by Nana Malone
Chemosh had his first test subject.
“Don’t be afraid,” Chemosh projected comforting images into the girl's mind as he jabbed a needle into her arm and pushed down the plunger of the sedative. The girl's eyes slid shut.
“What will we do, Sire?” Chemosh’s second-in-command, Abid Hahmed Mahmud asked. “She’s too young to bear children.”
Chemosh reached for his scalpel, thankful for his foresight to assign a lesser Agent hungry for his own place in Moloch’s hierarchy to act as Presidential Secretary to the Agent who’d seized Saddam Hussein as a host. Like most who followed Moloch, Mahmud was loyal first and foremost to himself. But self-interest was easily manipulated.
“We’ll artificially stimulate the ovaries to produce eggs early and harvest them each month,” Chemosh sliced through the child’s lower abdomen. “The normal human female produces 20 egg follicles each month, but usually only one matures enough to be released. With this, we can force her ovaries to mature and release all 20 eggs and artificially inseminate them for implantation into mature human incubators.”
With a practiced hand, Chemosh implanted a microcomputer and a series of tiny injection and harvesting machines into the child’s abdominal cavity.
“Won’t that cause medical problems for the child, Sire?” Mahmud asked.
“What does it matter?” Chemosh said with a shrug. “We’ll use her until we find a more promising option. Once we’re done with her, she’ll make a nice snack.”
“What about Saddam Hussein?” Mahmud asked.
Chemosh silently finished wiring up the harvesting equipment and stitched the girl's abdomen back up. Only the scar and tiny collection machine protruding out of the girl’s belly button gave any indication she possessed technology no Earth fertility clinic had ever dreamed of.
“That idiot American president has an Oedipus complex about his daddy's unfinished war,” Chemosh said at last. “He’s been blustering about coming after our dear friend, Saddam Hussein. Why don’t you send him a little gift?”
“What kind of gift?” Mahmud asked.
“Why … weapons of mass destruction … of course,” Chemosh said pleasantly. “I’m sure you can cook up the appropriate doctored evidence to get the neocons to invade this petty kingdom and keep our upstart Agent too busy to throw a monkey wrench into Moloch’s plans. It will divert resources away from the real battle our brother Bin Laden wages in Afghanistan.”
“I have just the evidence to get the do-nothing government keeping the American president on a leash off their asses to invade,” Mahmud said with a bow. “Would materials to produce 500 tons of Sarin, mustard gas, and VX nerve agents do the trick?”
“Perfect,” Chemosh said.
* * * * *
Chapter 36
Our fear of death
Is like our fear that summer will be short,
But when we have had our swing of pleasure,
Our fill of fruit,
And our swelter of heat,
We say we have had our day
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Earth - AD February, 2003
Baghram AFB, Afghanistan
The hair stood up on the back of Elisabeth's neck.
“Go!” Kadima gave her a knowing smile. “I’ll finish up here.”
Elisabeth smiled down at the young man who’d come to the infirmary complaining of stomach pain and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Eighteen. First tour of duty. Arrived in Afghanistan three weeks ago. Baptized by fire clearing Taliban from caves in the Adhi Ghar mountain range during Operation Mongoose. And now … cut down at the knees by an Afghani chicken. Roast chicken, that is…
“There’s a reason why they tell you not to eat street-vendor food,” Elisabeth said. “The stool culture came back positive. Textbook salmonella. We’ll notify your C.O. you’re out of commission for the next few days.”
The Private nodded and clutched his stomach, ready to puke the contents of his now-empty gut into the bucket nurse Mary held for that purpose.
“Go!” Kadima glanced towards the shadow in the corner. “There’s nothing going on here we can’t handle.”
“You’ll be fine,” Elisabeth reassured the young soldier. She casually scrubbed out and grabbed her coat. She did not acknowledge his presence, but knew he followed as she made her way to the first checkpoint.
