The Edge of Reason

by Melinda Snodgrass

  Richard slowly lifted his eyes. Whatever Grenier saw there made him take a half-step backward.

  Grenier said hurriedly, “Look, all you have to do is give us what we want, and we’ll support you in any and all of your goals. Chief of Detectives for New York? Director of the FBI? A brilliant concert career? A contract with the Met?”

  “You could do all that?” Richard asked softly.

  “Yes.” Grenier stepped in closer, gripped Richard’s shoulders in both hands and drew him to his feet. Richard tried to step away, but Grenier tightened his grip. “Listen to me. Our world is not so terrible … .”

  “The parents of Naomi and Dan and Alice wouldn’t agree,” said Richard.

  “Ask the dead at Hiroshima if Kenntnis’s path doesn’t exact a price.” Grenier gave an angry wave with his glasses. “You can’t counter the faith of millions. Even now, you want to believe. Go back to that. Worship. Live your life. Be safe and we will give you anything you want. The only cost is that you turn aside, and leave this unwinnable fight to others.”

  “Excuse me. Those are traditionally my lines,” came Kenntnis’s voice from the doorway.

  Richard and Grenier whirled. Kenntnis pushed his shoulders off the doorframe where he had been lounging and strolled into the room. Cross, Rhiana and Angela appeared from behind Kenntnis’s camouflaging bulk.

  “A rescue.” Grenier’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a parody of a smile that he turned on Richard. “Which tells me all I needed to know.”

  “He’s throwing a spell!” Cross yelled, and he flung himself between Richard and Grenier.

  Richard had the briefest glimpse of color flashing in the lenses of the reading glasses before electricity arced from the overhead light and from the lamp on the desk heading straight at him. Cross took one bolt full in the chest, then pirouetted and threw himself sideways to intercept the other. He lay on the floor, his clothes smoldering, and grinned thinly up at Grenier.

  “Shot your wad, asshole,” he said.

  “Not quite,” said Grenier calmly, and reached into his coat pocket.

  Richard heard a woman scream in wordless warning. The barrel of the gun looked enormous at such close range.

  Angela jerked at Rhiana’s shrill scream, and then registered the gun leveling at Richard. No time! No time! her mind yammered as Richard flung himself sideways. The deafening report of the pistol crashed off the walls of the room. The impact of the bullet sent Richard tumbling into the coffee table. The top broke into a thousand glittering shards, leaving the policeman tangled in the metal frame. Cross struggled to his feet as Kenntnis rushed the gunman, but Grenier was running straight for a blank wall by a window.

  Angela ran to Richard. Blood was pumping from a cut on the side of his head. He groaned as he pushed to a sitting position. His hand was pressed against his side, but there was no blood oozing from between his slender fingers or staining the bandages on his palm. He clutched Angela’s shoulder with his free hand and used her to lever himself to his feet. She could smell sweat overlaid with the rich scent of his aftershave.

  “Stop him,” Kenntnis was bellowing.

  Angela looked up. Grenier was clawing at the wall, and suddenly a crack appeared. Cross put on an added burst of speed. The crack lengthened and widened and Grenier turned sideways and vanished through it. The rent disappeared, leaving a plain white gypsum wall. Cross smashed face first into it.

  “Shit! Fuck! Hell! Piss!” Cross bellowed as he cupped his nose.

  Angela became aware of Rhiana standing stiffly in the center of the room muttering to herself. A penny lay on the palm of her hand. It began spinning and glowing, throwing off copper-colored sparks. She threw it at the wall. It left a trail of sparks like a comet’s tail.

  The copper fire struck the wall and the wall tore open again. There was no sign of the man. There was also no sign of the parking lot of the church. Instead Angela saw a vast expanse of seething gray sand and several burning suns. It was night in Castle Rock, Colorado, Angela’s mind provided with rare calm. Then she saw the shapes on the other side, but her mind was unable to define what her eyes perceived.

  “This ain’t good,” said Cross in a tight, stretched voice.

