Tales of the Continuing Time and Other Stories

by Moran, Daniel Keys

Anteho nodded. “My lord.” She stepped out of the house, out into the now floodlit front yard.

  “We will need to talk at more length,” Father told Georges Mordreaux. “Will you see me in Arch?”

  “If guaranteed safe passage? Of course. I’d enjoy seeing Middle Earth again. It’s been some time.”

  “I will send you an escort.” Father hesitated. “Thank you for your service to my son. I am in your debt.”

  Georges smiled. “You are, but we’ll find a way to make it right.”

  Father nodded. “May I speak with Tariq privately?”

  Georges pointed. “Take the bedroom.”

  Anteho returned at that moment with a trooper’s uniform and a pair of boots. I didn’t ask where she’d acquired it, or who’d been wearing it. It looked to fit me. I took it into the bedroom, and changed into it, and put the boots on.

  Father came in a moment later.

  With just the two of us in the room, he abruptly seemed more distant. Not a surprise, really. He looked as though he were about to speak, stopped. Then he said, and I think it was not what he had started to say: “I saw the first draft of your letter.”

  I simply looked at him. “Sir?”

  “The letter you wrote in Harleton.”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Please send troops,” he quoted.

  “Forgive my impertinence, sir.”

  He shook his head. “It was not impertinent. It was weak, though. When addressing a superior or equal, which will be a rare experience in your life, we advise. I advise you send troops. When addressing an inferior, we instruct. Send troops. But we do not ever use please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Father hesitated. “Gurny died.”

  “Of course.”

  “That was not a question, son. He did, I have seen his body.” He studied me for a second. “But your sister Uadalure is alive.”

  HE HAD THE decency to look aside while I cried.

  UADALURE THE FALLEN, they called her when she was older. That was because of the fall she survived, it’s true. Later, Uadalure of the Four Hundred – historians of later millennia thought it referred to the distance she’d fallen. History is mostly a lie, though, and truth of the last stand at Windward and the four hundred who died with her was not even a myth by then, buried in the greater story of the final fall of the Republic of Potsdam.

  END

  All Possible Worlds

  THIRTY-THREE YEARS ago my father, Samuel Goodnight, told his best friend a terrible secret – and asked him to keep that secret forever.

  The next day a man came to talk to Sam about it.

  THEY WERE RAIL thin, the boys, wandering about on dirt trails in the west hills of the San Fernando Valley. This was back when kids went where they wanted to, hopping fences as needed, and there were no cell phones and no GPS, and nobody worried about them as long as they showed up for dinner. (I know that sounds like old people talk, but I’ve been to that year, and things really were like that.)

  Sam was a blond, blue-eyed, ten-year-old white boy. His friend Tom McCoy was a slightly taller version of the same: they looked like brothers, though they weren’t, and in some ways – and I am talking genetics now – were as different as it’s possible for two boys to be.

  “My Mom says they shouldn’t let you stay with your Dad.”

  Sam shook his head. “Your Mom’s wrong.”

  “Because he can’t take care of you, being away all the time.”

  “No one,” Sam said with perfect certainty, “is going to take me away from him.”

  “You could come live with us,” Tom said, a note of hope in his voice. “My Mom would like you to live with us.”

  “I wish you’d stop talking about your Mom.”

  Tom thought about that for a minute and sounded contrite when he said he was sorry.

  “I miss my Mom so bad. I wake up and want to go in her bedroom to get a hug ... and it’s just my Dad in there.”

  “You could get a hug from him.”

  Sam didn’t entertain the idea. “No.” They stopped at the top of a hill and looked out over the San Fernando Valley – not much to look at; the brown haze of the summer smog, at midday, limited the view to only a few miles, and mostly of tract houses. On a clear day – in the winter, after it rained – you could see the skyscrapers of downtown from the hilltop, just the other side of the Hollywood Hills.

  They sat down to rest, on the fallen trunk of a dead tree.

  “Can I tell you something secret?” Sam demanded abruptly.

  “Sure.”

  “You gotta promise not to tell.”

  “OK.”

  “I mean really really promise.”

  Now Tom was intrigued. “Sure.”

  Sam took a deep breath. “I think my Dad ... I think he killed my Mom.” He looked out over the city toward the distant downtown he couldn’t see but knew was there. “I think he did.”

  THIS WAS SUMMERTIME, six months ago.

  My father, sitting at the desk in his office, looked up from reading “Lonesome Dove” as the figure appeared in his doorway. It’s his favorite book – he once said he’d read it twenty times, and I think that was understating it.

  He was a little overweight – a tall middle-aged man, head shaved, black goatee, black eyepatch over the right eye. We had a neighbor once who called him “the scary bald dude,” and that neighbor didn’t know a hundredth of it.

  The gut was because he’d been letting himself go, ever since Alison Adams’ death.

  Looking up from the book, Sam said, “Well, you look ... older.”

  THREE WEEKS AGO, in mid-November, Sam and Isabel Martinez were lying asleep atop tangled bedclothes in a two-room suite at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons. Sam was in noticeably better shape by then.

