Myths of the Modern Man (7 page)

Depth? He wants Dr. L’Esperance for depth?

“
I have to get one of my assistants, General,” Eleanor said, “Obviously the lab can’t be left without someone to monitor….”

“
Make it fast, Eleanor.” She knew he was becoming irritated because he used her first name.

She summoned another one of her subordinates to baby-sit the absence of Colonel Moore, and they proceeded to the pressroom.

Dr. L’Esperance stood before the podium to their left as they entered. They were immediately directed to the dais by Security. Eleanor sat behind the table, her hands nervously smoothing the white tablecloth before her, while a page put a name plaque in front of her so the press could read that she was Dr. Eleanor Roberts, Mission Director.

Dr. L’Esperance stood over her, framed in the glare of flashes and Fresnels, that created a halo effect from the top of her head, cascading like artificial moonlight down the mane of pencil-thin, long dark braids that fell to her shoulders, dark against the white of her lab coat.

“
When men fear, there is a breeding ground for meanness,” Dr. L’Esperance said in a clear but curiously mannered voice that managed to carry despite the hum and mutter and shuffling of a hundred bodies before her.

“
Yet, when danger is present, men are often at their best,” she said, and for a hefty pause, said no more. Eleanor shot a glance of ridicule but tempered herself, remembering that she was highly visible and that her reactions were being observed. Eleanor assumed an expression of nearly-in-a-coma pensiveness and concentrated on the back of her brass nameplate.

“
This is a paradox, but in the study of time dimension, we are filled with paradox and focused on paradox. The past as a gateway to the future, and the future as the mere residue of the hopes of the past.”

Eleanor shot a glance at General English, standing by the door, looking impatient, concerned and utterly dumbfounded at whatever meaning there was supposed to be in Dr. L’Esperance’s speech. Eleanor tried not to smile.

“
This study gives us the amazing and blessed opportunity to do what mankind has always wished to do, always yearned to do, and that is to fix our mistakes. Learning from the lessons of the past would enable us, as teachers have forewarned down the millennia, of doing just this. But, man is a short-sighted, impatient and fickle creature, and such warnings and advice inevitably falls on deaf ears. But now we need no longer rely on the versions of the past left to us by others. We no longer need rely on the advice to learn from that which we do not feel. Now, we may experience the lessons ourselves. Now, we may truly know what it is to take our errors and regrets and twist them in our very hands, and make something new, something fine, something wonderful.”

Eleanor glanced up at Dr. L’Esperance, suspecting that there might be tears of easily called up emotion in her eyes at this point, and verified with some self-satisfaction that there were. Another quick glance toward the General also confirmed for her his discomfort at Dr. L’Esperance’s foolish, meaningless dramatic recitation would leave Eleanor with very little competition as regards her authority in the department.

“
The future needs us,” Dr. L’Esperance continued, “it is not theoretical, but a real place that awaits us or people very much like us. Colonel Moore is not chasing imaginary phantoms at this moment. That brave, dear man is confronting ourselves as we were once. As imperfect and perhaps even as savage as future beings will regard us today. We must take care then, not to mock or dismiss the information we glean as pure fancy, for it is treasure which will sustain us in the long years ahead.”

The journalists were quiet. The shuffling and murmuring had ceased. They had been used to official dogma, so much so that they usually listened with only one ear. Dr. L’Esperance’s thin and airy rhetoric might be just as vague as the official line that spoke down to them with arrogance and condescension, and always self-serving platitudes, but her words were gossamer and intriguing, and her exquisite face was a delicate work of art. She had that quality that official spokespersons almost never had -- sincerity.

Eleanor noted with alarm that the press seemed interested, dutiful, and captivated by Dr. L’Esperance, and grew horrified noting that General English had perceived the same thing. He folded his arms with satisfaction and his eyes seemed to light up with excitement and pleasure.

