by Tom Doyle
Major,
Return to CRFT-CEN ASAP. We are under attack.
Well, at least he’d gotten his e-mail. He strode back to the covered bridge, swearing such mild oaths as he thought God could forgive, under the circumstances. He would have to get a crew to clean up this mess, if they could find it, and as he wasn’t supposed to have been here, he’d have to do it through someone else.
* * *
Scherie and I went out to the battlefield one last time to give our thanks, even if we weren’t heard. It was not time for the play, but the actors were gathered anyway. Now there was no curtain between the living and Valhalla, an ease whose implications I didn’t care to dwell on. The soldiers staged a perfunctory charge. Then we saw the part that was denied us from the outside. The wounded and the dead stood up, brushed themselves off, laughed and embraced. “Was it not real?” they said.
The native leader, wearing a ghost shirt with no apparent sense of irony, galloped up and along the ridge until he faced me. “Nobody forgets anything here, Morton,” he said. “Not even what could have happened but didn’t.”
“I’ll remember,” I said as the native rode away.
Sergeant Zanol limped on a tree branch crutch over to us.
“Thank you,” I said.
Zee shook his head. “No thanks required for doing my duty. But I could use a favor, sir.”
“Anything,” I said.
“Not from you, sir.” Zee nodded to Scherie. “You, ma’am. Tell me to go.”
Scherie sputtered with fatigue. “But you … where…?”
“Leave that to me,” Zee said.
I said nothing. Scherie’s craft, Scherie’s decision.
She took a deep breath. “Go.” And he was gone.
Then some of the other spirits bowed their heads and, slowly without calling attention to themselves, wandered over to Scherie. She expelled the wounded spirits of both sides, spirits done with Valhalla and ready for graduation to a gentler Elysium.
* * *
I watched Scherie work, wordless with awe at her great-souled gift. In his heart, every lover knows that his beloved is well beyond his own worth, but few had seen it so thoroughly demonstrated as I had. What could I do but work harder to save her, even as I brought her with me into the heart of the danger?
We set Sakakawea’s body up as a scarecrow near the bridge. Her ghost didn’t show up to complain. It was a barbaric, primitive gesture, and the right thing to do.
We had stripped Sakakawea and one of her team of their government badges, hoping that with a little craft we might use them to get into the Pentagon, but that was an extremely dodgy contingency. It would take more than a little craft to make Scherie look Scottish.
As we crossed the bridge back into normal space-time, I had no doubt that, unlike his previous encounter with Grandpa’s shotgun, Sergeant Zanol in all his spiritual echoes was now fully erased. Scherie’s one word had sounded that powerful.
I also had no doubt that, whatever a fledgling was, Scherie was one no longer. From the way the Appalachian had described it, a fledgling’s camouflage would be a gift to protect someone who didn’t know yet what she was doing or how she was doing it from the predation of seasoned mages who didn’t appreciate the emerging competition. But Scherie was consciously, willfully practicing the craft. The predators were now able to see her.
PART VI
WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN?
They were going to face the symbol, the embodiment, no, call it the true and high church of the military-industrial complex, the Pentagon, blind five-sided eye of a subtle oppression which had come to America out of the very air of the century.
—Norman Mailer
The people invent their oppressors.
—Mark Twain
CHAPTER
TWENTY
Grandpa bellowed. “Incoming!”
I-270 was alive with onrushing craft wires. Emerging from hills and signs along the highway, the laserlike lines glowed in primary colors—red, yellow, blue—and in bright white where they crisscrossed.
We drove along the interstates now, almost challenging the enemy to take us in public. I was sick of little ambushes in out-of-the-way places. I would not keep my deadly light under a bushel anymore.
A red wire was seconds away. “Take a deep breath,” I reminded Scherie. “Don’t react. Don’t try any craft.”
