World of Darkness - Time of Judgement - Mage

by Judgement Day

  (Well, there are ways around that, involving qualitative improvements to the agents’ perceptive and cognitive functions. Why do you think I’m so obsessed with augmenting humanity, anyway? I want us to get out of this fucking rat race. Until we do, we’re stuck with these problems. )

  Once it became clear that a fascist victory was not going to happen, the Union went through the next best thing to an actual shooting civil war. The strategic assets were, of course, information stores. Just as German, Italian, and Japanese medical records went up for grabs, so did Technocratic archives. I’ve always thought that it would be fun, in a draining sort of way, to assemble a multidimensional map showing the movement of selected data, physically and in terms of control, year by year. But I digress. What matters for my work now is that in 1951, the Telman Cay Epidemiology Working Group got their hands on enough data from all sides to assemble a reliable map of sub-strains of the vampirism virus. Up until then, factional rivalry had kept crucial data out of reach, but while the show trials and purges were going on, the Telman Cay crew cleaned up.

  They got purged themselves, of course, in the panic of 1963 and ’64- You can’t do that kind of thing and not make any enemies. But before they went down and out, they spread copies of their work around. As a strategy for deflecting the impending arrests, it failed, but as a knowledge-preservation strategy it worked superbly. Here it is for me to use now.

  The upshot of the current data and my new analysis is that things are getting weird in a new away among the various strains of vampirism. Now, in one (meaningful) sense, it’s always strange. Anything that makes stories of vampires seem plausible and well founded is just strange. But things are going on that lack any precedent I can discern. Most particularly, it looks like one whole strain, the one we call East Europe One since that’s where it seems most common, has just disappeared. No bodies, no nothing, just gone. I have the reports from the Hematovore Developments Threat Team here, with their guesses ranked in order of probability:

  Possibility #1: The victims of some other strain discovered exploitable weaknesses in the victims of HHV strain EU1 and mounted a coordinated attack. The hematovores spend a lot of time chowing on each other, apparently finding already-infected blood particularly yummy, and the virus doesn’t impair intelligence. Quite the opposite, in fact, in some cases.

  Possibility #2: Non-hematovores discovered an exploitable etc. etc. There’s an attached breakdown of probable candidates, including uncoordinated factions of the Union itself, a resurgent covert Inquisition, and so on down to an alien species once mistakenly reported as related to the transmission of EU1. The annotations run to many, many pages; I let them wait.

  Possibility #3: HHV-EU1 mutated and wiped out its victims. Unlikely, given the need for both the latent defect and a global trigger, but better than the alternatives.

  Possibility *4: Other, with a very long (and very conjectural) list of scenarios. I recognize some of the pet issues here, like Dana Caruthers and her crusade to establish deadly orgone radiation as responsible for HHV and many other woes, and my occasional drinking buddy Rob the Bogman and his thing about Jungian archetypes and morphogenetic resonance instantiating concepts in tissue rendered temporarily undifferentiated. Rob may know every good bar and most good brothels in eight time zones, but on this one he’s just plain as full of shit as my first wife was during the divorce. I skim in search of anything new or interesting, sigh, and go back to the analysis of the higher-probably risks.

  Turns out to be a good thing it’s a long flight.

  * * *

  MING XIAN

  Two days west of Beijing, I walk along a side road toward Mentougou. It’s heavily trafficked, of course. There simply are no empty spaces around the capital, but there are districts whose people continue to farm and tend their herds and mostly stay out of the way of large-scale commerce. Among them I can seem to be simply one more peasant woman, or perhaps someone originally from the bureaucratic classes but sentenced to labor for her crimes against the state and who chose to remain at it when the sentence expired. These are familiar, comfortable roles, not needing any further explanation, and not inviting scrutiny to see if I might be a notorious terrorist.

  It’s lush here even in midsummer. These lands have been irrigated since long before there actually was a China as such (at least, they’re irrigated whenever there’s no war or rebellion in the area), and the good soil holds the water very well. The roadside grass grows at least knee high, and in some places almost up to my shoulders, while the pines planted as windbreaks sway gracefully in the occasional breezes. Farmers pass me by in their carts and trucks; I notice that while the tires are often mismatched, they’re all in fairy good condition, unlike many of the ones I see on Uygur roads. And the people look like me, the same builds and proportions in their features as I see in my own. Sometimes it’s good to be one of a billion.

