Refractions of Self

Alanna

2012-01-03T16:54:00.001-05:00

Weird shrieks pierced the humidsilence, sending shivers of terror down Alanna's spine. They werecoming. She'd been running for three days, stumbling through theWastes, fleeing the hungry hell-wights known as Scavengers. Herstomach rumbled and twisted in her gut, hollow and aching. Shepressed a forearm over her stomach as she ran, wrenching her headaround to look behind her. They never showed themselves, stayingalways out of sight, following her tracks, her smell, her bioelectricsignature.

She'd prayed,wished, hidden, run, and now she was at the end of her strength. TheScavengers would get her and she'd be turned into harvest for a powercell. She was alone, now. Mama and Papa were gone, and Louis wasgone too, now. She had no one to mourn her, if she died. Thatthought, more than anything else, is what kept spurring her burninglegs and lungs ever onward, over the bare, blasted, naked mounds ofthe Appalachians, through windblown empty cities echoing withwindsong and the voices of ghosts. Keep running, she told herself. Don't let them get you. Make them take you, make them pay for it.

Ahead of her nowwas the skeleton of a city, gaunt bones of wracked buildings risinginto the leaden sky. She was parallel to the road, and she couldmake out a billboard in the distance, faded letters announcingWelcome to Columbus. If only a city meant refuge. Usually,it just meant vicious, nomadic gangs and hordes of Scavengers. Therewasn't much difference between the two. The gangs were, technically,humans, having flesh-and-blood appendages and speaking comprehensibledialects of English, but they were desperation and hunger embodied;they took no prisoners, and weren't above cannibalism, if they werehungry enough.

The ululations werelouder now, and they were coming from all directions. Theysurrounded you just before they took you down, Alanna had been told.She ducked into the gaping mouth-hole of an apartment building on theoutskirts of the city. It was a burnt out shell of exposed,blackened rafters and scorched brick, smelling still of smoke. Shewandered from room to room, tiptoeing, as if silence or smallerfootprints in the dust would make it harder for the Scavengers tofind her. It was a pleasant fiction, while she allowed herself tobelieve it. The problem was, she couldn't keep up the pretense forlong: the howls and shrieks had turned to growls and garbled words,steps crunching in the street.

She found herselfcowering in the darkest corner, fists clenched around her last lineof defense, a two-foot-long metal pipe. Her skin prickled in thetwilight chill, her breath coming in ragged panting gasps. A bulkyfigure appeared in the doorway, mech-light eyes glowing dull orangein the gloom. The figure sputtered an unintelligible gutturalcommand, gesturing at her to stand up. She burrowed deeper into thecorner, raised her jagged-ended pipe. Heavy steps thumped closer,crashing hard enough to shake ash down from the ceiling. She couldjust make out the details of the figure now: it was barelyrecognizable as human, its legs grafted from an obsolete bot-suit,thick metal jointed pistons, whirring and whining servo-motors, armsassembled from mismatched cybernetic parts, a torso showing sickly,rotting flesh through a tattered shirt. The Scavenger's face was anightmare vision, a rusted metal lower mandible, a gaping holeleaking mucus where a nose had rotted off, bald scalp peeling scabbedand leprous flesh, orange mech-light eyes oozing pus where oxidizedmetal met skin. The thing was clearly male, no cloth covering itsall-too-human groin.

As it neared her,repeating the stand-up motion, Alanna coiled her legs beneath her,tightened her grip on her make-shift weapon until her knuckles ached. One more step and it was within reach; Alanna lunged at it, swingingthe pipe with all of her fading strength. She connected, and thething's head split open, splattered gore across the room. Mechanizedarms still reached for her, carrying out dying commands after thebrain was compromised; she bashed at the ovoid head again and againuntil it was pulp, pulled free of its grasping fingers and stabbed atits chest with the end until it stopped moving. It had an Impulsorpistol in its grip; Alanna pried the gun free, crept away from thefoul-smelling corpse and back out into the echoing canyons of thecity streets. The rest of the Scavengers were close by, she couldhear them calling to each other in their unintelligible language.

A gurgling howl ofglee signaled that she'd been seen; she forced herself into a run. She heard at least two behind her, there, two to the right and aheadof her, another on the left. Hopeless, it was hopeless. Alannasobbed, staggered to a stop, leaned against the rough crumblingbareface cinderblock wall of a bombed-out edifice; the nearestScavenger was less than ten feet away, growling wordlessly. Alannaraised the Impulsor, fired. The shockwave shook the dust at herfeet, rattled her teeth, and the creature lurched, clutched itschest, fell twisting to the ground. She fired again, and anothershockwave blasted the silence, another Scavenger fell, the buildingbehind Alanna rumbled, trembled, shook, wobbled; an upward glanceshowed the building swaying back and forth, chunks of brick tumbleddown at her. Alanna threw herself into the street, felt fingerssnatching at her arm. She flung her fist out, felt flesh crunch,thrust the muzzle of the Impulsor into the thing's face, fired, feltthe shockwave more than heard it, was doused by blood, hot and stickyon her face and in her hair.

Another handgrasped at her, gripped her, squeezed her arm hard enough to make hergasp, yanked her to her feet. She hadn't realized she had fallen tothe ground; “move, girl!” a voice commanded, deep, reassuring,human. Alanna scrabbled in the dirt with her feet, pushed off andran pell-mell, tripping to keep up with the hand pulling at her. Dust was in the air, shards of brick stung her cheeks and back andlegs, Scavengers shrieked angrily; she couldn't make out the form ofthe man in front of her. She hoped he was helping her, rather thansaving her to eat her, or rape her. Or the one, then the other. Hisvoice had given her comfort, at least. His presence soothed theterror hammering at her. She held onto the hope that he would be arescuer, but kept the Impulsor in her hand, ready to defend herselfagainst him.

The crashing roarof the building's fall quieted, but the Scavengers were stillululating behind them, close and loud and vengeful. The man stopped,pulled Alanna into a crouch behind a jagged hulk of masonry: “stayhere and keep shut, if you want to live,” he told her, then he wasgone into the skirling dust. A few seconds later, she heard seriesof wet percussive thunks, howls and growls abruptly silenced. Shefelt a syrupy wave of energy roll over her, something psionic,hugely powerful. Its effects were immediate: the dust whorling inthe air skittered, slowed, froze, caught some the gelatinous force,Alanna's matted, tangled, dirty hair stopped mid-lash before hereyes. Alanna could see motes of dust, minute and myriad, spinning inplace like a cue-ball on a pool-table. Sounds pulsed in Alanna'sears like sonic sludge: crunches, thwaps, wet plops like bloodsplatting in the dirt. Time and motion resumed with shockingsuddenness. A lone figure strode towards Alanna through thewind-slung debris: tall, dark and handsome. Her heart skipped a beatas he got closer; it wasn't entirely a school-girl-crush kind ofbeatskipping, it was partially fear. He was feral-looking, primal,despite his modern gear. His hair was black, dreadlocked, falling tohis back; broad shoulders, thick arms bare at the biceps, forearmscovered by metal and leather vambraces, a cuirass of homemaderingmail over his torso with a thick sleeveless tunic underneath. Hewore heavy, dark pants tucked into knee-high boots a wide leatherbelt slung low with holsters on both hips, and a backpack; handles ofarc sticks poked out above the backpack, between the bag and hisback. Utilitarian gear, not expensive, but good, well-used and welltaken care of. His facial features were what kept her hand on herImpulsor: he did not look kind. His eyes burned with the fire of aman who has survived in the Wastes for far too long; it was the glintof near-insanity, a quickhot anger, a never-dormant hatred forScavengers, a determination to keep breathing at any costs.

“What the hellare you doing out here alone, girl?” His voice was the same, deepmellifluous rumble she'd heard when the hand had jerked her away fromthe crumbling building.

“I...I don'thave anyone,” she murmured. “My brother Louis was killed, just aweek ago. There was a gang, they...they took us. Louis...he foughtthem off, made me run. I didn't want to leave him, but he...he wassick, anyway. His leg, it was gangrenous, and spreading.” Why wasshe telling him all this? He was nodding slightly. He patted her onthe shoulder awkwardly.

“You did right,I guess. You got away, and you're still breathing. That's whatcounts. If he was gangrenous as you say, then he was gonna die soonanyhow, and he must've known it.” He looked around, sniffing,listening. “Shit. There's more coming. We'd better get scarce. Come on, girl.”

He pulled her withhim into a swift walk, almost a run. Alanna had to trip-skip-stumbleto keep up; she yanked her arm away, looked over her shoulder,trotted next to him. “Thank you,” she said.

“Course,” hegrunted, uncomfortable. “Couldn't let 'em get you, could I? Name's Dez Marlowe, by the way.”

“Alannaal'Haran. So...where are we going?”

“Well I don'tknow know about you, but I'm headed towards Detroit.”

“Well then,that's where I'll go.”

“I can't slowdown for you, so you'll have to keep up and pull your weight.”

“I'll do mybest.”

Dez sat in frontof the small fire he'd made under the lee of a massive oak tree. Thegirl, Alanna, hadn't lasted long. Got up to pee in the middle of thenight, went alone, not even twenty feet from the banked fire, andhadn't come back. Nice girl too, it was shame. It'd been too lateby the time he'd realized anything was happening.

Pandora's Curse

2011-12-13T16:29:00.000-05:00

Prologue:SPARK OF APOCALYPSE

It all started with agirl, as so many things do. She was young, beautiful, curious,slightly naive and idealistic, and such women have been the downfallof nations. So proved this woman to be. She had a name, once,something ordinary and forgotten. Now, her only name is Pandora. This Pandora, like the one from ancient mythology, opened a box andlet evil loose upon the world. Only, this Pandora wasthe box. The evil she loosed wasn't contained in a clay amphora, no,this box was far more commonplace: the human mind. In the oldeststories, Pandora was given a sealed jar and told not not open itunder any circumstances. So, of course, consumed by naturalcuriosity, Pandora opened it. When she did so, out rushed all theevils of the world, save hope, which alone remained.

This new Pandora was achemical engineering major, back when such quaint things asuniversities still existed. She found a way to do somethingincredible, like J. Robert Oppenheimer and Alfred Nobel. It had beensaid that people only used 30% of their brain, so this girl, beingyoung and idealistic, found a way to unlock that elusive 70%. Shetested it on herself, being young and naïve. She was right, in thatshe unlocked the rest of her brain using her chemicals and compounds,and she was right in that she found herself capable of things farbeyond imagination. People had theorized in books and movies whatwould happen: telekinesis, telepathy, empathy, perfection, terribleand wonderful things.

Terrible, andwonderful, indeed. Telepathy, telekinesis...yes, she discoveredthese, and found them to be burdens; but the weightiest burdenPandora unlocked was immortality. With her new, profound intellect,she created the ability to put off sickness, invented regenerativetechniques to stave away Death's specter, she developed all this, andmore. But, like the ancient Pandora, what she opened couldn't thenbe closed. She took a lover, our postmodern Pandora, a courageous,foolish man, and together they conceived a child, and that child hadcontrol over its entire brain. And so it went. Children bornthereafter were able to do nearly anything they wished...exceptexercise restraint.

The purpose, it becameclear, for that millennial restriction on the human brain was toprotect mankind from itself, to protect men from themselves and eachother: nearly infinite power, but no understanding of the forceswielded...the result was apocalypse. Not by nuclear holocaust, ormelted polar caps, or meteoroids, but because of one ambitious girlwho thought she could unlock the mysteries of the human brain. Sothen, men murdered each other with bare hands, with lasers and plasmarifles and fission bombs and empath hunters, with hate and hunger andovercrowding.

See her now: stumbling across a blasted plateau, bare feet catching on bleachedbones buried in the soil, hair thick and youthful still, lovely faceunlined by age, yet heavy and haunted with grief. She carries in hergut the thickest of gall stones: the knowledge that she wreaked thishavoc, she created this hell, the road to which was paved by thatcommonest of stones, good intention. She cannot forget and shecannot die, while her lover lays long rotted in the wind-scouredsoil, her descendants stare out from caves in hillsides, lope throughempty streets of skeletal cities, gaunt and gangrenous apparitions. Pandora, who carried in her synapses the spark of Apocalypse, nowwanders Earth trailing the ghosts of mankind behind her in anethereal skein of sorrow, palpable to her senses as voices singingelegies and curses to her ceaselessly. She weeps, and regrets, butshe cannot close the box she has opened.

Chapter1: The Walls of Detroit

Snow falls, thick clumps drifting andhanging like a curtain of frozen fog, covering my tracks and mufflingmy footsteps. I'm grateful for the snow, I had prayed and wished forit, and had gotten it, miraculously. No one knew if Pandora's Cursehad ever given anyone control over the weather, but everyone wonderedin the generations following the Devolution. She had given us ourwhole minds to control and in so doing unleashed chaos andanarchy—true anarchy—upon us all. We had telepathy, telekinesis,precognition, empathy, clairvoyance, increased physical strength,endurance; she had given us near-immortality as well, throughregenerative medicine, anti-aging techniques. She had improved thehuman race in every way imaginable, but in so doing had destroyedhuman society. We overpopulated, brought technology to levels onlydreamed of in the most speculative science fiction, but societycouldn't handle it. People lost the ability to think and do forthemselves. There were no consequences. No one died, everyone livedlonger, but that only led to civil war, to anarchy, to the implosionand collapse of social structure.

Then came Terrance McHale, America'sfirst dictator. He seized power from the bottom up, began as a pettybut ambitious drug lord operating in the blasted, war-torn slumtownsof Detroit, and then he wrested control over the city, block byblock, having coalesced the various factions into a single unitedforce. Under his rule, Detroit eventually became a bastion of order,the last hold-out of any kind of organization, and the de factocapitol of what remained of the United States of America. The firstthing McHale did once his rule was secure was to build a wall aroundit, a ring of stone and steel and razor wire.

The rest of the country fell city bycity, emptied by war. Buildings were blown up, streets becameterritories fought over, then abandoned when supplies ran out;industry and business collapsed completely, taken over and exploitedand ruined. Detroit survived, under McHale's iron fist and brutal,bloody tyranny. McHale is a complicated man. He wields his powermuch like Hitler and Stalin and Trujillo, with bloody-mindedabsolutism, but he does so with the single intention of preservingorder. He carved a functioning community out of the ruins of deadnation, and he has no intention of letting his little kingdom fallapart, and so has no qualms about keeping his power consolidated byany and every means necessary, defending it against the onslaught ofthe other city-states still surviving: New York, Los Angeles, Dallas,Chicago, and Atlanta.

I recognize the necessity for someonelike Terrance McHale, but I don't have to like him. His securityforces, which he calls the Fist of Peace, are little more thanglorified henchmen, an organized, well-equipped army of thugs, butperhaps in such times as these that may be exactly what is needed tomaintain some semblance of order.

Whatever the case, it is thesehardened, shoot-first soldiers that I have to get past tonight, if Iwant to get into Detroit, and I haveto get in. I've got too many Scavengers on my ass to stay out herein the Wastes much longer. They've been tracking me for three weeksnow, despite my most desperate attempts to lose them. Now, with thesnow falling around me I just might have a chance, if they haven'tcaught up and surrounded me while I was sleeping. They're sneakybastards like that. You think you've gotten ahead of 'em, you thinkyou've lost em, but then just when you reallythink you're safe, there they are, the rotting sickly foragingcreatures. I don't even consider them people anymore; they'relittle more than semi-human cybernetic amalgamations. Civilizationmay have collapsed, but technology never really slowed down, it justgot twisted and misused, warped and made wicked, and now everythingbecomes a weapon for the Scavengers, who got their name from theirhabit of roaming the Wastes to kill anyone unlucky enough to get nearthem. They steal the obvious things, of course, clothes, weapons,power cells, food, but they can also take your bioelectricity. That,more than anything else, is what frightens people about theScavengers.

Bioelectricity iswhat powers technology these days. It was a known commodity for along time, but it wasn't until a young man named Takeshi invented away to harness bioelectricity to an automobile that it was any use tosociety. He called the technology he invented Impulsion. Hisdevelopment was borderline miraculous in two ways: one, he exploitthe heat and energy within the human body, and two, he created a wayto harness the increased mental ability unlocked by Pandora totechnology. I'm no engineer so I don't get the fine details of howit works, but I get the basics. Somehow, the Impulsor takes theunique signature your bioelectric heat and converts it into power,which is stored in power cells. Then you use a mental impulse tosend the vehicle into motion. The amount of power you get depends onthe amount of mental acuity you possess. This Impulsor technologywas converted for use in pretty much every other facet of life afterthat, at least until the collapse. It's used in cars, motorcycles,elevators, phones, anything and everything that uses energy. Takeshi's invention may have saved the Earth in terms of pollution,eliminating emissions completely, but it couldn't save humankind fromitself.

Themost famous bastardization of Takeshi's impulsion technology was theImpulsor rifle. It was inevitable, really, and everyone knew it. Wewere all just waiting for the first person to come out and saythey've done it. And when someone finally did, the results were astransformational as everyone expected. Impulsor rifles work the sameas cars do, converting the user's bioelectric signal into anexplosive force, storing the energy in rechargeable power cells. Noneed for powders or intricate machinery any longer, just a few wires,power cells, and induction plates. Guns still look pretty much thesame, but the bullets fired are more akin to the balls used inmuskets from the 17^thand 18^thcenturies, but smaller. Impulsion rifles were silent, initially,which was weird. Battles after the invention of Impulsor rifles werebizarre scenes, men running and ducking, blossoming crimson blooms ofblood as they clutched wounds, screaming and dying and cursing, butabsent was the crashing deafening noise of gunfire. Then someenterprising gunsmith developed the expansion chamber, a way ofexponentially increasing the explosive force of the rifle, and thatprovided enough impetus for the projectiles to break the soundbarrier, so each bullet fired creates its own sonic boommid-trajectory. So now, when gangs or armies meet, the deafeningnoise of gunfire is delayed, the boom happening after the rifle isfired, and since Impulsors can fire bullets as fast as the personusing it can think, the sonic booms come in concussive chains thatare often as destructive as the bullets themselves.

Ihear a howl behind me, the piecing, ululating shriek of huntingScavengers. It's answered by howls in front of me and to eitherside. Shit. They miserable clanking bastards didsurround me while I was sleeping. I lean back against a tree andexchange clips in my rifle, check to make sure there are sparesreadily accessible, check that my handguns are loose in theirholsters tied to my thighs. A deep breath, and I'm stepping silentlythrough the snow, ears attuned to the silence around me, listeningfor the heavy treads of Scavengers. There, to my left. I crouch,pivoting to face the approaching knot of creatures. They're stillquiet, so they haven't seen me. When they have prey in sight, theygrowl and moan, chatter at each other in their slurred gutturallanguage. Scavengers hunt in large packs, splitting the whole groupinto units of six or seven that spread out and surround their prey,communicating with each other by means of those squealing shrieks. Ithumb the switch that turns off the expansion chamber so I can killthem quietly and retain the element of surprise for a while longer. They know they've got me surrounded, but they don't know exactlywhere I am yet, so hopefully I can drop this bunch and slip out oftheir noose undetected. If not, I'll have a hell of a fight on myhands. These things don't die easily.

Idraw a bead on the first Scavenger I see, fire once, watch its chestburst open. Before the others can howl in surprise I drop them oneby one, a single bullet for each; ammunition is scarce out in theWastes so I can't afford to miss. The only sound when I shoot is alow, barely audible thumpof air followed by the wet crunch ofthe bullets striking the Scavengers. There's six of them in thisbunch, I drop five before the last one has time to flinch. The onlyproblem is, it only takes a millisecond for it to bark out a warning.

Damn it. Not fastenough. I hear the other groups hollering and hooting around me. Isplat the last one, jog over to the bodies and search them. Thesehaven't been scavenging long, judging by their still human-lookingappearances. They have two arms, two legs, one head, which isn't thecase with ones that have been out in the Wastes scavenging for a longtime. They acquire new parts, become more machine and less human. These ones, so close to Detroit, have high-quality tech grafted on tothemselves, rather than the obsolete cast-offs that you'd see on mostScavengers. These have human faces, four male, two female, all havelong, matted, tangled hair, the men have beards, all are scarred andsickly. Their torsos also are normal in appearance, but after thatthe resemblance to humanity ends. Cybernetic arms clumsily graftedonto shoulders, hastily and poorly modified to be rifles, swords,laser-cutters, and a few other less-identifiable objects; legs madefrom rusting clockwork, all-terrain wheels instead of feet,reverse-knees, anything and everything, all stolen from wayfarers,scavenged from dumps and ruins and ghost-towns. Skin, where itexists, is gangrenous and crusted and filthy. All the machinery andhunger, the desperation and disease and insanity has twisted themaway from humanity into nightmare creatures. If you were able to getclose enough to them—and stay alive—to hear them converse, youmight understand one word in five or ten as English, the rest beinggrowls and grunts, howls, clicks, slurred and garbled words.

I hear three moregroups of them, behind and to my left and right, close and closingin. I finish pawing through the corpses, finding three more clips ofammunition, then I sling the rifle over my back and draw my handguns,knowing that the cumbersome rifle will be little use in closequarters combat. I lope off in a space-eating run, the gait ofsomeone long used to distance running. Detroit is only four or fivemiles off, and if I can get away from these Scavengers I'll be homefree. Well, relatively. Nothing is certain: getting into Detroitwill be difficult in itself, as the Fist is notorious for refusingentrance. Right now, however, simply surviving will be enough.

Shit. Here they come. Just can't get away from them, the filthycreatures. Eastward I run at top speed, ears and eyes searching forany hint of movement in the white-blanketed landscape. I see one tomy right and send a round towards it at supersonic speed; the bulletgoes clean through its chest near the shoulder—spraying blood andclockwork cogs everywhere—and into the next Scavenger a step behindit, punching through that one as well and into the pine tree tenpaces further along. I might have put a bit too much power into thatone, but panic is pinching me with its claws, blurring the edges ofmy control with desperation. I keep running, not stopping to finishoff the group like I know I should, but fear has my feet under itscontrol and I give in to it. I hear a growl over my shoulder, inchesaway, accompanied by labored gurgling breath. A Scavenger has caughtup to me, moving with blinding speed on a chassis sporting four largeknobbed tires where its legs had once been. As it comes abreast ofme I can see that this one is a male, a thin, lank-haired boy ofeighteen or so. He has a makeshift machete in one hand and anancient pre-Impulsor-era pistol in the other. He veers towards me,swinging the machete. I duck, stumble, he bashes into me and sendsme flying, slices open my arm along the triceps with a wild swing. Ihit the snow rolling, feel dirt and snow and pine needles mashagainst my face and in my mouth, tasting bitter and cold. Thewheeled Scavenger is barreling towards me firing his pistol, I feelthe bullets whip past my face, three angry wasps buzzing by my ear,he fires again twice more and one creases my thigh, but I barely feelit through the adrenaline coursing in my system. I brush my eyesclear and fire my own pistol once, feel a rush of satisfaction as hishead explodes. There are three more rushing at me now. I lurch to myfeet and fire with both pistols, the reports coming in such quicksuccession that it sounds like a long peal of rumbling thunder. Twobullets slam into the first one, dropping it instantly, two more forthe next and by now the third is barely five feet away and barrelingat me, growling rabidly and swinging a spiked club at my head. Ithrow myself backwards to the ground and let him stumble past me,firing upwards into him at point-blank range. His torso bursts open,spraying gore all over me, and he drops to the ground. I wipe snowon my face to blot away the blood. Five corpses lay strewn aroundme, and I search each one carefully, taking their weapons from theirslack hands and clips from their ragged pockets. They have nothingelse of value so I leave them where they lay and take off through thesnow and trees of the primal forest surrounding the wall of Detroit. I hear the rest of pack howling wildly behind me, running togethernow that they have their prey on the run. I know they're gaining onme, but I have no intention of waging a running battle against them. I'm nowhere near that stupid. I sustain a flat-out run for anotherten minutes before I let myself stop. The snow is still fallingheavily now, obscuring my tracks within seconds. I pull my rucksackoff of my back and rummage through it until I find what I'm lookingfor: three small discs—mines—and a length of razor wire. Workingas fast as I can with bare, numb hands, I fasten the razor wire atchest height and plant the mines in the snow in an arc beyond thewire. As soon as the trap is set I move off again at a full run forthe road, the remains of the freeway once known as I-75. Now it'slittle more than a clearing in the forest littered with crumbledchunks of concrete and rusted hulks of vehicles. It's the only wayinto Detroit now, so I have no choice but to follow it, even thoughmy instincts tell me to stay far away from the open spaces—in theopen, the Scavengers have you at their mercy. I hear a cry of agonyfollowed by three massive explosions that send me sprawling into thesnow. I get to my feet and brush off the snow, waiting andlistening. Silence reigns the forest once more.

Damn, I'm good.

That feeling ofsatisfied pride last for the thirty seconds it takes for theadrenaline to wear off and the wounds to make their presence felt. Iwrap the cut on my arm with a strip of cloth from a pocket, examinethe crease along my thigh and decide it's not worth bothering with. I put gloves back on my hands: the only downside of Impulsor firearmsis that they require direct skin contact to work. I set offeastwards towards the road.

Iplod through the falling snow for three long, bitterly cold,uneventful hours before the wall of Detroit comes into view. Ihaven't been here before, I've only seen pictures and heard storiesof the massive architectural wonder that is McHale's wall. I stopdead in my tracks half a mile from the gate and gape slack-jawed atmonstrosity before me. It is fully one hundred and thirteen feethigh and thirty feet thick, but those numbers don't really expressanything. The legend goes that when McHale seized power twenty yearsago, Detroit was mere months away from being completely abandoned,like so many other cities. McHale's first act was to order a wallbuilt around Detroit. He organized a workforce of whoever was leftin the city to begin gathering materials by tearing down everyderelict building within fifty miles of the city proper, and whenenough raw materials were on hand, he began the construction of thewall itself, supervising, designing, and doing actual labor himself,it is said. The wall took six years of constant work to complete,with labor coming from volunteers, paid crews, and forced-work gangsrounded up by the nascent Fist of Peace. During this time McHalealso successfully defended his hold on power from revolts,assassination attempts, as well as fending off assaults on Detroitby Chicago and Cleveland. After that short, vicious battle againstCleveland, McHale launched a massive reprisal attack, surprising thecity in the predawn hours of October 25^th,2123. His forces decimated Cleveland completely, overrunning it in amatter of hours. Weeks of looting saw Cleveland in flames, with thealready-waning population scattering in every direction. Refugeesfrom Cleveland did eventually show up at Detroit, and, to McHale'scredit, weren't turned away, but were welcomed with a warning thatthey had to either contribute, and abide by the law, or be turnedout. Word that Detroit even hadlaws that were being enforced spread quickly, as rumor will, andrefugees began to pour into Detroit by the thousands. McHalewelcomed them all, put them to work on his wall and the ongoingrevamping of the city within the walls. When the wall was completed,McHale ordered that the flood of incoming refugees be stopped and aquota set. Other attacks were attempted on Detroit, but most wereturned away by the mere sight of the wall, and even the mostdetermined of attackers, Chicago, was repulsed within days.

Iapproach the gate slowly, hands in plain sight, away from my weapons; the guards at the gate are infamous for shooting first and notbothering with questions at all. The gatehouse is a small armorednook built directly into the wall itself, and it is here thattravelers are interrogated before being ushered through into thecity. The gate, imposing and gigantic, is built out of recycledsteel and titanium and wide enough to allow convoys of supplies andmilitary forays in and out, with a smaller doorway set into thegatehouse to let people in and out. The wall and its defensivearrangements are drawn straight out of medieval castle design,including crenelations and Impulsor cannons along the top of thewall.

“Stop there,”a guard barks at me. He unslings a rifle from his shoulder and drawsa bead on me. He stops

a few feet away, lowers his rifle and looksme up and down. “That musta been you, before, doing all thatshooting.”

“Yessir, itwas,” I reply, lowering my hands slightly.

“How many?” Heasks, slinging his rifle back on his shoulder and lighting ahand-rolled cigarette.

“Five in thefirst bunch. The rest went up in that explosion, I doubt there'sanything left to loot, but I didn't check. I'm seeking entry.”

“Where are youcoming from and what's your business?”

“I've been outalone in the Wastes since leaving New York in the spring. Found afew scattered towns here and there with some folks in 'em, but mostlybeen on my own. I'm just looking for somewhere to hole up forawhile. Don't really have a business, as such.”

“We don't takeslackers here, boy,” he warns. “You gotta pull your weight, oneway or another. Ain't nothing free here.”

“Nothing everis.”

He regards me forseveral beats. “I suppose if you've made it here, on foot, fromNew York, then you probably can hold your own. Run into manyScavengers?”

“More than Icare to count, honestly. They've nearly taken over the Wastesoutside of New York. I had to fight my way out of there, literallyevery step of the way. I must've taken out nearly thirty packs of'em in the month it took me to just get clear of the ruins of the oldsuburbs. Out here, outside of Detroit, there aren't quite so many of'em, but they've got better parts, and they're better armed.”

“If you say so. What'd you say your name was?”

“I didn't. DezMarlowe.”

“Welcome toDetroit, Dez.” The guard put out an armor-gloved hand. I shakeit, breathe a sigh of relief. He opens the door and leads me down along straight dimly-lit hallway lined sides and ceiling with pipesand tubes. The hallway terminates in a small room where mybelongings were searched and my weapons registered. After being ledby the same guard through another hallway identical to the first, Ifound myself standing at the top of a stairway overlooking the dark,sleeping city. They've built upwards, out of necessity. Wallsprovide protection, but they also limit expansion, and even in theseharrowing, war-torn, hunger-ravaged times, population increases withthe years. I've heard they've also expanded downwards under theground, but that's more hearsay than fact. Few people leave Detroitonce they're let in, so it's hard to separate fact from fiction. Iguess I'll find out soon enough. I shrugged my bag higher on myshoulders, loosened my guns in their holsters and set off down thestairs.

Snow is stillfalling in a wind-blown curtain of white providing only briefglimpses of the city. The gate is centered on the central boulevardof the city, a thoroughfare lined with high-rises, tenementbuildings, and small shopfronts by the dozen, the main artery of athriving city. I slog through the ankle-high snow down the street,hunching down into my coat against the driving wind. I should'veasked the guard for somewhere to stay, I realize. Now I'd have totrudge through this damned blizzard, freezing my hide off, until Ifind somewhere that would rent me a room. Which might take awhile.

The city is silentexcept for the wind skirling through the buildings. I pass anintersection: a street sign tells me I'm walking down WoodwardAvenue. I've drastically underestimated the ferocity of this storm,or it's intensified while I was in the gatehouse; either way, I'mrealizing that I have to find shelter, and soon. I've gone maybe amile when I see a sign through the snow: “Lodgers Welcome (cashonly)”, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

Archaically,a bell dings as I open the door. I stomp my feet and shake my headas I approach the battered desk, at which is sitting an old man. Hehas a few wisps of hair drifting over a liver-spotted bald scalp,drooping, wrinkled, and gaunt features, a scraggly beard hanging fromhis chin. His eyes, however, are sharp and alert.

“What'cha want,boy?” He asks in a thin, rasping voice.

“A room,obviously. It's cold as hell out there.”

“Sure is. Youlook about froze t'death. Well, a single is $89, local credit orhard currency only. Pay up front.”

“I just got infrom the Wastes, haven't exchanged anything.”

“Screwed then,ain'tcha?” The old man chuckles. “Naw, I'm only messin' withyou. Here, gimme what you got, and I'll trade it for you. Got afriend who does exchanges, see. Getcha a good rate, too.” I handhim a thick roll of New York City bills with a handful of loosechange, and he thumbs through it, counting silently.

“Haven't seenNew York money in an age, I'll tell you. Don't get many from overthere anymore. How is it there?”

“Bad,” I say.“Really bad. Scavengers have overrun the outskirts and they'restarting to push into the inhabited areas. Getting bolder every day The Anarchists have the whole city on lockdown, and they're runningit into the ground in the meantime. Can't get a meal without lookingover your shoulder the whole way, weapons at the ready. Gangs rovewherever they want, robbing, raping, killing, beating anyone andeveryone. 'Survival of the fittest,' is all the Anarchist Mob Patrolwill say. It's even worse outside the cities, too. Scavengers arejust one of the dangers. There's empath hunters, bandit gangs, evena few cannibals here and there. A lot of places have gone wild,taken over by the forest.”

“Sounds likehell on Earth, to me,” the old man says.

“It sure is. You have it good here.”

“I s'pose. Hardto see sometimes. The Fist can be as bad as the gangs you weretalkin' about. McHale can and will do anything and everything tokeep what he calls 'the peace'. Arrests whoever he wants, on trumpedup charges, he's executed people, publicly, and people flock in towatch like it's a fuckin' holiday parade. People are sick thesedays, I tell you.”

“Forced peace isbetter than free chaos, from my perspective. Anarchy is the death ofcivilization, and AMP is the weapon used to kill it.”

“Heh. Well,maybe you're right. I don't know if I can say. I lived here inDetroit before McHale took over, and since he did, you can't movewithout being afraid of the Fist behind you, watching everything youdo.”

“Lesser of twoevils, I guess.”

“Maybe so. Well, here's your local credit, minus the charge for the room for onenight. Room's up those stairs and to the left. Best to you.”

“Thanks, youtoo.” I find my room, small and sparse, smelling of cigarettes andage, but warm and dry. I haven't been under a real roof in weeks. Ished layers of clothes, spreading them out to dry in the smallbathroom, roll and light a cigarette, lay on the bed smoking it andwondering what Detroit has in store for me.

