Bleak History

by John Shirley

  Forsythe acted as if he hadn't heard. “I knew at the time you were keeping something back but I was pressed for time. Something to see to. Now. Let us see if we can get caught up.”

  He grabbed her shoulders and dragged her close. His breath smelled like hot iron. She struggled to pull away—but this was the strongest grip she'd ever felt. It was as if something else was holding her too, keeping her from breaking free. Like the muscular paralysis that comes from an electrical shock.

  He pushed his forehead against hers, hard enough that it hurt. She could feel the bone of his skull, grinding on the bone of her brow, the skin seeming barely there at all. “General—this is not necessary!”

  “Silence,” he hissed, and she felt his spittle on her face. “Let me in! You are more difficult than Gulcher. Your thoughts are guarded. You are inward. But...” Loraine felt something pushing through her forehead.

  Some part of her knew it wasn't physical—not the kind of physicality that body and bone had. The phrase unconventionally bodied came to her. It was a probing from something like that. From Forsythe—and from something else that came through Forsythe.

  ...Breslin is afraid of the man within the man who stands on his right...

  Loraine knew, then. She was certain. That General Forsythe was no longer General Forsythe. For perhaps a long time now, he had been taken over by something inhuman.

  Then the entity that was pressing into her forehead showed itself to her inner eye. She was staring into the mouth of a lamprey, a circular mouth with teeth all around, and another circle of teeth within those—and another within those. Inside the innermost ring was something like a polyp, but one that could stretch out, and on the end of the polyp there was an eye, a mucus-colored eye with a black iris, and this eye was rushing toward her, toward the center of her being, pushing into her mind to stare around at her inmost thoughts. It was a rape of the mind; it was a deep, bottomless violation, a stabbingly painful violation, a cold, cutting agony that plunged into the center of her, ripping into her living soul.

  She had seen some bad things—pieces of still-bleeding bodies after the bomb attack in Kabul. But she hadn't lost control at that.

  Loraine believed a woman should be as strong as any man—and she was stronger than most men. But now... but this time... Loraine screamed.

  ***

  SOMEWHERE. OUTSIDE OF TIME.

  A warm day—but not too hot, or humid. The air seemed to wrap around them with a velvety, pristine embrace. Truly it was not Hoboken.

  It seemed to Gabriel Bleak that they had been walking for almost two miles. He and Shoella— dressed now, in the clothes they'd worn yesterday—were following a path made by forest creatures, along the bottom of the valley that meandered through the jungled hills. They passed through bands of mist that sparkled in shafts of sunlight; they crossed singing brooks and walked through sudden meadows of tropical flowers droning with bees that never threatened. Occasionally they saw termite mounds taller than a man, looking like models of dried-out hills pocked with tiny caves; they saw a leopard, with a small deer sagging from its jaws, in the crook of a broad-trunked baobab tree. Its muzzle red with feeding, the leopard looked at them with only placid curiosity as they passed—and Bleak could have sworn he heard it purring. They saw a large black buzzard feeding on a dead water buffalo; it ducked its naked red head under its wing, as if in obeisance to them. Flamingos quivering with pink light watched them pass close by and never fluttered in alarm.

  And all the time, Bleak felt something, someone, watching.

  They paused to eat from two fruit trees; mangoes and guavas, perfectly ripe and tasting as if they were infused with the sunlight—the sunlight that was warming, comforting, but never too hot. They passed through a meadow of fragrant, yellow flowers, like little hands opening to the sun. Beyond the meadow the path ended at a large pond at the base of a hill. Here a stand of gnarled cypresses encircled the pond, which was fed by another, higher waterfall. The thin cascade showed a shoulder of emerald green before tumbling in white lights from a beetling, mossy hillside. Glimmering gold-mottled fish luxuriated under the lily pads in the clear water of the pool. The lichened stones flanking the top of the waterfall seemed the worn, carved remnants of an ancient civilization that had never actually existed.

  “Shall we swim?” Shoella suggested.

  “Is it safe?” Bleak said vaguely, shading his eyes to look into the pool. Still stunned by all this. “Could be...I don't know...piranha in there or.

