The Armageddon Blues

by The Armageddon Blues (new ed) (mobi)

  And so it came to be that Jalian d'Arsennette and Georges Mordreaux walked the freeways of the world together, for a while.

  Let us note, here, the two Precepts of Semi-Divinity:

  (1) Mind Thine Own Business.

  (2) Don't Worry About It.

  The alien gods came to Earth in the early part of the twenty-eighth century, as measured from the death of a man who was nailed to a tree for telling people that it was all right to love each other.

  Their landing craft dropped out of a clear blue summer sky, and set down on a strip of what appeared, to them, to be a sort of primitive road. They sought for the civilization that would produce such a road, and found nothing.

  They were not surprised, these alien gods. They had seen other deathworlds; they recognized the signs. If they were surprised in any degree, it was only by the obvious recency of the cataclysm; the previous owners of this world had destroyed themselves less than a cycled running cycle ago.

  The alien gods--the Corvichi spacetime gypsies--set down to work. The Ship that was their world was in trouble. Biosphere degradation, resource depletion, failing machinery; they had traveled a long, long way around the Great Wheel of Existence, had braved the Chained One and Chaos itself, and much of their equipment was designed to operate on timelines whose physical law was vastly different from the one on which they now found themselves.

  And so they set to work.

  Three days after they set down, eighty of Clan Silver-Eyes' most blooded Hunters climbed onto the steelstone of the Big Road, and began the long, long run toward the ship.

  Many of the women wore the white of Elder Hunter; they did not lag behind their younger comrades.

  At their head was a woman named Ralesh, who would one day be Eldest Hunter.

  Dateline 712 A.T.F.

  In the Clan House, well past sunset, lights glowed and flickered. The flicker came from the central fire pit, where lopers and bluewings were roasting on a spit. The glow came from several strange, floating balls, about two hands across, that emitted an eerie blue radiance.

  Sitting on the faded green tatami mats nearest the fire pit, the eight Eldest Hunters, including Morine, the Eldest Hunter, conferred with the alien gods.

  For reasons of their own, the gods had insisted that Jalian be allowed to attend the meeting. Morine d'Arsennette y ken Selvren was at first inclined to say no; the child was willful and headstrong, and was not to be rewarded for her asinine behavior.

  The alien gods insisted.

  Jalian sat in a dark corner of the Clan House's central hall, separated from the alien gods by fire and the eight white forms. The alien gods spoke to the Elder Hunters through a machine that spoke understandable silverspeech, in the voice of the first ken Selvren that had addressed it. It was strange for Jalian, listening when the alien gods talked; the machine's voice was her mother's.

  That they talked in her mother's voice was not the strangest thing about them. The things they talked about were not even the most interesting things about them, although they were interesting enough:

  Of the eight Elder Hunters present, five, including Morine and Morine's daughter Ralesh, knew how to read and write. Sylva de Kelvin and her daughter Jenna knew the basic rudiments of chemistry and mathematics. Other Hunters, not present because of low status, knew the arts of medicine and construction. Though the wastefulness of the Men's World forced a simple lifestyle upon them, the Silver-Eyes, ken Selvren that was ken Hammel, had the capability, as the Real Indians and mutants did not, of reconstructing a technical civilization, given power and metal.

  It was this that the alien gods were offering them; but first they had to explain what an alternate timeline was, and that took a long, long while.

  Like everything else about them, their explanation was strange; but it was not the strangest thing.

  What was strangest was the way they looked.

  If it is true, as said, that it is only the first time a human looks at a thing that she truly sees it, then it is probable that Jalian saw the gods more clearly than any of the others in the House's central Hall. Even Jalian's mother, the youngest of the Elder Hunters present, looking at the gods, was able to put aside her preconceptions of what a creature should look like only to the point where she perceived a sort of very large, squarish bear, with tentacles and something like strings of lace hanging about its upper regions.

