The Fresh Meat

David strolled down the narrow hallway toward the Blue 3 common area with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jumper. All the passages at Ravenwood were these weird octagonal shaped affairs that he hadn't yet been able to put a practical use to. Architecture on a military base rarely inclined to the artistic, so there must have been so functional purpose to it, but he couldn't imagine what that might be. Regardless, it did tend to discourage loitering -- no decent place to lean one's back against was a remarkably effective deterrent -- and it was very good at making sure there were nearly no shadows anywhere even with the minimal lighting provided. The upper left and right angles were nothing but solid blocks of light diffusing plastic, behind which were intensely bright low-power light emitting diodes.

The only down-side to the LED lighting, in David's opinion, was the barely-perceptible flickering with the cycle time of the electricity powering it. They said you couldn't see it, that it was too rapid for human senses to detect. They said it was purely . . . what was the word? In your head, anyway, is what it boiled down to. It's just part of adapting to a new environment, Pagano, the doctors had said. What the hell did they know anyway?

Still, tonight David Pagano was in the best spirits he had been since he had transferred to Ravenwood from Mille Roches. He took his time heading over to Blue 3 but it took an effort of will to avoid actually humming or, gods forbid, singing to himself on the way. He'd been here for six months now, played countless hands of Contact with the rest of the security team, drank far more shine than could possibly be healthy and smoked more Moulinette cigars than he'd even seen in all his days before drawing the Ravenwood post. Thursday nights were Contact Night now and he'd come to see it as the highlight of the week. Notwithstanding that more often than not he would return to his bunk in Grey 1 with far lighter pockets than when he had left. It really didn't matter anyway, they all got isolation pay way out here at the edge of the empire. Even pissing away half his weekly pay in an evening here still left him with enough to be able to buy himself a nice, three-story block when he got back to civilization. Maybe not in The Roches, but he didn't like big cities like that anyway. Something smaller, Souris maybe. Or Courcelles.

That wasn't what put him in such a good mood tonight, though. All the crews were on different rotations, probably something concocted by the head shrinks back at The Roches with the intent of making everyone's stay seem shorter by having things changing all the time. At the start of this week Maint-1 had rotated out and been replaced by a new group. That was what had put David in such a good mood. Fresh meat at the table always meant easy pickings for the first few weeks.

· · ·
"Y're late, Pagano," Randash called from the far side of the Contact table, a small rain of ash falling from the cigar already clenched between his teeth.

"Fuck you," David laughed as he took up his usual seat with his back to the eastern window. "Not my fault you always finish early, y'know."

The other men at the table laughed at the tired joke. The exchange was almost rote now between Sergi Randash and David Pagano, but everyone acted like it was new. This week maybe for the benefit of the newcomers.

"Watch your mouth, Grey," Randash came back, flicking a burnt-out matchstick at David. The nickname for security staff, Greys, came from them all being housed in Grey dorm and it certainly wasn't a secret, but something about it always had a vaguely offensive feel to it and it never made an appearance at the Contact table.

"What the hell?" David asked defensively, sounding annoyed but actually feeling a little hurt for being singled out like this. Greys never showed up at these games, they were technically against regulations, after all, but no one had ever objected to David playing before. He was about to up the ante in this unexpected confrontation with Randash when everything suddenly became clear.

"Why don't you tell me who this new person is, Sergi," an impossibly sweet, almost girlish voice came from the far end of the room. David craned his neck to look over Randash's shoulder and heard himself actually gasp at the raven-haired woman approaching the table.

She had long hair that looked to David like it was molded pitch covered in a sheen of water, so black and so shiny was it. It appeared to be cut in long layers and the right half of her face was hidden completely behind her bangs. That isn't even close to a regulation cut, David thought distantly. The one eye he could see was a brilliant green that seemed to glow in the weird, not-flickering lighting of the common area and for a moment she seemed to look right into his eyes, sending an icy chill down his spine. A slightly up-turned nose and full lips above a narrow, slightly pointed chin completed the picture for him. Somewhere he registered that she was wearing the yellow coveralls of maintenance staff, tied at her waist to reveal a plain white t-shirt covering her chest, but this was a distant observation at best. He found himself almost incapable of tearing his attention away from that one, at once innocent and sensual eye.

