Unnatural Selection

by Tim Lebbon

  "What is it?" she asked a young man, his eyes wide, face slack with disbelief.

  "Dragons just destroyed Heathrow," he said without stopping. He was walking from TV to TV, as if viewing different channels could alter the truth.

  Abby did not stay long. She had seen one of the dragons in the New Ark, and she had no wish to watch them raining fire and destruction down on innocent people. "You bastard," she muttered as she left the terminal. Whatever cause Blake claims as his own, there's no justification for this.

  She had to get there. Hire a car, drive to London, because the hints she had received from that awful, ancient entity in the infinity of the Memory had seemed to be right. London was where things were beginning to happen, and she knew that Blake would be there soon.

  She would meet him. Father and daughter reunited. But this child had nothing but hate in her heart for her father. Hate and fear and a growing desire to kill him and eat of his flesh.

  * * *

  Abby breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled out from the Avis parking lot and found her way onto England's motorways. She supposed the world had far greater problems to contend with right now, but she had still been expecting the BPRD to put out information about her, telling airport authorities that she was ... what? A monster? A runaway werewolf? A danger to herself and everyone around her, come full moon?

  She smiled, shook her head, turned on the radio. "Bad Moon Rising." Great.

  * * *

  Jerusalem — 1990

  "GAL, THIS IS MADNESS. Father would never want us to do what you re talking about doing. It could destroy everything we've done over the past fifteen years!"

  "Zahid de Lainree doesn't agree, you said that yourself."

  "Yes, but he was obviously mad."

  "Mad," Gal said, and he smiled. His cigarette lit his face in the darkness of the sultry night, a pale yellow glow that set his skin aflame. "One man's mad is another man's sad."

  "You know how things are, Gal." Richard loved his brother so much, and yet lately he had grown to fear him as well. He was afraid that Gal was dying — the sending weakened him more every time, and his recovery periods between instances were starting to overlap — but he was more afraid that his brother was going slowly, comprehensively mad. Whether madness or death would take Gal first, Richard was terrified at the thought of either.

  "Yes, I know. I know I'm more than just a son to our father. I'm a way for him to better his plans."

  "He told us what to get, and we've been getting just that."

  "And is there no room in that plan for betterment?" Gal said. He leaned forward in the chair and stared at Richard, his face illuminated by vague light from a balcony farther along the side of the hotel. "Do you run through your life simply doing what you're told, instead of trying to find better ways to do the same thing?"

  "This is not a better way, it's a different way," Richard said. Gal's eyes were deep black pits, and he could not look straight at them. So he looked out over the city instead, amazed as ever by the lack of light reflecting from the low clouds. "We have no idea what may happen if we find this thing. What if it speaks to us? What if it's never been asleep and gone, just lying there dormant, waiting for someone to come and speak the right words to give it life again?"

  "That's just what we are going to do. You'll lead us to it from de Lainree's book, we'll find it together, then I'll send whatever I can to Father, wherever the Ark is right now. And after that ... the choice is his."

  "No," Richard said. "If we do this tomorrow and find something, we're taking all choice away from Father and putting it in the hands of something else."

  "We're giving him power."

  "He has that already. Can you imagine the New Ark now, Gal? Can you picture what he has on there and what he has yet to bring through? If only we could see ... if only we could go to him."

  Gal sighed and lit another cigarette. His face was gaunt and weak, skin yellow and saggy in the match's flare. He drew in the smoke and leaned back in his chair. "It's a beautiful night," he said. "So warm, peaceful. So filled with potential."

  Is he really thinking this? Richard thought. Can he really believe we'd be doing any good? "Potential for chaos," he said.

  "And isn't that what we've been working toward for years? Chaos?"

  "No," Richard said, and he was certain of that. He'd asked himself the same question every time they went in search of something else from de Lainree's book, and each time he watched Gal perform the sending spell, his answer was the same. "No, not chaos. Order. We're helping Father bring order back into the world. We're saving the planet."

  Gal laughed, loud and surprisingly bitter. "Richard, for someone so old you still hang on to your cute childish conceits."

  "I'm not embittered by what we're doing," Richard said, regretting it instantly. The sending was killing Gal, and they both knew it.

  Gal sighed again. "Well, it's your choice come sunup."

  But it was not Richard's choice, and it never had been. They both knew that, both acknowledged it, and yet they had these conversations and pretended that their outcome could make a difference. Gal — in pain, weak, feeble, and quite probably mad — was the stronger of the two by far. His will steered their lives. Richard, protesting and hesitant, followed along every time.

  * * *

  Next morning Richard woke early and found Gal poring over the book. He was sitting in the same chair out on the balcony of their hotel room, and Richard wondered whether his brother had even gone to bed. He often seemed not to sleep at all.

