Taff's whoop of jubilation had another and unexpected echo.
"There's a Spit behind us, Jaybird. 2000 yards."
Taff whooped again, because now he saw them, the little cluster of aircraft with the lovely curving wings that only belonged to Spitfires. "This is Red Two, Jaybird. Your little stray lamb."
"Thought we'd lost you, Taff," Brittan said warmly. "You okay?"
"A couple of nasty moments, Skip, but everything seems fine now."
"We'll orbit for you, Taff. Pick up on the right wing, and let's go home."
The dearly familiar landscape over the base beckoned as the returning fighters circled and, one by one, landed. There was no fuss, no aerobatics. Until on the ground there was no way of knowing if a stray bullet had struck a control cable. Just an ordered, easy landing, with the mechanics swarming over before the aircraft had taxied to a halt.
Taff climbed stiffly out of the cockpit. There were holes all over the fuselage, as if someone had tried to turn the Spitfire into a pepperpot. Somehow she had brought him through it and safely back to earth. He laid a hand on the pitted skin briefly, in silent thanksgiving.
"Taff! Thought you'd bought it back there! What happened?"
"God knows, Tommy. They were coming out of the woodwork, weren't they?"
"Five kills confirmed, lads." Brittan strolled over, the Group Captain at his side. "One of 'em is mine, one's yours, Tommy. And Taff got three. Bloody well done!"
"Three!" Tommy crowed, slapping Taff on the back. "You jammy sod, Taff!"
"Just my lucky day," Taff grinned at him.
"You can say that again! Come on, this deserves a drink!"
"I still got mine waiting for me," Taff grinned, "Unless some bastard's drunk it. Let's get one in before we go up again, is it?"
They are frail, my children. Yet they strive to their utmost for what they believe. They are mortal, but they have a courage that even a god, sometimes, must marvel at. For that reason, we aid them. As my brother Manawyddan an Llur, when he smoothed the sea for the passage of their little ships across to Dunkirk. As DianCecht inspires their healers. As the Blessed Bran protects them. They are our children, and our continuance, and they carry at their heart's core the seed of immortality. Not theirs alone, but also ours. It is only when they forget that we, too, begin to die.
Loki shall not prevail against them. Not this time.
JUSTICE
Tek noticed that for a brief moment Mentor seemed upset at the story. It was almost as if he too had learned something new. The new god found that gratifying. He also noticed that they had been joined by a number of new visitors. The first were quickly introduced as companions of Lugh. They seemed friendly and, well, earthy. Tek found them easy to talk with, if woefully ignorant of the latest technology.
While he spoke with one of the earth goddesses, another of the newcomers began changing the landscape. The barren field rose up and formed itself into columns and buttresses. Ethereal dust whirled and Tek found himself standing at the entrance of a garden. It wasn't a very neat garden, not like those Tek had seen on military bases. This was a wild jumble of exotic plants and blossoms, cut only by a wide path which began a step ahead of the war god and his teacher.
"A peace offering from Diana," Mentor explained. "It might be best if we accepted."
"How would we do that?" Tek asked. He wasn't sure if he wanted to accept a "peace" offering or not. Diana and her companions had been less than friendly until now. Something was still bothering him, but the garden didn't seem menacing.
"Come, let's enjoy the views," Mentor said cheerfully as he took the first few steps into the garden and then looked back.
With a slight shrug, Tek followed. The two walked in silence for some distance. Occasionally Mentor would stop and examine an unusual flower or watch and insect scuttle among the debris beneath the plants. Out of courtesy to someone who was aiding him, Tek tolerated this wasted time. Finally the sense of urgency, a fear that he was missing something, drove him to comment.
"It might be best if we continue as we walk," the young god said to Mentor.
The old man had been amusedly commenting on the efforts of an ant to move a piece of sap much too large for even its strength and seemed surprised at Tek's insistence.
"You are a god," he reminded. "You have, in effect forever."
