Inbar said, “He’s telling you to shut the fuck up.”
Kincaid turned and looked, squinting into the haze low over the buildings. You couldn’t see flat landscape, all of it hidden by the two- and three-story buildings of Solonikì, but...
“I don’t know.” Something. A distant bit of glitter in the sky, a silver fleck of something, soft mechanical growl louder now, rising over the massed human voice of the crowd.
Silver dot slowly growing larger, catching the rays that fell out of the sky, reflecting them, making the whatever it was seem to sparkle. Ling said, “I know that sound. Airship. We use them a lot in Siberia and around the Pacific Basin.” Where Green China owned many little islands.
Now, the slavemaster turned to see what they were looking at, stood stockstill for a while, staring at the approaching airship, watching it grow from a silver freckle to a bright sliver, to a substantial cigar hanging against the otherwise featureless backdrop of the sky. The crowd down in the agora was growing silent as well, people turning and looking, conversations quieting until all the disparate voices were no more than a faraway murmur.
Finally, the slavemaster, hands on hips, said, “Shit.” Shit? How interesting. Not exactly the, um, greekest word I ever heard...
He turned and looked at his charges, sizing them up again, eying them one by one. “Well. I suppose some of you will turn out to be Americans.” English very crisp, with a recognizably Midwestern accent. Suburbs of Chicago, maybe, early Twenty-First Century.
Kincaid stepped forward, chains clattering, absurdly loud under the growing rumble of the airship’s engines. She smiled and said, “You got it, Bub. Every fuckin’ one of us.”
Slavemaster’s penciled-in eyebrows going up. “Even the three Chinks?” Gesturing at Genda, Ling and Amatersu.
She said, “Even the fat guy.”
The slavemaster looked at Inbar. “Well. I’m not surprised at that. Plenty of them up in High America.” Brows knitting now, eyes heating right up. “God damn that Shoz Dijiji. Told me you were some Arabs and Chinamen and a couple of Russians he caught down by the River.” Looked at her again, “I guess he figured you looked Russian enough, gospozhá.”
The engines above suddenly grew louder, going into reverse as the airship slid over the city, slid to a graceful stop, huge now, like an ocean liner in the sky. The slavemaster said, “Well. There goes my profit. God damn!” Meaty fist slapping into a fleshy palm. “When I get my hands on that lying Comanchero son of a bitch...”
o0o
Ling Erhshan stood with his friends in the middle of a rapidly emptying agora, while the slavemaster spoke to Kincaid. He said, “Now, when they get down here, you be sure to tell them, right off, that you were treated well. You got that?” There was a bit of or else in his voice, but...
Kincaid only grinned. “Were we?”
Slavemaster, a bit impatient: “Oh, come now, ah, Sergeant, is it? You weren’t whipped or anything. And I understand Shoz Dijiji’s boys didn’t even rape you.”
Ling smiled to himself. Right. What more could a girl ask for, eh? Like being delivered virginis intactae...
Up above, the dirigible had grown rather quiet, hanging up there, motionless, maybe four kilometers above the city. How are they keeping it still? Propeller blades on the six ducted-fan engines visibly motionless and... The two rearmost engines started up just then, turning over slowly, putt-putt-putt... All right, so there’s just not that much wind up there.
If you looked closely, you could see tiny figures moving, tiny people going out on the pylons supporting the engines, opening doors and going into the cowlings. Taking this opportunity to make a service call, while it’s quiet in there.
A small gondola up near the nose, all glass, more like a blister than a true blimp-car. Windows set flush in the hull further back. Tiny faces there too. Not waving or anything. An occasional glint from one of the faces. Binoculars?
Design a lot like the Hindenberg. Bigger though. Airship close to a thousand meters long. Looks like its right on top of us, it’s so large. Smooth skin. Monocoque hull design? That’d make good sense, if they’ve got the material technology to manage it, airship hull thin as stainless-steel paper, held rigid by the pressure of the gas within.
Helium? Hydrogen?
Visions of the real Hindenberg going down.
Aft of the two rows of windows, three big biplanes were hanging under the hull. Hard to tell how big, really. Can’t see the cockpits, but those things might be doors in the side. Maybe as big as Caproni bombers. Or Gothas?