* * *

A week passes withDetroit inundated by a white-out blizzard that keeps the city stifledand silent under a blanket of snow. It finally subsides on my eighthday holed up in the tiny room, eating from a diner next to thehostel, bored and restless but glad to have reached Detroit before Iwas caught by this storm. I'm exploring the city the day after thesnow stopped, wandering aimlessly. Jasper, the proprietor of thehostel, was right about the Fist. They are everywhere, poking theirhelmeted heads into shops and restaurants and homes, thugs givenauthority, throwing their weight around. I have a feeling it's onlya matter of time before I have a run-in with them.

If only I couldhave known right that feeling was.

Thestreets have been cleared of snow, and I've gotten to know this city. It's buzzing again, people coming and going, buying, selling,visiting, all this under the watchful eye of the Fist of Peace,striding arrogantly down the street armed and armored, wearing thickblack spidersilk armor glimmering with the telltale haze of aRepulsor Field, two-foot-long arc sticks in each hand crackling witharcing electricity (thus the name). Arc sicks...I hate those damnthings, despite carrying a pair myself. I haven't seen anyone but Fist members carrying them here in Detroit, but back in New York,anyone who can get their hands on them has them. They're supposedlynon-lethal, but get hit with them hard enough and in the rightplace—or wrong, depending on your point of view—and they'replenty lethal. I saw a kid back in the Bad Apple get jumped by apack of empath hunters carrying arc sticks. Nasty bastards poppedhim him straight in the throat a couple of times. Poor kid droppedinstantly, vomiting blood like a fountain, like something out of thehorrorshows, writhing and arching backwards so hard he snapped hisown spine. Those empaths probably had tweaked their arc sticks toproduce more juice. These Fists more than likely have theirs set tolow power, to stun and debilitate. I haven't seen them actuallyharassing anyone yet, but I can see what Jasper was talking about.They're everywhere, in everything, watching, spying, poking andprodding and questioning, roaming the streets in groups of three,which most people just called tri's. As I began to understand therhythms in of the city, I started to notice the changes in behaviorin people when the tri's were around and when they weren't. Groupsof kids would stand in shivering huddles, smoking, laughing, shovingand rough-housing, acting the way kids have for centuries. As soonas the tramp of booted feet on the sidewalks was heard, stepsclomping in the packed snow in unison, the kids would drop theirsmokes in the snow, stamp them out ,whispering “a tri is coming,better vanish!” And they'd do just that, disappearing intodoorways and alleys, reappearing when the tri had moved on down thestreet.

I'vebeen in Detroit close to a month, pulling in some credits by doingodd jobs for Jasper and his friends. I'm slogging through a freshdowsing of snow, well after midnight. Fat flakes float in the air,swirling and drifting, settling on my nose and lashes, stinging mycheeks. The air is still, the sleeping city silent in the thick,muffled way of a late-night snowfall. The hood of my coat is pulledlow, the hem sweeping the ground at my heels. The only sound is theskritch-skritch of myboots in the hard-packed snow. My thoughts are long ago and far awayto when I was teenager in NYC, that crumbling Babylon. I had asister, then. We were only two years apart, she the younger. Stubborn thing that she was, she was always sneaking out, taking offwith friends, hanging out in abandoned buildings, drinking, smokingpot, being typical teenagers. Nothing anyone said to her made anydifference, she thought she knew it all, thought she could handle thebig bad city. The last time I saw her alive, I was yelling at her. “Tamara, don't be stupid! It's dangerous out there! You're gonnaend up dead if you don't stop wandering out alone.”

Damn predictioncame true. My buddy Germaine brought her home, carried her in hisarms across three city blocks. At one point, he said, he had to puther down to fight off some punks. She'd been raped, beaten bloody,and strangled, left dead in the middle of the street. It was a nightjust like this, unnaturally light out at midnight, snow-lit, silentand still. Germaine kicked the door open, set her down on the couch,tears and snot frozen in his beard, on his face. Germaine had had acrush on Tamara for years. He'd been waiting for her to grow upsome, hoping, hoping.

That was the firsttime I hunted someone down and killed them with forethought andintent. Germaine and I went out, bought Impulsor pistols, a satchelof clips and hundreds of rounds, ammo belts, holsters, the works. Decked ourselves out like heroes from the 2D Western shows fromcenturies past. We were gunmen. Killers for hire. Badasses out forrevenge.

Revengeis exactly what we got. Her assault had been witnessed, but ofcourse, this was anarchic New York, when the AMP (Anarchist MobPatrol) was just starting to consolidate their power base. No onedid anything at all, as there was nothing they could do. But theytold us exactly who had done it: six local hoodlums, violent,soulless punk-ass bastards. They gave us names. We hunted themdown, each and every one of them. Shot them in the knees, beat theminto shapeless pulps with our bare fists and booted feet, hung themdangling twitching feet from the streetlights. I was never the sameafter that. Kept the look, kept the attitude. Nothing matteredthen. Life was empty, just subsistence from one day to the next;Germaine and I started boozing, partying, trying to kill off thegrief we both felt over Tamara, trying to drown it in liquor. Thatlasted until Germaine got himself killed in a stupid brawl. I foundhis body lying just off the road near the Brooklyn Bridge, barelyrecognizable. I snapped, went blank. I don't remember the next fewmonths after that. I woke up in an empty tenement building in a poolof vomit and blood, far from anything, with nothing but ripped,stained, blood-stiff clothing. I never found out what happened to mein the three months of blank memory, even under hypnosis or druggedmemory-dredging. Tamara was my only family, our parents having bothbeen killed in the New York Anarchist Revolt when we were kids. AndGermaine...he was as good as family too, so when I found hisbarely-recognizable body, I had no one left at all.

Ileft the empty building, stumbled through the chill spring air, mindempty and echoing, soul shattered, heart hollowed and holed. Igradually gained my equilibrium, physically speaking, and decided tojust keep walking. I made it three days nonstop before I collapsedfrom hunger, pneumonia, and exhaustion. I remember falling,tumbling, lying on my back andstaring up at a clear cerulean sky asit spun crazily above me, thinking Thank God...I'm free...

No Iwasn't. Nothing is ever that easy. I woke up again, this time inwhat seemed, against my better judgment, to be a cave. Flickeringfire-light, stalactites and stalagmites, the sound of trickling watercoming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Yes, I was in fact in acave. A cave? Really? Ok, Ithought, I'm game. Now what?

“Awake,finally?” A lilting, feminine voice, to my left. “Thought you'ddie for sure, more than once. You nearly did, at that. But yet hereyou are, waking up, alive and well. Guess I healed you up right andgood, I did, aye?”

I sat up, dizzy,confused, disoriented. When I stumbled and fell in the abandonedruins of suburban New York City, I hadn't expected to wake up at all,yet here I was, alive, in a cave with a woman.

“Where am I andhow did I get here? Who are you?” The woman turned out to beyoung, tall, short, spiked red hair, decked out in leather andbandoliers and holsters. Beautiful, nubile body accentuated by hermercenary gear. She was sitting against a stalagmite, braidingstrips of leather. Her eyes were a piercing luminous green,glittering with amusement.

“You're in acave, you dolt, I thought that'd be obvious enough. As for me, myname is Isis Munro. And as for how you got here, my brother Huginncarried you. And your next question, why am I here...we found youcollapsed and near death outside New York, and Ignatius decided youmight be useful. I don't know why. He didn't say, and I'm notinclined to question him. He knows things others don't. He is theempath after all.”

Shit. These were empath hunters. In a society of men and women withpowers and abilities that had toppled society itself, empaths werethe most feared, and the rarest. They have the ability to feel otherpeople, to tune into emotions. It seemed innocuous at first, butafter the Devolution of Society it was discovered that empaths haveother capabilities as well. They can detect people, they can walkinto an empty city and track down any living person, without needingso much as a footprint. Simple enough, so what? In conjunction withharvesters, the process becomes more sinister. Harvesters are peoplewith the power to suck out the energy from a person, store it withinthemselves, and then transfer it into power cell. Harvesters grasptheir victim—their prey—by the temples, suck the poor dyingbastard's bioelectricity out and channel it into power blocks whichthen are sold, used, or traded. Glow-leeching, it's called. Glowharvested this way is far more potent than what comes from a personnaturally, but at the cost of stability. Glow-leeched cells areprone to cut out without warning, or just explode, or surge and ruinthe tech. But, in a world where nearly every natural resource hasbeen tapped out or the facilities to process them have beenabandoned, the practice of harvesting pirated bioelectricity isbecoming more and more widespread, as a means of acquiring cheap,disposable energy. Empath hunters are usually nomadic gangs,post-apocalyptic pirates, and there's always at least one empath, aharvester, and a few others as muscle.

Few peopletargeted by these predators escape to tell of it, so my presence intheir camp, alive, is an anomaly that I can't quite figure out. I'mnot an empath, I'm not a harvester, I'm not much of anything special. At least I wasn't then. Just a starved, sick, heart-broken kid withnothing but the clothes on my back. The girl guarding me—andguarding me she was, no mistake: she had an Impulsor pistol on herlap, and she was watching me carefully—must have read my mind,judging by her next words: “I don't know what Ignatius wants withyou. I told him just to let me harvest you and be done with it, buthe wouldn't have it. 'I've got plans for this one,' was all he'dsay. You don't question Ignatius, I've learned. He's never wrong.”

“He's a precog?”I asked, referring to precognition, the ability to see glimpses ofthe future. Precogs were even rarer than empaths and harvesters, andfar more disturbing. I've only met a few, and they were uniformlybizarre, eccentric, difficult to be around, prone to outbursts ofviolence, unable to control their precognition.

“No, he's not aprecog,” Isis responded. “He's a very, very powerful empath. Powerful to the point of going beyond empathy into something else Idon't think we have a word for. You'll meet him soon. My advice? Gowith it. You can't do worse than where we found you, after all.” She had a point, I realized. Whatever this Ignatius wanted with me,it was bound to be better than wandering alone and aimless. And Itruly didn't care what happened to me.

And that is how Ibecame an empath hunter. I started out as just a camp-boy. I wasbarely eighteen then, angry, hateful, and empty. I didn't care whatthey did, who they did it to, where we went. I lit the fires, cookedfood, cared for equipment, and kept to myself. Eventually, though,it was Huginn, Isis's brother, who got to me. He was a massive man,over seven feet tall, hugely muscled, but he wasn't a lumbering,stupid giant, as I expected when I first met him. He looked thepart, certainly, towering, strong enough to lift me up easily withone arm, deep-set brown eyes. He was quick and lithe, for all hisbulk, graceful, gentle, and funny. Whenever the group sat around thefire at night, he was the one to crack jokes and tell long,convoluted stories. Where Isis was cruel, careless with human life,cunning and violent, Huginn was the opposite, often upset by theharvesting, more inclined to discuss the books, films and movies ofthe bygone ages, philosophy, politics...he was an erudite andeducated man, but few ever guessed it. Even his sister oftenunderestimated him. He took a liking to me, I guess, and made it amission to pull me out the downward spiral of depression that mysister's and Germaine's deaths had put me into.

The first month ortwo were the hardest. The group I had been drafted into was large. There was Isis, Ignatius, Huginn, and eleven others, and now myself. We left the cave, part of a series of caverns outside what had oncebeen Albany, and moved south on foot. Ignatius refused to usevehicles, apparently.

“They mask thetrail, confuse the scent,” he said. He was an unremarkable-lookingman, of medium height with unruly brown hair, brown eyes that werealways moving, eyes full of malice and intelligence, insanity.

“Can't hear them, in a car. Can't feel them. Find the prey, huntthem on foot.” I stayed away from him as much as possible. Hewould watch me, stare at me, musing, considering. It creeped meout, feeling his eyes on me wherever I went, whatever I did. I oftenwished he would just order Isis to harvest me.

Huginn took towalking next to me. “Don't mind him,” were his first words tome, rumbled in his deep, syrupy-slow voice. “He's a weird one,sure enough, but as long as you don't cross him, you'll be fine.”

“He creeps meout. Looking at me like I'm a pawn, like he's figuring out his nextmove.”

“That's true,that is,” Huginn said. “Don't mistake me, he's dangerous, not tosay evil. He'll kill you as soon as talk to you. Watch him, beaware of him. Isis too.”

“Isn't Isis yoursister?” I asked.

“Yes,she is,” he answered. “Doesn't mean we're alike, or that I agreewith her. She's one to be wary of, more than Ignatius in some ways. Ignatius is a sociopathic genius, the most powerful empath I've everheard of. He can track six different people at the same time, feelthem, hear their thoughts and feel their fears, follow them each onetill they're cornered. It's not enough for him to just harvest themthough, he feeds on them, in a way. Not literally, he's no cannibal. I just mean he thrives on terrifying his prey, he lives for thehunt. Isis is just the same, worse maybe. She hunts with relish, like a lioness, stalking, waiting, pouncing...She and Ignatius areperfect together, and I can't leave them. They'll have me in minute,and Isis is my only family, I can't just leave her. So I'm stuckwith them, stuck helping them catch their prey. And really, most ofthe ones we catch aren't worth shit anyway. Starving, selfish, evil,self-absorbed pathetic creatures barely recognizable as people. Barely able to speak, illiterate. More animal than man, and we'renearly doing them a favor, taking them out of their misery. But Istill hate it.”

“So I'm stuckwith them too, then?”

“Oh no, notnecessarily. You might get free of them. You don't have anythingholding you to them, except maybe that they saved your life.”

“I'm not surethey were doing me any favors,” was my response, bitter and honest.

“I know. Youseemed angry when you first woke up, angry that we had saved you.”

“I was. I am. I was dying there and glad to be.”

“Well,” Huginnseemed to be choosing his words carefully now. “I can't say that Iknow what would drive a person to that, and I won't pretend tounderstand. But even in these times, there's always something worthliving for, I think. Maybe you just have to find out what.”

“Maybe there isfor you,” I said, “but not for me. There's no point to anything. It's all shit. This country is dead, and nothing can change that.”

Huginn looked downat me, and I could see anger in his eyes, but it didn't bleed intohis voice. “That's blasphemous bullshit, that is. Nothing is everhopeless. This country may be dying, sure, but it's not dead yet. It just needs the right person to take control, to rebuild. It maynot be America as it once was, but it could be something, anythingbetter than it is now.”

I couldn't see,then, what could ever be built out of the dead, ruined mess ofAmerica, and I thought Huginn was a delusional crackpot, but itdidn't seem prudent to say so. Huginn seemed to sense my feelings,so he changed the subject. I was glad he did, because I didn't wantthe only person I could even nominally call a friend to be angry atme, especially since he could break me in half with one hand.

After that, Huginnwas my constant companion, the only person out of the whole gang thatI could stand. The rest were bloodthirsty, cold and unfeeling,symptoms of the disease that ravaged the country. They were crueland selfish, using their mental abilities for every least thing,fighting viciously with each other for trinkets and gadgets andscraps. I never bothered to get to know them, not even their names.This angered them, and they made me their target. They hurled jokes,pranks and insults, they picked fights with me, they forced me to dotheir dirty work. For a long time I just took it in silence,enduring it all. As with so many things, it Huginn who taught meanother way.

“They're justbullies, boy. Show 'em that you won't take it, that you've got acore of steel and willing fist, and they'll shut up, and rightquick.” I remembered the bully that had tortured me for months,when I just a boy. My dad had given me the same advice Huginn wasgiving me then, fifteen years later. Then, as a boy, I had faced thebully, and got beaten to a pulp for my troubles. The bully hadbeaten me up, badly, but I refused to stay down until I blacked out. He would lay a haymaker on me, knock me flying. I would stand up,swing at him, sometimes connecting, sometimes not. This continueduntil I found myself lying on the ground, sight blurring and fading. The bully had stood above me, looking down at me with what might havebeen admiration. He never bothered me after that.

Now, I was facedwith a similar situation. Now, however, it wasn't one bully, biggerand stronger and older than me; now I faced six bullies, eachdifferent. I knew that I had to face them, and I had to do it on myterms, and take what came from it. The problem was, these weren'tschoolyard bullies, these were hardened, callous killers. They wouldslit my throat from ear to ear and leech my glow, leave me for thevultures.

Themoment came all too soon. I was building a fire at the end of aday's walk. One of them came up behind me, a man slightly older thanI, thin and sallow, unkempt, unwashed dark hair. He was fond ofknives, always flipping one in his hand in an calculated,absent-minded way. Huginn was leaning against a tree opposite me,watching surreptitiously. He caught my eye, glanced at the manbehind me as a warning. Huginn had given me an arc stick and a fewlessons in its use, and I kept it within easy reach at all times. Ipalmed it and mentally sent a trickle of impulse into it, just enoughto make it buzz in my hands, a low, inaudible hum. I felt him behindme, approaching on what he apparently thought were silent feet. Ishifted my weight, crouched before the fire I had been building. Iturned just slightly, enough so I could now see him out of the cornerof my eye, and I caught a glimpse of glinting silver, a long curved,wickedly-sharp knife, his favorite, one I'd seen him use all toooften on hapless prey just before Isis drained them.

Helurched towards me, knife upraised; I rolled to the left, felt thetip of his knife whisper past my ear. Lunging to my feet, I crankedthe arc stick all the way up so it was crackling with bolts of arcingelectricity. Olsen, that was his name. I remembered Huginn talkingabout him once, describing some of his nastier predilections. Olsencursed as he missed, and I saw his eyes go wide with surprise andpanic as he realized what was coming. Namely, my arc stick swungwith full force at his gut. The tip of the arc stick plunged intoOlsen's stomach just below the diaphragm; the electricity jolted himviolently, twisted his intestines and stomach into knots. He vomitedpast me, blood and bile and half-digested food. I'd seen what agut-blow of an arc stick could do, and I'd stepped out of the way. Doubled over in agony, Olsen was helpless, the fight gone from himnow. My first reaction was to let it be done, but then I looked toHuginn, who drew his thumb across his throat in an age-old gesturethat meant, finish him. If I didn't, he'd regain his strength and plunge that knife into mychest one night as I slept. So I growled a curse, lifted the arcstick and brought it down across the back of his head hard enough tocrack it and send blood dribbling down his neck. Olsen dropped tothe ground, bleeding from ears, nose, and mouth. His eyes wererolled back in his head and he was in the throes of a seizure. Icouldn't let it end there, though, despite knowing he was as good asdead. The rest of his cronies were watching, and if I showed anyweakness, they'd be on me like hyenas in an instant. I picked upOlsen's knife and dragged it across his throat, pressing so hard Inearly severed his head. As his twitching and seizing slowed andceased, I pawed through the layers of ragged clothes. He had littleof value besides knives, so I took the sheath for the one in my hand,and another arc stick he had hidden at the small of his back in aclever contraption, rigged so that he could reach back and draw itlike a gun, and there was a space for a second stick. I undid thestraps of the hidden scabbard and stuffed it the rucksack I'd takenfrom Olsen.

His friends werestaring at me hatefully. I'd hoped that with this display, they'dback off and leave me alone, but from the looks on their faces, I wasin for the fight of my life, and soon. Huginn hadn't moved theentire time, but now he came over to where I was standing, lookeddown at Olsen's corpse.

“Deserved it, hedid. Had it coming. But I warn you, his buddies will be after you. They're just like him, but he was the worst.” Huginn turned atwalked back to where I had been making the saying over his shoulder,

“Olsen kept an Impulsor pistol in that coat of his. I'd check himagain.” I checked again, and sure enough, the crafty bugger hadrigged another holster for easy, hidden access. I took the pistoland the holster rig, as well. I could feel eyes on me, watching,assessing. They wouldn't wait long.

They didn't. Onecame in the middle of the night, with a knife. He stood over me,knife glinting in the dim starlight, hatred written in the lines ofhis face. He lunged downward with the knife, a movement so suddenand swift that I nearly didn't roll out of the way in time. Unfortunately for him, 'nearly' was just enough. His knife plungedthrough my blanket roll and into the sod beneath, stuck for a splitsecond. I was already up on my feet, Impulsor pistol in my hand,muzzle against his head. An impulse, quick as a single synapsefiring...the man whose name I didn't know, a smelly, selfish coward,died in a silent burst of gray matter. He slumped to the ground onmy blankets, a pool of blood spreading beneath him. I frisked himquickly, found nothing but another Impulsor pistol, a few worthlessodds and ends, a few dozen credits. I dragged him to the edge of thecamp, just beyond the ring of light cast by the fire. I saw Huginnwrapped in his blankets, watching. He nodded slightly, went tosleep.

The others werejust as easy. One by one, they came for me, at night, from behind,from afar, never up close and personal, face to face like men. Cowards. I slaughtered them like the pigs they were, and if I didn'tenjoy it, exactly, well...I didn't mind it, either.

“You're a bittoo good at that, I think,” Huginn said to me after I'd disposed ofthe last of Olsen's cronies.

“I'd be careful of that, If I wereyou. Get too good at it, get to enjoy it, and it's worse than anydrug. Worse than being addicted to glow, in a lot of ways. Justdon't get to where you like it, is all I'm trying to say.”

I told him not toworry, I didn't like it and never would, but deep in the pit of mystomach, at the core of my soul, that small hollow where lay thehardest truths about one's self, I knew I did kind of like it. Iknew, from the instant the tip of the arc stick zapped Olsen's gutthat I would do it again, and again and again, I would take lives andfind release, find some dark relish in the act. I knew it, and itscared me, because I knew I didn't have the moral fortitude to resistit. I think Huginn sensed it as well. He was more distant afterthat, still my one and only friend, but there was a gap between uswhere there hadn't been before. I had planned on talking to himabout it, but I never got the chance.

Huginn, despitehis warnings against developing a taste for killing, continued totrain me in various ways of fighting. Unarmed, hand to hand combat,arc sticks, drawing, firing, and aiming the Impulsor pistols. Itturned out that I had a natural aptitude for firearms. I could drawand fire the pistols faster than Huginn himself, and could group myshots tighter as well. Ignatius was at the lead of the now-smallergroup. He hadn't said or done anything about the confrontations thatled to his band being winnowed down by seven. We were headingtowards Florida, he had told us. He was tired of the north, hewanted somewhere warm. I think he'd also tapped out the entireregion around New York, harvested anyone one foolish enough toventure out in a group less than twenty. He wanted fresh blood,fresh glow. So, southward to new hunting grounds. It took us sixuneventful months of endless trekking, through empty cities, echoingsuburbs, vacant, war-blasted farmlands, but we eventually we reachedFlorida. The only indication I saw that we had actually crossed intoFlorida territory was a metal sign laying in the dirt next to thehighway we were following. It was large, rusted, dented,bullet-pocked, and the words “Welcome to Florida, The SunshineState” were barely legible. I stepped on the sign, my boots makingtinny thumps on the metal.

“Well, here weare,” I said to Ignatius, who was squatting in the dirt a few feetaway, his expression unreadable. “Florida. Now what?”

Ignatius stared atme for so long that I grew uncomfortable. At length, he said,“Now...we hunt. And then we find someone to buy the glow.” Helicked his lips, rubbed the pouch of glow-cells at his belt. Hestood up, sniffed the air, turned in circles a few times. Castingfor a scent, looking for a trail, I supposed. Apparently he sensedsomething, for he abruptly took off in a quick, space-eating lope. Isis, Huginn, myself, and the other four—nameless, faceless gruntsI never spoke to, never acknowledged. They left me alone, and I leftthem alone, an arrangement which suited all of us. I knew they werethere, heard them conversing among themselves, but I never interactedwith them in any way. They were expendable, useless, base, vain andselfish creatures, like Olsen and his crew. These four, however,simply lacked the courage to attack me, having seen the fate of Olsenand the others. The odd thing was, none of the others talked to themeither. Isis and Huginn ignored them as completely as I did, andIgnatius only spoke to them to give them orders.

Hell descendedupon us a few days later. When I was a boy growing up on theoutskirts of New York City, I once stepped on a yellow-jacket nestburied in the ground. One moment I was running around, playing,pretending I was piloting a space-jet to the Mars Colony, and thenthe earth erupted without warning, spewing a massive swarm of angry,stinging yellow-jackets that surrounded me, got under my clothes, inmy hair, following me all the way home, stinging, stinging. Theambush in Florida was like that. One moment we were walking in ascattered group, chatting, Huginn whistling a merry, skirling tune,then abruptly Impulsors were going off all around us in bone-jarringexplosions, and those four grunts were now literally faceless, onetwo three, down in bursts of bone and brain and blood and the fourthwas throwing himself behind a chunk of concrete firing his ownpistols at nothing at all, firing blindly. Isis was hit, hershoulder streaming blood and her mouth streaming curses, Ignatius waspulling her behind the highway divider, firing his pistol much lessblindly, using his empath senses to track the attackers. Huginn andI were left in the open and now we were drawing fire. A bulletgrazed Huginn's beard, drawing a curse from him.

“Over there!”he shouted, pointing at a copse of trees a few paces from thehighway. I drew both Impulsors and fired off several rounds, feltthe concussion of the sonic boom before I heard it, watched thepebbles and dirt underfoot jump with each detonation. Huginn waspulling me towards the rusted, burned-out hulk of an old automobile,pushed me to the ground behind it. I couldn't hear, for some reason. I felt Impulsor concussions rolling over me like waves of thunder,but they were felt, not heard, I saw Huginn's face in front of me,yelling yelling yelling, pistol-wielding hands gesturing at theattackers, now emerging from the treeline. Other explosions werecoming now, powder and fire explosions, grenades or bombs or mortars,flinging dirt and concrete and limbs and blood in the air, but Icouldn't move, couldn't see except for a narrow tunnel of blurredvision.

Then, suddenly,Huginn's ham-hock fist connected with my jaw and sound returned,Impulsor shockwaves and grenades and firearms, shouts and screams andcurses. I looked around me, saw Isis and Ignatius down behind thedivider, Isis still and bleeding, Ignatius still firing, but weakly. Huginn was next to me, a rifle in his hands, eye pressed to thescope, unhurriedly picking off the Scavengers, one by one. I pickeda target, a thin male with too many arms, fired a round at him,watched him drop, felt a burst of satisfaction, drew a bead onanother target, dropped him, and then I had a rhythm, breathe in, oneshot, one kill, breathe out, each of my pistols firing independently,my brain empty now, my entire existence dropping Scavengers. I sawone lob a grenade at us, saw the small dot flying toward me. Mypistol lifted on its own, hesitated an eyeblink, fired. The grenadeexploded mid-air and I saw Huginn turn toward me, a look ofpuzzlement and awe on his face.

It wasn't enoughthough. They were too many. They were closing in, fast, surroundingus. Huginn slung his rifle on his back, drew his own handgun, firedit in the same cool, unhurried rhythm. I found myself on my feet,rushing forward at the Scavengers, shooting as fast as humanlypossible, a succession of explosions that knocked the Scavengers offtheir feet. I was in among them now, and they were rabid, snarling,my nostrils filled with the smell of rotting flesh where man metmachine. I saw one of them aiming his pistol at me and I knew Iwouldn't dodge that one, felt panic hit my brain. The panicactivated something in my head, uncorked something long-dormant in mybrain.

My whole life Ihad been surrounded by people with gifts from Pandora: telekinesis,telepathy and the like. I never had much by way of talent in thosethings. I had enough to fit in, so I wasn't a Blank, someone withoutany abilities at all, but I had nothing to set me apart. My sisterwas able to dig into people's heads, burrow deep inside to the mostsecret places, read your most private thoughts and memories, and nodefense could stop her. My mom and dad were both kinetics, able tomove things mentally, no matter the size. Even Germaine was giftedwith the tech-touch, the ability to interact mentally with any kindof electronic device.

Not me. I struggled through life feelingmediocre at best.

Then, that day ona rutted and ruined Florida road surrounded by Scavengers, Idiscovered something within myself. Panic hit, slamming into me hardenough to stop my breath. I froze, just for a nanosecond, thought tomyself: “Oh hell no. Not like this, not here, not now. Dosomething!” In that frozen fragment of time, I pulled uponevery shred of mental energy I possessed, drew and drew and drewuntil there blazed within my mind a hell-hot inferno, a supernova. Iheld it in until I could hold it no longer, like a diver at the endof his long-held breath; the Scavengers were upon me, firing, I sawthe muzzles expel bullets in slow-motion, syrupy-slow and impossiblelike a raindrop at the end of a fern leaf drooping low low lower andfalling off. I saw the bullets spinning on their axes and saw theScavengers sweating and slavering as they coursed towards me and thenmy pistols were raised and pouring out projectiles as I hurled myselfto the side, hit the ground rolling and came to my feet several yardsto the side and still the Scavengers' bullets were inching throughthe air towards where I had been. Some small part of my brain wasreeling at what I was doing, slowing the time around me, or myperception of time, or my own personal physical speed or something Ididn't understand at all, but I knew it had saved my life. I came tomy feet, blinked my eyes and released the mental tidal wave. TheScavengers jerked and twisted in real time, blossomed brilliantbursts of blood as they flew through the air, tossed like rag dollslike clods of dirt by the impact of whatever force I had released. They were thrown back by the impact of my bullets, then the invisiblewave struck them like a palpable wall and they burst apart into pilesof limbs.

Silence suddenlystretched out and lay heavy and hard on us. I stood, out of breathand sweat-drenched, blood spattered, surrounded by the bodies of theScavengers; all eyes were on me, awed and puzzled.

Huginn stoodslowly, looking in disbelief at the battlefield, at me. “What thehell was that, Dez? What'd you

do? I saw it happen, but I can'tmake sense of it.”

“I don't reallyknow. I saw them circled around me, about to all shoot at once and Iknew I wasn't going to make it, and I refused to let die like that. Then something exploded inside me, kind of in my chest and my brainat the same time. You saw what happened. I don't know...I don'tknow.”

“I'd figure that shit out if I were you.” Huginn shook his head, a look of waryrespect in his eyes.

I eventuallylearned to control it. It's tricky though. I can't do it all thetime, and not to that kind of intensity, but I can slow down time,briefly, or stop it for a few seconds, and I can send out thatconcussive wave, but I've never been able to duplicate what happenedthat day. I'm not sure I want to.

* * *

A sound brings meback to the present: a whimper, a shriek, scuffed steps slipping inthe snow. I pass an alley and pause at the mouth. I see a figure atthe end, a small female silhouette wearing a cloak, cornered at theend of the blind alley, four hulking male figures facing her in aninescapable line. The girl has an arc stick in her hand, waving backand forth, trying to ward off all four at the same time. One of themen feints, she cries out, jabs at him with the arc stick, misses, heyanks it from her grasp, chuckling, jabs her in the side with it. She contorts away from the tip, a scream juddering from her throatthat shivers the snowflakes as they fall. She's a sonic, I'd guess,but she probably doesn't know it, or she'd be ripping them apart withsonic blasts.

I pull my arcsticks out, crank the flow to max so they're crackling and sparkingand arcing spitting electricity between the two tips. I takehunter-silent steps in the soft snow towards four unsuspecting backs,holding my breath, letting the psionic power pool in my core, let myrage at cowards preying on helpless girls build it in exponentialbursts. I'm less than two feet away now, I send out a burst of powerthat slows time to dream-slow sluggishness: the girl's face twistedin fear and agony and rage, wisps of hair trailing across her face asshe falls, hands reaching for her, hands fumbling at belts, handsloose on the handle of the arc stick. They're all nearly but notquite frozen in time, unsuspecting and helpless. I'm darting forwardwith the psionic burst, burying one stick in a kidney, twisting it sothe prongs rip flesh and pour searing bolts of blue-white energy intothe wound, the second stick finds a spine, gouging through the skinto the lumbar itself and his body is folded backward in half, broken;and now I take a step forward, spin on my heel, jab into a throat andrevel secretly as the thin skin breaks open and blood pours forth;one more time my arc stick flashes out into the last man's chest andbloody froth bubbles out of his mouth immediately. I release timeand all four fall the ground, several spouts of gore fill the air andsplash the girl as she collapses to the ground. She's down andscreaming, curled into a ball, expecting harsh cruel hungry finger torip her clothing and pry her legs apart, so when I kneel down nexther and touch her shoulder, tell her it's okay, it's understandablethat she shrieks, a blood-curdling ululation so unnaturally loud thatit sends me stumbling backwards, clutching my ears. She's definitelya sonic. I pick myself up and approach her cautiously, talkingslowly and soothingly to her, telling her I wouldn't hurt her, shewas okay. She must hear me, because she peeks out from behind acurtain of sticky, matted black hair, sees the bodies, dead andbleeding in front of her. This elicits another howl from her, butnot a sonically-charged one. I stand over her, apologize for themess, reach a hand down to help her stand up. She shakes her head,whimpers, shrinks back against the wall.

“Calm down,darlin',” I tell her, with some exasperation. If the sight of afew dead bodies affects her like this, in this day and age, then shemust be pretty sheltered, I figure. “I'm not gonna hurt you. I'mhelping you, ain't I? No one is going to hurt you. I'll take youback home. Come on, now.” I grab her arm and pull her up, moreforcefully than I should, I guess. She lands on her feet, she'sthrashing and pushing, not listening as I implore her to calm down.

“HALT!” Shit. It's the Fist, a full hand of them, five massive, armored bruteswielding arc sticks and Impulsor pistols and lead-knuckled gauntlets. It only takes a split second to realize how this looks. I turnaround slowly, hands in plain sight, empty.

“This isn't howit looks,” I say. I point at the bodies on the ground. “Theseguys had her cornered, I saved her—”

“Shut up! Handson your head! On the ground!” Not good. These gorillas aren'tgoing to listen. I consider, briefly, pulling my Impulsors andfighting it out, but decide against it. I might be able to takethese five, but the sound of gunfire will bring more in a hurry, andI can't take on the whole damn city. Besides...these guys looksalty. I lay down, hands on my head. It galls me to the core tosubmit to anyone, but survival always trumps pride.

