Muggles Bereaved

by Vernon C Moyse

  The Harbourmaster had seen them all. He was not equipped to make value judgements, merely to serve. And damaging a portal was quite beyond human capability, a building technology that should be investigated by those who build public lavatories with so much silly porcelain. A totally indestructible lavatory is a possibility but the manufacturers care more about profit from repair and replacement. Portals were however, made by a real not-for-profit entity and not a worldly corporation. Their construction was wrongly attributed to The Quintessence, but they were in fact the legacy of a race of galactic travellers long since dead. They were to the Universe what The Great Wall was to China.

  “How may I help you,” said the Harbourmaster, smiling affably.

  Jim who had seen many films with heroes crying, ‘follow that cab!’, said, “where did the last user of this portal go?”

  “Unless you have a police flash code...” began the Harbourmaster..

  Louis gave it, “Eisenhower,” he said.

  “The entity who used this portal did not give me any directions, but I know that he went to the portal in St Louis at the Valhalla cemetery. We get a lot of cemetery hoppers, admirers of statuary for the most part. Some even ask for portals by name of the edifice, Lenin’s mausoleum, for instance.”

  “Fold us to Valhalla, St Louis,” said Louis.

  “There will be some delay on that,” said the Harbourmaster apologetically, “a local earthquake has shifted some soil and water into the spatial position occupied by the portal. We see this quite a lot in the Pacific ring countries, especially Japan. But Japanese portals are housed in paper and wood structures and can be repaired in minutes.”

  The collective groan saddened the Harbourmaster. That is to say that it caused a faint glow in a virtual empathy chip associated with the avatar’s functions;

  “Oh dear, he said, “That much of a hurry! Well the latest information suggests that you have an hour to wait. Maintenance are very fast these days. Especially in japan where earthquake drill rituals do slow first responders down. But of course, this is the United States and there are, ahem, Environmental and Health and Safety considerations. I believe they are currently creating a negative atmospheric pressure around the gateway to eliminate asbestos risk.”

  “We are not in bloody Japan,” oozed out of Jim’s mouth, “and neither asbestos nor any kind of insulation is needed by the celestial builder of portals.” He might not be anxious to engage The Needful One in battle but he was impatient at the best of times. And the best of times, this was not.

  “I agree with you,” said the Harbourmaster. His empathy chip provoked him into a Scrooge like expression, ‘An intelligent boy! A remarkable boy!”

  While they waited, they pondered something imponderable. It was what doomed human beings do. If The Needful One was that entity hitherto called the Fallen One, a Son of God, and if God had permitted that angel to have hegemony over the world, what right had they to block his actions? Lim thought that they had every right since the deal struck by God was that the Devil should have hegemony but that he would fail to be able to bring humanity to a knowledge of God by his methods. And his failure would be the result of opposition by God’s people. But Tracy opined that actually stopping the Devil from using force to achieve his aims was tantamount to the Companions rigging the game in God’s favour. All this discussion was irrelevant and pointless since it referred to a legend which had no reality. But, curiously, they carried on with the debate.

  “Well,” said Lim, “that is the very point. We as members of humanity, are not just failing to be persuaded by brutality, we are standing against it and causing Satan to fail. As God predicted.”

  “He hasn’t failed yet,” said Jim, “or would you prefer that I said ‘she’ hasn’t failed yet, Tracy.”

  “We should have service to St Louis in 20 minutes,” said the Harbourmaster.

  “I thought you only appeared when the portals are activated,” said Jim.

  “Well, you haven’t experienced many portal delays then, have you. Your feedback is useful and will delight my operators,” the Harbourmaster shifted and shuffled his feet in what might have been a dance. All he needed to do was to land with one foot forward and an outstretched arm to the ‘der, dum’ sound of timpani. He did nothing of the kind of course.

  When the portal came back on line they folded in and folded out in St Louis, slightly nauseous from the process of dissociation into energy and reassembly in a contaminated portal. They were shocked by the mud and slimy slop in the portal gateway, but they were at least in the right place. They could hear the shouts of adulation and applause from above the mausoleum where The Needful One was again exhorting a full scale assault on the Godless Chinese and Russians. It sounded like a repeat of the speech delivered in North Hollywood, and Lim adjudged it to be towards the end of the monologue.

  “If he is repeating the Hollywood performance, he, ok she, will finish soon and move on to the next venue,” said Lim.

  “I can’t believe he is going to visit every portal on Rowling,” said Jim, “a devil would have better means than that.”

  “Oh he has,” said Louis, “these speeches are going out on TV and radio every time, everywhere and in every appropriate language. The personal appearances must be for some other reason.”

  At this point, The Needful One appeared on the stair ahead of them. He paused and stretched his arms wide, then let them fall beside his body as if helpless to resist. It thought to move into a gaseous phase just to tease his would be assailants, but waited expectantly. Should it create a vacuum bubble and enjoy watching them struggle for breath before filling the bubble with molten lead a cupful at a time? It was so lost in its enjoyable and forbidden fantasies, that it did not see Jim moving to one side. An instant later with a soundless fart, Jim cast his silken cloak towards the demon. The Needful One watched the cloak coming and saw it drift down in slow motion. The cloak twirled beautifully in the air like a gossamer creation the colour of of shot silk and mother of pearl. Its beauty was distracting. Was this an acolyte’s gift? An insignia or benefice from a worshipper?