Faint creak of metal on metal from high above, squeak, squeak, squeak... one of the biplanes dropping slowly away from the hull. Being lowered on a big hook, hook attached to a thick, two-armed boom. Very good. Very good.
Is it my heart that’s pounding?
Odd, far away groaning sound. Grr-rr-rr... Single prop in the nose of the biplane starting to turn, all by itself. Well. Electric starter. Very nice indeed... The engine suddenly caught with a chattering sound, spinning up, smoothing to a steady hum, dragging the zeppelin forward a little, two of the airship’s engines, the midships pair, starting up in reverse, compensating.
The hook let go and the biplane dropped, banking away, out from under the mother ship, rising above it, circling out over the plain, then banking back toward the city. The slavemaster, hugging himself with fat arms, said, “I wish the Hell they’d never come. Why can’t they have their own Heaven to be dead in?”
Ling laughed, softly, to himself. A lot of people felt that way, back when the world was first overrun by the Plastic Men with their Plastic Hamburgers. Then they shut the door on us and we were mad at them for that too. The biplane swooped down over the far end of the now-empty agora, bounced on the cobblestone pavement, engine stuttering noisily, dropped its small tailwheel with a harsh scrape, came rolling toward them, propeller windmilling, engine turning over at idle, going pop-pop-pop...
Slavemaster, turning to Kincaid: “Now you remember, we treated you all right!”
She looked at him, and snarled, “I’ll try to remember that when they’re looking at my snatch. Asshole.” You could see the slavemaster grow pale.
What would they do if we told them otherwise?
Ling took another long look up at the silver airship. Those big squares outlined on the hull. Those would be bomb bay doors, then. Image of American napalm falling on an ancient pseudoGreek city. Does limestone burn? Of course it does. Just ask the Persians. The pillar of smoke would be visible for a long way, on a world like this. Really a long way, if it really is a world without end.
The biplane rumbled to a stop, men with white faces looking out at them through cloudy glass windows. You could see things like crushed bugs and dead birds stuck all over the radiator of this thing’s liquid-cooled in-line engine too. A twelve cylinder job, I think. World War Two vintage. A little disquiet. Why? I wanted a nice, air-cooled radial, what you’d expect to see in a plane like this. Something from the 1920s, perhaps.
A Liberty engine? Was that what I wanted? Don’t remember any more. Too long since I was a boy, hiding in the library, doting on an alien past.
The door popped open, banging against the corrugated hull, metal ladder unfolding dropping to the ground, followed by a husky bald man in flying leathers. Bomber jacket. Brown leather pants. Black boots almost up to his knees. No flying helmet, though. No goggles. Of course not. No open cockpit.
Eying us with evident amusement. Especially the women. Of course the women. This is a man, and they’re all naked. He smiled, and said, “Hello. Are you the new Americans? Our spies weren’t quite...” Big, blunt-fingered hand extended. “Well. We’re here from Search and Rescue. You can call me Edgar.”
Edgar. The man had yet another Midwestern accent, Chicago once again. He sounds like Ernest Hemingway. Like the voice narrating that old film about the Spanish Civil War.
And a naked woman stepping forward, snapping a salute that made her breasts jiggle. “Astrid Kincaid. Ser
geant-Major, USMC.”
The amused look deepened. “Maybe you’d better wait on a uniform before... ah. Well. Welcome home, Sergeant-Major.” A long look around. “All ten of you Americans?”
A shadow falling over them, perhaps? Ling said, “Not exactly.”
Bald head cocked to one side. “Hm. Chinese? Well. We’ll get things straightened out. We’ve made... plenty of exceptions to the Law of the Return.” Then looking around again. Rahman and Inbar, clearly not Caucasians, but then, America was one of those places where...
This Edgar with a curious look in his eye, stepping forward, stepping up to Squire Edgar, of course. “By damn, you could almost be my twin brother...” Reaching out with his hand, reaching out to touch a bemused Squire. Alarm in his eyes. Bigger alarm still in Amanda Grey’s eyes...
BAM.