"... Pagano," Randash was saying, with a slightly irritated note in his tone. "He's our token security guy to keep things nice and legal." Scattered laughter around the table, most of it still apparently uncertain about how they should react to this subtle hostility directed toward David.

"What?" David asked, suddenly feeling ike he had been caught napping in class. "Wh-what? Huh?" He shook the confusion off as Hurt, sitting on his right, hit him in the shoulder and said something about laying off the private shine stash. "Ye-yeah, well, y'know. We spend most of our time boozing it up in the security office. What else're we gonna do sitting on our butts in a room full of guns, right?"

Relieved laughter passed around the table but was almost instantly cut short by the woman's soft tones trying out the feel of the new arrival's name. "David Pagano," another chill raced down David's spine. "What does that mean, David? Your name."

David smiled uncertainly, in a heartbeat he was again feeling like he'd been caught sleeping in class, "It, what?"

She was walking around the table now and he had to fight down an irrational urge to run as she approached. "Your name, David. What does 'David Pagano' mean?" She reached him as she said this and was now resting her hand lightly on his shoulder. The contact sent a thrill through him and in the first moment after she had touched him all he could think about was taking her back to his bunk and to Kur with Randash. Somewhere in the back of his mind he recalled hearing her name seconds ago. Aaren. He wondered what kind of name that was, but he couldn't manage to organize his thoughts enough right now to turn the tables on this strangely exciting woman.

"It--it doesn't mean anything," he stammered, feeling his cheeks flush and wondering how much abuse he was going to take from the other guys for this display later. "It's just my name."

"Oh that's not true, David," she purred. "Names mean everything. Names are power."

Silence.

David tried to say something but his throat had gone so completely dry he couldn't even manage to swallow to try to get a whisper out. He was starting to feel like he might not even be able to breathe, but he couldn't tell for sure.

Silence.

"We playin' or what?" Hurt finally asked and David felt his abdominal muscles relax. He hadn't been aware he'd been clenching them.

"Yeah, c'mon, deal," Gabriel thumped his hand lightly on the table. Out of the corner of his eye David saw Randash start to shuffle the cards with all the ethusiasm of an automaton. The woman named Aaren finally stepped away, trailing her fingers along David's shoulder for a long moment before finding a spot on a sofa away from the Contact table and picking up a magazine.

Five Minutes

"Five minutes remaining to reach minimum safe distance," the bland, androgynous voice announced in the same measured tones it used for all base-wide notifications.

They really should've made it a little enthusiastic about the end of the world, David thought to himself as he watched the video monitors. No, not enthusiastic, but at least like something more important was happening than a meeting of the social committee in the cafeteria in blue wing at seven.

Someone had probably even suggested that, might have even gotten as far as a trial implementation, but they the board would've reviewed it, or it would have been focus grouped all to Kur and back, and eventually someone would've piped up about how if Rowan sounded alarmed it might induce panic in the base personnel. And that would've been that, back to the monotone for announcing a cataclysm.

"Four minutes, fifty seconds remaining to reach minimum safe distance," it updated him.

David pushed his chair back from the console, the wheels making the usual, annoying kwee-kwee sound as the bearings rotated around the shaft, carrying him across the security office floor. He reached the emergency panel and tore off the plastic tab, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as an alarm sounded. At least something around here gives a shit about what's going on.

He retrieved the heavy black flashlight, hefted it experimentally, then dropped it on the floor and removed a brilliant chrome cylinder that easily weighed fifty kilograms. He grunted against the mass as he carried it over to the main speaker in the security console. A few beads of sweat forming on his wrinkled brow, he stood over the speaker until Rowan began again.

"Four minute--"

CRASH

"Shut up, Rowan," he whispered as he watched the cylinder roll off the console, trailing bits of shattered speaker behind it, and smashed into the floor with a hollow bang. He could still hear the automated countdown being piped through the whole complex, but at least it was a distant sound now. It hadn't really bothered him until it reached the five minute mark when the designers had decided, for reasons which eluded David entirely, that it should start warning every ten seconds.

