by Peter David
The black man had volunteered to go down and participate in the rescue and salvage operations, and the President had allowed him to go. That was the black man’s way; he liked to go where he felt he was needed, where he could do some good. Not for him were endless meetings and discussions with people whose primary job seemed to be preventing anything from being accomplished in a remotely expeditious manner. He liked to be hands on, to just go in and get things done.
So down he had gone to South America. He was trying to allow for all possibilities; should he find himself in a jungle situation, the machete would come in handy. Should he find himself facing looters or similar vermin who took it upon themselves to prey on individuals in their darkest times, the firearm would attend to them. He was prepared to offer his services wherever and whenever they were needed, and at the same time could report back to the President over how the multinational rescue effort was going.
He had not, however, expected to stumble upon a very old scent.
It is said that when one is looking for something and cannot find it, the best thing to do is stop looking. Go on about one’s life, attend to business. And while in the process of doing that, all unexpectedly, one winds up stumbling over that which one had been searching for in the first place.
Such was the case now.
In his travels around Peru, he had heard rumors floating around about . . . a man. A strange, mysterious man, who had supposedly washed up on the shore nearby a Camana resort (a resort that, as it so happened, was now a pile of rubble.)
A man who was young.
A man who wasn’t young anymore.
A harried-looking doctor with a white coat flapping around him approached the black man suspiciously, but the quick flashing of an ID halted the doctor in his tracks. He seemed confused as to what the black man was doing there, and clearly wanted to be polite, but he also was far more concerned with attending to the needs of his patients. All around him, people were moaning and bleeding and dying, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in seventy-two hours.
“Who are you looking for again?” asked the doctor.
The black man was about to reply, when suddenly his nostrils flared, and he was nearly rocked back on his heels.
“Are you all right?” the doctor inquired with concern. He was probably less worried about the black’s condition than he was nervous over the notion of having to deal with yet another patient. Every bed in the place was occupied, as was just about every morsel of free space.
“I’m . . . fine. I’ll find him. Don’t worry.” With that the black man turned, leaving the confused doctor behind.
The black man made his way through the ward, his shaved head swiveling back and forth as if he was sending out radar. He looked more than anything like a great cat on a hunt, and then slowly he approached one particular bed.
No one else would have noticed anything extraordinary about the occupant of the bed. To any observer, it would have seemed simply an old man, gaunt, tired, clinging to life by the most tenuous of strings. His skin had the consistency of parchment, and his lips were drawn back to reveal yellowing teeth with several notable gaps between them. His eyes were fluttering rapidly, like trapped butterflies, as if they were fighting to retain the delicate soul that was on the verge of being pulled away. His hair had once been black, but was now entirely white and mostly missing. His breathing was a loud hiss between his graying lips.
But the black man looked upon him, and felt a certain type of excitement stirring within him for the first time in many, many years. Instantly he felt a connection to this . . . this heap of skin and bones lying helpless on a bed. The dying man was hooked up to tubes, but it was painfully obvious to the black man that the patient wasn’t going to be around much longer, despite whatever devices they hooked him up to. He was beyond all means of salvation that the world had to offer . . .
All means but one. And he had the scent of that one on him, and it was so plain to the nose of the black man that it was all he could do not to tremble with excitement in the presence of the dying man. He could smell it upon the man; he could even see a faint glow around him. He looked around in wonderment. No one else was reacting as he was. How could they not see? How could they not realize, not understand, that someone who had basked in the sustained presence of holiness was among them?
The dying man looked up at the black man, and his gaze—which had been wandering about since the black man had arrived—now focused clearly for the first time. He looked rather surprised. “A Berber?” he asked, and despite his extreme age, his voice sounded strong.
The black man was slightly surprised, although he realized he shouldn’t have been. Who knew what age this man was from? “Close. A Moor,” he corrected.
“Same thing,” the dying man said with a disdainful shrug. “What would you have of me, Moor? Do you derive some enjoyment from watching an old man sicken and die?”
Taking a step toward him, in a low voice, the black man said, “My name . . . is Percival.” Then he searched the man’s face carefully for some sign of recognition.
There was nothing at first. Just that sort of warily blank expression that people sport when they think they’re supposed to have an idea of whom they’re meeting, but can’t quite place it. Then, very slowly, a vague suspicion began to grow. “Not . . . the Percival.”
Percival nodded.
“The Grail Knight?”
Percival nodded once more.
He just stared at him for a long moment. “Hunh. I’ll be damned,” he said finally. “I never read anywhere you were a man of color.”
“Yes, I know. Somehow that little fact always seems to be dropped from the books,” Percival said dryly. “And my understanding is that your name is Joshua.”
Joshua nodded.
“The one who fought the battle of Jericho?”
At that, the old man started to laugh. This set off a ferocious round of coughing, and it went on for several minutes. Percival made no effort to offer him anything for it; he didn’t much see the point. Finally Joshua’s coughing fit eased up and he managed to gasp in a few lungfuls of air. “No. No, nothing so biblical. I’m just someone from . . . from long ago.”
“How long?”
“How long do you think?” he fenced.