  Rhiana gasped and ran to Kenntnis’s side. Kenntnis gathered Rhiana within the circle of his arm. Angela realized she was screaming. She never screamed.

  “Sure hope you got some dandy ideas,” Cross said to Kenntnis, “because they’ve seen us.”

  Angela clamped her teeth shut to silence herself. Kenntnis reached into the pocket of his overcoat, and pulled out a strange, twisting object that looked like a piece of blown gray glass. “Richard!” he called out commandingly. Richard looked up and Kenntnis tossed the object to him. Angela had a feeling that the cop caught it more by reflex than design. Richard’s fingers twined through the open curves and Angela realized that it resembled nothing so much as a Klein bottle.

  “Okay, now what?” Richard called, and his voice was a high tenor squeak. The shapes were moving, drawing closer.

  “You’ve got to close the tear.”

  “How?” Richard interrupted desperately.

  “I’m going to tell you. Just shut up and listen.” Kenntnis sucked in a deep breath. “That’s a sword hilt. Draw the sword.” Richard stared at the man blankly. Angela didn’t blame him. She was just as befuddled.

  Kenntnis set Rhiana aside and mimed drawing a sword. “Pretend there’s a scabbard and just draw it!”

  The things on the other side were drawing closer.

  “Boy, I sure hope my detect magic/no magic gizmo wasn’t broke when we found him,” muttered Cross.

  Angela stared at Richard to avoid looking through the tear in the wall. His face was tight with concentration. The pale brows furrowed and he cupped his right hand at the base of the hilt. With his left hand he swept the abstractly shaped hilt away from his right hand in a smooth gesture.

  Angela’s gasp was involuntary. A meter-long swordblade appeared, seeming to slide out of the palm of Richard’s right hand. It was profoundly black, the blackness of deep space. She felt rather than heard a deep thrumming hum as if she were leaning against the mother of all amplifiers. Everyone in the room and the things on the other side of the opening froze.

  “Go,” Kenntnis whispered and Richard launched himself at the opening. He held his torso slightly hunched, and his panting breaths were loud in the silence.

  “Of course. Kevlar,” Angela muttered hysterically to herself. “He was wearing a vest. Clever boy.”

  Richard was at the opening. He hesitated, looking from side to side as if trying to figure out how to bring them together. He lightly touched the sword’s point to the floor, then with sinuous turns of the wrist he parried his way from side to side up the length of the tear. Beneath the sword the normal drywall appeared, but it was scorched and blackened. He had almost closed the rent when a bubble of coiling and pulsing colors ranging from darkest purple to bilious green pushed through the remaining gap at the top. Richard lunged and stabbed at the thing. There was a high-pitched squeal and the intruder withdrew. The gap closed.

  Richard slowly turned, rested the tip of the sword on the floor, leaned on it and stared at Kenntnis. “Does everything have to be so damned operatic with you?” he asked, trying to make it sound casual and failing completely because his voice was shaking. Kenntnis threw back his head and filled the room with his booming laugh.

  Angela rushed to Richard’s side, and found Cross there before her, pounding the far smaller man on the back. Cross reeked of burned material and singed hair. Angela shoved the bum away before he could drive the cop to his knees.

  “Back off,” she snapped. She gently pulled back the side of Richard’s suit coat. “I know I normally work on the dead, but let me have a look at you.”

  “Not now. Not yet,” Kenntnis ordered. “Grenier’s people will be returning and we don’t want to have to answer any awkward questions.”

  “Yeah,” said Angela. “Yo
u’re going to have enough trouble dealing with my awkward questions.”

  “I’m sorry.” The strained and tearful whisper brought all their attention to Rhiana. The young girl was shivering, tears coursing down her cheeks. “I was just trying to stop him. What did I do?”

  “Shhh,” Kenntnis soothed and gathered her once more in the circle of his arms. “We’ll sort that out later, too.”

  Chapter TWELVE

  The powerful jet engines on the Gulfstream GV were a muted roar and a subtle vibration through the floor and seats of the jet. The air in the plane tasted rich and thick, heavy with oxygen, and carried none of the stink of stale coffee that one found on commercial flights. Outside the window, stars shown diamond bright and diamond hard against the night sky. Beneath the wings roiled and bulked heavy white and gray clouds.

