The Fire Bringers: An I Bring the Fire Short Story (IBF Part 6.5), Page 3

  Amy shakes her head … she’d wanted them to be so much more. But it seems like the creatures are stuck in their evolution. Some of the scientists call it “perfect equilibrium with their habitat.” As far as the mages and paleontologists have been able to uncover, the Lemurlikes have spent the last half million years in this forest. Sometimes they’ll go to the edge of the savanna north of their habitat to harvest tubers—but perhaps because of the large carnivores there they seldom stray out of the forest long. Sometimes they go to the sea to harvest salt in the shallows. While they’re there they’ll collect mollusks they catch in the tide waters, but then they return to the forest. The Lemurlikes have brains the size of Homo Erectus—but Homo Erectus wandered all the way to Asia, used primitive weapons, and had fire. The Lemurlikes don’t need either. The forest is warm with only medium-sized predators, and they have salt to preserve their kills.

  When they’d first discovered the Tenth Realm, Amy was sure that famine in the forest would force the creatures to leave and spur them on to greater things. That was before she knew about the ceremony.

  Females begin filling the circle. They range in age from toddlers to elderly, some are visibly pregnant, others are carrying suckling infants of both genders. The Lemurlikes separate into two teams, and sit facing each other. Lifting their heads they begin to hum.

  “They sing pretty,” Durga says.

  Amy’s grip on her daughter grows tighter. More Lemurlikes come from the forest to the ceremony site. All the females take a place in the circle. The males fan out into the trees, calling out for any lost females to join the rest. A few of the males come within three paces of the spot where the onlookers are, but behind their magic wall they are invisible. The Lemurlikes, compelled by the same magic that elves had used to ward humans from “faerie paths” in the old days, veer away at the last minute.

  “Mommy, I want to talk to them,” Durga says.

  “We have to leave soon, Honey,” Amy says.

  “But we’ll come back, right?” Durga says.

  The hum of the females in the circle grows louder. Throughout the forest, more humming rises. There are other ceremonial circles in the forest, undoubtedly filling with females and separating into teams. In a few hours the females in the circles will attack each other. They will fight to the death with their bare hands and sharp fangs. Any surviving members of the losing female team will be strangled, and all of the dead bodies will be salted, preserved, and slowly eaten. By the time the bodies have been consumed the red nut fruits will be back, and the Lemurlike population will be half as large. With only a third of the remaining population being female, the replacement rate will be slow.

  Bouncing in her arms, Durga says, “Mommy, we’ll come back right? They sing so pretty!”

  Amy realizes she hasn’t answered. “Maybe someday?” she replies.

  Apparently, correctly registering her hesitation as “maybe never”, Durga protests, “No, I want to come back, tomorrow!”

  Amy imagines that scene: Lemurlike bodies stretched out on the ceremonial plain being crudely skinned with the creatures long sharp nails. “No, Durga,” she says.

  Flapping her wings, Durga shouts, “Tomorrow!”

  Somewhere far off a pteranodon calls. From the forest rises a roar, unlike any animal Amy’s ever heard, and then beneath her feet, the ground begins to shake. Amy falls to her knees, and Durga rolls from her arms. Someone shouts. Amy looks up and finds her eyes on a pair of Lemurlike males a few paces from the circle. The creatures are hooting among themselves and stepping backwards. It takes a moment, but Amy realizes that they see her. Durga stands and faces them. “Hello,” she says.

  “Durga, no!” shouts Amy, crawling quickly to her feet.

  The males screech, and through magic, Amy understands. “Females! In the arena! In the arena!”

  “The generator is down! We’re no longer invisible.” one of the scientists says.

  “Back through the World Gate!” says the Light Elf.

  “They are not us!” cries a Lemurlike. “Eat them, eat them instead!”

  All the females in the circle lift their heads and turn toward the scientists. Two rocks simultaneously hit the Fire Giant in the head. She goes down, squarely in the place where the World Gate is, and male Lemurlikes swarm onto her body from the trees, blocking the exit from the Tenth Realm. Amy feels the Fire Giant’s life extinguish. Someone pulls a pistol and starts firing, but the Lemurlikes in the circle are rising and racing toward the scientific team. Durga screams in fright, the world rocks—literally, or figuratively—Amy is not sure. She just manages to will her child and herself into invisibility. She extends the shroud over the Light Elf and the human scientist. “Run to the trees to the south!” she shouts to them, sprinting to the first tree in that direction. “I can open a new World Gate.”

