Hardbingers

30

As soon as Rasalom disappeared, Jack felt the bench release his body. He sprang to the railing and peered below, but saw only dark, churning water. No sign of him.

Gone.

So what?

He stepped back and slumped into the seat again. He glanced right and saw the lady and her dog still standing there.

"How many of you are there?" he said.

She stepped closer.

"As many as need be."

Women with dogs had been dropping in and out of his life since last year. They all knew more about what was going on in his life than he did. They seemed to be a third force in the shadow war. One had told him that if they had their way, both the Otherness and the Ally would be chased off to do their interfering somewhere else.

"What did you mean about preventing him from feeding?"

"I blocked his access to your pain."

"You can do that?"

"Only on a one-to-one basis. If 1 could block him from all the world's pain, he'd shrivel up and blow away."

Jack sat in silence, wondering at the sick nature of what had become his reality.

Finally he looked up at her. "Is it true what he said—that all this is the Ally's doing?"

She nodded. "I am afraid so."

He felt weak, as if life were oozing out of him.

"But I'm supposed to be on the Ally's side. Is this what it does to its people? Is this any way to treat your troops?"

"You've been told about the war: It's not a battle between Good and Evil, but more like a battle between the indifferent and the inimical. We cannot comprehend their scope, nor understand their motivations, so it's useless to try."

"But I thought the Ally would at least—"

"Obey the rules? Follow a code? Neither force has rules or morality. The concepts are alien to them. When you are so vast and so powerful, you've moved beyond the abstracts of right and wrong. Whatever gets you what you want is right, whatever impedes you is wrong. We can make rules for ourselves, but not for them."

"Then we're pawns."

"Only some of us. You are one."

"Great. Just great."

"The Ally regards us as nothing more than a possession. Let me give you an example. Do you know what sea glass is?"

"Of course."

What did this have to do—?

"Then you know it's simply broken glass that has been worn and rounded by time, tide, and sand. People collect it. The whitish sea glass is the most common and can be found every day on every beach. The colored glass—the red, blue, green—is much more rare and prized by collectors."

"I don't see what—"

"Just bear with me. I'm trying to put this in the most concrete terms possible. Different worlds, different realities are sea glass to the Ally. It collects them and gathers them under its cloak. But the most prized of these are the sentient realities—the equivalent of colored sea glass. Now let's suppose you have a collection of sea glass. How much would you care about the individual pieces? Would you take each out at every opportunity and examine it under a loupe for any new flaws? Would you love it and cuddle it and polish it every day?"

She waited for an answer, so Jack shook his head and said, "No. Of course not."

"Same with the Ally. It devotes only the tiniest fraction of its consciousness to us. But let's say there's a predator out there that eats sea glass and is always on the hunt for more. You're going to protect that collection, aren't you. Not because you care for every single individual piece, but simply because it's yours."

"I've got the picture."

"Not quite. A full frontal assault by the predator won't work because you are virtual equals and you can repel it. That was tried back in the First Age, and it failed. But that doesn't mean the predator has gone away. It hasn't. And it never will. So you've got to worry about sneaky, backdoor moves and—'" She shook her head. "1 feel I'm trivializing this, and I don't mean to."

"I'm following."

"Good. So they battle on a smaller scale."

"Who's winning?"

"The Otherness, I'm afraid. The Ally is an interested collector who wants this world, this reality. The Otherness needs it—needs us. It feeds on worlds such as this. Its hunger is a more insistent drive than the Ally's possessiveness."

"But how's it going to take us away?"

"Through subterfuge. By tricking the Ally into believing this is a nonsen-tient world—that it's dead white glass instead of the colored sort. That is what Rasalom meant about restructuring the battlefield to his liking. The Otherness is counting on the Ally losing interest then and withdrawing—effectively abandoning us."

"Can it do that?"

"It has already started. You know of Opus Omega?"

Jack nodded. "The columns Brady was burying."

"Yes. It began thousands of years ago and the project continues without Luther Brady. When that is complete"—she looked away—"and when other requirements are met, the Otherness will have this world to itself."

Jack swallowed. "No way to stop it?"

"Perhaps… if the Otherness's pawn is defeated once and for all by the Ally's. They look on their pawns as weapons."

"Spears." The word was acid on his tongue.

She nodded. "Yes. And spears have no branches."

The words hung in the air between them for a seeming eternity. Finally the woman broke the silence.

"A spear must be smooth and sleek—a weapon. A spear is cut from the straightest, toughest branches of a tree. But in order for it to be effective, its own branches must be removed."

"And Gia and Vicky and the baby are branches."

"Tragically, yes. Not so much Victoria, for she carries none of your blood, but certainly the baby, and Gia because she carries the baby."

"But the human cost—"

"Means nothing to the Ally. Would you ask a tree for permission to remove one of its branches to make a spear? No. Would you ask the branch permission to strip it clean? Of course not. That's the way the Ally views us: as natural resources, raw materials. No evil there, just pragmatism."

Jack began to see a pattern.

"Like the yeniceri."

