Hawk_Hand of the Machine

by Van Allen Plexico

  “Great,” Falcon muttered, giving Hawk a look. “Less time eating and sleeping, more time to enjoy the wonderful view.”

  The man who might be Eagle didn’t react to that. He continued to stare out at the mists, as if he could see something in those endless depths that the others couldn’t. Fog swirled around his feet, obscuring the barren ground.

  Hawk leaned in close to Falcon. “I’m not sure helping him remember himself really suits our purposes right now,” he whispered.

  Falcon offered a single nod as reply.

  “You wish to leave,” the robed man said faintly then. “Yes…now that I come to think of such things, I can recall a time when I felt the same way. When I searched for a way…out…of the world.” He smiled up at them. “That was so very long ago. I had forgotten. Forgotten there was anywhere else to go.”

  Hawk inhaled the cool air, then exhaled slowly, frowning.

  “If Eagle could never find a way out, in all this time,” he began, “how will we—”

  “The doors,” Eagle said, his voice soft.

  Falcon looked down at him, where he still sat cross-legged on the crumbly soil.

  “What?”

  “Ages ago, when I was trying to find a way out… I used to wonder if the doors were a way.” He laughed faintly. “But of course I could never open them.”

  Falcon and Hawk exchanged looks.

  “What doors are those?” Falcon asked.

  The robed man said nothing for several seconds. Then, slowly, he unfolded himself and stood, regarding the other two men. Smiling, he motioned with one long arm in what seemed an utterly random direction.

  “Would you care to see?”

  “By all means,” Falcon replied.

  As they moved off into the fog together, the faintest sounds of howling echoed all around them.

  11: HAWK

  “There is a door just ahead, here,” said the man in the brown robes.

  “How can he tell, in all this?” Hawk hissed to Falcon, motioning at the wall of fog they were slowly moving through. The cyborg only shrugged in reply.

  After only a short distance their guide halted abruptly, raising one hand to indicate the others should stop as well.

  “What’s wrong?” Falcon began, but the other man motioned sharply for him to be quiet.

  The three of them stood there in the cold and clammy depths for several long seconds, Hawk and Falcon exchanging puzzled glances the entire time. The third man gazed out into the grayness, as though he could see something within it that the others could not.

  “What are we doing?” Falcon whispered when his patience began to wear thin.

  “Silence!” the big man snapped back, his voice barely audible but intense. As soon as he had spoken, he gestured off to their right. “There,” he muttered. “You see? It is too late. We have been detected.”

  “What?” Falcon frowned and squinted his good eye, even as his electronic one emitted faint whining sounds, indicating the big man was cycling it through various frequencies. “If there’s something out there, I don’t see it at all.”

  “Detected by whom?” Hawk added, equally unable to make out anything in the wall of mist that surrounded them.

  Before the third man could respond, Hawk involuntarily grunted as the faintest flicker of luminous green appeared in the indeterminate distance. “There,” he said, pointing.

  Falcon and the other man whirled about, at the ready. Hawk had his pistol out, directing it toward the light.

  “Who’s there?” Falcon called.

  “Who’s there?” came a voice in reply. Hawk first thought he was hearing an echo but quickly realized it was different; a strange, warbling cry that seemed to cross the distance only reluctantly, sounding as if it was emerging from a great depth, and only barely forming actual words.

  Hawk and Falcon glanced at one another, puzzled, and then both men looked at the third. For his part, he said nothing, only continuing to peer into the gloom.

  Already the green light had grown brighter, now quite evident despite the fog and quite obviously moving toward them.

  Hawk took one step forward and then halted, uncertain of exactly what they were dealing with. Was it a man with a torch? It didn’t bob up and down, as it would if a person were carrying it while walking. Could it be some sort of vehicle—perhaps a vehicle on fire? There was no sound of a motor, or of wheels moving over the soil. What was it?

  “Stop there,” Falcon shouted. “Don’t come any closer. Identify yourself.”

