The Book of Feasts & Seasons Read online

  I coldslept again, and woke up a decade and a half later. This is in AD 2493. The Cube was in orbit, between the Earth and Moon, and could be seen every night , rising in the east. Depending on the time of month, one or two faces was turned to the sun. When the Cube was “full” that is, in opposition, the gold light was considerably brighter than the morning star, and cast a strange yellow-red twilight across the landscape, almost bright enough to read by. When it was in conjunction, of course, it was dark. With binoculars you could make out the ports appearing on four of the six faces: tiny round dots representing valves or airlocks large enough to swallow the Great Salt Lake.

  Ten years was not long enough for the College of Panphysical Sciences to learn their language, but it was apparently enough for them to learn several of ours, maybe all of them.

  The message itself was a trifle disturbing. “We are here in response to your distress signal. May we begin?”

  The message was repeating in a number of ways and languages over a number of months. NASA, with help from the Han military, constructed a transmitter powerful enough to reply. At that point, the astronomical scientists were sent to mountain retreats to aid in their meditative practice, and Harmonic Scientists took over.

  The answer was cautious, diplomatic, inquisitive. It was several messages, over several weeks, and the process was considerably slowed by the need to have each term mathematically defined. What was the distress signal of which they spoke? What did they wish to begin?

  “You name our star Zeta Geminorum or al-Mekbuda, the Sheathed Paw of the Lion. An immense psychological disturbance or interruption, propagating at the speed of light, encountered our home system 1291 earth-years ago. We came as quickly as possible, given the limitations of light-speed travel, and given the delay of 120 additional years caused by the opposition of one of your principalities. At considerable expense, we have brought the appropriate means and mechanisms to render aid. We offer that which should suffice to remove the wounded and unconscious, even when dispersed. Are you willing to request help? May we begin?”

  The scientists asked cautiously what form this help would take.

  “The form of the help includes interconnectivity with primary consciousness, and related physical needs, such as medical aid, fermented beverage, comestibles made from grain; water to wash, oil to anoint. All diseases can be cured and all wounded made whole. We have studied your physiognomy, and, except for the defects, can reproduce it precisely. Our order of behavior does not permit us to act upon you without your affirmation and consent, since otherwise the curative properties are null. Do you understand the extreme danger present?”

  The scientists asked for the danger to be defined.

  “You are conscious without being self-conscious, and hence are divided. Divided consciousness errs, ceases to cohere. You are not like other organisms on your world, who possess consciousness but not self-consciousness. Neither are you self-conscious. You neither know what self is, nor what is to be done with it. You begin by saying the thing which is not, and end by doing the act which is not, and making other to be not.”

  The scientists asked again for clarification.

  “The speech which is not is lying, defrauding, betraying, gossip, backbiting; acts which are not are sloth, inaction, indifference to the suffering of others, distraction, incoherence, diversion, self-amusement, abuse of intoxicants, abuse of the organs of reproduction, drunkenness, gluttony, sadism; pursuit of nonbeing is manslaughter, infanticide, fratricide, viricide, uxoricide, matricide, parricide, heriocide, regicide, mass-murder, mega-mass-murder, genocide, democide, deicide. This last act is sufficient to create the disturbance detected.”

  The scientists wanted more information on this psychological disturbance. In the Third Decade of the Common Era, Terra possessed no ability to generate artificial power, or send an electromagnetic signal of any kind, much less one that would cross interstellar distances. What interruption was meant?

  “Luminous interruption. The disturbance issued from your planet but had severe additional properties or side effects, as all objects within the entanglement were influenced. The disturbance was in your primary, which you call Sol, the Sun. It would have been noticeable from the surface of your world to any who had eyes operating in your visual range. Any with eyes to see, could see.”

  Considerable study was done by the scientists to decipher this message, and many hypothesize put forward, none of which were found convincing. After some struggle over the budget with the military, the Harmonic Scientists were able to send out another group of messages, asking for details, such as the exact the time when this took place.

  “Let us define the moment when a ray of light from the primary is tangential t the surface of the earth at a given point the first hour. At the sixth hour, the ray is normal or vertical to the surface. Your term for this is noontide, or noon. Your sun went dark from the sixth hour until the ninth hour. If you have no record of the event, then your condition is more deleterious than our most pessimistic estimates.”

  The final question concerned the hundred years of delay mentioned in the first message. What opposition had the expedition encountered?

  “The immense energy expended for launches of our magnitude cannot be hid, nor are we the only celestial intelligences to inhabit the constellations. The prince of the kingdom of the Four Persia Stars, named Regulus, Antares, Aldebaran, and Fomalhaut, withstood us one and twenty years: but, lo, Michael, whose throne is in Alpha Canis Majoris named Sirius, who is one of the chief princes, came to help us.”

  This time, the Son of Heaven from the Forbidden City itself, with all his entourage, journeyed to the sending station, and typed in the message with his own hands with their long and delicate fingernails.

  The message was in a special dialect only the Imperial Family is allowed to use: We now know from whom you have been sent. Please land with your highest ranking officer, with whatever he needs to save us from our condition, and he will be greeted in the fashion appropriate to maintain harmony on this, my world.