"But something needs me elsewhere," Tek observed nervously. "My followers must be calling on me."
"But you are not ready to aid them," Mentor pointed out. "That's why I'm here: to get you ready. To teach you how to be a god."
"So teach," Tek almost roared, "here. Now! I want to begin."
Mentor kept his half-amused smile, even when Tek bellowed, a sound that resembled nothing so much as the screech of a diving Stuka. Then he turned and slowly transmuted some of the nearby plants into another wide screen, high resolution television.
"It is now time," the teacher explained as the screen lit, "to teach you another face to war."
Tek nodded his approval. A sense of progress allowed him to ignore other concerns. You had to have the proper training and intelligence to successfully complete any operation.
The clouds that covered the conjured television's screen formed themselves into a new image, one of a beautiful oriental woman. She wore white silk robes embroidered with gold thread. Without question, even among the gods, this was one of the most lovely of all creatures.
"Kwan Yin," Mentor introduced. "Not exactly your type, but wise and in her own way powerful, a mercy goddess." Tek nodded a third time, unwilling to look away.
As they watched, the woman smiled, giving the impression she could see them. It was then that Tek realized there were other people on the screen, walking behind Kwan Yin. Concerned, the goddess turned to hover over an U.S. Army issue cot. As she turned her silken robes became the simple cotton gown of a peasant woman. On the cot was a Caucasian male in a thrown-together uniform. He was clearly near death.
WHITE LADY
by S.N. Lewitt
Langley Field, Va. 1919
"He's not going to make it," the doctor said to one of the orderlies. "Put him in with the others. No good infecting anyone else." He was put on a stretcher and taken out to the overflow facility, a small shack near the morgue. Half the patients there seemed to be dead already.
Anger burned hotter than fever in the young pilot. All his life things had gone stark screaming wrong. He had been just too young to fight in the War, and he had begun to understand the secrets of the fierce little biplanes just as they were being replaced. He had expected to die fighting. He was a fighting man and a pilot. He never expected to die old.
But to die in his own country, in Virginia, for God's sake, that was bad enough. But of influenza? No matter that the country was under epidemic attack, that thousands had already died and that there was nothing that could be done about it. That something as civilian as influenza could do what a uniformed enemy had never had the chance to do made Claire Lee Chennault more furious than the fact of dying.
The little shack was dark, dissolved, and he was aware of the morgue next door. Where he belonged, most likely. The whole place filled with an eerie light and he could see his sweat-soaked body lying on a makeshift cot near the door. He became sad for a moment, all the half-schemed ideas in his head becoming solid and taking on shape.
He could see so clearly from this height the patterns of planes and how the older men were misusing them. How they just didn't understand the potential there, ready, straining, eager to pounce on their foxholes and infantries. In that one single flash of comprehension and death he could see it all so very clearly and he knew how to make it all work. And he knew he was dying and wouldn't have the chance.
He saw a friend open the door of the shack. Pale moonlight spilled through the door and onto his face. His friend went to where he lay with a bottle of cheap bourbon, looked at his glazed form and tucked the bottle under the blanket with what had been Chennault's living body.
&nb
sp; Then his friend left and Chennault followed into the dark night of epidemic. There were tears on his friend's face. Chennault knew that he was truly, really dead.
"This is the one," he heard a voice say. Then he saw a lady dressed all in white, more beautiful than he had ever imagined any woman could be. She reached down and touched the bottle at his side, touched his forehead. And he woke up with the fever burning to drink the good whiskey his friend had left.
Amaterasu had invited all the Celestial Beings to her great cave in Heaven. The ancient Tiger of China appeared and was given a seat of honor on a silk cushion under a blossoming cherry tree, which all guessed was a bad omen. Amaterasu was planning something, and she had never given such precedence to the Tiger before. So there were whispers and speculations among the lesser gods, but none said anything aloud.
