A Quantum Mythology

by Gavin G. Smith

  Steve nodded dumbly, still staring at the two dream dragons as they sinuously explored their new home. Vic glanced over at Scab. His human partner had opened the faceplate on his armour to watch the dragons, his pale features bathed in their electric light. Vic wasn’t sure what the expression on his partner’s face was, but he knew it made him uncomfortable. After a few moments, Vic, still smoking gently, turned and walked out of the pool room.

  Talia was curled into a foetal position, sitting on the bare wooden boards of the floor with her back against the wall, hands over her ears, screaming. Yellow-powder disc guns blew holes in the walls, while thrown and crossbow-fired discs thudded into the wood all around her. She knew that outside the hut, war-painted humanoid lizards mounted on flesh-eating dinosaurs and armed with spears and blades, both curved and circular, were galloping around the flimsy wooden house. She hoped they were simply going to kill her, although she had a suspicion they would eat her alive.

  Vic appeared, standing over her. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ he asked as a serrated disc blade impacted into the wall next to him. Talia stared up at him, eyes wide with fear. It took her a moment to realise what he’d said. Then she threw herself at him, clawing at his armoured body.

  ‘Can you make it stop?’ she cried. Vic looked down at her, utterly mystified, then froze the immersion. She collapsed sobbing into his arms. He didn’t think he’d ever felt more like his namesake and hero than he did right then as he scooped her up, carried her into the colonial homestead’s bedroom and laid her down on the bed.

  ‘Did you not like the immersion?’ he asked.

  She stared at him, chest heaving as she gasped for breath. ‘What are you talking about?’ she managed. ‘I just appeared here. Then these lizards starting attacking me.’

  ‘Yes, it’s my favourite. Vic Matto and All’s Quiet on the New Croydon Front.’

  ‘You’re Vic Matto,’ Talia managed as she tried to persuade her confused brain to work through all the terror.

  ‘No, I took my name from him. He was an immersion star till he died of a drug overdose so massive it scrambled his personality when they tried to clone him. A shame, really, as he was in his prime when he died. A lot of people think Monarchist assassins killed him. A pre-emptive taste-strike during the build-up to the Art Wars.’

  Talia was still breathing heavily and staring at him wild-eyed. ‘We’re in a fucking film?’ she spat.

  ‘A film of what?’ Vic asked, confused.

  ‘This is a movie, a story?’

  ‘It’s an immersion, yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Vic was mystified. ‘What do you mean? It’s an adventure. You had entertainment, right?’

  Talia stared at him. ‘Subjectively, what do you think just happened to me?’ she asked.

  Vic thought about that for a moment. ‘Subjectively, you were dropped into a homestead during the humans’ diaspora period.’

  ‘And?’ she demanded.

  ‘You were attacked by a lizard hunter tribe,’ Vic said as he started to see what she was getting at.

  ‘And it didn’t occur to you that might be just a little fucking frightening if you’re not a seven-foot-tall, armoured insect violence junkie?’ she screamed at him, spittle flecking her chin.

  ‘So, not your thing, then?’

  ‘We watch stories, read them, sometimes listen to them. We never want to be in them because they’re too fucking dangerous!’ she shouted.

  ‘Sorry,’ Vic ventured.

  ‘I thought you were punishing me.’

  ‘What? No!’

  Vic sat down on the bed, which creaked under the weight of his virtual hard-tech form.

  ‘You do this for fun?’ she asked. ‘How much violence is too much for you guys?’

  Vic gave the question some thought. He remembered watching starscrapers collapsing and thinking the sight beautiful. He remembered watching an Elite destroy a habitat and being frightened by the raw power being displayed.

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it like that,’ he mused. ‘I don’t know for me. I don’t think there’s enough for Scab.’

  ‘So I’m not really here?’ Talia asked.

  Vic shook his head. ‘No, you’re wrapped in the ship, asleep. So you won’t hurt yourself.’

  Talia looked somewhat sheepish. ‘Can you take me somewhere else?’ she asked.

  ‘Scab has oversight, but he’s got some new pets to keep him occupied so we can try. Where do you want to go?’

