Powers

by James A. Burton

  He was left with the body, pounds and pounds of meat, dark green scales on top and silver on the bottom, dark stripes the length of the body, spiny fins. It reminded him that he didn’t know this world. A pike, maybe? With those teeth? But heavier and deeper-bodied than any pike he’d ever seen, and the nose had curved down to meet the mouth. More like a bass.

  Food. To hell with Carolus Linnaeus. It’s food, and anything that’s food attracts other feeders in this world. How long until we attract the fireflies?

  He gutted it, skinned it rather than wasting time trying to scale it, cut two heavy filets of meat free of the bones and diced them small for quicker cooking and wrapped them in a plastic bag, tossing everything left over into the water. Double splashes again. He hoped that whatever lurked out there wasn’t amphibious, like a crocodile. Then he washed down the moss and rocks where he’d worked, washed his knife, his hands, his boots—didn’t want to leave any food-smell, blood-smell, behind.

  He might revere bears, but didn’t want to invite one into his camp.

  Then he untangled and coiled the fishing line on a thin slat he’d cut from a driftwood plank. Set the hook in the wood, stowed it in a pocket—he might need it again. He fumbled and stumbled back through the wet shadowy brush and trees to their camp, such as it was. Faint green light glowed through the mottled camouflage of Mel’s tent, a small camping nightlight he’d left on so she could tell where she was if she woke up lucid. It had been a coin-toss, risk either way—attract animals or humans, or have her panic in the night.

  If she had the strength to panic.

  “Hani? Hani?”

  Okay, he could hear whatever she was babbling now. Which also proved that she was still alive. He hadn’t decided yet whether that was a good thing. Risk either way.

  “HANI?”

  What or who was a Hani? That wasn’t a word or a name he recognized. He dumped the fish chunks in the larger pot with some chopped-up cattail roots and wild onions and garlic he’d gathered and cleaned and already part-way cooked while he still had light. Fish stew. But before he started up the stove—complicated dance in the wind and rain and he’d better watch it for a while until the cooking settled down—he thought he’d better check on his patient.

  Flashlight on, not shining full on the tent but bright and moving, he didn’t want to startle her. At least three guns in that tent . . .

  “Mel? Lieutenant? Goddess?” Cover all the bases. “It’s Albert.”

  Silence.

  It continued long enough, he was debating whether he dared open the zipper. He did not want to startle her. She was the kind of person who, if you startled her, you could end up hurt.

  “Hani’s dead.” Her voice came across almost dead, itself. But at least rational.

  He wrestled with the zippers, two of them, storm flap and then insect netting, and didn’t get shot even though the flashlight threw his shadow ahead of him. Maybe she was waiting for a clear target, couldn’t tell which way his shadow offset from his body.

  She looked like hell, green wan light reflected off the camouflage tent not helping. Hair soaked with sweat and tangled. Eyes hollow over hollow cheeks. Hands almost skeletal plucking at the Mylar rescue blanket he’d spread over her, but not bothering to pull it up to cover her soaked underwear. She’d thrown off the coveralls again—too hot in the fever.

  “Hani’s dead.”

  Even so, it looked like she was home. She focused on him. She appeared to know who he was, where she was.

  “Who was Hani?”

  “A man. He made the Kali. Centuries ago.”

  Oh, hell. What did the kids say, these days? Been there, done that? “I quit having human lovers. They die. Every damn time, they die.”

  Mel shook her head. “He didn’t die. I killed him. There was a woman . . . ”

  “Thou shalt have no other gods before me . . . ” Albert couldn’t help himself, the words just slipped out. Jealous gods. Everywhere, the jealous gods.

  She managed enough strength for a glare, looked around as if searching for one of the guns. The shotgun lay right next to her . . .

  “No. She was a slave. He beat and raped her. Strangled her as he raped her. I killed him. He’d just finished the statue. We’d—” She buried her face in her hands.

  It’s not as simple as it looks. It’s never as simple as it looks. You’d think you’d learn that, after a few centuries.

