Incarnations of Immortality

by Anthony, Piers

  Well. So nice to have decided. Now how did she get back home to Jonah?

  She came again to the inlet. She peered into the calm water. There was the sponge, its faint music continuing.

  "That music brought me here," she said aloud. "It must be part of the Llano. Magic. But how do I return?"

  She tried to remember what she had done before, but could not. She had just, somehow, expanded-and contracted here. Thus she had in a few seconds traveled thousands of kilometers.

  Now she was stuck here, no longer wishing to be alone. The wind was picking up, stirring the waves. Clouds were shaping overhead, possibly considering a storm. She had no shelter, no umbrella, no mackintosh. No food, no company. Except for the sponge.

  She peered down at it. The water was becoming turbulent here as the wind whipped the waves across. "What are you going to do when your water starts frothing?" she asked it. The music of the sponge intensified. It began to grow. "You!" Orb exclaimed. "I emulated that technique from you!"

  The sponge continued to grow, fading as it did so. It became an expanding shadow of itself, projecting a gauzy portion above the water. Soon it enlarged itself out of sight; there was only thinning mist where it had been, and then nothing. "Wait for me!" Orb cried. She concentrated, tuning in on the music, joining it, becoming part of it.

  She expanded. This time the process was much faster than before. In a moment she was towering invisibly over the isle, shooting out in all directions. She grew to encompass the world. Where was Jonah? She reoriented and found him, cruising along over the continent. This time she did not need to put her finger on the target; she merely coalesced about that portion of her that included the big fish. She could solidify at any site within her expanded body; all it required was the melody and her attention.

  Soon she was back inside Jonah. Her targeting was imperfect, and she solidified within the wrong chamber.

  Jezebel and the guitarist were locked in a most passionate embrace. Embarrassed, Orb puffed into whale size, then recoalesced about her own chamber. She was glad that things had worked out so well for that couple, but she had never intended to snoop on them!

  Then, solid, she marveled at what she had done. Just like that, she had enlarged, then contracted, changing her location silently and efficiently.

  She had caught a part of the Llano and traveled across the world!

  But her exploration of the fragments of the Llano was far from complete. Perhaps her most significant progress occurred because of a deceptively irrelevant item.

  The drummer and Lou-Mae were, as they put it, an item; the guitarist had his secret love to sustain him, and that continued to be the way he wanted it. The organist had a girl friend with whom he communed via a tiny magic mirror he had bought for the purpose. She had been a Livin' Sludge fan and had sent her picture, nude to the waist. That had been enough for him; their correspondence had intensified. But she declined his frequent invitations to join the tour; her family needed her on the farm, she said.

  The organist had discussed the matter freely with his companions, Orb and Jezebel included. Was Betsy stringing him along? Was her picture faked up, so that her assets were not as represented? Did she just want a distant association with him for the purpose of notoriety? She seemed like a really nice girl-and that led to another question. What would a nice girl want with a creep like him?

  "Sometimes a nice girl can get to like a creep, if he has redeeming qualities," Lou-Mae said, looking at the drummer.

  "Gee, thanks," the drummer said, smiling. He was poring over fan mail, methodically working his way through a monstrous pile of it. "How about getting a nice girl to answer some of these for me?"

  "I've got my own pile to answer!" Lou-Mae protested. "They never told me that success would bring so many letters!"

  "We need a damned secretary," the guitarist said.

  "Don't look at me!" Jezebel said. "I've got all I can do to keep up with the housework!"

  "An undamned secretary," the guitarist amended himself, smiling.

  "I wonder," Orb mused. "Does Betsy do that sort of work?"

  The organist looked at her. "You mean-?"

  "Why don't you visit her," Jezebel said, "and take Orb along, and sing your girl a song? Then she'll come here."

  The organist nodded. He looked at Orb.

  "If she is as represented ..." Orb agreed. "But I have one question: does she know about the H?"

  "What I thought," the organist said, abashed, "was if she came here to Jonah, there wouldn't be any problem about that. I know she wouldn't go for H, but maybe when we find the Llano that won't matter any more."

