by Ewing, Al
“We have to shut it down! Now! The power drain is growing exponentially, it’s as if –” He froze. “Oh. Oh, no, no, no, you fools –”
“Soran?” There was an edge in Maya’s voice now. Inside the field, the animal began to scream.
So did the machinery. The stone glowed almost white now.
“We’re taking genetic information from the thing’s descendants, aren’t we?” Soran’s voice was trembling.
“Yes, but –”
“Except this animal is destined to die fighting a #7C! A fang-beast! We’re going to send it out to be killed! It’s not going to have any descendants! The machine’s trying to resolve the paradox, and it’s bending the universe out of shape to do it!”
Unwen turned, staring at Soran. “That’s impossible –”
“Possible or not, it’s happening! I have no idea what kind of kinks this is putting in the probability of events... we could be warping the whole structure of time, distorting the whole future...” He wiped sweat from his brow.
Maya grabbed his shoulder. “Concentrate on the here and now, Soran –”
“Shut up!” Soran shrieked. “You caused this! You and that... that egomaniac with his delusions of godhood! Look at the stone! Look at it!” He waved his arms at the glowing white xokronite. “It’s beyond unstable now –”
“Just turn it off!” Maya shouted to be heard above the shriek of the machinery and the humming of the stone.
“I can’t. The controls aren’t responding!” Soran raced towards the containment cylinder, shielding his eyes as he placed a hand against it. “I think the xokronite is coming unstuck in –”
There was a bright, white flash, and a section of the containment cylinder simply vanished. Soran stared for a moment, then put his hand into the break, as if wanting to make sure of it.
His fingers brushed the stone.
Then it flashed again, bright enough to make spots dance in front of Unwen’s eyes. When they cleared, the xokronite was gone. So was Soran. So was a large section of the flooring he’d stood on.
Unwen and Maya stared at each other in horrified silence. From outside the ship, they heard Munn begin to scream. “The field! The field is down –”
Maya moved first, grabbing hold of the portable field generator they’d been working on, leaping nimbly over the hole in the flooring and running down the corridor towards the exit. Unwen watched her go, then turned to look at the shattered containment cylinder, the thing that had been able to withstand a supernova.
A first for science, he thought.
He felt oddly calm – calm enough to theorise, even. ‘Unstuck,’ Soran had said. Perhaps the cylinder had not been destroyed, exactly, Unwen thought. Perhaps it was just that a large part of it was now elsewhere in the temporal dimension. Along with Soran, the xokronite, and, of course, the metal flooring. Perhaps one of the outlandish hypotheses he’d mentioned during that fateful conversation a few months previously had involved the xokronite becoming unstuck in time.
It was a marvellous theory, made more marvellous by the fact that he would die before even beginning to find a way to prove it. It might just as well be true, at least to him. Soran and his magic stone. It had a certain fairytale quality to it.
The earth underneath him shook.
Of course. The #7C, which he’d arrogantly attempted to tame by assigning it a number and a classification, had returned to show him the folly of all his ridiculous theories. How just.
Another tremor. He heard Munn’s scream, mixing with a terrible roar. Munn got halfway through another scream, and then there were some loud, wet sounds Unwen didn’t feel like speculating on.
Perhaps Munn’s sacrifice would give Maya time to get away. He hoped so. Perhaps she would even survive.
He glanced over at the flickering spherical field, and the animal trapped inside it that looked so very much like a man.
It looked back at him with wet, blinking eyes, unable to comprehend what it had become. Unwen smiled, and reached out a hand to bless his creation. A God could do no less.
Then he walked outside the ship, to meet the Tyrannosaur.
THE PRINTER’S DEVIL
The Body of
B. Franklin, Printer,
Like the Cover of an old Book,
Its Contents torn out,
And stript of its Lettering & Gilding,
Lies here, Food for Worms.
– Ben Franklin’s self-penned epitaph,
written in 1728. He was 22.
IN THE DREAM, the kite flaps in a bitter wind, rain pelting the canvas...
THE OLD SPRUCE in the yard no longer burns.
The tree was set afire by lightning towards the end of the storm, as if the Lord was signing the symphony of wind and rain and thunder with a final flourish, an exclamation point. You may tame the earth, He tells us in our hubris. You may make a toy of fire. But the lightning is Mine, and there is no man who may tame or control it.
Saul was able to quell the flames in short order by forming a human chain to ferry buckets from the nearby riverbank to the site of the blaze, composed of his fellow slaves and a smattering of indentured servants. If any of the big Germans felt umbrage at taking orders from a negro, they did not show it, and the fire was soon halted. My hat is off to young Saul, who is as much an asset to the plantation as his father was. Would that I had it in my power to reward him adequately, but my uncle has made it painfully clear that my opinions count for little in the running of things here. I am merely unwanted baggage, fed and housed out of a sense of obligation to a man I despised. Were I a man of spirit – had I any shred of self-respect at all – I would leave this place, where I am so clearly surplus to requirements, and make my own way in the world. But I am not, and I have not, and things are as they are.
