The Lady's Champion

by M F Sullivan

  And then, as the True Word for that which was known to men as the sacred protein bubbled to the surface of her opened mind, Dominia’s memories of the past rose with it.

  More than any, it brought the memories of the first function. The same as this iteration, or nearly. Without the organization of the Red Market, without the Hierophant, without the foreknowledge of her hateful Father. The Family: it had been Cicero and Elijah, Dominia and Cassandra, Lavinia and Theodore. And what a terrible, violent mess all of it had been! What an endless sea of sorrows worse even than this world. Then, as now, Dominia had died after seeing to the death of the Lamb. Then, as now, she had found herself praying endlessly for all those she wronged. But the prayers in that place had been different, the Catholic prayers, for then Valentinian did not exist in even the fictional sense. Again and again, she pled for the eternal rest of the damned and lost and lonely beings of purgatory; then, as now, she had prayed for the sacred protein, and determined once it revealed its True Word that it, too, had a soul.

  Valentinian, the martyr saint of death and the incarnated form of the sacred protein, genuflected down before his mother at the instant she sat up. He asked, “Do you get it now?”

  “You are the sacred protein. Its spirit.”

  “You didn’t create me. But I was born of you, Dominia. Your Word.” The surge of white energy blazed into her with such force that she was rendered speechless, and could not even comprehend the irony of discussing the Word at such a time. “You derived me from the sacred protein’s bond to your soul. Gave me life here. And now you’ve given me flesh. Because you’ve given me flesh, I can help you trap your Father.

  “Do you know how much information you can store in a hard drive while respecting the structural integrity of the universe? You don’t have to answer that.” He smiled doggishly into her eye, unseeing above her pain-opened mouth. “The answer is ten to the sixty-ninth power bits per square meter. The standard Earthling brain—martyr or human, for those keeping track at home—has one hundred trillion neurons, which is an incredible amount of storage space. The brain is the only storage device that must run a twenty-four-seven program simulating an entire world. Almost, anyway. Without sleep, we’d be in trouble! Have to dump that RAM somehow. Do you know how much your brain is doing for you during your waking hours? You look at an apple, and you don’t see the real apple. Your eye is interpreting it, coloring it, flipping it right-side up, then you go, ‘Oh, that’s an apple.’ Every day, you walk down the street, and you see a thousand apples: a thousand things, a million things, that your brain is perpetually constructing and interpreting, then selectively presenting faster than I can snap my fingers. Not just that, but all it remembers! All those once-glanced faces that come to you in dreams, or those fragments of chatter invented just for them. Every mind contains infinity, but the infinite contains every mind; and that which contains every mind becomes infinite, you understand.”

  She fancied her limbs dissolved, overwhelmed by the force of the souls plunging into her with their flowers, their straw hats, their fishing boats, their starry nights and beautiful mornings and all the things they once had and wished to have again. She felt it all; and what was “it”? The world, she supposed, swiftly passing the point of supposition. The General had been forced to her knees and needed to be held upright by the magician, whose arm she gripped with such a viselike hand she was surprised he did not wince.

  “Every person you know, everything you’ve ever experienced—it’s all part of the black hole, Dominia. It’s all a part of you. If I am the soul of the first True Word, you are the soul of that vast, encompassing spirit: the Lady. You create new iterations of the universe, new models, to trap your Father there. Instead of moving into the afterlife or transmigrating to a higher state of being, the old wretch is so broken up about the death of his brother—and, now, so addicted to power—he’d rather flee to our simulations of the original universe and delude himself they’re real, tangible iterations. Ever since your first death, I’ve helped you do this. Helped you physicalize it all for him, to give you another chance to end his life and set right what you’ve done.

  “You asked me once what you were in the metaphor about movie theaters. I let you think you were the projectionist, but you’re not. I am. You’re the screen, kiddo. And we’re about to run this film one final time.”

