Dagger Key and Other Stories

by Lucius Shepard

  “Call Skyler Means. Find out how much the Americans know. They’re certain to have picked up something on satellite. Tell him to do whatever he has to.”

  I told her to continue checking in with me and switched off.

  Shortly after Elaine’s call, I found the body of a young woman lying under some bricks, but I did not pause to examine her, nor did I allow her death to disturb me—there were many dead that night, and I had no time to ponder my emotional state. As I descended through the town, the devastation increased. Buildings were flattened and the rubble in the winding street provided a surreal accent to the scene. Portions of Diamante’s murals lay everywhere. Here a chunk of stucco bearing the pointillist rendering of an elephant’s foot; here a sunrise broken into five sections; here a child’s arm, a little dog trotting, a piece of a carousel, the bell of a tuba; half a Madonna’s face was intact—the other half was pitted and unrecognizable. It was as if the pretty shell of the world had been blown apart to reveal its true disastrous nature.

  Because of the extent of the destruction, I was able to see the waterfront long before I reached the Via Poseidone. The sea wall and the causeway had been obliterated, and, surrounding the islet on which Baldassaro’s was situated, the water had been transformed into glass or something like, and the glass twisted into hundreds of tortured, translucent shapes, some diminutive, others towering thirty feet into the air, gleaming in the moonlight. The island itself was burning with a strangely steady, reddish flame, marking Lucan’s grave and that of his lover. From where I stood, the entirety of the scene resembled an enormous, complicated blossom with a fiery stamen and irregular stiff petals.

  The burning came to me as a faint windy sound. I was too far off to discern what the translucent shapes were, but when I stepped out onto the Via Poseidone, I realized they were heroic figures, none of them complete, yet all the more heroic for their lack of completion. Had they been finished figures, correct in every detail, they would have looked cartoonish; unfinished, mired in webs of glass, leaping out of glass waves, trying to shrug off glassy shrouds, charged with moonlight, like silver blood flowing through their limbs, they seemed more what Lucan would have had in mind: ancient warriors, both succumbing to and struggling to break free of the moonstruck glass that gave them substance. How long, I wondered, must he have trained himself in order to produce so complex a result at the moment of release? Decades, I reckoned. And I had no doubt that he had achieved his intent—the imagery and its incompleteness spoke to his obsession with the old days, to his belief that we had repressed our warrior instincts, restrained them beneath a decadent veneer. Confronted with the visible expression of those beliefs, I was moved a ways toward agreement with them.

  I walked toward that barbaric sculpture garden, to the crumbling verge of the Via Poseidone, and examined a figure with a half-formed face and flowing hair, the muscular torso straining, with a two-handed grip on a club. As I inspected it from various angles, light glided back and forth inside it like the shiftings of a spirit level, bringing up bits of detail. Hulking just beyond, one of the larger figures appeared to be effortfully rising from a crouch, its head lowered, using a spear to push itself up, weighed down by a glass robe. I was about to call Elaine, thinking to modify my previous orders, when I spotted Jenay off along the street, standing beneath the immense figure of a woman depicted in the act of slashing at an invisible enemy with a knife. She was approximately a hundred feet away, anonymous at that distance, but it could only be Jenay. I hailed her and, as I approached, I saw that she had changed into jeans and a short jacket. Her hair was loose about her shoulders; she wore no make-up. She might have been the sister of the sculpted woman, who was also buxom, her wide hips flowing up from a glassy wave. They shared the same calm expression.

  “Did you see it?” she asked as I came up. “The light he made?”

  I told her I had been otherwise occupied.

  “It was magnificent,” she said. “He ruled the sky for nearly a minute.”

  Her poised demeanor and admiring tone aroused my suspicions. “You knew,” I said.

  “A few years back, he told me he wanted to die with Rappy. He only had about fifty years left, he thought, but he was emotionally spent. He said he was contemplating a release.”

  “And you knew he would do it tonight.”

  “I didn’t know. Perhaps I suspected. He didn’t seem himself.”

  I tried to turn her, wanting to search her face for signs of a lie, but she knocked my hand aside.

  “You watched for the light,” I said. “You must have known.”

