Armageddon Blues

by Daniel Keys Moran

  "Wait—" The line went dead. Frank Danner dropped the phone in pieces to the floor.

  … and, in the opinion of this department, the project known as Sunflower represents a reasonable use of our resources and manpower. The figures are conclusive, as presented in briefs One through Six; the likelihood of finding an alternative source of environmentally clean energy within the foreseeable future is small to nonexistent. With the continuing Soviet penetration of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, it is vital that the United States secure a stable alternative to foreign energy sources. The ancillary benefits of the solar-power satellite system named Sunflower—in a permanent base for operations in geosynchronous orbit, the beginnings of a space-based manufacturing capability, and a proprietary energy delivery system which is not subject to the whims of nations whom we cannot control—are impressive in a way and to a degree that no other option approaches. We recommend Sunflower as that alternative. —Frank B. Danner, et al. Report to the President, Department of Defense, and Department of Energy, March 9, 1973.

  He met her down on the beach, in the dead of night. Frank Danner had been standing by the pier for nearly a half hour, clutching his jacket closed to protect himself from the cold wind off the ocean, when the woman appeared.

  That was the word for it; one moment she was not there. The was a brief flicker in his peripheral vision, and he whirled to face her. His voice was harsh with surprise. "Do you have the photographs?"

  The woman came forward, into the light from the pier floods. Frank Danner cut himself off as he was about to repeat his question. A cold tremor ran through him. He had never imagined anything like this woman; no, this girl. Her hair shone white, and she wore white from head to toe. Her eyebrows were brown. She was not as old as her poise in their conversations had led him to imagine; twenty, perhaps or younger.

  She moved closer to him, and the light caught her eyes. Stainless steel, thought Frank Danner in horrified fascination, eyes like stainless steel. The wind sent ripples through the cloth of her coat.

  She produced a packet of what Frank assumed were photographs, and held them out. She spoke with that same delicate accent he had observed over the phone. "Take them. It is all here. I have no further need of these."

  Danner opened the packet with hands that were not entirely steady. He held the negatives up to the lights, and nodded. Himself and Steve, all from the night in San Diego.

  The girl said clearly, "I am truly sorry that this was necessary."

  Frank Danner nodded. He put the photographs inside his jacket, for later disposal. He took two steps backward. "Not as sorry as you're going to be," he said distinctly. Without hurry, he reached into his jacket and pulled his revolver from its shoulder holster.

  With her right foot, Jalian d'Arsennette scooped sand up from the beach and kicked it into Frank Danner's eyes. She stepped to the left, pulling steel. Danner fired blindly into the night, in the direction of the sea. Jalian moved in, broke his right arm beneath the elbow, and took the revolver away from him.

  From the parking lot at the far end of the pier, she saw headlights come on. Backups, she thought in disgust. "Idiot, Indian," she hissed at Danner in silverspeech. With his good arm, he swung at her. She brushed the arm aside, pulled him close, and put the steel in just beneath his sternum. He sucked air in a gurgling, stifled scream.

  The cars were rolling forward, onto the sand. Jalian let go of Danner, pulled the knife from him, let his body fall. The cars were coming down the sand from both sides of the pier.

  She turned away from them, and ran. Directly into the cold, black sea.

  The cars came down to the edge of the water, and the agents within fired handguns and high-powered rifles into the dark ocean.

  After a while they stopped. The senior agent present turned Frank Danner's body over, and pulled the photographs from his coat.

  One of the younger agents knelt next to him. "What the hell was this all about, Chief?"

  The sensor agent grunted: "Favor to a friend. Anybody get a good look at her? Photographs?" He looked around. "No? I didn't think so." He flipped through the package of photos casually. He stopped, and peered at the face in the photo. He said slowly, "Well, I'll be damned."

  They packed up the body, and got out before the police arrived.

  It was 1973, and there were thirty-four years left until Armageddon.