  Cross, Angela and Richard sat around a small polished mahogany conference table set in the middle of the plane. The coroner and the homeless god had bottles of beer from the galley in front of them. Richard sipped hot chocolate, trying to ward off the chill air blowing across his bare chest and the stabbing burn of a Baggie filled with ice pressed against the spectacular eggplant-colored bruise blooming across his sternum. He felt exposed with his shirt unbuttoned, but Angela had insisted on examining him. He glanced nervously toward the front of the plane where Rhiana, curled up in one of the oversized, leather-covered seats, slept deeply.

  Removing his shirt revealed the bandage covering the knife thrust from Cross’s doppelganger. The bandages had been removed and the cut examined. Not content with stopping there, Angela was now unwrapping the bandages covering his hands. She inspected the burns, looked up and declared, “Jesus Christ, you’re a walking disaster area!” Cross burst out laughing and even Richard chuckled. “What? What’s so fucking funny?”

  Richard shook his head. “Nothing.” But in fact the amusement didn’t last long. After today’s events Richard was beginning to think Grenier had spoken the truth when he said Richard’s life expectancy wasn’t all that great.

  This brought his focus back to the center of the table and The Object. His mind provided the capitals since it couldn’t produce an explanation. The hilt lay on the table. Angela had called it a Klein bottle. To Richard it looked like something out of an Escher drawing.

  “So, what is it?” Richard asked Cross.

  The homeless god shook his head, and held out his hands palms out. “I think we should let himself tell you. He’s the answer guy. I can tell you this. You’re in exalted company to be able to draw it and use it.”

  “Like who?” asked Angela.

  “Hammurabi, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Justinian, Arthur—the real Arthur who tried to hold back the darkness after the Romans pulled out—Charlemagne, Franklin.”

  Richard sat up straight. “As in Benjamin?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?” asked Angela.

  Cross looked at Richard like a teacher encouraging a reluctant student.

  “He was the last great renaissance man,” said Richard slowly. “Scientist, a publisher who valued books and learning above everything, and when asked to edit Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence, he removed the word sacred from the text.”

  “Where did it say sacred?” Angela asked.

  “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable,” Richard quoted. “Franklin argued that our rights derived from a rational source. He changed it to read, We hold these truths to be self-evident.” For some reason this knowledge about one of America’s founders gave greater credence and strength to Kenntnis’s arguments.

  Cross glanced at Richard. “And in between the famous guys it’s mostly been poor, noble schmucks like you.” He fell silent for a moment and shook his head. “I also now know we are really, truly fucked because Kenntnis didn’t intend to arm you, which is why he never mentioned the sword to you.” Cross looked depressed and took a long pull of beer. “Could be I’m gonna be the one to die, and not my evil twins.”

  “So, who carried it after Franklin?” Richard asked.

  “I’m betting Darwin,” Angela said.

  “And you’d lose,” came Kenntnis’s voice. Even before takeoff in the elegantly appointed private jet he had removed himself into a small cubicle office at the back of the plane and closed the door. “No, it was no one you’ve ever heard of.”

  “One of the schmucks,” Cross interjected.

  Kenntnis frowned at him. “Though Jonathan did cross paths with Darwin, and touched him with the sword.”

  “You remember his name,” Angela said.

  Kenntnis bent his dark gaze on Richard. It was disconcerting because Kenntnis looked sad. “I remember all your names.”

  Richard pointed at the hilt, and repeated his question. “What is it?”

  “A weapon that only a select few can wield.” Kenntnis turned his dark-eyed gaze on Angela. “You saw what he did. You draw it.”

  She stood and picked up the hilt. For a moment she bounced it in her hand, then, drawing in a deep breath, she twined her fingers through the curves, and drew. Nothing happened. Frowning, she turned it and inspected it from all angles. “Okay, what’s the trick? Where’s the release button?”

