The Trouble With Heroes.... (6 page)

"They're all gone." Plop. "The staff from
Hellbane." Plop "The fixers down south." Plop.

A chilly emptiness weakened her, and she sat
where lawn met the lake's shingled edge.

Dan stopped tossing the stones. "There's just
the ones in the northern and southern settlements. We've decided we
might as well have a go, as they used to say."

It was like listening to nonsense. "Who used
to say?"

He turned to her and she thought he looked
more relaxed than she'd seen him in weeks. But thin. Too thin.

"Men in war stories. It's usually men.
I've been checking out books and films about war.
Lawrence of Arabia
.
The Dam Busters
.
Reach for the Sky
. I thought I'd see if they had
any suggestions."

"Did they?"

"Be brave, don't give up, and have the right
weapons."

Tempting to think him mad, or joking like the
old Dan, but he was deadly serious. Bad adjective, Jenny.

"What's going to happen, then?"

"I'm going to die. But," he added with an
almost Dannish smile, "in the best tradition of English heroism,
I'm going to keep a stiff upper lip and take as many with me as I
can."

Jenny wanted to say, No, to deny reality, but
she knew it was the flat truth. "We're all going to die, I suppose.
Is there anything the rest of us can do?"

"Give us reason to try, perhaps."

"If you fail, you die. Isn't that reason
enough?"

He sat on the grass facing her. "I'm worn out
by the waiting. In a way, I want it over."

She shivered, recognizing a reflection of her
own state.

"Living and dying don't seem particularly
important any more," he said, "but Gaia is. I mean us, the people
who've made Gaia home. I'm going to fight for that as long as I
can. Perhaps I can make a difference.”

She reached out and touched his hand.

“
I know what it'll cost, though, Jen.
You probably know, too. How it seems easier to die now. Get it over
with."

It was the ashes in the wind put into
words.

Praying she read him right, she moved close
and grasped his tense hands, then raised one for the lover's kiss,
as he had done to her, so long ago.

His hand flexed slightly against her jaw.
"Are you preparing to sacrifice yourself for the cause?"

"No." If he could face the blighters, she
could face honesty. "Just hoping."

He closed his eyes, then drew her hand to his
mouth. "I called you. Tonight. Bad form when you'd not taken up my
offer, but... I need you, Jen. You. Now."

Breathtakingly, she didn't doubt it. There'd
been no reason for her wandering search, and in fact the search
hadn't wandered, but had drifted here like a feather on the
wind.

"How. How did you call me?"

He drew her close, and his lips traced her
cheek, her ear, her jaw. "I'm practicing rusty skills. If I'm going
to fight, I'm going to fight dirty."

"I don't understand."

"You don't need to...."

And she didn't. There was nothing rusty about
his lovemaking skills and she sensed the something extra. It was
little to do with her, no matter what he said, but everything to do
with magic, with death. With more than death.

It sprang from hovering annihilation. Fear of
that surrounded them and played in the magic of their minds. Fear
of a void, that he fought with fire.

She let him undress her because he wanted to,
and because each incidental brush of his hands on her skin was like
liquid pleasure. It flowed over her and into her so she pushed off
his shirt to get to his skin, to give back, to draw more.

When she was naked, she stripped him, stroked
him, cradled him. Then he was in her, slow, relentless, building a
dizzying power. She might have been afraid of dying if things like
that mattered any more. All that mattered was the cauterizing
conflagration and the drifting postapocalyptic dream.

She came back to reality to find she was
lying on her back on soft grass with Dan half over her, his head
cradled on her breasts. He seemed relaxed, replete, and she felt
the same way. What a fool she'd been. They could have been easing
each other's bodies, minds, and souls like this all along.

So much wasted time, and now he was going off
to die.

"Rusty skills," she said, playing with his
shoulder-length hair. Longer than he used to wear it.

"Is that a complaint?"

She heard the smile in it, so didn't
answer.

