by Jack Yeovil
He broke the seal and twisted off the cap, then tipped the liquid into his mouth.
Ugh, he thought, firewater heap mighty medicine!
II
Since Elder Seth went into his coma, on the night Dr Proctor had failed to kill Jessamyn Bonney, there had been a certain amount of panic in Deseret. Roger Duroc had had to cancel a long-planned-for trip to the Antarctic to stay in Salt Lake City. This was a crucial stage of the Great Work, and the Elder's spiritual absence was much felt There had been a minor revolt among the resettlers in the outlying homesteads, triggered by the backfiring of an enzyme-augmented wheat strain that had failed to yield a worthy harvest but had spread a species of croprot among the farmhands. The farmers had marched on the Tabernacle in their dungarees, waving their American Gothic pitchforks while their faces fell off, demanding that the Elder come out and address them. Duroc had had to have some of the ringleaders publicly stoned by his security force, the grim-faced, black-clad Elders whom he had personally trained and drilled in the Old Testament system of law enforcement. Since then, there had been a few stormy council meetings, and a few families had tried to pull up stakes and make it back through the desert to the United States. None of them had managed to cross the state line yet, thanks to Blevins Barricune and the other hunter-killers Duroc had stationed along the border. There had been an information containment problem too, but he had dealt with that by ensuring the accidental crash-landing of a chopperload of newsies and netweb teevee personnel.
But things were overextended. The Church of Joseph could not continue much longer without its figurehead, its fountainhead and its mastermind. Duroc spent a portion of each day in the tankroom, looking at the relaxed, unlined face of the ageless Elder, wondering what dreams he had lost himself in.
He thought it had something to do with the Bonney girl. They were still linked at some psychic level, and her continued existence was draining him of vitally-needed energies. He had considered several programs for eliminating the problem, but given the failure of the Manolo and Proctor options, he did not want to put anything into action without the Elder's say-so. Two failures were quite enough. Another might put his position in jeopardy. Elder Beach had been speaking against him in the councils rather too often lately, and a faction had been gathering around him. Beach would dearly love to take Seth's spectacles for his own, and shoulder the burden of the Great Work. He had his supporters. Sometimes, Duroc questioned the wisdom of using a church to further the Great Work. The Josephites attracted too many impractical fanatics, too many focused but tiny minds, too many desperate need-to-believe lost souls. But Seth had been an accomplice in the creation of the sect, and had nurtured it for more than a hundred and fifty years. It was the instrument he had chosen, shaped and prepared. The Elder knew best.
Duroc paced the isolation chamber. It was as cold as a tomb, and slightly damp, but otherwise resembled a striplit hospital waiting room. The tank was like a cross between a fridge-freezer and an Egyptian sarcophagus, with a clear-glass faceplate inset. The Elder's clothes hung on a curly-hooked old-fashioned coatstand in one corner.
Yesterday, Duroc had had to allow the stoning of Sister Harrison, who had been caught in adultery. In Nguyen Seth's absence, he had been called upon to cast the first stone. Coralie had looked him in the eyes as he tossed the rock, showing the hurt before he struck her. He had tried to make it quick, but the Council of Elders had decreed that she must lie bleeding in front of the Tabernacle for a day and a night. This morning, she was gone, spirited away by the frog-chinned Brother Harrison. Later, Duroc would check up. He wasn't sure whether it would be best for the Sister to live or die. Whatever, he could have no more to do with her. He had engineered the evidence against her, keeping his own name out of it but making sure Brother Shipman and Elder Pompheret were disgraced. She had to suffer, not for her immorality—that was not a question that entered into his thinking—but because she had been with him the night it started to go wrong. She had seen him shivering with terror, and that must be driven from her head.
There were droplets of condensation on the outside of the isolation tank, and the temperature dials were misted over. While in his deepsleep, the Elder drew the little nourishment he found necessary from a biosolution pumped into the waters that lapped around his body. Duroc checked the biosupport system, wiping the glass of the tubefeed monitor. The condensation came off, but the dial was still clouded. It had been abraded until opaque.
