Avalon

by Rusty Coats

  The menthol opened a small tunnel to my lungs. "I must be losing my touch."

  "Or finding it."

  The door opened and Levi came in. He explained that Marigolde was preparing for a Binding for six new citizens and said Rita was invited, since she was still a member of Shiloh in the eyes of David. I was not invited; outsiders were not allowed because of the strict secrecy of the ceremonies. But Rita shook her head.

  "The Creed says a member may be accompanied to any ceremony by one she loves," she said. "My judgment is trusted among the Sons. I invoke the Creed."

  Levi stared a clear blue eye at Rita: "Do you love this man?"

  Her hand found mine. "Yes."

  "And does he love you?"

  Rita squeezed my hand. "With what is left of his heart, yes."

  "I summon East, home of Wind. Blow now your breath on our chosen few. I summon East."

  "We summon East."

  Levi nodded as the meadow thundered with the voices of Marigolde's forty thousand, the six initiates beside him under the tie-dyed canopy. The moon had come up, sharing the sky for a purple moment before the sun disappeared behind Mount Shasta. When the last echoes died, Levi turned, raising the gnarled staff to the horizon.

  "I summon West, home of Water. Rain down the source of life upon us. I summon West."

  "We summon West."

  Their voices seemed tectonic, a rumbling that came from the magma of Shasta itself. My ears were clogged with fluid; the virus had slammed down full force this afternoon as we'd walked through the carnival, goosing my fever off the mercury. But their voices shook my ribs as we stood near the back of the crowd.

  "I summon South, home of Fire. Raise your flames to cleanse our souls. I summon South."

  "We summon South."

  Rita stood beside me, whispering something about grounding spells, but I couldn't hear her over the people. I wondered where these people were from, how they'd come to Marigolde, what they'd lost. It's a community of lost souls, just like the other Sons of David communes, people with nothing in common but loss.

  "And now I summon North, home of Earth. Feed us with your strength and song. I summon North."

  "We summon North."

  Levi sat the staff at his feet as if releasing a viper, sharing the stage with initiates and other members of the High Council. Gretchen stood behind him in a purple priestess robe, a crown of violets woven into her dark curls, the ROM winking like a mirror. Beside her was a girl. Sunny. My niece.

  In front of the stage stood a pit the workmen had dug, now glowing orange. The blue-robed initiates had built a bonfire this afternoon from punk wood cleared from the land where they'd build their homes, then raked the coals until the bed was as level as a hotplate. Beside the pit were piles of clothes, suitcases and even a Mensa Mini.

  "We welcome new friends and bear witness to their purification." Levi called. "As we strengthen them, so do they strengthen us. So said David."

  "So said David."

  Gretchen dipped her fingers in a small cauldron and anointed the initiates. Then Levi stretched his arms to the bruised sky, and my sister slid the robe off his shoulders, and Levi was naked in the moonlight.

  "The Binding is a tunnel of light that burns our secret heart, making it known to all, making it known to ourselves." The patch over his left eye caught the flicker of the candle and held it, a huge hypnotic pupil. "It tells us we are natural, of the Earth. May nothing to shield your soul from what is true. So said David."

  "So said David."

  The members of the Council disrobed with an easy shrug, letting the gowns fall, bodies orange from the fire pit. Sunny held Gretchen’s hand, a naked Kewpie. The initiates dropped their blue robes and tossed them into the pit, where they ignited.

  A cheer rose from the crowd. I staggered against the tree, feeling it scrape my skin, staring at Marigolde's tribe as they undressed and felt like I'd stumbled into a wildlife preserve. My head pounded as the robes burned.

  Beside me, Rita's eyes were glassy, lost in the call of her past, and she began unbuttoning her blouse, just as she'd done in Shiloh. She’d run from this, run so far she'd buried herself beneath a ruined city to work for a hacker mafia, and here she was beneath the shadow of Shasta and the old religion was still in her cells, alive.

  Chills scraped down my spine. I could smell their sweat now, turning the meadow into a soup of musk. Levi was talking again, but I couldn't make out all the words. I felt dizzy and starved for warmth.

  "Change is..." Levi's voice was as smooth as the belly of a leaf. "Touch is..."