  The Visitant from Zeta Geminorum made planetfall in a fashion so unexpected, I will not record it, since you will not believe me. Suffice it to say that he was found on the planet’s surface, living in a slum. He was not merely remarkably like a human being, but was identical in every way.

  In his first public demonstration of the techniques of his civilization, he gathered the ashes and stray molecules of someone who had been cremated and buried at sea, reconstructed her atom by atom, and revived her. Her name was Tabitha. The reconstructed body showed signs of having no genetic flaws, neither prone to aging nor disease. She could, however, be killed by napalm, as we soon learned. She was quite lucky.

  Scaphism is a method of execution where the victim is stripped naked and tied between two boats with his head, hands, and feet protruding. Honey and milk is forced down his throat with a funnel, inducing diarrhea, and his extremities are smeared with honey. The boats are set to float on a stagnant pond, thick with insect swarms. His feces accumulate within the container, attracting more insects, which sting, eat and breed within his exposed flesh. The victim is fed more milk and honey so that the septic shock, dehydration or starvation which eventually kill him do not happen too quickly.

  The Visitant did not die without screaming. It was not a pretty sight.

  I am writing you, Václav, because I think you can see what the logical result must be. I have taken steps to inter the Visitant’s body into one of our hidden caves, the ancestral cold sleep tomb the van Winkle family has held in trust for hundreds of years. The long wait of all those who sleep may be nearly at an end, but, strangely, no sign, no signal, has come from the immense golden city in the heavens. The golden city has yet in any visible way to act.

  I confess at times to certain doubts. Maybe the city will never act. Maybe I should sleep, and let Arthur awake from his slumbers, and stand the long watch.

  But at other times, the hope seems obvious.

  Pal
e Realms of Shade

  Easter Sunday

  It was not the being dead that I minded, it was the hours.

  No one ever calls me up during the day, and most people decide to wait until after midnight, for some reason. I am a morning person, or was, so meetings in the still, dark hours lost between midnight and the dawn make me crabby.

  This time, it was not some comfortable séance room or picturesque graveyard with moss-covered stone angels. I came to the surface of mortal time on a street corner of some American city, mid-Twentieth to early Twenty-First Century. You can tell from the height of the buildings that it is American, and from the fact that the road names are written on signs rather than walls. And Twenty-Second Century streets are not lit up at night, of course.

  The main road was called Saint Street. The small alley was called Peter Way. Great. I was crossed by Saint and Peter.

  I smelled her perfume before I saw her. I turned. There she was, outlined against the streetlamp beyond. I could not mistake her silhouette: slender, alluring, like a she-panther as she walked.

  “Matthias,” she breathed in her low whisper. Her voice was throbbing music to me, despite everything that had happened. “You look well—ah—considering.”

  “Lorelei,” I grunted. She was just wearing a blouse and skirt and a knee-length gray coat, but on her the outfit could have made the cover of a fashion magazine. Or a girly magazine. Her wild mass of gold-red hair was like a waterfall of bright fire tumbling past her shoulders to the small of her back. Atop, like a cherry on strawberry ice-cream, was perched a brimless cap. My arms ached with the desire to take her and hold her. But I could never touch her, or, for that matter, anyone ever again.

  She sighed and rolled her enormous emerald-green eyes. “Sweetheart, this time, you have to tell me if you were murdered. You have to!”

  I took a puff of an imaginary cigarette, and watched the smoke, equally imaginary, drift off in a plume more solid than I was. “I ain’t saying.”

  “But you must! I cannot rest until I know!”

  Now I knew when and where I was. Because I died the day the Korean War ended. July 27. Mark the day on the calendar. That was the day I gave up smoking. This was only a few months after, judging from the dry leaves scuttling across the sidewalk, the bare branches of the one tree, surrounded by concrete, across the street. Late October or early November.

  “My heart stopped,” I said. “I died of natural causes.”

  She pointed a slender finger at the holes in my trench coat. “You’re dripping!”

  I looked down. The rest of my body was black and white like an old talkie, a thing of sable mist and silvery moonlight. Only the blood was red, bright as Lorelei’s lipstick.

  It was not something I was deliberately imagining myself to look like. I guess it was part of my self-image, subconscious or something. That seemed unfair. I had had a tricky subconscious my whole life. It was one of the things I had thought I had gotten rid of, left behind.

  “That’s natural,” I said. “When bullets pass through the lung cavity, they naturally make large holes. One of them went through my heart, and caused it to stop, like I said.”

  “Still making jokes!” She stamped her foot in anger, which send a vibration jiggling up through her curves and made her hair tremble and spread. I was reminded of a cat puffing up its fur in anger.

  I looked her in the eye. “Lorelei, just leave it alone. Forget about me, get on with your life.”

  She was good at hiding her anger. She took a moment to tuck her hair behind her ears, and drew a breath, and spoke in a voice of icy calm, “Your partner found your body. He unlocked the door and walked in. He said you were shot at close range, point blank. From the burns on your coat, the barrel was touching your coat. Your own weapon was still in your shoulder holster, the holster was snapped. That means a friend killed you.”

  I said nothing.

