The Gypsy Morph

THIRTY-FIVE

WILLS WALKED THE EMPTY CORRIDORS OF HELL, talking with the ghosts of the dead. A quarter mile underground, buried in his coffin of concrete and steel, he carried on his one–sided conversation with Abramson, Perlo, and Anderson–or was it Andrews? He could never remember her name. They had begun appearing to him a while back–he wasn’t sure exactly how long–come to keep him company. They were only faint presences at first, shadowy and elusive, enough so that he wasn’t sure if he was seeing things or not. It wasn’t until they began to be there all the time that he knew they were real.

He hadn’t understood what they were doing there, why they had returned, what mission they were on. Soldiers come back from the grave to haunt him–why? But after a time, he had come to realize their purpose. It wasn’t so difficult to understand. Deep Rock was their home, the final resting place of their corporeal remains, which were still locked away in one of the storage rooms … although their bodies were beginning to rot now, he had noticed, even with the refrigeration units operating on high.

In any event, it made sense that they should return. Deep Rock was their home, just as it was his.

Until he joined them, of course. Which wouldn’t be all that long.

Which was why they had come back for him.

When you were a soldier, you never left your buddies behind. You always took them with you.

It touched him deeply that they would care that much about him, and he told them so repeatedly. Well, he told Perlo and Abramson, anyway. He didn’t talk that much with the woman, and she didn’t seem much interested in him, in any case. She only seemed interested in poking about through the complex, as if searching for something she had mislaid. He thought it might be the code that would have allowed them all access to the surface and freedom. But he couldn’t be sure. He would have welcomed a chance at escape, even at this point. He would have taken it gladly, gone back to the surface, gone out into what remained of the world, even if it was just long enough to breathe the air and feel the sunlight on his skin. He cried about it sometimes. He missed it so.

Most of it, he had long since forgotten. Time’s passing had erased the particulars from his memory bank, and all he had left was a dimly remembered happiness at how it had made him feel. He asked Abramson and Perlo if it was like that with them, too, but they only shrugged. That was pretty much all they ever did when he asked them questions. But at least they were paying attention. Anderson never even did that.

“Got to make the rounds,” he told them as he walked down the corridors of the missile complex, moving from room to room, checking the computers, the monitors, the screens, the windows to what remained of his connection to the outside world. Routine was important, he reminded them. Routine was what kept you busy and engaged. Routine was what kept you from going insane.

But he was having increasing difficulty understanding why any of this mattered. Routine did all the things he said it did, but to what end? He wasn’t ever leaving this place; he had accepted that some time back. He wasn’t ever going to get out, and no one besides his friends was ever going to get in. Time was going to pass, he was going to age, and sooner or later he was going to die. The inevitability of it was the eight–hundred–pound gorilla sitting on his lap. In the face of such an overwhelming truth, what did anything else matter?

His buddies had nothing to offer. They listened to his thoughts as he voiced them, considered his questions and shrugged.

The truth was, they had known all along something he was just beginning to realize. Even routine wasn’t enough to keep your mental trolley on the tracks. Even routine could drive you crazy.

He paused at the reflective window of the door opening into the sick bay–as if the entire place wasn’t one big sick bay, ha, ha, joke–and looked at himself in the glass. He didn’t recognize the stranger looking back. Bearded, disheveled, hollow–eyed, and gaunt, the other man stared at him. A man who had let himself go, who had ceased to do anything to keep up his appearance, who had given up eating regularly, who seldom slept, who prowled the complex like the ghosts who kept him company.

A man who had become a ghost himself.

I know this man, he thought, but couldn’t put a name to the face.

He shrugged his indifference, taking a page from the book of Abramson and Perlo. Didn’t matter.