"Exactly. That is why they are recruited from abandoned children, so they start off without branches. They are human spears from childhood, ready for use. You weren't so lucky—if a fate such as theirs can be called luck. You came with many branches, and they all had to be cut off."

"But wouldn't I be a better spear if I was fighting to protect people I cared for?"

"The Ally views such people as branches, attachments that not only add weight to the spear, but interfere with its aerodynamics as well. It doesn't want its human weapon weighted with or distracted by family ties, by people he loves. Those are liabilities, vulnerabilities. If the enemy can threaten what the spear cherishes most, it will be hesitant in battle, will lose its edge, perhaps even break. A broken spear is useless."

"And here all along I've been thinking it was the Otherness."

"That was what you were supposed to think. Through direct and indirect means, you were pushed to this state for one reason. Tempered by tragedy, fueled by rage at the Otherness, you'd be a perfect weapon, more than ready to step into the Sentinel's shoes when the time came. And willing to do anything—anything—to destroy the Adversary."

Jack leaned his head back and stared at the pitiless stars. He sensed them staring back.

"Why me?"

"I can't say. Who can know the ways of something like the Ally? But 1 can surmise. I believe you were chosen young. I believe you were next in line behind the Twins. And when they died…"

Thanks to me. Shit!

"I became the heir apparent."

"Yes."

Something she'd said penetrated the fog enshrouding his brain.

"You said I was chosen young. How young? When 1 came to the city?"

She shook her head. "Long before that. As a child."

"Why? There was nothing special about me."

"There must have been. The Ally must have sensed something in you-—the qualities it was looking for in a spear."

"But I was never a fighter. Christ, I was an English major in college. I'd probably be teaching modern lit in high school right now if it hadn't… been… for…" He bolted from his seat and stared at her. "My mother?"

She looked sad as she nodded.

"No!"

"I am afraid so. The man who dropped the block from the overpass and killed your mother was a common sociopath. The Ally simply arranged for your parents' car to be passing below when he released that block. Thus your mother was the first branch removed. And that created the turning point, the pivotal episode in your life that changed you from a typical college student to the man you are today."

Jack began stalking back and forth, swinging at the air. He didn't know what else lo do. He heard the Akita growl. Maybe it sensed a threat. And with good reason. He wanted to hurt someone, something. The Ally most of all. But how could he strike back at a formless entity?

And though he knew it was true, he didn't want to believe it, couldn't accept it.

"So it's all been planned? Everything that's happened to me! Everything that's happened to my family—Mom, Kate, Dad, Tom! And now Gia and Vicky!"

It's too much! Too much!

"I am sorry. No more coincidences, remember?"

He stopped in front of her.

"You ladies knew this all along?"

She nodded.

"Then why didn't you warn me?"

"Not possible. Past events can be catalogued, plans can be deduced, but the future?" She shook her head. "It cannot be seen with any accuracy."

"But you could have warned me that they were targets. I could have protected them."

"Not possible. Sooner or later, despite your best efforts, no matter where you moved them, no matter what protections you used to shield them, they would be struck down."

"Were Vicky and Gia supposed to die?"

"Yes."

"Then why are they still—?"

"Alive?"

"If you can call it living."

"Human frailty, human error… that is something even the Ally can't predict."

"Can you help?"

She shook her head. "I would if I could."

"Anya helped my father."

"That was possible because of human error. The car crash did not kill him as intended—"

"It didn't kill Gia and Vicky either."

"It has left them gravely injured, though. Far more so than your father.

"But their Glasgow scores—"

"Do not matter. Your father could be helped because the Ally had no direct involvement after the accident, allowing intervention. That is not the case here."

Jack started stalking about with his hands pressed against the side of his head. Everywhere he turned he ran into a wall.

"You've got to try."

Another head shake. "The Ally is staying with this. It wants to bring this to a close and have done with it. Their condition will deteriorate. If the Ally steps back, I can help. But unless that happens… it is too powerful for me."

"So there's no hope?"

"I don't see any."

"All because of me."

"You can't blame yourself. You've had a say in your day-to-day choices, but no control over the overall course of your life. Events have been engineered to bring you here to this place at this time as a seasoned spear without branches."

"I can't believe this cosmic power has been paying attention to me!"

"'Attention' is a relative term. I told you it devotes only the tiniest fraction of its awareness to this entire sphere, and only a fraction of that fraction is watching you—and not full time."

"Okay then. What are the chances they'll survive?"

Her face remained impassive. "Even though I cannot see the future, I see no future for them."

"Because they're going to be brain dead?"

"No. Because the yeniceri will not rest until they have completed their assignment."

"Aw, no."

She nodded. "I think you had better return to the hospital."

"Why?" He couldn't help it. Nothing was going to keep him from going back to the hospital—especially now—but he had to ask. "If they're doomed, as you say, if they're as good as gone, what's the point?"

"Because as I told you: Nothing is carved in stone. The human variable—willingly or unwillingly, whether through frailty or fervor, torpor or tenacity, cowardice or courage—has the capacity to affect outcomes in the most unpredictable ways."