Gods damned nuisance is what that was.

Back at the monitors, David spared only the briefest glance at the dorms. Randash was still organizing the group in Blue 3, but they were far too late. Even if they could find a way out, David had already ensured the compound had been cut off. The outer gates had been sealed and the security fence engaged. He had never been clear on why the base had been constructed with nearly as much interest in keeping people in as out, but he was glad for it now.

"Daaaaaavid, why are you doing this?" Aaren's pouting, vaguely playful voice came from the direction of the security office door and in a flash David had produced his pistol. "Oh David, don't be like that," she purred, laughing softly as she strolled across the room toward him.

"How did you get in here?" he demanded, as his blood turned to ice in his veins. He willed himself to squeeze the trigger, to put her down before she could take another step, to put an end to this nightmare, but somehow his hands had stopped responding to such requests. He found himself fascinated as he watched her walking toward him, slow, elegant heel-to-toe, one foot precisely in front of the other, steps as if she were walking on a catwalk or a tightrope.

"You ask such silly questions, David." She was nearly within arm-reach now. Even in the shapeless blue jumper all of the Ravenwood maintenance staff wore he could still see the hints of her figure. He raised his gaze from her feet to her belly with an incredible effort. The barrel of the pistol was aimed almost exactly where he imagined her belly button was. "It's not too late, David," she had a way of working his name into nearly every sentence. Once he'd found it charming, now it filled him with terror. "We can still finish the work."

That did it. Somehow that tripped something in him and he smiled brightly up at her. "I'm about to finish it now," he murmured.

"David, what--?"

Her question was cut off by the report of the pistol. David felt a warm spray on his face but before he could even consider what it might be the world ended.

· · ·

At the way station three monitors winked out. A moment of silence passed, then an androgynous monotone informed the empty building that Ravenwood was no longer reporting. Another moment passed, followed by a second alert. "Final telemetry from Ravenwood indicates probable reactor breach. Please begin standard radiation treatment regimen."

Magician

Floating. For a moment he was the embodiment of the name he had chosen for himself. Pure, childlike joy without any pretense or notion of self-consciousness. He was joy.

Above him was a cloudless blue sky. Supporting his form was a large body of water. He listened, fascinated, to the sound of the water sloshing in and out of his ears as his head bobbed slightly with the tiny waves. At the very edge of his peripheral vision on the right he could see a wide, sandy beach. All details were lost, but he knew he was quite far out and there almost certainly was no one there to help him even if he were to call out.

But nothing was going to happen. He had a destiny. He had seen it, and drowning was nowhere in his future.

Of course there were the distressing dark periods in the future. Like small valleys in the plains, he could see both sides but he couldn't see what lay inside them, only what awaited him on the other side. And much of it made no sense at all. There was a towering city of shaped stone and gleaming metal, a tired old man who held his fate in tired hands and on the other side of one of the larger valleys . . . a shadowy woman. He could see only her form, no details he could use to identify her. No matter. She was waiting for him on the very edge of the valley and on the near side The Magician.

The Magician, he thought as a chill passed over him.

· · ·

"What about the magician," She asked softly.

In a flash Joy had passed from completely asleep to hyper-alert, crab-walking away from her again and backing himself up against one of the boulders that littered the landscape they'd been traveling across. "What?" Undirected fury clear in his voice.

"You were talking in your sleep, love," she purred and not for the first time Joy imagined what sounds she would make if he were to throw himself at her and try tearing her throat out.

She'd laugh, because I'd be a broken heap before I even got close, he thought bitterly. "He killed me, that's all. But you already knew that."

Her hollow gaze made his mask itch and it was all he could to to keep from reaching up to finger the imagined crack in the cheek. She doesn't believe me. She knows I'm not telling her everything I know and she's going to--

"We'll reach Futility today," she announced finally. Then, without another word she stood up and strode away from the miserable little camp, leaving Joy and the still-sleeping form of Pop-top alone.

