Eternal Life Inc.

by James Burkard

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “It was uncalled for.”

  Jericho turned and looked at him for a long moment. Finally, he nodded to himself as if he’d seen what he needed to see. “Apology accepted,” he said with a terse smile.

  “Good,” Harry said. “Now maybe you can tell me about these wolves. You said they come from an alternate universe or timeline. How is that possible, and what do they want with us?”

  “What they want is to enslave and eat us,” Jericho said. “Believe me, these things are the boogeyman of everyone’s worst nightmare. As to how they got here.” He glanced over at Diana, who nodded her head as if giving permission. “You have to know something about Isis and the work she did with Norma-genes.”

  “Who’s Isis?” Harry asked.

  Doc looked over at Diana. “Why don’t you tell him,” he said. “She is, after all, your sister.”

  Diana nodded and took a deep breath, like a diver getting ready to go off the high board. “Isis is not only my sister,” she said, “she’s my twin sister. We’re identical twins.”

  “Interesting,” Harry said.

  Diana raised a questioning eyebrow. “And?” she asked.

  Harry shrugged. “And nothing special, except that you were both named after the twin aspects of the Goddess.” He noticed how her eyes widened with surprise that he should know this. So just to hammer the point home he added, “Isis is the Egyptian goddess of motherhood, compassion, and healing and wears a sun disk diadem. On the other hand, Diana is the Moon goddess, goddess of the kingdom of the dead, and goddess of the hunt. Some say it’s a hunt for dark knowledge. They also say she could be a merciless, vengeful, bloodthirsty bitch,” he added and cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “Is that true?” he asked with exaggerated innocence and a provocative grin. He wasn’t sure why he was baiting her, but it probably had something to do with secrets and trust or rather lack of trust.

  Diana gave a twitch of her shoulder as if shrugging off an irritating insect. “We were named by the Goddess,” she said with cool distain and paused as if daring him to make another comment. “She came to my father in a dream on the night we were born and named us. The significance of the names and the naming was not lost on him. My father was after all a classical scholar,” she added with a touch of bitterness. “In an age that had no use for classical scholarship.”

  Harry was busy putting two and two together. “Your father wouldn’t happen to be Jake Lloyd?” He asked excitedly.

  Diana looked surprised. “Why, yes,” she said. “You know of him?” she asked it as if she had trouble believing that.

  Harry cast an amused glance at Doc and nodded. “I’ve read a couple of his books.”

  “How interesting,” she said giving a little, skeptical twist to her words. “What have you read?”

  She was testing him, of course. He was used to it. People just couldn’t seem to accept that a movie star, action hero, with a reputation for womanizing and drunk and disorderly behavior ever read anything but the funny pages.

  “We’re waiting, Mr. Neuman,” she said with a schoolmarm’s questioning tilt to her head as if waiting for the dimmest bulb on the tree to fail.

  “Sorry, wool gathering,” he said, flashing her a crooked grin, and then added, ”Shaman Games, Saints and Sinners, The Mythology of Enlightenment,” and tossed in half a dozen others for good measure. He was showing off of course and Doc rolled his eyes despairingly, but Harry didn’t care. She irritated him with her smug, superior assumption that he couldn’t possibly know about her father and probably couldn’t even read! He was a little surprised at his reaction. When other people did the same thing, he just laughed it off, but this was different because it was her and for some reason that made it painfully personal.

  Diana arched her eyebrows in surprise and looked at him with genuine interest. “What did you think of them?” she asked.

  “Interesting,” he said giving the words a skeptical twist of gentle rebuff.

  Diana looked at him with confused embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to…”

  “It’s all right,” Harry said, “I’m used to people seeing only the cardboard cutout, media image. Besides, this prodigious erudition is really only skin deep. For most of the last seven years, I was exactly what everyone expected of a brawling, drunken womanizer.”

