by Peter David
Some of that resolve came from the way Xyon was looking at him. The pointy-eared child, whose face was a general mix of the features of both Burgoyne and Selar, obviously trusted Moke implicitly. He drew his perception of the world through Moke’s eyes, and Moke wasn’t about to make Xyon afraid of that which was around him.
He held out a hand firmly. “Come on, Xyon,” he said.
The small boy placed his hand in the elder’s, wrapping his tiny fingers around Moke’s. They got up and Moke headed back the way he’d come, shoulders squared, determined to deal head-on with whatever might be waiting for him. It particularly helped when he reminded himself that his strident finger-pointing had made the god lady go away when she was clearly trying to bother poor Mr. McHenry.
Indeed, there was no reason at all for Moke to have run from McHenry. He’d just been caught by surprise, that was all. McHenry had been coming right at him, gesturing frantically, and something within Moke had just cried out, “Enough!” And off he’d run. But that wasn’t going to be the case anymore. Moke was going to handle it. He could handle anything. Besides, the bottom line was that Mark McHenry was a friend. It wasn’t as if he was that intimidating dark man with the one eye. ...
Moke rounded the corner and saw McHenry right where he’d left him.
He was talking. As had consistently been the case, Moke saw the mouth moving but was unable to hear any words.
The thing was, McHenry was speaking with the one-eyed man.
That was enough to freeze Moke where he was. As much as he had stood up to Artemis, as much as he had overcome his initial fright and gone back to see McHenry, he wasn’t prepared for the sight of this darksome man standing right there, big as you please, in the corridor. Others were walking right past him without batting an eye. No one could see either McHenry or him. But Moke could, and—screwing his courage up—he stamped right toward the two phantoms and said loudly, “You go back where you came from!”
The old man and McHenry both looked straight at Moke. McHenry seemed startled, while the old man ...
He actually smiled.
It was the first time he’d genuinely smiled at Moke, and for no reason he could account for, Moke actually found the smile reassuring. The beginnings of a wild thought began to formulate in Moke’s mind. He’d spent so much time being startled by this imposing and fearsome individual, that he’d never considered the possibility that this ... this person ... might actually be friendly somehow.
The old man said something to McHenry, and suddenly he turned and walked right through the nearest bulkhead. McHenry glanced at Moke, shrugged, said something although Moke couldn’t determine what, and followed the old man through the wall.
“Get back here!” shouted Moke. “Get back here!”
A bewildered Xyon tugged on Moke’s pants leg. Moke looked down at him and Xyon, again working meticulously to form the words, carefully enunciated, “I here!”
“I wasn’t talking to you, Xyon,” Moke said, but he had to laugh as he said it.
And then, to his surprise, McHenry reemerged from the wall. He glanced left and right, then looked straight at Moke and put a single finger to his lips, as if shushing him. Instantly, Moke understood: McHenry wanted him to keep quiet over the fact that Moke had seen him.
This immediately struck Moke as wrong. He felt as if he should go straight to Calhoun and tell him exactly what he’d experienced. As if sensing what was going through Moke’s mind, McHenry shook his head with even greater vehemence and again pressed his finger to his lips. The aggressive manner in which McHenry made it clear that he was seeking Moke’s silence gave Moke the impression that something very major was at stake. That by going to Calhoun and trying to improve matters, he might instead turn around and make things much, much worse.
Moke felt torn between his loyalty to Calhoun and the desperate urgency in McHenry’s face. Finally, deciding to err on the side of caution, Moke nodded once and mimicked the “shushing” gesture McHenry was giving him. McHenry let go a visible sigh of relief, which didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense to Moke. If McHenry was some sort of disembodied ghost, what did he need to be breathing for? But there was certainly no way he could pose such a question to the officer, and even if he did, he wouldn’t hear the answer.