  The Light Elf and the man, once again visible to her but no one else, begin to comply, but they’re close to the downed Fire Giant and are knocked down by the swarming Lemurlikes. As soon as the creatures realize there are invisible somethings in their midst, they begin to attack them. The Light Elf, realizing what’s happening, sets their fur on fire—but it’s only small flares, not an inferno like Bohdi could cause. The pistol fires, too—but there are just too many of the creatures. Amy pulls Durga behind the tree. She doesn't have enough strength to open a Gate that extends from where Durga and she hide to the other team members. She has just enough strength to open one for her and Durga. She just needs a few minutes undisturbed.

  As the life of the Light Elf and the man slip from their bodies, Durga cries.

  “More in the trees!” cries a Lemurlike.

  Clasping Durga tight, Amy runs.

  x x x x

  Bohdi steps out of the In Between right into the main office of Amy’s lab. He finds himself surrounded by a desk overloaded with papers, bookshelves that buzz with magic, and framed anatomical illustrations of dragons, totoros and bakus; but there is no Amy or Durga. He sees Durga’s coat thrown over a chair. Focusing, he sends his projections throughout the building—but sees no trace of them.

  Steve’s projection emerges a few feet from Bohdi. His bionic eye is glowing purple. “Neither of them are on surveillance cameras. Looking through old footage now.”

  They could have slipped through a gate to Alfheim to visit associates there—that is the most likely reason for their absence, but Bohdi’s gut is a twisted mass of worry. “Have they gone to the Tenth Realm?” Bohdi shouts. His skin feels cold, though inside he feels like he’s burning up.

  The side of Steve’s lip curls. His head ticks to the side. “I’m playing your robot butler at the moment while hosting the Light Elf and Dark Elf peace accord that may be the event of the century. Be. Nice.”

  Bohdi takes a deep breath. Steve is being very nice; he’s putting off important and powerful people right now to help Bohdi. Part of it might be because he doesn’t want Bohdi upset—especially not in a major metropolitan area—but somewhere under that calculus there may be caring, too.

  An alarm goes off in the building and the lights in Amy’s office flash red. Steve’s projection looks at the ceiling. “That is an intruder alert. You didn’t check in at the front desk, did you?”

  “Of course not!” says Bohdi.

  Steve’s projection takes a step closer and raises a finger at him. But then he stops, his mouth opens, and he says. “Durga World Walked through the gate to the Tenth Realm on her own.”

  Bohdi almost steps through the In Between. But he needs to calm down, he doesn’t want to get to the Tenth Realm and set it on fire. Well, he does, but Amy would be pissed. He sucks a hard breath through his teeth and wills the molecules speeding up around him to be still. Telling himself that Amy and Durga will be fine for a few minutes in the Tenth Realm, he slams out of the door of Amy’s office instead, Steve’s projection trailing along.

  He tries to walk calmly … instead he storms through the hall. Shouting over the alarm at Steve’s projection, h
e fumes. “We should close the World Gate to the Tenth Realm.”

  “No, we should not. We need to observe it to keep our enemies from taking sanctuary there—”

  “Our enemies are the Lemurlikes … we’re enabling our replacements!” Bohdi snips.

  “Of course,” Steve’s projection replies smoothly. “And I approve.”

  Bohdi shakes his head. Steve’s about to go off on his ‘this peace won’t last forever, we always get along at the beginning, someday I’ll go too far,’ schtick …

  “Fuck you and your self-sacrificing bullshit, Steve,” Bohdi snaps, his hands fisting at his sides.

  “Because you’re upset, I’m going to forgive you for that,” Steve’s projection snaps back.

  Bohdi should say he is sorry—because he feels it, but he can’t. Despite Steve’s doom and gloom predictions, Bohdi, Steve, and Amy are still friends. Talking about their replacements is acknowledging that someday they won’t be anymore.

