Year of the Black Rainbow

by Claudio Sanchez

  And started to scream.

  It was the most terrifying sound Cambria had heard in her relatively short life. “I landed on ‘em!” Coheed screamed. “I landed on the blades, oh God, Cam! I think…God, they drove into my guts! Cam, I’m gonna die, I—“

  “It’s okay, it’ll be okay!” Cambria cried out, and she ran to him, unsure of whether she should try to move him or if that would just make matters worse.

  The moment she was within range, Coheed lashed out with his right foot and caught her square in the gut. Cambria was knocked clear off her feet, flying two yards before crashing up against a tree across the clearing.

  And then Coheed was atop her and she was still confused, and all he had to do was knock her cold. It wouldn’t take more than a sharp blow to the head.

  His fist was curled, ready to strike…

  And then he opened his hand and, instead, brought the tip of one of his blades directly above her eyeball. “That,” he said, “was just plain dumb, Cam. Letting your guard down like that…”

  Her eyes narrowed and she shoved her hand against his chest. The air seemed to sizzle around him and suddenly Coheed was blasted backward. He tumbled through the air, his arms flailing, trying to pull himself out of his spiral.

  His left arm thudded into a towering oak with a wide trunk. The machetes rammed into the tree. Coheed hung there, supported by his arm. He tried to pull them free but they were buried too deeply. He tried to bring his feet up so that he could brace them against the tree and push, but the soles of his boots kept skidding off.

  “You stupid—!” shouted Cambria, so inarticulate with fury that she couldn’t even finish the sentence. She brought her hands up again and pointed them straight at Coheed.

  “Cam…remember about respecting our surroundings…protecting the environment…”

  “Screw the environment!”

  Realizing he had about two seconds, Coheed swung his legs up and wrapped them around the trunk. It braced him sufficiently that he was able to push backwards and yank the blades clear of the tree. He thudded to the ground just as Cambria’s shock blast slammed into where he’d been. The tree shuddered and there was a loud cracking and snapping as the upper section ripped free from the lower. It started to fall backwards but then the branches snagged in the branches of other trees, leaving it hanging there halfway.

  Cambria took aim once again. This time Coheed leaped straight up, over the blast, snagging the upper portion of the tree as her blast tore through the air below him. He ripped the tree clear with a series of deafening snaps as the branches tore off and he hit the ground once more. Then, with a low grunt, he drew back the upper section of the tree and let fly. Cambria saw it coming and still was hard pressed to get out of the way. She hit the ground, covering her head, as the tree sailed over her, missing her by scant inches.

  She started to get up again and suddenly Coheed landed heavily on her back, flattening her. She cried out in fury, but her hands were being held flat to either side, and her head was pushed down into the soft dirt. The aroma of a grove of pine trees a short distance away mingled with the smell of sweat from the wrestling man and woman.

  Once again it would have taken nothing more than a quick, decisive blow to end it; and once again, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead he warned her, “Give up, Cam! If you can’t point at me—”

  “I don’t have to point, you imbecile!”

  And suddenly both Coheed and Cambria were airborne. She had fired a blast directly into the ground, sending them both hurtling skyward. Coheed tried to reposition himself but it was too late. He slammed heavily into a particularly large overhead branch. The branch snapped off from the impact and seconds later Coheed, Cambria and the branch fell back to the ground. Cambria landed first, Coheed a few moments later. He glanced up just in time to see the branch about to land on Cambria’s skull. He caught it just before it struck her and tossed it aside.

  She glowered at him. “Am I supposed to thank you for that?”

  “You mean for making it so that you didn’t get cracked in the skull?”

  “Maybe if it had hit you in the skull, it would have knocked some sense into you!”

  He got to his feet and dusted himself off. His black workout uniform was covered with dirt, leaves and bits of bark. “What the hell is your problem?”

  “My problem? My problem?” She extended her hands, clearly ready to hurl another shock blast at him.

  Coheed started to take a step back but then held his ground and simply stared at her challengingly.

  “Where do you get off—?” she started to say, but before she could unleash a blast, a hand grabbed her wrist firmly. She turned and saw Inferno standing there. As was typical for him, there was no sign of disapproval in his face. He looked calm, even dispassionate, as if he had no personal stake in any of what was going on. She tried to pull away but he didn’t release her immediately. “Let go.”

  “Once you calm down.”

  “You want to see calm?” Her eyes began to glow in a manner that was very distinctive.

  “Don’t!” he said sharply. It was not a plea but more in the spirit of an order mixed with a very pronounced warning. “Do not even think about trying to seize control of my mind. Or his,” and he gestured with a nod of his head toward Coheed. “You know that was against your instructions. You do remember about instructions, yes? Those things that you are supposed to follow rather than ignore?”

  “Why not talk to him about it?” she said, with defiance in her voice. “He treated this like it was a game…”

  “Well, they’re called ‘wargames’ for a reason,” said Coheed.

  “Shut up,” said Cambria. “You’re in enough trouble.” Coheed looked to Inferno and shrugged in a What am I supposed to do? manner.