  “Closer,” the voice warbled back. “Identify!”

  The green flame was now nearly on top of them, the mist burning away around it. Hawk realized with a start that there was nothing else to it but the fire. It was a column of flame, about seven feet tall, gliding along through the fog over the barren landscape.

  “He told you to halt,” Hawk growled. “Whatever you are.”

  The flame emerged into the space where the three men stood. Its light was nearly blinding.

  “Identify,” the flame demanded, its voice deeper and richer, its call clearly an order and not mere mimicry now.

  “We are Hands of the Machine,” Falcon stated, his human eye squinting against the glare. “Who are you? What are you?” he added after a moment.

  The column of flame filled the center of their space, separating them into a triangle around it. There came a sound like a gong; a single note, deep and ringing, from every direction at once. The flames swirled faster then, like a miniature tornado, the circumference growing wider as they moved. Each of the three men took a step back.

  “Hey!” Falcon shouted. “You—”

  “Hands,” said the warbling voice from the fire. “Hands of the Machine.”

  “That’s right,” Falcon said, confidence and authority strong in his voice, even as he raised one hand to block the light that now poured from the thing. “So you’d better—”

  “You speak true,” the flames said. “I can taste it—taste you, all of you—in the Aether.”

  Hawk shot a puzzled look at Falcon, but the cyborg wasn’t taking his eyes off the green phenomenon between them.

  “The Aether?” Falcon followed up. “What do you know of the Aether?”

  “I live within the Aether,” the flame-creature replied, its voice quavering and thin. “You have its smell all about you—all three of you do. And yet I feel you are not creatures of this realm.”

  “The Below?” Falcon shook his head. “No, we most definitely are not—”

  “You are trespassers,” came the voice from out of the fire. “Trespassers in a realm not your own.”

  “Just a minute,” Falcon began. “We’d like nothing more than to get out of here—to get back to our own—”

  The flames rushed at him, suddenly moving with the speed and force a small hurricane. They struck him hard, shoving him back and down.

  The man in the brown robes stepped forward, hands coming up, palms facing outward. “Demon of the depths,” he shouted, “away with you!”

  The sound of keening laughter echoed all around.

  “Human fool! I am no mere demon that you can order about. I have held this form for untold eons. I served in the front ranks of the legions of Vorthan. Four entire human worlds I helped to ravage before my master was defeated—and many millions of souls did I consume. The three of you will scarcely serve to whet my appetite for the carnage that is to come, when the dread lord returns to corporeal form!”

  A crackling tendril of flame lashed out, tentacle-like, driving into the third man’s midsection and blasting him head-over-heels into the fog.

  Hawk had listened carefully to the fire-creature’s babbling but could make no sense of it. Somehow its words seemed important—seemed worth almost any cost to know, to comprehend. But now, with Falcon and the other man both down and the flames only growing brighter and more widespread, he knew he had to act. But—neither of the others had so much as inconvenienced the creature. What could he do?

>   His pistol at the ready, he advanced.

  The flames spun about faster and then a pair of eyes seemed to form within them, not moving in relation to the rest of the crackling form, and facing Hawk’s way.

  “You,” the bizarre voice cried. “Your taste is different. Who are you? Why do I know you?”

  Hawk raised his gun and fired, energy blasts streaking out. They passed harmlessly through the flames.

  “Bah,” the creature exclaimed. “You are obviously unimportant—no threat to me. Clearly I am mistaken.”

  Even as the voice spoke the words, new tendrils of flame like giant hands reached out with lightning speed and grasped Hawk from both sides.

  The flames all changed color from green to yellow to orange to red.

  “What?” came the warbled voice. “This cannot be!”

  The flames shimmered all around, passing from red to violet and finally to blue—a deep, rich, vibrant blue.

  “You!” the voice cried.

  “Me?”

  “Why do you come to me in that guise?” it demanded.

