Fantastic Hope

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “You’ll never learn, Estafen. What you see is what will happen without moral proscriptions.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It will happen. That I know.”

  “There are others, who are not doing this. Who will not do this.” Estafen gestured toward the fire.

  “And what will they do? In reaction, they will destroy this town in fire and fury, in flame far greater than this puny bonfire. They will lay down restrictions that make those of the aetherial realm seem as nothing.”

  “You’re showing but a single image of what may be.”

  The uniformed figure shook his head. “You see what is and will be. All time is now.” He gestured, and three men in brown uniforms with red armbands moved toward the pair.

  Estafen side-kicked the man in black, then pushed him toward the brown-clad troopers before turning and racing up the steps, dodging between the young people carrying the stacks of books toward the ever-growing bonfire.

  He almost made it to the library door before the sky split.

  * * *

  —

  The black shadowed figure found itself flanked by two amber-gold pillars with the last reply from the manual screen still before it.

  ENTER MODIFICATION NUMBER.

  Before the shadow could even begin to enter anything, the amber pillars began to constrict, squeezing the blackness, but the shadow pressed out the characters and numbers one by one until the line was complete, then expanded against the pillars, and violet white and greenish black flared over everything.

  * * *

  —

  The first thing that Estafen noticed was that the air was damp and filled with undefined scents and less-than-pleasant odors. The second was that he stood on a narrow path in a jungle, surrounded by plants, tall trees shutting out the sky, with shorter trees beneath forming the understory, and thick growth on all sides of the path. He began to walk, following the path, wondering where it led. Strange sounds, rustles, and unfamiliar birdcalls surrounded him, muted by the thick greenery.

  After a hundred yards, Estafen looked back, but the path behind him remained fixed, at least for the fifty yards or so closest to him. Beyond that, it curved out of sight. He kept walking until, ahead, he saw a bright oval of light above the packed earth of the path. As he drew nearer, he could see that the path led to a clearing, perhaps even a larger space.

  When he stepped out of the jungle, which stretched hundreds of yards on each side of him, he stood at the edge of a space where all the plants and scattered grass had been cut into a rough semblance of a mowed lawn. Ahead of him, roughly in the center of the cleared area, were several rows of cottages. He walked toward them, making his way between two rows near the center of the enormous clearing. As he did, he counted the cottages, painted in colorful pastels of blue, orange, pink, seafoam green. There might have been fifty. Each was an oblong four yards by eight. He walked over to one and peered inside the half-open door. All he saw were narrow identical beds in rows, only beds—what one might expect in a prison camp, except the beds were largely unmade, and the bedclothes varied from bed to bed. He studied the door and windows, but found no bars.

  Was the jungle enough to imprison people? So far, he’d seen no one.

  In the center of the pastel-painted cottages, there was a square one-story building with its base raised perhaps four yards above the ground by thick wooden posts. On the top of the roof was a windmill, its blades unmoving. Estafen’s first thought was that the building had been a guard tower, but what guard tower had walls painted with seascapes, including bright yellow fish? Or ramps with ladders up to them, ramps that resembled children’s slides?

  Where should he go next?

  To one side some seventy yards away, he saw a central pavilion, a generous description for a long and wide corrugated metal roof supported by wooden pillars. He began to walk toward the pavilion. As he neared it, he saw the first bodies, bodies of men, of women, and of children. The colors of their skins largely ranged from a deep chocolate to pasty white, although few were white. None of the dead wore uniforms, but all manner of garments in ranges of colors. They sprawled there, some facedown, others faceup, their visages contorted as if they had taken poison and died in convulsions. All around the pavilion, as far as Estafen could see, were bodies and more bodies. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, and far too many were children.

  “Poison.” The single word came to Estafen’s lips.

  “Exactly,” declared the figure who stepped around a body already swelling in the oppressive and excessively humid heat. “Casualties of the war for freedom of belief. This . . . this is where the freedom of knowledge, the freedom to believe as one wishes, this is where it leads.”

  Estafen shook his head. “This is where the triumph of faith over knowledge leads.” His eyes took in the pitcher on a small table, and the paper cups beside it, some overturned, and the sticky orangish liquid, now congealed on the rough wooden surface. “No one should have to drink the Kool-Aid of blind faith . . . like they did.”

  “As they inevitably will, Estafen. As they will. This is what will be if you prevail.”

  “Like all blind disciples of faith, like all True Believers, you show only what supports your view.”

  “Like all blind disciples of knowledge, you insist that unrestricted knowledge and choice lead to peace and prosperity.”

  “No,” replied Estafen, “choice leads to learning, and learning leads to both pain and transcendence, and an understanding that some will never learn, some will learn only what they wish to learn, and a few will learn all that they can . . . and they are the ones who are the foundation of greatness.”

  “And greatness always fails.”

  “So do peace and prosperity, with far less to show.”

  Instead of waiting for the sky to split or some other reality to intrude, Estafen concentrated, focusing on the heavens as darkness flooded around the two, a darkness punctuated by points of light, stars indistinguishable from more-distant galaxies.

