Ash Ock

by Christopher Hinz

  A vague excitement coursed through Gillian. “And the other massacres?”

  “All the same profile,” said Martha.

  Buff nodded vigorously. “Yeah, now that I think about it, Martha’s correct. Shooter’s a rightie.”

  Gillian’s excitement grew. “You’re sure? I don’t remember any mention of this anywhere.”

  Buff shrugged. “No one thought it was important. But I recall a bunch of witnesses saying the same thing. The killer with the boom-boom gun is right-handed.”

  He’s right-handed and he wears a crescent web, thought Gillian. An energy shield was almost impenetrable at the front and rear, but it was weak at the sides to allow air circulation and to permit the arms to extend weapons. Nevertheless, a man with an active shield sacrificed full range of movement when utilizing regular line-of-motion firearms. No matter how fast Shooter was, he would not be able to wield his thruster as freely with an active web. Consequently, he would always enjoy a distinct combat advantage toward the side where he carried the weapon. If he was marching in a straight line, he would possess greater firefield coverage to his right.

  When the killers were marching toward each other, they were roughly balanced—Shooter, leading with his right, Slasher, able to wield the flash daggers in both directions. Supporting firefields, meshing together to sweep across nearly a 360-degree combat radius. But in each of the massacres, when the killers came within sight of one another, their pattern changed. Shooter continued marching in a straight line. But Slasher always cut left, began moving on a perpendicular course.

  And at that moment, they sacrificed the advantage of supporting firefields. When Slasher cut to the left—Shooter’s right—all of their weapons were concentrated to one side. In terms of firefield coverage, they had shifted from a 360-degree to a 180-degree combat radius. Slasher should cut to the right, not to the left, in order to cover that huge blind spot. But instead, Slasher moved in the one direction that made both of the men—or both tways—more vulnerable to attack from the rear. In this instance, more vulnerable to enemy action from the right side of the hall.

  Gillian knew that this was the uncertainty that had been bothering him since his trek through the Yamaguchi terminal, three days ago. At that time, he must have subconsciously sensed that Shooter was right-handed, and that Slasher’s change of direction created a senseless tactical situation. If the killers were transceiver-linked humans, it was perhaps possible that such an anomaly was simply the result of poor planning that had eventually metamorphosed into a bad habit. But even that seemed remote. And if this were a Paratwa . . .

  A fluidly ambidextrous Paratwa, operating without a crescent web, might adopt such a peculiar attack pattern. But if Martha was correct—and Gillian sensed that she was—Shooter was not ambidextrous. And he did wear a crescent web, which limited his full range of arm motion and attached extra significance to the fact that he was right-handed. No Paratwa that Gillian knew of would ever operate in such an unnatural way.

  Then what are we dealing with here?

  From deep within his body an answer beckoned: a hot rhythm—pure stimuli—originating at the base of his spine, pulsing upward, trying to penetrate the translucent mask separating physical sensation from the cold logic of cerebral consciousness. Like water on a glass window, the hot rhythms condensed, transformed themselves into a wet sheen on the face of awareness. Clarity whispered. And Gillian knew that it was time to open that window, allow the unconscious assimilations to occur.

  He turned to Buff. “I want the two of you to walk me through the room—quickly. I don’t want any distractions. Keep Xornakoff and anyone else away. Tell them that I’m concentrating. Don’t talk to me unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  Buff regarded him curiously for a moment. Then she shrugged. “Lead the way.”

  He marched down the center aisle with the women on either side of him, following a trail of dried blood meandering from the back of the hall to the base of the stage. They passed small groups of E-Tech personnel; men and women studiously examining corpses or parts of corpses: lopped off arms and legs, a head wedged between two chairs, an ear resting on the lap of a lifeless female. Gillian ignored them, tuned out all distractions, allowed concentration to follow its own path, freeing himself of intellectual constructs and assumptions, with one exception:

  Why does Slasher always cut to the left?

