Elemental (11 page)

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Authors: Steven Savile

BOOK: Elemental
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Over the course of the next few days while he healed from his attack, Thom had stayed in the fabled isle of Avalon and listened to Merlin's stories of Arthur and his knights.
But more than that, he'd seen them. At least those who still lived. There for a week, he'd walked amongst the legends and shook the hands of fables. He'd learned that Merlin was only one of her kind. Others like her had been sent out into the world of man to be hidden from Morgan who wanted to use those Merlins and the sacred objects they protected for evil.
It was a frightening battle they waged. One that held no regard for time or beings. And in the end, the very fate of the world rested in the hands of the victor.
“I wish to be one of you,” Thom had finally confessed to Merlin on the evening of his eighth day. “I want to help save the world.”
Her eyes had turned dull. “That isn't your destiny, Thom. You must return to the world of man and be as you were.”
She made that sound simple enough, but he wasn't the same man who had come to Avalon. His time here had changed him. “How can I ever be as I was now that I know the truth?”
She'd stepped away from him. “You will be as you were, Thom … I promise.”
And then everything had gone blurry. His eyesight had failed until he found himself encased in darkness.
Thom awakened the next morning to find himself back in England, in his own house … his own bed.
He'd tried desperately to return to Avalon, only to have everyone tell him that'd he'd dreamed it all.
“You've been here the whole time,” his housekeeper had sworn.
But he hadn't believed it. How could he? This wasn't some illness that had befallen him. It wasn't.
It was real (another four letter word that often led men to disaster).
Eventually Thom had convinced himself that they were right and he'd dreamed it all. The land of Merlins had only existed in his mind. Where else could it have been?
And so he'd returned to his old ways. He'd gambled, he'd fought, he'd wenched, and most of all he'd drunk and drunk and drunk.
Until
that
night.
It was a night (another noun that was five letters in English and four in French. There were times when the French were greatly astute). Thom had wandered off to his favorite tavern that was filled with many of his less than proper friends. As the night passed, and they'd fallen deep into their cups, Geoffrey or maybe it'd been Henry or Richard had begun to place a wager.
He who told the best tale would win a purse of coin (not the four letters here).
No one knew how much coin was in the purse because they were all
too drunk to care. Instead they had begun with their stories before a small group of wenches who were their judges.
Thom, too drunk to notice that a man had drawn near their table, had fondled his wench while the others went on before him.
“That's all well and nice,” he'd said as Richard finished up some retelling of one of Chaucer's tales (the man was far from original). “But I, Thomas Malory …
Sir
Thomas Malory can beat you all.”
“Of course you can, Thom,” Geoffrey had said with a laugh and a belch. “You always
think
you can.”
“No, no, there is no think … I'm too drunk for that. This is all about doing.” He'd held his cup out to be refilled before he'd started the story. At first he'd meant to tell the story of a farming mishap his father had told him of, but before he could think better of it (drinking usually had this effect), out had come the whole matter of the King Arthur Merlin had told him about.
Or at least some of it. Being Thom, who liked to embellish all truth, he'd taken some liberties. He'd changed a few things, but basically he'd kept to the story. After all, what harm could come of it? He'd dreamed it all anyway, and it was an interesting tale.
And the next thing he'd known, he'd won that wager and taken home a purse which later proved to only contain two rocks and some lint. A paltry prize indeed.
Then, before he'd even known what had happened, people had started coming up to him and speaking of a book he'd written. Thom, not being a fool to let such fame bypass him, had played along at first. Until he'd seen the book himself. There it was, in all beautiful glory. His name.
No man had ever destroyed his life more quickly than Thom did the instant that book became commonly available.
One instant he'd been in his own bed and the next he'd been in a small, tiny, infinitesimal cell with an angry blond angel glaring at him.
“Do I know you?” he'd asked her.
She'd glared at him. Out of nowhere,
the
book had appeared. “How could you do this?”
Now at this time, self-preservation had caused Thom to ask the one question that had been getting men into trouble for centuries. “Do what?”
And just like countless men before him (and after him, is this not true, men?) he learned too late that he should have remained completely silent.
“You have unleashed our secret, Thomas. Doom to you for it, because with this book you have exposed us to those who want us dead.”
Suddenly, his dream returned to him and he remembered every bit of it. Most of all, he remembered that it wasn't a dream.
The Lords of Avalon were all real … just as Morgan was. And as Merlin led the remnants of the Knights of the Round Table, Morgen led her Cercle du Damné. Two halves fighting for the world.
But that left Thom with just one question. “If you had all that magic, Merlin, why didn't you know about the book that would be written if you returned me to the world?”
With those words uttered, he'd learned that there truly was a worse question to ask a woman than A) her age, B) her weight, and C) do what?
“Please note that here I rot and here I stay until Merlin cools down.”
Thom looked down at the PDA and sighed. Time might not have any real meaning in Avalon, but it meant a whole hell of a lot to him.
BY JOE HALDEMAN
 
