The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption

by YS Pascal

  The memorial service was set for the day after tomorrow, allowing enough time for the whole family to fly back home. In the cave, John had asked me if I would arrange cremation and scatter his ashes into the wind at the base of Sugarloaf Mountain in his beloved Appalachian Range. Praying that I’d never really lose him, I had promised--with my fingers crossed.

  So Connie took care of all the preparations. She always does. In a couple of days, once everyone had returned, we would gather near the Rappahanock River and hike along the path towards our favorite hill, stopping every mile or so to share a memory of John’s full, short, life. When we reached the caverns, we’d let Icarus soar, and watch the breeze lift John back into the sky.

  * * *

  George was nursing a cup of tea in the darkness of our library, a black silhouette in the large armchair Grandpa Alexander had once occupied. Grateful that the lack of light would be a veil for my tears, I Ergaled myself a cup of hot chocolate and sat down on the sofa next to him.

  He finally spoke. “I didn’t ask you to tell us the whole story. Just why he never bothered to call.”

  “Come on, George. I told you what I could. Army Special Ops swore him to secrecy.” My sip burned my burning tongue. “He did say how much he loved you.”

  “I’m sure,” George snorted. Sighing, he added, “Something happened a few years ago, Shiloh. After that, John became all about John.”

  George shook his head. “I confess I was hoping for the return of the older brother I’d grown up with. He did love us. Back then.”

  I pursed my lips. Hesitated. Didn’t say “and now, more than you know”. Instead, I took a deep breath and changed the subject, sticking my big toe in the water. “Hey, Bro. You remember our parents?”

  George looked at me, surprised. “Of course. I was almost ten when the accident hap--why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because I don’t.”

  “Well, you were pretty little when they passed.”

  “What was my mother’s name?” A tremor in my voice.

  George’s jaw slackened. “Really, Shiloh?”

  “Her name.”

  A deep frown. “Same as it used to be. Anastasia.” He shook his head. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Did she have red hair?”

  “Nooo…” A hint of a question. My brother’s frown now carved canyons in his forehead.

  “Can I see a picture?”

  George laid his cup on the end table, spilling some of the tea onto the antique walnut under the doily. “They’re all still there. We haven’t moved them.” He pointed to a row of photo albums on the bottom shelf of a nearby bookcase.

  “Can I turn on the light?”

  George reached over and flipped the switch on the reading lamp before I’d finished standing up. My face turned away, I shuffled over and picked up several of the dusty volumes in my arms, bringing them back to my chair.

  I flipped the pages one by one. Yellowed photo albums of sunny days long since forgotten. Connie with pigtails. Kris with braces. George without his mustache. Grandpa Alexander, working in the barn with Blair. And—I swallowed hard—John, golden locks teasing his sculpted shoulders, sitting atop his red Moto Guzzi.

  What I didn’t see among all of our photos were views of my mother or my father. Even in the snapshots with Billy and Andi in diapers, frolicking under a volcanic sprinkler.

  I looked through every single album, each book groaning and coughing dust, as I opened it to search for visions that weren’t there.

  “Maybe you’d better go lie down, Shiloh,” Connie said from the doorway. Her expression mirrored George’s concern.

  “Dammit!” I cried, throwing down the album in my hand. “Where are they?”

  “You’ve been through a lot and—“

  “Where are they?” I clenched my fists to stop the shaking.

  “Could be a fever.” Connie reached out her hand to feel my forehead.

  I shoved it away. “I am not sick! Just show me one picture, one, of my parents.”

  George and Connie looked at each other, the worry and sadness clear in their eyes. George sighed and picked up the volume with the pictures of my younger sibs playing outdoors. He opened the album to the page where Billy had climbed up onto a small boulder and was preparing to jump. “Here, Shiloh. Can’t you see?”