  The streets around their hotel had come to life with the dawn, and Richard was relieved that the silence of the previous night was no more. People talked and shouted, cars growled and hooted, motorbikes roared, traders called, and children chattered in the street two stories below their balcony, and the mouthwatering aromas of street cooking wafted up to them on pale smoke. He liked the feeling of the world around them being alive, yet at the same time Richard knew that he and Gal were apart from this world. They had removed themselves the day they fled their burning home with their father. Ever since, they had been hiding beneath the skin of reality, digging deeper into the petrified flesh of history. Anyone who happened to look up would see two middle-aged men on a hotel balcony, one staring intently at a big old book, the other standing at the rear of the balcony, looking out over Jerusalem with an expression of confusion that would be familiar to the observer. Many foreign tourists came here, but few ever truly understood the city.

  Richard looked down into the crowd below. None of them could have any idea of what he and Gal were considering doing this day.

  "How can you read this?" Gal said. His voice was croaky from too many cigarettes and too long sitting on his own, not talking, just thinking. "There's no sense here at all, no meaning. It's all distortion."

  "That's because it's what you perceived the very first day Father showed us the book."

  "And you saw clearly what it said?"

  "No, I saw what it meant. I knew page one, and every page since has been open to me, with a little concentration."

  Gal shook his head, closed the book, and smoothed its time-worn leather cover. "I'm glad I have you with me, Rich," he said. "I truly am."

  Richard's heart missed a beat at the unaccustomed softness of his brothers voice. The brash man of last night had gone, burned away perhaps by the morning sun, and in his place there was his brother. Vulnerable, wasted, tortured by many things from many times, yet still his brother. They were from the same father and mother. However different their personalities, Richard liked to remember that.

  "Are you ready to go?" Gal said quietly.

  "I suppose so. But I think I need something to eat first."

  Gal stood, twisted his body this way and that, easing out the stiffness. "We can pick something up on the way." As he passed Richard on his way back into the room, Gal put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "You know this is the right thing, don't you? Its in de Lainree's book, it's part of t
he Memory, and Father will only thank us." Gal went inside to get ready.

  I hope so, Richard thought.

  * * *

  It took them most of the day to find the entrance to the tomb.

  They walked through the streets of Jerusalem, ignoring street traders, avoiding police and army patrols, pausing every half hour at a street café, drinking strong coffee while Richard strengthened his spell of course and tried to make sense of that most esoteric chapter of the Book of Ways. He was doing his best. Whatever doubts he felt about what they were doing, never did he feign confusion. The words and text and strange drawings merged in his mind, steering him this way and that, until late in the afternoon, as they sat in bright white plastic chairs outside a building a thousand years old, two symbols bled into each other and showed Richard the way.

  He sighed, slumped in the chair, picked up his coffee, and downed it in one gulp. "I have it," he said.

  "Good." Gal leaned across and touched Richards shoulder. "I knew you would."

  They remained in the café for a while and ate, Richard to regain the strength he had lost through that long day of spell casting and concentration, Gal to fortify himself against the sending yet to come. The sun dipped toward the western hills, and they both decided at the same time that they should not remain above-ground to watch the sunset. Much better to be on their way by then. They had flashlights, folded digging tools, and a crowbar packed into their rucksacks. They were used to breaking and entering, finding buried history. Richard sometimes felt that all the relevant moments of their lives had been spent underground.

  He led them to a deep drainage ditch beside a park, filled now with discarded bicycles, clothing, cardboard boxes, and other refuse.

  "Down there?" Gal said.

  "Down there."

  They began to dig through the rubbish, heaving it behind them and forging a path down to the base of the ditch. Richard cut himself on an old rusted baby carriage, Gal scraped his hand along the ragged mouth of a broken bottle, and they both gave blood to the land. Nobody came to see what they were doing. Whether they went unseen or people thought it best to keep to themselves, Richard was relieved.

  "Here we are," he said at last, panting and sweating.

  "There should be a stone slab in the base of the ditch. It'll be well fitted, might need to break it instead of lift it."

  Gal set about prodding through the hardened silt along the bottom of the ditch with the crowbar, and right at the edge of the patch they had cleared, he uncovered a straight stone edge.

  Fear and awe prevented Richard from saying anything. What in the name of hell are we doing? he thought, but it was too late for that now. Perhaps it had already been too late fourteen years ago, when they had uncovered the phoenix feather in Egypt. He often wondered when their lives had changed, and sometimes he marked a moment in case he thought the same way ten years down the line. Now, he thought. This could be the most important moment of my life. He looked up at the sinking sun and hoped he would remember.

  It took Gal half an hour to expose enough of the stone slab for them to see what was written on it. "That's old Hebrew," Richard said. " 'Here lies chaos'."

  "Comforting," Gal said. He hefted the lump hammer from his rucksack and started knocking the crowbar down beside the slab.

  The sun was setting by the time Gal broke the stone. Richard had sat on the sloping side of the ditch, looking up now and then to see whether the noise of their efforts had finally attracted attention. All he saw was sky, birds, clouds smeared red by the setting sun. He thought it grew suddenly cooler, and then Gal gasped and said, "I'm through."

  The slab fell away into the darkness below, a darkness untouched by light for many centuries. There was a heavy, long sigh as air pressures equalized — it seemed that a breath came out of the chamber rather than going in — and then Gal looked up and smiled. "Almost there," he said. "Rich, don't be scared. Father will be thrilled."

