by Ramy Vance
“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades … and Blackjack,” Jean said.
Both Father Time and I shot Jean an undignified look.
“Well, it’s true,” he muttered to himself like a sulking child.
Ignoring Jean, I said, “It’s better to be close to the line and not cross it than cross the line, is it not? Help us and we’ll help you. We’ll have the conversation.”
“But, but …” he stammered.
“You know the deal. Surely at this point you remember it, don’t you? You know how this whole thing is going to unfold. Help us and we’ll help you.”
Father Time began clicking his tongue like the seconds on an old grandfather clock before nodding. “Very well,” he said with a smile. “You have tricked me, placing me in a bind that forces my hand in order to maintain my vow. I shall help you. But not by shifting the sands of time. I shall instead impart a great secret to you that may, perhaps, if properly used, help you.”
Then the creature who even the gods feared wrote something down on a piece of paper and folded it. Father Time handed it to Jean. “Open this when the time comes.”
Jean started to protest, but he lifted a silencing finger. “And you will know when that time is. Trust me.” Then he handed an ordinary hourglass in a wooden frame to me. It looked like a kitchen egg timer. “The sands of time, my young lady. Use them wisely.” And with that, Father Time folded his arms. “Now let us have our conversation once more. And this time with feeling.”
No Time Like Any Time but the Present
We had our conversation. As for having it with feeling, I had to admit that even I was surprised by that part. And I’m not referring to what I said, because I was rather robotic in my role.
But Jean was another story. Sure, he started out robotic enough, just going through the motions, but as soon as he started talking about his wife, Bella, everything changed. He spoke about his love for her, her love for him … and how she had a heart so big that it loved everyone. And the more he spoke, the more we could feel his passion. He wasn’t kidding when he said he loved her and would do anything to make her happy. To keep her safe. To help her on her mission to help Others. Jean might not have cared for Others in the way his wife did, but he cared enough for her that it spilled over into caring for them as well.
We stepped outside Father Time’s hut. I held the hourglass, and Jean had the piece of folded paper that supposedly had something written on it that would help that would supposedly help us defeat the gods.
If this was “Mission Accomplished,” then I’d hate to have gone through the mission-crashed-and-burned scenario.
Keiko, who had been sitting on a rock outside the hut, stood up as soon as we came out. She gave us a look that simultaneously prayed for hope mixed with a resolve that we’d go on even if there was none. How she managed to say all that with a look, I’ll never know, but there was no denying Blue’s presence in her granddaughter. If Keiko was half of who Blue was, she’d be a force to be reckoned with.
I gestured for us to walk down the path before saying anything. Once we were halfway down, Jean broke the silence with, “Well, that was special. I mean, I’ve met eccentric Others before, but this guy wins the beauty pageant for weird.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “he was just working with what he had. He’s an Other who used to live in all times at once. And now that he’s mortal and stuck on the same temporal timeline as everyone else … well, it’s a miracle he’s not insane.”
“You call that ‘not insane?’ ” Jean said, cocking a thumb up the path.
“I call that surprisingly coherent. You saw what he did. He wanted to help us while not compromising his oaths. That’s a big deal for normal Others, so I can only imagine how epically huge a deal it is for a creature with cosmic powers. But he played the conversation exactly how he needed to to get us to threaten him and—”
“You threatened him?” Keiko said, anger in her voice.
I waved a dismissive hand. “Yeah, but only because he wanted us to.” And I told the noro priestess everything that had happened in the hut, ending with the folded paper and hourglass. “We don’t know what this says or what the hourglass does, but he insisted we would know when the time comes.”
“Does this mean he’s seen the future and knows our outcome?” Keiko asked.
I considered this. Truth was, I had no idea.
Jean shook his head. “I don’t think so. The way he spoke, the things he said, I gathered that the future isn’t set and that there are many outcomes.”
“But he is trying to help us?”
Again Jean shook his head. “He says he is, but I’m not so sure. A creature like Father Time would have a lot to gain from the gods returning. He’d be elevated to his previous status, become immortal again.”
“True,” I said, “but he’d also be enslaved by three gods whose Other-rights record wasn’t exactly stellar. He didn’t strike me as being into that, either.”
Jean shrugged. “All I’m saying is that we take this vial of sand with a grain of salt.” He chuckled at his joke. We did not. “Like I said,” Jean chimed in after our groans, “I’m very funny in Paradise Lot.”
Keiko pursed her lips, suppressing a … a smile. She wasn’t actually starting to appreciate his jokes, was she? Then again, he did have a certain charm. So does the Devil, I thought, pulling my gaze away from him.
“OK,” Keiko said, “so we have something with unknown powers that may or may not help us. I call that progress.”
“Optimistic,” I said.
“Perhaps, but it is something when before we had nothing. The question is, what next?”
“Well,” Jean said, pointing down the hill at the destroyer floating off the coast, “we could jump on that ship and use all the gadgets they have to assess our next move. After all, knowing is half the battle.”
G.I. Joe quotes aside, he was right. That ship would have access to information we didn’t have, and right now we needed to know as much as possible if we were going to survive what was to come next.