  Albert started to ask her why her winds hadn’t warned her, and then didn’t. People, even gods, get stupid when sex enters the picture. He knew he had.

  And she kept the statue. She set it right in front of her Great Wheel, part of her meditations. Life is struggle, life is pain, life is illusion. Life is death. Endless. Life is a wheel, ever turning and ever coming up again to repeat. He flinched away from the image.

  “I’ve caught a fish. I’ll be cooking it with some wild vegetables. Should be done in half an hour or so. Do you think you’ll be able to eat any?”

  She looked up. “You haven’t left. You know what I am, and you’re still here. Why haven’t you left?”

  Good question. “Fish stew, in about half an hour. Think about it.”

  He zipped the screen and the storm flap closed, leaving her to whatever he was leaving her to.

  Albert ducked back under the plastic sheet he’d rigged for some minimal shelter against the wind and rain. The pot felt dead cold, of course, more than twelve hours since he’d boiled the roots with salt from the pack and a few herbs he’d found along the creek. Not what he’d call an elegant stew, but hunger provides a reliable sauce.

  The tiny gas stove didn’t have a pump—preheat the tank enough to force gas into the burner, he’d puzzled that out by the scorching on the bottom, then shut the valve and ignite the puddle of gas around the burner stem. Open the valve again just before the flames around the burner guttered out. Do it right, you got a jet of vapor and then a roaring blue flame. Do it wrong, you got liquid gas and went through the steps again.

  He did it right. He’d always been good at studying a machine and figuring out how it worked.

  This time he could hear the roar, just inferred on the previous run. Setting the pot back on the burner took another delicate touch, really too big and heavy a pot for the small stove, but he got it balanced and solid enough. Cautious, he set a couple of rocks where they would block wind and keep the pot from tipping over if it shifted. He sat back, watched, and waited for the first wisps of steam. Once the lid was bouncing over a strong boil, he cut back the heat, another temperamental thing, until he had a decent simmer.

  Hunger sauce, the steam smelled good. Good enough he was tempted to cut back on the cooking, take at least a sample early. But he wanted that fish to boil long enough to cook clear through—meat and anything living in it. He did not trust sashimi. He’d seen a short pale worm crawl out of a plate of sliced raw fish once, and had to assume this world had its own.

  After all, those mosquitoes had wanted his blood. No reason to think intestinal or muscle worms wouldn’t.

  Cook ’em long enough, they’re just added protein.

  He nodded off again, twelve hours apparently hadn’t been enough sleep, but he heard the tent zippers rasp and snapped awake and the pot hadn’t boiled over or boiled dry or fallen off the stove and spilled. He checked his watch—more than twenty minutes into the half hour he’d said.

  A flashlight beam climbed out of the tent and stood and headed off into the bushes toward the stream. He wondered where she would find anything to shit or piss after the last two days—nothing had gone in that needed to come out again. If she was a human, she’d be dead.

  Back from the stream, stepping into the almost-light of the candle lantern hanging in his kitchen, her hair shone slicked down with fresh water. Face wet. She’d been washing up. She’d left the top of her coveralls unzipped a bit, from washing, and he could see that she’d put on both the leotard and the bulletproof vest. That probably meant she felt she was fit for duty. He assum
ed she’d stowed her arsenal as well.

  I should have warned her about the fish. Either the one I caught, or the bigger one that wanted to eat it. Dip water out of the stream into a pot, don’t splash your hands around like bait. Something might decide to take the invitation . . .

  There’s other things I don’t think we want to talk about, just yet. Find a safe tangent to keep our tongues out of mischief.

  “Helps the soup a lot, but any particular reason I’ve been hauling a pound and a half of kosher salt up hill and down dale for a week? That pack’s heavy enough without it.”

  She blinked and stared at him, then nodded. Fast brain there, even just staggering out of a sickbed. “I don’t like slugs. Plus, a complete circle of pure salt, thick enough to mound and overlapping all the way around, keeps some things out or in. It’s a simple magic, no words or gestures or secret ingredients needed.”

  He looked around at the shadowed pattering rain, steady like it intended to settle in for days. “Wash away before you could get much done, right now. You think it would work on Legion?”