  Sam didn’t live at the hotel – where he lived wasn’t nearly as nice – but he did have the suite rented on a permanent basis, and Isabel thought he lived there.

  At 3 A.M. on Saturday morning, Sam sat up in bed and said abruptly, “What the hell was that?”

  Isabel muttered, barely audible over the ringing in Sam’s ears, “What was that?”

  Sam patted her bare, gorgeous, twenty-four-year-old ass. “Nothing.” He hesitated. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  AND THIS IS the Now.

  Sam sat in the hotel’s living room, wearing white Thorlo socks and black slacks, holding in his left hand a long-sleeved blue-gray shirt that was almost the same color as his eyes. On his right shoulder he had an anarchy tattoo. Red eelskin cowboy boots sat by his feet. He held his right hand palm upturned, with that blue fire Navigators of a particular age call Mohammed’s Radio hovering over his palm: even a citizen would have heard a whispery noise emanating from that glow, though that’s all they’d have heard.

  The eye not covered by his eyepatch was sleepy, drooping. At one point it widened slightly –

  Sam made a fist and the glow vanished. Isabel entered from the bedroom, buttoning up a white dress shirt over a very attractive black lace bra – the bra was still visible through the shirt when she was done. “Who died?”

  Sam stared at her. Not much surprised him, but this did. “Why would you think someone died?”

  “I heard it on your voice mail. An old man?”

  Sam put his shirt on, watching Isabel pull on stockings and shoes, getting herself together. He thought, not for the first time, that even under the circumstances she was much too young and beautiful for the likes of
him. “You misheard. The old man ... we expected him to die last night. He didn’t.”

  “You don’t sound happy about it,” Isabel observed.

  “In our line of work,” said Sam, and the our was probably not an accident at that point, “surprises are bad.” He pulled the boots on and stood up. “Come have breakfast with me.”

  “I better not. My manager’s going to be waiting for me.”

  Sam smiled. “Tell your pimp I took you to breakfast. If he gives you a hard time about it, I’ll break his arm.”

  “He’s a really scary guy, Sam.”

  “So I’ll break both arms. Come to breakfast with me.”

  Isabel cocked her head slightly to one side. “You’re a strange man.”

  “I’m the normalest person you ever met,” Sam informed her. “Let me get my sword.” He brushed by her, walking into the bedroom –

  SAM SURPRISED THE sniper in the orange grove, and ran him through before the man could make a sound.

  AN INSTANT LATER Sam returned from the bedroom, a sheathed sword in one hand. Isabel couldn’t remember having seen a sword in the bedroom, certainly not just beside the door.

  Sam seemed cheerful. “Let’s go.”

  ISABEL HAD EXPECTED to eat at the hotel restaurant, which was superb – instead Sam bundled her into his gold 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible. They drove down Beverly Drive to Pico Boulevard, and then several miles westward on Pico, until he came to a rundown coffee shop she’d never noticed before, at the corner of Pico and Bundy Drive.

  It was busy for a Saturday morning, and there were more cops than Isabel liked. No one seemed to take notice of the appearance of a tall pirate with a girl half his age. Sam took a booth large enough for four and they sat across from one another. Their waitress, a college-aged girl – Isabel’s age, probably – seemed to know Sam. Sam ordered toast and scrambled eggs with coffee; Isabel, feeling more than a little put-upon, ordered hot tea.

  “Why are we eating here?” Isabel demanded after the waitress left.

  “Meeting someone. Look at me.”

  Isabel gave him the barest smile. “I am.”

  “Look hard. Make eye contact.”

  Isabel stared at his one visible eye. “Right. Now what?”

  “What’s our waitress’s name?”

  The blue in Sam’s eye seemed to be floating slightly; Isabel found she was having a hard time actually looking at it. “I didn’t look at her tag.”

  “She’s not wearing one. What’s her name?”

  A vague expression flickered across Isabel’s features. The diner seemed to grow quiet around her. She wished Sam would stop looking at her with that fucking eye – it felt, intimate, like Sam was ... inside her ... and not in any way she liked.

  She said slowly, “Why would I ... Alice? Park? Parker? Alice Parker?”

  “Alice Parker. Well done. How does Alice die?”

  “What?”

  “Everyone dies. Alice Parker’s gonna. How?”

  “She’s ... old,” Isabel said desperately. “She’s really old. There’s a pain in her chest –”

  “Lung cancer,” Jake Two Knives said. “When she’s 93.”

  Sam blinked and the noise of the restaurant came crashing back in on Isabel. A tall, fit girl with straight blonde hair had appeared beside their table – even younger than Isabel, and Sam was easily old enough to be Isabel’s father. (Which, to be sure, was a fairly normal age gap between men and their companions at the Beverly Wilshire.... )

  The girl was ... seventeen? Isabel thought. Eighteen? And nearly six feet tall, almost as tall as Sam.

  Two Knives looked back and forth between the two of them, considering, and then slid in next to Isabel.

  “Jake, Isabel. Isabel, this is Jake. She works for me.”