  Instead of apologizing, Bohdi says, “Can you turn off the alarm?”

  The alarm stops and so does the flashing of the red lights. And then they immediately start again. “You tripped another wire,” Steve says.

  “Well untrip—”

  “Be quiet!” Steve hisses. Bohdi almost snaps back, but then he notices that Steve’s bionic eye is completely lit up, and his other is wide with alarm. “I can’t connect with the research station in the Tenth Realm.”

  There’s only another ten steps in the stairwell. Bohdi pulls out a marble, and steps through the In Between anyway.

  x x x x

  Bohdi emerges through the World Gate to the Tenth Realm and curses. A Promethean Wire “container” has been dropped over the gate’s platform. Human sized and shaped like a bell jar, it has auto lock clips at the bottom that adhere it to the floor. Circling it are ten Einherjar in full magical Kevlar armor, with rifles already upraised. “Halt there, we have Promethean wire-tipped bullets,” one orders.

  The bullets could kill him, but Bohdi doesn’t halt. The men fire and Bohdi slips through time, ala Sleipnir. Unlike Odin’s trick of stopping time itself—which wouldn’t stop the Promethean bullets—Bohdi leaves time behind completely. The bullets appear suspended in midair in the quiet twilight he enters, and the alarms are mercifully silent. He circles the Promethean container but sees no console to lift it. He curses … and then sees the ghostly shimmer of Steve’s projection at the door of the ballroom. Steve’s still in real time, and his projection doesn’t even blink. Bohdi almost immediately goes to Steve’s side, but then thinking of the bullets that had just been fired at him, plucks the rifles from the Einherjars' hands first.

  Dumping all but one of the rifles at his feet, he slips back into time beside Steve—just in time to hear the bullets impacting against the walls over the scream of the alarms.

  The alarm goes silent and Steve hisses at Bohdi. “You could have waited for me.”

  Before Bohdi can respond, the guards’ cries of surprise fill the ballroom. “Where are our rifles?”

  Bohdi whistles, smiles, and waves the one in his hands.

  Narrowing his insubstantial eyes at him, Steve’s projection booms, “Einherjar!” All eyes snap from Bohdi to Steve.

  The guards’ jaws drop, and their eyes flit between Bohdi, standing above the pile of their rifles, and Steve, just a few steps away. Bohdi can tell the instant the headpieces they wear tucked behind their ears have determined that it is a projection of the real Steven Rogers, Director of Inter-Realm Cooperation, Commerce, and Interventions. They stand just a fraction taller, their jaws get a little harder, and their eyes light with respect. The closest Bohdi ever has gotten to that look is fear … but these guys don’t know him, which is probably for the best—people do stupid things when they’re afraid.

  “Lift the container,” Steve commands.

  “Director,” one says. “Communications to the Tenth Realm have been cut off. We’re following standard procedures so that—”

  “I know that, Commander Hsu,” Steve says. “But I am altering that protocol. Civilian lives are at risk. Lift the container.”

  “Yes sir,” the man who must be Hsu says.

  Hsu waves his hand, murmurs a few words, and a little light flashes on his headpiece. The auto locks disengage and the container is lifted from above.

  Bohdi narrows his eyes at Steve. “You could have done that,” he hisses.

  “You already disorientated them enough,” Steve mutters.

  “Sir, should we prepare for a rescue party?” Hsu says.

  Steve’s eyes slide to Bohdi. He tilts his head. “What do you feel, Mr. Patel?”

  Bohdi can feel all eyes on him, and normally he gets a kick out of moments when the Director of Virtually Everything defers to him, the skinny unknown wearing a blue choker and dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt. But he can’t gloat; he’s too keyed up, too worried. Instead he focuses at a point in the old ballroom floors, tries to set aside his anxieties, and tries to feel the truth.

  Someone starts to say something. Bohdi’s dimly aware of one of Steve’s ghostly arms lifting and then there is silence.

  He takes a deep breath. Creation and Destruction, the two sides of Chaos, always find each other and are often oddly in-sync even when they are apart. Hoenir and Loki both decided to incarnate as humans at nearly the same time without consulting one another. He usually has some idea if Amy needs him, and vice versa.