Rough hands stripme of my gear: bag, weapons, harnesses, boot knives,everything...except a few secrets they'd never find without a stripsearch.

A muzzle pressesagainst my head and a gravelly voice growls, “Up, slowly. Anymovement I don't like, and you're a dead man.”

Another voice:“Shit, Sarge, these guys are tore up! This fella may be tellingthe truth. One's got his belt open and he's all hangin' out of hispants.”

Sarge, the onewith his piece to my skull, says: “Don't care, Skerritt. Any onegets killed in Detroit, it better be us doing the killing. He goesin, he gets processed.” The bodies are rifled, a code is calledin, bodies for removal, send a vehicle for prisoner transport.

“Uh, Sarge?” Skerritt again.

“What?”

“You know whothis is? The girl, I mean?”

“No, should I?”

“Yeah. It's Layla McHale, sir.”

“Like, The Old Man's daughter? That Layla McHale”

“Yes, sir. ThatLayla McHale.”

“Damnit. Is shehurt? Coherent?”

“Doesn't seem tobe hurt,” Skerritt said, “she has a shit-ton of blood all overher, but it ain't hers. She's in shock I think. This fella reallydid a number on these guys, and I think it messed her up. You knowhow the

Old Man keeps her locked up. Betcha she ain't seen anythinglike this before.”

The sergeantgrunted grudging acknowledgment. “Prolly right, at that. She'sgotta be only the person in the entire world, then, who hasn't seen abody killed before. Well, best bring 'em both to see the Old Man.”

Redefining Sexuality in the Poetry of Robert Herrick

2011-12-06T19:29:00.001-05:00

Seth D. Clarke

ENG 401

Dr. Laam

Love, lust,sexuality, sensuality, the kiss, these are recurring themes in thepoetry of Robert Herrick. But, often his poetry is held up againstthat of other poets of his era, such as Donne, and Carew, andHerrick's is seen lacking. In the words of J.B Broadbent, “allHerrick's sweets are the same, and too sweet, pretty lewdness isboring. People sense something wrong, a lack of genuine sexuality”(Draper et al 368). But this reading, of Herrick's poetry being merelewdness empty of deeper meaning or lacking genuine, masculinesexuality, this is a shallow reading that misses much of the truethrust of Herrick's work. His poetry, I would argue, approachessexuality and seduction from a different angle, with a differentpurpose. Where Donne was clever and witty, and Carew wasdeliberately graphic, Herrick expresses, not innocence, but adifferent kind of sexuality, one that is tangled up with the woman,with love, with poetry itself. Herrick seduces, in his poetry, buthe does so on his own terms, using language itself, redefining thekiss. His poetry is aesthetic, not about sexuality for sexuality'ssake than about expressing the beauty of the experience, theloveliness of the woman; he expresses this through his verse, whichis deliberately crafted to have the most effect. Paul Jenkins, in“Rethinking What Moderation Means to Robert Herrick” writes: “Thenotion of being tasteful in art and amorous matters is central toHerrick's poems, with the metaphor's literal source in appetiteclearly understood. (380)” The tastefulness itself, however, is aploy, a tactic used to gain the most effect, as Jenkins furtherexplains: “Moderation is invoked, not for ethical reasons, but forit's partial role in an aesthetic formula—carefulcarelessness—which Herrick believes will produce the mostsatisfying sensations...Herrick's desire to have artful satisfactionthrough artfulrestraint is partly an aestheticcommitment to fineness...” (380). Thus we see that Herrick isdedicated to artful, aesthetic poetry that invokes powerful physicaland mental response, not through graphic—not to saygratuitous—language, but delicate and purposeful sensuality.

One of the mostfrequently examined poems by Herrick is “Upon Julia's Clothes,”and this poem has been discussed by critics beyond enumeration, mostfamously, perhaps, by C. S. Lewis and E. M. W. Tillyard in aback-and-forth dispute in publication. Lewis, for example,discussed the idea of the poet's perception of silk itself in thatpoem, and the way in which the reader's sensitivities to thelustrous, sensuous qualities of silk are communicated through thepoet's language, but this is tertiary to whether “the poet'scharacter is part of my direct experience of the poem; or whether itis simply one of later and unpoetical results” (338). The poet'sskill, Mr. Lewis is implying, and later in the essay directlystating, is seen in the reader's immediate grasp of the feel of silkagainst skin, and how sensual that experience is. We are at firstunable to see the skill of the poet because we are taken up with theimagery and tactile sensations being communicated. “I see that'liquefaction' is an admirably chosen word,” Lewis writes, “butonly because I have already found myself seeing silk as I never sawit before...to account for the unusual vividness of that idea, I maythen analyse the poem and conclude 'It is the word liquefactionthat does the trick'...Perception of the poet's skill comes later,and could not come at all unless I had first and foremost apprehendedthe silk” (338). C. S. Lewis' idea here is of vital importance:the poet's skill is not always directly obvious, at first glance. But when we step back and look at the effect he has on our senses, onthe idea that we are able to immediately conjure up tactile memoriesof silk against our own skin, visual memories of seeing a woman'sbody underneath silk, of the liquid manner of silk in thelight...truly, the word liquefactionis the only appropriate word for it. This skill then becomesapparent, when we see how the poet has, in one single word, breathedso much of reality into his poem, and in so doing, created a verysensual image:

Whenasin silks my Julia goes,

Then,then, methinks, how sweetly flows

Thatliquefaction of her clothes

Next,when I cast mine eyes and see

Thatbrave vibration each way free;

O,how that glittering taketh me! (Rumrich and Chaplin 214)

Eachword is chosen for a specific poetic purpose, and that purpose is tocommunicate the poet's own rapturous delight in seeing Julia's bodymoving underneath the silks. We are given a glimpse at Julia throughHerrick's eyes; the very visuality of the poem is a testimony to theskill of the poet. His poetry is not so libido-driven as Carew orJonson or Milton, but it doesn't need to be, for Herrick's poetryoperates according to his own ideals and aesthetics. Tillyarddisagrees with Lewis, on several points. I need not enumerate thetotality of their debate, for all that is salient to my purposes isTillyard's statement:

WhatI cannot accept in Mr. Lewis's interpretation of the poem is thevalue he puts on 'things'. I do not say that the poem does not tellus something, but I do say that what it tells us about silk has avery subordinate share in the poem's total meaning. Silk may haveconsiderable importance as a means, as an end it is negligible...forbefore the silk is made vivid to us, we are given through theexcited repetition of the words 'then, then', the statement of thespeaker's excitement at the sight of his Julia in motion. (Draperet. al. 339)

Ido not believe it hypocritical or paradoxical to state that I agreewith both authors' ideas. The importance of the 'things' in Lewis'interpretation is indeed central to the poem, for the subject is notso much Julia herself, directly, but Julia's clothes, so here Lewisis correct in his reading; Tillyard's point is also well-taken,however, in that the silk itself is only superficially the point ofthe poem. The silks are the means by which the speaker chooses tocommunicate a very complex visual experience: it is the liquidmovement of the clothes themselves, as well as the vibration of thebody beneath them—“perhaps moving in little horizontal eddies,and he is captivated,” (339) as Tillyard so eloquently puts it—thatimpels the poem, it is these elements working in harmony through thepoet's deft pen-work that makes “Upon Julia's Clothes” sodeliciously sensual.

Thekiss, in the poetry of Herrick's time, held a special place. Itcould be an innocent pleasure, or it could be a gateway, an open doorto sex. Herrick's poems on kissing seem to bridge the two, as in“The Kiss. A Dialogue”:

I. Amongthy fancies tell me this,

What is this thing we call a kiss?

2.I shall resolve ye what it is.

Itis a creature born and bred
Between the lips (allcherry-red),
By love and warm desires fed.

Chor. And makes more soft the bridal bed. (1-7 www.luminarium.org)

Inthis poem, the kiss is defined as a “a creature born and bred,” athing that needs feeding; kissing, here, is not a door, or aninnocent pleasure, but a living being that must be taken care of, “bylove and warm desires fed.” In the epigram “A Kiss” Herrickfurther elucidates his definition: “Whatis a kiss? Why this, as some approve:/The sure, sweet cement, glue,and lime of love” (www.luminarium.org). Inthis little poem, a kiss is the very mortar of love itself. WilliamKerrigan, writing in Kiss Fancies in Robert Herrick,says: “Kissing is consummation's supplement, differing from orgasmin its capacity for limitless increase,” (Rumrich and Chaplin 855). Herrick would agree with this summation, I think. This does notmerely divorce kissing from the “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,and short act of intercourse” (855), as Kerrigan puts it, but givesvalue to the kiss for its own sake, and does not in so doing devaluesex itself. The kiss is an exploration, a commune of souls throughthe economy of lip to lip, and often flits away from lips to otherplaces: “Then to the chin, the cheek, the ear,/It frisks and flies,now here, now there,” (“The Kiss. A Dialogue” 12-13www.luminarium.org). Herrick's poem “To Anathea (III)” perhapsmost openly beckons his mistress to bed for amatory purposes:

Let'skiss afresh, as when we first begun.

Butyet, though love likes well such scenes as these,

Thereis an act that will more fully please:

Kissingand glancing, soothing, all make way
But to the acting of thisprivate play:

Nameit I would ; but, being blushing red, The rest I'll speak when wemeet both in bed. (8-14 www.luminarium.org)

Andeven here, directly speaking of the sexual act, Herrick forebears todirectly name the act, to write it, but rather falls back on blushingtact. Their kissing is a portal to love-making, but they are notkissing as mere foreplay, for as the pair adds kiss upon kiss, “athousand up a million” (6), then they “Treble that million”(7), and when they've shared a million kisses, the speaker invitesAnathea to “kiss afresh, as when we first begun” (8); this is notthe invitation to simply be done with the preamble and get to thesex, this is a poem celebrating the kiss for the kiss' sake. Sex isimplied but explicitly not named—making sex itself sacred, not afit subject for verse. The kiss, however, was a topic Herrick spentmany lines defining and exploring and expressing. His definitionflows easily between innocent pleasure and portal to sex; in movingso subtly between the two extremes, Herrick's view of kissing may beseen as enveloping both to create a third, and new definition, one inwhich the kiss is an entity of its own, not sexual, and not innocent,but both and neither at once.

Allof this discussion of kissing and sensuality versus sexuality takesplace within the context of Herrick's poetry. This is an importantfeature to remember, that this discussion of sexuality is the productof poetry. I would argue that perhaps poetry itself, the act ofwriting these poems was in itself an act of sexuality for Herrick. He didn't overtly discuss sex in the way that Carew did in “TheRapture,” nor did he cloak his sexuality in clever misdirection andintentional ambiguity in the way that Donne did, but sexuality wasnot lacking, for all of that. Achsah Guibbory writes: “ForHerrick, poetry is the product of a heat which is almost sexual, andhis poems themselves become objects of his love, capable of arousinga delightful excitement that is similar to sexual passion andpossibly superior to it” (Draper et. al. 392). The poemsthemselves, in expressing through diction and subject Herrick'ssensuality, hint at a more explicit sexuality, via methods as subtleas meter itself. Consider “The Night-piece, To Julia”:

Then,Julia, let me woo thee,
Thus, thus to come unto me ;
And whenI shall meet
Thy silv'ry feet,
My soul I'll pour into thee.(16-20)

Theselines nowhere suggest even so physical an act as kissing, but thereis a sensuality to them, nonetheless, found in the rhythm of thelines, in the staggered meter of the lines, in the repetition of“thus, thus” (17), a pulling of Julia towards himself. There isa kind of thrusting rhythm to these lines that suggests sex (to myears): it is in the simple words—no word is more than twosyllables—that pelt the ear in soft, lilting waves, rushing on andon, slowly and methodically; there are no jarring words, no harshconsonants, suggesting a susurrus, a sighing in Julia's ear. I haveapplied this reading to only the last stanza, but it lays neatly overthe whole; look at lines 6-8: “No will-o'-the-wisp mis-lightthee;/Nor snake or slow-worm bite thee:/But on, on thy way.” Thereit is again, the soft, sibilant words, the repetition of “on, on”in line 8. The fabric of the poem itself is the sexuality, andunlike the act of sex, the poem lasts forever. Guibbory again: “Goodpoetry is like an eternally youthful woman: she never loses her vitalpowers, and she offers to her lovers a very special opportunity totranscend the ruins of time” (Draper et. al. 394). Thispositioning of the sexuality within the poem itself, rather than themore obvious subject matter, is a direct choice on Herrick's part. By subsuming the sexuality into the structure and form of the poem,Herrick is choosing to elevate aesthetics over tradition, or custom. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in a lecture on Herrick's poetry wrote: “Hedelights in this victory of genius over custom. He delights to showthe muse is not nice or squeamish, but can tread with firm andelastic step in sordid places and take no more pollution than thesun-beam which shines alike in the carrion and the violet” (313). Emerson is stating more eloquently than I have thus far, thatHerrick's poetry eschews the tradition of other poets, classical andcontemporary (to himself) and instead uses language, uses poetry toshine a light into his own sexuality without being polluted bytoo-graphically depicting the process. He is not “nice orsqueamish” but he is honest and unafraid to delve into the deepestpools of his nature. “[Herrick's] talent lies in his mastery ofall the strength and lighter graces of language,” Emersoncontinues, “so that his verse is all music, and, what he writes inthe indulgence of the most exquisite fancy is at the same timeexpressed with as perfect simplicity as the language of conversation”(313). Herrick does not use exaggerated technique to dredge up thisexpressive sensualism, but relies on his broad command of language todo the work for him.

Kerrigansays, in the opening to his essay, Kiss Fancies in RobertHerrick that, “in a traditionstretching from Edmund Gosse to Gorden Braden...something major andmale is absent from Herrick's erotic verse” (Draper et. al. 851),and further quotes F.W. Moorman as complaining of a lack of true fireand passion in Herrick's poetry. There may be something to thesecomplaints, in that, as explored above, Herrick doesn't discuss sexin openly erotic terms in the way sexual poetry from the seventeenthcentury usually did; but considerthe words of Thomas Bailey Aldritch:

Ofpassion, in the deeper sense, Herrick has little or none, Here are no'tears from from the depths of some divine despair,' no probingsinto the tragic heart of man, no insight that goes much farther thanthe pathos of a cowslip on a maiden's grave. The tendrils of hisverse reach up to the light, and love the warmer side of the gardenwall. But the reader who does not detect the seriousness under thelightness misreads Herrick...He must be accepted on his own terms. (324)

Aldritch'swords convey a basic truth about Herrick's poetry that his detractorsmay have missed: it does not grasp for weighty metaphysical truths ofthe universe, nor is it burdened by maudlin maunderings on tragiclove affairs. He may place a clutch of flowers on a lover's graveafter she is gone, Aldritch implies, but he won't waste a hundredstanzas decrying the epic nature of their fateful love. Herrick'spoetry, rather, vividly portrays simple subjects in quick, still-lifevignettes, such as these verses, “The Vision to Electra:”

Idreamed we both were in a bed
Of roses, almost smothered:
Thewarmth and sweetness had me there
Made lovingly familiar;
Butthat I heard thy sweet breath say,
Faults done by night willblush by day;
I kissed thee, panting, and I call
Night to therecord! that was all.
But, ah! if empty dreams so please,
Love,give me more such nights as these. (www.luminarium.org)

Tenlines, containing no clever conceits or epic similes, but they conveya scene with elegant economy. The poem describes a dream, a vision,and the speaker is communicating it to Electra, and in so doinginviting her with subtle force to join him in bed and recreate thevision. They are musical, like a song, or a magic spell conjuring ina mirror a scene from the speaker's memory or fantasy. In the wordsof Richard J. Ross: “The lyricist's musicianship, his mastery ofsuggestion in the mere rhythm of sounds, brings into play theinstinctive feeling always accompanying objective recognition tore-create an experience in depth...But depth in a poem, even a simpleone, comes from more than musical moods, it comes from a perfectwedding...of insinuating moods and intentional tones...” (Draperet. al. 370). The power of Herrick's poetry is not in what he says,but in what he suggests: “overtly he describes beautiful silksvibrantly becoming to a lively woman,” Ross says, in discussing“Upon Julia's Clothes,” “Very subtly he also suggests thediscarding of silks...His explicit thought is of art clothing thenatural” (370).

Herrick'spoetry is undeniably sensual. Critics, in the sense of detractors,have said that he lacked masculinity, or passion for woman but ratherfor the act, or for voyeurism. Robert Southey said, “Of all ourpoets this man appears to have had the coarsest mind. Without beingintentionally obscene, he is thoroughly filthy...” (314). Soeither he was not filthy enough, or too much so. Somewhere betweenthese contradictions is the truth: Herrick was neither. He balancedon a fine line between them, expressing sexuality and sensualityboth, never crossing the line into graphic depictions of sex butrather conveying his passion for a woman's beauty and his desire forher through unexpected channels. The best poetry, a teacher oncetold me, portrays something old in a new way. A kiss is just a kiss,but in the hands of Herrick, a kiss becomes more. It takes on a lifeof its own, grows to be a distinct entity separate from foreplay orsex, but inextricably linked to both. He can weave a spell aroundthe reader with simple language, using meter and rhythm and dictionto lull and pacify while suggesting the rhythms of sex. He can makea poem about the silks that cling to his lover's body express hislustful admiration for her as a woman and his desire to consummatethat passion. Herrick's poetry does more than describe a kiss, or abreast, it redefines sexuality in poetry, it shows how wordsthemselves can be sexual without being lewd, how tastefulness can bemasculine.

Annotated Bibliography

Draper,James P., and James E. Person, Jr., ED. Literatureand Criticism from 1400-1800,vol. 13, pp. 308-412. Gale Research Inc., Detroit, 1990

Thispublication contains criticism on every poet during the time framelisted in the title. The critical essays are in chronological orderof publication, from the poet's contemporaries to modern critics. Most of the essays in the volume are excerpts from longer works,either articles in journals or stand-alone books. Each essaycontains a one- or two-sentence abstract summing the main thesis ofthe article, so that the essays can be quickly scanned forsuitability of subject and then later perused at leisure.

Emerson,Ralph Waldo. “Ben Jonson, Herrick, Herbert, Wotton,” EarlyLectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1833-1836, vol. 1,ed. Stephen Whicher and Robert Spiller, Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press 1959, pp. 337-55.

Aldritch,Thomas Bailey. “RobertHerrick: the Man and the Poet” in TheCentury,vol.LIX, no. 5,March 1900, pp 678-88.

Southey,Robert. “Collections for History of English Literature and Poetry,”Southey'sCommon-Place Book, Vol. 4,ed. John Wood Warter, Reeves, and Turner, 1876, pp. 259-351

Lewis,C. S. “Chapter 1,” ThePersonal Heresy: A Controversy,E. M. W. Tillyard and C. S. Lewis, Oxford University Press, London,1939, pp. 31-48.

Inthis excerpt from Lewis and Tillyard's debate, Lewis argues thatHerrick's poetry is simple and sensuous, that the poetry must be readon a surface level to appreciate the deeper skill behind it. Hediscusses the usage of words such as 'clothes' and 'liquefaction' andtheir context within the poem. He also explicates the idea of thesilk itself in “Upon Julia's Clothes,” which is the subject ofthis essay and the response by Tillyard. Lewis' primary argument isone of perception being the primary requirement useful inunderstanding Herrick's poetry, and that the person of the poet mustbe absent from the poem.

Tillyard,E. M. W. “Chapter II,” ThePersonal Heresy: A Controversy,E. M. W. Tillyard and C. S. Lewis, Oxford University Press, London,1939, pp 31-48

Thisresponse to Lewis' argument warns that it would be too easy, in usingLewis' interpretation, to oversimplify the case. Tillyard suggeststhat the value of the silks, the description of which Lewis claims tobe the the heart and force of the poem, is, for Tillyard, lessimportant than the use of the description to convey a more complextheme. The speaker is excited, for Tillyard, in a way that Lewismisses. There is a personality in the poem, which Lewis claims thereis not.

Ross,Richard J. “Herrick's Julia in Silks,” Essaysin Criticism, vol. XV, no. 2, April1965, pp. 171-80.

Broadbent,J. B. “The Metaphysical in Decadence” PoeticLove,”Chatto and Windus, 1964, pp. 238- 65.

Jenkins,Paul R. “Rethinking What Moderation Means Robert Herrick,” ELH,vol. 39, no. 1,March 1972, pp. 49-65.

Guibbory,Achsah. “ 'No Lust Theres to Like to Poetry,' ” “Trust to GoodVerses,” Herrick Tercentenary Verses,ed. Roger B. Rollin and J. Max Patrick, University of PittsburghPress, 1978, pp.79-87

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herrick/herribib.htm

Mad Mary

2011-11-23T17:36:00.001-05:00

The air smells of lunacy. Smell it? Delicious. Lovely, wafting to the nostrils like Mom's apple pie. Tasty, she was. The madness has a distinct olfactory punch to it that cannot be mistaken. It's not like fear. Fear smells thick, like spilled blood. Madness is light, almost frilly, delicate and thinly pungent.

Ah, yes. There she is. What'ssssss her name? Mary? Yes, that's it. I lean in to the outskirts of her mind, and listen:

The cows come home home home, all day all day...where mind the gallows go, inclines declines...algorithms of alcohol...

I withdraw, leave her to her nonsense chanting. She's pressed far past the bounds of what can be understood as thought, much less coherence. Perrrrrfect.

She mumbles and stumbles, swigs from a brown-paper bag in the shape of a bottle; I flare my nose and sniff...King Cobra, I think...yes, yes. She's far gone, too. Many bottles in, this day.

"Periwinkle, twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder who you are..." she weaves around a corner and into an alley, lurches to a stop, inspects her surroundings, sinks and sags to the ground in a pile of newspapers and cardboard arranged into a nest, still whispering to herself in a barely audible sing-song "it's contagious, here we are now, imitate us..."

Nirvana? Really, Mary? Ah the mad, no taste whatsoever.

I wait, wait, wait, tasting the shadows, watching the stars come to life beyond the cloud cover. Night falls, Mary sleeps. The crowds fade, and no one sees me. They never do. I disguise myself as something living, something real. Something vaguely human, or human-shaped. I love their ignorance, these frail, mad humans.

Finally, the moment comes, and I strike like an adder, swift and silent. She tastes of madness, so sweet like honey-wine, and anger, acrid, like aged scotch. When I finish, she is a flaccid sack of nothing, but I sense her soul wafting upwards like a smoke trail and she is relieved, thankful. She whispers to me, before she vanishes among the waiting multitudes of the In-Between, Thank you thank you, death is like loving--

I smile a toothy grin and slither back into the cool shades of nowhere.

A Daphne Crown

2011-11-10T17:10:00.001-05:00

She flits between the trees, and the only glimpses I am granted are shreds of white gauze vanishing between mammoth tree trunks like the legs of a colossus. She laughs, mocking, and it enrages me. Her laughter echoes...echoes...echoes, returns to me from behind, before, to the left and right. There is no sound but her bell-chime voice, no sight but her lithe, lovely form. She is all around me, she is everywhere, she is nowhere.

Daphne.

Her very name is like bewitching music coursing within me, burning fiery in my veins. My side stings where Eros fired his golden arrow; I hear Daphne's laughter pulling me ever onward. I see a single drop of blood glimmering bright and bold in a pool of sunlight, Daphne's blood; I dip my finger in the spot of crimson and taste her essence therein, like honey, like sunlight. I charge forward through the wood, and now I see her. She too presses a palm to the ivory skin of her side. She leans against a majestic elm, a leaden arrow lying at her feet. She sees me, framed by the sun, and she takes a step away from the tree. My heart leaps...I step towards her, hands outstretched; I can almost feel her skin beneath me, hear her panting in my ear...

...She lifts her face heavenward, calls the name of her father the river god, begs him to save her...Save her? Why needs she to be saved? I take another step forward, poetry of love on my lips...

She flees yet again, and my heart is crushed, my ire roused. All I want is to love her, and I will, I will have her. She runs like a wounded deer now, wild and frantic, weaving between trunks and ducking under low-hanging boughs and even as I pursue her I feel my lust rising at the tantalizing glimpses of her lovely body moving with such gazelle grace beneath the sheer white silken gown. My own unflagging speed carries me nearer, nearer, she is within grasp and now I have a handful of silk in my fist...

She cries out again, and I hear true anguish in her dulcet wail; she wrenches her head around to look at me, revulsion in her marble features, and her body is twisting as she pulls away from me. My hands are wrapped around her waist, I have her in my arms at last. But her pure white alabaster skin, so smooth and warm and flawless, is changing beneath my touch, turning rough and coarse, darkening, hardening. Her hair, black as raven wings, lustrous and shimmering in the noonday sun, her hair is turning green, spreading out and rising upwards as a million leaves fluttering in the breeze, stretching towards the sun as if hungry for his light, and her arms are reaching for the sky as well, twisting and knotting, bending, splitting and contorting, her legs are merging and thickening and driving grasping roots like serpentine tendrils into the ground, into the soft black loam. She has become a tree, an elegant laurel tree, leaves like spearheads wavering luminous in the brilliant sunlight.

Peneus has protected her. Damn him.

I wrap my arms around her broad, solid trunk, gaze up at the azure sky through her fluttering foliage, kiss her now-rough skin, caress her as if she were still flesh and blood. I turn away, unable to face the hungry hollow in my soul, the place where she belongs.

Wind stirs, soughs through the forest, lifts her delicate branches. I turn back to her, pluck leaves from her and weave a crown, whisper a prayer to her, promise to never forget her.

My Daphne, my love.

Lily's Hunger

2011-10-17T22:37:00.000-04:00

A billowing draft rustles and lifts the curtains, granting me a fleeting glimpse of the world that lays beyond this darkened room that is my prison: a lush green sward stretching in rolling folds, an azure sky wide and unbroken in a vast curving expanse, and far in the distance, perched upon the horizon line is an oak tree spreading its branches like reaching, trembling-leafed fingers, each broad leaf burnished to luminescence by the great, glowing, blinding sun.

All this in a fragment of a moment, then gone. The curtains fall closed again and the room is bathed in darkness, affording me only dim outlines of the sparse furniture: a small cot, a table and chair, a candle for which I have no matches. I feel eyes watching me; the door silently opening behind me had caused the draft that lifted the curtain.

She smiles slowly at me, a sinister curling of her cold red lips like a serpent coiling to strike, showing a pair of fangs that gleam in the gloom as sharp white omens of death. I shrink against the wall, knowing what is coming. I edge for the window. "Go ahead," she says, gesturing at the window. She laughs, a vicious, tinkling chuckle like breaking glass. I lunge to throw open the sash, knowing it is in vain. Her fangs pierce my throat, and darkness, hungry and breathing, washes over me.

Carnivale Mechaniste

2011-10-11T18:00:00.003-04:00

Chapter 10: Shipwrecked

High Consul Pede Claudo stood atthe railing outside of his cabin, leaning heavily on hisintricately-carved thornwood cane, idly fingering the silver eaglethat formed the knob. His leg was throbbing, making him irritableand impatient, which the very last thing the situation at hand calledfor. His Dreadnaught ran like a clock without much intervention fromhim; his crew knew their jobs, they were all seasoned, experiencedmen, trusted and steady. He'd taken them to the farthest realms andback, faced incredible odds and had always come back to dock withminimal casualties and full profit. This time, it looked as if thismight be an exception. This realm...it was mysterious, difficult,and dangerous; the inhabitants were even more so, treacherous,vicious, unpredictable, and cunning.

The ship was tethered in aprecarious position, hiding in the lee of one of the massive,city-sized islands that floated in the air by some devil-magic.There didn't seem to be anything like ground here, just an endlessmaze of floating islands that ranged in size from large boulders tohulks bigger than all of Carth, to continent-sized mammoths thatdefied belief, all hovering in the middle of space, scatteredhelter-skelter, some miles apart, others with outcroppings knockingagainst each other like boats at dock. The winds worked awfulmischief too, currents blowing in wild directions, shifting andchanging without warning, raging and whipping, slowing and vanishingand kicking up again moments later; even the mighty Dreadnaught wasturned on end by sudden gusts of unbelievable force, the rigging wasin constant disarray, sails were split and spars creaked and bent and snapped with a noise like a cannon, piercing everyone in thevicinity with splinters. One man had even been knocked clear off theyard and overboard to tumble into space that seemed to have no end. And the damned mages couldn't cast the realm-shift spell again foranother thirty ship-days, so they were stuck here.

The natives were the worstnuisance of all. Perhaps nuisance wasn't the right word, however,Pede Claudo thought to himself. They were gallingly, devilishlycrafty, masters of guerrilla warfare. They seemed to understandinstinctively that they couldn't face the Corsairs on any kind oflevel playing field—should such a thing exist in this awful abode—so they would swoop down out of the sun in ever-shiftingarrowhead formations, launching those red balls of fire from silver,pronged sticks the size of a gladius. They flew in perfect unison,never colliding, even during the most outrageous maneuvers, throwingthe balls of fire back and forth like they were playing a game he'dseen back Earth-side, long ago, in another lifetime, played by thenatives of a then-unknown continent...Claudo shook himself out thereverie. Memories of Earth would do no good. He slammed the butt ofhis cane on the deck, gruffed and cursed under his breath. Thenatives would be attacking soon, his gut told him. Best movepositions.

“Garris!” Claudo's second incommand swarmed up the ladder and waited for orders. “Un-tetherus and set the screws at quarter strength. Bear straight ahead andbring us above this rock. I expect we'll have company soon, so havethe troops at the ready.”

“Sir.” Garris slid down theladder without touching a rung, calling orders as he went. A goodlad, that, Claudo thought. Reminded him of a praefecti he'dknown in the Seventh Legion. Of course, that praefecti had beencaptured, tortured, and exsanguinated by Pict raiders, but that wasthe hazard of being sent to Britannica. Claudo had to shake himselfagain. He was getting maudlin, it seemed. That wouldn't do, not atall.

Claudo's Dreadnaught, theRealmfall, shuddered and rumbled as the engines kicked into gearand set the four screws to spinning. The sun was setting—ordescending, or whatever—lowering in the west, darkening the sky toshades of pink and red and orange. The natives seemed to have noproblem in the dark, so the coming of night was no shelter or solace. The crew of the Realmfall was on edge, jumping at everysound, every gust of wind, and Claudo wasn't in much better shape. The Realmfall eased away from the rock to which she had beentethered and swung out into open space, nosing up and away from thearchipelago she had been hidden in. Not for the first time, Claudowished to Jupiter that the winds weren't so be-damned unpredictableso he could move in silence; the engine and screws weredead-giveaways to their position, but every time he upped sails, thewind wreaked havoc on the sheets and the rigging, tangling lines,snapping yards and spars, and making life a living hell for everyone. No, engine power was the best choice, but every time Claudo had theRealmfall shift position, they found themselves under attackby harrying raids of the natives.

Sure enough, they hadn't so muchas cleared the archipelago when he heard the distinctive battle-songof the winged warriors that made their homes in these floatingmountains. Claudo peered over the edge and watched the arc ofislands receding from view, but saw no shapes flying towards them;there was nothing above them but empty sky; then he saw them emerging from a cloudbank between three islands, each of which was big enoughto hold all of the city of Carth twice over. Claudo put histelescope to his eye and brought it to bear on the approachingraiders. There were at least fifty of them, flying in a tightthree-dimensional diamond formation, wide wings beating in perfectunison, each mouth singing in eery synchronicity the battle-song thatalways foreboded dead deckhands and Corsairs, more funerals, morefamilies to visit once the year out and year back were finished.

Claudo cupped his hands aroundhis mouth, bellowing, “All hands! Raiders to aft! Ready the deckguns!” Claudo turned to the helmsman and ordered him to bring theRealmfall about so her cannons could be used to some effect. The likelihood of actually hitting such small, maneuverable targetswith anything so cumbersome as a cannon was laughable, but...he hadto use everything he had. The deck guns, used primarily againsttargets that could conjure magical shields or force-fields, would beof more use, he hoped. He didn't know what effect the phage-globeshad on living targets, but they would soon find out.

The Realmfall had swungabout and brought her screws to a halt, all available hands manningany kind of projectile weapon available, long-bows, cross-bows,muskets, and rifles all carefully smuggled from various Earth eras, as well asother, stranger weapons magical in nature. Claudo knew he had anadvantage over many other Dreadnaughts, in that Claudo knew Earth,knew when and where to go to procure weapons that would make all thedifference in situations like this, where most other High Consulsdidn't. Claudo's home realm was the one place the Carthians didn'tlike to raid, except for select times in history, when anomalies suchas the Dreadnaught would go unremarked. One Consul had tried to raidEarth in a time-point too far advanced technologically, and the shiphad never been seen again. Claudo knew all too well how that hadhappened, and he too stayed far away from his home realm as much aspossible. He missed Earth, though. Quite a bit, sometimes...for somany reasons.

The lead warrior ended thebattle-song with a long-drawn ululation that seemed to be the signalto open the attack, for when the sound of his voice faded, all thewarriors unlimbered their weapons, each of them identical to theothers: three-foot-long staffs, one in each hand, crafted of somekind of silvery metal that caught every shred of light and refractedit, intensified and prismatic. In his or her left hand—for womenfought as well as men here, with equal viciousness and cunning—thewarrior always held the pronged weapon, seven long and curvingtalon-like prongs cupped around a giant red, translucent,iridescent stone; from this hand, the left, the warrior conjured thered globes of fire that consumed with horrible swiftness anything andeverything it touched, flesh, steel, wood, cloth, even the very airitself seemed to burn when the globes howled past. In theright hand, the warrior always held the hammer staff, a weapon thesame length as the other, but with a a mace-head, round,bulbous, spiked, and heavy; with this hammer-headed staff the globes,once conjured, were hit to fly howling with an unnatural shriek for hundredsof feet. WhenClaudo first saw the warriors attack, he'd thought it to be anotherexample of low-tech natives trying to attack a far superior forcewith sticks and fire, but then, when the devastating effectiveness oftheir sports-like technique was demonstrated, Claudo revised hisopinion to grudging respect and even a little awe, in the manner thatonly a seasoned warrior can.