Flash. The craft line scanned through the car and sliced like a laser through Dad and Grandpa. The ghosts flickered out, then yelled back into view. Craft residue smeared over the living in the rainbow splashes of a paintball fight, then faded.
I kept the wheel steady through the wire. Driving through these lines of force felt like flying through turbulence.
“Goddamn it,” said Scherie, wiping at herself as if encrusted with spider web, spiders included. She seemed more sensitive to the wires than me—a double-edged ability at best. Hutch had taught me how to turn down and tune out to avoid overload. No time to teach Scherie how not to see.
Scherie squinted. “What the fuck are these things?”
I passed a hand over my face to clear my eyes. “Some are trip wires, some are dampeners against strategic attack. We’ll be hitting the core Masonic geomancies at the Beltway and the District lines—we won’t be driving through those. Those will feel even more, um, uncomfortable.”
“They’re massive,” she said. “They’re fucking everywhere. Why doesn’t everyone notice?”
“They’re looking for the wrong thing,” I said. “The conspiracy theorists hunt for geomancies that make a city more interesting. But the craft design makes the capital as boring as possible.”
“Oh. That explains a lot,” she said.
“Yep,” I said. “You don’t see many Wiccans and other minor league practitioners here; they’ve all retreated to the exurbs or Baltimore. Even the punk rock is straight edge. It takes a mass incursion to make this place interesting.”
“Or an attack on the Pentagon,” she said.
“Or that.”
Flash. A craft wire interrupted the backseat shouting. Between salvos, Dad and Grandpa had managed to restart their fight.
“This is the end of our line,” yelled Dad, “and for what? Do you see now, Old Man? I was trying to stop this.”
“And a lot of good it did,” said Grandpa.
“I’m not finished yet,” said Dad.
“If you can’t help,” said Grandpa, “get out of the way.”
“I can help,” said Dad.
“The hell you can,” said Grandpa.
I interrupted. “Dad, how can you help?”
Dad coughed. “I know the way to H-ring.”
Flash. Another beam of craft passed through us. Grandpa looked like he’d been slapped, but not hard enough. “Bullshit. No Morton has ever been allowed near H-ring.”
“No living Morton,” said Dad.
“Dad, you know H-ring?” I asked.
“We’ve been locked out since the meetings that set it up,” said Grandpa.
“I haven’t been into H-ring proper,” said Dad. “Even dead, they’ve kept me out, but I know how to get there. I’m an Arlington ghost.”
Arlington ghost. I bit back hard on my feelings. There it was—a justification for Dad’s burial away from House and Family, all to be ready for a day like today.
But Grandpa wouldn’t let the old argument go. “He doesn’t need you. The boy can guess how to get there.” True—guessing was part of my plan. If it came to it, I planned to slip through the craft barrier and mundane security, then feel my way for as long as I could.
“I can show you,” said Dad.
“Tell me now,” I insisted.
“There’s a hidden elevator and a stairway through what used to be the Ground Zero Café, dead center in the courtyard.”
“OK,” I said. Dead center. An apt choice of words, if we had to go that far.
“They’ve also got a probability defense.”
I kept a poker face. �
��Fine.” Fubar. “No need to follow.” Dad might try to stop me if he saw what that defense could do.
I expected the ghosts to argue with me about my plan, but instead they resumed their fight with each other. “I didn’t care what Arlington, what any of it, cost me,” said Dad.
“Talking about it now isn’t going to do them any good,” said Grandpa.
“So,” said Scherie, speaking over the spiritual debate, “are you going to tell me what this computer is?”
“Watch out for the craft wires,” I said.
“I’m watching,” she said.
“OK,” I said. Flash. “Well, you already heard the beginning of the story. During World War II, the mundanes developed code-breaking machines, not quite true computers, but very close. Somebody in craft came up the idea of trying to magically enhance the performance of these machines.”
“How could they do that?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Craft is sometimes just a game of altering probabilities. And code-breaking involves a kind of statistics—number of solutions versus the time it takes to try all of them. A machine reduces the time. Craft could reduce it even more. So Chimera was born.”