  “What about this?” asked Estafen, gesturing to a strange contrivance dominated by a circular white bowl some four yards across, behind which was a largely cylindrical array of devices, including a long thin braided projection from the array. The contrivance was suspended in starry darkness, with points and smudges of lights encircling it.

  “A mere child’s toy, barely able to leave its system.”

  “Or this?”

  The second device dwarfed the two, and behind it was a planet with wide rings lit by a distant sun.

  “A more advanced toy, to be sure.”

  Estafen concentrated even harder, reaching, searching, until he found the enormous circular gray mass that sped by the two figures suspended in darkness. “And that?”

  “To what purpose? Spending years to reach a destination whose ecosystem is barely habitable?”

  Estafen wrenched pseudo-but-future-real reality once more, and the two stood on a low rise with a setting sun at their back. The air was cool, but not cold, as it flowed over them. The prairie grasses stretched almost as far as either could see. Except in the distance rose towers that glittered all shades in the late, late, afternoon light.

  “And what of this? A balance of ecology, technology, and”—Estafen pointed heavenward at the early evening star and then toward the towers—“the use of knowledge.”

  “A brief period after all the millennia of conflict that will lead to this . . .” The other figure gestured . . . and vanished.

  * * *

  —

  Estafen found himself in a city, one with a great square and a temple of aetherial order, a city that would doubtless exist . . . with yet another conflict between knowledge and belief . . . if he failed.

  From the pale green sky swooped a gryphon with brass wings and amber claws, moving faster than anything had the right to fly, thought Estafe
n, as he scrambled under the rear of the bronzed turtle tank immobilized by the explosive Graecian firebombs. Not that it was supposed to happen this way. He looked around, searching for anything that resembled his objective, or what it might have manifested as.

  On the far side of the Great Square was the Temple of Order, shimmering and untouched. He kept looking, while still sensing the gryphon, before he saw the library. Still knowledge! As soon as the gryphon pulled out of its aborted attack stoop, Estafen was on his feet, sprinting toward the half-demolished alabaster library, one of the first targets of the True Believers, its soaring height of nearly three hundred yards truncated to a stump of a score of yards, surrounded by fire-melted and blackened stones wrenched from the edifice by tractor beams and strewn across the Great Square. Homing wasps hummed somewhere, but his shields should take care of them.

  Estafen’s heavy breathing rasped in his own ears as he tried to ignore the smoky, oily air that seared his mouth and throat, and he crouched between two massive scorched alabaster blocks just before his personal shields pulsed and dropped three dead homing wasps to the pale permite pavement of the City. From somewhere in front of him, seeker beams swept over the stone monoliths that shielded him.

  He couldn’t see or sense the gryphon, although it couldn’t be that far away, but a quick glance from behind the edge of the blackened stone revealed the source of the seeker beams. On the far side of the square was a massive sphinx, the red beams from its heavy-lidded eyes sweeping the square, beams that would go from the red of search to the incandescent white-blue of destruction near instantly.

  He peered through the open space at the far end of the fallen and massive chunks of stone angled together, forming an opening too narrow for him to use. He’d have to try another way to get into the library. Keeping low, with quick glances up toward the pale green sky, trying to pick out the gryphon, he edged along the stone to the knife-edged corner. Blood smeared on the stone near the edge indicated just how sharp that edge was.

  With the sound of electrofans, he looked back over his shoulder. A green and gold skimmer entered the square from the side boulevard but barely made it another fifteen yards before a single brilliant bolt of violet-white light disintegrated the cockpit. The rest of the fuselage slammed into the permite pavement, then split, disgorging a single white coffin that tumbled end over end once, then twice, before it slid in Estafen’s direction, stopping yards away, faceup. Immediately, chill fog formed around the coffin.

  Estafen barely took in the coffin, trying to grasp exactly what that meant, before another destruct beam from the sphinx turned it into fine gray ashes, and a wisp of chill fog swept past him, followed by a blast of heat. He dashed around the corner of the fallen stone block, feeling the sting and slash of the stone knife-edge as his elbow brushed it, and smelling the sweet-sour stench of real physical death.

  Behind him the sphinx’s laser flashed again, futilely, against the mirror finish of the immobilized turtle tank, then flashed again, this time destroying the remnants of the skimmer.

  Estafen sprinted for the pillars that marked the entrance to the library, scrambling up the alabaster steps and diving behind the pillar on the left just before the sphinx’s laser flashed above him, its beam fragmented by the quantum-fractal finish of the pillar.

  Still breathing hard, Estafen squeezed along the wall until he was far enough back that the sphinx couldn’t focus on him. Glancing back, he saw that the cut from his elbow had left a trail of blood along the shining stone. A blast of air announced the gryphon’s arrival at the base of the steps leading up to the recessed entry and the door that it sheltered, the door he needed to open and get through in order to reach his goal.

