Grand Junction

by Maurice G. Dantec

  The Vessel continues its celestial development, heedless of the events unfolding around it on the surface of this Earth from which it is wresting itself little by little.

  The armistice is broken on the morning of the sixth day. Its only real purpose, of course, was providing time for both sides to reorganize their troops. And now this last of all wars resumes as if it never stopped. As if none of the wars that preceded it ever stopped.

  None of the wars have ever stopped. Each of them has simply been followed by a stretch of peace separating it from the next one. This last of all wars is separated from them now by the last of all peaces. Total Peace, Universal Peace, World Peace. Omega Peace.

  This sixth and last day of the Construction of the Vessel will be known as the Day of Light.

  Probably because it is the darkest day of all.

  The luminosity emitted by the metamachine is so bright that it is now creating series of optical illusions, perihelia in twin constellations inside the Halo. The brightness reaches such a magnitude that the Vessel itself, like the Ark, is refracted, its image doubling. Yuri knows that the Halo and this optical splitting are part of the exact same event. This is the nature of light, its singularity—that which makes it what we see, just as much as the means by which we see.

  At this level of intensity, the light eventually plunges the universe into deepest darkness. The darkness born of blinding, born of the consumption of the optic nerve, the consumption of the brain itself.

  This Day of the Blind, as the Legend will also refer to it, is probably the deadliest day so far. The numbers/losses ratio is more or less maintained; the problem is that, despite this continuous equilibrium between losses inflicted and the enemy’s numeric superiority, the combatants are rapidly reaching rupture points, “levels” at which the ratio, however numerically identical, has a totally different impact on the land. Maps have nothing to do with the Territory now. Numbers cannot encompass life, much less death.

  Yuri and Campbell realize—simultaneously, as always—that this will be the Day when most of the defenders will die.

  The Law of the Territory is clearly visible in the light, all the way until your eyes close.

  Bob Chamberlain is shot in the head when, with his partner and a militia squadron led by Lady van Harpel, they surprise the rear guard of an enemy battalion near Nexus Road. The old Catholic sibyl dies along with him, fighting to the last bullet, the last blast of gunpowder.

  Jane Delorette dies with Villalobos when their truck is hit head-on by an RPG-7 rocket fired by an elite enemy formation.

  Alex la Varende, Florian Schutzberg, Scot Montrose, Patrick Doyle, and Virgil Fermont meet their deaths in similar conditions as they execute the tactical maneuvers developed during the Day of Traps, luring the enemy to the places where it can be killed. This final time, the enemy seriously damages the trap by falling into it. That is the problem with this Day of Light; even the highest-functioning optical devices are useless. The trappers cannot see any better than the trapped. More than once, the trap turns on the predators—and they go from being living traps into being victims.

  Mary-Ann Beaulieu and Fernand Claymore die this way. Later, Lecerf, who has performed his role as mobile sniper marvelously since the beginning, is surrounded by a whole enemy unit west of the cosmodrome and fights for hours, alone, cut off from the rest of the Guardians since the death of Schutzberg, his partner. He kills dozens of men, all day, until he runs out of ammunition. The Anomians who fall on him to finish him off find a smiling young man holding a sort of cable in his hand. A second later, four high-power defensive grenades blow up everything within ten meters of his body, of which nothing will ever be found.

  But the numbers/losses ratio holds. No sacrifice is pointless. No sacrifice derogates from the Law.

  It was the correct tactic. One might even say that it was the best one, because it was the only possible one. Yet it creates an ongoing nonnumeric differential, a topological differential. The ratio remains the same, but for each man lost on their side, hundreds of square meters of terrain are made available to the enemy. The Ridge is becoming more and more difficult to defend. The Anome will add lateral surrounding maneuvers to its frontal offensive.

  This time, it will be the end.

  Campbell says only: “We have to kill more of them. A lot more of them.” And Yuri thinks: We will always have to kill more of them. We will have to kill them for all eternity. But we only have a day or two left.

  They will have to kill all of them, he realizes.