“Yer not be going out and about alone, me hopes, Lieutenant Kaiser?” a British soldier asked in a lilting north-English accent that was more akin to a Scottish brogue as she passed through the first checkpoint.
“I’m not going past the second checkpoint,” Elisabeth reassured him by reaching into her pocket and pulling out his calling card. “And I’m not alone.”
“Ay … very good, miss,” the soldier gave her a grin. “Yer just be careful, all right? Don’t wanna be hunting down no missing nurses in none of them gullies.”
A legend had grown up around her. Elisabeth. The nurse who could defeat Death. In the past month, three more groups of Taliban had mysteriously appeared, dead, when so-called ‘local informants’ led Coalition forces into remote areas where there were rumors of Taliban feeding supplies over the border from Pakistan. The details were kept tightly under wraps, but at each site the bodies were without a mark to indicate how they had died except for the ace-of-spades neatly tucked into the neckline of their shirts.
Elisabeth found her way to a semi-secluded spot, little more than a flat rock overlooking a bit of a gully out of sight of the main area of the base, and sat down, placing her cane next to her with a satisfied sigh. Barren rock. Unless it was irrigated, Afghanistan was little more than rock.
“You can come out, now.”
Azrael solidified behind her. “Hello, Elisabeth.”
“Come … sit with me,” Elisabeth patted the rock next to her. She needed to coax the reclusive angel to get close enough to even hold a conversation. He wasn’t antisocial. Just … shy.
“It’s too small.” Azrael moved to the rock she indicated, but did not sit down. “I don’t want to bump against you.”
“I’m not going to leap at you,” Elisabeth said. “I trust you’re not going to thwack me with one of those big chicken-wings of yours.”
Azrael’s stern countenance softened into a boyish smile so sweet and innocent it almost took her breath away. Chicken wings. It was a sign of the easy rapport which had begun to develop between them now that she understood who he was and why he watched her.
“I’ll be careful.” Azrael sat as far away as he could while still having his posterior planted on the same boulder. He carefully arranged his glossy black wings facing away from her so an inadvertent flap wouldn’t brush against her and kill her.
“How go the wars in heaven?” Elisabeth asked.
“Same old same old,” Azrael said. The boyish look disappeared. “Not well. We made a mistake assuming events in different nations were isolated incidents. We weren’t expecting your level of technology or economic interconnectedness to jump the way it did the past twenty years.”
“I still don’t understand the prohibition against giving us technology!” Elisabeth groused. “Think of how many lives I could save? We’re saving lives here that Nancy couldn’t have dreamed of only five years ago.”
“Moloch’s signature was always easy to identify because he favors advanced technology,” Azrael said. “He’s always had the best and brightest new toys. If we found advanced technology, we could track it back to him.”
“Had?” Elisabeth asked. “Past tense?”
“He’s changed tactics,” Azrael said. “He’s learned to hide in plain sight by giving others the advanced technology and quietly manipulating things behind the scenes. It’s like trying to spot somebody using sign language in a crowd full of people using bullhorns.”
“So he’s like a hacker or something?"
“I think so.” Azrael's expression softened and a wistful look appeared on his face. “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been able to tou
ch a piece of electronic equipment for over 2,300 years.”
Elisabeth stared down into the gully. The wind cut into the tiny openings in her coat and made her shiver. She should have brought her hat, but some odd impulse had made her leave it behind. She was no Abercrombie wannabe, wishing she was thin and cool enough to step foot into one of their stores without being lambasted by some tone-deaf CEO about only popular kids being welcome to shop there, but lately she wished she could dress a little nicer. Her choices were olive green. Olive drab. Khaki green. Khaki beige. Khaki drab. Black. And taupe. With a good measure of … you guessed it … army green if she had an excuse to wear her dress uniform. Even her hair had to be kept neatly tied back in a regulation army bun.
She noticed the way Azrael’s interest became even more intense whenever she allowed her hair to cascade down her back. She liked the fact he noticed. Could Kadima be right? Did her ebony friend have an interest in her that was more than mere scientific curiosity?