  And then the gestalt was upon him, overwhelming the limitations of normal analysis. Distractions disappeared; consciousness was swamped by a raging stream of raw data. The window opened and, for one timeless instant, he perceived the body-ridden assembly hall as a congestion of opposing forces. He saw the movements of the killers and the victims and he began to understand the dynamics of what had occurred. And he felt his head pivoting to the right, scanning the right side of the room—the killers’ blind spot—searching that 180-degree arc with unbridled intensity, searching for the missing fragment of the puzzle.

  But at the preinstant of clarity, when comprehension beckoned from the deeper reaches of his mind, when the wild stream of data was about to be damned by a wall of logic—at that instant, Catharine appeared.

  The familiar bubble of golden light. Her elfin face shimmering within that cloud of brilliance, the wild brown hair dancing across her narrow shoulders, the blue eyes gazing at him . . .

  She stood a mere fifteen feet away, between two upraised seats. So close. Longing overwhelmed him. He stumbled forward, thoughts adrift, unfocused. His arms reached out for her.

  She moved away. Rejection. Her denial restored mental clarity.

  She’s just a memory-shadow, he reminded himself sternly, even while desperately wishing that it were not so. She’s just an apparition—unreal.

  Her lips moved; as in the Honshu terminal, she was trying to speak to him. He squinted, unable to comprehend the silent mouthings. Her face darkened with anxiety and her eyes seemed to cry out to him, begging to be understood. The pain on her face mirrored his own.

  What are you trying to say? he pleaded. What is it that you want me to know?

  Even as Gillian’s beseechments echoed through his own mind, the golden bubble began to shrink in upon itself, dissolving Catharine’s countenance into a pale cloud of lurking energies. But before she vanished completely, before the golden light faded into nothingness, some fragment of her consciousness seemed to thrust itself outward, straining mightily to bridge the vast canyon that kept them apart.

  And in that fragile moment, Catharine’s voice soared through him. Her words pulsed with clarity, as sharp and potent as if she were alive.

  You must bring on the whelm, Gillian. We must be united—forever.

  And then she was gone, the golden light reinternalized—a fading memory. His gestalt collapsed; the data stream became a raging waterfall, plunging back down into his subconscious. He was alone again, his functions delimited to the logic of ordinary intellect. But feelings remained . . .

  A stirring in his guts: part hurt, part anger. The hurt was obvious; the reality that Catharine was no longer living flesh remained a wound that he knew would never completely heal. And the anger . . .

  He felt as if he had been made the victim of some cruel joke. It must be their monarchial consciousness—Empedocles—who wanted them to be together again. It was their Ash Ock, from the lost nether regions of Gillian’s soul, who desired the whelm, and who voiced his desire through Catharine. But even if Gillian could find the proper fulcrum to again create the whelm—that dialectic of unity/duality—he sensed that Empedocles could not be sustained for any length of time.

  Certainly not forever.

  Don’t you understand, he projected bitterly, Catharine is gone. She’s dead.

  There was no response.

  “Are you all right?” a man’s voice whispered.

  Gillian turned his head, saw Buff’s dark face, her solemn eyes pinched with concern. Martha stood a pace away, wearing a frown.

  “Are you all right?” asked I
nspector Xornakoff again.

  Gillian was surprised to find himself hunched over one of the auditorium chairs. He straightened, took a deep breath.

  “I’m fine.”

  The inspector regarded him silently, the heavy jowls camouflaging suspicion.

  “Sometimes,” Gillian lied, “all this—” he spread out his arms, encompassing the array of bloody corpses, “—gets to me.” He allowed a weak smile. “I should know by now not to have such a heavy breakfast. I believe necropsy work is better performed on an empty stomach.”

  Xornakoff nodded in sympathy, but his eyes remained skeptical.

  “Why don’t we get out of here for a while,” suggested Buff. “A walk might help you feel better, help you regain your balance.”

  Martha, playing with one of her blue sapphires, agreed.

  O}o{O

  —from The Rigors, by Meridian

  Once, when my master Theophrastus had completed a particularly challenging research effort and allowed that he was in the mood for open discourse, I asked him to speculate on a puzzling facet of Ash Ock existence.