  Shoella leaned against him, caressed his cheek. “You haven't noticed that nothing here does us harm, cher darlin'? There are no mosquitoes—or if there are, they will not bite us. The bees, they don't sting us. It is the ideal place of the ancestors, with all its pleasures, its shady places and water and food, and none of its harm, not for us. You could embrace that leopard we passed—she would not harm you. And me, I would not harm you.” She grinned. “You could embrace me here on the grass by the pond.”

  Bleak drew away from her and squatted to trail his fingers in the water. He had gone on the long walk to make the drug wear off—and to see if this world ended, like a stage set; like a ride at an amusement park. The walk had worked to clear his mind. “This just goes on and on, this world?”

  “Yes. The gods created it for us. To go on and on.” After a moment she said, “You're angry.”

  “You drugged me. I don't take drugs, Shoella. I tried them a couple times. They make me imagine the Hidden where it isn't, or miss it where it is. I only make mistakes on drugs.”

  “This drug was something...special. Because—I didn't think I could get my chance any other way. It did not harm you—just a certain shaman's mixture. Some seeds from Hawaii, some bark from Haiti, some other things. It was only meant to bring us together.”

  “You had only to ask. A couple of glasses of beer and a kiss would have worked, Shoella. In fact you could have left out the beer.”

  She seemed genuinely surprised. “Truly? Years I felt this way—and you gave me no sign. I thought you wanted that Sarikosca woman, and if I was to have you...”

  “I barely know her. Of course you're attractive to me, Shoella. I didn't know if it was wise for us to get together, so I didn't push it. I don't like being pushed into it—not the way you did it. If you'd just—”

  “I'm sorry, cher darlin'. To push you. But...there is something else you should know.” She sat down by him, looked at him tenderly, spoke to him gently—but he felt she was talking to him like a perverse kindergarten teacher to a little boy. “I did not bring you here only to keep you away from her —yes, this was in my mind, but there was more. I have cast the bones and splashed the blood; I have listened to the growls of the great powers. The ancestors tell me I must mate, and it must be this year. And I must produce a child! This child”—she pressed her belly—”she is to be my great destiny! And I feel—I see it in the Hidden—that you are the man to make this child with me! I cannot follow my path as a priestess until I do this, Gabe. Life is ritual, my darlin'. If we make love, this is an invocation; if we make a baby, this is to please the powers of the Hidden.... And to do this, I must have you to myself. No one else may have you. Here we are safe, Gabe—safe from the devils at CCA, safe from that pale little liar who looks at you with big eyes and her lips parted...safe!”

  “This is all to please your ancestors? And what makes you think those powers are the ones I want to please?” Bleak asked.

  “Not just to please them—to weave a great destiny!” She took both his hands in hers; tried to clasp his gaze with hers, leaning toward him urgently. “The beginning of a magical dynasty, cher darlin'! What could be more mervellous!”

  Bleak snorted and shook his head, drew his hands away. “And I was selected...for breeding?”

  “Not only this! To be the high priest beside the priestess! Oh, Gabriel, you must know I love you. Have loved you since I first saw you, my cher darlin’! So I brought you to paradise.”

  “Paradise.” He gl
anced around at the lovely, womblike tropical forest. A seductive place. But paradise? “Meaning what exactly? Where are we?”

  She shrugged. “A... world. We can give it a name. A 'demiworld' some say, but also a real world.” She stretched her legs out, put her feet in the water, splashed it softly. “Magicians know these places. Many a sorcerer, many a sorceress, they create one such, and live there, in their own demiworld. It is...a pocket world, you might say.” She stood, walked a few paces up the bank, picked a purple-red orchid, growing from the base of a cypress that grew in the shallows, and brought it back to him. “Look! Perfect in every detail! Fait by the”—she tapped her head—”and magic. And a person can live there forever. And not die, no never die, in such a place. The wearing down of time, it is not here! It is between the universes and safe—made of the things of this world, and...oh, only the bon Dieu knows. Someday we will feel it right to return to the world of our birth. But until then—I know we can be happy here!”