  She cocked her head to one side, considering. Then she smiled, tight lips and narrowed eyes. “I’d like to try. Just as an experiment . . . ”

  He nodded. Just as an experiment. A chance to test his blades.

  “Okay, I’ll keep carrying it.”

  Steam billowed out into the damp air when he lifted the pot lid, steam fragrant with onion and fresh fish and the wild tarragon he’d found. He poked at chunks of meat and they fell apart under his spoon. Cooked through. The peeled cattail roots had softened. He set the pot off the heat and shut down the stove. Wind and rain and the rushing water of the creek filled the silence. That stove made a lot of noise for its size. He hadn’t noticed, before.

  He scooped stew into the deep pot lids and set them on rocks to cool. His stomach growled that it didn’t care if the tongue got scalded.

  A couple of pounds of fish, a couple of pounds of starchy roots, a quart or two of water—they vanished. He could have saved more meat, gathered more cattails, but they wouldn’t have fit in the largest pot. He didn’t want to keep food in the camp. It could attract Things.

  She scraped the last dribbles out of her pot lid and then licked the aluminum. Then started to gather stuff for cleaning. “You cooked, I’ll wash.”

  But she staggered when she stood up, and caught herself against a cedar trunk.

  He took the pots and lids away from her. “No. Get back in the tent. I just hope that all stays inside of you.”

  She blinked and sagged back onto a rock. “Silly Mel, thought she couldn’t get sick. You cook good. Think I’ll marry you rather than kill you.”

  Her voice slurred as much as if she was drunk. Then she twisted herself onto hands and knees and half-crawled back to the tent. He listened to the rasp of the zippers, open and shut again, and shook his head.

  I’m not sure that’s an attractive choice. And I don’t expect you’ll remember it in the morning, anyway.

  He shook his head again and went to scrub the pots in the stream. He kept his hands out of the water as much as possible, and used a shallow eddy of water rather than the main channel. Then, bit by meticulous bit, he packed the stove inside the pot inside the other pot, blew out the candle lantern, and listened to the rushing water and the rain in the darkness. He didn’t hear anything else, which was just what he hoped to hear.

  By the time he crawled into the low narrow tent, she seemed to be sound asleep. He left the dim nightlight glowing.

  XX

  Albert opened his left eye, just a slit, trying to figure out what had wakened him. Faint pre-dawn light shone through the tent, and the nightlight wasn’t glowing. She must have turned it off sometime after he went to sleep, probably going out in the night to pee, and the thought startled him more awake. Apparently his sleeping brain trusted her enough that he didn’t wake up for that.

  Either that, or his subconscious wanted to die . . .

  He didn’t like the image either way.

  Drips still tapped on the tent fabric. He couldn’t tell if they meant continued rain or just the trees dumping their overnight load. He could hear the river and stream out there, water muttering around rocks and logs. A brief stir of wind whispered in the branches, and more drips showered down on the rain fly. Nothing suspicious there.

  But something had changed and his “sentry” noticed it, that part of him that processed the world while the rest of him slept. It had poked him awake.

  He lay there, both eyes open now, ears sorting through some early birdsong and the muttering river and the occasional touch of wind in the trees. And the quiet sigh of Mel’s breathing behind his right ear.

  Mel’s warmth against his back.

  That was it. He hadn’t had someone snuggled up warm against his back while he slept for, well, centuries. Now that he noticed it, he welcomed that gift against the dank night chill. She hadn’t packed any sleeping bags, no room in the backpack. She’d made do with a couple of those flimsy emergency blankets, aluminized plastic.

  She probably hadn’t even woken up to move, just tossed and turned and rolled in her sleep and found some warmth and wanted it. It’s not as if the lumps under the tent made a comfortable bed—rocks and roots, and everything sloping down to the rear left corner, and he hadn’t had time or daylight or energy to find a better site.

  Any port in a storm. Literally.

  He felt her draw a ragged breath and let it out with a sigh and also felt her arm move with it, draped across him, and that told him she was awake. She couldn’t have done that, asleep, without him noticing. His “sentry” would have screamed out loud. She had to have moved slowly, gently, consciously, to avoid waking him.