  “It’s a bad way to die,” Two Knives observed. “She outlives her kids and her grandkids stop visiting her toward the end. She dies all alone ...” Two Knives waved at their waitress. “Coffee, please. Black.”

  Sam studied her. “What happened?”

  The girl shrugged. “I was watching all night. He was supposed to fall on the stairs and break his neck. Didn’t.”

  “Supposed to?” Isabel asked.

  Two Knives just looked at her.

  “Supposed to? Like you were there to make sure?”

  Neither Sam nor Two Knives answered her. Sam said, “You didn’t go inside?”

  Two Knives shook her head. “No. Where’d you find this one?”

  “She heard you and Mrs. Jones on Mohammed’s Radio.”

  Two Knives stared at Sam. “Mrs. Jones left you a message? The Inquisition is here?”

  “The Inquisition is here. With the Wickersham Brothers.”

  Two Knives glanced at Isabel. “What was she doing –”

  “Pretty much what you think,” Isabel said evenly.

  Jake Two Knives looked back and forth between Sam and Isabel, as though comparing them, trying to picture them together. “Things can always get worse ... you had to bring her with you?”

  “Protocol.”

  “We’ve got problems,” Two Knives said sharply.

  “Always do. ‘Although affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground.’” Isabel joined him on the next line: “‘Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.’”“Not Shakespeare.”

  “Jake just finished reading Shakespeare,” Sam informed Isabel. “All – what? – thirty-five plays?”

  “Thirty-seven,” Two Knives said. “The Bible, I assume.”

  “Book of Job.”

  Two Knives sighed. “I should read that.”

  There was a note of real bewilderment in Isabel’s voice, barely concealing incipient anger. “The Bible was the only book in our house when I was growing up. What’s going on here?”

  “Shit,” said Two Knives. “I can’t believe you brought her with you. I’m going –”

  Sam looked at her, with mild curiosity.

  “– to the bathroom.” Two Knives slid back out of the booth.

  “What’s her problem?” Isabel demanded. “What is this?”

  “Ah, well. Jake’s embarrassed because she thinks you’re too young for me. When she finds out I’ve been paying you, she’ll think badly of us both.”

  “Why,” Isabel asked pointedly, “would she find out?”

  “I expect you’re gonna tell her.”

  “Sam, I’m not even going to talk to her.”

  Sam actually grinned at her. “You’re not gonna have a lot of choice about that.”

  That was enough for Isabel: she’d been a working girl long enough to know that when customers got weird it was time to get out. She could get a cab. She got a tight grip on the straps of her purse –

  “Jake’s behind you.”

  Isabel turned her head very slightly –

  Two Knives stood in the doorway of the diner, a long, wickedly curved knife in each hand.

  Across the diner, people had fallen silent (again? flashed through Isabel’s mind, or for real this time?) – watching them, watching Two Knives blocking the door. Even the half dozen cops scattered about the restaurant didn’t move.

  Sam said softly, and kindly enough for what he really was, “We kill runners. Jake’d feel bad afterward ... but she’ll kill you before you get to the door.”

  SAM PULLED THE ’57 Bel Air off to the side of the road, next to the Bothwell Ranch orange grove on Collier Street, in the south San Fernando Valley.

 
It was the largest remaining orange grove in the Valley.

  Isabel sat alone in the back seat – not angry, not even particularly scared yet – just waiting: whatever was going on, they couldn’t watch her forever. Though she’d need to create distance to get away from the girl, she expected – Jake looked like she could outrun a greyhound.

  In the seat beside Isabel sat a gym bag which Isabel knew contained Sam’s basketball clothes, shoes, and a basketball.

  Sam got out of the car and Two Knives moved into the driver’s seat. “Leave the engine running,” Sam told Two Knives.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, OK?”

  Sam nodded. “You see a bright light, get out of here.”

  Two Knives just looked at him. “How bright?”

  Sam hesitated. “Don’t look straight at it.”

  Sam went to the trunk of the car and withdrew a .38 revolver and his sword, and walked into the orange grove.

  THE WICKERSHAM BROTHERS and Mrs. Jones waited for him in a small clearing ten rows in from the street. The Brothers, two men in their mid-thirties, wore their usual cheap black suits, a sort of Pulp Fiction look; Sam knew Terry, at least, thought he and his brother looked good in them. He didn’t know what Brett thought; he hadn’t spoken to Brett much since meeting him, and seeing how Brett was going to die.

  Mrs. Jones was an attractive black woman, a few years younger than Sam, whom Sam had known most of his life. She didn’t frighten Sam – not very much at all frightened Sam, and this was probably a failing – but he respected her enough to slow down and plan.

  Sam came to a stop about ten feet away. Terry, looking at Sam’s sword, seemed amused. “Brett, Terry. Mrs. Jones.”

  “You’ve been working out,” Terry observed.

  “Yep.”

  “Still dyeing your beard.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Mrs. Jones looked around. Sam knew she was annoyed by their location – her bespoke suit was getting dirty, and cleaning that suit cost more than buying most of the clothes Sam owned. “Why an orange grove?”