Armageddon Blues

by Daniel Keys Moran

  Georges nodded, combing his hair by touch. "That sounds reasonable. The second thing you wanted to tell me; Jalian is coming?"

  There was a distinct pause. "This unit is ... curious… as to how you acquire such information, Sen Mordreaux."

  Georges smiled. "Jalian is coming?"

  "That is correct, Sen Mordreaux. This unit was notified by a phone call thirty-seven minutes ago that Senra d'Arsennette intended to visit you. Due to the necessity for securing an untraceable satellite link to your microwave antenna, this unit was unable to inform you of this fact for thirty-three minutes after the phone call's reception. This unit has also identified a fluorescent-green automobile, approaching on Provincial Highway 102, whose driver, from satellite observation of driving style, is identified with a high probability as being one Jalian d'Arsennette."

  Georges pulled on his gloves. "Driving like a maniac, eh?"

  "That is what this unit said, Sen Mordreaux."

  Jalian stood uncertainly in his doorway. "Georges?" She was carrying a large box; she set it down next to the door. "I brought you some insects for your garden." She moved into the room slowly. Georges was sitting at the table, with the chess platform set up, not moving. He had not looked up when she entered the door. "Georges?"

  "Oh." Georges stood abruptly, "Jalian. I was expecting you."

  "Well, I hope so," she said. "I spent almost a twentieth day trying to trance myself so I could reach you yesterday. It was hard. There were dozens of untrained telepaths in the way." She looked at him crossly. "You were dreaming?" Georges nodded. "Yes." He walked around the table, stood before her.

  "I brought you insects," she said, gesturing vaguely behind her.

  He smiled. "Did you bring the same kinds of insects this time?"

  Jalian forced herself to glare at him. "No."

  Georges said, "I just thought you might have forgotten. Jalian's lips twitched. "I mean, you're not a farmer, you keep saying that."

  "It was not my fault that all the insects ate each other last time," she said bluntly, daring him to contradict her.

  "I didn't say that it was," said Georges with a perfectly straight face. "I was just thinking that it wasn't your fault that when I opened the box and looked inside, all that was left were some really fat flying beetles." Jalian was struggling to keep a straight face. "I was going to use the beetles as sentries," he continued, "to keep Russians and hunters out of the area, but they were just so fat that they couldn't even keep in the air." He took a step closer. Black glass met glittering silver eyes. "I ended up putting them on a leash. It was terrible, Jalian." She forced back a giggle. "No, I mean that. One by one, they got skinny enough to try to fly. Morning after morning I came out and found beetles with broken necks." He paused, shook his head. "Can you picture it? 'At last,' thinks the beetle, 'away from this awful slavery.' Buzzing wings, the sound of the beetle preparing to wing its way to freedom… snap. Bzzz, snap. Bzzz, snap…

  Jalian broke. She fell against him, laughing. Georges held her, without smiling. When the laughter subsided, he said silently, /i am glad you are here./

  Jalian hugged him strongly. "Georges," she whispered. "I miss you." She sniffed, chuckling. "I miss you all the time."

  "And I thee, Jalian of the Fires." Georges ran gloved hands through the white silk hair. His voice broke. "And I thee."

  She spent the morning with him, sitting on his front porch, discussing world events. There was a young African named Rhodai Kerreka whom she kept hearing about. His publicity portrayed him as a sort of black Kennedy the First, with a bit of Gandhi thrown in. "My protégé, Michael, says that he is a very compelling speaker." She shrugged. "They are all too impressed with words, Georges. Even Michael, who was raised by a half-breed Indian mother who kept in some measure to their old ways; even he does not always understand that words are only sounds." She added, "I studied the Indians. I was surprised. Real Indians"—she used the Silverspeech words—"have a name that sounds much like 'Indian,' but they are not the same peoples. Real Indians are more like pale Mexicans."

  She had found a restaurant in Italy that she liked; after some discussion, she told Georges, the maitre d' had agreed to serve peanut butter cookies, freshly baked. Georges did not inquire about the discussion.