  He shook his head. “You brought your whole house and just dropped it here? Is there a witch under it?”

  She laughed softly, tossing the orchid in the pool so it floated in its own dimple, the blossom reflected in the clear water. “It is only a copy of my house. But you and I—we came here entire. We are not here only in our minds. Our bodies are here, our souls, all of us. Forever, until forever is too much—and then we go back. But now, you and me, cher darlin' Gabe. Here you are safe with me.”

  He looked at her. “You keep saying 'safe.'“

  “Yes. Our enemies were coming for us, Gabe. This place”—she gestured at the world around them—”they cannot come to.” She plucked another orchid.

  He wasn't convinced that no one else could come here. He suspected her of using magic that she had stumbled upon—and didn't fully understand.

  A thought came to him. “Where is Yorena? I haven't seen your familiar. Unless it was that buzzard.”

  “That...no! Yorena—” Her expression became guarded. “I chose not to bring Yorena. I want only you and I.”

  Strange, Bleak thought. She was never far from Yorena, and vice versa. “Shoella—do you respect me?”

  She looked at him in open surprise. “Of course—bien sur! “

  “If you respect me as a magus—as a worker in the Hidden—you know I cannot stay here, if I'm...if someone else makes the decision. That would make me passive, a shrunken man.” She laughed. “You could never be shrunken!”

  “Then give me time to think. To feel this place out and understand it. Leave me alone for a while. I suppose I can find my way back to the house.”

  She frowned. But she nodded. “Just picture it in your mind, and look for a path. The path will lead back to the house.”

  Shoella shredded the orchid with a sudden motion of her long fingers, tears gleaming in her eyes. She turned and stalked away, then, back along the path they'd come.

  Bleak sat down on the grassy bank, watching the fish dart at the bits of shredded orchid petal. Just picture it in your mind, and look for a path. The path will lead back to the house.

  So this place, this “demiworld,” was responsive—strongly responsive—to the mind of the sorcerer. That had implications.

  He had never been to any world but his own before—not in this lifetime—and wasn't sure if the Hidden worked by the same principles here. But he knew the invisible field of living force was there, knew that those same energies, the same potential, the field of the Hidden, was all around him, in this world. He had felt it, since waking here, the way someone else would feel the ground underfoot. You didn't doubt the ground. Until, he reminded himself, an earthquake came.

  He needed to know. Could he access the Hidden, here, the way he had in his world? Bleak closed his eyes and looked, with the other kind of seeing.

  He saw the forest, around him, the cliff and the waterfall, the whole demiworld, as if it were in photo-negative, its lines etched in luminous purple. Then he made out living energy, seething, rising and falling, between each object, each plant and rock, each blade of grass. When he looked at it, it responded to his attention, pulsing brighter.

  So the Hidden was available to him, here—it had a different character, but any world had its own Hidden.

  He opened his eyes and saw Shoella's world around him, saw it anew—as lines of force, shaped into foliage, into earth and rock and sky. He searched, looking for the entity he sensed behind the veil of this world. The lines of force shivered, converged, and reshaped...into Yorena.

  The bird looked bigger than ever—big as a man. She spread her wings and hovered there, not flapping them, just hanging in the air in front of him, defying gravity, like an emblem on a flag.

  “No,” Bleak said. “That's not you, is it, Yorena?” He could sense this was a false image; an external. A mask.

  He used his ability to draw on the power of the Hidden—and evaporated the veil of appearance.

  Yorena's wings stretched out, changing shape. The familiar's eyes altered shape too; her beak became smaller and formed into a nose. The bird-head developed a mouth, a chin...feathers became clothing...

  A man, now, hovered there where Yorena had been. Revealed, exposed—and staring impudently at him.

  The man was suspended in the air, about three feet over the middle of the pond, with the waterfall as spectacular backdrop. He looked vaguely familiar, though Bleak didn't immediately know him.

  The man was young. He had a military jacket, cammie shirt under it, khaki pants, boots. Long brown hair. His eyes...

  “Sean...?” Bleak said, jumping to his feet.

