Irresistible Forces

by Catherine Ansaro et al

  Most of these people were packed and ready to flee not just Anglia, but Gaia. Now they had hope. They drank round after round of toasts to the fixers, especially to Dan Fixer, their own hero.

  Jenny had not heard from Dan, but he'd not called his family either. She didn't think the blighters could knock out com-towers, so there must be some other reason.

  He could, of course, be dead. It was a fact she lived with day by torturous day, consoling herself that no news was good news. Surely the families would be told, like in the old movies. Whatever the fixers were doing must make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to send any kind of message, but that would surely change now.

  She slipped away, slipped home, to sit in front of the screen on max, showing ten different things. Maps on most tracking where the blighters had been stopped. The blighted area was still an appallingly huge belt around the planet, and the closest edge was only fifty miles south of Anglia.

  Talking heads, but when she flipped between them none had solid information. She muted the system, setting it to alert her to mention of Dan Fixer, then fell asleep with no new information. She woke to sunshine and the screen still on. One section was flashing. Partial match.

  An excited woman was mouthing silently, an exhausted man behind her, sallow-skinned and haggard. A fixer? Jenny hunted, cursing, for the clicker, finding it down the side of a cushion, and turned that section onto max and sound.

  "… here at the front, as they call it. My friend here assures me I'm safe." The stocky reporter grinned, but she looked tensed to run at a word.

  For some reason she was wearing a dull green shirt and trousers that looked vaguely like the army uniforms in the old films. Jenny snorted. Fat lot of good that would do her if a blighter came along. The woman chattered on, not really saying anything because there wasn't anything to say. Behind her lay peaceful, normal countryside.

  "So," she said, turning to the man—flabby, middle-aged, grim—"you think this is the turning point of the war, Jit Fixer?"

  "We're getting the upper hand."

  It was direct, but the flat tone made Jenny's heart pound. No jubilation at all.

  "Can you tell Gaia how you've managed to turn the tide, Jit?"

  The man's eyes shifted for just a moment. "It's very technical," he said, then went on about concentration of powers, of nodes and impacts and strategic distributions of forces. Was she hearing Dan's theories put into practice?

  If so, Jenny couldn't follow it, and by the look of the reporter, she couldn't either. Even so, Jenny sat glued, praying for a mention of Dan, even though she knew it was unlikely. There had been—what?—more than five thousand fixers before the war.

  But Dan had said he'd been the one to gather the remaining fixers. He might be important enough to get a mention. No such luck. The reporter, glassy-eyed, brought the technical ramble to an end, wished the fixer success in the fight, and returned the screen to the "your local station."

  Jenny slumped back in the chair. That hadn't even been Angliacom. It could have been anywhere around the world.

  On sudden impulse she clicked on the directory and found the numbers for Hellbane U, scrolling down to Information. She clicked on that. After two rings a message flashed: We regret that due to the current emergency the Gaian Center for Investigation and Control of the Hostile Amorphic Native Entities is unable to respond to enquiries. Please call back when normal conditions resume.

  Jenny went back to the regular screen and lay there watching the maps and charts, then a string of interviews with displaced people, community administrators, even artists sharing their thoughts about victory. No mention of Dan.

  If he was dead, wouldn't she know it?

  She staggered up to go to the loo, grabbed some food, then collapsed again to watch. She'd had to switch the prompt to search for Dan Fixer only, which stopped the constant flashing and replaced it with nothing. A string of fixers gave interviews, and she learned to spot them simply from their debilitated look. All the fixers, young and old, seemed to be exhausted, and it was more than physical. It was as if something vital had been sucked out of them. What a terrible struggle it must be, but now they were winning.

  Slowly, Jenny began to hear something in their voices, an echo of the war films. One of them even said, "We will never surrender," in a flat tone almost identical to Winston Churchill.

  Was that anything to do with Dan?

