by A. J. Curry
No kidding, I thought.
As her ice-blue eyes settled fully upon me, I once again had the feeling a mouse has when it realizes it’s about to be the main course on someone’s menu. “You should not have withheld from me your dealings with this… person, but it is understandable that you did. Describing him as persuasive is something of an understatement. It is somewhat a given as well that you have been under a certain amount of personal stress.
“Any lapses in your behavior as a member of this Order to date are a matter I am prepared to overlook, but no more. And while I appreciate the delicacy of your situation as a double agent, I must insist that you remember that your primary loyalty is to us, not The Company. We will do everything possible to preserve your cover, but it is far from our highest current priority.”
She turned to Murgenstaern. “As for you, this is hardly the first time you have suborned our people or endangered those I am sworn to protect. I am sure you feel you have good reason for all this − you always do − but you know better than anyone which particular path is paved with good intentions.
“I can no more truly compel you than could any mortal, nor do I wish you any particular harm. But you may find yourself in true need of allies, not entertainment, for the first time in a very long time… perhaps ever.”
Kids always hate it when mom and dad fight, but it can also be hella fun. In the three days I had known Murgenstaern, I had not seen him particularly deterred or visibly impressed by much of anything − but if he had anything to say right now, he was keeping it to himself. In the twenty-plus years I had known Evangeia, she had largely seemed even less human to me than Murgenstaern in statue mode, and about as impassioned. This was something new.
It occurred to me that they were probably speaking English for my benefit. Eight hundred years? It could have as easily been some obscure dialect of Old Occitan, if not ancient Sumerian.
“At the very least, you are going to explain to me your business here to my satisfaction,” Evangeia continued. “You may find me more agreeable with your intentions than you think − but you will notinterfere with mine.”
Murgenstaern spoke. “I have no commitment to your Order, have other commitments predating the existence of Murphy’s species, your species, and your respective single-celled ancestors. It would be best if we compare our respective intentions. You first.” As usual, it was not a request.
“By all means,” Evangeia replied. “Murphy needs to know and so do you.
“The Black Rock Advanced Research and Containment Facility is operated by a consortium of interests within the U.S. military and intelligence communities. The Order both monitors this facility and maintains deep-cover brethren within its staff.
“Shortly after the arrival of the downed surveillance device called ‘The Archangel Array’, we became aware that this facility was being subjected to extremely low-frequency electromagnetic energy with fairly unusual characteristics. Some hours later, all contact with the facility was lost − including contact with The Order’s own deep-cover assets.
“I was dispatched to investigate. Upon arrival, I determined that a beam of the same unusual low-frequency energy was apparently tracking to a ground object in the desert north of here − which turned out to be a vintage Porsche convertible moving toward this location at ballistic speeds.
“We have determined that Black Rock is currently under attack. Under the terms of Protocol 23, I am taking command of this facility. Any questions regarding the disposition of any materials presently housed here shall be addressed to me. In fact, any questions regarding anything whatever more recent than the early formation of the universe should be going to me.
“Am I clear?”
three: murgenstaern
Although I am with few peers in what Murphy might describe as “multitasking”, even I have limits.
Between keeping Murphy’s antique vehicle intact and in place at extreme velocity on what could be charitably described as a “road”, batting away the occasional coyote or rabbit before they wound up on the front of the car, and making sure that the Seraphim Stone remained our destination, I was handling a number of things at once, requiring a fair degree of attention. Other than making sure he was still conscious, I had little attention to spare for Murphy. I didn’t expect him in any case to make small talk over the hurricane-force slipstream I was guiding past our heads with my mind. Possibly, I might have noticed other small changes taking place in him under better circumstances. Or perhaps not. Again, I am not a mind reader.
But under almost any other circumstances, I would have noticed that I had lost the ability to move.
What Murphy describes as my “statue mode” is simply what happens when I’m busy doing something else and have the luxury of not animating the puppet that enables me to pass as human. By the time we were approaching the location of “Area Fifty Whatever”, I had been immobile for many hours.
Driving off a cliff had actually been part of our plan, although not a part Murphy had agreed to without considerable persuasion. “You drove off a cliff yesterday,” I’d said. “I fail to see the difference.” We had been sitting in the diner going over final details. For the sake of appearances, I had ordered coffee as well.
Murphy glared at me. “The difference is that I was drunk and a fucking sasquatch had shot out my tire. This time, I’m cold sober and doing it on purpose. There’s also a few hundred odd feet more elevation involved.”
“A few thousand more feet would not make a difference. And I will be sitting in the car as well.”
“Big deal − if there’s some sort of ‘oopsie,’ you still get to walk away from the crash.”
“More likely crawl, but I take your point.”
“I’m not sure I take yours. This little ‘shortcut’ of yours isn’t going to get us past any security checkpoints that matter, or shave off any trip time that couldn’t be shaved off by taking a more direct route.”