  Once again, he noticed her look of distaste, quickly hidden but not quick enough. He decided it was time to change the subject. “What made you go to Jericho’s in the first place?” he asked. It was obvious they had a history, and he had been wondering about it ever since he got there.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Diana said, momentarily caught off balance by this sudden change of direction.

  “It sounds like you and your sister were in some sort of trouble with the wolves and the Norma-genes. So why did you run to Jericho for protection? You could have gone to the authorities.”

  Diana cast a sidewise glance at Jericho. Once again Harry had the feeling that they were weighing out the truth, deciding how much to short-change him.

  “We’re waiting, Miss. Lloyd,” he said, mimicking her voice from earlier. It was a petty ploy born of irritation and anger. Once again it was a matter of trust. She and Jericho didn’t trust him and it rankled.

  Jericho was perceptive enough to realize what was happening and said. “I’m an old friend of the family.”

  “So you knew Jake Lloyd?” Harry said. Jericho nodded.

  “And you never told me?”

  “You never asked.”

  “That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s the only one you’ll get.”

  Harry shook his head in disbelief. Jericho knew how important Jake Lloyd’s writings were to him. Shortly after he revealed the strange abilities that constant resurrection was calling forth, Jericho gave him a copy of Shaman Games with the comment, “This might help explain what’s happening,” and it did. Harry devoured the book and asked for more and Jericho obliged with a whole stack of Lloyd’s books. In those early days when he was just beginning to realize what was happening and could easily have been terrified, doubting his own sanity, these books became invaluable guides. They showed him that others had experienced these things; lots of others throughout history had walked this road before him. They were called mystics, shamans, seers, and saints. The most recent one had been the Prophet General of the Goddess, who founded the Church of She. They all had the same thing in common. They had walked in their kas out onto the edge of the Astral Planes or the Shining Sea of the Gods or whatever other form this magical non-space might take and it changed them. They were no longer ordinary men.

  Lloyd seemed to have an intimate, even encyclopedic knowledge of all this, and his books referred back to hundreds of pre-Crash sources, documenting a rich tradition of knowledge and firsthand experience. More than anything else, it had been Lloyd’s writing that had given Harry the intellectual strength to take his first step into his ka and out and into the spirit realm, together with Samuel Kade.

  Harry looked at Diana. She smiled uncertainly.

  “I’m in awe of your father,” he said at last. “He was a giant. I wish I’d met him. No one in the Empire measures up to his boot heels.”

  “In fact, no one in the Empire cares,” Diana said. “His books have been out of print for years.”

  “I think that’s probably about to change,” Jericho said.

  Diana smiled wearily. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  “Where did you get the books you lent me?” Harry asked.

  “My own private copies,” Jericho said. “You could probably get a complete set from the Imperial Library though.”

  “Or from the Cathedral of the Goddess,” Diana added. “The Church of She keeps a complete set in all cathedral libraries.”

  “Why?” Harry asked curiously.

  Diana shrugged. “They see my father’s writings as part of the same spiritual tradition t
hat gave birth to the Church.”

  “I think we’ve gotten way off the track,” Jericho said, looking pointedly at Diana and, once again, Harry had the feeling they were getting into something the old man didn’t want him getting into. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not much time.”

  “Of course,” Diana said and smiled at Harry. “I was going to tell you about Isis.” She reached up and pulled out the golden locket that hung around her neck. Harry noticed a crescent moon inside a blazing sun engraved on its front. It was the sign of the Church of She. Diana pressed a hasp and the locket sprang open revealing a hologram of two young women.

  She pressed the hasp again and the holo-images expanded until they were each about six inches across. The two young women were facing each other and talking animatedly. Diana must have shut off the sound, and Harry could only guess at what they were saying as they both threw back their heads and laughed with the same unconscious, mirror-image body language.

  For a second, he was reminded of the little plastic heart in his pocket, with the hologram of him and Susan mugging for the camera. He pushed the thought firmly down into a drawer in his mind and then closed the drawer and locked it.