Joe Haldeman wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up. He went on to get a BS in astronomy … and an MFA in writing. He sold his first story in 1969, while he was still in the army, post-Vietnam, and his book
The Forever War
won the Hugo, Nebula, and Ditmar Awards as Best Science Fiction Novel of 1975. A full-time writer for more than twenty-five years now, Haldeman's most recent novels include:
Guardian
(2002),
Camouflage
(2004), and
Old Twentieth
(2005). He has published short stories and novellas, songs and poetry, articles and editorials—and appears in about twenty languages, including Klingon, which he suspects will generate letters he won't want to answer. He is on the National Space Society Board of Advisors, and currently works as an adjunct professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Expedition, with Recipes” is a hidden gem, written during the early years of Haldeman's illustrious career but never published. “It was a classic failure of communication,” said Haldeman. “A woman who worked for a UNICEF magazine was looking for five or six science fiction writers to each do a story, under 2,000 words, about ‘children and food in the future.' When you tell a science fiction writer to write a story, he naturally types out a piece of fiction. But the woman had wanted a ‘story' in newspaper parlance, a nonfiction piece. I wrote ‘Expedition' that day, and sent it off. A few months later, I got a small check, but the story never appeared.”
Joe Haldeman lives in Florida. Learn more at his Web site:
http://home.earthlink.net/~haldeman
. .
1 c. rice
2 c. water, boiled and filtered
Prepare rice in the usual manner. Serves 10.
There were many places
to play, when there was time to play. They liked best playing in the City, of course, since their parents forbade
it. But you had to have at least a dozen kids to go in there, because of the dogs and cats. And sometimes the people you saw there, the drifters.
They met at a bend in the river, where a collapsed railroad bridge afforded a broken passageway across the rapids. It led to the ashes and fascinating rubble of the City.
Fifteen children squatted, hidden, behind the riverbank. The thawing mud under their shoes squeaked every time someone shifted his weight. They ranged in age from eight or nine to about twelve.
“Where's Danny? We can't wait much longer,” Francine whispered. She was the oldest, and would lead the expedition if Danny didn't show up.
“Can't go without Danny,” another said. Which was more practical than loyal; Danny had the only gun.
“He'll make it,” Steve said. He was Danny's best friend. He raised himself cautiously to peer over the riverbank.
“
Don't do that
,” Francine said. “What did I tell you?”
“I'm careful,” Steve protested. The sentry who guarded the entrance to their commune was a good quarter-mile away; Francine was being overcautious.
He didn't see anything. Francine passed the time by telling a story, a cautionary tale, to the three new kids. To the others, too. This was the first expedition since fall, and some of them might have forgotten.
The story was about the importance of staying together. A few years before, a girl had wandered away from the group. They searched for her every afternoon for a week, and finally found her dress and a pile of bones beside the remains of a campfire. Someone had eaten her.
“How do they know it was a person?” one of the new kids said. “Maybe the dogs got her.”
Francine was ready for that, and dropped her voice even lower. “The dogs wouldn't have undressed her. Her dress was bloody but not torn.
“And the dogs would have left her head attached.”
10–20 cockroaches, large
2 tsp. salt (if available; optional)
Reserve insects, live, until you have a sufficient number. Put salt in a pan with a tight-fitting lid, and get the pan very hot before adding insects.
The cockroaches are done when the legs come off easily, though some prefer to cook them longer. They may be shelled before eating.
Danny showed up
and explained that he was late because the gun had been buried on the other side of the commune. (The gun was a .22 rifle, automatic, with a broken stock. The original owner had killed seven dogs with it, but the rest of the pack had dragged him or her down before the rifle could be reloaded.)
They crossed the river single file, Danny leading. No one fell in, and there were no perils waiting at the opposite bank.
“Where to this time?” Steve asked.
“I've been thinking,” Danny said. “We've been wasting time, looking through the stores. That's the first place anybody'd look. We never find more than a can or two.” He pointed to his right. “Maybe we'll find some houses down there. Never been—”
“You know what happened the last time we tried houses,” Francine said.
“We've got a gun this time.”
“We never even saw the one who killed Melissa.”
