Coven

by David Barnett

  “Thanks for the input.” Wade checked his watch. Twenty minutes to eternity. Shit.

  “Destiny is calling, Wade. It’s time for you to go.”

  “It’s time for you to go too,” Wade said. “Into the trash compactor.”

  Tom sighed a commendable resignation. “I understand.”

  Wade honestly found it difficult to hold Tom’s head over the open Kenmore compactor. If only in part, this gray smiling severed head was still his friend.

  “Good luck, dude,” Tom’s head bid.

  “‘Bye, Tom.”

  “Wait, wait! Before I go, here’s an old one.”

  Wade rolled his eyes. “I’m about to drop you into a trash compactor and you want to tell jokes?”

  “Just one more, for old times’ sake.”

  “All right.”

  “What did Lincoln say after his five day drunk?”

  “What?” Wade groaned.

  “‘I freed WHO?’”

  Wade dropped the head in the compactor and hit the power button. Tom’s laughter could be heard over the machine’s descending hum. The motor whined. Tom’s skull folded up, crunching. Then the motor cut off.

  What did you do today, son? he could almost hear his father asking. Well, Dad, I got chased by a dead man, I found Dean Saltenstall’s body in a closet, I watched three police officers get killed, I drove a Buick LeSabre over several dozen women, and last but not least, I put Tom McGuire’s head into a trash compactor. Pretty interesting day, don’t you think?

  But not nearly interesting enough, not yet. He stuck Lydia’s .357 in his pants and rechecked his watch.

  Indeed, destiny was calling. It was time to go.

  —

  CHAPTER 32

  Tom’s black pendant, which Lydia had found on the Route, lay in the console. Wade didn’t know what it was, so he left it, and he left the thing that looked like a portable tensor lamp, not knowing what that was either. There was very little he did know just then, except that his life was either about to end or take a dramatic change. He drove the Vette in stoic grace.

  His mind seemed to float, vacant as space, as he entered the sciences center and went up the steps. We’ll be waiting, Besser had told him, yet no one waited in the dim, lamplit office. Preparations had been made, though: Blackout curtains hung over the windows. The only sunlight came in through the open door behind him.

  Then: “Close the door, please, Wade.”

  Wade closed the door. When he turned, Professor Besser stood by the wall, fat as ever and all smiles.

  “Our central extromitter is here, a marvelous invention. You wouldn’t believe the time they save.”

  Wade saw the black dot on the wall, like the one at the shop. Not a dot, he reminded himself. A hole.

  “Say hello to my birds of prey.”

  A suboctave hum filled Wade’s head. The black dot ran down the wall, like a bead of ink, forming a line to the floor…

  …and through that line, one by one, four sisters emerged. The line was a doorway, he realized, to the place he’d seen through the hole in the shop wall. A doorway to the labyrinth.

  The sisters had squeezed through the line, like cutouts pushed through a slit. Yet an instant later they stood in the flesh, black cloaked, hooded. Fresh white faces grinned at him, eight lenses of four pairs of sunglasses reflecting the tiny dot that was Wade’s face.

  The four sisters stood identically, grinning identical grins.

  “We’re taking you home now, Wade,” Besser informed him.

  “You’re not taking shit till you let Lydia go. That’s the deal.”

  “Yes, but one that I’m not prepared to honor. The sisters would catch you before you reached the door.”

  Wade drew the .357 from behind his back. He pointed it at the biggest sister.

  Besser laughed. “You already know that’s futile.”

  Wade fired one bullet. The sister batted it down with her palm.

  “So you see, you can’t shoot them, Wade.”

  Wade turned the gun on Besser. “But I can shoot your fat ass.”

  “If you like.”

  “I like,” Wade said, and fired another.

  The sister beside Besser plucked the 900 feet per second slug out of the air, like catching a thrown pea. She looked at it curiously, then ate it.

  “You can’t hurt them and they won’t let you hurt me.”

  But Wade had one more trick. “You need me, right? For some reason, I’m important to you?”

  “Yes, very,” Besser said.

  The sisters advanced, reaching out with white hands. But then Besser, in a flash of panic, shouted, “Stop!”

  Wade now held the gun to his head, hammer cocked. “Get Lydia out here, or I blow my own head off.”