  Not long after sunset, an empty truck driven by a cheerful-looking old man slows down so that he can speak to me without getting out. I’ve been watching the people passing by me with this new awareness of yang power, learning to judge the health of body and soul in terms of its strengths as well as its yin-revealed weakness. This one... doesn’t have any health. He has a karmic burden, dark heavy chains tying him to the yin realms, but the only spark of life in him is in his blood and breath, and they belong to someone else. He is one of the hungry ghosts who claw their way out of hell and back into the world to resolve the debts that chain them.

  When he speaks, it is formally, in an old-fashioned dialect. That’s no surprise to me, since the hungry ghosts can last for centuries if they’re as careful as this one seems to be. “Good evening, miss. ” He uses a term implying individual distinction without noble rank. “Pleasant as these roads may be, they are not altogether safe at night. There are predators. ” He does not smile—to judge from the smoothness of his cheeks, he has not smiled or frowned for a long time—but his manner is friendly enough.

  And of course I know what he’s not saying, and he knows that I know. “Good evening, sir, " I say, framing my address to a gentleman of unknown status. “I welcome your concern, though I’ve been well trained to attend to my safety. ” I wait for him to respond, walking on in silence a little while.

  “Please, miss, ” he says after giving me another considered look. “We must speak. "

  “Must we? ” I answer somewhat glibly, taking longer than I should to understand his emotions. He is fighting through a passionate internal conflict on more than one level of awareness, and I should avoid provoking him.

  He pulls to the side of the road a few paces in front of me and parks the truck. When he gets out, I see that he’s no taller than I am, but he looms more impressively thanks to perfectly erect posture and that general air of authority. His suit is neatly tailored and would fit in with any Western-influenced gathering of officials in the last century and a half. His hands are as smooth as his face, the nails neatly trimmed except for his right index finger. That one’s ragged and dirty, and I can’t quite imagine the sort of circumstance that must have produced it. After standing still with the precision and consistency possible only for one not distracted by the process of life, he says, “Yes, miss, we must. ”

  I come to a stop four paces behind his truck’s rear bumper. “I see, sir. Please enlighten me, then. ”

  He takes one step closer to me, and the shadows deepen around us. The flow of yang dims as well, leaving a little pocket of land closer to death than usual. “Miss, you carry something strange inside you, ” he says through the magical gloom. “The part of your soul that lies closest to heaven, it is much stronger and brighter than it ought to be. It echoes, for those able to hear. You are a mystery, and mysteries must be solved and resolved lest they threaten the harmony of things. ”

  I very much want to back up, but there’s no point in doing that until I decide to actually flee. Most hungry ghosts can outrun a living woman. I clasp my hands behind my back and trace out the bou
nd' aries of a mandala through which I can escape if I need to. He’ll sense that there is magic brewing behind me, of course, but will not (I hope) be able to tell what it is until just before I complete it. “Sir, I am also of the Way. How could I be anything else? Heaven appoints our souls and its ministers infuse them. Your complaint is not with me, but with the Scarlet Empress and the Ebon Dragon. ”

  “Do not play rhetorical tricks with me, miss. ” His flat tone is scary enough that I’m now glad for his absence of expressions. “This is not Heaven and your nature. You used to be one lightning person among many others. Something happened to you not at birth but mere days ago. I want to know what it was, so that I may know what to do about you. ” Beneath my feet, the darkened ground trembles. Something’s passing through the yin realms quite close to the skin of the world, moving so quietly that I’d have missed it if it weren't for my fear-born alertness. It’s circling around us, drawing in and out. The hungry ghost was quite right about the nighttime dangers, apparently. “Sir, I do not see that you possess the mantle of righteous judgment in this matter. Heaven raises up its agents and blesses them with wisdom and presence. You have not been blessed even with your own breath, and if your blood is not your own, I fail to see how your insight can be any more trustworthy. ”

  “You will not cooperate, then? ”

  "I will not, unless I see some sign that this is the will of Heaven for me. ”

  With a small snort, he steps toward me, his arms rising from his sides and his fists beginning to clench. I hasten the work on my mandala.

