It’s a good thing I started right in on the defenses, too. The passenger banes waste little time in identifying me as a threat and sending up scouting parties to test my strength. Light taps against the windows give way to stronger and stronger attempts, finally tossing out the cover of secrecy altogether in favor of both psychic and physical assaults. For the moment, though, my mind and body remain my own. I meditate and chant and study and try to figure out how the hell I want to proceed.
* * *
WILLIAM
“Terry, ” I say with an exasperated sigh to cover my anxieties. “I’d love to hear your thoughts about the end of the world, but I’ve got a job to do. You obviously know enough that you can know what I'm doing, if you care, so I won’t make a big show of secrecy. You want to ride along while I get something useful done, or you want to wait until I’m back? ”
He smiles. “I’ll ride along. We’ll have time to talk, if we’re going where I think you are. ” And with that he heads out to his own room.
I don’t sleep very well. My dreams, and my waking moments, are troubled with memories of what I thought I saw him do and what it might all mean. I still think it’s most likely that he’s managing to hypnotize me or project a series of well-crafted illusions. He could be using some form of psionic manipulation, and he could have... well, an operational open-environment nanotech array or something like that. None of those options are all that reassuring, though, particularly not given the really thick solipsism he’s apparently been soaking in for a while now. I figure that my best bet is simply to keep him talking long enough to find out what he wants, and then see how I can deal with it.
In the morning, we eat breakfast in the hotel— sticking to the packaged cold cereal, since the sanitation just doesn’t inspire any confidence in the cooked food—and manage to find one of about three vans in the city equipped with a wheelchair lift. Terry's obviously amused by the whole thing, and that actually gives me some relief. I would worry about him more if his apparent power were linked to some grand crusading ideology. Self-interest is a hell of a lot easier to work with than the conviction that somebody else needs good done to them against their will.
I can’t tell anything useful about the history of this damn van. It’s obviously an Eastern European knock-off of an American design, and it may well be as old as I am. The accessibility conversion was definitely done in the late seventies or early eighties: it uses a particular combination of levers and cranks that was popular with American designers for about five minutes, until they realized four ways to simplify the whole thing, and with disability “experts” for another five years or so. It’s a better setup than, say, having me get out and push the car with the help of my wheelchair’s motor. It’s better than coating the inside of the vehicle with ground glass and disease-laden chili power. It is not a whole lot better than that, and I curse frequently and loudly as I settle in and try to make the van start. Terry finds it all terribly funny.
Having programmed a couple of doppelganger systems myself, I’m under no illusion about the limits of impersonation. This entity beside me could be Terry with elaborate mental engineering, or someone schooled to impersonate him, or someone programmed to think he’s him.... The possibilities go on and on. So when I start probing at his memories of experiences we’ve shared, it’s not really out of any conviction that I can detect tampering or imitation, just the vague hope that he will show reactions that I could find reassuring. The first such opportunity arises as we drive out of Tuzla’s city limits, from the main highway running toward Lukavac and Gracacina, then onto the secondary road to Bijela, and then onto a smaller road that’ll take us past Donja Dragunija.
I look over at him and say in an affectedly earnest tone, “Faraway towns with strange names like... ”
He blinks in confusion, then gets it. “Like Smegma, ” he says in much the same voice.
“... Spasmodic... ”
“... Frog... ”
"... and the far-flung Isles of Langerhans, ” we say in unison.
“Man, ” he adds after a moment. “I haven’t even thought about Firesign Theatre in years, and I bet I could still do the rest of that sketch from memory. ” He gives it a good shot, too, pattering out most of The Lonesome American Choo-Choo Don’ Wan’ Stop Here Any Mo' without a hitch. We spend a while trading riffs from other Firesign Theatre sketches, and some Monty Python, and a bit of this and that. I’m certainly sharing this vehicle with someone who knows what Terry used to like, back in the good old days, and who can deliver favorite lines with the same panache. It’s a good sign, or at least not a bad one.