And then Moke saw something he really didn’t understand in the least. As McHenry slipped through the bulkhead once more, a pair of darkly feathered birds flapped in through one side of the far wall and passed through the same bulkhead that McHenry had gone through. Quiet as shadows, as empty of substance as smoke, they were there and then they were gone, and so was McHenry.
Moke looked down at Xyon. “Just when you think things can’t get any stranger around here.”
At which point Xyon suddenly flashed perfectly formed, sharp little teeth, took two quick steps, and vaulted upon Moke like an attacking panther.
II.
Mark McHenry stood just outside sickbay, staring in wonderment at himself, still trying to process how people could possibly be walking through him without even knowing he was there.
“I don’t believe this.”
“It gets worse. Much worse,” came a grim voice from near him.
He turned and found himself staring at the strangest individual he’d ever encountered. He seemed to defy the very concept of life, instead shrouding himself in darkness. He wore a cape with the hood pulled up, and sported a dark red beard with streaks of white and gray. Most strikingly, he had only his right eye. Where the left would have been was just darkness. A man, definitely a man, shrouded in darkness, with a single streak of what appeared to be blood in the right corner.
“Who are you?” demanded McHenry.
“Don’t you mean, What am I?” He spoke in a voice rich with amusement. Except McHenry was absolutely in no shape to be amused.
“I think I know the question I wanted to ask,” McHenry retorted.
“I don’t believe you do, actually,” said the old man, and his voice seemed vaguely patronizing, but also—strangely enough—comforting in a way. As if McHenry was talking to someone who really, truly comprehended all that was going on ... and that would be a nice change of pace. All too often, McHenry couldn’t shake the feeling that he was perpetually one step ahead of everything going on. “The ‘who’ of me is of so little importance,” the old man continued. “Of far greater concern to you—or, at least, it should be—is what sort of creature am I, where are we, and how do we get out?”
McHenry tried to come up with some snappy response, but none really suggested itself. His shoulders sagged in defeat as he said, “All right, fine. Any of those questions, then.”
“That would be acceptable. However, I think it would be best if we conducted our discussions in private.”
“Private?” said McHenry, stunned. “How much more private does it have to be? No one can freakin’ see us!”
“He can,” said the old man, indicating someone standing nearby. McHenry looked to see where he was pointing, and was surprised—but somehow not too surprised—to see a wide-eyed Moke standing and staring straight at him.
“How?” demanded McHenry. “How is he able to perceive us?”
“I told you your initial questions were worthless. Already you ask more interesting things. And you shall learn the truth of them ... but not here. Come.”
And without another word, the strange man walked straight through the nearest bulkhead.
McHenry did not hesitate to follow him, and found himself passing through an unoccupied quarters. The one-eyed man was just ahead of him, and McHenry said—to himself more than anything—“At least Moke will be able to tell them I’m all right. Not that I’m sure I am all right ...”
Immediately the old man turned to face him, and it seemed as if thunderheads were drawing in around him. The room appeared to darken, and even though McHenry was insubstantial, he still felt a sudden drop in temperature. There was a distant rumbling, and the old man said, “It’s too soon. Far too soo
n. Everyone is not in their ideal position yet. If he speaks of his prematurely, it could have dire consequences.”
McHenry had no reason to believe the man, and yet he instantly did. With but a thought, he slid his way back through the wall and saw that Moke was still standing there. “Don’t tell anyone you’ve seen me, Moke,” he said, and made a great show of giving the universal sign for keeping a secret.
Moke seemed not to comprehend, however, and McHenry repeated the gesture, this time with an even greater show of force. He only wished he could do more in terms of communication than this frustrating pantomime.
But then Moke nodded and clearly appeared to understand what it was that McHenry was trying to put across to him. McHenry grinned, nodded approvingly, said, “Thanks! Hope to see you later!,” and moved back through the bulkhead into the empty quarters.
As he did so, he heard a high-pitched “cawing” almost directly in his ear, and reflexively flinched as what appeared to be two powerfully built black birds—ravens, if he wasn’t mistaken—hurtled directly past him and landed on the shoulders of the old man. Insanely (as if this entire thing wasn’t insane already) they seemed to be whispering in his ear, their beaks clacking together as they “spoke.”