  "But if we don't find the Llano, you may have trouble trying to fit into her world."

  "We've got to find the Llano!" he said fervently.

  They happened to be within range of Betsy's farm, though there was an engagement scheduled for the following day. "We'll do it now," Orb said. "Jonah can drop us off, then take the rest of you to the city, where you can set up. Then Jonah can come back for us in plenty of time."

  "Uh, remember what happened last time," Jezebel reminded her. "Sometimes Jonah doesn't come on call."

  "He seems to have reason when he doesn't," Orb replied. "If he strands us this time, it will surely be for the best." But she hoped they would not be stranded; that had been an uncomfortable adventure, despite its net benefit.

  Jonah obligingly deposited the two of them at the farm. Orb had her knapsack with her harp and her carpet, just in case. When they were safely on the ground, the big fish swam away, quickly disappearing.

  The farm did not look healthy. Rows and rows of plants were wilting in the baking heat. There were channels for irrigation, but they were dry.

  They approached the house. A young woman in coveralls was cleaning manure out of stalls. The horses did not look well fed.

  "It's her!" the organist whispered, terrified.

  "Then let's introduce ourselves," Orb said, taking the initiative. She strode forward, and the organist had to follow.

  The girl paused as she spied them coming. She was grimy and sweaty, and her hair was matted against her head, but she had an excellent superstructure. It seemed that her picture had been an honest representation. "What can I do for you?" she inquired tiredly. "You come to buy a horse?"

  "Not exactly," Orb said. "I am Orb, a singer for the touring group called the Livin' Sludge, and this is-"

  "It's you!" Betsy exclaimed, recognizing the organist. "Oh, I'm a sight!"

  "You're beautiful!" he said.

  She paused as if straight-armed. "You think so now?"

  "Sure! I mean, I never knew a girl before who really worked."

  She flushed, flattered. "I'm not really working, I'm just filling in. I need to get out on my own. But-"

  "But not on some freak show," he said.

  "I didn't say that!" she protested.

  "I thought maybe you were some groupie, you know, or maybe just stringing me along. Why'd you send your picture like that?"

  She grimaced. "Well, I guess it was more or less of a joke. Farm life-it's like this. I wanted to seem different. And I really like your music. And when I got to know you-" she shrugged. "I didn't think you were serious. I mean you musicians have a girl in every city, don't you?"

  "No," Orb said. "You're the only one he's kept in contact with. He asked me to help convince you to join us on the tour."

  "But I can't sing or play!" she protested. "All I know is farm life, and not a lot of that."

  "We need a secretary," Orb explained. "It really isn't professional work. It's just that there is a lot of mail coming in, and we'd like to answer it, but with the rehearsals there just isn't time to do it properly. We need someone who can go through it on a full-time basis, and sort it out, and call our attention to the important letters, and-do you type?"

  "Oh, sure, I do that. But-"

  "We could pay you, of course. We have a housekeeper already. But you would have to travel with us."

 
"Now wait!" Betsy said. "I sent that picture, sure, but I'm not that kind of-"

  "We can see that you aren't," Orb said. "This is a legitimate offer. It is true that this man would like to have you with him, but there would be no commitment apart from that of the job."

  Betsy looked at her. "You know, I don't think I'd believe him, even though I like him a lot. But you-you I believe."

  "Then you'll do it?" the organist asked, hardly daring to believe it.

  "I don't know. It would be like a dream come true, to travel with the Livin' Sludge and see the whole country. But with the farm drying up like this, I'd sure feel guilty about walking out."

  "I saw that you had irrigation ditches," Orb said. "But why aren't you running water in them?"

  "What water? They're taking it all for the poison gas plant, drying up our river. If we don't get rain soon, we're finished! Us and every other farm in this area!"

  "For what kind of plant?" Orb asked, appalled.

