THE TWILIGHT DANCER Read online

  THE TWILIGHT DANCER & OTHER TALES OF MAGIC, FANTASY AND THE SUPERNATURAL

  By

  ARDATH MAYHAR

  A Renaissance E Books publication

  ISBN 1-58873-494-3

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2004 by A. Mayhar

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

  For information contact:

  [email protected]

  PageTurner Editions/A Futures Past Fantasy

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  TALES OF MAGIC

  FIRST-IN

  KNYGHTE KELLIN

  ONLY TO A DEATH

  THE PASS TO DEATH

  EARLY ENCOUNTER

  A GAME FOR THE GINLI

  SOMETHING TO BEAR IN MIND

  THE ONE WHO FOLLOWED DREAM

  THE TWILIGHT DANCER

  THE GIFT

  A SNAP OF THE FINGERS

  PART TWO

  HERMIONE'S JOURNAL: A CAT FANTASTIC

  A CAT'S PRIVATE DIARY

  HERMIONE AT MOON HOUSE

  HERMIONE THE SPY

  THE VERY EARLY HERMIONE

  HERMIONE TO THE RESCUE

  THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

  PART ONE

  TALES OF MAGIC

  FIRST-IN

  I was young, then, with the lack of caution you can expect from a mossy-eared kid who hasn't yet lived a quarter of a century. Young and head over heels in love with my job. That's a bad combination, when you're a first-in reporter with the biggest, pushiest holocast system in the world.

  Global, like any big corporation, hadn't a bit of concern for its employees' lives and limbs. Oh, they issued us the glow-suits and instructed us in all the signals we were supposed to use to keep from getting lasered by snipers. They implanted bugs in our skulls that told them we were still alive. When the proper gizmo was activated, it gave them our locations and told Big Mama to come quick. But when the chips were down, we were expected to jump into the middle of any blow-up, any place, any time.

  It was lonely. I'll never forget my first solo job. The ride in the VTO was terribly long. The feel of being zipped into the jump-sphere was claustrophobic, and being pushed out, blind, to fall fifty feet to invisible ground was something you never got used to. When I finally got myself free of the cushioning sphere and onto my feet, I had just what I stood up in, plus fifty thousand Global Credits sewed into my glowsuit, my wrist cam and my satellite transmission code. I've never been that frightened since.

  Scared or not, I hadn't learned yet to be cautious. I was still enthralled with the glamor of my business, for mine was, after all, the last really dangerous profession. In the past couple of brush wars, more first-ins had been killed than had professional military people. We and the civilians were the ones getting it in the neck, for at that time the pros stayed in their satellite stations or their miles-deep bunkers and watched things via remote.

  If that seems a strange way to wage war, join the club. I never did figure out the rationale, and now I'm too old and tired to try. But as long as someone was out there, bleeding in glorious color and three dimensions, the fans of our 'casts demanded to see it all. Still do. That's what keeps Global and Trans-Terra and CIC and all the others in business. Big business ... it has to be to pay us a flat million a jump.

  I was determined to make Tamerlane Wills a name to conjure with in my field, but my first couple of jumps didn't amount to much. Besides, I was in the company of old timers with big names. You can't make good copy from burning wheatfields and farmhouses ... the fans are sick of extrapolations showing famine and death from malnutrition that result from such destruction. They have been soaked in gore for so long that nothing milder gives them a charge.

  I intended, with the sublime confidence of youth, to change all that. I wanted to educate our viewers, make them appreciate the subtleties of cause and effect, of guilt and expiation ... I suppose I wanted to civilize their tastes. Don't laugh. My fourth jump, the first solo one, gave me just that chance. It also taught me the first rudiments of self-preservation.

  Ireland blew up in our faces. If you have read any ancient history, you know what has been happening there for half a millennium. The Irish seem to be so volatile that anything at all sets them off.