“I see,” said the old man, and “Good.”
“They talk?” asked a stunned McHenry.
The old man allowed a vaguely patronizing smile. “Yes. Just not to you. All right, my pets, well done. Go to, go to.” Obediently, the ravens lifted off his shoulders and flapped away, back out through the wall.
“You said you were going to tell me what’s happening. So fine. How am I walking through walls? Why can no one see you and me.”
Still smiling, the old man appeared to sit. There was no chair under him, but he adopted a distinctively reclining posture nevertheless. “You’ve been imprisoned,” he said, “trapped, as it were, in a sort of ... how best to put this? A sideways dimension. Some manner of psychic energy surge catapulted you here, would be the best way to describe it. There are other ways, but they’re far more technical and, frankly, quite boring.”
“All right ... that explains why I’m here. Actually, it doesn’t,” he realized, “but it’s probably as close as I’m going to get. But what about you? Why are you in this ‘sideways’ dimension?”
“Ah. I was incarcerated here by my fellow entities ... the race whom I believe you know as ‘the Beings.’ ”
“You’re one of them?”
“Not just one. The greatest of them!” he said with a grim smile that indicated massively wounded pride over having been cooped up in this semi-existence. “No one of them could possibly have overcome me and put me here. It took their combined efforts. It was quite a surprise, really. I’d never seen so many of them agree on something before. On the one hand, I should be angry over it. On the other ... it’s quite flattering, in a perverse sort of way.”
“You’re flattered that you’re imprisoned?”
“Well, I did say perversely.” The old man chuckled. “We are a perverse lot, we gods ... or Beings, or whatever we’re calling ourselves now. Sex with siblings, sex with mortals, sniping and plotting against each other. And yet, despite all that, we were worshipped. Indeed, our sins were exalted, made the stuff of legend. I’ve always thought humans did so in order to make themselves feel better about their own shortcomings. They reasoned that if we, in our divinity, could be base in our actions, then that excused any sins they might commit. How could they reasonably expect more of themselves than they expected of us?”
“All right,” McHenry said slowly. “That makes sense ... even if none of the rest of this does. But that still doesn’t explain—”
“I was the last, you see,” the old man continued, as if McHenry hadn’t spoken.
“The last?”
“The last god to leave the Earth.” His voice seemed to carry the sadness of the ages in it. “I had different priorities, you see. To the rest of my kind ... it was all about them. It was all about having the humans of your world worshipping us. They felt that humans were there for us. Only I believed that we were to be there for them. The only one who was anywhere close to my view on the subjects was poor, tragic Apollo ... and even he had an ego that superseded his wisdom.
“Eventually, humans had less and less need for us. They turned their interests elsewhere. To gods who were more ... unknowable. Or gods who, if abominations were committed in their name, would not be inclined to come down to earth and destroy the perpetrator with bolts of lightning. Besides, I’ve always thought,” he said in amusement, “that they came to know us too well. You cannot worship that which you know; it’s antithetical. Familiarity breeds contempt, not adoration. Instead of being gods, we were more ... celebrities. And humans must always tear down their celebrities. It’s just the nature of the species.”
“And ... you were the last one to leave?”
“Yes,” the old man sighed. “Curiosity kept me, I suppose. That, and a desire to be a source of inspiration for humans rather than an object of reverence.” He looked to McHenry and amusement twinkled in his eye. “You still need to know who I am, don’t you. You humans—even half-humans, such as yourself. You still need to apply names to everything so you can comprehend it.”
He sagged heavily into a chair. How he could possibly do that, McHenry didn’t know. For that matter, McHenry had no clue why he wasn’t sinking through the floor if he was supposed to be without bodily form.