“Over here, we have the command center,” he continued, his narration of his daily routine, a smooth and practiced recitation by now. “You may remember its purpose. The missiles are monitored from here. All of them, all over the United States. All those that haven’t already been dispatched to their intended targets.” He grinned knowingly. “The launch switches are kept under lock and key, even if there’s no one but me left to launch them. Kind of silly at this point, when you think about it. I mean, why monitor all this when there’s really no reason. You know, before we had a world to be concerned about. When we had people and animals and cities and towns and hope. When we had a working civilization. All gone now.

All you have to do is look at the monitoring screens and you can tell. There’s nothing out there. Nothing that matters, anyway. A few people, sure. A few monsters, too. But nothing of importance. Nothing that is going to change what’s happened. We let it go too far for that. We let it decay like a set of bad teeth. We didn’t brush. We didn’t floss or rinse.”

His grin widened. Excellent analogy, he told himself. He had gone away from his usual narration, but he didn’t care. It felt good.

“You think about it a moment, you’ll see I’m right. We just ignored what was right in front of our eyes. We didn’t take care of business. Not the business that really mattered. We were too busy living our lives to do that. So now what do we have?”

He paused, considering. “I’ll tell you what we have. We have what we deserve.”

He saw both Abramson and Perlo nod in agreement and was encouraged. They understood. They knew he was right. That was a part of why they stayed with him. They liked listening to what he had to say. It helped pass the time for them, too.

Impulsively, he walked over to the command console and seated himself at the launch board. A faint memory surfaced of that time, now long past, when the last general strike had been called in from the National Command Authority, and he and the other key holder, Graves or whatever–now, that was an appropriate name–had activated the triggers to missiles housed in launch silos all over the country.

How long ago had that been, anyway?

He could do that again right now, if he chose. It was a thought that crossed his mind at least several times a day. His retinal scan and the keys slung around his neck were all that was needed. Once, he would have needed authority from farther up the chain of command, a direct order come down from the general. But there wasn’t any chain of command left. There wasn’t anyone left but himself. He had to accept that. All his efforts at communication with the outside world had failed. He still tried, now and then. He still kept an open channel on the broadband. He still scanned the surrounding countryside through the monitors. He still hoped.

But he knew it was pointless.

Why don’t you just do it?

He jumped at the sound of the voice. It was Perlo who had spoken. But Perlo never spoke! None of his buddies did. He wheeled his chair around and stared at the other’s face, shocked.

Really, I mean it. Why don’t you just do it?

He knew what Perlo was talking about, and he was vaguely resentful that the other man thought he had a right to make such a suggestion. It wasn’t up to him. He was dead, a ghost. What did he know?

But then he saw Abramson nodding in agreement. Abramson, for whom he had more respect, thought Perlo was right!

Wills stared at them for a moment and then turned back to the console, studying the blinking lights and the bright empty screens as if they had something to tell him. He thought about it for a long time, and the prospect became a faint buzzing in his brain that teased at him with feathery touches, causing him to itch all over.

Why not? He could launch just one, see what happened. Just one.

What difference could it possibly make?

Once, not that long ago, such an act would have been unthinkable. But he had become increasingly convinced that no one deserved to live once he was gone. After all, what had they done to help look after things? He had seen what was out there, and it wasn’t human. Or not human enough to matter.

Even so, he still required a better reason than that. He had that much discipline left in him.

You launch one, you might attract attention. Someone might come for you, get you out.

Perlo again. He glared over his shoulder at the other man, wanting him to mind his own business. The command center was his responsibility. The missiles were in his care. No one had the right to tell him what to do with them. Certainly not a ghost.

But Perlo did have a point. If there were still someone out there with the right training, they might be able to come for him. It was possible, after all. He couldn’t see everywhere. There might be someone left.

The faces of his wife and boys stared out at him from the framed picture on the shelf in front of him. He had abandoned them. He had left them to die. He could see it in their eyes. They knew.

He sat there for a long time, staring at nothing. He forgot about Perlo and Abramson. He forgot about everything but his dead family and his lost life. He began to cry softly.