  Besser jittered, dread in his face. “Wade, please. You can’t—”

  “Sure I can. I don’t give a shit.” It felt good to be the one with the power for a change: “I got a hunch that this Supremate dude wouldn’t be too happy if you brought me in dead.”

  “No,” Besser croaked. “He wouldn’t.’

  “Then bring Lydia out here right now, or you get to watch my brains take a one way flight across the room.”

  Besser backed the women off. Their eager heads listed. “Be calm, Wade,” Besser said. Again, the black dot ran down the wall.

  Lydia unfolded from the line.

  “Wade! You came to rescue me! I don’t believe it!”

  “Neither do I,” he said. “And don’t bother asking me why I’ve got a gun to my head. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then get out of here.”

  “But—”

  “Just shut up and get out!” he shouted. There could be no dramatic goodbyes, no final professions of love, none of that corny shit. “The Vette’s outside. Fill it with gas and don’t stop driving till you get to Alaska.”

  “But what about you?”

  Wade’s mouth twisted. “I have to go with them.” He didn’t want to see her anymore; that just made it worse. “It’s the only way, so just…leave.”

  This would be her goodbye: silent acknowledgment. She looked at him, blinked, then walked out of the office.

  “There,” Besser said. “So what’s it going to be?”

  Wade knew what he meant. There was still one ultimate decision to be made. He heard the Vette start up outside and drive away.

  Somehow, Wade smiled. “I could screw you bad, couldn’t I?”

  “Yes, but what a waste,” Besser said with emphasis. “Why not come and see what we have to offer?”

  The sisters’ faces seemed radiant. They looked like angels.

  Wade dropped the gun.

  Besser opened the extromitter with his pendant. Two sisters took Wade by the hand and led him into the wall, into infinity.

  ««—»»

  “Are you okay?” asked the 7 Eleven cashier.

  Lydia realized how she must look. Uniform in tatters, hair in her face, no gun in her holster. She’d look a lot worse, though, if the holotype in the next hold had had its way with her. Wade had sacrificed himself, for her.

  She bought cigarettes and a six pack of Coke. She sat in the Vette, thinking. During her stay in the labyrinth, she’d overheard enough to know what was going on. She knew what they were, yes, and what they were doing.

  She also knew that they were leaving at midnight tonight, and they were taking Wade with them.

  The UV spotter was still in the Vette, and thank God so was the black pendant she’d found where Wade had wrecked Tom’s car. Winnifred had called it a key, and the extromitters—the dots—were the doors they unlocked.

  A piece of paper was stuck in the visor, a note in Wade’s yuppie scrawl.

  Lydia,

  White, Peerce, and Porker are dead. So is the dean. I still don’t know what any of this is about. Don’t go back to the grove—it’s getting worse by the minute. Leave town right away, Jervis is planting a bomb, but I don’t know wher
e. Just leave town and forget about me. Doesn’t that sound corny?

  Wade

  P.S. —Take good care of the Vette!

  The dolt could’ve at least signed off saying he loved her. Men could be such assholes. So what else was new?

  She didn’t know what to make of this business with the bomb, or all the people Wade said were dead. But none of that mattered. For now she had to work on her plan, and she only had half a day to do it.

  ««—»»

  —WE HAVE WADE NOW. WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED.

  “Great!” Jervis exclaimed, shovel in midstroke. “We did it!”

  —YES, the Supremate said. —AND SOON YOU WILL JOIN ME IN ETERNAL GRACE. BUT TAKE CARE IN YOUR FINAL TASKS, JERVIS. SIGNS AND WONDERS, MY SON. YOU ARE MY SCRIBE.

  Jervis fell to his knees in the dirt. Dead face turned to the sun, he raised his hands in obeisance to his invisible lord.

  —THINK NOT OF THE LIVES OF CATTLE. THEY SERVE AS SACRIFICE TO MY HOLY WILL, A PORTENT TO THIS WORLD THAT I WILL ONE DAY RETURN AS DELIVERER. TODAY SHALL BE A GREAT AND HOLY REMEMBRANCE. I MUST BE REMEMBERED. LIKE A PROMISE IN THE WIND.

  “Yes, my lord!” Jervis cried up.