A terrible calm descended upon his mind.
He pressed the glass until it shattered. A red-tipped shard speared into the meat of his thumb. He sucked it loose and spat it out. The red froth was startling against the white floor.
It was as he had suspected, the tubefeed had been blocked and the nutrients witheld.
The double doors opened, and men clad in the dark suits of the Josephite Council of Elders pressed in, surrounding him. They had some security staff wim them, discreetly armed.
"Elder Beach?" Duroc greeted their obvious leader.
"Blessed be. Brother Duroc. It has been decided. I am to head the Council until Elder Seth has recovered. We have taken a vote. It was unanimous."
Duroc looked from face to face. They were mostly unrepentant, but Elder Wiggs glanced away from his gaze at the crucial moment. His body tensed. The confined space would tell in his favour, and he thought he could kill Beach and most of the others before the security people shot him down. But he couldn't risk a ricochet puncturing the tank. The Elder might be comatose almost to the point of catalepsy, but he still clung to life.
"We have come for your approval," Beach said. "As the Elder's Executive Assistant, your palmprint is necessary to access the datanets. You must realize that this is the only path we can take."
The biosupport unit hummed, and something gurgled inside. Wiggs was pointing with a shaking finger.
"Look…"
Duroc turned. There were clear refuse tubes leading from the tank to the floor, feeding into the drains. Purple-threaded liquid was passing through the tubes. The tank was emptying.
Beach's tanned face paled in an instant. Someone began to mutter a prayer. Duroc wondered whether he was pleading with God for the Elder's return to life or consignment to death.
"I cannot give my approval to your suggestion, Elder Beach," said Duroc. "Matters such as this are not in my jurisdiction. If you want to take over the council, you will have to settle the affair with Elder Seth himself."
There was a hydraulic hiss, and the tankseal was broken. Dry-ice smoke puffed out and descended like white candyfloss to the floor.
Duroc turned. A thin, naked arm stretched out of the tank, pushing up the lid.
Nguyen Seth sat up, the electrodes falling from his white, hairless chest.
The Elder smiled. "A welcoming committee?"
Beach bowed low, trembling. "Yes, Elder."
"How gratifying. Roger, bring me my robe."
Duroc handed him a black kimono from the coatstand. He knotted it about his middle, and stepped out of the tank as spryly as if he had just lain down for a mid-day catnap and awoken refreshed rather than been in a near-death state for the better part of a year.
"Elder Beach," Seth said. "I am calling a Council meeting in the Central Conclave of the Tabernacle. See to it that the Inner Circle are all assembled within an hour. The timing is vital."
Beach backed out through his crowd of supporters, most of whom trailed after him, crushing through the doors in an undignified retreat. Elder Wiggs remained, speechless, his eyes fixed on Seth.
"Elder Wiggs?" said Nguyen Seth. "Have you no business to be about?"
Wiggs apologized, and ran off.
Seth laughed, and Duroc felt the chill of the room.
"Roger, we must be strong. This day's work will not be easeful, nor overly pleasant."
Duroc bowed his head.
"We must call to one of the Dark Ones to deal with the Moon Woman…"
A shiver began in Duroc's spine, but he held it
in, refusing to let his shoulders shake.
"We must summon up the Jibbenainosay."