  And the mathematical consequence of this is that they, the defenders, will all have to die, too. There can be no doubt of it.

  It is the only kind of equilibrium the Territory can tolerate.

  * * *

  Legend will call the Seventh Day the Day of Departure.

  As the Vessel of Infinity whirls slowly toward the zenith, getting farther and farther away from the planet of Men, leaving final photosonic bursts of its light-music to individuate in each of the surviving singularities there, the very last battles are being fought in the Territory-within-the-Territory, and a sort of moonlit dimness falls over the universe. The unyielding light of the Halo in one’s retinas makes daylight look like midnight at the full moon, a continual night, the hours of which no one cares to count. This is the day when the last Guardians will die, even as the Anomian army begins to be pushed back by the advancing deadly zones slowly being created by the Territory-within-the-Territory.

  This is the day Chrysler Campbell dies.

  There are fewer than a hundred Guardians of the Territory left: Yuri, Campbell, Alpini; the last of the sheriff’s men—Langlois himself, Cyril Clarke, Slade Vernier, Erwin Slovak, and Lewis Duchenal, the Manitoban mixed-blood. And then what remains of the county militia. Eighty soldiers in total. Not counting Balthazar, the bionic dog still watching over the sheriff and his deputy.

  On the other side, Belfond and his commanders still have an army of more than eight thousand men. The one-against-one-hundred ratio still stands. But this time they have reached the breaking point. The brigades of neohumanity will attempt a mixed offensive, with a frontal assault supported by attacks on the flanks, until the final encirclement. They will give it all they’ve got before the ontological barrier closes completely.

  And the last eighty Guardians of the Territory will give it all they’ve got, too, for as long as the Vessel has not been joined by the Ark of the Singularity, for as long as the hyperluminous body of Link de Nova has not been crowned by its metabrain, they will keep fighting, keep killing, keep dying.

  The moment when the structure will be most fragile, the electric boy said. The moment they must win at all costs. The Vessel is a huge, brilliant spark in the night-blue sky. It will reach orbit in two or three hours. Then the Ark will be able to join it. The final mission of the Law of Bronze will put the final period on its own existence.

  They will put everything they have left into this last battle.

  We will all die, thinks Yuri. All of us. We will all die, on both sides.

  The Law of the Territory will be the only winner of this war. And its victory will be precisely this null match. Its victory will be mutual assured destruction.

  It is the very last chance for life on this planet.

  Lewis Duchenal and Erwin Slovak, partners now, are the first to fall, having inflicted a veritable massacre on an entire enemy column, which they cut down with machine guns while driving at full speed through the ranks, north of the strip. Yuri knows it wasn’t really a suicide operation; the two men evaluated their chances and took the risk. And they killed or wounded two hundred neomen all by themselves during their final commando maneuver. They respected the ratio; they preserved the equilibrium of the Law to the end.

  Very rapidly, the rest of them form a circle, like the famous circle of covered wagons that left for the Far West eons ago, the ones the pioneers huddled in on the plains when they were attacked by Indian tribes. All the pickups and the other vehicl
es, in working order or not, including those recovered from the enemy, as well as a few carcasses the Vessel left on the periphery of Humvee, are assembled around the summit of the Ridge.

  The mesa becomes a citadel of metal.

  The last citadel. The last one that must hold.

  The last one that must fall.

  From the top of the Ridge, finding a place to station himself and reload all his weapons, Yuri can see the configuration of the crater left by the rising of the Vessel. He notices a bizarre detail, incongruous against the landscape, and unexpected to say the least.

  His shelter has been left by the Vessel, as if forgotten, in the middle of the former city of Heavy Metal. Just like the plastic and metal debris there. The tires. The windshields, rearview mirrors, dashboards. Pieces of engines. Radiator grilles. Car seats. Bumpers. Two windmills joined by a system of gears. It is as if the Vessel wanted to leave these relics behind. Yuri cannot understand why.