The gods of Korea and Burma, all the Buddhist saints and demigods arrived and were seated at the lower end of the table, and below them were the million local spirits and revered ancestors. All the gods of the Heavens and those who had descended to Earth, and those of the Sea and the Underworld all arrived, one after the other, to be seated in Amaterasu's Great Hall. The chamberlains kept careful count as they appeared, and each was guided to a place in the elegant chamber. For Amaterasu's cave was beyond the beauty and harmony of any Palace on Earth.
A great feast had been laid, rice and fish and shark's fin, fugu and eel all perfectly prepared and splashed with the lightest flavoring of soy and the most delicate sprinkling of ginger and onions. Even the gods appreciated all the delicacies laid out before them, the platters made to look like peacocks and mountain landscapes and fat carp swimming around lotus. After the feasting came the tea, and after the tea came the poems to the Sun Goddess thanking her for her hospitality, her beauty, her impeccable taste.
Still, as all this went on, the chamberlains were distressed. One single goddess had not appeared. She was a very humble goddess, but popular in both China and Japan with very many followers. Kannon, or Kwan Yin, was the only one of Amaterasu's guests not to appear. The chamberlains could not understand why this meek and quiet Goddess of Mercy, surely not a very powerful or noble lady in the great assembly, would scorn the power of the Goddess of the Sun, the Imperial Ancestress of Japan. So they did not tell Amaterasu that her last guest had not arrived.
After a polite interval the Sun Goddess arose. She was splendid, wearing the jewel that her father had given her when he had also given her the heavens to rule. Her brother the Moon God and her brother the Sea God stood on either side of her. All three of them were in the bright silks of Heaven, black and silver and gold and blue, all delicately woven with patterns of birds and cherry blossoms and butterflies all over. Surely there were no more magnificent gods anywhere in the universe. Even the great Tiger of China in his stripes and claws was not so dazzling as these.
Amaterasu cleared her throat delicately. There was complete silence in the hall. "Many have petitioned me, many have prayed to me with their deaths," she began. "The people of Japan have long desired to grow, to take over the leadership from the weary, Westernized Chinese. Burma has fallen to the British, China is under the influence of a million different round-eyes who speak unpronounceable tongues. Only Japan is left, only Japan is pure. And it is the Japanese destiny to throw the Westerners out of our homes, our countries, our world. Let them return to their own homes, their own people. Let them leave our people forever. My children are strong enough to eliminate them."
There was cheering in the great hall, for all the gods of Japan were in attendance and at the highest places. They all rose and yelled and stomped their support of Amaterasu's announcement.
The Tiger of China looked alarmed and circled the Japanese gods, his great tail making a barrier behind them. "Will no one speak for the Chinese?" he asked softly, hissing through his teeth. "Will the new Buddhists and our ancestors protect us from these people?"
But no one heard him. There was only laughter and cheering in the rafters among the assembly. The cheering was so loud that it could be heard outside the great cave of Heaven, where a single wanderer stood at the gate.
She was not a magnificent sight, she had no jewels or bright silks. She wore only a simple white cotton robe like a peasant woman. And like a peasant woman she carried an infant in her arms.
She heard the cheering and the cries, and under it all she heard the hiss of the Tiger. She was too late. Kwan Yin, who could not help but listen to prayers, had stopped on the way to Amaterasu's cave to help a family whose house was burning put out the flames before the baby died. She could not ignore the old man who wanted to see his grandson, she could not pass by the potter who had been robbed and all his clay tea cups and bowls scattered broken on the ground.
She did not know if these people were in China or Japan, if they were in Burma or Korea. She was ignorant of boundaries and the language she understood too well was pain. That did not need translation.
So she had been delayed on the long road to Heaven, and had missed the pronouncement of the Sun Goddess. Slowly she glided into the great hall. Already those who had feasted were drinking rice wine and were praising the Goddess Amaterasu for cleansing the whole of Asia. Only the Tiger of China noticed the small, white-clad goddess arrive.