  He studied the image of the two women. At first glance, they appeared as unalike as any two strangers. The one who was obviously Diana was casually dressed in jeans and a blue denim work shirt, open at the throat and spotted with what looked like different colored dabs of paint. Her sleek black hair was longer than it was now and pulled back in a girlish ponytail, tied with a red bandana. As far as Harry could see, she wore no makeup.

  Her sister on the other hand wore a spotless, white, lab smock buttoned all the way up, with an official looking ID-badge just visible in the lower left hand corner. Her hair was a striking platinum blonde, cut to a radical pageboy bristle. Her jade green eyes and blonde hair were in striking contrast to her deep golden-brown complexion. This was further heightened by midnight blue eyeliner and bright ruby lipstick. A pair of black horn-rimmed data-glasses hung on a fine golden chain around her neck.

  Harry looked up at Diana. “You didn’t try very hard to look alike, did you?” he said. “The only question is, which of you is the real you?”

  Diana collapsed the hologram and closed the locket. “Isis and I always needed to somehow express our individuality, to draw a line, to be different from each other. It wasn’t that we disliked each other. We were our own best of friends. I mean, how could it be otherwise? I guess being identical twins just exaggerated the need to be a unique individual, that’s all.

  “But we always tried to be true to ourselves, even when we chose very different ways of doing it. And I think we succeeded. Even though we chose different careers, we each found fulfillment and a degree of success. For example, I became, among other things, an artist, a painter while…”

  “You’re a painter?” Harry interrupted, suddenly making another connection. “Do you happen to sign your paintings with a ‘D’ resting in a crescent moon?

  Diana looked at him in surprise. “Why yes,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “I bought one of your paintings,” he said excitedly. “When I asked the dealer the name of the artist, he refused to tell me. He said the artist wished to remain anonymous. I thought that was a helluva way to run a business.”

  “But you see, it’s not a business,’ she said with an enigmatic smile.

  “The price tag said different,” Harry answered with a sardonic smile of his own.

  “My paintings are not for just anyone,” she said. “They find their owner. If their owner can’t pay the price, then the painting finds a way to them anyway.”

  Harry raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Your paintings know who they’re meant for?”

  “What painting did you buy?” she asked.

  “An icon called, ‘The Madonna of Eternal Life’.”

  “Of course,” she said, as if that proved her point, and strangely enough it did.

  As soon as he saw it in the gallery window, he knew he had to have that beautiful little icon of the Madonna. She was dressed in glowing blue robes, standing in a spiraling tunnel of light. She reached out with both hands as if offering him the spiritual promise hidden in every resurrection he had ever been through. It was the promise of the eternal life of the ka made manifest in the loving arms of the Goddess of light. But what finally pulled him in off the street was the face of the Madonna, that same sweetly smiling, loving face he had seen time and again in every resurrection and in countless dreams afterwards.

  Harry leaned back and regarded the young woman across from him with a new sense of respect and something akin to awe. “How many times have you resurrected?” he asked.

  “Never,” she replied.

  “But how could you…? He stopped, at a loss for words.

  She smiled, understanding. “You know you don’t have to die to see these things,” she said, casually fingering the silver locket round her neck.

  22

  Valkyrie

  For the first time, he noticed the black onyx ring edged with silver on the third finger of her left hand. Suddenly, he understood or thought he understood. “You’re Jaganmatri,” he said, “A Valkyrie!”

  Diana heard the undertone of accusation in his voice and sat up very straight, eyeing him defiantly. “If this bothers you, Mr. Neuman,” she said and lifted her hand, showing him the ring. “Perhaps we should discontinue these talks and you should leave.” She stood up and offered her hand in regal dismissal.