  His hands tighten around the rifle. He can’t clear away his anxieties—all he feels is terror. He doesn’t know if it is real—maybe it is just the reality of his wife and daughter being marooned on a primitive realm with raping, murdering, cannibalistic savages. His jaw grinds … truth doesn’t matter. He looks up at Steve. “Send me. Just me. It will be dangerous for the rest.”

  Steve nods, and Bohdi walks toward the platform.

  Hsu strides next to him. “Sir, all intel indicates the Lemurlike are violent; however in our armor—”

  Bohdi thrusts the rifle he is carrying at Hsu; it will just get in the way. The Einherjar stammers. “Don’t you need this—and armor?”

  “No,” says Steve. “He doesn’t.”

  Bohdi is at the top of the final step, reaching into his pocket when Steve says, “Give him your headpiece, Hsu.”

  And that is a good idea—Bohdi doesn’t have a phone, after all. Turning, he takes the small electronic-magical gizmo from Hsu and slips it behind his ear.

  As Hsu backs away, Steve says, from the bottom of the steps. “Do what you need to do.”

  Steve’s jaw is hard. And Bohdi knows what he means. The third, most enduring, most vulnerable, and maybe most valuable member of the trinity must be saved. All other lives are secondary.

  Amy would hate it if she heard them discuss it like that.

  “Thank you,” says Bohdi.

  Steve nods. Bohdi tightens his hand around the marble and is enveloped in rainbow light.

  x x x x

  Once, Amy was a slow runner, but that was before she was a magical. Focusing her magic on her muscles, bones, and sinews, she moves with the silence and agility of a deer. Hopping over fallen trees and rocky terrain, she lands with nearly catlike stealth; Durga’s weight in her arms is the only thing making her slightly unbalanced.

  Durga whimpers and some Lemurlikes call, “There in the trees.”

  Amy focuses and drops silence around them, but it’s hard to maintain while simultaneously keeping them invisible and moving so quickly.

  Amy calls up a memory of the terrain from above … does she run toward the savanna or the sea? She could survive underwater, but she won’t have the energy to keep Durga alive in the depths—especially if they attract carnivorous sea life. At least on the savanna she’ll be able to run. She picks the savanna and veers west, Durga still whimpering in her arms.

  “Broken twigs! Went this way!” she hears one say behind her. “I smell them,” says another. Amy swears and runs faster. Hoots rise from behind and also in front
of her. The tribe she was just observing is calling a neighboring tribe. They’re preparing to kill cooperatively.

  She bites her lip and pulls Durga’s tiny frame closer—she can feel her tiny heart beating against hers. Amy can raise the dead, and she can’t die—but she can be injured. If Durga is killed and her body goes cold or is hopelessly mangled while Amy is injured, her daughter will be lost for her forever. She hears hunters up ahead, behind, and to her right and left. She isn’t Bohdi or Steve, she cannot walk the In Between, even if she can create World Gates, raise armies of the dead, cause evolution with a thought, and, by her very presence, fuels scientific discoveries of all kinds.

  “Bohdi,” she murmurs. He hates this place, was always warning her about it and the Lemurlikes … they are murdering, raping, cannibalistic savages … she had tried to tell him that so were many early humans.

  More hoots sound in the forest around her. Sucking in a breath of oxygen and magic, she pushes her power to her limbs, eyes, and ears. If she can dodge them …

  She hears the stones whizzing through the air before she feels them. And then she’s falling, Durga spilling from her arms. Amy lands with jaw-rattling force on the ground, Durga falls a few inches in front of her; the shroud of invisibility is lost.

  Amy crawls forward on her hands and knees. “Momma!” Durga cries. And then, lifting her head, Durga screams, the world seems to rock, stones whizz from the trees, and everything goes black.

  x x x x

  Bohdi emerges at the research outpost just as Lemurlikes are ripping the limbs from the corpses of the scientists and elf mage. The magical generator is dead, but he doesn’t have time to ponder why.

  “Another!” cries one of the Lemurlikes.

  They turn toward Bohdi. Grasping his marble, Bohdi puts his face on all of the Lemurlikes, drops invisibility around himself, and weaves through the throng as they attack each other.