“No, but the entire route keeps us clear of several excellent spots for an ambush. You and I have both been under surveillance for a week. Are you so very sure the roads will not be watched?”
He had eventually agreed, as I knew he would. In the overall scope of what we were doing, driving off a cliff in the company of a telekinetically gifted elder being was the least of his worries.
But even so, I found myself surprised when he turned on to the cutoff to the mesa without a single word of protest or wisecrack. I thought to comment on this.
And was even more surprised to find I could not do so.
Someone or something had found a way to interfere with my ability to control my puppet. Whatever they were doing was beyond subtle − I had sensed nothing.
There was never any real danger of a crash only one of us was going to crawl away from. I could probably even move my puppet’s limbs through sheer force of my abilities − but I would certainly break it in the process, and certainly I could not speak. I’m fond of my puppet; I’ve put a lot of work into it. Despite my plans to abandon it altogether, I hated the idea of breaking it any more than I had to.
As Murphy unhesitatingly drove off the cliff, I began the process of lowering the car to the road below − my “shortcut” − and considered my various options.
I was still considering when a craft of The Order appeared and took us aboard. As soon as we were within its walls, I found I could move again. I also realized that whatever had happened involved more than a mere shutdown of my puppet. Somehow, during the drive from the Northwest, my senses had been subtly limited in a way I had never experienced and had not noticed. Now restored, I was fairly sure I knew how it had been done − and by whom.
“Not quite as planned,” I’d said to Murphy, “but interesting.”
Evangeia de Lourdes’ subsequence appearance was not entirely surprising, her claims of authority even less so.
All of the extradimensionals that have taken varying levels of residency on Earth are to some degree related to humankind, representing
either what humans became in other realities or what wound up taking their place. Some of them are as closely related as were once humans and neanderthals, with predictably similar results.
Evangeia was one such result. We’d met before, back when I was only slightly masquerading as human and she was doing her best to masquerade as a god. She’d been willful and arrogant back then as well, and almost got burned at the stake for it. I hadn’t exactly expected to be thanked for my troubles then, expected it less now − but I did have something of what Murphy might call “a marker,” and I had every intention of calling it in.
“…in fact, any questions regarding anything whatever more recent than the early formation of the universe should be going to me. Am I clear?”
“Abundantly,” I said. “One small question, though, if I may.”
“By all means.”
“Should it be the case that material presently housed in this facility includes items dating back to ‘the early formation of the universe,’ are you willing to take into account subject matter expertise in how best to deal with such items?”
Evangeia raised one brow. “If the subject matter expert in question is yourself, I’ll take it under advisement − perhaps as soon as you explain what exactly it is you want and what you are doing here. Keep it simple, Morningstar − and try not to condescend too much to us mere mortals.”
“I can make it very simple. How would you like me gone from this place?”
“I expect you gone from this facility in any event, although Murphy will not be leaving with you.”
“That’s not what I mean. How would you and your Order like me gone from this planet?”
“I have no opinion on your residency one way or another. The Grandmasters have long seen you as a threat, but many think you may have diminished to the point of merely being an unpredictable nuisance. Is this planet better off without you? Probably.
“In any case, it was my understanding you were stuck here, absent the possibility of humanity leaving this place and offering you a ride − is this not so?”
“No longer. I can go home, Evangeia. My means to do so is on your base yonder that you claim under attack.”
“What struck the Archangel Array out of orbit is no spaceship, certainly not one big enough to hold you.”
“I don’t need a spaceship. What struck down that artifact is as much a remnant of creation’s dawn as I am. I call it the Seraphim Stone, and it calls to me. With it, it is finally within my power to leave this place.”
“Or rule it.”
“And when was that ever my intent? Milton was wrong, and the words he put in my mouth utterly foolish. Far better to serve in Heaven. I was never cast out, you know, nor truly fallen. All I really want is to go home… and again do the bidding of my Master.”
“I need more.”
“You described what is happening to your facility as an ‘attack’, I agree with that description. Although you’ve not named the attackers, I think we agree as well who they are.”
“The Selenites,” Evangeia said, setting her mouth in a grim line of distaste.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe they want the same thing I want… but for different reasons.
“Some time ago, unknowns in human guise attempted to abduct me from this universe. I now believe they were in the employ of your Selenites.” I turned to Murphy. “Greys, I think they are now called.”
He shrugged. “I’ve heard them called lots of things.”
I turned back to Evangeia. “The attempt failed. I made sure it failed on such a scale that a repeated effort would be unlikely.”
“Why the attempt in the first place?”
I had wondered that myself on many occasions. Not everything that slipped through the cracks in the universe was sentient or even dangerous, but the Greys were both. Evangeia’s people and a few others had learned to navigate the cracks in space. The Greys apparently created them at will. They were far from omnipotent, however, and a delicate balance of power had existed between them and the other visitor races almost since the cracks first opened.
The Greys’ interest in protomatter from the beginning of time could be utterly benign and academic.
