Night fell and Aegis took Rachek to the upper floors, to his own Ministerial office, and onto the balcony. They looked at the stars. Haven was the only city in the world where the stars shone sharp and clear at night, just like in the wasteland.
Her eyes to the stars, Rachek felt her heart swell, full to the brim with love for this land and then set overflowing with the events of the day. Aegis placed his hand lightly on hers and turned his face to her. Stars reflected in the giant eyes of the most powerful man in Haven, twinkling promises from the dark emptiness.
He led her back into his office. The lights were dim, the red carpet dulled to crimson, warm, like some coagulating passion hardened to a scab of lust. Aegis led her to a couch.
“Hundreds of great men have parked their behinds here,” he said, nodding to it. Just as she glanced at it, he leaned forward, darted his hands out and laid them on her waist. He kissed the side of her face awkwardly. Before she had the chance to give in and go along with it, he stuck his tongue in her mouth and wiggled it around. Her dress was form-fitting silk and his hands pushed around her plump waist, then down to her butt, his hands two bony mice hungry for the trap.
He pushed her down onto the couch and straddled her. With a few practiced movements he yanked off his tie, jacket, and shirt. He looked her in the face, fully prepared to tell her with one Executive Glare just what was going to happen to her. He was shocked to the core to see her staring back, eyes wide, mouth spread in a feral grin. He was more used to mouths hung open, slack, eyes closed and eyebrows turned down in sensual resignation. But this one - her skin glowed like molten bronze, her earth-brown hair fell loose like nature unfolding. He paused, unsure of the script. Suddenly she slapped his sides, grabbed a handful of meat on each end, pulled herself up and licked the loose folds of skin around his wrinkled torso.
He pushed her dress down around her midsection and felt her breasts near his crotch. He thought of all the degrading acts he had done to others before, even on this very couch, but could think of no real way to get back on the script - then she pushed him roughly and unzipped her dress with intimidating ease. She was not at all like the skinny girls he’d wowed and powed with his Executive Power. She was plump - borderline fat! - and the meat on her brown thighs shook as she wrestled with him and jerked his pants down around his ankles.
As she turned and leaned over the side of the couch, she grabbed his wrist and pulled him onto her.
“Come on, come on!” she growled, and he slid into her from behind.
“Uh!” stammered Aegis. “U-u-uh!”
Not moving to her liking, she arched her back, held his sides, then pulled and grinded into him. Her hair shook and her ass bounced wildly as she forced him into her, over and over, so hard that his glasses ratcheted up and down, smacking him in the face before they flopped off entirely, exposing his beady eyes scrunched up in ecstatic confusion.
She would not slow down, only sped up and even began growling like an animal. He felt himself losing control, about to blow. “P-perhaps we sh-should try... uh!... a more... hef!... a position less... ah!”
“Shut up!” she screamed.
He cried out, burst inside her, then pushed both his hands against her ass in order to break free. He flopped backwards, gasping for air. He saw her curl into a ball, one hand between her legs working fiercely. Soon she twitched, bit into the couch, slowed her hand, and her breath came in long, deep groans.
* * *
Wodan woke and found himself stumbling about in a dark world. He approached a light ahead. He stumbled over a shelf, caught his foot, tripped. Something white on the ground, a liquid spreading around his hand. There was no sound. He choked and coughed painfully, ribs burning, too much dust in the air. Nutrimilk cartons broken all around him, pouring out. Saw a man walk by him, staring ahead, blood running down both nostrils. Wodan stood up, felt dizzy, then sat down in the milk.
He dimly made out the sound of voices, some kind of alarm.
He remembered a grenade going off in the wasteland... remembered being on a mountainside, hiding in a crevice while grenades went off below. Where was he? Were the Ugly here? He tried to piece it all together. This was worse than any grenade... an explosion, that was what had happened. He was in his father’s grocery store. An explosion!
He focused and saw that the light was coming from the stone hall outside. The store seemed to be in ruins, food and boxes everywhere, shelves lying flat or tilted over on one another. Cracks in the far wall. Wodan remembered his father, then pushed himself up. Felt nausea and terrible dizziness. Forced himself to walk, kept veering to the right, legs refusing to obey.