  To Jalian, at the age of six when most things are new and strange, the alien god was a four-limbed, nearly cubical hunk of furred flesh; there was a double-jointed leg, as thick around as both of a normal person's legs put together, at each corner of the body. Atop the cube there rose a lattice of interweaving bars that looked like exposed black bone. Lace was strung about the lattice; in some spots tightly, in others more loosely. Their tentacles grew out of the base of the bone lattice; there were about twenty of them, and four of those twenty were thicker and longer than the rest. The tentacles were covered with a fine, purplish fur, that faded to show purple-black skin at the tips of the tentacles. While Jalian watched, the lace stretched and loosened, as the bones beneath them shifted positions slightly. Watching the lace, she had the sudden strange, intense sensation that she could read expression in them.

  /?/

  Before the machine spoke to the Silver-Eyes, it was always preceded by a high-pitched whine that only a few of the Silver-Eyes could hear. They could not tell which of the gods was actually speaking at any one time. Jalian suspected that it was the small one nearest the machine, for no other reason than that it was the closest. There were four of the alien gods present; three of them stood still and motionless. The fourth, who was furthest away from Jalian, seemed restless. It ... he kept shifting his weight from one foot-pair to another, in a slow circle that was working its way regularly around his perimeter. Jalian leaned forward, peering; but the god was as far away from her as the hall allowed him to be, back where neither the cool blue light nor the flickering yellow of the firelight much illuminated things. This particular alien god

  /ghess'Rith/

  suddenly ceased moving. One of the Elder Hunters was asking a question about traveling sideways through time, and Jalian was standing up

  /greetings be/

  when something happened.

  She was certain that the alien god was watching her. She did not know how she knew this, but

  /naming be?/

  /Jalian. Jalian of the Fires./

  /Fires be?/

  /the light that dances and burns./

  /fascinates. naming be ghess'Rith/

  /how are we talking?/

  /mindvoice. faster and clearer than soundvoices/

  /then why do you use the machine to talk to the Elder Hunters?/

  /deaf be. too old to learn new ways, is may be/

  /why did you come here? you put a building on my Big Road, and now i'm in trouble./

  /apology. ship-not-alive-which-thinks-in-numbers needed level area. Big Road seemed not used/

  /the gods and demons won't like it./

  /persons be?/

  /gods and demons ... they live there. they're scary. they eat badgirls sometimes. i am not a badgirl./

  /understanding be. cautionary tales/

  /?/

  /not important. question be/

  /what?/

  /closer contact?/

  /i don't understand./

  /wish rapid learning of culture, of Corvichi ways?/

  Jalian stared through the dimness of the main hall. Her gaze did not leave ghess'Rith's now-motionless form. She took a step forward, completely unaware of the vast silence that had settled in the hall. Ralesh stirred as though she would rise, and hesitated in obvious indecision.

  Jalian moved forward, into the ring of firelight. The Elder Hunters were watching her with something like awe; she had forgotten they were there.

  /closer be?/

  Jalian d'Arsennette whispered aloud, "Yes."

  There was a brief pause.

  Jalian had an inst
ant, fragmented impression of something vast and powerful, purposeful, glowing dull red with heat, that rushed at her out of the cold eternal darkness.

  It took all of the courage that she possessed to place herself in its path.

  At the last moment the monolithic thing identified itself to Jalian with a force that burned itself into the deepest recesses of her mind.

  /destiny/

  impact.

  Dateline 1968 Gregorian.

  Carmel, Central California.

  "What," asked Jalian d'Arsennette, "is ice cream?"

  It was, as ghess'Rith would have put it, a pleasant enough summer day, but then, the Corvichi were comfortable with an ambient temperature nearly twenty percent warmer than a person would have considered ideal.

  In other words, Georges Mordreaux's, in fact, it was "too damn hot for anyone but an Englishman." Jalian did not know what an englishman was, and was certain that she did not care. Nonetheless, when noon approached, she sought shade, to wait out the worst heat of the day. Georges, she noted with poor grace, was, despite his complaints, not even sweating.