  His finger rested a few inches to the right of Billy. I stared at the photo, unblinking, for as long as I was able. Until the shivering washed over me and I dropped to the carpet by their feet. How could I tell George and Connie that there was no one there at all.

  Chapter 30

  Merely Players

  I don’t remember much about the next two days. Connie said I was the picture of teeth-gnashing delirium until the fever broke.

  That was as good an explanation as I would be able to come up with, so I played along. No point in rattling their padded cages with my reality. Once again, it was going to be up to me to track down the truth--alone.

  I’d snuck one of the Billy and Andi pictures out of the album and tried to catch each of my sibs in private and see what they saw in the photo. No, I didn’t lead them on, didn’t hint. They all claimed—pretended--to see our parents.

  The photo went into my jeans pocket, right under my Ergal, saved for Spud and his eagle eyes.

  Because of my ‘illness’, Connie suggested we wait another day before the hike to Sugarloaf. I wouldn’t have it. I was dreading the memorial, and the bitter barbs I expected to hear from Connie and George about John’s decision to strike out on his own. “Let’s do what we have to do,” I insisted, pulling on my sneakers and donning my windbreaker.

  We set off, Connie carrying the ornate urn with John’s ashes. I noted some runic symbols in the design—one or two reminded me of characters I had seen on Benedict’s planet ship, on the non-Zygan communications equipment we’d tried to use to escape our captors. I took a quick photo with my Ergal. Another item to file for further study with Spud.

  At the base of Sugarloaf, Connie and George scattered the last of John’s remains. I was grateful that, despite my fears, the eulogies remained positive and inspirational, and no one sang “Dust in the Wind”. And, that I didn’t cry.

  I let the gang know at dinner I’d be returning to Malibu the next morning. Glancing in the direction from where John’s plea for rescue had emanated only a few days ago, I saw that Tom, Connie’s fiancé, was sitting in John’s chair at our table. Life moves on, and so must I.

  “Can I come see you?” Andi whispered.

  “Won’t have time to hang with you in Vegas—I’ll be marketing our show the whole time at the Con,” I had to answer, but I promised her she could spend a few weeks with me at my beach house as soon as her school year was over, and that we could fly back together in July for Connie’s wedding.

  Kris declared that she’d stop by our booth at SingularityCon and market her new album—I mean ‘say hi.’ Her boyfriend, Mettle singer Elijah DiFiero, had just been cast in a few webisodes from the zombie graphic novel Hideous Undead, and would be manning one of the nearby display tables for a few hours during the weekend of the convention.

  “He’ll be scoring, too,” Kris gushed.

  I smiled politely, and returned an “Of course.”

  I hoped they didn’t pick up that I just couldn’t sell it—the warm, fuzzy family thing; I felt as if this entire day, all my conversations, this dinner, was actually on the set of a streaming reality show, and I was going up on—forgetting--my lines.

  Maybe Connie was right. Maybe I still had that fever and this whole family scene was a delusion--that sudden thought made me scan the room for any sign of the Plegma’s Mel.

  I hadn’t even realized I was shedding tears. To my shock, it was Kris who put an arm around me and gave me a worried hug. I shook my head and dabbed at my eyes with my napkin. “I’m okay. Just tired.” I excused myself from the table with a forced smile and headed upstairs.

  * * *

  No, I couldn’t r
esist a last look at John’s room.

  Empty. Everything was gone. Well, except for the curtains, the desk, and the bed. But, John’s books, his files, his disks, his mementoes. Nothing. The room was clean, and recently dusted, “ready for its next occupant”. Lives—like hotel guests--move on.

  The only trace of my brother remained in my memory. And in the urn that someone—Connie?—had lain on its side in a dark corner of the room.

  I took the urn to my room, and hid it under my windbreaker. Driven by a sudden thought, I snuck back down the stairs without disturbing the vibrant jabbering at the dinner table. Alone in the den, I dove for the photo album that had had the most pictures of John.