  “Surprised you recognize me!” Sean chuckled, drifting slowly toward him, across the water, like someone on a moving sidewalk at the airport. Looking that bored too. “You were aware of me, the whole time, Gabriel. But you couldn't deal with it. Kept hiding from that part of the Hidden, funnily enough.”

  Sean had reached the grassy bank, floated not quite within reach, a few feet higher than his brother, Gabriel—so that he could look down on him. “Sean...you're really here?”

  “Not exactly. Shoella only just realized, a short time ago, back on Earth, that Yorena was no longer Yorena. Seems to me familiars are just a kind of idea that takes on form and function. They're part of our own minds, like a computer program, that we put out to run in the Hidden. Easy enough for someone with my gifts to capture her familiar and destroy its inner nature. Set my own mind inside it. Make it my little spiritual UAV, a little supernatural drone, to watch you and her! Follow you here. Could have had you earlier—I waited too long, listening in, that night at the Battery. Should have called in the troops to take you in right there. Lost track of you for a while. You're good at creating a chaotic energy cloud around you, to muddy the waters. Been doing it so long you hardly know you're doing it. You slipped away—we set you up with that skip-trace job...and presto! You slipped away again! How'd you do that, by the way?”

  “Probably shouldn't tell you that,” Bleak mumbled. Amazed to be talking to his lost brother. Feeling almost numb.

  “Why not tell me? We're not enemies, Gabriel! We're brothers! It's all been a stupid misunderstanding! We are to be allies. We've even got the girl, she's waiting for you. The girl you're intended' to have. Not this exiled voodoo priestess you're tangled up with. No—your soul mate, for God's sake, Gabe! The real deal! The true soul mate!”

  “Loraine...”

  “That's right. You felt it. You suspected. I confirmed it for myself, talking to the Powers—and now you know it. That's what she is: your soul mate—and we've got her! She wants you to come and help us, Gabriel.”

  “If she does...it's because she's CCA. Indoctrinated. Doesn't know any better.” After a moment he added sadly, “Like you, Sean.”

  “Oh, I know what I'm doing! I'm on the inside, Gabe, you're on the outside—so you should be guided by me. You've got to trust someone sometime!” Sean grinned crookedly. “You and I are like oxygen and fire, Brother. Bring us together”—he raised his h
and and fire seemed to leap from the sun overhead, to become a roaring flame in the air above him—”and the fire grows!” He turned and made2 a throwing motion, down into the pool of water, and the fire in the air formed into a ball and shot down to crash like a meteor into a sea, so that a pillar of water surged up, widened into the shape of a ten-foot-high mushroom cloud, boiling and seething in a nuclear explosion, the fire glowing in its heart. “We're like uranium and the atom splitter! Bring us together and the power of the sun is set free!” Sean dismissed the water and it fell back into the waterfall pool, the fire going out with a hiss. Turning toward Bleak, he went on, “You get it? I don't think you do—God, look at your face! Well. I don't like having to collaborate with you much, myself. Wish I didn't need you. I mean, shit—you've had so much already! You got to stay with our parents. Had freedom out in the world. Adventure...women... And what have I had? I've been a prisoner. Been close to escaping too.”

  Sean paused, looked up at a small flock of parrots flying by overhead. His voice became low and earnest. “Then Forsythe came along, changed all that for me.” He looked fiercely down at his brother. “You'll see why—if you come with me. The hell away from this half-world. Come to CCA, Gabriel— and you can have Loraine!” Adding bitterly, “You can have the person who completes you. Something I'll never have. I've had that revealed to me too. But you can have it—what everyone yearns for! True love. Completion. Peace. Only, brother, if you want it—you've got to cooperate with us. We're going to change the balance of power of the whole world. And there'll be something for your brother in this: I'll have real freedom for the first time.”

  “Yeah? How, exactly, does this come about, Sean?” Bleak asked. Thinking that Sean had a grimace, when he talked, that looked like his attempt to smile. And he always seemed to have his teeth almost clenched. Even though this wasn't him—was some kind of magical projection of him—it was probably how he looked in life.