Freddie somersaulted away and rose up to watch Gur shriek like a terrified child and clutch frantically at the corpse of his future. His talons grasped and pulled at the sword with the Khan's body attached, howling horribly as he did so while the swarming yarrow demons shot bolts of black flame at Freddie's back—the same fire that had burned her unconscious as she lay impaled on the spear of Alexander. The bolts sounded like brief and loud rushes of wind as they spat through the air. She cried out in genuine pain, unable to avoid a few licks of the black fire.
The demon things sprung at her next, their insides radiant with churning red orbs and hundreds of tiny stars. Saravastra knows what those red things were! Distant suns about to burst? But no time to ponder. With an aria of Tempo ser lenta (Time be slow) she dodged their leaps and ducked the bolts of black flame. They moved in slow motion now, and for the first time, she looked deep and saw that the stars were actually the tiny glowing faces of women, men and children of varying races: African, Asian, European, Indian, and others she did not recognize. All the faces evidenced a terrible agony. Each black demon then was a star cluster of souls in pain, chained by Gur's magic to servitude and torment.
What kind of Hell must that be?
Freddie realized the time had come to force Gur's hand for the final blow at Dubai, and to end his miserable existence forever. She rose higher into the air and twisted around to face him, her fists clenched, her hair wild and churning about her face. She imagined her aria of Tao creating a protective bubble of hot magical force, and she sang loud and strong enough to overwhelm the slow-motion noise of a blustering Gur: Unha burbulla quente de Tao, protexer o meu corpo. (A bubble of hot Tao, protect my body.) And she added, E serve-me ben! (And serve me well!).
She watched Gur's form suddenly collapse to his usual appearance. Even with time slowed, the transformation back to the smiling Buddha face appeared rapid and bizarre. Once done, he also rose into the air, though more slowly, and his yarrow demons turned as one to face her. Gur had not yet realized how slow he moved in comparison, and she would take full advantage. Freddie projected her heat at him, just a moment's flash, hot enough to ignite a tree and enrage him even more. He growled and clenched his teeth as the burst of heat washed over him. She returned her time to normal with the words: Tempo ser natural! And shouted at him from across the cavernous Necropolis: "I will kill you, goat fucker, before you can even touch me! Do you hear? I will free your imprisoned souls and forever end your plans to restore your child eating rapist god! Such a sad plan, and from SUCH A STUPID FOOL!"
"AND I WILL BURN YOU TO SMOKE AND BREATHE YOUR SOUL INTO MY BLOOD!" he shouted back, his eyes delirious with insane anger even though his face still smiled in a parody of itself—a sight the Czarina of years to come would never forget, and one nobody could believe unless they actually saw it.
"Not even all your power can harm me, goat man! I DEFY YOU! Use it to burn me and see how foolish and weak you are!"
She shouted that and heard Paganini's voice, the Saravastra chanting of the spell captains louder than ever, and the violin music of Skanda rising to crescendo with a haunting and violent Caprice.
We are ready, Czarina. The moment is now.
Mother Yarrow Maria: Strike true, warrior daughter!
Paganini again: Once he attacks, slow your time, get behind him and unleash your aria as you did against the Dio Soldati at the Somme. We will take care of the rest.
"For Earth and Saravastra!" she shouted as she faced Gur.
Temujin Gur's yarrow demons thinned to sticks and snapped back to circle their master. As they did so, the sticks let loose a chorus of misery, as if the thousands of imprisoned souls cried out at once for mercy. Oblivious, Gur raised his arms and barked his Tongue of Ahriman, and it sounded to Freddie like:
"ZHENG YAO GUR, ANNO LAI, CATARCLUC, CAHHHH!"
A bubble of red-glowing force enveloped him, and the yarrow sticks as well, reminding Freddie of the red suns in the black demon bodies. The glowing sun-force brightened until the entire treasure collection in the ruined and smoking Necropolis blazed with a fierce red light and began to melt and drip like so much golden blood running from a hot wound. Gur continued to cast spell, though his voice was muffled by the sound of the superheated air beginning to crackle.
