The Border

by Robert McCammon

  A stream of acid spittle came at one of the First Born, who vibrated out and left the viscous slime burning into the concrete wall. The four reptilians streaked forward with incredible speed upon the other three First Born. The energy blasters fired, missed, and blew the far wall to pieces as their targets went into slither mode across the floor. An elongated arm with a barb-covered mallet at the end of it swung within inches of Deathbringer’s faceplate. Deathbringer’s weapon destroyed the offending enemy. The fourth First Born ghosted back in a few feet away and blasted a second enemy into burning pieces. The reptilian commander sent a spear of acid flying at Deathbringer, who went to one knee the liquid passed over its left shoulder. Deathbringer fired but missed as the commander snaked aside. Then, as another First Born’s energy bolts blew the third reptilian apart, the commander camouflaged itself amid the rubble and vanished, leaving not a blip on the faceplate search grids.

  The orders must be obeyed. Capture this specimen. High altitude tracker on station. Begin immediate deployment.

  A shift of Deathbringer’s search grid showed their destination. It was a distance from where the four First Born of the Blessed Machine stood, but what was such a distance to an interstellar traveler who could enter and leave the fourth dimension at will? A mathematical picture of the specimen could be brought up, but that information was already burned into Deathbringer’s numeric code and the codes of the other soldiers. If the specimen moved during the time it would take to reach this destination, the tracker would maintain contact if it was not destroyed by enemy action, for the skycraft battleships fought even at the edge of this world’s atmosphere.

  Deathbringer transmitted the coordinates and the path to the other soldiers. They took no notice of the headless body lying nearby, for that one had become a negative. They began to ghost out, one after the other. As Deathbringer began to vibrate into distortion a claw attached to a scaly and sinewy arm with a shoulder adorned by three spikes reached from the gray stones on the floor. It seized the ankle of Deathbringer’s left boot. Then the rest of the reptilian commander began to restore itself from the state of camouflage and rise up from the rubble, its facial hood flaring wide to show the same violent scarlet as the slitted pupils, its mouth opening to spew acid into the black faceplate.

  Deathbringer knew two things that might be termed emotions: loyalty to the Blessed Machine and hatred of the enemy. In its complex mathematics, there was no room for anything else. Except, perhaps, an integer’s sliver of cruelty. Deathbringer fired its weapon at point-blank range, a single energy orb, and severed the left arm at the shoulder, thrusting the commander backward to the floor as a spool of acid flew into the air. The right arm was burned away by the next single burst. The legs were burned off one after the other, and the flesh of the reptilian commander’s scorched and squirming torso changed back and forth from the gray of the rubble stones to its yellow-and-black banding, the camouflage organ overcome with the chemicals of agony.

  The black faceplate with its small red glyph of glory angled down at the tortured commander and drew in a numerical picture of the scene. Then, satisfied with its work, Deathbringer did not bring death but instead ghosted out.

  A specimen had to be captured for the honor of the First Born, and for the triumph of the Blessed Machine.

  TWENTY-ONE.

  “LET’S HEAR IT,” SAID MAJOR FLEMING, HIS JAW SET LIKE A CHUNK of granite. “The truth.”

  The mall’s maintenance room bristled with guns: automatic rifles, machine guns and pistols. The ashen-faced soldiers who held these weapons aimed them at two figures seated on metal folding chairs: Jefferson Jericho and Jack Vope. Ropes had been lashed around the prisoners, tying them together back-to-back under a harsh incandescent light. Standing out of the line of fire were Dave, Olivia, and Ethan, who had one blue eye and one silver with no discernible pupil. JayDee had come down on the elevator and stood leaning on his cane behind Olivia.