Claudo cursed yet again. Hedidn't know if his men could bear up under thirty days of this. Heknew they couldn't. In thirty days, at this rate...they'd all bedead and the Realmfall would be a ghost ship, floating in the maze ofsky-islands until it smashed against one and fell through theinfinity of empty space in chunks of ruin.

Now the first warrior, the oneat the very tip of the diamond, held the heads of his weapons againsteach other, chanted a single syllable, and ignited a ball of redfire. In unison, all the others followed suit, and at that moment, inthe lowering, darkening haze of impending nightfall, there was asudden blaze of red fire tracing through the sky; the warriorsswung their hammers and the globes of fire exploded towards theRealmfall with a roar of rushing wind and a burst of howlingenergy. When the barrage was less than ten feet away, the formationbroke, scattered up and down, left and right, prong-staffs ignitingand tossing globes back and forth in a dizzying tracery thatafterimages on retinas. Then red fire was splattering andspreading, creeping up masts and eating at the edges of reefed sails,devouring hair and boots and fingers, eliciting screams of agony andpanic. Water didn't douse this fire, and water was always at apremium aboard ship; slapping only transferred it from cloth to palm; the only mercy was that it was short-lived, the fire burnt itselfout after a few minutes, but each second that it burned caused awfuldevastation. By the time the first barrage had died down, there wereat least three men dead and a dozen writhing with awful burns, fleshturned black with peeling oozing pink underneath. Now the warriorswere darting overhead and past on either side and beneath, passingglobes to and fro, swooping down beneath the mast to crush a head oropen a chest with the hammer-staff; when the hammer impacted, it sentout a shock-wave that propelled the victim for several yards andbattered against the ear drums and skin of anyone nearby.

There was a fraught, stillsilence left in the space after the attack. That was their way, thenatives: swoop in, hit like lightning, and vanish. Damned effective. Claudo opened his mouth to order the cleanup, but his words wereburned away by the raging fires of a second attack, hard on the heelsof the first, a new contingent of aerial warriors singing andblasting howling balls of fire, smashing holes in men and in the sides of the ship, firing groups of red projectilesat the screws so that the ship shuddered and the engines groaned andthe ship stuttered and yawed and drifted to a stop. The deck gunsopened fire without orders, and found some effectiveness. The long,wide-mouthed guns belched, guttered, and emitted amorphous blobs ofpurple and yellow gelatinous liquid that formed itself into ateardrop shape as it gained momentum; the deck-guns were weaponsmagical in nature that Claudo didn't really understand fully, exceptto that they fired a modified version of the same energy thatpropelled the ship, the magical force that was drained from slaves,prisoners, and in cases of emergency, the crew itself on rotationalconscription basis. The material was called chash, and itsmain property was an acid-like tendency to eat away at whatever ittouched. It wasn't, as a rule, used against other living creatures,but Claudo wasn't too sure why this was. Probably because it was anawful and cruel way to kill another being, but that was just a guess.

The chash moved with a strangeslowness, as if in slow-motion, but it reached, eventually, a clumpof warriors stooping like hawks down at the ship; the yellow-purpleteardrop swallowed the warriors, absorbed them, and their screamscame down to the ship muffled and stifled, their forms disappearedand the screams were silenced, and the chash moved on, leavingnothing at all but a horrified memory, still glooping through the airto hit an island, through which the chash burrowed, hissing throughrock and soil like a sword-blade through soft flesh to leave a gapinghole. The deck-guns were indeed an awful weapon to use againstliving things, but at this point, Claudo was willing to use whateverhe had at his disposal to fend off the attacks of the flyingwarriors.

The second wave was scattered,warriors flying away in a dozen directions, disoriented by thedisappearance of their comrades. There was a third wave on the way,however...Claudo heard shouts from three different quarters of theship, and realized that this was not merely a few isolated guerrillaattacks, but rather was a concentrated effort to down the ship andkill all aboard. And they were winning, too, Claudo realized. Hisengine was stopped, his screws damaged, the sails were eaten to thepoint of uselessness by the fireballs, and his nearly half his crewwas dead or wounded.

The hull of the ship echoed andcrunched and grumbled under a constant barrage of fireballs, andClaudo heard the hiss of escaped air and energy as the reservoirs of magic holding the ship aloft escaped. That was anothermagical property of the Dreadnaughts that Claudo didn't fullyunderstand, but rather knew about and trusted to in the way that onesat in a chair without consciously thinking about how the chairoperated: in the very bottom-most holds of the ship there were adozen sealed-off chambers that held some kind of magicalspell-effect that had to be renewed at the beginning of everyyear-out-and-year-back journey by a quartet of hooded, glowing-eyedmages whispering sibilant spells. These chambers were punctured now,and the ship was juddering and sinking. There was a fairly largesky-island directly ahead and below the ship and with any luck they'dland there and be able to make a stand. They would be lost toposterity, of course, but they would sell their lives as dearly asthey could.

The natives were buzzing thedeck again, and one of them grabbed a deckhand with hands andfeet—clawed appendages that seemed a cross between eagle talons anda monkey's opposable-thumbed feet, except they had two thumbs, one oneach side, and their hands were the same—picked up the sailor as ifhe weighed no more than a rag doll, and flew out over the open air,threw him up and let him fall, darted down and caught him, the poorman screaming in terror all the while; he was tossed verticallyagain, and this time another warrior caught him with one hand andfoot, slammed him with a hammer-staff. The man simply fell apartwhen struck, and the native warriors seemed to find this hysterical,cawing and whooping to each other, and that became a game to them.

Claudo climbed down the ladderto the deck, mingled among his terrified crew, shouting words ofencouragement and orders to form groups and bands for common defense. He drew his gladius, reversed his grip on his staff so the eaglethat formed the head became a weapon. A warrior swooped down at himand Claudo ducked to the side at the last second, bludgeoning theyellow-skinned warrior in the side and hacking with the sword,missing. This close, Claudo got a better look at his foe: they wereenormous, measuring easily eight feet from head to foot, and they hadlong tails which added to their length. These tails werefascinating, being almost as long as the rest of the body, but thin,flattened, and prehensile. Claudo watched as one warrior landed onthe mizzen-mast yard and clung there with feet and tail, like amonkey in the jungles Claudo had seen back on Earth, in hisdays as a new recruit in the Seventh Legion assigned to Africa. Then, as another warrior flew past him, Claudo realized that tailsweren't just flattened, they could be changed for useas either a rudder or a vertical plane, which explained theincredible feats of maneuverability he'd seen.

The island was nearing, now, andClaudo began calling orders for the crew, or what was left of them,to ready for impact. The ship was falling quickly, the wind howlingpast, the natives following, launching more fireballs, knocking moreholes in the hull. Then a fireball hit one of the chambers andreacted with the energy from the buoyancy spell; the explosion rockedthe ship, sent it bucking and spinning and in flames, crumblingapart. The rock and trees of the sky-island were hurtling up atbreakneck speed and the ship was in pieces, men clinging to hunks ofhull and bits of rigging. Claudo was free-falling suddenly, seeingsky-ground-sky-ground; the foremast was falling past him and hegrabbed at a bit of stray line, pulled himself to the mast, amused tosee that his soldier's instincts had kept his grip on his weaponseven as he fell. He shoved his sword back into the scabbard andclung tightly, watching men fall into the trees and vanish, and nowthe trees were whipping past him, long, twisted limbs like rawexposed muscle, wide leaves slapping at his face. The mast hit abranch and snapped it, but the moment of impact slowed him justenough to fling himself at the tree, ignoring the screaming agonyfrom his game leg as he used it to to jump free; he fell, missed abranch, grabbed at another and clung to it desperately, feelingmuscles and bones ache from the force of impact, watched the masttumble down, down, down, realizing for the first time howMars-be-damned massive these trees were. He'd fallen at leasta hundred feet down before the mast hit a branch, and then he'dfallen another fifty feet or so, and down beneath him the ground wasstill out of view, just branches and leaves. Around him, other menhad caught branches, like himself, and others had not been so lucky,or quick-witted. Some were hanging from the limbs, broken and bentin impossible positions; the hull was crashing through now, rightabove Claudo. Move, old man, he told himself. He ran along thebranch, which was wider, in fact, than the yardarms of a Dreadnaught,saw another branch a few feet away, jumped with all his strength,caught at the tip with his fingers, got a grip on it and swung downuntil it reached its breaking point bent nearly double, held briefly,and then, unbelievably, snapped back up like rubber band, throwingClaudo airborne in an inward arc, away from the onrushing hulk of thecrashing Dreadnaught by the sheer luck of physics. It passed byhim, missing by less than a foot, carving a swath of felled treeswith its passage. Claudo could see men still gripping to therailings, trailing behind it on ropes, falling away from it, saw oneman even perched on the boss of a screw.

Then the Realmfall hitthe ground and Claudo felt the sky-island quake and rock from themassive shock. Claudo had caught a branch at the apex of his upwardflight and let it droop down under his weight, let go when it wasabout to snap back up, caught another on the way down, keeping hismomentum under control to a certain degree. After what had to havebeen nearly five hundred feet, the ground finally came into view. There were men there beneath him, cursing, moaning, weeping,clutching wounds and holding injured comrades, gatheringsupplies...as Claudo dropped heavily to the soft black loam he feltpride in his men, especially the officers he could see that weremilling among the men, issuing orders, keeping calm and establishingorganization. The most crucial thing right now was to keep the menbusy, keep them from panicking as they realized that they werestranded here.

Above, the sky was was almostblack with impending nightfall. Claudo wondered what would come outto stalk among these mammoth trees at night. Perhaps he didn't wantto know. No indeed.

What a mess.

INTERMEDIARY

“These intruders must beslain. They are an infection.”

“Peace, Ghil'nur'Athni. They cannot leave that murak. They are stranded in a foreign place, and we have lostenough souls to the Everhalls this day. We are Rhylathi, and we arenot murderers. Let them make their way as they can. They will notharm us any more.”

“You underestimate them, Ithink. That they could craft a thing so large, and cause it to flyas only born-things may, that is a fact to remember. Where there isone such, there are more. What if they come again, or send more tolook for their lost tree-skin-murak and the brethren who caused it tofly? They would tell them of us, and how we fight, and then we wouldlose the advantage of surprise.”

“You speak wise words, mybond-brother. But I cannot allow you ravage them when they are nolonger a threat to us. They cannot fly withoutthat...tree-skin-murak, as you called it; we have seen that duringthe fighting. They fell and could not fly. Thus, they cannot leavethe murak. We have no heart-homes on that murak, and we need not gothere. They will run out of food, and then they will die without usneeding to risk more souls to the Everhalls.”

The first speaker,Ghil'nur'Athni, the Song-leader, a huge, hulking, long-winged warriorwith dusky red skin, hissed his frustration, slapped his wingsagainst his sides, and thumped the ground with his tail, butAvra'kel'Zhura was the Song-maker, and she could not be gainsaid.

Avra tapped a long claw onthe arm of her chair, eyes unfocused as she considered the bestcourse. At length, she said, “Because I hear the truth in yourwords, and because you are a wise and skillful Song-leader—if youare a bit rash and prone to strike without thinking—I will grantyou this one small concession: you may select two bond-brothers andwatch the wingless intruders. Watch, I say, Ghil, and watch only. You may have no contact with them, and you especially must not harmthem, unless they attack you first. This will be a great test foryou, I think, and by it you will grow, should you succeed in heedingmy injunctions.”

“I hear your words,Song-maker. I will not fail you, though it will sore try me to watchand do nothing.”

Avra chuckled, a dry, agedrasp that let through a glimmer of the humor that her weightyresponsibilities of office forced her to keep hidden. “I know itwill be a trial for you, my son, but you are equal to the task. Iwould not send you thus if I thought you would fail.”

Ghil bowed low, spreading hiswings and curling them around him in the formal bow of respect. “Thank you, mother.” He stepped close to her chair—anelaborate, high-backed throne crafted of living wood, a thing thatgrew and aged and changed even as she herself did—and touched thetips of his wings to her shoulders, an intimate gesture shared onlyby the closest of blood-bonds.

Ghil turned away from hismother and queen, stomped out onto the landing-balcony with long,jerking strides that showed his underlying anger, despite his vocaland gestural acquiescence to the Song-maker. When he was near theedge of the balcony he crouched, coiled his tail and leapt leaf-wardwith a mighty bound that carried him nearly twenty feet into the air. He let himself fall a few feet before he unfurled his long, wide,ribbed wings and sailed away over the treetops. He rode the root-ward current, banking and turning and dipping around muraksuntil he came to the murak on which he made his home. It was a smallsky-island, no more than three wingbeats in diameter, shallow, ovoidin shape. He'd claimed it as his, and no one had contested it; herehe made his heart-home, here he trained with his closestbond-brothers, and he was fiercely protective of it, as all Rhylathiwere protective of their heart-homes. Ghil settled to the groundlightly, barely stirring the dust or making a sound, and called forhis two best warriors, Treyev'iyl'Zurath and Khoryth'nur'Vedyov. Thetwo warriors sang the three-note call of obedience, their harmonytwisting and echoing from the next nearest murak. Within seconds,they were dropping to the ground, touching wingtips to dirt, staffsplanted by their knees.

“We are to observe theinvaders,” Ghil said, without preamble. “As much it galls me, weare under strict orders to watch without interference. No contact. Do you hear my song?”

Treyev and Khoryth respondedin practiced unison. “We sing with you, Song-leader.”

Three figures perched onbranches hundreds of feet above the camp of the flightless intruders. They hadn't strayed away from their wrecked flying-tree, thewarriors were amused to note. They had scavenged things from withinit, and had made temporary heart-homes and hearth-fires surroundingit. There were at least a hundred of them, crowded around fires,swilling from mugs and jars, eating, laughing in low tones. Standingoutside the light of each fire was a sentry, in full armor, watchfuland alert. The three figures were silent shadows lurking in thedepths of the darkness, invisible and barely breathing, not so muchas rustling a leaf. Night deepened, men slept, all but thesentries, who were replaced eventually. When daylight came, thestrange, small, wingless things showed industriousness that surprisedthe watchers. They dismantled the huge thing that had borne thempiece by piece, cut down trees—which caused each of the warriors tocringe and shed tears for the awful, tragic waste of suchviolence—and used the dead wood to make shelters for themselves. It seemed, to Ghil, that they knew they would not be able to leave,so they were attempting to make the best of their situation.

For many days, without foodor drink, Ghil, Treyev, and Khoryth watched, immobile and silent.

Then, when Ghil felt they had a firm grasp of the natures of theintruders, they climbed to the tops of the trees and leapt leaf-wardto make their report to their queen.

The invaders wereresourceful, and intelligent. But they were still stranded. Perhaps, as Song-maker Avra predicted, they would fade away with timeand the ravaged tree-spirits of that murak would be reborn. If not,Ghil swore that he would sneak down there and kill them all in thenight, throw their bodies off the murak to tumble root-ward for allof eternity.

The Singer

2011-10-08T08:04:00.003-04:00

The skirling whirlof a traditional Irish band greeted me as I stood outside DickO'Dow's Irish Pub. I handed the burly bouncer my ID and replaced it,entering through the propped-open green doors and into the darkenedinterior. The contrast between the mellow amber glow of sunset andthe perpetual midnight of the pub was jarring; heavy chandeliersdepended from the low ceilings, dim, orange-glowing bulbs made tolook like candle flames were the only illumination besideshalf-a-dozen flat-screen TVs tuned to Sports Center. Thick,scratched, scarred wooden tables ran the length of the room oppositethe bar; the tables resembled hunks of driftwood from a shipwreckthat had been retrieved and polished. The floors looked ancient,scuffed, weathered gray wood that seemed to have centuries of storiesto tell. I remembered one of the bartenders telling me that thefloor planks were from an 18^th century Irish hospital, andthis made me think of the ghosts that must reside silent in thewhorls of the wood grain.

The band was thepièce de résistance of thepub, permeating the atmosphere with the lilting, jigging music. Theband is a four-piece: a tall, thin man with angular features, round,gold-rimmed spectacles, and graying hair receding in a U-shapedcul-de-sac played the penny whistle with thin, deft fingers; thefiddler was the diametric opposite, short, portly, red-bearded andlong-haired, sheened with sweat as he sawed his battered, well-lovedfiddle; next to the fiddler was the bodhran player, a man with finesilver hair neatly parted, an iron-gray beard closely-trimmed framingpatrician features, thumping his hand-held drum and stomping hispolished leather boots on the stage to the rhythm; last was thesinger and guitar-player, an elegant woman, tall and willowy, thickblack hair shimmering in the dim light like raven wings.

Itwas her I had come her to see. Her eyes were the color of mossfurring a tree-trunk in the afternoon sun, and she sang flawlessGaelic in a dulcet, haunting voice. I stood at the bar and ordered awhiskey, sipped it as I watched her sway with the music. She scannedthe crowd absently, strumming her guitar with red-paintedfingernails. Her gaze swept across me, but didn't see me. This wasreassuring. I wasn't ready to be seen, just yet.

Thebartender, who had just moments ago handed me my drink with a smile,passed by me without a glance, without even a flicker of recognition. Moments slid past, slow like sunset, and my anticipation mounted. Iwas growing restless, my palms damp and warm, my feet tapping atoo-fast rhythm. Slow down, I told myself. Not yet.

Anotherwhiskey, another greeting from the same bartender, as if he'd neverseen me before. The set must have just started when I arrived. Damn. Impatience scoured through me; I gouged patterns in thebar-top with my fingernail, deep runic shapes incised in the hardwood.

Athird whiskey, and I was feeling fine now, if burning with restless,hungry vexation. The set had to be almost over. Ah yes, now theywere thanking the crowd, setting down instruments and filing out tothe alley for a breath of fresh air.

Ifollowed them out, lit a smoke, approached her with a broad smilethat I hoped seemed genuine and friendly. She smiled back, shook myhand. Her palm was cool and dry, sending bolts of electricexcitement through me. I caught her up in conversation, droll,mundane chit-chat. Her band-mates went back in, and I could senseher desire to end this conversation, to go with them.

It'snot that easy, the fun hasn't begun yet, my lovely. Your fair, paleskin is far too perfect. I stroked the hilt of the knife in mypocket; yes, now it was time. Now.

Shenever saw it coming, the poor, beautiful, doomed thing.

Oh,what fun.

MAN/MACHINE

2011-09-29T16:23:00.002-04:00

01.10.1004

Lyss,

Things on Perepeteia have becomeuntenable. It's gone from a few rocks thrown, a few people dead, afew Dual-sings lynched in retaliation, into rioting in the streetsand full-scale battles. The unit I'd become attached to wasdispatched to try to keep the peace—at least, that was the orders. In reality, they just wanted to crack skulls, human or not. I had toslip away, I couldn't stomach it.

I've got no problem fighting, I'm nolily-white pacifist, that's for damned sure, but I'm no butchereither. And I've got no problem with anyone on either side of thisscrum, although it seems to me as if the Dual-sings oughta get theirdue rights. They are people, right enough. Maybe, sure, they're nothumans, technically, but they feel, they speak, they evolve, they...Idon't know...they evince all the characteristics of humanity. Itdoesn't seem programming to me. When the Look-Alike Case happened,just after the war on Luna, people discussed this very issue. Cybrex had invented robots that looked, acted, and felt like realpeople, only they were inanimate machines. Of course, they didn'tstay that way, the Androidicons. All the HoloNet fictions werecoming true, Androidicons developing past what the inventors hadintended, and causing all sorts of problems Earthside. I'm not surehow it all shook out, as I got shipped to Kleuer just as things weregetting really heated. But this situation with the Dual-sings smacksof that same issue: what defines an individual? What is a person?

For me, a person is someone I can sitdown with and have a good old fashioned talk with, someone I canshake hands with, or sock in the jaw, or kiss, and not predict theresponse based on programming. These Dual-sings, they're people. Odd, hard-to-look-at people, maybe, but they're people. And Icannot, will not be party to any effort to suppress their bid forequal rights. That doesn't mean I'm ready to join their side either.

I don't know what I want, or where Ifit.

I'm wandering J-Temp, alone, dressedin torn uniform pants and a ground-length heavy coat pilfered off ofa dead man in an alley. I kept my Patrol-issue boots, tablet,shock-sticks, and pulse-rifle, just because I feel more of a man ifI'm armed. The fighting is intense, now, door-to-door, civviesagainst Patrol against Dual-sing. No one is cleaning up the dead, noone is using tactics or organization. It's a free-for-all hell, andno telling who'll win.

As I scratch this entry into thetablet, sitting in the shadows of dead-end alley, a knot of Patrolthugs are being systematically overrun by a much larger group ofDual-sings, not twenty feet from my hiding spot. The Sings seemorganized. They've got a plan and leader to keep 'em following it. Patrol doesn't stand a chance, I think. They're cornered in acourtyard, surrounded, wounded, and desperate, but desperate men putup a savage fight. Just look at the Colonials on Mars. Thosebastards were primal. We couldn't stop 'em until every last one of'em had been shot to pieces. A Pyrrhic victory, the Old Man calledit. Which amounts to no victory at all, if you boil it down.

01.11.1004

Midnight after the last entry. ThePatrol lasted longer than I expected, but it was inevitable. TheDual-sings were crafty, they went for the head-shots, to preserve thegear of the dead men. The plan, as I could see it, was to get theuniforms and try to infiltrate with whoever could pass for human. Smart, that.

I'm feeling less and less connected. I don't know how else to put it. My brain and body, my mind and mysoul are not fully in sync with my body. Memories waft up and washover me, time slows down and speeds up, sounds get louder and louder,lights get too bright and the night seems less dark. Just now, I canhear a rat scrabbling in the darkness beneath me, hear its jawchomping and its breath soughing slightly. There's fighting to theeast and to the south.

I fell asleep writing that entry, andnow it's dawn. Someone is screaming, a few streets over. A woman. I can't listen to it anymore, I've got to do something.

Damn it, I didn't want to getinvolved.

01.12.1004

Alyssa,

Now, this is just a record for myself. A means of keeping track of my thoughts, a place to work out myconfusion. I don't think I can keep up the pretense that theseentries are to you anymore. You're dead, my love, and to writeletters I'll never send to a woman I'll never see again seems likerunning in circles. I have to let you go. I'm sorry I couldn't saveyou, my heart. You didn't deserve to die that way.

Goodbye.

01.13.1004

I died. Here's what happened: I heardscreaming, and went to investigate. I should've kept my nose out ofit, but it's just not my nature. She was a Dual-sing. A Patrol thugwas raping her, beating her. She was nearly dead by the time I foundher, and the bastard was still hammering away. I blasted his headinto a splatter of red on the walls, threw his body into the street. The poor girl couldn't even move, could barely breathe. Half-dead,all beautiful. I picked her up, realized she was nearly as tall asme, knew she was Dual-sing by her hair. It's not hair, it'slike...the filaments in the old-style lightbulbs they had in thatmuseum of old-Earth tech. Thin, almost invisible strands of metal,twisting in braids. Her hair chimed when I lifted her, glowed dullred from within the strands of metal. It was as if her hair knewthat she was hurt, maybe dying. That sounds silly, I guess, but itwas my impression then, and it rings true, even now. I picked herup, carried her into the street. She was heavier than she shouldhave been. Tall and lithe, willowy and delicately curved, she shouldhave been a feather in my arms, instead she felt...like carrying amachine. But she wasn't a machine. She was warm against my skin,her blood dripped red from her bruised, battered face. Her skin wasbruised and yellow by her ribcage and beneath her breasts, and Icould tell she had broken ribs in a few places. She moaned,whimpered, cracked her eyes open, peered at me with violet eyes thatglowed with preternatural luminosity through her slitted eyelids.

“I don't know where to take you,”I told her. I was whispering, for some reason. The city around mewas dead silent, but for the distant concussive thumping of a battlesomewhere miles away across the pyramidion.

“Down...beneath..” she croaked. She turned her head, flopped over to one side, looked around, lifteda limp, weak arm to point vaguely towards the eastern wall. “Thatway...to the Mosque of Ibn Haran... catacombs entrance...alleybehind.” I had no idea where the Mosque of Ibn Haran was, but Iknew what a mosque was, so Iset off in the direction she had indicated. By the time I found themosque, I was sweating and trembling. The girl, the Dual-sing, wasdead weight, passed out but alive. The mosque was enormous, a cupolarising hundreds of feet into the air, spires and minarets spiking thesky, gold leaf on the roofs and trimming the arched windows ofpainted glass, white-washed walls, the whole surrounded by a wroughtiron fence to keep out the infidels. The muezzin was ululating hiscall to prayer, and it brought me back to Mars with joltingsuddenness. I slump the pavement, the girl in my arms a heavy weightacross my legs. I laid my head against the bars of the fence andstared up at the city around me, eyes seeing, but mind re-living thepast. Beyond the mosque, the city is a welter of building, all ofthem uniformly tall and thin, like reeds in a pond. I doubt anyonehere would understand the simile, never having seen a pond, or reeds,but that's the image I see when I look around me. They've builtvertically, here. There is no wind within the pyramidions, noweather at all, so buildings can rise up high and thin like needlesstood on end, stacked one atop the other in impossible structures. They are round, made from what appears to be seamless glass windowsthat reflect like mirrors, making the city glint and glimmer and seemeven bigger than it is; the towers are built cheek-by-jowl, less thanfifty feet between sides in some places, and in others, they aretouching, with walkways and bridges spanning the two, attaching them. There are a couple smaller buildings scattered here and there, likethis mosque. The streets are laid out in a grid pattern dissectedwith diagonal cross-cutting side-streets, and the whole is lit, atnight, by luminous globes a hundred feet in diameter strung likeover-sized Christmas lights from the girders that prop up theceiling. The lowest level is two thousand feet high, at least,probably more. I've never understood the physics of what makes thepyramidions so stable a structure, but it seems to work, and thesepeople have taken the idea and expanded it into somethingunbelievable in scope.

The sky above us,outside the pyramidion, is yellow, like sulfurous gas, and the landis barren wasteland, empty brown and red gently rolling hills is someplaces, flat as the Kansas plains of my boyhood, a dusty expanse ofdead earth. I can see the lure of a place like this, open,uninhabited: they can build pyramidions one next to other until thewhole globe is covered with the gleaming transtanium structures, eachone holding millions. The race can expand exponentially beforerunning out of room. It is an unlovely place, but it serves afunction.

Like Mars. TheRed Planet. It was a place of death, at the end, and its crimsonappearance was awfully apropos. I can't think of that. Can't, justcan't. I shake my head, shake away the images that cling to myconsciousness like cobwebs.

Are there spidershere? Probably not.

The girl moans,coughs, and I am stirred out of my delirium. I realize that I'mdehydrated and starving. I haven't eaten or drunk anything in a longtime...days...

Drunk? Or shouldit be drank? I can't remember now. I haven't had anything to drinkin days, is what I'm trying to say.

The entrance tothe catacombs is hidden carefully, at the back end of a blind alley,behind a door that seemed perfectly natural, a back door to a shop orapartment. Behind it was a staircase, low, narrow and steep. I haveto duck almost double, which makes carrying the girl almostimpossible, but she is limp still, barely conscious.

As I glance backup at what I've written, I realize I'm vacillating between past tenseand present tense. My memory is difficult to control, since thecryobed. Past and present bleed together, and it's difficult totell, sometimes, whether I'm living an experience currently, orremembering something that's happened. To make it all the moreconfusing, I have a habit of composing the entries in my head beforeI write them down, so I tend to forget whether or not I'm composingor writing. It all bleeds together.

I think I'mtelling the story of how I died. Yes, I do believe that's it; sothis should be past tense, then, and I'll just stick to that. It'seasier, I think. It puts distance between me and all that'shappened, and that's a good thing.

Weentered the catacombs, and now the girl directed me with a weakfinger pointed this way or that. The catacombs were dark, dank, andlow, echoing every footstep to sound as if a thousand nightmaremonsters were creeping through the darkness behind me. Mypulse-rifle has a lamp on it, shedding a dull yellow spear of lightinto the thick darkness of the subterranean passage. It took meseveral minutes to realize that these tunnels were truly catacombs,underground burial chambers. The walls on either side were carvedwith shallow niches six feet long and two feet high, stacked fourhigh. Each niche held a body, wrapped in a kind of bag rather than ahard coffin. The tunnels were a maze, stretching for miles in everydirection, winding and looping and dipping and rising, crossing andre-crossing. I cannot imagine how many miles of catacombs there mustbe beneath the ground, if this is how they dispose of their dead. Itseems archaic and bizarrely low-tech, but there is much I simplycannot understand.

I was thoroughlylost within moments, but she seemed to know where she was going, andindeed, within maybe fifteen minutes, we had left the catacombs andemerged in what looked like an underground cavern, a natural spacethat had been turned into a city. I stood amazed for many longmoments, staring, unbelieving. It was hyper-organized, gridded anduniform in layout, but each building looked handmade, like anexpression of the builder, some tall and thin, others short andsquat, some colorful and bright, others white and utilitarian. Lightwas provided by the same globes that lit the upper world, and thecavern was so enormous as to make it feel as if one weren'tunderground at all.

I was seenimmediately, and surrounded by a host of curious, hostile Dual-sings,some normal looking, others looking as if nature and technology hadfused in an accidental freak of evolution. No two were the same. They took- her from my arms, disappeared with her, and I followed asbest I could, pushing through the crowds that whispered and mutteredat the appearance of a human in their midst. They healed her,somehow. I was brought to her side, and when she awoke, she took myhand, thanked me in a voice like synthesized bells.

“I'm Cully,”she told me. Cully? That baffled me. It was a word I'd heard backup above, in reference to a specific kind of Dual-sing, ones thatsold themselves. A cully was a prostitute.

“Yes,”she said, eyes firing and flashing, “thatkind of Cully. It's what I was, though not by choice. I took theword as my name, because it was my identity, and now...it's areminder.” I didn't pursue the subject.

What I'd seen wasn'tprostitution, it was rape, and I knew it.

She must've seenor sensed the thoughts running through my head. “He'd decided hedidn't have to pay for it,” she said. She leveled an odd look atme, saying, “You know, now that you're here, among us, I'm not surewhat we're going to do with you. No human has ever seen this placebefore.”

I had a sinkingfeeling in my gut that told me where this was going. “And thenyou're going to tell me that I can't leave, now that I've done mygood deed of saving you.”

Cully smiled,laughed gently. Her laugh sounded like a spoon tinkling againstglass, exactly so, like a recording. Eerie, but beautiful. “Prettymuch.”

“Would it make adifference if I said that I couldn't get back here if I tried? Afterthe first few turns, I was lost completely.”

“No, that won'tmatter. Humans don't even suspect that there is a secret communityof Dual-sings. You even knowing that there is such a thing...itcompromises you.” I sighed, leaned back, tried to collect mythoughts. I hadn't felt any more at home among the real humans...

Real humans...asopposed to what? These weren't humans, I couldn't deny that. Atleast, not fully. But they were people. What comprises anindividual? Sentience? Emotion? Enough philosophizing, back to thestory.

I just sat there,for a long time, staring at her, lost in thought. She was beautiful,human or not. Her eyes were magnetic, fiery, like purple supernovae,lush with emotion writ plainly. Her hair, too, was an expressivepart of her beauty. Now, at rest, at home, and healing, her hair wasa gentle, vibrant green, like oak leaves when seen backlit by thesun.

There are no treeshere. I miss trees, grass, early morning dew on my feet.

Already herbruises were fading, and she seemed less tired with every passingsecond...as if she were being recharged...

I followed what Ihad taken to be an IV line in her arm, but the line was opaque, andit terminated, not at a IV tree with the clear bag of regrow meds,but at the wall, in socket. She was being recharged, literally, andwas healing in the process. This struck me as so funny that Ilaughed out loud. I have sounded slightly unhinged, because Cullyregarded me quizzically.

“What's funny?”

“Nothing...Ijust haven't ever seen anyone get...recharged before. That's all.”

“Recharged? What are you talking about?”

I pointed at thecord in her arm. She fingered the cord, and then looked back at me,confusion in her violet eyes. “You've never seen a med-linebefore?”

“Med line? Ithought it was a Dual-sing thing, like...recharging a battery...”

She shook herhead, making her hair chime. “What's a battery? Where are youfrom? Who are you?”

I guessed I hadmisjudged a few things, and given myself away in the process. “Myname is Vargos Vale.

I'm new to J-Temp. New to Perepeteia ingeneral.”

“How can you benew to Perepeteia? Were you born on a far-scout?”

“Kind of. Youprobably wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

“Told me what? And what does 'kind of' mean?” I hesitated. Now, it seems stupid. I was talking to someone who was an outcast, who had to live in asecret, underground city because normal society didn't like her kind.

“I came in on afar-scout, that much is true. But I didn't go out on one, and Iwasn't born on one, either.” Cully tilted her head to one side,puzzled. “I was born on Earth.”

“Earth...?”She said the word as if it tasted strange, like it was a word onlyheard rarely, an exotic word used by scholars and mystics. “How...how is that possible? Humans left Earth a millennium ago,and no one even knows where it is anymore. They teach human kidsabout it in grade school like it's a myth.”

