Weird World War IV, page 35
I need to charge.
To become power.
Midnight. I’ve been part of the sky for half a day. The winds changed an hour ago, and they let me loose. I am like an eagle, soaring the winds, catching updrafts and nighttime thermals that propel me toward the GAgers’ stronghold. Inextricably, I feel the power of the stars and the billion suns in the system. Blood has been seeping from me, whipped away with the wind. I am in and out of consciousness, but each time I awake, I revel in being alive. I imagine myself as the Silver Surfer, arcing my way across a dark wave of night dreams toward a certain destiny, weaving the power cosmic.
Galactus cannot stop me, nor can the denizens of the Army of New Custer. The sky has become the new Little Bighorn. Beneath me squirms a mass of the necrotized, dead but focused on the single task to make everyone else dead. Yet, here I am, out of reach. Above their ken.
Flares light the sky in front of me.
The Army of the New Custer sees me coming.
I am not the first.
I am the eighth of my kind.
And I will not be the last.
I feel myself brighten and brighten, soaking in every ounce of light within my view. The flares die, the stars diminish, the suns go dark, leaving me alone and brilliant in a Stygian sky. I become the sun in the middle of night, so dazzling that one must shield their eyes, lest they go blind.
Paha Sapa had once been the center of our universe and now it is the center of the GAgers. Since gold was discovered and the mountains were hollowed, it has been theirs. They think that by living on it, it will accept them.
But they don’t know the truth of it.
The trees are black because of them.
The land is dying because of them.
The world is lost because of them.
Their Golden Age is a pyrite of time.
And then I bloom.
I explode into a million incandescent pieces, each with individual will, powered by practiced and assured geomancy. Like a sudden blizzard of kamikaze fireflies, I light the sky, each piece descending and landing atop a necrophage. Where I land, my energy flows, turning death into life, rot into rule, and must into wheat. They become the barley of the song, the fronds of us all, no longer caught in their Dunning-Kruger OODA loops, but freed to learn the truth, just as they become one with the lands.
And I can almost hear them whisper, Paha Sapa, as I became fable and soft winds shake the barley and the grasses of the plains.
And the shaking and the wind will one day be enough.
Because the barley and the grasses will live far longer than any idea of domination.
FUTURE AND ONCE
John Langan
(The setting: Paimpont Forest, outside Paimpont Village in the Department of Ille-et-Vilaine, in northwest France—or rather, the remains of the forest. Tree stumps cover the ground, none of them more than a couple of feet high, all of them carbonized. The couple of thin trees rising amidst them are similarly charred, their branches stripped; they look like warped flagpoles. The ground itself is scorched, the sky full of roiling gray clouds. Flurries of ash drift across the stage.
(Merlin enters from stage left. At least, he appears to. It may be that he was standing there all this time and we just noticed him. He is as old as you would expect Merlin to be, his beard long and white, though his eyes remain bright. He is perhaps thinner than you would have envisioned, even for a wizard whose concerns are for things other than food. His robes make it difficult to say for sure. They are a gray which retains traces of the deep blue from which they have faded. An assortment of symbols covers them. Whether they have been stitched or painted on is hard to tell. Many of the symbols are familiar, the usual astrological signs you see on a wizard’s robes; in addition, there are characters from numerous alphabets, as well as other designs somewhat in the manner of hieroglyphs. The colors of these decorations change with the movement of the robe, the way a fish’s scales appear to shift color as it glides through running water. You may see emerald, ruby, chartreuse, and violet, among others; although all of them have the same dimmed appearance as the garment on whose folds, you may have noticed, they seem almost to float, possibly to slide. Merlin’s hat is of the dunce-cap variety, conical, of the same gray as his robes, but devoid of their migrating symbols and dented in a couple of spots, as if it had been squeezed into a space slightly too small for it. It perches on the wizard’s shock of white hair like a rider clinging to a horse on the verge of throwing him. As Merlin walks to center stage, his eyes scanning the tree trunks as if searching for something, he clatters and jingles and clinks, as the assortment of necklaces, chains, and pendants hung around his neck, the bracelets circling his wrists, jangle and clash together.