  The Russians had orbited their twentieth ABM satellite a few weeks ago, and Sunflower had just orbited its twelfth. So far, both were insignificant numbers; all reasonable projections put the number of ABMs necessary to blanket either American or Russian missile launches at between 85 and 130.

  There was an ancillary space-based weapons system on the boards, called THOR; Jalian explained to Georges with complete unselfconsciousness that the name came from the hammer of one of his culture's barbarian gods. Georges nodded. "I see," he said gravely.

  The tone went by her completely. "The basic idea is very interesting. They plan to orbit scores of thousands of impact missiles. Chunks of metal with guidance systems attached. They fall from orbit and run into missiles, or ships, or tanks. They will be remarkably destructive weapons, if Sunflower can convince the Department of Defense to recommend them."

  Georges said politely, "Oh?"

  Jalian said softly, "Don't worry, Georges. I'm not going to have another Frank Danner. There is subtler blackmail, if blackmail is necessary. But it should not be." She was silent for a long while. "I wake up in the morning, Georges, and I wonder if something I am going to do will be responsible for the time change that will destroy ken Selvren. I go to sleep at night wondering whether what I have done has destroyed ken Selvren already." She looked at him, at his profile, and said, "And then there are times when I cannot lie to myself, and I know in my heart that I have destroyed ken Selvren as surely as though the Real Indians had won the Battle of the Meadow."

  One gloved hand moved into hers. Jalian looked away from him, and turned unseeing eyes out to the wild rows of the garden. "I look at the moon," she said quietly, "at night. It is not the moon of my childhood. There is a scar, three hundred kilometers long, that I can see with my naked eyes."

  Georges squeezed her hand.

  "And every day," she said, "every day, I work to prevent Armageddon.

  "And every day more of Silver-Eyes dies in my mind." They sat together, listening to the wind in the leaves of the orange and apple trees. "You know," said Georges, many minutes later, "sometimes I feel very old."

  Jalian bowed her head slightly.

  "But I cannot die." Georges held her hand without speaking; there was nothing left for either of them to say.

  She left just before noon. Georges walked her to the edge of the trees. They parted company in silence, without good-byes. In his mind he followed her back to the campground, watched her getting into the car.

  She drove away; he pulled his awareness back into himself as the car receded. He turned and walked back to the cabin.

  He picked up the box by the cabin door with some curiosity; he'd forgotten to ask Jalian what sort of insects they were. He'd asked her to get bees of some sort, but he would be satisfied if she'd gotten any sort of pollinating insect. There were some things that, with all the best intentions, Jalian had never fully grasped the importance of. Georges thought she still did not know that honey came from bees. Honey making had been a lost art in her culture. The box was strangely warm; Georges put an ear to it and listened. No buzzing; there certainly were no bees within. There was a vague crackling sound. Intrigued, he took the box out to the porch, and tore off the brown paper that it was wrapped in. Heat flashed against his face. The box was getting genuinely hot.

  Georges lifted the lid off the box.

  The explosion blasted him back off the porch. He stood, dazed. The insects were swarming up out of the box, into the air. Flashes of vague warmth lit against his cheeks. Understanding broke in on him.

  Georges ran up the steps, charged through the door of the cabin, and slammed it shut. Another explosion rattled the door.

  He stood there, his mind completely blank, for
several seconds.

  There was another booming explosion outside the door. Georges Mordreaux chuckled slowly. He sank down and sat on the rug before the doorway, and the chuckles became laughter. He sat with his back to the door, laughing so hard that his whole body shook, laughing as he had not laughed in more years than he could remember.

  Outside, the fireflies continued to blow themselves to bits.

  Where nature makes natural allies of us all, we can demonstrate that beneficial relationships are possible even with those with whom we must deeply disagree, and this must someday be the basis of world peace and world law.

  —John F. Kennedy, State of the Union Address January 29, 1961.

  DATELINE 1993 GREGORIAN: APRIL.

  Rome, Italy.

  Ilya Navikara paused just inside the entrance to the small bistro on the outskirts of Rome. The entrance led directly into the dining room, a small cozy area with about twenty tables. It was dimly lit by red hanging lamps. The tablecloths were white and orange, the chairs made of real wood. It was not crowded, even at lunchtime on a Friday.