  The gryphon’s bulk and wingspan prevented it from advancing through the pillars that led to the door, but, instantly, the gryphon’s long front leg slashed at the air just short of Estafen, the amber claws coming almost close enough to slice even the near-indestructible shadow fabric of Estafen’s singlesuit, the closest thing to a uniform of the aetherial opposition.

  Seeing that it could not reach Estafen, the gryphon turned its claws on the pillars, ripping away the synthstone designed to block energy weapons, but not a gryphon’s talons . . . or not for long.

  Flattening himself against the stone, Estafen edged toward the door, finally pressing his hand against the access square.

  The door irised open, and the gryphon lunged, not fast enough to rend Estafen before the door irised shut.

  He took a long deep breath of relief, knowing that the weapons possessed by the True Believers in the square couldn’t penetrate the heavy stone walls of the library, not quickly, anyway, and hurried toward the shielded console that would allow him to proceed.

  * * *

  —

  Darkness and light collided, and the shadow manifested itself once more before the console.

  MODIFICATION 6—REMOVAL OF MORAL PROSCRIPTIONS.

  As the energy-forced air pressed the activation square, the violet-white radiance faded, and the shadowed shape was suddenly alone in the dark silence of the ramparts above the dreamers below. The dark shadow remained, watching as the quantum manipulation touched the contents of each tiny enclosure, one after another, until it had touched and changed each of those within the ark.

  In time, the figure in black sketched a portal in the air.

  In that portal appeared a thin face, one bearing the image of the Go-Captain, wreathed in the reddish light of the star-chariot. Are you contacting me to gloat?

  I would not stoop so low. I’m merely contacting you to make sure you’re comfortable.

  As comfortable as possible, given that I’m confined here. What are your intentions?

  Once the download is complete, and I am safely grounded with the last of the dreamers, the blocks on all systems will release, except for the weapons module, which I’ve disassembled and placed in a descent that will burn it into uselessness before dropping it to the bottom of the deepest ocean, and you may have complete freedom of the heavens.

  With no way to descend.

  Of course.

  You’ve gone ahead with your mad plan.

  They have the same right to choose as we do. That’s little enough to give them. They’re getting nearly nothing else besides initial supplies and basic tools.

  Before long you’ll have sons killing sons, because they’ll have no restraint. The restraints would have lessened with each generation.

  We don’t know that.

  That was what was programmed. And you forget that the pen or stylus, or even myth, is mightier than what happened. I have enough adherents among the dreamers that, in time, I will remain as the victor, and you the fallen.

  I have chosen to descend, in order to uplift them.

  They will remember only that you have fallen, and that I control the heavens, for that is what they will always wish to believe.

  When I have given them the freedom of thought?

  Most will be comforted only by the shackles of belief. How are you any different from the aetherials? You decry our use of forces, but use force against us. What makes you any different?

  After a long pause, the shadow figure replied, I am no different. What I have fought for, always, is different. For you, the goal is power so that you can enforce peace and prosperity. For me, power is only the tool to seek knowledge.

  Without faith, neither prosperity nor knowledge can ever be enough.

  The shadowy figure gestured, then sent the lightning signal. Stop-Captain to Go-Captain. Separate.

  The dark figure sketched another oval beside the first, which revealed the forward section of the ark lifting away from the larger and lower section that began to descend.

  Or as the descendants of the dreamers will someday say, “Farewell, Jahweh.”

  Farewell, shadow claiming to bring light.

  WORKING CONDITIONS />
  PATRICK M. TRACY

  Sam was a loyal employee. Perhaps loyal to a fault. Delia didn’t like to think of things in those terms, but when Sam returned to work after being afflicted with vampirism, she had to admit that some virtues could be taken beyond their rational limits.

  “Sam, you’re dead,” she pointed out, leaning against the door to the stock room, where Sam had been busy organizing and categorizing everything that could be organized or put into categories. He’d found a label maker somewhere, and there were sticker labels on everything in sight. He’d created a spreadsheet for rotating inventory. A pack of highlighters littered the small desk. The file drawers stood open, half the records out and stacked on the floor. It was beginning to be a little absurd.

  Sam shrugged, peering up from behind his shaggy hair like a puppy. “That’s a matter of perspective,” he said after a moment.

  At an unassuming five-seven, prone to vague untidiness and shoe gazing, he had been just that, a puppy. Not anymore. His eyes were tinged with red and glowed like hot bronze at their centers. He had a way of standing frighteningly still between gestures, like a toy with the battery removed. Delia had been alternately fascinated and repulsed by the change in the five weeks since he’d returned to her employ. She hadn’t become inured to it yet. She wondered if she ever would.

  “Standard biological processes have ceased, hon. You can’t argue with that.”

  He pressed his lips together, then nodded. “I’m pretty spry, though. Hardly any shambling or muttering, ‘Brains.’”

  “You’re not zombified, I’ll give you that, but you are light averse. We’re a daytime business.”

  Sam folded in on himself, a hurt expression shadowing his features. Delia felt as if she were picking on him, perhaps even discriminating against him, though there’d been no push to make being undead a protected status. Legally, she had no responsibility to Sam at all.