He went into the brightly-lit stone hall. People were running about, eyes wide, gathering somewhere. Wodan saw his father sitting on the ground, dazed, his comb-over hanging over the side of his head. Someone stood over him, a hand on his shoulder. Wodan tried to run, then collapsed onto his knees before his father.
Walter turned to him slowly, said, “Wodi? What you doin’ here?”
He seemed to be speaking through layers of gauze. “WHAT?” shouted Wodan.
“You stopped by to visit,” said Walter, nodding. “Someone was trying to steal something... I yelled at him... then...”
Wodan leaned forward, touched his father, yelled, “ARE YOU OKAY?”
Walter nodded dumbly.
“WHY WOULD SOMEONE BLOW UP OUR STORE?”
The other man spoke to Wodan. Walter pointed. Wodan turned and looked.
He saw a long column of devastation. Kyner’s had suffered little compared to other shops. The epicenter of the blast was a great mass of fallen granite, purple and gray, a giant corpse. People climbed atop the rubble, shouting.
“Pelmer’s,” said Walter. Wodan could hear him, but also a great ringing was building in his head. “Somebody went an’ blew up Pelmer’s.” His eyes went wide. “Wodi! Wodi! Your mother was in Pelmer’s!”
Wodan remembered in a flash. He leaped to his feet, his movements sure. He ran by rows of blackened stores, each filled with dark, drifting mist, dull movement inside. Saw the rubble ahead, saw that the weight of the entire earth had crashed through the vacuum where Pelmer’s had been. Nothing could survive that. Not a blast like that. Not a cave-in like that. No survival possible.
Wodan jumped onto a great block, then leaped from it onto the loose rubble. Horrible aching, the knowledge too terrible, eyes clouding, he lifted rocks, threw them to the side, then someone shouted near him because he was nearly hit. Wodan bent, dug his hands into a huge stone, channeled the unnameable horror grinding in his chest, lifted the thing, threw it to the side, and heard it crack below him. He heard someone at his side shouting, “YOU! YOU! YOU!” and when the man grabbed his shoulder roughly, Wodan pushed him without looking at him and heard the man tumble down below.
Wodan glanced to the side and saw an entire hill of rubble above him. He was only on the periphery. There was no way he could clear it out, not even a fraction of it.
He realized a siren had been going off near him. Strong hands grabbed him from behind and threw him. His shoulder and back hit the ground, hard, but he spun and was immediately on his feet; he felt nothing except for the horror of the unnameable thought. He saw Guardians moving on top of the rubble, and saw the flashing lights of their cruisers. He glared at the one who had thrown him. The man Wodan had pushed earlier shouted at the Guardian, “That’s him! That’s the boy who set the bomb! I saw him! He was running, others saw him, that’s him!”
The Guardian was on him and, without thinking, Wodan pushed at him. The Guardian was twice his size, but stumbled back and nearly fell. Wodan ran to the rubble, then felt his foot catch as a gloved hand grasped it. He fell. The Guardian climbed on top of him, cold armor biting into his back, strong hands holding his arms, a knee digging into his back, the weight crushing his spine. Wodan screamed in pure frustration, a terrible ache that promised to shatter his own ribs.
“Son of a bitch!” he heard the Guardian growl. “P
sycho’s gotta come back to the scene, huh? Gotta see what you done, huh? Son of a bitch, I swear!”
“Get offa him!” said a woman’s voice, firm and commanding.
“He’s resisting arrest, ma’am!” said the Guardian. “Get back!”
“My son did no such thing!” hissed the voice.
Wodan yanked his head around, saw his mother, her face drenched in blood, hair slick and black. “Mama!” he screamed, wriggling with new intensity. As the Guardian gripped his hair, he yanked his head free and smacked it into the ground.
“Well now ma’am!” yelled the Guardian, struggling.
“My boy was helping clear the rubble just a second ago, didn’t you see any of that? And what have you done to help, except get in the way?” Wodan had never heard her voice filled with such fury.
