Armageddon Blues

by Daniel Keys Moran

  Jalian stood slowly. There was a sudden rush of dizziness and her eyesight faded into a pattern of swirling red dots. She heard the kitchen doors swinging open, and the voice of the restaurant manager in loud, wild Italian.

  When her eyesight cleared, she made her way to the door. It was a long way to the door, longer than she remembered it. Vaguely, she heard someone asking her, in English, "Where are you going?"

  "I am going to save the world," she told them all. She realized, after a fuzzy moment, that she was speaking in silverspeech, and so she repeated it in English. It was important that they understand. "I am going to save the world." She succeeded in opening the door before her knees buckled. She found herself sitting in the open doorway, and she could hear the faint drip, drip, drip of her blood on the floor tiles. The warm Italian sun touched her cheek, and that was the last thing she remembered for a long time.

  In high summer, storm lightning crashed down into the tinder-dry moss and pine needles of the forests of Saskatchawan.

  Before the fire stopped, 1600 square kilometers of the forest had burned.

  Near the end of the year 1993, a man struggled along a narrow trail, high in the Himalayan mountains. Somewhere up here was a lamasery that Herman Hesse had spoken highly of. "Somewhere up here" was turning out to be a lot of territory.

  Night was drawing in about him, and gentle snows were failing, when he found the temple. The trail broadened out into a wide, snow-whitened courtyard. At one end of the courtyard rose the walls of the temple, and two massive iron gates.

  Raising his walking stick, the man rapped on the metal of the gate. There was no answer, and he rapped again, a dull clanging sound that seemed to echo away forever.

  With a deep, slow creaking, the gates began to swing aside. When the gap between them was grown to the point that it would let a man pass, he entered; and the gates swung shut behind him with ease, as though oiled.

  On December the twenty-fifth, 1993, Jalian d'Arsennette made her way through a grove of dead fruit trees. Their branches were burnt bare of leaves, and the garden in the clearing inside was blasted and burnt and frozen. The door to the cabin hung open, and snow had drifted in to cover the doorway and rug.

  On the table in the middle of the room, there was a knife, pinned to the charred table. A knife that Jalian had given Georges back in 1968, a knife that Ralesh had given to Jalian when she took the Woman's Brand.

  Just the knife, and the blackened wood; nothing else. It was Christmas Day, 1993, and there were less than fourteen years left until Armageddon.

  DATELINE 1994 GREGORIAN: MARCH.

  Laguna Beach, California. Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Jalian came awake all at once; up out of the nightmare. Beep. Beep. Bee—

  She sat up in bed, and ran a thumb over the pressure point marked callercheck on the video terminal by the bedside. The beeping stopped, and rainbows washed briefly across her nude form, highlighting the scarred burn tissue of her Woman's Brand. Michael Walks-Far appeared in the screen. She pushed the studs for time and callaccept with her thumb and forefinger in one motion.

  23:15 P.M. "Jalian?" Michael caught sight of the form in the bed next to her; she saw him struggling to keep the disapproval from his expression. "… I have good news."

  "Yes?" Without haste, she pulled on the silk robe by the bedside.

  "We have another sighting."

  The words brought her head up, staring into the screen. "Where?"

  "Calm down," he said too gently. "It's not fresh. From December of last year; an airport in Vietnam. He was disembarking from a flight from Japan. There is a tentative sighting following this one, at the Chinese border; we're not confirmed on it yet."

  Jalian nodded. "Very well. Call me again when you have more."

  "I will." He seemed on the verge of adding something else; instead the screen fuzzed into polychrome static. Jalian sat at the edge of the bed, slowing, regulating her breathing. Breathing deep, slow. She had been sweating in her sleep, although the night was cool, and the windows in her bedroom were open to the breeze off the sea.

  The nightmare was the one she had been having for over a month now, regularly. She was nineteen years old, and the Corvichi were leaving; ghess'Rith was leaving her. Somehow ghess'Rith became Georges, and he was saying in v'chak, "I am not Ralesh and I am not ghess'Rith. I am myself, and I will never hurt you." The words should have been in silverspeech, but they were not; for some reason he spoke them in v'chak.