Dr. L’Esperance concluded with a slight, modest bow of her head. The press applauded awkwardly, and actually respectfully reserved their questions until the end because she asked them to do this.

“
And now,” Dr. L’Esperance said, smiling again slightly, as she wiped a tear and gathered herself for the effort, “please welcome my esteemed and very dear colleague, Dr. Eleanor Roberts, our mission director.”

Eleanor stood woodenly, submitted to another spontaneous kiss on the cheek from Dr. L’Esperance, but if the nuzzling at first irritated her, she soon learned to be grateful of the implication that it might transfer Dr. L’Esperance’s good graces with the press onto her. For a while, it did. For the first part of her speech, the press was attentive, but as she droned about the dry complexities of spatial deficits, they returned to their usual stockyard demeanor of shuffling, conferring with each other, and only half listening.

Dr. Roberts had the unenviable job of making as detailed an explanation of the mission as possible without actually revealing anything at all. She paraphrased their press kits one more time. General English seemed satisfied, but the press acted unimpressed.

She excused herself and left the podium with more businesslike expedience than grace, and this was taken for curtness. Her curtness was noted by more than one journalist who took the trouble to emphasize in their notes that she was unmarried and perhaps there might be a reason for this.

General English, whose own blustery manner made him oblivious to displays of rudeness or conceit in anyone else, congratulated himself again on picking a project head who was, first, a woman and therefore fitting for demographics of the public since there were more women than men in the population; and second, pretty, and therefore would be attractive to the public which always was drawn in by such things; and third, had several degrees from several universities all testifying to the fact that he was smart himself for choosing her.

Dr. Roberts released her grip on the podium and stepped away from the television lights and web cast equipment. She left without introducing anyone else, so for a moment General English had an awkward segue of recovering an empty stage before producing his next act. He cast an eye across his lineup and beckoned Dr. Ford with his finger.

Dr. Roberts left through the double doors without looking back, as if she was very important and in a hurry. She was not in a hurry. Outside in the hall, almost as crowded as the press room, she moved along without making eye contact to the other team members who parted to allow her to pass like a royalty in a poor village.

She wanted only to get back to the lab again, and away from everything else. In no other place did she find such comfort, such peace, and such control.

Eleanor noticed Dr. L’Esperance standing in the hall, surrounded by members of the Committee.

“
You’ll come now to the reception, won’t you, Dr. L’Esperance? Yes, please join us. We’d love to hear more of your thoughts on the project,” they said to her, and she accepted with obvious pleasure.

Eleanor, alone and ignored, and dejected, walked back to lab. The hallway hangers-on had thinned out; then the hall before her was empty and she could hear the sound of her own footsteps’ hard clacking on the shiny tile floor and echoing in the empty space all around her.

So, this is how it was to be -- usurped by a tall, weird, metaphysicist rock star.

Eleanor would not go without a fight.

Before even reaching her laboratory, she compiled a mental list of methods to eliminate Cheyenne L’Esperance.

CHAPTER 6

Colonel John Moore’s narrative:

They walked me north. We passed through scattered villages, nothing more than a meager collection of wood huts with thatched roofs, but they represented Celtic civilization of the day. Unlike the Romans who lived in towns and were ingenious about roads and plumbing, the Celts were country folk, who lived in sporadic collections of huts that could be called villages for lack of any other description. Their dwellings looked like the kind of huts the two foolish little pigs made, the frail huts of sticks and straw that the big bad wolf destroyed. Around them, the contour of the land embroidered with tilled fields. The Celts supported themselves by agriculture, and the breeding of cattle and horses and sheep. They were a warrior society with one foot in this most peaceful other existence, but without the power to hold onto it. So they had to keep fighting. Their eyes followed us in silent, stony approbation as we walked before them.

We moved up a rising slope to an earthen fortress. We reached another labyrinth of wooden huts, and found the inner circle of Boudicca.