“Suspects... I have to… detainment...” stammered the Guardian.
A Guardian standing in the rubble, stripped down to his waist, called down to them, said, “The fuck you doing down there?” Other Guardians had already formed a line and were passing rubble down to one another.
“Uh, had a suspect... I mean...” said the first Guardian.
“Fucking get over here and help out!” shouted the commanding Guardian.
The first Guardian rose and hopped away from Wodan.
Before Wodan could rise, his mother embraced him. They were both sobbing uncontrollably, the blood on her face sticking to his cheek. How horrible it was to know that she could have been taken from him so easily, and like a dream to have her given back to him.
* * *
Wodan went home with his father while his mother went to the hospital. She had already left Pelmer’s and was far from the blast, but a piece of stone had struck her in the head. She was treating others less injured than she was long before any Guardians or medics arrived. Not only that, but she had seen the skinny, brown-haired boy who had run from Pelmer’s just before the blast. Many had seen him and were being questioned at the blast site and at the hospital. The same boy had been seen at the nearest train station, cackling madly. A picture from compiled testimony was being drawn up.
Wodan collapsed in his bed. He listened to his father moving about in the next room. There were wild thoughts with little to focus on. He looked at the clock. It was past midnight; his birthday. He fell asleep with Tomkins sitting on his chest, kneading his heart.
* * *
Sevrik stood outside Didi’s mansion, sun pink on the horizon, white cloak whipping about in the wind and snow. Yarek stood at his side, heavy black cloak hanging limp, hood drawn. His eyes pierced the two shorter Guardians standing at the door.
Sevrik stepped forward, said, “I, Sevrik Clash, Head of Guard, formally present myself to visit Didi under house arrest.”
One Guardian coughed slightly, said, “Sir, uh... you were not, uh... selected. That is, uh, to visit... the detainee...”
“Quite an awkward situation,” said Sevrik, “to deny your superior.”
Yarek stepped forward. The two Guardians shrank within themselves.
“Don’t worry,” said Sevrik, pushing out a great smile. “I’m not going to compromise your duties!”
The two Guardians laughed politely, loud and awkward.
Sevrik turned away from them. His smile melted immediately, face molded in frustration. “Come to the DoR with me, son,” he said. “If you want.” He walked on.
Yarek stood before the two Guardians, huge and immobile, glaring darkly.
* * *
Seven Months Ago
“So if we compare the stories of Agamemno with Machina, what comes out?” Professor Korliss Matri walked among the students, throwing his eyes about. “What jumps out immediately?”
Saul Hargis cleared his throat, said, “In Machina, the writer was obsessed with showing cause and effect. All the variations on the Agamemno story are about subverting that, about making a wish and having it come true.” Saul leaned back and scratched his chin thoughtfully. A young black-headed girl across the room tingled with delight to hear his voice.
“True,” said Professor Matri. “But you could’ve gotten that just by knowing the title of this course. Did you even do the reading?”
“Of course!”
Laughter.
“Okay, that’s all true. But what about the protagonists, the results they got. Did the hero of Machina really accomplish anything?”
Silence.
Saul spoke up again. “At least Agamemno got the girl. For a while. And he defeated his rival, too. The hero of Machina was constrained by his own understanding of cause-and-effect. He had to act in a realistic manner, because he knew there was only so much that one man could do. In terms of working in reality.”
Luumis Lamsang stabbed Saul with his eyes, then stared at the black-haired girl. How in the world to get her mind off that know-it-all...?
“Constrained by reality,” said Professor Matri. “ ‘Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.’ ”
“Yeah,” said Saul, nodding. “But Agamemno, in cheating reality, in having his wish fulfilled, paid a price, lost the girl, lost himself, lost everything. Guess nature has a way of balancing itself out.”
“But what does that have to say about the role of a hero? How does he know when he can and can’t hero-it-up?”
He always did this, Luumis thought, shaking his head. He always ran his mouth and the class just ended up being between those two. And the dumb bitch right beside him couldn’t get enough of it!