Writing this, I am reminded that next week will mark the third anniversary of Abraham’s passing. It is clear Saul misses him dearly, as do I. Would that my own father had been as gentle and kind a man as Abraham, or, for that matter, as steadfast and noble a man as Donato Scorpio, but, again, things are as they are.
One day I will have that inscribed on my tombstone.
Scorpio is long gone now, of course. He vanished from my life more than twenty years ago, and with Abraham dead and the state of Pennsylvania far behind me I suppose there is no harm in telling the story of how he and my father left my life on the very same night – if only here, in the pages of this journal. And yet a part of me hesitates at the thought of finally committing the tale to paper. Perhaps it feels too much like a confession written by a man condemned.
Well then, let it be a confession, for God knows I feel I have much to confess. My name is Robert James Steele, and in the year 1728, at the age of ten, I caused my father’s death.
Is that too strong a manner of wording it? Perhaps. Mine was not the hand that struck him down, but he died so I might survive, and there are days when the guilt of that survival weighs heavy upon me, a black shroud that settles over my soul. During such times I find myself retreating from the sight of men to spend the day alone in my chambers. I find myself wondering, on those days, how my life would have gone had he lived. Eventually, I suppose, I would have inherited the farm, become an owner of my own land, rather than a guest on someone else’s. Perhaps I would have sold it, and taken some other profession, though the Lord only knows what. Perhaps he would have killed me first, as he killed my mother. But certainly I would have stayed in Philadelphia. Alive or dead, I would have stayed.
I feel dead now. I feel as if something has left me, or left the world – as if a vital actor has been lost from the play, and the cast is ad-libbing desperately, hoping that they can please whatever looks down on them from the darkness of the balcony. Sometimes, I dream...
But I digress. This is the story of three deaths – my father’s, my own, and the catalyst for both. In the middle of the night, he was abducted, bound, taken to the top field of my father’s farm and stabbed nine times, in the throat, chest and
gut. His genitals were severed and placed in his mouth, and he was then buried in a shallow grave. Too shallow by far – for coyotes unearthed the body, dragging it from its hole and gnawing on it until they had eaten their fill.
Whereupon they left the remains for me to find.
IN THE DREAM, there is the crack of thunder from far away, and the kite looks very small against the dark of the sky...
I REMEMBER ALMOST nothing of my mother; a smell, a smile, the light catching russet hair. She died when I was two years old. My first real memory is of a man with kindly eyes and a timorous smile looming over me, asking if I was all right: the Undertaker.
My father, soaked in liquor after a night carousing in the town, struck her for some imagined slight, and as a result she lost her footing, struck her head on the jutting edge of the fireplace, and stove in the back of her skull. The Sheriff, a gruff and hard-faced man named Landon Reed, declared the death a ghastly accident – perhaps he was unaware of my father’s nature, though given later events I doubt it.
The incident was spoken of rarely, and until I was eight I had no idea of the specifics at all. (Even then it was Abraham who told me what had occurred, after much urging. He begged me to keep the knowledge to myself, lest he take the blame for spreading the grim particulars, and – knowing the depths of my father’s temper – I gladly honoured his request.)
I suppose it is to my father’s credit that my mother’s death spurred him to give up use of alcohol entirely. However, for him temperance was yet another kind of intoxicant – his sudden adherence to the cause replaced the irrational rage of the drunk with the seemingly rational anger of the overly righteous. In particular, he became obsessed with moral philosophy and the proper punishment of crimes, holding long debates on the subject with whoever would hear him and publishing at least one pamphlet on the subject. Perhaps it was a reaction to the knowledge that he never answered for the drunken manslaughter he committed, although if he felt any guilt over Mother, he never admitted it to me or any other living soul.
While his philosophies never seemed to apply to his own crimes, I was not so fortunate. As I grew up I was perpetually aware that the slightest offence – real or imagined – would result in him ordering me to fetch the heavy leather strap that hung on a nail in his study, whereupon he would ‘teach me my lesson,’ as he put it. He spent little time with me as it was, being more concerned with the running of the farm and his growing reputation in the town as a man of letters, and this vengeful and unpredictable streak ensured that I avoided him as best I could.
My time was thus spent either in my studies – I was tutored by a stern man named James Newton, who has recently made a great noise on the subjects of education and, more controversially, the uniting of the colonies for better defence – or at play in the fields. Father would beat me for being too familiar with the field slaves, but he saw conversation with those indentured servants working our crops as being of benefit; perhaps he envisaged their rough and ready nature rubbing off on my own slight frame, so that, like them, I would eventually sprout broad shoulders and a strong back. It was not to be.
To the workers in the fields, I was mostly a part of the landscape, and they spoke to me with a forced respect that betrayed their contempt. However, a few did take to me, in particular a tough, quick-witted Italian named Donato Scorpio, who referred to me as ‘Generalissimo’ – some private joke of his own. He thought nothing of downing his tools for half an hour to join Abraham and me in a brief game of soldiers or a romp through the woods. His popularity was such that a blind eye was usually turned to this, provided he made up the time in some way after the others had finished their labour; no doubt had my father known of this kindness, Scorpio would have been whipped and the overseer who allowed it dismissed from his duties.