  What brought about the great division among the Royal Caste? Why did these five super-Paratwa, created to function as a unified group—like a quintet of exquisitely trained singers—fail to reach this ideal?

  My master settled his tways into the invisible web of a zephyr seat—just one of the numerous self-inventions that littered his private chamber—and leaned back, his somber faces lost in thought. The zephyr’s powerful airjet streams, rising from the floor to suspend his collocating bodies, whined gently; automatically adjusting to micromovements. But other than the lilting melodies from these invisible geysers, suspending his tways on an unseen fountain of bridled air, the chamber remained cloaked in silence.

  Theophrastus finally replied, speaking through the tway whose public name was Port. Naturally, no one knew the real designations of his Ash Ock tways—the secret names. But somehow, Port and Starboard had always served to delineate his stature and define his curious humor.

  “Imperfections, Meridian. The Royal Caste was a flawed crystal from the outset, a conglomerate of entities too unique to ever truly function as a unit.”

  I permitted both my tways to smile. “Imperfections within the child suggest imperfections within the mother.”

  “True, of course. But that conclusion, Meridian, I would be wary of quoting too freely. The Ash Joella have sharp ears.”

  I acknowledged Theophrastus’s percipience. This newest breed of Paratwa—the Ash Joella—when not involved in their primary duties of shepherding mature Os/Ka/Loq plant life, tended to wander through the Biodyssey, overhearing all manner of conversation. Some assumed that such Ash Joella attentiveness provided diatribes for Sappho’s ears.

  “Nevertheless,” I continued, “my root question remains unanswered. Granted the Ash Ock were, as you say, ‘a flawed crystal,’ they also collectively possessed the ability to grow, to learn, to correct that flawed structure.”

  “In theory, perhaps,” conceded Theophrastus. “But in practice, very real differences existed among us. Codrus, for example, simply lacked the intellectual fortitude to make the great leap of understanding into the larger sphere of perception. As Sappho has frequently suggested, Codrus was simply too planetbound in his thought to ever truly comprehend the second coming. It was not merely his financial skills that made him the perfect choice to leave behind in the Colonies.”

  I could not help but agree with Theophrastus in this regard. Ultimately, it was probably fortuitous that Codrus had perished during the Gillian/Reemul debacle. The Codrus that I remembered from the days of the pre-Apocalypse would have been shocked by the true magnitude of the second coming.

  “But a lack of intellectual fortitude does not account for Aristotle,” I pointed out.

  “Correct. Aristotle was an intellect of rare power.” Theophrastus paused. “Obsessions, Meridian—obsessions also account for the imperfections within the crystal. I, for example, am quite obsessed. The research I engage in, the inventions I produce—even if it were not Sappho’s will, I would still spend every spare moment in the laboratories.

  “But my obsession with the purity of science can flourish, in one form or another, within a wide spectrum of political systems, chiefly because it can remain apart from those systems. Aristotle’s obsession—with the political process itself, with the interaction of disparate, emotion-driven entities—did not grant him such freedom. He began to involve himself too closely in the very processes he was studying.”

  “The dangers of emotional entanglement,” I mused. “They ultimately brought about his downfall. But what about the fifth Ash Ock?

  My master’s faces melted into sly grins. “Ahh, Meridian. We now begin to approach your true target. It is not the overall failure of the Royal Caste that fascinates you. The imperfection of the whole is merely a path to lead you to the imperfection of the one. Your own emotional involvement drives this discussion.”

  I laughed. As always, Theophrastus was able to cut to the heart of the matter. “You’re right,” I admitted. “Ever since we learned that a tway of Empedocles still lives, I have found my thoughts returning to bygone days.”

  For a time, my master regarded me with calm gazes. Then Port broke into a smile while Starboard’s face assumed a dark scowl. Theophrastus had split into his separate tways.

  “Gillian survives,” said Port.

