The Obsidian Blade

by Pete Hautman

“Do what?”

  “That ‘yes . . . and no’ thing.”

  Awn laughed. “As I have told you, this is Hopewell. In a sense you are already home.”

  “I want to go back to my Hopewell.”

  “There is no direct route from here to your Hopewell.”

  “I can’t get there from here?”

  “You could return the way you arrived.”

  Tucker thought back to his brief and violent moments atop the pyramid. Even if he could get past the priests, he did not think he would be able to tell which of the five diskos had brought him from Hopewell.

  “That’s the only way?”

  “There are others.”

  “Is any way not dangerous?”

  “No.”

  “So, every one of these things goes to someplace where I might get killed?”

  “I did not say that.”

  “What should I do?” he asked.

  “There is no should.”

  “I can’t just stay here forever.”

  Awn stopped and pointed her walking stick at Tucker’s chest. “You must gather information. When you feel you are ready, you select a disko and leave this place. It is what everyone does, even that man we just saw. You learn and you choose. Choose well, and you may find yourself where you wish to be.”

  “You said the diskos always lead to the same places, but what about when you go back through? Do you always end up where you started?”

  “Reentering a disko will often return you to your approximate geographical point of origin, though not always. If you were to return to the Cydonian Pyramid, you would likely find yourself facing the same priests, who would attempt to kill you again. Or you might arrive somewhat later. Others entering the same disko might be taken to a different time, or even a different place. The diskos are an instrument, like those — what do you call them?” Awn held out her hands and wiggled her fingers.

  “Pianos?” Tucker said.

  “No. The things in your places of worship.”

  “Like in a church? You mean like an organ?”

  “Yes! An organ, with its pipes and stops and bellows and moans. They open and close and change in pitch and volume.”

  “You mean somebody is playing the diskos? Like an instrument?”

  “Yes and no. Once, perhaps, but then not.” She shook her head. “Language is inadequate. They are not played, exactly. Imagine the organ as a collection of willful beasts, pulling in different directions. A closed system containing infinite variations.”

  “I’m sorry I asked,” said Tucker, more confused than before.

  They continued through the bog. Awn pointed out a disko that she said led to two historical events that meant nothing to Tucker — the murder of a Detroit labor organizer named Jimmy Hoffa, and the rupture of the Glen Canyon Dam.

  They climbed a short, steep path onto a piney ridge.

  Tucker said, “How many — I mean, there sure are a lot of diskos here.”

  “Yes.” Awn stopped before another disko. On the ground was the hilt end of a broken sword and a worn leather scabbard. The pine needles were trampled and stained by a large quantity of what appeared to be dried blood.

  “I heard men shouting last night,” Tucker said.

  Awn did not reply.

  “Where does this one go?” he asked.

  “The death of a prophet.”

  As Tucker examined the disko, he noticed something half-buried in the pine duff. Tucker’s heart swelled and pounded as he picked it up. It was the same hand-carved wooden troll he had once wedged into a toy fire truck and catapulted onto the roof of their house.

  “MY DAD CARVED THIS,” TUCKER SAID, HOLDING UP THE troll. “He was here!”

  “Perhaps so.” Awn looked at the broken sword. “Others as well.”

  “So does that mean he went into that thing?” He pointed at the disko. “Or did he come out of it?”

  “I do not know,” said Awn.

  “You said this one goes to ‘the death of a prophet.’ What does that mean?”

  Awn was already walking away. He started after her, then stopped and returned the troll to its place so he could find the disko again. He ran to catch up with her.

  “All your questions will be answered in time,” she said.

  “Yeah, but —”

  “Let us finish our tour. Tonight we will talk more.”

  They walked for more than two hours and visited dozens of diskos. Awn’s slow, steady pace never varied, and she did not seem to tire; Tucker was exhausted both by the walking and by her always bewildering answers to his questions.

  When at last they returned to the cabin, Tucker, wobbly in the legs and dizzy with information, retired to the bedroom and stared at the ceiling, trying to sort things out.