“It's real. How...it's a long story. The short version is that I was part of theExodus and something went wrong I was in cryosleep, kind of, and myship got damaged. We...I...got knocked off course, without power,and I drifted in space, for what turned out to be a more thanthousand years. I was found, by accident, by a far-scout. They sentme here.”

Cully was silentfor a long time, processing what I'd told her. To her credit, and myrelief, she didn't seem to disbelieve me. “So you really don'tknow much about anything, do you?” She seemed sympathetic, almost.

“No, notreally.”

“Who is 'we?'”

She'd caught thatslip. “Just...someone who was with me. Someone I cared about. She...her cryobed shut down, and she...didn't make it. Minemalfunctioned and went to back-up power, which kept me alive, kindof. I hadn't gone completely under, so I was awake.”

“I don't knowmuch about cryosleep. It's ancient tech, these days. Some humansuse it, sometimes, just as a fad. They'll go under for a while andcome back up.”

“Well, it putsyou to sleep, freezes you, starts at the feet and works upwards. Iwas frozen physically, but then the accident happened. Eyesight andconsciousness get turned off together. They're connected, somehow. Well, when the ship got hit, I was left awake.”

“You mean, youdrifted, awake, and seeing, for a thousand years? How is thatpossible? Didn't you go crazy?”

Thiswas touching on things I wasn't comfortable with. “I...I don'tknow. At some point, I think I just fell asleep, or something. Things get blurry, if I try to think about it. I don't think thehuman mind is meant to experience that kind of thing, just empty,unmoving time. I couldn't move, couldn't smell or hear. I couldonly see, and think, and remember. I think my mind just...shutdown.” I hadn't really thought about any of this too carefully,but something about Cully...the words just poured out. “I'm notsure I've really woken up, truly. I feel...disconnected. Timedoesn't feel the same, anymore. I don'tfeel the same. I feel...like I'm not a person any more. Like mymind and body and soul are three different things now. Awake,asleep, thinking, remembering, feeling...it's all the same, it allruns together. Everything is confused and blurred.”

Cullyreached out a hand, touched my arm. Her eyes drilled into me, struckdeep into me, held me fast. I couldn't look away, and I felt a brushagainst my mind. It was delicate, careful, tentative, but real. Cully's eyes were locked on mine, and I could feel concentrationcoming from her in palpable waves. My instinct was to lock down, runaway, push back; instead, I sat still and let her in. I don't knowwhy. There was no sense to it. I didn't even believe in telepathy,for God's sake.

Then, like aconcussion, I was duality. She was there inside, reading me, riflingwith quick, sure mental fingers through the contents of my mind; Iwas seeing her, too, and something told me that this was a consciousdecision on her part, somehow. She didn't have to let me see her,but she did, to reassure me.

I couldn't move,couldn't breathe, I could only feel her thoughts and mine twined likevines. She was sad, and angry. She hated who she had been, andlonged to remake herself.

The universeshifted between us, and I was seeing her through my own eyes, andseeing myself through hers. She saw with mechanical precision. There was no focus or blur, no near and far: all things wereinherently clear and sharp, from the fine hairs on arms and theflecks of gold in my eyes (oh Lyssa, you always loved those goldflecks in the brown of my eyes) to the far crags and stalactites onthe ceiling of the cavern, thousands of feet away.

Her thoughts leftme whirling, mentally. She thought in a logical procession,computer-fast computations and sequences; conversely, there was astrain of illogical emotion running through it, wound around thelogic like ivy creeping up a tree trunk, urges and desires, fears andlove and hate and curiosity that was entirely human. She wasassessing my character at the same time that she was trying to decidehow she felt about me, if she was attracted to me, if she wanted meto take her hands in mine or not, if she wanted to remember how itfelt to be carried by me through the tunnels, my strong arms likesilken steel around her...

It was fairlystrange to think of myself in those terms, to see myself in thatlight. I shuddered, pulled back, took my arm from her touch. Theconnection between us was snapped like a cord stretched too tight.

I've been delayingthe telling of the important part. Now I come to it. It'sunavoidable, but hard to tell, mainly because it all happened sofast.

They took metopside with them. They'd ended up trusting me, and I them. I feltmore in common with them. They let me be. They understood that Iliked to sit at the farthest edge of the cavern and be alone. It wasquiet there, and peaceful. I could feel Alyssa, there.

It's been easierand easier to let her go, now that I've got Cully around to distractme. It feels like betrayal, in a way, but I know she wouldwant me to move on. Cully and I are friends, but there's a glimmerof something there, a respect, a tentative attraction that we haven'tdared look at too closely.

After months belowground, emerging topside was like rebirth...again. Like coming outof a cocoon, blinking and stretching in the bright sunlight. Above,all was chaos.

The riots andstreet warfare hadn't subsided; the entire planet was in a state ofwarfare, a many-factioned free-for-all, with Dual-sings stuck in themiddle. The group I was with—Cully, myself, three big, warriortypes that also looked mostly human, and a person that was some kindof androgenous, deaf-mute healer—were sent to observe the state ofthings, to find any Dual-sings and try to bring them to theunderground city, Sessura.

It turns out eventhe Dual-sings were divided: some wanted to stay and fight, get theirrights, kill and destroy as much as possible in the process and thenstart over. Others wanted just to be left alone—this was thesmallest faction, and quickly eradicated. The other group were theones who wanted to leave, to board a colony ship and set out to findsomewhere they can live on their own, start a new society. Cully andthe Sessurians were of the last group, and they were willing to breaka few human heads to get away, if that's what it took.

And it did.

We were ambushed.

We were moving ina tight group down a main thoroughfare, myself in point, Cully behindme, Apothika, the healer in the middle, and the threewarriors—Herick, Dove, and Lure—in the rear. A dozen Patrolmenslipped silently out of an alley behind us, opened fire, droppingHerick like a sack of stones. The rest of us jumped through an opendoor, watching Herick bleed out less than ten feet away. Pulse-rifles barked in their harsh, throaty voices, sending smallincendiary shells flying at near light-speed, so that bark andexplosion were simultaneous. I lifted my own rifle, peeked aroundthe lip of the door, took a bead on a Patrol thug and dropped him. Cully had a weapon that looked like a pistol, but fired silentneedles with machine-gun rapidity; Lure and Dove had pulse-rifleslike mine, and Apothika simply sat against the farthest wall, black,almond eyes unblinking and emotionless, hairless gray head bowed,thin arms and legs folded.

Of course, thedozen who ambushed us were just the fore party, the ones sent tocorner us. When we had them whittled down to a manageable number, ahundred more poured out of a side-street a mile away and sync-marchedtowards us with unhurried arrogance.

We took ourchances. Dove scooped up Herick and ran as hard as he could,dropping small, blinking black globes behind him. They beeped in aquickening pattern; I knew they were some kind of explosive. Cullywas beside me, Apothika in front, running as lightly as a deer, itsbreathing unlabored. Then, without warning, Dove and Lure were downand bleeding at my feet and Cully was behind a door, a dozen feetaway, Apothika behind her; three thugs faced me, close enough topunch, pulse-rifles leveled and firing. I felt a twinge in my brain,and time slowed. I saw rifle-round inching towards me; I dropped myrifle and pulled out my shock-sticks, jabbed them bothsimultaneously. When the pronged tips touched flesh, a burst ofblue-white electric fire arced around their bodies, jerking them likerag dolls, dropping them instantly to the ground. The last one tooka shock-stick to the throat, spraying me with bright blood.

I forgot to moveout of the way. I was hit in the chest, blowing me back a dozenfeet.

I laid on theground, staring up at the girders and lights far above, dizzy, deaf,hurting, dying; Apothika's genderless face appeared above me, mouthedwords I couldn't hear, bent over me, a needle in its hand.

Coldwashed over me; blackness swallowed me.

01.20.1004

I woke upunderground, tethered to machines that hummed and beeped. I wasawake, but my eyes were stubborn, refused to obey.. “We were ableto save your life, Vargos Vale,” came Cully's voice. “But therewas a cost.” I opened my eyes slowly, performed the unconsciousroutine of taking stock of one's self after an injury. I've beeninjured many times before, and nearly died once before as well; thisstock-taking is no new experience for me. This time, however, wasunique.

Where before Iwould flex my toes, wiggle my fingers, roll my shoulders and tense mymuscles, this time I could do none of those things. I looked down atmyself, and saw not flesh-covered bone and hospital sheets andblankets, but the dull metallic gleam of an un-fleshed Androidicon,or the version of that for this age. Horror spread through me likepost-battle adrenaline wearing off. This wasn't a cybertronic leg orarm, this was...all of me. I felt myself, mentally,emotionally, in my spirit and soul, but...physical sensation wasentirely absent.

“What...what didyou do to me?” I asked. I turned my head to find Cully:servomotors whirred gently and my vision rotated a precise ninetydegrees. Cully was on a platform a few feet away, a small hoveringdisc more than a dozen feet off the ground. How was that possible?

I lifted my hand,and the servomotors whispered again, subtly louder this time. Theappendage that rose into my line of sight was five-fingered, as ahuman's but huge, big enough that Cully could have sat in thepalm with room to spare. It was a hand made for the vacuum of space,for the arid landscape beyond the transtanium of the pyramidions,meant to clutch titanic tools and colossal weapons. I looked down,and the motion was again exact, mechanically precise. At least I wasbipedal, with knees that bent the right way. I recognized the bodymodel. It was an elaboration of the out-ship-ops exo-mech, exceptthis one had been worked over by the Dual-sings. I saw theseexo-mechs on the Rakehell, mechanized suits that could also beused remotely. They were used for everything from repairs done invacuum to waging wars in human-hostile environments. They wereamazing tech, and I'd always wished for a chance to take one out asan exo-suit.

This wasn't whatI'd had in mind.

“I know this isa drastic change, Vargos, but it was the only way to preserve yourentity. Your physical shell was too badly damaged to be saved.” I turned back to look at Cully. Sympathy and concern glittered inher eyes.

“So what did youdo? There's no body inside this exo-mech, is there?”

“No, there isn't.” At least she didn't sugar-coat the answer.

I am a mech, now. All those ruminations on individuality suddenly seemed more aproposthan I could ever had guessed.

Canto of Wording

2011-09-23T18:16:00.001-04:00

I am inundated, deluged, avalanched, flooded, caved-in, buried in words. Poetry, criticism, plays, ancient letters from stodgy dead men, essays, stories...they fill my thoughts like recurring waking dreams; like reciting the Hail Mary, my pen is a rosary, clicking and whirring in absent-minded ritual. Am I about to go into 17th Century British Poetry, or Early American Lit? Am I writing an essay? A reading response? A daybook entry? Should this be in iambic pentameter and rhymed couplets?

I see words all around me, piling and pooling beneath me, rising up and bearing me heavenwards, lapping at my nostrils and wavering at my eyes; words whirl in a grand amalgamation of thoughts unconnected by so paltry a thing as punctuation and conjunctions. I swallow in desperate gulps turns of phrase archaic and lyric and oft-insensible; I arch my back to float upon the rolling roiling press of words, I relax into them. I slowly and suddenly evolve gills to breathe in this elemental profusion, I develop a taste for their acrid saltiness, their exotic tang. I delve down now, twist and rush through through through the words which are my native land, my home my life and my reality; I arc through waves of words in a graceful glissade, rolling and porpoising with sheer joy. I let the words lull me, let them lilt in my synapses, wash to and fro in my ear canals like tides rising, tides falling, all under the sway of silver-shrouded Lady Luna.

My words here are my song, sung to fill the heavy, quiet spaces, that shrill and lovely discordia concors, that silence ringing with the wails of ghosts, the shades of words unspent and yet to be born, words that haunt me, beg me in tolling syllables to give them voice, to give them their due moment of elegiac song.

Free the Flood

2011-09-22T17:33:00.003-04:00

There isa moment of silence before my fingers begin their slow crawl acrossthe keyboard, like that frozen moment of silence as you look in therearview mirror and see the grille of a car barreling towards you,that fear-fraught tableau when you realize you cannot avoid what isabout to happen. It's just a few letters at first, the hesitanttap-tap-tap of exploratory thoughts beaming down from theunexplored depths of my mind's lyric/prose ocean, the intermittent,percussive tick-tick-tick-tick of the backspace key as theword-stream starts, stutters, stops, gutters, and gushes forth oncemore. I have delved down without the re-breathing apparatus of adefined plan; rather, I have simply plunged in, head-first, chasingafter the hazy, wavering image of an idea as seen through the diamondscintillation of unformed, fragmentary thoughts tossing in the deepsof my soul.

Like mostideas, it begins with two simple catalytic words: what if.Those two words hold the power of genesis, from them have sprungmighty theses, entire civilizations writhing with life, bright andvivid characters.

Whatif...?

Likethose two words, a blank page holds a world, a universe of potential,and that is the jumping-off point, for me, in this moment. The blankpage itself is the force that sets my fingers to flying; like a flashflood, it starts with a trickle, gradually increasing to a stream,then a river, then a roaring rampage that cannot be stopped until itis spent.

When Iwrite, I set my mind to...what do I call it?...tabula rasa, Locke'sblank slate; put another way, I write in a frame of “no mind,”the Buddhist intentional emptiness in search of ultimate nirvana. Thewords flow out of their own accord, with little to no prompting frommy consciousness. I am not empty, when writing, however. It is not abrainless, zombie-like apathy, it is an emotional process, a sensoryprocess: I hear the words tolling in my skull and rolling in my earcanals, tingling on my tongue and dancing on my tastebuds, I can seethem floating and lilting in my vision, buzzing along my skin andtickling the fine hairs on my forearms like a caterpillar crawling upmy arm; if I use the wrong word it jars and jangles my nerves, poundson my taut sensibilities, I cannot rest until I find the right word,I pounce on the syntactical error like a puma pouncing on a mountaingoat.

There isno “zone.” The backlit, glowing screen of my cheap laptop is thezone, the blue lines racing across the notebook page is the zone, thepen gripped in fingers ready to spill ink in delicate floralarrangements, words resting each upon the other in intricatecochleate patterns. But do not mistake this for ease. It is far fromeasy. It is a kind of magical summoning, it sometimes seems, and allmagic comes with a price. One must practice, and fail, and practiceagain, devote hours to finding the perfect balance, the correctalignment of idea, style and purpose. I cannot just sit down andconjure prose for free; there is a cost, as with all things. Theoutside world must be tuned out, faded into grainy haze at the edgesof consciousness; homework, housework, fussing babies, arguingchildren, these must be quieted and set aside; worries and stress,love and dislike, these too must be relinquished, so that the wordsmight be brought forth to do my bidding.

Now, inthis moment of composition, the outside world is pressing in upon mybubble, and the crashing gallop of words is tripped and halted. Ishake my head and glance around, the clack-click-click isslowed, my breathing deepens from the unconscious quick shallowpanting of the mid-flow rush. Now I must rest a moment in betweenclauses, blink and meander mentally between sentences. The end iscoming...I can feel it approaching, looming, beckoning. I welcome it,as much as I regret it. The end of a piece is always bittersweet, allthe more so when the writing has burst forth with such possessivepotency, gripping me as in the crushing coils of a python.

And tothink, all this emerged from the seed of a single notion, germinatedduring the walk from classroom to classroom.

Is therea message? Is there a moral meant to be imbued, here? Not in theMother Goose, Aesop kind of way. If there is, it simply to cherishwords, to embrace the moments when it all happens perfectly, when theplanets align and douse you with the sentences phrased just soto please the ear and the mind most fully. It won't always happen,though, and that's okay. Sometimes, the well of creativity is dry,and in those times you must pull deeply on the reserves within, likepursing lips to produce spit when your mouth is dry.

And now,the end has arrived. The flow has returned to a trickle and soon mustcease completely. I take a deep breath, and let it be.

Fín.

The Chronicles of Vargos Vale

2011-09-20T12:51:00.002-04:00

PEREPETEIA

The next several weeks passed in ablur. I barely remember any of it, honestly. I got checked up bythe medics and their machines, got outfitted for gear and draftedinto some kind of ground troop unit. I'd never thought I'd be asoldier again, but here I am, wearing a uniform and saluting men halfmy size.

This place, this time...it's all sodifferent. I suppose that'sto be expected, but it's a shock to the system, especially since I'mstill having trouble inside myself. My time in the cryobed...thatendless time of...unbeing...Iguess is the best word for it—that time changed me. I don't feelthe same in my mind, I don't feel the same in my body or my soul. IfI close my eyes, I'm back there. Blink...blink...blink. Silence. Not even silence, actually, but rather the complete absence of sounds. I found a sensory-deprivation chamber, on board thisship...this man-made star floating in the heavens...and in it, Istill couldn't find the kind of silence that experienced in thatcryobed. In the sense-dep pod I was still able to hear my heartbeating, I could wiggle my toes or flex my muscles, I could hear thesound of my breathing...it's not the sameas being deaf and numb, not being able to hear or feel.

During the battlein the Mars Colony Pyramidion, I took a round to the helmet, anincendiary round. The helmet saved my braincase and my life, butleft me completely deaf. I had to be shipped back Earthside and havemy hearing repaired, which took months in the regrow tank. Beingdeaf isn't the same either.

Butstill, I can only sleep in the sense-dep pod. In a real bunk...everysound sends me into a panic. Every tick of shifting metal, everyklaxon in the farthest wings of this ship...I hear it all. Awake, Ican deal with it, the hypersensitivity. When people speak, even inconversational tones, it sounds like they're yelling in my ear, evenif they're forty feet away. A door whooshingopen across the barracks room sends a puff of air that I can feellike a wind. I can hear men's bellies gurgling.

Time, too, isunreliable for me now. Sometimes, seconds will drag by over whatfeels like hours. I will be sitting at a table in the mess-hall, andthe men next to me, carrying on a conversation, will be moving inslow motion. Hands, gesturing, will crawl through the air withsyrupy slowness, words will drip and drawl, strands of hair will waftand drift as if through water.

I miss water. There are no pools here, no baths or showers. Just a decontamchamber that scrubs you down in a matter of seconds, without evertouching you.

Time also willspeed up, those same mess-hall mates will move like aHoloNet on fast-forward, words blurring and piling one atop theother, gesticulations too-fast. It alternates, slow to fast, thenback to slow, then without warning, all will return to normal. Andnever a warning. All I can do is sit back, keep still, and watch. Speech was impossible, in those bubbles of distorted time. Icouldn't summon words, couldn't form them or produce them. At first,I couldn't even move, but I learned, later.

Ofcourse, everyone is curious about me. The man who saw the Exodus,the man who drifted through space for a thousand years, whilehumanity evolved without him. The giant. These people are tiny,here. They move strangely, speak strangely, think strangely. Theywalk in a gliding shuffle, the gait of people who spend a lot of timein low- or zero-grav, but they walk this way even when the grav isnormal. It seems ingrained in them, a racial trait. I've discoveredthat some of these men on this ship were born here, raised here, andexpect to die here. The Rakehell isa far-scout, it turns out, a ship designed and built to patrol theedges of mapped space, and to push those boundaries, to extend themap. My ship, it seems, was at the very edge of explored territory,and only a bored, sharp-sighted scan-tech drew attention to myderelict craft.

These men willspend their entire lives aboard this ship, disembarking only forbrief planet-side leave. This is unfathomable, to me. I've asked the commanderwho rescued me, the officer in charge of outship-ops, to get me atransport to civilization.

I need to see moreof this new humanity, this new civilization. I can't live the restof my life on this far-scout. I just can't.

* * *

Perepeteiais a wild, strange, exotic place. Nothing here is like anything I'veever encountered before. Even the people, those that I recognize ashumans at least, have changed beyond my understanding. The men andwomen aboard the Rakehellare on the fringes of society, exempt from the vagaries of socialcustom and fad. They exist outside of society, away from anyoneother than those like them, officers and soldiers and members of theshipboard culture. This society on Perepeteia is humanity in all itsinconstancy and fad-driven indulgence. Hair and clothes, technology,transportation, everything is totally inexplicable and ineffable. Women have hair with some kind of light in them, like neon tubes wovenaround their natural hair, which is itself dyed, it looks like. Clothes are outright bizarre. They exist for fashion, rather thanfunction. Nudity is the norm and clothes are a choice to exhibitwhat the individual sees as exciting or as an expression ofpersonality. Skintight pants of transparent material, sometimestranslucent just enough to disguise things, seem to be the fad, aswell as shirts that hang down to the feet in the back, cut away infront and sleeveless, or tassels hanging from sleeve points orcollars. Also popular are tattoos inscribed in gold or silver,somehow non-toxic, or in glowing neon, across the face or wrappedaround the forearms and hands; everyone carries weapons. There is nopolice force, only a token display of soldiers to prevent outrightlawlessness, but very little is enforced except the injunctionagainst outright murder in public. If you can get away with it, itis left uninvestigated. Theft, larceny, prostitution, these are ascommon as handshakes and kissing. For all of this, however,Perepeteia is surprisingly welcoming. People don't so much acceptyou as much as they simply don't care who or what you are as long youdon't infringe on their space. I walk among them unremarkable, foronce in my life. My mere size has always been enough toset me apart my whole life, so it is a strange feeling to walk down astreet without being stared up at.

Thereare things here that don't seem to be...people. Or, not humans. Ican't tell if they are androids or robots or cyborgs, but they arebizarre mixtures of machine and human: men with plasma rifles where ahand should be, women with computer displays in their forearms,metal legs or camera-eyes, anti-grav booster platform from waist downas if a man had been grafted onto a hoverbike at his waistline. Others are more normal appearing, just one little thing slightly off. Hair that isn't hair,or eyes that glitter too much with a mechanical sheen, skin thatdoesn't feel right when they brush against you in the street, voicesthat hiss and crackle with faulty transistors as opposed to a coughor sneeze. Perhaps the humans take me to be one of these mechine-manamalgams. I have seen no natural person that is above six feet tall,as if evolution has made them smaller, perhaps from generations thatwere born, lived and died aboard a colony-transport.

Perepeteiaitself is a place that requires some getting used to. Low grav, forone thing, not Earth-moon low, but noticeable to me. Twin suns,huge, one yellow and hellishly bright, the other a dull dying red. Its a hot, arid, low oxygen planet, so the inhabitants have turned the Pyramidiontechnology from the Mars Colony to their own uses and expanded uponthem. On Mars, a Pyramidion was an independent city-state, a pyramidof transparent titanium—transtanium—layered in horizontalfloors like a highrise back on Earth, before the cities were alldestroyed. Now, on Perepeteia, the Pyramidions are being built on anunbelievable scale, wide enough at the base to contain two or threemetropolises; and they built vertically as well, rising nearly a mileinto the scorching sky, containing four layers, each layer, or floor,holding several spread out cities or villages. And there are dozensof these Pyramidions on Perepeteia, each one governed independently,as on Mars, each one holding millions of souls. The human race has definitely expanded in the lastthousand years.

Theyall have names, but damned if I'll be able to get them all straightany time soon. The one I've fetched up in is called Juris Tempe, or J-Temp. As on Mars, the richest of the rich live atthe peak, and the further down you go towards the base the poorer androugher more packed the living quarters get. I'm at the very bottomof course, living with a garrison of off-duty ground troops. It's atonce entirely too familiar, and dreamily unreal. Soldiers aresoldiers, and they tell the same basic jokes, just couched in newterminology and slang, but the outfits, the technology, the housingarrangements, all of this takes a while to get used to.

Noone seems to realize that I'm not actually part of the ground troops. I've been absorbed by the system, and no one has noticed. I salute,wear the uniform, do the drills and PT, all of which is basicallyunchanged, and if anyone notices that I've done something wrong or say something weird, or don't understand a reference, I tell them I was on a far-scout,and they nod sympathetically, as if that explains everything.

Isuppose it does, at that. They ship out, and theyreturn after several generations have passed back planet-side, andeverything has changed. For me, its not just the surface detailsthat have been altered, but the very fabric of human culture. Thereare no racial boundaries anymore, but stereotypes and bigotry abound,nonetheless, just directed towards new targets.

* * *

Ihave been just scribbling all these thoughts and memories down asthey come to me. I was issued a “tablet”, a paper-thin sheet ofclear rubbery material that can be folded, balled up, bunched up,soaked, burned, or crushed without being compromised. These tablets arethe personal computer device of this age, a person's entireconnection to the virtual world of information, and most people seemto have a way of interacting with it directly through their brains oreyes, through some kind of implant that I, of course, never got. Ican still use it manually, however, and that suits me better. I'mnot ready to get an implant yet.

Isuppose I should organize this record. For who, for what? I don'tknow. For myself, I guess, so I can look back and see where I have been andwhat I have gone through.

So, today's date seems to be 24.13.1004. Apparently, there are 24 months here, and 40 days to a month, and itis the year 1004 P.E., which makes it, according to my calender,somewhere around 3217 A.C.E., as they dated things when I was growingup Earth.

Ithink I like using the 1004 date better. It makes it seem a littleless...difficult to swallow.

24.15.1004

Ican't help thinking how proud of me Lyss would be, if she knew I wasfinally writing regularly. She was always after me to write more. She said the letters I'd written her, when I was stationed at theKleuer Pyramidion Base, were, in her words, achingly poetic. I don'tknow what-all that means, but I take it as, she likes my writing. So, I'll address these journal entries as to her, and write them asif she were going to read them, out in the far beyond of death.

DearLyss,

Youwouldn't believe this place. Everything is huge and fast. Thepeople are loud, gruff, busy, self-absorbed. You would hate it. Noone smiles at you on the street, or shakes your hand when you meetthem.

Forme, as a soldier, its a good life, thus far. It's what I know, andfor all the inexplicable aspects of the world around me, it's the onefamiliar thing I can rely on: get woken up before sunrise, or Ishould say, suns-rise, PT with the squad, dress out, breakfast,patrol. My unit, my adopted unit, is assigned to patrol the groundlevel of J-Temp. It's a dangerous job. Those who live down here,they have no love for uniform, and with good reason. These men,they're brutal. Thugs, really. I march with them and keep tomyself, defend if I have to. The others, they take what they want,be it goods or people, and do what they want. There's places wedon't dare go, warrens of alleys dimly lit and stinking of abjectpoverty and slow death. Even we, with out guns and armor andshock-sticks, we don't dare enter those mazes. We'd be overrun andsmothered, we'd just disappear.

Forall that, though, I understand these people, in a way. Their speechand appearance are strange to me, but they are still humans, and wechange little, at the core. They struggle to survive, day to day,they love and hate, seek pleasure and avoid pain, they joke andswear, they kiss and slap and fight and make love.

I'mno sociologist, no philosopher or psychologist, I'm uneducated. I'mjust a soldier, a grunt. But it is a fascinating, if disorientingand lonely, experience, to live and move among this culture to whichI am alien.

24.20.1004

DearestLyss,

Somethingis happening here, on Perepeteia. It's not just J-Temp.. All theother Pyramidions are being swept up in it too. Something to do with“Dual-sings.” I've done some asking around, and the best I canfigure, the situation is this: Dual-sings are a race of people thatare kind of like cyborgs, but not really. No one can explain them ina way that makes a damn lick of sense. Those strange people withmachine parts, they are Dual-sings. Dual-singularities. Machine,human, and neither, and both. It's horridly complicated, apparently. They are human in that they are born, they love and breathe and havebabies, but they are also cybertronic, bio-mechanical. The machineryis organic, grown somehow, and they can graft onto themselves true,dead machinery.

Dual-singsare at the heart of the unrest, I'm told. They don't have a place insociety, except at the bottom of the bottom. If prostitutes anddrug-dealers and murderers are the scum of society, most people lookat Dual-sings as being the putrid mold that grows on the scum, turnsit into unidentifiable sludge. They have their own society, theirown culture, a secretive underworld that scuttles in the shadows ofPerepeteian life.

TheDual-sings are rising up, rebelling. They want rights, they wantrecognition. They want to vote, they want to come out of theshadows, and the humans won't let them. It's complex, though,because some dual-sings want to take their rights using any meansnecessary, however violent and extreme, and others want to separate. It all sounds familiar. I barely graduated high school, but Iremember hearing this story a hundred times.

Thefaction proposing violence is the most numerous, it seems.

Am Iwilling to take up arms against these people, these strange creaturescalled Dual-sings?

Idon't think I am. They've never harmed me, in any way, for all thatthey are bizarre looking. The civil wars on Mars and Luna weredifferent, Lyss, you know this. I wouldn't ever tell you much ofwhat happened there. I didn't want you have the nightmares that keptme awake. You were too sweet and innocent and kind and loving. Toowilling to see the bright side, the best in every situation. Thoseawful bloody revolts were...hell. Nightmares made alive. Menairlocked, eyeballs bursting, skin shriveling and lungs collapsing,screams silenced by the vacuum, red blood leaking out into red dust,clotting in ponds of blood-mud...Lord help me, I still dream of thosebattles, even now. When I sleep, that is. I still can't sleep well. The hypersensitivity hasn't gone away, and the distorted timesense...that is something I'm slowly learning to control.

Imiss you, Alyssa. I hope this unrest blows over, but I can feel, inmy gut and my bones, that it won't. The tension in the air ispalpable. Secrets float in the wind, curses follow us on patrol,humans disappear without warning, whispers of uprising flutter in thehot winds from the black alleys.

Wheredo I fit in to all this? There are only two sides, and I'm onneither.

I wish you could tell me what to do, Lyss.

A Gothic Horror (Nosferatu)

2011-09-16T22:16:00.002-04:00

Moonlight softly wavers through the window,
shedding silver spears, gently piercing gloom;
towers tall and spires spiked 'neath the midnight
moon like a brilliant moon echo silence.
The landscape dreams: rolling hills and glitt'ring seas,
delicate drifts of cloud, stars like scattered gems,
a mansion, ancient, sprawling on a hill;
this dream-still tableau is broken, shattered
by a piercing scream, a note of horror
stamped in aural ink upon the sleeping night.
This scream by winging bats is swift pursued,
a maddened flutter of screeching demons;
      now the eldritch night is broken,
      and evil things are woken.

Look now at the all but empty tower,
rising highest all above the rest,
into the only room that's warm with life,
at the lovely, trembling maiden huddled
by the oaken door, breast heaving, breathless.
She, staring at a pool of shadows cold,
shrinks against the door, fumbles with the lock,
clasps her ragged shift to her shivering skin.
The shadows shift and part to reveal deeper shades,
shapes that move, uncast by light, shapes with eyes
that gleam with hellish hunger, unholy glee.
Her fear at every panted breath exhales,
vapor making gnashing jaws drip more drool.
      With growls those maws closer creep,
       cries she, "wake me from this sleep!"

The lock at last gives way, the door swings out,
the frightened maid flies forth, loudly shrieking.
Scratching claws pursue, evil laughter booms
through darkened hallways, mirth of ghoulish things.
In haste she flees, with slapping, tripping feet,
down circling stairs, past open doors like mouths.
She turns her head, she seeks in vain a glimpse
of the hell-wights in pursuit, demons lewd
and leering, like drunken rakehell villains,
but cold as death, stinking still of open graves.
Fleet of foot they fly, more than mortal man;
taunting shades are they, whispering vile threats,
rushing wind-swift round, cutting with their claws
      they prick and nick, lick and lave,
      lap their tongues at wounds they gave.

A game these cold ones play, as much for fear
as her sweet red blood; they wait with patience
until she's steeped in dread, in terror bathed.
Across a chessboard they play their devil's game,
moonlight silver squares, shadows form the black;
'round her they glissade horror's waltz of death.
Hall to hall, wing to wing, floor to floor
they've played their dreadful game of cat and mouse,
but this tormented maid swiftly weakens
and her flight is slowed, panting turns to sobs,
desperate pleas for life strike deaf, inhuman ears
elicit further hungry, cursing growls.
      In a fury they descend,
      limbs and skin to rip and rend.

When at last their game is done,
sated thirst for lust and fun,
they circle 'round pounce and leap,
they sink in fangs, piled in a heap;
no more she weeps, no more cries,
one last gasping breath she sighs,
with a sob she falls and dies.

Thawed

2011-09-15T12:34:00.002-04:00

At first, time distorted. All I hadto keep track of its passage was the blinking, and my own sense oftime, but then, after what might have been an hour or a year or amonth or a second, I began to lose track of the blinking, lose trackof my thoughts, lose track of my sense of existence. Then—and thiswas a slow progression—I began to feel a distinct disconnect frommy self-awareness. I had no body, had no breath in, breath out, nogentle synchronous thump-thump thump-thump ofmy heart beating...only my thoughts, and those became erratic andmeaningless, fragments of memory, long sequences of waking dream, orfantasy, or memory and dream mingled together, narratives in which Iwas not myself but someone else, a HoloNet character interacting withmy mother, or Alyssa or my squad-mates from the service. I relivedthe battles on the Lunar Colony and Mars Project, those strangesilent scrums, when explosions were muffled and cut short, whenrifles fired in silent bursts of too-bright flashing fire, when mateswere twisted and thrown dozens of feet in the low-grav landscape tobleed in drifting clumps of red. Then I would board, in thosedistorted dream-memories, a transport cruiser, which in reality hadlanded safely and brought me to Alyssa, but in the dream would loopout past Saturn and slingshot into the far infinity beyond our humanreach, and I would find strange aliens with too many eyes and notenough limbs and wars would be waged and men I never knew would dienext to me firing un-invented weapons.

ThenI would wake and the red light would blink, blink, blink and I wouldremember and there would be Alyssa, dead and frozen, a nude statueencased in glass and silver. In those moments, I would wish foranother meteorite to finish the job and release me from this eternityof undeath. It never comes, and time ceases to have meaning. Mymind begins to float, lost in the ether. I can catch, through aporthole just inside my range of vision, glimpses of the starswhirling and spinning and drifting, sometimes a distant satellite ornebula or quasar or galaxy, and once a mighty asteroid glidingmajestically past, craggy and pitted. I cursed when it failed tocrunch me into freedom.