  Hawk stood straight and still, feeling almost hypnotized as he watched the colors shift and heard the voice grow increasingly troubled and strident.

  “You cannot be here,” the fire-creature went on. “You cannot! Your time ended ages ago!”

  Hawk said nothing, but now his instincts told him to advance on the creature—to press the advantage he seemed to have developed, for whatever reason.

  “You know this place,” he said, “and you know the way out. Show us, and we will leave you in peace.”

  The sound that came back to him was so low as to be subliminal; he felt it rather than hearing it. It was like some unearthly groan of pain from the world itself.

  Hawk took a step toward the center of the swirling column of flame, then another.

  “Show us the way out!”

  Nothing at first, as the now-blue cyclone of flame danced about, angling and curving its cylindrical form as though writhing in agony. Then, “The doors,” it warbled. “Use the doors. You can open them.”

  “We can?”

  Another wordless, reverberating cry.

  Hawk took another step forward.

  “Show us where the right door is,” he demanded.

  “No!” the voice cried. “Noooo! The others must be warned—our plans must be altered so that—”

  Whatever else the fire-creature said was lost in a rush of wind and another resounding gong-sound. The force of the gale shoved Hawk back and sent him tumbling to the ground. Quickly he climbed to his feet but by then the flames had entirely vanished and darkness had descended across the landscape once more. He was alone.

  “Falcon!” Hawk shouted, looking this way and that. “Where are you?”

  “Here,” came the gruff voice in reply.

  Hawk whirled, still on edge, to see the cyborg moving stiffly out of the fog, absently wiping the soil from his uniform.

  “What happened?” the bigger man asked. “Where did the fire-thing go? And where’s—?”

  “I am here.”

  They both turned, their guns at the ready. But it was only the third man, his robes still drawn closely about his body, his hood in place.

  “So,” he said, his voice sounding tired. “We yet live.” His eyes met Hawk’s. “I wonder why that should be.”

  “Yeah,” Falcon agreed, looking at Hawk. “I’m curious about that, as well.” But then he started, and Hawk saw that Falcon’s human eye had flickered upward and was now looking past him at something else.

  “Well, well,” Falcon muttered. “Wouldn’t you know it.”

  Hawk turned slowly, almost afraid to know what was behind him. When he saw what it was, he gasped.

  A door, wooden and ancient, stood before them, shrouded in fog.

  “Never in all my time here have I encountered a greater demon,” the man in the brown robes was saying as he gazed out into the fog. “The fact of my continued existence supports that statement, obviously.”

  “I’d rather not meet another,” Falcon stated.

  “I wonder what caused it to leave us alone?” the man went on. “And what drew it here to begin with?”

  “I have no idea,” Falcon replied. Then he pointed at the strange door that stood there before them. “But if it led to us finding a way out of here, I’m not going to complain.”

  He and Hawk both studied the thing, not sure exactly what to make of it. It was more than three meters tall and a third as wide, seemingly made of a single piece of dark wood. A dull metal knob completed the picture.

  “A way out?” the robed man asked. “Hardly.” He looked from one of his new acquaintances to the other. “As I told you before, it doesn’t open. None of them do. The knob does not turn. I have tried and tried.” He looked away into the fog again. “I can remember that too, now. So long ago, before I lost all hope. I raged at the first door I discovered, and at the others as I came across them. I kicked them, beat upon them, threw myself at them. Over and over. And…nothing.”

  As Falcon moved closer, reaching out toward it, Hawk asked, “How many others are there?”

  “Many,” the robed man answered. “Scattered here and there. They vary in appearance, but none of them will open.”

  Hawk watched as Falcon’s gloved hand tentatively touched the surface. It did indeed seem solid, not an illusion.

  “Here is perhaps the most interesting part,” the robed man added, moving around to the other side of the door and gesturing at it. “Come and see.”

  Hawk and Falcon made their way around to where he was, and they looked back.

  The door wasn’t there. It had utterly disappeared.