  You learn and you choose, Awn had said. Easy to say. Not so easy to do.

  Tucker thought of the wooden troll. Had his father left it as a signpost? Was it an invitation or a warning? Had he placed the troll there upon entering the disko or after he had emerged from it? And what lay on the other side?

  The death of a prophet, Awn had said.

  The smell of cooking wafted through the cabin. Tucker realized that he was famished. He got up and went into the main room just in time to see Awn leave through the front door. He followed her out onto the porch and stopped dead.

  On the other side of the field, two yellow-robed, hooded figures emerged from the trees. Lah Sept priests. They saw Awn walking toward them and stopped. One of the priests pushed back his hood to reveal a shaved head and a scraggly beard. It was the priest who had stabbed him. Tucker moved back into the cabin and watched them from the shadows, his heart pounding.

  Awn met them in the middle of the field. The head priest was gesturing with his hands and talking loudly in their strange tongue. Awn replied in the same language. Tucker could hardly breathe — was she friends with them?

  The bearded priest became more agitated, raising his voice, while Awn made soothing gestures and spoke quietly.

  The priest abruptly walked past her, coming straight for the cabin. Awn grasped his sleeve. The priest stopped and uttered a sharp command to his companion. The hooded priest pulled a short, black baton from within his robe and jabbed it at Awn’s back. The device made a loud snapping sound. Awn’s body convulsed; she spun and swung her walking stick at the man’s wrist, knocking the weapon from his grasp. She said something to him, then turned away. The priest jumped on her back and threw one arm around her neck. Awn whipped her walking stick up and back, striking him on the head; the priest fell, stunned, to the grass. The bearded priest reached into his robes and came out with a bright-silver object. With a snap of his wrist, the device telescoped into a tube about a yard long. Awn, seeing what the priest held, moved sideways faster than any human should be able to move.

  A ragged, eye-searing jet of energy crackled from the end of the tube, ripping through grass and earth as the priest swung it from right to left, leaving behind a charred, smoking scar. Awn dove beneath the beam, rolled, regained her feet, and ran at the priest, who brought the beam back, this time sweeping it across the old woman’s midsection.

  The sound was that of meat hitting a superheated grill. For a moment, Tucker thought Awn would be okay, that she would shrug it off as she had the discharge from the other priest’s baton, but his hope crumbled in an instant as the two halves of Awn’s body fell to the blackened grass.

  Tucker felt as if he had been cut in half, too — one foot caught in a horrible nightmare, the other mired in an impossible reality. He stepped out the doorway and started toward them, then froze. What could he do?

  The priest retracted his weapon and stood staring down at Awn’s sundered and smoking remains. The second priest, recovering from the blow to his head, climbed to his feet and joined him. For several seconds, the priests stood side by side, their heads bowed. Tucker had the impression that they were praying. As if on cue, both turned their heads and looked toward the cabin, where Tucker st
ood in full view, framed by the doorway.

  For a long, frozen moment, no one moved. The priests started walking, then running toward him, their robes billowing. Tucker felt as if he were stuck in slow time — he could not will himself to move. The head priest triggered his device again, and the door frame shattered inches above Tucker’s head. That was enough to get him moving. He ran down the porch, around the back of the cabin, and toward the trees. As he entered the woods a tree trunk just to his left exploded. Tucker ducked his head and ran. He scrambled up a low ridge and down into a creek bed. The priests were shouting to each other — by their voices, he could tell they were spreading out. He splashed across the creek and ran between two closely spaced diskos and into a cedar swamp, trying to stay on the hummocks, leaping over fallen, rotting logs, ducking under low-hanging vines, a few times breaking through the mossy, boggy soil and plunging his leg into a sinkhole. He reached a rocky outcropping — the end of another piney ridge. He climbed up onto the ridge and stopped, gasping for breath. He could still hear them. A wet, crunching sound came from below; he caught a glimpse of yellow through the trees. Following the far side of the ridge, he kept moving, running, then stopping from time to time to catch his breath and listen. He followed the ridge as it curved to the right.

