1

WAR

 

I TRY TO view death objectively. Everything dies.

Humans die...that has always been the case. Trees burn. Countries go to war with one another for reasons more terrible than the wars themselves. The world is insane in a way. All of us are insane. People don’t talk about it, but we all feel it. That the insanity depicts itself as mundane doesn’t make it any less insane. I know more now, about how humans have been manipulated for years, at least since the end of the first World War.

I also know that none of us is as innocent as we pretend. We affect one another, whether we mean to or not.

But this time, it’s not abstract.

This time, I had a direct hand in starting what I’m looking at now.

“HOLD HIM!” CHANDRE caught another infiltrator by the neck.

Her braids whipped behind her like a dark tail as she slammed the smaller, Tibetan-looking female into a wall, knocking down wall hangings and flecks of blue paint. She shoved the barrel of a gun into the hollow of the woman’s throat, aiming upwards, throwing the image of her intent into the other’s mind so there’d be no mistake.

In nearly the same instant, Chandre jerked her eyes to me.

“Stay back! I mean it, Bridge!”

I held a gun myself. You wouldn’t know it by the way they were all treating me. I had six babysitters, all of them sure they were doing god’s work, protecting me from harm. Being leader wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Even so, I trained my gun on the other seer in the room, a male, even as Maygar, Dorje, Brevin, Alex and Cass came in behind me. I knew Chandre didn’t want me there at all. All of them, even Cass, would rather if I’d stayed on the plane. But I couldn’t simply sit there, imagining my instructions carried out as if I’d ordered a pizza. I pushed my calico mane of hair out of my face, wishing I’d tied it back with one of the leather thongs Cass had used.

I spoke Prexci, the only language all seers know.

“Where is it?” I pointed the gun at the male infiltrator’s chest. We know you’re holding it for him, I said directly into his mind. You can come with us. We’ll make sure he can’t retaliate. We can protect you...

The seer laughed. A young male, he had high cheekbones and violet eyes he probably wore contacts over when working with humans. He spat in my direction, not bothering with words to respond to my offer. He wore fatigues, I noticed, the uniform of Russian infantry.

I took a step nearer, wiping my face.

“Where is it?” I said again. I raised the gun, pointing it at his face.

Maygar crossed the room behind me. Walking to where I stood, he grabbed the collar of the seer I had in my sights. He proceeded to drag him across the room.

“Maygar, wait!” I said in English. “Don’t hurt him!”

The muscular seer with the sword and sun tattoo on his arm acted like he didn’t hear me. I clicked at him in irritation as he pulled a hunting knife from the sheath on his thigh, showing it to the other seer before he set it against his neck. He growled something at the seer in Russian.

I saw the violet eyes lose their confidence as he spoke.

Then I heard a word I recognized, and the violet eyes shifted to me, just before they widened in fear.

“Bridge?” he whispered in Prexci.

“Where is it?” Maygar said in English. Or she’ll create a new orifice in that pretty face of yours...without even breaking a sweat.

I lowered my gun, biting back my irritation. The seer began jabbering at him again, in Russian. Maygar listened for a moment, then looked at me.

“The other room,” he said, in accented English. He motioned with his head. “There’s a box in there. He says it’s all paper. No organics.” He shook the seer, asking him something again in Russian. The seer nodded emphatically, pointing again to the other door.

“Paper only,” Maygar confirmed.

Fighting an impulse to reprimand Maygar, I turned instead, walking to the door he’d motioned towards with his head.

When I entered the small bedroom on the other side, I passed Cass, who gave me a half-smile that stretched the scar on her face. Her delicate features showed through beneath the scar, but it still hurt me a little, each time I saw it.

Growing up, she’d always looked like a model to me, with her odd mixture of Thai, Ethiopian, Irish and whatever else she inherited from her two parents. Now she clutched a gun in her hands too, looking like something in a guns and ammo magazine with her shocking dyed-red hair and the tee shirt stretched across her chest with words that read, “Spacegirl Don’t Need a Reason.”

Unlike my adopted brother, Jon, Cass had embraced living with the seers in a way I couldn’t possibly have imagined when we were best friends in San Francisco a year ago. Of course, being tortured for months by a psychotic seer could do that to a person.