  The cloak settled snuggly over the standing avatar with all his powers and fell to the floor around him. In that instant, Jim began drawing back the cloak, upending the avatar who first shapeshifted into a spiky creation like a porcupine, then within the snare went gaseous. It boiled and seethed inside the silicene cloak and then settled, stilled and baleful in a reddening glow. The closed end of the trap was firmly attached to Jim.

  “Now what do I do?” moaned Jim

  “You hang on for the moment,” said Lim, “ can you detach the cloak and let it roll about free but closed?”

  “I wish I knew how,” said Jim, miserably.

  “Well we can’t stay here,” said Louis, “the acolytes of The Needful One will be waiting for him to reappear. We’ll need to go through the portal. Somewhere like the Pentagon or a Defence establishment. Maybe back to Sculthorpe.”

  “Look,” said Lim, “let’s go back to Sculthorpe as a first step. We may have to move around to lose the discipleship who are getting a bit restive.” The discipleship, as Lim called them, were calling “Master, Master,” in ever increasing agitation.

  “Right,” said Louis, “Evacuate. You first Jim.”

  Jim went to the portal and announced his destination to the Harbourmaster. He was surprised to find that intercontinental transport had just come online, perhaps to meet the needs of The Needful One. Then Jim folded into the portal with a sizzling sound. The cloaked demon, now enclosed in a perfect ball of silicene, stayed behind. Jim had found one way of detaching a cloak from his person. A few moments later, a puzzled Jim folded back out of the portal.

  “Sorry,” he said, “ I honestly didn’t let go of the cloak, really I didn’t”.

  “No worries,” said Louis, “but we will have to do a helivac with a bigger chopper and take His Nibs with us. I’ll call up a Seals swat team and they’ll handle it almost as well as the SAS. Almost.”<
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  Several swat teams were already on standby in the area, part of a number of plans to take out The Needful One, plans that involved great destruction, even, as a last resort, the use of a neutron bomb. They were greatly relieved to hear of the alternative means of capture and swung four helicopters down to form a protective cordon round the mausoleum. Some of the demon’s disciple’s opened fire but the heavily armoured swat team took them down by helicopter based sniper fire.

  Soon, the Seals clattered down into the mausoleum moving their weapons side to side in purposeful sweeps. Louis and his American agent held up their ID’s and disabused the Seals of the notion that Lim, Jim and Tracy were just civilian hostages.

  “These are the folk who trapped The Needful One,” explained Louis, a fact confirmed by his American agent. The latter had a greater reservoir of trust among the American Seals.

  “We need to get out of here and to take the captive with us,” said Louis, indicating the silicene ball floating and undulating with the gases within. The gases subsided and the tall figure of the Prophet of Darkness reformed within the silken cage. The silicene cloak collapsed around him. He was seized by the Navy Seals and bundled away up the stairs, Louis, his agent and our three heroes following.

  “This is just too easy,” opined Jim.

  “You really are a worry-gut,” said Tracy, “you should be proud as punch. Your capture went without a hitch and you lassoed that beast as expertly as any cowboy!”

  “But what about the cloak,” said Jim, “what if it is made out of an essential bit of me? Clearly its not the greasy hairball that first emerged, but it must have taken something out of me. And I didn’t fart at all, or if I did it was one of those creepy silent ones you girls do.”

  “When we figure out how to finish off The Needful One, you can have your cloak back,” said Louis.

  “More boy’s talk,” said Tracy disdainfully, “if you follow the biblical storyline, how can you “finish off” a Son of The Quintessence given dominion over worlds?”

  And the boys did what they had done for centuries, they ignored the wise advice of women.

  Clattering up the steps after the Navy Seals, they emerged into the raging downdraft of helicopters and a fair amount of sniper fire. They were bundled under the cover of a sort of tortoise shell of Kevlar-graphene and into what resembled an armoured diving bell. Then the whole assembly was winched up and swung away beneath a heavy lift chopper. The scary transfer from armoured container was accomplished at about 2000 feet.

  “We’ll fly low and slow,” said the loadmaster when he had bullied the Seals whom he called ‘dopes-on-a-rope’ into ‘nut-to-butt’ formation. “Now the transfer has been successful we will descend to tree-top height. Gives insurgents only a quick glimpse and defeats any targetting.”

  “Just in case random fire brings the chopper down, the doors stay open. So if it happens, bail your butts out fast or you’ll be toasty marsh mallows. He looked at the Prophet of Darkness still standing draped in silicene, “You in the fart sack, sit down.” He was ignored.

  “fart sack,” said Jim, “how did he know...”

  “In US military parlance a fart sack is a sleeping bag or flying suit,” said Louis, “he doesn’t know about the niceties of your production processes. Just as well because the yanks love nick-names. Fruit-loops would just be the nice version of your moniker.”