She'd rather not think at all, but her mind
was coming back to life.

"The stones. What were you doing?"

"Controlling matter." Shifting, he lazily
pulled a handful of grass and tossed it in the air. She watched it
hang there, then suddenly shower down on them.

"Sorry," he said, brushing it off her. "Still
rusty."

The fire was in his touch, though, and
brushing led to nibbling, nibbling led to kissing, and kissing to
another apocalypse. An easy way to mindless pleasure, but reality
returned.

He couldn’t die.

She had to save him.

"Someone must have sent for help," she said.
“From Sector, or even Earth.”

"Weeks ago, but it won't arrive in time. And
anyway, what do other places know about blighters?"

But he sat and pulled her up to face him.
"Any response might arrive in time to take some survivors off. Go
north tomorrow, Jenny, and keep going north. Try to survive until
the evacuation ships come."

It was good advice, but Jenny doubted she'd
take it. She couldn't imagine fleeing north while Dan went south to
die. And she didn't want to leave Gaia. Perhaps it was the scrap of
magic in her, that mysterious Gaian part, but she felt she'd wither
and die away from here.

"I didn't know you could do things like that
-- the grass. How is that fixing?"

His grimace showed that he’d noticed her lack
of promise, but he didn’t pursue it. Perhaps he understood too
well. "It isn't."

He collapsed onto his back, hands beneath his
head, beautiful enough to distract. Perhaps that was his purpose.
It wasn't going to work.

"So what is it?"

His eyes swiveled to hers. "Wild magic."

She knew he was about to tell her something
important, but this time she wanted to know. "What's that?"

"The elemental force, I think. Fixers are
born with magic. No one knows why. It doesn't go in families. No
amount of effort can create it or increase it."

Okay, so she was weak. She leaned up on her
elbow to trace the contours of his chest. "What about the
training?"

"That's not to teach us how to do things.
That's to teach us how not to do things." He caught her hand and
looked straight at her. "Here's the truth, Jenny. The truth no
one's supposed to know. Hellbane U makes such a fuss about finding
fixers because they daren't leave a single one unchecked. We can't
have wild magic."

"I don't understand."

"Remember when I fixed your finger?”

“
But there was nothing bad about
that.”

“
What about the baby?”

She’d pushed that to the back of her mind.
“Would it really be so terrible for fixers to heal like that?”

“
Yes, yes it would. In that, the
training’s right. We can’t fool with nature. That’s what drove
Earth to the brink. Death’s natural. Without orderly cycling of the
parts the whole will rot.”

“
Then what are you doing with stones
and grass?” She couldn’t stop a sharp edge in her voice.

“
Looking for a weapon. What if wild
magic is more useful than tame against the blighters?"

She stared at him. “Tell me.”

He rose and pulled her to her feet. "If I’m
going to be coherent, we'd better get dressed."

He found her bra and knickers in with his
clothes and tossed them to her. "I have tea."

She noticed the glow of his small campfire,
tucked amidst rocks where it wouldn’t be easily seen.

He picked up his shirt and found her bra and
knickers underneath. He tossed them to her. She resisted the
temptation to make a performance out of putting them on. They
needed to find a way to survive. A way to win the war.

Once she was dressed she went to sit there
with him, holding her hands out to the warmth, though the night was
not particularly cold. "Now tell me."

“
I’m not sure I have my thoughts
straight yet.” He moved a metal pot from onto a trivet over the
flames. Steam began to curl out of the spout.

“
Talking sometimes helps.”

“
Yes.” He poured the tea into two cups.
He’d always planned to draw her here.

"Talk," she said. "How do you suspend
something in the air, and what use it is?"

"I don't know." He picked up a stone and
released it in mid air. It hung there, but then fell. "We don't
understand what fixers do anymore than we understand the blighters,
but I think our... energy... comes from the same place.”

"Negative and positive?"