Somehow, she never blamed me. I wished I could say the same. Touching her shoulder as I passed, I entered the bedroom. A flapping rag covered the one, broken window.

Terian, the aforementioned psychotic seer, had been cleaning up, ever since he managed to come into power in the human world. Thanks to me, the craziest, smartest and most bloodthirsty seer I’d yet encountered was now President of the United States. He’d figured out a way to break his mind into pieces to spread himself across numerous physical bodies, and managed to place one of those bodies in the White House. He’d managed it because I’d killed the previous president, a genetically-evolved human who happened to be the head of the Rooks’ international network of seers.

Yay, me.

I walked to the wooden crate. It lay on a bed with broken springs that sagged nearly to the floor. The whole room smelled of mold and cat piss and rotted wood.

“Wait!”

I turned. Chandre was staring at me with her dark red eyes.

“Don’t touch it, Bridge...d’ gaos! You’re like a child wandering in a wild animal park covered in blood...”

I backed away from the box, even as Cass laughed at Chandre’s visual.

“I scanned it,” I said, feeling a little put out. “No bombs, Chandre. No Barrier traps. I was just going to look inside...”

“Well...don’t. You may not value your life, but I value mine. Your husband would kill me...literally...if he knew we’d even let you in here.”

“No,” I said, warning her. “Don’t bring up Revik again...”

“Does he even know you are here?” she said, giving me a narrow look.

“No.” I glanced at Cass, then more pointedly at Maygar. “...And I see absolutely no reason why he needs to find out.”

Smiling, Maygar slung his gun over his shoulder, walking back towards the main room. He blew me a kiss with his thick fingers. “You can lie to your husband all you want, Bridge,” he said, winking. “...I don’t mind.”

I watched him go, biting my tongue.

“Well, then.” Chandre said, causing me to turn. “...As Dehgoies is the only person you let order you around, someone else should get the honor, in his absence. I figure, why not me?”

Cass laughed again from the doorway, giving me an apologetic grin when I swiveled my gaze to hers. Reaching into her vest, Chandre pulled out a small, olive green device, about the size and shape of a fist-sized rock. She laid it on the crate, where it promptly began to vibrate. Tendrils erupted from the smooth surface, making me flinch.

I still hadn’t gotten used to the types and prevalence of organic machines. According to the World Court, they were supposed to be illegal, but the seers relied on them heavily, especially for military-type ops.

Fascinated and repulsed, I watched the legs softly probe the sides of the wooden box before sliding down the slats of the crate and into the papers stacked and crammed inside.

“I don’t let him order me around,” I muttered.

“Well, you pretend to listen to him at least.”

Chandre gave Cass a wink when the human laughed again. Touching her earpiece to read some kind of signal off the organic, she straightened, training her gaze narrowly on the stone-like object on the crate. The three of us watched its pale tentacles slide through layers of paper.

“Can it disarm anything that might be in there?” I said.

“Let’s hope so, Bridge,” Chandre said. “I don’t want to be picking bits of you out of my hair, with your human-like reflexes...”

I rolled my eyes, refolding my arms tighter. Insulting my seer prowess by calling me human didn’t seem weird to her, apparently, even with Cass—who actually was human—standing right next to her.

The psuedo-organism let out a pale tone, just before the serpentine legs retracted into a fist-sized body, leaving it smooth, lifeless-seeming.

“It’s clean,” Chandre announced.

“Grab it,” I said to Maygar, who appeared in the doorway, watching over my shoulder. “Put it with the others. And check the walls with the sonar...there could be more.”

I watched Cass follow as the seers dispersed around me, doing as I asked.

No one argued anymore when I told them to do things. Even Maygar and Chandre obeyed direct orders if I pressed the point, although they might give me a hard time as they did it. I wasn’t sure if that fact unnerved me more than eased my mind.

I was “the Bridge,” after all. I had to get used to a lot of things...and not only the fact that more than half of those in both the human and seer races believed me to be a reincarnated mythological being whose presence on earth heralded the end the world. But I didn’t like thinking about that much, either.

I had a new name. There’d been this whole ceremony.