  Just then, the darkness he’s called forth coalesces into a second human form. Well, something like a human form: eight feet tall and so purely black that I can make out details only in silhouette, wearing classical Chinese armor and lifting a massive sword in each of its four arms. It stands directly behind the hungry ghost confronting me, so he cannot see it. But of course he can see the shock in my expression and feel the chill, and he whirls around as the first of the swords swings down toward him. He mutters a name I can’t quite make out and ducks to avoid the blow.

  I decide not to stop and watch. The moment the mandala is complete and the hungry ghost is busy with his rival, I plunge out of the world, through the mirrorlands, and into the deeper yin realms. Hungry ghosts can pursue me here, but it takes them some time, and they are at risk of recapture by the demons from whom they escaped in the first place. As for the other, it might be one of those demons come for its prey, in which case (if it wins) they’ll both be headed quite directly back to one of the thousand hells. It might be another hungry ghost, since they have a demonic side that sometimes manifests in shadow-warrior forms like that; if so, the winner will probably come after me, but the fight might take a while. (Stories tell of how the unbreathing can fight for days, weeks, months on end. )

  Or it might be something unknown, in which case I’m in precisely the situation I was before the truck pulled up, facing unsuspected opposition. My transformed soul echoes, the hungry ghost said. Then I can expect more seekers, some perhaps even less benevolent. I need my ancestors, and it might be as easy (which is to say, no more insanely difficult) to travel there through the lands of the dead.

  * * *

  ROBERT I GAVE MARILYN A CALL WHEN I CROSSED THE STATE LINE, SO BY THE TIME I GET TO POINT PLEASANT, SHE’S ALL READY FOR ME. THERE’S FRESH INCENSE ALL AROUND THE GATEWAY TO HER FARM, AND THE WIND CHIMES THAT SO MANY OF THE LOCAL SPIRITS SEEM TO ENJOY, AND THE FAINT ECHOES OF CHANTS FOR REPOSE. SHE'S ALSO SWEPT THE WALK AND SET OUT A BASKET OF THE GRIMES GOLDEN APPLES SHE KNOWS I LOVE. IT’S, WELCOMING FOR BOTH ME AND MY TOTEM. TOTEMS. WHATEVER.

  Back when I was still in my initial wandering, the Rubbish pointed me here. Marilyn Gosberger was the first shaman I met who struck me as anything like really sane. She’s middle-aged, widowed, and runs her farm with these great orchards and a few horses in bloodlines that make for good tourist riding. She’s also been talking with the spirits since she was in her teens. When I first commented on how much she lacked our kind’s usual twitchiness, she just laughed and said, “Bob, I did crazy. But that was a long time ago, and after you’re done with crazy there’s still all this life to lead. " That was an important milestone in my own recovery.

  We’ve stayed in touch ever since, though years go by between our actual visits. Sometimes we exchange phone calls, sometimes letters, sometimes a little dream-shaping. There aren’t many shamans I’d care to let near my dreams, but she’s demonstrated again and again that she does no harm and doesn’t pry where there isn’t a need—and that she can tell the difference between need, want, and simple nosiness. Sometimes she helps me with a problem, drawing on her experience with spirits very unlike the troubled urban ones I spend most of my time with. Occasionally I get to help her, particularly when there’s a problem with the highway or the power lines or something else that taps into the urban ecology. She’s one of the few people in this world that I think of as really being a friend.

  She comes out just as I turn off the car’s engine. I know that she doesn’t like small motors, having had bad encounters with engine and oil spirits back in her crazy time, so I always park well away from the house. And I don’t actually acknowledge her until I’ve made three passes around the car, erecting simple wards. (They’ll help with the oil leak that started yesterday, too. Whoever said shamans were unworldly didn’t know what he was talking about. ) Then I brush the dust and spices from my hands to close the wards, and turn to greet her properly. She’s got her still-black hair pulled up in a tight little bun and is wearing a blue and white gingham dress; I’d think she was being ironic about the farmwife stereotype if I didn’t know that it’s just the way she’s most comfortable.