  "Well, they claim it's a chemical plant. But there was a leak-I mean a news leak, not the other kind, thank God! and we found out it's making poison gas for the next war. And it uses an awful lot of water-something about the refinement process. We got up a petition to close it down, but they went to court and they had the money, and now they've got first call on the water. In this drought-" She shrugged. "Nothing anyone can do. If only it would rain!"

  "A poison gas plant!" the organist exclaimed, horrified. "I wish we could get rid of that!"

  "Oh, enough rain would do it," Betsy said. "Enough to wash right down that channel of theirs and flood the thing out! That would do us some good, too."

  "Rain," Orb said, a farfetched idea coming to her.

  "Bring us a deluge, and I'll go anywhere with you!" Betsy said, laughing somewhat bitterly.

  The organist spread his hands. "I wish we could! But that's not the kind of magic we're into."

  But Orb was tuning in on what she believed to be another fragment of the Llano. She concentrated, seeking it out. It was similar to the melody for traveling, but different, too; it involved expansion, but not of her own body. Contraction, of something else. A summoning and intensification "Say, Ms. Orb, are you all right?" Betsy inquired.

  "Hey, wait!" the organist cautioned her. "I think she's caught a piece of the Llano."

  "The what?"

  "It's the magic song we're all looking for, to get us off the-I mean, it's like nothing you ever heard. It-she got some of it a few months back, and-" He faltered, not wanting to speak of either H or the succubus.

  "Is there something I ought to know about?" Betsy asked alertly. "Just what's going on, on your tour?"

  Orb was concentrating on the elusive melody of summoning, ferreting it out, strengthening it in her mind. But it wasn't enough. "Get-harp," she gasped, not looking at him.

  The organist scrambled to obey. In a moment Orb's harp was in her hands. Still she clung to the tail of the melody, resonating to its enormous power without quite being able to grasp it. "Set me up!" she snapped, unable to spare the attention to do this for herself.

  They took her by the arms and guided her to the ground. They drew up her legs-she felt the organist's hands on her knees, but knew he was not being familiar. The harp came back into her hands.

  "She epileptic?" Betsy asked, worried.

  "No. It's the song. It-"

  "Tell her the truth!" Orb said, as her fingers sought the proper strings. She couldn't start playing until she found the precise place, but she had to be ready.

  "We're into H," the organist said reluctantly. "We want the Llano to get us off it."

  "You're all drug addicts?" Betsy asked, shocked.

  "Not her. Just us, the original Sludge. Once she sang my friend free of it for a while. But she can do it only a little; she needs the Llano to do it all. Meanwhile, Jonah holds it down."

  "Who?"

  The organist went into his answer, but Orb tuned out. She had zeroed in on enough of the melody to amplify! Her fingers moved, playing chords on the harp, and its magic amplified the effect. It was strange music, unlike anything she had played before, but its power manifested increasingly as she grasped it, the feedback providing her more and more of it. It was the melody of the operating system of the Elements! With it she was moving the Element of Air, stirring it-but not enough. All she could generate was a light breeze; the leverage simply wasn't there.

  She needed something else. And she thought she found it, in a distant variation of the theme. The Element of Air related to what she had done when traveling: diffusion and concentration. This other related to heat. In fact, it was the Element of Fire. She pursued this melody, her fingers dancing over the strings of her harp. More quickly than before, she caught it; she was learning how.

  She tuned in on Fire, juxtaposing it with Air, at the site she watched with her mundane eyes. The air was now being heated. But it was already hot; she was doing only what the sun was doing-and doing no good for the parched crops. It was water she needed, not fire.

  She quested for the Element of Water, scenting its melody. More quickly yet, she traced it down, caught hold of it, tuned it in. Using it, she summoned water. She knew the humidity was rising.

  But that was not enough for rain. The air would simply drift onward, retaining its moisture. She needed to make it yield that water, to precipitate it. To do that, she had to cool it-but all she had was heat, not cold. She had the melody of intensification, but not of alleviation. Should she quest for the rest? She risked losing what she had, for her mind was already overflowing with these vast and potent new themes. How long could she retain them?