  Talia leaned against the bedstead and looked out of the window. ‘Do you have something of Earth, from—’

  ‘Before you guys lost it?’

  Talia turned to glare at him but nodded. ‘Somewhere glamorous, but not in the middle of a battle or anything?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Vic told her.

  They were standing in a spacious, tastefully decorated apartment with a balcony. The door to the balcony was open, diaphanous curtains blowing in the gentle wind. They were staring out over a cityscape. It looked very small to Vic.

  ‘I’m not sure where this is,’ Vic said.

  ‘It’s New York,’ Talia said. She was dressed elegantly in a tight, calf-length skirt, a striped blouse, stockings and heels, her black hair arranged into a bouffant style. One hand rested on her hip; the other held a cigarette holder with a lit cigarette in it. ‘Before the war, I think.’

  ‘The war?’ Vic asked. ‘You only had the one? What changed?’

  ‘I’m not sure about the giant floating, glowing jellyfish, though.’

  ‘I can get rid of them if you want.’

  Talia turned and looked up at Vic. There was something different in her expression – something calculated that was starting to make Vic feel funny.

  ‘No, it’s okay,’ she said. ‘They’re kind of pretty, assuming they’re not going to attack us.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Talia moved closer and looked up at him with an expression Vic’s neunonics told him was best described as ‘coquettish’. She touched his armoured thorax with one perfectly manicured burgundy nail and ran it down to his abdomen.

  ‘Can you look more human?’ she asked, tilting her head.

  This was a matter of pride for Vic. Humanophile or not, he was secure-ish in his identity as an insect. He always swore that he would never pretend to be anything he wasn’t. He would stand firm.

  He turned into a muscular human male with four arms and multifaceted crystalline eyes. He glanced at his reflection in the huge mirror over the fireplace.

  ‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘Scab’s oversight. He probably thinks he’s being funny.’

  Talia reached up and traced around his eyes with the tips of her fingers. ‘I think they’re pretty,’ she told him. ‘And four arms gives us some options.’

  She moved her hand down, placing it flat against his chest, and started pushing him backwards across the apartment until he stumbled against a chair and sat down hard. Then she climbed into his lap.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, though he found his human form was strangely breathless.

  She hesitated for a moment. ‘Because this isn’t real,’ she told him. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She kissed him. Being accustomed to mandibles, Vic wasn’t quite sure what to do with lips. ‘Relax,’ she told him. ‘I’m really good at this.’

  33

  Ancient Britain

  The figure with the antlers turned and left the mound, disappearing into the mist and sunlight.

  They had been blindfolded, which neither of them had been happy about, but both had agreed to. They stumbled through the woods for what seemed like a very long time, then were loaded into what felt like dugout log boats and taken upriver.

  Finally their blindfolds were removed. They were standing on a little outcrop on the side of the narrow, fast-moving
river, a shelter made of branches and ferns on the riverbank in front of them. Steam was leaking through the ferns.

  ‘Strip,’ one of their guards ordered.

  Tangwen looked at the shelter, then at her captors, and started to undress. Kush didn’t move. ‘I don’t think they’re going to rape us,’ Tangwen said. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  Kush was looking at the steam coming from the shelter. ‘I am more worried about being eaten,’ he muttered. Tangwen laughed. Reluctantly, Kush started to undress. Tangwen found herself staring at his penis. Kush became aware of it and looked back at her. She didn’t notice. He cleared his throat and she looked up at him, utterly unembarrassed.

  ‘When we return to camp, you and I should—’ Tangwen stopped, and her hand came up of its own accord to cover her acid-burned face. She turned away. Kush watched her, concerned. One of the warriors pointed into the shelter.

  Inside the shelter, hot rocks bubbled away in a large, shallow stone bowl, filling the structure with steam. Something mixed with the water gave the steam an aromatic quality. Tangwen started to feel drowsy as sweat beaded the skin of her wiry body.

  The steam was so thick and heady that it took them a minute to realise there was someone else in the shelter with them: an old man, twig-thin, long, wavy grey hair draped over his face, concealing his features. His thin, straggly beard was shaped into a point. He looked up at them through his hair. His narrow face was heavily lined, but his eyes were very much alive.