  His target was seated, alone, at a table at the far wall. Her back was to the wall. Warning flags went up in the back of Ilya's mind; the lamp over her table was dead. Still, she seemed so—delicate.

  His thoughts turned grim. This woman trained Michael Walks-Far, who came closer to killing you than anyone, ever. Closer even than the One in the forest.

  This woman killed Karien.

  Ilya brushed off the maitre d', and approached the table, smiling. "Miss d'Arsennette?" His English was without trace of an accent. "May I join you?"

  Jalian looked him over for a moment. If she recognized him, it did not show. She nodded. To the maitre d', hovering in the background, she said, "I would like some more peanut butter cookies. And more chocolate milk." The man nodded quickly and vanished back into the kitchen. Ilya seated himself. He could not see either of the room's entrances.

  Jalian ate a cookie, looking at Ilya appreciatively. He was rather pretty. Not as good-looking as Michael, but more handsome than, say, Georges, even when he'd had his eyes. He was dressed in a conservative business suit. "Would you like a peanut butter cookie?" she asked. "They're out of chocolate chip."

  Ilya accepted. "Thank you. May I speak freely?"

  "If you wish," Jalian said indifferently. She grinned with sudden fierceness. "There is nobody here to stop a person from speaking her thoughts freely."

  Bad sign. "I will put all of my cards on the table," said Ilya easily. "I am Ilya Navikara. You may have…"

  Jalian was nodding. She held a thumb and forefinger slightly apart. "One of my trainees came that close with you."

  Ilya forged ahead. "I know as much about you as anyone is capable of knowing, having never met you before. Your name is Jalian d'Arsennette. Since 1971 you have worked with various offices and installations in the American intelligence community. In early 1976 you blackmailed the then-head of the Central Intelligence Agency and the American secretary of defense into creating a small, well-funded intelligence operation called Sunflower." Ilya paused. "The solar-power satellite was a good touch. It fooled us for most of a year."

  "Closer to two," said Jalian quietly.

  Ilya licked his lips. For the first time he seemed unsure. "Despite your rather remarkable appearance of youth, you are at the least in your late thirties… I hesitate to place an upper age limit."

  Jalian considered. "I am… about fifty years old."

  Ilya exhaled slowly. "Then, it is true. The woman who walked the freeways in the 1960s, in California; that was you. And the woman reported in 1969, when you tested that energy weapon in central California; that too was you."

  The waiter arrived with a tray of peanut butter cookies, and another glass of chocolate milk. He put them down before Jalian. In English, he asked stiffly, "Will that be all?"

  Jalian waved him away. "Yes, yes." When he was gone, Jalian separated the cookies into two piles, and shoved a pile toward Ilya. "Actually," she said, "it was not a weapon. But you would not understand that."

  Ilya nodded thoughtfully. "It's an interesting possibility, that it was not a weapon." He moved his lips in a graceful smile. "But it does not bear examination. There is a mirror-reflective scar of partially melted ground on the moon that is one point three meters wide and over three hundred kilometers in length. There is nothing but an energy weapon that could have done that—and a vastly powerful one. Still, let us not raise old arguments. Whatever the weapon was, you cannot control it, or you would have employed it—as threat, as weapon—by now." He made a cutting gesture. "I am getting sidetracked. I wish to ask you a question."

  Jalian nodded approvingly. "I see. You wish to join us, to defect?"

  Ilya looked blank. "On the contrary. I wish for you to join us."

  Half the world away, Georges Mordreaux was getting dressed. He pulled on a pair of old jeans, and a long-sleeved lumberjack's shirt. He shrugged into an old overcoat, and stamped into his walking boots. He added a pair of gloves and smoked black sunglasses, and picked up the walking stick next to the door. He read the note pinned to the table one last time, nodded with a vague feeling of unease, and left. He closed the door to the cabin behind him.

  It was approaching summer, and not as cold as it might have been. Occasional brilliant flashes in the night sky produced perceptible heat radiation. Navigating with the bouncing sonar images, he moved swiftly out into the grove of fruit trees, away from the swarm of booming, exploding fireflies.