Then,finally, there was no I,no me, no present orpast or Alyssa; I closed my eyes and saw stars on the screen of mymind, still and bright and imaginary, and they too faded and I slept,dreamless and peaceful, eternal.

I waswoken by a juddering crash that rocked the stars outside theporthole, made the glass of the cryobed rattle around me, then therewas the hiss of the airlock, unheard but seen as the gasses shot outof the seal-rings. I struggled to orient myself. I was not I, formany moments, just a vague notion of occurrence, disconnected fromanything. Two things like men floated through the opening, set theirfeet to the metal floor, touched a button on their forearms and theirboots adhered to the floor with a sudden shock. They explored thechamber, leaned over Alyssa's cryobed, and then I wished I couldhear, to know what they were saying, for the gesticulated eagerly,pointed to the blinking light was my only evidence of reality orwaking truth. One of them came over and stood above me, and I sawthat it was in fact a man, a real human, in a ship-suit the like ofwhich I had never seen. Close-fitting, hardened like an exoskeleton,but limber at the joints, a transparent helmet revealing a rugged,unshaven face, showing an expression of extreme shock. He lookeddown at me, met my gaze, narrowed his eyes, and then when I shiftedmy gaze, he stumbled backward and grabbed the arm of his companionand jerked him around, pointed at me, lips moving rapidly. The othershuffled over to me, looked down at me; I blinked, and he too took aninvoluntary step backward. They both stared at me for several longseconds before bending to examine the read-out of the cryobed. Theytook a very long time to do so, pointing, disagreeing, finallypressing buttons and stepping back to watch as the cryobed woke me,gradually and gently.

Itwas painful, waking up. It began as a tingle in my toes that turnedto fire; the tingling spread upward to my legs and torso and arms,followed by the agony of fire licking along my skin and inside myveins and muscles. My face was last, and my hearing returned,ringing and echoing. The lid swung open, and I tried to lift myselfout, but couldn't. One of them gently took my hands and pulled,lifting me out. I managed to drag my legs out, but they wouldn'ttake my weight completely, not yet. I slumped back, waved the menaway, held up a finger to signal that I needed a few moments. Mythroat was dry, parched and scraping as I swallowed; I couldn'tspeak. The burning receded, leaving a tingling and buzzing as ofwaking limbs. Finally, I stood at my full height. The men in thestrange armor craned their necks up at me in surprise. I had beennearly curled up in the cryobed: I am a large man, clearing sevenfeet one inch in my bare feet. A full two terms in the service leftme extraordinarily fit. These men couldn't be more than five footfive, at the most, but I could tell that they were highly-trained,strong and rugged. These were soldiers; men of war can recognize oneanother at a glance.

Theyput their shoulders under me, one on each side, and half-dragged methrough the door into their ship. I was halfway through the portalwhen I stopped, shook myself free of them, stumbled drunkenly backinto the dead, derelict Icarus,over to Alyssa. I bent over the glass, kissed its cold surface aboveher lips, whispered a prayer in the thin icy air, to God, to all thegods, asked them to care for her soul in the hereafter. The menwatched, but didn't interfere. They saw the emotion writ on myfeatures, in my movements. You don't get in the way of a grievingwarrior, you allow him space and silence to mourn in his own way, youwait at the edges, offer stoicism, offer no platitudes, for you knowbetter. They respected the ritual.

Finally,I was ready to leave her, but I took the green blanket that had lastknown the touch of her skin, wrapped it around my naked hips, andmade my way out of the Icarus,taking one last glance at what had been my tomb. The cryobeds weredarkened and starlight gleamed dully on the silver bases, flashed inshifting points of white on the glass tops.

I wasdisoriented still, mentally. I couldn't feel emotions fully,couldn't form coherent thoughts. I had said goodbye to Alyssa out ofhabit, instinct. She was a part of me, and I was leaving her, but Ididn't feel the grief, not really. It was there, on my face, in myheart, but the emotion was disconnected. I was still a mind floatingin the ether, I wasn't I,yet. I knew my name: Vargos Vale. I knew I had left Earth as partof the Exodus. That was the sum of my knowledge.

Whowere these men?

Howlong had I drifted, asleep?

Themen helped me, supporting me with difficulty. Their ship was like afantasy, like something from the HoloNet. Gleaming white and blackand silver surfaces, flickering, transparent readouts, irising doors,winding hallways, wide, floor-to-ceiling windows that offeredmind-boggling glimpses of the universe just beyond. As soon as theseal between ships was broken, the stars began to move. It took me amoment to realize that that meant this ship was departing, with me onit. I pressed my forehead to the window and watched for a glimpse ofthe Icarus. When itcame, it brought curses to my lips. The damage was far moreextensive than I had realized. The exterior was blackened andpitted, the cockpit completely destroyed. It was dented and broken,burnt to a crisp. It was, I realized, a miracle that I was alive atall. I watched the once-sleek craft drift out of sight, trying toreconnect my soul to my body, trying to forget the image of

Alyssalying dead and ever-perfect in the cryobed.

Iheard someone clear his throat behind him. I turned and recognizedone of the men who had rescued me. “Thank you for rescuing me,”I rasped. My voice was like sandpaper scraping across metal. Theman held out a bottle of water to me, and I drank greedily.

“Welcomeaboard the Rakehell,”he said. “I'm Commander Lucas.” His voice was deep, a soft,menacing growl. He wore a gunmetal-gray uniform with crimson trimand pouldrons on his shoulders. He carried himself as an officerwould, with that cocksure confidence of a man used to giving orders,hands clasped behind his back. It sent me back to my days as asoldier and I unconsciously fell back on my military training. Isaluted crisply, heels together, back straight.

“Gladto be aboard, sir,” I said.

“It'squite remarkable that you're alive, mister...”

“Vale,sir. Gunnery Sergeant Vargos Vale, United Earth Special Forces,retired.”

Alook of shock and confusion flitted across the Commander's face. “UESF? My gods...how long were you in that ship, Gunny?”

“Wellsir, I truthfully don't know. We were hit by asteroids or somethingjust as our cryobeds were going through the start-up. Alyssa's bedwas shut down after she was cold, but mine wasn't done yet, so whenit went to backup power, it stopped the process and there wasn'tenough juice to finish. I was awake, but frozen physically, trappedand aware.”

Lucaslooked horrified at the thought. “Well, when did you board theship?”

“Idon't know the exact date. It was at the tail-end of the Exodus, isall I know. Alyssa and I were some of the very last to leave.”

“TheExodus?” Lucas wasincredulous. “Are you sure? Cryosleep can give you funny dreams,sometimes...”

Hedidn't seem to believe me. “Yes, sir. I'm sure. I was nevercompletely under...” Something in his demeanor gave me chills downmy spine. “What is the current date?”

“Itis the year 1004 P.E., Post-Exodus.”

Atfirst I wasn't sure I'd heard him right. 1004? That meant I had beenasleep for...“A thousand years?” I barely managed a whisper. Mybreath caught, and I fell backward against the window. How was thatpossible? A thousand years?

Cryosleep

2011-09-13T17:18:00.000-04:00

Part I: Into the Teeth of Infinity

The light blinks red, once every three seconds. My first attempt to distract myself was to count the blinks, one…two…three…four…I gave up at 6,500,322. The blinking red light came from across the chamber, from Alyssa’s cryobed. The light on mine was yellow. Green is for go, all systems ready, normal function. Yellow means something is amiss, but the system is functioning. Red means stop, malfunction, system failure.

We had been part of the Exodus, humanity’s flight from the dying Earth. Our starhopper was called The Icarus, we boarded her, strapped in, pushed all the right buttons, felt the low deep rumble and were pushed against the chairs for liftoff. We navigated her manually out past the moon, half-way to Mars, then we programmed her nav system to follow the homing beacon that would bring us to The Ark, the colony station near the Horsehead Nebula. We prepped the cryobeds, stripped out of our jumpsuits. Alyssa had spread a blanket on the floor, a downy soft green square. I laid her down slowly and we made love languorously there on the floor with the cryobeds perching on either side of us, mummy-shaped clear glass sarcophagi with snow white interiors.

I can still hear echoing off the featureless pristine walls her sighs and gasps, I can see reflecting semi-distorted from the silver bed bases her graceful curves and tan skin.

We collapsed and slept, rose eventually, left the blanket rumpled on the floor. We rinsed and scrubbed and toweled each other, kissed, climbed into the cryobeds. I watched her lay down, close the lid, push the button to engage the nanomachines that would send her into the long dreamless slumber to pass the years. She lay down, blew me a kiss. She pushed the button and fell asleep. The light flashed red yellow green, red yellow green as the systems cycled on, turned green and glowed steady. She slept, peacefully.

I lay down in mine, the lid was closed, the button pushed. I felt a cold creeping crawling numbness spread from toes and fingers to biceps and thighs, stomach, chest, neck…

I heard a crash, deafening and jarring, the lights flickered, the room tilted…another crash, a third and fourth. The lights went out and stayed off for several minutes and the room was black, pitch dark. Emergency systems engaged, light returned to the chamber.

Cryobeds shut down the human body limb by limb, organ by organ, starting at the extremities, keeping the heart beating just enough to supply blood to the brain and retain the very minimal essential functions. Cryosleep is, basically, controlled death.

I couldn’t move. My bed had begun to put me into cryosleep, I realized, then just before sending me into unconsciousness something--asteroids or meteors most likely --had hit the ship and damaged it. My body was dead, my brain alive. I could see, I could think. I couldn’t move. And the ship, almost certainly, was dead and spinning, knocked off course and unpowered and rocketing at an unthinkable speed toward nothing at all, nothing but infinity or a distant star’s gravity well…

Then I looked over at Alyssa, I could just barely see the shape of her cryobed out of the corner of my eye, I could see the profile of her face, her breasts…and the light blinking red, once every three seconds. Her bed had shut down with the rest of the ship’s systems, and when it powered down the invisible nanomachines that kept her brain and heart nominally alive were powered down as well, and her system never rebooted. Alyssa was four and a half feet away, forever beautiful, forever just barely visible from the corner of my eye. Forever just out of reach.

It took a few more minutes before I understood the implications of my own predicament. Paralyzed in a cryobed, awake. My body wouldn’t age, wouldn’t atrophy, but I would never leave this bed.

Chronos

2011-09-10T21:21:00.004-04:00

I flex my fingersand whisper sibilant words: time stops, a frozen fragment of fixedfinality. I cannot save her. I can see this, and it breaks me,shatters some vital portion of my soul. I can see the bullet, arounded, hollow-pointed thing howling towards her, seeking with awfulhunger her perfect, porcelain breast; it struggles against mycontrol, shivers, wiggles, strains forward millimeter by millimeter,and I know that it will pierce her before I can reach her. I amleaping, I am in the air reaching for her, and I will not be fastenough. I scream, and it is a guttural roar of primal rage, comingfrom some demoniacal portion of myself heretofore unexplored; a beastwithin me has been unchained, and cannot be re-caged, now.

I am not a hero,nor yet am I “super” in any sense of the word. I cannot fly, orjump far, or bend steel, or stretch or shoot webs, I am merely a manwho discovered a miniscule rip in the fabric of the cosmos andlearned how to exploit it. It happened by sheer accident, thoughsome may call it fate, or destiny. A scroll, a laborious translationfrom from one dead, archaic language to another and thence intoEnglish...words read aloud, directions followed...I am a timid man, ascholar, more used to archaic hero formulae than comic book actionheroes, but it seems, through this twist of fate, that I am destinedto be known as Chronos, rather than James Uriah Callahan.

To tell the truth,at that moment of which I speak—when the bullet burst through myspell and splattered her crimson life-blood on the crumblingcinder-block wall—James Uriah Callahan died, and Chronos was bornin his place. I have nightmares of that moment, and I wish my spellscould turn back time and allow to undo it, but if there is such aspell or power, it eludes me. I am no magician either, no wizard. What I call a spell is not really magic, nor is it a mutation orsuper-power, an incantation already ancient when the Sumerians werefirst learning to bake bricks, and it is limited in its use. Fromthe instant in which I utter the incantation, time and the rules ofphysics are suspended, not broken or abolished, merely suspended forI have determined is thirty precious seconds of my own personalsubjective time. Anyone and anything within a fifty-foot radius isaffected, and has no memory of the suspension. During those thirtyseconds, I can do anything within my abilities: I can move a person,cross an intervening space, strike a blow or a fire a weapon, orsimply disappear. I stop time and the rest is up to my imaginationand abilities, both of which are limited.

In that firstfrozen moment, she is screaming, mouth in a moue of terror, hands upin a futile attempt to stop the speeding bullet, eyes half-shifted tome, pleading with me to help her, to save her. I leap with all mystrength even as I finish uttering the incantation, but she is fiftyfeet away and I sense time beginning to reassert itself, and thenwith a palpable snap thetableau is broken, the bullet strikes her with wet crunch,blood paints the wall behind her like a Rorschach image, and I slaminto her a fraction of a second too late. I watch her die, then. She lies limp in my arms, eyes dimming and watery with unshed tears,breath coming in labored gasps, pink froth bubbling at the corners oflips. She whispers my name, clutches at me, and then she is gone. Iset her gently to the ground, rise up and face her killer, a hulkingape of a man with heavy shoulders and mauls for fists, one of whichholds a pistol, which looks in his grip like a toy squirt gun. Hehas mirthful, wrathful, scornful glee in his eyes, slips the gun intohis waistband at his back, spreads wide his hands, as if to say,“What are you goingto do about it?”

Ishow him. I stalk towards him, stand in front of him, glaring athim, letting my rage build, stalling for time. I am counting theseconds by the beats of my heart, and when enough time has passed, Iflex my fingers again in the prescribed pattern, speak the words,loudly this time. He is puzzled, confused. The words are in alanguage that pre-dates the sinking of Atlantis, and they sound likethe hissing of a maddened serpent. When the last words is uttered,he is frozen, the look of befuddlement on his face comical. Now, Ilet loose all the cruelty and evil within me. I take the gun fromhis waistband, fire it point-blank into his groin, and wait for timeto resume. When it does, he collapses, screaming. I kick him, stampon his face, and then a red haze of rage washes over me and I know nomore. When I come back to myself, he is a pulp of gore on the groundand she is cold and stiff, and I am covered in crusted blood.

“Layla,”I whisper, finally allowing myself to feel my sorrow. She loved me,and for that she died. The dead man on the ground, he was thejealous ex who refused to let her go, who was us together and wentberserk...

Ileave them there, placing pennies on Layla's eyes for Charon, kissingher cold lips once more.

AsI ascend the steps, I leave behind not only Layla MacPherson, butJames Callahan as well. When I emerge into the star-washedmidnight, I am no longer timid, or studious, or careful. I amreckless, and angry and violent.

Butthat formative night is not over. Stomping down the street, sparsetraffic rushing by, I realize that I cannot go back to my old life,any more than I could have saved Layla. I am changed. I am altered. Do I like this new I?It is too soon to tell, I think. I am stronger, perhaps, for I carenot what anyone thinks, or whether I live or die. Layla was my onelove, the companion to my soul, and without her, I am naught.

Ifind myself wondering what havoc I could wreak with this power, whatwonders I could perform. I tried to save her, and failed, but if Ihad been there sooner, she might still be alive. I was too latebecause I hesitated. I hesitated, and she died.

Iwander aimlessly, distractedly, lost in my own thoughts, passingthrough pale pools of light and stoplights cycling green-amber-red;suddenly I find myself at the heart of downtown, deserted and silentat 3a.m. I hear, filtering to my awareness through the fog of myself-absorption, voices nearby. A woman's voice, weeping, pleading,no no no PLEASE NO andmy action is decided by motion rather than thought. I slink throughshadows to the mouth of the alley from which the sounds emerge, thesound of a hand slapping a face, a whimper, a rustle of clothes, thechink of a beltbuckle...

She,an unknown faceless woman who now becomes her,is lying on the rough wet cement by a reeking dumpster, pale legsflashing in the lurid sickly glow of a hanging streetlamp, and I cansee her hands are tied with zip-ties and her clothes are ripped offand the man atop her is hairy repugnant vile sweating eager...

Istalk like an animal closer by inches until I am a few feet away, andthe gun I never threw away is in my left hand, my right is flexingand marking the air, the words are whispered so quietly as to besubvocalization, and then he freezes mid-thrust and she freezesmid-thrash, muffled moan of protest cut short. I throw him backwardsand paste his brains across the alley in gray and pink, lift her upto her feet, stiff as a mannequin, remove the underwear stuffed intoher mouth as a gag, strip off my sweatshirt and slip it over her andthen reality reasserts itself and she finishes her shriek, starts inshock and confusion. She looks at me, then the corpse on the ground,the ragged faded U-Conn sweatshirt that doesn't quite cover her,mumbles and stutters, falls apart weeping. I catch her, settle herdown, say nothing. Eventually, she gathers herself together and askswhat happened. I find no words to answer except, “I had to stopit, don't ask me how, you wouldn't believe it,” and she doesn't.

Iwalk her to her door, a hundred feet away, shrug at her thanks, andvanish back into the night.

Thenext night, I wander forth, looking for trouble; I find it, easily. I try to redeem myself, moment by frozen moment, one fragment, oneslice of chronology at a time. But none of it brings Layla back.

Carnivale Mechaniste

2011-09-02T12:15:00.002-04:00

Chapter 9: The Farthest Places

“Commander Magnus, sir? Lord High Consul dev'Pross wishes to know our position, sir.” The deckhand's voice interrupted Jax's ruminations.

He turned away from the prow and its view of the jungle world beneath them. “Tell the Lord High Consul that we are moving under full sail due east, the same as the last time he asked.”

“Very good sir...but...”

“What is it?”

“Well, sir...it's just that...”

“Spit it out, then, Neophyte.”

“He will wish to know our precise position, sir. And our estimated date of arrival.”

Jax sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. If there was anything more trying on a man's patience than soft and inexperienced noblemen in positions of authority, he hadn't come across it. This “Lord High Consul” was a boy of maybe eighteen years, with no combat experience, no training in basic navigation, much less inter-realm navigation. His mother was the emperor's favored niece, and he was given command of a Dreadnaught for no other reason than to please a favorite relative. “Tell the Lord High Consul, yet again, that it is impossible to give an exact position, because this is an uncharted realm, and we have no known landmarks by which to gauge our position. Moreover, we have no predetermined destination, therefore we cannot have a date of arrival.”

The Neophyte shifted uneasily, looking confused and distraught. “He won't...he won't like that, sir. I'm sorry sir, but he just...”

Jax ground his teeth, trying to contain his irritation. It wasn't the fault of this unshaven boy that the Consul couldn't understand the most basic principles of commanding a vessel. “Tell him, then, as a message directly from me, that if his imperial lordship the High Consul wishes to play at being in charge of this vessel, then he should cork the wine bottle and come out on deck for once in his worthless life. Tell him that exactly, Neophyte Orissel.” The boy—a skinny, gangly peasant of barely fifteen years, shipping out on his first voyage—paled and began trembling.

“I—I can't tell him that, sir! I just couldn't! You don't know the temper that one's got, 'specially when he's in his cups, and he's been in 'em since afore noon. He'd have the hide offa me and then throw to me get eaten by whatever lives down in that there jungle.” The boy's rustic, peasant accent became more pronounced as his agitation increased. “You might not be scared of what he can do to you, sir, but I am, an' I ain't afraid to say as much.”

Jax was unrelenting. “Tell him, Orissel. Tell him that you've got a message from me, and all apologies as it's not your words but mine. Deliver the message, and then get out, whatever the wretch says. I'll find some other post for you.” Orissel was still pale, but he looked glad at the prospect of working away from the Lord High Consul Aryl dev'Pross.

Jax cursed under his breath. The last High Consul was a fair, worthy man, and Jax had served under him willingly. Consul Irindi had been a warrior who had fought his way up the ranks from green deckhand to seasoned Corsair, to Ground Commander—Jax's current rank—and finally to High Consul. It had only been a matter of time of course, but when Irindi had been promoted to Palace Under-vizier, Jax had been sad to see him go. Then, Jax had been summoned to the office of the War Vizier. He'd been expecting to be put in Irindi's place as High Consul of the Imperial Dreadnaught Relentless; instead, he'd been saddled with a dead-weight, an arrogant boy who hadn't even learned to shave his own ugly face. Irindi had watched the proceedings with a sad but amused expression. The High Vizier, a pale, rat-faced man with a precisely-trimmed beard, had introduced Jax to Mirana dev'Pross, niece to the Emperor. Jax knew the woman well, and had been hard-pressed to keep his hands off of her lovely throat: she'd been one of his most frequent post-Contest visitors, and the most...energetic. She was startled to see Jax in the trappings of a Ground Commander, but, experienced politician that she was, she covered it with expert ease.

“I'm sure you will take excellent care of my son, Aryl, won't you, Commander? He's a good boy, just a bit...sheltered. His father wishes him to see a bit of the Realms, before he takes up a post in the palace. It would do him a bit of good, I should say.” Her voice was sweet and calm, but the look she gave Jax held a world of venom. Aryl looked about as pleased at the arrangement as Jax himself, but it didn't seem either of them had much choice in the matter.

When they had all gone, Jax turned to Irindi and the Vizier, saying, “If I'm to have charge of this boy, doing my job as well as his, then I had damn well better get the pay for both jobs. And I won't be held responsible if he gets himself killed.”

The Vizier had stood up and glared down at Jax. “You'd best listen, and listen well, Commander, because your life is at stake. Aryl dev'Pross is your life, from this moment on. If you fail to return him to Carth at the voyage's end, then your head will roll down the palace steps, do you hear me? Furthermore, you had better teach him a few things while you're at it. As for pay, your request is reasonable, so I'll grant it, but only because the dev'Pross family is wealthier than all the empire combined and they won't even miss it.” The Vizier crossed to a bookshelf stuffed with scrolls and codices, rolled maps and scraps of paper, inkstands, pens, compasses, all the detritus of a busy, important politician. He rummaged for a moment before pulling out a blank scroll, sat down at his desk and wrote on it in clear, flowing script for many minutes. When he was finished, he blew on it to dry the ink and handed it to Jax.

“This is your commission,” the Vizier said. “You are an excellent commander, one of our best, truthfully, and you are well-due for a Consul's braids. But, even I cannot gainsay the wishes of Mirana dev'Pross. You are not a politician, my boy, so I'll put this in plain words. I know how you came to your post, for Luravian is an old, old friend of mine, and I know why you seemed about to rip Mirana's pretty little throat out. But, she is a dov'Firren by birth, born of the Emperor's only sister, and she could have you killed as easy as she draws a breath. My advice to you is to do as she wishes. The boy is a nuisance of the worst sort, a drunkard already, a lecher, a woman-beater, a gambler, and a weakling, but he has imperial blood, and none can control him.” The Vizier poured two glasses of wine, nodded at Irindi in dismissal. When he and Jax were alone, the Vizier leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Listen, boy. There are two ways that I see for you to deal with Aryl. One, you can ignore him, and let him pretend he's in charge. He knows he's not, and he knows why he's on board. He would rather be here in Carth, where wine and women and dice are plentiful, but the voyage on a Dreadnaught is part of the game, if one wishes to advance in the government. The other way to deal with him, one I do not advise, personally, is to arrange...an accident. Winds are unpredictable, and drunks are unsteady on their feet, and who would deny it if you were to say he tumbled overboard, one dark night?”

Jax thought carefully before answering. “You tempt me, Vizier. I would like little more than to just to toss him over, but the way Mirana looked at me...she'd assume the truth and that would it for me. I survived the Contests once, and I could again, but she would arrange a different fate for me, I believe.”

“You have the right of it. Just put up with him. Try not to let him anger you into rash action. Now, there is one last piece of business for us to discuss.” The Vizier made sure no one was eavesdropping at the door before resuming. “There is a mission given to High Consuls when they are first commissioned. It is not secret, per se, but it not public knowledge either. I give you the mission because Aryl dev'Pross is only Consul in name, and after this voyage you will take the helm as Consul in name and fact. Simply put, it is this: Carth is running out of room. Our population is outgrowing the space we have in the city, and something must be done. So, you are to scour the realms for a suitable location for colonies. We are preparing new ships and technologies as we speak, and when a location has been found, volunteers will be chosen.”

Jax was perplexed. “Why can you not simply expand the city? There is miles of room to every side, is there not?”

“I had forgotten you were an off-worlder. It is not that simple. Did you not notice that there were no other cities, anywhere? There are a few villages scattered here and there in the highest peaks of the mountains, but no other city even a hundredth of our size. The reason for this is that the lowlands are uninhabitable.”

“How so? It looks to be lush, fertile land, to me.”

“It looks so, but looks are deceiving. I have been down there, many years ago. Down in the lowlands, anywhere but above the treeline, there are storms down there, what are called temporal storms. It is not anything so simple as rain and lightning, however. It is magical in nature. How do I describe it? There are...pools of slow-time, where you will be walking along and then suddenly everything is frozen around you, the sun stands still, your breath comes slow and heavy, you cannot blink or move. It is like you are stuck in quicksand, sinking. If you can muscle your way through, you will come out the other side and it could be days or weeks or months or even years later. I went down to the lowlands on a scouting expedition, as a young man of twenty, and when I came back, my parents were three years in their graves, though to me, I had been gone only a matter of months. You cannot detect these pockets of slow-time, and it takes a man of near-superhuman strength to escape them. It was an effort of sheer will that got me out of it, and I was weak to sickness for weeks afterward.

“There are also things like lightning strikes, flashes of light that crack and growl and make the hairs on your head stand on end. I saw a man in my party struck by one, and he simply disappeared. Vanished. The most learned of mages have done research on these flashes, and to the best of their knowledge, they are a kind of crack between realms, like a portal. They have called them shift-strikes, for lack of a better term. There are other dangers, such as the realm-quakes. I experienced one of those as well. It is...terrifying, I don't mind admitting. Everything shook and trembled, and I was tossed into the air like a leaf. The world around me changed as if I was on a wheel rolling through the realms, one moment I was in a snowy world, the next plunged into the salty sea, the next drifting through the stars, the next in a desert...it lasted for nearly an hour, and I still have nightmares about it. This is all aside from the raveners, and shrieks, and baulders, and other things we have no names for. No, expansion here is not an option. The commission lists what we are looking for, and what to do if you find a likely place.

“So, Commander Brutus Magnus, you have your commission, and my best wishes. See you next cycle.”

A bellow of rage brought Jax back to the present. Aryl had just been given the message, it would seem. Orissel stumbled backwards out of the Consul's cabin, ducking and bowing. A sword sheath, gold-gilt and jewel-encrusted, flew out of the door after Orissel and struck the poor boy on the head, setting him to bleeding. Orissel stumbled below-decks, looking haunted.

“COMMANDER!” Aryl lurched out of the cabin, down the steps, and stood wavering unsteadily in front of Jax, a wine bottle in one hand and a naked sword in the other. “What is the meaning of this? Explain yourself.”

“Gladly. Perhaps Neophyte Orissel did not deliver the message accurately. What I told him to say was that if your imperial lordship the High Consul wishes to play at commanding this vessel, then you should cork the wine and come out on deck, for once in your worthless life. I see you have emerged on deck for the first time this voyage, but you still have the wine.”

“Worthless life? Do you know who I am? Speak to me that way again and I'll run you through, you ugly lout.” Aryl pressed the tip of his sword to Jax's throat.

“I will only say this once, Aryl. Put down the sword before you get hurt.”

“You don't scare me.”

“No? You asked if I know who you are. The real question is, do you know who I am?”

“Should I?” The sword point dug into the flesh enough to send a trickle of blood down Jax's tunic.

Jax reached up and grasped the sword blade with his hand and yanked it out of Aryl's grip. “I am Brutus Magnus. Do you know that name?”

Aryl's eyes widened. “The champion of the last Brutalian Contests? That's you?”

Jax examined the sword, turning it over in his hands, one of which was cut deeply by the blade. “Yes, that's me.” Jax held the sword up in front of Aryl, snapped it in two. “Next time you point a blade at me, boy, use a real sword, not a dull, flimsy hunk of scrap metal like that. And be ready to use it. You couldn't run me through, even if you had a real sword. You haven't got the guts. The closest you've ever gotten to real combat is sitting in your fat uncle's box at the Contests, swilling wine and groping whores. You watch good, honest men slaughter each other for your amusement and you think, 'I could do that,' but if you were ever faced by real danger, all you'd be capable of is pissing yourself, you rotten little brat.”

Aryl reddened with rage, stumbled back a step, then charged forward and swung sloppy fist at Jax, who simply stood his ground and let the blow connect. When it did, the boy staggered back, clutching his hand. “Big mistake, boy,” Jax growled. He jabbed hard with his left, breaking Aryl's nose and knocking him to the ground, then picked him by his tunic and held him backwards over the rail to hang upside down. Aryl screamed, choking as the blood sluicing from his nose ran down his throat. “If I let you go, all I need to say is that you fell overboard, drunk as a blind beggar. No one on board this ship would disagree. You live on my sufferance, boy, and don't forget it.” Jax let Aryl up and threw him weeping to the deck. Jax picked up the dropped wine bottle from the deck and drank from it, waiting for Aryl to compose himself. Eventually, he did, and stood up, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“You have a choice,” Jax told him. “You can either sit in your cabin and drink and leave me alone to do my job, or you can take off that ridiculous uniform and bunk down below as deckhand, and do a hard-day's work for once in your life.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“What don't you understand?”

“Bunk down below? Like...with the commoners?”

“Yes, you imbecile, with the commoners. And you would work like one too.”

“And if I don't want to?”

“I'll lock you in your cabin until we dock at Carth and you can crawl crying to your mommy about how mean I was to you, and she can do her worst to me. I don't care either way.”

“Why can't I be a Corsair?”

Jax laughed at this, and finished the wine in one long gulp. “Because you couldn't. You'd get killed within minutes. I can't be down there commanding them as well as protect you. You can barely hold a sword right way up. You have to earn being a Corsair. You know nothing, nothing at all. Sitting in your box watching men stab each other doesn't prepare you for combat. Do really want to know what it's like, down in the ring? It's hot, for one, and the armor is heavy, and the sword hilts are slippery in your hands because you're sweating like a pig. Your heart is beating in your throat, because you're terrified. There are dozens of men out on the sand, waiting to cut you open and spill your guts onto the sand. The crowd is screaming so loud you can't even hear yourself think. Then, the gate opens and you're pushed out into the ring, and the sun blinds you, and there's a huge man with swords trying to kill you. Your bowels are water in your belly, and your legs tremble, but if you don't move quickly enough, you'll get a sword through your gut, and that's exactly what the crowd wants to see happen. And that's just the ring. You do that seven times, each time harder than the last.

“You want to be a Corsair? The armor weighs almost as much as you do, and the masks make it hard to see, and the sun bakes you alive inside the metal and leather. Then, you have to slide down a rope, hundreds of feet to the ground and if your hands slip you're dead, and no one'll come back for you. Then you have to fight, for your life and the lives of the other men, against enemies who hate you, who want to rip you apart because more than likely other Corsairs have taken their loved ones as slaves, and they outnumber you at least two-to-one. What's worse is, you have nothing against them. They're no threat to you, you don't hate them or feel anything for them at all. You may not even know what they're called or the name of the realm you're in, but orders are orders and if you disobey you'll be whipped or executed or given to a laniska, or just left naked on the ground. So, you have to kill them and rip them out of the arms of their husbands and wives and children, and watch them sold into a life of slavery, or get burned out in the drain-chambers until they're just empty husks. And then, you have to do it all over again, next world.”

Aryl was silent, staring out at the jungle passing beneath them in the waning sunlight. “I had no idea...I'd never really thought about it,” he said, dragging his wrist across his still-bleeding nose. “I always thought it would fun, somehow. See new places, scare some natives, take a few prisoners with a show of force, tumble some local girls, unwilling or not...”

“Many have that same impression. Nothing could be further from the truth. These Corsairs, they rarely see the worlds we pass through except during the raids, and then things are too confused and fast-paced to see much of anything. As for local women, there happens to be strict injunction against tumbling the local girls, as you put it, especially if they're unwilling. That's not to say it doesn't happen on some Dreadnaughts, but on mine, it doesn't. We are not barbarians.”

“Would you really throw me overboard?” Aryl turned to Jax and gave a sharp, sober, penetrating look. The boy had potential, if it could be reached.

“In a heartbeat.”

“Really?” Aryl didn't seem to believe it.

“Don't mistake polite conversation for caring about you. If you cross me, even slightly, I will toss you overboard so fast you won't know what happened until you hit the ground. And believe me, that hurts.” Jax stepped close to Aryl and fixed him with a cold, hard stare, a look that cowed even the doughtiest of Corsairs. “Make your choice. Jump off, stay in your cabin, or work as a deckhand.”

Aryl was silent for a long time. Jax could sense that he was deep in thought, so he stood and waited. At length Aryl spoke, hesitatingly, haltingly. “I...you know, I've never wanted to work in the palace? I told Mum and Da, but they don't care. I'm the emperor's nephew, and I have certain expectations to live up to. I really was looking forward to this voyage, secretly. I put on the face they expected of me, but I've always wanted to be a Corsair, or even just a deckhand. I know I'm in my cups more than I should be, but it's the only way I know how to deal with all the pressure my parents put on me to be this...this perfect aristocratic, noble, imperial-blooded...thing. I'm the future of the Empire, they tell me. Heirs to the Carthian throne do not traipse about the realms swinging bloody swords, and they most certainly do not do menial labor.”