The two of them, Edgar and Edgar, embedded in a storm of silver feathers, feathers embedded in a nimbus of shimmering blue light. Feathers falling, falling, cloud of feathers and light seeming to implode, a single figure forming out of the swirling cloud, last few feathers falling to the ground like bits of exploded mylar balloon.
Knight-Errant Amanda Grey starting forward, voice shrill, a shocked scream: “Edgar!”
Only one figure standing there. One man in dusty brown flying leathers, standing in a little pile of balloon tatters, looking down at the thick pink fingers of his right hand, then looking at Amanda Grey. Hushed whisper: “I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
Amanda on her knees now, at the edge of the circle of shards, also whispering: “Edgar?” Looking up at the other one, eyes full of horror.
The American Edgar, wide-eyed, said, “You folks have come a long way, haven’t you?”
A long way? Ling thought, Yes, we have...
And I always wondered what would happen, when and if, if and when, two doppelgängers, wandering the byways of the Multiverse, should meet each other. Apparently, an explosion of silver feathers and... look at this Edgar’s eyes. Is the other one in there? Or... gone? Where would he go? Back into the Multiverse, spun onto some other spacetime track, like a train routed onto a siding? Back to Hesperidia?
Gone on ahead?
Ahead to where?
No answer yet.
“Well, said this Edgar, seemingly unaffected by what had happened. “Let’s get upstairs, get our asses out of here. We can chat later.”
o0o
From ten thousand meters, the landscape of the world without end was pale blue, everything tinted just so, endless river reflecting silver light, plains and forests and snow-capped mountains edged with a cyanotic tinge. And the sky, thought Ling Erhshan. The sky darkens, faster, perhaps, than the sky of home. Not yet black, but surely slipping away from blue in the direction of indigo.
Nothing up there. No sun, no moon, no stars, but... glimmerings. A hint that there was... something.
Just the two of them up here with Edgar and the crew, he and Kincaid, riding up front in the control gondola, while the others sat back in the passenger lounge, relaxing in their fresh, clean American clothes, stonewashed bluejeans, they were called, soft mock-toe loafers, open-collar, short-sleeve white shirts.
They were flying southwestwards, toward a great hazy mass of hill country, a rolling plateau, perhaps, back by a snowy mountain range. It’d look impressive, bigger than Tibet, mountains rising high above the hills, hills themselves lifted a thousand meters and more above the lowland plains, but... Beyond High America, you could still see those other mountains, the Mountains poor Smoking Mirror had called them, rising like a wall of iron.
Poor Smoking Mirror, reduced to ashes and smoke. I wonder if he’s... reified by now? Just a day or two, Black Bear said. I would’ve liked to stay and watch the process. I imagine him coagulating out of thin air.
Something seem to glimmer above the ragged peaks of the iron-gray mountains, teasing him with its ephemeral presence, a spark of light, perhaps, there then gone, just as he tried to see it. Averted-vision technique? Faint glimmer, hard to catch, eyes hard to hold in position, airship, perhaps, rolling imperceptibly. Yes. Definitely something there. He pointed: “I keep thinking I see something like stars. I don’t know. Something we’d be able to see if the sky were completely dark.”
Edgar, foot resting on a brass rail mounted just under the window frame, smiled. “I’ve been where the sky is dark. You can see them pretty well then.”
Kincaid said, “See what?”
“Not exactly stars. Kind of, well... lights in the sky.”
Ling thought, The lights in the sky are stars, but... “Do you know what they are?” Or where, precisely, where we are?
Edgar shrugged, broad, rounded shoulders humping up almost imperceptibly. “My buddy Al has this theory that the World Without End is debris fallen out onto the event-horizon of the universe. He says the... sunlight, if you want to call it that, is just the backside of the anisotropic background radiation, um, blueshifted...”
Ling: “Blueshifted from what? Surely not from the original fireball.”
Edgar laughed. “Murray and Gerry say he’s nuts. They think it’s just the average light from all the luminous matter in the universe, across all time, falling down on us.” Another shrug. “When you get up on top of the mountains, when you can really see the, um, sky... I don’t know. Gerry claims each little sparkly patch of fog is a local-construct universe, each a Quantum Domain, each with its own little sub-Bang...”
Kincaid said, “And this place?”
