The Eternal World

by Christopher Farnsworth

  He’d dropped his gun. Max scooped it up and began looking for his target.

  SHAKO CURSED HERSELF FOR being so dramatic. She had to get close to use a knife, true, but she didn’t have to let Simon speak. She didn’t have to do anything but cut his throat.

  Instead: “We’ve met.” Stupid.

  Still, the look on his face.

  She saw Max take out the guard who was busy shooting up the room. Then she lost him in the rush of bodies.

  She found Simon again, though. He was hurt, not badly, but enough to make him stand out, blood soaked into his shirt, a red flag that let her track him wherever he went. He ran toward the stage.

  She moved to pursue him when another body blocked her.

  Sebastian.

  He snarled something obscene at her in Spanish, his beautiful features made ugly with hate, and threw a punch at her.

  She ducked under it and came up with a kick that caught him on the chin.

  It snapped his jaw shut and pointed his eyes at the ceiling.

  She was about to follow it with another kick to his midsection when Peter caught her arm. He whirled her about and reached for her neck.

  She sliced with the blade, missing anything vital but opening a nasty cut across his forehead all the way down to his nose.

  The blood welled up from the split flesh and ran into his eyes.

  He cursed and let her go.

  Sebastian was mostly recovered by then. He unleashed a flying roundhouse kick at her head.

  She would have rolled her eyes if she’d had time. Always going for the big, fancy move. He never changed.

  She followed him around as he spun, and drove the point of the blade into his back.

  It deflected off his shoulder and did not reach his heart, but his sudden roar of pain was a good result in itself.

  She yanked the blade free and looked for Simon again.

  Two bodyguards got in her way. She hit one and broke his sternum in three places. The other went down after she punched him in the throat, choking on the wreckage of his hyoid bone and cartilage.

  They were soldiers, she reminded herself. They stepped into the battle willingly.

  She found Simon again. In the whirlwind of chaos, she saw that he’d stopped running. He was kneeling on the floor. Helping someone up.

  It was David.

  Simon lifted him from the ground and pulled him toward the door. David limped. He left a trail of blood drops. He’d been hit by a stray round.

  There was nothing altruistic in this, Shako knew. Simon needed David. That’s why he’d been her ticket inside.

  What she couldn’t figure out was why she still cared what happened to him.

  She crossed the distance between them in a matter of steps.

  She pulled David away from Simon and sent him spilling to the floor again.

  Finally, finally, finally, this was almost done. She would finally be able to rest.

  Simon was too off-balance to put up much resistance as she spun him around and got the tip of her knife beneath his ear.

  Just one long, even motion, and then he’d be dead. Even if they killed her now, he would finally pay.

  She heard someone shout her name.

  “Shako!” Max bellowed.

  She looked. She saw him.

  He stood a yard from David. He held a gun, aimed at David’s chest. There was no way he could miss at that range.

  Everything seemed to stop.

  MOST OF THE FLOOR was clear. Only a few of the partygoers remained, the ones who had been hurt too badly to run or who hid in the corners.

  They peeked out to watch the standoff.

  Max kept the gun trained on David, who was kneeling, caught halfway while rising.

  “Stay down,” Max told him.

  Simon gasped, caught in Shako’s arms. “Max, don’t—” he blurted, before Shako cut him off by poking the tip of the knife into his neck.

  “Shut up.” To Max, she said, “You think that’s going to stop me?”

  Max smiled. “Seems like it already has.”

  David remained kneeling. “So you guys all know each other, I guess,” he said.

  Shako almost laughed at that. She noticed Sebastian and Peter moving closer. “Back up,” she warned them. “I won’t tell you again.”

  They stopped where they were but didn’t back off.

  “This is where you decide who’s worth more,” Max said. “Your old lover or your new one.”

  “He’s nothing to me.”

  “Then why haven’t you killed Simon yet?”

  Shako hesitated. That was a very good question.

  David looked at her, fear mingled with confusion and betrayal. He did not know her. He was her key to a door, that was all. She had learned that sacrifices had to be made. People died. That was the way of the world.

  But this . . . As with the girl, Elizabeth. This was not simply letting someone else die.

  This was something she caused. This was uncomfortably close to murder.

  She’d killed dozens, hundreds of people, to get here. She thought her conscience could take the weight.

  The question was, could it handle one more?

  The moment stretched like a tightrope, tension drawing out exquisitely as the spectators watched, waiting for the moment when someone dropped, when a human being became a dead body right before their very eyes.

  She looked at David and made her decision.

  She released Simon.

  Max smiled and pulled the trigger anyway.

  DAVID FELT A HARD punch against his chest. He’d thought the bullet fragment that caught him in the leg was the worst pain he’d ever known. But this was much worse.

  The pain did not subside. It only grew and radiated outward, expanding until it felt like a new form of gravity that was bringing down the whole world on him.

  He struggled to breathe. Dimly, he was aware of people moving around him. Max disappearing from the edge of his vision. People running, the clip-clop of high heels as they rushed for the exits. Shouting. He thought he saw Peter go flying through the air at least seven feet over his head, but that was crazy.