  "I hope so," Richard said. Together, he and his brother descended into the long-forgotten tomb of a demon.

  * * *

  Its name was Leh. Zahid de Lainree called it 'the sham Voice of God', an exhalation from hell made flesh. It had been put down by Jesus Christ himself, its remains left belowground, smoldering in a fire that would never go out. It was destined to be forgotten forever, cast from the minds of humankind just as the story of its defeat at Christ's hand was purged from any history of his time on earth. De Lainree had written of the words that would guide the searcher to Leh's underground prison and the chant that would serve to extinguish its restraining fire. Richard had never wanted to believe everything he read, but all other prophecies in the Book of Ways had proven to be true, and he had no real reason to doubt this one.

  "I smell burning," Gal said. They were walking along a narrow tunnel, their route lit by the wavering light of Gal's powerful flashlight. This was a prison, carved for one purpose only, and there were no warnings scratched into the walls, no barriers across their way. This was always meant to be a forgotten place that would never be touched by light again.

  And yes, Richard could smell the burning as well. "Maybe its an old smell," he said. Admitting that this was the tang of smoke ... that would be saying that all this was true. That there was a demon down here, once flesh and blood but now just a memory. And memories were what they had been chasing for years.

  "It's new," Gal said. "It's the endless fire, keeping Leh down. You know that." He was whispering, his words returning from the dark as sibilant echoes.

  "Gal, lets get out of here," Richard said. "This isn't right. It doesn't belong! We've brought back things of myth and legend, and things that once were, but never anything like this. This thing was never natural! Who knows what it'll do if Father brings it back?"

  "I send it to Father, and the choice is his," Gal said. "You trust him, don't you?"

  "Of course," Richard said. I haven't even seen him for fifteen years.

  "And you know why we're doing this? For Mother and what they did to her?"

  "Yes." He may have changed, he may be nothing like our father anymore. We really have no idea what he's going to do.

  "Then let's go." Gal moved on, expecting no reply.

  Richard followed, sniffing, smelling the fire, and after a couple of minutes a glow seeped into the tunnel ahead of them. A minute later the walls opened up, the floor sloped down, and they were in a circular room twenty feet across. Theirs was the only way in and out. Again there were no signs of decoration of any sort. The only thing contained in the room was a hollowed pit at its center, within which lay something black and burning.

  "Oh, shit," Richard whispered.

  "I second that," Gal said.

  The flames were pure white. They rose only a few inches from the black mass in the pit, flitting here and there, dying down and rising somewhere else. They looked cold. Smooth plumes of smoke rose above them, swirling in the disturbed air of the underground cavern and painting ghosts in the torchlight. Shining his flashlight up, Richard could see how the ceiling of the chamber had been blackened by centuries of smoke. Directly above the smoldering demon, the ceiling was so black that it looked like a hole in reality itself. Maybe that's where Leh went, Richard thought. Perhaps that's how it fled into the Memory, even though its body is still here.

  "I'm going to look," Gal said. He moved forward. Richard raised his hand but did not touch his brother. He suddenly felt very much alone down here, less involved, more a product of his own thoughts and experiences than ever before. For a long time he and Gal had been one unit; now he was a man on his own.

  Someone who could make his own choices.

  "Rich, come and see this," Gal said. He only whispered, but the cavern caught his voice, bending it into echoes that stayed there for several seconds.

  Richard walked forward and stood next to his brother. He looked down. The demon was blackened by two millennia of flames, yet its form was still apparent, curled into a fetal position within the pit, head covere
d by its long-fingered hands, legs drawn up, feet curled inward and folded over each other.

  Richard let out a held breath, and dizziness faded away.

  "That's a demon," he said. "We've found a demon."

  "Leh."

  He spoke its name! Richard thought. But nothing happened. The white flames died down on the demon's shoulder and sprang up again on its arm and hip, flickering across its leathery skin like rapidly growing frost.

  "Are you ready?" Gal said.

  No. Not ready. I'm not ready to do this.

  "Rich? Ready? Open the book. Read those words."

  "I'm not sure I want to."

  "That doesn't matter."

  "Whose fires am I putting out if I utter these words?" Richard said. "Leh was put down by Christ himself. Whose flames will I be extinguishing?"

  "If the fire can be extinguished, then surely there's a reason for that?" Gal said.

  Richard did not know. Slowly, without taking his eyes from the demon, he slipped the rucksack from his shoulder and pulled out the Book of Ways. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and cast a spell of course, dizzied with the effort. Then he opened his eyes again and started reading de Lainree's words.

  The flames flickered, touched with a breath for the first time in almost two thousand years.

  * * *

  Richard fell back exhausted, and Gal took over. He used his pocketknife to chip off a portion of the carbonized demon, hissing as he burned himself. He blew on his fingers and stared at them for a few seconds, as if expecting something to sprout from his skin.

  Richard held his breath, then sighed again as his brother continued.

  He knelt close to the firepit — a firepit no longer — and drew the required shapes on the ground with a lump of chalk from his rucksack. He glanced back at Richard, expression unreadable, and then started a quiet chanting. The echoes of his words stumbled over each other.