  Falcon hurried quickly back around to the front, the other two just behind him. His good eye widened in surprise. “It’s back.”

  “It never went away,” the other man said. “You simply cannot see it except from this direction—from just in front of it.” He chuckled. “It made finding it and the others much more of a challenge, I must say.”

  Falcon had removed the brown glove from his left hand and now he ran his bare fingers along the door’s surface. “It’s cold,” he said, pulling his hand away quickly. “Like ice.”

  The robed man nodded.

  From the distance, the howling sounds echoed again.

  “What is that?” Falcon asked, unsuccessfully trying again to see into the fog. “There are dogs here? Wolves?”

  “Demons,” the robed man answered. “The lesser ones. They, too, are a challenge.”

  “What exactly are these demons?” Hawk asked. “Some sort of aliens? Or actual supernatural creatures?”

  The robed man simply shrugged.

  Falcon’s face revealed recognition. “Oh,” he said. “Right. There are stories from long ago, of something called demons that invaded some human worlds. The records aren’t exactly clear on what they really were. Maybe…”

  “I don’t know,” the robed man said. “Perhaps these are the creatures you refer to. Perhaps not. But they are ubiquitous here. And they are savage. Mindless and savage.”

  The howls grew louder and came from more than one direction.

  “Wonderful,” Falcon said. “Well, this would be a great time for that door to just happen to open.”

  Hawk approached the rectangular slab and ran his own gloved hand along its surface. Then he reached down and touched the knob, grasped it, tried to turn it. Nothing.

  “How do you manage the demons, then?” Falcon was asking the other man. “Or do you just fight them off?”

  “One learns to avoid their attention,” the man replied. “But, yes—if they find you and a conflict occurs, they can be beaten. Not easily, though. I have suffered greatly at their hands over the years that I have dwelt here.”

  He frowned then, looking at the cyborg with renewed intensity.

  “Seeing you from this angle—from your human side,” the man said, “I believe I do remember you.” Smiling, he moved closer, h
is right hand reaching up, his fingers brushing the bald man’s cheek. “Falcon. Falcon—my friend.”

  Hawk looked over and saw this exchange occurring. Falcon was offering the robed man a smile in return, but it was an extremely uneasy smile. Their eyes met and Hawk could feel Falcon’s anxiety increasing to match his own. Having Eagle back with them—if this was indeed Eagle—would be a tremendous advantage in the war Hawk believed was coming. And of course rescuing their former leader from such a horrific place of exile would count as a major victory for the Hands. The problem, of course, was the timing. If Eagle truly believed Hawk was an arch-traitor, and those memories returned now…

  Hawk noticed then that Falcon was using the subtle hand-gesture code and he quickly picked up on the message he was sending to Hawk: “If Eagle remembers you, and remembers what happened on Scandana—whatever it was that happened—we simply have to trust that he will come to the same conclusions I have. That you are a different man and that you can be trusted. Eagle was our leader, and he was the best of us. We have to trust that he will see things that way.”

  Hawk understood what Falcon was saying but, even so, he didn’t want to find out the hard way. Trusting that the man who was once the mightiest of the Hands would just happen to look with mercy and friendship upon a person he had branded an arch-traitor…well, that was an eventuality that Hawk preferred to avoid for as long as possible.

  One other possibility had also presented itself to Hawk, though he had refrained from suggesting it to Falcon thus far. From what little he understood of the events on Scandana, Eagle had vanished just after he had discovered that the original Hawk was a traitor who was passing secret military information to the Adversary. What if, Hawk wondered, it had been the original Hawk himself who had done this to Eagle? What if he had been the one to shove Eagle into this nightmare realm of exile, where the man had wandered for millennia?

  Hawk didn’t particularly like his chances of living very long, once Eagle regained his memories, if that had indeed been the case.

  The howls were much louder now, and all around. The robed man gestured to the others, saying, “We must move away from this place now. They have our scent. They will be upon us soon.”