by James Kahn
Josh had prepared himself for the excruciating pain he’d experienced when Bal had bitten him. But it was not so. Lon’s bite was searing, yet exquisite: Josh felt weakened as his blood was sucked by the other; but somehow, transcendent at the same time. He felt drained, and nourished; taken from, given to. In some way the ambiguities frightened him more than the simple pain could ever have done. He laid his trembling hand on the back of Lon’s head. He pulled the fangs in deeper.
Lon withdrew, with tortured ambivalence. Somewhat restored, he rewrapped the bandages around Joshua’s neck to stop the freshly bleeding laceration.
Joshua’s legs wobbled, Lon steadied him. Their eyes met.
For a moment all the lights in the city flashed on again, flickered, then extinguished once more. Dangling wires sparked briefly, where Lon had cut them, all around. The two comrades stood stranded on the wall, leaning on each other for support. Twice more in the next minute the power came on, then went out again. In the glare of the last burst, Josh pointed across the city: what appeared to be a Vampire sentry was flying the tall perimeter, scouting for invaders.
“He’ll be here in under a minute,” said Lon wearily.
Without enthusiasm, Josh reached for his weapons. He knew neither he nor Lon had any stamina for a fight; he doubted if Lon could fly. Even more glumly, he discovered he had nothing left but the needle and syringe set. He searched his pockets and belt in vain—no knives, no scalpels. In his boot, however, he found he still had one Scribe-tube left. He pulled it out and feverishly began unscrewing the top. The city lights flashed on and off again. The sentry was flying closer.
Lon, meanwhile, had picked up a twenty-foot section of unattached wire that he’d earlier cut free and draped over the wall. He was becoming weaker by the moment; every effort seemed to tax him. He now tied one end of the wire around the phalangeal tip of his furled right wing; pulled the wire across the back of the wing, looped it around two bony struts that jutted up midway; then pulled the wire tightly across his back, wrapping it under his arm and around his chest: the wire acted as an external extensor tendon, pulling the whig out to its full fifteen-foot spread, locking it in that position as he secured the wire around his chest. The manipulations left him completely winded; yet he forced himself to continue, finding another length of loose wire, attaching it in the same way to his other wing.
The sentry turned the comer in the distance, began flying toward Josh and Lon. Suddenly, the city lights came on again; and stayed on. Once more, the free ends of the cut wires began sparking all around. The sentry saw the two figures on the-wall, and began flying faster.
Josh saw the Vampire increase his air speed, and knew they’d been spotted. Urgently, he unscrewed the other end of the Scribe-tube, removed all the handwritten documents he’d concealed, stuffed them into his belt. Next, he pulled the needle off the syringe, pulled out the plastic plunger, and pushed the needle through the end of the plunger until it stuck forward out the tip like a nasty steel dart. Finally, he put the whole needle assemblage into the Scribe-tube—now open at both ends—and brought the Scribe-tube to his mouth.
The Vampire sentry was flying at high speed now, almost on them. Josh blew with all his strength, sending the makeshift spike into the oncoming assailant’s face. It struck him just below the eye: he broke stride, lost his balance, brought hand to face, and tipped his wing; and in tipping, came in contact with the electrified wire mesh over the wall.
With a great crackle and screech, the Vampire fell inextricably into the high-tension grid: smoking flesh, white blinding sparks. From their perch on the stone barely ten feet away, Lon and Josh watched the grisly spectacle.
“They’ll all know we’re here in a moment,” said Lon. “We must go now.”
Josh turned and looked at him now for the first time: his wings were pulled straight out by wire rigging, taut, to their full thirty-foot span; his black hair blew wildly across the full moon that hung above and far behind his shoulder; blood flowed black down his torn arm and belly; his skin looked hard as stone, his eyes dark as time. His knees began to buckle, but wires propped them as well, it appeared. Josh ran up to him.
“Do not tarry, I beseech you,” whispered Lon with maximum effort. “Climb upon my back. Pull the right wire to go left, the left to go right.” He fixed his eyes on the distance.