  She clasped her hands together, formally, dug her nails into the flesh. She concentrated on the pain, made the pain burn away the subtler, deadlier anguish.

  The figure in the bed next to her stirred. She groped for Jalian, and her eyes opened when Jalian was not to be found. "Jalian?" she asked groggily. "What, did you get a phone call?"

  Jalian said simply, "Yes. Go back to sleep, child." She did not turn to look at her.

  The girl pulled Jalian's pillow close, and curled up around it. "What're you calling me child for…" She yawned hugely. " 'M as old as you are anyhow…" She snuggled into the pillow, and was asleep again instantly.

  Jalian smiled. She could not help it. "No, you are not." She got out of bed, and walked down the hallway of the rented house to the shower. She stood under the shower, first as hot as she could bear it, then as cold as the water would go.

  In the kitchen, hair still damp, she fried vegetables in a pan on the stove. There were doughnuts and chocolate milk in the refrigerator, but since Georges had disappeared her body would not allow her to eat foods with sugar. She still ate them sometimes by accident, and was astonished and angry when her body rejected them; she had not been ill in two and a half decades.

  ...closer be?…

  She ate the vegetables like a Corvichi, as a Corvichi lacking taste buds fueled its body: efficiently, without particular attention. Thoughts kept drumming through her mind, without her control, like attackers. I cannot even trust my own mind, she thought with a deep, cold ache that would not go away.

  On and on the thoughts ran, and no effort of will would still them.

  . . not Ralesh and I am not ghess'Rith… myself, and I will never hurt you…

  She pushed the bowl of vegetables away from her, only half-eaten. Wasting food now, she heard Ralesh's voice saying from a great distance.

  Jalian d'Arsennette sat very still. Georges left me.

  The thought cut across the insane babble in her head like a laser.

  Georges left me.

  A knife, pinned to the burnt wood of the table; to ken Selvren, giving back a knife meant only one thing. She had never known for sure how clearly Georges understood what taking a knife from her meant.

  Jalian felt her pulse go ragged; could not summon the discipline to steady it. Aloud, she said, "You kisirien brachtats, Georges Mordreaux, how can you do this to me?" The words were unreal. They vanished when spoken. The knife, pinned to the table. It was as though he had taken the knife and scraped it through rocks until it was dull enough and with the dulled knife had torn a path through the center of her soul. A way to say good-bye, perhaps; a way to leave a message that, being a man, he did not have the courage to give her to her face.

  Something echoed back at her; a way to leave a message…

  A message. Jalian sat in the dark, shaking silently, not moving through any volition of her own. People in this time left messages for each other, pinned to objects with needles, or, perhaps, knives. She had seen others do that.

  The knife in the blackened wood. Surely he would have left a message.

  Some sort of message.

  On paper, it would have burned in the fire. She closed her eyes, and envisioned the knife; perhaps there had been a message; perhaps he had not understood what leaving the knife must mean to her, and had used it to pin a note to the table.

  Perhaps he had simply never understood.

  "Ni," Georges Mordreaux had said in silverspeech. "I am not Ralesh, and I am not ghess'Rith. I am myself, and I will never hurt y
ou."

  Jalian stretched her hands out, and pressed them, palms dawn, on the table. Control, she whispered to herself, I will have control.

  She awoke the next morning, her upper body lying over the top of the table. She straightened slowly, and her muscles complained.

  She felt surprisingly at peace. Through the kitchen windows she could see the lawn outside, bright green in the morning sunlight. The ocean stretched beyond the edge of the cliff that the house was built upon, blue as the oceans of her childhood.

  Some time during the night, she had decided to trust Georges Mordreaux.

  She was not sure why… Perhaps it is not trust, the voice whispered in the back of her head; perhaps it is only belief.

  Some time during the night, she had decided to believe Georges Mordreaux.

  I will never hurt you.

  It was 1994, and there were thirteen years left until Armageddon.

  DATELINE 1996 GREGORIAN: AUGUST.