  After the chaos was over, Ethan had gone into the bathroom to check out his silver eye in the mirror. He’d thought he would’ve been afraid to see it, but he was no longer afraid. Instead, he was simply fascinated. The feeling of power that had flowed through him during that encounter had been incredible…impossible for the part of him that was still a human boy to understand, but for the other part of him…whatever that was, and was going to be…an immense satisfaction at having been able to save human lives. There in the bathroom, with an armed guard still at his back, he had lifted up his t-shirt and seen that a new figure had appeared in the silver tattoo just above his heart. Now it read , with another symbol just beginning to come up from the dark slate.

  He’d had no choice but to go to the major and tell him.

  The Cyphers sent a recon probe and those weapons, because there’s a Gorgon here disguised as a man. I haven’t said anything because I can handle him. Do you believe that?

  And the hard-assed major who thought he’d seen everything in this nightmarish war had said, Yes I do.

  I’m sorry for not telling you, but I wanted to watch him. The man with him…Kushman…is a human, but he’s being protected by the Gorgons. I don’t know why, but I need to know. When you take these two men, I’ll need to be with you. The Gorgon is afraid of me, and so is the man.

  Hell, the major had said, I’m afraid of you too.

  You don’t have to be. My task is somewhere else, but as long as that Gorgon is here this place is in danger from the Cyphers. I should’ve expected that, but I’m thankful no one was hurt.

  Except that…man who got burned up, said the major. What was that?

  A Gorgon-engineered weapon. We should be glad for that, because those spiders were nearly too much for me.

  Okay. Right. Well…how old did you say you were?

  And here was the question, because Ethan knew whatever was in him was old. Whatever was in him, growing stronger and taking control of everything, was so ancient these runes on his chest might have been its most recent communication with the inhabitants of this world. Whatever it was, it knew the cosmic dust and dark matter that blew between the stars to seed the lifeless spheres of raw planets into new life; it knew how cold and remote could be the outer reaches of space whose distances and dimensions defied the minds of men to imagine, and it knew how ruthless these two enemies were, and how military men and women of Earth might wish to stop this war but it was the only entity who could, and it was not from around here.

  I’m fifteen, going on way more than you can count, Ethan said, and the major asked no more questions.

  “Waiting to hear something that makes sense,” Fleming said to the two figures tied together on chairs in the maintenance room. “Kushman? You want to say anything?”

  “Sir?” said one of the soldiers. He was young and lean and had a Southern accent. “Pardon, sir…but I think I’ve seen this man before. I mean…not here, but somewhere else.”

  “How would that be, Private?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He just looks real familiar. Like…somebody I remember from television. My mom used to watch him, back in Birmingham…or who he looks like.”

  “I doubt this bastard was ever a television star,” Fleming answered, and then he returned to his business by pulling back the bolt of his .45 automatic and levelling the barrel at the man’s head. “I’ll kill you, friend. And if your Gorgon buddy moves, I’m leaving that up to Ethan. So let’s hear it.”

  “Major,” said Jefferson Jericho, his eyes wide and set with an expression of puzzlement and pleading, “this is a big mistake. I hardly knew either of these men. I just met them on the road. Hey, I’m from the South too,” he told the young Southern soldier. “I used to live in—”

  “Shut it,” Fleming interrupted. “Ethan knows the Gorgons are protecting you. Why do you need protection?”

  “Protecting me?” Jefferson brought up a crooked smile. “If that’s so, they haven’t done a very good job, have they?”

  Dave was watching Vope, who blinked…blinked…blin
ked.

  “Major,” Dave said, “I think you ought to go ahead and put that sonofabitch there out of our misery. I’ll do it, if you like. Glad to.”

  “No,” Ethan said. “Besides, you wouldn’t know how.”

  “Would you?”

  “Yes,” Ethan answered, sure in that knowledge, and looking into the silver eye made Dave go silent.

  “I have let you restrain me,” Jack the Gorgon suddenly said. “I have allowed this indignity, but I could easily break loose from these bonds. The boy could destroy me, but not before you, called Major, are dead.”

  “This guy’s crazy,” Jefferson spoke up. “Mental. But how does that mean he’s a Gorgon?”