Percival shook his head. “I’ve no idea,” he admitted. He also didn’t like what he was seeing; the man was aging still. It was happening slowly, but inexorably. He wasn’t sure how much longer the old man had.
And then Joshua said something utterly unexpected: “Are you going to try and take it back?”
At first Percival didn’t understand what he was talking about, but then he did. “You mean the Grail?”
Joshua managed a nod, and forced a mostly toothless smile. “I will . . . do you the courtesy of not playing games. Of not pretending that we both don’t know what this is all about. You’re here because you somehow ‘sensed’ . . . what? That I was associated with the Grail somehow?” When Percival nodded, the smile spread wider. “I believe it. When you’re near it, it’s like . . . like . . .”
“Like touching the earth, when it was new,” Percival said reverently.
More slowly than before, Joshua nodded, and Percival saw a single tear work its way down his face. “Yes. Yes.” Then he refocused on Percival. “You have not . . . answered the question. Are you going to take it back?”
“It does not belong to me,” Percival admitted. “If I were to take it back . . . it would be to my liege lord, and truthfully, I am not even sure what he would do with it. I don’t know what I would do with it. Not really. But I know this: It was taken from me, long ago. I would like to see it again. Maybe if I see it . . . I’ll know what to do.”
“Oh, I can tell you what to do.”
“Really?”
Joshua bobbed his head and, although it was clearly a tremendous effort for him, he gestured for Percival to draw closer to him. Percival did so. The feeling, the aura, the “scent” of the Grail was begi
nning to fade from him, to be replaced by a nearly overwhelming aroma of rot. He bent his ear toward Joshua’s lips and then Joshua hissed, “Destroy it.”
He said it with such venom, such pure fury, that Percival was utterly taken aback. He regarded the dying man with astonishment. “Destroy it? But . . . it is holy.”
“It is unnatural. It is unnatural, and it has long outlived its use . . . just as I have. But I, at least, realized it.”
“I don’t understand,” Percival said, speaking faster because he sensed that time was slipping away. “Did you drink of the Grail? Because if you did . . . I don’t understand why you’re aging now. I drank of it, and I am still here, still very much as I was when I first downed its contents.” He braced himself, asking the question he had not wanted to ask. “Is what’s happening to you going to happen to me? Does the Grail delay the effects of age for only so long, and then it all catches up with you at one time? When did you drink from it? Are you far older than I? Where—”
“Skeleton Keys.”
The response was, to Percival, a complete non sequitor. “What? Skeleton Keys? What about them? Is it locked somewhere? Do you need a Skeleton Key to open it?”
Joshua took a deep breath and, when he exhaled, the rattling was frightening, and Percival thought for a moment that it was in fact his death rattle. But then Joshua opened his eyes, and there was fire in them, as if his soul was going to consume his body in one, final desperate burst of energy. “I left,” he whispered. “He never thought I would. He’s quite mad. He fears death . . . fears it so much. The others do, too. But I realized . . . realized we were dying there. Our souls were dying, even if we weren’t. It’s a perversity. It’s wrong. It’s not what God intended. Had to get away. He’ll be furious . . .”
“He who?”
Joshua started coughing again, his body flailing about. But there were so many people in misery in the hospital ward, and the doctors stretched so thin in their endeavors to attend to them all, that it went unnoticed. He said something that sounded to Percival like “Beware . . . hiking,” and he reached up and gripped Percival’s hand with one of his bony ones. “Skeleton Keys,” he said again, and then . . . incongruously, bizarrely . . . he said—very clearly, very articulated—“Pus.”
“Pus?” asked a bewildered Percival. “Like . . . from an infection? What does that have to do with anyth—?”
And that was when Percival heard it, unmistakably this time: the rattle of death, the sound of a tortured and pained soul departing its mortal shell. Joshua slipped back onto his pillow, his eyes fixed on some far distant point, and the light left them.
In his extended life, Percival had witnessed more deaths than he once would ever have thought possible. Yet in all that time, he had never beheld a soul so eager to slip away. Centuries—perhaps eons—of memories escaped with it, and he knew he should be mourning, but instead all he could be was happy for this single-named being, this “Joshua,” about whom he would very likely never learn anything else.
He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect next, and yet somehow he knew there would be something. And he was right. Slowly the body began to collapse in upon itself. He knew that something like eighty percent of the human body was made up of fluids; these dissipated now from Joshua, the body dwindling and shrinking as if incredibly anxious to leave. As if it felt that its mere existence, so long after it should have by rights been gone, was an abomination.
Percival forced himself to sit and watch and wonder whether it was his own future he was seeing. These were, after all, semi-mystical forces that were being dealt with. Who knew what would happen to him? Who knew the ways of God, even as they manifested themselves through such objects of power as the Holy Grail?
And Percival realized that he was not afraid of whatever pain might be involved nor was he the least bit concerned about the prospect of death. He was just . . . overwhelmingly curious, that was all. Curious as to what sort of fate awaited him. Then again, he mused, in that respect he was certainly no different than any other man who walked the earth.