  “Good to see you, Bob, ” she says while giving me a big bear hug. “And you too, ” she adds with a nod to both versions of the Rubbish. The dumpster she usually keeps around the side of her house is now out front—pulled by a couple of her horses, I’m guessing—and the Rubbishes have a great pile of fun things to manifest in. They both bow back and arrange pieces into big smiles.

  “Thanks, ” I say. “It’s been a weird time... ” She cuts me off there with a laugh. “As opposed to all that boring typical time you usually have. Though I do see you carrying around more totems than a man might really need. ”

  “True enough, ” I say and explain as we take seats on her porch chairs. It’s a long story, but she keeps it all straight.

  “Reversed speech? ” She says at last.

  “Reversed movements, too, I think. The whole spirit’s flip-flopped timewise. ”

  That makes her snort again, “timewise” does. She thinks it’s a bad idea to borrow too much jargon from scientific usage, which is precisely where I got it. I was a physics and astronomy buff before my hospitalization and awakening. She says that the terminology all carries assumptions about how the world works that could someday get me in trouble. She also knows that I’m not going to stop all of it, so she merely makes the occasional expression of derision, a little maternal nagging about the equivalent of putting my elbows on the table.

  Finally I’m done, and she sips her lemonade and thinks about it all for a while.

  “You want to talk to them, ” she guesses, “and you came to me for help with the reversals. ” “Right as ever, Marilyn. ”

  “Gotcha. ” She leans forward, and makes a few finger tracings in the condensation on the side of your glass. “You didn’t do so well with it last time out, did you? ’’

  “Not so as you’d notice. ” Not unless you count unleashed demons and four weeks of dysentery for the folks I was trying to protect with a reversing ward gone terribly wrong as “so well, ” at least.

  “Right. ” She nods firmly, as if to show me that that’s settled. “Okay, if it’s a full time reversal, then it’s probably not goetic, and that makes your life easier. Last thing you need to deal with is someone trying to unsay the name of God or undo the first sentence of creation. ” It’s as odd as
ever to hear her soft accent wrapped around technical terms of magic, and I smile as she continues. "When you first said something about this on the phone, I had a feeling that that was what you had. It’s the sort of damn fool thing you’d expect to find some New York spell-casting slicker up to. Whatever we’ve got may be harder, but at least it won’t make you want to kill ’em just for being so damn stupid. ” “So what do you think we do have? ”

  "I think you’ve got spirits coming out of the future, just like your totems told you. ”

  "Why?”

  “Beats me, city boy. Maybe you should talk to them and find out. ”

  “That’s why... ”

  “... you’re here. Right. Okay, so let’s talk about non-goetic reversal. I’m going to assume here that you’d prefer not trying to off God yourself or anything like that, okay? So you have to approach the subject on a layer that doesn’t tie into the big picture so readily.... ” A whole lot of shamanic technicalities follow. When she’s done, though, I’ve got a good picture of the sort of chase I’ll need to make, right up against the Gauntlet between spirit and matter and as near as possible to the fleeing spirits’ point of arrival.

  By the time we’re done waving our hands and drawing lines in the dirt and making sure that we’re talking about the same things when it comes to the world’s edges, it’s getting dark. Being Marilyn, she’s put on some stew, and it’s ready to serve up. At my suggestion, we take it back out to the porch, so that I can keep an eye on the Rubbishes (and not provide them with any incentive to try coming inside) and just enjoy the rural evening, so very different from my usual experience. I stretch out my legs and eat in comfortable silence.

  Once it’s fully dark, we get to work. Marilyn’s got a good tape recorder, and she starts me working on reversed speech by itself. It’s hard. Like most people who don’t speak a tonal language, I don’t think much about sounds in time, evolving as I make them. But a drawn-out vowel sounds different when it’s drawn the other way. So do a lot of consonants. The transitions and spaces between sounds are often strange themselves, since breath going the other way isn’t something you expect to hear regularly in conversation. Furthermore, many of the sounds that one can recognize in reversed speech turn out to be illusions, pieces of overlapping words that sound enough like something regular that the mind imposes the guessed meaning on it. The longer reversed speech goes on, the more of these show up, and the more work it takes to hear and properly re-reverse the actual speech.