“You're heir to the throne?” Jax hadn't realized that, somehow.

“Well, yes.” Aryl seemed uncomfortable admitting it. “Uncle Herastus, the emperor, he doesn't have any heirs. He had a daughter, but she disappeared before I was born. Nobody will talk about it, and I don't know much. Just that his daughter, my aunt, Nialla, she didn't wouldn't marry any of the suitors Uncle Herastus set up for for her, and then one day she disappeared with a commoner, an off-worlder, Tinus, or...Titus, that's what it was.” Jax's blood ran cold. Something had been niggling at the back of his memory for a long time, ever since the meeting with the Vizier, and now it all clicked together.

“Nialla dov'Firren is your aunt? Daughter to Herastus dov'Firren, Emperor of Carth?”

“Yes. You didn't know that?”

“It just made sense of a few things. So what else do you know about Nialla and Titus?”

“Not much. Just that Nialla ran off one night with that Titus fellow, and they were never seen again, and the Emperor was left with no direct heir. Imperial law states that if the Emperor has no direct issue, then the male in closest degree of consanguinity to the Emperor will inherit...and that would be me, unless Nialla showed up, or if she had a son or daughter.”

“A male or a female can rule?”

“Yes. The law only specifies male in cases of no direct issue.”

“Direct issue, meaning son or daughter.”

“Well, specifically it has to be a son or daughter that is legitimate, by legal marriage.”

“So a bastard can't inherit?”

“Well, that's not true all the time either. The laws regarding inheritance of the throne are convoluted, to say the least. A bastard can inherit if he or she is the child of the Emperor's son or daughter. It's a bizarre clause that no one really understands. The best anyone can explain it is, if the Emperor dies, and the next in line also dies, or is unavailable, say disappeared or mentally unfit, then the Emperor's grandchild can inherit, regardless of legitimacy, but an illegitimate child can't inherit if there is a direct descendant available.”

“They've really drilled this into you, haven't they?”

Aryl laughed bitterly. “Yes, Commander, they have drilled a veritable mountain of knowledge into me. I can recite the entire law, from beginning to end, from absolution to usury. I can tell you the entire the process of succession from the first minor king of Carth when it was little hamlet in the folds of a mountain, to Uncle Herastus. I can tell you who all the captains of every unit are in the current service, and I can tell you the names of all the Consuls of every Dreadnaught, and the name of every Dreadnaught in current commission. I can tell you all of this from memory, while standing on my head, in my sleep. And I don't care a whit about any of it.”

“You don't want to rule?”

“Not even a little bit. I'm not cut out for it. Uncle Herastus, he's cruel enough, merciless enough, and conniving enough to control all of the Viziers and court politicians and sycophants. I'm not like that.”

Jax's view of Aryl dev'Pross was quickly changing, now that he was sober. “So what do you want to do?”

“If I could do whatever I want, I would just stay aboard this Dreadnaught and never go back to the palace. I want to see the realms, I want to learn how to fight, I want to feel all those things you were talking about, even if it does terrify me to think about. I'm sick of being sheltered and protected. My parents act like I might break if get hit by a drop of rain. It makes me sick with rage, sometimes.”

“So don't go back. I could arrange it.”

“They would hunt me down and haul me back, however far I went.”

“There are more realms than there are Dreadnaughts, and if you want it badly enough, you can disappear, with ease. A beard, some armor and muscle and long, unwashed hair...you would be unrecognizable. Change your name, move from ship to ship frequently...it's not that hard. The world of Corsairs and deckhands is a vast, changing thing, and it is impossible to keep track of one man in all of the thousands of faces. On top of that, there are innumerable realms, and some of them are nearly civilized, where a man could make a life, if he wanted to.”

Aryl took a deep breath, faced Jax and squared his shoulders like a man who has made a difficult decision. “Commander Magnus, would you help me disappear?”

“You cannot undo this decision, once made, Aryl. Know that, and understand it. If you make this choice, you will cease to be Aryl dev'Pross, child of the empire and privileged aristocrat. You will do as I say without question, and believe me, it will be hard. You will regret your decision more than once, I promise you that.”

“So be it.”

Jax nodded, motioned for Aryl to follow him.

* * *

Below-decks was a strange world, for Aryl. The men were big, coarse, rough, and vulgar, but something stirred inside of him. He would have been revolted even a day ago, but now, knowing he was going to become one of them, he didn't seem to mind, as much. His heart beat like a drum, his palms were sweaty, and he felt tongue-tied. Commander Magnus led him through low, winding, wood-paneled hallways past clean-rooms billowing with steam and smelling of hot water and soap and flashing with glimpses of muscled, unselfconscious naked men, past wide, spacious barracks ringing with jokes and curses and rough-housing, stuffed with bunks four high and twenty across on each wall. They came to a room that was in a corner, an oddly-shaped cabinet made out of extra space, and here the Commander rummaged through piles of uniforms on rough wooden shelves until he found the uniform of a deckhand.

“This should fit you, I think.” Commander Magnus strode off down another hallway, still speaking as Aryl struggled to keep up. “I'm starting you at the very bottom, as a Neophyte. You know nothing about anything at all, and you'll have to learn the hard way. I'm not going to protect you, favor you, or treat you any different, and I'm going to instruct the men to do the same.”

“They all hate me, I know they do. I see the way the looked at me when I first came aboard. I'll be surprised if I make it past the first day.”

“True, they do hate you, but then...you earned it. You'll have to earn their approval, and you can only do that by working hard and being respectful to those who are more experienced that you. The best advice I can give you is to ask if you don't know. It's best to ask for help than make mistakes, because on board a Dreadnaught, mistakes can kill.”

They came to barracks, a small, cramped room less than half the size of the one's he'd seen before. There were two bunks to a row, ten rows to a wall, and all but one were full. “The empty bunk belonged to Thirin,” Commander Magnus told him. “But he died last voyage and we haven't replaced him yet.”

“How did he die?” Aryl asked.

“A stray arrow got him, last raid. He died slowly. I doubt you'd remember him. He was a good kid.”

“Well, thanks for that cheery thought.”

“This is what you wanted, and that's the reality.”

Commander Magnus addressed the room, “Listen hard, you lot. You all know who this is, and I know how you feel about him. I feel the same. Turns out he's had a turn of heart and he wants to make a clean break of things. More than one of you here are in the same boat as he is, I know. There will be no hazing, no tricks or hard treatment. He's one of you know, same as you were, first day out from the docks, except I can guarantee you he's more nervous than you all were, as he's turning his back on a whole hell of a lot more than you penniless peasant louts. Any mistreatment will earn the offender an extra day in the galley with the cooks, second offense will get you a turn in the drain-tank, and third offenders will be striped.” With that, he turned and left the room, saying over his shoulder, “bunk out and catch some rest, morning shift comes early for Neophytes.” With that, he was gone, and Aryl was left to the stares of the other neophytes.

“I...I know I haven't been pleasant, much...and I'm sorry.” Aryl felt a knot in his gut, and his fingers were trembling. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his uniform to hide the shakes, but he doubted anyone was fooled. These were young, tough boys used to work and used to hard knocks, and they looked ready to fold him into the small chest by his bunk.

“What'd you do, then?” One of the boys asked.

“Do?”

“C'mander said you needed a fresh start, like, and that means you done somethin' back 'ome. What I wants to know is what you done.”

“I didn't do anything, I'll have you know. I just don't want to be what my parents want.”

“Wossat, then?” The boy, no more than sixteen at the most, was idly digging dirt from under his fingernails with a long-bladed knife as he interrogated Aryl.

“Don't you know?”

“Know what, then?”

“Don't you know who I am?”

“No, should I?”

“Well, yes, actually. I am Aryl dev'Pross, nephew to Emperor Herastus dov'Firren, and heir to the throne of Carth.”

The boy jerked at this statement, stabbing himself deeply with his dagger, loosing a ribbon of blood and a stream of curses. “You jestin' me, ain'tcha? Tell me you're just pullin' a knock-headed fast one.”

“What? No, I'm not kidding. I'm deadly serious. I'm running away. They sent me on this voyage to get some 'experience of the wider world', and so I could say I've done my year out and year back.”

The boy looked incredulous as he clamped a rag around his finger. “You are tellin' for true, ain'tcha? Bless me, but that's loony.” He turned at exchanged disbelieving glances with his fellows. “Well if that don't beat all. You're actually running away from bein' emperor of all Carth, away from the wives and concubines and all that money...and those servants to do what-all you tell 'em...gods but what I wouldn't give to trade places with you.”

Aryl laughed aloud and shook his head. “No, you wouldn't want that. It's not at all like you think. Sure, there's money and women and servants, that's all true. I've got all that, as much as I want. But it comes with a lot of expectations, to say the least. Do you want to know what it's really like?” The other neophytes gathered around close, sat piled onto bottom bunks and passed around a bottle of something that made Aryl's throat burn. He told them story after story of his youth in the palace, dodging tutors and slipping into the servants quarters with mostly-willing chambermaids, told them of hours upon hours of rote memorization of the law and the rites of succession and the names of ancestors and generals and battles and the history of Carth, told them of wild nights in the guard's barracks dicing until he had lost all but his underclothes and had to sneak back to his rooms nearly naked. They seemed awed and mystified that anyone would give up such a life, but they understood more fully when he described the pressures of inheritance, the expectation that he would be ready to rule the empire when Herastus stepped down. The empire was a massive thing, a living, organic, pulsing, changing creature that needed constant care, constant attention, that any slightest mistake or bad judgment meant lives lost and resources wasted. By the time he had told every story he could think of, the bottle was nearly empty and the neophytes were nodding where they sat. The boy who first spoken, whose name was Jossur, eventually announced that it was time to have done and get some sleep, and the others seemed to listen readily. Jossur was the most senior, it turned out, and thus had the most authority among the neophytes.

He handed Aryl the bottle and let him finish it, saying, “If I was you, I'd not tell anyone else what you done told us. You got lucky that the C'mander put you with this lot, because I doubt the others'd be so ready to listen. Most others might even know your name and who you are by sight, and that could lead to trouble for you. I might even start goin' by a different name, and let yourself get some scruff goin'. The C'mander, he ain't much on holdin' to regs that don't serve much purpose.”

“Regs? What are regs?” Aryl was dizzy and sleepy, and he fairly fell into his bunk, Jossur in the bunk at Aryl's head.

“Regulations...things like havin' short hair and no beard, wearin' full dress when muster is called before first shift..that kinda stuff.”

“Full dress? Muster?”

Jossur laughed sleepily. “Oh man, gods help us. You don't even know what dress uniform is. It's gonna be a long trip till we learn you the ropes, it is.” Jossur turned over and was soon snoring, and Aryl wasn't far behind.

Jossur's words that night proved prophetic. Everything involved in becoming a deckhand was alien and difficult. The ropes rubbed his hands into blisters that soon burst and bled and became callouses, and it took every ounce of mental retention to learn the names of the sails and masts and ropes and cranks. He washed the deck with a long-handled mop, a duty called swabbing, he spent hours in a little perch at the dizzying top of the forward mast on look-out duty, swaying hundreds of feet above the deck with all the world spread out beneath him like a living map, the wind pushing and blowing and tossing him. He learned the hard way that petty disagreements with other neophytes were settled by the simple expedient of quick and dirty fist-fights. He got into many disagreements and lost most of them until he hardened a bit and learned to punch straight. These fights were against ship-rules, technically, but he quickly learned that the Commander rarely interfered unless a fight got out of hand. He was learning to see Commander Magnus in a much different light, now that he was a neophyte, or in barracks-slang, a scrub. No one, not even the most experienced Corsair, ever called him anything but “the Commander,” and they were almost reverential in the way they spoke of him. If he was in view, everyone worked a little harder by unspoken consent, and they walked with a straighter back and quieter voices. If he gave an order, it was obeyed with alacrity. Aryl only saw one person on the ship ever approach the Commander and speak to him as something like an equal, and that was a Corsair who addressed him as “Brutus” rather than “Commander.” The Corsair was heavily scarred, hugely muscled, with hands that seemed permanently curled as if around the hilt of his weapons.

The Commander spent a lot of time standing at the rail in front of his cabin watching the deckhands scurry about ship maintenance and Corsairs engaged in sparring exercises, his lean, tanned, weather-worn face scarred and pitted, dark eyes glittering in the sun, long black hair tied back into a neat queue, impassive and inscrutable. He moved about the ship in a slow, graceful prowl, never stumbling, even when the hardest winds buffeted the ship into rocking and bucking; if he wasn't at the rail, he was moving below-decks, poking his head into barracks and cabins, always with a shallow nod and greeting men by name.

The Relentless was weeks above the jungle, a seemingly-endless expanse of green tree-tops and shimmering silver threads of rivers. They moved eastward in long tacks, sails snapping and belled out by the perpetual wind, screws still and engines at rest to conserve power. Each day found Aryl more at ease on the ship, among the other men, and with his allotted job. He ignored the advice of both the Commander and Jossur and continued to go by his own given name; it was sheer stubbornness on his part, he knew, but he refused to hide behind fake names. Either he would be accepted as himself, or he wouldn't. The Corsairs especially were cold and distant to him, if not outright hostile, being older and more aware of who he was and his reputation.

After a month, Aryl was familiar enough with the rhythms and sensations of the Dreadnaught to recognize that the ship had halted during the night when he woke for morning muster. All the deckhands and the Corsairs were gathered on the deck in their unit formations, sleepy-eyed and groggy in the still gray pre-dawn haze. The Commander stood in front of them and waited until the last stragglers were in formation and all the chatter had been silenced.

“I have decided,” he began, “that we must break from protocol if we are to gain any profit from this realm. We must make an excursion to the ground, beneath the tree canopy. For all of you who haven't been with us for a raid, this is unusual in that Corsairs are trained as shock troops. We rely on surprise and superior training to bear us through situations in which we are often vastly outnumbered. Here, in the jungle, we will be at a disadvantage. We are not explorers or woodsmen, and we do not know what to expect down there, but it is simply unconscionable to leave this realm after spending so much by way of time and resources exploring it without gaining something. So, orders. Corsairs: ready yourselves for a raid, projectile weapons as well as close quarters. Deckhands, you must be alert for the slightest tug on the cables, ready to haul away at a moments notice. We will go down in fists, each group of five descending and taking up sentry points around the ship for the others coming down. No face-masks, as you will need all of your senses about you. Deckhands: reef the sails, tie off all lines, and prepare the descent cables, and standby. Go.” The Commander himself was already in full battle gear, helmet tucked under an arm, belt hung with saber and axe, an unstrung bow and a quiver at his back. When the Corsairs were all below-decks, he called over a deckhand, an older, heavy-set man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and beard.

“Borian, I'm leaving you in temporary command of the vessel until we return. If for any reason I should not come back alive or able to command, then you are to set a course for Carth and do not stop for anything. Keep the engines on while we are below, ready to rise and depart the moment the last Corsair is on board. Allow for no mistakes, Borian. Be alert.”

Borian merely nodded, and when the Commander had turned to inspect the preparations of his ground crew, Borian began issuing orders in a deep, clear, loud voice. Aryl was part of the crew ordered to reef the sails. Scrambling up the nets, he sat astride the mizzen-mast yard and furiously hauled at the lines until the sheet was fully reefed. By the time this was done, the Corsairs were lined up at the descent cables waiting for orders. Commander Magnus was standing on the wide, flat mounting rail, saber in one hand, cable clamp in the other, a foot set in a pre-made loop in the cable, helmeted and unmasked, watching as his troops made ready. When all was to his satisfaction, the Commander held his saber aloft for a few tense beats, then stepped off the rail as he lowered the sword. The Corsairs all gave a monosyllabic chant in unison as they followed suit, stepping onto the rail and off into space. As soon as the rail was clear, the next Corsair in line stepped up and over, the whole process going so quickly that within a matter of seconds the deck was clear and silent once more.

For perhaps an hour, the deck crew waited tensely, the silence only broken by muttered conversations and brief orders, and then a rope was jerked and the crank crews hauled at the double handles of the cog-and-wheel apparatus that drew the descent cables back up to the ship. The Corsair who tumbled over the rail was weak and bloody, pin-cushioned with four-foot-long black arrows with yellow fletching. He slumped to the deck, grabbed the nearest deckhand and yanked him down to his mouth, muttering a few words, then coughed wetly, pink froth bubbling at his lips. The deckhand leapt to his feet and scrambled over to Borian. Whatever the deckhand told him made Borian's face pale, visible even from Aryl's perch at the mizzen-mast platform, far above.

“All hands!” Borian bellowed. “All hands, to me!” Within seconds every deckhand was clustered around Borian, listening. “They've run into trouble, down below. The Commander has ordered everyone down below except crank-hands. You're not down there to fight, so don't get no ideas of heroism, you're there to get the killed and wounded back up to the deck. It'll be a wild scrum, I'm guessin', so keep your heads down and a wary eye out.” Borian stepped over to the nearest descent cable and demonstrated the proper method of descent.

“If you haven't used the cables yet, then listen up. It's easy but if you do it wrong you'll break your bones. The bottom of the cable has a loop in it, called the foot-loop. Hopefully it's obvious what you do with it. This,” he held up a clamp attached to the cable by a smaller line that braided around the main cable and attached to the crank, “is the stop-clamp. When you get near the ground, say fifty or a hundred feet, squeeze this cable with your hand and it'll slow your descent so you don't slam into the ground. There will be men waiting for you, so don't use the clamp until you're close to the bottom, or you'll cause a pile up. Now, get moving, single file lines and be quick!”

Aryl was third in line at his crank, and his hands were sweaty, his heart thumping crazily, and his stomach was fluttering in his throat. Battles had always seemed like adventures, before, but now that he was about to go down into one, it didn't seem like such fun. Within moments he was stuffing his boot into the foot-loop, grasping the stop-clamp in his hand and standing on the rail. The crank-hand near him slapped him on the back, saying, “You'll be fine, sailor. Now jump!” Aryl took a panicky breath, hesitated, and then half-jumped, half-fell, assisted by a gentle push from the crank-hand. The descent was terrifying. The green blanket of tree-tops hurtled up to him, turning from amorphous green to individual leaves, and then he was crashing through branches that cut and whipped at his face, arms and legs; there were screams and yells audible now, clashing steel and the thunk of arrows hitting trees and torsos, orders in Common, savage ululations of whatever natives had ambushed the Corsairs. Aryl was through the trees now and the ground was less than forty feet away and he was squeezing the clamp with both hands frantically; the Corsairs were clustered in a wide, ragged circle in the middle of a clearing, backs to each other, surrounded by hundreds of ten-foot-tall, skeleton-thin, orange-skinned natives. They were clad in loin-cloths, and wielded bows as tall as a normal human male, and these they used with horrible speed and accuracy, drawing arrows from quivers on their waists and firing them with mechanical precision, filling the air with buzzing arrows. There was not one Corsair in view that didn't have at least a dozen arrows buried in their armor.

Aryl landed hard, jarring his legs and ankles, crushing the air from his lungs and sending stars in sparking in his vision. He stood shakily, only to throw himself back to the ground as an arrow whizzed angrily past his head. There was a thick tree nearby, with a Corsair behind it firing some kind of hand-held cannon that Aryl had never seen before. Aryl crawled over to crouch behind the tree next to the Corsair, who was bleeding from a dozen minor wounds.

“C'mander wants you to get the wounded and dead aboard ship. Get moving, we'll cover you!” The Corsair shoved Aryl out into the open, following him closely. There were two downed Corsairs less than twenty feet away; Aryl crouched low and made his way over to them, trying to keep from vomiting from sheer terror. At least three times arrows passed by him, and the Corsair was hit at least twice more in the torso, but the body armor prevented the arrows from penetrating too deeply, although the warrior grunted each time he was hit. Aryl grabbed the bodies by their heels and hauled them toward the circle of Corsairs where the descent cables were. The natives were everywhere, firing arrows and hooting, unlimbering short throwing spears when their arrows ran out. The deckhands were among the trees now, carrying and dragging bodies, tying them to the cables and jerking the line to signal the crank-hands, rushing out into the fray again. There were at least three deckhands slumped to the dirt. Aryl felt a sting along his back as an arrow creased him, followed by a bolt of sharper pain as another arrow buried itself in his shoulder; he hid behind a tree, reached up behind himself and snapped the arrow off short; a sound nearby pulled Aryl around to see a native towering over him, glaring black eyes wide and fierce, javelin held to stab. Aryl threw himself to the side as the spear flicked out, hit the tree, spat bark at him; he rolled over and over and up against a dead body, felt the hard length of a weapon underneath him. The corpse was a native, and the weapon was javelin. Aryl wormed it out from underneath himself and brought up just in time to block a thrust, another, and a third, he kicked out and felt a knee-joint bend inwards, eliciting a howl of enraged pain; scrambling to his feet, Aryl used the momentary lapse to plunge the spear through the native's gut, pulled it free, saw another orange-skinned warrior a few feet away preparing to throw a javelin. Aryl took a running step, threw the spear in his hand as hard as he could, was rewarded to see it plant itself in the native's back to hang down, pulling the warrior with it. It was an awkward throw, but it distracted the warrior long enough for a Corsair to hack him down the ground with an axe.

Suddenly Commander Magnus was next to him, snapping off arrows and dropping the broken shafts to the ground. “You're not here to fight, dev'Pross. You're here to aid the wounded and retrieve the dead. But good work, nonetheless. Perhaps you're not hopeless, after all. Get moving. We need to retreat or there won't be anyone left to withdraw.” Aryl felt a rush of pride at the Commander's compliment as he made his way to the nearest prostrate Corsair. The wounded man moaned pitifully as Aryl dragged him to a cable, tied it around his waist and signaled for the ascent. After that, the minutes blurred together into a haze of retrieval and tie-off, and then the Commander was yelling for the retreat, waiting until all the Corsairs were aloft, then the last of the deckhands, including Aryl, who, once he was riding the cable aloft, found time to realize that he had been pierced through the thigh by another arrow, a shallow wound through the fat and skin. He realized, now, that he was faint, weak, and dizzy. The natives were still shooting arrows and hurling javelins, flinging the spears with such force that they were hitting targets nearly a hundred feet away. Aryl looked down, watching the natives jump and scream and ululate; one of them threw took a dozen running steps and threw a javelin at Aryl, who watched the missile hurtling towards him helplessly. Commander Magnus was on the cable next to him; Aryl watched in stunned awe as the Commander swung himself back and forth, and at the furthest apex of the swing towards Aryl, lashed out with his saber and cleaved the javelin in half, the barbed point of the spearhead spinning past his head.

“Gotta be on your toes, boy,” the Commander said. “You can't just wait for death to come to you, go to meet it, fight with all your strength and try to best it. Go to meet the enemy, boy, that's the Corsair way.”

Carnivale Mechaniste

2011-08-25T12:35:00.002-04:00

Chapter 8: Hardened (The Brutalian Contests)

Carth was a lush, mountainous place, full of jungles and rainforests and old-growth forests, pine-carpeted hills and twinkling lakes in long valleys. The Dreadnaught burst out from the stormhole, as Farrago called it, above a white-capped mountain peak. The screws thumped slowly and stopped, the deck-crews scrambled up nets and rope-ladders to unfurl the many sails, hauling on long thick ropes to chants of “heave! heave! heave!” and several hands even tossed ropes over the sides, tied them about their wastes and fastened them to rings on belts and swung out over the side to extend booms from the sides of the ship and unfurled sails from them to snap in the stiff, constant, billowing wind. Another three men turned with great effort a crank in the sidewall of the ship, letting loose a loud grinding noise. “They're lowering the keel,” Farrago explained. When the keel was lowered and all the sails let down and tightened, the Dreadnaught began to pick up speed quickly till she hurtled through the air and pierced thick puffs of off-white clouds and sped over the landscape at a breakneck pace that even the four giant screws and chugging engine could never hope to equal, so strong were the wind currents. Against his own will, Jax found himself thrilling at the speed and the feel of the wind in his face, wishing he were up in the rigging with his toes tangled in the rough hemp ropes, watching the living map unfold before him. Instead, he was collared and waiting to be sold.

The city of Carth was breathtaking. Nestled in the crease between the two tallest, fattest mountains Jax had ever seen, it was a sprawling, layered apron of buildings, shacks, huts, palaces, inns, barns and stables, rows of interconnected apartments and shops, all dissected and cris-crossed by lanes and boulevards and alleys and looping rabbit-trails. Carth wrapped high up and completely around the bases of both mountains, spilled down both sides of the pass between to sprawl out in a wide alluvial delta of cityscape. No two building were exactly the same, no two roads were the same, and everything was grand and massive and ornate scale. The Dreadnaught tacked and banked to circle around the westernmost peak towards a long dock stretched out from the mountainside, supported by thick stone arches. A mile from the dock, the deckhands scurried back up the rigging to reef the sails, scrambled over the side to furl the side-sails and lower the booms, engaged the engines and set the screws to full reverse so the ship slowed and stopped exactly level with the dock. Shorehands threw ropes to tie it down, and Jax felt the deck rocking gently in a low rough breeze, exactly as a water-going craft would.

The captives were herded by spear-wielding Corsairs in a double file off the ship and down the gangway, across the dock and through the city. A million voices echoed off of high stone walls in a cacophony of noise, accompanied by braying donkeys and whinnying, nickering horses. Jax nearly wrenched his neck all the way around trying to take in the endless vistas of this city, where one could from every street see the twin peaks of the mountains towering thousands upon thousands of feet in the air, and each building seemed to be trying to reach it, each building a spire, a tower, a crenelated castle; even the meanest, rudest huts seemed to reach with withered hands for the tooth-spikes of the ivory peaks above them. The prisoners were led through the teeming city to an open square at the terminus of four boulevards; the square was filled with row after row of stalls selling every good imaginable, and along one wall a low stage was built, with a three-sided wood-fenced pen nearby, a high stucco wall forming the fourth side. A milling crowd filled an open area in front of the stage; the Corsairs led Jax and the other captives to the pen, swung open a gate and ushered them in. Once the gate was closed, a dozen of the black-armored pirates formed a semi-circle around the pen, which was unlocked, and the prisoners unbound. After a few minutes of silent waiting, a small, sweating, pot-bellied man wearing a dirty gray sleeveless robe took the stage and made a beckoning motion at the pen. One Corsair opened the gate and went in, shoving out six captives in turn, closed the gate and used his spear to herd the first six onto the stage, arranging them in a line along the front. The man on the stage struck up an auctioneer's fast-talking patter, standing behind the the first slave in line, a tall, thin, middle-aged woman with graying black hair. The auctioneer cut open her ragged muslin dress with a dull knife and cast aside the garment to leave the woman standing naked before the crowd, cupped and lifted her slightly-sagging but full mother's breasts, turned her around to display her backside, pinched the flesh of her middle and pried open her mouth to show yellowing but straight white teeth. Through it all the woman stood stoic and unmoving, unresisting and resigned, but Jax noticed a tremble at the corners of her mouth, watched a single tear trickle down to leave a clean trail on her tan, dusty skin. Jax's heart contracted for her, and for himself, knowing he would soon endure the same treatment. A blond, bearded, pale-skinned man near the front of the crowd lifted a hand and the bidding began between himself and stocky, swarthy turbaned man in the back; the woman sold for three hundred riim, and was led away by the turbaned man, who doffed his robe and tossed it over the woman's shoulders, but not before Jax caught a lecherous leer and a tongue tip licking dry lips.

The blond man seemed miffed at being outbid, for he bought the next two, a older, patrician-faced man and a teenaged girl wearing rags and an expression of sullen hatred. Jax couldn't watch any more of the proceedings after that. The thought of being handled and displayed and sold like a piece of meat or an old car...it set some banked fire inside him to raging, and that, he knew, would only get him killed. Survival was the order of the day, he told himself, shut it all away inside, don't think, don't feel, don't resist, just go along and survive. Get revenge later, escape at the first opportunity. Jax closed his eyes and breathed deeply, brought up an image of Thyra's face and focused on it, held it, meditated on it, consoled himself with her voice, with the memory of her touch, her skin against his, of making love till sunrise...

He was brought back to reality by a spear-point jabbing his ribs and a gruff, harsh, rude voice saying, “Get on, boy, get on. Move.” Jax steeled himself, opened his eyes and shuffled one foot in front of the other. He refused to look around, refused to meet eyes, to see people. He stared up at the sky and watched shreds of white scamping and twisting across the endless azure sky, watched a sparrow wheel and tilt on a wing, soaring on warm currents. His vision telescoped and he found himself pulling on the well of magic within...and fell to his knees gasping and grunting against the needles of fire in his skin. A rough hand jerked him to his feet. “Playin' sick won't save you, boy. Get you up and take your fate.”

“Its...not...sick,” he wheezed, “its...collar...'phage...”

A hand touched the collar, lifted the thin wire. “You're a shifter?”

“Yes,” he might as well admit it, he decided. Things couldn't get much worse...right? He was last in line, last to be auctioned off. The pen was empty and the crowds were sparse and dispersing as the sun set. The only man left near the stage was tall, thick, scarred, dark-skinned, and wore a short, straight sword hanging from each side of his waist.

“There's no one to barter against,” the man said in a loud voice, cutting in over the auctioneer's patter, “I'll pay half a thousand riim for the lad, take it or leave it.” The auctioneer nodded, caught the leather sack of coins tossed at him easily. Jax was nudged off the stage, dropping heavily to the dust.

“Come with me,” the scarred man said. Jax sighed deeply and followed the man. “My name is Luravian. You are?”

“Jackson Magnus. I am called Jax.”

“Well, Jax, do you know what I have bought you for? No? I thought not. I am a laniska, I train slaves into warriors to compete in The Brutalian Contests. It is an honor and a curse to be chosen for the Contests. Thousands upon thousands will come to watch the Contests, and if you survive and reach the rank of Brutus, you will have all the honor, wealth, and freedom one could imagine. But first, you must be broken down, molded, and built back up. Have you any prior combat experience?”

“Yes, a bit,” Jax answered. Luravian nodded and plodded on silence. This sounded awfully like the gladiator games of ancient Rome, he thought. Survive, he told himself. If it came down to kill or be killed...there wasn't much choice there.

Luravian led him through wide, thronging streets and down into the lowest city-center shadowed by the bulk of the twin peaks and back up steep, winding, switchback roads to the opposite side of Carth. Around and up they went, skirting the waist of the mountain to the farthest side; the road terminated at a building with high walls, guard towers, arrow-slits and a metal-banded gate. “This is the ludis,” Luravian announced as he pounded on the closed gate. “This is your home and your prison, and this is where you will be buried, should you fall in the Contests. Know this, before we enter: my word is law, and by it you will live and die, be punished and rewarded. My word, and no one else's, not even the emperor himself.”

A low door set to the side of the gate groaned and squealed on protesting hinges, admitting Jax and Luravian. Within was a wide packed-dirt courtyard surrounded by walls, on which watchful guards with longbows stood; the courtyard was filled with pairs of men in knee-length leather kilt-type garments, bare from the waist up. Each man had a wooden sword and a diamond-shaped shield, or two swords, and each pair traded blows, blocking and parrying, dodging, rolling, jumping, shouting and swearing, bleeding and hobbling and cradling bruised limbs. When the door opened, the mock-combat stopped and all eyes turned to Luravian and Jax. Every man lifted his sword and held it horizontally before him, bowing over it. Luravian returned the bow, a shallow dip of acknowledgment.

“This is our newest member, Jax. Give him a Brutan's welcome.” In unison, the group of men gave a single harsh yell, accompanied by a stamped foot. Unsure of how to answer, Jax settled for a nod. Luravian pushed him forward into the courtyard, lifted both hands aloft. Two wooden swords were thrown to him, and Luravian passed one to Jax, keeping the other for himself. There was no warning, just a flicker of wood as Luravian slashed at Jax's head. Jax reacted instinctively, shuffling backwards and blocking, lunging forward with a return blow. Luravian riposted lazily, smiled a laconic smile and attacked again, faster than thought. Jax realized, as he defended desperately, that Luravian was a master swordsman, far beyond even the skill of Harman Luca, who had trained Jax. The laniska was merely testing Jax, putting him through paces to determine his skill level. Jax was sweating and bruised in a dozen paces, out of breath and jelly-kneed when Luravian finally stepped back and planted the tip of his practice sword in the dirt.

“Not bad,” he said with a lopsided grin of approval. “You've had training. Whoever trained was self-taught, I suspect, but not without skill. Attend to the lessons and you might survive, if you have luck. Nil will show you your cell and outfit you.”

Nil was moon-faced man of medium height, with a patch over one eye, thick, hairy arms and a round belly. Nil set off without a word, leading Jax through a doorless opening into a low-ceilinged hallway, cool and dark after the bright glaring sun and heat of the city. Jax's cell was an eight-by-eight chamber, containing only a blanket roll on the floor and a bucket. There were four rings attached to the walls, with manacles and chains hanging from them, two high up in the wall, and two lower down on the opposite wall. Jax flashed back to the vision in Madame Hassan's tent, and understood the arrangement: the prisoner (Jax) lying down on the bedroll, arms chained to hang just above his head, feet chained to the opposing wall. He would have just enough slack in the chains to lay down fully, with his arms painfully extended above his head, or sit up slightly, with his feet stretched out. It was a specifically-designed arrangement, something told him, with one purpose in mind. He shuddered and pushed those thoughts out of his head. This moment is all there is, he told himself, there is no yesterday, there is no six months ago, there is no tomorrow or six months from now, there is only this very instant. The Jackson Magnus who went to Jane Addams Junior High School and read Nightjohn and played Call of Duty and had no shape-shifting powers, and wasn't a slave in an alien realm...that Jackson Magnus was dead. As was the Jax who could fly through the air on a hawk's wings, or slither in the grass on a snake belly, who could heal himself with a simple spell and magically solder and mold metal and float a candle above his head. There was one former-self, he decided, who wasn't entirely dead: the Jax who loved Thyra Aricsdottir, who had floated with her above the soft green Pleurian grass and who had writhed with pleasure with her in the gentle silver light of a full moon and strange constellations...that Jax wasn't dead. Nearly so, perhaps, injured and ragged and weak, perhaps, but not dead. Not while life and thought and desire pulsed within him. That part was the true Jackson Magnus, and that part would fight with primal, feral, rabid ferocity to survive, and would do anything to stay alive, anything at all...