End of Part 2
Part III
Prologue
Charon
Arriveth the Ferryman
Charon lands on an island called Okinawa, a place he has visited many times before as the Ferryman. This is the first time he has traveled here as a mortal and he does not appreciate the long lines that he must suffer until he is granted final access to this place.
His attention is drawn to a young mortal talking to a giant yeti. They stand ahead of him, engaging in what the humans refer to as “pleasantries.”
He does not know why his eyes fixate on her. She is young, virile, strong. Unless tragedy strikes, she will live for many more years. His desire for her is perplexing.
Charon is not attracted to the living; he only has eyes for the dead. And this girl is anything but …
He wonders what it is about her and considers exploring further. But before he can approach her, she is through the line and lost in the crowd of the Okinawan airport.
↔
Alone, lost and unsure of where to go next, Charon allows himself to be drawn toward the wayward soul. He finds himself standing on a port where many boats are docked.
He stares out toward the sea. His eyes—if you can call the all-seeing orbs that rest in his skull “eyes”—see another island across the sea. He knows that the soul isn’t there.
Not yet, at least.
Wishing he had his ferry, he looks for a way across the waters and onto that island. And whether it’s fate or destiny or inexplicable luck, his desire finds an answer in the yeti he saw speaking to that girl.
For the yeti recognizes him and says, “Charon, as I live and breathe! I had heard you were made mortal like the rest of us and had always hoped to meet you.” The yeti extends a hand in a very human way.
Charon, as trained by Larry, takes the yeti’s hand, much to the hairy beast’s satisfaction. “Are you attending the festiviti
es at Kakusareta Taiyo Shima? The Celestial Solace is tomorrow and we are headed there now.”
The yeti points to a boat filled with other Others.
So that is where the soul is, Charon thinks. Trapped in another plane of existence, waiting to come to this world so that it may find its living body once more.
Charon nods, pulling out two pennies that he hands to the yeti as payment for passage.
The yeti accepts, holding the copper coins with the reverence befitting a gift from Charon the Ferryman.
↔
On the island, they walk to a familiar place: a hotel that Charon has visited many times while ushering souls to their various destinations. Once, he even escorted the god Baldr from the hotel to Yomi, the Land of the Dead and the geographical (well, celestial) location of the museum.
At the hotel, he sees many Others gathering for the coming Celestial Solace. The Land of the Dead is arriving this evening and all his senses tell him that the lost soul he seeks is trapped there.
This should be an easy affair, presuming that the pathways to the celestial plane will open up. Charon isn’t sure what will happen now that the gods are gone.
But what makes him uneasy isn’t the question of whether or not the pathway will open. It is the gathering occupants who line the halls of this place.
The Celestial Solace Hotel that Charon remembers is a place of peace. A place of neutrality. A place of reverence.
But the hostility within these halls is palpable. And Charon, who knows Death better than most, knows she will visit this place to reap the souls of many a lost Other.
His instincts are proven correct for at the moment when the human New Year and the Celestial Solstice intersects, a giant hole opens in the earth. It is not a pathway exactly, but more like a sinkhole into the underground passages that ultimately lead to Kami Subete Hakubutsukan and the museum beyond.
But as soon as the hole appears, the gathering Others engage in battle. For some reason, the battle seems to be centered around a young human. Charon cannot see the human and does not understand why the Others are so determined to capture her.
Then she jumps on the Chandelier of Stars and he sees that she possesses a map to Kami Subete Hakubutsukan.
He also sees that she is the one whose soul is trapped in the lands beyond.
G.I. Joe … a Real Other Hero!
Every time I thought I understood who this Jean guy was, he surprised me. Well, in this case, it wasn’t that he surprised me—it was more the way everyone acted around him. The three of us had walked down to the shore where an obviously bored soldier stood counting the noro as they filed onto the ships. As soon as he saw Jean, his disinterest evaporated as he stood erect, his posture so perfect I thought his spine might fuse that way.
“Sir,” he said, “so good of you to join us.”
The other soldiers hadn’t recognized him like this one did, and just as I was about to question how and why, I saw a little badge on his lapel with the initials OAIU. So he was from the same unit as Jean.
And from the way he swooned, I was starting to see that Jean wasn’t just a high-ranking soldier in the OAIU … he was a legend.
Jean gave the kid a half-hearted salute and a warm smile. “At ease,” he said. Scanning the ships dotting the horizon, he pointed at the destroyer. “How do I get on that rust bucket?”
“The USS LaSalle?” the soldier asked. “We can chopper you in or speedboat or—”
“This isn’t a multiple-choice quiz,” Jean said with a wink. “I just want the quickest way on.”
The soldier took Jean’s wink like Deirdre might have taken a wink from Ryan Reynolds, because his knees went weak as a smile crept across his face that said, “Wait until I get home and tell everyone what the great Jean-Luc Matthias did at me.”
Fanboy much?
“Speedboat,” the soldier said, his tone relaxing. “The chopper will take time to arrange.”
