Wielding a Red Sword (25 page)

He backed away and emerged again, and once more his hands were restored, and he was awake, with the letters of fire against his pulsing brain. All he had to do was repeat those twin formulas to those who could interpret and apply them, and success was his.

Mym knew that the man had done so. He now had the excellent life he had desired. Yet now that he had it, it seemed somehow inadequate. He could not tell anyone beyond the secret project of his significance, because that would make him a target for enemy agents, so he had to pretend to be no more than a simple farmer who had come into wealth. That was unsatisfying. He desired acclaim. He wanted beautiful women to seek him for his personal attributes and charm. He wanted the heads of state to consult him, to take him seriously, and to compliment him on his knowledge.

Mym recognized the problem. The farmer had been bitten by the worm of desire for fame and could not be satisfied with only part of it. He was driven to seek more than he had, more than success.

Perhaps stirred by Mym’s realization, the dreamer entered a new phase. The dream within a dream formed.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Mym said in the dream. But the dreamer shrugged him off. The worm of ambition was too strong; its poison had spread too far. It could not be denied.

Mym withdrew himself from the dreamer. He watched
as the man made walking motions with his legs, and door-opening motions with his hands. Then more walking—and the two hands curled up as if de-nerved, becoming useless claws.

There was a pause, and Mym realized why; the man was trying to figure out how to open the magic volume of Success when both his hands were useless husks. After a moment, one leg stirred; he was lifting the cover with a toe.

Mym did not stay. He could see the progression: each additional piece of information would cost a part of the body. After both feet were gone, the man would have to open the book with his teeth, and his head would be incinerated. That would be the end of him; his mundane body might seem unchanged, but his mind would be dead.

Mym summoned Werre, mounted, and returned to the site of the battle. Chronos was there, waiting for him.

“I thought you were going to go facilitate a shipment of grain!” Mym sang, half-challengingly.

“I did—last week,” Chronos replied.

“But it has only been a few hours!”

“You forget my nature.”

Now Mym remembered Chronos was the Incarnation of Time. Chronos could step into last week and return to the present. “Where is the shipment, then?”

Chronos sighed. “I did what I could do, but found myself balked by a greater power.”

“What power is that?” Mym asked, alarmed.

“Human corruption.” And Chronos explained. He had found the bottleneck, manifested, and by dint of some fast talking gotten the train moving toward its destination—only to have it held up at the next station by officials who were determined to collect a decimating tax on its wares. This was a relief train, not taxable, but they affected not to understand that, and unloaded a segment of its cargo. The same thing happened further down the line. At every stop, more was taken, until the train was empty—before reaching its destination. Corrupt officials had stolen the entire cargo. Against this, Chronos was powerless; he could manipulate time, but time was not the problem here. Human greed was. Greed had defeated Time. The grain
was now being sold on the black market; none of it would reach the starving folk for whom it had been intended.

“But the government!” Mym protested. “It should be protecting the train, not robbing it!”

“When the train is destined for a segment of the country that is in rebellion against that government?” Chronos asked.

There, of course, was the underlying reason. The government would not permit a rebellious province to be fed, for that could strengthen the rebellion. So it permitted the graft while protesting innocence.

Mym clenched his fist. “There is justification in war!” he sang. “To abolish governments like that!”

“Perhaps so,” Chronos agreed. “It is a thesis you have made to me before.”

“I have?” Mym asked, startled.

Chronos smiled. “In future years, your framework.” Then he frowned. “I regret I have not fulfilled my part of the bargain. Therefore if you—”

“No, you made an honest effort,” Mym sang. He was learning more about the limitations of the Incarnations when meddling in human affairs. Mortals could be so determinedly short-sighted and wrong-headed! Were they really worth helping? “I have discovered the source of the technological breakthroughs on the manipulation of time—or part of it. A man had a series of visions or dreams that revealed the key formulas to him. Eliminate that man slightly before he eliminates himself, and there will be no breakthroughs.”

“Not a scientist?” Chronos asked, surprised.

“Not a scientist. He dreams of a special chamber in which is a fiery book labeled
Success
, and it burns him when he takes the information.”

Chronos frowned. “All in a vision? That seems familiar.”

“Oh? How?”

Chronos shook his head. “I—suspect I should not burden you with my conjecture, as I am drawing on memories in your future. Let me just say that I am not sanguine about this.”

Mym shrugged. Chronos’ incidental revelations about
the future had confused him before; probably it was indeed best to let this matter drop.

But what was he to do about the battle that remained frozen? He chewed on his lip as he looked out over it.

“Do not be concerned,” Chronos said. “When I eliminate the breakthrough, none of this will have happened. You may supervise the battle as you choose.”

Mym wasn’t sure quite how that would work, but was willing to find out. “Very well.” He described the location of the key man.