  The flight was bumpy and hair-raising as tree tops flashed by on a level with the doors and some branches and leaves even whipped in through the openings. But it was a short journey and the aircraft landed in a circle of military vehicles on a school playing field.

  “Circled the wagons?” quipped Jim, “expecting indians?” he asked innocently, quite oblivious to the sensitivities and titles of the “First Americans” among the Navy seals.

  With the helicopter rotors still swirling overhead, they dropped to the ground and, half bending as fans of Die Hard tend to do, ran to a beckoning Major. He directed them and their prisoner into a spacious armoured personnel carrier which was sealed and rumbled off.

  “It is a short journey,” said the Major, “we are going into an underground bunker that was built during the Cuban crisis. We have a local command centre there and cells for prisoners. But we have nothing like this guy behind bars.”

  “There is nothing like this guy,” said Louis. He tended to be the spokesperson when in military company, having the dress and demeanour of a military man himself, “this guy could be described as the Alpha and Omega of all the mayhem around the world. His appearance is misleading. He is a shapeshifter and is unlikely to be a he, she or it, anyway. More like to be an essence or a power. But not in a good way. Whatever shape he adopts, he really needs watching.”

  The shapeshifter obligingly turned into the form of a Bengal tiger and so alarmed Jim that he inadvertently produced another silicene cloak which covered The Needful One with a second layer of silken shroud. This one Jim drew back into himself. The tiger settled down, one front paw draped over the other. It preferred the less misty view of the world.

  “You should have left that on,” said Tracy, “the opaque-ing of that image was very welcome indeed. In fact, you should cover it with several cloaking layers. You don’t suppose he was the tiger at Bertram Mills?”

  “Unlikely,” said Lim, “or we would be a pile of bones with reddish gobbets of flesh still adhering to the joints. And you are anthropomorphing again in a wickedly male way!”

  “You Brits,” said the Major.

  Jim played his favourite game, which was teasing; “and you Americans welcomed us at Plymouth Rock disgracefully under-dressed in nothing but a few Turkey feathers. Then, when you got a bit more established and wore clothes imported from Angle-land you kicked our butts out on Independence Day. Explains Thanksgiving and July 4th in a nutshell.”

  “How old are you?” asked the Major.

  Jim thought it best not to reply. In his experience the next line would be “do you want to live to be age-plus-one-year”.

  The overladen chopper flew on.

  Chapter Fifteen – The Cat is Out of The Bag

  In the damp, dark world of a cold war silo and its underground bunkers, dormitories and tunnels, the Needful One felt nothing like ‘being at home’, ‘being in danger’ or ‘being beyond release’. He did not feel. His shape stood watchfully, because standing was no stress at all to a shapeshifter. Stand, lie, be forced into a box, be bricked up in a wall, be buried in concrete. Nothing mattered, or anti-mattered. And ‘watchfulness’ was not an attribute of the evil that was his darkness. He had no feelings, nothing approaching sorrow, despair or regret. He was a force that just existed and would ever exist. Release was likely, simply because people, with their humanity were easily affected by the dark power. And release meant freedom to go to work again, perpetrating the darkness. The silicene snare might be strong and inconvenient, but even those words were not appropriate. What was inconvenient about being confined to one place for a millennium or for a trillion years. That was the destiny of matter, whether dark matter or not. It was matter, it was energy, it happily alternated between those states. But there I go again, assuming ‘happiness’ to be a condition that The Needful One ever experienced. His characteristic was more like a spiritual acid, an aqua regia of the soul.

  The shapeshifter was placed in a cell, where it would meet the expectations of its captors. In the shape of the Prophet Jesus Christ, it could fall to its knees and beg pitiably for water or food. But even if a Catholic rota jailer felt a sense of empathy, food or water slipped into the cell just lay outside the silicene shroud and could not be touched. And no jailer knew how to lift off the shroud. It was not like undoing a prisoner’s handcuffs to let him eat or drink or defaecate. Not that The Needful One had any such bodily functions. But the shapeshifter had one facility that its captors could not remove. It could communicate through the silicene shroud. It could issue calls to its disciples, coldly begging for their assistance and letting them know wher
e it was located by seizing control of every satellite navigation system in every car. In this it did not discriminate. The vehicles of the military showed the same fixed location data; always centred on the entrance to the silo. And this was the nature of dark matter, it seeped into any ‘good’ system and created havoc.

  As disciples congregated, the military ushered them away. But the mobs became more and more insistent and willing to use whatever weapons they carried. The assaults became so serious that the commanding officer withdrew his men into the silo, leaving the mobs to hack at the silo doors with axes and saws and eventually with thermic lances and diamond drills. They used explosives and rammed the doors with tracked vehicles. All to no avail. The doors were made to be impervious to such assaults. But the General knew that he would need to call for material support at some stage if he and his men were not to starve or die of thirst. A sensible man, he had not called in armoured units for fear of causing massive casualties among the deranged mobs outside. But he knew that he would have to do so soon. Units equipped with Somniac nerve gas canisters were already nearby, but they could not act until ambulance services were ready to respond to the likely number of people gassed and displaying adverse responses.