  The vibrations of her rib cage made her feel as if her very internal structure sought to drill through her flesh. “It hurts,” she said. He embraced her, her friend, her son, her personal manifestation of the Holy Spirit within the sacred protein as projected through her genetic code. Still the spirits flowed. “Why me?”

  “Because that first time you died you didn’t do what everybody else does and start praying for yourself. You started praying for everybody else. You, that first time, realized the formula of consciousness plus ego equals a soul. You, that first time, invited them into you and became infinite in the process. You realize you could have moved on to the Kingdom by now and seen Cassandra? She’s already there. It’s eternity. But that idea never even crossed your mind. It was worth more to you to trap your Father and liberate all those spirits than it was for you to be happy. In the infinite probabilities of infinite people, it’s infinitely easy to take the lazy way out. You refuse to allow that—maybe because I keep coming back and pushing you,” he added, chuckling. “But that’s one of the reasons you derived me. It doesn’t have to hurt.”

  At last, the river of souls ceased. The impact of the final spirit was so thunderous that the disoriented General returned to her senses to find the magician disappeared. His voice from all around her—from within her—said, “Take off your eye patch.”

  After all she had endured for the sake of keeping it on, and all she had been warned of its removal, the moment arrived to a very reluctant Dominia; but neither could she stand the pressure, for her intuition cried that if she did not find some relief, even her powerful thoughtbody would be lost among the screaming masses within her. The weeping masses within her. All those souls of the world who wished, in the purest way of wishing, only that they could live again. It didn’t matter whether they did it a little better, a little worse, or just the same as last time. And if she could make their dreams come true—if she could give them a chance at redemption—it was worth her own suffering through the same.

  The General of the old world removed her eye patch and the Lady’s eye opened. The hyper-density of the spirits within Her collapsed Her form, that old self bursting beneath the pressure of the knowledge contained: bursting, yet, reforming with the dark substance of the Ergosphere that very material world. An eye opened in Her that was not an eye at all—it saw beyond all information, all structure, all time. Above the howl of the geyser that streamed from Her un-eye’s socket, the magician said, “I prefer to derive reality through a mathematical model, because it’s so streamlined. But what I find works best for you is true sight.”

  The darkness of the Void that had returned on its emergence from Her skull now swirled back upon Her to crush Her body in a wave: as that darkness inhabited the very substance of Her flesh, She saw it for what it was. Ink, or phosphors untouched by electrons. But, more often, ink. She looked beyond this ink, into the shapes they formed around her, with her, beneath her, and read their words in a way that was not the absorption of new information but the remembering of old. Or, better than remembering, the revealing of what she had always known. Broken through, she read the Words upon the pages of her life and found she spoke them aloud, True Words forming reality from her invisible mouth in the Void while the vanished magician said, “Once you have words, you’re going to need numbers. That’s easy, because they’re implied right in front of us. Anytime there’s one, there’s an infinity. Though frankly, you don’t even need one—.999 repeating will do, since it equals 1, but we’re lucky we don’t need to concern ourselves with that. Since I already know I’m a given, we have to distinguish enough other numbers to fill a number system. And sin
ce we—or I, anyway—have ten fingers…”

  In the vastness of space, the magician reappeared. “One,” he counted. Then: “Two.” A beam of light pierced the darkness, then another, then another. Nine he counted them, before the Lady repeated their names. From these lights emerged the souls of the Bearers, the first beings of the Kingdom, which, in turn, revealed the existence of the Kingdom. As the Lady’s opened eye transmuted into the waters of that crystal pool, the magician drew through it those souls desperate for refuge from the bleak landscape of Ergosphere. Within that same desolate plane, that pool was envisioned not as a perfect mirror of water but as another world. That world spoken, eternally, by the voice of the Lady.

  Now, She understood how long—and how infinitely short—Her journey was to be.