  There was no moon that night, but he walked surely. His grip on the walking stick was not very secure; it slipped from his hands twice in the ensuing kilometers. An old wolf was there, watching him, the second time he lost the walking stick, and it followed him for several kilometers after that, the fur thickening and growing out over a spot into which some hunter had, long years past, pumped a load of buckshot.

  When Georges reached the road, the wolf left him. There was no traffic, so he started walking.

  South.

  Jalian looked at Ilya in amazement. "Work for you? Why?"

  Ilya said earnestly, "You are a talented woman with a great deal of useful information. The Soviet Union rewards individuals who make contributions. You are not an American to begin with. In truth, we do not know what nationality you are. You have a number of valuable secrets that we are willing to pay most handsomely for." He leaned forward. "The nature of the weapon used in 1969. The details of the treatment that keeps you young. The truth behind the spiriting away of Nigao Loos to your Midway space construction factory, and why you and he are the only two known instances of your anti-aging treatment in use." Ilya's voice took on a harsh cast; he whispered. "The truth of who you are, and of who the One in the forest is."

  Jalian sat quietly, looking at Ilya. Her hair was a dull white beneath the dead overhead lamp. Highlights played in it from the functioning lamps over other tables. She looked no more than twenty years old; in a sudden, chill moment Ilya believed, truly, for the first time, that the woman facing him was indeed all of the things that legend said of her. For a full minute and more, Jalian sat and looked at him. Before thirty seconds were up he was beginning to fidget. She began to smile, slowly. She—

  /Michael./

  The mindtouch was faltering, unsure. /Jalian. one in a car parked down the street. he's sitting on the passenger's side./

  /take him./

  … agreement. /it's done./

  —reached for a peanut butter cookie. Ilya seemed nervous. He was fumbling with the napkin in front of him. He would not meet her eyes. Jalian was thinking to herself, All too easy, when a shock of adrenaline ran through her system like a knife.

  Naturally, not too casually or with too much show, Ilya took the napkin he was fiddling with, opened it and put it on his lap. Jalian knew instantly that she had underestimated him.

  His right hand came back up from under the table. His left hand did not.

  Foolish and fatal, Jalian thought with great cl
arity. Nothing showed on her face. She munched a peanut butter cookie in apparent reflection. "I suppose," she said, "there is no reason I cannot come to work for you." She held a beat, and his left hand moved slightly as though he were adjusting his napkin still. "I have terms, however. You must build some more freeways."

  Ilya had become very calm. He was going to kill her; he had made up his mind, when… "Freeways?"

  "And your food is terrible. I went to Russia back in '85…"

  "And killed Karien Karchovsky," said Ilya softly.

  "You can't buy decent cookies anywhere. You could open some cookie factories." Jalian held a thoughtful pose. Her silver eyes focused on the distance. "And you could stop trying to sabotage American antiballistic missile satellites—oh,” she said in tones of mild surprise, tipping over her chocolate milk. The liquid ran across the tabletop and dripped into Ilya's lap. His eyes moved downward for just a moment.

  With the fingertips of her right hand Jalian picked up the edge of the table and brought it smashing up against Ilya. The Russian kicked back and fell away from the table, rolling backward across the floor. A metallic something glinted in his hands, and Jalian moved a step to the left and filled the air with steel.

  The gun went off once. The bullet struck Jalian high up on the right shoulder. It spun her completely around; the bullet punched cleanly through. Without changing expression, she moved her fourth knife from her right hand to her left, and approached Ilya. He was lying flat on his back. Two of her thrown knives had found targets, in his chest and solar plexus. The third was hanging in the wall across the room, and Jalian found room to be glad that nobody important had seen her miss the throw.

  Ilya was still alive. Jalian nudged the gun out of his outstretched hand, and knelt next to him. "Too slow, Ilya." Blood was flowing dawn her shirt, front and back, a seeping scarlet stain that was very red against the white of the shirt. Ilya tried to say something, but his voice only rattled in his throat. He tried again, and made it. "Always wondered… if you were ... real…" He said something else, in Russian, and died.