  Then Shy was there, her face at the end of a dark tunnel. She looked deeply into his eyes, as if searching for something.

  He knew, in an abstract way, that her arms were around him, but he could not feel them. He tried to speak but could not catch his breath. Goddamn. This really hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  The tunnel began to close. Her face was the last thing he saw before everything went black.

  FROM CNN:

  (THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT)

  WOLF BLITZER: I’m sorry, we are breaking into our program with a developing story out of Florida. It seems there is a situation at a party, a corporate event, a possible terrorist attack on a corporate party in Tampa, Florida. Do we have . . . yes, we have video there from the local affiliate, a shot from the news helicopter; you can see the emergency vehicles and the people running out of the building. I’m going to turn it over to the reporter on the scene, Teresa Nazario, from the local station WFLA. Go ahead, Teresa.

  TERESA NAZARIO: Wolf, as you can see behind me, there is chaos on the ground here tonight at the Grand Regency Hotel in Tampa Bay. People have been shot, the police are still attempting to put up a cordon around the hotel, and a SWAT team is about to storm the building. The situation is still very much in flux. There’s a lot we don’t know right now.

  BLITZER: Teresa, can you tell me who was involved in this?

  NAZARIO: Right now, we are told that this was a corporate event for Conquest Biotech, to announce a new product launch. Then, according to at least one witness, someone began attacking guests with either a knife or a sword, followed by gunfire.

  BLITZER: Was this a t
errorist attack?

  NAZARIO: Impossible to say right now. At this point, the ballroom in the hotel is still unsecured. So we have not got a statement from the police yet; they are still trying to get the situation contained. We have seen several people being treated by paramedics, and they are being rushed to the local emergency room.

  BLITZER: Teresa, can you tell me how many people have been wounded or killed?

  NAZARIO: At this point, we don’t know, Wolf. We just don’t know.

  CHAPTER 19

  FLORIDA

  1527

  THE WOMAN STALKED through the trees, still furious.

  She carried everything she needed to stay away for weeks. Months, if necessary. Her father kept telling her she did not understand. That was the problem. She understood all too well.

  The Uzita were under attack. They’d heard from other tribes far south that more and more of the strangely dressed invaders arrived every month. They spilled out of their giant ships on the coastline and moved inland like a river going backward. Some of the other tribes hoped the invaders would leave—there had been visitors before, but they always went away.

  Clearly, this was not the case this time. The invaders set up camps, chopped down trees, and began building shelters. They would not be ignored. They were not going away.

  Which was why the Uzita needed to be united and strong. They needed to put aside any of their own differences to face the threat.

  And she had been chosen by her father as the sacrifice that would bridge the gap between the Water Clan and the Wolf Clan. A marriage between the two most powerful families of the Uzita. Yaha had many sons and grandsons. Despite his age, he was still a fierce warrior, and he was the strength of the tribe. Her own father knew this, because her own father held the wisdom of the Uzita. Yaha had always believed that his strength was greater than her father’s brain and heart. They had clashed for years, since they were boys themselves.

  Now her father had decided it was time to end the rivalry. So he chose to merge their families. She was promised as a wife to Yaha’s oldest son, a thick, dull boy with twice his father’s strength and none of his intelligence.

  She had protested. Her father, ordinarily tolerant, became a different man in front of her eyes. He raged at her. He commanded her to go along with the marriage for the good of the entire tribe.

  She saw the fear in his eyes then, and misunderstood it. She thought he was frightened of Yaha. She felt rage and contempt. He was bargaining with her life to preserve his own power. She had never thought he would be so cold or cruel.

  If he cared that little for her, she could show him the same regard. A week before she was supposed to wed Yaha’s son, she ran into the woods.

  She ran to the one place she knew no one would look, where not even her father would dare follow her, because to do so would be to risk the secret.

  She was going to the place that did not exist. She went to the cave.

  To her great shock, she discovered someone there. One of the invaders. He was dying. She saw the wound in his leg, the blood gone black. His breath came in ragged gasps. She recognized the poison, and wondered idly if her husband-to-be was the one who had fired the arrow that would kill this man.

  He did not look as strange as the stories said. His skin was pale, true, but he was shaped like any other man, now that he was stripped out of the odd shells they wore. His face was different, but somehow familiar to her. As if she had always known it, and was just now remembering him.

  It was in her power to save him. She knew what her father would do—what he would order her to do, if he were here. He would tell her that this man was an alien, an invader, a disease infiltrating their land, who would kill everyone with his mere presence if given the chance.

  Her father was no coward. She’d seen him fight and, more important, she’d seen him win without fighting, simply by standing his ground. Until the invaders came, she’d never seen him afraid.

  And this? This was what he was afraid of? A pale man, sick and dying, unable to even find water when left on his own.

  She touched the invader’s cheek.