“Sounds innocent enough,” she said.
“Most babies are,” I said. “Anyway, Sphinx clued me in on the next part down in the mine shaft. During Vietnam, some folks started talking about the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Now in the mundane sphere, this has been tougher than expected—nice chess machines, but no talking HAL as spaceship captain. But in the craft sphere, they had the Chimera machine. Somebody must have thought that they could fully embody human craft in an improved model. Probably years of disappointments, just like the mundanes. Then somebody claims a breakthrough.”
“So they think they’ve got an artificial magus,” said Scherie.
“Right.”
“Bullshit.”
“You got it in one,” I said. “It’s more like the Turk—a chess machine with a hidden human making all its moves. Chimera would have to be something subtler. The human would have to be well-hidden.”
“You haven’t explained why everyone has gone homicidal yet,” she said.
“Maybe the scammers are nervous that their scam is coming undone,” I said. “But the true believers in Chimera must be getting nervous too. Our life in this country, our covenant with the government, is based on our service. Without our mutual need, the basis for trust is gone. That’s volatile enough; plenty of folks don’t like the direction the craft has been going. So suppose Chimera predicts a Family revolt, starting with me.”
“Wait, now I’m confused. How does Chimera change the need for you?” she asked.
“The need for us. Whatever Chimera is, it’s very powerful, yet its believers probably think they can control it by just pulling a plug. And they may think they can build more, though they can’t because it’s a fake, and each machine would require another practitioner.”
“Who’s the practitioner in Chimera?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter.” I wanted to elide over this. I had some ideas who Chimera might be, and all of them were Left-Hand, and all horrible beyond words.
“OK, maybe despite the look on your face, that doesn’t matter. But what about me then? So far, all I seem to do is scare ghosts and exorcise possessors,” said Scherie. “Not that I’m complaining—that’s more than enough crazy stuff for me. But what can I do to a computer, or a living person?”
Flash. Damn, she wasn’t letting it go. And keeping her ignorant would be bad tactics. “You kicked Chimera’s power out of the Sanctuary,” I said.
“Oh. I did. Remind me how I did that?”
“One possibility is that the human in Chimera is like a possessing spirit,” I said. “So you can expel him.”
“And the other possibility?”
“Is that Chimera’s human is like a ghost.”
“Oh. Dead.”
“Or at least not quite alive,” I said. A human in the machine would be easier to hide that way, but even less pretty.
“This is going to be awful,” she said.
I glanced at her. Was she going to break now?
But she gave a rueful smile. “It’s the bit where Bond ‘storms the fortress,’ isn’t it?”
“Kinda.”
“I always hate that part,” she said. “The evil mastermind captures 007, hits him with ridiculous monologue.”
“No need to worry about that,” I said. If we were caught, there wouldn’t be much talk. “You should feel Chimera well before the entrance, when we pass the craft boundary.”
“What if I don’t feel it?”
“Then we keep going until you do. But we might not have to go into the Pentagon at all. You might have enough range.”
“Right,” said Scherie. “What do we do when we have to go in?”
I considered my plan again, then fell into my captain’s voice. “We’ll enter, then go toward the center courtyard. I’ll take point. As soon as you can, drive Chimera out, shut it down, whatever it takes. When you’re done, say to someone near you that you forgot your case. Then turn around and get out. Grab the next train. Do not wait for me. Your exit is my cue to withdraw. If you don’t leave, we’ll be stuck.”
Flash. In the backseat, Dad and Grandpa had disappeared with their argument. Scherie put a hand on my upper arm. Simple gestures of affection had been rare the last few days. “I like your father and grandfather,” said Scherie.
“Thanks.” This pleased me, even though I didn’t always like them myself.
“When do I get to meet your mother?” she asked.
“That’s a long story.” And a doubtful one. I wouldn’t live long enough to sort it out. But that wasn’t her real question. “Why do you ask?”