Or not.
“What I am as a being, an entity, I doubt is of any more importance to them than any other creature they abduct or mutilate for whatever reason. But I am, at my core, a uniquely powerful remnant from the early creation of this universe. Call it Dawn Matter, if you like, but there is nothing else in this or any other universe remotely like it. I am not ‘starstuff’ − I’m the stuff that existed before the stars and galaxies I helped to create… so is the Seraphim Stone.
“I have no idea what your Selenites want with such stuff, no interest in finding out. Some transcendentally powerful tool or weapon? Probably. It doesn’t seem likely to be anything in your best interest in any case. If I depart and take the Seraphim Stone with me, the balance of power and everything else here remains exactly the same with the exception of my absence. Problem solved, I would say.”
“Will they not attempt your pursuit?”
I mimicked Murphy’s shrug. “They are welcome to try, but they are no more capable of true interstellar travel than you are. And if they persist in the matter, I’m happy to remind them of the last time they took too much interest in my affairs.”
“And your word on this − you will simply take this power object and leave?”
“My word.”
“I must confer with my masters on this, but I will. The sworn word of Lucifer Morningstar is sufficient to me,” Evangeia said.
She came closer and touched my puppet’s face. “I do not forget,” she said.
The marker had called in itself.
four: murphy
I should not have been surprised when Murgenstaern talked Evangeia into it − after all, the persuasive bastard had talked me into driving off a cliff − but the ease with which he had pulled it off was nonetheless impressive. Whatever had happened 800 years ago between them likely made for one damned interesting field report in The Order’s archives I will never get to read.
Which suits me just fine.
Things started happening rapidly after that. Protocol 23 had only been invoked a few times before. It meant that The Order was intervening directly to deal with something the Grandmasters consider a planetary-level emergency. The Grandmasters take the long view, and their definition of an “emergency” is guaranteed to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.
Luckily, baseline humans who haven’t made bad life decisions about meddling in the affairs of wizards and aliens either don’t get to hear about these things − or hear a carefully sanitized version when something like this does happen. To a certain degree, my roles within The Company and The Order mirror each other and even involve some of the same tools. The main difference is scope: The Company hardly ever asks me to rewrite history. The Order seldom asks for much less.
The aftermath of Protocol 23 actions have involved huge rewrites and frequently as well involve the Greys − or ‘Selenites’, as the older Grandmasters call them. At least part of the reason Evangeia had been an easy sell for Murgenstaern’s pitch was the involvement of those little termite rat bastards. They were a big part of the reason The Order even existed in the first place. We had been containing their activity on Earth for the better part of five hundred years. Almost every other species that had come in thru the cracks in space had had a problem with the Greys one time or another− in some cases, long before coming to Earth.
Whatever they wanted with the Seraphim Stone, whatever they’d wanted when they attempted their silly damned abduction trick on Murgenstaern, no one believed it was going to benefit anyone else, and no one found it particularly difficult to believe that the end result would not wind up a weapon pointed at their mutual heads or head equivalents.
And while the Seraphim Stone was precisely the sort of artifact The Order would love to have in its archives, keeping it could be a problem.
The Greys would keep trying to get their hands on it; eventually, they’d succeed. The Stone had no real use in this universe except as a bargaining chip… or a fallen angel’s ticket home.
I didn’t get to sit in on the call, but Evangeia didn’t get to make a decision like this on her own. Even though I don’t report up in The Order past her, I’ve met some of the greater Masters on occasion. Regardless their actual DNA, I wouldn’t exactly describe any of them as “human”… and I think that might’ve played a role in the decision as well.
All I really knew of the being that called itself “Lucifer Morningstar” was what that being had told me, and abilities I’d witnessed that gave good reason to believe the claims were true. But there was something more. I’m no psychic, and Murgenstaern claimed that the content of human minds were as opaque to him as a stone wall would be to me. But you would have to be made of stone to not sense the loneliness emanating from him like waves of cold.
Evangeia and those like her arepsychic, or at least say they are, and they live lives spanning thousands of years. Almost as much a brief nothing as my own life to a thing that had essentially lived for all of time − but long enough to know what it’s like to watch entire civilizations turn to dust, entire species vanish. Long enough to imagine what it must be like to watch it again and again and again… without even the company of other immortals.
I think Murgenstaern was right that the Grandmasters would be happy to see him gone, but I think compassion figured into the decision as well. Even a lowly human like me could tell that all the poor bastard wanted was to go home. For whatever reason… everyone with a say in the matter agreed it was a good idea. Now he just had to go get his ticket.
And that was about to get complicated. Area Fifty Whatever was already under attack. Just not physically. Not yet, anyway.
* * * *
“We’ve no way of knowing how any one individual might react,” Evangeia said. “Extreme paranoia is not unlikely, nor suicidal ideation. Delusions are certainly possible, perhaps even hallucinations.”