My more constant companion, in rain or shine, was Abraham. I have mentioned him several times in the course of this narrative, but it occurs to me that I have not yet offered the hypothetical reader any information as to who he was. Should any eyes but mine read these pages, let me humbly beg their indulgence.
Abraham was a house slave, and his nominal task was to keep me out of trouble, and if I were to get into any trouble, to report it – thus saving my father the troublesome duty of raising his offspring. Abraham had other duties, but his was the lightest load of any of the house slaves, and they rarely let him forget it; the field slaves, meanwhile, hardly spoke to him at all.
I suffered from a lack of friends also, being shy and withdrawn around other children in the town, who responded to my reticence by bullying and taunting me without mercy, until I withdrew to the confines of the farm and grounds; thus, we were lonely together. Still, I was a happy boy, knowing no better and content with my world, and if Abraham ever grew weary of spending his days looking after his Master’s son, or yearned for better conversation or stimulation than I in my youth could provide, he was gracious enough not to show it.
I suppose, then, that I had three fathers – my natural father, a judgemental and remote presence that I associated with loss, Abraham, the protector who kept me from harm and made sure I ate what was put before me, and Donato Scorpio, the role model I looked up to and hoped somehow to emulate, despite my slight frame and quiet disposition. And in a sense, my story begins with him, for the day I found the body was the day Scorpio was to leave my father’s employ. His four-year term was up, and in a matter of days, certainly no longer than a month, he would be leaving Philadelphia to travel across the country and find more rewarding work elsewhere. I was heartbroken, of course, and I’m sure I drove Abraham to distraction with my petulance, stomping sullenly around the outskirts of the grounds and calling him and Scorpio all manner of unpleasant names.
It was while engaged in this ugly activity that I saw something in the woods at the edge of the top field, which lay fallow and deserted: a hole dug in the earth, just beyond the treeline, with what looked like a large and mangled animal lying half-in and half-out of it. Against Abraham’s shouted advice, I crept closer to investigate further, and saw to my considerable shock that the animal was wearing a suit of clothes.
That was my first sight of the printer, Benjamin Franklin.
IN THE DREAM, the kite loops and glides, dances and spins. It is heavier than it should be. Something is tied to the end of the string, next to the tail...
I SHUDDER NOW when I picture his corpse in my mind, butchered at the hands of man and the teeth and claws of nature. But perhaps in my youth I was made of hardier stuff, for mixed in with the shock, horror and nausea I felt at the discovery, there was a kind of wild excitement, a thrill at being the discoverer of this grisly sight, at seeing something not meant to be seen, certainly not by one my age. Abraham tremulously warned me away, but I crept closer, wanting to see everything despite myself.
I assumed at first that the printer had been attacked and killed by some group of large animals, like bears or wolves, but Abraham, looking over the corpse, divined the truth – the printer had been stabbed with a man-made knife rather than gored by an animal’s fang or claw, and had been buried by his killer. After that, he had been exhumed from his grave by passing scavengers.
I went straight to my father, which was foolish of me. His first thought on hearing the news was to order Abraham whipped, as though he was somehow responsible for my discovery. I protested, and he ordered me to fetch the strap; I refused, and he brought it himself, and beat me until rivulets of blood ran down to my ankles.
After that, he hand-picked a couple of the field slaves to re-bury the body in a deeper hole. He swore them to secrecy, hinting darkly that if they spoke of the matter to anyone, they would hang for it – to my knowledge, they took the threat seriously and kept their own counsel. As for me, Father forbade me from speaking further on the matter. The man, he said, was undoubtedly a drifter, murdered by another drifter, and that was all there was to it.
Perhaps I should have taken his heed, but I felt that I could not let the matter lie. Drifter or
no, this was still a man, and in need of man’s justice; thus, risking my father’s displeasure, I decided to consult my tutor, the aforementioned Dr James Newton, telling him all I knew about the body, and asking if my father was right to react the way he did. I shall always remember his words to me then:
“Idle gossip, Robert, is something I do not and will not tolerate.”
He went immediately to my father, who stormed into the room and bade me fetch the strap again. Father proceeded to thrash me until I bled afresh, welts landing atop welts, and this time he did not feel the need to stop, even when I passed out from the pain of the blows. The wounds I suffered were so severe that I was bedridden for several days.
I lay in a state of fever, pain-wracked and delirious – doubtless the result of an infection of the wounds, though Abraham cleaned and dressed them admirably. He stayed by my bedside as I lay, mumbling in the grip of terrible hallucinations, seeing the mutilated face of the body I had found floating at the foot of the bed, whispering terrible secrets to me that I can no longer quite recall – except in my dreams.
Occasionally, Franklin’s grotesque, torn head would lapse into great oratories on taxation and similar political matters that I could not at the time comprehend and do not remember with any clarity now. On these occasions it would often be replaced in mid-speech by the face of Newton, and though the cadence changed, the subject matter remained. At other times, my father’s bloodless visage would float above my head, the skull smashed, and it would stare at me accusingly even through closed eyelids. Occasionally, the dead face that haunted me would be my own, although no wound was apparent. This last apparition would never fail to make me scream until there was no air in my lungs; Abraham told me later that during these episodes he could not help but weep to see me so transported.