Hope Springs

Mayor could feel the storm coming as soon as he woke up this morning. By noon the grey clouds overhead were thickening and growing dark. Now, in the late afternoon, he had felt an undeniable urge to walk out here, to the edge of town, and see with his eyes what he already knew in his bones.

He crouched down in the dust at the edge of the main road leading into Hope Springs and retrieved a handful of something so small and so smooth it couldn't rightly be called dirt anymore. When was the last rain? Not since the turn of the year, he knew that, but how long before that? Despite the best efforts of the records keepers in the town hall, it was getting harder and harder to keep track of the passage of time. They'd known for a long time now that the days and nights were longer than they were in the older days. And they'd been sure that there were now not just more hours in the day but more days from one year-end to the next, but the records . . . something was wrong.

He stood up, shifting his weight from the front of his square-toed boots to the rounded, well-worn heels. Slowly he began to let the handful of impossibly-dry dust slip from his grasp. Anyone watching might see him trying to judge the direction the wind was blowing, it had become unnaturally calm in the last few hours, but he was doing this simply out of habit. There was no wind and the angry purple sky toward Pile of Bones told him all he needed to know about what their immediate future held.

The dust gone from his hand, he brushed the last of it off with two quick slapping motions. The old man imagined he could feel his calloused palms cracking, the dust having leeched the last bits of moisture out of his skin, as he slipped them back into the pockets of his worn trousers. He stood there a moment longer, looking longingly at the clouds, whispering a silent prayer to the Old Gods that it would bring rain and knowing there would be nothing but wind and blue-white fire.

· · ·

Mayor stepped slowly through the batwing doors of The Reagent Saloon and stood there, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness inside. Already the colour was draining out of the perpetually steel-grey sky as the storm approached and inside Sarah hadn't yet lit the kerosene lanterns, leaving the common room far darker than it would be at mid-evening.

"Afternoon to y', Mayor," Sarah called from behind the bar. Mayor squinted, hoping to make out some detail of the woman, but failed. It wasn't just the days and the years that were slowing down, his own body refused to adapt to changing conditions as quickly as it had been when he was young.

Maybe the world's just hitting end-life too, old man, he thought ruefully. Well, even so I've still got a fair few of these longer-than-years-years left in me. He started toward the voice even though he still could only make out a vague shape silhouetted against the startlingly bright mirror behind the bar. "Afternoon, Ms. Tunstall," he replied, narrowly avoiding a chair that had been pushed out from a table and left abandoned. The resident likely off to the wash, or someone would have already returned it to a safer location.

By the time Mayor had reached the bar his damned eyes had adjusted and he could make out the smile on Sarah Tunstall's weathered face. She was already pouring him a shot of the clear white alcohol she kept in stock. The crops had failed for three harvests running now and there was barely enough to keep the town alive. The trains had stopped running . . . not last year, but some time after the drought had come . . . say two years now, and supplies were tight, but somehow Sarah managed to find a way to bring in something to take the edge off.

Mayor didn't ask about it, he just thanked the Old Gods that she had found a way.

"Storm's on its way," he rasped as the alcohol burned the back of his throat.

"How long we got, y'think?" She tried to sound interested but her tone said that she was just making conversation.

"Evenin', I think. Maybe a bit longer."

"Mayor," Sarah leant forward, her lips close to the old man's ear and her voice nothing but a breathy whisper. "She's back. She was asking for you again."

He pulled back from the proprietress and gave her a suspicious, almost angry look. She bore it well, simply nodding toward the back corner of the room. Four hours from now it would be well lit and filled with the drunken singing of the townsfolk as they tried to follow the music from the upright piano, but now it was shrouded in darkness. Mayor peered into the gloom, unable to make out any details at all until an orange flare of a cigarette tip told him She had returned.

"I'll get this next time," he told Sarah brusquely as he stepped away from the bar. Sarah shook her head to tell him it was, as always, on the house. He nodded a brief thanks to her, turned on his heel and, casting a vicious look toward the orange glow, strode back out into the street.