  —SIGNS AND WONDERS, JERVIS. THE GHOST OF FUTURE TIDINGS.

  “You are my life! My redeemer!”

  —LIKE A PROMISE IN THE WIND.

  The Supremate left his head, and left Jervis shuddering in the graveyard. His lord’s commandment was clear; this old life was fading, racing toward a new wondrous eternal life. Jervis drank Kirins and smoked as he buried the remaining bodies. It was refreshing work, burying the dead. The corpses were part of the promise too, and Jervis the very arm of the ghost of future tidings. He was nearly done now, like an apostle nearing heaven.

  “You lurp lurpfffeeeevii prick ick ick!”

  Jervis looked down. Here was poor Penelope again, clambering out of her hole. She churned upward, flesh the color of spoiled milk, almost out of the grave to the waist. Blessed are the boneless? Jervis thought. He should write his own testament, for hadn’t he, too, returned from the dead? Yeah! Sermon on the Mounds!

  “Gll ff gliv gliv give me back my bah bah bones!” Penelope blubbered. Her face looked curdled. “Glive me black my baby!”

  “Your baby’s dead, funky,” Jervis said.

  “Mlup mlup mlutherfucker ler ler!”

  Jervis flicked ashes on her, impressed. It wasn’t easy being buried alive, and probably harder still to continuously unearth yourself to face your conquerors. Boneless or not, she had guts.

  “Pluh pluh pleeze helup helup help me!”

  “Sure,” Jervis said, and planted his foot in the middle of her amorphous face. He shoved her squealing back into the hole, flabby hands dragging at his pants cuffs. “Down you go,” he said.

  “I’ll lyle lyle kah kah kah—”

  “Shut up and have a drink.” Jervis unzipped and sent a stream of dark dead man’s beer piss into Penelope’s mouth. Soon all she could do was gargle in protest. “There. That should wet your whistle,” he remarked. He refilled the hole again, then packed the mound down flat and hard as a sod pounder with his foot.

  The hot sun drew a haze of death up into the clearing. He glorified in its humid stench and walked back to the Dodge Colt. Everything is beautiful, he mused. Like a promise in the wind.

  —YOU ARE MY SCRIBE, the Supremate fleeted back.

  Jervis swam in the heavenly caress. Yes, he was an apostle nearing the pillars of heaven. An existential proselyte.

  —TODAY SHALL BE A GREAT AND HOLY REMEMBRANCE.

  The black cube grew warm in Jervis’ palm.

  —

  CHAPTER 33

  Wade’s gaze drew ahead of him like an endless ribbon unreeling into a bottomless pit. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

  “Welcome to the labyrinth.”

  The sisters dispersed, leaving Wade alone with Besser in the recepetioncove of pointaccessmain#1. A single black corridor stretched before them. Its end could not be discerned.

  “This place is the box in the grove?”

  “Yes,” Besser replied. “Our master’s sanctuary.”

  “But the box in the grove is no bigger than a coffin.”

  “On the outside, yes. But inside, its verges are more vast than any building on earth. Its actual proximities are incalculable.”

  “That’s impossible,” Wade scoffed.

  “No, it’s physics. An applied system of the manipulation of physical dimension. All things are malleable, Wade.” Besser loped ahead. “Come along. I’ll show you what destiny looks like.”

  Wade followed him through corridors, through blackness.

  Besser inserted his pendant into one of the dots, above which a sign seemed to glow SUSTENANCEPROCESSING. Wade saw it, yet he didn’t.

  “We call them mindsigns. A servopathic transponder identifies the designation to the reader. A Russian person, for instance, would see it in Russian.”

  Besser opened the extromitter. Dark, pulsing green light extended through a channelwork of odd machinery, chutes and lifters, and something like a conveyor belt. Wade saw the backs of several naked sisters bent over in their tasks. Intermittently the silence was ruptured by a sudden screech which reminded Wade of tree branches being tossed into a wood pulper. Each screech sent a shiver up his spine. He peered deeper into the channel and saw that the conveyor was carrying white, naked bodies.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.

  Besser seemed dismayed. “It’s waste processing. The Supremate is merely recycling material that’s outlasted its usefulness.”

  “Material!” Wade objected. “Those are people!”