III
Dr Ottokar Proctor was content with his life. He had food, shelter and an interest. He needed nothing more. His knife flicked away at the hardwood, etching in the eyes of Michigan J. Frog, one-time-only star of Chuck Jones' classic One Froggy Evening (1955). First, he found the character inside the wood, then he cut away to create a rough approximation, and finally he did the fine work with the knifepoint. In the last few months, he had whittled away at the remnants of furniture which still cluttered up the monastery, creating a horde of Bugs Bunnies, Daffy Ducks, Road Runners, Coyotes, Sylvesters, Tweety-Pies, Elmer Fudds, Foghorn Leghorns, Pepe le Pews, Speedy Gonzalezes, Yosemite Sams and Porky Pigs. He kept returning to these archetypes, rendering them in each and every one of their multifarious moods. He had a Daffy with pointed teeth bared in his bill, building up to an explosive rage, and a Coyote with eyeballs twice the size of the rest of him, appalled at the approaching doom unleashed by an inexpressive, beep-beeping bird. Now, he had run through the roster of Warner Brothers' major characters, he was applying himself to the lesser-known greats: forgotten stars from the '30s like Bosko the Talkink Kid and his girlfriend Honey, Foxy, Piggy and Fluffy, Goopy Geer, Buddy and Cookie, and that proto-Elmer Fudd, Egghead; and memorable but unprolific creations like Marvin the Martian, Witch Hazel, Hippety Hopper, Private Snafu, Spike and Chester, Claude Cat, Henery Hawk, Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog from Ready, Woolen and Able (1960), the pathetic Merlin the Magic Mouse, Second Banana and Cool Cat. If there was anyone missing from the line-up, he couldn't think of him…
Inside his mind, there was a non-stop chase, as his carvings pursued each other through doors in the ceiling, dodged falling battleships, pulled off and replaced their heads, dressed up as busty cheerleaders with lipsticky, heart-shaped mouths and spit curls, swallowed exploding firecrackers, were reduced to charcoal briquettes and reassembled, switched on and off the lightbulbs over their heads, shot each other with ever larger guns, and reduced rivals to their essential atoms. Elmer Fudd shushed the audience with "be vewwy quiet, I'm hunting wabbits!" Marvin the Martian disappeared in the beam of a disintegrator ray as Space Cadet Porky Pig sneered "take that, you thing from another world you!" Daffy Duck dropped 126 storeys inside an icebox while Bugs snickered "ain't I the stinker?" The Road Runner beep-beeped, and the Coyote ordered earthquake pills, boulder suits ('impress your friends—be a rock!') and economy-size holes from the Acme Mail Order company. It was Rabbit Season, it was Duck Season. There was non-stop music, and bright colour, and no one was ever hurt. His creations were destroyed and remade in the time it takes to cut from one shot to another.
Dr Ottokar Proctor smiled to himself. He had finally found the world of his dreams.
But on the wharf, waiting for Bugs and Daffy, was a parcel, freighted all the way from Tasmania, with breathing holes cut into it. Inside the parcel, bright eyes shone with hunger, with greed, with irrational and unstoppable violence…
Soon, Bugs and Daffy would open the crate, and the Devil would be free again.
IV
Nguyen Seth was much relaxed by his spell in the isolation tank. His spirit had been drawn to the edge of the Outer Darkness and been in communion with the Dark Ones. Ba'alberith, the Mythwrhn, Nyarlathotep and the Jibbenainosay were gathered on the lip of the funnel that led down to the Earth, vast and formless, their energies gathering as they merged into one mass of power, then recreated themselves as distinct entities. Too much time spent in the world of men had robbed Seth of his appreciation for those whom he served. It was too easy to be distracted by the petty concerns of the Elders of Joseph, by the ridiculous politicking of the countries and corps of the world, by the confused tangle of personal relationships. His mindlink with Jessamyn Bonney had dragged him too deep into the mire of humanity, tainted his purpose with hatred, love, desire. When the girl became one with the Ancient Adversary, his entire being had screamed in an inexpressible agony. He had nearly been dislodged from his earthly form, and only been able to survive by slipping into his trance, allowing his spirit to wander, unfettered by the concerns of his flesh…
The Dark Ones had been angered by the ascendancy of their enemy, and Seth had a mind-stretching vision of the eternal wars, feuds, rivalries and alliances of the Outer Darkness. The business to which his everlasting life was devoted was but one of a series of skirmishes fought on planes beyond even his understanding, between forces he could only vaguely comprehend. As Ba'alberith and the Mythwrhn combined their essences like gases creating a liquid, Seth realized just how alien these beings were, not only to his human perceptions—it took a spell in the Outer Darkness to remind him how close to humankind he really was, just one step beyond their tininess—but to the entire matter of the physical universe through which the Earth spun like a forgotten ball of mud and water. The Dark Ones had their histories, their cultures, their tragedies, their humours, but they were beyond anything he could even imagine. Time had no meaning in the Darkness, but the entire span of terrestrial history was but a brief armistice in the war between the Three Shades of Dark and the forces of Nullification. A myriad parallel universes were bunched together in a knot tied by Azathoth, the Crawling Chaos, and the Dark Ones were penetrating his own reality just as the Nullifiers were infiltrating other timelines. He had a vision of other Nguyen Seths, living through other eternities, under other names, and he was able to pick out the billion specks that were the multiple souls his lives had touched.