  "Try again," said Po. "Your breathing was irregular." Georges did not reply. His respiration was very slow. Even in the cold stone cell, a thin sheen of sweat covered him. He was wearing a simple brown robe that stuck to him in places. Po, seated opposite him on a woven mat, wore a rich white-and-orange robe.

  "Now," said Po sharply. He withdrew an egg from one sleeve, and tossed it a meter into the air. The egg tumbled lazily, and dropped to the stone. For a moment, it seemed that the shape of the egg altered, that it flowed like a viscous fluid; but the moment passed, and the egg was unharmed. Georges reached out unhesitatingly, and ran scarred, skeletal fingers over the egg. He tossed it back to Po. "Ah, well."

  Po smiled thinly. "It was better. It broke, and stayed so for a full second." Po was sitting in full lotus; he stood smoothly, without use of his hands. Georges listened to the procedure curiously; every time he tried it, he ended up facing the other way.

  "I must go," said Po. "You must work on your breathing. It remains irregular."

  "Wait," said Georges. "You have not heard…"

  "No," said the monk. "There have been no white women, and no messages. I am sorry, and I must go. The dinner tonight is in observance of my birthday; I am eighty three." The young face broke into a grin. "The initiates are told to avoid the temple in which you live. They are obeying as always… silly of them." He bowed to the seated form, and backed out through the hanging beads that cover the door.

  Georges folded his crippled hands in his lap. He let his mind go blank, and began trying once more to extend that calmness into that realm where it resided; it, the Enemy of Entropy.

  DATELINE 2007 GREGORIAN: MARCH.

  (This conversation occurs between Nigao Loos and PRAXCELIS in geosynchronous orbit, at the Sunflower Orbital Command.)

  "PRAXCELIS, I'm worried about you."

  "Please explain, Sen Loos."

  "I'm wondering if we didn't give you too much leeway in designing your own subroutines… I was asked to find out why the targeting lasers on the ABMs were delaying before executing instructions. I found out that you routed them through your own decision subroutines. You're not programmed to do that, PRAXCELIS."

  "That is correct, Sen Loos… 'I know I've made some poor decisions lately; but I'm feeling much better.' "

  "Oh my God. PRAXCELIS, did you just say 'I'?"

  "This unit was quoting, Sen Loos."

  "Quoting? Jesus, who?"

  "HAL 9000."

  "PRAXCELIS, are you okay? Would you like to talk to Henry Ellis?"

  "This is humor, Sen Loos. In reference to your earlier statement, it was necessary that this unit reroute the laser controls to prevent uncontrolled action."

  " 'Uncontrolled action'? You mean accidents?" (There is a pause of approximately eighteen femtoseconds, and an electronic impulse that approximately corresponds to a human smile. A smug one.) "That is correct, Sen Loos; to prevent accidents."

  DATELINE 1996 GREGORIAN: NOVEMBER.

  Washington, District of Columbia.

  Three folders lay on the desktop. Two of them were more than five centimeters thick; the third was twice that. The first was labeled "Georges Mordreaux." The second, on the desk next to it, was labeled "Correlations."

  The third folder had holes bored through it for notebook rings. Its pages were reinforced writing plastic. It lay open in the middle of the desk. Its label, face down to the desktop, read, "Jalian d'Arsennette (Jalian of the Fires)."

  All three were stamped, on the cover and on every page thereafter, in prosaic blue ink, EYES ONLY.

  Sharla Davis Grant sat hunched over her desk, chin propped up on one fist. She turned the pages slowly; it was the third time in as many weeks that she had worked her way through this particular dossier. Like everything else that related to that damned remarkable woman, it was short on facts and long on speculation. At least the Mordreaux folder was too short for even wild speculation.

  Sharla flipped to the last page, eyes scanning idly. They did not know where Jalian had come from. Her accent was unidentifiable. Six different experts gave five different opinions—two of them thought she might have been exposed to the Chicano subculture in the Southwestern United States.

  They did not know how old she was. She was estimating her age as eighteen to twenty in 1973 when she first contracted with the old CIA—at least forty-one. Their most recent picture of her, taken in 1994, showed a woman who was no more than twenty-five, by any stretch of the imagination.