Until the ludis, there had never been pain, or thirst or hunger, or anger. Until he began training under Luravian, he'd been soft and weak and helpless and naïve. Luravian was careful, cunning, and merciless. He saw when a man was at the edge, knew how to drive him to the very limits of endurance and sanity, and then bring him back. Just when Jax couldn't take another lash of the whip across his shoulders, couldn't take another knock to the ribs with a training sword, just when Jax thought he would explode in pain and blind rage, Luravian would send him off for a break, give him a cup of thin, sour wine. Then, all too soon, Jax would be prodded back out into the courtyard with a sword in each hand and would be trading blows, blocking and parrying and getting hit when he was too slow. His ribs, by the end of the first week, were black and blue from hip to shoulder, his hands swollen and stiff, every muscle screaming and shredded. The brutans, as they were called, weren't allowed to collapse into bed until well past midnight, sparring by torchlight, and then they were roused from bed by whip-tip and spear-point at the break of dawn, fed a thin oatmeal-like substance that Jax thought might be called gruel, with crusts of bread and hunks of rainbow-sheened meat. They were given their swords and put through the paces all over again. Luravian was everywhere, watching everyone simultaneously, it seemed. He would rush across the ludis with a roar of anger at a clumsy parry, would rip the sword from the brutan's hand and show him the correct way, watch him until he got it right, box his ears if he got it wrong.

“I make more money off you greasy louts if you stay alive,” Luravian would tell them, cracking his twelve-foot whip as punctuation, “so pay attention! The things I show you will keep you alive, but only if you do it right!” Weeks passed this way, one day blurring into the next. The bruises never went away, replaced always by new ones, but Jax stopped feeling the twinge and ache of them, at some point. His muscles stopped screaming at him every night, and the blocks and ripostes and lunges and cross-block-thrust maneuvers came instinctively, automatically. He was too exhausted to think of anything but swordwork. If he dreamed, it was of a block he should've made, a missed lunge, an opening he could've pressed harder. He wasn't Jax anymore, he was Brutan Magnus, and he slept in ankle-chains.

Several months passed—if time passed in any familiar sense, here—without change in routine. Then, one day, Luravian called a halt mid-day, and singled out two brutans, Jax and another, a man head-and-shoulders taller than Jax, broad of frame, thick muscles and a scarred, grimacing face. His name was Ibnis, and he never smiled, never laughed, rarely spoke except in monosyllable answers to direct questions. Ibnis fought with a sword and a shield, and was feared by the others for his swift, brutal blows, always delivered at full force. Most others pulled back, just a little, and avoided striking tender areas. Not Ibnis.

“Form a circle,” Luravian ordered. “Now we begin single combat. This isn't a sparring match, this isn't a game. No holding back, no mercy. If you crack your opponent's skull open, so be it. He should've blocked. The winner of this match will be rewarded with a day off, and a night spent enjoying the pleasures of Madam Vura's establishment.” There were catcalls and whistles at this announcement. Jax didn't know for sure what Madam Vura's establishment was, but he could guess, if Ibnis' leering expression said anything. Jax struggled to suppress the fear that rose in his throat. He'd been paired with Ibnis, once, and he'd left the session more bruised and aching than ever before or since. This was going to hurt.

Ibnis shuffled in a slow, wary circle, shield held up in front of his face so only his hard brown eyes showed. Jax let Ibnis circle around him, pivoting on a heel, weight distributed and ready to move in any direction. There was no warning, no chance to get set or dodge when Ibnis shield-charged. The shield was wood with cured leather stretched over it, secured with an iron boss in the center, and when it crashed into Jax, it sent him flying backwards, the breath knocked out of him. He hit the dirt on his back, slid a few feet, rolling with the momentum onto his feet. Ibnis had followed him, sword arcing to where Jax would rise to his feet. The timing was impeccable, and Jax couldn't help admiring the move, even as he deflected the blow. The wooden swords connected with a such hard crash that Jax's arm shivered and buzzed for several seconds afterwards. Jax found himself dodging and blocking desperately, shuffling, twisting, parrying just a split-second behind. Before two minutes had passed, he'd taken a dozen body blows and hadn't managed one in return, and his strength was quickly flagging. Worse, Ibnis could tell Jax was losing strength, and pressed him even harder, a slight grin tipping his lips. Ibnis wasn't even winded yet, and Jax was heaving, sweating, aching. This wasn't working, he told himself. He had to switch it up somehow. He knew he could never hope to match Ibnis for strength or endurance, so he had to find another way to best him. Ibnis bashed at Jax with his shield yet again, and followed it with a clumsy overhand chop, and that provided Jax with the opening he needed. His left-hand sword blocked the strike, while the right jabbed upwards simultaneously, plunging into Ibnis' belly, doubling him over. Jax pivoted around and stepped backwards, away from the stumbling brutan.

“Finish it!” Luravian ordered. Jax hesitated for a split-second. The man was beaten, wasn't he? Luravian's whip cracked near Jax's ear, and that was all the warning he needed. Both swords lifted, struck down on skull and spine. Jax didn't hold anything back, struck with all his force, made himself watch as Ibnis collapsed to the ground, limp and bleeding. Luravian strode over, rolled Ibnis onto his back with a boot, put two fingers to Ibnis' thick neck.

“Well, he's alive,” Luravian said with a grin. “But he'll have a splitting headache for several days, if he ever wakes up. Good work, Magnus. You fought smart. Boran, take him to Madam Vura.” Boran, a burly guard with a plug of chewing tobacco in his cheek, beckoned with his spear. Jax tossed the wooden swords in the bucket and followed.

Madam Vura was slim, red-haired woman of middle years with a low, sultry voice. She kept an inn a few blocks from the ludis, a two-story building with few windows and long bar in the main room. She welcomed Boran and Jax with a smile and a knowing glance. “Well well, Boran, what do you bring me today?”

“A new recruit, Vura. Fresh from the ships. Just won his first combat.” Boran was staring at a girl on the balcony above Madam Vura, a lithe, buxom girl with brown hair and plain features. She met Boran's gaze evenly, smiled a come-hither smile, leaned over the railing till she was nearly spilling out of her bodice. Boran pushed Jax towards Vura without taking his eyes off of the girl, leaving a thick gold coin on the counter as he ascended the stairs and vanished into a room with the girl. Vura chuckled as she dropped the coin into a pocket, took Jax by the hand and led him up the stairs and into a small room scarcely bigger than his own cell in the ludis. There was a low cot, a battered trunk half-open, a small table with a basin of water, a cloth, and a carafe of wine. Sitting on the bed was woman a few years older than Jax. Auburn hair hung in lank curls around a thin, attractive face with bright blue eyes swimming with resignation and lassitude. Jax saw his own emotions writ in the woman's face, in the way she lay back on the bed in a forced pose that was meant to be seductive. She wore thin, drab green linen shift that barely covered her body. Vura closed the door behind Jax, saying, “Be gentle with this one, Elana, he's new.”

Jax put his back against the door, feeling his heart pound and his face flush. He'd rather face Ibnis again, than this. Elana seemed to sense his trepidation. She sat up, brushed her hair out of her face, smiled a sympathetic, knowing smile. “First time, brutan?”

“Well..it's my first time with a...a...”

“A prostitute? Don't worry, brutan, I'll take good care of you. I'll be just like your girl back home, you won't know any difference, I promise you. Just sit down, here, next to me, and pretend it's all a dream.” She put her lips to his throat, and where her lips touched him, his skin seemed to burn and tingle. Her hands loosened the belt of his kilt and wandered down further, making him squirm away.

“Maybe you're new enough to not understand,” she said, pausing in what she was doing to look up at him. “There ain't much choice here for either of us. I won't get paid, an' if I don't get paid, I don't eat, and then I can't work well, and Madam Vura'll be displeased with me, and then she'll complain to Brutus Luravian, and that'll come down on you.”

“Couldn't you just say we did?”

“Surely you ain't that skittish? I'm not all ugly, you know, and I can do things to you...”

“You're not ugly at all, I just...there's a girl...”

“Oh, brutan, there's always a girl. But you will die soon, I think, and she will never know. And besides, Madam Vura...she will know. She always knows. A girl here tried that once, with a brutan who preferred boys to women, and Vura, she knew. And the girl, she was beaten and cast out, and the brutan, he was fed to the raveners the next day. So I think that you should just close your pretty blue eyes and pretend it's a dream and let me do all the work.” Elana pushed him down, touched her lips to his chest in something that was not quite a kiss, and then she did something else to Jax that made him squirm and gasp...

He closed his eyes, and pretended it was dream.

When Boran came and returned him to the ludis, Jax sat in his cell, feeling as if he had a layer of dirt on his skin that couldn't be washed away, feeling treacherous and traitorous and ugly inside. The next day, he was paired in single combat again, and this time, Jax fought with savagery that startled him. His opponent was left bleeding and unconscious and broken in half a dozen places, but the dirt remained, and Boran took him back to Madam Vura's inn, to Elana, and this time, it was easier to pretend it was dream. The feeling of filth remained, and became a crust, a hardening within.

Then, long after Jax had stopped keeping track of days and weeks and months, Luravian announced that the Contests were to begin the next day, and Jax would be part of the first group to enter the ring. “Survival is the only rule, brutans,” Luravian told them, as they stood in a long, low tunnel, sharp steel swords in their hands, sweat in their eyes and nerves afire, knees a-tremble. “Survive, at all costs, and you might win your freedom, someday, as I did.”

A horn sounded, a long trumpeting blast, and the gate in front of them ground open. Jax and the six other brutans entered the ring into blinding sunlight and the deafening roar of screaming crowds. Jax felt his gorge rise, felt his fingers tighten to white on the hilts of his swords, felt a trickle of sweat tickle down his spine. He had metal-studded leather vambraces on his forearms, matching greaves on his legs over knee-high boots, and a cuirass over his chest. His swords were straight, two-edged short-swords, about three feet long, with a small cross-guard and a spiked pommel. They were battered and dented, much-used, but polished to a gleam and razor-sharp, well-weighted. They sat easy and comfortable in his hands, and despite the pounding fear in his gut, he swung them in circles at his sides, took deep breaths to push down the fear. The ring was huge, with high walls keeping contestants away from the paying crowds. The sand was raked in intricate lines, the sun high over head and bright and hot. Facing Jax and his ludis-mates were seven others, nearly identical, but their cuirasses had daubs of bright red paint on them front and back for differentiation.

The trumpet sounded again, and a man in long bright white robes stood up on a balcony. He held a golden staff in his hands, what Jax supposed was a scepter, and had a circlet on his head, making him the king or emperor, or whatever. Jax didn't care who he was, he had no thoughts at all, except visions of parries and lunges, possible combinations. He hoped, in some distant part of his mind, that it would be over quickly, whatever the outcome. The emperor (Jax remembered Farrago talking about an emperor) lifted his staff above his head, and the brutans next to Jax tensed, crouched, readied themselves like runners at the blocks waiting for the gun; the golden staff dropped and they were running, Jax with them, charging with roars and with grim silence. There was a clash of bodies, leather, metal, and bone, grunts and curses. Jax found himself slashing at a skeletal apparition in ill-fitting armor, swinging a clumsy, weak stroke. Sparks flew and his arm shivered, his off-hand sword plunged of its own accord into the small gap between cuirass and kilt, eliciting a whimper and a sigh, a glut of blood from slack lips. Jax jerked his blade free, swiveled to block a slow side-arm chop, struck in return, drawing blood from a bicep and leaving his opponent off-balance. It was too easy. That one fell too, slumping heavily to the dust with a gash where his throat used to be. His comrades weren't faring as well, he discovered. Three were down and unmoving, two were losing their battles; only one seemed able to keep his blood on the inside.

It was all a blur, just a whirl of silver blades and jarring clashes and scattered splatters, slow sighs of disbelief, low grunts of blood-letting. He was moving in a daze, unthinking, unfeeling, almost unaware of anything but sword hilts in his hands and the roar of crowds. Then, suddenly, it was him and one other, facing three red-splotched brutans. Jax's brother-in-arms sidled over, put his back to Jax with a nod and slight smile. What was there to smile about, Jax wondered? They were about to die. These three remaining, they were unstoppable. They worked in harmony and silence, in a rhythm of synchronicity. They approached slowly, evenly-spaced, expressionless, inscrutable. The crowd was silent, expectant, and only the crunch of boot-heels on sand filled the quiet. There was a frozen, then, moment, a tense tableau, followed by a darting steps and a quick gleam of sword blades in the bright sun. The crash was deafening, and the crowd roared to life again and added to the din; Jax kept his back to his fellow brutan, refused to be separated, and together, they fended off a dozen attacks, warded clever feints and obvious lunges. The battle was endless, the sun hot and blinding. Sweat made sword-hilts slippery, exhaustion made steps slower, and everyone was bleeding. Someone's fingers slipped, just slightly, a tip drooped and Jax thrust his blade home, found himself blocking with the other blade, drawn away from his mate, and now it was one-on-one again, and Jax was shuffling backwards and spinning a vain defense as his quick, skilled opponent came on and came on, thrust and lunged and feinted until Jax wasn't sure if he was coming or going. The fateful moment came, as such things do, in a slow-motion vignette: he felt his ankle twist and his foot roll as he stepped on an out-flung limb, he fell to one knee, the other underneath him and throbbing fiercely, but there was no time to feel it because there was a sword point coming at his chest and he knew the leather wouldn't stop the thrust and his blades were down and there just wasn't enough time...

He let himself fall backward, ignoring the protest of his ankle, felt a hot ribbon of pain slice into his shoulder and there was a huge suffocating weight on top of him and warm gush of wetness all over him and the crowd was screaming maniacally as he strained with all his strength to shove the dead weight off him. It seemed he'd gotten his point up in time. He struggled to his feet laboriously, and now his shoulder was on fire, as were countless other places all over him. He was bleeding, he covered in blood, some his, some others', and there was no way to know the difference. The other brutan from his ludis was on his feet as well, holding a red-covered arm. They hobbled to stand next to each other, facing the emperor, who smiled a faint, evil smile, looked around him at the crowd, which was still cheering and screaming in blood-lust. The emperor, a fat, jowly middle-aged man, red and sweating and porcine, lifted his scepter, pointed from Jax to the other survivor, lowered his scepter slowly, freighted with awful meaning. The two men exchanged stares, knowing full well what the emperor meant. Something within Jax rebelled. This was too much, too much. He'd bled with this man, fought with him, and even though he didn't know his name, he felt a bond of kinship formed in blood and strife. Jax held his swords out in front of him, dropped them to the sand.

The crowd fell silent, stunned. Silence held, a hush profound and tense, until the emperor gestured and a dozen Corsairs trooped out of a door with long-bladed spears. Jax took up his swords once again, nodded at his ludis-mate, and stepped forward towards the Corsairs. Before anyone could strike a blow, however, Luravian's voice called out a countermanding order, and the emperor nodded in acquiescence, eliciting disappointed booing from the crowd.

Luravian was silent all the way back to the ludis. He accompanied Jax, alone, to his cell. “That was stupid, boy,” he eventually said.

“Maybe so. But I'd rather die having spilled Corsair blood than...that.”

“Would he have done the same, do you think? Jurin would have turned on you in a second, if it meant his own survival.”

“I don't care what Jurin would have done.”

“Well, I can see that. I must say, I think highly of your sense of honor, but not much of your sense of survival. That being said, that was one of the best Contests Carth has seen in generations. The crowd loved you. I personally made a fortune on you. You've got three more brutan matches, and then you rank up.”

“How do the Contests work?”

“Simple enough. You start as a brutan, and that's three group matches like you had today. Survive all of those, and you take the rank of brutor. Survive three matches one-on-one, against other brutors, and you become a brutus. A brutus fights alone, against whatever comes into the ring. It could be a past champion, one-on-one, or it could be against a dozen fresh brutans, green and raw, or it could be against raveners, or an arranged mock-battle. Four times you must fight alone, and if you live through them, then you are free. I am one such. The title Brutus garners respect, even if you may never be welcome in the courts of the nobles. You will find a Brutus wearing the armor of a captain aboard a Dreadnaught, commanding the city guards, or running a ludis, like me...if you can make it that far.” With that, Luravian left, and a guard entered, wielding the key to the shackles. Something undefinable in the guard's expression made Jax uneasy. So far, he head never had his hands chained, which had led him to hope that perhaps his vision had been wrong, or inaccurate. There had been differences, so far. But now, he wasn't so sure. The guard closed the manacles, first around his feet, then his hands. Jax was left with just barely enough room to shift positions, but not enough slack to be entirely at ease. However he moved, he was left extended in a painful position. The guard sauntered out of the cell and closed the door behind him, leaving Jax still bleeding freely from a dozen wounds, covered in drying, caked, and itchy blood, exhausted, and hungry, and now it looked as if things were about to get worse.

After what might have been an hour Jax heard footsteps in the hall, a key in the lock of the cell door. The hinges squealed as the heavy iron-bound door was opened, revealing a different guard. This one was not from the ludis. His armor was clean and polished, expensive-looking, as were his weapons; in fact, his entire demeanor spoke of upper-class bodyguard, rather than battle-hardened warrior, as was the case with the ludis guards. This man was haughty, arrogant and swaggering. Jax wished he were unchained so he could rearrange the bastard's face with his bare hands...the viciousness of the thought startled Jax. The bodyguard stepped aside with an extravagant flourish: three small, hooded figures entered single-file and stood over Jax. He could feel their gazes raking over him, filling him with a sense of revulsion. He knew what was coming, and he could do nothing to prevent it. He tried to curl in on himself, but his chains brought him up short. The guard chuckled, a low, lecherous, evil laugh.

“I'll be within shouting distance, m'ladies. Should this lout cause you trouble, call for me...I'll soften him up for you,” he said, turning on a heel with crisp precision. His boot-heels clicked loudly on the stone flags, and the hallway echoed with a low, tuneless whistle that receded to a barely-audible distance.

One of the figures stepped forward, dug a pale, manicured hand into a pocket of the forest-green robe and produced a small glass phial. “Drink this,” came the order, in a high, musical, imperious voice. “If you resist, I will call for Herick, and that would be...unpleasant for you. This need not be difficult, brutan. If you cooperate, I think you might find it to be even...enjoyable.” The figure lifted her hands and pulled back the hood. Long, curled auburn hair framed sharp and avian features, her brown eyes were aristocratic, hard and haughty as they took in Jax's recumbent, chained figure with palpable desire. She turned her head and addressed the other two figures. “Ladies, your hoods. We mustn't be rude, you know.” The other two lowered their hoods as well, revealing two more pairs of eyes that examined Jax possessively. The first woman knelt down next to Jax, pulled the cork from the phial and held it to his lips. Jax pushed down his emotions, concentrated on turning himself to stone, unfeeling, unchanging; he swallowed the bright yellow fluid. It was pungent, tasting like some exotic fruit. As soon as it settled in his stomach, Jax felt it take effect. Lack of desire was no longer an obstacle, it seemed.

“Good,” the woman said, a cold smile on her face. “It is essence of the Swellroot flower, in case you were wondering. I'm sure you can feel its purpose.” She unbuckled his kilt and slid a hand downwards.

“Ah, yes,” she said, her voice low and sultry now, “you are quite ready, I think.” With her free hand she unbuttoned the heavy silver buttons holding her robe closed, and when the last of the buttons was free, she shrugged her shoulders and writhed her torso so that the soft, fine wool fabric slid off of her and to the floor. Beneath it, she was bare. The other two women followed suit, shedding their robes as well. One knelt on the other side of Jax from the first woman, while the third sat astride him, bold and eager, put her small, slim hands on his chest. The other two bent over him, removed his armor, brushed his matted hair out of his face, put their lips to his skin, licked the blood away with moans that made his gorge rise in disgust.

Jax closed his eyes, held himself absolutely still, muscled tensed and rigid. They were insatiable, it seemed. In his head, Jax pictured himself as a bird, once again, soaring aloft in warm currents of air, diving and drifting beneath the bright sun. It was a paltry escape, but it was better than what was happening to him, here and now. He felt the collar send a warning burst of pain through him when the fantasy of flight turned into an unintentional pull on the magic of shape-shifting. He hadn't tried to shift since the day he was sold, on the stage, that first day in Carth. He'd almost forgotten that he could. But now, with these vile creatures disguised as beautiful women writhing atop him, violating him, eagerly and greedily devouring him, he tried once more, just to feel a physical pain. The electric heat washed over him, and the pain of it was a relief, an ecstasy of agony, a throbbing horror of sun-heat in his veins. The woman atop him—he'd long since lost track of which one of the three it was—shrieked loudly, a sound of pleasure turned to surprised pain. She flopped over and off of him, weeping bitterly and cursing in choked sobs. Jax felt a rush of grim satisfaction, realizing that she had felt the effects of the phase-phage collar. He laughed aloud as the hurt woman slapped him with all her strength, clawed her nails into his flesh.

The guard stomped into the cell. “What did he do?” He demanded.

“I...I don't know...” the woman said with a hiccup. “It was like I'd been stung by a whole hive of wasps, or...or...or had burned by a flame, but...inside.” The guard just grunted a curse, cracked Jax across the face with the butt of his spear.

“Do you wish to return to the palace, m'ladies?”

The women exchanged glances. “I'll go out in the hall with Herick,” this was the girl who'd gotten stung by the collar. The other two seemed inclined to stay.

One of them glanced up at Herick, held her hand out to him. “Give me a knife,” she ordered. Herick drew a short dagger from his boot and handed it to her. “Very good. Now leave us.” She put the blade to Jax's throat, dug the point in just deep enough to draw blood.

“Hear me, slave. I don't know what you did to Neera, but if you do it again, I'll kill you and pay the fine to Luravian.” She looked at the other woman and nodded.

Well, he'd gotten rid of one, at least. He considered trying to phase again, just to spite them, but one glance at the woman with the knife disabused him of that notion. Her eyes told him, very clearly, that she would drive the knife into him with as little compunction as she would step on a bug.

They took their time, those two. They fed him another phial of the yellow Swellroot essence. By the time they had had their fill, every muscle was on fire, and he couldn't form a coherent thought. Maybe he would be able to file this away as just a nightmare, he thought as he faded into unconsciousness. Something told him that it wouldn't be that easy.

It wasn't.

* * *

He retreated within himself, after that. Emotions were a weakness, a soft chink in the exoskeleton of self-loathing, in the carapace of hatred for the world around him. He stored up the softness deep within, built it up in a pile in his soul, let it fester and sour and grow rotten. Then, when the day of Contest came, he gave it vent, performed a dark alchemy upon the self-pity, the loneliness, the thoughts of suicide, the longing for a home and comfort, for escape, turned it into blood-lust, into merciless fury, into a mastery of the ring. The crowd reveled in his unstoppable brutality, they screamed and threw coins, the women threw themselves at him by the dozen, by the score. Once a limp-wristed delicate-looking male courtier came, but Jax struggled so violently, biting, kicking, cursing, thrashing and spitting that the courtier left ashen-faced and horrified. The guard pummeled him into a pulp with his spear, then, but Jax welcomed it. He took the pain and devoured it greedily, sucked at the agony for strength like it was the pap of some evil goddess.

He didn't recognize himself. He wasn't Jax, any longer. He was Brutor Magnus. The battles were the only clear memories he had, all that he allowed himself to remember. The rest was a blur of horror and nightmares, endless lines of women coming to having their time with the god of the Brutalian ring. By the time he attained the rank of Brutus, Luravian had made a dozen fortunes off of him, came to see him and shower him with bags of useless gold, with the most luscious of women, with wine and narcotics and his pick of custom-made weapons; he came with everything but freedom. He fought with the weapons of a Corsair, strangely: the curved single-edge saber, the tomahawk with a wide blade on one side and long hook on the other. The saber and the handaxe fit him perfectly, fit his hacking, aggressive style hand-in-glove. He lived for the moment when the black-and-rust gate scraped open and he strode swaggering and weapons held aloft into the circle of sunlight. The ecstatic, madding crowd screamed his name, and he devoured their worship and used his alchemy upon that as well, sent it pulsing into his sword-arm, turned it into the red haze that curtained his vision. He had long-since entered a realm of insanity, he knew, but he didn't care. Nothing mattered. There was no freedom, no escape, not from the ludis, not from the ring, not from the noblewomen and their phials of Swellroot...not from himself.

Then came the day of his last match, the final battle before he won his freedom. He sharpened his blades until the very air seemed to split away from the razor edges, he kept a tight clamp on the idea of freedom and thoughts of what he would do with it. The crowd had swollen until people were standing cheek-by-jowl, and the din of their blood-maddened screaming was deafening. He stepped out into the ring, stood in the center and pivoted in a circle, looking at the ubiquitous crowd, the sun-brown faces, mouths wide and hand clapping, ululating and shrieking. He felt no fear, but then, he didn't feel anything at all.

The grate on the opposite wall juddered open and a file of Corsairs trooped out. Jax tried to count them, but lost track at twenty. At first, he thought perhaps they were part of a ceremony of some sort, but then the grate closed behind them and they swept around into a semi-circle formation around him, and he knew that these Corsairs were his final challenge. Each one of them had yellow-painted pouldrons on their shoulders, and that, Jax had learned, signified that they were members of an elite unit. Now he felt a twinge of fear stir in his gut; the calcareous, carefully-constructed shell of emotionless bravado softened and shook, just a little. Deep inside, where his true self hid, he didn't want to die. He wanted to fly again, on bird's wings, he wanted to stalk through the grass on cat feet or snake belly, he wanted to hold Thyra again...

That way lay dangerous thoughts. Jax swung his sword savagely, stretching and readying himself. He crouched low, set his teeth, breathed slowly, took shuffling, sliding steps into the arc of his enemies. He saw a flash of white teeth through a mask, saw that these Corsairs were eager for the fight. His death-grip on the sword-hilts loosened slightly, the hard ball of fear in his throat warmed and metamorphosed into a pulsing rush of fury that lent him strength. The heat of the sun slipped off of him, and his flesh turned cool and pimples raised on his flesh. A bird passed over head and its shadow seemed to cross over him slowly, too slowly. Was this magic, then? He felt no tug of used energy in his gut...perhaps it was adrenaline...?

A heel crunched in the sand, a blade whistled thinly in the air, the screams of the crowd sounded low and hollow and distant; Jax pivoted, leaned back, met the descending axe with his own, threw it out and away and charged forward with a shoulder to the armor-hard chest and felt his foe stumble, and that was all he needed. A half-step back, a foot to the gut, an axe-blow to the exposed pale neck and one was down; the second was stepping over the fallen first and swinging both arms inward and Jax blocked, kicked downward with a savage heel onto a knee-joint, crashed sword-pommel to face-mask, reversed and thrust the blade to its hilt through the throat, loosing a flood of blood onto the sand, onto his own feet, and the warm tang of blood in his nostrils was like fire on dry tinder, was like an infection in his brain. He saw nothing then, felt nothing, was no one at all but spinning sword-edge and sullen hatred and axe-blade biting into bone.

The third and fourth came simultaneously, left and right, high and low, fake and feint, thrust and slash. Jax ducked between them, swiped at the space between greaves and boots, engaged swords with another, crushed axe to mask, was rewarded by stumbles and blood oozing from eye and mouth holes. The shadow of the bird was still passing overhead, floating slowly in lazy circles and figure-eights...a blade caught Jax on the arm and creased his cheek, another his thigh, and now he was backing and defending desperately against four at once, unable to breathe for the speed of the melee, and the crowd, the awful roaring crowd loved it, loved it so, slurped up the sight of the blood and the gore and the death and the agonies of death-throes, and Jax hated them most of all, hated the rictuses of morbid glee like orgasms of corrupted vampiric sensuality. The sweating masses licked at the scenes of misery like the painted, scented, heaving-breasted noblewomen paid heaps of gleaming coin to lave the blood from his bare, crawling skin and writhe sloppily atop him, disregarding the horror in his eyes, the vomit at his teeth. Jax would gladly ascend the wall and carve into them, slay them all before he would cross swords with his fellow combat-slaves.

He tripped over a body, felt warm stickiness on his face and salty cooling blood in his mouth as he rolled off and impaled a rushing Corsair on his upheld sword, saw three charging at him and scrambled to his feet, knew he wasn't set to defend against them all, for two more were behind them. Jax ran full-tilt at the wall, slid the sword between belt and armor, turned his axe in his hand so the long curving hook on the end opposite the blade was facing forward, leapt up with all the power he could summon and caught at the lip of the wall with the hook of the axe and pulled himself up, clambered to his feet on the thin high parapet. A guard rushed at him, but Jax caught the spear and yanked it free, planted the hook in the guard's throat and toppled him over the edge. He had the spear now, but there were too many guards coming at him through the wild crowds, so he ran along the edge around the ring, leapt down and hung the axe from his belt. The spear was twelve feet long, with a leaf-shaped head. It was wonderfully balanced weapon, and Jax used it to devastating effect, goring a Corsair through the armor, withdrawing and spinning it around to sweep another from his feet, reversing once more and pinning him to the sand through his gut. There were only two left, and they spread apart to come at Jax from opposite sides; the spear was buried in the sand, so Jax took up his sword and axe once more, trying to keep both enemies in sight at once.

They charged him at the same time. Jax dodged and ducked and blocked, but still took a glancing axe-blade to the armor on his chest, knocking him back and cracking a rib, spiking each breath with lances of pain, bringing up a pink froth that he spat out with a curse. A saber sliced across his knee, stumbling him, and now he was on his back suddenly and gasping, his sword gone and buried to the hilt under an arm, and the last one was atop him on his chest forcing an axe to Jax's throat with inexorable slowness. Jax tried a desperate gambit: he swung his legs up and wrapped his bleeding aching knee around the Corsair's throat, jerked downward. The warrior was thrown to the sand and Jax flung himself forward, chopping down with clumsy force.

The crowd was silent momentarily, then burst out into new screams of joy at the display. Jax struggled to his feet, eyes on the emperor. Jax expected to see him rise to his feet, raise his scepter in some kind of ceremonial gesture. The emperor, however, smiled laconically, flicked a lazy finger, slurped at wine from a heavy jeweled gold goblet. A grinding of gears and scraping of metal on stone: a section of the floor rose up, revealing a massive cage that contained a hissing, clicking, spitting, screeching creature from a demon's nightmare. The cage was opened and the thing inside darted out towards Jax with horrifying speed. It looked to Jax like a cross between a centipede and a cobra, but as large as a pony; a dozen skritching jagged legs on each side of a long serpentine body, a torso that rose up wide-hooded and tall with a fanged mouth and cold staring eyes. Jax heard gasps from the crowd, and a woman's voice shrieked “it's a ravener! A ravener!” And Jax knew death was dear, then. The fangs dripped venom as the ravener skittered towards Jax, torso extended to strike. Jax threw himself to the side, but not fast enough to avoid the stepping, piercing spike-like feet stabbing him. He slashed wildly, blindly with a sword, hacked with his axe upwards at the long body. The blood that spilled was bright orange and burned and sizzled where it spattered on him. Three legs thumped to the ground, but the ravener wasn't slowed at all, only spun on its axis and darted its arrow-shaped head at him, missing with its fangs but catching his sword arm in its mouth, crushing and shaking, throwing him to the side. Men with swords Jax could face with impunity, but this thing, this frightful beast from another world was alien and unpredictable and too swift for thought. It struck at him again and Jax let it strike, waited, waited...used a technique borne of last-chances that had worked in the past: he fell backwards at the last second and buried the hook of his axe in the ravener's underbelly and was dragged a dozen feet across the sand, orange blood draining out. The creature skidded to a stop and spun and bucked, trying to get at Jax, and in the fraction of a second between hops and spins, he let go of the axe and transferred his sword to his unbroken hand, stabbed it upwards, one, twice, and again, closed his eyes and mouth and rolled away as the creature writhed and wriggled and bled burning blood on him. He buried his face in the sand, trying to get the blood off of him, spat and screamed as it ate into his skin.

The crowd was mad, now, utterly mad, as Jax staggered to his feet, wiping at his face, coughing, vomiting, and collapsed against the wall. He cracked open one eye, painfully, and watched as the emperor lifted his scepter above his head with both hands, lowered it to waist height and bowed shallowly over it. Luravian emerged from a low door and put an arm around Jax, dabbing at his face with a cloth, chattering:

“Gods, gods...you did it, Magnus, you did it. You made it. You're free, free indeed, and I've already received a dozen offers to employ you. The Corsairs want you bad, they do, they'll put you in the landing troops with possibilities of advancement.”

“This blood, it stings...” Jax had trouble breathing, and his face burned.

“Ah yes, ravener blood'll do that to a man. You'll have scars for life, and your hair'll be white where the blood touched it, but you'll be fine, in time.”

Through slitted eyes and caked blood Jax saw the world around him shift and waver, and then fade to blackness. Free, he thought as consciousness fled, but still the collar sat cold around his neck. He felt the pendant on his chest, too, strangely. It seemed to come and go, somehow. He forgot he wore it, rarely thought of it, but now, it seemed to glow dully and briefly, then faded as he sunk into unwilling sleep.