(Ursula Opango follows Merlin a few paces behind. She is nineteen, her tall frame dressed in gray-and-black camouflage helmet, shirt, and pants. High on her right shoulder, a pair of red chevrons on a rectangular black background identify her as a caporal, or corporal, in the French Army. A flak jacket in the same gray-and-black pattern covers her back and chest, its ceramic plates, like those in the large pockets on her pants, making an almost musical clinking as she moves. The pockets on the flak jacket are stuffed. There’s a pistol holstered on her right hip and an assault rifle—an HK416, if precision about such things is important to you—slung around her right shoulder and carried muzzle down in both hands. Where Merlin’s creased and wrinkled skin is toadstool white, except for the red spots on his cheeks, her smooth skin is dark brown.
(Merlin wanders the center of the stage, slowing to peer at and in some cases into the various tree stumps with an almost detached air. He moves between two stumps in particular before finally settling on one at which he stops, beckoning Ursula to join him. It’s not much to look at, even as these tree stumps go, barely more than a disturbance in the ground. Nonetheless, he gestures at it with his left hand.)
Merlin: Here. This one.
(Ursula approaches the tree stump and leans over to look at it, an expression of polite skepticism on her face.)
Ursula: Inside this tree?
Merlin: A hawthorn, yes.
Ursula: For fourteen centuries.
Merlin: Approximately. Record keeping tended to be a rather slipshod affair in those days. Part of the reason I was always writing things down. But yes, close enough.
Ursula: And it was a woman who put you here?
Merlin: Mmm, Nimue, though sometimes she liked to be called Vivian, and one time tried to pass herself off as the Lady of the Lake. Completely ridiculous, of course. At the time, it struck me as part of her charm. I was . . . quite taken with her. Infatuated, you could say. In her presence, the sap of youth rose again in me hot and strong—
Ursula: I get it. You wanted to fuck her.
Merlin: Yes. I did. She had no interest in lying with an old man such as myself, but she was extremely interested in what she might learn of magic from me. I showed her all manner of things. My lust made me reckless. I taught her just enough for her to catch me in a trap I should have evaded with ease, had I not been so distracted. But I was, and Nimue (or Vivian) trapped me.
Ursula: In a tree.
Merlin: A hawthorn, yes. It was very uncomfortable.
Ursula: I imagine so.
Merlin: The most embarrassing part of the matter was, I saw it all coming. I mean to say, I literally knew exactly what was going to happen, down to the very tree she would use to imprison me.
Ursula: You’re serious.
Merlin: Yes. I told you, I may not always tell you the truth in full, but I will do my best not to lie to you.
Ursula: In that case, if you knew this Nimue had it in for you, then why didn’t you do something about it? At the very least, you might have stopped teaching her what she needed to trap you.
Merlin: Tell me, Ursula: Do you remember our encounter with the bandits two days ago?
Ursula (looks away): You know I do.
Merlin: Yes. Things didn’t go so well for the sergeant, did they?
Ursula (still looking away): At least it was quick.
Merlin: True: In circumstances such as these, a single bullet to the head might be considered its own kind of blessing. Based on your remark, I assume you could describe our location, the relative positions of your fellow soldiers, the course of the battle.
Ursula (looks at Merlin): Yes.
Merlin: Excellent. Now change them.
Ursula: What do you mean?
Merlin: Exactly what I said. Change what happened when the bandits ambushed us outside of Rennes. At the very least, advise Sergeant Falcone not to remove his helmet outside the pharmacy.
Ursula: Stop making fun of me.
Merlin: I assure you, I am not. My request is entirely serious.
Ursula: Your request is entirely ridiculous. How can I change what has happened already? We put Falcone in the ground, for fuck’s sake.