  “Well, they’re sisters, yes. But no longer serviceable.”

  Wade squinted closer through the gaps. Twisted, crushed, squashed—these were the sisters Wade had run over in White’s cruiser. They lay alive on the conveyor, bespattered with black blood. The belt fed them one at a time into a gaping bin—then came the screech—and from a chute at the other end, out poured big spews of black meat, like hash. This was how they dealt with damaged goods. They ground them up for food.

  “We eat well around here, Wade. And you will too.”

  Mobile sisters shoveled the meat into hoppers that automatically rolled off. Wade felt himself grow faint.

  Besser led on. Subinlets led to more servicepasses which led to more warrens. SUPPLYIMPLEMENT, ACCLIMATIONPOST, CHARGESTABILIZATIONMOMENTOR. Sisters moved about like grinning idiot slaves.

  “The sisters are examples of the Supremate’s technologies.”

  “This is no cult,” Wade realized. “It’s a fucking spaceship, and those women are…aliens.”

  “They’re crossmultibredintegratedhybrids, but ‘aliens’ will suffice, as I suppose ‘spaceship’ will suffice for the labyrinth. Actually it’s a valencecorehypervelocityorbitalmagneficpulse- momentyrayquadrupoularcoulombMeVspontaneousbosomwavelengthdecay/accelerationendodiermicmassenergydefractingpi-mesicphotofissionalfieldeffeettransistingvan denhulmaxirnalentryreentrypointphasemobilekeneticmotionvessel.”

  Wade stared at him. “Oh, is that all.”

  Besser took him along and extromitted into a sloped, threadwalled warren whose mindsign read EMWGUIDANCETRACKINGPOINT.

  “Do you know what electromagnetic energy is?” Besser asked.

  “Light, sound, radiation—shit like that, right?”

  “Yes, Wade, shit…like that, stretched over an infinite wavelength, and those wavelengths exist everywhere.” Besser took a moment’s silence, for effect. “They’re a power source.”

  “You mean you don’t fill this thing up with gas?”

  “Picture the entire universe as a lake, Wade. The surface of the lake is electromagnetic energy, and the labyrinth is, in a sense, a boat. The apparatus in this room countercycles electromagnetic waves, allowing the labyrinth to float, so to speak, on the lake, while conduction devices harness the active properties of the same EM waves, creating a kinetic energy pulse that propels the
labyrinth at phenomenal speeds.”

  “Then how does it sustain itself when it isn’t moving?”

  Impressed, Besser turned. “Excellent question, Wade. When not in motion, the labyrinth of course cannot utilize active EM motility. So it creates its own static EM field by releasing stored molecular activity previously processed during propulsion transitions. We call it the stasisfield.”

  “A battery,” Wade concluded. “And that’s why you have to leave soon. Because your batteries are draining.”

  “Exactly. Your perceptiveness is noteworthy.” Besser took him into another service pass. “Before full depletion is experienced, we recharge the stasisfield in a single spontaneous pulse with the remaining stored potential electron activity. That will occur tonight at five minutes before midnight. Then—”

  “Blast off,” Wade said.

  “More like a magnetic repulsion, but, yes, the labyrinth will project itself back into the active EM flux of space.”

  “To where?”

  “The next acquisition assignment. We go from world to world, Wade. From galaxy to galaxy.”

  Wade was boggled. “What the fuck for?” he shouted. “To bury coeds? To pull people’s heads off? Why?”

  Besser chuckled deeply. “I’ll show you why. Follow me.”

  Strange light hummed around Wade’s head. There were no light fixtures, yet somehow he could see through the solid blackness. A mindsign hovered by: SUBINLET#4. And the very next: SUBINLET#5; and next: SUBINLET#999. The labyrinth was an endless maze.

  But the next sign glowed GERMINATIONWARREN.

  Dark, orange light pulsed in a long, narrow chamber. Large canisters sat in racks along one wall. The other side was a half wall, which looked down.

  Besser pointed. “A thousand kingdoms, whose end is perfection.”

  Wade lost his breath peering over the edge. From layers of orange light, production stratas descended ever downward. It was like looking down the slope of a mountain miles high. Each level bore movement, white bodies busying back and forth in arcane passages, pushing things about in some nameless onus.