  I had six hours warning, and then we were off in a huge long-range VTO. It ate up the Atlantic as if it were a mud puddle, and I rolled onto the damp soil of Eire just before dawn. My only consolation was that for once I had only to drop about ten feet.

  The jump-sphere gave a tired sigh and shrivelled to almost nothing; the weather would biodegrade it in a few days. Now all I had to do was find the nearest plug-in and interview the Operations Officer for this sector. By remote, of course.

  As I followed my automatic guidance system, I saw that the land was burned black. Not so much as a bush was in sight that wasn't scorched to a cinder. The trees were reduced to ash. I smelled something nasty and familiar and winced. Filming burnt bodies is not my favorite pastime.

  I turned my nose toward the breeze and followed it. Global loves burnt corpses, if they can't have mutilated people dying in full color. I twitched the muscles activating my "I am sending" light on the edit-board thousands of kilometers away in New Boston. Then I activated the satellite code and opened the connection to the fixed Atlantic satellite.

  The cam warmed against my wrist, as I held my arm across my chest, panning the blighted countryside. Everything sent now would register on the computers in New Boston, to be edited by my own personal editor and sent out on the regular 'cast.

  When I reached the top of a small hill, I could see that a little farm had occupied the valley beyond. A few walls still stood. Solid stone is hard to disintegrate, even with today's devastating weapons.

  A dead cow lay, grotesquely spraddled, each leg pointed in a different direction. Her head was plowed straight forward into the mud. I filmed her ... dead animals will do if dead people aren't available.

  Yet I knew quite well that the stench in my nostrils was human. That smell is distinctive and unforgettable.

  I found them huddled against the wall that still stood shoulder-high. Three of them, man, woman, and child, the classic family. Except for the relative sizes, I couldn't really tell which was which.

  I got down on my haunches and let the cam catch the glints of bone glimmering through black rags of flesh. For the first time in my professional life, I felt like a ghoul. There came a crack in my conviction that what I did was right and important. A chink opened in my belief in the glamor of my work, and I felt I pandered to unnatural tastes of sick-minded and over-coddled monsters.

  Bile rose in my throat, but I held it down as I turned away to move eastward again. Ahead was the pylon marking the plug-in for the sector.

  The Op Officer didn't appreciate having his breakfast interrupted. When I gave him my Global ID, however, he quieted down and assumed his best PR face. Strictly for the camera, of course ... he reeked of phony, even at a distance, as did most of the professional military of that era.

  "General John O'Rourke Vasquez?" I asked.

  He nodded, his figure tiny on the monitor.

  "I arrived only an hour ago and have seen, so far, little of this operation. I did pass a farm, just west of this pylon. The buildings were burned, and the family had been lasered. Can you explain why this action was taken?"

  His smile was a tight grimace that did its best to give the impression that here was a soldier doing his duty, no matter how distasteful. "A sad necessity," he said. "But unavoidable. The family there has – or had –a relative on the Other Side. We felt it possible that their sympathies might lie with the enemy. One cannot risk having such a situation so ne
ar the command post. The farm might have posed a threat to this pylon, and so we eliminated it."

  He made this sound almost reasonable and justifiable. But I had seen those bodies and I knew better. Inspiration hit me, and I looked into that oily face, untouched by any of the destruction its owner wielded.

  My tone carefully respectful, I asked, "Do you have another such operation planned? That should make excellent copy for the evening 'cast."

  For a second, he looked at me searchingly, as if suspecting that I had some ulterior motive for asking. But he was being filmed, and generals were Global's favorite 'stars.' Clearing his throat, he said, "There is a trouble spot just six klicks north of here. If you will wait beside the road to the east, you can get a lift when one of the robounits passes to attend to it.

  "Riding on the unit, you will be safe and can film the entire operation. I will look forward to seeing your 'cast tonight."

  I finished up the interview in standard format, and less than an hour later the robounit trundled up the cracked and pitted road. It stopped for me, and I knew the General had signalled it to pick me up.