Abruptly the battle resumed—but not as it had been. This time the defending farmers were getting the best of it, and no time bomb dropped.

“You prefer this?” Chronos inquired.

Obviously the man had been at work, traveling back and forth in time. Now reality had changed, at least for this region. The breakthrough had never happened.

Mym shook his head. “I think I have had enough of battle for today—even if none of it happened. I’m going home.”

“This is the way it often is in my domain,” Chronos said.

Mym wondered how the man maintained his sanity. Who could guess what convolutions Chronos had endured—that never happened? He made a gesture of camaraderie and mounted Werre.

 
12
 
GAEA

Rapture was away increasingly as time passed. She was very positive about her mortal job and seemed to be doing well, but it apparently made considerable demands on her. Mym was glad that she had adjusted so well, but the frequent nights alone bothered him.

Naturally Lila was available. When he couldn’t sleep, he took walks in the garden, and she was always there. Of course she was ready, willing, and able to serve as his concubine, but a complex of considerations prevented him from exercising this option. For one thing, she was from Hell, and he still distrusted the creatures of Satan on general principle. For another, he was becoming uncertain of Rapture, and that made him less rather than more inclined to use another woman. Had Rapture been solidly established and pregnant, it would have been virtually his duty to use a concubine, so as not to place demands on the bearer of his Heir; as it was, a concubine was premature. His seed needed to be saved for the Heir, rather than expended frivolously. So to use a concubine at this stage might be to suggest that he did not desire Rapture or seek an Heir, and that was not the case. Also, and this was an insidious consideration, he was not certain
that Lila was a virgin. It was, of course, necessary for a man to know a number of women, as no single woman could provide essential variety, but it was important that a woman know only one man. It would demean his princely heritage if he were to consort with an unchaste woman. The creatures of Satan, by all accounts, were of questionable pedigree, and their forms here in the spirit realm were malleable, so Lila well might be a pseudovirgin.

His pride kept him from making application to the Purgatory front office for a legitimate concubine, because of the problem with Rapture. Thus he was caught without adequate service in this respect. That was what made Lila so infernally tempting, as well she knew.

“Alone yet again tonight?” she inquired dulcetly, appearing ahead of him as he passed the copulating statue. “Maybe you should bring your fiancée back here.”

“Where she can be corrupted by your occidental notions of female suffrage!” Mym snapped. As always, he found pleasure in the ability to speak without stuttering, here.

“But Mym, she’s a mortal,” Lila said. “You brought her out of her oriental situation and planted her in the West. Things are different here. Women are supposed to have minds of their own.”

“For what?” he demanded. “Rapture was already well-versed in what she needed to know.”

“For pleasing a man and bearing a son,” she agreed.

“But what about her own fulfillment?” She stretched her arms out and up, so that her gown opened in front to reveal the perfect globes of her breasts, lifting with her motion. She was very like a statue in contour.

“That
is
her own fulfillment!” he retorted.

“Not in this hemisphere,” she said, coincidentally touching one of her own. “It would be grand for a creature like me, but not for a mortal like her. She needs to assert herself, to branch out, to explore her larger potential.”

“So speaks a creature of Hell.”

“I may be damned, Mym, but I’m not ignorant. I have learned common sense the hard way.” She bent to adjust her fastenings, in the process exposing one leg up through the plush buttock.

“Not as I see it!” he said, and strode out of the garden.

But alone in bed, he did curse himself for foolishness. Why should he allow the words of a Hell-slut to bother him? The opinions of women mattered little, and those of a pseudo-woman even less. Why hadn’t he simply used her for her explicit purpose and not listened to her at all? Discussion, after all, was no necessary part of sexual fulfillment.

Of course he could return to the garden and do that now or simply summon Lila here to the castle. He could do anything he wanted with her and banish her without notice. That was the obvious and sensible course. That flesh she had arranged to show him—he knew that though she was of the spirit world, that body would feel completely solid and alive. She was, indeed, designed to satisfy the lust of a man.

But that would mean a kind of capitulation, and that he could not abide. So he suffered alone. He was Mars, an Incarnation, dedicated to settling the quarrels of mortals efficiently, yet he could not settle his own.

When Rapture showed up again, the change was more apparent. She was not satisfied to remain placidly in bed; she wanted to converse about unrelated things. She was full of detail about the students she was helping to educate and their interest in the quaint customs of the Orient, where science was little practiced. She now had classes at all levels, ranging from adult to juvenile. She loved the experience of independence, of being able to make decisions based purely on her own preferences. She was developing a confidence in herself and her individual worth she had never before experienced. She was acquiring an occidental wardrobe, so that she could avoid being taken for an Indian at times when she preferred to be herself. She even wore jeans in public.