The Left-Hand Way

by Tom Doyle

  PART VII

  TERRIBLE, SWIFT SWORD

  O gentle Faustus, leave this damned art,

  This magic, that will charm thy soul to hell.

  —Christopher Marlowe

  Like something getting chewed by something huge and tireless and patient.

  —David Foster Wallace

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Miles and hours to the southwest of Providence, Roderick sprinted alone through the dark woods between his abandoned car and the craft bunker near Mount Weather. A late autumn cold rain was tapering off, and it didn’t touch him anyway. He had driven insanely fast to get here, but his power was sufficient to cover him from law enforcement or craft observation. Now, carrying his small briefcase filled with wheat and other seemingly innocuous objects, Roderick ran, not from anxiety of pursuit but from the sheer joy of arrival. Years of planning and anticipation had come to this.

  Perhaps he had not eluded all pursuit. He’d felt some sympathetic craft from the northeast; just a twinge, but it’d been more than he’d expected the opposition to muster. He thought that he’d left nothing behind that allowed such distant tracking magic. No matter—he would not dally.

  The paved way to the bunker had been torn up, buried, and overgrown, but he didn’t need it. He reached the side of a hill. This was the place. He felt the land’s revulsion, for such bunkers represented the opposite of life. Various wards played off his flesh and raised the small hairs on the back of his neck, but the door he wanted remained hidden by craft. The blast door had been left sealed with mundane and magical mechanisms, but neither would keep him out, because as the Chimera machine, Roderick had given a hand to the design.

  Still, that had been decades ago, and Roderick’s organic memory had unavoidable holes. He felt around, discerned the misdirection magics, then moved the correct way instead. His fingers found a simple keypad, and it became visible. He entered the pass number, which was not the Number of the Beast (despite his usual sense of humor). It was 09 17 1787, the day of his and Madeline’s conception. They had been born about ten months later. This piece of timing had been the last careful attention to the details of their lives that their father, Joseph, had given. “I tied your birth to the birth of a nation,” he’d said. “I hope you appreciate the power in that.”

  The armored door became visible; its bolts moved with the grinding noise of decades. Now, the simple password, but one tailored to his craft. “Please open.” With a groan, the door swung out. Anyone who had begun their spell with a word other than “please” would have been locked out forever. Anyone who, like an Endicott, compulsively invoked God’s name would have set off the traps in the ground below the entrance.

  Roderick entered the tunnel. He would have barred the door behind him, but it was laden with too much craft, and he needed a clear channel for the spirits to join him. Besides, the remote contingency of opposition pursuit only added a certain piquancy to the moment and a containable karmic counterweight to his magics.

  “Some light, please.” Roderick walked down the long tunnel through the paired armored doors of the first airlock, which had been left open, and toward the area of the bunker proper, where the path split three ways. The right-hand path was a service tunnel for the mundane and alchemical machines that would have kept the bunker habitable. To the left another long, craft-hidden, and secured tunnel connected this H-ring bunker to the mundane government bunkers at Mount Weather. That tunnel was supposed to have been collapsed with decommission, but through Roderick’s manipulations it had been left intact, just in case he needed the extra room in the mundane facility for his first base of campaign.

  The central path passed through an inner airlock threshold, with both doors a smaller variant on the bank-vault style of the outer blast door, though again this passageway had been left open. No radiation screening or sterilization apparatus here—a healer would’ve managed those issues. Roderick now walked a corridor with irregularly spaced doors on each side. It felt like home. Before bombs and air raids, his people had built bunkers, and this was just another subbasement. He had even intervened to give the bunker the aesthetic style of his old House, despite the risk in an attack of the splintering and cracking of weaker materials: fine-grained hardwood floors, exposed brick in the walls, and white plaster hiding the concrete-and-steel shell that protected the space. The only exposed metal was the brazen-colored alchemical tubing for processing pure air and water, with some hidden outlets for the always necessary body tanks.