“I’m cold,” she said. Her excuse. She reached back and pulled her hair from the elastic, watching through veiled eyelashes the way his nostrils flared and chest rose as he inhaled the scent of her shampoo as she shook loose her locks. For ten years he had watched her. Now it was her turn to watch him.
“What was it like?” Elisabeth asked softly. “Learning to re-hold your physical form after your accident?”
Little by little, Azrael had revealed how he’d ended up in the predicament he was in now. The young friend he’d tried to save. Being shunned, even by his own kind, because he was a creature of the void. His loneliness at never being able to touch a living thing without killing it, not even a blade of grass.
“Time consuming,” Azrael bent to pick up a rock and tossed it into the gully below. “It took me nearly a thousand years to hold a form you might even recognize as humanoid, and another thousand to reshape my original appearance enough that people didn’t run screaming in terror whenever they saw me.”
Elisabeth stared off into the February sun, closing her eyes and absorbing the weak sunlight as it warmed her skin. Needing a long time to recover from an accident was something she could understand.
“Rehabilitation,” Elisabeth remembered what it had been like. “They said I would never walk again. But I did. Did you know I used to imagine you came to watch over me those first two years to help me learn to walk again?”
“I did,” Azrael said. “I held my breath and prayed each painful step you took. You have no idea how much it hurt watching you fall and not being able to catch you.”
“I knew you were there,” Elisabeth said. “And I hated you. I hated you because I couldn’t understand why you would come every day and then let me fall. I wish you had said something. Made me understand you didn’t catch me because you couldn’t. It would have made things easier.”
“It‘s forbidden,” Azrael picked up another rock. This time, instead of throwing it into the ditch, he simply crushed it in his hand until it dissolved into black nothingness and disappeared. “But I wish I’d disobeyed. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“You’re not the one who hurt me,” Elisabeth said. “A drunk driver hurt me. Why didn’t you throw him into hell?”
“It’s not my place to interfere in the affairs of mortals.” Azrael's wings involuntarily twitched in anger. He hastily got his emotions back under control and aimed the traitorous appendages as far away from her as he could, tucking them behind the rock at an angle that had to be uncomfortable. “But know that I wanted to. Even before I knew you! I’m not brave like my Archangel cousins, but even –I- loathe that kind of cowardice!”
Elisabeth felt the peculiar shudder of the rock beneath her. She glanced down. Earthquake? She noticed the way Azrael closed his eyes and breathed as he forced himself to relax. Not an earthquake. He said it required concentration to not dissolve whatever chair he sat down upon. His dark gift must be tied to his emotions.
“You threw yourself into a fiery pit to save a friend,” Elisabeth said. “Even though you knew you had little chance of surviving. That sounds pretty brave to me.”
“I …”
His words trailed off as he stared, not at the barren mountains, but events in a past so distant Elisabeth could hardly fathom it. Whenever she asked him about his young friend, he didn’t want to talk about it. She could tell he still grieved her loss even after all these years. She was learning that, to get him to talk about himself, she needed to tie it to something about her.
“I felt like a freak,” Elisabeth changed the subject back to her own rehabilitation. “All of a sudden everyone I ever cared about was gone, and the people who’d been connected to them just didn’t know what to say. They avoided me like the plague because … well … I’m not sure why.”
“People don’t like to acknowledge bad things can happen to them,” Azrael said. “I see it all the time in my work. People like Kadima. They survive. But when they tell their story, people don’t want to hear it. They marginalize the victim. Blame them …even. It’s why I like to check in on people I ask to bear witness.”
“We don’t make it easy for people to come forward and rub our noses in reality,” Elisabeth sighed. “Everybody wants to live in their own perfect little world. Nobody wants to be reminded that death is around every corner. I mean …”
Azrael smiled at her slip-of-tongue.
“You know what I mean!” Elisabeth said, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t mean you!”