  Then his brain processed the faint sounds behind him, good thing his ears were still getting better, and the shudder of her breathing clicked with everything else. She was crying. Silently.

  Probably remembering . . . Hani? That was his name, the artist? Or some other deep wound from the past. God, whichever god, knows I have enough of those. Some of which cut too close to this.

  If I let her know I’m awake, I can think of at least twenty-five ways it will turn out bad. Including, if she’s anything like a human female . . .

  The last time he’d tried to comfort a crying woman, they’d ended up doing things that both of them regretted. Not at the time, not the next day, but later. In his case, forever, or so close as to not matter.

  I quit looking for human lovers.

  He lay there for the next eternity, concentrating on slow breathing. Only allowing himself the small movements people make in normal sleep. But his right arm was going numb and his bladder and gut kept nagging, growing more insistent by the minute. That fish stew wanted to be released back into the wild.

  He stirred a bit more, just what a sleeping man would do if a rock was poking in his ribs. Which it was. She jerked her arm back and eased away from him, silent, as far as the tight width of the tent would allow. He could pretend to wake up now. And do something about his bladder.

  Keeping as quiet as possible, as if he was trying to avoid waking her, he unzipped the bug screen and the weather flap and slipped out of the tent and zipped them up again. Out from under the rain fly, he could stand and stretch and wince. His back still ached from falling asleep against that tree.

  Fog, dead calm now, dripping trees, smell of moss and forest and river, but it didn’t seem to be raining anymore. He had enough pre-dawn light to pick his way across the roots and rocks and around wet dark tree trunks to the clump of bushes of the designated toilet. Something boomed wings overhead, sounded like a startled grouse, dumping a fresh shower of drips, and then rattled through the leaves to vanish in the silence. He got back to breathing again, and waited for his pulse to quit pounding in his ears. Maybe being deaf wasn’t such a bad deal, after all.

  If it was a grouse, it probably had teeth. And was carnivorous. This world would have carnivorous grouse. More likely, it had been a v
ulture of some kind, hoping those bodies in the tent would live up to their stink. But he wasn’t inclined to take a bath in the stream or river. Not after what he’d seen trying to steal his dinner.

  When he got back to the tent, she was up and out and had her shotgun stripped down and spread across a bit of plastic sheeting, drying the component parts. To hell with cleaning clothes and bodies and such. The weapon comes first. He remembered that.

  He didn’t remember from where, though.

  She looked up at the sound of his feet, reached into a pocket, and tossed him one small package and then another. “Breakfast.”

  He caught them. Heavy. Unwrapping aluminum foil from the first one gave him a thick granola bar. The second offered a large flat chunk of bittersweet chocolate.

  “Keep some snacks in the coveralls. That’s your half. I get really bitchy on a long shift in the field. Keep the blood sugar up, at least the rest of the squad won’t take a secret ballot on shooting me.”

  How would we tell “really bitchy” from the ordinary day? He ate “breakfast” and copied her, clearing and then field-stripping the pistol and drying it as best he could. He couldn’t remember ever handling this particular model of pistol before, but the metal told him to click this and slide that and push there to tear it down.

  He didn’t find any visible rust. Yet. As far as he knew, she hadn’t packed a cleaning kit for any of the weapons, or gun oil.

  She fitted a couple of shotgun pieces together with a snick of metal. “Don’t count on lunch, there ain’t no more. I’d been saving it for when we got across the river, but . . . things happened.”

  Like, she’d collapsed.

  Then, “How’s the Seal doing? Still holding together?”

  He consulted with the ache in his upper molars. “Weaker. We’re a lot closer. General direction is upstream on the creek.” Which also was the direction of the sandalwood smell that wasn’t a smell. Whatever trick he’d been following, trap set by whoever, they had walked right into it. Had swum into it.

  He thought about it for a moment, running memories back through his head. “I was kind of aiming for that feel, crossing the river. Tried to keep kicking in the right direction.”