The Celtic Mirror
Page 9
Connach was easy to find.
He sat alone in the garden below the enigmatic priestess’s chambers, seemingly lost in thought. Morgan quickly scanned the area for potential intruders, and finding none, carefully loosened the snake-hilted dagger that Greenfeld had returned in the morning. He flexed and rotated his shoulders, taking several deep breaths and expelling them slowly, trying to achieve a state of calm purpose. Purpose? Morgan laughed soundlessly. He felt like a cheapened version of Shakespeare’s Scottish Thane.
Aw shit, Morgan. Screw your courage to the sticking place. He did not feel courageous, just unclean.
Wiscombe, he whispered to himself in justification….
He drew a slow, tortured breath and reached for the smooth hilt. Connach’s back was toward him. A lozenge of perspiration darkened the white tunic between the shoulder blades.
A target.
He hesitated. Wiscombe had never stabbed anybody in the back, figuratively or literally. Would he understand what I have to do? Damn it, Morgan! Listen to the bitch in your brain, and screw your courage to that old sticking place. C’mon, McMorgan! Do it!
Wiscombe! he invoked.
He stood a snake’s coil from his enemy’s back, saw the tired slump, the way the warrior’s torc weighed him to the ground. Screw your courage!
“Ian!” He stepped around to face Brigid’s brother. Not in the back!
Connach’s head snapped up at the rasp in Morgan’s voice. He smiled with comprehension at the loosened dagger and at the way Morgan’s hand carelessly dangled near the hilt.
“You came to avenge John’s death, I suppose,” Connach said, as if he was discussing the weather, as if the confrontation had been expected.
“Could you think of a better reason? You killed him,” Morgan answered, just as conversationally, removing his hands from his sides crossing his arms casually. He was anything but casual or unready.
Connach stretched like a great feline awakening from a nap, pumping blood into the big muscles. He watched Morgan carefully.
“I didn’t kill John.”
“You didn’t pull the trigger. I suppose you think that technically absolves you of all blame. But it was your damned 4D and your fucking Mirror that killed him. You might as well have stood there and helped him to steady his gun hand,” Morgan growled, letting tears and outrage sweep him along. It disturbed him that Connach did not rage back. That would have made things easier.
“I admit that the 4D was my idea and that the 4D ultimately killed John,” Connach said, the look in his eyes begging Morgan to understand. Morgan noticed that Connach had loosened his own blade, obviously in case understanding was slow to come. “In a way, John Wiscombe was a victim of this war, but he didn’t have to be.”
“The hell he didn’t,” Morgan snapped. “Brigid told me he killed himself over a feeling of responsibility for the 4D ‘deaths.’ He was a man with a conscience. Something you probably wouldn’t understand.”
“Back off, Kerry,” Connach answered, red-faced. “As soon as hull nine made the Crossing, I was going to send John a message that explained everything, along with a video of you healthy 4D sailors as proof. I had already left him a present that would have made up for all the losses that PacSail incurred because of the 4D scandal and would have made John a national hero to boot.”
Connach’s face told Morgan that he was being told the truth, but that was not the kind of truth he needed to hear. John Wiscombe’s spirit cried out for revenge, and all Morgan could do was to face his killer and nod in dumb agreement with his lying excuses.
“What kind of present could make up for all of that?” he managed lamely, “The loss of his reputation? The company going under?” His anger was rapidly draining away, leaving a weary emptiness that he needed to fill up with something. Even another Connach fairytale.
“In John’s wall safe I left the plans and a working model of a small marine engine that works on the minute differences in salinity near the ocean’s surface,” he said, rubbing his face as if it ached from Morgan’s flung accusations. “It doesn’t develop a hell of a lot of horsepower, so it wouldn’t bring back the cigarette boat or the gasoline-powered private automobile. But it would make one damned fine auxiliary for salt-water sailors.”
“Like you said, he could have been a national hero. A lot of good that’ll do John now.” The futility of the whole thing made him want to cry.
“I suppose John’s heirs will end up rich and famous instead. That wasn’t the idea at all. I wanted to make it up to him...for the 4D.”
“You blew that one, too,” Morgan replied. By then he could almost look at Connach without wanting to slice his throat. He was not quite ready to trust the deceitful nobleman, but the realization that Connach was human after all and that the Mirror was not infallible helped to mute his weakening need for blood vengeance.
“John had no family left. You just gave the world’s first perpetual-motion machine to the Feds.”
Connach made a retching sound in his throat. His face contorted with disgust and self-hatred. “I thought that he had a niece somewhere.”
Morgan watched the prince silently for several seconds, wondering if Connach’s reaction was genuine.
“That miserable Mirror of yours is plain death. I understand that the Druids wanted to get rid of it altogether. Maybe they were right.”
To Morgan’s surprise, Connach agreed quickly, twisting his lips into a pained smile. “Yes,” he said, softly. “The Mirror has been an instrument of death. Like dynamite, it was designed for good, yet it has brought mainly destruction. Some of that must be on my head, for I, alone, have recalled it from the obscurity to which the priests had condemned it. But it is far more than a weapon. It also opens the gates to infinity. Universe upon universe lies beyond its portals if one only knows how to look.”