  XV

  Anno Domini 1974

  Trisha Robbins was twenty years old when a then unknown cabal of prostitutes began seducing her from academia to fulfill her destiny. Of all seven avatars before the Lady herself manifested upon the Earth in that distant, fatal future, one could easily argue Trisha was the most significant—and most visible. Yet she was not affiliated with a spirituality, as had been Her previous embodiments. Nor was she of a distinct race or cultural affiliation, which was a trait particular to the people of her place and time. She was a modern woman living in the United States of America, a nation of immigrants founded upon the backs of genocidal religious separatists. Therefore, religion was in her DNA, but far be it from the geneticist-in-training to acknowledge such a thing! Not before she began to understand her role in the world.

  Ironically, though she studied biochemistry and would, in another place and time, have been responsible alongside her husband for discovering what martyrs called “the sacred protein” (“Our only child,” she would have joked at the sundry cocktail parties upon its discovery, before her worthless lab assistants stole a malformed variation and took it in secret by terrible mistake), Trisha had never been as interested in her genetic background as in her mental lineage. She venerated no more ancestors than she did deities. The spirits she praised were Newton, Darwin, and the wise words of then living sage, Dr. Carl Sagan. His book, The Cosmic Connection, had spoken to her from a bookstore’s new-release section just the year before. This man wrote in a way that made her believe science fiction was possible. Imagine, terraforming a planet! Imagine, a race of people who never died, but might voyage out into the far reaches of outer space like an infinite collection of dandelion seeds! It was not an American that Trisha foremost considered herself; it was an Earthling first, a human second, and a scientist third.

  Budding scientist, at least. In her Pomona College dorm room, she dreamed every night of a future that seemed as if it would never come—not with so many years of study between it and her. Her roommate majored in French in a way that mostly involved drinking at parties, missing her classes, and occasionally remembering to show up for exams, but Trisha worked so hard through her first year of study that it took a month into year two to realize a fellow was making eyes at her. That crossroads of time, October 1974: her roommate, while unwrapping a vinyl album sent to her by her mother, said, “So are you going to do anything about that guy?”

  “What guy?” had been the redhead’s oblivious response. Her boggling roommate lowered the cardboard sleeve, allowing a glance of the cover—the band Styx had released an album lazily titled Styx II, and Trisha had been blissfully unaware of its existence until her roommate started humming some song she’d heard playing in her home radio station in Chicago. Tish had a feeling she’d like it even less played twenty times a day from the poor students’ turntable in the corner of their room. She had zoned out into thoughts of the device’s cost when her roommate told her the name of the man she’d noticed admiring the pensive, analytical Robbins girl.

  Oh—him. Yes, she did know him. A very fine-looking fellow, with dark hair and piercing blue eyes, who (nervously, she would realize on future pondering) inserted himself into her campus library study group. She hadn’t realized it was because of her. Her roommate’s annoyance on hearing this gave Trisha the sinking feeling that something would “be done” about it. Sure enough, a day later, the quiet young man asked her out to ice cream. Like it was the 1950s! So wholesome. And, well, he was too good-looking to pass by. Trisha was very good-looking, herself, but it was a confidence issue with her. She had never expected to have the pick of the litter, so she usually didn’t; her focus was so plastered to her books that there was no time for something as frivolous as boys.

  Almost.

  They tend to say opposites attract, but this same cliché-prone “they” also tells us that birds of a feather flock together. With him, Trisha felt what she could only explain as, well—a cosmic connection. Sure, sure, they both had very similar dreams for their futures. Both came from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, both had similar political ideals in that period of sweet, post-Nixon relief. But nothing felt quite the way it did when she found his paperback copy of Sagan’s 1973 book in the bedroom of his off-campus apartment. Then, she knew it was love. She’d never believed in love, or fate, but here were both, and neither would be denied. Of course, it made perfect sense she should meet another budding biochemist in college courses that led down that career route, but the similarity of their dreams—to heal the sick, to perpetuate the human race through the stars, to believe beyond all doubt that death was defeatable—before the presence of that book felt, for lack of a better description, like a sign.