Freddie's bubble protected her, matching Gur's heat, forcing him to increase his own to ever more murderous and destructive levels. She caught a glimpse of the golden corpse of Genghis Khan, now like a little lump of butter dissolving in a hot skillet, and as it did, the very stone walls of the Necropolis began to smoke and run like thin lava to the floor, mixing with the melting treasure until, moments later, Freddie hovered above a lake of molten mass, the air thick with swirling and poisonous vapors. Over it all, she shouted, loud enough for Gur to hear through the unfolding chaos:
"I AM STILL ALIVE, GOAT FUCKER, AND I WILL BITE YOUR HEAD OFF ONCE YOU ARE DONE PLAYING!"
Freddie sensed Temujin Gur ready to explode, in every sense of the word. All her instinct and senses said NOW! Tempo ser lennntaaa! (Time be slow!) She darted up and behind the bubble of Gur's magic, now wide as a house and throbbing with giant tongues of flame, as if Gur had siphoned the sun itself. Lowering her body behind him, she witnessed the ultimate eruption of his raging hate: an enormous, sun-like flare birthing quickly despite the slow of time. She knew it capable of blowing out the side of the mountain and incinerating the Earth all the way to Peking.
But that would never happen.
Skanda and the yarrow-chanting Bodhisattvas reached full crescendo with enough power to crumble the Andes mountain range while Mother Yarrow Maria on her own exerted enough magical strength to sink the island of Crete. And Freddie unleashed her full aria Tao, sufficient to vaporize the Arctic Circle with enough left over to reroute the Nile.
As a result, Peking was saved.
* Оверман *
EDISON DANCED WITH MANDUKHAI BENEATH THE DUBAI MOON to the tune of "You Make Me Feel So Young" by Frank Sinatra. He loved that old Sinatra, as much as he loved Leonard Cohen's dark songs with words like, "I've seen the future brother, and it's murder."
Mandukhai looked stunningly beautiful, dressed in a black sequin evening dress which fell only to her upper thighs, low cut neckline, and transparent black chiffon sleeves. The two of them danced slowly, cheek to cheek, on a Mediterranean blue-tile patio atop Le Petit Sanglier, surrounded by Babylon torches big as giraffes, and in the distance, the grand sky towers of Dubai twinkled with thousands of lights, lines of aero cars flying silently between them and filled with the Overmen—his Sorcery Star pilots, Dio Soldati, empire administrators, Dyson Sphere engineers, and so forth. All part of his master plan. Any humans remaining alive would do whatever menial tasks made sense while clever, personable robots like Angelia Jolie took care of all else. The concept of it made him feel so at ease, and happy as a true World Maker should be.
Mandukhai stared into his eyes with her own loving eyes full of war and massacre and hot sex on Titan while Sinatra sang, "You and I are just like a couple of tots, running across a meadow ..." as he smiled at her with teeth brilliant as a sunlit glacier. She smiled back and leaned closer to gently bite his ear. Later, he knew the sex would be free fall. Float down, back up, and do it again as the wind rushed in their faces. She bit his ear, the feel of it tickling his toes, and the Dubai night turned to day, and even brighter, as if a nuclear warhead had detonated in the sky above the city. He heard a distant, echoing boom, and felt a flash of heat on his skin, hot enough to singe the delicate ends of Mandukhai's hair and make his pinot noir undrinkable.
Next, a roaring crack in the distance, getting louder and drawn out, as if an impossibly large thing prepared to topple. He sighed, a bit peeved for being interrupted, and said to an alarmed Mandukhai, "Oh, what now?"
He released her, turned and walked to the far end of the patio to gaze over the city. He saw one of the Dubai towers to his right, faraway and well over two miles high. Severed in the middle, the up
per portion fell towards the earth.
A broken colossus, the fall slow and unreal.
Edison scanned to his left and saw his own tower, the top of it gone, at least thirty floors vanished. The crown of the structure was blackened and in flames. He strained his acute vision, strong enough to see the beak of a small sparrow twenty miles away, and noted War Tracker gone.
A chill claimed his body.
For the first time in centuries, Edison Godfellow felt a surge of fear.
I am afraid. I do not believe it, and yet, it is so.
Upon completion of that thought, all about him faded.
Even Mandukhai.