  His eyes snapped open. For a moment, she saw his fear and panic and pain. She felt for him. For all his strangeness, he was lost and alone. She thought she understood the feeling.

  Then as his eyes latched on to her, he smiled. He said something in a language she didn’t understand, barely a whisper.

  He touched her hand and brought it back to his cheek. He burned with fever, but his eyes never left hers.

  “Angel,” he said again. “Angel del Cielo.”

  He closed his eyes again. Peace radiated from his features like the heat from his skin. There was, in that moment, a perfect trust between them. His life was in her hands. She could almost feel him handing it over, like a physical weight had passed to her.

  At that moment, she decided.

  He would not die.

  FOR THE SECOND TIME that day, they sat down outside the cave and the man tried to teach her to speak.

  The first time had not ended well. He’d brought over a group of small objects: stones, sticks, some things he’d salvaged from his few possessions. Then he would point at them while speaking very slowly at her. He looked so serious, his young features drawn into such fierce concentration, that she kept laughing.

  Eventually he was holding the stone in front of him, barking the same word over and over: “Piedra, piedra, piedra!” She couldn’t help herself. She fell into a fit of giggles.

  He stood up and stomped away.

  She felt bad for him. She was young, but she already knew how men treasured their dignity. Laughter was the quickest way to shatter their illusion of controlling the world.

  It did not help that he was nearly naked. So was she, but she was accustomed to wearing little in the hot summer months. For him, it was clearly a maddening distraction. When he was sick and dying, she had used her knife to cut the torn and bloody clothing off him. The pile of rags was thick and stank of sweat and piss and blood, and she’d taken it far away from the cave.

  After he woke, healed by her, he covered himself with his hands and searched for the stinking pile. He came back with what was left of his pants tied around himself, and the white shirt he’d worn under everything else.

  She had decided that where he was from, everyone must have worn that heavy clothing all the time. He stole glances at her and quickly looked away. She wondered briefly if her body was somehow different from those of the women he knew, but quickly dismissed the notion. He turned from her, but she saw his erection rising at those moments. It wasn’t that he didn’t like how she looked. He’d simply never seen a woman’s breasts before.

  She took pity on him when he finally came back to her. She wrapped her breasts in a cloth so that he would be able to meet her eyes. This was hard for him. She would have to be kinder.

  They sat facing each other again. He pointed to himself. “Hombre,” he said.

  She pointed to herself. “Shako,” she said back.

  He looked frustrated. Pointed again. “Hombre,” he repeated.

  “Shako,” she said again.

  He shook his head, grabbed her hand, used it to poke himself in the chest. “Hombre,” he said, even slower now.

  She tried not to roll her eyes. “Shako,” she said, even slower than him.

  He shrugged irritably and moved on to something else. He pointed up at the sun in the sky. “Sol,” he said slowly and carefully. “Sol.”

  “Haasi,” she said back.

  His eyes narrowed. “Sol.”

  “Haasi.”

  “Sol!” he insisted. “Sol. Sol.”

  She tried to keep from laughing, but her mouth quirked into a smile. “Haasi, haasi, haasi!”

  “Maldición!” he spat. Then another string of rapid-fire words. She didn’t understand a single
one, but she knew the tone.

  She took his hand and gently pulled it toward her chest. She placed it on her skin. The sudden contact seemed to shock him out of his tirade. She looked deep into his eyes, trying to will him to understand what was really happening here.

  “Shako,” she said, tapping his fingers against her chest. She pointed at the sun. “Haasi. Sol.”

  She picked up the stone and placed it in his hand. “Cvto,” she said. Then, mimicking him perfectly, “Piedra.”

  Understanding dawned in his eyes. He thought he had been teaching her. Now he realized, she was teaching him.

  He pointed at the sun. “Haasi!” he said.

  She smiled back and playfully mimicked him again, repeating the word as slowly as possible, putting a thick look on her face.

  He was shocked. For that moment, she saw him struggle with his temper again.

  Then he laughed and smiled, suddenly delighted.

  She placed her fingers gently on the skin under the remnants of his once-white shirt. “Hombre?” she asked.

  He understood now. He shook his head. “Simón,” he said. He put his hand over hers. “Simón.”

  She pulled his hand back to her chest. “Shako,” she said again.

  “Shako,” he repeated.

  So now they at least knew each other’s names: Simón and Shako.

  His hand was still on her. She let him keep it there.

  ONCE THEY LEARNED HOW to speak to each other, one of the first things he asked her was to show him the way back to his people.

  That was something she couldn’t do, no matter how much it displeased him. (And to be honest, it hurt her a little, too. She knew it was absurd. If she woke up lost and far from her people, she would expect to go back home as well. Still, she wondered why she felt such a pang at the thought of him leaving.)

  Either way, it was irrelevant. She did not know how to find his people. And she wouldn’t take him, even if she did. There had been only minimal contact between the Uzita and the invaders now coming to their lands. But her father feared them enough to begin preparing for war. She wasn’t as afraid, but that didn’t mean she would willingly put herself at their mercy, either.