  Slade Vernier falls in his turn, alongside Balthazar. A blast of M60 machine-gun fire destroys the weakest part of the pickup that was serving as his firing post, ripping apart human and animal flesh with the same short-range volley. The heavy 7.62-millimeter bullets cause geysers of red to spurt from his body as he falls backward, killed cleanly, his Desert Eagle still solidly clutched in his death-stiffening hand like an immovable prosthesis. The bionic dog is nothing but an indistinct mass of blood and shattered biocomponents. He takes a few seconds to die, his eye fixed on the Ark.

  Then an automatic-weapons cross fire takes out Cyril Clarke, who falls less than two meters away from Yuri, the upper half of his body reduced to a mist of blood and flesh.

  Later, Yuri sees an RPG-7 rocket pulverize a stack of car bodies behind which Francisco Alpini has been firing, a good position dominating the east of the Ridge. His body torn by pieces of shrapnel and metal, Alpini fights for a few hours afterward; then, feeling the end approach, he carries out a true kamikaze maneuver, a furious charge, guns blazing, with the final pyrotechnic of the detonation of a belt of C-4s in the very middle of a battalion of attackers.

  The Circle of Steel, the Ring of the Ridge, is holding to the end. It holds until only Sheriff Langlois, Yuri, and Campbell remain. It is still holding. They have only a few hand weapons left, the Soviet Tokarev and the SS Luger, and a small store of bullets. It holds. Until the inevitable happens.

  A complete breakdown on both sides. No more ammunition. The clicking of empty guns is heard for several minutes, like the sound of a strange animal, at once subterranean and aerial, organic and mechanical, the paradoxical noise of the silence of killing machines. The song of firing pins meeting nothing except steel, vibrating against nothing. The silent rhapsody of chambers without bullets, of barrels that will never be anything again but empty tubes, triggers that will never be pressed by a finger again. The metallic sound of the end of the mechanical war.

  The strategy of the citadel has demonstrated its adequacy as part of the Law. Not only have they substantially increased the ratio of numbers to losses, they have held on long enough to exhaust the enemy’s ammunition supply. And their own, too, of course. But they have held on long enough for the Vessel to reach orbit. They have held on long enough that the Ark will soon join it. They have held on long enough for the ontological border to close again. The Anomes cannot stay one hour longer in the Territory-within-the-Territory. Many units have already been caught in the trap of the invisible protective wall that is reassembling randomly, in spots, in the most unpredictable manner. The singular ontology of the “wall” reminds them that the border is only a line of demarcation; it was the placement of the beginning of the Territory-within-the-Territory; its topology is mobile. It is a whole zone that will prove fatal, little by little, for the immortals.

  Like a sublime perfection of the former ecology of the Territory.

  It is at that very moment that a shot rings out. A single shot. They will say it was the very last shot fired in Grand Junction. They will say it was the very last shot fired on Earth.

  A single gunshot. It resonates, ringing recognizably, ordinarily, mundanely, as such sounds have for centuries. The singular sound of hot metal being projected at the speed of sound. It is fired from far away but very precisely aimed, a large-caliber bullet.

  A bullet that strikes the sheriff directly in the forehead. Sheriff Wilbur Langlois, the man of the Law of Bronze, is thus the very last man to be killed by a gun. The Legend is very clear on that point.

  For death has not yet finished giving life to the secret economy of the Territory.

  The last of all wars resembles all wars, back to the very first one of them.

  And the first war was fought with bare hands, or very nearly.

  It was fought in the manner of the very first men, in the manner of the wild inhabitants of all ecologies.

  It was fought according to the rules of animal life.

  It was fought in accordance with the primary principle of the Territory.

  50 > THAT’S ALL RIGHT, MAMA

  It is ontological. A firearm without ammunition becomes a hand weapon. It is equipped with a bayonet at the very least; in the best case it is a quarterstaff, a bat, a billy club, a blunt instrument.

  The very first weapon in the world.

  They still have their combat swords as well: for Yuri, his small Nepalese Gurkha saber with its curved blade; for Campbell, his long-toothed Navy Seals knife. The sword: the first technical perfection of the bladed weapon.

  They have something to strike with, to cut with, to stab with, to pierce with, to cut throats and disembowel with.