  Five of the doors led to split-level offices and quarters for the five commanders of the H-ring sections, their immediate staffs, and their chosen best. The sixth door led to rooms covertly reserved for certain figures from the Office of Technical Management—Madeline and Abram’s fallout shelter fantasy room. Two doors led to supply areas stocked with plenty of food and water. Roderick felt a little hungry, as his new body still needed conventional food, but he would not eat this disgusting packaged matter.

  This bunker was built as a safe place for H-ring to hunker down, preserve American lives (particularly their own), and take vengeance on America’s enemies. It would also have been a shelter from those mundane former friends who, in a post-nuclear strike world, would readily kill all craftspeople as witches in a misguided apocalyptic rage. Unlike Greenbrier, civilian discovery hadn’t caused its abandonment. Instead, farsight had given the contingency planners the bad news: none of it would matter. Even if farsight anticipated a strike and allowed the craft leadership to beat POTUS to shelter, all would be lost in the aftermath, if not from radiation and nuclear winter, then from the resulting global Yasukuni-style engine composed of billions of dead that would consume any survivors. Best not to waste any more resources on what would only delay the inevitable.

  Roderick went through the last door on the left into the main room, which, unlike the more specialized compartments of the larger government bunkers, would have served multiple purposes: a conference room (perhaps even a broadcast room), mess hall, and social area—the mead-hall style of space in which people had gathered to keep out the monsters from Grendel on.

  Here, and in nearby Mount Weather and other bunkers, America had made its capital for the end of the world, denying that death alone would have dominion. His fellow Americans had been prepared to sacrifice the whole world for ideology. For one bleak moment, Roderick felt trivial in his schemes next to this viewing stand for a global funeral pyre.

  The object in the center of the room brought him back to himself. The long, dark hardwood table for meetings and meals seemed solid enough to support the whole bunker on its legs. Stored against the walls were the table’s chairs, five large for the section chiefs and many smaller ones for staff. This dusty table’s surface would serve as his altar to bring about the new age.

  Their colors faded, spells lay about this main space, passive and waiting. The spells resembled wards, but Roderick would use them to channel and shape the forces he’d summon.

  Roderick checked his watch. Had the Renfield succeeded in his task? Roderick thought he should have felt something, like one of those science-fictional tremors in the Force from millions screaming, but he felt nothing. Only one way to know for certain.

  Roderick opened his briefcase on the conference table and pulled out the glass tube. In case of apotheosis, break glass. He pivoted and, exhaling with tantric force, threw the tube against a blank wall. The glass shattered, spraying its contents. “Please write this: for the unknown soldiers, all known to me, come.” The alchemical solution hissed as it etched his words into the wall, a smell of burnt wood and metal. He didn’t need to be so literal as the Yasukuni model and list all the dead he intended to bind. From H-ring’s center, he had seen them all, and that was enough.

  But those unknown American soldiers would only be the tip of the spear, the diamond in the drill bit. They wouldn’t suffice to punch the hole that Roderick needed. So he again reached into the case and brought out the small sheaf of wheat grown
in the black soil of the Ukraine. In Ukrainian, he combined biblical words with his spell. “A measure of wheat for a penny, please, and three measures of barley for a penny. You millions, murdered with hunger, all known to me, come.”

  He had misdirected the opposition with his residence at Babi Yar. Yes, he’d been disappointed by the dearth of spirits left from that subset of the Holocaust, but he’d suspected that he couldn’t get those ghosts, and he needed more than a hundred thousand anyway. So he’d found a greater harvest in Ukraine’s famine dead. All those Ukrainians that Stalin had killed, all those innocents never properly laid to rest, were now millions of hungry ghosts. His wheat sheaf had left a silver thread from Kiev to here, a clew for them to follow. That was the reason (besides the simple joy of it) that he’d had to destroy the Ukrainian craft service as he exited—they could have blocked this mass summoning of their forgotten dead.