  ‘I’m more impressive when I’m wearing a robe and antlers, I think,’ he said. His accent was odd – Tangwen had never heard one quite like it, but she had no problem understanding his words. ‘It’s more difficult to lie when we’re not hiding ourselves.’

  ‘And there is magic in the steam that compels the truth,’ Kush rumbled.

  ‘I breathe the same steam that you do, Kush-who-is-not-a-demon.’

  ‘I am Tangwen, hunter of the—’

  The old man held up a hand. ‘We are being cleansed. We are to be unborn. The steam will send away all the other spirits that surround you. The serpent.’ He looked at Tangwen. ‘And those of metal.’ He looked at Kush.

  Kush looked to Tangwen. ‘I mislike this,’ the Numibian said. Tangwen was not altogether happy herself.

  ‘Is there a spirit bound to the skull you have brought with you?’ the old man asked.

  ‘The skull was taken fairly in battle,’ Tangwen told the man. ‘Its owner died well and should have returned to his god, his head held high.’

  ‘If the spirit has not moved on to his god, then it has something to be ashamed of. It will be a weak and frightened thing and no threat to us.’

  Kush gave a slight shake of his head.

  ‘Are we not civilised enough for you, Kush-who-is-not-a-demon?’ the old man asked.

  We? Tangwen wondered.

  ‘I meant no offence,’ Kush told the man.

  ‘I did not ask if you meant offence,’ the old man told the Numibian, though there was no reproach in his voice.

  ‘Your ways are not mine,’ Kush muttered.

  ‘And I am not a stupid man. One look at you could have told me that.’

  Kush looked up and straight into the old man’s eyes. ‘No,’ Kush told him evenly. ‘You are not.’

  ‘And see – already we are chasing falsehood away. Soon we will be able to talk as real people, and not the deceitful people we all must be outside this place.’

  ‘This may not be the correct time to introduce ourselves in your rites, but I was told by a Persian Magi that names have power. You know ours, and I would know yours – unless you have something to hide,’ Kush said, somewhat irritably.

  The old man regarded him for a moment or two. ‘Are you sure you’re not a demon, Kush-who-is-not-a-demon?’ he asked. Kush opened his mouth to retort. ‘My name is Guidgen.’

  Tangwen recognised the name. It was an old one. It meant Born of Trees.

  After Tangwen had sweated most of the mud off – and the berry dye she had smeared on herself to call the serpent – they left the steam-filled shelter. Next they followed the old man’s example by plunging into a deep pool in the fast-moving and very cold, river. They dried themselves with ferns, and the old man led them into the trees.

  ‘Shouldn’t we go clothed?’ Kush asked.

  ‘Were you born clothed?’ Guidgen asked. Kush shook his head.

  Guidgen was clearly another of the mad men this island appeared to breed so easily, Tangwen thought. She hesitated when they came to the gnarled, ancient, stooped oak. There was a hole in the earth beneath it and the oak’s roots acted as a doorway to a cave. Tangwen had always liked her father’s cave, but for the most part caves were to be feared. Wolves, bears, monsters and madmen all lived in caves. They were said to be the gateway to the Otherworld, and she knew from her own experience that sometimes gods made caves their home.

  ‘It’s not what you think. You’re safe with me,’ Guidgen said, not unkindly. Tangwen looked around but could see no more of the ash-covered warriors. She steeled herself and crawled into the cave entrance. Guidgen went to follow her but Kush stopped him. The old man looked at him questioningly.

  ‘I’d rather you have to look at my arse than I at yours,’ Kush told him, and then followed Tangwen into the cave.

  At first it was pitch dark and cold, the smell of earth very strong. Gradually, Tangwen started to feel warm air against her skin. She could smell woodsmoke, and finally she made out a faint red glow.

  She crawled out of the tunnel into a low earthen cave supported by a network of roots. A fire burned low and red in the centre of the cave. Tangwen thought it a little odd that the cave wasn’t filled with smoke. It didn’t feel like a place that she should fear. Rather it felt warm, oddly comfortable and strangely familiar.