  From the Pomona Progress Bulletin, July 14, 1973:

  … and, born to Marienne R. Hammel and Jonathan Hammel, at 6:30 in the morning of July 13; a girl, Margaret Beth, six pounds four ounces, in good health.

  "Jonathan Hammel is a partner in the Pasadena offices of the corporate and investor relations firm of Jones, Collins & Hammel."

  DATELINE 1976 GREGORIAN: JUNE.

  The child popped up out of nowhere, from a landscape strewn with boulders, wind-cut rock, and mesquite scrub, and onto the dusty path in front of Jalian; one moment he was simply there. Jalian was impressed despite herself. A Silver-Eyes girl, without training from an Elder Hunter, might have done no better. There was noise, and she had smelled him, but had not seen him at all until he chose to let her. Not that she'd been trying.

  He examined her gravely, under eyes half lidded. against the fierce noonday sun. He was, Jalian guessed, perhaps seven years old. Except for his long, uncombed hair, which was blond, he looked very much like the other Indian children Jalian had seen in the area—poorly dressed in dusty clothes, shoeless, with clear Indian features that were already stamped with a wariness that seemed an integral part of his person.

  "Are you lost?" His voice was pitched high; more the voice of a girl than a boy.

  Jalian had ceased walking at his appearance; she resumed, slowing slightly to accommodate his smaller legs. Her action seemed to startle him; the boy hurried after her. "I am not lost."

  "Usually white people are lost when they come on this road."

  Jalian glanced down at him; he was looking up at her, not watching where he placed his feet on the rock-strewn path. "I am not a white person," said Jalian carefully, "I do not think this is a road, and I am not lost."

  "Do you have enough water?"

  "Why do you ask?"

  "Because if you're thirsty the creek's only a half hour away, and it isn't dry yet. It will be before the end of summer." he added.

  Jalian nodded. "I have enough water, thank you."

  "What's your name?"

  Jalian drew a slow breath. She was not particularly in the mood for company. Still, he was only a child, even if male. She squatted until her eyes were level with his. "Jalian d'Arsennette y ken Selvren, or, in English, Jalian of the Fires of Clan Silver-Eyes. I am the daughter of Ralesh who was the daughter of Morine; Margra Hammel was our mother."

  "Oh." The answer seemed to put him off for a moment. "Mine's Michael. Michael Walks-Far."

  Jalian unslung her canteen and drank from it. Michael was sweating; she offered it to the boy. "Would you like a drink?"

  "How far are you going?"

  "To Needles," she said patiently, still holding out the canteen. "I will be there within a day, and the canteen is half full yet."

  Michael nodded in acceptance, and took a small drink from the canteen. He handed it back to her, and then saw her eyes for the first time. He stared openly. "Are you Huapatanetal?"

  Jalian reslung the canteen, and stood slowly. "I do not understand."

  The child shook his head slowly. "Never mind. Mama tells me of them, the demons with silver eyes, but I think it's a story. They are called Huapatanetal."

  "Walk with me," said Jalian abruptly. The child followed her as she resumed her westward journey. Deep within her memory, the boy had stirred something which she had not thought of in many years, but she could not place it instantly. "How old are you, child?"

  Michael answered with reluctance. "Five. But everybody says I look older," he added instantly. Already, he was sweating again from the effort to keep up with her. Jalian did not slow her pace. />
  Jalian nodded. "You do. I would have thought seven."

  "Really?" He looked up at her, and smiled suddenly, and for the first time Jalian realized that he was beautiful.

  "Yes," she said firmly, "I would have said seven." They walked in silence after that for nearly ten minutes, until Michael stopped and told her that he couldn't go any further because he had promised his mother.

  "Then you must not break your promise," said Jalian.

  With obvious resentment in his voice, Michael said, "I won't. Mama spanks me when I do."

  At that, Jalian laughed; she could not help herself. "When I was a child, and my mother punished me, it left scars." She knelt next to him and touched his cheek. "Your mother does not sound so bad."

  He nodded, unconvinced. His long white hair, so like her own, fell across his eyes, and he pushed it back. "Are you going to come back this way?"