His dream towers of Dubai evaporated, and the sky islands, aero cars, the grand palaces on the sea like luminous crustaceans, all gone. He floated in dark space, in the cold night air above a different Dubai far below him, one much smaller, depressed and dim with not even one building above ten stories. The past had changed his future to this future, and one in which oil and military money obviously mattered far less. Without War Tracker to act and dispatch the medicine of force to heal the wounds in time, a crucial conflict point had obviously turned to the benefit of Paganini and those moon-hatted imbeciles of the Pan-Buddhist Democratic Union. Though which one? Dozens of conflict points could be going on at any one time, from assassinations to battles to kidnappings.
Perhaps that cursed Battle of The Somme again?
But how had Paganini been able to muster enough focused force? It seemed impossible, since the energy necessary to pierce the screens that protected War Tracker would have required at least 200 megatons per square centimeter. Edison knew the Czarina, or two Czarinas must be involved, along with Paganini and his blathering moon-hatters, a few Mother Yarrows perhaps, and God knows who or what else!
Regardless, the memory of history on this Earth was no more. Fortunately, his own memories remained whole, since he kept himself above and beyond the fickleness of time. What did Kipling say in the poem "If"? If you can breathe not a word about your loss, but begin again with worn out tools? Something like that? He wasn't too old to learn from mistakes … or might he be mistaken?
A man has got to know his limitations.
Man or no, a lack of memory at the moment would be a good thing.
Оверман
13
World Stormer Prediction - Peter the Great - A New World, For Now
BABETTE WOULD NEVER REMEMBER THAT HORRIBLE TORTURE in the Virgin Mary. Upon Gur's death and the destruction of War Tracker, Freddie returned to the torture dungeon only a moment after she had joined Gur in the Necropolis of The Khan. She freed Babette and Zolo, and healed them, erasing all memory from Babette and causing her to sleep once more. Zolo though, wished to keep his memory, and she agreed to his wishes, hugging him for minutes on end and asking his forgiveness.
"Let us make love to celebrate a blackness gone from this Earth," and she kissed him long and deep, and he returned her love in a magnificent way until, by whispers of magic, they found themselves lying in wild grasses atop a foothill of the Alps, gazing over the Mediterranean under a full moon night. The town of Menton, France in the distance, torch lit and serene.
Both Mother Yarrows, Margaret and Maria, closed their eyes to it, not wishing to gaze upon the lovemaking. Allowing privacy when necessary was a core principle the Mother Yarrows lived by, and one dictated by Saravastra, though a few broke the rules at times and closely watched intimate encounters. Many Mother Yarrows lived lonely lives in their time, and the lives they mentored and cared for in the future meant everything to them. A few felt a right to experience even sexual love as intimately as possible.
A small reward of sorts, or so they believed.
Before the night on the Alpine foothill came to an end, Freddie said to Zolo, “Your sense of rightness and compassion are greater than mine, as is your sense of loyalty and destiny. Though I lost my temper with you over the death of my father, and the serfs, I know those terrible events had to take place. And I know you suffered through them, and later, because of them, suffering too because I could not realize the truth and unfairly blamed you … There has been too much on your shoulders, Mr. Bold. Please forgive me for being such a terrible selfish bitch.”
“I understand,” Zolo said, “And I would have felt the same as you.”
“You are the strongest man I know, and in every way that truly matters. I love you, Zolo Bold,” she said as the lights of Menton winked out and stars whispered from eons away and the townsfolk dreamed their dreams of seas and meadows.
* Оверман *
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, FREDDIE TOOK BABETTE for a stroll outside the castle—the day fresh, and the rolling hills and fields of Anhalt still foggy in the warming sunlight. Freddie held her arm and listened to her nanny's chatter. She still had not spoken to Babette since Gur knocked her down with spell and branded her with yarrow symbols.
"I heard you, darling, in your room. It sounded like you were being attacked!" said Babette.
"I was, and you were brave to try and rescue me."
"I would give my life for you, lapooshka," Babette said, small tears in her eyes. "Was it that horrible Mongol wizard of the Empress?"
"Yes, but we have nothing to worry about now. He has gone."
"Forever, I hope. He turned the whole castle into one never ending nightmare. Bleeding walls and phantoms and floating corpses and God knows!"
"Be calm, my darling."
"I will, I will ... It was just so terrible. And now Empress Elizabeth has her servants out on the walls banging pots and calling his name. They say she is hysterical."