I had to wear a blue robe. Afterwards, I was “Dehgoies Alyani,” at least on paper. The name made me nervous. Seers put family names first, like in a lot of Asian countries. It made sense to take Revik’s, I guess...at least temporarily...but I felt pretty strange about it, given the last and only time Revik and I had actually talked specifically about our marriage, he’d asked me for a divorce. Since it wasn’t really a seer tradition for females to take on the names of their husbands, I tried to just let it go. But it wasn’t easy.

The Alyani was less of a big deal. I’d asked Vash for a seer name I could still shorten to Allie. Alyani was as good as anything.

I couldn’t remain Alyson May Taylor...for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which being that Allie Taylor was wanted for alleged terrorist acts in like 20 countries. But I wondered if we were really fooling anyone, with Terian alive.

I still didn’t have a clan tattoo. Apparently that had more serious ramifications, in terms of familial duties and all that, so Vash gave me permission to wait. Regardless of what Revik thought about our ‘marriage’ these days, I got the impression he didn’t like his adoptive family much. I didn’t want to use them as a fallback for something I couldn’t reverse...not without talking to him first. All of the clans had petitioned for my inclusion in their lineage, now that my position had been legitimized by the Seven, so I had options.

Which also meant, no matter what I did, someone would be pissed off, basically. When I told Vash that, he smiled and said, “Welcome to leadership.”

He wasn’t wrong. Still, he didn’t have to be so blatantly happy about the fact that it was no longer him in the hot seat.

The truth was, I don’t know why they bothered with the whole fake identity thing in the first place. Everyone but Cass and Jon called me “Bridge.” I had to deal with human and seer religious types coming to Seertown to pay homage, some from as far away as the United States. They had this big festival just three weeks earlier where I’d blessed babies. I was pretty sure at least a few people filmed it, even though any kind of imaging device was technically illegal within the compound walls.

My face still showed up in the news here and there...my real face, not an avatar...which was extremely rare for anyone still alive. It also meant I was still officially classified as a terrorist and enemy of the World Court.

So I don’t know who they thought they were fooling.

In any case, the last thing I needed was more people giving me shit about Revik.

June 12th, 1944

Journals of Roderick Biermann (aka Galaith), later known as US President Daniel Caine

Berlin, Germany

 

...I THINK WE may finally have enough force to exert an influence for good. Young Dehgoies is a blessing. Already, I find myself wanting to give him more responsibility, to see how far that talent for strategy might stretch.

He will be my architect of this new world. Across this racial divide, he feels like a true collaborator. A visionary.

I so wish to trust him. With all of my being, I wish to trust that he will help me with this, my greatest burden. The boy is the key to peace. Not peace in the short term. Ending these wars is just the start, a prerequisite for all that must follow. Nor do I mean the kind of peace that implies capitulation among those who should never be forced to lie down or beg.

I mean real peace...the kind that lasts.

As for Feigran, he has a role to play as well. His ambition is limitless it seems, but it is more than that. There is something in his soul, some key to the next step...the ultimate outcome of the Displacement...that I still cannot fathom.

They still have no idea of who they really are.

A STREAK OF fire illuminates the darkened space of the Barrier.

I see the cloudy, sheep-like lights of humans blown back. Some separate from their bodies, ejected at once into the Barrier’s dark sky. Attached still to my own body, I watch them. At first, when only a few died out here, I tried to help them. Now, there are too many.

I still try to reassure those who pass near me in the Barrier’s waves. From the light body I wear in the Barrier, I tell them simple things. No, you cannot return to your body. You cannot force your way back into broken flesh. Yes, the vessel really is broken. See it? That’s it, there. That was your body. Yeah, I know it looks bad. No, I’m not God, or an angel. No, I don’t know how to contact your wife...

Getting them to listen is difficult. Most run from me. Their fear causes them to resonate with other lights, to disappear, ‘poof,’ into some other, more confused Barrier place. They are unused to the Barrier’s dark clouds and shifting appearance. They don’t know how it works from the inside...or that, in principle at least, they can travel as I do here, if only they would just relax.

But they can’t relax. I might as well admonish a baby not to cry.

Some, a very few, do listen. Some even listen long enough to copy what I show them. Some learn by accident. Other seers try to help, but it is a discouraging process. There are too many of them. And for humans, all of this is too new.

Trying to help in outside, before they are dead, is even more futile. I’ve learned that quickly in the last few weeks, even with Jon and Cass. There are simply no words for some of what is everyday for me now. Even if the idea is interesting to them, I can feel the chasm between their imagination and reality. Like all beings, humans explain life and death in terms of what they know now. The problem is, they don’t know anything.