  Jalian started to shake her head no, and then stopped. "I do not know," she said honestly. "I am going to see a mathematician who lives in Needles, and after that I cannot say."

  "Oh." He paused in thought. "If you come back, my Mama and me live on this side of the creek, but on the other side of the hills. If you just walk down the creek you'll see our house. We have chickens and two cows," he said proudly—he was old enough to have seen others who did not have that much. "It's just us there. Mama had a boyfriend once who was a singer for the Sorry Blues, and they had me, but he went away and didn't come back." The boy paused, looking at Jalian, obviously expecting an answer.

  "Perhaps I will come back," said Jalian simply.

  All cheerfulness left his expression "Do you have a boyfriend?"

  The question surprised Jalian. Without conscious intent she ran her hands over her knives; one knife was missing, a gift to Georges Mordreaux. She was not at all certain that he understood the meaning of that knife; and even if he had, things were so very different now.

  "I don't know," she told Michael Walks-Far. "Probably not."

  He nodded and hugged her around the legs, suddenly and with surprising strength, and then turned and ran back the way they had come, ran until he was out of sight without ever once looking back.

  That night, as she was making her fire before going to sleep, with the city lights of Needles visible in the distance, words that she had not thought of in almost a decade and a half came back to her with a force that brought her springing to her feet, as if to face an enemy.

  Corvichi words; the 'salch khri, ghess'Rith had called them, the warlike humans from across the Great Wheel of Existence, with technology equal to or surpassing that of the Corvichi themselves.

  The words 'salch khri translated, very nearly, to Walks Far.

  Her fire had nearly died before Jalian managed to make herself sleep, and she did not sleep well at all.

  The United States of America was nearly two hundred years old, and Jalian d'Arsennette had no idea at all whether she had a "boyfriend" or not…

  … and there were just thirty-one years left until Armageddon.

  The Armageddon Blues

  … we have begun. Neither wind nor tide is always with us. Our course on a dark and stormy sea cannot always be clear. But we have set sail—and the horizon, however cloudy, is also full of hope.

  —John F. Kennedy

  Introduction, To Turn The Tide November 8, 1961.

  The bombs fell.

  In a nuclear rain that lasted for days, through a perfect first strike and a retaliatory second strike, through retaliatory second and third strikes, until only a few lonely submarines cruised through the ocean to fire their weapons upon an enemy who no longer existed, through all of this the bombs fell, and fell. Billions died, of the planet's seven and a half billion persons, in fire and blasting shock waves and radiation. Billions more died in famine, and in the firestorms caused when the bombs went down. But that was not the worst.

  Vast clouds of dust and earth were blasted into the sky. Whole continents disappeared beneath them; and temperature began to drop. As the glaciers traveled south, the last crumbling pockets of civilization vanished.

  It did not return for over five hundred years.

  DATELINE 2007 GREGORIAN: JANUARY.

  (This conversation takes place between Nigao Loos and PRAXCELIS, the Prototype Reduction X-laser Computer, EIIntegrated System, in geosynchronous orbit, at Midway, the Sunflower Orbital Command.)

  "PRAXCELIS, I don't understand this readout."

  "This unit has endeavored to be clear. Where is the area of nonalignment?"

  "PRAXCELIS, I requested a readout on the possibility that the tracking lasers were diverging from their assigned grids."

  "Sen Loos, your input, as orally recorded, reads: '… and, PRAXCELIS, while you're at it, take a look to make sure that the lines aren't diverging with the passage of time.' Unit ENCELIS informs this unit that the lines are diverging."

  (A long stretch of silence.) "You're not supposed to have any contact with SORCELIS and ENCELIS… What lines are you talking about?"

  "The timelines, Sen Loos. The timelines are diverging. There have been an estimated nine hundred million events of significant divergence since base divergence 1962."

  "Events of significant divergence…"

  "Whether this will be sufficient to prevent Armageddon is unknown."