  I climbed the armored skirting to the observation deck atop the turtle-like mechanism and strapped myself into one of the gimballed seats. We went fast, when we moved, and I stayed busy recording a voice-over that would either make my point or get me booted out of Global and blacklisted everywhere else on the planet.

  "We are headed north through what used to be County Meath. It is impossible to determine the exact location, as every town, signpost, landmark, and indicator has been blasted to atoms. The only legible sign I have seen said 'nderry.' I can only suppose that it pointed toward Edenderry, which my map says once stood west of this road.

  "The operation presently ongoing is directed toward what General Vasquez calls a trouble spot. We will soon learn what he meant, for we are almost there. The robounit upon which I am riding is now engaged in opening the panels that clear its lasers. It remains to be seen if those ahead of us truly pose a threat to the plug-in pylon behind, which is set three kilometers above the deep bunker in which the command post is located."

  I paused to look ahead. A cottage stood inside a low stone wall still sheltering a bit of green. Smoke curled from the chimney. A more peaceful and inoffensive spot I had never seen. The robounit had no audio receivers, being radio-directed, so I shouted at the top of my voice, "Run! Get out and hide, for God's sake! You're about to be lasered!"

  There came a stir of motion. I switched on the cam and began speaking again. "The enemy seems to be inside the cottage just now coming into view. There – you can see that one is a toddler, perhaps two years old. Another ... four wouldn't you say? And still another runs from the house. A dangerous one, this time, all of twenty-five years old and at least five feet tall."

  I cocked the cam to pick up the open panels, which revealed the wicked nozzles of the lasers. "Here comes retribution, ladies and gentlemen. Those three dangerous enemies are about to be burned to cinders, right before your eyes. I have shouted a warning, but where can they run? Nothing is left standing for miles, and the robounit will hunt them down until not one is left alive." My voice shook, and I controlled it with an effort.

  "I cannot stop this. The unit is preprogrammed for this task, and only the General, safe in his burrow, can instruct it. He thinks these people pose a danger to his emplacement, and he will not countermand the program."

  The young woman was desperately climbing the farther wall of her garden, helping the small girl. The toddler, a boy, was sitting on top of the wall where she had put him. The robot grumbled and a streak of almost invisible light flicked toward the wall. A section of stone tumbled into shattered ruin, and melted rock steamed.

  I unstrapped myself and stood. I was not going to let this happen, let Global say what it would. I was going to alter the course of a story, if I possibly could.

  "Drop on the other side of the wall," I shouted to the woman. "I'm going to try to stop this thing, if it's possible."

  The unit had no exterior control, but I hadn't expected one. The only thing that would prove my point was putting my own life on the line. I was young, as I said before. Caution wasn't a lesson I had learned, as yet.

  The unit slowed to a stop and lined its forward lasers toward the spot where the three were disappearing over the wall. I leaped down, directly in front of the thing, and ran for the same place, setting my back to the warm stone and activating the glow-suit.

  A spout of molten rock hit me, as the lasers took a chunk from the wall. I heard a moan from the other side, and I knew some of the burning stuff had hit one of the fugitives. I hoped it wasn't too bad, but there was nothing to do now but stand fast and hope the glow-suit worked to specifications. The press was supposed to have immunity from hostile action, and that was (theoretically) programmed into every device used by the warring factions.

  The robounit stood still, its interior engines and computers whining with frustration and indecision. The lasers thrust forward, retracted. I could feel the general squirming with fury, there in his hideyhole. I filmed everything, as I spoke again.

  "I am standing here, protecting with my body those three dangerous enemies you saw go over the wall a moment ago. If the unit abides by the Compact, I will find a way to get them away safely. If not, you will see me die before your eyes. I believe sincerely that the sort of slaughter you almost saw here and whose result you saw earlier in this 'cast, is being done for the purpose of entertaining you who sit in your homes to watch. The countries involved and their generals, of whom Vasquez is only one, foster these conflicts for enhancing their own reputations.