As a lesson to him, Ba'alberith had allowed him to dip into an alternate in which he was a fearsome sorcerer, rotting behind a mask in a seven-turreted castle at the edge of a great empire, doing battle with swordsmen, magicians and a leech lady. Seth was whipped through this life in an instant, from a violent clash on a primordial plane to another, fifteen thousand blood-soaked years later, in the heart of his castle. It was over within the blinking of an eye. From this experience, Seth learned the futility of a pure devotion to self. In that life, he had been simply obsessed with his continuing existence, with the gratification of his every whim and impulse. Upon his death, he had left nothing behind him in that universe except dust and bad memories. When he returned to his Earth, to the course of his history, he would be humbled.
He would live purely to do the bidding of the Dark Ones, happy in the knowledge that in his servitude his life would mean something. He was the man born to end the world, and he would leave behind him the void through which the Dark Ones could have access to his physical universe, the predestined site of their Great Tourneys, the killing games from which would emerge the Three Champions of the Night who would join battle with the Nullifiers for the fate of the eternally expanding Empire of the Actual and its infinite number of Shadow Selves.
All this was far in the future, far beyond any physical life he could expect, but he knew he would be present in some altered form at the end of the conflict. From the lip of the funnel, he saw the timelines spiralling away into the Darkness. The culmination of his struggles was within his grasp, and beyond that was the restful blackness of the Nothing that would be the lot of the peoples of the Earth. He would bring them a merciful oblivion, freeing them from the need to endure through another cycle of pain and suffering as the whole story was played out again.
This was the future, he knew; but it was also the past. The Outer Darkness was set sideways against the progress of time…
He stepped back into his body at various points through his long career, reinforcing his original decisions, initiating sequences of action whose consequences would only become apparent as the 20th Century drew to its fiery close. He relived his finest moments, his memories becoming the realer as he sped through them, cannonballing through his own life towards the Nguyen Seth who waited in his tank in Salt Lake City.
Back in the world, he was possessed by the needs of his flesh, and took the time to satiate himself before gathering the Twelve Elders of Joseph in the Centra
l Chamber of the Tabernacle.
Back on the lip of the funnel, the Jibbenainosay gathered itself, the alien matter of a hundred universes concentrating in the centre of its cloud, vast discharges of world-shattering electricity signifying its thought processes.
Seth had taken a tendril of the Jibbenainosay with him to the world, and now he would have to pull the whole being through the funnel, and turn it loose. As he strode through the corridors of the Tabernacle, Roger Duroc at his side, Seth felt the ache in his gut where the tendril ended in a diamond-hard fragment of concentrated matter.
The hurt was growing as the Jibbenainosay squeezed itself towards reality, lusting titanically for the destruction of its adversary……of its Ancient Adversary.
V
A clawed hand reached into his dream, and shook him awake.
Hawk-That-Settles started up in his cot, the blanket falling away from his nakedness, and the claw was around his heart, squeezing.
He forgot his dream, but the world he awoke to was nightmare enough.
The room was full of moonlight, and Krokodil was standing there, cloaked by her hair.
He saw a woman, but he felt the presence of a ghost.
She spoke, in her old voice. "Something is coming through," she said. "We must fight again."
He didn't know what to say. He had emptied a bottle before stumbling to his cot. His thinking was muddied by sleep and tequila, and he felt worse than he would have if he'd been kicked in the head by a mule.
She walked over to the bed, seeming to glide, her hair rippling.
She knelt, hair parting over her body as she stretched her arms out to him. Pale in the light of the full moon, she was lovely.