“Then a speedboat it is. Radio it in,” Jean said.
The kid did more than radio it in. He went running to the beachline, clicking his radio and waving his arms, and within sixty seconds, he was frantically calling us over to where a small, two-engine boat waited to speed us to the battleship.
“What did you do to get that guy’s head stuck in your ass?” I asked.
“Nothing I’m proud of,” he said with a solemn gaze.
↔
On the USS LaSalle, Jean, Keiko and I were greeted by the same bald captain that had sent us on our way when we’d sped off from Camp Kaneda and to this island. Only this time he had swapped his pristine white shirt with lots of medals and badges for a pristine blue blazer with lots of medals and badges and stripes.
Still, seeing the familiar captain gave me hope that Deirdre and Egya would be here to greet us as well. But a quick scan quickly revealed no changeling and no Ghanaian. Military intelligence my ass, I thought. These guys have no idea what kind of assets they’ve been benching for this apocalyptic fight.
“Actually, they know what kind of asset you are. They’re holding the other two for insurance,” Jean said, his hands up in a don’t-shoot-the-messenger gesture. Jean turned to the captain, to whom he gave his characteristic half-salute. “Captain Donnelly.”
The captain sneered at the obviously lax military protocol, but said nothing. Instead, he gestured for us to follow him into the bowels of the destroyer where we walked into a room with a low ceiling and lots of screens blipping and blooping. I felt like I had just entered the helm of a cliché submarine you saw in just about every 1980’s movie.
All we need now is Larry Connery and we’ll be in a scene from Hunt for Red October, I thought.
“Indeed, Moneypenny. Indeed,” Jean said in a terrible Scottish accent.
“Stay out of my head,” I said.
“Keep your head to yourself,” he countered. And with a faux gentleman’s bow, gestured for Keiko and me to take a seat.
The captain cleared his throat. Picking up a remote control, he activated a screen in front of the half-circle desk we sat on. “Here is the mystical hotel you called in. And as you can see, we’ve got one hell of an army gathering.” He clicked twice and we saw the same scene that we had witnessed on Jean’s tricorder device. The only difference was that the density of Others had grown.
As in, multiplied.
“And that’s not the worst of it. Here.” He clicked the remote twice and the screen’s camera zoomed out and panned to the other side of the island before zooming in again. There we saw several aquatic Others—meres, hafgufa, umi zato and selkies—ferrying the non-swimming Others to the island.
“More and more are coming every hour. By tomorrow morning, the number of Others on the island should double, if not triple.”
“And they’re all gathering to protect the hotel?” I asked.
“That is our assessment—”
“No,” Keiko said. “Look over there.” She pointed to the upper right-hand corner of the screen. “Look—that is the makara who helped us to the island.”
“Meres Griffin,” Jean chimed in with a smile.
Without a hint of mirth, Keiko nodded in agreement. “Hai. The makara is against the coming of the gods. She does not wish for a new age of divinity. She fights against it.”
Captain Donnelly pursed his lips as he considered Keiko’s comment. Then he walked over to a desk and pulled out some pictures. “Surveillance from this morning. There seems to be another camp of Others about two clicks from the hotel. And this morning, Others from that camp got into a skirmish with Others who had moved out from the hotel. We assumed it was just in-fighting. You know, one clan fighting for the top-dog position.”
He tossed the pictures across the desk, which were full-HD images of dozens of Others engaging in a battle. As I pieced through them one by one, I saw several dead Others left behind on the field. Whatever this “skirmish” was about, it had claimed lives on both sides.
“So your theory that there are two forces pans out
,” the captain said with an even tone that betrayed the simple fact that, in his world, two opposing forces changed nothing. Especially if both sides were made of Others.
But just in case, I thought I’d drive it home. “You can’t go ahead with the bombings—you’ll be killing Others that are on the humans’ side. On your side. Killing them will only galvanize the Others who are neutral against you.”
The captain shook his head. “The boys in lab coats disagree. They think any decisive strike against an organized group of Others will serve as a lesson against organized rebellion. In fact, they theorize—”
“Then those lab-coat boys are stupid,” I said. “As is your bombing raid plan.”
“How do you figure, ma’am?” he asked, his demeanor not changing in the least. This guy was a career politician, which meant he was practiced at deflecting civilian objections to war.
“Well, for one thing,” I said, raising a finger, “Others operate by a code of honor not too dissimilar to ours. You know, the whole Eye for an Eye thing. Except with these guys, they tend to go by Eye for Your Intestines.”
The captain started to say something, but I shot him down by raising a second finger. “And for another thing, has bombing allies or innocents ever not resulted in radicalizing otherwise peaceful individuals?”
The captain shrugged. “That is a philosophical debate several rungs above my pay grade. We will continue as planned.”
“And if you do,” I said, slamming my fist on the table, “you will pave the way for the gods’ resurrection. And that will lead to enslavement, torture, pain and suffering for Others and humans alike.”
I took a deep breath, centering myself before I continued. “We have a real chance at stopping this,” I said. “And bombing the island isn’t necessary.”