  She said, “Who was it? I know it was not Cambell. He would use his blade, not a pistol. Was it Sean? Was it Harvey? You don’t have that many friends.”

  “I don’t remember what happened,” I said.

  “You always get that same dumb look at your face when you try to lie to me. You are a memory. That is all a ghost is. How can a memory not remember?”

  “Fine,” I said, gritting my teeth. I wondered how it was that I could feel the muscles in my jaws and temples tense up when my teeth and my whole body were imaginary. “I was cleaning my revolver. It went off by accident.”

  “Funny. Seven bullets were fired,” she said, raising one of her perfectly-arched eyebrows.

  “I reloaded.”

  “Sylvester said the bullets went through the office window behind you, and could not be recovered for forensics. We don’t know the caliber. We assume it was an automatic. You were standing up, and fell backward over the desk. No evidence of burglary. The top drawer of your file cabinet was open, but the lock had not been forced. The file drawer was empty.”

  “What does he know? Sly was always an idiot.”

  “You have to go the cops and say you were murdered! If it is ruled a suicide, the insurance company reneges! And I have bills to pay.”

  “And here I was thinking you had grown sentimental.”

  “It was Sylvester, wasn’t it? He wanted …” She pursed her lips like she was about to say the word me, but then realized how that might sound. The lips just stayed closed, a thin, very red line, still looking very kissable.

  I should have kissed her more often, in life. Back when I could.

  That was a thought like an icicle stabbing through in my brain. It was more a feeling than a thought. But then I wondered how she could still have this hold over me. Can a ghost suffer from testosterone poisoning? Even dead, were men still saps for dames?

  She must have thought so.

  I looked at her left hand. She was wearing white gloves. I adjusted my eyes and the glove became transparent to me. “You’re not wearing our ring anymore.”

  Her expression grew stiff, her eyes narrowed, like she had just stepped on a tack, and did not want to let out a yelp.

  I glanced at the cracked sidewalk underfoot, and noticed something odd. Why here? Why this alley? There was no magic circle painted on the ground, no candles, no crystal ball, none of the rigmarole usually needed to call up something like me.

  All the stores and shops across the street were closed, wire mesh drawn over their plate glass windows, all dark as a graveyard except for one lonely pawn shop with a broken neon sign that read AL_ HOURS _PEN! We Sell Go_d! We Fix It! The other storefronts were flea markets, liquor stores, gun shops or strip joints.

  I was expecting to see a palm reader’s studio or maybe a tattoo parlor with some Satanist emblems hanging in the window, something that could pull a shade like me all the way into the world so that people could see me. But there was nothing.

  I closed my eyes, and I could feel the heat beating from her body, the life in her flesh like an electric tingle in the air. But no one else, not for yards in any direction, no one hiding down the alley, no one watching from a nearby window.

  I opened my eyes again. Now her expression changed: her eyelids were half lowered, and her lips half-parted, and her head almost tilted a little to left, as if I had said something amusing. “I had to pawn my wedding ring, because I am out of money. I cannot be happy until your spirit is at rest. You have to go to Judge O’Keefe and tell him who murdered you.”

  “Then you can collect on the insurance money.”

  She pouted and shrugged and looked coy. “Being a detective’s wife, I knew the risks I ran. Especially a detective like you, with silver bullets in your gun, and a crucifix under your flack jacket. I knew one day you might come home in a box. So we made book on those risks. Your number came up. It’s my money. If you think about it, all the times I wondered, all the times I was up late, in bed, in our cold bed, just me, just worrying about you…I earned every penny!”

  I turned my head away. I could not stand seei
ng her performance. Or, if it were on the level, that would be somehow worse.

  I tried to sink below the surface of mortal time, back into the ocean of eternity. Nothing happened. It was like standing on a sheet of ice, with my feet stuck in place. What was holding me here? What had called me here?

  Turning back, I took a step toward her. Interesting. That meant I could move. The memory holding me here was not this spot, just this area.

  Harshly, I said to her, “Sly will pay your bills. Have you moved in with him yet? Cuddled up to play house? You’ve dug all the gold out of the mine called Mrs. Flint, and now you can move on to him. You can be his kept woman for a few months, until enough time passes and you can come out of mourning and blackmail him into marrying you. He was always stiff in the trousers for you, and that makes him stupider than even his admittedly low standard, because the blood rushes toward his groin and away from his brain, leaving it limp and …”

  I saw her eyes start to change with anger. There is a reason why the Irish are said to have a temper, and it is not just because the English beat the snot out of them for a thousand years of history. No, there was something wild and Celtic in the change in her face, and I saw in her the old, fiery blood of fairy kings who danced on the wind-roaring mountainsides underneath an unscarred moon, or who battled with the giants from the sea. Her change of expression looked almost like when some shade like me steps into a body not warded from us: the whole demeanor changes, the stance and look and voice. At that moment, she wanted me dead. Or deader. Or whatever the word is.

  She swung her hand through my head, or, I should say rather, through the empty air where I was imagining my head to be. Lorelei snatched her hand back, no doubt because of the cold, but she had not hit my face any more than she could have hit a shadow or a fading memory.