Blood pounded in him and, before he could stop himself, Luumis said, “But at least Agamemno did something - did something great. He didn’t just wander around worryin’ that if he touched somethin’, it might go wrong ten steps down the road. He did something.”
There was a terrible silence. Luumis could see that the girl beside him was annoyed.
“Isn’t that like the superman? Like what you told us?” said Luumis, quietly.
* * *
By the time Wodan woke up the next day, the first day of his twenty-first year, Luumis Lamsang was the only subject of the news. He’d been identified by numerous eyewitnesses in the laborer’s sector and on the train, and his train ticket had been bought with a student account card. Questioning of roommates revealed that he was absent that night and that he had been fascinated with terrorism. Sifting through fingerprints at the train station matched those in his room. There were stories about his upbringing, an unknown father, a mother who died of Neural Carbon Accretion, a disease that drove its victim mad before it killed them. Questioning of distant relatives gave a snapshot of a withdrawn childhood, unhappy times spent in school, and even a possible use of violent video games. The death toll was already in the high teens, and it was believed that there were more victims deep in the rubble. The boy was now a fugitive.
Wodan threw his black cloak about his shoulders and trudged through the snow to the Guardian training grounds.
Rudy Seaver. Cyrus Jebediah. Seven exiles.
He clutched his mother’s audio recorder in his pocket. Just like Girardo, Mama, he thought as he entered a visitor’s welcome center.
Guardians in white suits tickled keyboards and chatted on telephones. A man at a desk near the entrance nodded at Wodan, said, “Welcome. What can I do f’you?”
“I need to make an appointment with Sevrik Clash,” said Wodan, standing before the desk. The man’s demeanor shifted immediately. He grunted a noncommittal note.
“It’s very important that I speak with him,” said Wodan.
“Why’s that?” said the Guardian secretary, his tone flat.
“I need to ask him some questions.”
“Well, believe it or not, the Head of Guard is a fairly busy man.”
“I’m Wodan Kyner, the exile. Sevrik killed men to save me.”
“Yeah, well, that might be true, but it doesn’t mean...”
“Can I at least make an appointment?”
“Suuuuure...” said the Guardian secretary. He began writing on a p
iece of paper. Wodan waited. More scribbling. Wodan turned his head slightly and looked at the paper. He could just barely make out a W, the word Clash nearly given up halfway through, a question mark, then a series of loopy X’s. Wodan glanced at the man, who moved to cover the paper. Wodan turned suddenly and left the visitor’s center, grinding his teeth.
* * *
Today, Aegis went crazy. He told me he loved me, but when I didn’t say anything, he got on his knees and begged me to love him forever. I didn’t know what to do. He kept going on about showing his real self to me. He kept saying he could do things for me, that he could make any problem disappear. It was really scary. I think it was a mistake to go as far as I did with him. What am I supposed to do about this?
- from Rachek’s Red Diary
* * *
Sevrik stalked through the stone halls of the Department of Science. Scientists and junior scientists turned away when they saw him or avoided him entirely. He went down deep and, on a whim, stopped by the Makers of Mothers. The hallway was darkened, with stone walls of dark gray. The scientists wore black and had strange darkvision glasses that covered much of their faces. These were trusted men who held in their hands the future, the unborn. These men cast their face toward Sevrik, their jaws tightened, their eyes unreadable. Sevrik understood why they treated him this way; the fact that Didi had done the unthinkable, had possibly tampered with an unborn, did not override the fact that Sevrik had arrested one of their own, a leader that they respected and admired.
There was talk among politicians and among high-ranking Guardians about disbanding the Makers entirely. Pharaoh’s Curse, the disease passed from mother to child that killed the young shortly after birth, and which had nearly crippled the first few generations of Havenders, had itself most likely been wiped out. It could not pass to a child if it spent the first few weeks of life outside of its mother and within the safety of the mechanical wombs kept by the Makers. No evidence of the disease had been found within the past few generations; it may have gone the way of the wolf and the pig. In light of Didi’s arrest over an act of biological blasphemy, the Makers might be forced into extinction as well.
Demonworld Book 2: The Pig Devils Page 14