"What? That's ridiculous," Freddie said and laughed softly.
"But I do miss your father, lapooshka. He was a good man, and always kind to me, a good word to everyone. Fair to the servants. I cannot believe that maniac shot him for a pay grievance. Your father never would have cheated anyone."
Freddie held back a sob. She did not wish to upset Babette. "I know. I loved my father, and I have yet to grieve for him the way I should, but I know my mother—"
Babette interrupted with a raised arm and a pointing finger. "Look!"
Freddie followed the path of her finger to see a number of men outside the castle walls with big hammers. They began to swing the hammers at a pile of metal and shiny glass in a big pile along the wall. The sound of their hammer strikes sounded like ponk, punk, pank—little nips of sound coming over the field to where they stood.
What was it?
The Anhalt World Stormer!
Freddie could see what they worked to demolish. "Wait here, my darling!" she said to Babette, and she ran at a normal speed across the field towards the scene. In a minute, she stood before them, anger in her eyes. The men, Bärenthoren servants, various butler assistants and "scrubber boys," looked up at her and stopped swinging the hammers. They appeared dazed by her stare, confused, even anxious. Freddie knew their predicament—stuck between Princess Johanna's wrath and her own. She felt sorry for them, and her temper quieted.
"I suppose my mother gave orders this be destroyed?" she said to them.
"Yes, princess," a man said. The voice came from her right side. She turned her head to see the depressed and thin face of Benjamin Barth, the servant who had asked for her help to thwart Baron Eichmann. It seemed like centuries ago, yet the sight of him struck her dumb. The realization of his grief, and the reminder of those many deaths to restore her to life, cast a darkness over her thoughts.
What can I possibly say?
All of them stared at her.
They must be wondering if I am going insane.
"Benjamin ... I ... Come here for a moment, I wish to speak," and she turned to the others and said, "Please be still."
Benjamin, walking like a zombie, joined her and she led him by the arm out of earshot of the others. "Benjamin, please please forgive me. I have been ... gone, and my life in danger. I heard ..." She found it hard to say. He just stared at her with a look of shock on his fac
e. "I heard something about the serfs of Eichmann vanishing, or ...?"
"No one knows," he said with a flat voice. "I think they are dead. I wish I were dead also, but I do not have the courage."
"Your sister, Daniela—"
"She was not one of them. Baron Eichmann kept her for himself. For his passions."
"What? His passions?"
"She is his slave."
"My God, Benjamin, I did not know," she said, growing enraged by the news. It seemed, even on this beautiful morning, rest would not be forthcoming. So be it. She reached up to hold his face with her hands, and said to him, "By tonight, dear Benjamin, she will be free of Eichman and he will be gone from this Earth, as well as his wretched wife, and they never will hurt anyone else. Danilea will return and live with you here. You have my word. You will see her tonight, I swear it."
Benjamin Barth fell forward into her arms and sobbed and sobbed.
Upon holding him for a time and rubbing his head, she asked one of the servants to escort him to his room, whereupon she ordered the rest to leave the World Stormer and attempt to demolish it no longer. In response, one of them nervously said to her, "But princess, your mother will—" Freddie cut him off and said, "Do not fear. I will settle her soon enough."
The servants walked slowly back into the castle, all of them looking depressed. Freddie decided she would later use aria to restore the Anhalt World Stormer and place it all shining and new in the Bärenthoren Great Hall where her mother could not miss it. Freddie would tell her, "I saw Temujin Gur make it appear, then he laughed and vanished!" And just when Princess Johanna was ready to explode, the World Stormer would raise its machine barrels and fire a few rounds in her direction, thus causing her to run screaming in terror from the hall.
Freddie found it odd, especially after all she'd been through, that the idea of provoking her mother still found great appeal. She gazed down at the broken tubes, the electric spats and barrels and cylinders, the twisted and pounded black chassis of the World Stormer. Her father's most wondrous invention—a bit of matter that was part of a whole beyond the power of any god or God; and just like the castle Bärenthoren, like the living woods and grasses beyond, like the water in the ground and in the sky: all born of stars. The wandering between one time of Earth and another made her look inside herself for a universal constant, and in the madness of swirling Time, she found it in the simple thought of the night sky, in that timeless void of all creation.
War of the World Makers Page 25