He shredded a leaf into small pieces as he spoke, scattering green confetti into the gusts of wind that eddied about the two men. Verdant motes dispersed over the garden. Morgan watched the pieces disappear like little worlds, lost in the greater green of the ordered rows of fruit trees. He was not an avid reader of speculative fiction, but after witnessing the renewed interest in space exploration that was the aftermath of the first Gulf War, he could not fail to see the probabilities that Connach’s device might spawn.
“How many of those gates have you opened with that infernal toy of yours?”
“I’ve personally observed five shadow sisters of this planet, but using the Mirror to look through the fabric of this universe poses some rather delicate problems for me. I’ve only been able to secure permission from the Druid Brotherhood to scout on those five separate occasions—not counting the actual rapports needed to bring the 4Ds here once your Earth had been selected as the final target. And I had to lie pretty convincingly to do that. I don’t think the Brotherhood can be sucked in on that count any more. In a big way, you guys are embarrassments. Makes me appear untrustworthy.” He laughed like the Connach that Morgan remembered from the halcyon days at PacSail.
Fool! Morgan chided himself. Who’s getting sucked in now? “What were the shadows like?” he asked aloud.
Connach stared into the small space in front of him as if seeing again the worlds revealed beyond the shimmering screen of the Mirror.
“One was yours, of course. I rejected it from the very first—the overpopulation, the pollution and the decay of the biosphere. People responsible for conditions like that were not the sort of recruits I had in mind to save this world. Do you realize that your planet may already be terminal as far as intelligent life is concerned? It will die slowly, though, like a neglected plant. Too many things have fallen out of balance. Your people have dominated their world for too long and have forgotten that they are merely one part of its design. There was a time in your world that your gods were asked to bless or at least approve of all human ventures, whether they involved science, technology, politics, or war for example. On your Earth, the gods have been abandoned, their
approval not sought. Money, Science and Technology are now your gods and have been for too long. Look what damage you’ve done to your planet.
“Here we must ask the gods to approve before using technology. The weapons you brought over would not have worked for you at all, if the Council of Ten hadn’t prayed and made offerings in advance.”
“Hey, I had an old pickup truck that I got from my father when I was a teenager. I used to pray that it would start every time I….”
“Shit! What do you take me for, some ignorant savage? You know damned well what I mean!
“The Viks—the Mercians and their allies—are much like you in that respect. They violate the lands that they occupy. They have never attempted to live within limits of any kind. The mainland territories they control are strangling under their pollution, destruction of natural resources and uncaring waste. It will take the captive Free States generations to recover any semblance of a rational balance with the land once the Viks have been kicked out.
“Another world was the end product of your type of explosive civilization. Only the insects survive there—sole masters of the planet, inhabitants of dead cities, ruined countrysides. Man no longer has a place there.
“A third world was beautiful, untouched. Game was plentiful, the land pristine. In it, I could detect no sign of man. There was something else, I think, no more than a bit of my overactive Celtic imagination to back the feeling up, but something was there.” He laughed a sharp sound. “I’m not an adept like my sister, but I swear, on my ancestors’ ashes, that I felt some sentience in that wild place. At any rate, that world would have been of no use to us in the present struggle, except perhaps as a place of final refuge. We could not be followed there, but the cost would be too great, much too great.
“The fourth was a dead planet as airless and lifeless as the moon that once orbited this world. There would be no help there.
“The fifth was a place in which life evolved differently than it did on our true sister worlds. There was life. Oh gods! There was life, all right—intelligent life. I was afraid to even consider looking for help there because I might have received it.”
“So you turned to us for help after all,” Morgan said, thinking of the limitless possibilities beyond the screen, world chasing world like images spiraling out of view in a double-hinged mirror—alike, yet each one subtly altered, following different lines of development.
“Ok, so you searched through the Mirror to find a suitable group of veteran warriors to help you build a resistance force, but how in hell were you able to finance all the weaponry we unintentionally smuggled in the 4Ds?”
“That was a stroke of good luck, I’ll tell you.” Connach laughed. “There was this very nasty piece of work in Beverly Hills who collected illegal antiquities. He also amassed quite a fortune in gold coins. All his stolen artifacts and art objects were stored with that considerable hoard of gold in a vault built beneath his mansion.
“A very convincing young Irish broker of illegal treasures from your world’s past offered that particular slimeball a very rare Celtic antiquity. As a result, a special large mirror, that was purported to date from the Roman occupation of Britain eventually got stored in that hidden vault along with everything else the ‘collector’ had accumulated through his mob ties.
“Did you know that gold will buy you almost anything…even rocket launchers?”
Morgan’s capitalistic soul stirred and stretched.
“Ian,” he said, dazed by the vision he saw. It was the stuff of speculative fiction, all right, not of reality, yet made real by the Mirror. That damned Mirror! He pushed thoughts of Morgan Trading Enterprises aside, knowing that Connach, or more importantly, Brigid would not approve. “Ian,” he said, again, “if this and the other worlds you saw are variations of each other, do you have any idea what the original might be like?”