The distracted-looking doctor approached at that point, looking at a chart rather than at Percival, and said, “Sir, I will have to ask you to leave. This is a—” Then he stopped and stared at the bed. “Where’s the patient who was here?”
“What patient?” asked Percival innocently.
The doctor took a step back, eyeing Percival suspiciously, clearly wondering if some sort of foul play was involved. But there was no exit door nearby the bed, nor even a window. Nor, obviously, had Percival slipped the patient into his hip pocket or in some other less ludicrous way attempted to hide him. Yet plainly the patient was gone. His hospital gown was lying upon the bed, and there was a fine film of dust upon it, but otherwise there was no sign of him.
Rallying, the young doctor demanded, “Where’s the man who was here?”
Percival stood and recited, “Last night I saw upon the stair . . . a little man who was not there . . . he was not there again today . . . oh, how I wish he’d go away.” With a slight flourish he bowed, said, “E. E. Cummings,” and walked away.
Utterly bewildered, the doctor said to Percival’s departing back, “Good-bye, Mr. Cummings,” and then turned to stare in puzzlement at the little man who wasn’t there.
CHAPTRE THE FOURTH
TERRANCE STOCKWELL HAD never been all that fond of Arthur Penn. Stockwell, a former Arizona governor—and a formidable quarterback in his college days—had considered Penn to be too much of a showboat. Oh, there was no denying that Penn talked a good game, but for Stockwell’s tastes, it was all “pie and blue sky,” as he liked to call it.
Stockwell was not the most photogenic of men. His face was almost triangular, his dark eyes a bit too closely set together and a bit too recessed. His black hair was cropped closely, nearly to a buzz cut, and a sharp widow’s peak extended down past the edge of his otherwise receding hairline. When someone was speaking to him, he tended to lean forward, anxious not to miss a single word. His intelligence, his leadership abilities, were beyond dispute. But he left a number of voters rather cold, because he did not suffer fools gladly, and that put him on the outs with a disturbingly large percentage of the American electorate. His college career as a football hero at Arizona State had helped him considerably when he’d turned to politics, but his transition to the national level had not been an easy one. A lifelong Democrat, he’d been left in the dust during the primaries.
He had been astounded when Arthur Penn, running for the presidency as an Independent, had picked him up off the scrap heap and offered him the opportunity to be his running mate. The idea had seemed insane to Stockwell . . . at first. But Penn’s numbers were doing nothing but soaring, and despite his personal problems with the way Penn did business, there was no denying the man’s raw charisma and the distinct possibility—remote, but distinct—that Penn might indeed wind up in the White House someday. So Stockwell swallowed his considerable pride, hooked up with Penn . . .
And now, here he was, sitting in the East Wing of the White House, watching television.
It was not at all where he wanted to be. He should have been seated in the Senate, in his capacity as Chairman, perched in a seat directly behind the President on a podium when the President delivered the State of the Union address to Congress.
Instead he was in the residence wing, bristling with annoyance, even though he knew that there was nothing to be done for it. That certain laws had been put into place some years ago that forbade—absolutely forbade—any circumstance in which the president and the vice president were publicly together.
The room was comfortable enough; about as luxurious as they came, really, in the White House. There was food laid out, and even though Stockwell wasn’t especially hungry (having had an unusually large dinner), he indulged himself by nibbling on a few carrot sticks. But he was shaking his head even as he did so, and the moment Ronnie Cordoba walked into the room, Stockwell was verbally assailing him.
“You realize we’ve let the terrorists dictate our actions once again, don’t you, Ronald?”
Cordoba shrugged in the manner of someone who had had this conversation many times in the past, and wasn’t seeing the upside of going around one more time. “There’s no harm in being cautious.”
“Cautious. Cautious.” He laughed with low derision at the concept. He had gone to a window that looked over the Front Lawn, and he pointed to it. “Once upon a time,” Stockwell informed him, “people would bring their farm animals right up to the lawn to graze. Can you believe it? There was virtually no security in the whole place. You could practically walk up to the front door and ask to speak to the president. Things have changed, Ronald, and not for the better . . . and it’s pigs like Sandoval and his ilk that have made it that way.”
Cordoba had heard the argument more times than he cared to count. “Mr. Vice President,” he said, “the White House was made a far more secure place long before the Trans-Sabal war, long before Sandoval, long before any of it.”
“So your defense of my saying that the world is a wretched place,” observed Stockwell, “is to point out that it’s been a wretched place far longer than any of us wants to admit. Is that about right?”
“Whatever you say, sir.”
Stockwell was on his feet, pacing about. He was not one for sitting still if he didn’t have to. “Save the patronizing tone for those who deserve to be patronized, Ronald.”
Cordoba stepped in close then, his eyes narrowed, and he said sharply, “All right, Terry. Then how about just for one night we drop the bitching about how the world is unfair, so that we can sit back and enjoy the President making his constitutionally mandated yearly speech, before I have to kick your ass into the Potomac.”
They locked gazes for a long moment, and then Stockwell let out the short, guttural bark that passed for his laugh. “That’s more like it,” he said. “That’s the Ron Cordoba I knew back in my college days.”