  Then one of the fixers cried. He was a dark-skinned man, perhaps, by his accent, from one of the African settlements first affected. Partway through his technical description, tears began to well in his large, dark eyes. He blinked and kept going, but then suddenly choked. He covered his face and turned away from the camera.

  The reporter—another young black man, but speaking meticulous Earth Standard English—took over, talking about the exhaustion of the noble heroes who were fighting the terrible battle.

  Jenny watched, not hearing the reporter but the sobs of the man off screen, shaken by that deep and desolate grief.

  Was the talk of victory lies?

  Or did the fixer weep for the price the victors had to pay?

  In the past weeks she'd become an expert on war. All kinds of war. Now she remembered the words of the Duke of Wellington after the bloody victory at Waterloo: "Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won."

  If Dan was alive, was he as melancholy, as soul-shocked, as the weeping fixer? Oh, to take him in her arms and comfort him. She'd have walked out of Anglia to find him if she'd had any idea where to start.

  All she could do was her bit to keep the home fires burning. She had a shower, went to work, and even suctioned dust out of the idle presses. She kept part of the office screen on to Angliacom as she worked, set to alert her to any mention of Dan Fixer.

  The parade of fixers stopped, however, replaced by a middle-aged woman called Helga, with gray hair and a stony, unreadable face. Helga flatly reported daily successes, giving details on areas that were cleared and safe. She did not take questions.

  News readers returned. Jenny phoned Angliacom asking for news about Dan. A short time later she heard back. They'd put in a request for a report on him and received no response.

  Anglia itself was perking up like a spring flower after a frost. People were pouring back in, and Jenny finally had enough work to distract her, enough that she grew impatient for her coworkers to come back.

  Reporters ventured out with cameras, but apparently the fixers had ordered everyone to stay away from the front, so they could only send back pictures of peaceful countryside and occasional close-ups of heaps of clothing and ash. Even they were rare. War hadn't changed the weather, so most remains had been scattered by wind and rain.

  Daily, Helga reported progress, and the red tide on the map ebbed. Then she began to announce places that were now safe, inviting people to return. There was never a trace of joy or triumph.

  Jenny had learned to distrust the news, but she'd come to believe in Helga. The woman reminded her of jowly Churchill, someone who tamped down emotion and simply got the job done.

  Anyway, Jenny knew in other ways that what Helga said was true. The pressure of sick fear in her mind was easing, the bitter taste was less. She actually had some appetite and began to put back the weight she'd lost. Sometimes she had to probe for the unreal parts of her mind instead of fight them off.

  With victory clear, it was like Christmas. She could have gone to ten parties a night, but instead she spent every night in Dan's place. She didn't watch the war films anymore. Instead she wandered through his sys—music, poetry, games, comedies. She saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail listed but skipped over it. She didn't think she'd find it funny now.

  Then she came across his family album and some film from when they were kids.

  A group of them running around screaming in the park under water jets.

  A birthday party with Dan wearing a Sirius V helmet, a milkshake mustache, and missing his front teeth. Had they really
once played at war?

  Dan and her building something out of Robot-Robot, then cheering as their construct poured juice into a glass without spilling any. She thought about Earth, where apparently war was mostly waged by robots.

  Lucky Earth.

  Helga stopped reporting, and Jenny missed her stony solidity, but the good news kept coming. The red swath around the equator shrunk thinner and thinner, and Jenny linked it to Dan's return. He was working hard, to his limit, destroying hellbanes. When that shrinking stain disappeared, Dan would come home.

  Then one day she realized that her magic had gone. No, no, that wasn't quite it. That strange bit of her brain that shouldn't be there was still there, but it felt… alone. As if the rest of the magic had gone.

  As if the fixers had gone?

  She clicked on the screen, heart pounding. More jubilation. More stupid speeches. Say something about the fixers, you berks!

  After an hour or so of nothing, she phoned the station. She managed to talk her way through to the newsroom and asked why there were no interviews with fixers.

  "I thought you were offering to set up an interview with a fixer," a woman snapped.