  "Change us... Touch us..."

  Rita had her shirt off now, her breasts rising to the moon, and then she kicked the skirt from her ankles. Her eyes had fallen out of focus, like all the eyes around me, staring at the stage, but at the same time staring at something else.

  It all meant one thing to me: I had to get out of here.

  "Whirlwind, rising sun, sickle moon."

  "Harvest, all."

  The humming began softly as a single tone and broke into harmonies, until the humming formed a body of tones as complex as a ninth-generation Mensa.

  "Raven, hawk, crow," Levi called. "Fox, coyote, wolf."

  "The unfolding God among us."

  At some point, I'd begun stumbling through the humming naked crazies, as if pushing my way through a kelp forest. Some moved aside, but most clutched at me, trying to caress me, and I jerked away from their fingers. My clothes reeked of gasoline, a perfume that cut through the musk, and I walked. Over the sarapes and robes, over the clown costumes and magician capes, my head throbbing, my eyes nearly blind.

  "Into the fire with the corrupted past," Levi called over the hum. "We strip ourselves of technology's empty promises and embrace the sacred. So said David."

  "So said David."

  Through openings between the people I saw the initiates step off the stage and walk toward their small piles. Then the bodies shifted and I was buried again, blind. I touched the blue knit cap on my head and found it soggy from my sweat, and as I lurched forward I yanked it off and felt the cold air seize my scalp.

  "We divest ourselves of our pasts, leaving the land of the dead so that we join the living," Levi called. "But we remember our pasts and carry them forever, albatrosses of lost lives found. Choose well your cross. So said David."

  "So said David."

  Another note higher on the scale. The moon burned against the snowcaps on Mount Shasta and it was hard to swallow now, flinching away from the outstretched hands as the initiates stepped to the edge of the fire pit.

  "A militia medal!" one cried, choosing a silver trinket from his pile of possessions.

  "The slide of my microscope!"

  "A radar chip!"

  One thing kept from a lifetime, and the rest into the pit. When their possessions hit the coals the flames climbed above the audience. They tossed it all, purging themselves of a world that had run out of uses for them.

  Onstage, Gretchen watched the initiates choose their crosses. There was love in her eyes for these people and nothing but bitterness for me, and I wondered what I would save. Could I get the WPA into a single trinket -- the promises of our Project, the poetry of our programmers, the ozone of our uplink booths? Could I find a vial to contain the neuroelectric triggers burned by CNI or bottle the flood of serotonin that followed Septal Decay? Could I wear something of the Digerati, who turned Avalon into a palace to our weaknesses? The insignia of the Neuromantics? What?

  I could wear a scroll of the proclamation suspending the Project, the order to unleash Wrecking Ball, the 28th International Amendment. I could, like Gretchen, find some remnant of our parents and their dreams. I could wear a swatch of Monk's smart fabric or, as Levi did, a strand of Jasper's barbed wire. I could rip the visor off my old fedora, as final an act as putting a gun to the head of the only horse you've ever ridden and pulling the trigger, bam, and watching your past finally roll over and die.

  Death follows him.
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  You should have stayed in yesterday, Jack. Because tomorrow sold your seat.

  We were the new dogs, Jack.

  Here there be dragons.

  At midnight the Neuromantics will dismantle the last Mensas supporting Avalon.

  What future?

  I felt a stinging wetness on my cheek and reached up to flick it away. Tears. That would be my cross, Levi. Fucking tears.

  "Step forward and we will bind your wrists with this silver thread, binding your lives to ours. So said David."

  "So said David."

  With a lurch, I broke through the crowd, disoriented and dizzy, but thankful to be free of the bodies. I could barely see, my vision smeared by sickness. I drew a breath, hoping the night's chill would give me a slap of clarity. Instead, I felt raw heat.

  My shoes caught on something sticky and I yanked my feet free, prepared to walk barefoot to the border of Marigolde. And I walked into the orange night, and now an urgent hollering had joined the humming chorus. Levi, it was Levi calling my name, beckoning me, and I realized the fever was worse than I'd thought, hallucinating now, hearing Levi call my name in this orange heat and my bones ached, needing the gravity adjustment of a scuba suit so I could fly out of this, just fly.