  Inferno didn’t seem to comprehend any better than his “brother.” “I fail to see how he is in trouble.”

  “That act he pulled about being hurt! He—“

  “He caught you off guard. Do you truly believe that an enemy will not use every trick at his or her disposal to turn your own weakness against you?”

  “I’m not weak,” Cambria said heatedly.

  “If you were willing to give an enemy quarter, then yes, you are. Because I can assure you,” said Inferno firmly, “that an enemy will not provide you the same consideration. If in the midst of a battle, Wilhelm Ryan is lying there with a sucking chest wound, begging for succor, the only action you take is to finish him off. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say that you understand it.”

  She pulled away from him then, as much from the fact that he was letting go as from her own strength. “I understand,” she said, her jaw set.

  “Good. Now remember it. Coheed,” and Inferno turned to him, “you were foolish to throw yourself onto her. You could have used your arm cannon. For that matter, there were several times where you could have dispatched her. Why didn’t you?”

  Because I enjoyed the attention I was getting from her. Because I didn’t want to hurt her pride. He shrugged. “I was afraid I would hurt her.”

  “Concern over her wellbeing was not among your mission parameters. This training exercise was about incapacitating your opponent. You both did well, but you could have done better.” He heard a snort of laughter from Coheed. “What do you find so amusing?”

  “You, ‘Ferno. If you gotta ask. You. Acting like you’re this big know-it-all when you’ve barely been walking the world much longer than either of us. The Doc put you in charge of training ‘cept all you really are, are his eyes and ears on us. You’re a glorified vidcamera is all. So stop acting like you’re our teacher or that you know so much more than us…”

  “I know,” Inferno said coolly, “all that the Doctor knows. Which is far more than either of you. Furthermore, if he wanted you to know as much as I do, he would have arranged it so that that was the case. He didn’t. So that should tell you something.”

  “Tells m
e you’re an obnoxious prick who’s getting kind of full of himself.”

  Inferno stared at him for a moment. “Odd. That was precisely what the Doctor said you would say.” Then he walked away from them with that insufferably confident stride of his.

  Coheed licked his lips, feeling uncertain of what to say and not even sure why that would be. “Look…Cam—”

  “Save it,” she said as she stomped away, leaving him standing there.

  A raccoon chattered at him.

  “You got something to say?” said Coheed. He picked up a rock and took aim. The raccoon, deciding it was overmatched, quickly skittered away.

  “Yeah! You better run!” Coheed shouted after him. He stared at the rock, flipped it a few times, and then threw it with perfect accuracy at the space recently vacated by the raccoon. He nodded in approval. “You better run,” he said more softly.

  * * *

  Coheed’s quarters consisted of nothing except a very small, portable tent nestled under an overhanging tree. The Doctor’s reasoning had been that they could pretty much rely on the notion that they would be out and about in challenging environments, and it did nothing to benefit their training if they had a nice comfortable room in the house. Chances were that they wouldn’t even have a tent at their disposal, but it was his token nod to living in a civilized manner.

  He heard a footfall from a short distance away. Instantly on alert—for he had been trained to assume that any unexpected noise was a potential hostile—he was out of his tent, striking a defensive posture. His incredibly keen eyesight picked up on the movement of a human form, and the targeting information that ran through his brain instantly identified it as Pearl Hohenberger.

  Despite the Doctor’s explanation as to why they were living a distance from the house, Coheed suspected that there was something else at issue, namely the Doctor’s wife. That Hohenberger wanted to keep his creations as far from her as possible because…

  Well, Coheed wasn’t sure why.

  Coheed had no idea what to make of Pearl Hohenberger. She had not, to the best of his recollection, said a single word to him. On those occasions when they encountered each other, she would look at him, her eyebrows knit, and it always seemed as if she wanted to say something to him. But she never did. This made Coheed slightly crazy because he felt that if he could only establish some sort of rapport with the woman, it would solve a lot of problems.

  Still, whatever Pearl’s problem was, obviously it was her problem and not his.

  Except it was bugging him.

  Deciding to take the opportunity to address the issue directly, Coheed followed her. He quickly realized that everything about his body language made it seem as if he was about to launch an attack, and instantly modified it so that he appeared more casual and at ease.

  She heard him approaching because he allowed her to. If he had wanted, he could have been upon her and severed her jugular vein before she knew he was anywhere near. He even began to calculate the angle and trajectory of his assault before he brought himself up short. Stop thinking about everything in terms of tactics and assault, he mentally chided himself, before realizing bleakly that it was so hardwired into him that he couldn’t do a damned thing to change it.

  A twig snapped loudly under his foot because he deliberately stepped on it, and she looked up at him. She had just been standing there, staring at something. When she noticed that Coheed was a few feet away, she seemed to process that information and then return to staring. He followed her gaze and realized that she was studying a boulder that had lettering carved into it. His vision zoomed in on it and he saw that it was a name.

  Her son. Her son is buried here.

  “Can I help you?” said Pearl when the silence seemed as if it would go on forever.

  “Can I help you?”