  They stood in front of the order window of an establishment which bore the legend Al's Burgers, Fries and Shakes. Al's was located at the edge of a plaza which, though Jalian did not know it, was one of the better examples of architectural design in central California. Al's stuck out from its surroundings glaringly. It would have been insufficient to say that it was ugly; even in less pleasant surroundings it would have been visually unpleasant. Plastered across the window, facing the street, were dozens of pictures of culinary delicacies, ranging from the burgers, fries and shakes of the establishment's name to other items such as "hoagies" and "submarine sandwiches." One picture, of something called "Our Fantastic Philly Cheese Steak!" was so disgusting that Jalian had to look away.

  "Two cones," Georges told the sweating girl who stood at the window. The girl took his money and expertly loaded down two cones with approximately fifteen centimeters of vanilla soft swirl. Jalian stared, she could not help it, at the obscene sight of the vanilla ice cream as it was deposited upon the cones.

  Georges took their cones, and handed one to Jalian. They walked over to where a bench sat beneath shade trees, and rested, looking out across the plaza. The day was quiet; a Thursday afternoon in Spring without tourists. The locals were at work, or in school.

  Jalian's cone had already started to melt in the heat. Little white rivulets of melted ice cream were coursing down the cone, and over her hand. Jalian smelled the ice cream, looking at Georges dubiously. His cone had barely begun to melt. Georges was watching her expectantly.

  "How do you eat these?" asked Jalian finally.

  Georges demonstrated, licking the side of his cone. You stick your tongue out, thought Jalian; I should have known. The smell of the ice cream was vaguely familiar; it was similar in some ways to "doughnuts," a food which had made her quite ill the one time she had attempted to eat it. Ever since she had made a point of avoiding foods with that particular sweet odor.

  Refined sugar had not been a part of the Silver Eyes diet.

  At last, because the damned thing was melting all over her hand, Jalian stuck her tongue out and tentatively licked a small portion of ice cream.

  "Well?"

  Jalian licked the cone again. It was not at all as bad as she had been expecting. In fact ...

  In a surprisingly short period, the ice cream was entirely gone. She threw the cone away after one tentative bite, and went back to Al's. "I would like," she said firmly, "three more."

  Dateline 718 A.T.F.

  /no, no,/ said jin'Ish impatiently. /true is our senses differ; we hear, see higher than persons. differences be/ She waved a tentacle at Jalian, then used that tentacle to point again at the Doorway's exposed circuitry. /But light in no-air circuit you can see/

  Jalian sighed. She blocked the sunlight with her hand and peered into the maze of wiring and vacuum tubes. She was in a bad mood--jin'Ish kept talking down to her, as though she was no more intelligent than one of the men in the fields--and try as she might, she couldn't see the lights that jin'Ish was pointing out to her. She didn't like working with the Doorway in the first place; because shifting physical law on different timelines kept them from using molecular circuitry that depended on quantum effects of varying probability, the Doorways were constructed with hard-wiring and almost invisible vacuum tubes. The assemblage was bulky and inelegant.

  Jalian sat back again. /i don't care what you say, there's no light in there./ She leaned back against the wall. They were in one of the east rooms of the God's House, one of the group of rooms that the gods used to store spare equipment. Sunlight was streaming in through the storage room's one large window, bouncing off rows of eldritch machinery, devices of steel and glass and crystal and other materials that Jalian did not recognize.

  Jin'Ish hesitated. /so. wait/ A bulge ran down the center of one of cher minor tentacles. The tip of the tentacle split, peeled back into four tiny flaps, and jin'Ish's traveling eye popped out of the tentacle. The eye swiveled for a moment in the grip of the flaps, orienting itself. It stabilized and jin'Ish thrust the tentacle into the dark center of the access panel. After a moment che forced air through cher lace in the barely audible sound that indicated exasperation. /tube is malfunctioned/ che admitted.

  Jalian stood, dusting her tunic off. /this is idiotic,/ she said flatly. /i'm going to get ghess'Rith to teach me how to work these things. at least he doesn't contradict himself./ She felt jin'Ish's surprise--most of the Silver-Eyes were polite to her, and to all of the alien gods--felt it turning to rage.