  A sigh of relief. Still there. Still smiling. Still “alive”. The Moto Guzzo photo joined the other snapshot in my jeans. Just for me to cry over and remember.

  * * *

  Las Vegas—two and a half weeks later

  I’d agreed to meet Spud at the exhibitor’s check-in table at the Las Vegas Convention Center at 7:30 am on opening day of SingularityCon. He seemed to have grown another inch during the three weeks he’d been in England, I observed, as he bent down to meet my eyes with a questioning gaze.

  I patted his arm and let him know I was doing okay.

  “Of course,” he responded to my nosy question about passing his finals. “And I shan’t be taking a gap year either. I have placed at Sidney Sussex.” A beat. “The University of Cambridge.”

  “All about networking,” I muttered, adding upon catching his frown, “The old school tie.”

  He snorted. “No, rather, my vitae, building my repertoire.

  Ergal, do your work. “Getting skills and adding to your resumé?”

  A hint of annoyance. “That is what I just said.”

  “Escott, Rush,” cried Simon Carter, the “hawt” star of Bulwark, dressed in the uniform of successful Hollywood, a black turtleneck and tailored slacks and jacket. “Our booth is near the morning panels; hurry and you’ll be just in time to start your pitching.”

  Spud and I both rolled our eyes. For once, we were exactly on the same page. Marketing’s a pitch.

  * * *

  Apparently, Bulwark fans weren’t the type to show up—or even wake up—before lunchtime. We only saw a trickle of passers-by in the first hour we staffed the booth. A few stopped to ask about our show, which network it was on, what time, etc,… With all this underwhelming enthusiasm, I started to wonder how we even got renewed for a second season.

  But the downtime did give me a chance to broach the subject of John’s revelations with my partner. Spud’s brilliant brain might give me an insightful interpretation of John’s…theories and speculation.

  Happy to leave Simon out in front to flirt with the fangirls, I pulled Spud back towards a couple of folding chairs on the far end of the booth, out of earshot of the associate producer that had drawn the short straw and been stuck with booth set-up and first marketing shift.

  As soon as I sat down, I realized I didn’t know how to begin.

  Spud sighed and came to my rescue. “I wasn’t listening, but how could I not hear you. You were both sitting five feet away from me.”

  I nodded. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “What do you think? About the, uh, clone thing? About me?”

  Another sigh. “Though improbable, it is certainly not impossible. Whether it is the truth, I do not know. Perhaps that is a question your brother would be able to answer, but not I.”

  I fished in my jeans pocket and pulled out the photos, handing them both to Spud.

  He studied them with a raised eyebrow for a few minutes, then returned them to me. “Yes?”

  “What do you see?”

  “I observe a young man in the prime of his life straddling a powerful motorized stallion and shaking a fist of defiance at the world he has dared to engage and hopes to conquer.”

  “And the other one?” My voice trembled a bit.

  “Two small children. With a family resemblance, so I am assuming they are Rushes? You?”

  I shook my head. “Andi and Billy.”

  “And there is something missing.”

  I flinched.

  He pulled the photo out of my hands and indicated the open space on one side where George’d said he could see my parents. “Your brother and sister are far off to the left of the frame. The angle of this shot implies that the photographer was aiming to include something else on the right.”

  “Grandpa Alexander must’ve taken the picture. George insisted he could see my mother and father.” I choked on the words.

  “Then I am inclined to believe he was telling the truth. Why I.” he looked at me, “and you cannot do so is yet another mystery I am unable to solve.” Casting down his eyes, he added, “I can only apply my methods to the material.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “To the concrete world which we inhabit,” Spud explained, leaning back in his chair. “My dear Rush, I shall tell you a story of a man I once knew. An acquaintance from my childhood.”

  I shifted in my chair, and slid the photos back into my pocket.

  “He was an artist, a painter, and, as are many who embrace the arts, a man of many passions. His mien and demeanor ebbed and flowed from ecstasy to the abyss, tides enslaved by the phases of the moon.”