Josh went immediately behind his sulking Vampire comrade. Off to the side, the sentry’s body continued to burn and jump on the wires. Josh put his arms over Lon’s broad shoulders, jumped on his back, and started to ask, “How do we …” But his weight was enough to tip Lon forward over the wall; and with an exhilarating shock, he realized they were gliding silently into the night.
They kept level for a long time, rising a bit on up-drafts, settling again with distance. The noisy hubbub of the city receded quickly, leaving them soon to their own thoughts in the night’s black beauty. Josh straddled Lon’s back, full of love and fear, peering out over the land like a child-king carried by his tutor, and wondered, briefly, if this were what Dicey had felt with Bal. The world was too strange to understand.
The desert appeared below them after a while, for they’d been heading generally southeast.
“Don’t we want to go back north, to follow the river into the jungle?” Josh yelled into Lon’s ear over the drone of the rushing wind. No answer came. Josh yelled again, was again met with silence. With hollow fear, he pulled on the wire that criss-crossed the back on Lon’s right wing: the wing elevated slightly, and together they banked slowly off to the left. When they were aimed northeast Josh let up on the wire, and they leveled off again. He put his face down into the back of Lon’s head; and wept.
Gradually they lost altitude, over what period of time Josh could not say. At a totally unexpected moment, though, with a large jolt, they skidded, on Lon’s belly, across a flat grassy expanse, coming, finally, to a crunching, bouncing stop. Josh was thrown free.
He got up immediately and ran back to his friend. Lon lay motionless, prone, wings and legs tied out with wire. Dead. Sometime during the flight, Josh hoped. For a silent time he knelt beside his fallen comrade.
In the distance, to the west, Josh could hear occasional fragments of shouting carried from the castle on the rising wind blowing east off the ocean. He knew he should go quickly; but his strength was spent, along with much of his blood and most of his spirit. Dicey dead, and now Lon. Life seemed very hollow.
With little heart he began walking northeast. After less than a minute, he heard the gentle sigh of running water. Thirty seconds later he stood at the river’s edge. Like time, it made its stately flow, unperturbed by the million fish that prowled its depths. A living thing, this river. After all was said and done, life did go on.
And so must his, Josh resolved. Rose was alive, and Ollie, and Beauty and Jasmine. And Josh.
Far to the west, unseen flames lent the horizon a dull orange glow. Josh turned east and began walking. Exhausted as he was, though, he knew he wouldn’t likely last a mile. He stopped, considered. The west wind blew his hair.
Resolutely he walked back to Lon’s sprawled body. With great care he pulled up on one wing, lifting it high, stood underside Lon’s belly and tipped the spread-eagled corpse over on its back. Then in a series of debilitating fits and starts, he dragged it by the hair to the river bank. There he sat a few minutes, regaining his strength, fighting dizziness, trying to keep a hold on consciousness.
When he felt he could move without fainting, he dragged Lon’s legs into the water. Next, he unwired one whig, lifted it erect—perpendicular to Lon’s body—and rewired it in that position, sticking straight into the air. Then with a powerful sadness, he brought his mouth down on Lon’s and blew into it as much breath as he could, filling the dead Vampire’s lungs with air. Before any air could escape, Josh filled Lon’s mouth and nostrils with mud from the shore. Finally he sat on Lon’s great chest, and pushed off into the river.
Lon’s undisturbed wing spread flat across th
e water like a paper pontoon: his air-expanded chest buoyed his body, and supported Joshua atop it.
The current ran west, but the strong wind to the east caught the sail of Lon’s upright wing, billowed it full, and carried them, with sorrowful grace, up the river.
He reached the edge of Rain Forest as the sun was rising, and steered the proud dead body in to shore. Once there, he unwired the wings, folded them in, weighted the carcass with stones and set it adrift. It floated out to midstream, turning, slowly sinking in the westerly flow. Josh watched until he could see it no more, then set off into the jungle.
He was almost immediately greeted by Jasmine, who’d been lying patiently in wait. They exchanged hurried, affectionate greetings, and Josh was briefly tearful. Jasmine led him a mile farther in, to a secluded spot where the others fitfully slept or anxiously waited up. Beauty, Rose, Ollie, Humbelly, and all the orphans of the harem crowded around, but there was no time for reunion.