  “I wasn’t watching, I happened to be looking out the window,” she said defiantly; then she put a hand to her forehead and blew out a breath, as if trying to steady herself. “Perhaps I knew.”

  “You should have told me, even if it were only a suspicion.” Agitatedly, I opened and closed my cell phone several times. “He’s left us a hell of mess.”

  “Is that all you take from it?” She shot me a hard look.

  “I don’t have time to appreciate Lucan’s artistry now that I’m in command.”

  “Are you…in command? We’ll see.”

  “You’re challenging my authority?”

  “If I’m challenging anything, it’s your willingness to exercise authority.”

  “So you are challenging me. Do you want to formalize the challenge?”

  “Not at this point,” she said.

  She glanced up at the sculpture and I, too, glanced up—the flame of the burning island brightened, and the fall of the woman’s hair glowed redly. Jenay strolled off a couple of paces, her attention gathered by a smaller figure, a bearded, transparent, ax-wielding barbarian. The cell phone made a chilly noise in the empty street. I switched on and, keeping an eye on Jenay, said, “Yes.”

  “I can’t reach Skyler,” said Elaine.

  “Try him in New York.”

  “I’ve tried all his numbers. Everybody’s tried. The whole network is down. We haven’t been able to reach any of our people on the east coast. It’s Rome’s opinion we’ve been compromised.”

  “That’s obvious.” I came a step toward Jenay. “What action do they recommend?”

  “They recommend we go to a war level,” said Elaine.

  “Not yet.” I closed to within arm’s length of Jenay. “Go to Bronze…but tell them to go to Iron if they don’t hear from me every half-hour. And tell the helicopters to fucking clean-up and get us out of here. If the Americans are going to react locally, it’ll take a while, but there’s no point running a risk. Jenay and I are down by the water, about seventy-five yards north of where the causeway used to stand.”

  “This is no coincidence,” said Elaine. “Lucan and Skyler, both the same night.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s no coincidence.”

  Jenay’s face betrayed, I thought, an almost undetectable trace of amusement. I shaped the words, You knew, with my mouth and said to Elaine, “Tell Palermo to prepare a nuke. We may be able to pass Diamante off as some sort of terrorist incident. I doubt it, but it’s worth a try.”

  “What’s happening?” Jenay asked as I switched off.

  “Don’t treat me like an idiot. You know very well what’s happening.”

  She was silent a moment. “Lucan’s forced your hand.”

  I chose not to reply.

  “It follows that he would,” she said. “Once he made his personal decision, he wouldn’t have let the opportunity pass. And if the Americans are involved…Are we facing war?”

  I folded my arms, scarcely able to contain my anger.

  “You have to tell me,” she said.

  “If you want to continue with your pretense, call Elaine,” I said. “She’ll fill you in.”

  Jenay put her hands on her hips. “I realize you’d like to think of me as an element of a conspiracy, but there’s no conspiracy. You’re our leader now. People are going to watch you, they’ll judge you by your actions. If I hesitate to give you my absolute appr
oval, you shouldn’t assume that’s due to a conspiracy.”

  “Judge all you want. I won’t be pressured or coerced any further. I’ve been maneuvered into a bad situation, but I may not do what Lucan wanted.”

  “What Lucan wanted was for someone to take decisive action. Action he couldn’t bring himself to take, except in the way he did. He was well aware of his weaknesses. He used to tell me you were our hope. He saw in you a leader capable of making the kinds of decisions that we needed.” Jenay touched my forearm. “Whatever he’s done, he did it in part for you.”

  “This? This selfish, indulgent act? This treason? Yes, I can see that.”

  “Don’t be obtuse! However you perceive it now, it’s an opportunity to prove that Lucan was on the mark about you.”

  “Right. He created this fucking disaster just to make my leadership skills bloom.” I went nose-to-nose with her. “He’s killed Skyler! And probably hundreds more! Once they were taken, I’m certain Skyler and his people did what was necessary to preserve our position. But that they were taken, an entire network, it implies the Americans have a means of defeating our mental control. Skyler’s people may not all be dead; a few may be in rooms somewhere spilling our secrets.”

  “Well, then. You have your work cut out for you.” She said this flatly, as if to suggest it proved her point.