  A gaggle of fans costumed as vampires and werewolves closed in on Simon outside our booth and pretended to attack him—to his obvious delight. Simon never missed a chance to ham up a death scene to entertain an audience.

  “Great timing,” I joked. “Full moon out?”

  “Didn’t quite mean that extent of transformation,” Spud held up a hand. “More in the line of what you call ‘bipolar disorder’. Untreated and severe.”

  Serious again. “Oh.”

  “In a state of mania that likely bordered on psychosis, he k-killed his wife and wounded her illicit lover.”

  Very serious. Was Spud talking about his father?

  “He was, of course, arrested.” Spud continued. “The gallows loomed.”

  I frowned. “But it sounds as if he was mentally ill.”

  “Judges and juries were not quite so forgiving in those days. Unless one was entirely non compos mentis, there was an assumption that one could perceive and act on the difference between right and wrong.”

  “Oh.”

  “He was sentenced to hang. I only saw him once before his execution.” Spud’s eyes glistened, and he paused to clear his throat.

  I gulped.

  “He seemed astonishingly at peace, convinced that the entire crime had been merely an evening of theatre, and that after the curtain would fall, it would rise again, bestowing him with applause, happiness, and joy. His wife would be in the clapping audience, waiting to welcome him with open arms—she had, he was convinced, told him so, and implored him to hurry and finish Act III so that they could reunite.”

  I reached out my hand and laid it over his. He waited a full minute before pulling his away.

  “I was told he’d had many conversations with the spirit world of his imagination, and that he continued to converse with these spirits even as the noose was tightened around his neck.”

  Spud sat up in his chair and clasped his hands in his lap. “I could not, I should not, corroborate his faith--or his delusions. In truth, I castigated that faith for what it provided him in his last hours: solace and reparation, a reprieve that his actions had caused no one pain or grief,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “or death.”

  I hid my face in my hands and turned away so no one could see me cry.

  * * *

  Spud retreated into his stoic armor for the rest of the morning shift. I’d dried my eyes and fanned my face, hoping to minimize my puffy lids and Rudolph-ian nose, and taken my place next to him at the front of the booth. By ten, the crowds had begun to build, and traffic at our table was growing, even without Simon’s overblown thespian antics to draw attention.

  Spud’s
stamina for, as he put it, “the adoring overtures of our obsessed muliebrous claque”, had faded by eleven, and, as lunchtime approached, he set off to “study the bacchanalian eruptions of the conference attendees.”

  I was ready for a break myself. It was almost noon, and we’d greeted and meeted hundreds of fans, vendors, PR shills, and Hollywood-wannabes. My smile was frozen in place like I’d OD’d on botox. I was hungry, and eager to put something in my mouth that didn’t give me a bad taste.

  Spud’s tale still weighed heavy on my conscience. He didn’t know that I knew that his father had killed his mother—so maybe he’d just been trying to explain why the spiritual and non-material were so disturbing for him. But, I couldn’t completely erase the worry that Spud’s story hid an accusation targeting both John’s behavior and mine. Had my dramatic rescue of John and its consequences brought pain and grief to an entire world?

  Most of the food stands near our booth already had long lines, so I skirted the edge of the exhibit areas and made my way to the other side of the convention hall where the latest speakers’ sessions wouldn’t let out for another ten minutes. Should be less of a crowd over here—nothing worse than being caught in a queue where you’re trapped making small talk with Bulwark admirers, especially when you’re struggling to process ethical dilemmas involving life and death.

  The Ike’s Deli station seemed to have the fewest customers. I grabbed a paper menu and got in line.

  “All’s well that ends well.” A familiar voice, not entirely unwelcome, behind me.

  “Half right, Les.” Stuffing the menu under my arm, I shot my hands out, palms up, as I turned. “But, I lost my brother.” A polite smile. “As I’m sure you know.”