Somewhere Else, Years Ago

"You don't understand, you don't understand, you don't understand . . ."

Pop-top seemed to be stuck in some sort of mental loop. For a long moment Joy considered hitting him the way he might've hit a malfunctioning television to restore the picture a lifetime ago. Not much chance of that, he thought sadly. If a good, solid smack was ever likely to unscramble that brain, it would've been administered long ago. Chances are that's just the sort of thing that got his gears loosened in the first place.

"Help us understand," She said softly. Her voice was gentle, delicate, a spider walking cautiously over the back of your hand.

Pop-top's long past understanding, too, Joy thought bitterly, turning his back to the pair. He had no idea what She expected to get out of the mental wreckage known as Pop-top, but he felt confident she was going to be disappointed. He reached a hand up to touch his smooth, cold mask, the fingers of his right hand straying absently over the left cheek. He didn't know why but he had a nagging feeling that there was a crack there -- or that there should be one -- but every time he examined it he found nothing. He hadn't quite reached the point where he was willing to remove the mask to study it with his own eyes but he was close, oh so very close now.

I wonder if I've finally gone insane and this is all in my head, he thought absently. Pop-top was still rambling, blubbering now almost, as She tried to pry loose the information she needed. Just watching the two of them together, her speaking in the warm flannel tones of a parent comforting a frightened child, him with his random sputtering, made Joy furious. He felt . . . what? He couldn't bring himself to even mentally articulate the word that first came to mind. Even the hint of it made him furious.

"--the knife-thrower is dreaming he's awake," Pop-top informed her, the words tumbling over themselves as he spoke so much so that he was in danger of tripping over his tongue.

Slow down, Joy thought, then realized he was actually laughing softly to himself. Oh shit! He stood perfectly still for a moment as he tried to determine if She had heard him. She was never very forgiving and an outburst like that . . . he quashed that line of thought before it went too far, but under his mask he felt his skin crawl.

"Go on," the spider-feet on skin again.

"Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. Death's killer is watching, waiting, but the web . . . the web . . . the horrible beauty of the web. Blood and wire and Fate."

Joy walked a little further away from them, the nameless fury had passed but the stink of Pop-top's insanity was making him ill. And what if it's infectious? He touched the smooth, icy cold surface of his mask again before he realized what he was doing. With a start he yanked his hand down and forced it into the right pocket of his pants. What's the compulsion, though, he thought. That I can't stop thinking about the crack in my mask, or that I wouldn't dare take it off to look at it even when I'm alone? And what do I do if I find out there is a crack?

Joy had a feeling he had slipped into the realm of insanity -- not the overt, noxious style Pop-top sported, but some subtler and probably more dangerous type. Long ago. Maybe even Before.

"Dixon, dear," she prompted Pop-top gently and Joy thought he was going to scream. That voice, the motherly, cajoling one she was using now was worse than Pop-top's ranting, worse than his own crumbling sanity, worse
than the extended black outs he seemed to be suffering. That voice belonged to Belle Gunness, Madame Popova, or Lila Young.

Joy hoped never to hear his name pass through those full, perfect lips. Whatever remained of his sanity wouldn't survive the experience, he knew that at the very core of his being.

"Sleeping . . . dreaming . . . in my memory," there was a dull thudding sound as Pop-top rapped his fist against his own mask, trying to explain what he knew. "Sleeping, lonely, like Lucifer."

"Yes, we know that, we know the companion has left us," she said with a touch of sadness in her voice. The emotion was so false, so hollow it made Joy want to retch. "But he left us a prize, didn't he?" her tone lightened as if she were reminding herself to look at the bright side of a summer rain shower.

"No, no, no, nononononono," Pop-top was losing it. Joy could hear it even from his place well outside the cold grey-green light of the fire. She had managed to tease a bit of sanity out of him, but that was all she was going to get, just a taste.

"Yes," She cooed at him. "Yes, he did. And you can find it, can't you, Dixon, dear?"