  “You want to tell him what you’ve told me?” Fleming asked the boy with the silver eye.

  Ethan stared for a moment at Jeff Kushman. Looking into the man’s face, at the softness that seemed only lately to have been touched by this brutal war, he had the feeling that there was something wrong with the name…that it was an alias to an alias, that this man was a walking lie but he was good at lying, he was very skilled at it, and he may have been able to convince and persuade someone who could not see the hard blue sphere that shielded the images in his mind. Ethan said, “I can read the Gorgon’s mind. I can see things in there.” He decided to try his luck at persuasion. “I can read yours too, Mr. Kushman…but that’s not the name you really use, is it?”

  Jefferson’s face flushed; he looked around for help and found only hard faces and accusing eyes. “Listen to me,” he said, speaking to everyone, “I’m human! I’m one of you! Look at this boy and tell me what he is! You’re not going to trust a…an alien over a human, are you?”

  “I know who and what you are,” Ethan said. “Denying it just makes you smaller.”

  “This isn’t a boy!” Jefferson had almost shouted it. His eyes were shiny with fear. “I don’t know what he is, but he’s not one of us! Listen, listen…okay?” He directed this to Major Fleming, and specifically to the hand that held the pistol. “I didn’t want to get involved in this, I was somewhere else! It’s not me that wants him!” He felt the ropes tighten as the Gorgon shifted in his chair. He looked to Dave and Olivia. “I swear to God, I don’t want to hurt him! I don’t care, I just want to get back to where I was! Back to my people! You know?” It was all pouring out of him, he felt that his dam had broken and he couldn’t hold back the floodwaters but he thought that he could be killed three ways now: by this weird boy, by the Gorgon he was roped to, or by the major’s pistol. “I was pushed into this!” he said. “I was forced to do it, I didn’t want to be here!”

  “Forced to do what?” the major asked, and he looked as if he were so ready to use that gun.

  “I was forced to—”

  “I will speak,” said the Gorgon.

  Everyone was silent. Jefferson Jericho looked at the floor, his heart pounding and his mind racing.

  Vope couldn’t turn his head enough to look at anyone directly, so he stared impassively at the far wall. “The boy is a curiosity to us. How he kills without weapons. He is something that should not be, yet he is. We wish to know his internals and systems. You would do the same, Major, if you were fighting an enemy such as we are.”

  “We are fighting your enemy,” Fleming answered. “And we’re fighting you, too.”

  “You have lost both those wars long ago. The only chance your kind has for survival is to nest with us. Release us from these bonds, Major. We will take the boy and consider him an offering.”

  “Like hell!” Dave growled. “Nobody’s taking Ethan!”

  Vope was silent. Then his head cocked slightly to one side and he said, “Your refusal has been noted. You ask for an attack that will burn you all to the ground. In the end, we shall have what we want.”

  “Then maybe I should blow your damn head off right now,” said Fleming, who stepped closer to press the pistol’s barrel against Vope’s temple.

  “Good luck with that,” Jefferson said bitterly. He tensed himself for what he feared was to come, the sweat running down his sides under his shirt.

  “Yes,” said the Gorgon, as if in agreement with that last statement. Jefferson Jericho couldn’t see what happened next, but the others could. The Gorgon’s body shimmered and began to lose its substance. There was a sound like a soft whistling, as if air was being displaced. Maybe it was a whirring sound, like a little machine in motion. As Vope faded out and the ropes that had bound him fell slack, the black-bearded and dark-eyed face angled to look up at Major Fleming, and it seemed to the major that something behind that face was struggling to get out, to cast off its disguise, because the face was as distorted as if made of melting wax, or like an empty rubber mask seen in a funhouse mirror. There came the harsh, otherworldly echo of the Gorgon’s final word to him: “Idiot.”

  Then the body was gone, but perhaps there remained for a second or two the faintest impression of a dark aura where the body had been…and that too passed away, and the barrel of Fleming’s automatic was aimed at empty air.