  They talked for hours. Only talked, the way people did in movies. Then, like a gentleman, he offered to walk her back to her dorm in the still-warm darkness of the Claremont night.

  Claremont. What could be said of the place where she spent so little time? It was safe. She had never felt threatened there—not once—so it was a great shock when, from the darkness of a storefront along their meandering route, two figures stepped into the sidewalk on their passing. Trisha’s body tensed, although she told herself she was a fool; but, before she dispelled her fear by turning to ask the shadows if they wanted to pass, her would-be lover made the mistake for her. He had enough time to utter a cry before the blackjack fell upon his head and his body crumpled from Trisha’s arm. A scream began to peel past her lips as she turned to see the assailants for herself, but she was so shocked when she found them to be a pair of stylish women in military coats that the noise tapered off like the expiration of a leaking balloon.

  “He’ll be fine,” said the woman with the afro. Her Latina sister whisked a few strands of hair from her tanned face, then stooped to drag Tish’s boyfriend into the building from which they’d come. While Trisha, senses somewhat regained after the start, began again to cry out, the black woman sucked a tooth and closed the distance between herself and the redhead.

  “Please quit it with that racket or we’ll have to do the same to you, Miss Robbins. Then you won’t feel there was any choice in the matter.”

  Confusion after confusion! It felt as though confusion were the wave, panic the medium, and Trisha the shore upon which it all broke. “How do you know my name?”

  “We were told to watch you, and to be ready for the moment to move. The time is now; we are changing history tonight.”

  “‘We’? Changing—what is this? What are you doing with J—”

  “If you go back to your dorm room in the next fifteen minutes, you will die. You and your boyfriend, both. This is his only opportunity to do it. When he misses, it’s over for him. To rise to power, he has to get started yesterday—metaphorically, I mean—and that means he can’t afford to botch it up by killing you late in the game. He shows up in 1974 and tries to kill you sometime in the course of that year. Tonight’s the night this time. It’s now or never.”

  What did these words even mean? “He,” who? What sort of stranger just walked up to somebody on the street, incapacitated a man, and started saying things like this? While a limousine whipped around the corner, the dark woman turned to greet the reemerging c
omrade, who dusted her hands to indicate she’d relieved herself of their burden. Trisha managed to grasp hold of her thoughts enough to ask, “Who? Who wants to do this to me?”

  “A man not yet called the Hierophant,” answered the black woman. As the limo slid to a halt and fluttered open the women’s military coats to reveal the shimmer of bright fabric beneath, she popped open its back door. “Will you come with us?”

  Trisha, with an anxious glance over her shoulder for the building where her suitor had been dragged, wrapped her arms around herself. “What about him?”

  “He’s being taken care of. In a few hours, we’ll drop him off down the street from his apartment. Make it all look like a mugging.”

  “What am I supposed to say to him?”

  “Please.” The dark woman pulled the door wider while her compatriot stooped to get in. “Just a ride around the town. Half an hour. Let us show you something.”

  “What?”

  “The truth.”

  Her skin crawled. She’d rather have been anywhere other than there. To do anything other than get in! But she sensed there was no alternative. With a reluctant step toward the car, she asked, “Will you at least tell me your name?”

  For the first time that night, the black woman smiled. “I’m Gethsemane.”

  Tish had seen vehicles like this in movies, but even so, it was hard to believe the little minibar rattling behind the three other women already in the car. Hard to believe the shag carpet, the smell of pot, the disco ball, the specialty cocaine mirrors lying out on a couple of knees, anything—anything about it. Especially not the women themselves, who seemed an arrangement of not so much models from a runway in Milan as tropical birds from a mysterious jungle moon light-years away. Absolutely stunning and…not particularly shy in their choice of wardrobe, to put it politely. While Trisha cleared her throat against improper thoughts, Gethsemane and her friend removed their coats to reveal equally elaborate (and slightly less suggestive) dresses beneath. The black-and-white sequins of Gethsemane’s illuminated the cabin as though it were a light of its own.