  “Once this gets sorted out,” I said, “if it can be sorted out, I promise there’ll be an investigation.”

  Jenay shrugged. “And you’ll have my full support.”

  A searchlight swept over the nearby figures, bringing them to flashing life, and a helicopter descended out of the night, its rotors swirling the dust that lay everywhere and making conversation a chore. Jenay and I moved apart, waiting for it to land.

  From directly overhead, the burning island and its immediate surround looked even more like a blossom. I thought of those gigantic Sumatran flowers. Corpseflowers. The helicopter veered inland, and we began passing over the darkened Calabrian hills. My headset crackled. The pilots’ helmets were silhouetted against the lights of the control array. Beside me, Jenay gazed out the window as I plotted the next days. Sleeper cells would have to be activated throughout the United States. Hundreds of individuals would be terminated, dozens of hard targets neutralized. I could feel the constrictions that Lucan had devised closing in around me, limiting the scope of my actions, enforcing a restructuring of my attitudes, leaving me to orchestrate the parameters of a new and improved holocaust. Thanks to him, we were entering a dangerous phase of history, one in which we would be more visible, thus more imperiled, than at any time since the Iron Age. This enlisted my paranoia and I imagined, not for the first time, that—unbeknownst to us—another group was monitoring our activities, and, above them, another group, and another, and so on and so forth. The universe as terrorist. Conspiracies of angels and demons. God the infinite suicide bomber.

  “I’ve got Palermo on,” said the co-pilot. “The package is ready for delivery.”

  “Have we reached a safe distance?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Patch them through to me.”

  I hadn’t had a moment to think of Giacinta since rushing out of the hotel. I wondered if she had gone back to sleep, or if she had disobeyed my admonition and was wandering the streets, terrified and confused by the destruction of her home. The image troubled me, but at heart I was indifferent to her fate. Lucan’s actions had nipped that passion in the bud and stripped from me all but the thinnest veneer of sentiment. I wished things were different, that I could indulge in mercy, that I could wound myself with love or its imitation, that I had time for such games, but that wish was subsumed by the eagerness we feel at the onset of war. The desire to wield power, to destroy, to win—they were the enticements of a more involving game. Yet as I gave the order that would erase Diamante from the maps of the world, I nourished a twinge of regret, I savored it, I stored it away in memory for whatever use I might one day find for it. Though we were flying away from the town, the flash, when it came, was visible as a reflection in the helicopter’s plastic canopy. It held for several seconds, considerably less long than the light of Lucan’s release, then swiftly faded. Jenay sighed—in satisfaction, I believed. She rested her hand atop mine, and we continued north toward Rome.

  ABIMAGIQUE

  She’s the girl with the Halloween hair. The Morticia Addams Cut, dyed jet black, with asymmetrical streaks of orange. She’s twenty-four, twenty-five. A child-woman, you imagine, who dotes on books about famous poisoners and has several of the more painful piercings. Typical Goth material. But once you get past the hair, the vintage dress, the pearl ring shaped like a bulbous spider, the tattoos on the backs of her hands (a vampire’s skull, a human heart), and the extreme make-up, you notice that her face has a maternal sensuality and softness that seem too unguarded to be part of the modern world.

  Most weekdays she has lunch at this little teriyaki place just off the Ave on 45th, in the University District of Seattle. She usually sits at a table where Bill Gates once ate, an occasion memorialized by a framed Polaroid of the great man on the wall above it, and she always orders the Number Three (Veggie Special) and a bottle of water, and reads while she eats (trade paperbacks as a rule), except when it’s raining—then she stares out the window, absently forking up bites of food. This suggests she might be native to the region, because people born in the Pacific Northwest don’t generally view the rain as depressing; they’re more likely to accept it as a comforting veil drawn across the world, one that encourages contemplation.