“
Perhaps, but perhaps not.” He put his
cup aside. “Look, assume that the blighters are not just energy but
a species -- undetectable to us, but following the same patterns as
other species. They are born, they reproduce, they die, and they
need to take in nutrients."

"Do they?"

"I have no idea. This is a working
hypothesis. It would mean that they ash animals because that's
their way of feeding. They transform animals into the same kind of
undetectable energy that they are."

"Like water transformed into steam, then air,
by heat."

"Or like green plants transformed into our
ungreen bodies. That's a kind of magic if you don't know how it
happens."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology appears
to be magic," she said, remembering his words.

He pulled a face. "I can't see anything about
the blighters we could remotely call technology. Perhaps that
comment should say that everything we humans don't understand we
classify as magic."

“
And thus unreal.”

"Until the unreal starts to eat us."

Jenny swirled the last of the stewed tea in
her cup, swirling what he'd said in her mind. "If the blighters are
eating us they'll have to stop, won't they? Otherwise...."

"Otherwise, they'll be like people on Earth
eating all the cod.”

"Good point,” she said. “But they recreated
the cod stocks from DNA."

"And the blighters almost certainly can’t do
that.”

“
So what are you saying? That they’ll
eat us all then die of starvation? That’s not much
comfort?”

“
I’ve been reading up on it. There are
Earth species that eat almost all their food source and then go
dormant until the supply recovers."

It was like pieces of a baffling puzzle
suddenly clicking into place. "That's why Gaia was so perfect for
us! Fertile, lush plant life, but no large or sentient animals. The
blighters had eaten it down to a nub. How long would they be
dormant?"

"As long as it takes."

"But instead,” she said, almost breathless,
“we arrived..."

"Like a delivery dinner."

"But it's been centuries."

"Perhaps they're not programmed to stir until
now. Perhaps their life cycle is naturally measured in centuries.
Perhaps it's something to do with base energy stores...."

"Or perhaps," she said, "they were waiting
for the dinner gong."

He nodded, "My guess is that the occasional
blighters have been checking things out."

"Like the drones combing the universe for
usable planets. Fair's fair, I suppose."

"And survival is survival." He broke a twig
off a nearby bush and began to strip the leaves off it. Something
he'd done as a boy when fretting. "Interesting, isn't it? Gaia was
the perfect planet, settled with extreme care to ensure infinite
harmony and balance. But it all comes back to the jungle in the
end.”

“
Perhaps we had a good run because we
developed fixers and learned to zap them.”

He tossed the bare twig into the fire where
flames licked at it. "Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. This is all crazy
speculation, you know."

"But it makes sense." Jenny looked from the
spluttering twig to the statue of the little girl. "Ashes to
ashes.... Something’s told them dinner's ready, and they’re rushing
to the table. What do we do?”

"That’s the question. When we humans find a
planet we like, minor life forms can’t stop us from cleaning them
out to make things right for settlers. Perhaps we can't stop the
blighters from cleaning us out for food. Some small animals will
survive, and one day, who knows how far into the future, it'll be
dinner time again."

Jenny pressed her fingers to her head as if
that might somehow make her brain sharper. "But you can beat the
blighters. The fixers, I mean. So why can't you beat them now?"

"Numbers. A fixer can beat a blighter
one-on-one with power to spare. A fixer might be able to beat ten,
or even more. It's never been tested, blighters being rather rare."
He shook his head. "That sounds so crazy now. We aren’t efficient
killers – it’s a real case of using a hammer to kill an ant, but it
hasn’t mattered before. Now if we have to zap one after another,
we’re soon drained -- and then they eat us.

“
If the fixers had concentrated to
begin with we might have stopped them, but by the time Hellbane U
realized the nature of the problem, there were too many, too widely
spread around the equator. It's been like trying to drain a swamp
by standing in it with a bucket. With the swamp eating the
bucket."

"How many have you zapped?"

"One, to graduate."

“
That’s all? No wonder it’s not going
well.”