“They’re all kind of agreed on the event-horizon crust theory. I’m not sure I believe any of it.”
No. Scientific mumbo-jumbo, conjured up by atheistic scientists to cover their theoretical asses. Ling said, “How do they think we all, ah, came to be here?”
A genuinely mirthful burst of laughter from Edgar. He said, “That’s where I come in, you know?” He stood erect, feet planted on the tinny deckplates, arms spread wide, taking in the patch of dark sky that showed under the curve of the airship’s hull. “I’m dead! My spirit’s set free! Take me away to Mars, God!”
Ling thought, Of course...
Edgar let his hands fall to his sides, frowning, eyes distant. “Sometimes I swear I remember getting up out of that damn bed, seeing my old carcass with the funny papers crumpled on top of it. Then again, the dying often have endorphin-induced fantasies. Bright light at the end of the birth canal and all that.”
Kincaid said, “So you believe in corporeal souls. Why are we here?”
Edgar said, “Gravity.”
“It’d take a long time for us to fall to the cosmic event horizon.”
Ling said, “It would take forever.”
Edgar said, “The boys keep having that argument. Lise and Marie got so sick of the whole business we had to declare a moratorium on theoretical discussions during council meetings. Me, I agree with Al. We know so little about the nature of time, whose to say if forever hasn’t skipped on by while we were, um, walking with the Lord?”
In the dream time, thought Ling. Ahead of them, the Plateau of the Amazulu, now known as High America, had grown huge, the airship starting to slope downward out of the dark sky, dark sky brightening again, turning back to blue, blue tinge of the landscape dissipating, ground an irregular patchwork of green and brown, the occasional twisting silver serpent a river, the ragged mirror surface of a lake.
And cities. There are cities down there. Here and there, small white cities of stone, brown cities apparently made of wood, colorful cities of buildings slathered in paint. War paint? A world without end. A world clearly made for adventure. He looked at Edgar, and thought, No surprise. No surprise at all.
As they’d flown away from that little Greek city between the two big bends of the River of No Return, no surprise, again, that Edgar here called it the Iss, they’d passed over a massive heard of buffalo, stampeding buffalo, raising a great cloud of brown dust, dust like a sandstorm coming hundreds of meters in the sky.
Down there, som
ewhere, were all the people that ever lived and died. All the people and... all the animals? Are the rats we killed as children in Shanghai down there somewhere? The spirits of rats? Ah. And the implications. Are there dinosaurs somewhere? What about the dimetrodon that killed Ahmad Zeq? Will he meet it again someday? Will it remember him as an unusually tasty meal?
Vision of Jensen’s red-ant wife, rushing out of the crowd by the River. Yes, another interesting implication about this impossible place. All the others species that ever lived, anywhere in the universe. Or, for that matter, anywhere in the Multiverse...
Wait. The red-ant woman wasn’t even real.
He said, “Why do we humans all fall together like this, together with our familiar animals and plants?” Interesting notion that. Even plants have souls.
Kincaid: “I thought about that too. Why aren’t we all mixed up with everything from everywhere?”
Edgar was laughing again. “You little boys and girls are going to be right at home here, you know?”
Ling said, “I’m fifty-five years old, I think. Hardly a boy now...” Not to mention Kincaid’s one-thirty...
An odd look from Edgar, who said, “So? I was seventy-five when I died. I guess I must be at least three hundred by now, yet...” A gesture down at his sleek, youthful form. “I like being a boy. I like being twenty-five forever.”
Twenty-five forever... “You weren’t bald when you were twenty-five.”
Edgar put a hand up to his pate, and said, “So. You read the Porges book, did you? That’s the usual one.” Nothing. He sighed. “Well, I guess I’ve just got a bald-headed spirit.”
Kincaid said, “What happened to the Squire?”
Asking again, thought Ling. They’d asked back down in the Agora, again on the plane, again on boarding the airship, Knight-Errant Amanda Grey seeming to hold off hysteria by some iron inner discipline, Edgar frowning, frowning and saying, I don’t know...
“I keep hoping you’ll give up on that one.”
Ling said, “It seemed like you and he were... doppelgängers.”
The Transmigration of Souls Page 34