zzambrosius_02

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: The Aftermath, With Ethical Dilemmas

Ambros, Arrenji, and Voukli dropped into a plaza in Paris: obviously a version of Paris, despite the lack of several important landmarks from his own Line’s version.

His visor showed him three layers of force fields, one encompassing the plaza, another wrapped around the outer walls of a smallish fortified cathedral, and a third closely mirroring the walls of the cathedral itself.

“We’re sure he’s in there, then?” Ambros holstered his pistol and relaxed a bit.

Voukli shrugged: “Reds and Blacks have been pressing him and his bodyguards for three days. Traced their last Saltation to here. And this is where the Squids thought he’d go, at the end. His ‘last resort’ they thought.”

“They can’t Jump through our force fields,” said Arrenji: “If the Emperor is going to escape us now, he’ll have to do it on foot.”

Voukli nodded: “He’s supposed to have four women with him. At any one time three of them are armed and armored; whichever one isn’t armored is for his pleasure.”

Arrenji made a face.

Red Warrior Guild soldiers massed in the square near them. Arrenji made a handsign and they approached and spread out along the walls, eventually surrounding the compound completely.

Twenty Black Warriors dropped in, atop the walls, facing the cathedral. Arrenji made another handsign and one of the squads of techs moved forward. After a minute, the heavy oak door disintegrated.

The Blacks jumped down and charged the cathedral, smashing windows and breaking doors and entering through every opening so created.

Red Warriors flowed through the open gate, taking the inside of the wall and laying down cover fire throughout the gardens.

Gunfire broke out, the loud reports of ATL slugthrowers and the sound of blasters, countered by the buzz of Commonwealth microwave projectors and the zing of the Black’s own longarms.

Ambros heard the all-clear even as the Magistriae jogged forward. He followed close behind as they passed into the nave. Blacks were staged on either side of the vestry door, and on the dais behind the altar. More of them herded a sad-looking trio of prisoners into a corner; others dragged the corpses of their enemies aside, leaving a clear path for the Sacred Band trio.

The inner force field followed their movements, contracting as they approached their target.

“Stand ready,” Arrenji said, calm and sarcastic: “We’re about to call on his Majesty Jean IV, self proclaimed Emperor of the Multiverse. I expect he’s not going to welcome us...”

 
Ambros sat on the table, his body drenched with sweat, his cloned leg aching like it was newly attached. The Physical Therapy Magistros sat on a stool across the room, making notes on a lapscroll. He spoke to the Technican who’d been twisting and testing his leg: “What’s your opinion?”

She said: “He’s good to go. If he keeps up his exercises, he should have no more trouble. The leg will ache in wet weather, and maybe if he’s under stress...for perhaps another year or so, but that’s normal.”

“Endaxi,” said the Magistros. The fellow grinned: “Good health to you Spathos, and may we never see you here in the Temple again.”

“That’d be fine by me,” Ambros said, a little grumpy. He sent a note to Combat Medical, announcing his full recovery, and copied that note to the Sacred Band chat space on the Kyklo.

Then he walked out, both legs equally pained, as had not been the case since he’d been injured: ‘I suppose that twisting both legs past discomfort and affirming that the injury is no longer affecting my gait was worthwhile...’

He suspected that Temple physicians and techs got a rise out of doing PT on Warriors: ‘Just to see how much suffering we can take.’

He dismissed that thought as unworthy. He muttered: “Now I need another shower, though, and clean clothes.” He walked right past the Baths, wanting the cleansing power of the ‘magic’ lockers in the Command Complex, rather than a random outfit from the Laundry. 

The trip to Tokyo for his now-routine speech and Q & A had been, until now...routine.

‘Weird that jetting around the planet to talk about “The End Of The World As We Know It” has become so everyday for me.’

He put that aside: ‘My sparring partner here is a shihan: a sensei’s sensei. Relax and concentrate...’

“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.”

—Raoul Vaneigem

Ambros’ return to Eugene in his own Line did not occur until almost a week after his post to the Kyklo. On his return from the scouting-and-sabotage mission, he’d found Voukli waiting with a series of RNA training sessions, interspersed with lessons on the practice field. Then he spent most of a day answering inquiries about his short essay; he repeatedly sent lower-ranking Warriors off with assignments to research and document whatever doubts they had about his suggestions. When at last he shook off all of that, he announced his intent to return to Line Seventeen: “That’s where I am supposed to be working most of the time, right?”