  Kush crawled into the cave, followed moments later by Guidgen. In the dim red glow they were little more than indistinct shadows. The ceiling was low enough that Kush was unable to stand up straight.

  ‘This place is sacred to Cuda?’ Tangwen asked. Guidgen nodded. ‘But you clothed yourself as the Horned God.’

  ‘We were under the trees,’ Guidgen said, then sat down on the strangely warm earth, ‘and he is Cuda’s favoured son. I ask only that you respect this place. You are, however, not under hospitality. We do not know if you are friends or enemies yet, and it is difficult to trust someone who feels the need to assure people that he is not a demon,’ the old man said, smiling.

  ‘It’s only because everyone on this island—’ Kush started, but found both the Pretani were grinning at him.

  ‘I am Tangwen, a hunter and a warrior of the Pobl Neidr. This is Kush the Numibian, a warrior from lands across the seas and far to the south. We come with a message from Bladud, whom some call the Witch King, of the Brigantes. It was he who made you the gift of the skull, which, by his word, took some effort in the taking,’ Tangwen said formally.

  ‘And you are a man just like us?’ Guidgen asked Kush.

  ‘Yes,’ Kush told the old man.

  ‘Only more civilised?’ Guidgen asked.

  ‘Are you mocking me?’ Kush demanded.

  ‘Yes,’ Guidgen said simply. ‘But I mean no ill. You may not be a demon, Kush-who-is-not-a-demon, but neither of you is normal. The blood of the gods, however weak, runs in your veins.’

  Kush and Tangwen stared at him.

  ‘I have not heard the name of your people,’ the Numibian finally said.

  ‘We are the Tyleth Am Sgrech Cysgod,’ Guidgen said. Tangwen started at the name. The Tribe of the Screaming Shadows.

  ‘That is an ill name,’ Kush said.

  ‘We are cursed people.’

  ‘Are you their king?’ Tangwen asked when she finally felt she could speak again.

  ‘No,’ Guidgen said, shaking his head. ‘We have no king. I am a dryw, an advisor. Sinc
e there was some suspicion that you were consorting with creatures from Cythrawl, I was asked to deal with you.’

  ‘Why are you cursed?’ Kush asked.

  ‘A bold question from those invading Ardu,’ Guidgen said, though there was no reproach in his tone.

  ‘Is truth only for us to give, then?’ Kush demanded. ‘You speak of it, but there are shadows here, shadows there. You name yourselves shadows and then make war on the sleeping.’

  ‘We did not make war on them,’ Guidgen said simply. ‘We just killed them. They were fruit hanging from the trees for the Horned God. We live in Ardu to be free of the tyranny of kings. And to answer your question, we were cursed because we were too civilised. Our king sought to build a city. He did not care that it was on land sacred to Cuda. He did not care that another tribe had better claim to the land.’

  ‘We simply seek to pass through your land,’ Tangwen said.

  ‘I believe you,’ Guidgen said.

  ‘Then why make war on the landsfolk we protect?’ Kush was becoming angry.

  ‘Many of them are spear-carriers, and we killed warriors, too—’

  ‘Nobody is questioning your courage—’ Tangwen started.

  ‘That is a lie,’ Guidgen said.

  Tangwen went cold and her hand reached for a dagger that was not there. Kush tensed, not sure what do.

  ‘Think on what you said,’ Guidgen warned. ‘Think, before the anger takes you.’

  Tangwen took several deep breaths as she tried to calm herself. ‘I do not question your courage.’

  ‘Because you know what it is to hunt. We give you the same chance we give a bear,’ Guidgen told her.

  ‘I question your courage,’ Kush said. Guidgen smiled.

  ‘But why attack us when all we would do is pass through your land?’ Tangwen asked.

  ‘Two reasons,’ Guidgen told them. ‘First, it is a lesson. It must be too costly to cross our land or others will try. I would see all of you destroyed to keep my people safe, to see this land unspoiled.’

  Kush laughed bitterly, but Tangwen held up a hand to quiet him.