrace that holy power."
Among the heat of a thousand candles, beneath the heavy brocade and ermine of my coronation garments, I am chilled. Will there be no end to her needs, Charles thinks, I think? The currents grow treacherous.
"Of course," I say. "Of course."
~~~~~
I cannot separate my thoughts from her. Even when we are not together, I feel her knowing, judging eyes. I wish I could be what she is, what she thinks I am—bold and truthful, full of faith in the power she serves. There are moments I even think it is possible.
The men are caparisoned and we move against Paris. All around me is the heady confidence of the Maid, reflected in the eyes and voices of ten thousand Frenchmen. But I am s
ilent, turned inward. Have I gone too far? The siege of Paris is bitter. I am certain that I am all Charles now, that Aibek the Manipulator is gone, quite gone. We are repulsed several times by the English, with heavy losses.
"No matter," says Joan, her eyes seemingly on the other world. "So it was at Orleans, also. Only believe."
"No matter," say the common people, "only follow the Maid!" Some of the captains are not so sure, but Joan does not care.
"With only you, me, and God," she proclaims, "my king, France is whole."
One night I sit up, long past the time when silence has fallen on all the camp. Even the sentries are nodding, so quiet it is before the walls of Paris. Charles lowers his uncomfortable body down onto his preposterous knees ... and I pray.
What shall I do? "Believe" is too simple an answer, is it not? "Trust"—how? Show me a sign!
The next day, in the pulsing heart of the battle, Joan falls with the bolt of a crossbow penetrating her thigh. Beneath the brightly polished armor there is, after all, only the body of a young woman, a girl, full of need. The blood flows wetly down her leg as she cries out. Her herald is struck down and killed with an arrow between his eyes, but I can see only Joan as she trembles, shepherdess cheeks quite pale, eyes dark as wells.
There is nothing in the world so red as blood.
In that moment I stand, delicately poised, between two poles I cannot name or understand. I have pledged myself to believe in Joan, in the power of the holy love, but now she is revealed in her frail humanity and I cannot help drawing away. After all, a Manipulator is distance. A Manipulator is caution.
Some silver thing inside me, some strand of exquisite tension, snaps. I have chosen, without ever quite knowing exactly what that choice was.
"The siege has failed," I announce that night. "We will withdraw. Consolidate our gains."
Joan protests bitterly when she hears, but the Maid's wishes suddenly count for little. Wounded, she is put on a litter as we retreat.
~~~~~
Now, as though some great, universal movement has been triggered, time begins to telescope—to become compressed. I expect momentarily to feel the rush of synaesthesia, to be called back. I begin to lose my grip on Charles, or he on me: my mind touches his and then jumps away, like a stone skipping across the muddy Loire.
Joan's magic is broken, somehow, but although her star is falling, tumbling downward as though something has finally worn through the mysterious traces that held it, still it is her hold that is the strongest on me. Court life is a blur, lights and murmuring voices, a hurrying smear of impressions—but she is not. Whenever the river of Charles' consciousness rises up to greet me, it is her face that swims into focus: Joan, improperly supported, failing at the siege of La Charité; Joan, immaculate but somehow stained, the butt of quiet humor at Chinon; Joan, unable to secure my permission, going virtually unaided to Lagny-sur-Marne, to fight the Burgundians at Compiegne.
I see her on the battlefield there, transfixed in a brilliant arrow of sunlight. Her horse rears, stumbles. Joan topples to the ground. Fallen, she is made prisoner.
My grip is relaxing. Terrified, elated, somewhere in between, I try to slow and catch the visions of Joan that drift by like wind-stirred leaves. The entrenched English buy her from Burgundy. They will try her in Rouen, this madwoman, this "Daughter of God,” as a witch.
Their inquisitors demand to know why she said this, why she did that. Joan, my Joan, answers them. Sometimes she is angry, sometimes her words are garbled by tears. She seems confused, defeated, all her certainty eroded. They are relentless, and I, Charles, can do nothing but watch as she sits in her cold cell, her sword shattered, her standard furled away in the vaults of Orleans. I am only an observer now, with no power to rescue the Maid. She has only her faith.
"God and my king have not renounced me," she says, although in my secret heart I suspect she is twice wrong. "How can I do less than remain faithful?"
She will burn as a witch, the English say.
~~~~~
In the Vieux-Marché they have built a great pile of wood around a crude pole. A sign on the stake proclaims Joan a heretic, an idolater, an apostate. The heralds have blown their shining trumpets and a vast ocean of people, thousands upon thousands, have come crowding into Rouen. I hold tightly to the image of Vieux-Marché, making a backwater of calm in the hastening torrent of images. Joan is coming. Her armor is gone and she wears only a shift of simple black cloth. She has tied a kerchief over her close-cropped hair. The cart bumps over uneven ground and she sways. She is weeping.