Voukli had to admit the truth of that.

When he dropped into the main room of his Salon, he immediately found himself swarmed by the women. Marie dragged him towards the bedroom while Luisa lectured him about such long absences. Kim unbuckled his red leather belt as they hauled him into the back room where his large tourney bed awaited them.

Quite some time later, he lay on his back with his eyes nearly closed.

“Catch me up, please.”

Kim rolled over and snuggled against him: “Well, your friend Arlen is keeping his people mostly in line. They stay in plain sight, but they are very orderly.”

“That guy O’Malley on the other hand...?” said Luisa, acidly: “He doesn’t even seem to try.”

Ambros chuckled a bit: “He’s got a tougher job. Controlling Borderers is inherently more like herding cats.” Luisa lay down and snuggled him on the other side.

Ambros looked around the hallway outside the restaurant at the top of Seattle’s Space Needle, in the Alcatraz Quiet Timeline.

“Masters must have found a way to break out those windows,” he said aloud, not too quietly. “Those are supposed to be completely unbreakable, except with artillery.”

The carpets were savagely shredded; enormous rents disfigured the wallpaper.

“That’s a lot of destruction for one bureaucrat to accomplish,” he said, shaking his head: “Masters! You around?”

No answer. He drew and deployed his APS, and cautiously moved along the hall. The remains of the double doors into the restaurant lay on the floor, where he’d left them on his previous visit. The marks of his cuts with the APS showed plainly.

He crept silently through, looking behind both sides of the door as he entered. He surveyed the wreckage of the foyer and bar. 

He drew out his Shifter and activated the MPS on his wrist: “Not a live thing for a hundred miles around, except bacteria and fungi...”

Empty cans and jerky wrappers littered the floor, mixed with vomit and liquor bottles. Ambros estimated the amount of food eaten, and checked the whole area, including the entire restaurant, for other signs.

In the end he said: “Masters fled the joint with about enough food for a week, on very short rations. If he’s really more than a hundred miles away now, he must be getting pretty hungry.”

“Everything that was once directly lived has receded into a representation.” 

—Guy Debord

 Ambros Rothakis awoke, in slow stages. At first he could not move: he wondered why and what that meant.

He began to twist and turn, feeling confined. He grunted in frustration and nearly cried out in panic. Then he realized where he was, and why he was restrained.

He wriggled his left hand out of the patch pocket on his pants and pulled the velcro’d flap loose on the other side. He untied his ankles.

Then he sat up and stretched, pushing the sleeping bag down around his waist. He put his legs into full lotus and meditated for a short time, then dragged himself all the way out of the bag and began a more concentrated stretching routine.

As he finished that, he began to shake his head hard, occasionally hard enough to hurt some. He thought: ‘I keep seeing things outta the corner of my...’

Then he realized: ‘I’m still tripping a little.’

He pondered his memories of the trip: ‘Normally, I’d have at least some experience of “ego dissolution” when Shrooming.’ That puzzled him, and alarmed him somewhat: ‘Seeing things, particularly my own thought processes, without the veils of the ego...that’s a large part of the point of using this sporoid.’

He got out his little stove and heated water for tea. The distortions of his peripheral vision that seemed to almost be meaningful bothered him some, but he could ignore them..

‘But I’d best not head home until I’m all the way straight,’ he thought.

He packed everything up, strapping up his rucksack and setting the rolled tent and sleeping bag beside it.

He climbed slowly and carefully down the ladder to the mucky ground below: ‘Right. I camped at Nail and Claw, across the ‘street’ from Sparrow’s booth.’

He looked around, merely observing the things he could see. He touched his MPS and called up a virtual image of the Country Fair site in that Timeline. He pondered: ‘...Alcatraz semi-Quiet...a Skolo for promising recruits from various Timelines who want to join the Commonwealth military...and now a Diplomatic Deme outpost, too, all at the old prison at Alcatraz, hence the Line’s name...colonies of refugees and POWs in various places around the planet...’

He spoke aloud for the first time since he’d wakened: “I need to go for a hike, to walk this last bit of illusion off.”