  And so does the enemy.

  The enemy. These three people approaching the Circle of Steel, while below, to the south, the rest of the army flees through the last gaps left in the invisible border, leaving thousands of “corpses” behind them.

  Yuri and Campbell recognize them instantly. Two men, one woman. Belfond, the rotten cop promoted to general, and his two personal bodyguards: Wanda Walker, the former strip gladiatrix, and Lee Kwan Osborne, the Korean American military doctor turned poisoner-assassin.

  Yuri and Campbell emerge slowly from the Circle of Steel. It is time. The moment they were born for has come. The last moment.

  Belfond is still holding the long Winchester rifle topped with a powerful telescope that he used to kill Sheriff Langlois.

  All three of them know they have lost. They know they will not leave the Territory-within-the-Territory alive, that the ontological barrier will kill them.

  The Vessel is getting farther away with each passing minute. In the Ark the light is fading, losing its fluidity; the sounds of infinity disappearing frequency by frequency, going back to where they came from. The last trap is about to snap shut on them.

  There is nothing left to do but kill the people responsible for their defeat.

  And, without a doubt, these are the people responsible. The last two Men of the Territory, the last two Men of the Law of Bronze. Yuri McCoy and Chrysler Campbell.

  So the very last war will be fought with bare hands. Or very nearly. It will be fought in a false night copied from the dawn of time. It will be fought between four men and one woman. Two against three. The initial ratio has been brought down to a reasonable number, but the fundamental imbalance necessary for the actualization of any conflict is still there, like the last Pillar of the Law.

  The last of all wars will end with no eyewitness except the elements and the animals of the Territory, like the large purple crow soaring in high, large circles above the former site of the cosmodrome.

  It will end like a family quarrel gone wrong. It will end like all wars begin.

  Yuri and Campbell look at each other for an instant, enough time to synchronize their minds one last time, to send a clear and final message.

  In this type of situation three tactics can prevail; certain accidental conditions determine the eventual choice:

  1) In order to gain a strategic advantage right away, kill the leader,
or the strongest man, immediately. The only problem: if he is the leader he is most probably also the strongest man, and thus the hardest to kill.

  2) In order to turn numeric inferiority into parity, strike immediately at the weakest link in the chain to eliminate any need for diplomacy. The problem is the risk-to-benefit ratio: in the best-case scenario you will only find yourself with numbers equal to the enemy’s.

  3) The initial attack must always be concentrated on the target according to a ratio of at least two against one. Redistribute the numerical advantage locally and temporarily in order to equalize it in the end.

  The problem is not so much knowing who their leader is, who the dominant man is, because Belfond is officially and obviously that man. The question is, which of the two others is the true weak link? The powerful strip gladiatrix or the Asian expert in poisons of all kinds?

  Osborne is like the incarnation of all the old venomous plants that can now be found only in the county of HMV. He is as dangerous as Territory cowbane.

  But Yuri and Campbell are the Trap-Men. The floral devices of Grand Junction have been part of their everyday world since they were children. They are the Camp Doctors; poison holds no secrets from them.

  The master poisoner, then, will come up against the Territory’s venom.

  He will come up against the Law.

  And the Law strikes him. Like a flash. A double flash of flesh and shining metal.

  It is simple, direct, quick.

  Yuri and Campbell fall on him in such a way that Yuri is able to cover a counterattack from Belfond and the gladiatrix. It is very simple, very direct, very quick. The blades come up, sparkling rods of silver, and they sketch lines of mercury as they lunge at the man’s body and pull back, red and glistening, while Yuri and Campbell dance like ghosts around him. Yuri stabs him four times in two quick thrusts; the first slices across his neck, and the second, with the point, gets him right between the shoulder blades. The spinal cord, he hopes, has been cut at least once now. Campbell simply slashes him back and forth across the throat; on the first pass his Navy Seals diving knife cuts the carotid artery, which explodes in a spray of crimson droplets, a thousand scarlet points glittering in the false night that reigns over the world. With the second pass, a very deep gash brings forth thicker, viscous red blood.