  "It's hard?"

  The woman cut the connection.

  With the screen on mute, Jenny closed her eyes and tried to sense Dan. She probed for him, hunted him, blanked her mind so something could come on its own. Eventually she opened her eyes, defeated. It was as if the magic didn't exist anymore.

  As if Dan didn't exist anymore.

  Surely if the fixers were gone someone would say so.

  Stomach churning, she watched ten screen-sectors at once. She stilled on one. that showed people returning to their homes. The camera was like a predator itself, seeking the moments of horror, the faces of loss. Even while thinking that, Jenny couldn't move on. The continuing scenes of return were made weirder because all the buildings and machinery were intact, simply waiting for the inhabitants to return but often coated with ash.

  A camera swooped in on a woman scrubbing, weeping, saying over and over, "Who am I cleaning up here? Who am I cleaning up?"

  Soon it was almost as if the Hellbane Wars had never been, and yet, and yet, it seemed to Jenny that people held their breath as she did, not really able to believe that the terrible things were gone for good. And no one mentioned the other terrible thing—that they might have to carry on without fixers.

  Eventually Jenny had to return to life. She cleaned Dan's place one last time and moved into her own home. Her family was coming back anyway, so she had to stock the house with basics and restart the energy sys. She went back to work and found that the manager, Sam Witherspoon, was back. Her family returned for a tearful reunion and told her Dan's family was back, too.

  Jenny hurried over there, and her last hope died. They'd heard nothing, and they assumed he was dead. A hero, but dead.

  Someone designed a poster of Dan Fixer, Hero, and it hung everywhere. Heaven knows Where'd they'd found the shot to start with, but it didn't look much like Dan in the end. Square-jawed and rugged, he looked resolutely into the distance against a flaming red sky.

  Jenny bought one and kept it, knowing he'd be amused.

  Hoping he'd be amused.

  Her last hope wasn't really dead.

  Then Angliacom announced that in view of the lack of response from the fixers, a team of Mayan reporters was on its way to the Gaian Center for Investigation and Control of the Hostile Amorphic Native Entities. They would carry the thanks of the world and report back on the situation.

  Needing privacy, Jenny watched on Dan's screen, watched through the camera's eye as the reporters approached the pale rock walls that looked like part of the Mayan mountain. The gates stood open, but no one waited to welcome them.

  With the benefit of top-reality technology, she wandered empty streets and peered into deserted buildings. The mikes picked up only silence broken by breeze-blown dust and rubbish. At least the dust seemed ordinary dust, sandy and dry.

  Were any of the houses places where Dan had been? Had he shopped at that bakery, drunk at that tavern? A reporter was droning on about Hellbane U in former days. Jenny made herself listen.

  New students had been housed in dormitories in the central buildings ahead. Later, they could board with families in the town. Most of the citizens of Hellbane U were fixers—teachers or researchers—but some had been family and descendants of fixers, without special powers.

  Then Jenny realized that the reporter was such a person, that he was a refugee from Hellbane U, returning to his former home and shocked by the desolation. He was a professional, however, and his voice stayed steady as the team progressed through the ghostly town, but she could hear the thickness of tears in it.

  Tears were falling down her own cheeks.

  Where have all the flowers gone?

  Eventually the camera reached the central buildings. It panned lecture halls, libraries, and rooms that defied general descriptions. The tour continued, and Jenny watched it all, but Hellbane U was a dead place, the inhabitants gone. She remembered an old Earth term for it. A ghost town.

  Where have all the flowers gone?

  She found the song in the system and set it to play.

  Another war song.

  Damn war.

  She listened, and watched, and wept for all the heroes who weren't coming back from the war.

  6

  They held a parade, renamed Bond Street Dan Fixer Way, and life went on.

  Doctors had to learn how to mend broken bones with splints and plaster, but the latest technology was on the way. Apparently they had bugs and bots now to do just about anything the fixers could do. The Minister for Post-Fixer Adjustment moved into the fixer's flat. Dan's things were sent to his parents, who turned most of it over to a committee planning the Dan Fixer Museum. Jenny managed to sneak the red jacket out and take it home.