“I have a variety of names,” he said at last. “Some called me Zeus. Others, Jupiter. The Norse called me Woden. They named days after me, planets after me. Very flattering, actually. The Egyptians dubbed me Amen-Re. Takami-Musubi is what the Japanese called me. Elegant language, Japanese. Elegant people. Always liked them. And so many more, big and small. From nations to tribes, they all knew me.”
McHenry’s eyes widened. “You were ... you were a sky god? A creation god? But ... you were one of the greatest gods of all! You were ... you were big!”
“I’m still big,” rumbled the old man. “It’s creation that’s gotten small.”
“And ... how long did you stay around? After the others left?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “A while. For entities such as I, we don’t tend to pay all that much attention to the passage of time. Monitoring that is much more the province and interest of mortals than us. One century is like five is like ten. It matters little to me. Although I will say that in my last centuries on Earth, there was very little call for most of my incarnations. The name applied to me most often during that time was Klaus.”
“Klaus?” McHenry looked at him dubiously. “I don’t remember any god named Klaus.”
“I wasn’t seen as a ‘god,’ per se. More as a charitable sprite. I must say, I rather liked that time of my life. I dealt with children, mostly. Saint Klaus, I was. Those were good times.”
“Saint Klaus ... wait. Santa Claus?” he said suspiciously. “You’re telling me you were Santa Claus?”
“That was one version of it, yes.”
“Santa Claus. With the red suit and the presents and coming down the chimney? You must be joking.”
“Do you find that so difficult to believe?”
“Well ... yes! You’re Zeus and Odin and Santa Claus all rolled into one? How ridiculous is that?”
“I feel the need to point out,” the old man said airily, “that someone who is currently existing as a disembodied spirit is hardly in a position to question the little absurdities that life presents. All those names aside, I find that after all this time, I simply prefer to be called the Old Father. It’s certainly descriptive enough.”
“You know,” McHenry said at last, “I really, really hope I’m dreaming all this, because it’s too insane to cope with if I’m not.”
“You’re not,” the old man assured him, and he now had a grim demeanor to him. “Would that you were. But you’re not. This is the truth of it: My brethren, my ‘associates,’ shunt anyone to this dimension
whom they believe can cause trouble. Then again,” he said reflectively, “I suppose it’s somehow appropriate that they keep me locked away like this ... considering that it was I who had kept them imprisoned for so long.”
“You did?” McHenry began to pace, no longer dwelling on mundane matters such as how he was able to move about in relation to physical objects. “This isn’t exactly the story they were telling us.”
“Well, of course it wouldn’t be, would it.” He snorted derisively. “Do you think they would want you to know? Can’t blame them, really. More than a century, I kept them tightly bottled up, like the Earth legends of genies in lamps ... which originated with us, I might add.”
“Of course,” said McHenry with a helpless gesture. “I’m starting to think everything from the common cold to Fermat’s last theorem came from you people.”
“I would not call us ‘people,’ really.”
“It doesn’t matter,” McHenry told him, beginning to feel impatient. He didn’t know why he was impatient. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to do or anyplace else to go. It was probably a holdover from his annoying human condition. “So why did you do that? Keep them under wraps?”
“They wanted revenge. For Apollo.”
“Revenge?”
“Understand, they thought him somewhat the fool,” said the Old Father. There was unmistakable sadness in his voice, although McHenry wasn’t entirely certain for whom the sadness was intended. “But they felt he was ill used by the crew of the Enterprise. However, they also saw opportunity presenting itself: opportunity in the form of Apollo’s assignation with the mortal woman, Carolyn, who was your ancestor. They saw you as a potential bridge to the status and power they once enjoyed. I endeavored to talk them out of it, but they would not listen to reason.
“I knew then what I had to do, in order to stave off potential disaster. I knew, however, I could not do it alone. After all these millennia, even I am not what I once was. I needed an ally ... and the only reasonable ally was someone whom the others felt antipathy for, and he for they. Someone who had no love lost between himself and his associates. Wisely or unwisely, I chose my son.”