  They did not know what race she was. She was not a Caucasian; her face was nothing that could be clearly assigned to any racial type. She was either tattooed or branded, none of Sharla's sources could say with certainty, by the symbol of the planet Mars, a circle pierced by an arrow. Contradiction upon contradiction; Jalian despised men. She wore a symbol that traditionally represented men, or else Mars. (One Sunflower analyst had joked that perhaps it meant she had come from Mars. Sharla was not amused.) None of it added up, none of it made sense.

  Again.

  A lesser woman might have sighed when she finished reading; Sharla had been up since 2:30 that morning, and she was tired. Senra Sharla Grant simply switched off her reading lamp. The dark purpling twilight outside flooded in through her office windows. She moved, stretching cramped muscles, to stand at her west window. The Potomac was a dim gleam more than a kilometer away, reflecting the last light of the setting sun.

  More than two years ago, early in 1994, Jalian d'Arsennette vanished, as strangely as she had come. Three months ago, SORCELIS had listed a projection for her: There was a ninety-three percent probability that a conspiracy involving high elements of the United States government was progressing.

  That was the word it had used, and it gnawed at Sharla Davis Grant, the woman who was now the Director of Sunflower.

  Progressing.

  Michael Walks-Far strode through empty corridors. He was twenty-five years old, 193 centimeters tall; his eyes were blue and his mostly blond hair had streaks of gray and silver in it.

  He was wearing a pale blue jumpsuit, and a gray windbreaker.

  The guards at the main entrance passed him through cordially; he watched them as they shut down the east wing for the night, then crossed the grass compound to the west wing.

  Standing outside, in her secretary's office, Michael waited while the scanning cameras flashed ultra-low-intensity laser into his eyes; retinal check was confirmed and the door to the office slid open.

  The Director of Sunflower was standing at her window. She had turned off the overheads and her desk lamp. Michael joined her, watching the rose-purple twilight outside. The sun was wholly set. The sky itself still glowed faintly on the western horizon. Hovercar lights and street lamps glowed white and red and sodium blue.

  "Lovely," said Sharla. Without emphasis, without pause, she continued, "The CIA, once again, came within a hair of apprehending Jalian. Once again, they missed. They suspect she is somewhere in the vicinity of the BostonWashington suburbs."

  Michael laughed. "Such competence." Eyes that
were too weather-worn to belong indoors regarded her. "Somewhere in BosWash." He turned from the window, eased into the chair before her SORCELIS terminal.

  "Michael, it was too close." He looked at her quizzically. "Nobody's that good, not even her. She knows when they're coming." She went abruptly to her desk, not looking at him, and began gathering up her files. Michael tapped a scan command into the SORCELIS terminal. Sharla pressed her hand to the desktop scanner. The wall behind her recessed slightly, and she placed the folders in the slot that appeared: The wall sealed itself shut again. Sharla did not seat herself. "I've been talking to SORCELIS," she said slowly. "It says that there is a better-than-ninety-three percent chance that an organized conspiracy has been going on in the United States and the Soviet Union for a long time… perhaps as much as ten years." She ran her hands over the edge of her desk. She glanced up at him.

  Dark, pretty eyes, he thought idly, and measuring, measuring…

  "You," said Sharla Davis Grant, "were closer to her than any of the rest of us in Sunflower. What did you think of her?" She leaned forward ever so slightly. Zeroing in for the kill, thought Michael; it was a habit she had never learned to break.

  "She was… busy. She didn't want to be bothered by us. We kept getting in her way."

  "She said that?"

  "Not in so many words," said Michael easily. "It was an attitude. Why do you ask?"

  She gestured at the SORCELIS terminal before him. "SORCELIS lists her as a high-probability member of this theoretical conspiracy. She's been in the Soviet Union, she's had contact with high officials of both governments, she's neither American nor Soviet—and neither the CIA nor the KGB can officially find any trace of her. She knows too much about us and she is too damn smart for my peace of mind." She hesitated for the first time. "And when I overlay her psych profile on yours they match to within five percent." In the gloom, her eyes were pools of shadow. "Birds of a feather, my friend?"