  Then I heard Gretchen call to me, her sharp alto piercing my fever and I grinned stupidly at my delusion -- that Gretchen cared enough to mention my name, let alone scream. Scream something about fire.

  That's when my clothes burst into flames.

  In the orange glow they were easy to see, these blue flames fed by the gasoline fumes that had soaked into my clothes, and as I waved my arms I saw blue arcs streak across the velvet sky. I looked down and saw my bare feet crunching ash off the orange coals, the tops of my toes as black as cinders. I waved my arms and heard screaming, no humming now, the sweet harmony as dead as a cadaver on Freud's gurney, and in the heat there was a coolness that eased the fever.

  The streaks looked like robin's wings sewn to my arms with Monk's master stitch. I stood in the fire pit with my clothes on fire and waved my arms, feeling the woosh as the wings gathered up the air so I could fly above the Sons of David and the Digerati and the Neuromantics, and I glanced up, smiling into my sister's jade eyes and I said:

  "I am Daedalus."

  The carnival meadow was silent. I flapped my arms and stared at the moon, yearning for Avalon's turquoise sky.

  In my blurred vision I saw my sister flying, too, her nude body rising off the stage like an Olympic diver. The moon flashed off the ROM on her neck and for a moment I saw my mother's face, her eyes as silent as a cryptographer's key. As Gretchen ran across the coals, I beat my arms harder, trying to escape.

  And then her arms were around my waist and I wasn't flying anymore. We were falling, she had tackled me, and we fell out of the pit with the blue flames clinging like a lover. We fell at the feet of the initiates, who had burned their clothes and belongings and so had nothing but their own bodies to use to smother the flames and crush my brilliant blue wings.

  AVALON XXV: The Key

  Jasper stinks of brine and the air tastes like alkaline. Gulls squawk, flying over rows of white canvas tents. The gulls have migrated to lay eggs on the lake islands and feed off the sand flies clouding the shores. They’ve flown over the Sierras and razor wire fences separating us from microprocessors, coming to this dead place to find life.

  The wind hisses as I drag a chain rake through the prison, keeping the paths as smooth as a Japanese garden. Four prisoners to a tent, one-hundred-sixty tents to a column, eighteen columns. I count them as my feet scrape the chalky soil.

  Today it's cold and I see my breath in clouds as the wind bangs the wooden tent doors, knowing tonight I'll shove my socks into the cracks to seal out the howling wind.

  Only now the wind rips open the door of Cell 108. Something is wrong.

  My cell is empty. The beds are upturned, the mattresses burned black and the cardboard wardrobe turned to ash. The fire is old.

  Another door bangs. Cell 110 is empty, too; the wind whistles through the eyelets roping canvas to the frame. The tent is undamaged but, its guts have been burnt black.

  I drop the chain-rake and run from cell to cell, finding nothing. Jasper is empty.

  I touch the bristles of my prison crewcut and they're spike-still, and I realize there is no wind. It's whispering I hear. I am alone in Jasper with the whispers of the dead.

  I run, hoping to find the ring of skeleton keys in the station to unlock the gate. I see shadows in my peripheral vision, but when I turn they vanish. The shadows seem to be repairing the tents, rebuilding charred supports, righting upturned bunks. They pore over blueprints as transparent as glass, but in my peripheral vision I can see the plans clearly, signed with Jann Turnquist's familiar scrawl. And then I see the specs aren't of Jasper's tents but the skyscrapers of Avalon. The ghosts are rebuilding Avalon.

  Suddenly I'm at the station. Prison records are scattered on the floor and I wade through a tide of paper -- paper, because everything in Jasper is obscenely low-tech, beneath our threshold of temptation. I open the guard’s desk, but the keys are gone.

  Instead, I see my prison file. Photo, booking information, work crew duties, reprimands for two fistfights. Page two holds the specs for Icarus, the self-replicating algorithms that landed me here, plus the unsigned letter offering leniency if I showed them how to neutralize the code. Page three is a biography of my parents, but their accomplishments have been slashed out. Everything but one: Archiving Consciousness.