  “Coded in your genes,” said Kenntnis, taking the hilt from her and handing it to Richard. “Like most humans, you possess a touch of magic. Only a human born without any magic can activate the sword.”

  “And now your involvement with the human genome project and stem cell research makes more sense,” Richard said.

  “Yes, if we could design a retro-virus to edit magic out of your DNA it would be a big help. As it is I have to wait for that particular confluence of genes to occur before I get a new paladin.”

  “And boy, could we have used one in the twentieth century,” Cross said. He ticked off on his fingers. “World War I, World War II, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot—”

  Kenntnis held up a hand. “Spare me the recitation.” Cross subsided.

  Kenntnis resumed. “Sometimes there will be a whole clump of you born. Other times we go for years without a single one.”

  “You mentioned touching Darwin,” Richard said. “What does that mean?”

  “If you touch a normal human with the sword it will render them incapable of performing magic. And it has many other uses. It can repair the tears in reality caused by the injudicious use of magic by humans, and the judicious efforts by the Old Ones. When it’s drawn it makes people sane. Unfortunately its effect can’t cover the entire world.”

  “Okay.” Angela gave the gesture for “time out.” “He …” she pointed at Cross “ … says you’re the answer guy. Well, I need some. I’ve been pretty cool with this so far, but now I really need to know what the fuck is going on.”

  “Richard first. He’s more important than you,” said Kenntnis. It was rude and arrogant and put Richard in the spotlight, and he wanted to hit Kenntnis.

  “Because he can use this thingy?” asked Angela.

  “Precisely.”

  Richard raised up the hilt. “So this was why you wanted me to work for you.”

  “Partly.”

  “And what am I supposed to do? Go through the world touching everyone with this thing?”

  “A daunting if not impossible task, and enlightenment can’t be handed out like a magic pill.”

  “Meaning what?” Angela broke in.

  “People have to develop a conscience. As late as the nineteeth century slavery was accepted. One hundred years ago women were property all over the world. Today only some of you are freed. Even if we erased magic from every person on Earth, our opponents would still be here, and they can still feed. Until people can give up the violence associated with bone-searing hatreds, racial, religious, ethnic—the Old Ones will continue to thrive.”

  The two humans present and awake sat silent, and Richard wondered if the prospect of a tolerant humanity was so remote as to be hopeless. He stirred and looked up at Kenntnis.

  “
So, you’ve told me how it affects humans. What does it do to …” He had a hard time forming the words. “To magical creatures.”

  “It’s deadly.”

  Richard looked at Cross. “So, I could kill him?” Cross sat up and looked hopeful.

  “Yes.” Kenntnis held up a restraining hand. “But you’d leave his splinters free to operate, and his presence is as much of an annoyance to them as they are to him. Right now we need Cross and his abilities on our side.” The homeless god slumped back down in his seat looking glum.

  The rumble of the engines changed cadence and tone. Kenntnis glanced out the window, then back. “Sounds like we’re beginning our descent. If you’ll excuse me, Doctor Armandariz, I need to speak to Richard in private.” He beckoned and Richard followed him into the private office.

  The door closed and the hum of the engines faded to mere vibration, indicating the extent of the soundproofing. It was a confining space made too small by the presence of a desk and three chairs. There was an array of office equipment and three phones cluttering the desk. The screen of a laptop computer glowed in the dim lighting.

  Kenntnis settled into the chair behind the desk, the springs creaking under his bulk. “Rhiana is your backup so you’re going to have to be very careful using the sword around her. We need her.”

  “Okay, that seems pretty self-evident. So why bring me in here to tell me that?” Richard asked.

  “Cross and I are having a difference of opinion regarding Rhiana. It’s pretty clear she’s not completely human. The safest course would be to neutralize her, but I think she can be controlled and guided and will be useful to us.”

  “What do you mean she’s not human?” Richard asked and felt crazy for even saying the words.

  “There is no way a normal human could have opened a tear between the dimensions with such ease. I’ve been doing some checking on Rhiana, and discovered she was an abandoned baby in the California foster care system. Eventually she was adopted, but it’s all completely consistent with her being a changeling.”