Merlin: Exactly. And if you cannot alter the past, how do you expect me to alter the future?
Ursula: Because the future hasn’t happened, yet.
Merlin: Hasn’t it?
Ursula: No.
Merlin: Then how could I know it?
(Ursula begins to reply, stops.)
Merlin: To be honest, I know the future in much the same way you know the past: incompletely. You recall the recent battle with great specificity. This makes sense. It was a memorable event. Undoubtedly, there are many such moments in your life—though how many, I cannot say. I am sure there are small things you recall with startling clarity; I am equally sure there are bigger things you have forgotten some or all of. This is how the future appears to me.
Ursula: So you didn’t know what this Nimue was planning for you?
Merlin: Oh, no. That I could see with perfect clarity. Had I not been able to foretell the future, still would it have been obvious. But Nimue was beautiful and I was overcome with desire. In the same way your past bad experiences with a lover may not be enough to keep you away from them a second or a third time, so my future bad fate at Nimue’s lovely hands was insufficient to keep me from participating in my doom enthusiastically.
Ursula (shaking her head): I’m sorry. It still makes no sense to me.
Merlin: No need to apologize. There are times it seems a little odd to me, too.
Ursula: So you were in the tree for fourteen centuries. What was that like?
Merlin: Cramped. Although the spell Nimue used to imprison me was constructed well—enough for me to be unable to break it, there was room at its edges for certain modifications. This I had planned, as I had no indication I would not do so. I was able to bind myself to the tree and thus draw sustenance from it. I tapped into the network whereby the trees in a forest communicate with one another—
Ursula: They do?
Merlin: What makes you think they would not?
Ursula: I don’t know. I never gave it much thought.
Merlin: Yes, well, trees speak to one another; though their language is one most humans would have difficulty recognizing as such. It is a slow tongue, suited for beings locked in place, their only motion upward and outward. (The grammar’s quite tricky, in fact.) Through patient effort, I succeeded in learning the wisdom of the trees, which is strange, unlike anything I had encountered before—or ahead. I had studied the ways and wisdom of animals—I was particularly adept at the hare and the duck—but this was entirely different. It’s one thing to try to make sense of a hare explaining the best way to escape a pack of dogs; it’s altogether another to parse a sentence which goes on for days describing the changing weather.
Ursula: You could talk to animals?
Merlin: Not only could I speak with them, I could put on their shapes and live among them. I had a brief but tender romance with an absolutely lovely hedgehog . . . Had we world enough and time, I would transform you and me into, oh, I suppose foxes might have a certain applicability to our present circumstances, and together we would take whatever instruction they had to offer us.
(Ursula looks startled by the suggestion.)
Merlin: For a wizard, the world is a university, ever ready to instruct those willing to heed its teachings.
Ursula: If you say so. But I do not think I would like being a fox.
Merlin: Oh? What would you prefer?
Ursula: A bird—a falcon.
Merlin: How interesting. Perhaps once this present business is over.
Ursula: Wait. Is this some kind of psychological test: “Tell me what animal you would choose to be, and I will tell you about yourself”?
Merlin: Possibly. Mostly, I was asking what kind of animal you would like to be. (Begins to walk stage right.) I believe it is time for us to proceed in this direction.
Ursula: Where to?
Merlin: Come and find out.
(With a shrug, Ursula follows. As she does, the background starts to move, scrolling stage left to indicate their process. Even the tree stump the two of them have been considering slides stage left, a startling example of trompe l’oeil. At the same time, neither Merlin nor Ursula’s stride appears false, contrived, the way someone pretending to walk might look. It could be the two of them are moving on top of some type of track inserted into the floor. It could be they’re gifted physical actors.)
Ursula: This ability you have—your foresight. How did you gain it?
Merlin: There are two explanations for my knowledge of the future. The first is that I am living my life backward.
Ursula: How is that possible?