  No-she could do it with the tools she had acquired! Air-Fire-Water. She concentrated her attention, fixing it on a large region of air. Then she summoned water into it, raising the humidity. Then she summoned the heat, heating the moist air. This increased its capacity to support water. So she summoned more water.

  The process accelerated as she became conversant with the separate themes. She was, indeed, tuning in on the Llano: the great processes of nature, the wind and sun and moisture, that together shaped the weather. She continued the intensification, building up an enormous mass of hot, moist air above the parched fields. Something would soon have to give!

  It did. The heated air was less dense than the cooler air surrounding it, and began to rise. Air swept in from the great geographic torus, displacing the heated mass, squeezing under it. Orb continued to heat the region, so that the incoming air warmed and followed the prior air up.

  The process accelerated further. The outer air swept in with greater authority, and the warm mass rose faster. The original mass expanded as it achieved elevation, and cooled as it did so, bringing itself to the dew point. Precipitation occurred; the air now carried too much water to support, and the water emerged as tiny droplets. The circulation of the air carried positive and negative charges into the cloud, mostly positive above, mostly negative below, and so the droplets became charged in positive and negative layers. These charges built up, until intra-cloud lightning occurred to nullify the disparity. But the process was constant, so more lightning was needed, and more. The lightning, instead of causing the precipitation to ease off, increased it a thousand fold.

  Now Orb could relax. The storm had become self-sufficient, drawing in its own air and water and ionized particles. It would continue until it dropped some of its water on the parched ground.

  Betsy and the organist were staring at the thickening storm. What Orb had done at the start had been invisible to ordinary senses, but now there was no doubting the effect. A phenomenal deluge was in the making.

  Soon the rain came. Quickly Orb put away her harp. The three of them stood there, getting soaked.

  Betsy, her clothing plastered to her body, was nevertheless radiant. "I think our farm is saved," she said and turned to embrace the organist.

  So it was that the last of the Sludge got his woman. But Orb realized that she had stepped into a new dimension of potentia
l. She had used her music and the power of a fragment of the Llano to influence the course of nature itself. She realized that this was just the beginning. If a poorly grasped fragment could do this, what could the fall melody do? Suddenly her reasons for pursuing this song seemed trivial; she might as well have gone naked into the jungle to pursue a tiger.

  NATASHA

  The Sludge continued to tour, and Orb continued to explore the powers of the melodies that had come to her. They rehearsed while traveling in Jonah and discussed her discoveries, for they were all interested. They knew that, if she mastered the Llano, she could do for them permanently what she had done temporarily-abate their addictions to H, abate the curse on Jezebel so that she could be faithful to the one man she cared for, and bring regular rain to Betsy's farm.

  In fact, if she mastered the Llano, she could abolish all addiction and compulsion and vagaries of weather, immensely improving the world wherever she went. They could continue their tour, but in addition to bringing music to the masses, they could bring all manner of other good things. They were dedicated, now, to this aspiration. They realized that only Orb had the capacity to find the Llano, but that her success would benefit them all in both selfish and unselfish ways. They had sought personal gains, but had found a higher mission.

  Orb tried to perfect the powers of the music, but all she had were fragments. She could keep the boys free of H while she was with them, but not when apart from them, unless they were in Jonah. She could keep the intolerable lust of night from Jezebel on a similar basis. There had been a mix-up once, and the succubus had gotten separated from Orb's vicinity for an hour. Jezebel had barely made it to the guitarist in time, abating that hour with such dispatch that there could be no doubt of her demonic drive. He never complained about the episode, but agreed emphatically that they should never allow such an accident to happen again.

  There was better success on the matter of traveling. Orb practiced and in due course was able to make her way to any spot of the globe in seconds, by expanding to world size and contracting swiftly at the new site. The travel was silent, almost unnoticeable to others; she simply faded gradually from view and reappeared when she returned. She visited Luna, who seemed only moderately surprised, and even her old home in Ireland, but her mother had disappeared. That brought her quickly back to Luna; what had happened?