Cailte and I went to the long house, a rectangular wooden lodge used for gatherings by the tribe, and by their queen Boudicca for most public occasions. She held private audiences her own hut. Taliesin left us to report to his druid priest, who was called Nemain. The temple where Nemain performed his magic was close by, to the other side of the village.

Boudicca sat at the head of the lodge, on less a throne than a simple seat of honor befitting the number one Iceni. Boudicca was a tallish woman, for her era, with a wild mane of coarse, copper hair made artificially lighter by washing in lime water, a practice of vain aristocratic Celts. She listened to the counsel of a trusted captain, but all the while looked beyond him to me. Cailte requested permission to approach her, which she granted, looking over his shoulder, still at me. He explained my story, I think embellishing it even more than I originally did, but not for my sake; it was just something that bards do. Was he painting me out to be hero?

Or a Roman spy.

She reserved judgment in steely eyes, but nodded at something.

Her husband, King Prasutagus had died the year before. Knowing the Romans were at his doorstep, like the big bad wolf, he made a patchy agreement with the Roman governor of Britannia not to overrun his kingdom at his death, but to accept the peaceful terms of a legal will, an inheritance to both his people and to the Roman government. He made a proper will indeed, leaving half his kingdom to his two daughters and half to the Roman Emperor, thinking that at least his family and his people would have half the kingdom they knew and not lose all to rapacious conquerors.

He got that one wrong. The Romans still wanted it all. His death, and leaving no male heirs, seemed to them the perfect excuse and opportunity to just take it. The Romans did not understand that the Celtic society was not entirely male dominated. Women played an equal part in ruling, fighting, and dying, and inheriting.

It might not have been Nero back in Rome who gave the order, it could have been one of these transplanted legionnaires feathering his nest, but the order was to take it all.

They did not extend the courtesy of their alliance made with Prasutagas to his wife Boudicca, partly I think because they already had a similar alliance working for them with Cartimandua, queen of another Celtic tribe, the Brigantes to the northwest, and, undisciplined wench, she was already seen as a loose cannon. No, it was better to step in and take over these troublesome natives. Diplomacy was wasted on them anyway.

Unfortunately for the Romans, the only thing worse than a woman scorned was a Celtic woman scorned.

Bowls of bread and honey were brought in to the lodge. Chunks of pork and mutton. The long hall began to fill with Boudicca’s personal guard, her court, relatives, and servants. People were gathering outside the hut as well. Nemain entered, the head druid priest, with Taliesin following behind.

Boudicca nodded to them, and they bowed to her.

Torches were lifted from crude sconces on all sides of the lodge, and carried to a central dirt pit. They were extinguished, and the room grew dim save for the long twilight in view from the large open doorway at the far end of the lodge. The last hopeful source of light fled the room. Fresh air got a little scarce in here as well. Nemain raised his arms and spoke, more to himself than to his gods or his people. Taliesin stood at attention with a different torch, a long silver ornamented shaft that as yet bore no flame.

“
Feis de Beltain.” Cailte leaned into me, laughing at my obvious expression of curiosity. Of course, the feast of Beltain, the god of life and death. Tomorrow would be May 1st, the beginning of summer.

So who said I needed a calendar?

The Celts had two seasons, winter and summer. Summer began on what we knew as May 1st, or perhaps the druids felt they made it begin on that day, I don’t know. Winter began on November 1st, after the Samhain, the night where departed souls from the otherworld mingle with the living in this one. When I was a kid we called it Halloween.

Nemain lifted sparks from pieces of flint and scraps of prayer, and Taliesin held the ornamented torch to it. When the fire leapt to the torch, everyone in the lodge sighed in relief, and chuckled, and began to sing and laugh. There would be a summer this year. The time of the dead was over.

The crude torches which had been extinguished were re-lit from Nemain’s fire. He held the ornamented silver torch now, having taken it from Taliesin. He held all the mystical power and grandly doled out its protection as a gift.