  One final ritual action would complete the motive engine for Roderick’s machine. With one of the shards of the glass tube, Roderick reopened the cut on his palm and dripped blood to the ground. “I have summoned you all. I bind you to this place. Please come.”

  The summoning and response would take a minute or so; he would use the time to deploy the last three objects in his case. These things would serve in a remote but very enjoyable contingency. They had been extremely difficult to obtain, even for someone like himself who had seen their locations. First was a fragment of marble chipped from a gravestone in Iran. Second, a ragged and singed piece of cloth from a Red Sox jersey found buried in a Middle Eastern tell. Third was a poppet from colonial Salem, preternaturally preserved through the centuries as an heirloom of the Left-Hand Mortons, representing in folksy style a bearded man in Puritan dress.

  These talismans were insurance against a daydream. His main enemies couldn’t possibly arrive in time, but he’d thought that about Joshua and Abram, and they had badly surprised him. Some secret craft, some nascent precog or its antithesis, could make certain individuals and their associates difficult to track. His main opposition could, at crucial times, be mere shadows in bright farsight. He would not be taken unprepared again.

  Roderick stepped onto the conference table as if it were a royal dais, and as he had all those years before during the siege of the House, he lay down to commence his trance. He held the three talismans close, with the stone in his left hand, the jersey fragment in his right, and the poppet clutched against his chest under his arm like a sleeping child. This summoning would be horrible. Concentrated in this small space, the ghosts would try to rend his spirit from his body and consume it. He gathered his energy for the coming trial. He had no doubt of the outcome. Despite all, this country was still his home ground. Also, he was, first and foremost, a necromancer in the purest sense of the term. He took power from death and the dead, not the other way around.

  Roderick waited and tried to avoid distracting thoughts. It was difficult. He felt awe at the greatness of his fate. Of all the humans that had ever lived, he would be the one. He would open just the smallest crack to a world of the dead. Such worlds had a surplus of the quantum-like possibilities that fueled craft, for all their human choices were gone. The dead of such worlds were coalesced entities of raw power, and Roderick could tap that energy too.

  The sheer force at his command would be more than this one, niggardly Earth had ever given him or anyone else. As for the Morton specialty, weather, he could summon a ocean-sized hurricane. Combat? His mere words would be life or death across the globe.

  With such power, he could bring about the new craft order. Practitioners wouldn’t hide anymore. His disturbances of the existing regime weren’t just good tactics, but a statement of principle: magic should be known. By his actions today, craft would rule the world, and he, godlike, would rule the craft. Then, the stars would be their destination.

  Some culling of the population might be necessary. Roderick knew that some currently living would make a big deal about all the killing, but he’d never cared before, and he wouldn’t have to later.

  From afar, he felt the opposition—they were definitely drawing beads upon him. It was time. Where were his dead?

  On that cue, the soul-shattering force of a thousand dying black-lit suns slammed into the room. Roderick screamed with agony and even horror as the rending pain and pressure grew, but the central quiet point of his mind was in ecstasy. Welcome, welcome, my lovely dead.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  When we got to the airport, the pilot had deserted his post. “In answer to your question,” said Eddy, though nobody had spoken, “yes, he was a little precognitive.”

  “You guys have a real morale problem in a crisis,” said Dale, as I helped him and Scherie out of the van. They were still wobbly from their unbinding of Madeline, though Scherie had managed to slip into her fashionable camo wear. Eddy returned to talking and giving orders on the phone, as he had been ever since leaving the House of Morton, though he’d been driving at combat speeds.

  “I can fly it,” said Grace.

  “You can?” I said, not skeptical so much as in renewed awe.

  “I’m good with all forms of transport,” said Grace. “I don’t need to use any spiritual force for it. It’s a natural talent that assists with my license to steal.”

  We boarded, and Grace took the stick. Almost immediately after takeoff, we went to Mach 1.5, leaving a sonic boom like a scar across the airspace of the Eastern Seaboard. We were giving the mundane establishment a lot of things to explain in a short time. A serious problem, but it was a distant second to the end of the world.