One of my colleagues came back from a scouting mission to Herzegovina a couple years ago and described it as the Rust Belt’s nightmares. That’s about right for this part of Bosnia, too. There is so much wrong, and there has been for so long. The Soviets did... well, not irreparable, but deep and lasting damage to any concept of scientific management with their ham-fisted totalitarian bullshit. Being the biggest thug on the block is not the same as being the best-informed planner, but they never got that, and they’ve linked the two for a long time to come. Then came the collapse of that damned empire and the rise of the local tyrants, who sure as hell didn't care any more, and then the war, and now just plain grinding poverty and neglect.
This land might not be the most fertile there ever was, but it could feed the people and provide all the mineral wealth necessary for a great industrial base, if only it were run right. Instead, we drive through the remains of bombed-out factories surrounded by outcroppings of bedrock, where the topsoil’s completely washed away. Here are dead fields piled high with ruined cars and tractors, leaking out oil and other fluids to guarantee that the soil won’t support anything you’d want to eat. Occasionally I notice a cluster of faces peering through holes in a more or less intact wall, and I know that on the other side is a little pocket of not-too-bad land that’s yielding some produce to keep the people tending it going a little longer.
"I wish we could just buy this place outright, ” I say to my passenger. “Fence it off for a couple of years, rebuild it from scratch, and the people here would actually have something worth living in. ”
He shakes his head with an ironic smile. “So much effort. You’re still the busy little beaver who’s going to save the world, aren’t you? ”
“And this is where you tell me that the world’s too big or too doomed or something to save, I take it. ” I don’t bother looking over—I can see enough of his expression in the mirrors, and I’m in a tricky patch of road here. Well, it’s partly road, but more artillery craters and what look like sink holes. I vaguely remember reading that the water tables are down all over the country thanks to the environmental damage from the wars. Something like that, anyway. I’m down to about twenty mph and steering with a lot more care than I usually exert, since if we run off the road here, we could be well and truly stuck for a while.
“Nah. ” He pauses for a moment, bracing himself as I slalom through a series of deep cracks in the pavement. “I’m trying to tell you that the worlds not fucking real enough to save. You’re sweating yourself into an early grave over someone’s nightmare. The only thing really there besides us is the void, and the sooner you get on with it, the better for you. ”
I sigh. “Gee, thanks. I really appreciate that. " From there the conversation shifts to the whereabouts of our former colleagues in the Virtual Adepts (most of them dead, a few insane, a few missing, a handful still practicing as nearly as either of us knows) and of some of our various enemies past and present. Once we’re caught up—and past the worst of that damaged road and back to a stretch that’s just plain been neglected since about 1994— conversation shifts again to what it is I think I’m doing here. I consider lying to him, refusing to answer, or otherwise concealing information, and decide that there’s not much point to it. By the time we get to the little valley I’m aiming for north of Donja Dragunija, he knows more about the hematovore problem than some
of the people I work with.
He listens, occasionally asking a useful question. Finally, “Okay, so what are you heading to right at the moment? ”
“There’s a castle up here. The locals generally just call it ‘Neznam’ if you ask about it. That’s Bosnian for i don’t know, ’ and they say it in a way that makes it clear that they don’t want to know. And they’re right to do so, I guess. There’s been a hematovore enclave in the castle since, as nearly as we can tell, the sacking of Byzantium at the start of the thirteenth century. Some of the Byzantine suckers made their way here, displacing some local chieftains and setting themselves up as absolute lords of the region. ”
“And you’re going to see what they’re up to, and if they’re gone, try to figure out why. ”
“Right in one. ”
“I have just one request, ” he says very seriously, and this time I do turn to look at him. “If anyone has to go down into the dark basement without a flashlight, you do it. ” He breaks up in laughter as I go, and I can barely make out the last three words.