“What the hell?” he whispered.

Impulsively he pulled out the red keys and inserted them into the locks. He leaned forward to allow for the retinal scan, waited for the clearance authorization to kick in, and turned the keys. The panel concealing the launch switches slid back. He heard the locks to the switches releasing, one after the other. And then the lights above the switches turned amber and everything was activated.

Just one.

He studied the switches intently, trying to decide which. There was a book with codes designating targets and launch sites, but he didn’t know where that was anymore. He wasn’t entirely sure he remembered the codes, in any case. Five years was a long time to remember something you didn’t ever use.

Abramson and Perlo were standing at his back, watching him. Anderson was there, too, come to join them. Maybe it was time, he thought. Maybe they knew. He studied the switches some more.

Finally, he flipped one.

The amber light turned green, blinking furiously. The missile was launched.

He waited for a response–any response–but there was none forthcoming. Not from the console, not from the screens, not from those watching, not even from his own emotional center. It was as if nothing had happened.

Because, he thought, nothing had. A missile was launched, a target was obliterated, and nothing was changed. Nothing would ever change again because there was nothing left.

He shook his head in despair. He was just so tired of it all, so sick and tired. None of it made any difference, did it? What was the point of anything that he did or didn’t do? He was just passing time until it ran out and he died.

He was just waiting for the inevitable.

Perlo’s soft whisper brushed his ear. Try another.

He was surprised to discover that he liked the idea. He liked it a lot.

Why not? Matter of fact, why just one?

He flipped them all.

THE BOY WHO WAS the GYPSY MORPH slept within the mists, encapsulated and sheltered in the way of the storybook princesses of old. He had no need offood or drink, and the passing of time meant nothing to him. Still, he was neither comatose nor unaware. Though he slept, he was hard at work fulfilling his destiny.

In a dream–like existence, that part of him that had always been a thing of wild magic was reaching beyond his human form and its limited abilities to complete the task of strengthening the barrier he had created to protect those who depended on him for their safety. The wild magic flew through the mists, an invisible presence, and everywhere it touched it left a part of itself in reserve. The mists must last a long time, it knew, and so they must have durability and resilience. No stress or strain, no matter how massive, must be allowed to break them down.

When the bombs exploded and the shock waves struck, the wall was ready. When the winds blew and the fallout began, the walls held firm. When the nuclear winter settled down across cities and plains, engulfing entire countries and in some cases whole continents, the wall kept it out. It was made of the same wild magic that creates a gypsy morph, magic rare and unfathomable, magic that comes along only now and then to do something that has never been seen before.

The King of the Silver River had understood its potential, had housed it when it had taken the boy’s form, had cared for and nurtured it, had released it back into the world when there was no other choice, and then waited to see what would happen. No one could ever know for sure how it would respond, not even him. Not even the Word could shape wild magic. It took its own form, as it had done since the beginning of time. It served its own purpose.

Time after time it circled the mountains that cradled the valley, infusing itself within the guardian mists, bleeding out of the boy who slept, and becoming what it must. The wild magic would endure until its time was finished, and then it would go back into the ether and wait until one day it would be born again into the world. The mists thickened and strengthened, and the madness and destruction of civilization’s collapse were locked outside the valley in which the survivors of the caravan were beginning their new lives.

When it was all used up, drained away entirely, and all that remained of the boy was flesh and blood and bone, the boy awoke. No longer a gypsy morph, the wild magic no longer a part of him, he stood within the mists and remembered that his life was something more than what the wild magic had demanded of him. There was a residue, a leaving. That part of him that was human had loved a girl and fathered a child. That part of him had lived among other children, who had been his friends and been left behind when he had come into the mountains and created the wall of mist.

He wanted to go back to them. He wanted to go home.

So the boy Hawk, who was a man now, a man whose mortal coil was no different from that of any other, walked out of the mists into the valley, alive and well and whole, and went in search of his life.