The Barrier, for the same reason, is officially pronounced mythology by the World Court. They describe our powers as a child does, refusing our explanations because they prefer their own. When their own do not match reality, they grow angry with us, or relegate the phenomenon to the scientific equivalent of ‘magic.’ They look for a better story...a better story being one that appears to explain what was previously unexplained, only without challenging their original assumptions.

This war, for example.

To a human, it involves fighting over land and trade rights, the potential for accumulating more little pieces of paper that mean more people will want to have sex with them and total strangers will find them impressive.

To someone like me, however, and all the seers with whom I work, the war and all the reasons leading up to it are simply the invention of a mad seer’s mind...a mad seer who hates humans and would like them all to disappear. A mad seer I put in power, in a country capable of making war on all the rest simply by shouting emotion-laden slogans.

The other seers tell me it’s not my fault. No part of me believes that, though. My heart hurts, but not enough. I am numb, unable to feel as much as I should.

Sir? You have seen enough?

I turn my head, my consciousness still split. I focus on his face, watching it flash back and forth to his physical one, positive to negative...and I lose it.

My mind snaps back.

I leave the Barrier, and my consciousness resumes its march in real time...

 

Sound exploded around me. Whirring helicopter blades slammed overhead, thudding and rotating in a deafening heartbeat, long metal wings blocking the sun in and out with shadow. Hair whipped my face. I locked eyes with the pilot, a tall, Chinese-looking seer named Tenzi.

We are too close, he sent, apologetic.

I cursed, angry at how easily I’d been pulled out.

I needed to get better at being in both places at once. For awhile, working with Yerin and Maygar daily, I seemed to be improving. Lately, I’d plateaued, hitting a wall I couldn’t seem to make my way over. I could hold both places simultaneously if no one bothered me...or if nothing startled me. Which meant if I stayed away from the world and people, I was fine.

Sometimes, like now, I could even hold the split for a few seconds of distraction.

Sometimes, I flat-out couldn’t do it at all.

It was especially irritating to note in juxtaposition to my aforementioned husband, Dehgoies Revik, who could split his consciousness four or five ways, his attention focused on each to greater or lesser degrees, seemingly for as long as he wanted.

Most esteemed Bridge, Tenzi sent politely. We cannot stay.

I gestured dismissively with my hand, seer-fashion.

Let’s go a little further in, I sent.

No, Esteemed Bridge.

I glanced over, eyebrows raised. I hadn’t gotten a flat-out no in a while.

Tenzi’s thoughts remained stubborn. Sir, we must go back. He surprised me by smiling. You promised, Esteemed One. Vash said to remind you. He said to tell you ‘no do-overs.’ If you persist in arguing, I have license to rule your judgment irrational, and bring you back of my own authority...

I laughed in spite of myself. “Esteemed one my ass...” I yelled over the heartbeat of blades.

Still, he’d managed to make me laugh, no mean feat these days...and while he might be overdoing the politeness thing, he had a mind of his own. Glancing down through the plexiglass window, I watched the fires burn, this time with my physical eyes. I focused on the line of smoke through the trees.

A loud whistle broke into my thoughts.

Tenzi swerved the joystick-like cyclic sideways, alternating his feet on the anti-torque pedals. Lurching sideways and feeling my stomach drop as we lost altitude, I grabbed the opening of the helicopter door, catching a glimpse of something sliding by above as he went down. Whatever it had been, it was loud, and moving fast.

They are shooting at us, sir, Tenzi sent.

I caught that. I grinned at him, and he surprised me, grinning back. “Okay. Take us back,” I said aloud. “You win...this time.”

He was already turning us around, accelerating as we rose above the canopy and headed for the snow-covered mountains looming to the southwest. I remained where I was, gripping the door as I looked back into the near dark. Holding onto the harness strapping me into the chair, I watched flashes from small arms fire light up the dark mass beneath the treetops.

Then we banked, accelerating faster for the border to India. Infiltrators back at Seertown held a shield around us to hide us in the Barrier, mainly from seers working for either the Chinese or the Americans...but those same seers still had eyes. From the lack of Barrier imprint, they’d also know we were being protected by seers, which could only mean one of three things: we were seers ourselves, we were important...or, we were rich.