  “Jesus!” Jefferson Jericho shouted, as he realized the ropes had fallen from him and Vope had been teleported from the room. “Don’t leave me here!” Jefferson stood up from his chair, causing all the guns in the room to train on him. “Don’t leave me!” he called into the air, with a voice like that of a broken child. There was no reply to his plea, not even the merest pinch of pain from the device buried in the back of his neck.

  “I can’t live out here! I can’t survive it!” he babbled to the major, as tears of terror burned his eyes. “This is all wrong! I’ve got to get back to where I was!” He turned his agonized appeal upon Ethan, Dave, Olivia and JayDee. “Please…you’ve got to help me get back!”

  “I’ll help you into a fucking grave, if that suits you,” Dave said.

  Ethan sent out the silver hand again—it was easy now, so easy, as if he’d been doing it all his life—to probe into the head of the man who called himself Jeff Kushman, but the incandescent blue sphere still protected the man’s memories. Whatever the Gorgons had done to him, they were still shielding him. It was a strong force. Ethan’s force couldn’t remain in there very long without feeling that it was sapping his strength; he had to pull out, and he brought the silver hand back to rest within himself. From beginning to end it had taken less than three seconds.

  “What are you talking about?” Olivia asked the frantic Kushman. “Help you get back to where?”

  Jefferson Jericho decided the time had come. Even with all these guns trained on him, even if it meant his death in the next thirty seconds. He had to get back to Her protection, back to the Ant Farm, and there was only one way to do that…broken fingers or not.

  Flesh to flesh, She had said. He figured that must trigger the process of transportation or whatever the hell it was that would get him out of here.

  He stepped out of the ropes and with the courage of desperation lunged past Major Fleming before the man could stop him.

  He grabbed hold of Ethan’s forearms, flesh to flesh except for the splints around his broken fingers. Now! he thought as he peered into the depths of the boy’s silver eye, though he was calling mentally to Her, Queen of the Gorgons. Get me out of here NOW!

  Ethan clearly heard that call, as if the man was speaking it to him. The room began to fade. He was aware of Dave reaching for him, but it was too late. It was as if the light was simply going out, the walls dissolving, and Ethan knew it was his own body—and Kushman’s too—that was leaving the room, bound for an unknown destination.

  Ethan had the impression of a figure standing behind Jeff Kushman—a large, leathery shape with a dark and dimly seen face, and set there were the fearsome, hypnotic eyes of the Gorgon, commanding him to obey but that was the last thing he wanted to do, and as he felt the Other Realm beginning to close in upon him he thought no, I will not be taken…I will not be taken, I’m going back to where I was. He didn’t know how he did it. He just knew he needed to fight, and he was not
going to be removed from his friends and the task he had to do. He felt a tremendous pressure, pulling at him as if drawing him into a whirlpool, or over a waterfall to dash him to pieces on the rocks below. But he thought no, no…you’re not taking me…and his strength of will—the strength of will worlds beyond that of the human boy he used to be—was enough to break the power of what was transporting them; it was enough to scramble the signal or block the portal or do whatever was needed to be done, for the figure of the Gorgon behind Jeff Kushman faded away and the presence of the Other Realm was gone, and quite suddenly they were standing in the maintenance room of the mall again, with the light shining down upon all those guns in the hands of the soldiers.

  It had happened so quickly that Dave was still moving. It had appeared to Dave and everyone else in the room that the bodies of Ethan and Jeff Kushman had faded almost to shadows and then had come back into focus in the space of time it took for two anxious heartbeats. Dave wrenched Ethan out of the man’s grip, and pushing Ethan aside he laid a right hook into Jefferson Jericho’s jaw with every bit of wiry muscle a tough-assed ex-bouncer, brickmason, and general owner of a bad attitude could throw.

  The Tennessee stallion went down so hard most of the people in the room, including John Douglas, thought he was dead.