  No one knew what the fixers had done, but they were heroes for sure. Yet it seemed to Jenny that, other than Dan's family and friends, people didn't seem deeply affected by the loss.

  Her pain was beyond words or expression, so she hid it, glad that no one knew about that last night.

  Then, as she wandered out of work at the end of another meaningless day, a woman in the street bumped into her.

  "Did you hear? Dan Fixer's back!"

  Jenny stared at her. "They found his body?" But then she answered herself. "No. Blighters leave nothing but ash."

  "Alive as you and me! Outside the southern gate, he is."

  Alive? Outside? The words didn't make sense.

  "They're keeping him out, till they figure out what to do."

  The gates would be shut, yes. They were still shut and guarded, though now she thought about it, she didn't know why. "Then it can't be Dan," Jenny said. "He's a citizen."

  "And a fixer. Citizen of all, citizen of none."

  A sort of glee in the woman's voice shattered the blank-ness in Jenny's mind. "You don't want him back? How can you not want him back? He's a hero. He saved the world. We had a parade and named a bloody street after him! Don't you at least want the fixing back?"

  The woman backed away, then turned and hurried off.

  Jenny stood frozen. Dan was back?

  Alive?

  She was already running toward the nearest tram stop. She needed to get to the gate, get to Dan. Then she realized it would be on screen. If it was true. She stopped, made herself look calm, and walked into the nearest pub.

  One of the big screens faced the door, split between a cricket game., comedy, and a dim, sunset landscape. She saw a fire and a figure by it. She moved into that line of sound, having to squeeze up against two men in business clothes.

  "… claiming to be Dan Fixer," an announcer was saying.

  "The Witan is meeting to discuss this development and assures everyone…"

  Jenny stepped into the cricket commentary so she could focus on the picture. The camera must be up on the wall, looking down at the road. On the gr
ass verge a small fire burned and a man sat beside it, reaching for a kettle, pouring boiling water into a pot.

  Memory staggered her, then hope swept in, as weakening in its own way. She grasped a chair to hold herself up.

  "Creepy, if you ask me."

  Jenny blinked and looked at the two young men in office wear drinking pints. One was blond with a sharp face, the other dark-haired and heavy.

  "They've always been a bit strange, haven't they, fixers?" the blond said.

  "No one knows how it works," the heavy one replied.

  "No one knows what they did to win, either. One minute the blighters are all over us, next minute they're gone."

  "Fixers were supposed to be gone, too. So it can't really be him, can it?"

  "Or they're playing silly buggers with us."

  More faint hostility. Was this a dream? It wouldn't be surprising to dream that Dan was back, but why would she dream this? She wanted to ask what the hell they were thinking. If Dan was back, it was wonderful!

  "They had stories on Earth about this sort of thing," the heavy man said.

  "About what?" his friend asked.

  "About people who come back from the dead. Ghouls. Vampires. Zombies. Ghosts. Monsters."

  Jenny couldn't keep quiet. "Monsters?"

  The man turned to her. "Can't know for sure, can we?"

  Perhaps she looked alarmed rather than angry, because the other one said, "It's probably not even him, luv. Some berk thinking he can impersonate a hero, that's all. And not even good at it. I saw Dan Fixer not long before he left, and his hair was no longer than mine. Look at that."

  He pointed at the screen, and Jenny looked. The camera wasn't on zoom so details weren't clear, but it did look as if the man had a rope of hair down his back.

  She didn't realize how much hope she'd gathered until it drained away.

  "Like a Trojan horse."

  Jenny looked at the dark-haired man in disbelief. "Bringing what into the town?"

  "Who knows. That's the point, isn't it?"

  Jenny couldn't entirely fight off the idea. The fixers and the blighters had fed off the same force. What if in the end the remaining blighters had taken over their enemies?