I remembered Maygar’s grumpy warning the last time I went out. He’d tried guilt that time, and it had come closest to working. If I were to be captured now, he’d reminded me, it would affect more than just Tenzi and myself.

I’d come anyway.

Sitting back on the ripped vinyl seat, I closed my eyes, taking in breaths of cold morning air. I had plenty to do back at the compound. I now had crates of Galaith’s papers to go through. I’d have more in a few days, assuming the team I’d sent to Bavaria found anything. I could have given some to Vash’s seers to sort through, or even the Adhipan, now that they were starting to trickle into town...but that would mean telling more of them what I’d been up to.

So far, only a handful of the Seven’s Guard knew what those trips were about. I couldn’t even afford to tell Jon and Cass the whole story. They were human, and vulnerable to being read by any seer for information. I’d let Cass come along, and gave her the same story I gave Vash—that I was looking for artifacts from the Rooks’ pyramid now that it was destroyed.

Which, essentially, was the truth.

I found myself staring at seas of ice and snow, lost in my own thoughts as we slid through passes in the high mountains. We rounded a sheer rock outcrop, and a green and brown valley appeared at my feet. Familiar tile rooftops began to break up the long valley floor. Houses, shrines and larger structures quickly appeared with more frequency, along with white-painted cairns and colorful flags hanging from the roofs of buildings. Then I saw the stone house of Old City high on the crest of the hill with its sprawling gardens and white statuary.

Seertown market and commons, including Vash’s more modest-looking compound, stretched down the hillsides below, where buildings had a much more lived-in look. Laundry hung from balconies, even at the compound itself, and most of the houses had peeling blue and green paint. Monkeys stood on several balconies and roofs, looking over at the noise. Tenzi brought us to the center of the white cross marking the helipad above Vash’s house.

We landed with scarcely a bump.

Hanging up the sound-muffling headphones, I climbed out of the battered seat as the rotating blades powered down with a descending whine. Ducking low, holding my hair ineffectively off my face, I walked out of their range, smiling at the four people waiting for me on the other side.

I grinned at Jon first.

“Miss me?” I said.

“No,” said Chandre pointedly, but she smiled.

“He’s coming back, you know,” Jon shouted over the blades. “Would be nice if you were alive when he got here...”

“Who?” I said, giving Jon a quizzical look.

Cass laughed, long, dyed-red hair whipping around her delicate, Asian face.

I grinned at her, only wincing a little at the thick scar that ran down one side of her forehead and nose, throwing her wide smile off-kilter. I saw her look down the hill from where the helipad sat, taking in the view of Seertown with its colored prayer flags and bamboo-walled houses.

“I assume he means your husband,” Yerin answered for Jon, drawing my eyes.

The narrow-faced seer stood perfectly still on the platform, despite the robes whipping around his elongated form. His dark eyes held a thread of humor.

“...And I must say, he is likely right that Dehgoies Revik would not approve of these excursions of yours, if my last conversation with him was any indication. He expressed concern that you were not better protected, even in Seertown. He fears you are too visible, given the number of people who already—”

“Where’s Maygar?” I said, cutting him off.

They exchanged looks.

Every last one of them knew Revik and I had agreed to not talk during the period he was away. Even so, no one seemed to get that I didn’t want to hear about them talking to him either.

Looking around, partly to distract myself from their meaningful silence, it occurred to me that Maygar really was missing. Still my official bodyguard, he never failed to be present on the landing pad to lecture me on the pure stupidity of letting myself be seen beyond the compound’s walls. I would have loved, one day, to tell Revik just how alike the two of them really were.

“Really,” I said. “Where is he? Is he sick?”

“He’s gone to Cairo, Bridge,” Chandre said.

“Cairo?” I turned on her in surprise. “Why?”

“Who knows?” Chandre shrugged. “Good riddance.”

“Maybe Revik missed him.” Cass gave me a slanting smile.

There was a silence, filled with nothing but powering down helicopter. Then I choked out an involuntary laugh. Jon and Chandre laughed with me, and even Yerin, who rarely understood our humor, smiled at the joke.

Revik would be about as happy to see Maygar as he would to be dipped in an unwashed septic tank...naked.