  "Our entire society and culture, I believe, are guilty of a Slaughter of the Innocents that cannot be justified in any way. If there must be war, then I beg that those who wage it be forced to suffer the consequences."

  I set the cam on the wall, its multiple lenses uncovered and set at maximum range. I glanced over the stones to see the woman holding the little girl, whose arm was a mess of burned skin and congealed rock. I aimed the cam downward and caught their faces turned up to mine, dazed and uncomprehending as rabbits in a snare.

  Securing the cam on the wall, I left it, moving toward the robounit, which began humming frantically as I neared it. A burp of fire touched my side, and I saw that part of the glowsuit was gone, along with some of the flesh over my ribcage. I didn't feel it then, for I had other things to do. Only the Compact had kept the thing from burning me completely.

  I stooped after a baseball-sized rock. The sensors on the curved front of the unit seemed to regard me apprehensively, as I got near enough to batter them into shards. I worked my way around the ugly thing, knocking out everything breakable. When I was done, it was blinded.

  The young woman was no fool. When she saw what I was doing, she ran, stooping, along the wall and away, carrying the infant in her arms and the girl on her back. She waited out of range for the end of my attack.

  When I joined her, we stood together and watched that blinded killer incinerate everything in a circle around it. The cottage went, along with the wall, the garden, and the few poor fruit trees. But the inhabitants stood safely beside me, and I felt a surge of triumph.

  The camera went up in a blaze of glory. My editor told me later that it was a shot unique in holocast history. As was, indeed, the entire story.

  Nobody had really thought about what was going on. My reckless disregard for professional conduct made such an impact on the viewers that they took stock of what they had been watching – and why – and were shocked into making their objections known.

  Questions were raised in the Whole Earth Federation that resulted in a resolution banning the use of satellite command centers and deep bunkers. Best of all, all generals and lesser officers were psychologically screened, down the chain of command. Those who had been using the blow-ups for satisfying their own perversions were removed from authority and put into therapy. That alone changed the face of modern warfare, for in th
e investigation that led to this action it was found that eighty percent of casualties for the past decade had been young women and small children.

  Of course, Global was livid. My editor, who should have erased all my footage, was fined all his pay for six months, like me. I was suspended, too, but a flare-up of civil war in Angola made them call me back. I got raked over the coals by everyone from the Chairman of the Board to the cleaning lady.

  But now, thirty years later, wars are mostly fought by those whose interests are involved. Now I am less reckless, too, and my caution dates from that first assignment. When the shock wears off, a laser burn hurts like hell.

  Now I am old, in fact. It seems incredible, these days, that I was ever so young as to lay my life and my career on the line, risking everything for my young ideals.

  But I can't say that I'm sorry I did it.

  KNYGHTE KELLIN

  Kellin leaned upon his battered shield and stared toward the north. At this considerable height, the wind was chilly with more than the bite of Fall; here it was tanged with hints of snowfields lying on the peaks above the foothills. Upon the wind came another scent, as well, the bitter suggestion of brimstone.

  Kellin turned his face upward, examining the peaks that waited for him above the intervening forested slopes. There was no trace of smoke, no glimmer of scales that he could find, as yet, for he still faced long days of journeying before he reached the lair of the worm he sought.

  Behind him, there in the broken foothills, his horse lay dead, an anonymous lump among the boulders and bushes. The slopes he still must climb would try him sorely, burdened as he was with armor and weapons and supplies.

  He drew a deep breath. "I have never turned aside from any purpose," he said. "No man or woman, warrior or wight has ever stayed me on my way. Let the wretched worm cower in his lair, thinking he is secure there. I will come at him, all unexpected, using only my two feet, bringing my weapons in my hands, as a true knight should."

  Suiting his actions to his words, Kellin arranged his shield to hang from his shoulder, settled his blade in its scabbard, secured his small pack to his back, and set out. All his life had been focused upon this final quest and the forthcoming encounter.