Jasmine led them all, in semi-forced march, through another half-day of jungle hardship, to a place she knew—a large, hidden den, which none of her enemies had ever discovered. It was a comfortable cave, stocked with canned and dry food stores many decades old, stocked for a long stay. Jasmine, Josh, and Beauty put the new brood of orphans to bed beside the gentle flow of an underground spring. It gave Josh much joy to see Ollie sleep so quietly at last; but deep melancholy would not abide with them both. So many souls lost, dear friends and true. The price of a young boy’s peaceful dreaming? Josh wondered. The meaning was obscure; the price, too painful to contemplate. He picked up Humbelly and placed the sleeping Flutterby beside Ollie’s head, where it hummed softly into the boy’s ear. Both little creatures smiled.
And finally, finally, safely ensconced within the jungle cave, the adventurers deeply slept, saving their stories of victory and loss for another day.
EPILOGUE
THEY slept all that night and all the next day and most of the next night. On the second morning the entire troop gathered around for a great communal breakfast of jungle fruits, lizard jerky, and cave-spring water.
“To those we found, and to those we lost,” Joshua toasted.
All raised their cups.
“And to the love of our finders,” answered Rose.
A great cheer went up, and the feast began. Food and stories were devoured with a vengeance.
Rose’s ordeal was wailed over. Ollie was hugged almost into speaking; but not quite.
Everyone had something to say about the collection of stolen brains the ANGELS were molding into the collective consciousness known as the Queen. Rose spoke to that hue and cry.
“As dehumanizing as this whole experience has been, that particular episode was one I gained from. They used what knowledge I had; yet they gave me knowledge too. I know things I never knew.”
“That could be said for all of us at the end of this quest,” commented Beauty.
“Perhaps,” nodded Rose. “Perhaps we’ve all found new knowledge, without understanding exactly how it came to us. Still … I feel I know so much more. And so much of what I now know remains yet a mystery to that in me that was.” She could not begin to count the ways in which this was true—ranging from new knowledge of herself, to such strange bursts of understanding as had led her to wrap Joshua’s head in wire to screen him from the effects of the wave generator.
And although she didn’t say so out loud, she had the persistent feeling that perhaps there was a new animal, a superior guiding intelligence, in spite of what Gabriel had said. But then she knew she was only Human; and Humans always had a need to invent omnipotent characters in their lives, whether or not such characers existed. She smiled tenderly at Beauty: he’d been right again, in his simple Horse-sense way: all of them had gained new, special knowledge on this journey; and none could fully describe their own insights to the others.
Josh had a hole in his heart where Dicey had been, made even more ragged-raw around the edges by Lon’s demise. He fingered the blood-drop pendant Lon had given him so long ago, and again so recently. “My grief is my mystery,” he answered Rose. “Its depth is beyond my understanding. And I don’t know what it’s taught me. Lon saved my life three times—twice after his own death. How can I discharge the grief that I may never repay him, never thank him? Must I forever carry that burden?”
“Lon did what he did of free will,” responded Jasmine from across the floor. “You have no debt to his actions. That weight is yours only if you want it.”
The subject of free will was no less on Joshua’s mind. He’d undertaken this journey ostensibly of his own free will, for his own purposes. Yet Gabriel had told him he was there at the pull of the wave machine. It was nonsense, of course, the ANGELS’ claim—Josh knew he’d come for one purpose only: to save his people. Yet, what of that action was purely Joshua, and how much was dictated by conflicting outside pressures, such as Venge-right, and species elitism, and … Josh fingered the wire-mesh helmet he now kept hanging at his belt. He could not fathom.
Nonetheless, he looked warmly at Rose and Ollie, and was reassured somewhat. Two good reasons for having chosen the path he’d taken. If only the others could be with them now, to bathe the empty shadows in the light of their presence. “And poor, sweet Isis,” he said aloud, giving voice to his last thought; “we may never learn if she died or escaped.” He shook his head. “She was always so afraid of the water.”
“I am confident the fur-face swam to safety,” Beauty assured with a quiet smile. “Her aversion to water, I have no doubt, was purely aesthetic, and unrelated to her swimming abilities.”