Merlin: I am not one hundred percent certain. I have a theory, which goes something along these lines: viewed from a perspective outside of time (as we understand it), our lives form a kind of grand design, a sculpture in four dimensions. Our consciousness moves in one direction along this sculpture, such that we perceive the past as the past and the future the future. For reasons obscure to me, something happened at what I can only presume is the end of my life to send me backward through it. Since even my mind cannot process the experience of a life lived in reverse, it accommodates the condition as a kind of foresight.
Ursula: You have no idea what the cause was, though.
Merlin: I presume an experiment gone awry, my magic turned against me.
Ursula: Another Nimue?
Merlin: I would not like to think so, but the possibility exists.
Ursula: You said there were two explanations.
Merlin: Yes. The other is that my father is a devil.
Ursula: A what?
Merlin: An incubus, to be precise, a resident of the first circle of Hell. Have you read your Dante?
Ursula: I don’t think so. I was never very good in school. Too many fights.
Merlin: Over what?
Ursula: My mother being Algerian and my father Congolese.
Merlin: Ah. Yes, in that regard, I fear the world has little changed since my time.
Ursula: It’s fine. I found the Army.
Merlin: You did and if I may say so, you are very good at being a soldier.
Ursula: Thank you. Tell me more about your devil father.
Merlin: Do you know, I never met him? In all my long life, not once have I sought him out, summoned him. Yet I owe so much to the portion of his blood coursing through my veins: my intelligence, my cunning, my skill at the magical arts, and (perhaps) my visions of the future. No doubt one of your psychiatrists would make much of such avoidance.
Ursula: I don’t know. It doesn’t seem too complicated to me.
Merlin: Doesn’t it?
Ursula: You think of yourself as good, as trying to do good things. You’re afraid to meet your father and discover you’re more like him than you thought.
Merlin (pauses): That may be.
Ursula: So the damned can see the future.
Merlin: According to Dante, yes. One of the torments of their condition, knowing what is to come in the place they have lost forever.
Ursula: Wait. Dante lived when?
Merlin: 1265 to 1321, I believe.
Ursula: How do you know about him? Weren’t you in your tree by then?
Merlin: I was, had been for hundreds of years at that point. During those centuries, I had arrived at a way to link my tree to the other trees in the forest. They’re quite sensitive to their environment, you know, especially in full bloom. Their leaves pick up all sorts of information from their surroundings, some of it very subtle. By connecting my tree to its fellows, I was able to amplify those abilities, making of the forest a great ear. Unfortunately for me, there wasn’t a great deal of interest to listen to. Over time, however, I learned to refine my ear, to enable it to hear farther and wider. It didn’t make too much difference. Most of what I listened to consisted of men killing men on an ever-larger scale. I had my fill of that during Arthur’s time—before Arthur’s time. Do you know, the earliest reports of me, or of the figures some scholars consider the earliest version of me, went mad upon the defeat and death of his beloved king and roamed the forests in his lunacy?
Ursula: Did you?
Merlin: I can’t recall. It sounds right. By the time I came to advise Arthur, I had counseled many kings and leaders. Some I had become very fond of. All perished, either due to war or treachery. It can be a bit much, after a time. I do have a memory of my beard becoming tangled in an especially stubborn tree bush, and also of eating acorns, which tends to support the madman-in-the-forest hypothesis.
Ursula: All these kings—what were you doing with them?
Merlin: I was trying to make things better. I could see enough of the future to know that it could be better, it would be better. With each local chief and king I advised, I sought to bring the future a little bit closer, to make daily life a little less bad. Arthur was my greatest success, in part for the way his story lived on after his death, for the inspiration it continued to provide.
Ursula: He was supposed to return, wasn’t he? In the hour of England’s greatest need, or something like that. Not that it would do us much good here.
Merlin: The exact nature of Arthur’s return was never adequately explained or understood. It had less to do with Britain and more with the state of . . . (Merlin waves his hands at the backdrop, the ground, the ashy air.) . . . all of this. He wasn’t the only one, you know.