  After a time — twenty minutes? an hour? — he reached the base of a steep, flat hillside. Only a few stunted trees were growing on the hill; the rest of it was covered with grasses. Tucker stopped to listen again, hearing only the rustling of the wind in the trees and an occasional birdcall.

  He had lost them. For now. But he had lost himself as well. After all the zigging and zagging, he was completely disoriented. Thinking he might be able to see more from higher up, he climbed the steep hillside, using the little trees for handholds. Halfway up, the grass gave way to a giant stairway of waist-high, weathered, mossy stone blocks. The ruins of an ancient building? He climbed until he reached the top, a flat platform paved in lichen-covered stone, littered with leaves and pine needles, and crowded on every side by tree branches. He had hoped to see out over the top of the forest, but the platform was only about fifty feet above the ground.

  Tucker crossed the platform and found another set of giant steps leading down. His heart sped as realization struck. He circled the perimeter of the platform, finding three more steep, crumbling stairways. He was standing upon the ruins of the Cydonian Pyramid, or a very similar structure. He saw no diskos. Hearing a familiar buzzing sound, he looked straight up. Thirty feet above him was a single disko, flickering in the sunlight. Anybody coming out of that one would have a long drop.

  If this was the same pyramid, it had aged thousands — maybe tens of thousands — of years. Over the millennia, it had settled into the earth; half of it was now buried beneath the forest floor.

  And if this forest was, as Awn claimed, the Hopewell of the future, then that meant that the pyramid had been built in his own hometown. That thought sent a chill deep into Tucker’s gut; he climbed down, skidding and sliding bumpily over the eroded steps, needing to put some distance between himself and the place where the stone blade had pierced his heart, and also thinking that this ruin might well attract the interest of the priests. He did not want to meet them on the pyramid again.

  He continued walking, following the deer paths that twisted and coiled through the forest, keeping a close watch for the yellow-robed priests. There had to be someone somewhere. Another cabin. Another friendly old woman. He found a blackberry bush heavy with fruit and ate several handfuls, then discovered a small spring bubbling from a rocky slope and drank deeply; the water was sweet and crisp.

  The sun had dropped below the treetops when he came upon the top half of a disko jutting from a stagnant pool — the disko that Awn had said produced snakes and lizards. He had circled back — Awn’s cabin was only a short distance away. The cabin was a source of food and shelter, but the priests might be waiting for him. He thought for a moment. If the priests were there, he could simply leave and be no worse off than before.

  Retracing his steps from the day before, he reached the edge of the field. He could see the two halves of Awn’s ruined body in the meadow. Tucker concealed himself behind a copse of hazelnut bushes and watched the cabin. For many minutes he saw no signs of activity, but after a time he heard voices. A priest stepped out of the woods about fifty yards from his hiding place and crossed the open area to the cabin, where he was greeted by the bearded priest, who had been waiting inside. Tucker held his breath. Slowly, silently, he backed away from the meadow. As soon as he could no longer see the cabin, he turned to go. He had taken only a few steps when he heard a shout.

  “¡Aquí! ¡Aquí!” The voice came from a few yards away. Tucker saw the yellow robe crashing through the underbrush, heading straight for him. A third priest! He took off running, powered by fear and adrenaline. He lost the priest by circling around the crown of a hill and doubling back, but once again he could tell by their shouts that they had spread out. Tucker made a decision; he cut through a shallow ravine and climbed onto a piney ridge. It had to be here someplace — there!

  The broken sword lay before the disko. In the faint light he could see the dried blood staining the pine needles. The wooden troll still stood guard exactly as Tucker had left it. The voices of the priests were getting louder. Tucker picked up the broken sword. Only a few inches of the blade remained attached to the haft. He cast it aside and edged closer to the surface of the disk. As before, it tugged at his shirt front.

  He heard the snap of a stick breaking, very close. An instant later there came a flash; a bush a few feet away from him crackled and burst into flames.