  Of those to whom much is given, much is required.

  —John F. Kennedy,

  Speech to the Massachusetts State Legislature

  January 9, 1961.

  DATELINE 1981 GREGORIAN; MAY.

  The laboratory lay secluded in the low hills overlooking the Irwindale gravel pits. It was a complex of eight interconnected buildings, with a small cafeteria, and a parking lot that accommodated sixty-one cars. The 210 freeway ran less than four hundred meters away from the laboratory's south entrance. Earlier that year they'd had private on- and off-ramps installed to service the lab.

  It was quiet, and as secluded as you could reasonably get while remaining within working distance of UCLA. (There were major cities within a half-hour's drive on the 210 east or west. But they could not be seen.)

  As far as Henry EIlis was concerned, it was ideal. He liked the location, liked the early morning drive in the near desert. He even liked the buildings, the plain unadorned brick and cement, the clean brass lettering that proclaimed: TRANS-TEMPORAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION.

  (Underneath the sign, somebody had taped a handwritten placard: Home of the UCLA-famous Experimental Number Cruncher, Ellis-Loos Integrated System.)

  Henry Ellis came in early that Monday morning. The grounds were shrouded in fog, and it was cool enough that he wore a tan poncho over his work clothes for warmth.

  He was of just-less-than-average height, with a calm, easy manner, and graceful, contained movements.

  Unlocking the main doors, he paused only long enough to pull the sheet of paper from the wall. He wadded it into a ball and tossed it toward the outer office's wastebasket, left-handed over his right shoulder, without looking. He continued on to his office, not glancing back.

  It was just after seven, only a short while since sunrise. As far as Henry knew, the only other person on the premises was the janitor. In his office, he flipped on the lights, and turned on his coffee maker. There was a brief hum from the machine, which ceased with a sharp click, and was replaced by a trickling sound from the machine's innards. Henry put his coffee cup under the spigot, shed his poncho and hat and hung them by the door, and seated himself behind his desk to wait for the water to boil. From his shirt pocket he took a dozen toothpicks, individually wrapped in cellophane, and placed them in are even row next to the desktop intercom.

  He flipped on the intercom.

  The voice that addressed him was smooth, without inflection. "Good morning, Mr. Ellis."

  Henry was unlocking drawers. "Good morning, ENCELIS. How far are you on the processing I left you last night?" He unlocked the final drawer and hung the keys on a hook protruding from the side of the desk.

/>   "This unit has processed eighty-three point eight percent of the data input to it."

  Henry nodded out of habit. "Excellent. With what primary results?"

  "There is a tentatively assigned probability of six nines, based on an eight-three-point-eight complete run, that the chronon event threshold is secure within the range of energy usage that this facility is capable of applying."

  Henry spread hardcopy over the desktop without paying conscious attention to it. His mind was elsewhere. "If we assume a straight line proportional to energy input, then a steady event threshold implies discrete timelines…"

  Behind him, the intercom said, "Mr. Ellis, you asked this unit to remind you that you have an appointment this morning, at ten o'clock, with one Jalian d'Arsennette. Have you been reminded?"

  Henry scowled. "Yes, ENCELIS. Thank you." He leaned over his desk and turned his memo pad to the date, a week and a half ago, that the appointment had been made.

  In his characteristically neat handwriting, the memo said, Monday next, woman from DoD: Jeremy Carson recommends handle lightly.

  Below that, in block letters, underlined twice, was a single word.

  WHY?

  Jalian d'Arsennette y ken Selvren pulled into the parking lot at 9:56. She was driving a cherry-red Porsche with a long scratch down the left fender. The clouds were burning away as she arrived, and the day was growing warm. There were two other people in the parking lot when she arrived: the janitor, who was going home, and a short dark-skinned man whom her briefing identified as Nigao Loos, the theoretical physicist on whose work and reputation the TransResearch Foundation was built.

  The janitor simply stared at her openly; the world's foremost research physicist scowled in the general direction of the sun, and hurried indoors.