  I look up and see Jana Johnstone in an ivory tutu and pink slippers. As she pirouettes, pale sunlight winks off a necklace of skeleton keys. She stares Celtic eyes that once claimed my online virginity and says: "What is the prison of the dead?"

  I hear myself say: "The memories of the living."

  She steps forward, toes pointed. "And what is the prison of the living?"

  My voice is like screaming into the blades of a fan. "The mansions of the future."

  "And what is the key?"

  "A memory of the future."

  Jana laughs as I reach for the keys. Her laughter becomes a cackling, and the madness reshapes her face. Her cheekbones spread like wishbones and her dark eyes pale. Her shoulders bulge above the lacy tutu. A scar appears on her temple. My first love has become Wells Janak, the Neuromantic Southpaw.

  He rips the ring of keys off his neck and they burst into flames.

  "There is no key."

  Suddenly the roof explodes, splintered by the foot of a dragon. A yellowed claw impales Janak but he keeps laughing, even as his blood splashes the warden's portrait.

  The beast soars into the bleached sky and the dragon's terrible velocity rips Janak into confetti. I stagger back, scattering the papers of my past, and look up in time to see the dragon's head turn, open its emerald mouth and consume me with its flames.

  "Dragon Wagon Flagon."

  I jerked my eyes open, cracking the film that had hardened on my lids. A ghost hovered over me, chanting and swabbing my lips with a cool menthol salve. Then focus came, separating visual static from shape, and I saw Sunny DeCloud.

  "Scream Dream Cream," she said, as if that explained everything.

  I opened my mouth and made a croaking sound. Her green-gold eyes widened, gleeful that I'd made noise, and she grabbed a small bladder off the bedside table, took aim and shot a jet of water into my throat. I swished it around until the cobwebs washed free and said: "Seam Theme Team."

  Sunny grinned perfect seashell teeth and clapped her hands, bejeweled with a ransom in diamond rings. Then, with a challenging glint, she said, "Sick."

  "Sick Flick Tick."

  Another round of applause. Sunny adjusted the nurse's cap so the giant red cross faced forward. "You know my rhyme game."

  "I played it with your mother when we were your age."

  Sunny simply rolled her eyes. "Silly Chilly Billy."

  I glanced around the room, trying to get some bearings. The la
st time my eyes were open, I was standing in the middle of a coal bed with my clothes on fire. Now I was in the converted room of a cheap motel, the kind that once dotted the beltways, offering a hard bed and a second-generation television. The hard bed remained.

  I did some deep breathing and let my mind take a quick tour of the damage. My head still felt numb, but the fever had broken, and the wall of fluid behind my eyes had drained to a weak rumble in my chest. But my skin felt sticky, glommed with a jelly that muffled a distant sting. There were no mirrors. I had to take it on faith that beneath the covers, all of me was still there.

  I licked my lips and tasted copper in the cracks. "Are you my nurse?"

  "I am Chief Nurse Sunny DeCloud." She swelled inside her white smock and her voice adopted an adult's curtness. "Welcome to General Hospital, where every day we deal with the drama of life and death. Now for a word from our sponsor."

  I smiled at my niece; she'd inherited more than the Rhyme Game and the Denys Gold. General Hospital was a serial drama on old TV, before interactives replaced the studios. The show went extinct decades before Sunny was born, but archive ROMs were still floating around. Such things were forbidden in Marigolde, which meant Sunny also had to be sneaky. We were definitely related.

  I gave her a sly wink. "How bad is it, Bones?"

  She crossed her arms and huffed, "I'm a doctor, Jim. Not a miracle worker."

  I couldn't help but laugh now, despite the pain and goo, and she laughed back.

  "You don't say any of that around your Mom, do you?"

  "Huh-uh." She shook her head. "You won't tell her, will you?"

  I made an X over my heart. "Hope to die."

  She looked over her shoulder, checking for spies, and said confidentially, "I have a hideout for my treasures. Like these." She waved her fingers, displaying diamonds. "When new people come, I look for stuff in the warehouse. They bring neat stuff and then they just burn it. It must be neat out there with all these toys."

  "Depends who you ask."