  No one hits on her, and that surprises you. Some guys are doubtless put off by her personal style (which you suspect is less a statement of cultural disaffection than a disguise), and some will assume she’s a ball-buster and that any approach could trigger a barrage of insult. Yet others wouldn’t be so easily dissuaded. She’s a beautiful woman—no, a lovely woman; lovely being a word more evocative of her antique quality. Her breasts, always displayed to advantage, are large and milky white, zoftig, like the breasts of models painted by Titian and Raphael, and the remainder of her body conforms to this unfashionable standard of voluptuousness. There must be a special atmosphere around her, you think. An envelope of force that keeps her space inviolate. One way or the other, you understand she’s not a girl who can be easily acquired. You can’t just walk up to her and say, Mind if I sit here?, or, If you’re going to break my heart, do it now, because later it’ll be too painful, or, Didn’t I see you at the Crocodile Club last Saturday?, and talk about the cool bands you’ve both seen and then ask for her number, and by then you’ll have gone past the need for conversation (it’s really more of an animal preliminary), and you’ll either wind up in bed together or you won’t. Though you desire the same thing that guys who use such uninspired openings desire, you recognize that if you are going to reach that night, that bed, you’ll first have to desire everything about her. You’ll have to fall in love, succumb to her, so when you introduce yourself, employing no greater wit than that typically employed by anyone else your age, your introduction will be supported by a depth of emotion, a weight of knowledge, and by then you will have discovered that conversation is rarely a trivial matter for her—a moral conviction underlies her words—and you’ll have learned she works with the handicapped as a massage therapist and lives alone in a frame house on a fir-lined street in Fremont, and that her eyes are green as bottle glass under strong sunlight, and that she’s called Abi, which is short for Abimagique.

  Of course no one would name their daughter Abimagique. It’s a self-chosen name, a name that, when you first heard it, caused you to harbor derisive thoughts, to imagine her the victim of some Wiccan delusion, and this appears to be more-or-less the case. On the walls of her house hang classic representations of the angels; Tibetan and Native American masks; curious constructions of dried vegetable matter and silk ribbon; ankhs, crosses, backwards 7s, and other symbols less readily identifiable. Long strings of beads—silver and
amber, topaz and lapis lazuli—drape the bedroom mirror, carving reflections into slices; herbal sachets that yield peculiar odors are strewn everywhere; scraps of paper bearing inscriptions hand-inked in a Tolkienesque script are tucked beneath pillows, in the backs of drawers, under potted plants, inside tins and jars, many of these featuring a backwards 7. After you’ve been friends with her for a month (you’ve insinuated yourself into her life as a client, seeking treatment for back problems you suffered in an automobile accident years before), you realize that these arcana don’t announce her character, they merely reflect it; they’re natural expressions, like sprays of foliage from a central trunk. When she talks about God, gods, spirits, ghosts, miracles, monsters, the magic of animals, of plants, the circles of Hell, the potency of angels, the entirety of the mystic landscape she inhabits, she expresses herself neither defensively nor assertively, but with a calm certainty that inspires you to argument. You want to debunk her beliefs not because you’re such a huge fan of empirical truth or because you’re so locked in to your science-geek grad-school thing, but rather because a vague male reason demands it. She refuses to argue, she merely submits there may be some things you’re not yet aware of, and that’s not something you can argue, though you try.

  Just past the turn of the year, you become lovers. Rain falls intermittently and the firs enclosing Abi’s house lend the pewter light a greenish undersea opacity in which her skin glows. You discover a backwards 7 tattooed on the inside of her right thigh, close to her sex; you trace the blue ink with a finger, puzzle over it a moment, then make gentle play with her genital piercing. She tells you that she loves you, but her tone is oddly dispassionate and, once you’re inside her, though you experience the ferocity of desire, your feelings seem muted by a tranquil energy you recognize as uniquely hers, as if you’ve penetrated that protective envelope you sensed, that atmosphere, and now it surrounds you. You’re lulled, cradled by her acceptance. It’s like you’re adrift on the undulations of a tide, not moved by female sinew and bone. But the instant before you come, she breaks the languid rhythm of your lovemaking; she places her hands on the small of your back and presses down hard with her fingertips, manipulating the nerves and muscles there. Electricity snaps along your spine, heat floods your brain. You cry out from spasms of sensation so violent, they take you to the brink of unconsciousness. Once you recover, you ask with a degree of anger (because it hurt), but with a greater degree of wonderment (because you’ve never experienced such an intricate orgasm), what the hell was it that she did to you?