“Fuck you, man, ” I say with a smile. “I’m gonna scoot up behind and push you down. Then I can study what the mutant rats do when they eat you. ”
We’ve been switchbacking up a steep grade on the western slope of a ridge running more or less north and south. We finally get to the top, and there’s Neznam, a narrow valley in the space between not-quite-parallel ridges. The domain is a bit under eight miles long and never more than three quarters of a mile wide. A complex castle, repeatedly extended and rebuilt over the centuries, stands on a low rise right down below us, and there are small farms filling up most of the rest of the valley. There’s no sign of activity: no animals in the fields, nobody working, no fires lit. The air doesn’t smell of smoke close up, just the background reek from the south. “Nobody home, ” I comment as I begin the slow descent.
It’s mid-afternoon by the time I pull up outside the castle. The general stillness prevails. I’m quite sure that everyone here is dead and gone, one way or another, but I make sure to take my time and observe the evidence. Terry doesn’t care. He’s out of the van with one good bound and pacing around the outer courtyard while I get my wheelchair out and its defenses primed. When I’m ready, we go through the gates together.
The only good survey of historical landmarks done of this area says that the guts of this fortress date back to the second century A. D., built to be part of the Roman frontier. Back then the valley was open at both ends, so it made sense to put something capable of traffic control here. In the eleventh century, a badly injured crusader settled down here and built a sort of combination fort and monastery on the remains. His heirs were infected or destroyed when the fleeing Byzantine hematovores arrived a couple centuries later. The peasantry proved resistant to HHV, apparently, and they remained as they were. Minor earthquakes collapsed the ends of the valley around the start of the fifteenth century, and after that the area pretty well dropped out of official awareness.
The analysts at Ragnarok first learned of this place in 1999-2000, right after the big bang in Bangladesh. They intercepted widely scattered HHV-EU1 carriers all sending coded transmissions here, through a series of intermediaries, and once a year or so they’d each go back home for a week.
This fit one of the classic patterns for the virus’s spread, where the infecting agent sees himself as the father (or mother, as may be) of a brood of progeny—familial metaphors are very common among the virus’s victims. I suppose it’s easier to think of yourself as having an evil dad than having someone whose immune system happened to collapse before you. Anyway, it’s been on the list of Ragnarok secondary targets ever since, until the EU1 mass disappearance hit. I chose this one because the approach is relatively straightforward, and while Bosnia’s a mess, it’s neither the active war zone nor the bolted-down security zone that surrounds some of the other good candidates.
I assume that none of the old maps available in public archives bear much resemblance to how the place’s interior works now. Old hematovores usually go in heavily for customization in general and security in particular. This is one of those times when I really, really wish I had working legs, even with ultralight drones to go scouting ahead of me. Terry continues to look amused as I strap on projection lenses over my regular glasses and launch the drones. They look something like flying propeller beanies, moving almost silently on composite rotors rigged just so. In a few seconds I’m getting transmissions from them, and I send them leapfrogging each other for a general survey.
The place is empty.
Well, it’s empty of anything animate. There are plenty of elaborate furnishings, including what are most likely the original Byzantine tapestries brought by the thirteenth century refugees and sculptures that have a Grecian look about them. There’s lavish furniture: not particularly comfortable or heavily padded, but made out of elaborately carved, expensive woods and inlaid with gold and silver. There are also a few modem touches, like computers in armoires that blend in with the older pieces and recessed lighting in most of the hallways and larger rooms. What there aren’t are any people moving around.
I spend an hour this way, making my way from attic garrets to sub-basements and back again, and feel pretty sure that I’m not overlooking anyone. There’s no residual body heat. That doesn’t mean anything by itself when it comes to hematovores, but there also aren’t any other traces of recent presence: no minor surface deformations from footprints, no stirring in the dust, and so forth and so on. The drones have good forensic sniffers, and it's all coming up dry. The closest thing to evidence is a half-dozen scorch marks in the dining room and great hall. There aren’t any clothes or other artifacts around them, but it’s possible that hematovores burned here.