  The Mortons had set their seats to full recline for the flight, trying to recharge as quickly as possible. Eddy lowered his voice as he continued to make calls filled with commands and code phrases. Lara sat bolt upright as if in meditation, but her head and eyes lacked the single-point focus and ticked about from thing to thing and person to person as if all were equal.

  My father was still along for the ride, but he was flickering—technological speed didn’t always mix well with the supernatural. He gave me directions to the craft bunker. “It has spiritual camo, but if Roderick is there, it’s probably more exposed. Anyway, your eye is looking like Judgment Day itself as far as revealing hidden things.”

  My one eye’s sight had spiritually sharpened, but I didn’t think that was why, despite the flickerings, my dad seemed very near and clear to me. As the Mortons had explained to me, proximity to mortal peril brought ghosts into focus.

  My father flickered again, and he said, “I may have to go to ground soon.” Partings seemed as awkward as summonings. Out of nowhere, he added, “I wish you’d known your mother better. She would have been pleased to see you like this, in command, moving into the fire.”

  “Mom’s seen me,” I said. “You should look for her. In the Chunnel, I saw an echo of the two of you together.”

  The idea seemed to catch him by surprise. Then he cut out again for a moment. Another Morton lesson: ghosts didn’t like agitation. On returning, my father’s next words were like a recording of his old self. “I’m not big on failure, son, noble or otherwise. Win. Beat him.”

  Before I could say good-bye, he was gone.

  * * *

  We landed in Upperville, Virginia, at a private airstrip that the government occasionally borrowed, and all too close to Washington. I felt the energy, the excitement, of possibilities like dominoes all in a row. I could go there, commanding followers on the way. D.C. was the most direct route to hegemony. But no, I was busy, busy with something important.

  Could I stay busy and distracted from temptations of conquest for the rest of my life?

  This time, I also brought an HK416 rifle off the plane with me. It was for Grace to use, but I didn’t want to discuss that with her yet.

  Eddy had two classic black government sedans waiting for us, one with someone in the driver seat. “I’m heading back toward Langley,” said Eddy. “I’ll continue to organize my people fo
r the apocalypse. We’re sending what support we can.”

  “This time, try getting there a little earlier,” said Dale.

  Eddy ignored this and nodded at Lara. “Should I take her with me?”

  “No,” said Lara.

  Something was wrong in Eddy’s tone when he said “support,” and was wrong again when he asked about taking Lara away. Then I realized that Langley’s plan hadn’t really changed. “How long do we have, Eddy?”

  Eddy’s sad face relaxed, a meta-tell of professional liars. “I don’t know…”

  “Not this time,” I said. “Here, I’ll help you. Once you persuade the president, you’ll have to get a nuke or bunker buster there with a way to deliver it that totally destroys the bunker without desolating a prime chunk of the East Coast, and which also avoids Roderick’s power over the air. That probably means a ground force. The only reason you haven’t rushed it is you want us inside distracting Roderick while you get things in place. So how long?”

  Eddy spoke with deliberate calm. “I’m not going to talk about my plans. If you want to speculate, go ahead, but keep it to yourself. You can do the math as well as I can.” He opened his car’s rear passenger door and nodded at his driver.

  I turned to stop any of my friends from doing harm to this repeat offender, or maybe just to restrain myself, but the Mortons were holding each other close, and Grace was putting an arm around me. Eddy’s car drove away.

  Echoing, Lara said, “I am good with equations. We go.”

  At all due speed, we went. Grace drove at somewhere over a hundred miles per hour, reacting to changes in the road with her own mundane skill, as she couldn’t enter the stretched time of practitioner combat mode.

  “These are our objectives,” I said. “We need to destroy Roderick’s body or drive his spirit out.”

  “Sir, last time, it took both,” said Scherie.

  “Right, and even then, he had a way out. This time, you’ll need to direct his spirit to this needle.” I thought of our other weapon. “Lara, I can’t order you…”