  Whatever jin'Ish would have said to her, Jalian never found out. A scream broke through the early morning calm.

  "Hai! Ken Selvren, Hai!"

  In dreamy slow motion, Jalian found herself considering the sentry warning with a sort of calm, interested detachment. Without thinking twice, she discarded the alternative of exiting through the God's House's main entrance. It was at the west end of the building, precious seconds away from the village circle. She pulled a circuit spanner from the toolbot at her side and smashed the window open. Impossibly strong tentacles wrapped themselves around her, restraining her; with distant surprise she recalled jin'Ish's presence. She twisted inside the grip of the tentacles, brought her hands together as fists, crossing them over her chest to give herself the maximum striking distance between her fists and their targets. Her arms uncrossed like a snake striking to chop at the bases of the two major tentacles facing her. Jin'Ish emitted a high-pitched squeak of pain or surprise; her grip on Jalian loosened slightly. Jalian pushed back from jin'Ish, twisted so that she faced jin'Ish in profile, centered, and brought her right foot up in a shotak kick to jin'Ish's central bone cage. Jin'Ish's tentacles released her; che stumbled backward, cher rear legs folding beneath cher.

  It never occurred to Jalian that the alien god had been trying to save her life; she went out through the window. Perhaps five seconds had passed. She could not remember having drawn the short knife that was the only weapon she was wearing. It was in her hand already when she first thought of it.

  Women were pouring into the street. Most were still naked, this early in the morning, but none were unarmed. Even the men carried clubs or poles, though they were moving more slowly and with more confusion than the trained warriors. Jalian, like every other Silver-Eyes, paid them no mind; men were not taught the martial arts.

  The warning cry had come from the west sentry. She was lying dead at her post, riddled with arrows. A vast force of Real Indians, five hundred or more, all mounted upon the tamed animals they rode, were already halfway across the clearing that separated the village from the woods. They were mounted and painted for war, they screamed and fired arrows as they rode. The center of their charging line rode over the fallen sentry.

  Jalian stood still and unmoving. Arrows whistled past her; most were aimed poorly, if at all. Near her, Kendr's brother Davad took an arrow through the eye; she stepped to the sid
e and took the spear he was holding as he fell. She was calm, so calm. Her entire life, this was all that she had trained for. Strike as a child, and then kartari and shotak; at least an eighth day of each, every day of her life since she was old enough.

  Seconds left. Jalian picked out one of the horsemen for her own, a giant who was probably four times her size. The sunlight on his leather breastplate was beautiful. Tiny puffs of dust rose where his horse's hooves struck the dirt of the village circle.

  The warriors of Clan Silver-Eyes had less than sixty seconds from the time their sentry called warning and the moment when the wave of Real Indians met them; sixty seconds and a lifetime of training in a martial discipline their ancestors had spent five hundred years perfecting.

  They clashed in the center of the village.

  Dateline 1968 Gregorian.

  She lay on the grass at the side of the highway, in the dark hours before morning. The sea was audible, off to the other side of the Pacific Coast Highway. It was cold, below fifty degrees, and damp with heavy fog, but Jalian found that since meeting Georges she no longer got as cold, or as hungry, or as tired as before. She did not understand the phenomenon in all of its practical ramifications, though with what Corvichi physics she retained she had nearly completed a mathematical model she thought was valid.

  Usually she did not think about it, except when something happened which was sufficiently strange to force her.

  "When I was young," said Jalian, "I was told that the Big Road led to the other worlds, worlds of gods and demons. Later," she said with a perfectly deadpan expression, "I found that this was not true."

  Georges Mordreaux sat upright at the side of the road, his back to a gnarled old redwood. Jalian had almost never seen him sleep; he was usually awake when she went to sleep, and when she rose again. "That must have been very strange," he said quietly, "to find yourself suddenly in a time so different from your own. It is very different, now, from when I was born, but the change was gradual, until recently. Within the last fifty or sixty years, the world has seen more change than in the two hundred before--but even that change, by comparison, does not match your own."