The Tiger padded quietly through the celebrating guests and nuzzled her arm. "Kwan Yin, this is a very evil thing," he muttered under his breath.
The doe-eyed goddess of mercy stroked his great spotted nose. "Our people have suffered from Western ways," she said gently. "I hear so many women calling in the night, begging for help with a father, a husband, a brother who is lost to the opium forever. To destroy that alone will be a great good."
The Tiger snorted softly. "You are too soft, Kwan Yin," he said. "You don't understand these things at all. The Japanese have always wanted to take China. Now they have all the gods with them and China is abandoned. It is already done. I am the only one who will stand for China. Will you stand with me?"
Kwan Yin looked out at all the celebrating gods. Her long thin fingers tangled in the ruff around the Tiger's neck. "I cannot chose China or Japan or any one place," she said very quietly. "I am not sure I understand it. These countries have nothing to do with helping those in need."
The Tiger moved back carefully and looked at her full in the eye. He was far larger than most tigers and she was not so tall as many of the goddesses, and so well back they were of a height. "Even you," he said, and Kwan Yin saw the glittering harshness in his eyes. "Even you will abandon me and my people. We will still fight even without mercy."
Kwan Yin wanted to protest, but the Tiger was gone. The joy in the great hall of the Celestial Cave turned her stomach. They were celebrating something that would bring only more pain to the mothers, to the elders, to those who cried out to her. There was nothing at all here that Kwan Yin wanted to see. And there were already petitioners at her ears, women of Japan who did not rejoice as the gods when their sons volunteered for war.
Amaterasu sat in her cave in the place of honor she had given to the Tiger of China. The cherry tree had lost its blooms in the great cavern, and the stream that ran under its dripping fronds reflected not the leaves of the tree or the delicately arched ceiling of the cave, but something that happened far away on the Earth below.
The stream showed her a great city. Overhead were a cloud of airplanes with the mark of the Rising Sun on them. Her mark. They flew dark and heavy, laden with bombs. Amaterasu clapped her hands in delight. She knew enough about modern war to know that bombers were invincible. They soared over a city like a flock of birds and the whole town blossomed with red flame. There was nothing at all anyone could do.
She watched for the pleasure of it. And then she saw other planes, smaller and faster approaching out of the West. The West, the evil direction that had brought far too much foreignness already. Now it was bringing planes.
They weren't large, though, the Sun Goddess realized. They were tiny things against the bulk of h
er bombers, and there weren't many of them. As few as she could count on her fingers. Nothing to fear. The Tiger of China was large and fearsome, but he was also old and weary and without friends.
The little planes approached and did not run away. They moved in a complex dance pattern, two together, each group diving from above the bombers and cutting through them with machine guns. The little guns, she couldn't even see the damage they did to her great birds of death, and yet her own here falling. Failing, failing, some turning and running back to sea. Where they plummeted into the water, to the embrace of her brother.
Amaterasu was angry. She did not like to lose. She had rarely done so. This was humiliation. These metal birds had worn a talisman of the Sun, the painting of the jewel her father had given her as he had given her the Heavens to rule.
She cursed under her breath and blew hard on the stream. The water rippled and clouded. She was in charge again. The coastal cities of China would be cleansed of the aliens. The millions of round-eyes who thought of Shanghai as home were learning the hard way, the very hardest way, that they were not welcome here in Asia. They were not wanted at all.
1937, Nanking, China
A single man left Nanking in an airplane on the orders of Chaing Kai-shek. He did not want to go but there was nothing at all here he could do. The planes he had been promised had been sunk when the Japanese bombed the harbor at Shanghai. No, there was nothing Claire Lee Chennault could do to save the city. The Japanese had begun the ground offensive four days ago. Now they had won. He looked down as he lifted off over Nanking. The sun was rising and the buildings looked rosy in the dawn. The brilliant pink deepened into a blood red. He had not been the head of the Chinese Air Force very long, and now there was little enough left of China and less left of their ability to fight.
The Gods of War Page 13