  “Whoa, just a minute!” Harry said. He was having a tough time reconciling Jake Lloyd’s beautiful, artistically talented daughter with the fabled warriors of the Jaganmatri. “You just took me by surprise…” He stopped as he realized that was just what she meant to do. She had kept that ring concealed with her left hand in her lap until just the right moment. But right moment for what, he wondered. With a Jaganmatri Valkyrie, you probably didn’t want to know.

  The Jaganmatri were the sisterhood of the Church of She. The Church worshipped the Goddess in her dual aspects of creator and destroyer, and the sisterhood mirrored this duality. On the one hand, the Jaganmatri of Compassion, like the goddess Isis, served the creative aspect of the loving, caring, life-giving Earth Mother. They wore a distinctive ivory ring banded in gold on their right hand.

  By contrast, the Jaganmatri Valkyrie served the Goddess in her aspect of destroyer. They wore the black onyx ring and were a sisterhood of warriors sworn to defend the Church and the earth against all enemies, natural and supernatural. Like the Goddess Diana, they were hunters, and their prey wasn’t only dark knowledge. Their exploits in the Quarantine against the Seraphim Jihad were legendary. They were not only superb soldiers and tacticians; they were also spies, assassins, courtesans and diplomats, all in the service of the Church.

  They were admired and respected by some, feared and mistrusted by others, particularly in New Hollywood, where The Great Cathedral to the Goddess dominated the skyline. The Church was the major religion of the Empire and a force to be reckoned with, especially since its intentions were seldom clear and not always those of the Empire. Even the Tongs tread carefully when it came to the Church of She and especially the Jaganmatri Valkyrie.

  “You were saying?” Diana said. She stood looking down at him. Her jade green eyes held his in a cold, steady gaze. The pupils grew larger. They became great pools of liquid darkness that grew and merged, eclipsing her face and drawing him in.

  He felt a momentary resistance and then let go. He knew where this was going. He’d been there before. It was like stepping off a cliff and letting gravity take over. He toppled into darkness. A deep feeling of peace swept over him and he opened his arms and let it take him. He felt his ka stirring, and his meat body heaved a deep, boneless sigh of contentment. He was going home.

  He registered a distant pinprick of light and, in the next instant, he was standing in his ka on the shore of the Shining Sea of the spirit realm. Someone was standing beside him.
He knew it was her. He didn’t have to look. You couldn’t hide anything here. Everything was revealed in the infinite light of the spirit realm. You knew each other right down to the…

  He dropped back into his body. He swayed and grabbed hold of the tabletop. He was standing up. He didn’t remember standing up. He could still feel the residue of peace and light from touching his ka and the infinite possibilities coming off the Shining Sea.

  He blinked and looked around bemused. Diana stood across from him, studying him carefully. Her skin still retained a subtle golden glow from the touch of her ka. Everything is revealed, he thought, and for an instant he saw her standing on the shore of the Shining Sea in the fullness of her ka, Diana, Moon Goddess of the hunt, infinitely beautiful, alluring and deadly. He shook his head, and the vision disappeared, and even the memory of it was gone.

  “Very good, Mr. Neuman,” Diana said.

  Harry sat down heavily and looked up at her. “What do you want?” he asked uncomprehendingly. He was having trouble processing what had just happened. The only other person who had been able to drop him into his ka like that was Samuel Kade and it usually took him a while to do it.

  Diana smiled. “Now, we both know where we stand,” she said and sat down. “Doctor Jericho told me about your hold on the ka but,” she shrugged. “You never know.”

  Harry glared at Jericho. “I thought we had an agreement,” he said bitterly. “No one was to know about this unless I agreed to it, not even Chueh. Or maybe I misunderstood something?”

  Jericho refused to meet his eye and instead began to flip through the hit list of the small jukebox music selector standing on the end of the table. GREATEST HITS OF NINETEEN FIFTY-NINE was printed in gold letters across the front of the selector.

  “It was my fault,” Diana said. “I pressured him. I had to know.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t belong to the Church of She, do you?” Diana asked without answering his question.