“There’s something else in the air, something dreadful,” said Scherie. “I keep thinking, ‘Did I tell my parents I loved them the last time I saw them?’”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“But…”
“It’s a craft foreboding,” I said. “Stay focused on our immediate problems, and it won’t come to pass.”
The immediate problem was how to kill myself most effectively without killing her. Not that I wanted to die even at the worst of times, and particularly not after meeting Scherie. The unfairness of it pissed me off, even though I knew that life and fairness weren’t intersecting sets. But there were no good alternatives.
The problem for my life expectancy was that penetrating the Pentagon was a suicide mission, even for the greatest of powers. In January 1953, the Soviets launched a craft decapitation strike. By March, Stalin was dead. The most successful attack with a craft component was the autumn of 1967 antiwar assault, and half those practitioners ended up working for the Pentagon.
The Kremlin, 10 Downing Street, even the White House would have been easy drive-bys in comparison. No wonder that the rumors continued that something otherworldly, perhaps Lovecraftian, dwelled in the center. I knew better: the Pentagon’s power was of this world, though not all of it was living. No accident placing it so close to Arlington Cemetery.
But the defense my father had revealed was the strongest and subtlest. Probability defense went to the heart of craft. The more you attacked, the longer you stayed, the farther you penetrated, the more the odds built up against you. Eventually, you hit 100 percent fatal. Your luck literally ran out.
I would have to walk well ahead of Scherie to test the boundary of possibility. Whatever Scherie thought about her role in this mission, I had a different idea. If anything within my power could make a difference, she would survive. Like Joshua Morton, I would be one against many. Like Joshua, I must not flinch.
If I had to go into the Pentagon, I’d need some heavy artillery to draw on. Best to play my strong suit from the outset. I had one weapon that they would have difficulty opposing. Sure, Chimera had rained on my party, but I had only devoted a trivial amount of craft to the weather that night.
I rolled down
the windows to feel the wind, and started working on a small, very focused, thunderstorm.
* * *
Endicott heard the Left-Hand voices while walking from his car to the Pentagon entrance. “An Endicott. We will destroy you for what you’ve done.”
“That’s a pretty insubstantial threat, given you can’t get farther than the parking lot.” But Endicott was talking tougher than his position. Their floating oil slick form was much more substantial than the usual revenant, and the craft barrier around the Pentagon had shrunk. It hadn’t been this small since those hippies had attacked in the sixties.
“You have no idea what we’re capable of.”
Endicott couldn’t believe his shit-assed luck this week. Surely, this couldn’t be the attack they had called him back for. “What, you’re going to dress up as another Poe character? Maybe the black cat. Ooh, very scary.” He hoped his bravado masked his continued unease—for a crucial minute, their Red Death had made him yellow.
Silence. Then the unified chorus of voices broke into cacophony. “He doesn’t know—He lies—Tell him—Say nothing.”
“What don’t I know?” he asked. Silence, except for the distant sound of thunder. Well, he couldn’t stand around all day in a storm with the ghosts of ghouls. He entered the Pentagon.
He went through the building to what used to be the Ground Zero Café at the center of the Pentagon. The new place just wasn’t the same, and he didn’t appreciate the pagan image of an owl on the roof. He could reach the stairway from the exterior of the café, but instead took a break inside. He ordered coffee, and not just for appearances. The coffee was as horror-show as his mood. While the café made everyone look the other way, he passed through the secret door and descended the winding stone staircase to H-ring. There was a private elevator, but it was out again, of course. Machines were easier to mess up than the granite stairs. The eighth circle of the Pentagon eschewed concrete for slabs of solid rock.
Endicott reported directly to the general’s office. The screens were more frenetic than during Endicott’s last visit. One screen displayed casualty reports. The general was addressing his speakerphone. “Tell OTM I want a test of the autodestruct, ASAP.” He killed the connection.