“I’m just one person,” Azrael threw his hands up into the air in a ‘who me?’ shrug. “I get blamed for a lot of things that I’m not there to do.”
“Kind of like Santa Claus,” Elisabeth laughed. “You even have a naughty list!”
Azrael reached to the pocket of his cloak and pulled out his latest scientific journal. He turned so she couldn’t see as he rifled through the pages, and then flipped it open to a page full of tally marks. Doodled into one corner was scratched a remarkably good picture of an Afghani elder scolding a goat.
Elisabeth burst out laughing.
“The goat kept getting out of his enclosure and into his wife’s garden,” Azrael said. “The old man couldn’t figure out how the goat got out of the pen because the fence was solid and the gate was always closed. The goat figured out how to jiggle the lock on the gate and open it. Because it was built out-of-plumb, gravity would make the gate shut behind him and the latch would automatically fall shut.”
“And you let the poor man rip out his hair instead of just telling him what was happening?” Elisabeth asked in a mock accusatory voice.
“Shouldn’t I have?” Azrael looked crushed as he misconstrued her teasing for displeasure.
“I’m sorry,” Elisabeth said. “I was only teasing. How did you manage to not reveal yourself laughing your tailfeathers off as you watched?”
“He figured it out eventually,” Azrael glanced at the book. “He hid around the corner of his house and watched how the goat kept getting out. He fixed the gate after that.”
“And what did you learn from that little scientific study?” Elisabeth asked.
“It just reaffirmed what I already knew,” Azrael said. “Your species capacity to find a way around problems is on par with some of the most advanced species in the universe. Only the ease with which your emotions can be incited to undermine your own self-interest holds you back.”
Elisabeth looked down at the ground.
“That’s what I used to tell Tommy,” she mumbled. “We’re raised to believe we want the alpha-male, and then when you get him, you realize he’s a mess.”
She glanced up to see the expression of jealousy dance across Azrael’s face before being neatly tucked away behind a blank expression.
“Why did you choose him for a mate?” Azrael's voice was strained. “And then leave him?”
“I dunno,” Elisabeth shrugged. “I was lonely, I guess. Everybody said I should be flattered the best-looking kid in school had a thing for me and … well … prom night. I was b
eginning to feel like a freak being the only … well … you know. I guess I just gave in. Didn’t you ever have a girlfriend or anything that didn’t work out? I mean … before … um …”
“No,” Azrael said curtly. “Our species takes one mate. For life.”
“One mate?” Elisabeth noticed the stiffness in his posture. “For life? That’s … pretty romantic.”
“That’s the way it should be!” Azrael scolded. “Much misery in your world could be avoided if people took their interpersonal relationships more seriously.”
“I wish it were that way down here,” Elisabeth looked into his bottomless, black eyes that swirled with an even deeper darkness. Hurt? Had she hurt him, her immortal watcher, when she’d succumbed to her loneliness?
Elisabeth was a realist. Sex was … well … sex. You did it to scratch an itch. Or at least that was what she’d told herself after discovering Tommy had the sexual prowess of a grunting boar. Every time Tommy had fucked her, instead of seeing him, all could she imagine was the distraught look in her dark watcher's eyes the day he’d jumped in front of a bullet to save her.
It was what had finally made her break things off…
Azrael … on the other hand? Elisabeth knew he’d be a sensitive and attentive lover. One mate. For life. What would it be like? To touch a man who’d never known intimate touch? To feel his form quiver beneath her fingers the way he sometimes did simply because she got close? Like now? He was already obsessed with the fact she’d once touched him and survived. How would he react if she bent across the rock and kissed him?
“Tell me about the Regent,” Elisabeth changed the subject. “You said she is like you?”
“She was once human.” The shadow of jealousy disappeared as he discussed one of his favorite people. “Your species periodically spits out an evolutionary leap that far surpasses anything in the universe. Like the Regent. She’s the only person who can touch me without fearing death.”