“I’ve given it some thought, Kerry, and I think it must be the Earth as the Source of All Things intended to be. Perhaps it is the Horned God, Cernunos that casts these shadows. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever know.”
Morgan’s early upbringing, growing up in his father’s parsonage, once buried deeply by the less than holy years of his manhood, surfaced with a rush, knocking Trader Morgan aside. “Ian,” he blurted, smiling like the choirboy he had once been. “We could search for it. Paradise. Men have sought it since the beginning of time and only find it in death. You have the means to locate it for the living. Convince them. Convince whoever controls the use of the Mirror that….”
Connach stopped the tumble of words with a violent shake of the head. “I am quite frankly afraid to search through the Mirror any more, and I’m not afraid to admit my cowardice to you. If I looked further among the worlds scattered beyond the screen, I might just open a direct passage to Hell—a two-way tunnel that might never be closed again. When I first realized what risk I could be playing with, I determined never to explore further than the five worlds that I had already found. The next cast of the die might bring me face to face with the masters of that Hell.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Ah...the lady of my dreams,” Morgan said haltingly in Pan-Celtic as his language teacher glided into the room.
Brigid stopped and leaned gracefully against her tapestry-covered wall, contemplating him with eyes that held the secrets of antiquity and the promises of youth. “Have you been dreaming of me, Morgan?” Her eyes flickered for the briefest moment. “Or have you been dreaming Ian’s dreams?”
Caught off balance by her directness, her percipience, his answer was uttered as a guilty croak. “Both, my Lady.” He looked cautiously at her, expecting disapproval. To his surprise he found none. She was smiling at him warmly. A real response, by God, Morgan thought in amazement. Until that sunny smile, she had always been withdrawn and distant with him, simply taking the role of a teacher, a neutral stance. She had never been a female or a friend.
Her mood had certainly shifted. Even the cowl that shadowed her features could not hide her new vibrancy, a loosening of the spirit. He thought he might have been mistaken about the change, until she moved toward him. As she crossed in front of her open window, she paused and lifted her hands to her head and dropped the cowl. At that instant, the sun emerged from behind a black cloud and backlit her as she struck a classic pose—both hands raised to touch her hair, half-turned to Morgan.
The sunlight transformed the robes that covered her body into a near transparency, and in that instant, Morgan knew that Brigid was the high-breasted young woman who dominated his dreams.
She pulled the cowl over her hair once again, and the sun disappeared from the room. Morgan tensed, not knowing what to expect next.
“Today, the cultural tour for you,” she sang cheerily. Her movements were animated and had lost the stiff dignity that usually greeted Morgan.
“Why the change in schedule?”
She laughed. “Because you know enough of our language to converse intelligently with, let’s say a five year old… if you try your hardest.” She inspected him briefly. “You dress the part, and even your skin has the proper tone. You are finally ready to blend in with us racial degenerates.” She held her slim arm next to Morgan’s brawny limb.
Her skin was that bronzed hue seen only on billboards that advertise suntan lotions. It was that color desired by the multitudes of Sunday sun worshippers who sprawled, jammed shoulder to thigh on the beaches of Morgan’s world, like pork ribs on some gigantic grill, basting themselves with the most improbable unguents. Most peeled Sunday’s gains by Wednesday.
“The more I look at you, my friend Morgan,” she said, stepping back to examine the entire man, “the more I know that you belong here.”
She walked around Morgan, who endured her scrutiny with a great deal more patience than he could normally summon. She halted her peripatetic survey and faced him closely. He felt the warmth of her body reaching for him, and he was grateful for the generous cut of his tunic below the cinglium.
“What is your ancestry?”
The abrupt question puzzled him. “I was born in California near the place where Ian and I worked, but,” he continued, realizing the reason for her inquiry. “My parents came from Wales. Cardiff. I guess that makes me Welsh. I’m just another damned Celt on an island crawling with them.”
“Welsh? Wealh? Do you know what Wealh means?” She looked at him strangely, a peculiar smile touching her lips.
“No, I have no idea what it means,” he replied, dry-mouthed. A slight breeze through the garden window blew her sweet scent to him. She seemed intent on seducing him in her own understated way. Instead of welcoming the act, Morgan was uneasy, knowing that the man who could peer through the warp of space and time might also choose to look through walls.
But Morgan’s fears remained unspoken, and when she took his hand in hers, he welcomed it. Her touch was smooth and dry, the pressure of her fingers against his, electric. He dared not return the pressure.
“Wealh—or Welsh, if you prefer, was the name given to our people, yours and mine, by the invaders of the lands. It means ‘foreigner’ in their tongue.” She tossed her head contemptuously and the cowl fell back again. She left it where it was and squeezed his hand more tightly, anger flaring in her eyes. Spots of color touched her cheeks, which made her even more beautiful to Morgan.
“Imagine being considered a foreigner in your own land! But for my belief in Lord Nero’s teachings, I would take up a blade myself and help rid the world of those pigs!” She released her almost painful grip on his hand and stepped back a pace. “Morgan, I have a feeling about you that I never could have for any of the others that Ian brought here. They are all good and worthy men, but it is you who belong here and have always belonged here. It has been destined.”