“Don't argue.” They started down the road. Two large cats stalked them on either flank. One still showed some trace of Siamese parentage, and growled at them. The cats were fearless but prudent; they would attack and kill a single child, perhaps, but knew not to attack a group.
Besides, cats had no trouble finding food in the City.
Some rats
Water
Ashes
Salt
Slit the rats' throats immediately after killing, and hang by their tails to bleed. When bled, immerse in boiling water to which a handful of ashes has been added. Scald the rats for about a half-hour, then remove and scrape the hair off with a dull knife. Eviscerate and soak in salt water overnight (the heads may be removed and used for stock). Parboil in salt water until tender, and then bake or fry.
They came into a
suburban area, where fire-gutted ruins fronted broad expanses of weed. Dark red jumbles of rust stood in driveways and carports.
Finally, one house looked promising. The top floor had burned and collapsed, but the ground floor seemed in fairly good condition. Through a broken window, they could see the white gleam of a refrigerator.
They picked their way carefully through the rubble, into the kitchen. The refrigerator yielded nothing but dry gray fluff and old crockery. But there was a pantry full of canned goods. No freeze-dried food, unfortunately. They knew from experience that most of the canned goods would be spoiled.
The first twenty or so cans gave up nothing but parti-colored rot. “Why don't we just kill the cats?” one of the newcomers asked.
“We tried that once,” Francine said. “Everybody got sick, like to died.”
Danny picked up the gun and slipped the safety off. “Think I heard something,” he said. Actually, he just wanted some fresh air. If they found any food, they'd save him a portion.
The dogs almost got him.
He opened the front door and a large, gaunt mastiff, leader of the pack, sprang to its feet and charged. He shot it once in the head and jumped back through the door, slamming it. “Dogs!”
The pack started howling and barking, all on their feet now and milling around.
“Shoot them,” somebody said.
“We only have fifteen or sixteen bullets left,” Danny said. “Can't waste them.” Besides, there were twice that many dogs.
All the children were crowded up against the windows. A large dog started to drag away the mastiff's carcass. Then another bounded over to fight him for it.
“Maybe this,” Danny muttered. He took careful aim and killed those two dogs in quick succession. One of them died slowly, with a great deal of noise. The other dogs started to back away. He fired a third time, at a dog on the outskirts of the pack. The bullet just nicked it, but it yelped and ran. That was enough; the whole pack broke up and scattered in panic.
“Have to work fast, now. Who's got the coals?”
“We do.” A brother and sister had tin cans full of ash.
“Start a fire out front while me and Steve skin those dogs. Everybody else hunt up wood.”
“No wet or rotten wood,” Francine said. “We don't want no smoke.”
“They know that,” Danny said. “You go try and find some water.”
She did find some, in the basement hot water heater. They used it to rinse out the carcasses after they had skinned and gutted them. By that time, the fires had roared up and settled back to a bank of hot coals.
They put the dogs on crude spits and roasted them. With the first meat smells, many of the children started crying with hunger and dryly retching. It had been a long winter.
Danny carved pieces off the outside as soon as they were done. “We have to eat it all now,” he said. “You know what happens if we try to take any of it back.”
The summer and spring before, they had tried to bring roasted dogs back to the commune. One time, a gang of teenagers had jumped them as they came off the bridge. The other time, they hid the meat up in a tree, but the oldsters found out about it somehow and took it for the communal pot. Which meant the kids got very little.
 
 
Up in the sentry tower, a man squinted through binoculars. “Here they come,” he said to the other man. “Across the railroad bridge.”
“All there?”
“There were sixteen when they … looks like they're missing two—no, rear guard, coming up. That's Danny Bondini, with the rifle.”
“Have any food?”
“Can't tell. Nothing big.”
“Wonder what they shot at.”
“God knows. Guess it wasn't those dogs we heard.”
“Well. We won't stop them this time. Maybe they'll bring something back tomorrow.”
“With luck.”
Assorted men, aged 13–45
Assorted women, aged 13–45
Assorted old people
Assorted children
Limited food supply
Feed the men and women first. If any is left over, give it to such of the old people as are still useful—then to the children, who can forage for themselves, and besides are easily replaced.

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