The priest-examiners of Rouen rail against the witch as she is chained to the stake. My vision begins to mist as the robed men step away. A man, an English soldier, I think, hands up to Joan a rude cross made from two sticks which she places in the bosom of her dress. Another soldier steps forward, his torch a bright point in my dimming sight, and leans down to the pyre. The flames leap up like hungry children.
It is none of it my fault, I know. I do not even think it is real. And if this is all Suvinha's arcane manipulation, her tormenting of me was pointless. She has not succeeded in changing me. Why should I change? If there was a fault in what happened between us, it was not mine. I am not to blame.
So why then, as Joan's pained ecstatic cries become streaks of bright silver before my eyes, do I fear I have made some terrible mistake? Why is my gaze blurred by the bitter scent of tears?
Now I hear nothing but the satisfied murmur of smoke, and my nostrils are full of the clean, sharp smell of trumpets.
(Back to TOC)
Finding My Shadow
Joe Haldeman
We got canyons of smoke and steel-blue horizons
Our castles explode as the city lays dying
History that once was new
Memories that once were true
No, I can't find my shadow in the city
~ from Here In the City by Janis Ian
I used to love this part of the city. Jain and I had looked at a loft looking over the park toward Charles Street and the river, dreaming of escaping Roxbury. Not much here now.
My partner, Mason, pointed to the left. "Movement." I jammed the joystick left and up, and the tracks clattered over the curb into dirt, the dry baked ruin that used to be Boston Common.
It was a boy, trying to hide behind the base of a fallen equestrian statue.
I touched my throat mike. "Halt! Put your hands over your head." He took off like a squirrel and I gunned it forward. There was no way he could outrun us.
"Taze or tangle?" Mason said.
"Taze." When we got within range, he scoped the kid and fired. A wire darted out and the jolt knocked him flat. I braked with both feet and we lurched forward into our harnesses.
We both stayed inside, looking around. "This stinks," he said, and I nodded. How did the boy get here without being seen, in the glare of the nightlights? Had to be a rabbit-hole nearby.
We waited a couple of minutes, watching. Jain and I used to walk through the Common when it was an island of calm in the middle of the Boston din. Flowers everywhere in the spring and summer, leaves in the fall. But I'd liked the winters best, at least when it snowed. The flakes sifting down in the dark, in the muffled quiet.
Never dark now, but always quiet. With occasional gunfire and explosions.
"The shock might have killed him," I said, "if he's in bad enough shape."
"Skin looks like—" Mason started, when there was a "thud" sound and we were suddenly enveloped in flame. "Fire at will," I said, unnecessarily. Mason had the gatling on top screaming as it rotated, traversing blindly. It would probably get the kid.
My rear monitor was clear, so I jammed it into full reverse with the left track locked. We spun around twice in two seconds, harness jamming my cheek. No sign of whoever bombed us.
"Swan Pond?" Mason said.
"That's probably what they want us to do. Not that much fire; I can blow it out." Steering with the monitor, I stomped it in reverse. Braked o
nce as we bumped off the curb, and then backed uphill at howling redline. The windshield cleared except for a smear of soot, and I stopped at the top of the hill, by the ruins of the Capitol.
A female voice from the radio: "Unit Seven, what was that all about? Did you engage the enemy?"
"After a fashion, Lillian," I said. "We were down in the Common, near the parking lot entrance. Kid came up, a decoy, and we tazed him."
"What, a child?" They were rare; the survivors were all sterile.
"Yeah, a boy about ten or twelve. While we were waiting for him to wake up, they popped us with a Molotov."
"I'd say flamer," Mason said. He was scanning the area down there with binoculars.
"Maybe a flamer. Couldn't see forward, so we laid down some covering fire and backed out. Wasn't enough to hurt the track; we're okay now."
"Kid's not there," Mason said. "Somebody retrieved him."
"Got a fire team zeroed on the coordinates where you started backing up," the radio said. "What do you want?"
I want to go home, I thought. "Sure he's gone?" I whispered to Mason.
He handed me the binoculars. "See for yourself." No kid, no blood trail.
"No one there now, at least on the surface," I said to Lillian. "Drill round, H.E., maybe."
"Roger." I could hear her keyboard. A few seconds later, the round came in with a sound like cloth tearing. It made a puff of dust where we'd been standing, and then a grey cloud of high-explosive smoke billowed out of the entrance to the underground lot, a couple of hundred yards away, the same time we heard the muffled explosion.
"On target," I said. Of course they'd be idiots to stick around right under where they'd hit us. That parking lot had tunnels going everywhere.
"Need more?" she asked.
"No, negative."
"Hold on." She paused. "Command wants you to go take a look. Down below, in the lot."