They all laughed, and toasted that thought; except Josh, who sadly smiled, saying softly, “But we’ll never know.”
Jasmine put her hand on his. “Life is like that, sometimes,” she allowed. “You can’t always know.”
Beauty agreed, as if from special understanding. “Humbelly did not know, when I left her in the vine grove at the edge of the jungle, if any of us would return. Yet, she waited.” He looked directly at Jasmine as he spoke, and their eyes met: they both knew that along with all the myriad subtle ambiguities their lives would bring them over the years, none would remain more ambiguous, or more ambivalent, than their brief union. They smiled with the collusion of uncertain sweet shared remembrance. It was yet one more thing they would never know.
Joshua’s melancholy grew even deeper, now, under the weight of all the things he would never know. He would never know a child with Dicey; or the meaning of Time; or the powerful sorcerer’s language of the genetic engineers; or the kind, overweight boy in the Bookery. “I’ll never know Lewis,” he said under his breath, and somehow this loss seemed the greatest of all.
Jasmine interrupted his brooding. “I have a present for you, Joshua. Lon made it when we first left his den; he brought it with him all the way to our campsite south of the castle. I picked it up there the night of our raid, after I escaped the City—in case Lon didn’t come through. The last entry is mine.” She held out a book.
Joshua took it gingerly in hand. Leather-bound, with strong leather stitching at the spine, its cover was embossed with the snake in the circle that was the sign of the Scribe: It was beautiful.
He opened it to the first page. There, in heavy bookhand script, was the title: HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE. And then, in small italics at the bottom: for posterity.
He delicately turned the page. At the top, it said Prologue. Below this, the page was rilled. Joshua read.
1,000,000 B.C.-1960 A.D.—Generally progressive evolution of the Human species.
1961—Mutant virus leak during army experiments sweeps the world, causing the beginning of subtle changes in the Human personality.
1986—Nuclear plan meltdown at Oceanspring. Jasmine’s birth.
2006—Culmination of world energy crisis with total blackout.
Development of alternate sources over the next thirty years.
2010—Cloned horses become widespread.
Mass i
mmigration to orbiting or journeying space colonies.
2020—People begin dying of radiation-induced cancer. General increase in mutant births.
2030—Jasmine becomes Neuroman.
Perfection and proliferation of Neuromans, Deitons, Cognons, Hedons, Cidons.
2070—Creation of all the genetically engineered species.
General decay of society, increasing collective obsession with sex, death, and dream.
2110—Sum-Thin becomes Neuroman—one of the last.
2112-1A—Population overgrowth, famine.
2115—Bacteriological War kills all but the resistant Humans.
July 4, 2117—Nuclear War, most major cities destroyed, increase in ambient radiation.
2120-2140—Ascendance of new species, anti-Human riots, book burnings.
2140-2150—Neuroman genetic engineers make thousands of Human Clones to regenerate the race.
2150—Clone Wars: most Humans killed, children spared; reading is outlawed; the age of Creatures, the rise of Vampires.
2160—Emergence of secret society of Scribes.
2162—Quakes of Fire and Rain; formation of the Terrarium.
2191—The Great Quake; Dundee descends into the Terrarium.
0—The Coming of Ice.
0-50—Age of Ice: re-ascendance of Humans. Jasmine and Lon explore the Terrarium.
100 A.I.—The Race War: Humans and other species strike a new balance.
121 A.I.—Josh and Beauty begin their quest; joined by Isis and Jasmine, Lon and Sum-Thin; the journey leads toward a New Animal on the Sticks River.
The journey ends with the rescue of Ollie and Rose, and the grievous deaths of the bride, Dicey; the hero, Lon; the philosopher, Sum-thin.
Josh finished reading the last entry and turned the page. It was blank. He turned the next page. Blank again. All the pages were equally virgin.
“It’s meant for you to fill in,” Jasmine spoke again. “Lon wrote that much the week we left his home in the Forest of Accidents. He meant to give you the rest to finish. He showed it to me the night we assaulted the castle, and asked me to give it to you if he died. He said .when you finished the journal, he would take it back and keep it in his library, that it would share its thoughts with his books until the dusk of time. It was his gift to you, and to your people.”