  Tucker threw himself into the disko.

  The unreliability of the Timesweeps became evident almost immediately upon their conception. The Gnomon Chayhim accused the Boggsians of shabby work or, even worse, sabotage. The Boggsians, for their part, insisted that the devices had been built to specifications.

  “If we build you a hammer and that hammer smashes your thumb, do not blame the hammer maker,” said Netzah Whorsch-Boggs.

  The Gnomon Chayhim pointed out several alarming and paradoxical time loops, such as the “Cat from Nowhere” that accompanied the Lah Sept Pure Girl on her journey from the Cydonian Pyramid to ancient Hopewell and back again. “The cat has no origin and no endpoint,” said Chayhim. “This is unacceptable.”

  “The cat is of no consequence,” declared Whorsch-Boggs.

  “Tell that to the cat,” said Chayhim.

  — E3

  HENRY HALL, PERCHED ON A BARSTOOL AT THE PIGEON Drop Inn in downtown Hopewell, realized that he desperately needed to pee. He descended carefully from his stool — an operation rendered hazardous due to the large number of brandy manhattans he had consumed — and made his way unsteadily toward the restroom at the back of the bar.

  The restroom door was locked. Henry banged on the door.

  “Hold your horses!” the man inside shouted.

  Henry stood swaying as he processed this information. The voice, he concluded, belonged to Big John Swenson. Henry knew Big John, a deliberate, slow-moving man who could turn a bowel movement into a half-hour project.

  Henry did not think he could wait that long.

  Dragging one hand against the wall to keep himself upright, he made his way to the back door and let himself out into the alley. He was surprised to find it dark outside. He had started drinking around lunchtime. He tried to add up how many drinks he had consumed, but his pickled brain refused to cough up an answer. Henry had never been much good at math.

  He was leaning against the side of a Dumpster trying to remember what he was doing in the alley when the sudden slap of running feet on pavement caused him to look up. A bearded, helmeted, sandaled man wearing a short leather skirt and brandishing a stubby sword came racing down the alley. The man ran right past Henry, never slowing down, and disappeared around the side of the building.

  Henry stared after him, blinking, feeling slightly miff
ed that the man had not stopped to chat. Must have been a hallucination. He’d had those before. Oh, well, another brandy manhattan would help sort it out. He had taken one lurching step toward the door when yet another impossibility came rolling, tumbling, or oozing into the alley.

  Henry struggled to put a name to the thing he was seeing. All he could come up with was Frank-’n’-Pork, the 1,109-pound prize hog displayed at last year’s Minnesota State Fair — but this Frank-’n’-Pork was legless, eyeless, and intensely, unrelentingly pink.

  Henry, a third-generation hog farmer who had dealt with pigs of all types, stood his ground. Either this was some new breed of pig or, more likely, he was hallucinating again, in which case there was nothing to fear.

  As it came closer, the Frank-’n’-Pork thing looked less like a hog and more like a large pink garbage bag filled with purposeful Jell-O. It flopped, wobbled, and gushed to a stop directly before Henry. Henry searched for a point of reference on the pulsing pink surface, but his eyes skittered here and there without finding purchase. After a few seconds, he noticed an aperture, no larger than a belly button, near what he took to be the thing’s front end.

  As Henry watched, the aperture expanded. By the time it reached the size of a basketball hoop, Henry could see a shimmering surface within, and he noticed his shirt front billowing out, as if the thing was attempting to inhale him.

  The aperture quickly expanded into a pale, cloudy disk four feet in diameter. The creature — if it was a creature — was visible only as a fleshy pink band circling the edge of the disk.

  By that time, Henry was too scared to care whether it was a hallucination or not. The disk was pulling at him, as if thousands of invisible fingers were tugging at every hair on his body. It wanted him.

  Run! he thought — but his legs wouldn’t move. He felt a trickle of warm pee running down his leg. He had just enough time to think, Oh, yeah, that’s what I came out here for, when, with a popping, slurping, sucking sound, he was devoured.