  She cocked her head. “Is this some sort of training thing? That you repeat what others say in order to more fully grasp the language?”

  “Repeat—?” He winced. “I mean…no. I was…I just wanted to know if you needed…I don’t know…assistance.”

  “Do I look as if I’m in distress?”

  He studied her, really studied her closely for the first time since he had come into existence.

  “Is human psychiatry part of your programming?”

  “Programming? I don’t understand.”

  “Programming. That which my husband imprinted upon you. You do understand you were artificially created, do you not?”

  Coheed stared at her. “What do you mean?”

  “You were grown. Grown from bits and pieces, from genetic this-and-that. You’re not real. You grasp that, yes?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Amazing,” said Pearl. “When Lenny first explained—”

  “Who?”

  She looked confused at the question, but then understood and even smiled slightly. “Leonard. I…used to call him Lenny. All the time. Lately it’s been Leonard. But it—” She shook it off. “Anyway, I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, but now I see it for myself. He’s built into you a sense of—denial, I suppose, would be the best way to put it. You and Cambria do not comprehend that you are artificial creations. When confronted with it, certain parts of your brain simply shut down. You truly think of yourselves as real people. Leonard said he did it that way so that you would be more vested in the stakes of humanity, rather than feeling like outsiders. Inferno knows and understands, but you and the woman do not. You think you’re just people. Highly trained, surgically altered people. And nothing will penetrate that…that psychic filter that’s ingrained in your brain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sighed and looked down, shaking her head., “Is human psychiatry,” she said, choosing new words that would fall within Coheed’s parameters so that she could get an answer to the question, “part of what my husband has taught you?”

  “No, just human weakness. Being able to look at someone and pinpoint their…their vulnerabilities…”

  “Thus giving you something to target and making you a more efficient killer.”

  “Yes.”

  “He calls you ‘Beast,’ you know.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “That’s his code name for you. Or maybe his nickname. However you’d put it. ‘Beast’ is how he refers to you in his papers and memos to himself. Why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She just stared at him, trying to take in this interesting creature her husband had fashioned. Indeed, her gaze seemed to be boring into him.

  “You have his eyes,” she said at last.

  “S’cuse me?”

  “His.” She nodded toward the inscribed rock. “My son’s. You have his eyes. It’s like watching his soul staring out at me. Lenny mixed some of his DNA into yours. When I first saw you, I swear, I thought I was looking at Joseph. Not Joseph as he was, but Joseph as I always imagined he’d be. Or the Joseph he should have been if he had not…”

  Slowly she sat. Following her lead, Coheed dropped to the ground opposite her. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Well…that makes two of us. I have…” she sighed. “There’s the good days and the bad days, I guess. I had a good day some months ago, right when Lenny first started this entire proj—this whole thing. Then a lot more bad days. Then a few good. He’s been steering clear of me for the most part; I think he doesn’t know what to make of me anymore. Can’t say I blame him. I’m not sure I do, either.”

  He reached over and took her hand. She looked down at it in surprise. “You’re warm to the touch. I don’t know why I’m surprised by that, but…I am.”

  “You said I reminded you of your son?”

  She nodded.

  “All right. Well…if I were him…what would you say to me?”

  She laughed uncomfortably and tried to pull her hand away. “This is silly.”

  He didn’t let go. He wasn’t rough about it, but he was firm. “What would you say
to me?” he repeated.

  “I…” She stopped pulling, instead staring into his eyes, like a swimmer descending into the depths of a pool. “I would say that…I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For not being there to protect you. And for…” Her voice caught. “For blaming your father for it.”

  “Did you really think it was his fault?”

  “I really wanted to think it, because I wanted to have something I could lash out against directly; and Wilhelm Ryan wasn’t here, and he was. He was here. And he stayed here. He…” She shook her head and very gently, she said, “He was always here, I suppose. For me, I mean. Your father. We were the perfect match for so long. We complemented each other in every way. He was stern where I wanted to be permissive, and vice versa. You know the first step to being a successful, loving couple? Not getting in each other’s way. You’d be amazed how many people don’t understand that.”

  “I bet I would be,” said Coheed.

  She didn’t even seem to be listening to him. “We were two opposite parts that made up a whole. Two seemingly discordant parts of a song that when put together, create a perfect harmony. That applied to all things, even parenting. Len, he’d try to give you room to grow, and I’d keep trying to…I guess suffocate you, except I just thought I was being a good mother. You were my only child, after all. And maybe I knew the reason that I could try to rein you in was that at the exact same time, Leonard kept loosening the rein and loosening it, giving you the room to run. I knew he’d balance me out if I got to be, you know…too much.

  “And when you died, part of me was going, A-ha, see, I was right and he was wrong! Except that’s not true. We were both right, and we were both wrong.”

  “And have you said any of this to the Doctor?”

  “Not…in so many words.”

  Coheed was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Look…the whole love thing is still—I’m kind of hazy on it. The whole idea that someone can cause you tons of pain, and instead of just wanting to kill them, you wind up loving them all the more. That whole idea, I have trouble with. But I think I’m starting to understand two things.”

  “And what would those be?”