There was a muffled grunt of protest but Joy couldn't tell if there was supposed to be anything intelligible behind it. He looked briefly over his shoulder at the two figures silhouetted against the sepulchral flame. He was just in time to see her tear Pop-top's mask from his face. There was a terrible ripping sound as the mask came away from the
unfortunate's profile trailing something behind it. Pop-top let out a howl that, had he still been alive, would have surely shredded his vocal chords. At the same time his hands flew to cover his exposed visage and he began to flop around on the ground like a fish out of water.

"Dixon, dear," she repeated softly and now her voice sounded to Joy like a metal wire snapping. It was almost musical but the implications of that music left him feeling sick. "Show me, please," She may have phrased it like a request, but Joy knew the negotiations had come to an end. Pop-top made some gurgling, warbling sound from behind his hands that could have been anything, but apparently She was satisfied. She leant down and touched her face to his. There was a repulsive suckling sound and then a moment later the two of them stood up.

"We're leaving," She called to Joy. "Pop-top has agreed to help us find the doorway our friend left for us. Tell the others."

In The Before Time

The garden was getting out of control. Certainly Mitch would have to be brought back into line before the grounds got too wild, but Thaddeus had a sense that there was very little his grounds keeper could do to restore order to Cleophas House. Maybe once, before decisions had been made that could not be un-made, but that had been eons ago.

Something moved in the gloom of the hallway behind him and outside something moved in concert at the edge of perception. The light of the setting sun still painted the sky a rich purple, but the sun had long passed below the artificial horizon of the trees skirting Cleophas Estate. It had, in fact, passed below the true horizon perhaps half an hour ago now. Thaddeus had always been an early riser.

"I'm going to see Curtis," he announced to the empty space behind him. Lucy was somewhere in the darkened house but he didn't believe she understood much of anything that was said to her anymore. Mitch might be inside or he might be out, but either way he made no note of the comings and goings of his master. As he had been taught. Thaddeus thought again of how he would miss Mitch when the time finally came. "If Jacinta comes, tell her nothing."

And what if she's already here?

What if? Things skulked in all the darkened corners of the house now, was she any different than the others? Or the thing in the closet?

Boom!

As if turning his thoughts to it had awoken its rage again, the sound of meat and chitin pounding against wood filled the house. He had to remind himself again that no matter how loud or how dangerous it sounded, there was no way for it to free itself.

"Shut up," he muttered softly as he pulled a leather jacket over his silk shirt. The weather was unseasonably cold the last few days. He didn't feel the cold anymore, of course, but it was important to maintain appearances. Reaching into the left pocket he found his gloves and slipped them over his hands before stepping out onto the porch. He closed the door carefully behind him but didn't bother locking it. Anyone who could reach the threshold uninvited wouldn't be deterred by a simple deadbolt anyway. Quickly crossing the crushed rock walk, he slid into the smooth leather seats of the 535i. The engine, as always, came to life with the liquid-velvet purring sound he so loved. Adam missed so much by not driving himself around. To his left one of the topiaries, the bear, shifted it's massive head at the sound and the sudden splash of light, but made no other move. Thaddeus smiled softly, wondering if it was still following his instructions or if it had simply considered him unworthy of further investigation. It probably didn't matter now.

Shifting the car into first gear and letting off the clutch lightly, he started down the path to the gates and then on to his meeting with his old rival.

How Long Has It Been?

My body still seems to follow the old patterns. Sleep, wake, sleep, wake, sleep, wake. And the sky seems to change in about the same cycle. Brighter then darker then brighter again. But I'm not where I used to be -- why can't I remember the name of that other place, the old wooden house with the wide porch? -- and somehow I know that the sleep/wake pattern and the dark/light pattern isn't the same as it used to be. Longer, I think. Not much longer, but enough that I feel like I never get enough sleep anymore and when the day finally feels like it will never end the colour goes out of the sky like someone flipped a switch and then everything is finally, mercifully dark.

I could ask her. She would know. She might even tell me, she's been in a good mood lately, ever since we found Pop-top. But it would be a kindness to know, and I won't let her give me that.