  “And so does Empedocles,” added Starboard, his voice grim. “The consciousness of an Ash Ock monarch can perish only when both tways are killed.”

  “But although tway and monarch are still alive,” continued Port, “their days are numbered.”

  Starboard shook his head sadly. “Arrhythmia of the whelm.”

  “Sappho says that there is a way to save him,” I replied carefully.

  “Yes,” admitted Port. “There is a way”

  “But Gillian/Empedocles remains a traitor,” uttered Starboard. “The Ash Ock will not rescue him. He will be allowed to perish.”

  “The arrhythmia of the whelm,” I whispered, feeling a sense of dread at the mere thought of that unique Ash Ock affliction.

  “A fitting end,” said Starboard.

  O}o{O

  “Are you still a child of the Spirit of Gaia?” inquired Lester Mon Dama.

  Susan, standing with him just inside the entrance to the tiny chapel, shook her head. “I gave up the practice . . . a long time ago.” She was not about to lie to this man, certainly not if she expected his assistance.

  The bearded priest removed his robe, and hung the garment on a hook beside the hand-carved wooden door. Underneath, he wore casual attire: a white cotton shirt and baggy beige trousers. Not very stylish, Susan thought. But then true believers did not have to be.

  Smiling, Lester Mon Dama rammed the door’s thick mechanical bolt into place. “The Reformed Church of the Trust tries hard to live up to its name, Susan. But unfortunately, Southern Irrya still awaits the blessings of neighborhood rejuvenation. It is best to keep the locks secured.”

  She nodded, feeling awkward now that she was actually here, now that she was ready to spill her guts and request help from a man who was almost a total stranger.

  He led her toward the front of the chapel, past the hanging curtain of thin misk hoses upon which worshippers suckled during formal ceremonies. Misk was the Church’s holy sacrament—a strange, milky-white liquid, which once had been distilled from fault chemicals created on Earth during the original Church’s burial ceremonies. But with the cessation of Earth entombments, the Church’s misk storehouses gradually had been depleted. Susan recalled reading somewhere that this new variation of misk was being manufactured and processed in low Earth orbit.

  She followed him through a side door, down a dank and narrow hallway, and into an office. A scarred oval desk with embedded monitors, four aging chairs, and disorderly stacks of boxes had been crammed into the tiny space. Walls were peppered with antique telephone directory covers,
all individually sealed in translucent preservation envelopes. Most of the faded yellow covers were labeled: BELL OF PENNSYLVANIA, SOUTHWESTERN BELL, NEW ENGLAND BELL. Among the pre-Apocalyptics, Bell must have been a very powerful man to control such a vast communications empire.

  “I’ve a weakness for twentieth-century telephonic materials,” the priest admitted. “I’ve been collecting this sort of thing since I was a boy.”

  He motioned Susan to a chair, then sat down across from her. “And I do apologize for the furnishings. Unfortunately, my parish is not among the larger ones. And it is no secret that our Church as a whole grows poorer with each passing year.”

  Poorer since the time of the Great Trauma, Susan mused. Back around the turn of the century, before the original Church of the Trust had been betrayed by the Ash Ock Codrus, the religious order had wielded great power and influence throughout the Colonies.

  “I must say, Susan, that I was quite surprised to receive your call the other day. I’m sorry I couldn’t see you sooner, but the Church can, at times, be a demanding institution.” He ran a hand through his long straight hair. There were speckles of gray there, she noticed. Lester Mon Dama was no longer the young man she remembered from fifteen years ago.

  “You say that you’re in some kind of trouble . . . something that you can’t go to the authorities with?”

  She nodded rapidly, feeling more stupid by the minute. But she did need help, and she needed it right away. Besides that, she had to talk to someone about the events of the past week.

  She blurted out the whole story: the Honshu massacre, the feeling that she somehow knew the assassin, the E-Tech Security men trying to kill her, and their own murders later that same evening. She told Lester of Aunt Inez’s betrayal. And at last, she told him of her persistent feeling that the killer still wanted her dead.