“Nobody home, huh? ” Terry asks.
“Nobody, ” I say. “Let’s check it out for ourselves. ”
* * *
MING XIAN
I have become a curse, it seems. Is this punishment for the disorder in my soul? Perhaps Heaven’s circuitous way of taking back too generous a gift? After all, mortal bureaucrats sometimes punish those who have received too much favor, and the sages say that the celestial hierarchy mirrors the terrestrial.
Abstract thoughts are my cushion against great sorrow. I know this and tell it to myself and yet continue rationalizing. As I returned to the cave where I left my friends and the other ghosts, I saw the door hanging open. That worried me, even before I could tell whether they’d opened it from inside or someone else had forced it from outside. Well before I got there, I could hear the terrible sounds of ghostly corpus being rent. There were no screams, only the feeding.
Somehow I forced myself to finish the descent, wrapped in layers of yang and yin interwoven to pull myself almost, but not quite, back into the world of the living. I moved like a shadow through the dimly lit byways until I stood a dozen meters outside the cave and could peer inside. I saw the remains of the ghosts strewn all over, pieces of their souls still shining like quicksilver, and feeding on them, great black shapes like a frightened cave dweller’s nightmare of tigers. Such things have no business so close to the living, but multiple deaths, particularly with great suffering, can sometimes open the way for them.
I don’t know whether their victims somehow opened the way. It doesn’t really matter. What matters to me is that all those innocent men and women lost their chance at the redemption and maturation the afterlife can bring. I have been separated from my friends a second time, and to the best of my knowledge, nothing can bring them back from the fate they endured in the cave. It was with a heavy heart that I turned away from the whole area and made my way south, not following any of the major roads of the dead, toward the ancient capital of Yu Huang’s empire.
Distance is a flexible thing outside the boundaries of matter. Significance shapes proximity, as does a whole constellation of other sorts of meaning. On this trip I yearn most of all for obscurity, and my enlarged vision shows me the way through paths wh
ere the terrain of yin is complicated by infusions of yang. Before my second awakening, I’d have avoided some of these places as the equivalent of quicksand and dens of vipers. Now I can see clearly, making my way quietly and calmly through channels where the Emperor’s patrols never went. Shaanxi province is as settled as any in China, but even here there are places where so few people ever died that the spiritual landscape is almost completely pristine. The deaths of animals and plants have shaped it, but their force is small. It is a wilderness of the dead, and I have the time to contemplate all that’s happening to me.
Even as I depend on the yang sympathy within me, I wish very much there were some way I could be rid of it. Each evening, as it’s measured in the mortal world, the wind rises for a few minutes and carries the voices of those who died that day. This is not a wind native to the yin realms, but the creation of my one-time allies and mentors in the Wu Keng. It’s targeted at me, though since they don’t know where I am precisely, they cast their effect widely. Every day I hear the sobbing of others who’ve died because of me: former colleagues, former students from when I taught in the Beijing schools, family and friends. The toll mounts steadily, and I guess that it’s just a matter of time before some of the slain find me and try to exact vengeance. I must find some way of defending myself as I continue to search.
* * *
ROBERT NO MORE OF THE TIME-REVERSED SPIRITS APPEAR. THERE ARE TIMES WHEN SHAMANIC DUTY IS A LOT LIKE WAITING FOR THE BUS, FRANKLY: THE NEXT ONE WILL SHOW UP THE MOMENT YOU’RE OFF YOUR GUARD. UNFORTUNATELY, OTHER THINGS NEED MY ATTENTION JUST AS MUCH.
I’m long accustomed to living in the midst of significance disguised as coincidence. Everyone does, but most people either don’t realize it or do their best to shut out the sometimes uncomfortable realization. Me and my kind, we wade in and welcome it, looking for what message it might have for us or for the communities we minister to. So I’m the first in the hotel to notice something strange going on, though not the last.
World of Darkness - Time of Judgement - Mage Page 12